Raise the Jolly Roger!

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It is a tale of one of the most storied franchises in baseball history that has come back to life over the past two years; they are the buccaneers with bats, big ones that swing for the fences to conquer their foes and like the swashbucklers of old, they are back on the waters in Pittsburgh, camped near the confluences of the flows known as Three Rivers, the Allegheny, the Monongahela and the Ohio and the natives there are once again excited and restless! Not from fear as visiting teams from other towns may be, of what this one is capable of, but of anticipation that these guys have once again restored order and saved the city from another year of being knocked around and vilified as losers; something that had been happening there for several years. These Pirates came out of hiding and a two decades-long exile to once again be reckoned with when they earned a spot last year in the 2013 Major League Baseball playoffs and then came back again in the summer of 2014 to prove that was no fluke, that finally the Bucs are back!

Raise the Jolly Roger!

It is the battle cry of sons, grandsons and great-grandsons of Pirate fans around the world, echoed by their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers who know the story of Honus Wagner, "The flying Dutchman", Pittsburgh's Hall of Fame shortstop from 1900-1917 whose likeness on a baseball card is the Holy Grail for collectors, now worth nearly three million dollars for its rarity. Only 60 to 200 of those cards were printed while even fewer were ever distributed and the whereabouts of the most valuable one still in existence is now believed to be in the possession of Ken Kendrick, owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

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Production of that card ceased when Wagner insisted that The American Tobacco Company stop using his likeness on a product he didn't approve of. He didn't want young fans to have to buy cigarettes to get his baseball card. I have heard tales of some people tearing down walls and ripping up floorboards of old homes hoping to find one and indeed one man in Ohio did come across one in recent years, along with a dozen or so other cards from the early 1900s while going through his grandfather's attic; he sold the collection at auction for a little more than a half-million dollars!

In the decades to follow the Pirate legacy continued to build with names like Bill Mazeroski whose ninth inning home run against the New York Yankees in the 1960 World Series remains one of the greatest baseball stories ever told and seen in videos. His jersey sold last year for more than $633,000.00.

The greatest Pirate of them all, Roberto Clemente who was killed on New Year's Eve 1972 when a plane he was on crashed. It was delivering relief supplies to Nicaragua following a devastating earthquake there.

It remains one of the saddest stories ever to surround the drama we call baseball. The crash happened just a year after his Pirate team had won their second World Series title against the Baltimore Orioles and after making it back into the playoffs a few months earlier. 

There is a bridge named after him next to the stadium and one of baseball's most coveted awards bares his name; The Roberto Clemente Award is presented each year to the player who best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship and community.

And then of course there is that team-mate of his that has been my favorite ball player since I began following baseball, Willie Stargell who played on the 1971 and 1979 World Series championship squads; the man everyone called "Pops" in his later career; a bronze statue of his likeness stands guard in front of the stadium known as PNC Park as a reminder of those glory years when Pittsburgh was the home of perennial contenders for baseball's glory year-after-year.

PNC is named among the most beautiful sports facilities in America every year by publications that know about such things. Once again this year there is a home-team worthy of playing in such a palace.

Someday I hope to visit it as I did the stadium in Pittsburgh that preceded it (Three Rivers Stadium)...

and the one the Buccos played in before that, old Forbes Field.

Yes, I have been following these swashbucklers of a proud legacy for a very long time, for more than fifty of my own 62 years and the last time I saw a team like the current one was back in 1991-92, the last time the Pirates made it into post-season play in back-to-back years. Oh yes, they are back! All of those autumns us die-hard Pirate fans suffered through and whispered "maybe next year"  are behind us for now and hopefully will be for a very long time to come. They may not go all the way to the World Series this year but I am more than hopeful, I expect it! As of this writing the Pirates are the hottest team in baseball, winning 15 of their last 18 games and the echoes of Raise the Jolly Roger will be heard again and again by Greg Brown, the Pirates stadium announcer who coined that battle cry until this race to the championship is settled.

Somewhere another voice of the Pirates is smiling down at this current crop of players and fans and saying "we had 'em all the way!"  

The old Gunner kept me awake many nights through my youth as I dialed around the AM radio looking for the game and wanting to hear Bob Prince narrate and brag about what was happening on the field. For 28 years he sat in the booth looking down on some of the greatest names ever to play the game and for 28 years I wished I could sit where he was just once. Wherever he is now I am sure he would say it the loudest, he might even shake Greg Brown's hand and thank him for coming up with what is fast becoming a new lexicon to best feel the emotion being felt again in Pittsburgh and anywhere else this heritage is known and adored. 

                                                         Raise it!

              Go to Amazon for a wider collection of my short stories.

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                                                              Thank you!

Fall forward, Spring back

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This year I welcome the first autumn in the autumn of my life; the first fall season that I will really pay attention to as maybe the last one I will know; not that I suspect it will be but we do wonder about such possibilities as we age. This past year has been a very busy one for me as a writer and it was planned. The specific goal I had in mind was to write and publish as many short stories as I could while I still could and publish them in eBook format to document the lives of two men, a young one and an old one. Time has had its way with me and I had my way with it and now here we are; the old version of me reflecting on what some people have long suspected about me; that I have a split personality! It took all of 62 years to bring them together but once again, here we are. The old personality coming to terms with the younger version that now only exists in that part of the brain where we store our memories.

The younger me was always in a hurry but never in a hurry to see how the older me would eventually make out, and that guy didn't stick around long enough to find out. I often wonder where he got off to and how he got away so fast. What I do know is that he wasted a lot of time when he had a lot of it!

Let me explain what I meant by this possibly being my final fall season; I was warned about this year many years ago by my family doctor when he discovered something about me in a routine check-up and thought it best to refer me to a specialist. I laughed at him as I have often been prone to do when coming face to face with adversity but I agreed to go meet with his friend for a second opinion. That meeting did not go well because his friend examined me in a way much different than my regular doctor did; he went a lot further; his examination was much more painful and it left me a little skeptical about keeping an appointment that he made for me with another friend of his, so skeptical in fact that I decided to forego that one and just wait another year or so before telling my doc about it. I thought that as rigorous as this second exam was, the next one might kill me! For several minutes it felt as if he were trying to.

Two years passed before I returned to my regular guy and during the course of that examination I confided in him that his friend was not a nice man and that I skipped the third hand-off from one doctor to another. We discussed my lifestyle and he told me not to make any long range career goals if I didn't change my lifestyle and return more often for check-ups. "You are not a young man anymore and it is imperative that you take better care of your body and come to see more often than you have been, and when I tell you do something you need to do it!"  He sounded perturbed at me when he said that but I didn't take it personally because he was only doing his job.

That day was the first day he ever invited me back to his office for a chat and as we talked about things like diet and bad habits he mentioned the term autumn of our lives and he spoke of statistics and reasons he was concerned that I could or might not live long enough to qualify for Social Security if I didn't take his advice more seriously than I seemed to be showing. All of what he said made sense and in the five years that have whisked by in what seems like a blink of an eye I have read one obituary after another of people I have known for years, some younger than me and some not much older and each time I do I see reminders of that discussion. That was the last time I saw that doctor who I also regarded as friend. One day I tried to make an appointment with him and the gal who answered the phone informed me that he was no longer practicing medicine.

That sent me scrambling to find a new family doctor and for a year or so I settled with one that was the worst doctor I ever had examine me. She had a much larger office that was absolutely exquisite with all of the latest fancy touches and each time I would go there I would look around and know two things; I was the oldest person in the waiting room and the only guy. Each time I left her office I was angry and suspicious, wondering if she had a clue about treating men and each time I was convinced that she didn't. Finally I found another doctor who I liked, he was nearly half my age and he and I took an immediate liking to one another because we understood each others goals for me; those being just be here when either of us needs to be so we can work through issues. In less than a year he too was gone, he left that practice to operate a clinic somewhere else. At the moment I am without a regular family physician and I was discussing that with an old colleague recently who said "welcome to the club!"

The club he was referring to is the one we all eventually join in the autumn of our lives when finding and keeping a good doctor becomes a challenge we never saw coming. I will eventually work that one out but back to my old doctor who wondered if I might be around to qualify for Social Security: I hope he is a reader and that he finds this piece wherever he is if only so he can know that I made it. I reached that level this past July and I feel no worse for the wear than I did on the day he and I had that discussion. I also never changed my ways that he said were not conducive for anyone hoping to one day wear short pants, sunglasses and a fishing hat while riding around on golf carts in some warm retirement community. By the way, that was never a personal goal for me so once again he and I just moved on.

I was remembering some of that conversation this morning as I sat enjoying that first smoke and first cup of caffeinated coffee of the day and that part when I told him that settling down some day with people my age and older surrounding me in some place away from the one I have known as home most of my life was never part of my plan. He laughed and said "none of us look forward to that but we're all headed there eventually." I still hope he was wrong about all of that. He spoke of a time when we will be more comfortable surrounded by people like us who will need one another to discuss our health issues with and trade stories of better years when we didn't need each other. "Safety in numbers" he called it; "you won't like being the oldest person in every room you will be in, surrounded by younger people who will ignore you and not give a damn about you if you find yourself in such an environment some day. The day will come when you will want to be with your contemporaries instead of in the company of those who will push you aside because they can."

But like everything else I have approached on my way to getting where life has brought me I didn't see myself as someone who couldn't deal with that. I told him that I didn't look at my life then as a dress rehearsal for being old some day, I was already in my mid-fifties and standing in center-stage of it before a very large audience remembering every line I would need to say when it was my turn to speak. Life for me has always been like a play. I am surrounded now by as many odd characters as I always have been and although mine is no longer the best known name on the program I still have the starring role. This play seems to linger longer than the audience might have expected but it is still a very good one!

I believe it will have a very good ending even though I have no idea when that will be; but what I think I know is that even though I may need a few more stunt-men to fill in for me with each act the choreography has been spectacular. I am acting in a tailor-made role that suits me. When the winter of 2013 was closing and the spring of 2014 was approaching I wondered if it might be the last one that I could get out and still do whatever I wanted. It came and went and although I didn't get out much I did do most of the things I wanted to. 

However, in every year before this one I looked forward to relaxing in the sun from spring through summer and seeing my skin change color to a deep tan because it did seem to matter how comfortable clothes would look against it when my skin was more attractive than age eventually makes it. Some days I would spend most of the hours outdoors and by autumn I could be mistaken for another race. So when summer approached I wondered if it might be the last one that I could still do that. Remember, this all started with that consultation with a doctor who wondered how many more summers in the sun I might enjoy. 

As it turned out, the summer before it, the summer of 2012 was that one; this year I had no desire to sit outside when those temperatures were climbing into the high eighties and low nineties. I sipped cold beverages in my radio studio where I also write and now all of those days are past, I am falling forward. I spent a good deal of this year springing back by writing one story after another to put the final touches on the third act of my play. I suspect this won't be my final autumn but it might be; that is true for all of us but I don't worry about that now anymore than I ever did. I am looking forward to fall, I am enjoying the cooler temperatures and I will be leaving the house and returning to it more than I have since last winter.

I won't talk about winter yet because we probably still have a few months before it arrives but when it does I will wonder if it might be my last. These are things that I think we should all think about and talk about when we arrive at a certain point in our journeys because if we don't we may end up angry with ourselves someday that we didn't. I know I would be if left a lot of things on the table too long to matter to anyone. I wouldn't want my work to seem worth more than it is after all of my seasons are over than it did while I was scripting each one. I won't know one way or the other then, but I do want to know now and right now I am the most contented man I know with how things have gone so far and so far this long and enduring play of mine is on the course I hoped it would be.

The names and the faces around me will continue to change just as I have planned it. This blog I started last week has brought me an entirely new audience and I have no plan to let them down. You can make all of this worth the efforts I have invested by looking for my next story that should unfold any minute now, and in the meantime you can help me know that it has mattered by looking over some of my other work by following this link. There you will find about a half million other words cobbled together that I hope you will enjoy and understand.

http://www.speakcomputers.com/Computer-Books.aspx?&category=books&productsearch=rickery+dickery+books&pagenumber=1

Unconventional

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Yesterday my daughter Kelly left a remark on my facebook page after reading something I had written that said "I wish I could write like you."  I studied it for a moment and then responded by saying she could if she just wrote what she felt. Later I revisited that exchange and thought a little more about it and decided to write this piece to find a way to embellish my response, to do it in a way that better explains what I was trying to say to her. The truth is I believe she can do anything she sets her mind to, she is a very bright girl and I believe that she can and does write well. The difference here between she and I is that I write more than she does and that doesn't make me a better writer, just someone who does it more and in a different way.

We are all writers, we all write things through the course of any given day but most people write to express a singular thought at a time whereas I write  more words to make longer sentences that make up paragraphs to tell longer stories. When she said she wished she could write like me my response back to her was in the same general terms most people write. I do believe she could write just as good as anyone but if we were having that discussion in another forum besides facebook I would have expounded on that thought by saying more than I did. What she received was the text equivalent of two people exchanging words in a brief conversation while banging their fingers on a keypad. I am not a texter and I have never sent nor read a text message because I still don't understand people's delight in doing something like that and because when my fingers hit a keypad I am very conscience of word usage and spelling, even though I don't always get it right and sometimes miss a few when I write.

I am in no hurry to learn a new language at this late stage of the game and if I were I would rather exhaust my energy studying Russian or another one that most people in America wouldn't understand. There is no challenge in the texting language to make it attractive enough to me to want to do it well. However, learning the language the Russians speak would feel like a real accomplishment! If I could do that then I could really say to most people what is either on my mind or what I think of them and still make them smile regardless of what I said to them. They wouldn't know one way or the other. It would be both exhilarating and liberating to speak freely to anyone I don't care for in a tongue that allowed me to get some things off my chest without hurting anyone's feelings or leaving them to think more lowly of me than they might already do.

To me, texting is just a lazy way to exchange thoughts and a convenient way for people with spelling disabilities to hide their ineptness. Using abbreviations, symbols and numbers instead of real words is much easier than opening a dictionary for people who can't spell and don't have the time or the zeal to learn. It works well for both parties who go back and forth like that because the other person probably suffers the same lack of abilities or because both are just too busy to concern themselves with remembering what the schools once believed was an important skill. Could you imagine trying to filter through and understand what I have written so far in this post if it were in text language? I am not sure but I think these whole words, especially if most of them are spelled right make a more pleasant reading experience than if I took the easiest route to get where I want this story to go.

Now, a skilful and experienced texter who writes most of the time using one letter or one number to make a word might prefer that I impart my thoughts as they would but I am a stubborn old soul who refuses to downgrade my ability to share thoughts through the written text simply because it is easier and takes less time. I am not that busy with my life, I have the time. After all, I was forced to learn to spell way back in grammar school and I don't want that skill to now go to waste just because the rest of the world says it is okay. To me that would be akin to telling me that all of the arithmetic I had to struggle through for all of those years was a waste of time and so was the summer I had to spend in summer school to keep from failing a grade. I want to believe that all of it mattered. I still want to use the skills I learned all through my life if only to feel that I wasn't duped when the teachers and mentors made me sit and learn what they swore I would someday need! 

Texting is like calculators. I have a calculator but I rarely need it and where I find satisfaction and joy in not needing it is in knowing that I don't. It doesn't make me a smart man, it makes me a capable one and I feel good about that. Just another small triumph in life that separates me from an ignorant man.

Back to Kelly; I know she can spell because when she does write something to me she uses real words and they all look just fine, moreover, they all come together and make sense the way they should. Writing good stories is an art that requires those things and in that regard Kelly could write like me. The difference would be the content and that is where her work and mine would be vastly different. That is the area where my writing is different from most writers period! Kelly couldn't write exactly like me because she is a very polite person and she worries more than I ever could about saying the wrong thing. She is very careful with her vocabulary and will go out of her way to not offend anyone. When I said to her that she could write like me I meant it, but in order to write like me she would have to throw caution to the wind and write as I do, how she really feels. That is precisely what I said to her; the exchange on facebook went like this; "I wish I could write like you." - "You can, just write what you feel."

I am among the ranks of anyone who regards my work as how Webster's describes it; not conventional, not bound by or in accordance with convention, being out of the ordinary, an unconventional thinker. A person like that who has chosen to become a writer who writes what he feels instead of what he wants others to see in his work is someone like me. That is the singular difference in what I write and what Kelly could write. There is not now, nor has there ever been anything conventional about my personality. Mine isn't for everyone and I couldn't live with myself if it were. I never wanted to be that guy and although it is far from mainstream it has served me well in terms of being everywhere I wanted to be and doing everything I ever wanted to do.

Why would I ever tinker with something like that? Something that has worked so well for as long as it has for me and try to change it now? I regard the ability to always be the real me, regardless of someone else's opinion as a gift! One that I hope to keep and protect for as long as I live. I don't need anyone's approval to do anything anymore and I don't seek it; that is why when Kelly or someone else reads my work might say, "I wish I could write like you." 

I couldn't write like me if I were any different. To write like I do one would have to have the means and the desire. My desire should be evident to anyone by now and I have the means. It has become much easier since I retired because something that comes with retirement is something far more important than being liked by a lot of people and needed to do what a lot of people need me to do; time and an attitude that can be all mine! No more answering another person's bell or come when they whistle, no longer being required to do something that makes someone else look good or make more money for us both. Nobody needs anything I have and everything I would be willing to give to someone else now comes with strings attached.

They aren't long or complicate strings, just strings that make doing something or going somewhere as beneficial for me as it is for them. Simple strings that cannot be tied around me as tightly as they once were and the understanding that when one of us is ready to cut them we can with no hard feelings. I became able to write in the method I do when I cut a lot of strings that held me back from doing it. The desire and the ability was always there but retirement gave me the means. All I needed was to gather up all of the rule books and instruction manuals someone else handed me and use them for fuel in a virtual bonfire.

Kelly can write like me, it will take awhile before she can do it but someday she will be able to take out her scissors as I did and cut the strings she is bound by now. But do it with the words and expressions I use may be the real challenge for her because I don't see her being as rough around the edges as I am. It takes that too.

To date I have written and published 17 books of short stories. 

Please visit Amazon at the link below to see more examples of my work. Thank you.

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Teach your children, well?

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My dad was a meat-packer by trade and the best man I ever knew. 

When I was growing up and then all through my adult life, and even now at the age of 62 I have wanted to be like him. I never had aspirations of becoming a meat-packer although I did work for a meat-packing company for a few months when I was in high school and when I did that I know he was proud of me; he may even have hoped I would like it enough to follow in his footsteps but I didn't; instead I went in another direction, actually in two different directions. I became a radio announcer and then later a cop.

I believe a good son pays homage to his dad in a good way if he hopes to be like him, even if he never tells him that. I never told mine that I wanted to be a meat-packer or even that I wanted to be like him and then one day it was too late; he passed away in 1998, but I hope he knew from watching me make my own way through life that all he ever taught me didn't go to waste; that I used the respect I had for him and my desire to be a man like he was to keep reaching for the best things in life. Not the most things but the best things such as respect from those around me that I was doing the best I could and that I too was leaving a trail for my sons to follow that would shape them into good men.

My middle son Kevin followed me into the broadcasting world and my youngest son Todd wants nothing more from life than to be a cop. I want nothing more than to see him achieve his goal. I already saw my oldest son Ricky achieve his; he followed me into the Franklin County Sheriff's office and has since worked his way up to chief deputy. My own broadcasting career is behind me now but I hold fast to what I learned and loved from the radio business by programming and producing an internet station that is broadcasted around the world now. That and writing blogs and publishing books is how I spend my retirement years. My law enforcement legacy will live on a while longer through my sons. Todd will make it in some day, I am sure of that because he is the most determined young man I know, and although Kevin has moved on from the life of a broadcaster I know that he too will always use for the good all he learned from it. That knowledge will serve him well for the rest of his life and continue to make him a better and more competitive man all his life. It did for me so I am sure of it.

All of this was what I hoped for when I first became a dad and looked into the bassinet and watched Ricky sleeping in it when he was a baby. I was just 19 years old then and just a rookie dad who had no idea of what I could do to put down some footprints for him to follow and I was far too young then to have much going for me for him to even admire. But I did hope that he could find reasons as I did to admire my own dad as he grew. I didn't become a disc jockey nor a cop with any of that in mind just as I am sure my dad never became a meat-packer for that reason. I only went through life as he did, doing what I wanted to do and hoping I was getting it right. My dad never asked me what I thought of him as a man but I want to believe he knew by the things I did say to him and about him whenever I spoke of him. 

Today, September 21 is Ricky's 43rd birthday and although I won't call him and he won't call me to discuss it I hope the triangle between him, me and my dad is a solid one. Now before anyone wonders, "what do you mean you won't call him, that's your son and it is his birthday for crying out loud"  I can clear it all up by again by re-entering my dad into this story. Like I said at the beginning, my dad was the best man I ever knew. He was my dad for 40 of my own birthdays and although he never called me to say say Happy Birthday I always knew that he wanted me to have one. 

It wasn't his style to feel he needed to say everything he felt. He was always there when anyone ever needed him to be and he probably believed as I do that-that should suffice for proving that he loved all of us. I mean after all, he worked and sacrificed enough to become the man he was, a man that I still hope I can resemble, 

and just as I know Ricky won't call me today I never called my dad on my own birthday hoping that he would wish me well on that day. I didn't have to because on all of those birthdays that I could, I went to see him and my mother. Even then he rarely said Happy Birthday to me because he knew that he needn't do that to convey what he hoped for me. He was my dad, he taught us all well.

However, I have something now that he didn't; it is called the internet and there is a social networking site there called Facebook. I may go there later today and wish my son a happy birthday but even if I do there is a chance he won't see it. It won't matter to either of us if he doesn't because that is the kind of men we are and since he is too old for toys now I won't feel guilty about not buying him one for his birthday. He found himself in a place in life where he is able to buy all the toys he might want. He has found himself in a place I did a long time ago.

Flexing your muscle

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Several years ago an organization called Partnership for a Drug Free America launched a nationwide television campaign that showed a quick and simple video of a man holding a skillet that he identified as drugs. He then held up an egg and said "this is your brain." Next he cracked the egg and dropped it into the skillet he had paced on a gas burner of a stove and as it began to pop and sizzle in the pan he said "This is your brain on drugs."  Then he looked into the camera and asked "any questions?" 

The message was so clear that I needn't go any further to explain it, but this post isn't about what has happened to a lot of people's brains because of what they have put theirs through by abusing or merely using drugs for recreational purposes. I believe that alcohol has a similar effect on millions of people every day but I won't go beyond where I have so far about that either except to say that any malfunctions my brain may experience cannot be attributed to too much stimulation caused by drugs or alcohol. Drugs never was an issue for me except during my years as a street cop when my job mandated that I deal with people who did dabble with them outside of what the Ohio Revised Code allowed.

As for alcohol, if you were to pour all I have drank over the past thirty years you couldn't fill a gallon jug so I can say with confidence that the muscle in my head isn't pickled and that if you and I ever have a conversation with one another you can be assured it isn't the alcohol talking and that none of what I say to you comes from a mind that has been altered or slowed by anything I have done in my past. I happen to believe that my mind is very sharp most of the time, except for those few minutes when I first awake from sleep or when I am trying to maneuver through a day with a splitting headache. Those headaches are more frequent than I wish they were but I have grown used to expecting to have one several times a week. It isn't something new, in fact I cannot remember a time in my life when it wasn't a problem; I grew up with this plague, but aside from that I have always been a pretty healthy guy; I rarely get sick and I usually feel pretty good, the usual muscle aches and pains of growing older notwithstanding.

At 62 years of age my body isn't as strong as it was at 32 but the upside of being this age is that life has a way of compensating us for what we lose physically if we have paid attention all of our lives to everyone we ever encountered and if we at least tried to learn from our experiences. My compensation for having a slower body is having a quicker mind than I ever had in my life. My brain is my most dangerous weapon now and little by little those who have been around me for a good long time as well as anyone I meet for the first time are finding that out. I am in a pretty good place in life and believe me when I tell you I take none of that for granted.

I am well aware that losing one's mind may be the most crippling disease of all and I am saddened when I learn of anyone  who either suffers from or are in the early stages of Alzheimer Disease; I can think of nothing worse, not even dying. As a scholar said to me recently as he was describing the pain of watching his wife as she goes through this stage; "it is like a very long goodbye."  To live with someone he has known and has relied on to be his partner and best friend for more than two-thirds of their lives and watch her struggle with remembering people and simple tasks, and knowing there is no cure would be like that.

I have heard something like that is likely to catch up with all of us if we live long enough; that as we age we begin to forget a lot of things or just give up trying to make sense of the people and the world around us. Maybe it happens because the world around us gives up on us when we get so old that we no longer matter as much as we did. But whatever lies down the road for me hasn't yet shown itself and before it does I intend to keep learning new things and apply what I do learn to what I already know. The best defense against allowing our brain to falter is to keep it as active as we are able and I intend to that. When it comes to competing for my rightful place in the scheme of my surroundings I have an advantage that some don't; I don't take instructions from anyone anymore because I don't have to, everything I do and say comes from what my brain believes is right for me, not from anyone elses.

When I write, the topics are what I choose them to be and how I impart my thoughts comes simply from how I would talk to anyone, either one-on-one or in a group setting. My words can be as impolite as I deem necessary to make my point or as gentle as I think they should be to soothe the reader or the listener if I choose to do that. I am no literary scholar nor do I consider myself an expert at anything besides living a life that is best for me. I only know enough to qualify for that one, not enough about everything else, so I know when or when not to weigh-in on most subjects.

That too makes me a dangerous man to anyone hoping to outsmart me or take something from me that I want to keep. I have joked that I have been wandering through herds of sheep most of my life; sheep who seemingly need someone to follow to get where they either want to be, think they need to be or where someone tells them to go. I wander through the herd to find the man or woman who believes they are the shepherd and then I ask them to either pick up their pace or get out of my way. I always expect that person to take offense and ask me who I think I am and then I tell them. It hasn't always worked in my favor but I am here now doing whatever I want to do every day of my life; I am happy with how I lived it and I have never been more mentally relaxed. Some of those shepherd's are still out there walking about, either still leading a herd or looking for another one that will follow them.

So do I think I am a pretty smart guy? Well, here is where I explain the photo I posted on this page. That car is a 1969 Mercury Cyclone-Cale Yarborough Special that is powered by a 428 cubic inch motor that develops more than 400 horsepower. The Ford Motor Company built only a few of them. Most of the Cyclone's from that year reside in climate-controlled garages and museums now and for a lot of us Ford guys it is the ultimate muscle car. If challenged by anything else that was around in 1969 when it was on the streets of America it would certainly go beyond merely holding its own. I believe it still could. And like that Mercury I was on the streets in 1969 and I felt as cocky then as that car looks. 

Today I feel even cockier. So if I were to try to show an image of what I think my brain looks like now compared to what it looked like in 1969 I have done it here. Because like that muscle car, the muscle in my head only got better with time. That one is pristine, it is completely original, no one tried to change it in any way, it looked like it does here when it left the factory. I don't look as good as I did in 1969 and I am not as fast as I was then but that motor in my my head has never been tinkered with and it remains as strong as that 428 under that long sleek hood. 

But unlike that one mine will continue to rev up everyday it is able to and it will keep moving the body it is in as fast as it is able to through my work as a writer and as a broadcaster in internet radio. I invite you to follow my progress here and on the Live 365 Worldwide Internet Radio Network, I am there most nights after 9:00. You can find the documentation that what I have said here is still true in my work as an author because I don't merely write stories from the heart, I collect the words and phrases I share with others from a life I regard as one well lived by someone who has held onto a lot of it. My brain is like a warehouse full of it all and you can judge for yourself by clicking on this link;

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=rickery+dickery+books

Or you can join me nightly on a radio station called "Heartlites" by going here;

http://www.live365.com/stations/heartlites

Is this blog project another effort to sell my work? Come on, could there be any doubt? But it really is that other thing I just described also; another way to make that brain of mine keep working. While some people my age may find a television the best and easiest way to relax or make it through their idle time I have my own method; I don't want someone else clouding my thoughts with what they want me to think, I go this route and hope someone else can be inspired to never lose what they had and to take a look at themselves and consider what they can do to stay competitive in a world that may find a way to leave them behind. I hope me and that Mercury will always have something in common.

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!

Please sample my other work at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=rickery+dickery+books

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!