Special #Holiday post One from the heart, meet my dad

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A few things *my* dad used to say when we were growing up..

You have to learn from your mistakes

I used to have to walk to school 2 miles, barefoot in the snow

You made your bed, now you have to lie in it

Honesty is the best policy

Anyone who works hard in life can succeed

Love God or go to hell and burn in fire and torment forever

Every Sunday morning he used to walk around on that hardwood floor (a very nice one though ;) in those Sunday shoes singing Turkey in the straw, turkey in the hay It used to drive me crazy.. I was into Led Zeppelin at the time for crying out loud lol And on Sunday morning all I wanted to do was sleep myself..

But it was "As long as you live under my roof you are going to church" Needless to say that discussion didn't last long or recur often.. LMAO Where TF was *I* going to go 14 or 15 years old?

I wish my dad only the very best life has to offer, all the joy and happiness humanly possible. He was and still is an honorable man, honest to a fault (kinda like me ;) He believes in God and the rule of law.

He grew up on a farm in Arkansas.. He told me once the best Christmas present he ever got when he was a kid was a wooden flute his dad, my grand father, carved for him. There wasn't a lot of money to waste on frivolous things and getting that one gift that one year was a really big deal to him.

My sister and I were pretty much your standard spoiled brat Americans of the day. We got plenty of plastic toys for Christmas.

But that was more my mom.. a whole different story! LMAO

He and my mother slipped away in the cover of darkness to get married. He was 26, she was 17.

Dad served in the Korean war. That was a long time ago, 1950ish. Thank God that's over lol He was actually a cook in the war, which I always thought was cool ;) He cooked the meals for an artillery unit. He was a staff Sargent. He even had some old pictures of himself and some fellow soldiers passing out candy and playing with some little Korean kids. I don't know if they were north or south.. I still remember those pictures even though it was 45 years or more ago when I last saw them. It was my first look at war I suppose.. Gee, we're STILL there aren't we? And not only that, that situation gets worse daily. Makes me nervous, war.. I somehow, over the last few years, seem to have lost my ability to understand what purpose it serves, how it ever improves anything. We beat the evil Russian Empire too.. Remember that? Or did we? LMAO

Oh well, I expect more war, not less..

My dad had a rock solid work ethic and he made damn sure that I understood what that was all about. I learned. I have always worked as hard as I possibly could not to be good at what I did but to be the very BEST at what I did.

This was one of life's lessons that I have truly always valued greatly.

I have been an office machine repairman, a computer programmer, and now a lowly trader. lol

My dad was an office machine repairman and later salesman and later business owner. He worked with office machines his entire life. He started out working for the United States government but got fed up with them over fairness issues and quit after awhile, several years I think.

He repaired office machines for decades. Some of my readers might not even be sure what those are lol Things like old manual typewriters and, later, the new electric models too lol Old mechanical calculators, time clocks, check writing machines, cash registers. It ain't easy stuff to master, to be the BEST at, let me tell you. I did that myself for about 17 years.

That's all gone now. Good quality manufactured office equipment. Made right here in the USA. Good stuff also from Germany and Italy. It has all been replaced now by cheap slave labor throw away plastic junk from China and Japan.. That entire industry has pretty much vanished now. It didn't take long either. Thank God I was able to just move on to the next 'machine level' myself. I used to tell f'ing computers what to do and how to go about doing it. Now days 'they' watch everything *I* do.. LMAO

I helped build the matrix in a way I guess, helped pave the way. I understand how it works, what makes it tick, what it is capable of.. May God forgive me for what I have done, I didn't know what was going to happen. Did you know the government now tracks credit card purchases in real time? Maybe that's good to help catch a few criminals..

Maybe it is also good for tracking, censoring, controlling anything and everything the government might decide they would like to know about.. citizens.

You and I..

Dad eventually decided there was more money in sales than in repair. He was right as it turned out. We had a comfortable life throughout the 1960's. Hell.. my sister and I always had a comfortable life, not much hardship came our way.

If ever there were an honest salesman on the face of this planet it was my dad. Seriously. Like I said before, honest to a fault.

When I was 14 years old he and mom divorced after 15 years of marriage.

Dad decided to move back home and start his own business. He wanted to get my sister and I away from the obvious evils of 'big city' life in Springfield, MO LMAO So we packed up, minus mom, which seemed very odd, and headed for Harrison Arkansas. Population at that time about 10,000 or 12,000 people. Most all of them Southern Baptists too LMAO The kind of town that has a grade school, a Jr high school and a high school. Where everyone knows everyone else and likely their personal business too lol

Turns out those same damned 'big city' evils had somehow even found their way to Harrison Arkansas though! LMAO I'll never forget all those people holding me down and forcing me to have sex and use drugs ;) Seems like the more I fought it the more those 'big city' wannabe evildoers forced me to do it.. Drugs are a lot easier to find in a small town, ask anyone who spent their teen years growing up in one. You might not take them yourself but you damned sure know who does and likely where you might go to 'get some'. Hell when we lived in Harrison, it is/was a 'dry county', no alcohol sales ALLOWED, in the entire county! But plenty of moonshine in those hills. and *I* was buying booze myself with no ID at the Missouri state line when I was 16 years old..

At some point it apparently got so bad that someone ? thought I might have been possessed by Satan himself or some of his evil minions. So it was decided that our Southern Baptist pastor should perform an exorcism on me.. I'm NOT making this sh*t up! LMAO I'm pretty sure that in the end everyone felt pretty silly about that sh*t! No my head didn't spin all the way around and I didn't puke green soup.. LMAO I thought that was the Catholics deal?!

Oh well, maybe I am inoculated against future demonic assaults should they occur.. ;)

One other time, just once, I had to go see a psychologist. I understand that the psychologist may have somehow implied that dad himself might somehow end up being implicated in my behavioral difficulties. Dad KNEW that was bullsh*t! LMAO

F'ing psychologists.. Who TF do they think they are anyway? LMAO

Boone county Arkansas 'voted' to go wet this year, Nov, 2010. LMAO It'll likely kill that Missouri state line business. I have 2 brother-in-laws who live there now. One of them his entire life. He is INSISTING that by God he is STILL 'driving to the line'. It has been a part of his life for 35 years or more! He likes beer, a lot.

Old habits are hard to break.

I ended up moving in with mom and finishing high school in Springfield, MO. after about 2 or 3 years in Harrison.. From one evil filled place to another LMAO

Dad's business was very successful for decades in Harrison. The man has ALWAYS worked very hard.

Dad kept his building but ended up selling his business. The guy he sold it to ended up filing for bankruptcy a few years later. dad didn't much care for the way that whole thing went down. You can get kinda screwed in that situation it seems.. But he did fine. A beautiful 80 acre cattle ranch surrounded by gentle rolling hills with views surely from Heaven itself. Wood heat only in a smallish new home. Real honest to God country living. I think dad always missed that throughout his entire life. So I'm very happy for him.

Dad and my step mother of some 40 years now and dad's brother and my aunt were going to an eye doctor appointment in Springfield, MO. in 1998 when a truck on the road lost a full load of lumber right onto their car. Broke my aunt's neck and killed her on the spot. Broke my step mother's neck. Dad suffered sever head injuries, among other things. My uncle was in horrible shape, hanging onto life by a mere thread. But the man was tough as boot leather.

Dad too we thought might be gone, unconscious for days after the accident. His entire forehead had been pealed back.

We had the big family meeting with the doctor and he said dad had likely suffered brain damage as testing showed some sort of tearing or fissures of the brain itself. Not a good day week or month.. I stayed there with dad. For a couple of weeks. He regained conscientiousness I believe about the 3rd day he was in the hospital. He didn't have a clue WTF was going on but he seemed pretty sure that he did not like having 3 broken ribs. Lots of morphine for dad. He needed it. Hell, I could use some myself lol

Long story short he got better over time. He's 'different' but in a good way. It's hard to explain but the brain jar changed his personality in subtle ways. In my opinion mostly in positive ways. Not that I recommend it as treatment lol But he seems more patient, more at ease, more relaxed and confident than before the accident. A bit more emotional and a bit softer around the edges. It's weird and I can't really hope to explain it well ;)

So now, 12 years after the accident, at the age of 81, he runs his little cattle ranch and works in his garden with a zeal and passion that would make a man half his age jealous.

My step mother is fine too. she's a perfectly wonderful woman.

My uncle not as lucky. He never fully recovered from his serious injuries and the loss of his wife. He had some decent years years after the accident but has now succumbed to Alzheimer disease. His children and family are dealing with that now.. It's never easy is it?

I must admit that dad and I had some issues when I was young. And for a very long time there were some things that I truly resented about the way I was raised, my up bring.

I finally realized in my 30s that there is a lot involved in these things.. How your parents were raised in yet another generation, now far removed, for one. Kids don't come with instruction manuals. Neither do marriages. People, hopefully, do the very best they can with whatever knowledge they have available to them at the time.

My dad did that. I'm proud of him. He is a great American Patriot in my book ;)

Greg

Would you like to hear about my mom someday?