New Beginnings

The first job I had would have been in the summer of 1968, I was almost 11 years old and we were still living in Irving. I would push our lawn mower around to the neighbors and ask to mow their yard. My going rate was .50 for the front yard and .75 for the backyard. It was really hot that summer and I remember one yard I mowed, I got too hot and and got sick. The guy came outside and gave me a drink of water and told me to come in his house and lay down on the couch. He finished mowing his yard with our mower and he still paid me the $1.25. As I laid there on his couch, I decided this effort was not worth the payday and called it quits. My next attempt at gainful employment came a couple of years later in the summer of 1970, when my Dad and a neighbor, Tom Cunningham were hauling hay and I was the hay patch truck driver. My Dad and Tom would pitch and stack the hay on the bed of the truck and my job was to drive just the right speed for them to keep up. When we would get to the hay bar...

This story is more for historical purposes for those of my family, particularly for my sons and grandkids but is a story of my childhood and family. For story context, Grandma Black was born almost 113 years ago, on June 26,1912. She was born a couple of months after the Titanic left England then two days later strike an iceberg and sank just two and a half hours later. In birth order of her grandchildren, I was the sixth. Her oldest son had two daughters older than me, Sherri and Brenda. Her younger son had a son named Kenny, and my mother had two children before me, Mike and Patty. Grandma was 45 years old when I was born in August 1957. Her father, Fred Walter Wilson was born in 1881 and died in 1949 at the age of 68. Her mother, Nancy Jane Monroe Wilson was born in 1880 and died in 1970 when she was 90 years old. I do have a few memories of my great grandmother but I was only 13 years old when she died and we did not see her very often when we went to OKC. The photo below is the ea...

 I went to work for Davis Concrete in early January 1981 and like many people, I did not know the difference between cement and concrete. I didn't really care about that but what I did care about was  this company was in need of a welder and I was in need of a job. While I was not an accomplished welder at that time, I did work in an ornamental iron shop for two years after I got out of high school so I knew the basics. I had been out of work for about a week when I interviewed for that job just after Christmas in 1980,  and I admit I told a lie because I needed this job. Charlie Davis asked me if I was afraid of heights since cement silos are over 60' tall and I would be required to work at height on occasion. The fact of the matter was I have always been scared to death of heights, but on this day I told him heights never bothered me. 😲 After working here for three years I volunteered to operate the front end loader on the occasion when we were short handed and though ...

 This story is a lot more fun to tell than it was to experience and I will never forget that day I went deep sea fishing twice on the same trip since it was my first and my last. I fought the sea, and the sea won. It was in the early summer and the year was 1998. A vendor buddy of mine who owned a company that chips out the harden concrete from the drums in the concrete mixer drums invited several of his customers to go on a deep sea fishing trip and since I liked to fish and had never fished in the ocean outside the bay, I was ready to go. This trip consisted of a 12 hour excursion which would be about 70 miles off shore; 4 hours out, 4 hours to fish, and a 4 hour return trip. Me and my buddy Virgil Walker worked until about 3pm that Friday afternoon and we jumped in my truck and we made our way to Freeport Texas which was about a five hour drive south. Once we were checked in we would grab a quick bite of a light meal and turn in for the early start the next morning. When we got ...

 Brad and I finally take a trip that I have wanted to take for a couple of years but my work schedule at Gibson Energy and Brad finishing up college and working in Lubbock it was difficult to coordinate our schedule but we finally get the opportunity in June of 2014. This will be my third trip to Washington D.C. so I was familiar with the area well enough to plan this trip to hit most of the locations on my list and since his college major was history, I was sure this would be a vacation he would enjoy and remember. We fly out of Oklahoma City rather than Dallas, the airfare was cheaper, the traffic was not near as bad and was only a little bit longer of a drive. We arrive in Richmond Virginia in mid afternoon and rent a car and drive up to Alexandria and stay at the same Holiday Inn that Carol and I stayed at during our trip here a couple of years earlier. One of the reasons I liked this hotel was the subway stop was just beyond the hotel parking lot and was very convenient. The s...

I have literally lost count how many times I have been to Las Vegas over the past 25 years and yet I still enjoy going each time I make the trip and probably not for the reason most folks take a trip out there. It seems I am attracted to the massive construction projects that continue to 'out do' the previous massive construction project. For a long time everything was about the theme of the property and the attention to detail always fascinated me, like Caesar's Palace including Caesar's Forum Shops, The New York New York, The Excalibur, The Luxor, The Cosmopolitan, Treasure Island, etc. There seems to be a changing trend from those themed approach hotels to that of more creature comfort and luxury like The Aria, The Vdara, etc. I have stayed at The Vdara several times and it is a very nice luxury hotel, however it was originally built to be apartments rather than a hotel and when you walk into the room and it is very obvious. When we took this dad and son trip it was ...

It was October 4, 2011 and this is the first anniversary since October 4, 1979 (which was our 4th anniversary) that we have no children at home. We are now a part of the 'empty nesters group'  so we take a trip to central Texas to celebrate our 36th year of marriage. It has been 31 years since our first baby was born and and about 10 before our first grandbaby arrives. After being out of work for most of 2010, I had been working at Gibson Energy for almost a year and finally had some vacation time again. Jacob was living in College Station and in his first year of college, Brad was living in Lubbock and in his junior year of college and except for the two cats our house was empty. So with all of this, we thought we would do something we have never done, spend a couple of nights in a (reportedly) haunted hotel: The Menger Hotel in San Antonio. We didn't want to go too far so we decided to take a driving trip to the Hill Country of south central Texas. We spent some time driv...