Yep.......yesterday just didn't materialize into the reality I had visualized on Saturday!!! Doesn't that happen occasionally to us all??? I know it does here, but what the hell........I think I have just learned "to roll with the punches"!!! Even if the "roll" is sometimes more difficult to do than at other times.
The 1st Lady went to church.......it was cloudy and a few drizzles. When she returned, I began the task of unloading the thawed out items in our deep freeze in the infamous garage. Oh yeah.....oh yeah.....on Saturday night before I went to bed...we heard this loud, strange crashing in the garage and so, I put on my sandals and went to the garage. The door was blocked by my ax and my sledge hammer which had fallen over from their "home", along with some wood shelves that came from our OLD cabinets. Managing to push the door open, I realized that the floor was wet...and soooo, in following the wet trail, I found it was coming from under the deep freeze. Listening not too carefully, it was evident that the motor was not doing the job it had been assigned YEARS ago....and when I looked inside, the bottom was full of ice and water. SHIT.......the damn thing had stopped working and most of the things inside were thawed out!!!!
Well.....it was raining our Flash Flood Warning type of rain...and so, I hurried back inside and decided I would take care of things in the morning....Sunday. And, so I did. Threw it all into leave bags and stashed it in the large trash cart ......thank God, they pick up our trash on Mondays.
Soooo, with all of that happening, we decided not to attend the St Louis Art Fair in Clayton. And so........we remained at TheHowserHouse. We both did some research on our November trip plans, along with beginning the planning for our trip to Nova Scotia for all of next summer. Before long, the day and the evening had disappeared........
Today.....yep, it was finishing cleaning out the bottom of the deep freeze. We did this after our two mile power walk this morning.......and of course, the drain plug seemed to be not functioning properly, so it was the "bail it out" method that we found ourselves using. And....guess what happened........I decided to plug it in again....for the umpteenth time, and the damn thing decided to work beautifully!!!! Yep, before I got it washed down inside, it was turning cold again!!! Oh well.....we had planned to sell it anyway......for a very cheap price just to get it out of the garage so we can put the "old" refrigerator there when we get the new ss one.....SOON!!!
The rest of the day just went..........much like the dumb-ass military policy: don't ask, don't tell. So, don't ask because it was just a day of piddling around........
CHAPTER 4:
Well......last week we ended chapter 3 with a discussion of the fantastic times I had while in Asia. I left Okinawa in July of 1970 and flew back to the states where I was discharged at Travis AFB near Oakland, CA. As I said, I had applied from overseas for a few teaching positions for the fall of '70 and upon my return I accepted a position as the ONLY music teacher at Linn, MO School District. During those weeks between my discharge and the first day of school, I purchased a new mobile home and had it moved to Linn.
I also took a few trips to Omaha where I spent some catch-up time with my best friend who was working there after his discharge from the AF......having remained at Offutt AFB, NB his entire four years. I may have even made a trip to S Dakota, but memory fails me on this.....hmmmm, that BOTHERS me!!
And then the next four years of my Life begins.......Chapter 4. My first position as a music educator....not exactly what I expected as I didn't visualize being the one and only music teacher in a school district. HAHAH.....this sure as hell wasn't the last time that I would be handed something "unexpected" during my teaching career.
Elementary music classes, middle school band, high school band, high school choir, and who knows what else I taught that first year!! As anyone who begins a new job can testify to, the first year is HELL!!!! But......there were some great kids there and they worked hard to try to please me. The previous teacher had let the band and choir program slip down to almost nothing.....almost no enrollment. The HS band had only.....ONLY THREE students in it. Now, granted, there were only about 275 students in the high school, but really.....you can actually say there was NO band in that school. But.....by the time I left there four years later, there were 65 playing/performing members in the high school band......and they weren't too bad, either.
In the summer of 1971, at the end of my first year of teaching, I did some traveling: drove a friend from the USAF home to Vermont, seeing most of New England and on up to Montreal during that trip. Returning to Missouri, I went out to Wyoming to fish with my two friends from the USAF......Mac and Terry. And...still friends to this day!!! Then back to Missouri. While we were in Wyoming, we decided to climb the tallest peak in the Big Horn Mts of Wyoming: Cloud Peak. Sooooo, I returned to Wyoming in August with a teacher from the school district to climb the 13,000+ foot Cloud Peak. And.....climb it we did!!!!! One day of backpacking into the wilderness area to the base of the mountain......one day of climbing to the top and back down, and one day to pack out to our car. A quick week of great fun before school began.....and a year that I never expected....!!!!
Hmmmm, how do I say it, except that upon returning from Wyoming and the first week of school, I was introduced to a young lady who was going to be teaching for the first time......a science teacher that to whom I was very quickly introduced. A young lady that was the wonderful mother of two young children from her previous marriage......Michele age 5 and Michael age 3. Well.......enough details with the exception that on December 28th of that same school year, the now "1st Lady" and I were married and I became not only a married guy, but an instant father to to incredible young children!!!!! And.......that same year, in the spring, we purchased our very first RV: a 1971 Chevie 3/4 ton pick-up and a HUGE slide-in camper, which once it was slid in.......it never came off again!
The summer of 1972, we took off right after school was completed and the four of us, plus a newly acquired Golden Retriever, drove thousands of miles during the next eight weeks. We went clear out to Washington state by the northern route seeing the Black Hills, the Big Horns, Yellowstone NP, Grand Teton NP, Glacier NP in Montana, and then on to Washington, the San Juan Islands, Mt Ranier, Olympic NP, down the coast to southern Oregon, across to Idaho and the NP's there, Salt Lake City, Dinosaur NP, Rocky Mt NP, and eventually back to Missouri. WOW.....what a wonderful trip!!
By year four at this school district, the 1st Lady was expecting and in January of 1974, Dr. Jeni arrived in Jefferson City at the hospital there......the same hospital where I was born. Jenifer Kay arrived and our lives changed considerably!! A call from the Supt in Eldon asking me to come back and teach in my home town school district: asst band director and middle school vocal music. And.......to end this chapter of my Life, we moved that summer right after school was completed......and then off we went to Wyoming for a few weeks of fishing and rving.
Chapter 4........a wonderful time in my Life. Another major change in my Life.......the 1st Lady and by the end of the chapter, three children!!!! WOW......what CAN happen to a person in four years........whew!! No longer a happy-go-lucky bachelor, no longer a scared and inexperienced "first year teacher".....but, experiences which threw me into Chapter 5 and my "new shoes" in Life fitting much more comfortably than they did in the beginning of Chapter 4!!!!! Stay tuned..........Life does have it's valleys that can be very deep.........
However,.............................
LIFE IS GREAT!!!!!!.......and I hope it is for all of you, also!!!!!!
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