“All the Difference”

    

     Needless to say, I am so excited about my first book entitled “All the Difference.” 

     It is a compilation of forty-three chapters, dealing with stories of children, including our own and those we served over a thirty-year period.  It includes personal stories and of those who made such a difference.  It includes several of the most popular columns that I have written for the prestigious Texas School Business magazine.  It also includes My Dream for our Children, which is one of the most requested items I’ve ever written.

     Some of the chapter titles are: “The Day Heaven Smiled Down on Me Through a Sixth-Grade Teacher,” “One of these Days I’ll Laugh About This... and today’s the day!,” “Taffy and Chickens - a deadly combination,” and “It’s only Tuesday.”

     And for your reading enjoyment, here’s the first chapter...

 

The Beginning… be it ever so humble

 

“Poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up.” – H. H. Munro

The beginning.  What a good place to begin.  And I’m really tempted to begin with “It all began on a cold, dark rainy night,” because I understand that it did. 

 

It was the spring of 1942, April to be exact, and I came bouncing into the world at a whopping 10 lbs. 14 oz. in the delivery room of Shannon Memorial Hospital on a storm-filled Texas night in San Angelo.

 

My most notable feature at birth was that I had no hair.  I grew it in later years, kept it for less than two decades, and then returned to my “newborn look” for the remainder of my days.

 

To say we were poor is not exactly correct.  Like so many others during the years following the war, we were rich with the things that money couldn’t buy: a storehouse of love, a vault full of understanding, and an indeterminate amount of care and compassion.

 

Looking back, I couldn’t have had a better, more rewarding childhood. 

 

Oh, we might have secretly yearned for more money, better cars, a nicer home, but in the long run, what we had, and what we didn’t have, was helping shape character, and integrity, and faith.

 

As the Garth Brook’s song says, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are As the Garth Brook’s song says, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are As the Garth Brook’s song says, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are As the Garth Brook’s song says, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”

 

I don’t remember when Mom and Dad didn’t work.  Mother did everything you can imagine to make extra money.  She took in ironing, she wrapped presents at Christmas time, she picked up pecans to sell, and she did some sewing.  For several years she worked at the woolen mills running a loom.  Hard work.  Long hours.  Little pay. 

 

But she always did it with such an incredible attitude.  She’d whistle and sing and make the very best of difficult times.

 

Dad, too, worked so hard.  Times were tough, and he’d do anything to make some money.

 

When we moved to Brownwood in Central Texas in the late forties, he worked at a chicken slaughterhouse.  It’s difficult to imagine my Dad in such an environment, but he did it because it was the only job available.  A few months later, a better job came along – working on the city garbage and trash route.

 

I remember once at the beginning of school in fourth grade, the teacher asked each one of us in class where our parents worked. 

 

“My father works at the bank,” one would say.

 

“My father owns the lumber yard,” another would respond.

 

“My Dad drives a garbage truck,” I innocently responded.

 

Laughter.  Everywhere. 

 

“What was so funny about that,” I remember thinking.

 

That night, I asked my father about it.

 

“Daddy, why did they laugh?”

 

“Sometimes people see humor in the strangest things,” he gently responded.  “I’m so sorry that happened.  In the future, if you’re asked in public what your father does, you might just say that he works for the sanitation department.  Maybe that will help.”

 

And, as I would discover so many more times in my life, he was right.  I even found myself holding my head a little higher and with a little more pride each time I would say it.  “He works for the city sanitation department.”

 

My first lesson in public relations: Presentation is everything.

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