400 Mile Yard Sale

We live just a bit off of highway 68 and Thursday through Sunday they're having what they bill as a 400 mile yard sale. In other words, everyone so inclined, along that four hundred miles of highway 68, will load up their tables, hang clothes on lines and barter and visit with all the bargain hunting folks that salivate over the idea of thousands of yard sales end to end. We put out our sign.

Years ago before yard sales, garage sales and the like, I read about a closed neighborhood that had a recycle day once a year. They didn't let the general public in at first, but would put anything good they wanted to get rid of on the front lawn. Any resident of that neighborhood could pick up anything from a front yard free of charge. Later in the day anyone from outside the neighborhood could come in and pick up anything that was left. It struck me as a very sane system.

I have no idea just when and where the yard sale idea cropped up, though it's probably documented somewhere, but it has become an American institution and a week-end pastime for all sorts of folks. Next week we celebrate our 47th wedding anniversary, and in that 47 years we've probably had six or eight yard sales. My best guess from the hours spent in preparation, making and posting signs, pricing everything, setting it up and taking it in each day, and sitting there morning to evening, we've probably made a good 6¢ to 8¢ per hour for our labor.

Now as I'm sure you can guess, these sales have never been my idea. I'd load the stuff up and truck it to the Salvation Army store instead, but I think Mrs. Fish gets a big kick out of seeing someone just delighted to find our cast-off is their treasure, and visiting with people through the days. I know the last such sale a couple of years ago, we had a lady stop in. Her and her family had been burned out the previous week, losing everything. They were poor, renting, and didn't have renter's insurance. A bunch of the clothes were just her size and Mrs. Fish just let her take all she wanted free of charge, along with a lot of household items, games for the kids, puzzles and the like. That was a good yard sale.

Pistol Packin' PeeWee

Our youngest son came down early Sunday morning from Indiana, along with his fiance and her eight year old son. They stayed until Monday afternoon. They brought along a BB/pellet gun made by Remington and we took the eight year old to the range and taught him the proper handling of a gun. He did pretty well with it managing to keep a lot of the BB's in the target at 25 yards. We also let him shoot the .22 revolver and he was better with that than with the BB gun. It's a single action (have to cock it before each shot) Colt Frontier model that had been Dad's. Of course with this being the boys first experience with shooting, our son was standing right with him to intercept any dangerous act with the gun. He did really well, lowering the pistol to point toward the ground between each shot, cocking it while pointed down and keeping his finger off the trigger until it was leveled toward the target just as he'd been instructed. It's just a six shot and we let him fire 48 rounds through it. Each time we'd reload and hand him the gun, he would put on his ear protection before taking the gun and keep it pointed down as he turned toward the target. I was impressed with his attention to safety details.

I think every boy and girl should learn to properly handle and fire guns along about that age. If they can become comfortable and have fun with a weapon while young we wouldn't have so many grown people terrified at the sight of a gun. Then maybe we could get rid of at least the stupidest gun laws that are on the books.

Magic Bugs

I was just sitting on the back porch watching the last of the day's light give over to total darkness. I had been enjoying the sparkles on the meadow of lightning bugs rising up from the grass and flashing their presence to the world. When we first become old enough to realize such things, these magic little bugs become an adventure. You just have to capture some and put them in a bottle to have your own personal firefly lantern. Once I forgot to release my half dozen or so bugs and they were dead the next day. I never captured them again. I've held my hand in the path of one and allowed them to land on me. If you hold your hand up they will climb to the highest finger and launch into the air again.


The 23 years I lived in the southwest I never saw a lightning bug, so it's such a pleasure to have that little bit of magic in my evenings once again. I loved the southwest with it's amazing vistas, mountains, the surprise of the brilliance of cactus blooms in the spring, and wide open spaces. I still have it's sands running in my veins, but the midwest has equal numbers of delights. I love the thick woods behind the house, four seasons, waterfalls and streams, the profusion of growing plants and lightning bugs. Isn't America an amazing place?

There Oughta be a Law

Once upon a time I owned a 1970 Oldsmobile Delta 88 with a 455 cubic inch engine. A very quick and powerful vehicle. Stomp the accelerator at 70 miles and hour and it would bury the speedometer so quickly it amazed me. It would even beat Corvettes from a standing start. The power plants may have been similar but the Vettes were lighter and would spin while the Olds just dug in and ran. Just a family sedan but the dangest hotrod I ever owned.

Then I bought a 1973 Chevrolet Caprice Classic with a 454 cubic inch engine and a VW could beat me off the line. What was the difference? The federal government had mandated a certain fuel efficiency in sedans and Detroit had monkeyed up the engine trying to get that efficiency in a large block, full sized sedan. They couldn't of course because there's only so much power in gasoline. Instead, they made later model cars smaller, lighter, more streamlined (all looked like they'd been designed by the Jelly Bean company), and with smaller engines. The government once again had stepped in with legislation trying to force private industry and the American people into a place they didn't want to be, and the results have been just exactly the opposite of what the government wanted. They wanted to reduce the demand for gasoline. Obviously they expected a more fuel efficient car would help with this, but they didn't take the desires of the average American into account, looking instead at some figures on a sheet of paper.

Like this: "Fuel efficient cars = less gasoline usage".

They needed to look at the bigger picture.

At least consider "Fuel efficient cars + America's desires = ?"

The problem came when they realized they could not mandate the same fuel efficiency in trucks they were requiring in automobiles. People use trucks for work, for hauling, for industry. They need power. Of course, the American public had grown up with muscle cars, with ever increasing cubic inch engines and ever increasing horse power. The people that wanted economy bought a VW or Datsun. The people that wanted power stopped buying cars and started buying pick-up trucks and the demand exploded for trucks. Then Detroit got the idea of building a large car on a truck frame and called it an SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle). The demand for family cars decreases, the demand for pick-ups and SUVs increases, and the average SUV or pick-up gets worse gas mileage than my 1970 Delta 88. All the government managed to do was nearly destroy the U.S. automobile and increase gasoline consumption. Just the opposite of their stated intent when they passed this legislation.

Unfortunately we have reached the stage in the development of our government that they feel it is their mandate to micromanage every aspect of American life. We have a bunch of elected officials listening to whiners, passing feel-good legislation, throwing perfectly good tax dollars at every conceived problem in our lives, and most of their efforts are predictably about as effective as the fuel economy legislation. Now if it were you or I making decisions for our personal lives, and we found what we were doing was counterproductive, we would immediately stop that and try something new. Not the government. Every failed, feel-good mandate they've handed down stays right there and receives ever greater amounts of money to try to make it work. Wouldn't it be great if Congress would start listening to the Government Accounting Office occasionally? At least that agency has had the good sense to point out some of Congresses failed experiments from time to time. They've never managed to get any of them discontinued, but at least they've recognized a white elephant when they've seen one.

At one time they amended the Constitution to make alcoholic drinks illegal and get it out of society. The result of course, was a huge crime syndicate providing illegal alcohol to the public.

We've spent what portion of the GNP in the "War on Drugs" to get drugs off the street? How has that worked?

More than twenty two thousand gun laws on the books to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Yeah, right!

You can go on for several pages with this sort of list, but when they're campaigning for re-election the Representatives and Senators can point to the fact they supported this bill or that bill of feel-good legislation. Passing a law does not solve a problem, it just allows you to spend fortunes trying, convicting and housing the law breakers.

York Mill

I finally had the pictures developed of the trip we took into Tennessee a while back. This picture is the York Mill at Pall Mall Tennessee turned out rather nice so I thought I would share it.

You can see a larger version by clicking on this picture.

Some pictures

My daughter sent the pictures she'd taken on our jaunt to The Shades state park. I just thought I'd share some. The old guy in the first picture is me, sitting at the base of Bridal Veil falls.

Armed Forces Day

Staying in a Teepee - sort of

I used to pass through Holbrook Arizona on business trips back in the 80's. They had a Wigwam Motel on old route 66 that was closed and a bit run down. I thought it would have been an interesting experience to stay there at least one night. That particular motel is back up and running but I've never had the time to stop there for a night. Then we move to Kentucky and found the only other Wigwam village motel still running is open and operating in Cave City, about 25 miles from us. My wife and I decided to book a teepee for one night just to see what they were like, so we stayed there Wednesday the 16th.

There are 15 of these arrayed in a half circle around a sunken lawn area with a playground in the middle. At the center near the road is the front office and gift shop, also a wigwam. It stands 52 feet high and faces highway 31, the Old Dixie Highway. Before Interstate 65 was completed and highway 31 was still a main north/south corridor there was a restaurant on the main floor of the front office, and the gift shop was in the basement. The basement is no longer open to the public and the restaurant hasn't been there for at least 30 years.

The teepee cabins were built in 1937, stand over 30 feet tall, and are made of concrete, stuccoed on the outside then painted.

Our teepee had a double bed, desk, two chairs, three stools, a stand with television, air conditioner, coffeepot, closet, a twin sized folding bed tucked into the closet, and a bathroom with stool, lavatory and shower. They aren't quite round, but like a sixteen or twenty sided room with a window in each side and a window in the door. It has a drop ceiling rather than being open to the top, with a light and ceiling fan in the center. It's done in a wagon wheel design on the ceiling with 16 or 20 spokes that run from the center to each of the many almost corners around the walls. The furniture is in a rustic style, varnished log and woven designs but the whole place needs more work. They've repainted and stuccoed four of the 15 structures but the exteriors of the other 11 are still to be done. Interestingly it is owned by an Indian. He just happens to be from India rather than being a Native American.

Of course it's not as spacious as many of today's motels, but would be comparable to or larger than the rooms of most motels and motorcourts of the 30's. I was surprised at just how roomy they were. Looking at the outside is deceptive. I probably won't do a return trip, but it is just a small part of Americana I wanted to experience at least once just because it's unique and has managed to survive these 70 years. Personally I get tired of the homogenized American culture of today. The same motel in every town, the same restaurants, truck stops, filling stations and the like. We much prefer searching out the mom and pop restaurants, the one of a kind motel or hotel. They're unique, different and interesting in their variety. Yes, sometimes the food isn't good, and the rooms are less than expected - but then I've also found that to be true in a Cracker Barrel or a Ramada as well. Knowing what to expect by eating in the chain restaurants or staying in chain lodging may well be the "safe" way to travel, but you miss the delightful little surprises of the unique and different.

The cheapest motel room I've ever rented was out in the middle of nowhere, quite an old motel and run by a young couple. They set and chatted with us in comfortable lounge chairs beneath the pine trees that evening. The room was spotless and comfortable and the next morning they brought coffee and sweet rolls to the room free of charge. On my many business trips to Sante Fe New Mexico I stayed in the same motel each time. Again it was one of a kind, old, done in the stuccoed style of the southwest with heavy plank doors and wrought iron latches and hinges, hand set mosaic tiled bathrooms and big comfortable beds. I think I stayed in about every room in that motel and no two were the same size or layout, each unique in one fashion or another.

There have been many of the one of a kind lodging experiences that lay fondly on my memory. French Lick Indiana, Panguitch Utah, Yuma Arizona, Eureka Nevada, Cedar Island North Carolina, the Amargosa hotel and opera house of Marta Beckett at Death Valley Junction California and a cabin by the creek in Sedona Arizona. I don't remember much of the Ramadas and Holiday Inns.

We live in cave country

A little over a month ago, my eldest daughter and I toured a recently reopened cave here in south central Kentucky, just a little north of Mammoth Cave National Park. Cub Run Cave was discovered by two Hart County farm boys in 1950 and opened to the public in 1951. But the cave closed after only a year due to legal wrangling by landowners that kept the potential attraction sealed for the next 55 years.

Located on Ky. 88 about 15 miles west of the Munfordville exit from I-65, Cub Run Cave is now open for tours due to the efforts of Terry and Judy Schneble of Lebanon Junction, Ky. The Schnebles, who own a camp on nearby Nolin Lake, bought the 210-acre property at auction in 2004 and employed local Amish carpenters to construct an elevated wooden walkway that traverses the half-mile length of the pristine cave.

A stream flows through the cave, and a clear pool reveals eyeless crawfish, salamanders and minnows. A few very small bats also call the cave home.

We arrived more than an hour early for the first cave tour so had breakfast in their restaurant. It's a beautifully done, brand new establishment with antique items on the knotty pine walls and they served us a huge breakfast for $5.99. The main entrance wasn't open as yet when we took the tour, so we came in through the back entrance, toured the cave then retraced our steps. The main entrance will entail over a hundred descending metal steps leading to the elevated walkway. With the exception of 12 wooden steps near the end of the tour the rest could be toured on roller skates. Their elevated wooden walkway with a special metal mesh tread for non-skid walking makes this cave tour a leisure stroll, slightly descending for the full length. It's lighted, a guide takes you through showing you many of the special features, and they have some of the most beautiful formations I've seen in a cave. Another delight is there's no empty areas along the way, but fascinating formations the full length of the tour.

After the tour we sat in the restaurant again, sipping iced tea, and had a lengthy talk with Terry, the owner. A very down to Earth man, but one that really wants to provide the best possible experience for the visitors. He said he had already taken 15 handicapped kids in wheelchairs through from the back entrance, and intends to make that a regular feature. If there is another cave that offers handicapped accessability I'm not aware of it.

Growing up in a small town back then

For some reason there were soldiers in my home town during the Second World War. Maybe they were recruiting, I don't know. I was only six when that war ended, but I can recall a few soldiers marching in formation on our front street. It was gravel back in those days and they stopped to rest under the large silver maples in front of our house. They had their rifles standing in a tripod formation in the grass while they took a break. I stood inside and peeked out through the window at them. Maybe I was scared at this new phenomena in my neighborhood.

Just after the War we would occasionally have a small plane fly over the town and drop leaflets advertising one thing or another. We'd always run to catch some like it was a treasure, but then that was about as exciting as it got around that town in those days. I should well imagine towns complained about the litter this caused and that practice stopped not long after it had started.

In the summer we would occasionally hear street vendors. There would be a truck, a tractor with trailer or some such conveyance cruising slowly down the street with someone walking behind loudly announcing the produce they had brought to town to sell. Straaaw - BERRIES! Fresh, red, ripe Strawberries! Get your strawberries here!

If we put a sign in the front window that said "Cleaners", one day a week a vehicle would stop and pick up anything that needed to be dry-cleaned then return it the next week. This was before a local fellow opened a dry cleaners behind the barber shop. Polar Coal and Ice delivered to the door. I always thought that an odd combination, coal and ice. Fortunately they didn't deliver both with the same truck or we would have had a different definition of "black ice" back then. There were regular deliveries of milk and bread and such but they didn't last too long. I think the people in town preferred giving their business to the local stores.

What was the name of the fellow that performed a taxi service? For a few bucks he would pick you up, take you to the county seat to shop, then bring you home.

The town of my youth was a pretty complete, self contained little community. We had garages, filling stations, an implement sales and repair, groceries, a furniture store, hardware, doctor, dentist, pharmacy, bank, post office, barber, beauty shop, dry cleaners, lumber yard, grain elevator, passenger and freight depot, commuter service to state capitol via rail. Bus service to the county seat for a while, schools, a fire department, funeral home, pool hall, restaurants, the soda fountain in the drug store, and the free movie once a week during the summer. Society changes and many towns the size of that one have all but vanished. The advent of our mobile society has superseded many small town businesses. We'll run into the city to shop at malls, go to the county seat to the supermarkets, buy over the Internet, find a Wal-Mart, Lowe's or Home Depot, specialists instead of general practitioners, oral Surgeons instead of dentists. It gives us much greater choices but I think we lost a lot in the process, but it was a great place and great time to grow up.

My memories of our little Hoosier town in the forties and fifties is a Norman Rockwell painting.

Religious discussions

One time I gave my reason for attending a particular church by saying "They disagree with me the least". My fellow conversant thought this a terrible reason. He said he attended a particular church because they taught the truth and taught the Bible.

The dear fellow went on his way feeling superior without ever realizing we'd basically both said the same thing. He was attending a church that taught the truth as he had come to believe it, and the Bible the way he had been taught to interpret it. In other words, they disagreed with him the least.

I have often been criticized for talking about my interpretations of the Bible. The theme seems to be that I should just read it for what it says rather than trying to interpret it. Now isn't that a silly idea. If your driving down the road and see a red colored octagonal sign with these four odd shapes "STOP" in white against the red background, ceasing forward motion is the interpretation we put on that metallic placard mounted on a post. We recognize the four shapes as letters, and in that configuration they form a word that means we are to come to a complete halt. Of course we've been used to these signs most of our lives, and we know what it means without conscious thought today. We know what it means because that is the interpretation our minds put on that particular item, even though we don't have to consciously read and interpret it to understand we are to stop.

Anything you read only takes on meaning when your mind interprets the material your are reading. If you didn't need to interpret writing to gain full meaning from it, you would be able to gain full meaning from writings in any and all languages on Earth. I interpret the Bible.

To me the Bible is the best guidebook to spiritual development I've ever read, and I much prefer reading in the King James versions than any modernized text. I say versions because there have been nearly a hundred thousand changes in the King James version in the last century. Comparing my 1834 version with my 1961 version shows massive amounts of changes. Where I differ from most others living here in the Bible belt, I don't make a graven image of that book. I don't consider it the inerrant Word of God, and thereby grant it a reverence akin to worship. Too much of the Old Testament reflects more the ignorances of the writers than of an All Knowing God.

Just one nitpicking little detail from the very beginning as an example - the creation story. In those days it was believed the world was flat and the universe revolved around it. The Sun was the greater light to rule the day and the Moon the lesser light to rule the night. Since it is daylight before the Sun comes over the horizon, and still light for a while after it has set, they didn't understand that day was caused by the sun. Therefore in Genisis they had no trouble with the idea that on the first day of creation God could separate the light from the darkness and call the light day and the darkness night, yet not create the Sun, Moon and stars until the fourth day. To them the Sun didn't cause the day, but was just the greater light to rule the day. Lights on the firmament of the heavens. In the same belief they saw no problem in the idea of it taking five of the six days of creation just for the Earth, but whipping out the entire rest of the Universe in one day. Much of the details of the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, do reflect these ignorances. I think if the Bible was indeed the inerrant Word of God, He/She would have written it accurately.

The milk and the meat of the New Testament, especially the red letter sections. The more you understand the more it has to say to you. I grew up in the Christian religion, and the older I get the more I understand when I reread some of the sections I've read countless times. Enough to realize that most churches in the Christian faith are teaching a religion about Jesus, rather than the religion of Jesus. When he said "follow me" he didn't mean "worship me". He meant follow me "All these things I do, you can do, and greater things than this can you do".

I have a lot of other problems with "traditional" Christianity, but I'll leave that for another day.

We'll pass the collection trays now.

Backroads

A few weeks ago my wife and I took an overnight trip with my brother and his wife just to get away for a few hours. We followed a winding little highway into Tennessee through towns and countrysides that saw battles during the Civil War, and drifted into the little community of Pall Mall (pronounced pell mell by the locals). There is an old grist mill that was built about 1880, and in later years was owned and operated by America's most decorated hero of the First World War, Alvin C. York. Gary Cooper won an academy award for his portrayal of Sgt. York in a 1941 movie about his life. On the other side of the creek that powered the mill, and the opposite side of the road is the house where Sgt. York spent the last years of his life. You can take a scheduled tour of the home but we decided to pass on that. There's also a hiking trail that runs through the woods, across a bridge and up the hill to the cemetery where he is laid to rest. It was windy and chilly that day so we drove around the road instead of hiking the trail to visit his grave. It's a rather impressive grave site, and there's a tall flagpole with the American flag flying above the grave.

We stopped in a very old general store that still was very much in use. They won my heart immediately when I discovered a fresh pot of coffee. Better yet it was free. We browsed for a while and along with the usual cans of beans, loaves of bread and milk, they had numerous craft items. A couple that tickled my fancy was an item they called "The Hillbilly Fish Finder". It looked like a stick of dynamite. The second was a small wooden box with a picture of a chicken and the words "Three Piece Chicken Dinner" on the top. When you opened it up it contained three kernels of corn.

We continued to follow small highways until we reached the north edge of Chattanooga and stopped for the night in a new hotel there. We debated on touring Chattanooga but opted to avoid the masses of humanity a city presents, and chose a system of small highways through little towns for our return trip the next day.

That brother and I are less than two years apart, and were inseparable as children. Then life intervened and we saw little of each other for the past quarter century. Since I moved back to this area we've had several of these little trips together, and lengthy visits to each other's homes. It's nice to see there's such an easy familiarity between us still.

Prom Night

Saturday night was Prom night for the county's high school junior class. Yes, there's only one high school in the county. Though there are about 290 square miles, the population is only a little over ten thousand. Our granddaughter, normally tending toward tom-boy, was a beautiful young lady for the evening with her hair done up, wearing a full length gown, jewelry, make-up and being coached on how to walk like a lady by her aunt.

Most of us get to play-pretend on a few such occasions in our lives. A time when we step outside our normal lifestyles for a short period of time and appear to be something other than our usual persona. She waited for her date to offer his hand to help her from the car then walked with her hand on his arm amidst the smiling onlookers and flashing cameras into Prom Night.

Later she sat up telling us all about her evening. She danced every dance and enjoyed it all. In the telling she dropped a bit of information as if it were of no import. She'd seen a mentally handicapped young man just standing over to the side most of the evening watching the festivities. She went over to him and asked him to dance with her, and they danced. Such an action might not be considered politically correct by the "In crowd" of the school, but her grandpa couldn't be more proud of her than I am for that one simple act of compassion.

Of course there's no way to tell how important that was to the young man. He might have preferred to just stand and watch, but on the other hand it could be his fondest memory of the school years "She was beautiful and she danced with me."

Today she was in jeans and sneakers running the weed-eater. Quite a young lady we have there.

Hanging Out Time

Our daughter in Indiana made up coupons and gave my wife and I each a book of coupons at Christmas. One of my coupons was for "Hanging out time". The idea being I could redeem it from her for some exclusive time for just the two of us to be together. When we were discussing this we determined the last time she and I had spent any time together without other friends or family, was about 24 years ago. Long overdue for "hanging out time". When I knew I was to be in Indiana for this past week-end she and I arranged to take a picnic lunch and drive over to the Shades State Park for the day on Sunday. It was a good choice. Since most people go to the larger Turkey Run State Park near-by, there were very few people at the Shades that day. I took my coupon with me.

It's long been my practice to avoid hiking trails. I stroll trails, and that seemed to fit in with her ideas quite well. We strolled trail one, or what trail one has become since the last time I was through that way. That trail descends into a large hollow called the Devil's Punchbowl then wanders down that canyon to what used to be called "Bridal Veil Falls". I can't remember what they call it now, but instead of descending to the bottom of the falls then along Sugar Creek as it once did, the trail stops about a quarter way down the side of the falls, and you have to backtrack then go up over the hill to continue on. A sign said "No 'Hikers' beyond this point", but since we're "strollers" it didn't apply. We descended down the precarious slope to the bottom of the falls to take some pictures (then had to climb back up the same way). Rather than going up over the hill though we returned to the punchbowl and back up to the car to break out our lunch.

When I was a kid and we visited this park and others, mom always packed ham-salad sandwiches, potato chips, olives, cookies and iced tea, so that was what we took. Hey, if it was good back then, it's still good today. Besides I have mom's recipe for ham salad and made this batch exactly as she used to. Good stuff.

After lunch we talked each other into trying one more trail and chose trail 5. Now trail 5 is a deceptive little pathway. It started out as a stroll through the woods, pleasant day, gentle breeze, good conversation, then began a gentle descent. After a while it was a bit steeper descent with an occasional step. Before long it gets real serious about this step thing and you find yourself going down one flight of wooden steps after another until you're on the banks of Sugar Creek. Of course we knew the car was somewhere at the level before any downhill nonsense begins, and once you've dropped down that far the only choice available is to go back up again. We sat for a long time on the banks of the creek waiting for a paddlewheel boat, a helicopter, canoeists, a log raft or anything that might float us down to civilization. We knew we really didn't want to climb all those millions and millions (hey, it seemed like that many) of steps back up, so decided to follow along Sugar Creek to where the map shows the trail heading back toward the parking lot. As you reach this part of the trail a sign informs you this is a "Rugged" trail. I said "Oh good, I like walking on carpeting", but soon learned that rugged doesn't mean it's covered with a rug. The trail is basically walking up a stream, stepping from rock to log to stump to rock, to - oops, that was mud. We both agreed though it was easier taking that "rugged" trail than it would have been to climb the stairs back up, and there was a delightful little falls, grottos, lots of shaded areas to stop to rest (every 15 feet or 15 seconds, whichever came first). It was a great time of year for wild flowers of all sorts too.

Once we'd returned to the car, sat at the picnic table and enjoyed another glass of tea, we agreed that was enough of the wilderness thing for one day and headed out. The weather was perfect, and our time together was balm for my soul - just too quickly passed. Thank you dear daughter for the "Hanging Out Time".

Well now ain't this a shocker

Every day or two I've tried to see if Blogger would let me back in, but it never has. This afternoon I commented on a few sites. I've been able to do that all along, but not to post on my own site. Not even today. Now tonight I give it a shot, same old password and user name, and here I am. So here's a quick post.

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The Oakridge Boys recorded a song about the Class of '57 a few years ago. That was the year I graduated high school, so 2007 makes 50 years. Boy that number just seems way too high for some reason.

Anyway, the class of '57 got together last Saturday in central Indiana. Out of the 26 in our graduating class, 3 are deceased, one is "where-abouts unknown, possibly deceased", and 22 are still around. 19 of us showed up for the shindig. Some of those people I'd not seen in almost that entire 50 years, so we had quite a time getting reacquainted. Most of the time was spent just conversing, having brunch and the like, but in the afternoon we all took seats in a circle and one by one gave a brief run-down of how our lives had been for the last 50 years. No one got dramatic, keeping it light, but everyone gave a pretty good talk about their half century.

The class of '57 doesn't have any millionaires, no celebrities or movers and shakers, but we seem to be the "common man". The people that, after all is said and done, are the real backbone of this society. Farmers, lab technicians, policemen, teachers, in construction, printers and the like. We had several hours together but the time seemed so fleeting. How do you make up fifty years in a day? Of course you can't, but we 19 weren't listed among the deceased and were blessed to have those few hours to laugh, recall our times together, collect a few hugs and handshakes, and marvel at the very idea of a half century having passed.

Out of the 26 graduates in '57, 16 of us had started first grade and attended all 12 years of school together. It was a small school in a farming community. One of those that attended was with us only during the senior year. He said Saturday, in twelve years of school he went to 9 different schools, and was always the outsider. Our class was the only one that ever made him feel he belonged. It was a good class.