Monday, August 11, 2014

Life is a box of Chocolates

Forest Gump made that line famous and for a guy who seemed very simple he had a lot of wisdom.  I suggest you watch the show again.  Today I saw a Facebook page (the closest thing we had to Facebook was those pictures we passed around each year and traded with our friends) that said, "people just join the military because there too dumb to go to college...".  I had a cow over this one!  First off she spelled "they're" as "there" and second only because folks who had guts and gumption and cared about their freedom sacrificed for this country.  I wish I had her picture as I would post it for something to throw darts at.  Sure we Americans and our leaders make mistakes but overall it is infinitely better hear than anywhere else.  But this happenstance made me think about all the old folks that came out of Grainola and Shidler and literally every town in the Osage and beyond to fight for America.  Where were the intellectual cowards when it got down to protecting America?

Think about it for a minute.  How many people not only gave up their life and if they lived their quality of life because they were injured.  My first cousin, Stanley Patterson, a US Marine went to Vietnam twice and has paid for it his entire life.  Wayne Patterson, his older brother, was in the Bay of Pigs and their dad, Uncle Harley, was in WWII.  Arnold Jones of Grainola was a highly decorated soldier from Grainola, Andrew Glazebrook fought in WWI and WWII, Uncle Snyd (Vernon Snyder) was a prisoner of war with the Japanese and the list goes on and on.  Mark Whitt served for about 30+ years all for God and country.  Mark's dad (also Mark) was a veteran as well.  Then we have this sniveling punk kid spouting off remarks about military people.

OK, back to a box of chocolates.  In life we are blessed because you just don't know what is in that box of chocolates and sometimes you get one you just have to spit out.  Isn't life better when we can look at the contrast of the good and bad?  I was asked today if I had ever failed in a really big bad way.  Heck yes!  I would dare say there is not a single person out there who has not doubted their own abilities, talents, smarts (country for intelligence) and even looks.  In fact I know of at least two young teenage girls over the years who could have won most beauty contests and thought they were ugly and overweight.  I for one did very well in school both college and high school and have for years wanted to be smart like almost everyone around me.  We are harder on ourselves than anyone else and sometimes we take little bitty things that someone said and we make it into something horrible about ourselves.  Sure there are those who seem to always be confident but I bet you a dollar to a donut they doubt themselves many times.  We are all human beings and we have all messed up.  Just keep looking for that piece of chocolate with the caramel and a nut in it.  Time always passes and hurts, doubts and wounds heal.  I know folks think that I have lived a great life and everything turns into money.  Bull S___!  I just never have quit, thrown in the towel, screamed calf rope (anyone remember that one) or stopped trying.

Think of it this way I have a box of chocolates and in each one is a triumph or a tragedy and some are bigger and some are smaller than others.  So here is my pieces of chocolate:

  1. got a great job right out of college working for Ross Perot
  2. Moved to Dallas and then to Chicago
  3. Got into Amway (hard work and lots of rejection, painful experience but made a lot of money)
  4. Changed jobs and hated it
  5. Had our first child (one of the very best things to every happen)
  6. Moved to Oklahoma and a new job
  7. While doing that started a chain of day care centers (big bad failure, bad idea)
  8. Bought more day care centers (big bad idea)
  9. Bought more real estate to average out of a bad deal (worked pretty good)
  10. Bought a bank (president committed fraud, big bad idea)
  11. Very successful career in data processing for banks while living in Oklahoma with short moves to Colorado and Texas then traveled all over the US.
  12. Bought Auntie Anne's Pretzels stores (8 - all over Oklahoma)  - very bad idea
  13. Started an armored car company - one of the worst ideas
  14. built a business of owning and operating ATMs/money machines all over the US - very good idea for about five years then became a bad idea 
  15. Bought more real estate, rental houses, offices, land, farms
  16. Started development company for housing projects - very bad idea
  17. Started home construction business - worst idea yet
  18. Start commercial office building company - very good idea
  19. Bought more land and a farm
  20. Built the first Pumpkin Patch in Edmond - very good idea
  21. Quit data processing company and started consulting company - not real bad but not good
  22. Went back to finance industry = very good idea
  23. Started software companies to build remote deposit applications for banks - so so
  24. Built software for collection of bad checks - so so
  25. Started selling credit card processing services to banks = Pretty good
  26. 2007 and 2008 what can I say  -  bad bad bad but buy buy buy
    1. if you don't get it what I am saying is it was a bad deal if you owned stuff but a great time to buy, which I did
  27. Became a certified trust officer managing trusts - not great but not bad either
  28. started a financial planning business - pretty smart
  29. taught Sunday school to young marrieds and youth for 37 years - good idea
  30. started a non-profit for adults with special needs - Wings - very good
  31. Raised three children - very proud of them and the decisions they have made
  32. Stayed married for 40 years as of December 21st, 2014 - pretty good idea

I left out so much but you get the idea.  You win and you lose but Never ever cheat, steal or lie.  Help others reach their goals.  Give a smile and encouragement to everyone.  Trust God when it gets dark even if you or me have not followed the straight and narrow.  Get up one more time than you get down.  Thank God for the blessings of opportunities that have gone bad.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

  1. Persevere
  2. Never, Never give up
  3. Love life and forgive others will give you freedom from bondage of bad thinking
Thanks for your time,
gary@thepioneerman.com

Friday, August 8, 2014

My old red bicycle

Every body had a bicycle but some had really nice ones.  At least that was my take on it.  I remember Larry, my brother, had a white Schwinn and I had a red one but not sure if it was a Schwinn.  Billy Snyder had one of those fancy racing bicycles with thin wheels verses my fat wheels.  It was always a challenge when you lived on a farm as there were stickers which would put holes in your tires so it seemed we were always fixing flat tires.

I remember that dad tried and tried to help me ride a bike but I was just was too clumsy.  He would hold the bike while I tried to get on but as soon as he would push me to get started then let go I would fall over.  Finally one day he put up two steel posts (actually they were wood posts as steel posts/T posts were not around yet) just far enough apart so that my rear tire would fit in between.  This made it stable enough that I could climb on the bike and then take off.  Probably one of the reasons I had so much trouble learning to ride a bike is that I was big for my age.  To put it in a nice way, I was huge for my age.  In the second grade I was over five foot tall and clumsy as can possibly be.  I tried over and over to ride that bike and mostly struggling to get on it and get started before falling on the gravel.  I tried to do it on grass but it was so hard to move on the grass that it was next to impossible but certainly easier on the knees and elbows.  Using my dad's new invention I could get started and of course the faster I went the easier it was but ultimately I had to stop and that was disaster for a long time.  I really did not care about the loss of blood because it was too important to conquer the bike.  Ultimately I won but there was another problem.  You probably are asking yourself why I did not use trainer wheels.  Two reasons:  The first is they bent when I fell over and I tore them up and second it was too expensive to keep buying more training wheels.

You see we lived on the dead end of a road one mile north and three west of Grainola on Beaver Creek.  What that meant was to get anywhere I had to go up three hills and down three hills all covered in loose gravel to get where there was a choice on direction/an intersection of roads.  Of course these were public roads and cars, trucks and animals all used them.  If you are not from cattle country you don't know that there always seemed to be a calf, steer or cow out on the road or Vea Harris had lots of white geese that possessed the road.  The good thing is usually you could see the dust in the air of a vehicle coming and you knew to get out of the way.  Keep in mind the gravel roads were really one lane and you had to get over to the edge to let someone get by.  I never gave it any thought but it was dangerous but I never knew of anyone getting hit by a car or truck.  There were plenty of bike wrecks as once Larry bit the dust going down hill and had terrible cuts and bruises and it took weeks for him to heel.

But overall bicycles were freedom for us.  Eddy Harris and I were always getting together for some sort of mischief.  Of course you know if you have been reading my blogs for long that one of our favorite sports was gathering the eggs and throwing them.  We got in a lot of trouble for that.  One thing about Eddy and I is we were good at  thinking up stuff to do.  You will probably think we are crazy but Eddy and I figured out how to get rid of the giant piles of red ants.  If you have never seen them you have no idea but they were big and there were thousands of ants.  Well Eddy and I figured that if we got some gasoline (we tried diesel but it was not as much fun)  and pour it down the hole we could lite it like a volcano.  Don't try this as you will need to get licensed and certified and inspected by the United States government and pay some fees then fight for years to get permission and in the end you will lose your right to freedom of speech and it will probably violate someones personal rights.  Was that political?

Eddy and I were never the sharpest rocks in the pile and besides a blind squirrel gets lucky every now and then and finds a nut but we were creative.  I don't know if anyone taught us how but we could fix flats on those bicycles better than about anyone and we soon learned to fix regular tires as well from all the pickups, tractors, trucks and bicycles.  It was especially easy when the Harris's got a tire repair machine like they had at the Duval Gas Station in Shidler.

Anyway, this was about the time we were 9 years old which will probably really shock you but we would try anything for fun. Our friendship never ended and now that Eddy has passed I still like to think about all of our good times like when we went prairie chicken hunting in the back of a flat bed pickup chasing the birds and shooting while driving.  We never did kill any that way but it was a heck of a ride.  Just for you we were probably half way grown by then, close to 13 or 14 years old.

Back to bicycles:  My love for bikes and riding those gravel roads lasted even after I got my first car.  Yes, my first vehicle was a car and not a pickup (truck for you city folks and again, yes, I am one now).

So what do you learn in the Osage?

  1. Growing up is not hard to do but it can be hard on the folks
  2. Children today need to live in the country and grow up with an opportunity to have clean fun
  3. You can take a kid out of the country but you cannot take the country out of the kid
Thanks for listening,
gary@thepioneerman.com
www.thepioneerman.blogspot.com