My parents have decided to sell their house and possibly move away to Indiana. They have been busy packing for weeks now. My Mother wants to pass on her legacy to her Son & Daughter and has had my Sister and I over to “shop” for anything we wish to take before she leaves. I must say that both of my parents came from rather poor and meager beginnings. My Mother married my Father when she was 16 years old and they have been together ever since. My Father is retired now and although I certainly cannot say they are wealthy, they’ve done pretty well for themselves considering what they started with. To say that I’m proud of them would be an understatement. I consider myself very lucky to have been brought up in a stable household and instilled with good morals and manners.
I certainly was not a pampered child. I didn’t wear the trendy fashions; I didn’t have the latest video games or plenty of “pocket money”. Candy & soda were a very rare treat and Christmas usually consisted of just one special present. My parents had expectations of their children. We had chores, they made us do our homework, and we had to be home at a reasonable time each night. What I did get however, was a Mother & Father who loved me and cared about me. My father was the kind of guy who would take his kids to the park and throw around the football. He coached the baseball team, he took us fishing. There were family picnics, vacations and outings. My Mother actually cooked dinner and we all sat around the table as a family unit each evening. During the holidays, she decorated the house and filled it with wonderful smells of baking bread & cookies. To me, this is the legacy of my Mother & Father, not their stuff. Those memories are more important to me than any belonging of theirs they want to bestow on me.
I’m not quite sure if my Mother understands this about me. She was raised in a time when our Country was just recovering from the “Great Depression”. I suppose the environment I grew up in would be considered “lavish” compared to what she had to endure. She had an “absentee” father and was raised by relatives for significant portions of her childhood. I think she assigns much more value to an accumulated wealth of possession than I do.
In any event, I think my lack of enthusiasm for her horde of “collectables” might have upset her. But Mom & Dad, if your reading this, all I’ve ever really wanted from you was your continued love and support. I want you to both be healthy and happy and come over for BBQ’s and good times with your Grandchildren. I want Dad to play chess with the boys and teach them to play the guitar. I want the boy’s Grandma to bake cookies and pies and tell them stories of how milk used to cost a nickel. You two have accumulated over half a century of “Life Experience” and that is of more value to the family than any set of dishes could ever be.
Mom did manage to “con” me into taking a few things, so I’ll display my “loot” here from the last couple of trips….
pic-1 Here is an antique clock that has to be well over 100 years old. I hung it in the living room tonight, wound it up with the key and it’s keeping pretty good time so far!
pic-2 Here is a blue crystal decanter with a set of six glasses. Very exquisite and my favorite color!
pic-3 A Christmas stocking that my mother embroidered just for me!
pic-4 A professional dart-board with six quality darts that had never even been taken out of the box. I hung it on the door of the shed and the dart you see in the pix represents the first time Mark ever threw a dart in his life. I kid you not… I’ll swear it on the Bible, we were all standing there with our mouth hanging open in disbelief!
pic-5 Mark standing proudly in front of his accomplishment.
I just came across an interesting 
WhooHoo! According to my “Stats”, my blog has had close to 20,000 unique visitors. None of you “regular people” understand this or even care about it but to us HTML’ers, uniques are the “Holy Grail”. For what reason do we toil placing code upon a server? So people can come see what we have to say of course. It’s all for not unless “cyber eyes” are reading what we are writing!
I got this movie on a recommendation from a coworker. I pretty much grew up with the comedy of Jim Carrey and I absolutely loved Tea Leoni in “Family Man” so I thought I’d give it a shot. Carrey and Leoni play an upper class suburbanite couple who are doing pretty well for themselves when all of a sudden the company Carrey works for collapses “Enron” style and they lose everything. Comedy then ensues as they turn to a life of crime to support themselves.
I’ve been ranting for quite a while about how our Government is really not serious about researching alternative fuel sources other than oil. It is my firm belief that Capitol Hill has been “Bought & Paid For” by special interest groups. No serious laws get passed, no serious money is allocated for research, all we get is a little bit of “Lip Service” from the President every year in his State Of The Union Address about how we need to do this.
I’ve been on this planet for almost four decades. One accumulates quite a bit of “life experience” is such a time span. I’ve always preferred people to be direct with me, just tell me what is on your mind, don’t beat around the bush. I’ll deal with it, I promise. One of my biggest peeves, and pardon the crude pun here, is do not “Piss in my face, then try to convince me it’s raining”.
Some of you may be old enough to remember when Michael Dukakis was running for President. The man was actually doing very well in that particular election until one of his people decided the polls showed America thought him soft on defense. They dress him up all G.I. Joe and snap this photo of him in a tank. Back then, American’s were smart enough to see right through this kind of B.S. and summarily slapped him down like an obnoxious school boy. The photograph is widely considered to be one of the worse public relations disasters in know history!
A true story which happened the other night. I’m at my store it’s just a few minutes until closing time. It has been quite the routine night, nothing out of the usual. I’ve announced the closing on the intercom and I’m ushering the last of the customers from the store. The doors are locked and I take a quick walk across the front lobby looking down each aisle to make sure everyone has gone. It’s been a long day, I want to go home!