Episode #53: I Did Not Get A College Degree, But I Did Get An Education

 I am not necessarily proud that I had to work long hard hours (meaning 60-70 per week as a normal work week) throughout the majority my adult life. What I am proud of is the fact that nobody ever gave me anything and everything I achieved, I did it through hard work, perseverance and determination. I worked longer hours than most people I know not because I wanted to, rather it was the price I paid to provide for my family and achieve what I consider success. I figured out many decades ago that in order to be a success I would have to pay the price of money for a college degree, or pay the price time and work my way through the ranks. I am convinced that a large part of my adulthood success was because I simply out worked most of the people that I worked with and was determined to be better than they were in as many ways as I could. I have to say it paid off, though I did end up working for about seven years longer than I had planned and did not retire until the age of 66 years and 6 months (my Full Retirement Age according to the Social Security Administration to receive my 100% Social Security payment) though I have been on Medicare health insurance since August of 2022.

Although I never achieved a college degree nor did I attend college on a regular basis, I did take a couple of classes in the late 1970s. When I was working for Firestone, I had regular hours and the store was closed every day at the same time and I could then plan on making the classes without worrying about missing them because of work. These would have been at the local college in Gainesville which was known as Cooke County Jr College at the time and is now named North Central Texas College. During that time we lived paycheck to paycheck (as a result we bounced a few checks that I had to go back and pick up) and did not have money for college for the first three years of marriage even if I did want to go.

During the fall semester of 1978 I took a class on Business Law and the professor was a local attorney named Rusty Duncan who was the defense attorney when I served on jury duty a couple of decades later. Then the next spring I took a class called Basic Computer Concepts and learned a lot of the burgeoning technology of computers long before the PC made its appearance in almost every home in America less than a decade later.

At that time the most popular computer computer languages were FORTRAN (Formula Translator) and COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language] but these days they are seldom in use. One of the things I learned in that class that was almost immediately useless because that information technology environment was growing so very rapidly was the use of and to read punch cards. At one time that was some fast, fancy and amazing technology.

As the years went by and my job changed, I had to learn some basic computer skills for the various training classes I would conduct so I did take several classes on Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point and Outlook. Additionally while I worked as the National Safety Manager at Gibson Energy I took about 60 of the required 68 credit hours of training classes from Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEKS) as I worked toward my Certified Safety and Health Official (CSHO) certification but the job ended before I was able to complete the remaining few classes.

I learned how to deal with people while I was still a young manager with some good role models  and a real mentor along the way. In addition to the everyday life lessons I learned working in the construction materials business, I had the good fortune of attending several leadership development classes while working at Redi Mix Concrete. The training and the lessons learned as a Master Grad Level 2 through Rapport Leadership International over the years was an eye opening experience in many ways. In a nut shell what I learned was business success and personal success are very closely related and it really boiled down to a simple concept of working as hard to help others succeed as I did for my own success. This very honest and humbling approach taught me so many lessons on so many levels and was definitely a catalyst of my management style as well as personal growth and development.

One of the more interesting classes I took was also in the late 1970s which was private lessons in the martial arts. I sought out a local guy who at the time was a sign painter by trade name Bob Johnson. Bob had developed his training style that included concepts of different disciplines, which included kenpo (which is a blend of karate and kung fu), aikido and hapkido. While the techniques and what I learned from him were interesting for sure, Bob himself was a real enigma. 

The first time I met with him to discuss his training, style, schedule, etc. we met at his home on South Howeth Street in Gainesville. When I walked in, I was a bit concerned that this old house may fall in on me. He had a huge hand made fire place that took up the majority his front room that was made of a variety of huge stones and very wide mortar joints. The ceiling was very low and it looked like the walls leaned in every direction. 

He said during this visit that he conducts his training in the back yard, so we go outside to look around and it was as eccentric as the inside of his house. There was no grass in this entire back yard which was surprisingly small, but he had a very large and thick privacy hedge that was completely invaded with  honeysuckle on all three sides of his yard. He had built a ragtag three sided roofed enclosure supported by what were used utility poles with a lean-to roof  of sorts covering about half this enclosed area. In the middle of this open air enclosed area he had built another very large fireplace of stone complete with a huge stone chimney that had the same look as the fireplace he had built inside his house. He said he had constructed this so he could conduct training during any kind of weather including cold and rain. His was a very home made, yet functional dojo.

Bob was as eccentric as his lifestyle, but I found him to be an interesting fellow and he was a good teacher (or sensei) and I learned many very interesting self defense and fighting techniques from him during the many months I took lessons from him. As you can imaging over the time we spent together, I got to know him as a person and he was an interesting dude. He first developed an interest in the martial arts while serving in the US Navy as a very young man. After that he developed his style of martial arts craft over the years. 

During the time he was developing his martial arts style, Bob also became a professional wrestler and traveled around the country promoted under the moniker of 'Battleship Bob Johnson'. He made his professional wrestling debut at the age of 33 in 1966 and traveled extensively over the next 6-7 years. He was a giant of a man, at 6'6" he was almost a foot taller than me and had developed a big belly so he seemed even bigger to me but he was still very agile. During the warmer months of the year, Bob would be shirtless which would expose his many tattoos. He had a very large tattoo on his chest that included a portion of his belly which was that of a dragon with the words "Japan 57" tattooed below the dragon.

I once asked him if he got that tattoo in 1957, he said that he actually got it in 1951 when he was 19 years old, but had the number 1 changed to a 7 so he would not appear to be so old when he was still wrestling. On a couple of occasions after class was over he would show me some of the many newspaper clippings he saved that documented the many wrestling matches and who had wrestled of whom many I had heard of over the years and were famous in that era. He told me stories of the industry and of his many experiences over the years. I enjoyed the training and the time I spent getting to know this old eccentric sign painter. I lost track of him but found out that he passed away in 2002 at the age of 70.