So many years I heard it told
The story of compassion
A prodigal son who left the fold
And found no satisfaction
On my knees, Lord, I cried out to You
“I’m so alone but if there’s room in Your house for one more
I’m ready to come back home”

I know there is a place
Where arms of compassion welcome me home
Sweet mercy falls like rain
I know there’s a place called grace

So many days I’ve trusted grace
Yet I have to wonder
How many times my human strength
Has kept me from surrender
The more I learn just to lean on the cross
The more I see
When I fall, I will fall to the place
Where mercy reaches me

If it seems that my courage is strong
There’s just one reason
He’s my rock when my faith is all gone
He holds me in His arms
Gives me strength to carry on

Credit 2 P.C.& D.

– The Dirt Paved Road

I love rainy days.  For the longest time I never understood why…but, just last week it hit me.  I grew up in the country on an acre of my grandfather’s (maternal) farm.  The land, I believe, was gifted to my mother and father but, it wasn’t by any means a pristine piece of property.  It was a quagmire created by a natural spring.  It took months of moving and adding dirt just to get it close to being ready to have our trailer moved from the trailer park where we were currently living.  I digress, but I don’t think I have ever publicly said that I started my life living in a trailer park…so, here it is – I started my life living in a trailer park.  I don’t exactly know how long we lived there or how old I was when we moved out but, I fondly remember the older kids there riding bikes around.  I thought they were so cool.  They would pop a wheelie and bunny hop the pot holes.  I remember the grouchy neighbor man named Bunk and the trailer on the other side of ours had two spinning things on its roof that I loved to watch through my bedroom window.  There was this girl, she was a year or two older than I was and our parents were friends and always told us that we were going to get married.  It annoyed me, she annoyed me but, I always tried to do things that would impress her.  To further digress, I went to a dance with her when I was a sophomore in high school – we went to different schools…she turned out to be a really nice and good looking girl.  But, I could never get over the whole “you two are gonna get married” thing.  I had a small part in setting her up with a friend who is now her husband.  The trailer park was a very interesting part of my life that produced a lot of memories that I suppressed because I always felt embarrassed about being cast into the category of trailer trash.

So, when all of the bulldozing was complete we moved the single-wide trailer to the newly level plot of dirt and rocks.  Being a kid with a dirt front yard was a dream come true.  It was a major change in my life…I could walk to Grandma and Pappy’s house, I didn’t have to watch out for cars, I was allowed to play outside and go a far as I wanted as long as I could still hear mom call me back for lunch, supper or baseball.  There were fields to run in, woods to cut paths through, corn fields to get lost in, a barn to climb in, wild animals, and did I mention that my front yard was nothing but dirt and rocks. After a few years of what I remember being paradise things started to change.  My parents moved the trailer again and started digging what would end up being the foundation for our basement.  The coolest part was all the dirt from the hole was moved to the side of our land in one gigantic pile that I called “the big mountain”.  My days were soon spent conquering this mountain and keeping it safe from all forms of invasion both foreign and domestic.  I was in a He-Man phase and “the big mountain” was my Castle Grayskull…I even had a sword my Uncle cut me out of wood.  He over did it and I could only drag it but it was still awesome.  I was even convinced that from atop my mountain I could throw rocks and hit airplanes as they flew overhead.

On the front side of our property was a small creek or crick as I say.  When I wasn’t protecting my mountain I was in the crick slowly picking up rocks, so not to muddy the water, trying to catch crawfish or frogs.  When it rained I would take the spring off of clothes pins and use each wooden piece as a boat and race them down the crick.  I can still hear my commentary in my head.  Life was perfect.  I was outside from morning until dark or until baseball.  I never walked I ran everywhere and as fast as I could.  I remember loving to run at dusk…for some reason it made me feel even faster.

Soon enough the basement was finished and the trailer was moved on top of half of it and a temporary roof was put on the other side.  This would be our semi-permanent house for the next few years and around this time is when life began to stop being fun…apparently I was old enough to work.  The dirt and rock filled yard needed grass for some reason and it was my job to pick up the rocks and put them in the wheelbarrow…mom and dad both helped but, it seemed like we picked rocks from that yard for decades.  I had to help bail hay and weed eat the crick.  This changed my love for running through the fields and playing in the crick.  I even started hating the barn because after you picked up a bail of hay from the field you had to pick it up again to move it into the barn. My father and my Grandfather (paternal) started a 18-wheeler trucking company that involved me really doing nothing but, every time they had to work on something (every Saturday morning) I had to be there too.  My other set of Grandparents only lived a mile away and that is where the trucks were kept.  Their house was boring to me and I only seemed to get in the way of the guys trying to fix things so, I would wonder around bored out of my mind.  I hated semi-trucks for this and other reasons…work related as I got even older.  The only parts I truly enjoyed about going there were Grandma’s burgers and milkshakes, my Paps silly nicknames for me and the fact that my dad would allow to run back to our house and follow me in the pickup truck.

Here comes one of those few magic moments in life.  I had a baseball game on a Saturday that was cancelled because of the weather and I vividly remember, while on the ride home , being and most definitely showing disappointment.  My dad said that it is okay the game will get rescheduled and I responded I wasn’t disappointed about the game. I was upset that when we got home we would have work to do.  He smiled and said we need the rain and sometimes we pray for it but we certainly do not do much work in it just like you not being able to play your game in it.  Within moments I fell truly, madly, and deeply in love with rainy days because those are days that not working is okay.

– The Dirt Paved Road

There are things I am unable to let go, bother me or cost me endless hours of hopeless dwelling.  In an order precedence not volume there are spiritual, emotional, physical, and politically oriented “things” that I am referring to.  For instance, spiritually I cannot understand why Jesus never married and had children…as a man I find the day-to-day effort of trying to be a good husband and father one of the most difficult struggles.  I don’t want to dwell too long on this specific subject but, I do find it odd that he never had the opportunity to argue with or make love to his wife, discipline his children, protect his family or eat a burnt supper.  When I bring up this subject most say it wasn’t the reason he was here but, those same people when I ask if he worked say “yes” he was a carpenter…why did he work – how was that part of why he was here?…maybe the carpenter part just a metaphor?  This is just one of the many questions I want to ask after I enter those pearly gates (right after I throughly apologize for using so many variations of a word that starts with f) some of the others include who made you God and please don’t just say I am, why did you make dinosaurs, and are you a Steeler fan?  In reality…I probably won’t care about any of that once I see the farmhouse he built for me and my dog Steel waiting for me on the front porch.

Emotionally, there are really three things.  The first is the relationship I failed to have with my father growing up.  I never gave him the chance to see his side and typically not even want or care enough to hear it.  If he wanted me to go right I was most certainly headed left…for no other reason except to go my own way.  My father is a great man, a great father but he is not my friend and that is my fault.  Second, the fact I still have a burning fire deep down to prove all my naysayers wrong and strive to have a better life then they do.  It is so petty and I am well aware of that but, dang it pisses me off when someone says or said that I wouldn’t amount to much, wasn’t good enough, tough enough, smart enough or said nothing at all but, I thought they were thinking something bad. Previously, I allowed those things to become anger or jealousy now I am able to turn them into motivation and hope that soon I can get to a point where it won’t even matter.  Third, without any details, a few decisions that created numerous regrets regarding love that I think about every day.

Physically – the area where the shear volume is overwhelming.  I fell hard into consumerism…I needed stuff lots of stuff all shapes, sizes and colors of it.  I needed things to show my success…just typing that makes me feel stupid.  But, I am competitive and I wanted to be the first to have it for example fancy cars, house, watches, family…I wanted to be so far ahead of everyone else that I lost track of everything else…my health, my relationships, my friends, my family and ultimately my reputation to the ones I actually care what they think about me.  I am finding myself caring less about material things and looking deeper into the physical things that matter…like my body…I only have one and I am sure my kids, at least for now, want me around forever.

Last and very much the least…Politically.  Mainly, I cannot believe such a job as a political analyst exists and they get paid for being it.  I really don’t have much to say publicly on this subject because I don’t have a stance as I no longer know what any party stands for.  I no longer understand what any of what they say means…there is just too much personality, power, money, personal agendas and lack of results.  There are just so many things wrong with our political system that it makes it nearly impossible for me to wake up and go to work in the morning…actually I hardly feel any affects on my life no matter what happens in Washington other than I now hate watching the fake news.

– The Dirt Paved Road

I must admit there is a little “Doogie Howser M.D.” vibe from doing this. I also get a sense of comfort in knowing that unless I tell my family and friends about the site the odds of them stumbling on to it are slim. I feel how my daughter sounded when we gave her a diary…as I sit here thinking of it I am not sure she knew what to do with it and I certainly didn’t offer up any advice. How would you explain the necessity of a diary to a child under age ten?…Honey, this is a book where you write your feelings and thoughts about the events of the day. We don’t want you bottling up your emotions so, if you don’t want to tell Mom or Dad put it all in this little book and everything will be okay. We certainly give smartphones negative reviews about their impact on family communication but, I now think the diary is the foundation of family communication breakdown. Anyway. A special friend of mine suggested that I write a book as if my life is so interesting. It’s not! I just want it to be so, I think “interesting” comes out in my mannerisms, words and expressions when I explain certain things. Well, I will decided to partially take the advice and start this blog site called “The Dirt Paved Road” and see where that takes me. The title has many meanings to me. I grew up on dirt roads and now everything around me is a concrete jungle. Life was rough, mostly my fault, throughout high school and college then suddenly things started falling into place. But, the main reason I chose this name is because of my father’s driveway. It is not miles long but requires a substantial amount of money to buy enough gravel to cover the entire thing. He is and always has been a thrifty individual so, he gets free loads of pavement milling when the highways are being repaired. The last time I was home I was able to help him with the project. The loads are a mix of broken up pavement and dirt…it will probably be as close as he ever gets to a paved driveway. As we spent the time together unloading he repeated said “this stuff works, after a little rain and running over it with the truck – it turns into a solid foundation” and all I could think of was…this is just like my life – a lot of work, storms and hard falls that eventually turned into a solid foundation…I am nothing more than a Dirt Paved Road.

– The Dirt Paved Road