Finding Dead Bodies is Not that Much Fun

It's that Halloween time of year once again.

I like this time of year for a number of reasons such as cooler weather, the changing of the leaves, family time, festivals and especially Halloween candy.
I am not as big with the ghosts and goblins as some are but I have my own share of spooky stories and adventures.

This is actually a true story.

What we have done for a number of years is invest in real estate and manage the properties for ourselves. My main role through all these years has been maintenance on some level, whether that was doing it myself or being in charge of other maintenance guys. 
This has been a family business with several members of the family involved at one time or another. Our daughter, Tara, happened to be working with us at the time this story took place.

Some rather strange people lived in this one particular apartment that we owned. They were already living there when we purchased the place and they had done nothing wrong. They just were a little strange.

Nobody had seen these people in several days and concerned people started to call. There were  notes for them left on their door. After a few days, we also grew concerned about them and wanted to make sure everything was all right.

My daughter asked me to check it out and she would come along.

After knocking loudly and waiting, we knocked again and there was never and answer at the door.
I stuck the key in the door while yelling the usual warning words in this situation. No answer still.
Furniture was still everywhere as if somebody still lived there. It was a mess and I said as much rather loudly as I tend to do at times.
There was nobody around in the living, dining and kitchen areas. No lights were on. Nobody home it appeared from all evidence.

As it looked like nobody was home, my confidence increased and I made several comments about how sloppy they were. There was clutter everywhere and I wouldn't exactly hire these folks to clean anything if I needed that type of work done.

The bedroom door was shut. Once again, I knocked on a door to make sure they were not inside.
No answer.
We opened the door slowly into a very messy bedroom. My voice was louder yet again as I declared the residents to be filthy to the core.

Nobody was in the bedroom, and the lights were off. There was only one more door in the apartment that we had not opened and it was the closet.
Thinking nothing of it, I opened the closet door for whatever reason.

I may have screamed "they're dead" like a little girl, I am no longer sure as I saw the bodies of two people laying on the closet floor.
I slammed the closet door and we ran yelling like a couple of cowards. I am no longer sure who hit the doors first, Tara or I. But, out the door we ran not even taking the time to lock it.
I had never seen dead bodies before other than at a funeral and didn't like what I saw.

They were as white as sheets, or more fitting in the situation, ghosts. She was completely naked and laying face down. He was laying face up in his underwear. I had never seen whiter skin in my life which I had imagined dead skin to look like.

Tara called the police. I tried to gather myself and remain calm. Dead bodies were not my thing. I am no ambulance chaser.
The cops took their time arriving and it seemed like an eternity. In reality, it was probably half an hour.

The rest of the story is almost as weird as the first beginning. The cops came. They knocked on the same door I did.
The people answered the door and were watching TV as if nothing had ever happened.

Nothing was ever said about this again. Nobody knows why these people were in the closet and I never asked. I never looked at them directly again the remainder of their time living in their apartment. Never said a word to them or had any contact at all with them.
Did they think they were vampires? Why passed out in the closet? These are questions I will never know the answer to.

The story is funny to me now. I am sure glad they were not dead and sure glad I did not discover dead people in our apartment.
As far as I know they are still alive somewhere, just not in our place.

Not really a spooky story, but a true one and a little spooky to me at the time.

Happy Halloween.

How bout them Rangers?

I'm American and I like baseball. It's not my favorite sport, but I like it.
I also like the standard hot dogs and apple pies, but you probably knew I was going to say that. 

I don't watch baseball all that much anymore but I used to watch a lot. The team that I have always watched was the Texas Rangers.

Not in my wildest dreams would I have ever dreamed the Rangers would make the World Series this season. But, they did and did it in spectacular fashion beating the traditional best team in baseball, the Yankees.

This blog is not really about the Rangers, however. It's about my grandfather whom we all called Pawpaw.

My grandfather didn't like baseball. He loved baseball and the Rangers were the team he loved the most. He was retired and his health was failing fast and he watched baseball every chance he got.


It wasn't exactly a huge secret around my family's house that I was probably my grandfather's favorite. I'm not bragging when I say that, just stating the way it was back then. Lots of great memories.

My grandfather passed away when I was 29 years old and within a week of the birth of my son. Today is my son's birthday and he is 22 years old now so my grandfather nearly the same amount of years.
Still today, there are a number of things that I see, or hear, that remind me of him.

One of the biggest reminders is the Texas Rangers.

I wish my grandfather was alive today to see his Rangers in the World Series. I wish he had seen them beat the mighty Yankees and he had felt the joy that all of us long suffering fans have experienced in the past few days.

Win or lose, Rangers, thanks for stirring up in me memories of one of my all time favorite people.

Think your words don't matter?

I had been looking for one of my childhood friends for a long time.

I wanted to tell him something.

Something that he did once made a big difference in my life.

This kid was one of the cool kids. He had cool hair when the rest of us had to get buzzes because our dad's made us.
He wore cool clothes when I had hand me downs from my older brothers. He had a motorcycle when my parents wouldn't let me near one. He had a drum set and could play the drum solo from In-a-gadda-da-vida when he was in elementary school. Think about that for a minute because that was a pretty big accomplishment.
His dad was cool and he had a cool older brother. We all loved going over to their house because there was always a blast to be had.

Lots of great memories of Brad McFarling.

I don't think I have seen Brad since my family moved to a different town when I was going into the 8th grade.
But, I wanted to find him for a number of reasons. Most of all, I wanted to tell him what he had done for me so many years ago that I still think about almost daily.

In the 7th grade I played football as I did every year I was in school that had a football team to play on. I use the word loosely when I say I 'played' football because truthfully I was never really very good. Easier to admit that now than it ever has been before.
Football season came and went and we entered into a time of the typical school off season program where coaches try to get you in shape and built up for the following season.
I will also admit now that I was a lazy kid.

When you are lazy and you are working out, you look for shortcuts to makes things easier on yourself. Sometimes you don't even do it on purpose. It just happens because you are looking for the easy way out.

I was working out next to my friend, Brad, and obviously I was taking the quickest route to rest my sorry butt. Brad said something to me that I would use the rest of my life and I say it to myself almost daily still to these day almost 40 years later.

"Don't cheat, when you cheat you are only cheating yourself". Bravo, Brad, thanks for those words.

I believe in doing things right and I feel bad inside when I cheat and take shortcuts.
I usually try and tell myself and those around me the same thing Brad told me so many years ago.  This doesn't just work at the gym, but with work and everything else you attempt in life.

I wish I had said something to somebody back in the day that made a difference in their life. I fear I didn't.
This works in reverse, too, and I remember comments about me that were negative from the same time period but I try and blow those off.

But, we all have the same opportunities to bless others with words that build them up or straighten them out in some way if we would just take the time to do it.

This story has no ending. It's not over yet, not by a long shot.
But, it's got another chapter.
This weekend I found my old friend Brad McFarling on facebook.
I let him know that he made a difference in at least one person's life. Of course, being the great person that he is he gave his Dad credit for putting that in him instead of taking the credit.


Sometimes all it takes to make a difference is to just say a few words.

Things I found in the fire

Well, technically there was no fire. Not in my own life, anyway.
Yes, I have had to deal with fires and more than once, but this was different.

The fire I am talking about was in my soul.

My very life, my very belief system, my very thoughts and my entire being was rocked to the core by situations that were now out of my control.

I was at the bottom. 

The fire was in my soul and it was not a pleasant experience.

I won't go into my life's disaster details here and I may never really write about it in this blog. In fact, I am really tired of thinking about it and trying to explain what happened to people that can never really fully understand what I am talking about and probably really don't care all that much, anyway.
So, while it was true that there was not a real physical fire, but the destruction was complete much in the same way a real fire does a person's home or belongings.
Not only did I lose so many material things but making things even worse, I lost my brother from cancer during this process which only added to my pain.
My life was a mess and maybe it still is.

During these dark days of my life, I rediscovered a true love for MUSIC.

I have to say rediscovered because I used to listen to a lot of music as a younger person but had lost touch while raising a family, growing a business and other details of a busy life. 


Listening to music was a part of the healing presence. Oh, I am not healed yet, but I am working on it even if I have a ways to go.
Music is a part of the process.


I started with music that I grew up with such as Creedence Clearwater Revival and a lot of other groups from back in the day.
My playlist grew from there.
It has taken a lot of time but has been so much fun to discover one new music group after another and even find some I had forgotten about.

I have cried through this process and I have laughed as well. But, through it all I have kept moving forward and finding song after song and enjoying myself.
I love the Blues, Classic Rock, Alternative Rock, Texas Country and many other genres. .
Almost every night I am online searching for new music discoveries. During this time, new music has gotten harder and harder to find but I am still out there searching.

Maybe some day my spirit will  heal up. In the meantime, I have my music.

It's my life, give me that remote.