Anniversaries 2017

On January 11, Joyce and I will be married 53 years. It’s hard to imagine we have been wed that long. Other than age itself, this is the longest time we have done anything and yet the time has flown by and it has all been good. There are many important things in life, but of all, love is the most important.

On January 28, it will be the 29th anniversary of my first day at Litton. Like the day I was married, I remember the first day at Litton. I started working with Bert Shipley’s maintenance crew; we were up on the roof of the building, ripping up rusted roofing panels in the freezing cold weather. The only heat was what drifted up and out of the plating tanks below. It was a long way down and more than a little bit scary not knowing how safe the panels that we were standing on were.

Long about May will be the 28th year anniversary of our buying the farm. It was in sad shape when we took over the place. Much of the house interior was unfinished we had some sheetrock to complete and there was hardly any trim work, so that had to be done throughout the house. We had to add insulation and repair most of the window sills. That was the easy part. The acreage was all covered with thorn trees; there was a mountain of concrete piled up and the barnyard was a sea of rocks that the previous owners had drug there to keep their cows from sinking into the mud. The barn itself was packed with junk, old windows, burned out wood stoves, lumber and general trash, leaving only a narrow walking path. My goal for the first summer was to at least clear a nice wide path just to be able to walk out to the back fence. Joyce and I cut thorn trees and made a sled out of old field wire to drag the trees (by hand) up to the only clear area so we could burn them in the snow the next winter. The next spring we hired a bulldozer to clear the rest of the place and I spent countless hours burning all of that. The bulldozer guy somehow buried the mountain of concrete. I was working at the time, so I do not know how he did it, but he did and one would never know it was there unless they started digging a foundation. The fescue grass grew nicely on top of the once mountain, later flat land. Through the years we gardened less and less, shed all of the cows and sheep and sold the old tractor with the brush-cutter and started a tree farm. I kept some nice walking trails around the place and used them daily. We grew old and could no longer keep up with things and sold the farm last May nearly 27 years to the day.

While we have been sort of retired for 9 years now, this May will be our 1 year anniversary of living in the apartment and being really retired.

The end, for now.