Life With No Regrets

Good morning. Thanks for visiting. I have been reminded how living life moving forward, positive, and no regrets is healthy and productive. Looking over one's shoulder, being negative, and second guessing is time consuming, confusing, and depressing. In our shop we're getting ready to work on construction equipment.   

Since we moved across the yard to our new home last summer, and since we took the old house down about a month ago, we have all these boxes in our new basement of stuff. You know, stuff we'll never use. Well Jan is having me go through all these boxes on my free evenings. She can't figure out why I only get through one box a night. The reason, these boxes are full of memories. This house was about two miles west of Cedar way before my time and belonged to Jan's grandmother's family on her father's side. There was a fire and the family lost their home.

This is a poor picture but I found it interesting. I have told you before how Jan's father and others started the first tractor pull in our county. Well in this picture is a Farmall 806 is pulling a wooden sled that men jumped on as it went by to increase the weight in front of a packed house. And your parents and grandparents told you all they did was worked in the old days, right?

One winter day 50 years ago Jan's dad went to chore on the hill and made this discovery. Apparently a gentleman had walked away from the county farm and died in the hog shed.

When I was 14 years old we had to take a tractor safety class in order to work for hire. Sitting on the first tractor is Bryce. John is on the second with John, the instructor standing. The 4th tractor has the only girl that attended with Charlie, the instructor standing. And Gene is looking out the last tractor. As an 8th grader I thought it was crazy that a girl would attend. Well little would I know that 5 years after this picture I married that girl. 

You don't have a clue how many memories this picture brings. My father-in-law and his hired hand, Gene, are unloading straw into an elevator. Not only did they have a lot of baling, Jan and I and our kids had 100 acres of hay. We small squared, wire tied every bale and sold it to hay buyers who would truck it to Missouri dairies.

This is a fun picture of our local Christian School board 35 years ago. I wish I could name them all. On the left is Don, Jerome, Ken, and others. On the right is Darrel, Calvin, Don, Neil, and others. Good job guys.

 40 years ago we were just starting out. We had one tractor and one pickup. This was my father-in-laws idea. We took a 1957 Chevy ton truck and cut off the rear end. Then we added a Graham-Bradley tractor rear end and had ourselves a Truck-tor. We always called it the Hybrid. It's still around and the grandkids can't wait to get old enough to redo it again. Stay tuned.

One day we were combining along Hwy 92 in a field now called Otter Hills. The local newspaper came by. In this picture helping me is Mark and Becky. Mike and BJ were in the grain truck with Jan.

Our kids were always active, energetic, and helping and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. However once in a while they would get in a bind and need stitches. I'll let you guess who this was.

One winter day about 27 years ago I had a dozer in the shop just like today and was working on it. Jan came home from the doctor's office, came in the shop, and told me we were having twins. Wow. If we would have looked back then, second guessed, and told ourselves we couldn't afford a large family, we would have missed out on more blessings than you can imagine.

This past Tuesday we went to the Machinery Power Show. Since the weather was bad and since there is no discretionary income in farming there was a small crowd which was good when 12 grandkids go along. We ran into Paul who was working with Fellowship of Christian Farmers. Thanks Paul for your passion for showing folks Christ.

Laura is a fourth grade teacher at our local Christian School. Her and her husband Jason had a pizza and Bingo night for fourth graders and their grandparents. Thanks Laura and Jason for a good time.

John and Amelia are both fourth graders. I think we may have grandkids in every grade except one. Jan and I are blessed.

Saturday morning was breakfast pizza and getting ready for early weaners at Karl and Kristin's hog shed. Many hands make things happen fast. There were 13 of us working together.

There you have it. Some snapshots of the early days, of days when looking over one's shoulder and second guessing would have led one down a different path. However God had a plan we couldn't even have imagined or dreamed about. Don't just sit in your comfort zone. Don't be afraid of failing. If you do, get up and try again. Take chances. Get involved. Reach out to others. Don't burn bridges. You may have to cross it again someday. Be generous. And live life without regrets.