It's Been A Long Long Road

In 1984, I was an 18 year old boy working a very tough job in a warehouse for a company that sold horse trailer parts and equipment and custom conversion equipment for vans and pick up trucks. This job was high paced and required extremely heavy lifting, in an atmosphere that was less than idea for safety. With that said, today marks the 24th anniversary of the day that changed my life forever, the day that I injured myself.


I was attempting to remove a box from a seven or eight foot high shelf that held roughly a 200 pound rubber mat. The trick to getting these boxes down from their perch was to push it from the back side until it was almost halfway out. Then you went around to the other side and climbed up on the bottom shelf, grabbed hold of the box and jump down which, in theory, would cause the box to slide down to your waiting arms to guide it the rest of the way. That's the way it should work, unless the contents of the box shifted too fast and you were not able to beat it to the ground.

To my detriment, this was the case on July 31, 1984. The box managed to slide on top of me before I was able to brace myself for the hit. The weight was too much for my back to handle and the result was a crash to the ground with 3 disks rupturing under the pressure. At that very moment, I was introduced to a pain that I had never dreamed could exist. As an indestructible 18 year old (in my mind at least), I was about to enter into a world of pain that most people don't experience until they reach extreme old age.

So here I am, 24 years later, still dealing with debilitating pain. After 5 open back surgeries and too many lesser procedures to count, you would think that medical science would have been able to provide some relief, but alas, that is a dream that alludes me.

You would think that an accident of this magnitude would cause a person to be bitter, and it definitely has the potential to do just that. Just like any other black cloud that enters into our lives, there has been a silver lining to be found here. I have been blessed with the opportunity to be a stay at home dad for my boys and have been able to guide their lives in a way that has helped them to grow to be really good men. I am convinced that in today's busy world of two income families, children are all too often the ones who have to bear the brunt of the cost. I am in no way casting aspersions on those who do not have the luxury of keeping a parent at home to raise their kids, but I wish that everyone had the ability to do so. While we have not been able to live a lavish lifestyle due to our financial situation, I must admit that I am extremely satisfied with the life we have. If pain is the price to pay for the blessings we enjoy, it has been worth every minute of it, but that's just my two pennies.

Big Concert Review

It is around 1:30 in the morning and we just got home from an intimate concert for around 20,000 at the Superpages.com Center in Dallas. Tonight’s concert was billed as the most important musical event of the year as three major bands from the 70’s & 80’s combined forces to provide a monster show that rivaled the legendary line ups of Rock & Roll’s distant past.

First up was one of my favorites of all time, Cheap Trick. Their music was really good, they played a solid set of all of their biggest hits peppered with a few lesser known numbers. The obligatory Kiss album was thrown into the audience as they sang Surrender and the crowd was excited when I Want You To Want Me started up. All in all, they put on a decent show, the time between songs seemed a little long but what do you expect with all of Rick‘s guitar changes (it takes a little time to lug a 5 neck guitar on stage). One thing that was new, at least to me, was Tom Petersons 12 string bass guitar, very cool. The crowd was rather thin at the beginning of their set but was steadily filing in towards the end of the set. I have seen Cheap Trick when they were the headliner and was a little disappointed (not much) in their performance tonight.

After the Cheap Trick set was scratched it was time for the Wilson sisters to grace the stage with a powerful performance. I have never seen Heart in a live show and was not disappointed. Dreamboat Annie was in tip top condition to belt out the tunes with her trademark lungs, that girl can whale! And then there is Nancy, sweet Nancy, absolutely one of my top teenage crushes, alive and in person. There was just something about such a pretty girl who can pound an axe the way she does that just set the pre-pubescent hormones of a little redhead into overdrive. But I digress, these ladies still have what it takes to bring down the house in short order. Their band was spot on and ripped through almost all of their greatest hits with ease. The only downside that I saw was the fact that they played two cover songs, one from The Who and the other from Led Zeppelin. Both songs were perfectly executed , but it just seemed to me that they have a large enough library of hits that they shouldn’t have to rely on covers to get the job done (I like to pick nits).

And then we witnessed what is arguably one of the most exciting and power packed performances that I have ever seen, when Journey took the stage. If you haven’t heard yet, Journey is making a comeback that will blow you away, if you are a fan. They have struggled over the years trying to find someone to fill in the gap left in the band after Steve Perry left. They have had some really good front men, but it just didn’t seem to jive. Well, after the last singer took his leave, Neal Schon (lead guitar) decided to start cruising the You Tube pages to see if there was anyone out their that would catch his eye. To make a long story short, his eye got caught and put into a massive eye lock. He came across a little cover band from the Philippines named the Zoo. Their front man was a young man named Arnel Pineda who had mastered Steve Perry’s voice to an almost eerie perfection. He was brought to the US where he auditioned and was given the chance of a lifetime, to front the band Journey. Well, needless to say, the crowd was pumped to see Journey and was not disappointed in the least. They managed to get in most of their major hits in the hour and a half set and added a couple more in their 30 minute ovation to boot. These guys were on fire, Neal is tighter than I have ever heard him before and Arnel is a mad man, the Tasmanian Devil for some reason comes to mind while watching him work the stage. If you don’t get the chance to see them live, pick up their latest release, Revelation, at Walmart, it has two CD’s and a DVD of this concert tour. We had real problems finding our way out of the theater because we had our faces rocked off, this was one of the best shows that I have ever seen, hands down, but that’s just my two pennies.

Stop The World, I Want To Get Off!

Over the past several months, I have been busy researching my families history and delving into the memories, the myths and the unmistakable tall tales that make my families past so interesting. As I rummage around through the proverbial dusty cobweb filled attic, that holds memories of bygone eras, I began remembering some of my own past adventures and have noticed that I have a real longing in my heart for the times that have subtlety slipped away.

In these times of high speed communications, fast paced living and the ever consuming need for instant gratification, I wax nostalgic for a time that was much more simple and one that moved at a much slower pace. A time when children were allowed to play outside with the neighborhood kids without fear of a sexual predator, with less than honorable intentions, having access to their innocence. A time when you were not assaulted with raw footage on the television of the latest plane crash or high speed car chase. A time when a ten dollar bill was sufficient to fill your tank with gas or pay for a date to a first run movie with you sweetheart.

Although I know that those times were filled with their own share of problems and worries, it just seems to me that the simpler life we lived made the social ills of the time a little less hard to swallow. We have grown accustomed to knowing what is going on in the Middle East Wars with just a brief satellite lag time. We have found that we can read our friends latest thoughts in almost real time on Twitter or see our friends & families photographs in record breaking time just by viewing their MySpace page. We can buy the latest, can't live without it now widget just by pressing the buy now button on e-bay and have it at our front door in less than a week thanks to UPS & Fed Ex.

I must plead that I am guilty of freely partaking in the new technology, but at what cost? Has all this new technology really made me a better person? Or has it been a cocoon that gives me the option to avoid the world outside by turning to the virtual world inside? Has it really helped my personal relationship skills or has it merely made me a better typist?

As I have been digging up skeletons I have had some great memories of places and things that are no longer around. Like pulling into the subway station and hearing the chime as you walked up the ramp into Lenard's department Store downtown. Or seeing the Lisa Marie parked next to the fence at Meachum Airport every time Elvis came to town. Swimming under the cross bars of the dock at the Barbrook Swimming Pool in Haltom City. Eating pancakes at Sambo's Pancake House while reading the story of how butter was actually invented, on their menu.

Or the simple pleasures of just being a kid, like walking barefoot in the summer and letting your toes squish into the tar on the road as it was warmed by the hot summer sun. Chasing fire flies and collecting them in mayonnaise jars in the warm evening air. Running wild in Little Fossil Creek fighting Indians and pirates almost every day during the long days of summer. Creating mischief like stealing empty milk jugs from back porches to have coke and candy money for the day or smoking grapevine until you were sick at your stomach.

This was all in a time that was before the reality of life began to hit me as an adult and I'm sure that my parents did not see the world in the same rosy shades that I did but it does seem to me that times were much simpler then. I wish that my boys could have experienced life to the extent that I did when I was much younger, but I'm sure that they will look back on their childhood as the much simpler times and wish that they could real in the years that have slipped away from them too. I guess it all has to do with your prospective of life, but I believe that the good old days are just that and have slipped away down that long dark well of time only to be relived in our memories.

If you are interested in finding some local history, may I suggest that you visit the Fort Worth Architecture Forum at http://www.fortwortharchitecture.com/, they have a ton of old memories in the Local History forum and links to old pictures of the area. It is a real fun place for history buffs to play, but that's just my 2 pennies.
~marty

Minimum Wage Increase or Hold Onto Your Wallet

Our "leaders" in Washington, while pandering to the lower economic sectors of our nation, in their infinite wisdom decided a few years ago that it was necessary to begin implementing a substantial increase in the minimum wage. Their rational was that we needed to raise the entry level pay of the nations work force up to a "living wage". This is an extremely noble idea, that will have disastrous implications for our nations economy.

As with most other actions made by the current gang of scoundrels in power, this move demonstrates that they are out of touch with the reality of making a living, that our people face daily. As minimum wages are artificially increased due to government edict, the effect will result in a net loss of entry level jobs, an incentive for employers to turn to illegal immigrants to fill these positions at a much lower rate of pay and an increase of the overall cost of living for all of us.

Employers will now face the following options due to this move to garnish political favor:
1. Absorb the costs of increased wages.
2. Pass along the added cost of production to the consumer in higher prices.
3. Make cuts in the number of employees which in turn will increase the workload on those who remain.
4. Begin skirting the law all together by employing undocumented workers who will work under the table for lower wages.
5. Search for off shore facilities that are exempt from Federal edicts.
6. Close up shop all together.

Out of the five options listed above, it is a safe bet to assume that option 1 will not be a front runner. The cost of consumer goods, which have already experienced unprecedented increases due to a sharp rise in material costs, will begin to see a steady increase that will have the net effect of literally pricing the recipients of this “gift” right out of the market.
This in turn will force more people to begin relying on government social welfare programs. The number of displaced employees, due to staffing cutbacks, will undoubtedly feed this increasing line of Americans finding themselves reliant on government handouts.

Along with the devaluation of the Dollar due to the Federal Reserves and the Congressional penchant of resorting to the practice of fiat economics, we will begin to see a steady increase in the cost of living which has the potential to pose dire consequences to the American way of life that we have grown accustom to. Our country would be well served if these socialist “do gooders” would get their fingers out of the soup and allow the market place work through the laws of supply and demand. If an employer cannot fill vacant positions at a low wage, he will be forced to adjust his wages to be comparable to the market in which he does business. This will level the playing field for all by bringing the cost of living down according to the free market demands.

I am not very optimistic about the path we find ourselves on at the moment. I fear that the socialistic tendencies that our elected officials display, both parties included, will not bode well for our way of life, but that’s just my two pennies.

It might look like I'm doing nothing, but at the cellular level I'm really quite busy.

A Little Girl Named Bear
I have just been killing time perusing the Internet and came across a really interesting video of a 6 year old little girl, named Emily Bear. Emily is an accomplished piano player, to say the least. i cannot comprehend how someone, so young, can possess the talent that this young lady demonstrates. I wanted to share the video, of her on the Ellen show, with you... enjoy.



Well, Hello Dolly!
As I write, Tropical Storm Dolly is cranking up in the Gulf of Mexico and has her eye on far South Texas. It looks as if she will gain Hurricane status at any time and will make landfall somewhere between Corpus Christi and Northern Mexico. This story interests me because Jeromie just returned from South Padre Island, this past Saturday. He said that the waves were getting larger when they left and that they had been wondering if something was cooking out in the Gulf. Hopefully, Dolly will make landfall north of the South Padre area, onto the King Ranch. This is a huge expanse of real estate that has no human habitation, to speak of, on it. South Texas needs the rain... got to keep them cantaloupes watered.

STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!
The noon news just showed a story about a daycare in Dallas that forgot to remove a 19 month old baby from the transportation van. This is Texas and it is the middle of July, any brain dead idiot knows not to leave kids in cars in this heat, except these meat heads. You guessed it, another child needlessly killed by the negligence of a daycare worker entrusted to provide for her safety. When will these people learn, how many more babies have to die?

As The Worm Turns

Do you ever get the feeling that we are being sold a bill of goods by the liberal elites in this world. We have been forced to listen to Chicken Little screaming, "the sky is falling" for way too long now. The high priest of "Global Warming", Al Gore, has been lecturing us for the past 8 or so years about the end of the world as we know it being right around the corner. This charlatan has preached that we need to reduce our "carbon footprint" by purchasing carbon offsets, sold by who else? Al Gore, himself. All the while, his "carbon footprint" dwarfs that of the average mope who actually works for a living.


Well, now it looks as if the worm is finally making it's turn. The junk science, that is AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming, the warming of the atmosphere caused by human activity), is being proved to be just that, junk science. The United Nations has begun to scale back it's alarmist rhetoric and is reversing itself on it's dire predictions of doom and gloom.


The following is from an article from Onenewsnow.com that reports on the crumbling of the flimflam that we have been subjected to by these snake oil salesmen disguised as global do-gooders.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Business/Default.aspx?id=74767


U.N. IPCC scales back climate change report
Pete Chagnon - OneNewsNow - 4/8/2008 10:45:00 AM

Marc Morano, a spokesperson from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee minority staff, says the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is scaling back on its previous dire predictions of catastrophic climate change.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) says that with each successive report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there is less cause for alarm than previously thought. Morano points out that in the recent 2007 report, man's alleged impact on "global warming" was scaled back by 25 percent while ocean-level rise was also reduced. According to Morano, this is the 13th year that rapid warming has been predicted and advertised in the media by Al Gore and the U.N., but it has failed to occur. "So at some point, they're getting worried -- and now you have record winter in the Northern Hemisphere and record winter in the Southern Hemisphere, [as well as] global cooling to the extent from 2007 to 2008 that was rather significant and surprised a lot of scientists," Morano contends. He also says the U.N. is realizing and acknowledging that there is continually less cause for alarm on the subject. "And now you have a cooling .... [But] NASA scientist James Hansen [is] trying to say 'well, warming will resume soon, but this is just [a] natural factor [with] the ocean circulation,' but the fact of the matter is the head of the U.N. [IPCC] Rajendra Pachauri came out recently and said we have to investigate this apparent temperature plateau," Morano notes. The Senate committee staff member contends Al Gore is currently trying to sidestep the issue.


While I am concerned that we, as humans, are called by our maker to be good stewards of his creation, we have been made to feel guilty over a natural phenomenon, the cyclical nature of global temperatures, that we have absolutely no control over. We have been on the receiving end of a collective brow beating by those who wish to abscam with as much of our money as they can and by the socialist elitists who are focused on the destruction of the American way of life that our forefathers spilled their blood for. It is time that we, as free American citizens, tell these blow hards to take their carbon offsets and AGW bullcrap and shove it as far as their slimy hands can reach.

In my honest opinion, criminal investigations should be in the works to ensure that these thugs pay for the harm that they have wrought upon the unsuspecting people of our nation, but that is just my 2 pennies.

No Trees Were Harmed In The Transmission Of This Message, However, Billions of Electrons Were Temporarily Inconvenienced

Frustrations

Have you ever felt like you are the fire hydrant that the dog keeps pissing on? Well, that's where I am right now. I have been in a real funk dealing with my pain level. A few weeks back, I took a fall in the bath tub and I have had a hard time recovering from it. It seems that all the little gains that I have made have vanished and I am back at square one. It is hard to see the sunshine in your life when it is covered with a big black cloud. I know that I am not the most cheerful person in the world right now but I am trying very hard to not be a sad sack. I give mega props to Joyce for putting up with my sorry ass when I am in the hole like this. She is my strength and I appreciate her very much, even if I neglect to tell her so. I don't think I could make it without her unconditional love and support, she is cherry!

Last night was kind of tough, I was awake every 30 minutes or so and I had to get out of bed about every two hours to try to shake off the pain. However, during one of my moments of consciousness, I heard a great song on the satellite radio. It is Hocus Pocus by the Dutch band Focus. You cannot be in a bad mood when this song is playing, it is hilarious. You can listen to it on my MySpace page ro find it at Project Playlist.


Yahoo! has made a big mess out of their My Yahoo! page. They have decided to switch all of their accounts to the "New" My Yahoo! home page, which leaves content that was stored on the beta page inaccessible. This is a big pile of doo doo, as far as I am concerned. I have grown to love the Personal Notes section on the beta page and have stored most of my Internet information on there for handy access. Well now that we have made the switch, all of that content is lost in the ether.

They did make a way for us to import our bookmarks from the beta page to the new page, so I guess that counts for something. Hopefully they will read my many rants on their comments section and find a way to restore my files. I guess this just serves as a big lesson for me to not put all of my eggs in one basket, as it were. Oh well, I will just listen to Hocus Pocus and put on my happy face.

No Trees Were Harmed In The Transmission Of This Message,
However, Billions of Electrons Were Temporarily Inconvenienced

Been a while...

It's been a while since I have posted, I keep telling myself that I am going to get on the ball and start paying more attention to keeping things current, oh well.

So here is what has been going on for the past few months....

We have had two family reunions since I last posted.

We went to Glen Rose, for the Hickey Reunion, and had a really good time. Our numbers were

down dramatically this year and it showed, but all in all it was a good time for all. We had some nifty shirts made up for our family to wear on Saturday and also had some more stuff made up to add to the raffle. Hopefully, next year, we will have a better turn out.

We went to my uncle Bob's house for the 4th of July and had the Renfro family reunion along with the 4th celebration. We had a really good turn out of almost 100 people. A ton of food was prepared and devoured. We burned up a few dollars worth of fireworks and had a real enjoyable evening. As the night was coming to an end and the last rockets were being lit, there was a huge explosion right in the middle of our viewing area. I got hit in the side of the face and chest with flying debris and when the initial shock wave subsided, there was a second burst which caught Joyce's shirt on fire and burned her leg. Come to find out, the next door neighbor decided that it would be cool to send two shells into the air at the same time and loaded the chute with two shots. The tube could not withstand the extra pressure and ruptured, causing the first shot to deploy only about 15 ft in the air while the second one made a bee line across his property towards our unsuspecting party goers. These shells contained a double action shot which had a time delay so the first impact was the big pretty burst that everyone oooohhhh's and awwww's at when it is in the sky and the second blast is the secondary blast that compliments the first. It is all good and well at 100 or so feet up, but 12 inches off of the ground is a completely different story. Thankfully Joyce's shirt took the brunt of the damage and no one was seriously injured. The lesson learned: follow directions on fireworks packaging! Hey, it's not really the 4th of July until someone gets to take a ride to the hospital in an ambulance, anyway.

I have been working on T-shirt designs that will work with a little screen printing system that I bought a few weeks back. Let me know what you think.

The boys of Planning Yesterday have been busy over the past few months with concerts, Battle of the Band competitions and studio time recording their first three songs. They are doing great and have begun to garnish a little attention from some Music Industry types. Things are looking good.

Jeromie left this morning for Camp Padre down at South Padre Island, with Providence. They are the drama team this year and will be busy for most of the next week. I bet they will have a great time down there.

Here I still sit, riding the pill bottle swimming in the haze. I don't know if things will ever change for the better, but with my families support I am able to tolerate where I am at right now.

Se la vie... until next time,

~marty