When I retired from law enforcement ten years ago at a relatively young age (52) I walked away knowing only that I wanted something else out of life. Don't get me wrong, being a cop was a good way to make a decent living and during those years I spent out on the street as a policeman I enjoyed the work and even looked forward to it most nights as I laid out my uniform and gear in anticipation of what the evening would bring, what I would see out there and the kinds of people I would encounter. I really did like my job and compared to any number of other professions I always thought I was doing something noble.
But 52 isn't young, is it? It was for me, especially when I looked around at how many other cops I knew and worked with over my own twenty-year run through law enforcement; working around ten years for the Franklin County Sheriff's office and then another 10 with the Obetz, Ohio Police Department. When I became the chief in Obetz one of my sergeants was more than ten years older than me and when I started working there the chief who hired me was 66 years old. I knew then and still know cops still working who are older than I am now. I have sat in meetings with other police chiefs who were in their seventies and I have known some who never retired; they died while still employed because they simply could not take off that uniform and just walk away.
I didn't want that to be me. I wasn't sure what I could expect next except that if I went looking for another line of work I probably wouldn't be able to find much of anything that I would enjoy doing or even something that was worth leaving my dogs home alone for.
But I did test the waters; I went looking for something and it didn't take long for me to find out that 52 really isn't as young as I thought it was; not to the rest of the world out there. By that time I was qualified to do two things better than anything else I ever did professionally; enforcing the laws of the state of Ohio and using my voice and entertainment skills I relied on to earn a living before I first wore a deputy sheriff's star on my shirt. But since I had enough of playing cops and robbers that was off the table and because the broadcasting industry was never in a hurry to hire anyone over 40 except for sales or management positions I soon learned that I would need to refocus, either find something to do totally different than anything I had done previously or just settle for something, anything, regardless of the financial rewards or personal gratification.
The only other route available at that time was to do nothing besides downsizing my life and hope that my retirement income would be enough to see me through to the end. It really was my only option and as the months and first few years into retirement passed it was clear that I would just have to find a way to do it because everyone I knew and could count on through the years were beginning to scatter, probably in fear that I might try to call in a few markers and network through them to find meaningful work.
They needn't have worried about that because although I knew I would have to get used to having less and doing less I wasn't destitute or ready to join the welfare rolls, all it meant was that I would have give up some things, like my car hobby. I have a passion for vintage automobiles and few indulgences in life gave me more pleasure and satisfaction than finding an old Ford that needed a little TLC to bring it back to life. It wasn't an inexpensive hobby by a long shot; I bought and restored a number of them and I lost money on every car I ever tinkered with. But when you have the means to do that and still keep your bills paid the money isn't as much of a consideration as is being able to do something you enjoy besides working for someone else to be able to afford your other obligations.
Some people blow money on things like vacations because they need to get away from the everyday routines but I never felt any sense of wanderlust or need to see things far from home; I never felt like I needed to go somewhere else to be able to relax and my barometer for fun didn't have markings that might include things like fancy bars and nightclubs where I could sip concoctions of fruit and alcohol from a glass with olives floating around topped with paper umbrellas. I never thought that telling someone that I was headed for some exotic land or that I had just come from one would give me much satisfaction. And whenever someone would ask, "don't you ever feel the need to just get away" the answer was always, no.
I guess to some I am an anomaly when it comes to liking my home enough to wanting to be in it as much as I can. I bought into the adage that there really is no place like home so I have made mine as comfortable as I possibly could and I have it set up to be a place I will never be bored in. I couldn't travel ten thousand miles anywhere on this planet and find someone whose company I would prefer over my dogs. Man hasn't yet invented anything that would give more pleasure than what I have right here to feed, play with or cuddle up to. And besides, I never liked waking up in a hotel or in someone else's bed. I like my bed; I like my own coffee and I have been no more than a social drinker at best and I never needed to be a social butterfly to find my own place in life.
Amusement parks were a thrill when I was a kid but not anymore.
To sum up this part of the story I am fine with being a boring man and because I tasted enough of what is out there through 62 years of living I am content with being on no one's schedule or making any further commitments to anyone. My life is good and I don't need to plan one more thing to feel complete. Now, that is not to say that I won't do more, but there really isn't anything else left on the horizon that beckons me. I do see the mirages of things I may want to explore at sometime but I am in no hurry to go in those directions just yet. I will meander my way there at my own stride if and when I decide to and if any of of those journeys fall short of reaching them it is okay. I would gamble to say that I am more comfortable in my own skin than anyone I know; more comfortable than anyone who either still needs to be scheduled by someone else or wants to be because they just cannot stop or wouldn't know what to do next if they did.
So when I retired at what I believed was a relatively young age I did learn that I would have to substitute that lifestyle with another one. I knew that financial survival wasn't going to be my main concern, my police and fire retirement income ensures that I will be okay there, but rebuilding old Fords would have to stop, but so would things like worrying about the price of gas. If I can live with not having a need to go anywhere then the oil companies can raise the price of a gallon as much as they can get away with. I haven't spent $200.00 for gasoline in a ten year stretch! I haven't made a car payment in more than four years because when the lease ended on my last one I gave it back and bought an old clunker.
It is a car now 14 years old and the air conditioner doesn't work; I will have to buy a tail-light bulb for it some day and it rattles a bit but it is my life-boat if I ever need to leave my island. The tires are fair, it starts and I still remember what to do when I get in it. It just looks like Hell compared to all of the others on the street but I am okay with that too; I no longer have to worry about making a good impression on my neighbors, they have come to expect that I will never try to. My deepest concern these days is that my bank account doesn't get hacked and no one is able to get the rest of what I still have. I more than gave just a little at the office when I had to.
* Note to would-be hackers; it wouldn't be worth your time or the risk to even try; there isn't much there anymore, I keep my currency in a sock hidden in my well guarded home. I have two strong frisky American Bulldogs and I still shoot a firearm proficiently. Keep in mind that I was a cop for a number of years and the attitude I needed then to keep me safe is still with me.
After coming to terms with knowing I no longer had anything any employer would want or be willing to meet me halfway with I decided to tinker with my computer keyboard and see if it could do more than just give me the news of the day or a place I could go to stay connected to the outside world. What I discovered was a new way of life. I was never a gamer of any kind so the games this one would allow me to play are no more than things that would clutter my thoughts if I ever decided to log onto one so I never have and never will. In the early years of retirement I became more of a reader than I ever was before and I have filled my brain almost to capacity with information that has made me a smarter man and with history because I have always placed both high on my list of what should be in it. I wouldn't qualify as a buff but I have always wanted to know as much as I possibly could about what happens now and has in the past and what brought us all to where we are now.
Some of the best history I was reading was written by common people telling common stories. And as I continued to read one biography after another I began to see similarities in the lives of others with my own. I didn't change the world when I was doing all I did when I was busier than I am now and I never thought I was among the people who could or eventually would. What I had been doing all of my life had been done by many others and all I ever wanted or strived for was to just do it better if I could. But it was in those similarities where I saw a purpose to also try my hand at documenting and sharing some of my own world and the people I knew. I didn't set out with any grand plan to become a successful writer but I became one.
Now before anyone prematurely jumps to a conclusion I am not trying to make here I only meant that what I have written and shared went exactly where I wanted it to go, in the eyes of readers who would eventually see that writing is more than a passion for me, it is my way of marking territories and leaving a trail to follow.
When I wrote and published my first book all I could hope to gain from it was evidence that I could do it and as I was writing it I remembered something I read in a book written by Bob Greene; he is an accomplished author, network television contributor and former newspaper writer who worked for the Chicago Tribune and many years ago locally in Columbus, Ohio at the now defunct Columbus Citizen Journal. It was a book about his career and in it he wrote that being a newspaper columnist affords a writer the greatest audience any writer might ever know. He pointed out that hundreds of thousands of people would read something he wrote every day whereas very few authors when compared to how many there are can hope that hundreds of thousands of people will read a book they have written. Not just in a day, but ever!
Becoming a writer wasn't about making a lot of money from it or even supplementing my income, although either or both would be awesome! I don't do this expecting those results but I hope that one day I might. Until then I will keep hammering away at the keyboard and hope to leave as few typos behind as possible and be satisfied that I have become an accomplished author; the accomplishment is that after publishing a number of books I have built up a following. It isn't a large following but if you were to define the term fans, I have some. They are people who have enjoyed my work enough to want a little more and with each release of a new book I hear from people I have never met who tell me they have read other books I have written and they have enjoyed them. That to me is accomplishing something.
If I only sold one or just a few I couldn't make this claim. Moreover; the fact that my books aren't backed by large publishers who would be willing to invest huge sums of money to promote them I think I have done very well for just being some guy who likes to do it and goes forward with not much more than the desire to. I could not do this if a third or more of my time still belonged to someone else or if I worried much about what others expect or want from me. My loyal readers know what they will get when they commence reading something I have written. They expect non-fiction stories written by someone who wasn't trained by someone else to write, just a dose of realism in the grand scheme of a world that doesn't slow down enough to look at life through the eyes of a regular person.
A regular person is what I became when I made the decision to retire from a working world where I was constantly under the public microscope. I was under that one for a good deal of my life, especially when I became a deputy sheriff whose job for seven years was to be the spokesman for the largest sheriff's office in the state. My work days back then were filled with reporters and television cameras and every day that I was a cop I knew that I would catch the eye of every stranger who looked in my direction; I would know that I had to be at my very best at all times because police officers are held to a higher standard than some other professions allow.
That for me was tougher than it might sound if you don't consider the years I spent as a radio announcer; I also did that for around 20 years before I was a cop. Radio announcers weren't held to any standard beyond what the Federal Communications Commission allowed or by any a radio station station owner expected. So the standard I held myself to back then was a very loose one at best! I have documented some of that lifetime in various books I have written and I am likely to share even more in the future. Being a disc jockey in the era I was one was pretty simple; just sound good on the radio! What I did away from the confines of studios or on my own time mattered only to me. My listeners didn't care one way or the other what I was up to when I wasn't trying to entertain them.
And just as I walked away from law enforcement when I did I left broadcasting for the same reason; it was time to move on. So now I write and publish books; 18 of of them when this one is finished. I have never been a religious man and I am not comfortable in the company of anyone who regards themselves as one. Those who have read my work or know me personally know that about me and I am very close to weeding out and away from me all of those who cannot accept it. That is all I ever asked of anyone; if you don't like me or something about me then just go. With that said, I do believe in God and even though my feelings about him may differ from what someone else believes he expects from us I hope we can all allow for the possibility that when he allows one door in our lives to close he opens another one and dares us to go through it.
The DJ who became a cop who became a writer! My name is Rick Minerd, nice to meet you if we haven't already. There is another Rick Minerd out there making a name for himself now and whenever I am asked why I never refer to myself as Rick Minerd Senior I tell them because my name didn't change when my son was born. His given name is the same as mine but with a suffix after it. Junior has been a legal part of his name since I signed his birth certificate. I never legally changed mine to include a suffix even though sometimes someone will add it when talking about both of us or to clear up any confusion when mentioning one or the other.
I do believe that God has a plan for us even though I rarely speak publicly of what I think his is for me. I want to believe that what has become my latest phase in life as a writer was somewhere in it all along. I have to believe that because what I am willing to do and able to do isn't easy! For anyone who has never written a book or wondered if they could, go ahead and try it! If my work never makes anyone's best seller list it doesn't mean that it isn't good or that no one cares, it only means it hasn't found enough readers yet. That is not to say that I tout it as being good enough to, only that I believe it is good enough to catch the attention someday of someone who can come into my life and take it to another level. That won't happen if I don't keep at it.
When this one is finished it will be a collection of short stories, including this one and those I have shared and will share in a public blog. What I am doing with this one is something that may never have been done, allowing others to follow along and see a book unfold page-by-page as it is being written. For anyone who might ask, "why would anyone who has already read it that way ever want to buy it" I can only respond with saying, I don't know.
I never begin a new writing endeavor expecting only those who know in advance that I'm doing it to find it. I hope complete strangers who have never before even seen my name will. I want a bigger following than what is already shown up! That means people who don't even know about my blogs. Those who do won't need to buy the book, they can read it here and making it available this way is a small way of thanking anyone who bothered to read it or who has spent money on my other work.
Those who do follow along here are giving me what I want even if they aren't willing to spend a nickel on my work; an audience to play to. I played to many of them as a DJ and many more when I was a cop. I am doing that again in another forum, one that leaves my DNA all over the place to be identified long after I am gone.
Some people retire and build bird-houses or play golf or travel, others retire from doing much of anything ever again at all; some die shortly after they stop working and some spend all of their time scrambling around seeking ways to amuse themselves. For me this is as good of way as any any to spend mine. And someday I may be rewarded far beyond what I could have hoped for my efforts to do it. But what will never come from it is any feeling that I wasted my time because I never climbed up on a shelf like some figurine to wait out my time or became the stereotypical image that some may have of retired persons. I'm still working, albeit at my own pace and making up the rules as I go along.
You can read more by visiting Amazon where all of my work is on display.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=rickery+dickery+books
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