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Stories From My CaveGrandpa Joe Teaches Me How to Poach
GRANDPA JOE TEACHES ME HOW TO POACH A DEER I was a young boy, about nine years old when my dad and my Uncle Cosme Chacon took me hunting up the mountain. The only problem was it was not hunting season. Some people would probably call that poaching, but in...
GRANDPA JOE IS BURIED
Jose Odeceo Torres was buried March 24, 2001. I talked at his funeral. But there is more to the story than his last days. There is more to his life than fighting cancer and suffering and dying a long slow death. Once he was a small boy, he grew to be a wild strong...
Old Black Chalkboard
The Eyebrow Thing
The Banana Boat song in Tonga
Cookies for Gino
I have lived long enough that I have experienced the death of loved ones and strangers; some expected, almost welcomed, the end of a long painful journey. Other times; tragically, unexpected their death felt like a blow to the side of my head with a...
Gary Goes Glamping
Okay, I am on another adventure with the in-laws camping at Maroon Bells in Colorado. We call it camping, but it is nothing close to how I used to camp. Apparently, what I do now is called glamping and I am not even sure if it is legal in Utah. Since...
Three Green Berets and a Bottle of Bourbon
Occasionally people have enough self-awareness that they understand that something they are witnessing is bigger than themselves. Moments such as when man stepped on the moon for the first time and September 11, 2001. Abe Lincoln had clarity of purpose and...
Communicating: Then and Now
“What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Some of life’s best advice comes from movies like Cool Hand Luke. I am in the communication business, but I am having a harder time understanding what people are saying to me and I don’t know if it’s my...
Season to be Happy
My too kind and loving wife said that it is the holiday season, and I should be happy. My first reaction was to say bah-humbug mind your own business. There is a good deal of pressure in America to be happy. If you are not happy, then by golly...
Sawubona
Every eleven minutes someone dies by suicide, even more alarming is that two people attempt suicide every minute. Statistics don’t put a human face to the pain of those that suffer from depression resulting in suicide and for those that are left to unravel...
Good Old Days…Maybe
You know I am getting old enough that my idea of a good time is to raise a garden. I go out and water things with a hose just because it takes longer. I have had too much time to think lately, and I am kind of missing the good old days. Forty years from...
Hiking with Paul
The best thing about living in San Juan County are the people and the landscape. Being retired has some perks, it’s not all about predicting the weather with my hip. I wake up and can’t remember what day it is, so I call it Saturday. The only day...
My Shower
I am really quite beside myself this morning. After my run, I hopped in the shower and went to grab the no-name shampoo that you can also use to clean the garage floor with; but it was gone. So I started looking around and found myself surrounded by my too...
THE END OF THE WORLD
This is my second day in Tonga. I am here on a humanitarian mission and to teach people how to be resilient. I would like to share with you my first lesson. We met a man and his wife. His name was Mosese Sa’afi. He was...
Airplane Ride Over SJC
It is a sunny Wednesday morning, and I am boarding a 1948 Cessna 170 with my too kind and loving wife and a friend. He doesn’t like a lot of attention, so we will just call him Dakodta. First thing that comes to mind is that a 1948 plane is 75...
Standing on a Corner
I am literally standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona, and it is such a fine site to see. There is a girl my Lord, who I happened to be married to and she is not in a flatbed Ford, but is slowin down to take a look at me. Mostly, she is rolling her...