Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  With each passing day, I'm reminded that I won't be around forever. I don't know when my time will come, hopefully not too soon, but one day it will come and aside from any money that I'll hopefully be able to pass down to my kids, I'd like to pass down some memories. Sometimes when certain of my children are here, we discuss things from our past, but I don't think I've ever really mentioned much about the time that Jan and I spent at Key West Florida. When I graduated from Radarman "A" school in July of 1972, I was assigned to work aboard an old WWII radar escort ship called the Kretchmer. It was home ported in Key West. Unfortunately I had to wait to catch up to the ship, as it was in the North Atlantic. I spent a few weeks at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, mainly cleaning barracks and doing a few stints on burial detail. That was kind of fun. The burial detail that is. At least it got me out of the barracks.  I caught up to the ship in South

  I saw a T-shirt with this saying the other day. It kind of sums up how I feel some days. I know that I'm 70, and I feel like I'm 80, and I probably look like I'm 90 but I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that I'm an odd, old fart. I don't know how it happened, except that I wake up every day and the calendar has changed. I go in and do my thing in the morning,  and look in the mirror and wonder who the hell is staring back at me. The hair on top of my head is getting pretty thin, but the hair on my ears and eyebrows is as thick as a briar patch. I have to keep my eyebrows trimmed to keep them from poking me in the eye when I 'm driving. The ear hair just looks plain ridiculous. What is the purpose of it? Women don't have ear hair. I think my ears and nose are growing too. I remember seeing old guys when I was a kid and they kind of looked like Dumbo. Just having bigger ears doesn't mean you can hear better. It might be all the hair clo

                      Jan and I went shopping at the beginning of the week. We wanted to fill a couple of boxes for Samaritan's Purse's Operation Christmas Child. It's an annual event designed to send boxes overseas to various countries to children who normally would never celebrate Christmas. It's an opportunity to share some of the blessings that we've enjoyed because we were fortunate enough to be born in this country. There is a list of suggested items to send, and there are also labels designating the gender of the child and the general age group. I chose the ten to fourteen year old group because I think they have a tendency to be neglected. I believe a lot of people want to buy something for the little kids, which is great also, but regardless of your age, it's nice to be remembered. We bought everything we needed at Wal-Mart. They have pretty good prices and a decent selection. We both bought an assortment of school supplies, colored pencils, crayons, pe