Jack Bruton 12/18/1927 - 11/11/2010

My neighbor died in an auto accident last Thursday. My wife and I went to his service today. He would have been 83 in December, he had the same birthday as my son. He was a WWII veteran, he built and worked at the Potters Clay Mission in Tulsa for the last 12 years, he had no less than 17 great-grandchildren. He played football at Webster high school, and still holds some records for football and track.

But I'll remember him as the old guy who talked to my wife and I about working at the Sun refinery, about his son who repaired helicopters, the guy who sat and watched me fix one machine after another. Didn't matter if it was cold or hot, he would always take time to sit outside.

Hiding for the Holidays

It's that time of year again. The time where we all are supposed to be thinking of family, and loving one another, and buying bunches of stuff.

I'm usually just trying to find a good spot to hide out. But I have a wife now, and my wife is the most wonderful and happy person, who wants to be sociable with everyone. And she can't understand why her husband doesn't want to be sociable with everyone just like her. And it's not so much a matter of being anti-social, it's a matter of being bored. I can sit at home and read, or I can go see her family and stare at the walls because they get insulted when I read instead of, well, stare at the walls. Last family gathering I went to, I sat inside and after listening to the same hen party talking about the same self-inflicted issues for about fifteen minutes, I took to my heels and could be found sitting in the cargo compartment of my Trooper, with the back door open, reading a book. Which of course nobody could understand. Except my wife. And they kept bugging her, and grousing at her, about me being outside (In the heat, I think it was in the 90's that day) when I could be inside. After much whining from her aunt, I went inside and - you guessed it - read my book. Only it was in an uncomfortable chair, it was noisy, and it was inside.

Hanging out with her family tends to be like that. It's great if you're a woman, and want to talk about woman-type things. I'm not ever going to enjoy it. If I'm going to be staring at the walls, I'd rather be home staring at my own.