Full Circle

I got up around 5:AM this morning, as I have been doing for some time now. I've been retired for nearly 5 years, and can sleep-in whenever I so desire, but I don't.

This morning, though, it hit me. I got up, took my insulin shot and quietly went into the kitchen, (being ever-so-carful as to NOT wake my wife up, who has to get up in a little while herself, to work an early shift at Wally World).

I fixed myself a bowl of cereal and laid out my morning pills (diabetes/cholesterol), and as I did, I thought about my Dad, (who died in 1988 from smoking most of his life).

***Words to the wise.....if you smoke, you really ought to think about quitting. I've seen death from the streets of a big city, to the highways, to the jungles of Vietnam, but I've NEVER seen an uglier way to die than from a bed in an EMPHYZEMA WARD. I mean, we're ALL gonna die eventually......but screw THAT!***

Back to the pills, I remember driving home on leave, from here to Medford, Oregon, back in the early 80's. I'd usually leave here after work and get into Medford around 4 or 5 in the morning, and as I got about 30 miles out, I'd call my Dad on the CB. I knew he'd be up and on the radio that early, because he always WAS.

Mom would be asleep, but Dad would be talking to his CB buddies. He'd always have the coffee pot on, too. After I got there, we'd sit and talk at the kitchen table......quietly, as to not wake Mom up till she was READY to get up. (Although she always seemed to sleep through Dad's "CB traffic.")

When she got up, she'd start breakfast and Dad would lay his morning pills out, which by this time in his life, looked like a small pharmacy! I used to kid him about it.

It's about 25 years later. Dad's gone....I'll be 61 in March, and that "pharmacy" thing isn't too funny anymore!

That "full circle" thing has been coming on gradually over the years. Back when the kids were still teenagers, I remember lecturing one of the boys about something, and he'd stand there with the straightest look he could muster, nodding his head and saying "I got it, Dad."

No he DIDN'T "got it", anymore than I did when it was ME standing in front of my OWN Dad back in the early 60's. He just wanted me to hurry up and finish the "lecture" so he could get on about the business of finding things out the HARD way.............just like his old man did!

I see shades of my Dad, when I go to Boise and get mired down in traffic up there..

"If ya can't DRIVE it, PARK it!"

"That's right, CLOWN......don't bother LOOKIN'!"

"Light's GREEN dummy........what are you waiting for, your Aunt Matilda??"

"NATURALLY.......everybody makes it through the YELLOW but ME!"

"Way to go, #%@*&^(!....just cut OVER 3 lanes...don't bother thinking ahead for your exit!"

....the language and jargon is almost verbatim!....

Dad was pretty politcal too. He couldn't STAND Jimmy Carter, the welfare system, the tax system, anyone who was anti-American, our involvement into things that didn't concern us....he was an "Archie Bunker" in a lot of ways.

In my own way, I'm glad he's not around anymore, because he would NOT have understood these past 10 years at all! I know that I don't.

I wonder sometimes, if he used to turn in early, in order to shut out the crap of the day as early as he could..............and then got UP as early as he did, to have a few hours of quiet time, with no television or phone calls to disturb him.

I'm begining to see the logic in that, although I enjoy spending time with my wife, even to the point of taking her out for her lunchbreak no matter WHAT time that break might be, conducive to her staggered work schedule.

....but I COULD get along just fine, if that phone never rang again and no salesman ever came to the door. If the base were to close, and Mountain Home turned back into a "small village" again, I'd be so happy, you couldn't believe it!

I'm not a "people-person", per se.........don't mis-construe that, I love my family, friends, folks in our church, etc..............but I DON'T like CROWDS of 'em. How people can live in Boise, staggers my imagination.

Here in Mountain Home...this place has exploded from the Mountain Home I was first stationed at in 1972. I pull into Wally World to pick Donna up for her lunch break, and that parking lot looks like Yankee Stadium sometimes.

I stop at Sinclair for coffee, and if I haven't timed it right, it might take the better part of a week to get out onto Sunset Strip!

Sometimes you HAVE to do Boise. Can't always be helped......

Carefully having a "gameplan" laid out prior to the trip, I have every stop figured out before I leave HERE, hitting the places who open the earliest, FIRST....plotting the streetpaths of "least resistence", the shortest way BACK to I-84............and IDEALLY, being on my way back to Mountain Home, before all the Boiseans start getting off for lunch. I try to get to Boise by 9....and back OUT by 11:30 if possible.

If I'm hungry........it waits until I get out of town. I usually drop off the freeway at Gowen Road, grab a sandwich at Burger King........and scoot back on to 84. "No hassle or rassle"

If, on one of her days off, Donna wants to go to Boise, I usually go along, just for the time together, if nothing else. Traffic doesn't bother me quite as much then...because I NOW have the option, of changing seats with my wife and having HER drive, if it comes to it. Weird too........because I STILL normally do the driving, but maybe it's psychological.....maybe just KNOWING you have relief at the wheel if you need it...........

When I'm by myself though...........it's like the old man is riding "shotgun" with me....

"Get out of the way, you idiot, I haven't got all day to wait for YOU!"

"FINE!.......it's starting to SNOW! God waited ALL WEEK until HE KNEW I had to go to Nampa this morning.........probably turn into a friggin' BLIZZARD by the time I start home again!"

Yeah....it's coming full circle...........now, at lunchtime, I take 5mg's...or was it 10?