Christmas before Halloween

What a strange time of year late September has become. Each morning I wake to find the air outside around 20 degrees cooler than it was last summer, last month, and I turn on my computer to look for the baseball standings just as I have since early April to see where the Pittsburgh Pirates are and hope that this could be the year they have a shot at going deep into post-season play. They made it to first round play last year as a wild-card team for the first time in 22 years but they haven't made it to the World Series since 1979. 

Maybe this year. 

As I write this piece they are in second place, 2 1/2 games behind the St. Louis Cardinals, the same team that knocked them out of the playoffs last year but it is a very good place to be with just 10 games left in the regular season. We at least still have a shot. All the Pirates need to do is what they have been doing for the past two weeks; surging!  Now riding a 4 game winning streak while winning 8 of their last 10 games. These final ten games have suddenly become their entire season. I don't recall any teams anywhere in Major League Baseball winning 14 in a row so I am expecting a few losses as they close out the regular season but they cannot afford to lose any more than a few if they want to play in October. October itself is what this post is about, not post-season baseball but the Christmas season.

We are more than a month away from Halloween and I have been seeing all around me the reminders that Christmas will be here soon; one neighbor was seen yesterday stapling outdoor lights to her porch just yesterday and another neighbor never took hers down from last year. The other neighbors have been snickering each time she turns them on at night and they have been since mid January. It has looked odd all year and even more so when she was lighting them last summer, last month. In less than a month her house won't stand out as much as it has for the past eight or nine because by then there will be many porches around here all aglow. When the lighted inflatable Santa goes up in the front yard down the street I will know that Halloween cannot be far off.

Poor Thanksgiving; sometime during the month between it and Halloween is when a few local radio stations will begin playing Christmas music; the television stations already have by airing jingles around promos for upcoming holiday programming and during certain commercials for stores that have already put up their displays for pre-Christmas sales. At least two people on Facebook have boasted that they have already finished their Christmas shopping for this year and one young gal, not to be out-flanked by any of the other early birds said she will begin her Christmas shopping for next year on Thanksgiving. Her reason? She loves the competition that wages on Black Friday so she will begin when the stores open the night before and then camp-out that night on the parking lot of a nearby "Best Buy"  store.  Before that weekend ends she hopes to have her Christmas shopping done until the 2016 holiday season.

In  my own home I am already sick of looking at the fall decorations that have surrounded the mantle over the fireplace; the old woman put those up in mid July and sometime this weekend I am sure she will bring the plastic pumpkins and stuffed witches and black cats up from the basement and scatter them about. The day after Halloween the artificial Christmas tree will go up and the bannister leading upstairs will be draped in garland, ribbons and bows and miniature white lights and the pumpkins, cats and witches will be replaced with stuffed animals dressed for Christmas celebrations.

On December 26th all of that will be back in the basement and I won't see any of it again until a few weeks before my birthday in July. But I too am looking ahead to next year's holiday season...sort of. I am hoping that next September I will be logging on to my computer each morning to see if the Pirates are again in the hunt for a playoff spot, but not just as a team who is trying to make it back in but as the reigning World Series Champions! I have a lot to anticipate before this playoff race is settled but Christmas hasn't yet taken over any of of my thoughts. I am far too old to even be giddy that Halloween is approaching and when it passes I still won't be thinking much about Christmas. I guess I am the Neanderthal man that many around me say I am, especially when it comes to traditions I still hold firmly to. Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday since I became too old to play with little-boy toys so when the baseball season is over my next big anticipation will be the last Thursday in November because I generally skip Halloween altogether.

How we do Christmas in the 21st Century is nowhere near how it was done when I was a kid but Thanksgiving is that one holiday out of the year that few bother to make different. Always on a Thursday and with at least one tradition that no one bothers to change; the biggest and best meal of the year served on the most glamorous table setting of the year. Some still remember to give thanks for what they have on that day but no one loses sight of how they want the day to unfold. For me it is the real launch of the holiday season and it lends fodder to my arsenal of words when anyone jumps me for calling it the holiday season instead of the Christmas season. Those with thin skin or who drown themselves in their faith so much that they feel it is necessary to shout how offended they are by the term holiday when we speak of the season that surrounds Christ's birthday. I happen to believe that God is amused by them more than he might understand their rage at everyone who doesn't feel exactly as they do about the months leading up to his son's birthday. My poor Jewish friends, how bad they must feel when someone chastises them for not saying Merry Christmas to them. Many of them have believed as I have for a long time that saying Happy Holidays might be the safest way to go when in the company of people of varying faiths. As a matter of fact, I am rarely in the company of large groups that all believe exactly the same! I think it has something to do with residing in a country that offers freedom of religion.

However, I won't hear any of that outrage from those I can expect to hear it from until after Halloween but to my way of thinking I shouldn't hear it until December 25th because the season really isn't about him for a large segment of America, we have made it about shopping. Those same people who are offended anytime someone says Happy Holidays might be in the crowds now perusing the holiday displays in stores and may even find themselves in front of televisions weeks before the big day watching Rudolf, Charlie Brown and Frosty. They may be dusting off their Christmas figurines and contemplating how to decorate their porches for the season right now; they may even be in the stores this weekend to stock up on decorations because I did receive a flyer in yesterday's mail announcing a sale for them this weekend at Walmart.

Happy Holidays!

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Raiders of The Lost Art

It finally happened; for the first time since 1966 I don't care if the Oakland Raiders win their football game this week. I hope they win but I have grown so used to them not winning that what they do on Sunday really won't disappoint me as it has for nearly all of this young 21st Century. They were a much better football team in the 1900s and in fact were often called "The Team of the 1970s" back when fans like me could expect to see them in the playoffs and even cart home a few Super Bowl trophies. They actually played in the second Super Bowl in 1967 and even though they lost that one to the Green Bay Packers they went on to win six divisional championships in the 70s and in 1976 they won the first of three NFL championship titles they would eventually lay claim to by defeating the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IX. The second would come in 1980 when they beat the Philadelphia Eagles and in 1983 they pulled off a stunning upset by defeating the heavily favored Washington Redskins. Impressive credentials  for a football franchise and when you factor in the sum of 25 playoff victories in total that came from winning 15 divisional titles all told, including a fifth appearance in a Super Bowl in 2002 no one can argue that the Raiders were a team worthy of loyalty to someone like me who became a fan when I was just 14 years old.

Over the years I have owned a number of black and silver football jerseys, hats, t-shirts, coffee mugs, beer steins, a lamp, printed footballs, replica trophies of their championships and even a finely carved wooden football that is engraved with all of the years they were either division, conference and league champs. I know the history of the team's greatest players and coaches from quarterbacks Daryle Lamonica, Ken Stabler, Jim Plunkett and Rich Gannon to its storied coaches, Al Davis, John Rausch, John Madden, Tom Flores and John Gruden and all of those hall of famer's that caught passes while flying through the air and runners that went through and over defensive lines, more like machines than men. And on both sides of the ball played some of the greatest linemen who ever knelt on a scrimmage line. Ray Guy was probably the best punter I ever saw and George Blanda who was a quarterback by trade was as good a field goal and extra point kicker as any in the league. George was a history all his own; known as "The Grand Old Man"  he still holds the record for having kicked the most extra points in NFL history and he did that during four different decades before retiring at the age of 48!  I believe I would be able to go through Raider rosters over the years and pick a fantasy team that would utterly destroy any all-star team picked from the 32 teams now playing in the NFL; that is why I have been a fan for as long as I have and why when I look at the fresh crop of Raiders every year since they last appeared in a Super Bowl and lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers I grind my teeth and shake my head.

If anyone were to ask what I think happened to this storied franchise to reduce it to a punching bag or a bunch of practice skids for other teams I would be lost to explain it. In recent years I have finally known the pain of long suffering Cleveland Browns fans, another team that I have hoped year after year could get better than they have been for decades. I was never a Browns fan but being the team in my mother's hometown I always rooted for them too, only not as vocally or with the passion I have felt and shown for my Raiders. In this young 2014 season they are 0-2 and like in years previously they haven't shown much remorse for letting their fans down, nor have they offered any suggestions or even a hint that they may find their bearings and turn things around.

The attitude is gone, there is no swagger and no resemblance to the franchise that over the years was called "The Magnificent Eleven" or "The World's Team" or "America's Most Wanted"  (that last one for their reputation as the roughest, most penalized team in the league for their aggressive play). I have to believe that a good segment of the so-called "Raider Nation"  feels exactly as I do. We are tired of hearing the excuses that we are rebuilding and that we will be better next year. I mean why lie to the people who love you most? Die-hard sports fans may criticize me for not sticking with my guys but a moniker they can not hang on me is fair weather fan and there is not an iota of validity in saying that real fans stick with their teams regardless of how they perform, at least not any longer for me. I mean just because they have given up and have become losers why should we the fans go down with the ship? Why should I mingle with other football fans who can't stop smiling and bragging about their teams while they insult mine and constantly call me a fool for endorsing one that leaves me disappointed year after year?

I am sick of being asked..what happened to your Raiders?  I am tired of being taunted with...go ahead, admit it, your team stinks. 

Of course they do, but why should I be placed in the position of being the spokesman or go-to guy for that sad fact after every game, year after year. So this is the year it all stops for me; I mean I think it is the year. Who knows, they could turn it around and find the means to one day reclaim the glory that made me a fan 48 years ago but at my age I fear it might not happen in my lifetime. I am tired of not caring what happens in the NFL by the 4th or 5th week of each season. I miss looking forward to Sundays and if the Raider organization isn't willing to reward me for all of my loyalty through the years then what is the point of defending them whenever someone laughs in my face over their ineptness any longer? 

I watched the Cleveland Browns defeat the New Orleans Saints last Sunday and I saw my immediate future; like an epiphany! It was layered in brown and orange with just a hint of black. You guessed it. However, I am too old to dress in logo splattered clothing or to paint my face in team colors and no one has to worry about enduring the annoying sound of hearing me bark like a dog during games, but the time has come for me to let go; excuminate myself from the church of the silver and black and renounce my citizenship from Raider Nation and relent to the dog pound.

Go Browns! 

Cut & Dried

My work as a story maker isn't for everyone and I wouldn't want it to be, I never read another writer's work and thought any of them expected theirs to be either. That kind of writing is okay for instruction manuals, warning labels, labels of contents and weather reports but not for what I want to come from my efforts. I have been asked what it is that I hope to accomplish from the things I do write and the answer is in front of you now; only that someone will read it. I guess I write for the same reasons an artist might paint a picture or a poet tells stories in the genre they work in. That someone else will bother to look at it and appreciate it.

Story maker, you might ask? Yes, I turn experiences and opinions into stories, I don't write fiction or create characters, I write about real people, places and things. This blog is an example of things I have written and published in print books and eBooks and I started it to hopefully send readers from here to book retailers where there is a chance they may want to sample, or even better, begin collecting my other stories. I am an author who wants to be known as one. For a number of years I was known as a radio announcer and for many more as a cop. Two professions that I am very proud of but neither any longer something anyone will ever care about aside from me. Things like that only matter day-to-day as you do them and then when it is over everyone forgets that you were even there.

A time comes when those of us who can, do move on and this is where I decided to move to. Most people will forget that I ever was a voice they could have heard on the radio every day and just as many will forget that I spent twenty years of my life putting on a uniform every day and working out of a cop shop but what might be reviewed from now on is what I am doing now with a keyboard and enough of an imagination to believe I can make a story come to life and endure, hopefully long past my ability to even breathe.  To date I have published seventeen books and if I never write another one I am comfortable with where I was able to go with it, even if it stops here. I do plan to write and publish more but we don't know if we will even be here tomorrow so until I launch another project I will be doing this.

I want to believe that by the end of each story I share the reader will understand it, even if they don't like it or if they don't get it. I think I have a pretty good idea of who you are if you have read this far into this one even if I don't know much more about you. I cannot describe you but I think you are someone who likes to read and someone who either knows me or are only curious about my latest intention. Those who do like it will always tell me and those who don't might tell me that too but that is rare. Those who say nothing at all either didn't like it at all or are people who didn't stick around long enough to see where it is going. I am safely deep enough into this post to tell you who that last group is without any of them getting angry; they won't get angry because they didn't make it this far.

Just as writers differ from one another so do readers; I know people who will only stay focused on subjects that have to do with fun times, politics, religion, sports, entertainment, making money or opportunities to be silly. They are people whose mindset is...well, set, set on what they are only passionate about when it comes to reading anything at all. I liken them to some newspaper readers; like anyone who reads the sports pages before they focus on anything on the front page or the entertainment page before they read the index to know where to turn for the obituaries and never read anything on the front page. They pick up the paper in search of what they want to know more about; the scores, TV logs, who died, who got married, who had a baby or what their favorite comic strip character or movie star is up to.

My blogs and my social networking posts are like newspapers to those people. If I post something to do with one of my favorite sports teams only those who like a different one will respond. If I show anything to do with police work only those who are, were or hope to become a police officer will find it very interesting and weigh in. But if I post something that might suggest to them that I am open to talk about booze, sex or entertainment I can almost always know who will want in on the discussion. It works here as it does in my books. Sometimes I will bait readers with little more than a subject that really doesn't have a lot to do with the body of work and I will always know who the first respondents are likely to be. They aren't responding to the story itself, they are reacting to a few words that gave them an opening to say something clever.

Those people are writers also; their stories are much shorter than mine and they rarely go much further than they were when they started but still they are stories. They tell us who they are and what trips their interests. Those people aren't likely to join in discussions that might really matter to anyone who worries about where we are headed as a whole and I suspect the reason is because they never really took the time to read or try to understand things they don't or anything that requires putting what they do know out there for anyone to scrutinize. Some of the best known people who have very important jobs will never weigh in on a subject other than what their life is all about because they really don't want any one's opinion of them to change. 

They have created an image or a persona they want you to see and hopefully like but they don't want anyone to know that they live and breathe behind a veil, one that someone else might pull back to show who they are beneath the image they designed and continue to nourish. They are people who only read and write talking points they believe will benefit them. Those local politicians who we pay huge sums of money to, to make decisions we entrust them to make can only articulate about their jobs, they rarely have an opinion on anything outside the realm of what they do to earn a living. Foreign and domestic policies are only words they heard at one time or another when watching the news to see if they are in a story somewhere. The only bottom line they might care about is one of theirs, either how the one on the job affects them or what their bank account shows.

Issues of poverty, hunger or the overall world economy probably doesn't keep them awake at night or searching for written dialogue about it and they probably don't care as much about you or your family as they try to make you believe. Because they too are among those I have identified here who have not read as deep into this post as you have. What separates those readers from the others who only hope to read an opening where they can get silly is that they are more well known. This sort of journalism is the same to them; if they don't spot something immediately that they can converse intelligently with, or if it isn't something that resides in their personal world then they have no reason to invest the time to see where it might go. 

A more successful writer than me once said, don't worry as much about the size of your audience as who is in it. I trust that he is right anytime I grab a bunch of words and sort them out to make a story.

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If erection lasts more than four hours, call your doctor...

Seriously? We have come to this? I wonder how many others are sickened by some of the commercials we have to indulge as if television programming itself isn't bad enough. I probably spend less than four hours a week watching TV but still I cannot escape the reminders that we are a pretty sick society. In my latest book "On a Country Road" I shared a story about not being allowed to air radio commercials that were offensive during the dinner hour when I worked for WMNI in Columbus, Ohio. Our boss, William R. Mnich called me one afternoon to tell me he was having dinner and that I spoiled it by allowing a commercial for a jock-itch product to be heard at that hour. Although I didn't run the commercial it was my responsibility for not substituting it with another one when the network news inserted it into their broadcast. 

There was a programming log that listed all of the commercials that would run each hour and anything deemed (by him) as offensive would be highlighted to warn us DJ's to block them during certain times of the day. 

Back to an erection that might last more than four hours; what a vulgar thing to have to imagine, regardless of the time of day or night. It is for me. Like mini-soap operas the commercials for products that help men overcome erectile dysfunction are played out my middle age men who almost always are in the company of a younger, more attractive woman, both with the same thing in mind; they just want to get laid and the commercial is showing  us how they can pull it off but it runs the disclaimer that his erection and maybe yours too will last for four hours. Maybe some viewers hear that and think, "oh my, that sounds interesting"  but not me. Instead an image has now been planted in my head that I don't want there; perhaps his gal, probably tired and weary, nudging him to call his doctor while he looks for excuses not to. "honey, lets not waste this, let's make a marathon out of this and just keep going!"

I try not to see in my mind's eye this guy standing there staring into a mirror and wondering why after all that energy he just exhausted wasn't enough to relax his entire naked body. If that were me I am sure no one would want to see it either but one might if I talked about it enough and played the right song. Because that is precisely what commercials are designed to do.

I guess where I am going with this can be best stated by saying that I never want to have the thought of other men's penis problems, or advantages in my head. But it is hard not to when the commercial begins with some rugged looking guy doing rugged things like forging steel or pulling a calf out of the mud or a pick-up truck with his teeth while an instrumental version of a hard-rock song from the 1960s plays in the background. Then a chick, who if she is his age has really aged well beyond belief shows up at the end looking hot and acting amorous and I am thinking, "he needs a pill to help him with that?"

I cannot feel sorry for that guy and as much as I don't want to imagine old horny men finding a solution to their penis problems I am just as disappointed when I see commercials for feminine hygiene products. A pretty, well built young woman climbing a rope or performing gymnastic stunts while the announcer says "this is not the time for embarrassing moments."  Then the demonstration of blue water being soaked into a  feminine hygiene pad being compared to one that isn't as absorbent. I also don't want the image of senior citizens who have no control over their bladder or their bowels and now need to wear adult diapers. I am not making light of these very serious issues but I wonder if it is really necessary to produce so many commercials for so many available products. Of everything I have written about here I would like to believe that we are smart enough to know where to look for them without having one maker after another tell us how much more superior their product is than everyone elses.

I am pretty sure the doctors we see can make suggestions to help anyone decide how best to deal with these issues and I would hope that we don't really need a flood of commercials to help us make up our minds. When I have a headache I know what will relieve it and I stick with what I know works best. (I found it on my own on a shelf in a drug store several years ago.) If I ever suffer from erectile dysfunction I have a pretty good idea by now of what I should discuss with my doctor if it ever becomes a problem. If my body changes in any way I will probably take it up with him instead of consulting my television set. These are topics I also wrote about in a few other books; "A Best Seller-Diary Of an Angry Old Man" and "62". 

We can all expect what we see other people suffering through or just needing every day as we grow older and when the issues arise we should bite the bullet and pay the docs what they say it will cost for their wisdom because eventually we won't have any choice anyway. I don't think I would want to know anyone who is my age or close to it that wouldn't know what to do of they were suffering from diarrhea, constipation, bladder problems or excessive bleeding or muscle aches. The short solution is to call your doctor if it is something new or if what you were using no longer works. But the makers of these products are capitalists who know that whatever they have to spend to produce and air commercials will come back to them in the form of huge profits so they inundate us with reminders and suggestions on how best to exist with what we know we have to or will some day. 

I think I would have the upper hand in any argument that I would know where to go or where to look for any product that might resolve my body malfunctions and breakdowns. Because if I didn't believe that than I have become a person that none of these products could help anyway. And if I do become that person than just take away my television altogether, I won't need it for anything. I'll just lay there and conjure up some memories of a time when all that was needed in the medicine cabinet to fix me were bottles of cough syrup, mercurochrome, aspirin and a box of Band-Aids, and when TV commercials were more about those products than what happens below the belt-line. Today nothing is taboo, not even pointing out where we have come as a society that not only discusses everything in public, but one that also is expected to be okay with it all.

I began this blog in another post by saying I don't believe Heaven nor Hell will be my final destination and I didn't just write those thoughts, I believe it. I have tasted equal amounts of both during my tenure on Earth. I do believe in God but I also wonder why he allows us to end our lives the way we all will. In the end it won't be pretty regardless of how we live or what we believe. I don't ask him for a reservation next to him someday, although that would be nice if he has that in mind for me; all I can ask for at this point is to not leave me in any place where I am surrounded by people who are so broken down physically or mentally that they need either reminders of how fragile the body really is or ways that might help fix them, or someone to make the decisions for us.

Watch for my next blog post because I may have a change of heart by then and discuss the state of my penis or how well my bladder is doing these days. Maybe I will reveal what is now needed in my medicine cabinet to get me through my days! Sound interesting? 

Relax, I was only kidding.

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Rickery Dickery Books

Not So Social Security

SOCIAL SECURITY...

For some it (Social Security) is Facebook and maybe I have been guilty of going there also to see if what I am up to matters to anyone besides me but my reasons are more about marketing my books and my internet radio station than trolling for reassurance that I am still as handsome as I ever was. That would be a waste of time anyway because I never was that handsome and if someone were to say that I haven't changed much since some time ago then I would have to step back and wonder exactly what they were trying to say. For example; I have an older sister who I will call Patty who has been telling me I am ugly since I was four years old and maybe even longer than that. I don't remember much about her before I was four but I do know that she has never called me "handsome."  

Indeed no one besides an old fat guy who was twice my age has called me that since I was 21. That happened one afternoon when I wandered into a gay bar and he looked at me and asked..."What'll ya have Handsome?"

I didn't let it go to my head because I figured he probably said that to every guy who bellied up to the bar; probably his way of just being social or hoping I would leave him a decent tip. But this post isn't about any of that, it is a follow-up to a story I wrote in a book in the summer of 2014; in fact it was released on my 62nd birthday and for obvious reasons it was called "62". I began writing that one in May and in early June I talked about looking forward to filing for Social Security benefits but expecting a long and complicated process from the Social Security Administration. I mean, after all, it is a tentacle of the United States government and anything that has that stamp on it is bound to be a messy process. 

I had heard horror stories about what others have had to endure when it was their time to ask for a little bit of the money back that the feds had sucked from their paychecks through the years and I expected  a similar experience when I predicted in that book that I would need to have the patience of Job and that I would have to bring my own scissors to cut through miles of red tape when it was my turn to get in line. They didn't let me down; it was worse than I wrote that it might be. It all started in April when I contacted the SSA to inquire about applying for my benefits 90 days before I turned 62. I was told by a gal that I could do that but I would be better off if I waited until 30 days before and that it would be a very simple process that I could do on line and like a dummy I believed her. I know I should have remembered that I was talking to a paid employee of an agency run by the U.S. government but I let my guard down and hung up, looking forward to going to their website on June 26. 

What I found was an application there that looked simple enough but by the second page became something far from being easy to navigate. Before I was half-way through the third page their system logged me off and invited me to try again. I did two more times and after the third attempt to make it to the 4th page I was advised that applicants are only given three tries before being blocked for ninety days. That was explained in a phone call to them that it was set up that way to prevent fraud and that if I still wanted my money I could set up an appointment for someone from the SSA to call me back within 60 to 75 days.

As they say on Facebook...WTF?

So I made the appointment and on September 15th they did call me back. In the book I wrote that I expected to be hammered hard by them because I had read that if I was receiving another retirement that I also paid into than my expected SS benefits would be reduced, regardless of what they owed me, and even though I paid into their system for more than 30 years I would be penalized and probably receive less than half of what I would have received if I took any of the money that was owed to me from the other system I paid into. They kept their word; I was shocked at the amount more than I expected I would be when we finally worked it out.

Sometime within the next 45 days I will receive something from them but I have already lost what I hoped I would get thirty days past my 62nd birthday. Their reason: I waited too long to file to qualify for it. But still I am happy; elated actually, because that step of becoming a senior citizen is done and because pretty soon I will at least get a few dollars more than I was getting every month. 

But this post isn't as much an attempt to bitch about all of that as much as it is a public service announcement of sorts. One for anyone contemplating applying for and receiving what is owed to them by Uncle Sam when the time comes for notifying him that you want it. The law says you can start the process ninety days before your 62nd birthday, something to consider. The other reason I have written this piece is because if you have read my book it left you hanging on this topic. I finished it and released it before this nightmare ended. I just figured someone might want to know how my prediction turned out when I wrote that I expected another bumpy road enroute to old age. I found it!

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No Heaven, No Hell. Listen for me on the rails.

No Heaven, No Hell

When I die I will not go to either place. Stop shaking your head and wondering why there is a picture of a book about eight years of a disc jockey's life here and what it has to do with any of this, read on; in the 62 years I have been on this planet I haven't found any reason to believe there are such places for me to wonder about after this life ends.When I die I am pretty sure that I will not be found in some deep, dark hole sitting on a pile of hot rocks with my feet soaking in a steady stream of lava wondering how I screwed up and went in the wrong direction; nor do I believe that a meadow in the sky awaits, where I will spend eternity with a smile on my face, loving everyone around me as I learn all the secrets of the universe and spend my time having meaningful discussions with all of my loved ones who got there before me. 

But again, for the sake of argument I believe such places don't exist for me, I hope one or the other does for everyone else. Just don't look for me wherever you end up! No one has ever been able to mutter even one paragraph that has made me believe that they may know something that I think I don't on this subject. "I think I don't know" would be the definitive answer were I to ask another person if there really is a Heaven or Hell, but so far no one has come clean, not even those wealthy television evangelists who sit in the laps of luxury looking into the TV cameras and imply they know all of the answers or where to find them. I don't believe them anymore than I believe the well dressed people who have come to my door through the years with a book in one hand and a fistful of literature in the other who claim to have witnessed something they are hoping I will. I hope I am wrong for the sake of those I love and those I despise. 

For the best of them I hope their journey to the great beyond is a smooth and pleasant one and that they find what they hope is there and for anyone I ever said "go to Hell" to I hope they descend quickly and that when they get there they are surrounded by others exactly like them. I am inclined to believe more in a place like Purgatory for me than I am Heaven or Hell and that if there is anything after the heart stops beating, the eyes close and everything becomes dark and quiet we may all see one another again. So here it is; I don't think I am leaving when I die. Purgatory probably isn't there for me either. In my latest book I described myself as someone surely destined to lock horns one day with the Devil; if you believe there really is one.

Some might say that I was not a well behaved young man during that time in my life while others may agree with with me, that I was probably more like everyone else if we were all really honest about ourselves than many are willing to be. The difference may only be that I am not as protective of my weaknesses or misgivings that some are of theirs.

As a writer I am compelled to let as much hang out as I think is necessary to tell good stories that a reader may want to stay with long enough to see how it all ends. Pretty words and catch-phrases has never been my stock and trade because that isn't how I have lived and the bulk of my work is about that. This book certainly is; it describes where I was when I was a very young guy with an attitude that was both toxic and unforgiving, yet I don't think I was a bad guy and I don't think I was much different than most people around me. If I were to allow myself to believe my behavior then was any kind of yardstick to measure my destiny beyond this life I would have a whole lot of confessing and apologizing to do and I rarely do either. 

If I believed as my Catholic family does; that I could make an appointment with a priest and receive his forgiveness for my sins than I would spend most of what's left of this life having a conversation with him and I would never get out of the confessional on my own power. I am sure there are some who would say, "well, if that's what it takes."

No thanks; "On a Country Road" is not a book about bad behavior as much as it is a book about being honest about who I am and surviving some tough choices that I made early in my life. The irony in how it relates to what I have said in this blog post is that it is also about how a very fine Catholic family helped me discover who I was then. With the help of some pretty good people it was during that time in my life when I really discovered the importance of just being who we really are and accepting it. I came out of high school with not much going for me than a view of what everyone else was doing. I wasn't headed for college and within a year after I was finished with academics I also knew that the road ahead was not paved nor was it a straight shot to wherever I was headed, it would be rocky at best, with a lot of bumps and curves because I was an unmarried teenager with a crummy job and a pregnant girlfriend. 

For a number of years I wondered if I was on the right one, if maybe I took a wrong turn somewhere and was traveling down one to nowhere in particular. But I did find my road; one that was lined with rusted automobiles and broken down houses at times, as well as with people that loved me and some who hated my guts. But that road was not a dead end; instead it was one that stretched for miles and miles and I never looked for a way off of it. I believed that if I followed it and was willing to believe I could just stay on it then it would take me somewhere better than anyplace I had ever been before. I think I got there, but at what cost, and if I had to do it again would I have looked for an easier path? 

No.

Today I think of my life as one traveling a different kind of road that will take me somewhere else, maybe even a better one than I have ever been before; this time it is an imaginary one made of iron rails straddling railroad ties. I am headed somewhere in the direction of a train horn that you hear off in the distance.  When you hear it you have no idea where it is going, only that the sound it leaves behind is brief and then gone. I may never get off of this one. My journey now allows me to relax more than I ever did before and my time is mostly mine and I have much to reflect on. I share the stories of where I have been and where I think I am headed with anyone who is either curious or for whatever their reasons might care to compare themselves with me. Not that I solicit such comparisons but I do welcome any. 

I stopped working for other people a long time ago and now I work for me. My profit margin has shrunk a little since then but through my writing and my work with internet radio broadcasting I am still the guy I said I was nearly forty years ago. Within the pages of this book you may discover that was my plan all along! Go to this link to find out.

On A Country Road (A DJ Life)