Planes, Trains, and Automobiles...

Throughout my life vehicles have been a big influence to me (I have a passion for cars, trucks, boats, and even motorcycles and atv's (some of them anyway)! This is a part of my life that I'm sure my parents have to this day wished that I never would have encountered.

Instead of going through and telling you every vehicle that I've driven or even owned; I'm going to tell a few stories that stick out in my head about some of them.

Let me start out by saying that the show "Dukes of Hazard", has always been my favorite. Even though I know that the things done in vehicles on TV are not real (most of them are all stunts and rigged vehicles), there has always been the question in my mind...I wonder if I could do that?

On my first attemp of something wild and crazy, I found out very quickly how much I loved an adrenaline rush. It was the backing up slamming on the brakes while turning and sliding the front end around and getting into a forward gear and going, without ever coming to a stop. On the first attemp of this, it was a success . I felt invincable and truely thought that I was born to do this stuff. (If my parents had ever known what thoughts went through my head before I even went to get in the car I'm sure the keys would never made into my hand in the first place, so naturally I never told them about any of these things). By the way this was done in my first car, a 1984 4-cyl., front wheel drive, 2-door, Oldsmobile Cutlass Cierra-Holiday Edition. This was our family car until I turned 16. This car went on to survive many different airborne successes. I even took it 4-wheelin' once. The last of this car was not a stunt or even an attemp. I couldn't get the thing stopped at a stop sign one day and...CRASH right into a 1972 Chevrolet Nova (not a good story so I'll spare that one for now, I was on my way to my cousin's wedding). This picture is a 1986, but you get the idea.


Speed! I love it! The rush is awesome, not far from where we lived there was this straight away about a mile long and if entered correctly a speed of about 150 was possible in a verrietty of factory vehicles (this was one of the first tests I had to give every vehicle that I got in my hands).

My thought was that, the faster the car would go in that spot...the better the car was. If a vehicle had been altered or modified the occasional 160 or so was possible (that was by far the best)!

There were also many trucks, and all of them had tastes of the mud at "Wetstone" (good and bad experiences, I'll save a bad one for another day). This place has so many memories in my head that I could never type them all. But I was browsing around earlier and technolgy has come so far that I found some footage of this wonderful place on "the world wide web". Now the parts that are not shown is the calm evenings and the campouts (the music, and lots of stuff that I should not have been doing back then). If memory serves me correctly Brad Paisley was even in there one year, way before he made it in the music industry!

There were many things that I did to get an adreniline rush. Even now I look for things that won't get me in any trouble. So for you parents that have a teen driving think back to this post before you hand them the keys. I know what is coming from my children when they get older and believe me, they are gonna have it rough, thanks to "Evil Dad's" past.

Blog Crisis...

When I started this blog I was driving a big truck in three states and covered 500 miles a day. Now I drive a beer truck (it feels like driving a mini van compared to the big truck). I stay in the town that I live in and only work 8 and a half hours a day (compared to the 90 or so that I was working before). LIFE IS GOOD.

The problem that I'm running into is that I don't really have alot to tell everyone about. I tried to pay more attention to my surroundings over the past two weeks, but nothing. So again I'm back to the thought of what do you blog about. My wife can make posts about little things, big things, and even nothing. While I sit back and try to come up with something, with little luck.

So my attemp this weekend is to find something or think of a story from the past (hopefully I can think of one that won't give my loving mother a heart attack when she reads it).

Evil Dad...

According to my son, I am evil. This is the impression I get from him anyway. I got home from work today at my normal time, around 4:30. And within 15 minutes, Damon was crying.

Let me start out by saying that, between my wife and me, I am the stricter parent. I don't think I'm unreasonable, but I make my son do things that I believe every kid "SHOULD DO!"

Damon came outside when I arrived home today, and my first comment to him was, "Thank you, Damon." He asked, "Why, Dad?" And I said, "Because you have clothes on instead of pajamas." (He takes after his mom and wears his pajamas around ALL DAY, which drives Daddy crazy.) At this point, the first round of whining begins, already. Apparently he couldn't find his shoes in the house, and he knows that Evil Dad won't let him ride his bike unless he has shoes on. So now Damon's crying because he doesn't know where his shoes are.

Five minutes pass before we hear the music of the Ice Cream Truck rapidly approaching (a sound that I truly hate because the dumbass driver has the volume so high that I could hear it over 100 Harley Davidsons riding past). At this point, I'm getting slightly irritated... because I've only been home for a few minutes and this is supposed to be my time to "wind down" after a day at work. Now, Damon is mad because he spent all of his money ($3 he earned mowing the yard last weekend) on this very same truck 2 days before... but he wants ice cream NOW, of course. Evil Dad says, "no ice cream." I told him we were going to have dinner before too long... AND we have ice cream and popsicles in the freezer (for later, after dinner). Damon is mad and crying again... but Grandma is here and comes to his rescue, as usual. She gives him money and lets him get ice cream for after dinner. (This, by the way, irritates the crap out of me since she heard me say no, but how can I go above the "Almighty Grandma?")

Dinner is always a fight with Damon, and I try to prepare myself for it ahead of time. Tonight was no different. First, Evil Dad made Damon's friends go home so we could sit and eat dinner as a family (one of the things I like to do now that I actually see my family every day.) About an hour later, Damon came to me with his plate cleaned off to show me that he ate all his food. I looked at the plate and could plainly see that a dog (Lizzie) had licked the plate clean. (Erin had put Lizzie up so we could eat dinner, and Damon apparently let her out during one of his trips to the bathroom... another way he tries to avoid eating.)

So now, I make Damon take his bath and prepare for an evening inside. He's pissed off at Evil Dad, of course. He now knows that, because he didn't eat all of his dinner, he can't have his friends back over to play tonight and he won't get the ice cream he was able to sucker out of Grandma.

All of this fun and I haven't even been home for two hours yet.

If these things make me an Evil Dad, then I guess I'm guilty.

Okay, this has been long enough... I better go so I can figure out the next way to irritate my son... I'm sure he's counting on it!

(Carrie, this post is for you! Erin told me you were wondering when I would post again. It's nice to have a "fan.")

An Old Wive's Tale?

For as long as I can remember, I have loved storms (they truly fascinate me; all the different kinds, too). But I have one favorite type... maybe it is the setting, I'm not really sure, but I really enjoy watching these.

Here in Ohio Valley of West Virginia, we get these powerful thunderstorms in the summer. They are brief but they make their presence known!

I can remember sitting on the back porch at our farmhouse as a kid watching these storms come and go, the lightning crawling through the sky like a spider making a web (I always called it spider lightning) and the loud cracks and booms of the thunder (someone tried to tell me that someone in heaven was bowling).

There is a particular part of the storms that I have always watched for. On that very porch I can remember someone telling me to keep your eyes on the trees. I was told that if the leaves on trees start turning upside down, then there is a storm coming. To this very day, I still "keep my eyes on the trees."


This evening I was watching as usual. One of these storms was nearby and I watched the familiar sight of the trees and thought we had a good one coming... some thunder and a tiny bit of lightning, but to my disappointment the storm did not hit us.

So is this thing about the leaves true? There was a storm, but it did not hit where I was, so should the leaves have turned?

Handing Down the Chores...

When I was a kid I would watch my Dad mow the yard at our farm and think it would be so cool to ride on the tractor and mow the yard. My father told me that, if I mowed the entire yard with the push mower, he would teach me how to drive the ride-on. After a few days of mowing, I finished almost all of the yard (mind you, I was about five, if memory serves, and the yard was 3 acres or so). But my Dad decided that was enough and started to teach me how to use the tractor so that I could actually mow faster than the grass grew.

I thought I was so cool out there, mowing the grass like Dad. And then we moved into town... so much for the riding mower that spoiled me so much. It was all push mower and then I hated to mow the yard from that point forward. To this day, I hate yard work. I would rather have a few goats and move them around to mow the yard off, but unfortunately I live in town and don't have that option.

Recently, I've been borrowing a mower from a good friend for the fact that our electric bill is more important than buying a mower right now. So the other day I convinced my son that he wanted to go get the mower with me and tag along with me for the day. We had some different conversations about things he would like to do and stuff that 7 year olds think about, like the latest video games... ya know, the important stuff.

We made it home with the mower, and Damon wanted to help mow the yard. I went through and mowed the rough spots and decided what the heck... it's time for him to learn this evil chore. He mowed the whole back yard by himself and was very proud!

The funny part is that, even though I was more than happy not to have to mow the yard... even more than that, I was also a proud father. My son is growing up and learning to do grown-up things, so I must be doing something right!

But my final thoughts were about my dad and the day he saw me growing up, mowing the yard. What was he thinking about? Then I wondered: have I made my dad proud at this point in my life?

GUEST BLOG!!!!!

I started to make this post the day after I was tagged by one of my wife's dear friends. As I tried to remember the story the way it was told to me, it occured to me that there was only one person who could do this properly: my MOM. So, let me intoduce Mom (I promised that her version of the story would not be edited in any way... these are her words, her way)...





I think Nick actually was a little over three years old when he had this experience. Not that it makes much difference. It was the spring before we moved into the farm house in October of 1980. The reason I remember is that it wasn't long after Nick's adventure that we found out Missy, born in 1981, was on the way. Here's the story from my point of view.
_______________________________________________________

We lived on a 50 acre farm when Nick was little, about a third of a mile down a little dirt lane from the main highway. It was a beautiful setting. A steep wooded hill stood as a backdrop for the farm, and, below the barn, cornfields lay like quilted patches, stitched between a winding creek and the dirt lane.

It had been a very long winter, and since we lived in a mobile home as we awaited purchase of the farm house, everyone was feeling a little cramped. It was one of the first warmer days in the spring. The grass was just beginning to green up a bit. A slight mist arose from the surrounding hills, signaling the spring meeting of warmer air and winter's chilled earth.

It seemed like a perfect day to let Nick explore the front yard all on his own.

Now, anyone who knows Nick very well will understand how significant it is if I say that from the time the child could deliberately grasp anything, he held a Matchbox vehicle in his hand. As he grew, so did the size of preferred vehicles. So, by the time he was three or so, he preferred a BIG WHEEL. I don't know if that's the correct name, but that was Nick's name for the contraption. It was one of those low-riding blue and orange plastic trikes, with a huge front wheel and handlebars that protruded over the top. I'm thinking there were many parents from the late 1970s who cursed the darn things.

Yes, a perfect day to let Nick explore the front yard all on his own. I had a perfect view of the yard. Could wash dishes, glance out a window to the yard. Check on Nick. Dart out the front door if necessary to rein him in. I was sort of getting the hang of the parenting thing, confident in my ability to multi-task.

'Cept I forgot about the BIG WHEEL, tucked out of sight by the corner of a garage. The BIG WHEEL ... a three-year old's ticket to freedom, to vast worlds unexplored, to mud puddles, which, when connected like dots, led down the country lane to the main highway.

As surely as I type this, I say I washed a dish, looked out to confirm Nick's whereabouts, washed another dish, looked out the window. No Nick. Dashed to the door, yelled his name. No Nick. I yelled again. "Nick!!" (Does it sound the same when Erin yells it?) Still no little figure appeared from anywhere. I went to the coat closet to pull out some boots, and just as I struggled with the second boot, raising my head to push open the door and blow outside all in one motion ... a sheriff's patrol car emerged over the little rise by the garage.

Now, I'm not sure of the distance from the house to the garage, but it was a nice little stroll. Nevertheless, I clearly could see two things. First, there was a BIG WHEEL in the trunk of the patrol car. Then, there was Nick, plastered in mud. Or, I should say, Nick's huge eyes looking out over the back seat of a patrol car (you know, from the place where handcuffed prisoners are seated?), framed on the bottom by his mammoth grin.

The Deputy who returned my little one was gracious enough. "Ma'am, is this your son?" he asked.

"Uhhh, I ... gbleeee, gblaaah." My tongue seemed to stick on my lower lip as I awkwardly gestured toward the one boot, still partly dangling from my foot. Perhaps as an experienced professional, he recognized the seizure-like spasms of a young mother who couldn't mouth any reasonable explanation for a purely poor demonstration of parenting skills.

Or maybe, just maybe, he felt sorry for Nick, whose BIG WHEEL turned out to be one of the first plastic recyclables.

I love you, Nick. Thanks for making it through with me.

As I stated before, this is the story from Mom's point of view. There is only one part of that day that I can remember: while I was headed out "the little dirt lane," the mud puddles were just way too enticing... so I rode into them like a powerful 4wd truck going through a huge mudhole. When I talked to my Mom about doing this, she asked me if there was any part that I remember about that story... and in my memories of my life, I believe that one certain mud puddle is my first "real" memory.

My Mom and I have been through a lot over the years, and there are things that I regret saying about her (things that at a younger age, I made up -- i.e., I lied -- and I'm deeply sorry that I did). Today, Mom and I get along fine, and I would help her with anything at anytime, at the drop of a hat (after all, she is the reason I'm here).

So Mom, when you read this all put together, this is for you:

I know that I was never really kind when I was young;
but please know that I appreciate everything now.
As a parent I now understand all the things you tried;
and now it seems so clear that all you ever did was love me.

Thank you, Mom, for all you have done and the support you continue to give me!

Working on a New Plan of Attack...

It is time for me to come up with another special night for my beautiful wife. Now, I know she will be reading this, too, but I'm just searching for ideas right now. I've conjured up a few in my head... like spreading rose pettles all over the bed or trying to find somewhere we could take a dance lesson (considering I have about 6 left feet that have no coordination that might not work as well as I would hope, though).


I'm not asking for anyone to tell me exactly what to do, but I would like to hear some of the things that you all can think of that would be romantic. (Anyone that does not want their name associated with a comment is still welcome to leave one anonymously.)


I'm thinking that I can take into consideration all of the ideas you give me and then make the night my way. Even though Erin will know something is coming, she'll have no idea when or what is going to happen.


Afterward, I'll post and let you know what happened (minus the private stuff!). Knowing that, at this point, most of my readers are women (because my wife recruited all of her friends), I'm sure that you can come up with some romantic fantasies to share and help me create a nice, romantic evening for her.