The Crab Chronicles

The Gift of Faith

I was 23 years old and I thought I knew everything and most other people were idiots.

My attitude about religion and God and Faith could be summed up very simply: Prove It.

I spent my Freshman year of college at a tiny Baptist school in East Tennessee and while there I was accosted on a daily basis by some earnest student asking me if I was "saved" and wanting to "share their testimony" with me.

I was raised Episcopalian. Nobody in the Episcopal church ever asks about being "saved." I was irritated every time someone tried to get me to get baptized and be BORN AGAIN. My parents had warned me not to pick fights or be argumentative, and sternly advised me to be nice when confronted. I found it really difficult. It was a great relief to transfer to a big state university the next year.

By the time I finished college and paralegal school I had decided that I was an agnostic, and proud to belligerently tell Christians they were delusional.

My mother sat me down one day and said "I want you to promise me something."

"What?" I asked, startled. She had never said anything like that to me before.

"Promise you'll do something for me."

"OK, but what are you talking about?" I asked, puzzled.

"Do you promise?" she insisted.

"Sure, okay. What am I promising?"

"I want you to go to church. Any church in town, any denomination. I want you to participate in at least one activity at the church."

"Oh no, I have no interest in that nonsense," I snapped.

She looked horrified.

I knew I better talk fast. "Look, I don't want to be a hypocrite. I don't believe all that stuff."

"You promised."

I ended up going to St. John's Cathedral in Knoxville for the next 7 years, and I sang in the choir. Then I moved to Atlanta and started going to St. Luke's and singing in the choir.

I don't go to church any more, but I have a strong faith, and an unshakeable belief in God. Mom had set me on a journey that still goes on, to this day, many years later.

When I lost my dad to cancer in 1996 I had to drive from Atlanta to Augusta by myself, knowing my dad had passed away just an hour earlier. I couldn't stop crying in the car. By the time the 2 1/2 hours were up my eyes were red and swollen. I had felt my dad in the car with me, though, talking to me in my head, telling me to watch the road. Your mama needs you, he said.

My mother was a very wise person.

My parents' marriage lasted nearly 40 years, until Dad's death, but it wasn't easy. They fought a lot. I know she called on her own faith, forged in the Baptist church of her childhood, to get her through. Dad was a person of faith, too, but he didn't talk about it. He worked quietly and tirelessly behind the scenes of his church to help them raise and manage their money, because that was his area of expertise. 

My son is now a Buddhist, and he studies at a local monastery. He thinks there is a God but he doesn't find comfort in Christianity, like I do. He believes strongly in the Buddhist virtues -- Wisdom, kindness, patience, generosity, and compassion. I am fine with that. I can see how he returns from the monastery more calm and peaceful, and he stays sober. He was my Wild Child for years, but he has reformed in the past couple of years. I am proud of him.

My more conservative friends disagree with me, but I think we all go to the same place when we die. I think to be "saved" is possible only when we are mindful of how important it is to love each other, and we constantly strive to spread the message of Love and Kindness in the world. I tell my Atheist friends that if they believe in Love, they already believe in God. God IS Love and Love IS God.

I truly believe that. I consider it the truest Gospel out there, the one we are called upon to spread.

Now, are there people who cannot love? Sure. I think they are called sociopaths or psychopaths or maybe narcissists. I don't know anyone like that but I pity those people. They are truly in Hell, because Hell is the absence of Love.

Whether you agree with me or not doesn't matter. Love yourself, love your family, your friends, your pets. Think of Love as an active verb.

Go in peace..

 

Bob Hasty and Return to Marietta

Many years ago, my mother told me a fascinating story about a family event that I knew nothing about, and I vowed to one day write about it.

In 1923 my grandfather Bob Hasty was accused of being part of a KKK mob that beat up a young [white] woman. The charges were dropped but the scandal cost him his career as a pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics.

When Mom told me the story I drove down to Marietta and did some research in the library, and I found the articles about what happened, on microfilm. I tried to get a copy of the actual police file and the court file but too much time had passed, more than 70 years. I wrote an article about what happened and it was published in Georgia Backroads Magazine in 2015. I wrote about that here.

A few years ago I wrote a novel, Return to Marietta, that was inspired by the true story. It's fiction, because I just couldn't gather enough factual information to write it as non-fiction.

For a limited time, you can get the Kindle version of the book for FREE, on Amazon. Look here. It's a great story, and the most personal of all my novels.

#novelsaboutbaseball, #baseballlovestories, #baseballnovelsbasedontruestories, #novelssetinthe1920s, #freekindlebooks, #bobhastybaseballcareer, #novelswithstrongfemalecharacters

below left, Papa and Connie Mack and another player

below right, the poster designed by my cousin's son, Michael Hasty

 

Atlanta Paralegal Memories

On this date in 1993 I started my very first paralegal job in Atlanta. I remember it only because it's the same date as my parents' wedding anniversary. I was smart, a hard worker, and completely unprepared.

I had been a paralegal for more than seven years, but I knew nothing about Georgia law. Atlanta is a very large metropolitan area with the largest airport in the world. The town is encircled by interstate 285, a/k/a the Indy 500. Knoxville is the largest town in East Tennessee but its population is roughly a tenth that of Atlanta. It would take probably a full day to walk all over downtown Atlanta. You can walk all over downtown Knoxville in less than an hour. Most Knoxville lawyers file cases in Knox County, which encompasses most all of the city and county. In Atlanta, you have Fulton County, DeKalb County, Cobb County, etc.

In Knoxville, in 1993, most lawyers were very civil Southern Gentlemen and Ladies, who all played by the same rules. In Atlanta, practicing law as a litigator was more like a bloodsport.

In Knoxville, I once watched an attorney call a judge's secretary and sweet talk her into postponing his trial because he was scheduled to be out of town on a fishing trip. In Atlanta, trial calendars are published in the local legal publication and lawyers have to either settle or be ready to go with a couple hours' notice.

My job as a paralegal was rapidly evolving. At my last job in Knoxville I had a nice office with a window but no computer. Not even a typewriter. In Atlanta I didn't have a window but for the first time I had a computer! Shortly after I started, we got color monitors. We used WordPerfect. I had taken a class in WordPerfect in Knoxville but it was still a learning situation for me. I got a lot of emails from my very demanding boss.

Everything was paper in those days. All court filings were done in person. In Knoxville, I could walk to all of the places downtown where filings were done, and I never had to get in my car. All the paralegals in the Atlanta firm took turns going to the local courthouses [DeKalb, Fulton, and sometimes Cobb] and filing pleadings, copying things out of court files, delivering letters to judges, etc. The Courthouse Run usually took several hours and you had to use your car. I kept sneakers under my desk and quarters in my car to feed parking meters.

Sometimes the Atlanta lawyers would wait until the last minute to file pleadings in court and then two paralegals had to "tag team" -- one driving and one jumping out of the car and running into the courthouse to file the pleadings right before the court's filing desk closed. Downtown Atlanta between 4 and 5 pm on a weekday is not for the faint of heart.

In Knoxville I had only known one female attorney, and she just did legal research and stayed in the background. In Atlanta, I worked for a female attorney who was so ferocious that local paralegals didn't want to work for her, which is why I was hired, from Tennessee.

I had no idea what I was getting into. My Atlanta boss was a really hard taskmaster but I did learn a lot. I never went on vacation or stayed home sick that she didn't call me at least once, and sometimes multiple times a day. I had pneumonia once and was out sick for a week, and she called me and said if I didn't come back to work my pay would be docked. I went back to work. She was really a character. She used to routinely make plaintiffs cry in deposition -- and the secretary, associate and I would make bets how long the poor deponent would last before breaking down in tears. Usually it was accomplished by page 10 in the transcript. I devoted many pages to that attorney in my recent memoir, Talking Back: Stories from the Big Hair and Pantyhose Years. Of course I didn't use her real name. She is now retired.

Of course, my gameplan in 1993 was to simply work until I got married and started having children. That didn't happen.

Now that I'm older I look back sometimes and marvel at how energetic and optimistic I was as a young woman. I didn't give up on finding a husband until I turned 40, but I was relieved to throw away my pantyhose and buy stretchy pants, and go to work in the legal department of a company, which is FAR less stressful than working in a firm.

As the saying goes, "You either win, or you learn."

#paralegallifelessons, #paralegallife, #lawinatlanta, #paralegalmemories

below left, me in 1989, in Knoxville; below right me about ten years later, in Atlanta