Observations about Neighbors -- Part 1

Over the years, I have, from time to time, sometimes been described as: 'different', 'quirky', 'marching to the tune of a different drummer' and...well, you get the picture. While these observers were ALL right, to a degree, I doubt that I am any different than most people. I just don't care if I'm viewed as a little quirky. I'll own up to that characterization. Guilty as charged. People who think that THEY are not quirky, are often the quirkiest of all...they just go to great lengths to hide their quirkiness from others. They tend to be very private and reserved...and 'stingy' with their words and expressed thoughts. They maintain a facade and they do not want it breached. They don't communicate well. It's often as though their spoken words cost money and they do not want to deplete their 'verbal account.' Sometimes it's funny to observe quirkiness in people who think that THEY have it all together....like the child who covers his eyes with his hands and thinks that he is invisible to the rest of the world.

I don't dislike people like that. I accept them for who they are, and relish the kaleidoscope of varieties that humankind is comprised of. I try to not make other quirky people uncomfortable in their chosen skins. Like you, I have neighbors who represent the entire spectrum of typical American middle-classness. My next door neighbors, to the south, Neil and Joni, are open, outgoing, generous and expressive. They tell you what they are thinking. They want to know what YOU think. They are comfortable in coming over whenever the mood or opportunity strikes them, and never have an agenda. They are wonderful people to have as friends or neighbors. We have never had neighbors who were any more open, hospitable, generous, helpful or caring. (I hope they read this...we might get some more of the wonderful things from Joni's kitchen!!!). Neil and Joni are Christians...not just in name, but every pore of their bodies exudes kindness and generosity. They LIVE their Christianity. Recipients of their hospitality come and go, every week, by the dozens. Their home is the Grand Central Station of love and hospitality. I love these neighbors! They are always baking or cooking something and bringing over part of it to share with us. Neil sometimes comes over and 'vacuums' up leaves from OUR yard that he thinks might have blown there from HIS yard! I have caught him pulling the occasional weed from my iris bed in the front yard. He's always doing things to help us or another neighbor. Neil and Joni walk the talk!

I love all my neighbors, but some more than others, and that's probably not unlike your own experiences with neighbors. I have another neighbor...I love this guy, too, and I want to tell you a little about him. His name is Randy, and he is an older guy, like me. He is from the 'old school'...in a lot of ways. He is married to a lady who has been our neighbor for many years. She lost her first husband, and when she and Randy found each other, some time later, they were married and we began to get acquainted with Randy. He wears a cowboy hat...all of the time...even when mowing his yard or planting flowers for his wife. He's usually also wearing boots. Randy is one of those guys that, when noticing that you are in the middle of a project in your yard, such as cutting down a tree, will stop what he is doing and come over to help....bringing his own chain saw. He will, without your even asking, get right in the middle of your project. He doesn't 'count the cost' in time and effort. He's there to help! If I were out of town with car trouble, and called Randy, he would drop what he is doing and come running to help. His generosity has nothing to do with me...it's all about who HE is...the kind of man that Randy is.

When I think of Randy, I smile, because he's a misplaced cowboy. He is an insurance adjuster during the day, and a 'gospel cowboy' at night, singing his way into the hearts of people around the state (and sometimes out of state). Music is one of his true loves. He has a good voice, and he used it to tell people about Jesus. Sometimes, when Randy sees me out in my yard or in my pickup, he will walk over to visit. He walks toward me with those boots and that expensive cowboy hat, and, were he to be wearing one of his pistols, he would look as though he were Wyatt Earp, heading for a showdown at the OK corral! He's a frustrated cowboy, though --- all hat and no cattle! Living in Edmond, in a neighborhood, with no barbed wire, no barns full of hay and no wide open spaces. He is better suited for the open range...100 years ago. Church attendance is not a big thing with Randy. He's not for church attendance, but he's singing about our risen Lord all the time. And he is all about giving of himself to others....at the drop of his $100 hat!

We have other neighbors -- Christians who are out of a different mold. They never miss a service of the church, and come rain or snow, they are going to that building! The sad part, however, is that for 30 years that we have been neighbors, they have nothing to do with anybody. They don't even know the names of the kids who live next door to them. They have nothing to do with anyone, never have anyone in their home...never know about births and deaths and sickness, joys or sadness in the homes about them, and for thirty years, never have anything to do with anyone in the entire neighborhood. The man is an elder in his congregation, and, to my knowledge, is a good man, married to a good woman. Observing how this older (older than me makes them very, very old!) couple present themselves to the world makes me reflect on something that has its roots in a fallacy common to Christians: that church attendance, i.e. being 'at the building' every time the doors are open is a 'be-all and end-all'. I believe that true Christianity is more of what one is 'all about' 24/7. That, I believe, is what Jesus and the writers of the New Testament say that is ones' true worship...what we spend our lives doing, thinking about, praying about---the focus, the substance of our lives. It may be difficult for any of us, wanting to live for God, while voluntarily sealed off in a cave (or house), having nothing to do with the world about us. While church attendance is very important, I have often thought that when the focus is on 'trooping back and forth to a church building' and less on living for Christ and doing for others, the focus may sometimes get out of kilter. Maybe I'm wrong (nothing new to me). Again, to quote my really smart Mom, who died in 2004, at the age of 85, 'I'd rather SEE a sermon than HEAR one, anyday!!

Anyway, here are three families of very different neighbors: One family is always at the 'church-house' and is always involved in doing for others--- very giving people. Another family is never at a church building, but is always doing for other people, and singing about Jesus. The other family is always at the 'building', but has nothing to do with the world about them, and never comes outside except to go to the church building. I will not make judgments about them -- for a couple of reasons: 1. That is God's business, not mine 2. I don't know their hearts. 3. I don't want to be
the 'pot calling the kettle black'...I have enough to do trying to live my life like God wants me to live it --- and that seems more and more to me like a full-time job.

Still, it is interesting to observe the differences in people -- I have another 'installment' about neighbors to follow soon. You'll perhaps find it interesting. It will contrast observations about two other completely different families in my neighborhood -- one family who could not care less about God and another family that lives for God...and what happened when death came to visit each of these families a few years ago. Thanks for reading my blog, and, for some of you brave folks, daring to leave a comment now and then! Happy New Year!

And the winners are....!

I promised a golf putter to the winner of a drawing of those who read my blog, on an earlier post. It was not a bribe, of course (that's a lie...it WAS a bribe!...and an experiment!). It was just a little fun, and, as promised, here are the winners...

There was just going to be ONE winner, but all the excitement of Christmas and the upcoming New Year got to me, and I had to do a little more than I promised!

The winners are, in no particular order: Matt Gayle, Devy Blackwelder, Melody Byrd, and Joni Arter. Sorry, Gena, your name didn't win my little lottery, but since you're my favorite daughter, you get one anyway, as does Jeff, my favorite son! People who responded more than once got their names entered more than once and had a better chance of winning. I heard more than once from Matt, Joni and Devy. Congratulations, and thanks for 'checking in' and reading my blog. This blogging thing is a lot of fun, and I'm so grateful for Gena's having gotten me into it back in July! I haven't had this much fun since the hogs ate my little sister!!!!

Here's what I need from the winners: (1). Your preference of a printed name (upper and lower case is necessary if your name is long, like Frederick Schlegelmilch, or something like that). The space I have to work with is 3/4" tall and 2 1/4" long. (2). You could send me a signature, done with a clean, fine line (not a felt-tip pen), in black ink. You would need to send it to me at CustomPutt, Inc., 3126 S. Boulevard, Ste. 258, Edmond, OK 73013. Or, you could write it out, enlarge it, and then scan it and email it to me at gshoemake@cox.net. My cell phone number is (405)-229-9649. You may want to call and make sure I have received it. (3). All putters are right-handed only. The total club length is a standard 35" from top of the grip to where the putter rests on the ground. If you are ordering this club for a short person, consider whether the club needs to be made a little shorter than 35". If you are ordering for a really tall person, consider if you would like the total club length to be a little longer, say 36 or 37". (4). If you live in OKC, you can come pick up the club when I have it ready, sometime shortly after the holidays. If you live away from OKC and can't come by for it, give me your UPS shipping address and I will send it to you.

Each club comes with a genuine, soft leather putter cover, made for my putter, with a velcro strap and black, acrylic fur interior, to protect the personalized area.

I'm working on my web site, and now that we're up and running again with our golf club business, and have all our supplies, phone number, fax line, and everything else it takes to get off the ground, we'll be doing this again next fall, and will have the contest a little earlier so the putters that we give away can be ready for delivery/shipment well before Christmas. By then we may revive some of the other custom-personalized gift items we offered previously (back before we could no longer get our components manufactured in the U.S.)--- French leaded crystal items, gold-plated desk items, and some brand new gift items -- all unique! Nothing like them anywhere else in Edmond, OK, or the rest of the known universe! Stay tuned! I'll stay in touch, so you be sure to stay in touch also!

Thanks for all of your nice comments since last July when I started blogging. I'm getting acquainted with so many sweet, wonderful people! ...many of whom I never knew before! I love reading all of your blogs, and looking over your shoulders into the lives of you and your families. This is great fun!

Merry Christmas! May God continue to bless all our lives and keep us faithful to Him!

Gene Shoemake

6 inch cuffs and a lesson in humility!

Between the years of 1982 through June of 1988, I sold datacommunications equipment for a Texas-based company. We were distributors for some companies and reps for dozens of companies -- all of which made equipment for the world of datacommunications.

I had the state of Oklahoma for a territory, and traveled a lot over Oklahoma -- mainly around OKC and Tulsa with some trips to Lawton, Enid, Bartlesville. To keep up on new technology, there was a lot of ongoing 'continuing education', with meetings and seminars in places like Minneapolis, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Houston. I was a 'suit with briefcases', and flew from place to place as needed when the distances and schedules did not permit driving.

I often spent many hours in airport lounges and hotel rooms, but, with a young family at home, found myself communicating by pay phones in airports with my family in Edmond. It was often lonely work, made a little easier, ultimately, by the invention of shoe-size mobile telephones that filled half a briefcase. That helped somewhat, but one could not talk long distance for long, as it was very expensive.

To while away the time and relax, I began taking along for company, my Bible and the latest Robert Ludlum thriller. I also took a small pallet, and some brushes and other paraphernalia for watercolor painting, and often did small watercolor paintings in the airport lounges and my motel rooms.

On one particular flight, there was a very long delay in getting a connecting flight back to OKC from someplace out of town. It had been a very long week, with not much time for rest or relaxation, and I walked into other men's room at an airport lounge at DFW. I found a clean stall and hung my coat on the back of the door and carefully set my nice leather briefcase on a relatively clean spot on the floor. Then I carefully rolled up my pants so they would not touch the floor when I sat down in the stall. I had some time before they were due to call my flight and I thought I would sit there in the quiet and read while taking care of business. Pretty soon I heard them call for the boarding of my flight, so I got up, put on my suit coat, picked up the brief case and walked over to wash my hands and make sure my hair was combed (yes, I had hair back then -- lots of it!). I dried my hands, picked up my brief case and headed back to the lounge area. There were still a lot of people sitting there, not being in much of a hurry to board.

I was puzzled at how many of the people made eye contact with me, with nice smiles on their faces. That was uncommon. People at the end of a day, on a Friday afternoon are often business travelers and they are sometimes an indifferent, if not slightly unfriendly bunch. When I had left the boarding area, to seek out a men's room, they were a surly bunch. Now their smiles caught me off guard! Some of them were actually grinning at me! I smiled and grinned right back, and got in line to board the aircraft. I had never seen so many happy-looking people in a boarding area. All those smiles gave me a lift!

I boarded the aircraft and stowed my briefcase and coat in the overhead compartment. Only when I had taken my aisle seat in coach and had crossed my leg, did I realize the reason for the uncommon friendliness and huge smiles of the people in the boarding area for my flight. I was sporting 6" cuffs on my pants! I had rolled up my cuffs to keep my clothes clean while in the men's room. Then I had forgotten to roll the cuffs back down and had confidently waltzed into the boarding area with my suit and briefcase...and a pair of huge high waters! Good grief! How utterly embarrassing!

Okay--now everybody on board the flight from Dallas to OKC knew where I had been -- and exactly what I had been doing. Great. Just great. I was mortified. People grinned at me all the way to OKC. Oh yeah, I felt like the businessman extraordinaire all right. Suave? Cool? A regular Dapper Dan? You bet...

Oh well, I told myself as I walked to the parking lot at Will Rogers airport in OKC a little later...at least I gave some weary travelers a good laugh and something to think about besides their sales quotas and the pressures of trying to make a living. All in all, I guess it was all right. I thought a little more about it and then also had a good laugh...at myself!

Since that time, I've learned to not take myself too seriously. I often see others who could do with some 6" high waters to take the edge off their sense of self-importance. It's good medicine to be humbled now and then. In a world where many of us do not want any crack to appear in our facades of who we think we appear to be to the rest of the world, a little humble pie is good for the soul.

They say that within each of us are three distinct individuals...who others think we are, who we think we are, and who we REALLY are. An embarrassing occurrence can shatter the illusions we carry around that contain our perceptions of our individual identities and give us a wholesome reality check...and that's not altogether a bad thing, I think. These days I no longer want to be full of myself...I do, however, want to be full of Christ. Bring on the humility!

'Busted -- Six Ways From Sunday'

Dallas, Texas -- Summer of 1957. Edsel automobiles were new to the car scene. The Russians beat the U.S. in putting a satellite into space. I was not quite 13, and my brother George was 11.

We lived on 10th Street in Oak Cliff, 4 blocks from the Sunset church of Christ. The home where we lived on 10th Street, just off Hampton Road, was a modest brick home with a long building behind it that had a one-car garage on the east end, and laundry facilities on the west end. The middle of this long structure was one large room, which we occasionally used for 'overflow' company and as a place for George and I and our friends to play. It was about the size of an average living room. We had a ping pong table in this play area and Mom and Dad would often exile us to this 'away-from-the-house structure' when we were too loud or were not getting along too well indoors.

George and I often escaped to this garage-laundry-playroom structure to get away from a pesky four-going-on-five year old brother, Randy, and a bossy older sister, Nancy, who was 18. One day, while bored, George and I decided to explore the attic of this structure. Exploring was part of our agenda. Smoking some Marlboro cigarettes without getting caught by Mom was the primary item on our agenda. We lit up --- coughed a good bit, and then tried to act like we were enjoying the cigarettes. We felt pretty good about our safety. No way was Mom going to climb up into the attic to catch us smoking. Dad was at work, so we were safe.

We had borrowed Dad's flashlight -- a monster that used a bunch of 'D' cell batteries, and then had climbed up the vertical ladder in the garage. The flashlight was to be used to explore the attic while staying away from the inevitable spiders and wasps often found in garage attics. We found a large area full of boxes of stuff that Mom and Dad had accumulated over the years. Mostly junk, it was of no interest to us, until I found a metal box that looked interesting. It was green and looked very, very old. This was beginning to feel like a treasure hunt! We tingled with excitement! It was not locked, so, with George holding the flashlight while the smoke burned our eyes, I looked through the content of the box. Old letters! They had funny stamps on them and odd postmarks. They were old! They dated from the 1930's! They had been carefully sorted and were then wrapped in bundles with string. We were intrigued! What did we have here?!

I began reading the letters to George. We were both astounded as I read of passionate feelings my Dad was expressing to our Mom. These letters were written when dad was serving in the U.S. Maritime Service during World War II. Of course, George and I didn't know anything about 'grownup talk', like a young husband would use in writing letters to his sweet young bride, but we read and read and read, smoking those Marlboro cigarettes like crazy, and laughing out loud when we read a particularly juicy bunch of love talk! We were laughing and punching each other when I read a totally eye-popping passage in one of the letters! This was great fun!

After a long time, we heard sirens. They got louder and louder. It sounded like they were right outside. Then it dawned on us -- they WERE right outside! We put out the cigarettes and hustled down the wooden stairs, leaving the letters strewn about on the attic floor. Our next door neighbor had seen smoke billowing out from the eaves of the garage and had called the fire department!

George and I got a whipping for smoking. Part of the paddling probably was due to the embarrassment Mom and Dad felt for having had their privacy violated. The letters disappeared. The attic became off-limits. I got paddled harder for having been the older brother and the chief instigator of this summer escapade.

I didn't get much of an education from the letters, since not much of it made much sense to me. I was, for my age, pretty naive, I guess. George was even more so. And yet, as I looked back on that event over the years that followed, it gave me a little peek into things that had always been a mystery to me...about love and about the intensity of feelings that my Dad had for my Mom at a time when they were both very young and so full of young love. It gave me a little bit of perspective, because my parents were very private people, and a lot about life and love was kept very private. Kids my age at that time were largely responsible for their own education about this mysterious thing called love.

Although we didn't much care for the paddling we both received, and though that event is over a half-century in the past, the memory at this point in my life is a sweet memory. We were just two kids -- bored on a hot summer day -- who were having fun...when we got 'busted six ways from Sunday.'

A selfless act of bravery

Okay, it wasn't an act of bravery in the same league as, say, pulling people out of burning buildings, or saving little animals found wandering around in the middle of an 8-lane highway at rush hour -- yet, bravery by any man's measure of such things should be noted, acknowledged and, yes, even revered. That's why I privately thump my chest and step up to the plate to admit, with just a tiny, (for modesty's sake) uncharacteristic reticency, at my own recent act of extreme bravery. Night before last, I volunteered to go shopping -- for clothes -- with Paula and Gena. No, there were no other men present, at least at first. No others willing to throw all caution to the winds and forsake all personal safety, to do what obviously needed to be done.

We chose an early hour -- something before 9 p.m., as I recall. The parking lot was deceptively uncrowded, and this failed to explain the teeming thousands of female shoppers found inside. I knew I was in trouble when, trailing Paula and Gena into the store, I was hit with a wall of scent -- perfume, scented oils, powder -- all of the unmistakable signs of vast numbers of female shoppers. Paula and Gena boldly and with no hesitation, waded right into the ocean of women. Being of sound mind, and having no wish to be instantly transported into Eternity, I wisely held back, looking for some small break in the phalanx of winter-clad bodies, churning up and down the aisles, with wild-eyed looks of determination and desperation in their faces. Seeing no such opportunity, I removed a scantily-clad female manikin from her perch on a display, and, climbing to the top-most portion of the display, dove headfirst into the mass of women shoppers, holding the manikin out in front of me for protection. (Side note: The manikin was wearing a cute little powder blue outfit of lingerie that I'll have to remember to buy for Paula. The manikin looked positively fetching as she and I sailed out across the army of women shoppers).

Oblivious to my forced entry into the lanes of frothing humanity -- all looking for the bargain of the day (and all carrying their little 15% off card in their hands as though they were clutching a gift-card for Heaven itself)-- I was swept along in the throng.

Having trouble breathing, due to all of the powder and perfume, and deafened by the roar of shrill chatter of thousands of lady shoppers, I frantically looked for a safe harbor -- somewhere in the hardware department. I shouted at one lady after another, "excuse me, ma'am, but where do they sell the power tools?" Receiving no response to my questions, I shuffled along with the crowd, and hoped that, with all the close-quarter contact, I was not losing my car keys, wallet, pens, knife, and 'black gadgets' (as Gena calls them) that I always carry around when I'm in public. Little kids carry toy trucks -- real men carry cell phones, P.D.A.'s, and lots of other important stuff.

Finally, seeing Paula and Gena again after what seemed like hours of shuffling up and down the aisles with the 'bargain sharks', I somehow broke free of the frenzied mob and sought refuge with the two women I recognized and trusted. They moved with the calm assurance I would have expected to see of Clint Eastwood, in some rough neighborhood in a Dirty Harry movie. They clearly knew what they were doing. They rifled through row after row of hanging garments, spending no more than 1/10th of a nanosecond on each one-- in their zeal to look at each of the 10,000,000 garments in each department. They moved with a blur -- a facility of movement only found in women. Their hands moved so fast they appeared to not really move the hangers at all, but just to pass over them, palms down, as though they were imparting some kind of mystical blessing on the clothes as they passed over them. I stayed close behind them, fearing that if I didn't, that I would once again be swept up in the crowd of shriekers, gigglers and frothers.

Later that evening, I ran into Mark Henderson. Mark, like I, appeared disheveled and weary. He, too, had done the manly thing -- the right thing -- and had thrown caution to the winds and forsaken all self-interest. He, too, had gone shopping with his wife. He and I both looked like we had been there for days. We were wandering about, in the thinning crowds, at this late hour, looking for some display where we could shove some manikins out of the way and sit down for a moment or two. No luck. No hardware department, where Mark and I could have shopped and felt comfort amid the saws, grinders, power blowers -- stuff with real substance and heft! A place with black gadgets galore! That would have been nice....that and a couple of easy chairs and a big screen t.v. With those amenities, and and a snack bar and we could have done the shopping thing all night.

Much later, somewhere around midnight, we found our wives and two fork lifts to get their planned purchases to a cash register. The 'beep, beep, beep', of the fork lifts, heading to the front of the store, told Mark and I that our ordeal was almost over. Now, we stood in line at the register (we used to call them cash registers, but that term is out of date, since no one uses cash anymore -- I now call them 'wealth extractors'). Mark and I each stood dutifully by our women, while women commented on each others' purchases: "Isn't this little doo-lolly the most preciooooouuuuss thing you have ever seen?"...."I just loooovvvve the cross-stitched, basted, ruffled, little thing-a-ma-jig...it's just the frilliest ever!!!" ....and lots of other things that I heard but can't spell or remember. That wealth-extractor business went on for another half-hour, and, to get out of there, I would gladly have given up to half my kingdom...or more.

Mark and I survived, and we both expect to be ensconced in some male Hall of Fame for having braved an 'after Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas midnight madness sale' with half of the women in Edmond.

We never found the hardware department, but, that's not uncommon, I hear. A good number of my male friends have also never found the power tools or a 'rest station' at Kohls. Maybe next year...

Final note:
As we were leaving the store, the lady who was manning the 'cash extractor' asked me if I would mind returning the little manikin (with the tiny blue outfit made for fun and games). "Oh...sorry," I said. In all the excitement and frenzy, I forgot that I was still clinging to her. I returned her to her station, straightened her hair and re-arranged her little outfit and we all went home -- with our vehicle straining under the weight of 'ALL THE MONEY WE SAVED.'

A fish story

Born on Galveston Island, ten years in Houston, followed by another couple of years in Galveston -- then another three years in La Marque, then another year and a half years as a young man in Clute,Freeport and Lake Jackson, TX (right on the Gulf coast), I was around fish and fishermen a lot.

When I lived in La Marque, with my parents, my dad would occasionally go shrimping, and would return home with a couple of washtubs full of prawns. For those of you who do not 'fathom' (pun), prawns are larger than life shrimp! They are shrimp on steroids---huge, unlike the tiny, frail, sissy 'pinkie-finger' size cocktail shrimp you may be more familiar with, from your bold forays into deep sea fishing at the lobster tank at the Dead Lobster! We would carry the washtubs way back toward the back of our property, where the spare parts from shrimp that we would clean would not stink up the rest of our yard. Turning on the garden hose, dad and I and my brother George would de-vein shrimp for hours, then wash the prawns, drain the excess water and deliver them indoors to my Mom, who had all four burners going on the stove, boiling the prawns on three burners and deep-frying them on the other burner. She made huge containers of cocktail sauce, with lots of horseradish, and we would eat shrimp till we staggered! They were so, so wonderful! We ate them with French fries, cornbread, cole slaw, downing them with iced tea with lemon! The boiled shrimp were carefully drained and we then packed them into round white cardboard containers meant for ice cream. We filled our freezer in the garage with a couple hundred pounds of fresh shrimp, and they would last us until the next year.

Although I was around fish a lot while living on the coast, I never learned to fish. When I arrived at OCC, in the fall of 1964, I eventually --around 1967--became friends with my life-long buddy, Phil Johnson, who knew how to fish. Somewhere around 1968 or 1969, he volunteered to teach me the 'secrets' of successful fishing. Off we went to a local TG&Y store, then located at 15th and Broadway, in Edmond. They had a large quantity of fishing gear....one of everything ever made, it seemed. I was lost. I didn't know one thing about fishing.

The only fishing I had ever done, as a teenager, in the swampy areas around Texas City, Texas, next door to our hometown of La Marque, was flounder-gigging, at night, in the marshy areas, full of jackrabbits, snakes and, yes, flounder! This peculiar fish is flat. Its two eyes are on the top side of the flat fish, and the two eyes, and a faint outline of part of the fish are all that one can see when wading around in the marsh grass, with a flounder gig and a good Coleman lantern. The marsh grasses attract rabbits as well as frogs and the snakes are drawn to the frogs. There is an abundance of snakes in the marshes on the Gulf Coast -- cottonmouths, rattlesnakes, copper heads and coral snakes....all of them eagerly available to facilitate your speedy trips to the ER, if you are not cautious! I did okay with floundering. It's not rocket science. One just has to be careful -- and determined. Flounder-gigging was as close to fishing as I ever got, while growing up. With real fishing, however, I floundered badly!

Back to my buddy, Phil Johnson: He patiently walked me through the fishing gear area of the TG&Y store, and I walked out, some two hours later, with $140 worth of fishing gear...not fancy gear by a real fisherman's standards, but, to a novice, it was a real adventure. Understand, however, this was no Bass Pro Shop. I had lures and fishing line, a cheap rod and reel, waders and one of those fancy inner tubes with pockets to store your gear while you set forth across a farm pond on a mission to bring home the really big ones!

My entrance into the world of fishing was to go with Phil down to 'Vaughn's pond' -- a weed-filled pond full of runoff from the OCC campus. Battery acid and oil, along with fertilizer and pesticides and who knows what else -- made its way down to its eternal destination, into fish that resided in Vaughn's pond.

Phil showed me how to cast. I was dying to try my hand with an irresistible lure, then called 'The HULA POPPER'. It was bright yellow and was named after the hula skirt-looking device that modestly covered the business end of the lure. Man, that lure looked deadly! Before casting it into the pond, I was already envisioning one meal after another, from the huge, healthy fish I would soon be fairly ripping out of the water with my yellow Hula Popper! Wow! Does life get any better than this?
This is probably better than....well, no, not that good, I don't think, but still, very, very good!

The water in Vaughn's pond was murky, and filled with all sorts of sea-weedy things that looked, when one snagged them on a lure and reeled them in --- like great, long gobs of yellow-green cooked spinach. This pond spinach did NOT smell like spinach, however, or any other edible thing. I was a little wary of the pond, because, during my first year at OCC, 1964 to 1965, one of my roommates, a nice, but quiet guy who lived upstairs on the east end of "A" dorm, ran down to the pond one blistering hot day and plunged right into the pond. He drowned, after suffering a heart attack, if memory serves me correctly. Afterwards, I always shuddered a little when I thought of that pond. And now, here we are, tempting fate by venturing into those murderous waters, filled with who-knows how many dangers?

As soon as I cast my line, the Hula Popper landed with a splash and I began reeling it in. In my mind I was transferring images of a wounded bug, seductively scooting across the surface of the pond, in fits and starts -- sudden bursts of movement, followed by short periods of rest. Surely this is what a wounded bug would look and act like! Right? Wrong!

What happened was this: the entire surface of the pond erupted in bubbles! I was puzzled, as this scenario was repeated over and over, while my buddy, Phil, reeled them in, with a smug, self-satisfied look on his face. I finally gave up and just contented myself with 'organizing' my fishing tackle box. I was no good at fishing, and, to make matters worse, I had fouled my line on all the submerged tree limbs and pond spinach. I lost my best lure, the bright yellow Hula Popper, and a couple of other fake-bug-baits, but, by golly, I had an organized tackle box! Second to none! I had hooks from tiny little things that probably wouldn't have snagged a minnow, to monster hooks that would have made the Loch Ness monster become a vegetarian! I had bobbers and lures and lead weights and spinners and fish scalers -- even a fish scale. I even had a stringer to keep my trophy fish all tethered together in a sort of fishy chain gang, while still remaining in the water where they would remain alive and fresh until I took them out to prepare dinner! I had it all! Eventually, I thought, with patience and good observational skills, I too would master the manly art of fishing! I could imagine the newspaper articles, with photos, showing the world-record fish being pulled from the pond while I posed, straining under the weight of so many fish, wearing a decidedly 'no-big-deal-I've-done-this-a-thousand-times' look! Ahhh! Life was indeed sweet! And about to be even sweeter!

I went fishing with Phil several more times, and each time I tried my luck with one of my so-called 'tried and true' baits, I was again greeted with a pond-wide eruption of bubbles. In desperation I hired an icthiologist (fish expert) from NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration)-- a nice man named, Gill, I believe, who witnessed the extremely unusual event at Vaughn's pond when I took him there as a scientific observer. He saw the event with his own eyes and took measurements and samples of the bubbles every time I cast my lure into the water. He was very knowledgeable, exhibiting a vast experience. It did appear to me, however, that with his constant recitation of facts and figures, that he was fishing, as it were, for compliments. His conclusion, after days of testing and computer simulations, was that the curious phenomena -- which he had never seen in all his years as a trained icthiologist-- is that the air bubbles were caused by....mass, simultaneous laughter, among all the various species of fish in the ponds where I had attempted to fish. He advised me to discontinue my attempts at fishing, since the disharmony and wild 'waves' --gales, if you will, of unrestrained laughter among the fish population in these ponds would lead to a decimation of the fish population, as fish would 'scale back' (pardon the pun) --eating and reproductive activities as they eagerly anticipated the next hilarious casting of my line and lure into their watery world. He was not happy with the sight of exhausted fish floating on the surface of the water, near-dead from long and repeated peals of laughter. He further told me that, if I were not compliant in this firm request, that I would be issued a 'cease and defished' order by the local authorities.

I hope that by now I have 'reeled YOU in' with my deceit! While it is true that I am an incompetent fisherman, and have accepted this fact, I will continue to 'cast about', looking for other leisure activities. I am looking for a new diversion, one that will, hopefully, be a 'reel' winner for me and will keep me on the line-- at least as long as I have kept YOU perched on the line!

Please forgive me for the 'bait and switch' story....and the awful puns! As bad as they are, they are, after all, 'trout and true' ('tried and true', maybe?)...and people fall for them every time....hook, line and stinker! :)

Keepin' in touch...with the ONE!

Want to know a great way to keep in touch...with your Creator?...when you occasionally feel a little bit strung out with a problem or with your job or some other matter that weighs 'heavy on your heart?' Here's are a couple of crazy, but, for me, sure-fire ways to bring things once more into sharp focus. I have two ways...

I am an atronomy buff, and nothing puts my troubles into perspective better than to read something new -- usually on the Internet -- about something new and wonderful and vast and beautiful--something that defies our ability to get our arms around it due to the unbelievable distances...and sizes and complexity...of an 'other worldly' galaxy or cluster of galaxies, billions of light years from earth. The same God who put all of that together such a long time ago, long before we had the ability to even gaze on it -- that same God did it that we might see it and realize what a great God He is. That we might look at it and KNOW that HE IS, and WAS and EVER WILL BE! Astronomy calms me and humbles me and fills me with awe at HIS GREATNESS, HIS MAJESTY, HIS POWER, HIS BEAUTY, and HIS LOVE FOR US!

From the vastness of the universe, to the unbelievably tiny and perfect -- all things sublime!

I sometimes like to stop, along a country road, usually east of Edmond, where there are rock outcroppings. I like to take my 20X power magnifying glass, and get down low over the rocks -- sometimes flat on the rocks -- and look for the tiniest living thing I can find. A tiny plant-- so tiny that I can't even see it without the magnifying glass. I realize, when I do this, that I am the only human likely to ever have seen this little plant, growing on this inhospitable rock. No one else is likely to ever see this one little plant again, and yet, as tiny as it is, and as anonymously as it lives out its brief life, it was made by a God who designed it and put together its inner workings. A tiny life form, brimming with chemical interactions that baffle the scientists of the world, who, with all of their knowledge, money and scientific equipment and skills, cannot make such a thing, tiny and uncomplicated as it at first appears. Only God can make such a thing.

I shudder with awe, even at the age of 64, at a God who can make a universe, some 15 billion light years across (as far as we can 'see' right now). I laugh -- out of sheer wonder and admiration and delight -- at a God who creates tiny things that weird people like me seek out, to further confirm the fact that this same God who created billions of galaxies like our own Milky Way galaxy--that houses billions of stars and likely untold numbers of planets, also constructs tiny living things of beauty for us to enjoy, often too tiny to be seen with the naked eye! Tiny life forms that have their own rhythms of life, and seasons where they come and go, on God's perfect schedule. As we enjoy His creations, and revel in their complexity and the beauty of their design, we simultaneously give HIM all the glory and all our love for these gifts to humanity. In these moments, my troubles melt away and I reflect on an even more unbelievable gift He left us...

The physicists of the world go on and on about their ideas of a 'singularity'...(the initial state of what became God's Universe before that imaginary event they call the BIG BANG). I reflect on the Singularity of MY world...not an imaginary singularity, but a reality--that being my Lord Jesus Christ...WHO Was, and IS, and EVER WILL BE. The realization of the eternal existence of that true Singularity is what calms my heart, gives me hope and makes my life worth living.

Our God...is truly..an AWESOME GOD!

You're being watched!

When I was in high school in La Marque, Texas, in 1960, I had a job at a local supermarket. It was located a little less than a mile from our home and only a few blocks away from the high school where I attended. I worked, stocking shelves, mopping floors, breaking down cardboard boxes (that were then compacted, bundled and trucked away). I also worked as a bag-boy, and since I hustled and was friendly to the stores' customers and remembered peoples' names and their vehicles, I made a lot of money in tips! It was a great job. I had no need for spending money, since I worked all the time, it seemed. I only rarely went out with a few friends from the La Marque church of Christ Wednesday and Sunday nights for a hamburger or a coke. Because of this, I had plenty of money to buy our families' groceries. Just like it had been at an earlier time when I had a paper route in Dallas, it felt really good to be a contributing member of our family, and not just another mouth to feed. I always enjoyed being a giver, not just a taker. It felt great! I loved it-- and felt needed and appreciated and vital to our family's well-being.

Over time, I became known at the grocery store as someone who was honest and dependable. I was given a tougher job, and I felt a little (no, make that a LOT) like a detective, or a private eye! Theft was a big problem at Evans Grocery--theft-- and there was a need for 'surveillance' of the customers and even a few of the employees. There was a catwalk around the store, up high around the perimeter of the interior of the store. There were one-way mirrors every few feet, and my job, after my 'promotion', was to walk the catwalk for my entire shift each day, back and forth, all around the store, watching customers. It was a lonely job. I was up there, in the semi-darkened corridor all day each day. It wasn't hard work, although it required a lot of walking.

It was surprising to me how many people were shoplifters. The thieves who frequented Evans Grocery Store were from all races, all ages and included men and women, boys and girls. The items stolen ranged from needles and thread to large packaged hams! I saw many items disappear into pockets and purses, shirts and blouses...even into socks and hats!

Most of the shoplifters were easily 'profiled', as they would look around, tentative about their intentions. Their body language, however, was, after a short time on the job, easy for me to predict. They gave it away, by their demeanor. They 'telegraphed their intentions.' Most of them didn't have the presence of mind to act naturally. If they had acted naturally, most would have gotten away with theft, unless randomly chosen as someone of interest to watch.

My job was to watch-- to 'catch people in the act', follow them to the front of the store, without losing sight of them (so they didn't return the items to the store shelves and make the store guilty of falsely accusing them). I would then then press a button to alert the store manager, so he could head toward the front doors while I hurriedly came down the stairs to join him at the front door and point out the shoplifter.

I enjoyed this job, a lot, even though I had to do it alone, up on the catwalk. I could see the customers but they couldn't see me. I became very good at this work, and did not make mistakes. My 'busts' were 'righteous busts', and I didn't get the store manager into trouble by falsely accusing people. Not one time.

The ones who really surprised me were the old people -- men and women, who looked like anybody's little old grandma or grandpa. Some of them had the sweetest countenances. Often the items stolen were not expensive items, but were items most easily concealed. Sometimes, before an item was snatched, the thief would make 'dry runs', looking at the items and then circling back, like a shark, before committing himself or herself to the act of theft.

The biggest 'bust' of my career in surveillance at Evans Grocery was a huge woman of indeterminate race, who waddled behind her grocery cart, right into the stockroom where there were public bathrooms. I made a mental note of the items in her basket, which included a large packaged ham. When she went into the stockroom area, I watched her disappear into the ladies' bathroom-- with the ham. Why would someone take a packaged ham into a dirty bathroom, if theft was not on the agenda? When she came out, she was not carrying the ham. She waddled back out of the stockroom area with her basket, heading for the front door. I flew down the stairs and then checked the ladies bathroom. No ham! I then ran to the front door, pausing to alert the manager. He and I walked to the front door, keeping an eye on our
'HAM-STER'.

She checked out at Mrs. Meisetschlager's cash register and headed for the front door. The manager took over, since I was just a kid, and not about to confront the woman. Besides, she was four times my size! A real whopper! She could've cleaned my plow!

The manager had to wait until she left the store to accost her. When he did, she became indignant, and took a swing at him with her purse. When she did, the ham fell from her skirt to the pavement! That was unbelievable! That ham was the size of a 8 or 9-lb. baby and it skidded a little on the concrete when it hit. She had held that ham between her massive thighs from the back of the store to the front door! The police came for that lady, and we all went back to work. We made a lot of ham jokes for a long time after that colorful event! I'll never forget it!

I didn't feel bad for her, since she was so angry at having been accused of theft. With some of the others who were caught, I felt bad, because they looked poor, or like they couldn't help themselves. I nearly always felt bad when it was a very young or very old person.

I had this cushy job until I was a senior in high school, in the fall of 1961, when Hurricane Carla wiped us out and we moved to Dallas. I learned a good bit about human nature in that job, and I learned how to excel at something through diligence and careful observation.

In today's world, we are all subject to scrutiny, if not in a manner quite as direct. Our comings and goings are scrutinized by electronic devices -- in stores, at toll gates, via our credit card purchases and the GPS devices in our automobiles...not to mention our buddies the IRS! People we do not know and never will know, have access to our medical records, the choices we make in our purchases or entertainment, our banking records and much more. It's a scary time we live in. How can we protect ourselves? These days you don't have to spiriting a ham from a grocery store to be under surveillance!

Just like out of a Hollywood script!

Tenth grade at LaMarque High School, just outside Galveston, TX., was not an especially fun time for me. I was 6 ft. tall and 145, and I got picked on pretty regularly...by a number of people who maybe just didn't like my looks. I was gawky and had, as I admitted to in an earlier blog, a ferocious set of buck teeth. I looked funny... squirrelly. I didn't have a girl friend, and except for a handful of friends from church, I was sort of a misfit.

One day, on a Monday morning, I arrived a little bit early for my first class of the day -- shop class. I had been making a mahogany bookcase -- it was nothing to write home about, but I was proud of it. I still have it. I won a first place ribbon at the Industrial Arts Fair, and was more proud of the ribbon than I was of the bookcase.

On this particular Monday morning, some of the guys in the class whose projects were further along than my own project, had left their wooden creations in the well-ventilated room where things were lacquered and left to dry. Someone had broken in over the weekend and had defaced a lot of the projects in this 'finishing room.'

The shop teacher, Burl Clayton, had not yet arrived, and, since my project had not been in the finishing room and had therefore not been vandalized, I was running some of my mahogany lumber over a machine called a jointer, which smoothes and cleans up the edges of wood boards. I am normally left-handed, and, as I was running the wood from my right to my left, holding the wood safely with both hands with a huge push-block(to keep hands and fingers away from spinning blades), I caught movement coming from my left.

It seems that some of the guys were sitting on tables in the finishing room, which was located near the entrance to the shop room. A hot-headed guy had come into the building and had gone to the finishing room to see his project. It had been gouged with a sharp instrument and was ruined. He flew into a rage and wanted to know who had done it. One of the guys who was sitting on one of the benches,looking around for someone to deflect the hothead's temper, piped up with: "Shoemake did it!" The other guys, seing the possibility of a fight, chimed right in: "Yeah, Shoemake did it."

The hot-head looked around and saw me working on the jointer, across the room. He grabbed a half-finished baseball bat and ran at me across the room, weaving among the work tables as he headed toward the open area. I caught side of him as he ran directly at me, with the baseball bat cocked over his right shoulder. He had rage in his eyes and on his face as he started swinging the bat directly at my head! In a self-protective reflex, I jerked the push block up with my left hand, to try and block the bat. He swung the bat and my push block caught the bat, not far from where his hands gripped the bat. Almost simultaneously, he slammed into me. The bat was leveraged from his grip, due to the push block's point of impact with the bat. As he plowed into me, and we both flew backward, I did something -- without having time to think about it -- that might have saved my life. At the very least it changed my life at that school!

As we flew backwards, I grabbed onto his shirt collar with my right hand. We were falling, with me about to be on the bottom of the pile! I pushed my right leg up and into him, not wanting to have him solidly on me. What happened next was pure luck --- a serendipity---something that could have been scripted for a movie.

As I held his shirt and then pushed outward with my leg into his body, I hit the concrete floor on my back. An amazing thing happened! He was catapulted over me as I hit the floor. He continued on -- now upside down --- and slammed into the wall behind us. He fell from the wall onto his head and was knocked out cold! I thought he was dead!

Although I knew nothing at all about self-defense in the tenth grade, and did nothing 'on purpose' to protect myself other than just react to a threat, like anyone would do, the guys who had seen what had happened, told the story all over school. In one day, I went from the skinny kid with buck teeth that the high school jocks loved to pick on and taunt, to the kid that nobody wanted to mess with! I was, in one day, thought to be 'BAD'...and that was GOOD...REALLY GOOD! I had no knowledge about protecting myself, but, as long as no one else knew that, I guess that was okay. Life got easier after that day in shop class. My attacker got in trouble, but I didn't, since I was on the receiving end of the trouble.

After that chance event, I decided to take self-defense training. Over several years, I learned a lot of helpful things -- among them, how to take a fall. That later saved my life, when I fell through the window at OCC years later. When you practice something for a long, long time, whatever you have learned can become a reflex---something you may be able to do without thinking about it.

It's often seemed odd to me how a chance occurrence can change ones' life....again, just like in a Hollywood script!

OCC's 1964 Freshman bonfire and my Jeep

I transferred to OCC from Fort Worth Christian in 1964. That Fall OCC still had, as a Homecoming Activity, something known as the 'Freshman Bonfire'. All types of wood and other flammable objects were brought together, on the North side of the Learning Center. It was a good opportunity for people to get rid of all kinds of combustible objects...including wood. Guys risked their lives, stacking telephone poles, old furniture, cross-ties and other objects, in their attempt to build the biggest of allbonfires.

The bonfire was guarded a good bit of the time -- for good reason. More about that later...

A little background info:
I transferred in as a junior, and I had a vehicle..of sorts. It was an old jeep, made of parts of a Willys jeep and a Ford jeep. It looked like the old proverbial 'camel put together by committee'. It looked awful. It had no sides, so it was strictly an open-air vehicle. It also had no paint, except in places where I had not sanded and primed the metal. A lot of the metal was rusted. It was not a pretty thing, but it WAS fairly dependable. The carburetor was not made for the vehicle, so the air cleaner and filter would not fit under the hood. I had to improvise an air filter out of a pair of pantyhose, held on top of the carburetor with a hose clamp to try to keep dust and dirt out of the carburetor. It was a fun vehicle, though, and both boys and girls liked riding around town in my little jeep! The jeep was so unattractive it was cute! 

When I took girls out for dates in the fall, winter and spring, I had to bring blankets to wrap them up so they wouldn't freeze! Now, back to the bonfire! One day, when the bonfire-to-be was left unguarded, some guys and I took my jeep and raided the bonfire materials before they were erected. We hooked a cable around the telephone poles that were going to be the corners of the bonfire. Having secured the cable to the jeep, we took off! To the west of the campus, before the days of sewer service for the campus, there was this thing that the uninformed called a 'pond.'  A more accurate but ominous description would have nailed it perfectly -- a 'sewage lagoon'. We drove around the earthen embankments that surrounded the lagoon, dragging the telephone poles behind the jeep. We couln't believe our good fortune!  We had stolen the freshman bonfire telephone pole supports and had gotten away without getting caught!

As I whipped around the top of the retaining wall, the telephone poles followed dutifully behind the jeep, rolling and rolling, twisting the cable and mowing down the grass and weeds.  The guys who were with me unhooked the cable and with great effort we threw the telephone poles into the lagoon.  It was not a pretty sight. The telephone poles floated like basking sea lions in the sewage. We were elated! We couldn't quit laughing! We went back to campus and by now, at the site of the bonfire-to-be there was outrage among the freshmen over the disappearance of their coveted telephone poles. Without the telephone poles, there would be no grand bonfire! Eventually we were found out (maybe because we were all rolling on the ground, red-faced from laughing).

The freshmen had no way to get the telephone poles back to campus. We decided that the prank had been fun but that we had to help them out, so back to the lagoon we all went. The freshmen, brave souls that they were, waded out into the lagoon to secure their telephone poles. At the time, I thought that they exhibited unbelievable valor! There was no way that any of us upperclassmen would have waded into that lake of sludge and floating 'cookies.' We secured the other end of the cable to the jeep again and headed off for campus, going south on Eastern and then uphill on Memorial Road. The telephone poles were on pavement this time, and dragging on the pavement, they caught fire, and were smoking pretty good by the time we got them back to campus. No harm was done. Nobody got hurt. We all had great fun at the expense of the freshmen. The freshmen had to bathe...and bathe...and bathe (and, who knows--they may have had to burn some clothes). The bonfire happened without further incident. The sad looking little jeep got to have its 15 minutes of fame.

Later that year, the little jeep got to perform again when I took eight OCC girls down to Denison, Texas for the weekend. We didn't all fit in the jeep, and the jeep wouldn't go faster than 45 mph down old highway 77, but we were a funny sight, with legs hanging out on all sides as we went down the highway! We looked like a spider on wheels! Cheryl McKee, a wonderful OCC girl who went on to be Homecoming Queen the next year, provided two of my jeep's legs during that trip! Cheryl lived in Denison, Texas and she hosted the girls' visit. We all had a great weekend, but, on the return trip to OCC, it became bitter cold. I had to drive, so different girls took turns holding their hands over my ears so I wouldn't freeze while driving. We were NOT prepared for cold weather --not at all! By the time we got to Norman, we were in a blinding snowstorm. Some of the guys from campus came to meet us and take the girls back to campus in their cars...cars with windows, heaters and the works. I came back to OCC from Norman, finally having had about enough of the little Jeep. I needed a real car, with windows and doors -- protection from the elements. Dating, in an open-air jeep, was beginning to lose its allure.

In the spring, I succumbed to the flashy sales presentation of the Southwestern Company, of Nashville, Tennessee. They recruited a large number of us to be Bible salesmen. I needed a car, so I sold the little Jeep and bought a 1959 Chevy Impala, via the unbelievable kindness of Ralph Burcham, who, not really even knowing me, co-signed a bank note for me to buy that car. Years later, when I developed a little bit of common sense, I was embarrassed for having put Ralph on the spot to help me out. He could have refused me. No one would have blamed him. I was an idiot for having asked him. Ralph, however, did what he has done all his life --- he went out on a limb to help someone else out. He trusted me to make the payments on that Chevy Impala. I love Ralph and Gladys..for all they are and all they have been to so many, for their entire lives.

The memories of the Homecoming bonfires, the many trips in the Jeep, the wonderful guys and girls I met while at OCC comprise a lot of the best memories of my life.
Many of the friends from those days at OCC are still best friends -- and, over the years, the memories of those friends and the good times we had, grow sweeter by the year!

'Totally Immobilized....TOTALLY!"

Okay, this has been 'true confessions week'. I have one more really embarrassing moment from my youthful days. Here it is...

The summer of 1957 was a great summer. I was 12, going on 13. After my paper route -- after supper -- I would often get on my bicycle and ride all over our neighborhood. After I wrecked my old balloon-tired bicycle showing off at school at an earlier time, I got a newer bike. It was maroon, and wasn't an antique. It wasn't expensive, either, but I loved that bike! I became so familiar with that machine, I felt like the bike and I were 'one'. It almost seemed like part of me. I polished that bike and adjusted the spokes and cleaned and oiled it, almost compulsively. I got it with some of my paper route money and unsanctioned candy sales at school, and I spent a lot of time on that bike, exploring my world.

One summer evening, I had been riding all over the neihborhood at breakneck speed, up and down the gently-sloped hills in and around our neighborhood, wearing nothing but a pair of long jeans and a t-shirt. I didn't want to go home -- not yet -- and still, I needed to stop for 30 seconds to relieve myself. If I go home, I thought, Mom will make me come inside for the evening --- take a bath and get ready for bed. So, I pulled into the alley behind our house, and without getting off of the bike, unzipped my jeans and took care of business off of the side of my bike. Then I hurriedly zipped up my jeans and --- OUCH!...I had managed to zip up 'Oscar' in the zipper of my jeans! That really hurt! I was frozen in pain, and yet, I knew I couldn't stay in the alley all night. I tried to free myself from the zipper. I tried and tried, to no avail. The pain was almost unbearable! Then it gradually got dark.

I decided to try to ease back up on the bicycle seat and carefully coast down the alley and around the corner back to our house. Big mistake! As I carefully eased back up onto the seat -- still in terrible pain -- I slowly put my right foot up onto the pedal to give it a tiny push. I pulled my shirt down over my open pants, and then started rolling down the alley toward the street. I no sooner began pedaling than I realized that the cuff on my 'high water' jeans had gotten caught in the sprocket of the bicycle! "OH, GREAT!", I thought. "Now I've done it! I'm stuck here in the alley. I can't pedal and I can't get off of the bike without tearing 'something vital.' " I couldn't move! I WAS TOTALLY IMMOBILIZED! TOTALLY!

I stood there quietly in the alley for a long, long time. I had a vivid imagination, and began to think of all sorts of 'outcomes'...none of them pleasant!

I had mental pictures of people driving down the alley, plowing into the 'paralyzed kid' on his bike! I thought that I might be there all night, until someone could see me the next day. Then I thought of my parents. They will think that I've run away from home when I don't come home tonight. They may call the neighbors or the police and I may be 'discovered' by people with very bright, utterly revealing flashlights! I'll be ruined at school, I thought. How can this be any worse? I know how it can be worse --- what if they have Sylvia Harrell and her Mom and Aunt join in the 'search' and Sylvia finds me? (Sylvia was a young girl from church who was, at that moment of my life, and for years thereafter, the love of my life, as the saying goes). She lived half a block from our home. I would rather have died than for Sylvia or her Mom and Dad to find me in that ridiculous, embarrassing situation in the alley!

Very late that evening, my Mom went outside our home, looking for me. None of the neighborhood kids had not seen me in hours. Mom and Dad were bound to be worried. I didn't know it at the time, but they had gone out looking for me. Dad went one direction and Mom went in another direction, talking with neighbors and calling my name. I heard Mom coming, and I responded with an answering 'yell'. I was both so glad to see her, and yet mortified to have to have my Mom, of all people, help me get 'free' so I could go home. How embarrassing! It took awhile, but eventually, both 'Oscar' and my jeans were free and I went home. Eventually I healed up and the humiliation subsided. Mom didn't tell anyone what happened and I didn't either, for many, many years.

I learned a lot from that episode...but the most important lessons I learned were:
Don't 'whiz' off of a bicycle, put the chain guard back on the bike...and never forget to remember ALL of the kindnesses of parents. They go through SO MUCH in trying to raise their kids!

Gunplay at church - a lie - forgiveness- a life changed

In 1957, I was 13. I had a paper route in the afternoons after school in Oak Cliff. I had somewhere around 120 papers to deliver every day. The papers were Dallas newspapers, and they were heavy. It was a tough route to walk every day. It was good for me, though. It made me tough. I carried two bags of papers -- one over each shoulder. I walked for a couple of miles, delivering those papers. Delivering papers was a way I could contribute to the 'Shoemake family income.' I helped buy groceries with my paper route money and never minded doing it one bit. I felt like a real asset to the family. I felt important--I 'contributed' and that's a good thing for a kid (then or now!).

I was still an immature kid, however, and once or twice I got into trouble via the afternoon paper route. My papers were delivered each day on the north side of the Sunset church of Christ parking lot, out by the curb on Jefferson Boulevard, just west of Hampton Road. On one particular day, I decided to take my pellet rifle with me. I chose a day when the papers were pretty light, and the added weight of the air rifle was not going to be a burden. While waiting for the papers to arrive by delivery truck, I started plinking at things -- cans and bottles that I found next to the church parking lot. I got bored with those targets and soon spied targets I could not resist! The large floodlight bulbs esconced within metal reflectors, situated high up on the auditorium building of the Sunset church where we were members. I knew it was wrong, but I was a dumb kid, with no sense of the cost of things or the mess that I would make. I was tempted and I gave in to temptation. I began aiming at, and exploding the bulbs. I was having great fun, until Jack Hardcastle, our pulpit minister, drove up and got out of his car.

Mr. Hardcastle asked me if I was the one who was responsible for the glass on the ground under the reflectors on the sides of the building. I was standing there with a pellet rifle. I was the only person for a hundred yards. The glass had barely stopped 'tinkling' on the concrete, and, if this had been a Western film, my rifle barrel would still have been 'smoking' from the firing of the rifle! No, I didn't look guilty...NOT MUCH! A reasoning person, 'caught with the goods', would have instantly confessed to the crime, knowing that it was all over. Instead of doing this, I stood my ground and came out with what I remember as the first whopper I had ever told in my life. I denied what I had done! I LIED!

Mr. Hardcastle was not pleased, but he outwardly expressed his acceptance of my denial as 'the gospel truth'....and he never told my parents! I would have been beat within an inch of my life had he told Mom and Dad. I was ashamed, but kept my conscience in check, and covered up the lie. The guilt in me festered like a boil.

My conscience bothered me for years. In 1964, after having enrolled at Oklahoma Christian College, Jack Hardcastle was on campus, for the OCC Lectureship, if memory serves me correctly. I saw him from a distance and worked my way through the crowd, wanting to talk with him. When I got my chance, I introduced myself to him...hesitantly. He remembered me, and smiled a kind smile -- not the reproving scowl I deserved and half-expected. I told Mr. Hardcastle that in the summer of 1957 when he drove up and saw me with the air rifle and asked me if I had been the one shooting out the flood lights and had denied doing so ---that I WAS the one who had been doing just that! He smiled a forgiving and understanding smile, put his hand on my shoulder, and told me that he had known it all along. He told me that he forgave me for what I had done and had watched me over the years following my 'Sunset shootout', and knew that I had become someone different...someone with 'admirable qualities'. He told me that he knew that I had done things for my family and that he appreciated who I had become -- adding that he had often inquired about me over the years. He told me that he could tell that I was truly sorry, and that now I had to forgive myself.

I walked away from my talk with Mr. Hardcastle, and as I left him I felt like I had been reborn! I had confessed something that had bothered me for years, and had been forgiven. I had never known that kind of forgiveness from my own Dad, who I am sure, loved me and my brother George and my other siblings, but we were never TOLD that we were forgiven...or loved. Forgiveness, or an arm around the shoulder, or kind words were not something that we got from our Dad. We were disciplined, and we were provided for, but what we really wanted and needed was always missing from Dad. I know he meant well, but all four of us kids wished things could have been different.

As a consequence-- in my adult life, I have 'seized' on the qualities I have seen in men whom I have respected. At Fort Worth Christian College (1962 and 1963), I locked in on Elmo Hall, one of my professors. I also homed in on Marshall Keeble, a fiery black minister, who was the best preacher I had ever heard in my life to that point in time. I admired Jimmy Allen, the evangelist.

When I transferred to OCC in the fall of 1964, I again saw and watched Elmo Hall. I saw how he treated his family, and how he treated people with whom he came into contact every day. I saw his compassion, his love of the Lord, and the constancy of his devotion to family and the church. I watched and learned from Ralph Burcham, Mickey Banister and Bailey McBride, in whom I have seen an uncommon kindness and a gentleness of spirit that is magnetic! I found wisdom in all of these men, and a 'composite' of all the things I hold dear, and treasure in godly men. I have never told any of these men what I am sharing with you now, but I will. They need to know what an impact they have had on my life (and the lives of countless others).

People are watching all of us all the time, observing how we treat others...looking to see if we are the 'genuine article.' Lives are being changed all the time by the way we live our lives...by the way we treat people...by our words, our actions...a warm smile, a word of forgiveness or encouragement or a hand around a shoulder. Let's all remember to love each other. Life is over so quickly...each of us has a chance...as well as a responsibility...to be a light in this world.

'Redemption' by candy at Lida Hooe Elementary

I was in the 6th grade, in Dallas, Texas. We lived four blocks from the Sunset church of Christ in Oak Cliff (when Oak Cliff was still a nice place to live -- before it became a ghetto). One day when dad was at work and Mom had gone somewhere for the day, I thought it would be cool to skip school for a day. With no parental oversight, I had a grand day. Dressed in a pair of summer shorts and a t-shirt -- barefooted and free -- I decided to get on my old-timey-ugly-brown-rusty-no-handle-grips-balloon-tire bicycle and ride back and forth in the street next to the playground of my school---Lida Hooe -- my elementary school on Hampton Road. I knew when my classmates would be out on the playground, right after lunch, and I wanted to taunt my friends and make them feel like they were really missing out on the great fun I was experiencing, skipping school on such a grand day! I wanted them to suffer a little bit after seeing my apparent freedom. I rode grandly back and forth -- up and down the street on the north side of the school building, smiling and waving at my buddies (and hoping the girls were watching). Then I started doing the 'no hands' maneuver, whereby one steers the bicycle, sans hands, weaving from one side to the other like a surfer riding his board.

Suddenly, without any warning at all, the front fender on that old heavy clunker of a bicycle, dropped down over the front tire! The front of the bicycle stopped instantly, since the tire abruptly quit turning and the front of the bike stopped! The rear of the bicycle, however, went into a rear-over-front flip. Naturally, since I was perched up high on that semi-tractor seat, (which had its own set of strong springs), I was propelled over the front of the bicycle and onto the pavement. Just as you might imagine, it was another instance of 'teeth, hair and eyeballs' splattered all over the street. My bare elbows, kneecaps, hands and other body parts slammed into the hard pavement. As if this was not bad enough, the rear end of the bicycle, along with the bicycle seat, then slammed into me. I didn't have handlebars on my old bike, and one of the metal handlebar tubes drove itself into the space between the first and second knuckles on my right hand -- hard enough that I couldn't use that hand for days (and had what appeared to be a reddish blood clot between those two knuckles for years).

I picked my body up off of the pavement, to the laughter of a large number of my classmates and other hecklers, who thought that my nearly getting killed, while showing off in the street, was GREAT FUN!

By now, all my joints were getting into some serious 'synchronized bleeding'. Later on, I got 'busted' by the teachers, for skipping school, and had to stay after school every day for a long time. I also got busted with a belt that night when Dad came home. I wrecked my sole means of transportation, and made myself the laughing stock of Lida Hooe Elementary.

The ridicule went on for a long time, but I finally redeemed myself in the eyes of my classmates when I began furnishing them with a steady supply of cinnamon sticks that I would buy on the way to school (a small store next to a funeral home that I passed while walking to school each day). I loaded up my pants pockets with various articles of purchased contraband that I bought for a nickel or a dime and then re-sold at school, furtively, lest I get caught, for 3 times what I paid for them. My hottest selling item was a cinnamon stick called a 'Fire Stick.' Eventually I quit 'carrying' all the other items and focused on Fire Stick sales. The sticks were 4 or 5 inches long and about twice the thickness of a piece of chewing gum. I could pack a lot of them into my jeans pockets. I started doubling or tripling my money every day, and eventually pocketed some serious money...for a 6th grader!

The candy sales made me a 6th grade hero (others could have done it, but were afraid of getting caught -- or, they had no store in the route they had to take to get to school). I was able to make the embarrassment and ridicule from the bicycle fiasco fade away in time ---and I did it with cinnamon sticks! Redemption by candy at Lida Hooe Elementary!

The first ten years are sometimes the hardest!

When I was a newborn, my Mom was at the home of her in-laws in Sherman, Texas. She was holding me and she leaned over to latch a screen window in my grandmother's bedroom. As she leaned over, I moved suddenly and she lost her hold on me. I fell into the window, and past the still-unlatched window screen. I landed on the gravel outside the window. My mother and grandmother rushed me off to the hospital, thinking that I had sustained some internal injuries. I was not 'broken', but my Mother lost standing in the eyes of her mother-in-law when the accident happened. She felt like she was not a good mother, at least in the eyes of my grandmother.

I survived that first 'fall', and went on to move, with my parents, and siblings, to Houston, Texas. We lived out on Yale Street -- sort of out in the country -- and we had chickens. When I was two years old, and was chasing chickens one day, I slipped and fell onto an old washtub. The bottom of the washtub had rusted out and had become a sickle-shaped piece of rusted, yet sharp metal. When I fell, that rusted metal went across the top of my head, effectively almost scalping me. Off we went to the hospital. I got sewed up and months later, my thick, curly blond hair didn't betray the horseshoe-shaped sutures beneath. See the pic of me and sister Nancy -- before the chicken-chasing, washtub disaster. The other pic is of me, AFTER the hair came back. (Raegan, your Poppy gave you your pretty, curly hair -- don't ever forget it!).

I didn't want to go to school as a little kid. On the first day of kindergarten, my Mom left me with my kindergarten teacher at the Woodrow Wilson Elementary School in Houston, Texas. I made it through part of the day, but the little girl, Antoinette, who took a nap on a towel next to mine, on the floor, soaked us both while she was asleep! Wet, thoroughly grossed out and embarrassed, I left -- walked right out of the classroom -- out the door -- and went straight home! I didn't care much for school!

I felt pretty good about going home. It was a good decision! I enjoyed the walk. When I got home, however, the novelty left when I got a good paddling --- with Mom's Fuller Brush hairbrush (the good one, with the wooden handle). She marched me right back to school (with dry pants), and I suffered through the rest of the day, looking at the alphabet, trying to duplicate what I saw on the blackboard on my Big Chief tablet, trying to learn the alphabet while taking turns learning to tie shoes on a giant red wooden shoe...and staying WELL AWAY from Antoinette!

The next few years in grade school were better. I fell in love with all of my teachers and not a few of the girls in the classes.

Saturdays saw a bunch of the guys in our neighborhood, going to a local theater for the Saturday matinee, to watch 'shoot-em-ups'. The tickets cost a quarter, and my folks allowed me to do that-- unsupervised, since a bunch of guys all went there together (safety in numbers I guess).

Some of us managed to pick up ring worm at that classy theater. Our school picture showed several of us wearing those flat caps boys wore in those days --you've seen them. Like they wore in 'Little Rascals.' A small brim in front. There we were -- as bald as bald can be. No hair, no eyelashes, no eyebrows. We looked like little Martians. I was especially homely looking, as I was sporting a wicked set of Mortimer Snerd buck teeth. To have been 'street legal', I probably should have been wearing a sign, warning people to avoid bumping into me. The teeth I was sporting could have been their undoing. And that's the plain 'tooth!' The teeth, combined with the bald head, capped off by a dorky looking cap from the 1030's, made me a real looker! See the pic above of my 1954 Grade School class. I'm the guy, 2nd row from the top, left of center, with the dark cap. A kid that only a mother could love! My only comfort was that some of the other guys were in the 4th grade and also bald! As bad as this was, it gets worse...

I went to a doctor (of sorts). The standard treatment among the learned physicians back in the 1950's included irradiating peoples' heads when they picked up ringworm! They would lay what looked like heavy truck tire innertubes lined with lead, on our chests and then blast away at our heads with radiation...x-rays!...to kill the ring worms, of course! Our hair, eyebrows and eyelashes grew back, over time, but the humiliation faded away much more slowly.

In June of 1953, when I was 8, and going on 9, the Alco Fireworks plant, near our home in Houston, exploded! My brother, age 6, and I had been taking a nap. I had awakened, and was 'sneaking' out of the room, so my younger brother would not awaken and start following me around again. As I started to leave the room, a monstrous explosion shook our home, knocking me off of my feet. I landed hard on the floor. My brother, George, came flying out of bed, and barely missed being sliced and diced by a large mirror that shattered and sent large shards of glass all over our bedroom floor.

We ran outside and looked around. To the right, past the Baird's Bakery that was located a few blocks away, right next to the River Oaks Shopping Center, we saw a huge fireball -- a gigantic mushroom -- rising into the air. There was a lot of damage in our neighborhood, from broken windows and structural damage to homes, shaken by the explosion. Later we found out that people had died -- a large number of people had been hurt. An automobile ---a Crosley automobile, if memory serves me right -- had been thrown hundreds of yards through the air. The fireworks plant was blown to smithereens. At this time, however, we didn't know that the explosion was caused by the detonation of a fireworks plant. We all thought that we had been attacked by Russia!

We lived in a time, back then, of drills in the schools, to prepare for the possibility of nuclear attacks from the Russians (as though 'duck and cover' would help when ones' city had just been vaporized!). We had regular 'duck and cover' drills at school, and, as kids, had a sense of impending doom, even though we didn't really understand the threat. We didn't get bombed, however, and so life settled down after awhile. In the fall, school started again, and we went back to buying stamps to put into the pages of our little books. When the pages were filled, we got a War Bond! It was the patriotic thing to do back then. We all wanted to support the Korean War effort, although we didn't know where Korea was or why we were at war. We just did what we were asked to do.

Occasionally, Mom would take my brother and I shopping for shoes. They had this nifty device in the stores in the 1950's that was a kid's delight....none other than a small x-ray machine (they called it a fluoroscope...but an x-ray machine is an x-ray machine...no matter what you want to call it). One could stand in front of the device and stick a foot into the opening, and then press a button and see the bones in ones' foot! What a neat toy to allow kids to play with while Mom shopped for shoes! We played with it endlessly....(no wonder most of us who grew up back then are a little 'different' now!). Sometimes my brother or I would stick our hands in the machine and let the other brother look at the bones in our hands as well. Great fun! Playing with x-ray machines! The thing was probably developed by Hitler's henchman, Mengele, to genetically alter all of America's kids!

I made it to age 10, and watched 'Superman' every afternoon after school, at the home of 'Lalo' Reese, my little neighbor who was short and chunky, and, with her chili-bowl haircut, looked a little like a tiny, female Friar Tuck! My, did we love Superman! Her Mom always served us chocolate cookies and Kool-Aid. The Reese's were also more affluent than we were...not only did they have a television, but they had a window air conditioner as well. Rich people! ....Back to Superman...

I had a lot of confidence as a kid, and became convinced that with a proper cape, I, too, could learn to fly like Superman. One afternoon I strapped on a less-than-perfect cape...certainly not flashy like Superman's cape, but one that I was able to craft out of one of Mom's old bed sheets. I got up on top of our garage and then leaped, and soared off into....the ground! I didn't get hurt too badly, other than two sprained ankles, but came close to landing on one of the 54 turtles that I had collected...turtles that roamed all over our backyard during the warmer months.

We stabled our horses at the Post Oak Stables (Dad was a member of the Harris County Sheriff's Mounted Posse -- something he did as a hobby), and the turtles were, I guess, attracted to the bugs that were attracted to all the manure. Mom didn't like the turtles too much. We didn't have a clothes dryer in 1954, and Mom would hang the wash on clotheslines in the backyard. While she was looking up, putting clothespins in the clothes on the clothesline, turtles would clamber over her feet, sometimes almost sending her into orbit! Great fun, I thought!

Speaking of doing laundry, Mom also made our laundry soap. She made it in large basins, out of lye and what else I do not remember. I can still remember Mom grating large pieces of that lye soap, using a cheese grater. I would also grate soap, and the trick, of course, was to not run ones' knuckles over the cheese grater! We used an 'agitating washer', but, I can also remember Mom using a scrub board for some of dad's clothes. That was hard work. Looking back, I don't know how she did it....leaning over the bathtub with a scrub board and her homemade soap, scrubbing dirt out of three boys' jeans and dad's clothes. We had a 'wringer' on the washing machine, and we were given strict instructions to stay away from it. We had heard lots of stories about people getting hair, hands, fingers, arms, and other appendages caught in the wringer. One still hears an occasional reference to someone getting his/her '(blank) caught in the wringer...'.

When I was 10 we went to the Houston zoo. Nice zoo. I ran ahead of my parents and stuck my head between two of the vertical iron bars outside the zoo - bars that were part of the fence decoration at the entrance to the zoo. Bad move. (Why do kids stick their heads between bars?...because they're THERE, of course!). I got my head stuck and all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't get my head back through the bars. Finally, in desperation, the zoo people called the Houston Fire Department! Here they came, sirens blaring! A small crowd gathered. What a humiliation. If I hadn't been crying so persistently, I probably would have gotten a huge whipping by my Dad for that stunt.

Not long after this, my family and I witnessed the event in Houston that, even today, remains unexplained. All of Houston, TX., saw the event in the sky. I wrote about it in an earlier post. THAT was an amazing day, and I still think of it often and wonder. When you have a minute, read that earlier post, 'You tell ME what they were!'

Not long after, while messing around in our garage, I found dozens of old shotgun shells that belonged to my Dad. I had been experimenting with the rolled caps from my cap guns and the way the gunpowder 'flashes' when one scrapes a sharp object across the top of the caps. I thought: "I know -- I'll open up all of these shotgun shells and collect the powder that it inside them and make a bigger flash!" Another not-so-bright idea. It took hours, but I got all of the shells opened -- collected the powder and then began my experiment. It flashed all right...so big that when it ignited, it blinded me and seriously burned my face, fingers, hands and arms. I had to go to the doctor a lot that summer....it took months to get over that 'experiment.'

In late fall, my neighbor Bobby, who was about 13, decided to dig a 'fox hole' in the vacant lot on the corner of our street. He had his dad's pick-ax...you know, a blade on one side and a sharp pick on the other side. He had been digging for a long time when I showed up with a couple of buddies. I stood on the other side of the hole where Bobby was diging. As he plunged the blade down into the hole, I looked down in the hole to check on the progress. He yanked the pick-ax back up, and it hit me squarely in the center of my forehead. It hurt....oh, yes...it hurt a lot! And then the bleeding started, and I bled like a stuck pig. I was skinny back then and I ran home, with blood coursing down my face, neck and chest. Back to the doctor. Stitches. My forehead was mangled...I looked like a 10-yr. old Charles Manson...without the swastika carved into my forehead. It took years before the scar faded.

Later that year, near Christmas, Bobby, the 'old' 13-yr. old neighbor, was throwing a knife into a chinaberry tree. It was a beautiful knife. It has a fake pearl handle, and the blade was about 4 inches long (maybe a little less...to my eyes back then it looked like a Bowie knife!). He was pretty good at throwing it hard enough and accurately enough for it to usually stick in the tree....usually being the operative word here. I was impressed. He threw it once more and it richocheted off of the tree and embedded itself in my thigh. I took off for home, with the knife moving back and forth as I ran. Mom had to remove the knife and...you guessed it...take me back to the doctor again. More stitches. This time, however, Bobby got the whipping-- from his dad. If I had thought about the pick-ax and the knife and had ever put the two events together, I might have had second thoughts about running around with Bobby.

Right after the end of the year, after my dad's shooting-the-ornaments-off-of-the-Christmas-tree-stunt, with his cousin, Otis, (Matt Gayle's great uncle), the neighbors put their Christmas trees out on the curb for the trash man to collect. Good old Bobby -- our mentor and teacher -- collected the trees and put them in his back yard, in order to construct another, in a series, of ill-fated 'forts'. It was a grand fort, and we set about making the fortifications secure -- against imagined 'foreign invaders'. My brother George, as part of his preparations, brought matches from home -- the big kitchen matches. One day in January, George-- ever one for experimentation -- lit a match and accidentally set the fort on fire! He managed to burn down Bobby's parents' garage and everything in it!

We all got a whipping for that...all of us. Especially Bobby. His Dad nailed his hide to the wall! And come to think of it, George and I each got two whippings for that stunt....a 'two-for-one-stunt'---one from Mom and another from Dad once he got home from work. Mom used her Fuller hair brush (I still have it...broken wooden handle and all).

After the Christmas tree fort fire, one of the neighbor boys (from over the back fence, behind Bobby's house)-- still mad about the whipping he got from his participation in our fort activities--- beat up my brother George one day. I heard George crying, as the boy, 12, and his brother, 11, let my brother have it while George was on their side of the fence. George was only 8 years old, and was trying to climb the fence, to come home, and the boys kept hitting him. I grabbed a brick, climbed up the 'hog-wire' fence, and heaved the brick at the older of the two brothers, to try to make them leave George alone. The brick hit the older boy in the shin and he went down like a 'TON of bricks'. Those boys were never friends again after the brick incident, but they also left George alone.

The next summer, while I was still age 10, George and I were at my grandmothers' home in Sherman, Texas (the site of the cannon incident I told about in an earlier blog). We were across the street, down at the bottom of the bluff, just outside the weeds, in the creek bottom. We were playing with Dad's magnifying glass. It was a big, powerful magnifying glass. You could burn your initials into boards in seconds! George got tired of burning words into wood, and he experimented for a bit with dried weeds. You know where this is going....seconds later, the fire he started was racing up the steep wall of that bluff. From the creek bed to the top of the bluff was about 50 feet. The flames were immense! It was an raging inferno! It was loud! I had never heard a fire make so much noise. The cedar trees along the way went up like Roman candles! The heat created wind, that swept the flames up the side of the bluff. In a few minutes, we heard the fire trucks coming. They finally put the fire out. Two telephone poles were charred. The wires between the poles were 'toast', and had to be replaced. Just like my dad had received a hard whipping for setting a cannon off right over the same place (when he was a young kid, maybe 25 years earlier) where my brother George started a fire, George and I both received a 'belt' whippping (much worse than a hairbrush whipping, since it was administered by Dad, and he hit harder than Mom did).

This pretty well summarizes my first ten years! Most of my early years were filled with wonderful days-- fun times that I remember like they were yesterday. Carefree days of wearing a pair of shorts and nothing else...running like the wind, riding bikes and exploring and pretending. These years were just punctuated every now and then with unusual events --- probably much like your lives have likely been!

Putter pics for interested bloggers!

Here's what the putter looks like with a printed name in block letters, or a signature.

This is going to be fun! I can't wait for the drawings, late this year! Good luck!

How to get 'comments'...bribe 'em with golf putters, of course!

I just read my daughter Gena's blog. She's changing her 'address' so her name is not part of the blog name. Good move...I guess. I'm not very technically literate, and I'm too trusting to really understand why that's a good idea, but maybe it has to do with fears of 'identity theft', or a fear of weird guys stalking little children (I can understand that...big time!).

Gena said something funny on her blog tonight...it had to do with her trying to squeeze comments from people who read her blog.....good luck with that one, Gena. Most people like their anonymity, I guess. Part of the fun in blogging, at least for me, is having someone leave a comment. I want to try to 'draw out' some visitors who read my blog but never let me know they've been here. That's kind of like going to a friend's wedding and not signing the guest book....and then slipping out of the church building before the ceremony is over. Right?

I have always wished more people would let me know they've read my blog. That makes it more fun for me, too. I comment a lot on others' blogs, and enjoy doing so. Some people don't want to comment, however, and I understand that...I guess. Stay with me here. I've got an idea!

I'm going to try something FUN! For those of you who don't read blogs without pictures, you can sign off now. This won't have pictures--at least today. Don't get me wrong -- when I was young I wouldn't read things either, if there were no pictures on the pages. Now that my maturity has reached such an advanced level (major grin here), I'm deliberately weeding out the intellectually-challenged readers who rely on visual stimulation along with their printed pages. Such 'mentally dwarfed individuals' will drop out along here somewhere, I'm guessing.

I'm going to save all my 'comments', where people actually identify themselves as having visited my blog. Toward the end of the year, I am going to type out all the names and put them in a container and have a little child stir the names up (Raegan, maybe?), and pull out a few names. The owners of those names will receive a gift! A custom-personalized golf putter. The retail value of the putters will be substantially over $100. I'll share with you the retail value of the clubs later this year, in another blog.

One day soon, I will have the time to post a picture of one of the golf putters on my blog, so you can see it. I will custom-personalize that golf putter with the name of the recipient in block letters or something more cursive, such as Zaph Chancery font, or, should the recipient want me to do so, I will use his/her actual signature and custom-personalize the club with his/her signature!

I make these clubs in a proprietary process that I developed back about 1989. The club head is made of stainless steel, and will be fitted to the recipients' wishes as to length.

A length of 35" is standard for putters. The putters will have a genuine black leather, fur-lined putter cover, with a velcro strap. The personalized area on the club looks like black glass, with the gold lettering appearing to be floating in the cavity of the club, within the 'black glass.' The material is invulnerable to sunlight, and will never pull away from the putter head. It will not fade. It is simply gorgeous! The club is not just a 'pretty face', however. It is a functional club, and has been used by many customers since the late '80's It comes in a right hand model only, at this time.

These clubs are soon to be re-introduced in the U.S. market after a 7 year absence. We produced these clubs for 11 years, and sold them to companies all over the U.S.--companies like Coca Cola, ESPN, AC Delco (a division of GM), American Airlines, all the major oil companies, and so on. Every country western star you are likely familiar with has one of our golf putters -- given to them by Bob Woods, an OKC man who worked with and recorded some of these people -- Vince, Reba, Garth, Roy Clark, George Strait, and lots of others.

These are beautiful clubs, and you can't get them anywhere else! We designed the club heads, and they carry our logo. Our former logo was 'BackNine', and we dropped that after 11 years. Our new logo is 'OneStroke', and we've trademarked that name. You won't ever see our clubs in stores. We haven't and won't -- advertise them. We sell directly to companies, primarily, and they use our clubs as gifts for their best customers-- people who spend a lot of money with them.

We do sell to individuals as well, but the vast majority of our clubs were sold to large companies. We think our internet sales will also, over time, bring in buyers who want that special, unique (redundant?) gift item that can be custom-personalized with a name and a message, and given for birthday, retirement, job advancement, or any of a dozen other reasons. Wait till you see the pics of our clubs on my blog next week. The club will knock your socks off! We sold many, many thousands of them until 7 years ago when we could no longer obtain club heads in the United States. Our U.S. foundries couldn't seem to make metal heads without at least 30% of them having serious flaws. So, with the help of a well-connected friend, we are having them made overseas now. Our first shipment came in two weeks ago. We're having a web site developed and are getting the last few things put together so we can start producing them again. I will get the site up and running and then Paula will take it over -- at least until I retire someday from Premiere Roofing and join her.

This will be a fun experiment. I may or may not draw out the heretofore 'anonymous' visitors to my blog. There's no harm in trying, is there? There's no cost involve, so there's nothing illegal about this. There's no gambling involved (we couldn't have that, could we, Joetta?...a little private family joke here) :)

So, now that we have long ago weeded out the bloggers who have to have 'picture-pages,' you tough, stalwart bloggers who stay with me and identify yourselves when you visit my site, will have a better chance of winning a beautiful golf club for yourself or your significant other! As my Mom would have said: "How 'bout THEM apples?"