Interests
1. Outdoors
2. Travel
3. Earthly Problems
4. Food
Growing up in Oregon set my preference for small town for the rest of my life. Back then there were only three billion people on the planet. You could go anywhere without a reservation. A cup of coffee was ten cents. People bought things and repaired them when they stopped working. There was no such thing as plastic, cell phones, or virtual reality. We lived in the real world, climbed trees, and talked to each other face to face. We did things as a family. My parents were a part of my life, they participated rather than dumped me off here and there.
We moved to California when I was starting high school. As a teenager, there was somewhat excitement to life in California and I adapted okay. I could buy four McDonalds cheeseburgers for $1.00, and sometimes that was my lunch. I was only an average student in high school until I woke up to the fact that I would soon be an adult and would need to become a responsible person quickly. Since I was only average for so many years, I didn’t set my sights too high. I went to college though, and did well. I soon discovered that my potential was much greater than I had always thought.
My father was raised in Montana and grew up to love nature and simple life. As a family we always were in the outdoors, and he taught me many things. My father was also very much a do-it-yourselfer and involved me in most of his projects which helped to instill in me the idea that I can figure out most anything put in front of me. To this day, I would rather do something myself rather than have a professional screw it up. We would drink water from the kitchen faucet, and if we were working outside, we would get a drink from the garden hose. There was no such thing as air conditioning. We opened the windows at night to let the cool air in.
We had many technological advancements. We could roll down the car window by simply turning a crank. If you opened the car door a light inside would come on, and it would go off when closing the door. If I unlocked the car, the horn didn’t honk to annoy the neighbors. When I locked the car, the headlights didn’t turn on to shine in the restaurant window where people are enjoying a nice meal in peace. Things were simple and didn’t cause headaches. Things were perfect and were not labeled “smart”. Today we have smart water, and smart grass seed. The smarter, the claim, the dumber it really is. I spend most of my time undoing all the stupid things that are done to help me.
