Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

 I had a 1957 Ford pick-up truck that I bought in the late 1970's. It was Ford tough and built like a tank. I loved this old truck. A friend of mine named Joe, who worked with me at Colonial Baking company, sold it to me. Joe tied a bunch of artificial red roses to the front grill. I asked him why he did that and he said that he had declared the truck dead and had given it a funeral. The flowers were on the grill the whole time I owned it. I would love to have a nickel for every time I had to help my sister Donna move. She lived all over Nashville and Middle Tennessee at one time or another. Because of her, I came to detest helping people move. To make things worse she always managed to find an upstairs apartment. For reasons I will never understand she moved to Sullivan Illinois in 1977. I worked five days a week at Colonial. Tuesday and Saturday were my days off. Donna decided to move back to Nashville and asked me to help her. It is 333 miles, or nearly five hours to drive from ...

  In 1976 I found out that Debbie was pregnant with our fourth child. Although I was crazy about my kids and we always talked about having a lot of them I felt like four was about all we could afford. All I had to do was smile at Debbie and she would get pregnant. Vasectomies were a popular form of birth control but the thought of getting one made me cringe. At first I was being selfish because I wanted Debbie to get her tubes tied. After being shamed by her, and everyone else I finally set up an appointment with a urologist and had it done. The doctor gave me a shot of Sodium Pentothal or truth serum as it is sometimes called. Almost immediately I was feeling the most pleasurable high that I have ever experienced. I was laughing as the doctor was operating on me and I told him that he could just cut it all off. I didn't care about anything at that moment. He laughed and said that he better not. I wouldn't be too happy after the drug wore off.  On March 17, 1977 I was ready to...

  Around 1975 I became a shop steward for the Bakery and Confectionery Union at Colonial. I took the job more out of frustration than anything. We were working very long and hard hours without breaks. For my first couple of years I was working in the bun room and we were supposed to be relieved every two hours for a ten minute break. There was a break man that relieved everyone on the bun and bread lines. Our first breaks usually came close to on time but as the night wore on they would get farther and farther behind. Our second break was usually late and out of frustration everyone took longer breaks as the night progressed. This threw the breaks further behind and on top of this we were not getting a lunch break. I found a copy of our union contract and there in black and white it said that we were not only supposed to get a ten minute break every two hours but a thirty minute lunch break after we had been there four hours. Every time I would ask the older employees about the con...

 Karl Marx was fascinated with death and spiritual darkness. He wrote a play as a university student in 1837 The themes of the play were nihilism, revenge and a "pact with the devil". The main character was "Oulanem" believed to be an anagram of "Emanuel" (a biblical name for God). Marx was obsessed with the Faustian idea of selling his soul to the devil. He was obsessed with the idea of suicide pacts. Two of his daughters would die in suicide pacts. Marx loved the line pronounced by Mephistopheles, (which was the devil) in Faust. "Everything that exists deserves to perish." 

  Robbie was five in the summer of 1974 when he began playing Little League baseball. He played on the ball field at Cole Elementary and there was no tee ball back then, no coach pitch or bending the rules, and yes they kept score. They played baseball by the standard rules of the game. Because of that it was hilarious watching them play at that age. I remember the first practice when the coach told the kids to take the field. One kid started crying because he didn't know where the field was. In the games the pitcher would throw the ball to the batter and the batter would miss the ball and the catcher would miss too. When the catcher threw it back to the pitcher he would miss again. This might go on three or four times before anybody would be able to catch the ball. When I played I don't think that anyone under seven could even play.  Debbie's mom Margaret was crazy about Jon, as she was about all of her grandchildren. I remember how thrilled she was when we brought him hom...

 Karl Marx- "God, religion and immortality are cast down from their thrones and man is proclaimed God."  Mikhail Bakunin - "If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him." Karl Marx- Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.  The problem with elites like Karl Marx, Bill Gates, George Soros, Saul Alinsky and so many others is that they think they are smarter than God. They think of themselves as gods. Knowing what is best for the rest of us.   Romans 1:25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

  In the Spring of 1974 we took a long weekend trip to a town called Everts in Harlan County Kentucky. Debbie was very pregnant with Jon. We went to visit our friends, Bill and Sharon Wilson who lived there. They had been our very close friends in Oregon and by this time they had a little girl. Harlan county was in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. This was in the heart of of Appalachia and coal country. Growing up I had listened to stories about this region from my uncle Bud who had preached for years in Pikeville Kentucky. I was a little apprehensive when we left the main highway and drove over to Evert's. It was like we had left America and entered a third world country because I had never witnessed such poverty in the United States. There were wooden shacks and the area was filthy looking. It looked like there had been a recent flood and debris was lining the creeks. Bill was probably the wealthiest man in Everts because he was a businessman that owned a car lot and a restaur...

 The Democratic Socialists and Communists not only want to abolish private property but they want to abolish the family. Paul Kengor writes: The rejection of such a natural if not sacred right (the right to own property) violates the most basic precepts of all peoples, from the cave to the courthouse, from Judeo-Christian thinking to the most innate urges of primitive tribes. God's commandment Thou Shalt Not Steal implies a right to property. Marx was not oblivious to just how radical his vision was. He himself acknowledged that his views stood undeniably contrary to the "social and political order of things". Communism, he and Engels wrote in their Manifesto, not only seeks to "abolish the present state of things" but represents "the most radical rupture in traditional relations." They knew what they were advocating; this was a revolution touching on everything from property to the family. "Abolition of the family!" they wrote with exclamati...

  I had known hard work before going to work at Colonial but it was one of the hardest and most challenging jobs that I ever had. For the first two years I worked in the bun room. We boxed and bagged all kinds of hamburger and hot dog buns. Learning this job was very difficult because it took good hand and eye coordination to master it. When I was learning the job we had a supervisor that cursed me about as much as any T.I. that I ever had in the military. If there was a mechanical problem that caused the line to back up that was one thing but I would catch hell if I caused the line to back up. I worked some very long hours. We were off on Tuesday's and Saturdays. On  Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday we worked a regular eight hour shift but on Monday and Friday we were required to work until all the orders were filled. This could mean eight hours in the slow time of the year, which was usually January until sometime in the early Spring. Then there was the rest of the year ...

 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.  2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.  3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.  4. Confiscation of all property of emigrants and rebels.  5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.  7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal obligation of all to work.  9. Gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.  10. Free education for all children in public schools.

After my discharge from the Air Force and our return to Nashville I was ready to adjust to civilian life again. I was accepted at M.T.S.U. before I was discharged and my plan was to go to school full time and work full time. It wasn't a good plan but for some reason I tend to make my life unnecessarily hard for myself. I also didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with the rest of my life at that time. History was my favorite subject and the only path that I could settle on was to be a history teacher. I chose history as my major while minoring in sociology and political science. It was early May and we moved in with Debbie's parents until we could find a place of our own. The family was always crazy about Robbie and everybody made over Misty since she was now the baby. Even my brother-in-law Hulon was crazy about her which was unusual because he never seemed to like kids that much.  I tried to find a job through the Tennessee Department of Employment Security and the VA re...

In early April we had a snowfall that was 14 inches deep. Colorado had the earliest snow and the latest snow that I had ever seen. We had eight inches of snow on September 8, 1971 and now this snow in April. Mark was camping in the mountains and they were snowed in for a few days and were unable to leave their camp site. Toward the end of April, on a beautiful day, we were able to go with the Ramsey's to Royal Gorge that was South of Colorado Springs. It was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. What was then the worlds highest suspension bridge crosses over Royal Gorge and is over 1,000 feet high. The Arkansas river which flows through the gorge looks like a creek from that height. There is a cable car ride that crosses over the gorge and a railroad parallels the river down below. I am terrified of heights and it was all that I could do to cross that bridge. Cars were also allowed to drive on it. When we returned to Royal Gorge on our vacation in 2012 they had added a ...

  One night when Debbie, Mark and myself were all at home there was a knock at the door. It was several teenage girls with an older guy who was probably in his thirties. The girls were very bubbly and wanted to witness to us about Jesus. There was nothing phony about them. These girls were probably Mark's age and I was very impressed at their zeal for Christ. I knew at that time of my life that I would never have the courage to talk to strangers about Jesus in such a bold manner, even if I decided to become a Christian. Mark accepted Christ that night and prayed the sinners prayer. As for myself I had been touched by their visit but I was not ready to take that big of a step. In my mind I wasn't that bad. I hadn't been all that sinful in my life, as far as I could see.   Mother always took us to church and if we weren't going to church we were going to Sunday school. After our parents died Didi felt obligated to continue making sure we went to church but I would get irr...