Columns & Editorials

B

B

Make a Left

B Dear Aunt B, I would really like to find a positive role model in my life. I have friends that encourage me and a great family that supports me, but I like the idea of having an older woman that can pour into me as I’m figuring out life and raising my children. The only thing is, I don’t know how to meet someone and just ask them if they’ll mentor me. Do you have any advice?

B

Growing up in South Texas, air conditioning was a dream that remained an unattainable dream for most of my childhood. Everyone in the house had a fan that provided some relief for the summer heat at night. When I was in my early high school years, my fan was inherited from my great grandmother, Ella Barber. It was a box fan, but it was an ancient ancestor to the cheap plastic box fans that we buy today. The actual fan blade was made of metal, and it was behind metal fins. It was held together by wood at the top and bottom and had a cord that was covered with cloth not plastic.

Make a Left

When Can You Choose Retirement?

Make a Left

Every day you wake up is a special day. It is filled with potential and opportunity. Yet too many people start their days in a foul mood. They drag themselves out of bed to prepare to endure another day. Starting on Monday, their objective is to make it to Friday. Then, on the weekend, Sunday becomes stressful as the clock clicks down to Monday.

I have spent a good deal of time sitting in a deer blind. Not nearly as much as I would have liked to, but still, I have braved a lot of hours either shivering, sweating, fighting mosquitos and finally, contorting to get a good shot. In all of those years I have never hunted in a blind that I built myself. Most of the blinds I have ever hunted in are made of plywood and 2 x 4s and are pretty basic. When the cold wind blows, they don’t offer much protection. For years, I got to hunt at my Uncle Jim and Aunt Nell’s ranch in Floresville, Texas with my dad, my brother Jeff, and my son TJ. My dad and Uncle Jim had built two blinds. Both were in the oak trees on the far side of the ranch. One we called the “Green Blind”, and the other was “The Brown Blind” for obvious reasons. But the best blind Uncle Jim ever put on his place was a 6x8 foot “Tough Shed” that we always referred to as “Uncle Jim’s Blind”. What made the blind so special was that it was roomy enough for 2 or three people at once and it was practically soundproof. Eventually my brother Jeff bought a little propane heater that we would use on cold winter days. In Uncle Jim’s Blind, hunting was more about bonding and being close to the people I love. It was a time to really talk and visit as we would park at the gate, walk through the woods in the dark and get in the blind an hour before sunup. Those times are some of the best in my memory. My son TJ shot his first buck in that blind, a ten pointer whose antlers he has on the wall of his house to this day. Then over a decade ago our little hunting club suffered a tragic loss. Uncle Jim died of cancer, but we carried on the tradition. In the blind was one of his Sam Houston Cigars that he loved to smoke as a reminder that whenever we hunted in his blind, he was still with us, even though it was probably those cigars and a whole lot of cigarettes that took him. My aunt let us hunt there for several years until her son decided there were too many houses around the ranch and that we couldn’t hunt anymore. A couple of years after that, my dad died. I would have like to have spent the last couple of seasons in the blind with him but in his later life he was in his 80s and had a very hard time walking through the woods and he would only do evening hunts rather than stumble through the woods in the dark.

“You should always read the Bible when you’re bored or don’t want to play,” says Katy, age 8. “God is always around you whatever you do. If you were sad, God will still be with you.”

Dear Aunt B,