There are some things that are just tough to advertise – like things people need but don't want to think about. Like insurance to pay your funeral expenses some day. Well, a local insurance agency gave it a good try in the newspaper ad they ran. In bold letters it said, "FINAL PAYMENT". It went on to make a case for doing something now to take care of the last obligation of your life. Of course, that ad had a serious inaccuracy.
Our family has gone into New York City at times when we lived in that area with some blankets and food and gifts for homeless people, but we had to find them in order to meet them. Sometimes, they were in a park; other times they were under or near a viaduct or overpass. One night we found a little village of homeless people on a vacant lot next to the bus depot with their makeshift shelters against the back wall of the depot. I remember the time that I interviewed a homeless man on the street. I wanted to get his story out to people through my radio program. He actually let me crawl right into that large cardboard box that he called home. I guess when you're homeless you seek shelter and warmth wherever you can find it.
Our receptionist, Carol, always had nice flowers in her office-sort of flowers. Well, I mean, it looked like a beautiful bouquet. One day I walked into her office, and I sniffed and I said, "What's that smell, Carol? Is that flowers?" It was so nice to be greeted with this wonderful, spring-like aroma. She didn't answer me. She just reached into the top drawer in her desk and pulled out this air spray. "I sprayed it on the flowers," she told me. By now you know the truth about Carol's lovely flowers. They looked like they were alive. They smelled like they were alive. They were not alive!
Years ago, I was at a youth conference where we needed to raise some money for a camp scholarship fund. So we challenged the kids to buy their counselor into this Friday night food fight. Well, the kids found the money all right pretty quickly! So, Friday night all of us leaders showed up on the field of battle with the campers watching like sadistic spectators at the Roman Coliseum. Now, for starters, we got hosed down so everything would cling to us. I have to tell you, in retrospect, I'm embarrassed about the food we wasted. But I'm glad we at least got to pay for a few kids to get to camp.
It happened over a hundred years ago, but we still seem to be fascinated with it-the Titanic. I mean, the Titanic has sailed into the Internet! You can find all kinds of information about the sinking of that "unsinkable" ship back in 1912. And then, there was the Academy Award-winning movie, endless TV shows, articles, and there was even a Broadway musical about it. It seems like fascination with the Titanic just never goes away.
A lot of this information has been known for decades, but now there's a tremendous appetite for that information. Like the tragic mistake that fatal night by the radioman on the Titanic. The ship had received a number of warnings about ice ahead and had adjusted her course southward as a result. But two hours before the Titanic hit the iceberg, the radioman received a warning from another ship about a major iceberg, along with longitude and latitude coordinates. They put that iceberg right in Titanic's path. It's the one that sank the ship. But the radioman didn't know it was in their path. He was busy that night, so he stuck that message on a spindle to be dealt with later. That one choice doomed him and 1500 other passengers who died that night.
Every winter we hear the stories, we see the pictures of avalanches. We have done a lot of work in Alaska, and I took special note of an avalanche that happened at Alaska's Turnagain Pass. The mountain slopes had danger written all over them that day – eight feet of new snow had fallen on this older, packed-down snow, a warm sun had been beating down all day, and there were avalanche warnings. But that didn't stop some snowmobilers from powering up this 2,000 foot high mountain to see who could go the highest. There was an even more sobering warning of the danger they were in. Twenty minutes before the major avalanche there was a smaller one in a nearby gully. But some of the snowmobilers just kept going.
It's hard to describe to you how our first grandchild lit up our lives. He had a smile that was really a people-stopper. Yeah, I know I sound like a grandfather. Now, it's a good thing this is radio or you'd have to look at my pictures as well! One day when he was about 8 months old, I came home from the office to a pleasant surprise. My wife and I were babysitting our grandson. There he was, sitting on his Grandma's lap, leaning against her. I knelt down in front of the chair and told him what I tell him often. "I love you." He just looked at me, without changing his expression. I repeated it again – no response. Then two more times. "I love you." Suddenly he smiled, his arms started reaching, and his whole body leaned forward for me to hold him. And I did.
Dr. Christiaan Barnard was a doctor who made medical history. He performed the first successful heart transplant in human history. Since then, the procedure has become much more advanced as a way to extend the life of someone with a failing heart. I've got friends whose lives were radically changed by a heart transplant – an operation from which they recovered in surprisingly short time. I mean, it's pretty amazing to think that a surgeon can literally put a new heart in someone. Of course, heart transplants have been going on since long before Dr. Barnard's historic surgery.
Our son was falling in love. I mean like the big one-like the girl he ended up marrying. She's a beautiful Navajo young woman. Our son lived on the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona, and the girl of his dreams lived in a remote area of the Navajo Reservation. It was about an hour drive to get out to her house to see her, but he managed-frequently. And the road? Oh, boy! It's one of those reservation roads that kills your shock absorbers, covers you with dust, and even opens up a crater or two for you to dodge. It's not that there weren't better roads around in that area; there are some nicely paved highways with some beautiful views. They even had some nice girls living on them probably. But my son didn't take any of those, for one very good reason. There was only one road that led to the destination he wanted. He took that one.
I guess you could call it creative architecture. Or you could just call it a big stone in the middle of a high brick wall. I saw this phenomenon when I visited the new station of one of our radio partners. The front wall of the station has this big old 230-pound stone about halfway up the wall in the middle of the bricks. There's no way that could be mistake or an accident. It is, in fact, a message.
