The Rockets red gare, Exploding in Air, Dust Falling Everywhere

Can you believe that 2021 is almost over?  The COVID, bug end-of-time plague/Armageddon scare and the unknown of what’s coming is coming.  Babies born in 2019 become teenagers next year, or shall I say in a few days.  Father time creeps along and invades our lives.  Modern marvels and technological advances of the past decade slowly evolve into objects of antiquity.  Suddenly the old is repulsive and the new is alluring. 

That is the nature of the passing of time.  The world continues to spin along in its cosmic passageway and many of us think that it is spinning out of control.  Life has become so complicated and so hurried that 2022 will usher in 2023 before we have time to catch our breath.  Resolutions of slowing down and taking it easy will soon bow to pressures of deadlines and schedules.

The New Year is a time of reflection.  For some Christmas 2021 was the first Christmas without mom, dad, a son, a daughter, a grandparent, or a friend.  It is a time of remembering all those who did not make it into the New Year. 

Celebration of the New Year will take many forms.  Some churches will pray in the New Year while others will sing or eat into the New Year.  Some folks will sleep in the New Year while some will weep in the New Year.  For most, New Year is a monumental event.  For some people, New Year is just another day of the year.  When I worked rotation, New Year was just another day.  There was no celebration.

I remember working midnight on New Year.  I had some bottle rockets left from July 4^th and thought they might not be good enough for New Year.  Land Mart, the store just down the road from the house, sold fireworks where the kids would spend some of their Christmas money. Our kids loved the cash, instead of useless gifts.  I always monitored their spending when buying fireworks.  I hated to see them blow away their cash.  I subsidized their efforts occasionally when they did not receive as much as they did the last Christmas.

I am pretty sure that it was against company policy to have fireworks at work, but that never stopped us from bringing them.  You know that boys will be boys. Kiln burners were notorious for dropping firecrackers, cherry bombs, and spinning chasers down on unsuspecting oilers.  One kiln burner, Swann, dropped a spinning chaser one behind his oiler, Jones.  Jones raced across the railroad tracks with the spinning chaser bumping him in the back.  Pickett, a kiln burner, dropped a lighted pack of firecrackers behind Smithy, his oiler.  Smithy danced a jig as he went down the street.  Those are a few of the fireworks at the plant.

Getting back to the midnight shift, I had several packs of bottle rockets in my lunch box.  I recruited an accomplice to help me light them and toss them into the cement mill room.  This mill room had six giant ball mills that pulverized clinkers (ingredients of sand, iron ore, aluminum, and limestone cooked together to form cement) into powder. It was a very loud building.  Since these mills produced powder, there was cement dust everywhere.  It was a deafening and dusty situation.  The slightest jolt would start an avalanche of dust from girders and beams.

My accomplice and I walked to the edge of the kiln burner floor, which was adjacent to the mill room, and commenced to fire a barrage of rockets into an unstable dust loaded mill room.  Poor old Mr. Betts and Eddie Lee Barkley were trying to figure out what was happening. 

They could not hear the rockets as they zoomed toward them, but they could see the burning tail, the explosion, and the falling dust.  They finally saw two mischievous oilers having a fun time at the dawn of a new day as the clock stuck midnight and ushered in a New Year.  Mr. Betts and Eddie Lee laughed in the New Year that night.

Betts, Eddie Lee, Swann, Jones, and a whole host of others from the cement plant are gone.  Their passing serves as reminder that time passes quickly.  Both have been dead for years. 
Midnight January 1, 2022 quickly approaches.  Some compare time as midnight being the Lord’s return.  What are your plans for midnight, the dawn of 2022?

And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle (Exodus12:29 KJV).

At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments (Psalm 119:62 KJV).

And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them (Acts 16:25 KJV).

And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight (Acts 20:7 KJV).