my pops, his Pops, all rusty and russell.

overheard my pops talking to my momchick....they were talking about people who have bumper stickers, and american flags in their front yard, and people who have a million pictures of themselves in their house, who frame and hang their diplomas, who wish to have a picture with the president...anyways....i wrote down the following:



my mom read him bits from this article, which i then went and read b/c i couldn't write down as fast as she was reading-->

In 1942, as the United States was entering World War II, the Office of Strategic Services -- the precursor to today's CIA -- was scrambling to find promising spies to go behind enemy lines. One of the aptitude exams it developed was the Belongings Test, in which candidates had to draw conclusions about a man based purely on items in his bedroom: clothes, a timetable, a ticket receipt. Sam Gosling, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, has made a career of studying how such clues illuminate personality. His premise is that our personalities seep out in everything we do and that expert snoopers can draw remarkably accurate pictures of us by examining the traces we leave behind. Gosling's conclusions are supported by rigorous academic research, but his engaging book is aimed at a popular audience; he presents it as a field guide to the "special brand of voyeurism" he calls "snoopology." Few readers may actually rummage through their neighbors' garbage in search of what Gosling dryly calls "behavioral residue," but Snoop's conceit makes for an entertaining tour of how people project their inner selves outward into the world. Some clues come from explicit, deliberate identity claims, like the Malcolm X poster on your wall or the crucifix over your bed. Others, like the songs you download or the coffee cup you throw away, are what psychologists call "seepage," messages that leak out beneath your notice. The trick to decoding a person's space is knowing what to look for. Offices with plants, knick-knacks and symbols of friends, family and pets tend to belong to women; men display more sports items and symbols of their achievements. Rock fans are less friendly, more artistic and more anxious than fans of religious music. Extroverts offer comfortable chairs and bowls of candy as "bait" to lure people into their offices, while difficult people wind up on the remote fringes of the workplace. This may seem like just common sense, but it's not. We think people with messy, disorganized bedrooms will be unpleasant, but we're wrong. We incorrectly assume people whose rooms are highly decorated and cluttered are more extroverted. We make similar errors in judging people directly: We expect timid, grumpy-looking people with weak voices and halting speech to be anxious and easily upset, and we expect self-assured, smiling, stylish people to be open, imaginative and curious. But neither expectation is accurate. On a date or job interview, you may succeed in presenting a misleading impression of yourself. But since the gradual accumulation of clues in your living space is hard to fake, snooping can yield a penetrating portrait. And that, says Gosling, is perfectly okay, because though we try to put our best selves forward, most of us, in the end, want to be known not for who we wish we could be, but for who we are. Of course, one of the main ways we carve out our identity is by consuming. We surround ourselves with things that reinforce our conception of who we are, purchasing not just the objects we need but also symbols that help us articulate our personal narratives. That's why Ramones T-shirts outsell Ramones albums 10 to one and why, Rob Walker asserts, 75 percent of Viking's ultra-high-end kitchen ranges are never used...

and this is what my pops said: (well, most of it at least, i was writing as fast as i could):

That is exactly why I have never had a bumper sticker, never had a personalized license plate , never put a fish sign on my car, never wore my letter jacket, never put my all-state patches on my jacket, never hung an award on the wall, or a diploma, never sent out graduation notices, never kept pictures of myself anywhere on a wall or in a frame, don't wear lapel pins, don't put signs in my yard, don't wear "I voted" stickers, don't wear "I gave blood stickers", never put decals in my car window of HS- College-Delt- Sooners or anything, never wore a t-shirt promoting a band or promoting anything, never put little knick- knacks in my flower beds and bushes, don't wear jewelry, and never tried to send anything ahead of me to represent me or leave anything behind but a memory of me as a person (preferably barefooted and in jeans).I don't collect "things" that I agree with and leave them out to speak for me, I don't cut out articles that I agree with and send them to others, I just say what I think and that only as a last resort. Being an enigma ,when other pushy people who wear "flair" on their person and allow their trappings to say "something" about themselves, is always fun and enjoyable, especially as they pry to try and search for "things" to define me, and are increasingly frustrated. Why don't they just come in my house when I am gone and search it for clues? What is funny, is that people who have all of the stickers, pins, plates, photos, etc want you to validate them and comment (like "I am showing you all my stuff, please comment-PLEASE") and when you don't give them anything to define you, they do in fact "snoop", and I have found in the absence of finding anything, they usually just make up something in utter frustration, as the need to "be defined" and to "define others" is strong in people who lack confidence in themselves alone, and thus need animate objects to speak for them, and need others to constantly, and repetitively validate them. I "enjoy" in silence, I "hurt" in silence, I "pray" alone without waving my arms or rolling in the aisle, I fear alone, and I believe that, had my mom put one of those "Face" posters, showing the different moods and asking "which one are you today?", I might have cut it up and stuck it in her car window and on the bumper of her car. Fortunately, she knew better and just looked closely at me, the person, for her clues as to what I was. Thats a pretty good way.



after listening to their conversation....my pops read from his autobiography he's been working on...he read me about his first kiss...he was in the 7th grade, he kissed the girl, then weeks later he and his best friend went over to her house and of course my dad hadn't told his best friend about the kiss...and he leaves to get water from the kitchen, and comes back to see his best friend with his arm around the girl my dad was trying to 'woo'. my dad only told his best friend about this incident 35 years later....


last night, me and my pops were going through boxes and boxes about his grandpa, rusty russell, or "pops".....my dad was the kid in his family that collected things from "pops"......and i was poking fun at my dad because there was a big white box that said "pops' things under protection of Russell Morton...touch this box and you will be SEVERELY PUNISHED!!"....his handwriting was that of an elementary schooler...meaning that "Pops" was still alive and my dad, his ultimate fan....i was poking fun at my dad for the 'severely punished' part and my dad replies, with the most humble composure i've seen as if nobody was around and he was all alone, "i loved my grandpa...he was the greatest man i know....he was...he's my hero"........i saw my dad in a new light, because to me he's superman, there is nothing he can't do or can't know...but to see him humbled in memory of HIS hero....was possibly one of the greatest moments in my life....you never imagine that your heros have their heros.