THE VIEW FROM ST. CHARLES VOL. 2

I’ve made an executive decision. Since there isn’t anyone else involved in creating this blog, other than the leftist fools I love to write about, I consider myself the CEO, and Exalted Leader. My executive decision is that going forward, this blog will consist of two formats. Snapshots Of the News, and The View from St. Charles.

I was reflecting on my childhood today, old people tend to do that a lot. Truthfully, I don’t do that a lot, but I have friends that do, and frankly, it’s extremely boring. One of my friends has a ton of old pictures of himself on his phone and loves to start a conversation about the old days, and suddenly whip out his phone and engage in “show and tell”. That’s when I say, ” sorry pal, I’m about to pee my pants”, and excuse myself, then never return. He’s either never figured out my escape plan or doesn’t care.

I think what triggered my thoughts on my childhood, was reading about what our little kids are experiencing in today’s classrooms. Holy cow, it’s nothing less than madness. What effect is it going to have on their little brains? I can’t imagine how confusing it is.

I was born in 1941 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at home, in the house my father built with a collection of very basic tools. (All cordless by the way). I want to make sure I give my mother credit in this endeavor; she was one of the hardest working women I have ever known. She was a 4′-10″ tall giant. I don’t think that woman had an ounce of fear in her body. We lived on the outskirts of Tulsa, sort of in the Twighlight zone between city and farmlands. The house I was born in, still exists believe it or not. My folks built a good strong house, in more ways than one. They raised four kids in that house until the interstate took it out. The state bought it and it was moved to another location not far away, and we all moved into a brand-new house. Myself and my siblings were hard working folks, just like Mom and Dad, everybody stayed on the right side of the law, and had successful lives. Everyone is gone now, except me. I am proud to have been a member of that clan, and it is an honor, to be the offspring of those two fine individuals of such strong moral character.

OK, here is the part about walking to school in the snow, uphill in both directions. Well, it wasn’t uphill in both directions, but I walked to school from kindergarten until I was 16, in the rain, snow, sleet, whatever mother nature conjured up. My parents only had one car, and my dad drove it to work. In those days, we had “home rooms” where we reported each morning. Probably still the same. The teacher asked us to stand and recite the “Pledge of Allegiance”, then we recited the “Lord’s Prayer”. She called roll, and we got down to business. School was no nonsense, you either paid attention and did the work, or they would fail you. If you were really bad, they would fail you for the year, and you had to do that year over. The prospect of that was terrifying. I only saw that happen a couple of times, nobody wanted to stay back while their friends advanced to the next grade level. Great incentive by the way.

I loved being outdoors, except when it was raining. It wasn’t real smart to play outside in the rain in Oklahoma, always a possibility of lightning. As soon as the rain stopped, I was outside, with anything that would float, putting it in the drainage ditches and running along side it. Those same drainage ditches usually had standing water in them, and crawdads, as we called them when we were kids. We caught our share of those critters. When we weren’t catching crawdads, we were wandering around the woods to the south, with our Daisy BB guns, shooting anything that moved. (Nobody ever lost an eye) Then when we wanted a bigger adventure, we walked about a 1/4 mile to the big creek and caught tadpoles, put them into quart jars. Saw a lot of tadpoles turn into frogs in my day.

About a block down the road we had some Dutch neighbors, that owned a small dairy. My mother used to send me down the street to buy a couple of quarts of milk. I loved that assignment. Those folks were always really nice to me and would always give me a glass of warm milk directly from the cow. If you have never had that experience, you have missed out. Across the street from the dairy was a pear tree, best pears I ever tasted.

When you grow up being outdoors, and around farms most of the time, it’s amazing how much you learn about nature, even as a little kid. You learn what’s OK to touch, and what not to touch. You see life and death in real time. You quickly learn how to identify electric fences. You learn how to stay out of trouble and stay safe when there aren’t any adults around to supervise your actions. Of course, my mom and dad taught us how to stay safe as well. All of that said, here is a very strange fact. I grew up around creeks, rivers, lakes and ponds. My mother and father were strong swimmers, both of my sisters were swimmers. Nobody ever taught me how to swim, and I came very close to drowning while we were at a family picnic on the lake. I was going down the third time and my oldest sister pulled me out of the water. Even after that, none of them took the time to teach me how to swim. When I was about ten years old, I used to go to the public pool with my little girlfriend, she taught me how to swim. I still don’t know why nobody in my family was interested in teaching me how to swim. I had two daughters, and I taught them how to swim when they were very young.

I loved the summer evenings in Oklahoma when I was a kid. We had a huge yard and my cousins would come over and we would play until we were worn out. I’ll bet we must have caught a thousand fireflies and put them in quart jars. My dad would buy a huge watermelon, and everyone would eat watermelon until we could barely walk. Seems like there is always a penalty for having fun. Rolling around in the cool green grass with your cousins and friends, always yielded a good crop of “chigger bites”. Thank goodness for Calamine Lotion.

Seriously, it was a great life. No TV, one land line telephone on a “party line”. We listened to the radio shows when we couldn’t play outside. My mom was a great cook, we had a huge garden with fresh vegetables, even grew peanuts on occasion. My dad was a very good fisherman, we had fresh bass and catfish often. Sometimes we would go down to the creek and catch big bullfrogs and have fried frog legs. My mom was no shrinking violet, she would cook anything from frogs to squirrels to rabbits.

I’m a pretty busy guy, but when I do stop and reflect on my life, I thank God for letting me live in the best of times. Life was simple, crime was not even on the radar. Nobody in our small neighborhood locked their doors. If you needed to borrow something from your neighbor and they weren’t home, you borrowed it and left a note. Everyone looked out for each other. We played outside after dark, no worries. I would tell my mom I was going for a ride on my bicycle and be gone for hours. We lived in virtually total freedom in every way. I know freedom, I love freedom, I cherish it. We must not allow the leftist morons to steal it away from us.

God bless all of you, and your families. Stay strong, fight for your rights and freedom any way you are able.

VERITAS VINCIT ~ LIVE FREE OR DIE