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We had three kids. They were all in the junior high band at different times over a seven year period of time. So I got to go to seven straight years of junior high band concerts. I enjoyed watching our kids develop musically, but I cannot say it was a memorable music experience. Fortunately, they stuck to pieces that were at their level. But what if they had attempted, say Beethoven, the musical genius.
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Some years ago, we learned a great way to make our vacation dollars stretch, and that's important these days! We ordered ice water with our meals instead of Coke or something.
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In our treasury of family videos we have a few moments that are considered classics. Most folks outside the family wouldn't think so, but you had to be there. The classics are usually either very touching or give us a chance to laugh very loudly at one of the five Hutchcrafts; such as the one from our Alaska trip. Our oldest son (we will call him son number one for the purpose of this illustration), was about 14, the youngest son, (we'll call him son number two) was about 12; at the age where a boy's voice isn't quite sure where it will go on the next word. You know what I mean? Now, we're filming some dog team races, and we trusted the camera to our least-technical family member - son number one. Like Father, like son. Now, son number two, being more technically oriented, was providing unsolicited coaching on video filming.
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It was a beautiful and busy day on an Ocean City, NJ beach that day. Until an official suddenly started clearing the beach. I was thinking "Jaws." There's a big shark out there somewhere. I could see a bunch of lifeguards sprinting from other beaches. Turns out, it wasn't a big shark. It was little kids. In big trouble out by the jetty. Those lifeguards plunged hard into the water and started swimming like Olympians toward those kids and others started maneuvering a rescue boat that direction. It was a pretty dramatic rescue. It doesn't always happen that way.
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When a little child gets home later than they're supposed to, you know there's going to be something on the other end. There's going to be a worried and not very happy parent waiting for them. I heard recently about a little girl who got home unusually late from school only to find a daddy who was, of course, not happy at all. He asked the little girl why she was late. She said, "Because my friend broke her dolly." Her dad said, "Oh, okay, so you stayed with her to fix it?" He didn't expect her gentle little reply, "No, Daddy. I stayed with her to help her cry."
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I really like football. I just don't have a lot of time to watch it. But you know, I watched a whole game that wasn't even my team! It was the Denver Broncos when they won that astonishing victory over the heavily favored Pittsburgh Steelers in a wild-card playoff game. But I was watching more than a football game; I was watching Tim Tebow and the drama that unfolded every time he took the field. That game was no exception.
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"Frozen"! Yeah, that's a blockbuster Disney movie, but it was something else too. It was the headline for the record-busting winter of 2015 in a whole lot of the United States. Any time I heard myself starting to whimper over the long freeze, I just made myself think one thing - "Boston." We're talking a little over 100 inches of snow in just a few weeks!
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Each of our kids has gone through a baking stage as they were growing up, and my wife and I got to sample some very interesting cookies, and cakes, or whatever they were. You know, new cooks have a hard time waiting for their first masterpiece to get done. They keep peeking, opening the door, checking on it, and even taking it out too soon. That just fouls up the temperature in the oven and you get results like a cake that's burned on the edges but gooey in the center. Or like our daughter baked...a cake that's flat. The young cook, at least one without a microwave, soon learns that impatience can ruin the final result.
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It was like 11 o'clock at night when I suddenly got this cryptic text from my son - "Please turn off your porch lights." Excuse me?
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He's a real American hero! He received America's highest military honor, the Congressional Medal of Honor, and He earned it, believe me. It was November 14, 1965, Major Bruce Crandall flew a Huey helicopter assigned to lift troops into Ia Drang, which was to become known, in Vietnam, as the "Valley of Death." His mission to deliver the troops was done. But pretty soon he realized the plight of those troops. There were 450 American soldiers hugely outnumbered by 2,000 enemy troops. Major Crandall began flying into that Valley of Death to bring out the wounded and to bring in ammunition. Before that day was over, he had flown for 14 hours straight - 22 flights barraged with enemy fire. It took three different choppers to do it all; two were too damaged to continue. One officer said, "Without Major Crandall, our battalion would almost surely have been overrun." Crandall simply said, "They knew we would come if they needed it no matter what." That's heroism.
