Back in the Good Old Days

8-12-2023

Back in the Good Old Days

Don’t you just hate when talking to us old timers that we keep bringing up the good old days? I mean life was slower, simpler and everything was good, except walking up hill (both ways) to and from school in the snow.

It’s hard to believe that when I was a young man after graduating high school I left home without a care in the world, or any idea of where I would go or what I would do. I had a HS buddy who dropped out of school after the junior year and joined the army. He went airborne and volunteered for Vietnam. In the meantime I went to his folk’s dairy farm to stay while working my dead end job at a movie theater.

Then mom came to my rescue, she had a friend who got me a job as an auto parts delivery driver and she got me a room at a boarding house where the bathroom was down the hall.

I had my car, (a 58 Pontiac Chieftain) which I had “borrowed” from my dad and my girl (Linda). Every week we went to the drive in, drove the strip and usually got stopped by the same city cop for being the slowest across the starting line when the light turned green. Yes those were the good old days.

Life was good.

One day a friend of a friend came over and talked me into joining the army with him on the “Buddy Basic” program. I had just turned 18 and didn’t need permission, but mom gave me her blessing anyway. Looking back it was probably obvious to everyone except me that I was a fish floundering aimlessly without any direction or goals.

I did love to drive and the army trained me to be a truck driver. I went from no goals or ambitions to learning to stand on my own two feet, do things I never dreamed I could do and not being dependent upon my family back home. While I was in Southeast Asia (Thailand) my buddy came home from Vietnam a totally changed man. There’s a saying that when you go back home it’s just not the same. After 3 years in the military I found that to be true, not that everything or everyone else had changed, but I was a changed man too.

During my overseas tour I got married, came home with a child on the way. I couldn’t find a job that satisfied my need to care for my family with stability or my desire for adventure. After two years I joined the army once again and this time made a career out of it.

When I look back over my life I see that I made lots of mistakes. However it is learning from those mistakes that helped form me into the man I am today. My family has grown with kids and grandkids grown and great grandkids growing up fast.

I’m not a jack-of-all-trades but I have mastered a few and have been around the block a few times. I have a wealth of skills and information which I’m willing to share with anyone who will listen. If I don’t have answers I know many people who do.

Have you ever gone to a bluegrass festival……in Japan? It’s a hoot and a holler (phonetically speaking mind you). I went to one in style – riding for more than an hour inside a buttoned up motorcycle sidecar in the rain. It was a most memorable experience, to say the least. – RTM