Tuesday, July 24, 2018

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If you were the baby of the family, you might be able to relate to the occasional complaint that was filed by our youngest who's now all grown up. He kiddingly talks about how many pictures were taken of his older sister, then his older brother, and how we seemed to run out of film by the time he came along. You know, the last-in-line complex. But when reflecting on another sibling comparison he came to a happier conclusion. He said, "You built this big dollhouse as a gift for my sister. Then you built this big, fully loaded barn for my brother. Then you built a general store for me-about half the size of the dollhouse and the barn." At first, he thought, "Here we go again. Yep, they run out of gas by the time they get to me." But then, all of a sudden he noticed that his store had something neither of his siblings' had-a sign on the store with his name, identifying him as the proprietor. Our son said, "You know, I felt really good when I realized that what you gave me had my name on it!" All right, let's hear one for the baby! 

Monday, July 23, 2018

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Now, I'm not a deer hunter. I think I was brainwashed by "Bambi" a long time ago, but I tell you, something incredible happens in a lot of parts of the country when deer season opens. Some places they close school for a few days because of the deer, and in many places it's just understood. I mean, workers aren't going to show up for work that day; they're going to be somewhere in the woods on Operation Buck. Unfortunately, sometimes the hunt can end in tragedy-for the hunter, I mean, not the deer.

Friday, July 20, 2018

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I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but radio guys like me, we actually make mistakes sometimes. Yep, believe it or not. But you don't hear them. No, I have wonder-worker. Yep, producer, editor. And I have to always be nice to him. See, producers edit out my mistakes, but that doesn't mean they throw away the tape. No, see, the same goes for the random and sometimes crazy things I may say before or after we record a program. You will never hear those! Oh, it's all there. Yeah, he makes sure the tape is always rolling. I mean, one Christmas I was reminded of that in a most vivid way. They put together a recording of some of my mistakes and comments, stretched together in an imaginary interview with a TV reporter, and they played for our whole staff. No, you'll never hear it. Sure enough, if I say it, they've got it. 

Thursday, July 19, 2018

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I don't know if there was ever a time in our son's life when he checked the mailbox so many times. Now I know what you're thinking-a letter from a girl, right? No, it was grades from college. See, this was during our son's last visit home when he was going to college, and the grades for the semester just completed were supposed to be mailed to him at home. Well, it got a little frustrating and as he talked with all his college friends, they were telling him in other parts of the country, that they already had their grades. And every day that they didn't come, he got a little more frustrated. Now why was he so eager to get his grades? He had every reason to believe he had done very well this time. And finally, they came. Best grades by far since he started college, the Dean's List! High fives all around, baby!

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

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If you've ever listened to the fans at a college or professional football game, you know some of them are the ultimate experts at what their team is doing wrong and what they should be doing. It's just amazing some of those fans haven't been hired as like head coach of the team, right? Yeah. After speaking for professional football chapels and getting to know some of the players, I was less than patient with their critics all around me up in the stands. I mean, I knew some of those guys on the field. I knew they had everything on the line when they played and that they were the only heroes in the game. You know, there were no heroes in the stands. Sometimes I just wanted to stand up and say to one of those guys: by the way, I never did because they were all bigger than I am. But I wanted to say, "Hey! Why don't you get out of the stands and get in the game!"

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

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Over the years it's been an honor and a pleasure to speak for a lot of professional football chapels. You should have seen me with the New York Giants. I was like the New York dwarf! Hey, listen, I'm tall inside okay. Their "thank you" for speaking was two tickets for the game; great seats reserved for the chapel speaker – midfield under cover. Of course, any time you go to a public event like a game or a concert or a show, you hope for great seats. On occasion, I've even looked up a seating chart for the facility where an event was being held so I knew what seats to ask for. Unfortunately, well, you've got to pay a little for the best seats, but you get a view that most folks can't see.

Monday, July 16, 2018

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"Please help us." That's what the people stranded on the roof of their house wrote on the sign that they waved over their heads. They represented so many thousands of New Orleans residents who were left stranded and in deadly danger by the floods of Hurricane Katrina. The wind and the rain of that category four hurricane were bad enough, but it was when the levees broke that suddenly major parts of the city were underwater, literally up to the rooftops. We heard the harrowing stories that began to unfold of how people had moved from a first floor to a second floor to escape those toxic waters. Then, as the second floor filled with water, how they moved to their last point of refuge-the roof. And many were stranded there, no food, no water, and increasingly no hope. Then hope showed up in the shape of a Coast Guard helicopter, hovering over their rooftop refuge. Hope was a man coming down a cable to where they were; a man who secured their rescue and saved their lives. 

Friday, July 13, 2018

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If you ask our kids about four or five of the most indelible memories from their childhood, I think at least one is bound to bring up the night of the hurricane. Some friends had offered their home on Eastern Long Island; we could use it for our vacation. I wonder if they had advance word that Hurricane Belle would make it all the way up the East Coast that week and smack Long Island right on the chin? Thankfully, the home we were in was on a cliff above the ocean so we didn't have to evacuate. But we made all the appropriate preparations. We loaded up on batteries and candles, stored water in the bathtub, and lined the freezer with newspaper in case the power went out. The leading winds of the hurricane started blowing in about bedtime that night, and I mean, you could hear it howling around our bedrooms upstairs. The kids were pretty unnerved (including this kid). So, we all moved out of our rooms to the downstairs living room. We laid out some sleeping bags, and we slept side by side together in the living room. The kids loved it! They actually said, "Hey, Dad, hurricanes are fun!" Really?

Thursday, July 12, 2018

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When I was a kid, "Nautilus" was Captain Nemo's submarine in a Jules Verne novel. I knew that because (No, I didn't read it.) Walt Disney put it on TV. Then "Nautilus" became the name of an early nuclear submarine launched by the United States. But not too long ago I saw a nautilus while we were at Ocean City, New Jersey. It wasn't a submarine. It was the original nautilus; the little sea creature with the fascinating shell. We actually saw a lot of nautilus shells in little shops. We bought one for our living room. It's real smooth on the outside, got stripes on it, and it's bigger than my hand. Now, to me, the nautilus shell is shaped sort of like a big, shiny human ear, and maybe we could say it's like an unborn child in the womb, if you can picture that. The original inhabitant is gone, of course, but his fascinating shell-house remains. When you cut a nautilus shell in half, it reveals the life story of the one-time inhabitant. At the center is this circular chamber with a wall around it. That was the original home of a little bitty nautilus. There are circular chambers all the way to the outer edge of the shell, and each chamber is a little larger than the previous one. That little sea creature kept outgrowing his shell, so he left it behind and moved on to the next chamber-and chapter-of his life. 

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

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Look, whether you're a Yankee or a Confederate at heart, you don't take much joy in what happened at what is called the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy." If you're a Civil War buff, you know that's where the Union Army turned back Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. Some 15,000 Confederate soldiers marched courageously across a field in a very tightly packed formation, advancing on 40,000 Union soldiers. Only 150 of those Southern soldiers made it. General Lee had made an honest but tragic mistake. See, he'd been trained at West Point in Napoleon's war tactics-masses of men, advancing against imprecise, short-range weapons until they could overwhelm the opposing troops in hand-to-hand combat. Unfortunately, things had changed since that kind of strategy had won battles for Napoleon. Recent technology had greatly improved the range and the accuracy of the rifles that the Union Army was using, which meant those masses of men were brought down long before they could ever reach enemy lines.

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

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All eyes were on the mountain-the volcano nearby. Our friends' daughter, a missionary, was living in a city that sits in the middle of several volcanoes. And one of them was showing some of those Mt. St. Helen's-type symptoms: the bulging and the boiling that suggests a possible eruption in the near future. Scientists were predicting that could very well happen. So living anywhere near that boiling mountain was, to say the least, like nerve-wracking. 

Monday, July 9, 2018

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O.K., I'll admit it, I'm often in a hurry to get where I'm going. More than once, you know, when Karen and I were traveling in the crew configuration that my wife and I used for years – me pilot at the wheel, her navigator with map. We'd be clipping along at a healthy rate of speed, believing that the purpose of the exercise is to be there, right, not to spend a lot of time getting there! Right? And even though my beautiful navigator may have announced that a turn was coming up soon, I maintain my "got to get there" speed. Then, suddenly, I hear those words, "This is our turn!" Zoom! We blow right past it – sometimes without an opportunity to turn around for several miles. So much for me trying to make good time, right? Too often, I've ended up on the wrong road – just because I was going too fast to turn.

Friday, July 6, 2018

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It's a very impressive bridge. We saw it as we traveled near the Ohio River years ago. As you looked at it from the city where we were staying, it appeared to be complete. But when you went a few blocks and you looked at it from downriver, some additional information became apparent-in fact, important information. The bridge was only partly completed. It would get you part way there, and then it would drop you in the river. 

Thursday, July 5, 2018

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The passengers were there and the plane was there, but our plane wasn't taking off that day. Oh, it was time, but we were still sitting in the flight lounge, and there were not many smiles that day. Then we finally found out what we were waiting for - our pilot wasn't there. See, his earlier flight was delayed and he hadn't landed yet. So even though we all had to get somewhere, our pilot was flying somewhere else when we needed him. 

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

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It was our first weekend after we moved to the New York area; it was the 4th of July. So, we thought it would be a good weekend to go see New York City. A lot of people will be gone, and it was just a really good weekend. We didn't get all jammed up in traffic, we got to see a lot of the sights and we got familiar with the streets. We kind of braved it. When we headed home, we drove up the West Side Highway, which runs right along the Hudson River headed for the George Washington Bridge. 

All of a sudden all the traffic just came to a stop. We thought that was a little unusual to have a big traffic jam on a holiday, but what was more unusual was it just, well it didn't move at all. We weren't creeping, we weren't inching along; we were totally stopped for a while. It was a long parking lot and no one moved an inch for like half an hour. I couldn't figure out what was going on. 

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

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One thing television has done for us, it's made us all more self conscious about our breath. The commercials keep coming. Years ago it was - Don't broadcast bad breath. To our recent commercials like: Your wake up breath. You run from people who want to kiss you because you have to gargle first. You’ve got to get rid of that morning mouth. Well these kinds of commercials sell a lot of mouthwash, toothpaste and breath mints and breath drops. I just wish there was a mouthwash for the really gross mouth problem. 

Monday, July 2, 2018

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When my granddaughter was three years old she had big eyes, a big smile, and a backpack to match. She'd loaded her little red backpack with every book that she could jam in there. And being a firstborn, she must of course, carry it all by herself-which she was trying to do one day when it became clear to Daddy that she was really straining with that load. He saw again how determined she can be. (Determined actually is a grandparent's word. Parents call it stubborn.) He suggested she remove a few books and lighten the load, and that idea was a total non-starter. Then she tried taking another step. That's when she started to take off her backpack, and she said with a sigh, "Here, Daddy. I can't carry it anymore." Her Daddy gladly took it and he asked, "How's that, honey?" Her answer melted her father's heart, "All better, Daddy. All better." 

Friday, June 29, 2018

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Usually, the only way we know a musical artist we like is through listening to their CD or maybe watching their music video. We've come a long way from Grandma's old 78 RPM records. In fact, someone's listening and saying, "What's a record?" But there's something much better than either the audio or video recording of a great musician. It's called going to their concert where you can actually see them and hear them live in person. There's nothing like the live concert. 

Thursday, June 28, 2018

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My friend Rich had just come through a major battle with cancer with heavy radiation therapy, and that's what helped him win. The only problem was the radiation left him feeling pretty weak and depleted. So, he would work a short week at his business and then he'd retreat to this little cabin that he and his wife had way back in the woods. One day Rich was down by the stream and feeling pretty tired. So, he lay down right there by the water and fell asleep. When he woke up, he was startled by what he saw. There were vultures circling him! Yeah! Now, you wouldn't believe how quickly Rich got up! I can just imagine him shouting to the vultures, "Hey, you birds, I may look dead to you, but I am still alive!"

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

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Because we lived along the East Coast for so many years, we had the opportunity to see many of America's old lighthouses. I mean, not long ago we came up over the top of a hill on an interstate and I saw what I certainly never expected to see hundreds of miles from the ocean. It was a lighthouse with a bright, functioning light on top. Obviously, it wasn't there to point any ships in the right direction. Actually, it was part of a church that stands right near the highway. This lighthouse is for people!