One of my childhood friends recently passed away. He spent the last ten years of his life in a wheelchair, as a result of an accident that occurred while helping a friend cut limbs from a tree after a hurricane in Florida.
He was a big man with a big heart.
I was asked to speak at his service and was honored to do so for my friend. Due to the distance, timing and honestly my fear of falling apart, I asked if I could send a video. My friend’s brother understood and told me that would be great.
He wanted me to tell the story of my friend Jerry coming to the rescue when I wet my pants in kindergarten. I did and also said a few more things. What I thought would take 3 to 5 minutes ended up taking more than 10.
My brother recently sent me some pictures from our childhood. You know the type of pictures – the ones that Mama had made at Olan Mills with our heads tilted and wearing little outfits that I’m sure she put a lot of thought into picking out.
In that group of pictures, there was a random one that anyone else would not have understood, but I did. It was a picture of a green plastic yard chair and a blooming purple iris.
Our Mama passed away over a year ago and as those of you who have lost your mother knows, it is difficult not only on Mother’s Day, but also every time you see or hear or smell or taste or touch something that reminds you of your mother.
The other night, I started cooking dinner or thinking about cooking dinner for my son and myself. I shouldn’t have, but I turned the television on and sat down in my chair and put my feet up. My dogs seemed to be happy I was sitting down.
The television was still on the Hallmark Movie Channel from my early morning rendezvous with Ben Matlock (you know, Andy Griffith in the 1980’s).
I knew better.
It was around 5 in the afternoon and I was watching the Hallmark channel. Men and dogs aren’t supposed to watch this channel. The dogs and I knew that, but we did it anyway.
Headlines are written in a way to try to get your attention. As a matter of fact, they say eight out of ten people only read the headline without reading the rest of the story. Growing up in a newspaper and being a mathematician who also teaches statistics to college students, I enjoy having these numbers in my pocket.
A headline is like a fishing lure. A good one will catch more than those two folks out of ten who generally read the story. I’ve never been much of a fisherman, but I do love newspapers and viewing headlines as an “art form.”
Recently, an incident took place in a neighborhood in Salt Lake City, Utah. The story spread virally on the internet to national news and television websites. The headlines were similar, including the following.
Major League Baseball players know their swing can be the difference in being a great hitter or being sent down to the minor leagues. Teams have hitting coaches whose job is to find problems with batters’ swings and help them improve. This is a story that is more about changing your swing than it is baseball.
There is a book I keep in my office at work that I will always treasure; I will often just open it and read a random page or two. I’ve read it many times. Today, I first turned to the pages in the book about joy and sorrow. The author notes, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
Our parents and grandparents leave us memories. Hopefully, yours left you good memories. My grandfather, who I called, “Papa,” continues to give me memories and things many years after his departure.
He was a pack rat, keeping things “just in case” he might need them some day or perhaps so that someone would find it and realize some meaning. The other day I did just that.
My older brother and I were going through some of Papa’s things the other day together and my brother held up a Florida road map from the American Oil Company and asked me, “Do you want this?”
Recently, I was playing around with an old wooden television cabinet. I am working on putting a new display in it and planning on hooking up a DVD player to the display. Watching black & white television shows from the 1950’s appeals to me.
The display is from an old computer, but the cabinet is from the time of the original Mickey Mouse Club television show. My Papa worked on televisions in much the same way as folks now build computers. It was his hobby and a form of income for him. I like touching stuff my grandfather touched.
Annette Funicello passed away this week; she was an original “Mouseketeer.”
My dog, Doolittle weighs 95 pounds, maybe more now. He is a Standard Poodle (the big kind). He doesn’t sport one of those fancy haircuts; that just wouldn’t be Doolittle.
They say Standard Poodles weigh between 45 and 70 pounds. Therefore, mine is kind of larger than he is supposed to be. He is not fat; this is not for lack of trying.
Doolittle’s demeanor is about as sweet as a dog’s could be, but he gets into things when left unattended. Boredom is probably the cause of it.
This is "The Lastest Word's" third week, I am continuing to select a few of the issues
folks have in my local paper and trying to help them. On Saturday and Wednesday, my local paper has "The Last Word." On
Thursdays, I will respond to my neighbors and get in“The Lastest
Word.”
I'm just "The Tractor Guy" taking a “Dear Abby”
approach; I have decided I like the way the Dear Abby helmet looks on my head. I will continue with my normal
stories and columns that appear in newspapers and magazines in the Deep South, Ohio and the Denver Airport.
And make no mistake, I love my local paper. I'm not associated with the paper, I'm just The Tractor Guy.
Recently, my aunt sent me a picture of a pretty lady that was obviously taken a long time ago. It was one of those “You won’t believe who this is,” or “Guess who this is” kinds of messages.
I didn’t know. I could only tell the picture was taken a long time ago. The lady looked like she was a movie star and she didn’t look like she had enough clothes on for the time period. She was wearing some sort of polka dotted two-piece thing.
Times have changed, people wear next to nothing on television and sometimes they wear nothing.
