You start out with so little... how do we become so...

arrogant? Really, I was reminded by my wife that tomorrow is a day she would like me to remember and celebrate with her. Did I have any plans? Just to wonder where the forty years got away and why we aren't rich yet.

My parents hadn't been married twenty-five years yet when this picture was snapped. Their anniversary would be on the twenty-third and we would be back for it. My mother would be waiting for her fiftieth, her Golden anniversary, she was always waiting, but Dad and the Lord had other plans.

1972 I owned a used Pontiac Lemans, a 1948 flathead Harley-Davison, several hundred dollars in US Savings Bonds and a couple of hundred dollars in the bank, three rifles, three custom made knives and a job jumping out of airplanes and helicopters. The stuff dreams are built upon. I would make nine thousand dollars that year. Buy a new trailer to live in and a new car, a puppy and a television all on time. And some of the happiest years of my life, except for the bad parts. Isn't it always that way? For all the rest of you out there, I wish you all the best in your lives, and happily ever after.