My neighbor Daniel is a maintenance man for the many K thru 12 schools here in Lawrence county. The other day while on a break, he had his phone open reading my blog.
He had Emma's picture up full screen as his boss walked by, and the boss said What's this?, and Daniel had to scramble, explaining it was his neighbors grand-daughter, from his blog!
Wow, this is very sad! Apparently, some male teachers here are accused of inappropriate attention to their senior female students!
Folks here are pissed off about this, and rightly so! We drove by a school board meeting yesterday at the Lawrenceburg HS, and there were four cops on the scene, expecting something.
To counter that, Daniel and I concurred what a great community we live in.
Everyone is friendly and willing to help their neighbors out, crime is low, and it's just a great laid back Southern Tennessee town to live in.
But these male teachers need to keep their dick in their pants! And if this shit is confirmed, get the fuck out of town!
I've been thinking about my buddy Richard, from that last post. One day we were hanging out at a bar in Reno (I don't add the NV suffix, because there is only one).
He told me he was engaged to be married. I was happy for him and we drank.
On the eve of his wedding he got very drunk, and went driving. He crashed his vehicle big time, and fortunately didn't hurt anyone, except himself.
I hooked up with him later, and he was in a full body cast. If you have never seen someone in that position, consider yourself blessed. He was lucky to be alive.
I asked him what happened and he responded with the saddest thing anyone has ever said to me. He said he was under endowed and was afraid his wife to be, would find him unacceptable.
OMG. This meant that they had never had sex, and he felt he was going to disappoint her big time. How fucking sad is that!
So he gets totally drunk on his pre-wedding night, and ruins his life. I don't know if the marriage ever happened, probably not.
That was the last time I saw him, as life moved on...
I was chatting with my neighbor this morning about lessons learned and how they influence our lives. I was not close to my step dad, but I received a couple of object lessons from the man.
One day, I was hanging out in our town of forty houses on the side of a Sierra Nevada mountain, outside of Reno, called Floriston. My seven year old buddy Richard talked me into stealing something from Nana's store, a little place that sold basic supplies and the only store there.
I don't remember what it was, probably candy, and Nana caught us. She summoned our parents, and a severe punishment was handed to both of us. We were banned from the store for a year! As that year went by, I was reminded every day that stealing has consequences, and it formed my integrity on that matter.
As the years progressed, we moved all over California, finally landing in Paradise, CA. Yea, the same town that was burned down from the Camp Fire in 2018. I was still friends with Richard and he was living in Reno.
One day we came up with a scheme to buy a bunch of alcohol at a discount store in Reno, and bring it back to Paradise to sell it to my underage friends, at a markup.
In the dead of night, we rolled into town on Neal Rd and decided to pull off into the bushes to sleep until morning. Unfortunately, I fell asleep with my foot on the brake...
A local sheriffs deputy spotted the lights in the bushes, and lit us up. He demanded we open the trunk and found all of the booze, at which point he had us load it all up into his vehicle, and then he split.
He knew my step dad Paul, who was working at a local gas station, and the next day he pulled in and asked him if he wanted the booze, and Paul said hell no.
The cop kept everything, never reported it, and never wrote us up. We were out a bunch of money, and I realized that a life of crime was not up my alley! Lessons learned...
I rarely write about politics, because it's so polarizing. I'm on the Right and I'm sure a bunch of my blog readers and friends are not, and I respect that!
But this should not stop me from expressing my opinion on the matter. So here you go:
I think Donald Trump should succeed the GOP nomination to Ron DeSantis, in return for a special position within the administration responsible for securing the border and restoring energy independence. Pick Kristi Noem or Nikki Haley for VP.
The bickering would stop, the party would solidify, and we would have a strong VP, along with the woman's vote.
Then promise to fire all of these Biden appointees that are destroying our country, on day one.
Put all of the political bullshit and the inflated egos aside, win this election, and make America really great again!
I remember a few days I spent with my grand-father as a teenager, my only father figure, in a motel somewhere in California.
He was a sign painter, working a job and brought me along because he loved me. The place had a pool, the weather was hot, and I spent my days hanging out there.
As my skin cleared up from the sun, we watched boxing from the room. I saw Mohamed Ali kick ass, and later I met him face to face at Merritt College in Oakland, CA. About that...
Thank you grandpa! You were the male figure in my life, and I am so grateful!
My backyard is beginning to recover from the winter frost. The dead leaves are dropping from the trees, and the big rhododendron, despite being pretty beat up, is sprouting new leaves and buds.
My daughter Becky, has created some amazing people. Here is one I have never met, her name is Emma, and maybe I will meet her someday...
We have a new family of groundhogs in the back yard. Daniel pointed them out to me from his kitchen window the other day, it looks like mom and dad and three or four siblings.
This afternoon I walked down to their hole and planted some of Piper's remaining cat treats at the edge, then I hid behind a tree with my Sony and the zoom lens, and waited.
I got a shot with mom and a couple babies, I think it was worth the wait!
I guess this is my claim to fame, as I fade into the sunset. I created the very first graphics program for the IBM PC! Ahead of Microsoft and all of the other big players: 4-Point Graphics.
I bought the first IBM PC to hit the Computerland store in Oakland, CA, along with a color monitor, and a development system called Compiled Basic, in the very early eighties, for around $6,000 in cash out the door.
I then shut down my IBM System 38 consulting career at $65 an hour, and never looked back.
Here was this amazing personal computer created by IBM, running an OS from Microsoft, and I had the new personal computer world at my fingertips.
So I wrote a graphics program, and it opened up a new career that lasted for a decade. I was a programming star, creating programs that made the world stage. I developed a reputation and coding cred, and formed two companies, Bridgeway Publishing and Hamilton Graphics.
I was an amazing computer programmer back in the seventies and eighties. As I look back, I have no idea where that gift came from, but it was a great ride!
It's been a beautiful day here in southern Tennessee, clear skies, temps around eighty. I drove up to check on my ducks around noon, before walking the path at Veterans Park. I haven't fed them in a while and I was excited to see them at the dock.
I had my window down as I pulled up, doing my quack quack call, and usually they would come running. They didn't budge, so I walked down to them with my bag of quack, and asked what's up?
They had no interest in getting fed, and as I looked around, I saw wild bird feed on the ground, the same stuff I buy at Tractor Supply. Someone has taken over the feeding, and I wonder if they have read my blog, or watched my videos!
It wasn't quack cocaine, there was no cracked corn in the mix, but definitely the same bird feed.
Whatever, I guess I'm off the hook. I can save my bird feed for the birds (and the squirrels) here at the house...
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