It's all in the Details, but You've Got to Have Patience

Two of the greatest virtues that I learned from my dad were attention to detail and patience.  More often than not the two go hand in hand.  It took many lessons when I was younger to see how they both worked together but believe me, if you don’t learn from the lessons you will always have mountains of worry and headaches a whole bottle of aspirin won’t cure.

 There is no better way to teach someone the importance of patience and attention to detail than to put them to work laying a 1000 foot glue together waterline in the middle of a blazing hot summer in a ground as hard as concrete.   Every step of the process is a lesson in patience.  Imagine yourself sitting on top of a washing machine in the spin cycle with an unbalanced load.  Then put a couple of heat lamps over your head and a space heater turned on high at your feet.  Then grab a bucket full of dirt and throw a hand full of it in your face every few minutes and let it meld with the sweat running down your brow.  If all that isn’t bad enough, throw some silverware in the garbage disposal and turn it on.  Five minutes of that would be enough to drive you insane, but imagine 5 or 6 hours of it! 

Now sitting on top of a machine that is a kin to doing all that makes you want to get it done and get the hell out of Dodge as fast as you can, but you can’t rush it.  You have to take your time and have patience.  See that machine might be doing all the work but you still have to guide it along and keep it moving forward.  Being in a rush one might tend to try and accelerate it forward a little faster, but in doing that you lock up the drive chain and choke out the engine.  Once it knocks off, you have to disengage the chain, restart the machine, back it up a few feet and start it digging again.  It is like taking two steps forward and one step back.  You will eventually get there, but it will take you a lot longer than if you had the patience to take things a little slower. 

Once you get the ditch dug, then your lesson in attention to detail begins.  Putting together plastic pipe doesn’t take an engineering degree, but if you don’t do it right you are headed for trouble.  First you have to make sure you don’t get any dirt in the pipe.  Then you have to clean the bell of one section of pipe and the plain end of another section with a cleaning solvent that will eat the hide off a baseball and leave your hands stained purple.  That stuff won’t wash off in a week I don’t care how much you wash and scrub.  Once you get it cleaned you have to swab both ends with glue, slide them together while twisting, and hold it tight for a few seconds so it doesn’t slip apart.  Oh, don’t forget if you get dirt on it before you slide it together, you have to start the cleaning and gluing all over again.  Now multiply that process times 50 and you are ready to throw it in the ditch and cover it up.

After you have it all hooked up and backfilled you get a brief lesson in faith.  Faith that you had the patience to pay attention to all the details so that when you turn the water on and the pipe starts filling and the pressure starts building water doesn’t start gushing out of the ground like a geyser.  If you didn’t learn the first two lessons your penance is to dig up the pipe by hand with a shovel, cursing every rock you hit on the way down, cut out the bad joint and repeat the lesson of attention to detail as you make the repair. 

Now I still sometimes overlook details and patience wears thin when you have a mound of work to accomplish, a short time to get it done in, and you get flooded with calls from people who didn’t learn their lessons in patience and want you to get something done yesterday.  But every time I forget the lessons I learned long ago on a hot summer day I still curse every rock I hit with the shovel as I dig back down to fix the problems I could have avoided if I had just slowed down, paid attention to the details and had a little patience.

There is No Place Like Home

I am not a world traveler.  In fact when it comes right down to it and you start listing the places I have been, it is a pretty short list.  A few nights ago Ladybug was doing something online at Trip Advisor and it was asking her all the places she had ever been.   Not long into what she was doing she turned to me and in a very disappointed voice she muttered that she had only been to about 25 places in her life.  Well I hated to see her disappointment so I asked her to name all the places.  When she got to the end of the list I started throwing out the names of some of the places I knew we had been that were not on her list.  I even started naming the obscure places that I knew she had not remembered and some I wasn’t even sure Trip Advisor had a clue where they were.  Names like Bat Cave, Luray, Abingdon, Damascus, White Top, Yemassee, McPhearsonville, Walterboro, Frisco, Waves, Salvo, and Rodanthe, just to name a few.  I went on for about half an hour throwing out places, more near than far but names all the same to add to her small list of where she had traveled in her life.  She finally got tired of typing them in somewhere after we past 120.  We came up with a lot of places, and could have added more but in retrospect we were just putting more stuffing in our pillow to make it look fatter.

We have some true world travelers that will be paddling with us on the Hope Floats NC 2012 Tour in April.  Some have even planted themselves for extended stays around the world due in part to very intimate relationships with good ole Uncle Sam’s armed forces.  The pillows they have rested their heads on are truly oversized, not just overstuffed.  In addition to the places they have been, they also have some pretty amazing stories to tell about adventures far and wide.  Some of their stories are even borderline on miraculous in the fact that they are still alive to tell the tales.  It really makes you take a look at what you have done and where you have been in your own life. 

In the great big scheme of things I have really not traveled that far from the small town where I grew up.  I have moved 6 times in my life that I know of and each and every move has been within a stone’s throw.  The last move I made we literally carried our stuff out the back door, across the back yard and into the front door of the where we presently live.  I can walk to the place previous to the last in less than two minutes and drive to the three previous that in about 15.   I have just never had the desire to pull up stakes and move any great distance.  The few places that I have traveled just don’t feel like home, although there are a few places we have been that I could very easily see myself getting comfortable in.

I have traveled north across the Mason Dixon Line only as far as Scranton Pennsylvania on a wonderful vacation with my parents when my children were really small.  Even though people associate the South with being backwoods sometimes, Scranton was our daughter’s first experience with no indoor plumbing and a real old time out house; it didn’t go over very well at all.  Headed back south I have been in every state along the Appalachians and east, although in Tennessee I have traveled in the east and west but skipped the middle altogether.  Just because you flew over a place in a plane it doesn’t count as actually visiting.  I didn’t cross the mighty Mississippi in Memphis, but I did cross it in Vicksburg and New Orleans.  The furthest point west I have driven in a car was Alexandria Louisiana.  Kim and I drove 2 ½ hours from Baton Rouge to England Airbase, was out of the car a total of 20 minutes, ate lunch in Alexandria and we were back in Baton Rouge for dinner.   I flew into Montgomery Alabama twice and have driven clear across the state north and south but never really seen anything there to write home about.  The first trip down during hurricane Ivan, I drove from Montgomery down to Pensacola Florida where I stayed for two weeks and the second trip down during hurricane Katrina, I drove from Montgomery to Tupelo Mississippi where I spent three weeks.  I have been to Florida so many times I have lost count; I should have stock in Disney as many times as I have been there.   Savannah Georgia has become one of our favorite places to visit, if I  ever had to pull up roots, move out of North Carolina and had the money to do so, I could very easily slip seamlessly into a life there, although I would definitely need a getaway retreat back close to home so I could visit family and friends often.  South Carolina was vacation central when I was growing up.  My parents “vacation home” was a small Apache popup camper and it was nothing to get off the bus after school on a Friday and see it in the driveway hooked to the car and ready to head down to Myrtle Beach for the weekend.  Some of the best and most memorable trips I had in my youth were spent in that little six person camper.  I think my dad paid about $500 for it used, and I wouldn’t take a million for the memories we made in it.  I truly feel sorry for kids whose parents kept them sheltered and were never exposed to the outdoors.  I owe the adventurous spirit I have totally to my parents, along with many other things too numerous to mention.  The furthest away from home I have ever been was San Diego California on a relief mission with the American Red Cross.  I flew out during the wildfires of 2008 and worked for a little over two weeks.  It was just long enough for me to decide Cali For Knee might be the place to be for Jed and Granny but it is definitely not for me.

North Carolina is home for me and I honestly can say in all my travels there is no other place I would rather be.  If you made a list of the good and the bad, the scales here would always tip toward the sunny side of life.  You can always find a quiet place to relax and rejuvenate that is just around the corner from adventure and excitement.  Although some of the transplants that haven’t lived here for long are still grumpy and gruff, the exposure to polite and easy going native North Carolinians will rub off on them soon enough, or we will kick them back whenceover they came.  From the mountains to the sea and everywhere in between it is filled with places warm and inviting full of friendly people who have never met a stranger.   Though I have lived here all my life there are still places yet to be discovered that once I visit will only reinforce the feelings I have for where I live.   Dorothy can close her eyes and click her heals and be back in Kansas all she wants but my Oz is here and there is no place like home.

P.S.  Lady Bug and I set out on our biggest trip of all times an spent 19 days on the road through 13 states.  We drove over 6,000 miles round trip to Montana.  It was the best adventure we have ever had to date.  We can't wait to do it again.

Everything I Know I Learned From TV?

Everything that we know we learned from somewhere or someone.  As we get older we sometimes forget from where or who we learned everything we know, but usually the biggest lessons in life or the most valuable things that shape our character we tend to never forget from who or where they came.  I recently came across an article entitled “Everything I know, I learned from Andy Griffith” that gave an insight into some of the lessons that the writer had learned from the Andy Griffith Show.   Now this article was not saying that the author learned everything in life from a television sit com, and neither am I by writing this myself, but it did point out that there were some valuable life lessons that could be found between the colorful characters and the humor and that some of those lessons we remember all our life.  Reading the article made me really ponder where I learned some of the things that shaped me as a person and has guided me along my path in life.

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t believe any parent should intentionally plop their kids down in front of the television and leave them to learn everything important in life from a group of paid writers who are only out to make money and get higher ratings.  Not everything on TV has value beyond entertainment or selling a product.  As children we learn from what we see and what we are exposed to and as parents it is our duty to make sure that what our children are watching on TV has some value.  The television can’t replace the touch of a caring hand or the spoken words given at just the right time, but it can open up a learning mind to things you yourself might not ever imagine.   I didn’t grow up entirely in front of a TV, but there were times when the television was my babysitter and as such I can attribute some of my lessons learned from the shows I watched in the 70’s. 

I learned the importance of friendship from Captain Kangaroo.  He taught me that friends didn’t all have to look the same or believe the same things and being different was an important part of who we were.  He also taught me that even when friends did things to annoy you, like dropping a bucket load of ping pong balls on your head, you just laughed it off and loved them all the same even knowing they would do it again sometime down the road.  Though I preferred to find adventure in the real world and didn’t like to burry my head in a book, he did teach me that when you couldn’t get outside you could find adventure in a book.  Most of what I learned about animals and how to care for them I learned from the Captains good friend Mr. Green Jeans.  He was always bringing in a new animal to add to his zoo and he explained things about them in ways that little children could understand.  What most people don’t know about both the Capt. (Bob Keeshan) and Green Jeans (Frank Brannum) is before they were both television stars they were both Marines.

Gilligan’s Island taught me that even if you’re only going on a three hour tour, make sure your prepared and bring along things for the unexpected.  A steamer trunk full of money won’t help you much in the middle of nowhere, but a suitcase full of encyclopedias and scientific journals can help you figure out what is safe to eat and how to ward off savage headhunters.  Through their unbelievable misadventures and personal interactions the castaways taught me that whether we live on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific or a penthouse on Wall Street, we all live on a big blue marble floating in the universe, and we are all in this thing together.  No matter who we are or where we are at, what we do affects everyone around us in some way.  It takes all of us working together to make sure that we have what we need to survive.  I learned that necessity is the mother of invention and you can build anything from nothing, although until I was an adult I never figured out why they could build pedal cars, washing machines, musical instruments and put on productions of Shakespeare but they couldn’t patch a few holes in an old wooden boat.   Living on a deserted island with no sign of rescue was stressful and sometimes when we lose things or don’t seem to have control in our lives you tend to throw yourself into projects to cope.  We sometimes feel like we need to be doing something, even if what we are doing doesn’t help the situation it makes us feel productive.

Batman, the original 60’s TV series, taught me that heroes didn’t need far-fetched super powers to save the world.  When someone throws up the Batsignal, calls you on the Batphone or screams from the dark abyss, don’t hesitate to jump right in and help them out.  Never forget though to be vigilant and help those who don’t quite know how to ask you for it but need your help.  Bruce Wayne was a very successful business man and a philanthropist who was always raising money for the Wayne Foundation that gave to many charitable causes.   Sometimes there is more to being a hero than just fighting crime.  You don’t need to be wealthy, wear armor plated suits with cool gadgets on a belt, or drive a superfast car with a rocket engine in it to make a difference in the world; you just have to do the best with what you have and share it with others.  Batman also taught me the importance of having a “Plan B”.  The best laid plans can always be thwarted by a prickly bush, a devious thug or some poisonous lipstick so be prepared with a backup plan. “BIFF, BOOM, POW!”

Albert Einstein said; “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”   Einstein died in 1955 and never got a chance to see Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, which first aired in 1968, but I can only imagine that if he had seen it he would have approved of the message that Fred Rogers was sending to children.  Mr. Rogers taught me that imagination was the key that held everything together.   Without imagination you only see the world in black and white and miss all the other colors of the rainbow.  He showed me how whole new worlds could open up to you just by jumping on a trolley and going through a hole in the wall.  How something as lifeless as a picture on the wall could magically transport you to destinations unknown and frontiers unimagined.  He also taught me that no dream was too small and small dreams can turn into big things. Imagination is the way you bring dreams to reality.   After all if we can dream it then we can do it!  Mr. Rogers taught me to be honest with myself and others.   He said it was ok to be who I was and to be the best I could be.  There was no one like me before me and there will be no one like me after I am gone.  Fred Rogers had an impact on everyone around him and his message was simple; “If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”  Mr. Rogers taught me that you don’t measure your success in life by the big job you have, the huge house you live in, the fancy clothes you wear, the fast car you drive or the huge roll of money you flaunt around.  You measure the success you have in life by the impact you have on people around you.  Just one more reason that I think ole Einstein would have loved Fred Rogers after all wasn’t it Einstein that said “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile”?

When I was a little boy sitting in front of the TV watching all these shows and the dozens of others like them, I only saw them as entertainment, not thinking they were teaching me lessons I would remember throughout my life.  My parents and grandparents probably never realized when they let me sit there for hours watching those shows that they would ever do anything but keep me entertained while they cooked meals, cleaned house or did the multitude of other things they had to do to provide for our family and my well-being.   They also probably never knew that the lessons that I learn from those shows went hand in hand with the most valuable lessons and gifts of learning in life that they themselves gave me, but that is a story for another day.