My Father

I would like to start off by saying that my father is the reason I am who I am today. We have not always seen eye to eye, in fact we use to argue a lot when I was a freshman in high school. Now when I say argue, I mean that I respectfully disagreed with his decisions and always kept a safe distance from the fine line between respectfully/disrespectfully arguing with him. If you knew my father like I do, you would understand that decision.

I will be the first to admit that I was a little troublemaker back in the day. My friends and I had an infatuation with fireworks, pyrotechnics, and small explosives. We were always pushing the limits in one way or another, but we were lucky enough to stay out of trouble most of the time. Now I am not sure if my parents know the extent of what we were up to, but I think that they had a clue. Its kind of hard not to notice when half of our lawn mower gas tank went missing every week.

Anyways, lets just say that I was grounded a lot when I was younger. So, I would often think that their "rationale" for grounding me was absurd, but the fact of the matter is, I deserved it. All of their punishments taught me the crucial lesson of taking responsibility for my actions. When I messed up, they were on my case immediately and I was usually punished on the spot. My friends on the other hand would often have their grounding sentences shortened due to good behavior, my parents didn't get this memo. If they said that I was grounded for two weeks, then that meant that I was banned from (1) friends (2) tv (3) phone (4) computer for two whole weeks. It was rough at times, but it did teach me a lesson.

When I was in high school, I mowed lawns on our street for money. For a while, my friend Scott and I would do lawn work together and split the money. When we were not doing lawn work, my dad would always have some sort of outdoor project going on, which meant that Scott and I were his hired hands for that weekend. Well, after one long Saturday of spreading a mound of mulch on our flower beds my dad pulled me aside. He chewed me out for "horsing around" with Scott and questioned my work ethic for the day. I was drenched in sweat, covered in mulch, and exhausted from a long day of work and he was standing there yelling at me for having fun. I was irate, I couldn't believe that he had the nerve to yell at me after I had helped him all day.

I am going to just state this for the record, my father is the hardest working man that I have ever known. He says the same about his father, so in this case the apple didn't fall far from the tree. So, after getting chewed out Saturday evening I decided to let this anger fuel me on Sunday afternoon. I busted my tail moving the rest of that ginormous mound of mulch and kept a one track mind throughout the day. So when Scott started to take it easy and wanted to horse around, I yelled at him.

I couldn't believe that I yelled at my friend for trying to have fun during all of this manual labor, but I knew one thing, I didn't want to get criticized anymore for my work ethic. It was funny that a situation that made me so angry could actually help me to do a better job. There was a method to his madness after all. From then on, I decided that if I was going to do a job, I would do it the right way. A life lesson learned from a criticism, he knew what he was doing.

As I grew older, the lectures became few and far between. When I would mess up, my father would express his disappointment rather than his anger. It actually hurt me more to know that my father was disappointed in me than angered by my actions. I couldn't stand the thought of my father disappointed in me, so I have since done everything in my power to make him proud.

It has taken a long time for me to realize that my father shaped me into the man that I am today through all of his "tough love" techniques. He taught me life lessons and I didn't even realize it at the time. He is the hardest worker I know, a devout Christian, and a loving husband. I have grown to admire the man and work every day to make him proud. I have followed in his footsteps to the University of Texas and only hope that one day I can be half the man that he is.

Tyler, TX

Well I am in Tyler, TX at the moment, the East Texas town that I will be working and residing in after graduation. Other than the fact that you have to drive 30 minutes away to purchase any form of alcohol outside of a bar, Tyler is not a bad place at all.

Now, call me crazy but wouldn't it be safer to allow local residents to enjoy a cold beer in the comfort of their home rather than forcing them to operate a motor vehicle after pounding several post-work margaritas at the local Chili's. To tell you the truth, I have never seen so many people crammed into the bar areas at what I consider wholesome family dinner restaurants. I know that the Chili's, Applebee's, and TGI Friday's chains enjoy wracking up the tabs but Tyler must eventually get over these outdated laws created by the devout southern baptists churchs that are scattered all over the place. People must realize that times have changed and it is okay to reconsider laws that were mandated several decades ago, especially if the area is already known as "the wettest dry county".

I spent last summer here working for an independent energy company making a daily commute to the Odessa of East Texas: Longview, which from my summer assessment is most likely the birthplace of your generic trailer park drugs such as crystal meth. Actually, my employer sponsered a drug seminar on a Wednesday afternoon to educate all of us "field hands" about how to spot a meth lab. The seminar was actually very informative, but a co-workers stories about doing drugs and making trouble with Pablo Escobar's cousin really stole the show.

The people out here are really nice and the families hold true to the traditional values that they themselves were raised on. It is just strange to see that good ol' Johnny traded in his polo's and sweater vests for black lipstick and Michael Vick's dog collar. Thats right, the latest generation has begun to rebel against their parents and have decided to go the gothic route. So, times are changing and the once small "pleasantville" town is growing into a small city. The next step of course will be to de-segregate North and South Tyler.

Now, my dad has told me many stories about his high school days at Tyler Lee. His class was the first de-segregated freshman class in the history of Robert E. Lee high school. Of course some things must change during the desegration process, this included throwing out the Rebel flag, the Fightin' Reb mascot, and a refurbished civil war cannon. According to my father, this cannon makes the Ol' Smokey (cannon at UT football games) look like it was created for toy soldiers.

Now, I understand throwing out the confederate flag but changing the schools mascot and traditions is going to far, the confederacy did have beliefs and values that were not solely based on slavery. In fact, a majority of the confederate soldiers did not own slaves or endentured servants, a very small minority of southerners owned plantations. The southerners faced with extreme poverty would even work on the plantations themselves. Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general forever enshrined in US history, did not believe in all of the values put forth by the Confederacy, in fact his mind sided with the Union but his heart followed his home state. I know that General Lee owned slaves himself, but he did believe that slavery was becoming an outdated tradition.

Anyways, I don't mean to bore you with Civil War history, the point that I am trying to make is that my fathers high school did not need to make all of those changes to ease the segregation process. In fact, the changes enraged most students who dreamt of operating the cannon or playing for the fightin' rebels and also created more tension between the black and white students. The black students did not want to be at Tyler Lee and the white students did not want them there. All of this tension brewed and eventually boiled over in various forms of violent activities, such as riots.

So, I hope that my view of Tyler has not offended anyone because that is not the purpose of this blog. I don't really have a purpose to this blog, it is just for fun. I must warn you, I am not good about keeping up with things of this nature, so my posts will probably not be on any sort of schedule. That is all, thanks for reading.