Dear Folks, I Might Just Come Home By Bus Like I Left, Fort Rucker Georgia, USA, November 11, 1958, Love, Robert

                                             11 Nov 1958

Dear Folks

  We got off today being a
Holiday. I don't see why you
worried so much, after all you
brought me down here and I
also wrote one letter. I don't
feel like writing because there
is nothing to say. I have been
to Dothan once to watch a Parade
and I went to Ozark one time.
Both times I had to thumb.
I usually go to bed or over
to the EM club. Since I have
been here we have the two big
Inspections and one more to go
which is supposed to be the biggest.
These Inspections only happen once
a year and with my luck I came
at the right time.
  I wish that I had taken
the money I had when I got
back from Korea and fixed
my car. The last two
weekends we have got off on
Friday afternoon. But as it is
I don't want to depend on
anything else as far as going
or coming as myself, so
mostly I just stay here and
count the days. I am not
to pleased with this place
because I can't see why I
should still be in the army.
I haven't learned anything. It's
just the same routine. Well
maybe I will be out by the
end of the month. I will
call you if i want
you to come get me, as
is I don't know when I
will exactly leave this place.
I might just come home
by bus like I left.
                Love Robert

P.S. How about sending me 10$ ?scotia? money?

Hope Remains

Me and My Niece Gabrielle M. Armstrong

"..... But regarding the past, present and future, it is my hope that you will always be able to live life looking forward, not backward. Look backward long enough to remember the good times, but not so long that you cannot move forward to what your future may be, for we live not in the past, and not in the future, but in the present. It is in the moving forward every day that we live. You already know from experience that hard times will come, times you won't want to keep on going. Hold on to hope. Faith, hope and love exist together as the best things of this life, but when the times come that you lose faith, and when you feel completely unlovable, hope remains. There is a silver lining to be found in every situation...."
     -Marla Williams Murrah, Meek High School Principal, Commencement Speech, May 22, 2014

Life Begins......

  When my Beloved Uncle was sick and on the final days of his Journey he was asked about life.  He said for him he felt that life began at 50...because he found that he could do something else.

  Uncle Robert began a 20+ year career with a tax preparation service after the steel mill where he worked downsized and he took an early retirement. He helped a lot of people, including me.

  That stuck in my head when I approached a milestone birthday and I needed change in many ways, including extra income.

  My Mama got me a job the other day. I'm a college graduate, first female to ever be hired into the  management trainee program in the company I worked for and I later had my own business and my Mama got me a job.  She was talking to a guy I went to school high school with who had went on to become an Attorney.  He came home and opened a new office and was in need of someone to answer the phone and type and he knew my Mama and said that a daughter of hers would certainly be a fine employee.  I gladly took the job, happy to go to work at something that made money.

  He called me in on a Friday and I went to work...barefooted. I pulled a pair of dress pants out of my closet before leaving for my interview and put on one of my Mama's best blouses she made and wore back in the 70's and found a matching pair of dress shoes and I discovered I didn't have a pair of dress socks to go them them so I just stuck my 2 bare feet in those dress shoes and went to work feeling a little like Louis Grizzard, A Southern Man, and filed my first court case-barefooted.

  They let me come back the next day and then they let me come back the next day.

  Thanks Uncle Robert ...Thank you Mama.

American Honey

  I heard a song today as I scooted the hangers from right to left at the thrift store. It was "American Honey". My Neice, Gabrielle, was with me and had decided to skip prom so I decided she needed to skip school and go to the thrift store with my Mom and Me.  I have a friend that calls things like that "therapy". It was one of the first warm days of Spring. The pear trees were in bloom and the bees were appreciative. I was thinking about the people I have known in my past life before the coma went out of my income and I had to go back to having a real job for which I am grateful.

  I thought about that American Honey. When I left a corporate job to don the smoker and gloves and veil and the rake and hoe and shovel.

  I sat on the ground beneath the cottonwoods as the blossoms sailed to the ground around us. I sat at the feet of one of my beekeeping buddies, Ivory Darnell. Nobody was really sure how old he was, including himself, because when Ivory was born nobody gave out birth certificates. I sat at his feet and listened as he told me stories about his Mother, the Original Alabama Bee Charmer, with her white bonnet, smoking rag and bee "gums" near her clothes line. "Those mean German bees" as he refered to them. No one could go close to them but her. When they first put a man on the moon he told me what his Grandpa said... "Well, they'll not put one on the Sun".

  My Friend got blowed away by an F5 years ago. He didn't have any legs by then. We helped each other. I was his legs in the bee yard and he kept the smoker alive with mounds of cool white billows.
Moments like that made me glad... glad that I choose the life I did....or did it choose me

...of American Honey.

Lessons I've Learned From Bantie Bellbottoms

Miss Bantie Bellbottoms 

1) Be happy where ever you go.
2) Be grateful for the smallest of joys.
3) Bring joy to the lives of those you come in contact with.
4) Be good company.
5) Leave the world a better place.

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