The Saving Grace of 'Catch-22'

This article first appeared in the June 7, 2000 issue of The Camden Chronicle

When I heard on the news that Joseph Heller died, it sent my mind sailing backwards to a time when things were not going well for me and he helped me laugh my way through my low time.  

You see, Heller wrote a book called "Catch-22." It was about an Army Air Force bombardier who had seen too much German flak thrown up at his plane during bombing runs and was seeking any way to be grounded in order to stop his missions. The book's central character was Air Force Captain Yossarian and he was about as craven a coward as you'll ever read about, but don't feel superior because he is not unique. I'm almost certain that everyone who has ever fought in a war has shared Yossarian-type feelings.

Yossarian wanted to be declared insane and grounded by the medical staff, thus ending his dangerous missions over Italy where Hermann Goering's (Hitler's Luftwaffe leader) anti-aircraft gunners were defending targets. The trouble for Yossarian was that the Army's medical section opined a bombardier who wasn't afraid was a crazy person. The scared ones were perfectly normal, thus "Catch-22."

At the time I read the book I was in as blue a funk as Capt. Yossarian. The milk plant where I had worked since my 18th birthday had closed down and laid off its entire staff. Management included. I was as scared as Yossarian because I was having to plot a whole new course for my life's work. I had a young consort and a child to protect and support, a mortgage to meet and bills to pay. Money was scarce.

From my 18th birthday, the day I was hired at the milk plant, until the day I was summarily dismissed, I never expected to work at any other place. Career-wise, I thought I had found a home. As I found out when I was reading "Catch-22," there are forces working against all of us which we don't have much control over. Despite all of our plans, sometimes we must grab hold of the nearest hand grip and go along for the ride.While we're at it, we might as well relax and enjoy the ride we're on.

Because of my youth and my willingness to work, I had been welcomed into all parts of the milk plant. In three or four years, I was on speaking terms with people in every aspect of the plant's operations. Because of his, and the fact that I showed up for work everyday, I was a valued, well-paid employee who was appointed to break in the college grads recently recruited from Michigan State with degrees in Animal Husbandry and Dairy Management.

I had so much confidence I was cocky and real sure of myself, conditions that don't lend themselves to much fright or self-reflection. When the boom was lowered, I was in no condition to handle the pressure.

As Yossarian did, I panicked. At first I went into a state of denial. I didn't want anyone to know I had lost my job. I just couldn't bring myself to believe there would be no more job to go to each morning, where I would be completely confident of what I had to do and the manner in which I was to do it. For a week, I told people who asked that I was on vacation. I knew soon or later I would have to admit I was out of work. Not just out of work, it was worse than that. I was forced into a new system of life where I was just another "hand."

The woman I consorted with then, and as now, tried to console me but I refused to be comforted. The questions I asked myself and the decisions I had to make were mountainous to me. For the first time in a long time, I lost confidence in myself. Ask any athlete what a loss of confidence means. I asked myself questions like, should I accept the first job offer that comes along or hold out for a better one? Should I look for work in other fields or restrict myself to applications in the dairy industry, a field I knew well. "Catch-22" conditions had forced my company out of business and and was affecting the entire industry in Detroit. Very few companies were hiring new people. I found out there were plenty of other guys like me in the job market with as much skill and experience.

Then I happened on Joseph Heller's book and I realized there are worse conditions to be in than merely out of work. It was a fun book. I laughed when I read the lines that reminded me of myself and how I had overreacted to my situation. Sure enough, it wasn't long before I was established in another job and enjoying my work again.

On the last page of "Catch-22," Yossarian is asked how he feels. "I'm very frightened," was his reply. "That's good," the Major doing the asking said. "That proves you're still alive."

Father's Day, 1990

First published in The Camden Chronicle June 13, 1990

Parker Family 1953
From left, back row: John Moses, Walter, Polly, Jim (author of the blog), JoAnn, Larry
Seated: John Wyly ("Dad") and Bertha Sterling

To the anti-tobacco crowd he would be an ogre and to a clean air freak, he would be a Mount St. Helen's disaster, but my father was one of the few totally honest men I ever met. He didn't rule his home like a dictator or an emperor. His rule was more benevolent, like the Speaker of the House. When possible, all family members had a say in any decisions made. He was a kind, soft-spoken man, seldom raising his voice even when angry. He could usually find some humor in all but the rankest disregard of household rules.

In the daytime during working hours, he either chewed tobacco or dipped snuff. In the evening, he enjoyed filling his pipe with tobacco strong enough to tote a mule across Harmon's Creek. He would lean back in his chair and fill the room with a smoke cloud as thick as fog in the Smoky Mountains.

I saw him cry twice. Once, when he gave my eldest sister to be a wife. In those days, expensive church weddings were out of the question. The loving couple usually went to a nearby marriage parlor in Mississippi, quietly married and that was the extent of the ceremony. After my sister and her betrothed drove away from our house, I saw dad wiping tears. The other time he cried was when my youngest sister was bitten by a rabid dog and he feared for the life of one he loved.

The Director of Life miscast dad for the role he played. Dad was a farmer, but he had no talent or desire for the role. The only natural trait he ever showed around the farm was an affinity with animals. All of his animals loved him. Horses and mules obeyed him like children. Cows would relax and produce more milk when he was around. A certain cow we owned that never missed a chance to impale me on her spike-like horns would snuggle those same horns under my father's arms and croon like a lovesick partridge when he stroked her neck.

Dad died broke. When he realized the end was near, true to form, he called a friend who was a retired funeral director to make arrangements for his last service. It was his way of relieving his wife and children of that unpleasant task. His death was a shock to me. It just seems some people should never die.

Memorial Day, 1990

Originally published in The Camden Chronicle, June 6, 1990


We walked, the woman I consort with and I, among the fresh cut flowers and small American flags waving every so slightly in the light breeze. Memorial Day 1990. While reading the names and dates on the headstones, the silence in the cemetery reminds me of an outdoor library with each deceased person's history given in short bursts.

As we approached the grave we came to honor, the consort held back a little. The grave is not fresh; it is near a small river now muddy and swollen with spring rains. Grandpa would have liked this place where he has been placed for all eternity. You see, his boyhood home was in the hills of North Carolina and, like thousands of migrants from the hilly southeastern United States to the frozen North, he never quite made peace with the floor-flat Great Lakes terrain.

This is one of those post-war cemeteries that doesn't permit above ground memorials, only flat ground level stones are used. Grandpa's says, "Born 1902. Died 1988." That, along with his name, is all that is there. It explains nothing about the times he lived through, of the worlds he conquered, small and insignificant as they might seem. As the poet pointed out, each man is a general, his family is his army and in the war of subsistence, to rise above is to conquer and to build is to gain. He built, he conquered, and he gained. Because he was here, the woodpile is a little higher.

We moved, talking quietly, along the path, a narrow road, to another part of the cemetery and to another grave we came to honor. As we approached the maple tree and the small plot of ground burned so painfully in our memories, our conversation ceased, our thoughts busy un-jumbling each other. Here the dates on the headstone were "1964-1968."  Our littlest, killed in a tragic accident twenty-two years ago. Some things never change. The grab in the throat and the kick in the stomach are just as real as the day we laid her here.

Someone had visited a nearby grave earlier in the day and had too many flowers to fill the vase of their loved one. They lovingly placed them in the vase of the grave we came to visit. We arranged the flowers we brought along side the ones already there, silently thanking the unknown donor for their kindness. We left.

We don't come here often or stay long when we do. Some loves will last forever and some pains are too much for a mortal man to bear.

Clyde McKinley Cornett (1902-1988) and Janice Elaine Parker (1964-1968),
October 1967