A chapter from “An Artist’s Story,” the life story Lee wrote in his eighties. In his words, as he wrote them.

One of the hard things about writing one’s life story is the fact that there is so much to write about and as one thing led to another its easy to get side-tracked.

I’ll try and keep my story in a date line so I am going back to where we were on Brewer Rd. when Kenny, Rod and Barbara were our family. We had a dog then and his name was “Blacky“. He was a long- haired black and white Springer mix. He had black ears with a white face and white collar and white feet and legs.

Sort of shy and stayed around home, seldom did he leave the yard. We first got him when we were on Brewer Rd. He loved to chase mice in the tall grass. We would look for him and all we could see was his black tail above the grass, head down smelling for a mouse. When we called him he would come running no matter where he was. He made the transition from Brewer Rd. to East Moreland Drive without any problems. He was part of our family until Kenny died and on that day Blacky disappeared but that’s another story that I’ll try and write about some other time.

Blacky was not however our first dog I will have to go back to when Kenny was born.

We wanted a medium size We wanted a dog that would watch out for the kids and be a good dog for us. So our first dog in the family was a white samoyed pup called “Skipper” and what fun he was. He did not stay a pup very long he soon grew into a pure white dog weighing about 25 pounds. He looked much like an Eskimo dog. He sure kept his eye on Kenny and Rod when they were small. He would walk along side of the wagon or the baby buggy without being told to even without much training. He was very much a one-person dog. When I left to go into the service he had a hard time adjusting. Then about a year later when Lois came down to Texas to see me he did not adjust at all and finally died. He would not eat regardless of what he was fed. The attachment that some pets have with a particular person is a very strong bond and sometimes a strange one.

After “Blacky” and “Skipper“and “Poppy” we decided to try a thoroughbred dog and we then purchased a small Scotch Highland Terrier called “Kelly“. He was an all white dog who thought he was smarter than we were and often he was. He was the boss dog at our place and he would take on anybody or anything that came to or front door. He was a good “watch dog” he watched everything. He weighed in at about 12 pounds, loved to have a bath. He always rode in the front seat of our car setting on the front armrest. He knew exactly where we were at all times even when we were driving in a different state. He never got carsick, he just loved to travel.

He was a pretty good talker too. When he was just a pup he would beg for food by using a low quiet growl, deep in his throat, and it sounded very much like, “mom ma” and with a little coaxing he became very good at it.

When Larry was in high school he told the other kids in his class that “his dog could talk“. He would often invite them over to our place and have Kelly sit up and say “mom ma“. Then Larry would collect their bets, he didn’t get rich but he had a lot of fun with Kelly.

When he was 8 or 9 years old and being a thoroughbred dog he came down with cancer. I took him to a vet in Fla. and we had to have him put away; I buried him under an apple tree in the woods. While digging the hole I cried like a baby and I promised that I would never became that attached to a dog again.

It was some years before we had another pet. When we were older Lois felt it would be nice to have another dog seeing we were not traveling much anymore. So I put an ad in the Davison Index that read, “Little old lady wants small dog“. It was sort of a joke on my part, however the phone began ringing and we had the offer of some seven dogs. Because we lived in Old Orchard Trailer Park the dog had to be preferably under 20 pounds.

A family with a number of small children and a cat offered us their dog for free. He was a 17- pound feisty little Lahaso-Apso. He had been raised with a cat and acted much like one. He spent a lot of his time licking his paws and rolling around like a cat.

We took him to Dr Rooker who declared him healthy we adopted him into our house. He is now somewhere around 12 or 13 years old and he is just about as old as we are. He is a good dog and seldom barks with the exception that when the door bell rings he lets everyone know that he is the guardian of our house and you had better watch out.

That’s the part of this story that covers the 4-legged pets we have had called dogs. If you numbered all of the rest of the creatures we have had it would number into the 50’s.

Goats, gerbils, hamsters, gold fish and two or three birds. These animals were all good things to have and take care of but they did come and go.

We were living on Brewer Rd. when Grandpa John Mick died very suddenly during the day. Grandpa had been retired about a year and he had made a long car trip to Alaska to see Allen and his family. His plan was to sell his Buick in Anchorage for a profit then fly home. However the best of plans often don’t work out. He drove the car back to the states and stopped on the way home to see his brother and two sisters in Iowa.

It was a very trying trip and for the first time, that I can remember, I saw him laying around on the davenport at home. This was unusual for him for he was very active taking care of a large garden and lawn. He enjoyed being busy. I got a call from my mother to hurry to their home on east Moreland Dr. because something had happened to my Dad. That something was a massive heart attack that killed him quickly. He died Dec 12, 1951 at the age of 66 and it was a shock to everyone.

Transcription

Original spelling preserved; [brackets] mark uncertain or editorial readings.

Retired Buick Worker Dies; Funeral Friday.

Services for John D. Mick, 66, retired Buick employee, who died Tuesday, will be held in Masonic Temple at 2 P.M. Friday under auspices of Genesee Lodge 174, F&AM. Burial will be in Sunset Hills. The body will be at Brown Funeral Home, 1616 Davison Rd.

Mr. Mick died of a heart attack at his home, 6134 Eastmoreland Dr. He had been an employee of Buick for 35 years when he retired as supervisor of office services in September, 1950.

He was born in Des Moines, Iowa, but had spent most of his life in Flint. He was a 1909 graduate of the University of Michigan.

An active member of Masonic organizations, Mr. Mick was past master of Genesee Lodge; past high priest of Washington Chapter 15, RAM and a member of Flint Council 56, R&SM, and the Genesee Valley Commandery 15, Knights Templar. He also was a trustee of the Masonic Temple Assn., a member of the Flint Industrial Executives Club, and a trustee of the Industrial Mutual Assn.

Surviving are his wife, Grace, three sons, three sisters and a brother. The sons are Dr. Allen H. Mick, Palmer, Alaska; Douglas E., Jonesville, Mich., and Leland W., Flint. The sisters are Mrs. George Beard, Richland, Wash., Mrs. Clarcy Bechtel, Des Moines, and Mrs. Garnet Harrington, Valley Junction, Iowa. The brother, Floyd, lives in Berkeley, Calif.

[Photograph caption: John D. Mick]

He had worked for Buick for 35 years and only had one year of retirement. I am sure that the long drive to Alaska was too much for him.

For as many years as I can remember my dad took a very active part in the Masonic organization. He was past master of Genesee Lodge and I remember as I was growing up that he was gone every Wednesday eve. I could count on that most of my high school years as well as later on. He was a trustee of the Masonic Temple Assoc. and also a trustee of the Industrial Mutual Assn. called the IMA.

These organizations took a lot of his time and he willingly gave it. I found out later that he had helped a large number of people through these organizations. Many years after he was gone, some one would tell me about how they had been helped through my dad’s generosity. He was a great man and I was proud of him. I have missed him for a long time now but it’s good to know that we will be together again some day.

Mother continued to live on East Moreland Drive but she was not happy living alone and so far out in the country. The house was a big worry for her and she longed to be back in the city where she could shop in downtown Flint whenever she wanted to. To some degree she felt trapped in the country because she did not drive and she was still young enough to want to travel. She and Dad had found a place to their liking in Kissimmee Fla. And she would get on the bus and travel there as soon as the weather began to turn cold. She even flew by plane to Alaska in 1953 to visit Allen and their family.

She liked her small apartment on Root St. it was easy for her to take the bus downtown whenever she wanted to. She even got a job as a seamstress for a dress shop and enjoyed the people she met there in downtown Flint.

Every winter she would go to Fla. And rent the same apt there that she and dad had found a few years before in Kissimmee. We could sort of keep track of her through our letters but she was very independent and got along very well by herself.

Sometime in 1957 she started having minor strokes and we did not hear from her for some weeks until she wrote that she had been in the hospital after a nasty fall due to a black out. She recovered in a few weeks and returned home to her apartment to recuperate.

We visited her often and took the kids to her apartment for frequent visits, which she enjoyed. I would have dinner with her at noon as much as time allowed.

The only time that I remember my mother talking about the old days, I brought the subject up once and she was quick to remind me that the “good old days” were not the greatest. She said that “I had never been behind a horse who had been eating oats in the spring. It was all right if the wind was in the right direction, otherwise it could be quite a malodorous trip. So don’t ever talk to me about the good old days“.

It was in 1953 that mother sold her house on East Moreland Drive to us and we moved there with Barb, Rod and Kenny and Blacky the dog. We made the garage into a large bedroom for the boys and Barbara had her own room next to the kitchen.

The kids liked the house and the sliding hill right in front. They could go out our front door, down the driveway to the mailbox and be on the hill within minutes. They spent many happy hours sledding on that hill in the winters.

The kids wanted a tree house and we had lots of trees, so up went a platform some ten feet off the ground. This tree house was next to the garden just 150 feet to the south of our backdoor. You could look out our kitchen window and yell to the kids for dinner with ease. Hours were spent on a long rope swing that hung from a branch in one of these trees.

I didn’t have much time in those days taking care of a big lawn and working long hours of overtime, the days seemed to go by very fast.

I have to be honest, I had my hands full. In all the years that I worked I never met a man who said, “I wish I could find more hours to work“. I was not at home as much as I would have liked.

I wished I had taken more time for my children. There never was the right amount of time for them. As time goes by there is no way to make up that lost time and it is gone forever.

On Sunday June 13, 1954 we were putting up a camping tent to see how it worked because we were in the process of planning a vacation trip to northern Michigan.

Kenny asked me if he could go across Davison Rd. to look for golf balls along the creek at Brookwood golf course, and I said “yes“. That one word changed the lives of all of our family forever.

Kenny was hit by a car going west on Davison Rd. As I look back now I believe he was killed instantly. I held him in my arms until the ambulance arrived praying that he would be all right. Praying for Lois, Barbara and Rod who were watching from the top of the hill in front of our house. Later at the St. Joseph Hospital I knew that he was no longer with us. Oh how it hurt! That hurt feeling of loss easily returns whenever I spend time dwelling on it. Even today while writing this inadequate explanation that hurt easily comes to the forefront.

Transcription

Original spelling preserved; [brackets] mark uncertain or editorial readings.

In loving memory of

MICK—Kenneth W. Mick, 6134 Eastmoreland Dr., age 11, died Sunday, June 13, 1954 at St. Joseph Hospital. Funeral services will be held at 2 P.M. Wednesday, June 16, 1954 from Chapel of the Chimes, Brown Funeral Home, Rev. Robert J. Wise officiating. Burial in Crestwood Memorial Gardens. Kenneth will lie in state at the Brown Funeral Home, 1616 Davison Rd. Death was sudden due to an automobile accident. He was born in Flint, Mich., August 7, 1942, lived in Flint all his life. He was a member of Calvary Presbyterian Sunday School; member of Boy Scout Troop 193; he just completed the sixth grade at Bentley School. Surviving are: parents,, Mr. and Mrs. Leland W. Mick; brother, Rodney Lee and sister, Barbara Jean both at home; grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. L. R. Sanford of Flint; grandmother, Mrs. Grace Mick of Palmer, Alaska. Please omit flowers and make contributions to Scout Troup [sic] 193.

I am not writing this so that those who read it will feel bad in anyway. I am writing this for the people who will come along in the future and they may be helped by what I am writing.

I learned some years back that the hurt feeling I mentioned is called “trauma” and our emotional wounds are often deep. They don’t bleed like a cut on our bodies but they are just as real and just as painful....sometimes more. Our capacity for trauma has its limits.

A week or two after Kenny’s death a man drove into our driveway and got out of his car, I wondered what he wanted so I met him part way up the drive way. He said that he didn’t need for me to know his name but he wanted to share a story with me if I didn’t mind.

He said that he and his wife had lost three of their children. One died as a small child about 3 with some type of mysterious illness. Another child died while he was walking along the road holding his hand and was struck by a passing car. The third child was burned to death in a car accident that they witnessed.

I just listened and it was hard for me to fathom the depth of their loss. He said that sometimes as a couple they stood strong, at other times very weak, as they watched GOD deal with them in each tragedy. He said that he was not relieved as well meaning people offered shallow, or simple answers for their grief. I did not have any answers either; just then, I was too deep in my own trauma.

For many years I worked for a man whose name was Joe Rawley he was chief draftsman for Buick engineering. He was a man who was very strict with those under him. I did as he told me but I did not care for him very much. He did his job and he let you know when you were not doing yours. He seemed to be unfeeling and unapproachable.

Then when I returned from the hospital where Kenny was pronounced dead he was the first person to come to our house. We went out in our back yard and he and I sat side by side on a bench for over an hour not saying a word. His strong presence was a help without words.

My real help came from the Lord through Lois. If I had not had her to hold in my arms I would never had made it. She taught me to persevere she would not let me lose hope. Together we have grown old together and yes the best is yet to come. We know that we’ll see Kenny soon. “Come to me, all you who labor and are over burdened and I will give you rest. I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls.”

Mathew 11:28 Slowly but slowly oh! How slowly we began to recover. Rod and Barbara helped too, even while they were going through their own trauma. What wonderful children we have, they are very special people with a special quality to love like nobody else. We went on with our lives and we helped each other.

We felt it important to let our friends know of the hope we have in Christ and just like the man without a name who told me of his grief in the loss of this three children we try to help others who are hurting. I believe a family is one of the most important things in life.

Try all you like, you simply cannot find a substitute for the family. GOD planned it that way. There is nothing that I know of that can come close to the benefits derived from relationships that revolve around our roots as a family.

I hate it when family ties begin to loosen. I hate it when our children begin to drift. “I pray this prayer often, please GOD keep this family together“.

Remember this, “TIME DOESN’T HEAL....IT’S WHAT YOU DO WITH THE TIME THAT HEALS“. A long life or a short life is of equal importance to GOD.

One day we packed up our camping equipment and drove north. I think that this trip after Kenny died was the first time we went over the Big Mac Bridge. We camped in St.

Ignace State Park over looking the bridge. I remember the many times we crossed the straits on the old ferry boat long before the bridge was built. It was quite an adventure to take the ferry to the UP. We would hope that the parking lot at the ferry dock would not be to full, often we would have a hour wait before we would see the ferry coming toward us.

The ferry was not the most efficient way to cross the straits, it was the only way then. During the days of the ferry they would put a couple of older boats into service to accommodate the deer hunters who wanted to get across to the Upper Peninsula to get their deer. Thousands of cars would arrive a day or two before opening season and the line up of cars would extend as much as 15 miles south along highway 75. Each year the press of deer hunters seemed to grow. During the Michigan deer season it was often hard to find enough men to fill the ranks in the Auto Factories.

It was a great relief to have the Big Mac built. What a bridge it is. The ferries are gone now but we have fond memories of the trip across the straits of Mackinaw. We continued our trip north to Paradise and on to Tahquamenon Falls. We rented a rowboat and rowed to the island, which we could hike around the island on the rocks. There were a number of nasty little bees that seemed to like Barbara for she cried ouch to a couple of bites. She didn’t cry even though they must have hurt her a lot.

We left the falls and drove southwest to Indian Lake State Park to see the Big Spring and camp over night at the park. We thought we heard a bear but it was just a raccoon looking for food. After 75 miles east on highway 2 we arrived at the Big Bridge and continued to Petoskey State Park and spent a day or two walking the shore looking for Petoskey stones. Lois found many big and small of these Michigan gemstones. We arrived home on Sunday just in time for Barb and Rod to get back to school. It was not quite the same without Kenny but it never has been. We missed him a lot.

In 1951 I was 33 years old and working as a designer and I was drawing the frame of a full size car. This required a very special type of drawing board. It sat at a vertical position and it could travel up or down on a pulley system with counter weights mounted on a large frame. The drawing surface was approximately 18 feet in length and 10 feet high. On this board was mounted a special drafting machine that was moved by hand to any position needed.

Most of the time I worked from a standing position however I could work in a sitting position on a large table if I needed to. The time span for producing a large drawing of this kind was about three months to complete. It was then kept up to date, as changes required which took another 6 to 8 weeks. There were usually two or three different frames for other models or show cars that I was drawing so I never lacked for work, there was always something coming up.

One day I began to experience some severe backache and stomach pains. So I checked in with Dr. Cutler and he said he would meet me at St. Joe’s with in the hour. A friend of his who was a good surgeon promptly took my appendix out. This surgeon laughingly informed me that I need not have waited to the last minute, that he could have taken it out sooner.

St. Joseph Hospital was a busy place back then so my bed was placed in one of the corridors with a screen around it. After a week of that I was happy to get home to recoup. Thanks to GM who paid all expenses, I came out of it pretty good, minus one appendix.

It was around 1950 that I was given a special job to design. The King’s Ranch in Texas was the largest cattle ranch in the US. I believe it was Harlow Curtis who visited the ranch when he was the CEO of GM and they requested that Buick design and build a special convertible built on a Roadmaster chassis to be used to travel the desert in search of wild game. The windshield could be folded down over the engine compartment. There was a jump seat mounted just behind the front headlights on the right side as well as, a leather rifle rack on each side of the body. The seats were all done in brown leather. It featured rifle racks and ammunition compartments in the front fender.

This car required a heavier frame than normal and this was my part to design. It took approximately 4 weeks and the drawings were finished.

The car was assembled without any problems and a second one was ordered and delivered. I always wished that I could have seen the finished product. A number of years passed before I heard further about the King’s Ranch convertibles. Just before I retired in 1971 someone sent me a magazine article about these special made Buick’s El Camino and they were still being used today. I am happy to have had a part in their design.

Of all of the car divisions Buick seemed to us to have been sort of a favorite among all of the others. This may have been because Harlow Curtis was the general manager of Buick before he became head of GM. The other car divisions had to work hard to keep up with the new innovations that kept coming our way.

After the retirement of Harlow Curtis things began to slowly change under the new leadership of Mr. Smith. The other car divisions began to play catch up. Each one of the other divisions had developed a new research and development dept where they worked hard to bring out new ideas for their respective models. Buick began to lag behind because we had not yet moved forward fast enough. To make it look as if we were starting an R and D dept. A small room was built on the second floor in the back and my big drafting board was moved over night into this room along with a striped down Chevy show car without the body. New lighting was installed and all of my equipment was there one Monday morning. I was given keys for the new locks on the one door to this room.

I was now the official R and D man in the first research and development dept. at Buick Engineering. It was all a big smoke screen and I had no assignment of any importance. I was given a lot of “make work” projects but I seldom had a good objective that I felt good doing.

The chief engineer would use his key sometimes to come in and take a short nap in the afternoon. I knew enough to disappear for a while. I wondered how long this would keep on. It only lasted for a few months while a new group recruited from Chevy and Pontiac took over the newly formed R & D at Buick. I was the first to be recruited officially from the ranks of the drafting dept of Buick Engineering.

Most of the new people brought in from other divisions were put in places of management or assigned special engineering jobs.

There were lots of rumors flying around about the number of draftsmen and mechanics that would be required for this new dept. It was quite obvious to me that those being picked were not the most talented or desirable as far as I was concerned for this new dept. I had no say in what was going on and I was glad that I kept my thoughts to myself.

Phil Bowser became the new R and D dept. head and I worked for him for several years in lots of different job assignments.

I am not sure that I want to continue on with this part of my “life story“, perhaps later.

When Lois and I were 35 years old we decided to have another child. This was one of the best ideas we could have come up with.

Lawrence John Mick was born June 3, 1955 and he fit right in. Rod was 11 years old and Barb was 6 when Larry was born.

But before I write about Larry here is a thought. Isn’t it strange how very little we know about the childhood of our own parents or our own Grandparents, or of their time and place? Their whole world has lived and died yet it was and is part of my blood and bones but I know as little about much of it as I do of the world of the Pharaohs.

And then I wonder about my own children and their children about these “disconnections” between children and parents that prevent them from knowing each other. It’s funny how children rarely want to know who their parents were before they were parents, and when age finally stirs their curiosity there is no parent left to tell them.

That’s where I find myself today, now that I am 84. I long for the time that has slipped by to be able to sit down and have a chat with my mother and dad about how it was then. How they felt about things in their day and time.

I am not one to tell my children how much harder life was in the good old days. I don’t want to be reminded that I am an “Old Timer” but I know that often my own children had seen my exciting future become their boring past even to the point of where they seldom communicate or are even interested in what it was like when I was a child and was their future. I often get the feeling that they are too busy with things to be able to think much about our past doing’s.

I can’t have any of those “end of the line” visits with my folks now and I sometime wish I had not thrown off my own childhood so carelessly. Each one of us comes from the past and I strongly feel that children ought to know what it was that went into their making and to know that I am just a small part of a chain that makes up their roots. We can only go back a short ways along this chain because of all the “disconnections” between our ancestors. These disconnects also cause a lot of miss information to come to the front and as time goes by they become absolute truth to many people along this path. These false memories should be recognized for what they are. I hope that none of these false memories will come to the forefront of my writing and if they do I can point them out to the readers of the “Life Story” as a myth. Ha1 Ha!

It was not a myth that Larry was born and I have some good pictures to prove it. Larry as a baby was great fun, he kept us laughing all of the time. He didn’t keep us awake much at night but I must add, “until he was a teen“. We lost a lot of sleep when he was older.

He was a good size baby when born and a healthy one too. It didn’t take long for him to grow out of his baby things though. Barbara took care of him a lot when he was small. They loved to play in the snow and slide down the hill in front of our place. Here is a picture of Barb and Larry with the Easter Bunny. If I remember this snow came down just about Easter that year. We felt the spring would never come but it did.

When Kenny, Rod, and Barb moved into our house on East Moreland Dr. there was just enough room for everyone providing I could rework our garage into a bedroom for the boys. That was the first remodeling job to take place at our new home. I put in a false floor raising the floor about 4 inches and laid down a tile floor. Large windows replaced the garage doors with lots of drawer space under the window with a built in closet and a wall with a bedroom door to close off the pump and electric hot water heater. Our house was now big enough for three children and a master bedroom for Lois and me. What luxury.

Later on we constructed a 12x12 garage at the end of our long driveway. Rod helped me build this garage with the help of some of his buddies. Kenny had been gone about a year when we put up this building. We even had room for Rod’s goat.

One day Rod and Mike Shuplin decided it would help their communication problem if they put up a few poles in the back yard so they could run their own telephone line between Mike’s and Rod’s bedroom. I remember that one or two poles went up but then their enthusiasm was lost when another idea struck. All they needed was a couple of these new walkie-talkie radios and they were all set wow! How come I didn’t think of that? Mike Shuplin lived in a house just south of our place.

I don’t remember what took place next but Rod had a lot of good ideas when he was young. The only problem was he had to keep up with school, marching in the high school band, homework and working at the drugstore. He was a busy guy but most always he was happy doing new things and having new ideas to look forward to.

After graduating in 1962 from Bentley High School we had a family pow-wow and Rod felt he was ready to break free. He felt that the Navy would give him the freedom that he was looking for. So off he went to Pensacola Fla. And that was a long way from Michigan.I’m quite sure that Rod adjusted well to Navy life in Pensacola Fla. He was in the Naval Aviation Fire Fighter School there and it was an exciting exercise to learn how to handle the fire fighting equipment that the navy had then.

After graduating with high marks for his know how and expertise at Sherman Field he moved further south to Key West Fla. He attended the Naval Sonar School and became an expert Petty Officer in the field of Electronics and finished up there in 1964 to be assigned aboard a Destroyer out of Virginia in the Naval Reserve. He took several trips on this ship during training maneuvers for other young navy personnel. He moved on after his 4 year hitch looking for new adventures and accomplishments. Rod was gone for 4 years and when he arrived home he had become a man, he was no longer our little boy.

When Rod was young he had great fun being a scout and he was one of the best. We had a small Cub Scout Pack when he and Kenny were in Johnson School. They continued on in their scouting for some time. Rod became Waterfront Director in 1967 for the Boy Scouts of America in Genesee County and spent a lot of quality time working with young Scouts.

We have always been very proud of Rod and the path he has taken. Now he is a man of 58 and starring retirement in the face. He now has two Grandchildren and four grown daughters.

Where did the time go?

When Rod was in the navy it was a very busy time in my life. The auto industry was in full swing and Buick was making it’s share of profits for GM.

The R & D department at Buick had grown much larger and Phil Bowser had been promoted to asst. Chief Engineer of Buick Engineering.

We were busy with many new designs for Buick and the hours I spent in the drafting department often kept me there well into the early hours of the morning. I found myself being efficient and I certainly was diligent and productive and sometimes Lois would remind me that I was becoming a “Workaholic“. For a while I thought that might be the case. Sometimes I would become anxious about what might be going on back at the office while I was gone and I sometimes felt guilty. At work I found myself demanding more of myself and others. A workaholic is a strange being but I want you to know that I got over it. I did get a few cracks and I needed some time off from work to be with the people that I needed most and they helped me with my cracks. Ha! Ha!

I read this definition for workaholics written by Chuck Swindell and I wrote it down and have kept it for years. I am putting it in this book because it is worth remembering in case you ever run across a “Workaholic“. This will help you to determine if you are one.

The number one and two person pretty well describe a workaholic. Number three person is fairly well balanced. If you are a number four or five you have got other problems but you are not a “Workaholic“.

Quality of Work

1.Leaps tall buildings with a single bound.

2.Must take a running start to leap over buildings.

3.Can leap over only short buildings.

4.Crashed into building when attempting to leap.

5.Can not recognize buildings at all.

Timeliness

1.Is faster than a speeding bullet.

2.Is as fast as a speeding bullet.

3.Not quite as fast as a speeding bullet.

4.Would you believe a slow bullet?

5.Wounds self with bullet when attempting to fire.

Initiative

1.Stronger than a locomotive

2.Is tougher than a bull elephant

3.Is strong as a bull.

4.Shoots the bull.

5.Smells like a bull.

Communication

1.Talks with GOD directly

2.Talks with angles.

3.Talks to himself.

4.Argues with himself.

5.Loses those arguments.

So if this is your work life you need to strive for balance, somewhere in the middle, I think.

When Rod left for the Navy Larry must have been about eight years olds. Barb was about 14 and was a great help to Mom and me. She was a good student and had a lot of good friends. The following pictures of Barb start way back when she was born on Brewer Road.

This is about Barbara Jean Mick born Sept 23, 1948 at 1:30 in the morning she weighted in at 8 pounds and 13 ounces. Her mother Lois was 29 years old. Dr. Cutler said that the birth was an easy one. The father was not allowed into help with the birth of Barbara and had to sit it out in a smoked filled waiting room. Oh well we were up most of the night anyway. The mother came home in a few days and I had a great chance to help out with our new baby daughter.

Barb grew up real fast and it wasn’t long and she had Kenny and Rod in the palm of her hand. Barb was so cute that she was a real push over when she ran the boys. Here is a picture of the three of them with their good looking mom of 30.

Rod and Kenny often found their only place of escape from Barb was up one of the big box elder trees that grew in our front yard on Brewer Rd.

Everybody was dressed up in their Sunday Best and on their way to church in Rankin. There were few houses along our gravel road in those days and the traffic was light. You always looked up when a car went by to see who they were. Most always it was a local neighbor who would wave.

Because Brewer Rd. went North and South we had some whopping big snow drifts in the winter. Here is a big drift in 1947 and that’s our old Chevy that Glen Terry sold me. It sat there for three days until I could shovel her out and even then she would not start until Reed Torry came along with his truck to give the battery a jump. It wasn’t long after this big storm that we sold the old Chevy for whatever we could get (I think it was all of $150.00) and went to Durand and bought a new Jeep with $500.00 down and the rest on time. Wow! These were our good old days. We couldn’t get through to the nearest store during this storm so our next door neighbor’s sold us an old tough hen that mom cooked for 12 hours and you still had a hard time getting it down.

Spring was just around the corner and it was a good thing too but then the road went out and I had to ride out to Fenton Road on Reid’s tractor in order to get to work.

Well Spring did arrive and here is a picture of Barb to prove it.

It took a year but she got the lawn mowed and here she is ready for church.