Good manners never go out of style

One of the many things that I am so thankful for is how my parents taught me good manners.

I can remember going  different places with my Dad and he would always wear his fedora hat. Whenever he would pass a woman he would always kinda tip his hat and softly say "How do you do". It's just how it was and I'm sure the other men during that time did the same thing, assuming they were reared properly.

And of course, never would a woman or anyone senior to Dad,  have to open a door when Dad was around.

I feel I have followed in his footsteps correctly. And of course, Mom taught me manners as well, from learning how to eat and hold my silverware properly, seat a woman at a table and many, many more. I'm curious if it is still proper for men to act somewhat gallant with today's generation or if in fact it is considered sexist.  I'll still do it my way regardless of the current decorum.

I did have an incident yesterday though while at the doctors office while I was there for  an annual visual body scan with my Dermatologist.

Her PA had come into the room initially and after asking me the normal questions she told me I could remove my clothes down to my underwear  and then gave me a sheet so  I could cover myself   as I sat on the examination table.

After a few minutes of following her instructions, I suddenly panicked when I thought to myself, "Dang,since my Dermatologist was a woman and I always stand whenever a woman or really anyone enters a room, would it be more impolite to stand up in my skivvies and shake her hand with the possibility of the sheet falling or should I remain seated?"

Well, the doctor knocked, I said "Yes" and she extended her hand immediately as I kinda half stood. Problem solved.

I recounted to her the dilemma that went through my mind right before she came in and she laughed and then we got down to business.

My Dad always told me that, "Son, never forget where you came from and always have good manners" .....I guess that is even true when you are in your skivvies...People may not even notice if you are polite.

It's not WHERE we live, but HOW we live

I'm sure most of us have wondered how we ended up where we are. What stars crossed to place us in such locations as Hendersonville or Bristol or Grandview or Dayton or Yuba City or even Dallas.

I mean never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be owning my own equestrian ranch in Salt Lake City....um...oops...I forgot, that's not me. But seriously, we are where we are regardless of whether we chose to be there or not. We are where we are because we are needed to be there.

Of course it's important to be where we are, but not because of the location or address. What is important is what are we doing with our lives where we are located. There is no such thing as retirement. We continue to work, continue to provide service, continue to nurture family, continue to set examples. Just being there for someone, whether they live across the street or in another state is what is important.

Mothers never stop being mothers. Fathers never stop being fathers. Grandmothers, which is probably the best job going, get to nurture but they also get to help even in the smallest ways to mold and build character.

In today's world, we are simply a phone call away. A short text away or even a Facetime or Skype away. We greet our friends on the Internet each day. We say hello and share pictures. We share both the good news and sadly, the bad news.

Yet, we still sometimes foolishly daydream, "I wish I lived here or there and had sunshine and warmth year round".

The warmth and sunshine comes from within not from the outside. Some people live in what we might think is "paradise", yet they could be miserable within themselves. And heck, you might have 5 feet of snow outside your door this morning, but the warmth you can give a friend or family member with simply a phone call or taking a meal next door could bring more sunshine than Florida would ever see.

Be happy wherever you live. Spread your sunshine and melt those icicles from your neighbor's roof. And be the one to set the example. You'd be surprised how many people look up to you.

Peace my friends.

Warmth is just a thought away.

Life is like a big box of Legos and I'm running out of pieces...

When we come into this world we are given all the time we need, at least for that moment. All of the time that we will spend here on Earth is poured out on our table of Life like a box of Legos as we begin to build our world.

Each piece symbolizes the amount of time we will spend creating either our cityscape or landscape that will be our identity. The white pieces might represent hours, the blue pieces days, the red pieces months and even some green pieces that might represent years.

Not all of us will have the same amount of pieces. Sadly, some may only have a few. And yet some may have enough time pieces that looks like they would last for an eternity....but they won't. The pieces will begin to slowly disappear.

Some of us will think we have plenty of pieces of time to do all we want in this world and we will carelessly use them up randomly without ever setting a good foundation for our structures.

And, again sadly, some people 's Legos of time can be swept completely off the table in an instant much like the fires and hurricanes that have happened this year. And yes there are those who had taken care and used every block to build for their future with spare blocks of time left over, only to find that through illness or disease that suddenly there are only a few pieces left.

Initially, our parents teach us to use our time blocks to simply take care of ourselves...sometimes a lot of those hour blocks are needed and sometimes we learn more quickly. And then as children we use an abundant amount to simply play never worrying if we will have enough blocks. As students we begin to build our education structures that for some might be the tallest building on their table. For others their structure might be their family and as they construct each time block it not only rises tall but also spreads far and wide.

Some people spend their time building that proverbial stairway to heaven as they use all of their time doing good deeds for their fellow man. And again sadly, some simply throw away their blocks to a life of addiction. And many try to build the tallest structure around with their careers, surpassing all others only to look around and see that no family building, spiritual building or recreational building exists.

As I begin to near yet another milestone in my journey with my 70th coming next year, I took a moment to see just how many time blocks I have used and how many I might have left, assuming they aren't lost suddenly. It's not as many as I had hoped for, seeing I have a lot of buildings and landscapes that I still want to create, but as I take a panoramic view of what I am leaving behind, I'm relatively satisfied. Sure, there's a number of pieces left along the wayside, broken, dented and scraped but at least I had the chance to use them and I am thankful for that.

In closing, I suggest all of us stop for a moment and take a look around. Are there things and places you want to do and see? Do you still have some time blocks left? Are you hoarding your time pieces waiting for the right moment? Choose wisely. Your box of Life Legos can just last so long.

Some memories of past Winters

Now that the first of what will be several Winter blasts has settled in, it didn't take me long to remember some of the lesser sights, sounds, and feelings of my childhood while growing up in the Midwest town of Dayton Ohio. A town, tho not as cold as some in Ohio near the Canadian border, it was still far away from the pleasures of a sun-filled Florida city where many Ohioans went at this time of year. These were the sounds and sights  that are so unique that it takes that sharp slap in the face when you open the door on that first cold Winter day to let the dog out while still dressed in your sleeping attire to make you remember.

One is the disquiet that occurs in the eerie morning after the first snow fall as your galoshes crunch through the snow leaving the first of what will be many footprints throughout the day. Your mission is to simply get to school on time. No playing, no wasting time, no side tracks. All of that will come soon after the day ends and you can enjoy a coldness that is only appreciated by youth. The crunching, the pounding of the snow echoes through the neighborhood as you walk slowly so as not to fall. But it begins to take on a rhythm of its own. You begin to set the crunch to either a Christmas carol still in your head or maybe even a song you heard on the radio. You speed up, you slow down all the time as the neighbor looks out his window and says to their spouse, "There goes that odd Kender boy acting like he is dancing to music".  But in fact you were.

 As your journey to school continues you smell the aroma spewing from a neighbor's fireplace of burning oak. But that incense makes you smile not because you think of yourself sitting in a warm living room, but because it reminds you of where you will be on the weekend. You will be lacing up your ice skates while sitting around the outdoor fire at Icelandia, an ice skating rink in Dayton that was the center of most activity both day and night during the cold Winter months. Sharing hot chocolate with a friend or maybe if you were old enough meeting a special friend  there as you skated hand in hand in a continuous circle as the music played hoping you would not fall and look foolish.

And then finally you are near your school, and as the nuns usher you into the classroom they remind you not to take your warm clothes off just yet because you will be going to daily Mass next door in Church. So you sit there half-warm, half cold waiting. You'll head to Mass, head back to class and then wait until recess and then, then that feeling that reminds you why freezing temperatures are so painful.

You take up the dare from your best friend, as he challenges to stick your tongue out and touch it to the metal sign post. This challenge is new to you. You've never seen it before nor ever witnessed it. But it will be a challenge you will later throw out to friends, companions and not so close companions as you ready yourself to witness one of the most bizarre scenes for a kid in Winter. Your dang tongue will stick to the post. The other kids will scream with laughter, the teachers will come running and thankfully one of the nuns will pour warm water on your tongue to save you.

Yep, just the sounds and smells and feelings of Winter.  A favorite  time of the year.

Thanksgiving Memories

As I looked through the hundreds of blogs, short stories, articles or just plain musings I've written over the years, the topic of Thanksgiving wins hands down and takes the lead for "most items written about one subject". Either it's a time of year when I have less to do and more free time on my hands or it's more of an emotional period and I find that writing allows me to express and share those feelings.

I also find that the stories act somewhat like a key to helping me remember where I was living or what I was dong that particular year. Although some of the stories become a little more embellished each time I share them, the events as I recall them pretty much took place... well, sorta. One of my  favorites allowed me to remember a time when doing things like riding a bus downtown with my friends when we were barely 10 years old, in order to bring home a live turkey.

Another one that brings back a fun time was when the entire "Williams" family, my in-laws, and I all went camping on Thanksgiving and we cooked our turkey and sides on a bed of coals from the campfire.

The first Thanksgiving I spent away from my immediate family was my freshman year at the University of Oklahoma in 1966. Because of the expense of flying and the distance of 1,000 miles from Dayton, Ohio and it was too far to drive in such a short time, I ended up spending the holiday with my college roommate and his family. The companionship was great. The food was great, but just not being home, brought a little sadness.

One year later, I found myself again at OU during Thanksgiving with no plans to get back to Dayton for the holiday. I didn't have a car my sophomore year, I think it had something to day with really bad grades, so I decided to catch a ride to Nashville with a friend and then maybe hitchhike on to Dayton and perhaps talking Mom and Dad into taking my car back. I remember somehow getting to Vanderbilt University and going to the local chapter of my college fraternity and then somehow ending up in Dayton, I think by flying stand-by. Who knows. I guess it's just another one of those chapters in my life that seemed normal at the time. I did get to take my car back to college though.

Three years later I found myself once again separated from my family while I enjoyed my Thanksgiving meal alone at Basic Training for the U.S. Air Force. The companionship existed of 45 of us in our flight that we spent 24 hours a day looking at each other, the food was standard mess hall chow and the sadness, well, there was that also.

From Ohio to Oklahoma to Virginia and back to Oklahoma to New Mexico and finally to Texas every stop, every location, every address has a memory.

For the first 18 years I can remember Mom cooking the turkey down in the basement. Now, and yes, it makes me smile to even tell this anecdote, all those years Mom would cook the turkey in a little second oven, that Dad had connected in the basement. I guess they had bought a new oven at one point and they just decided to keep the old one. The kitchen was so small it was almost like a blast furnace in there by the time all of the burners and oven were fired up. Poor Mom would traipse up and down those stairs 20 or 30 times on Thanksgiving morning checking on the turkey.

In those early years it seems like right after a full belly of turkey and right before any drowsiness set in, we would gather in the neighborhood for some touch football unless of course an early season snowfall would cover the ground.

As the years went by, our own traditions would begin to evolve but of course the mainstay of the tradition was certainly the turkey but football was always included.

There was the infamous Dallas Cowboy football game of 1993 when a player named Leon Lett had a goal line fumble that cost the Cowboys the game. Leon would go on to say it was the worst day of his life. We hosted Thanksgiving at our house that day and had family come from 20 miles away braving the ice and snow to be together.

There were a couple of times that Pattye and I spent Thanksgiving working at the Dallas Cowboy stadium in one of the food vending booths. She sang with a world famous group of ladies, The Rich-Tones, and each year we would raise money as a non-profit manning the booth during the annual Cowboys Thanksgiving Day game. Later we would join the rest of her group of volunteers for turkey at one of their homes.

We have eaten at 5 star restaurants on Thanksgiving. We have had everything catered by the local grocery. We have traveled to our kids homes and they have traveled to ours. Each year has been different in its own way. Some years have been more quiet than others and sometimes the day seemed like non-stop kids running through the house.

It's a special time and I hold all of the memories close to my heart.

I hope all of you enjoy the day as well.

Gosh, I'm getting hungry already.