The 2011 Imaginary Family Project – Week 4

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https://lisasinopoli.com/market-reports/ https://www.coralfoodservice.com/contacto/ #4 of 52 : LARRY AND DARLENE
2001 Imaginary Family Project week 3 - Larry and Darlene

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“Mule” stuck fast. Larry hated it and his friends were never bold enough to drum up his sister’s nickname in front of him, but Larry knew that was what the town was calling her. It could have been worse and he supposed there was at least a little bit of sympathy that passed when the name left their snickering lips. They all knew that Darlene wasn’t always like this, a five year old child in a twenty-two year old body.

Buy Clonazepam Online Overnight But he stuck by her all the same. Even after high school ended and his friends left for big cities or for the 17th Parallel in Vietnam, he stayed with her. Even when the old vets threw him sour frowns when word got around he’d asked for a draft exemption, he stuck with her. He did it because he owed her a debt for the one night when it was Darlene that had stuck with him. Continue reading The 2011 Imaginary Family Project – Week 4

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Real Men, Measuring, and Cutting

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By Patrick Fitzgerald (originally posted to Flickr as spinning wheel) CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

follow link A real man measures twice and cuts once.

I’ve been blessed to have two really good grandfathers in my life. I love, and loved, both of these men very much.

One of them who is still with us was an engineer for most of his life. Growing up, I was always really impressed by how sharp and analytical he was (even if I had no place in my vocabulary for the word analytical back then).

There was no problem tmy granddad couldn’t solve. There was no complex issue he couldn’t get his mind around.

He could fix just about anything whether it was his car, his mower or his boat. As a really young boy, I fondly remember sitting in his garage and watching him tinker with his 1970s Chevy pickup truck, or as I called it back then, “Papa’s Kickup.” He was a great grandfather and I will always cherish the time he spent initiating me into the world of manhood.

Unfortunately, while he was gracious enough to pass on his analytical and problem solving skills to me, his skill and ability with all things mechanical was not. And while I could write a whole series of posts about masculine skills and values of one generation that are lost by those that follow, that’s not where I am going.  In fact, this post isn’t even about him.

As I said before, I’ve been blessed to be have two really great men call me their grandson.

The other one, who passed away a little less than a year ago, worked in management at an AT&T factory on the west side of Oklahoma City for most of his time in the professional world. And while that job was a big part of who he was, this post is really more about the avocational side of his life.

You see, when he wasn’t interfacing between the engineers and end users of AT&T’s products, my mom’s dad was busy teaching himself the art of carpentry. By the time I was old enough to have a conversation with him, he was quite the skilled (and self-taught) carpenter.

If you needed something and it could be made out of wood, my grandpa could make it. He almost completely remodeled the house he bought after retiring. He built cabinets and card catalogs and all sorts of other useful wooden things for his church. I need two hands to count the number of things he made for me over the years: a really sweet contraption for cracking pecans, built-in shelves for my bedroom as a boy, more shelves for my first house, and cabinets for the laundry room of that same house are just a few I can recall off the top of my head.

Just like I was fortunate to see my other grandpa tinker and fix mechanical things, I was very fortunate to spend a lot of time with this one in his wood-shop or at my house as he sketched, measured, marked, cut, and built things out of wood.

And do you know what frustrated me more than anything?

He NEVER measured once. I’d watch as he’d take his tape measure or ruler and pencil and mark 8 or 9 different places on a piece of wood where he would eventually end up making cuts. That part took long enough as he was doing it the first time. But then, after he’d already measured it once, HE WOULD MEASURE THE WHOLE THING AGAIN!!!

As an impatient young boy, I remember thinking, “COME ON GRAMPS! CUT THE WOOD ALREADY!”

Yet he knew something I didn’t at the time.

I can count on one hand the number of times I recall him having to throw a piece of wood away after he started cutting it. The man NEVER made mistakes with his woodworking projects.

He always measured twice and as a result he never had to make more than one cut. He rarely got frustrated and had to start over.

As I got older I began realizing that this philosophy of measuring twice and cutting once was not just limited to his woodworking projects. It was something that flowed over into all other areas of his life. He was a man of precision and I will always appreciate that about him.

He taught me the importance of not going too fast; of slowing down and taking the time to be precise. He taught me that real men measure twice and only have to cut once.

I’m not a carpenter, and though I think I’d like to learn the skill some day, I’m not sure I have the aptitude for it. Fortunately, the idea of measuring twice and cutting once is a metaphor that applies to almost every other area of my life as well. It’s about making smart decisions. It’s about thinking long and hard before speaking. It’s about considering how what we do will affect other people.

At work, it’s about seeing all of the ramifications and possible effects of a new project or initiative BEFORE starting it. At home, it’s about thinking how what we do today affects who we become tomorrow.

I want to be a real man some day, and since a real man measures twice and cuts once, so will I.

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One Voice of the Oklahoma Prairie, Conclusion

Kenny, Emma Lee's eldest son, playing the guitar sometime around 1967. Terry, her younger son, can be seen on the far left.

Mom was born March 16, 1891 near Ashland, Kansas. Her parents were William Tecumseh Sherman Crouch and Atlanta Bell Kitchen Crouch.  The both came from the areas near Ashland and Grayson Kentucky.  Grandpa homesteaded in Kansas where mom was born; they lived in a dug out.  Later they moved to Lahoma, Oklahoma where mom and Papa were married, then after that moved to Tuttle, Oklahoma where Papa farmed.  After farming in Tuttle, then moved to Bethany, Oklahoma (near Okla. City), to Waukomis, OK near Enid, OK on Highway 81 then back to Tuttle when Terry was a year old (1944). Mom moved to Fayetteville, AR helped cook in a girls dormitory, then she and Robert moved to Okla. City worked in O’Mealy’s cafeteria. Later she moved to Tulsa to help my brother Charles in a restaurant, then when Charles moved to Arkansas Mom and Robert moved back to Tuttle, OK. (Editors note: I count ten separate locations where “Mom” [Bessie] called home at one point or another.)

Mom was a real sweet person, she always wanted to do nice things for people.  She loved to study and read the Bible. Every Saturday she prepared dinner for someone; her food was so good and attractive.  Mom could always write the sweetest notes for all occasions. She lived to the age of 84 – died November 30, 1975 as she was taking a bath, getting ready to go to church.  She had a heart attack on Sunday morning.  On the Friday night before she died, she felt her days were numbered, so she got up in the night and wrote the instructions for her funeral.

I remember at one time in 1987 there were six of us in our 60s.  J.C. 69, Catherine 68, Charles 66, Emma Lee 64, Mary Elizabeth 63, Willa May 60; imagine having that many children in ten years!

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2011 Ranch Hand Guide: #3. Some People Grin and Bear It. Other People Smile and Change It.

I love my life out here on the ranch, but it is not without its hardships and disappointments.  Everyone has his or her burdens to bear, but the key to putting them behind you is what Rule #3 is all about: choice and attitude.

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During college a friend of mine once commented on my “always up” attitude.  He alluded to the fact that because my happiness always seemed so extreme that my sad times that he never saw probably had to be really, well, sad.  I think he must have just come from one of those freshman psychology courses and wanted to be the first to diagnose me.  It gave me reason for pause, and I waited for those “really sad times” to present themselves.  They never did.

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Last summer I attended a luncheon with a group of ladies.  The hostess began our luncheon by reading “Complaining,” an excerpt from Wouldn’t Take Nothing’ For My Journey Now by Maya Angelou.  Every person listened intently as the final part of the passage was read:

“Sister, there are people who went to sleep all over the world last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. Sister, those who expected to rise did not, their beds became their cooling boards and their blankets became their winding sheets. And those dead folks would give anything, anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of that plowing that person was grumbling about. So you watch yourself about complaining, Sister. What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain.”

Complaining.  That’s what this rule is about.  When I got home I quickly created a little tile with our picture and this excerpt written on it.  I put it in my underwear drawer, so when I am getting dressed in the morning, I feel that tile.  It reminds me to be grateful for waking up to another day.

Continue reading 2011 Ranch Hand Guide: #3. Some People Grin and Bear It. Other People Smile and Change It.

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Silent Sunday: 1/23/11 ~ A City Celebrates, History Reminds Us, and Animal Rights v. Cowboys in 1911

What's fun about having some time on the front row at a OKC Thunder game? Seeing Rumble rev up the crowd! ~ photo by Nancy Potts

Continue reading Silent Sunday: 1/23/11 ~ A City Celebrates, History Reminds Us, and Animal Rights v. Cowboys in 1911

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Showcasing Red Dirt culture ~ authored and managed by contributors with connections to the great state of Oklahoma.