In theTrenches

In the early '60s, when I was just a little kid, my mother and her three kids, and maybe a cousin or two, were invited to take a road trip in my grandfather’s pickup truck and camper out to West Texas to visit relatives. Leaving from Arlington, the trip could not have been all that far, but I remember that sometime after dark we pulled off the road, probably at a roadside park, to rest for the night.

After sandwiches and cookies, somehow we all found a place in the camper to lie down, and soon we were fast asleep. Late into the night, a bright light and a noise of some kind penetrated my consciousness and I slowly roused awake.

The light was bright and getting brighter, and the noise was becoming louder and louder, and the camper began to tremble with the vibrations of a rapidly approaching train. Its headlight beamed directly into the rear windows of the camper, straight into my cozy little bunk. Oh no, Pepaw had parked his truck right over an old track he must have thought was abandoned, and the midnight train was barreling straight toward us. There was no reason or time to scream, as the last brief seconds of my young life ticked away.

Crash! One of the other kids kicked something onto the floor and several screamed out loud just as the locomotive’s engine rushed past our parked truck, and the 75 or so cars it was pulling began clattering loudly beside us not more than 20 or so feet from where we were safely parked. The train missed us, as my grandfather knew it would, and I’m sure he thought the whole incident was hilarious. That was nearly 50 years ago, and I’ve been dodging trains along the way ever since.

But recently, my good friend Ernie Smith wasn’t able to avoid the runaway freight his doctors diagnosed as pancreatic cancer, a fast and deadly killer that took his life in only six months time. Ernie was a great guy, a career Texas Forest Service agent who trained people in forest management, fought forest fires across several states, and even was pulled up for special duty cleaning up at the twin towers after 9/11, and later searching for fragments of the space shuttle that came apart over the deep woods of Northeast Texas.

Ernie had wanted to come to the shop when he was well enough and see what he could make with some new equipment we had recently installed, but his chemo knocked him down a lot and he was never able to get up again, even for a short while. Yet just a few months before he seemed as healthy as one can be. You just never know what’s coming down the track, not in this life anyway.

We were going to make a sign for his gate, cut out of plate metal, and I was going to show him how to do it and let him run the equipment. It would have been a special day at work to have had that time with Ernie.

Of course, as you get older you realize that every day you’re healthy and able to do the things you need to do, even if it’s just work, like working in a sign shop, that’s a day to be thankful for. I believe I’ve known this for quite a while now, and though I work too hard much of the time I don’t really mind it.

Even though I’m grateful, I never believe I’ve really done it right, and have asked more than once for the wisdom to live the day in front of me the way it should be lived. In the movie, “Groundhog Day”, one of my favorites, the main character is forced to live the same day over and over until he gets it right. When he finally does it correctly, which means living that day for everyone else and not for himself, he is only then allowed to move forward to the morrow.

In reality, we waste too many tomorrows without learning how to live today. The days keep coming like a freight train whether you’re ready or not, coming way too fast it seems. I believe my grandfather, if he were here, would agree with me on that.

And as I sit at a keyboard, pounding out one more “Trenches”, I do know one thing I have never really done the way I should have. And that is to say “thanks” to all of you who’ve been reading these columns for over 20 years, and all those who’ve taken time to write a line or two and shared your thoughts with me, or have come up to me at a trade show with a friendly “hello” and an encouraging word.

I really appreciate you all, and have taken too long to say it. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

I hope you have a great month, and your sign business does too. And, for all of us, I hope there are many more to come. More to come until we finally get it right, which for sign guys, self included and first, seems to take quite a while.

‘Til next month,
--Rick