Good Bye 2011

Can you believe it? We've reached the end of another year! It has been over 10 months since I walked out of that factory for the last time and it seems like just a few days. As the age meter continues to rise, it seems like life in my world is a runaway train heading down hill. There are constant reminders that indeed life is "a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away". Take a moment and watch the steam rise from a boiling pot – on the eternal timeline, that is very much representative of our lifespan. Without hope for the hereafter, life would be empty and meaningless and many people wander through life questioning why we are here and where we are going. The answers to those questions have been revealed for those who are willing to accept it – "Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man" and "…as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment…". We are put here to serve the Creator and then face Him to be judged accordingly when life ends.

During 2011 there have been several occasions where life has indeed ended for people I either knew or those close to someone I know. There have also been several beginnings as little ones have been born to people who are a part of my life. Life begins. Life ends. So it is with mankind. So at the end of this year and as 2012 begins, what can be said about our lives? Are we better individuals than we were a year ago? Have we accomplished anything worthwhile? Are the lives of the people we've touched throughout the year better because of our influence? "As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend." We have the ability to make others better people and become better ourselves or we can affect others in a negative manner. As the New Year arrives, this writer hopes to be able to help each person whose life intersects with mine to be better because our paths crossed.

As another year begins and we make plans for whatever future we may have, let us all remember why we are here and do something good for the folks around us. I have so much to be thankful for; the sun is out, it's a beautiful day, I've got a wonderful little family, reasonably good health, there are deer to hunt and fish to catch – life is good! Here's to a better world in 2012!

A Whirlwind Called Life

Life has a way of seeming to be on cruise control with very little happening but the day to day routine then all of a sudden things change as though you've stepped into a whirlwind. Such was the case at this point in the history of my life. After nearly two and one half years of seemingly spinning my wheels, changes came into my life fast and furiously. Factory work had become my means of support in early 1980 and during the next year my experiences on the dating scene had become quite frustrating. At that time it seemed that marriage was not even remotely possible to the extent that I had decided to go out and buy a new car during the summer of 1980. There was an abrupt change as January of 1981 rolled around!

The second weekend in January, 1981 found me in a situation that was very unusual for me in that my schedule included dates with different young ladies on consecutive nights. My date on Friday night went very well from my perspective and I'd have absolutely asked that girl out again except for what happened the next night. On Saturday night my date was with Lynn, one of the most beautiful young ladies I've ever met in my life. After that first date, it was all over! There was no other woman for this country boy. Two weeks into our dating scene we were planning marriage and on June 5, 1981 we began our life together and yes, she got the new car. Today, over 30 years, two wonderful children, a daughter-in-law and a precious grandson later, we are still together. We've experienced highs and lows, joys and sorrows, laughter and pain, good times and hard times and we have held on through it all. We have learned that life is neither all good nor all bad and that through faith in The Higher Power we can enjoy the good and overcome the bad.

There will be more history filled in as we go but, jumping ahead to the present; there is something that I feel is worth inserting at this point. The changes that we experience in life can have varying effects on us and that has certainly been true in my life. One most significant change that has brought abundant joy into my life is the birth of my grandson. He is the light of my life and watching him grow and develop for almost three years now has blessed me beyond description. The anticipation of watching that sweet child as he grows and changes and to see what he becomes has given me a great desire to grow old and to be there for him each step of the way. I read somewhere that, "raising teenagers is like trying to nail jello to a tree" and after raising two teenagers that statement certainly seems to fit. No wonder so many grandparents say, "If I had known grandchildren were so much fun, I would have had them first". Nothing melts away a bad day like spending time with my little grandson.

So then, the whirlwind of life has brought me to where I am today – married for 30 years, a wonderful family, retired after 31 years of factory work and a used car salesman. That's right, I've set up a used car lot and after all those years of working a job that never brought much joy, I'm finally enjoying work. Who knows what the future will hold, but hopefully it will involve more grandchildren!

Searching For Direction

Now what? For some of us, the decision of what to do with the rest of our lives once high school is out of the way doesn't come easy. Should I just try to find a job or would college be best? Would it be better to just attend a technical school and learn a trade skill? Military? Now that's a frightening proposition! How can an eighteen year old possibly know what he or she wants to do for the next 30 to 40 years? There are so many choices that high school graduates are faced with and often not nearly enough guidance to help with those choices. Better insights and ideas to what possibilities lie ahead in life would have been something greatly welcomed when I was trying to decide on a path to travel in life. Often I've told young folks who are in the process of making decisions as to what course to pursue in their career that I'm still trying to decide what I want to be. That statement is made only about half jokingly, because the truth is sometimes this is one man who would really like to go back in time and start down a different career path.

The understanding of the value of a college education came much too late in life, so shortly after graduation my brief stint in a technical school at the local community college was underway. An interest in repairing broken things lead to auto mechanics school to which was added enough academic courses to earn an Associate in Applied Science degree. However, after about two and one half years of working in that field, I went to work in a factory and though that lasted for 31 years I never liked working inside. That's just not the place a hunter and fisherman can really enjoy! But it helped pay the bills.

During the two years of my community college education, there were some significant events in my history that bear mentioning as these things influenced the path my life has taken. After four months at the local community college, I left home and transferred to another community college in Gainesville, Florida. During my nearly eight months stay in Gainesville, I met several people who hold a permanent place in my memory 35 years after the fact. Among those people were four young ladies who caught my attention; two of which I dated and two of which I didn't, the latter of which is among my list of regrets in life. Mostly my time in Florida was rich with treasured memories but sadly during that time a good friend back home was severely injured during spring football practice and was left a quadriplegic.

As the old saying goes, "There's no place like home", so I moved back home in late summer and again enrolled in the local community college. Along with that last year of college education came some experiences that left lasting impressions – and scars. One such experience was dating a young woman who coincidentally happened to be the daughter of one of my professors. She educated me as to the new age, aggressive female type – something this little "country boy" was not accustom to at all! This dating experience was followed by a couple more young women, both of whom I was engaged to briefly but as it turned out they each had "issues" beyond my level of tolerance. Before these episodes had completely played out, my education had concluded and real world, fulltime work was underway. 

Thinking back now it seems that life just kind of simmered for the next couple of years without any really major events in my life. Of course, there were girls to date and friends to spend time with but nothing significant. Well, there was this one girl that I dated very briefly that bears mentioning. I'd been somewhere with a friend and we stopped in at a Wendy's to get something to eat and she was working behind the counter. We started talking and she ended up inviting me to go horseback riding with her the next day and I did. Actually, we rode her horse with me on the back and from there we ended up going out a few times. She was a very intriguing young woman and things heated up pretty fast, but didn't last very long and we soon went our separate ways. After a little more than two years of basically "riding the waves" things were about to change dramatically in my life.

Filling In Some Memories

Life in my world, the history of my life, seems like such a small, insignificant speck of dust on the timeline of world history. Each of us lives our own life in a relatively small frame of time that we are allotted on this spinning globe. Life slips away at breakneck speed and indeed is "a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away". Life is full of peaks and valleys, ups and downs and is sometimes wonderful and sometimes not so much, but along those hills and hollows of our respective journeys come memories that stamp lasting impressions on our minds. The following is a recollection of some of the memories in my life and thoughts on how these events may have shaped me into who I am today.

There are only two memories that I can recall of my mother who, as mentioned earlier in my life history, passed away during the fourth year of my life. One of those memories is of me standing behind the couch to try to get away from her because I'd done something of which she did not approve. The other is walking into the house after I had split my head open from a fall while playing on the carport and seeing her approaching me to see what was wrong. Then she stood over me and helped hold me down while the doctor sewed my head. Sad, isn't it? But that is all the memory of my mother that my four year old mind stored away! Losing my mother at such a young age and having almost no memory of her has influence my personality to a degree that even I do not fully grasp. No doubt this is the reason that it touches me so deeply to hear of a very young child losing a parent.  

Starting to school is another memory that forever shaped, or warped, me in such a way as to stick firmly in my mind. For the first month of my school career, I cried every morning the second the bus pulled into the parking lot and although the crying stopped after that the way I felt about school never really changed. Yes, there were some really great times in my experiences during those educational years but the whole going to class and learning deal never seemed to give me any kind of warm, fuzzy feeling. In these adult, real world years I've come to realize how very important education is in life and try to spread that message to as many young folks as opportunity presents. Education opens doors to those who take advantage of that treasure that may otherwise be unavailable.

Memories of hunting with my Dad have remained etched in my memory bank as well. He is a tall, big man and trying to keep up with him as we hunted for squirrel and quail was no easy task for a five year old boy, but those are memories that have endured time. At ten years old, Dad gave me my first shotgun and I've still got that old gun. Sometime after my twelfth birthday, we started deer hunting. Neither of us really knew much about it but we had some great adventures on those hunts. We were hunting one time around Smith Lake and Dad was going to walk around a patch of woods to try to "drive" a deer by me and left me sitting on a stump. Well, he got lost and was gone for a very long time and I was getting more frightened by the minute. After a long while, I heard something walking through the woods and called out, "Daddy"! The next sound was a tremendous splash as something jumped into the lake. To this day I've always figured it was probably that monster buck of my dreams. Shortly afterward, much to my relief, Dad finally found his way back. We enjoyed several hunting trips over the next few years. We always camped in a tent and sometimes we'd get really cold trying to sleep at night, but those are memories that have stuck with me to this day.

Sometimes things happen that you wish had never taken place and even more you wish you could forget. Two such events are filed away in my mind. First, there was the night of that horrific accident in which three people lost their lives. As the story goes, against her parent's wishes, a young lady left for a date with her boyfriend who reportedly had been drinking. Half a mile from our house they ran a stop sign and were hit by two cars traveling in opposite directions. Their car wrapped around a tree and burned. They and a passenger in one of the other vehicles were killed. Our entire family walked to the end of the road that night and the sight of that wreck is forever branded in my mind. Secondly, there was my friend Stacy. I'd really only gotten to know him over the summer that year. He and I lived on opposite ends of a two mile stretch of road and both of us, along with a couple of other boys that lived nearby, spent a lot of the summer riding bikes and playing in a creek just down the road. It was maybe November of that year that he and another young man were hunting and they were riding to another hunting spot on a motorcycle. The gun was loaded and somehow went off and Stacy was killed. Although a horrible memory which has troubled me greatly, no doubt that produced in me a greater concern for safety from that day forward as I pursue my passion of deer hunting.

One other thing worth mentioning took place during my final year of high school. We were at a family gathering and by that time in his life Grandpa was showing signs of declining health. His brother-in-law was there and made a comment about a man he knew who was still flying his own airplane at the age of 80. Grandpa was 76 at the time and apparently the comment was an effort to make him feel better about his age. A few weeks later, Grandpa and the rest of the family attended the brother-in-law's funeral – he dropped dead from a heart attack. Life is fleeting and none of us knows when we will pass into the next realm. Enjoy the good things in life while you can!

Though there are so many other memories tucked away in my mind from those early years, these mentioned probably have had the greatest influence on who I am today at the age of 53. My prayer is that I, the man sculpted by these influences, can take what life has helped me become and guide my children and grandchildren in ways most beneficial to them and the people they come in contact with during their lives.