1976 – New Start

There may be quite a gap in the story telling between when I was 19 and when I was 29. I may come back at some point and tell a story or two because believe me there are stories to tell. But for now I will hide in the verse in Ephesians “For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret”. Not a time that I am proud of but important lessons are sometimes necessary to the hardheaded and clueless.

“76” was all Red, White & Blue if you remember it. Bicentennial year…a nation for 200 years. Started off with the Steelers beating the Cowboys in the Super Bowl…back when I cared. Gerald Ford was president, I purchased an album by Wings (Silly Love Songs) and Dr Hook (Queen Of The Silver Dollar) and bought my first 35mm camera.

Somewhere in April I got a message that an old friend had called and left a number for a call back. The old friend was an old girlfriend Lela. Seems she had been back to Haskell to visit her parents and had run into my Aunt Shorty in the M System (a grocery store) who gave her my number and encouraged her to call me. We talked and we agreed that we would get together. A few weeks went by and I called and asked to take her to lunch the next Monday. She worked at Baylor Hospital near downtown Dallas and Monday was my day off (I was in the boat business and worked every Sunday for most of the year). With no Facebook or Internet or even computers back then the only photo of her was the one in the “62 Tumbleweed” (the annual for Roby High) and I wondered how she had fared…you know…was she still a 10.

I was really into bass fishing back then and had a two day trip to Lake O The Pines with my fishing buddy Donnie Rouse. That being the weekend before that Monday date. That trip deserves it’s own story and we caught tons of fish. Wound up being in all the east Texas papers with our stringers. So good was the fishing that we called Donnie’s wife Mickey and told her we were staying an additional day…Monday. We were on the water at sunrise and just like the previous two days we were killing it. About 9:30 we were in the boat taking a little breather when something started to nag at me … was there something I was forgetting.

Guys you know that feeling in the stomach when you realize how bad you have messed up. Donnie fell out laughing about how stupid I was. Now there were no cell phones so I went to the marina and called the florist in Dallas and convinced them to stick a rush order on the next truck out. Now I think I did that just to delay the next call I had to make. By now it was around 11:30 and I called.

On her side, Lee had told her workmates about who I was and our background and I am sure how nice and considerate I had always been. Not to be sexist, but women seem to discuss things like that more than men do. Forty plus years later when this story is told I still wince. Lela was waiting for the clock and then she got the call. A week or so later I was surprised when she accepted an invitation to dinner. I explained it was my birthday and have I told you how sorry I am about the lunch thing.

June 12, 1976…my 30th birthday I drove to her home on Trammel St where I realized that the 12 years we had not seen each other had been incredibly kind to her…she was now an 11. I met her two daughters, Kim (8) and Traci (6) and I fell in love with all three of them. This birthday was the most meaningful of my life…over the next 6 months I started living deliberately … making plans and doing the hard work to make sure they happen. Now over 40 years later I still marvel at the changes that occurred in that Bicentennial year. I believe that there is a perfect plan for our lives and when we do something stupid to mess things up God shows us a “new perfect plan”.