Tag: Life

The Wonder Of It All

Goose, our tabby cat with a permanet sense of wonder

One of the reasons that I love our big tabby cat, Goose, is that he always has a look of wonder.  We could learn a few things from Goose.  A few times over the years I have forgotten to be pleasantly surprised at whatever has happened, but not often.

After I went away to military high school in Tennessee in 1963, I figured out within the first three months that I could either be unhappy with what was happening in my life or I could be wonderously surprised at whatever happens next because it is often an unknown piece of the puzzle that turns out to be my life.

When I got in my car to go office to college in the fall of 1967, I left with a sense of adventure which included a promise to myself to try new things especially if they forced me to step out of my box. The Vietnam war was raging during my college years and for a while it looked like I might become a foot soldier in it.  Instead once I graduated and figured out that I wasn’t going to be drafted, I immigrated to Canada.

That as you might expect was a huge decision but like many decisions in the days before the Internet, not a lot of research went into it. I was in love with Nova Scotia.  The beauty and wonder of the place wrapped itself around my mind. Before I got married, I came to know loneliness even in a place as scenic as Nova Scotia. Marriage to a NC girl was another moment that surprised me and left me thinking that I was living under a special star that helped me find such a wonderful wife.

There were plenty other moments of wonder. After dispersing our cattle herd, somehow I made the transitiion to working with Apple Computer. From shoveling manure to selling Macintoshes has to be an epic career switch. Twenty years later when Apple pushed me away from the company, several people encouraged me to think about my next career as finding something that would excite me for the next fifteen years. It took a while, but I ended up helping communitieis build fiber networks.  Along the way, I learned how to take a skiff out into the Atlantic and how to kayak a two-mile wide river. I spent a few years rescuing an HOA. 

I always welcomed the next challenge never doubting my ability to do a good job and always approaching a new challenge with a sense of wonder.  That doesn’t mean I did not have any worries. There were many sleepness nights during my HOA time.  I would always wake early when I was taking someone new in our skiff out into the Atlantic. It was a big responsibility.

I recently got a new heart valve by way of a TAVR procedure.  While I was afraid, I never waivered.  I am still facing some medical issues but I face them with a sense of wonder that something so complex can be done without cutting me open.

I have been surprised by people all my life from the British doctor and his wife who became great friends to some of the very interesting people that I met Harvard.

I continue to be amazed by people that I meet from the young farm family working on the same farm that has been in their family for over one hundred years to the New Brunswick farm couple in their sixties still haying and keeping work horses. I also amazed by the young adults finding their way through this increasingly complex world.  That they can keep moving forward when most of the cards are stacked against them renews my sense of wonder.  Then there is my adult son who rose up to start doing many of the things that I was doing before my heart valve problem. I am back to driving and hope to be gardening in a few weeks but I definitely have a feeling of wonder seeing my son plant flowers. If that can happen, I think we will be able to push back on the anti-democracy forces trying to destroy our country.  That of course would lead me to an immense feeling of relief.

Swiss Army Knife Life

I once posted a picture of this Swiss Army knife and someone made some disparaging remarks about Swiss Army knives in general. I responded back that if you have never needed a Swiss Army knife, your life was likely confined to more civilized areas than I have frequented. Even a cursory examination will reveal that this knife has been well used. I am pretty sure it went to Newfoundland with me on our little trip to the barrens. I know it went in my pocket every day that I farmed. It did things it was never designed to do and some parts are broken as a result. It never failed me. I like to think the theme of my life is lot like that beaten up Swiss Army knife.

Somehow, I seemed to be prepared for whatever challenges that I faced. Perhaps it started when I grew up the child of single mother in the fifties. I tried not ever let having only one parent drag me down. Mother always told me that if I worked hard, I could be anything that I wanted to be. She pulled herself out of red clay soils of Yadkin County, NC and got her license to be a beautician. She supported us from the beauty shop attached to the back of the house.

In a sense being an only child of a mother who worked extremely long hours gave me a push into learning how to do things I might have avoided in a more standard family. I learned the basics of cooking because if we got food on the table at any reasonable hour, I needed to be involved. It started with just sticking food in the oven, but well before I got to Boy Scouts, I was grilling half chickens on an old charcoal grill. Tinkering with things started at an early age. By the third grade it was my job to balance the check book and make sure the deposits were recorded properly. At some point I became the navigator and developed a love of maps that still bedevils me today.

Being a Boy Scout accelerated many of these interests and enhanced my love of the out of doors. By the time I left college, I was in need of an escape from the cities. Regular visits to Maine had only made my desire to get back to the land worse. The old Nova Scotia farmhouse that I bought in 1971 only pushed me harder. I had to learn plumbing and how to wire a house at the same time my carpentry skills had to get better if we were going to have a place to survive the winter.

By the time we got to our New Brunswick farm, I was ready for almost anything. With a welder and an acetylene torch, there wasn’t much on the farm that could slow me down. I always had a John Deere tractor and a Chevy 350 3/4 ton 4WD that I could lean on and some great neighbors who were always willing to help. With some local help I even built a couple of barns that are still standing 50 years later.

After the farm, I went on to sell Apple computers, learned how to manage a sales force, and how to survive a teetering small business. When I actually went to work for Apple, the second day I was on board, they gave me a tray of real 35 mm slides and said you’re presenting to 100 people tomorrow, put together a presentation. If was the first of many presentations that would define my almost 20 year career at Apple. My last days at Apple in 2004, I was director of federal sales and sat with Avie Tevanian at a federal hearing on cyber security. Had Apple stuck more with open source and the direction our team was headed, there would be a lot more Macs in the federal government and our government would have a more resilient infrastructure.

After a consulting gig with the National Lambda Rail (some called it Internet 3), I went to work at an email company and learned the ins and outs of online marketing. It was a steep learning curve with Google analytics, buying search terms, and managing an inside sales force when I had spent most of my life in outside sales.

By the time the email company was sold, we were well on our way to establishing a life on the North Carolina coast, I worked a writer and I dabbled enough in real estate to know how to mine data from tax databases which turned out to be very useful when I became a vp at a company that was building fiber and convincing people to sign up for it. My love of maps led me to extensive use of Garmin’s mapping tools both on land and in my skiff and kayak. A knowledge of GPS helped me jump feet first into ArcGIS Pro and the technical reports and maps that have defined my last dozen years.

Not long ago, my barber asked me, “How in the world did you get from shoveling manure to selling computers and then helping to build fiber networks?

I told him the answer was simple, I always believed in what I was doing and I never sold anyone something that I wouldn’t be proud of using whether it was a bull, a bailer, a computer, or a report on the state of the Internet in their county. I could have said that I had a Swiss Army kind of life, always ready for the next challenge even as I was taking a lot hits along the way.

Life Sneaks Up On You

The Royal Road, Tay Creek, New Brunswick, Canada

Just after I graduated college in the summer of 1971, instead of going to Law School, I headed off to Nova Scotia. I was part of the generation that felt strongly about getting back to the land and understanding a lot of things that modern society was hiding from us.

A decision like that is possible when you are young, I believe that as age and life will sneak up on you, it gets much harder to go off on your own in a wild adventure as you age. How older people have done it, remains a mystery to me.

Eventually, I got married and my wife and I moved to what I considered a real farm or at least one that I believed that I could make into a modern farm. We never really gave up all modern conveniences like many back-to-the-landers. One of the first things that I installed in our Nova Scotia farmhouse was a dishwasher. I also put one in our home in New Brunswick. I plowed my garden with a John Deere tractor not a horse.

The road in the picture ran 20 miles back to Fredericton, the capital of New Brunswick. We were lucky to have schools, churches, a couple of general stores and medical services in our little community of Tay Creek. Forty years after we left, the churches and general stores are gone. If you want to buy gasoline or a nail, you have to go to Fredericton.

Taking on building a home for your family in an isolated spot which at the time was subject to amazing snow storms is something you only do when you are young and your body can take on almost any challenge. In my twenties and thirties, I never doubted that I could do everything for my family aside from medical care and schooling. Plumbing, electrical wiring, installing appliances, those were expected of the folks who lived beyond the city. There was no one to hire to mow a yard or even change faucet. While we had an oil furnace, most of our heat came from a wood stove. The furnace would come on during the early morning hours as the house cooled. Our water came from a spring. Our food came from our garden, our milk cow, chickens and cattle herd.

As nice as the life on your own in the hardwood hills of New Brunswick was, it was non-stop work. It was ten years before we went on a real vacation. After we left the farm, we mostly lived in suburbs. Seven years after leaving the farm we were in subdivision on the side of a mountain in SW Virginia. For many years I kept the steep slope behind the house clear of brush and small trees. It meant working with a chainsaw on a hill where I could barely stand. Fortunately, I never got injured. It was another activity reserved for youth.

By the time we got to our next house twenty-four years after leaving the farm, the strenuous work was down to mowing the yard, keeping our skiff running, and hurricane preparation. Good preparation for a hurricane often meant the cleanup afterwards was relatively easy. A storm like Hurricane Florence meant extra cleanup for everyone in the area no matter how much you prepared. The older you get, the harder all that is. Polywood outdoor furniture is nice until you have to haul it all into the garage.

When we moved from the coast in 2021, my wife and I were both over seventy. We were far from our children and family. Our house had too many steps and we were both tired of the hurricane routine in spite of never having any real damage to our house.

My wife had almost five acres of raw farmland which was a hayfield in Surry County. We briefly considered building a home there, but quickly decided that we were too old for all the work needed to build a home so we found a great subdivision with public sewer, water, and fiber Internet. Moving to North Carolina Piedmont close to where I grew up has turned out to be a wise decision.

We are glad that we moved when we did. We have friends our age that would like to move from the coast but have decided that they are too old to try. I can relate to their feelings. Getting our coastal home ready to sell and moving with our four kittens was not the easiest thing that I have ever done. I am pretty sure that three years later, I would be reluctant to move again unless I just had to move.

You don’t think about these things when you are young and can handle anything. Life can sneak up on you. It is good to plan a little for the time when you can no longer take on the world with one arm tied behind your back.