Target practice

I wish I still had my trusty Remington Model 700 BDL 22-250. I would go out to the country today and do some target practice. I would only need one bullet because the target isn't a paper bullseye, it is my Cingular phone.

Yes, my two year contract with that bunch of liars is over. No more dropped service in the center of Lincoln regardless of what their independent research company says. No more "no service" messages in the back of The Coffee House when my friends are chatting away on their phones.

Just one shot at 50 yards and no more Cingular. No more customer service calls that start with them saying "we apologize." What a sad excuse of a company!

Maybe best of all, they are no more. They are now AT&T again. I say again because I was a fairly satisfied AT&T cell user until Cingular bought AT&T's wireless unit. I inherited bad service through merger.

But I don't have to put up with their bad service anymore! Can you hear the bolt of my 700 opening? Can you see me put the cartridge in? Can you see me close the bolt? Can you see me looking through the scope? Can you see that goofy Cingular logo thing dance on my cell screen?
Can you see my trigger finger gently sqeeze back? Can you say goodbye Cingular?

Just the thought makes me smile!

The writer's nightmare

OK, this is a writer's worst nightmare--next to proofreading. I stopped at John Hall Motors for a friendly visit. It had just finished snowing. There was just a dusting to maybe a half inch of light stuff covering the ground. But, that was just enough to cover some glare ice under it caused from melting the day before and refreezing over night.

I was wearing my trusty Sorell boots. They keep my feet nice and toasty and are generally great in this kind of weather. Unfortunately, they are like a 4x4 truck on glare ice. Worthless.

My right hoof found the ice about the same time my left one did. I went up in the air and broke the fall with my right hand which promptly broke my right wrist. Owie.

I boarded the 4 bus for downtown, stopped at my favorite coffee house for a cup and got a bag of ice from them to put on the wrist. By then, it was time for the 16 bus to come around, pick me up, and drop me at Lincoln General. (That's Bryan West these days but it will always be Lincoln General to me and all fans of Terms of Endearment.)

In and out in 45 minutes. It is a broken wrist and tomorrow I get a cast put on. The forecast is for sleet and freezing rain. That would not be good for a guy who has to walk about a mile and a half to reach the doctor.

This is a writer's nightmare I can assure you. My paw is typing all kinds of crap. Thank God I don't have to use white-out on here.

Here's to you...Dad

My Dad was pretty big stuff in his small Nebraska town. He helped build a golf course out of a country pasture and went on to become the volunteer greens keeper. He turned hard clay into one of the most beautiful courses in Nebraska. Yes, the folks up there remembered him for that and you will find a bust of him out near the first tee.

He was also the mayor for a few years. He was in that post when the streets finally got paved.

But, half of the town remembers him for being the best Catholic a Protestant church ever produced. (Don't get him confused with being a pillar of some church. He wasn't.)

It was back in the 1940's. Dad, unlike me, was a great athlete. In fact, he got a scholarship of some sort to play basketball at Creighton University in Omaha. (That's right, he was a Protestant kid who got a scholarship to play basketball at a Catholic university.)

But times were tough and he came home to help his dad hold on to the Ford garage and one farm to the East of Hartington. The family owned a bunch of farms before the Great Depression but lost them. Yeah, I could have been a cattle baron but alas, my shoes are cleaner and my bank account is much smaller. Can you imagine how much his heart ached at not having a chance to play ball on go on to a bigger life?)

Dad worked in the garage with his brother after grandpa passed away Now, most sons think their dads walk on water and worry that they will never be as good of a man. Mine not only walked on water, he started Global Warming.

He started that walk at then struggling Holy Trinity High School. That little school couldn't afford a basketball coach back in the 40's and the priest asked dad if he could help out for a year. He said he would and kept that promise for 8 years. He never took a cent in salary and I suppose he took plenty of grief from the Protestant community for coaching at a Catholic school and whipping their ass in the county basketball tournament.

I must say, those folks have never forgotten what he did. Right next to his casket was a big spray of red roses from his teams. The priests were part of his funeral service. The Catholic church has honored him several times and have honored us, his family, by including us in those events.

How could a writer worth his salt leave a life like that alone?

Well, I couldn't. It's been a life goal to write something about those basketball years and I finally finished the movie script yesterday. You should know I HATE basketball so this was going to be a major effort on my part. Football was fine, but basketball I never got.

I have already completed a couple of edits and there are a couple more to go and frankly, I love it. It was fun to write. It made me well up inside. It brought tears. And, it brought out some writing that I didn't think I was capable of doing. I think there was some higher intervention here and it went straight to my fingers. What seemed to hit the page bypassed my loathing of the sport. That's the way it was suppose to be.

Normally, once I got in my "writing mode," it would take me a month or so to write something like this. I went start to finish in three days and I am very happy with it.

Yes, I do hope it makes it to the silver screen because my Dad's life was powerful, purposeful, and centered on helping other folks enjoy a better life through athletics.

So, here's to you...Dad. Your story is out there for a bunch of people to see. I hope they get the chance. God bless ya!