Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

 One morning I got a call from a shoe store that a gun had dropped out of a man's waist band and fell to the floor. He was with another man at the time and they were last seen walking toward the food court. I was by myself that morning and on the far end of the mall when I got the call. As I walked toward the shoe store I figured that the men were long gone and had already left the mall. To my surprise I saw them walking back toward the shoe store from the direction of the food court. They fit the description given to me over the phone. I called 911 and remained on the phone with the operator as I followed them from a safe distance. They walked into store after store throughout the mall heading toward the west end where they eventually turned around and headed back toward the food court. As they walked near to the exit doors I was afraid that they were going to get away. There was no sign of the police. Then, in a flash, the police burst in through the food court entrance and from ...

One day I had a caller that said that a woman was standing in our fountain taking her clothes off. It was a hot summer day around noon. Upon arrival I found a homeless woman, about 35 years old standing in the middle of the fountain. She was soaked to the skin and wearing only a bra and jogging pants. When I asked her what she was doing she said it was so hot she was just cooling off. Being homeless she was probably trying to steal the coins out of the fountain. We had an officer who at the time he was working the midnight shift and he was very good at catching people stealing money out of the fountain. Many days I would come into the security office and there would be cups of coins that he had confiscated from people trying to steal money. One night he was lurking in the shadows watching two heavy set black ladies who were stealing coins. They had removed their pants and panties so they could wade around in the fountain. He jumped from his hiding place and scared them so badly that th...

  Sometime after January 2010 I woke up in the middle of the night very short of breath. I thought at first I was having a severe panic attack. My heart was beating wildly and thinking it was a panic attack I jumped on to my exercise bike. Exercise was one of the ways that I had beat back panic attacks for years. I would put on my running shoes and run until the feeling of panic went away. In this case the exercise seemed to make things worse. I stayed up the rest of the night and drove in to work that morning My heart was still beating extremely fast and was out of rhythm.   I am hard headed and should have gone to the emergency room instead of to work. Most of the morning I was as weak as a kitten but  around 11:00 AM I suddenly felt much better. It happened so quickly it was like someone flipped a switch in my body. I felt my pulse and my heart was in a normal rhythm. Thinking that this episode was some kind of a fluke I was hopeful that it would not happen again....

    In September 2007 the bottom dropped out of the economy. A financial bubble had been created in the housing market and the bubble burst. Within four months I lost half of my 401K and the financial crisis was worldwide. To make matters worse, the decision was made to shut down the PSR or Passenger Steel Radial side of our tire plant. There were around 2000 employees at the Bridgestone-Firestone plant in Lavergne. By 2009 there were only about 500 of us left. They transferred me to the TBR, or Truck-Bus Radial side of the plant. I had been building passenger tires and now I would have to learn how to build tractor trailer and bus tires. Those tires of course are much larger and heavier than most passenger tires. I had been building tires on machines that were designed and built in the 1980's with robot arms that placed the tires on metal racks. Now I was building tires on machines that were designed and built in the 1960's.  After removing the tire from the 0 Ring I had...

  In early July 2003 I was able to fulfill a lifelong dream by taking a trip to Gettysburg. Debbie, Courtney, my sister Donna, her grandson's Stephen, and Sean Haffield, along with Didi and myself all travelled to Gettysburg together. Our first stop was in Lexington Virginia which is the home of Natural Bridge. It  was also the home of Stonewall Jackson, and Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson was an instructor. Washington and Lee University is also in Lexington, where Robert E. Lee spent the last five years of his life as president of the school. He died in the president's house and is buried in a beautiful crypt in Lee's Chapel along with his wife and most of his family. His horse Traveler is buried just outside of the chapel. In 2003 we arrived too late to see the inside of Lee Chapel, or the home of Stonewall Jackson. We returned in 2005 and were able to see Lee's chapel and Jackson's home on that trip. In 2003 I found Jackson's grave where he was bur...

Debbie went to the doctor for a routine medical check up in 1999 and Dr. Bishop, our family doctor at the time, casually asked her when she had her last mammogram. She told him that she hadn't had one in several years. Doctor Bishop scheduled a mammogram for Debbie. The technician that read the mammogram spotted a suspicious area in her right breast. Debbie had a history of cysts forming in her breasts over the years and they usually all turned out to be benign. We weren't all that concerned at the time. She was scheduled to see a surgeon that had a reputation for being one of the best in the country. On the day of the surgery I felt as though someone kicked me in the gut when he told me that Debbie had cancer. He said that he had removed a tumor the size of a pea but he thought he had caught it in time. The surgeon said that he wouldn't know for sure until he checked the lymph nodes. It was a very aggressive form of cancer.  She had a big decision to make. He gave her a co...