January Obituary

January shot past us at a fast clip. Maybe because it was more like summer than winter. This is a very strange winter.

Another thing that shot past quickly was the 300 weeks I have been doing this Newsletter. Where does it all go. So many things have happened to us all. We forget most of them and remember a few. In my case, I spend a lot of time in the past. Talking with people and researching different subjects. It is interesting, but, time consuming.

Most folks say, don’t dwell on the past and they are right. However, I think that remembering the past can in many cases relieve the sadness of some present day event. Like, attending the funeral of a close friend of many years. We try to remember the good times and not the bad times. We remember hunting or fishing trips or some birthday party and shut out any bad times. The petty arguments of the past have no meaning in the present.

A good example of what I mean, was the funeral for a close and long time friend, Bonnie Mesic. The funeral was at the Catholic church in East Ely. As we were leaving for the cemetery, I was walking with Johnny Demos to the parking lot. We came to his car first, so I rode with him. We were almost the last car to arrive at the cemetery.

It was a rather long walk to the burial plot and there were many people already there for the services. Johnny said, “I only see one or two people that I know”. I agreed and said, “but, we both know most of the people’s graves we are walking over”. Johnny agreed. We started telling short stories about some of them. The stories were of good times and we both stated that we should have spent more time with them.

I suppose the human mind tries to cleanse itself of bad thoughts as we grow older. Too bad it doesn’t start earlier.

Looking back on events and people that made me angry, I find that most of them were not worthy of being angry.

Age teaches us a lot about how so many of the most important events in our youth were not really that important.

I think older angry folks have not learned this lesson. They still dwell on the false past too much. We should not live in the past, but should not forget it. Youth is always in a hurry to get older.

An electrician at KCC, Al Cherpeski always said that you only get so many footsteps in life, so don’t run them down.

Here are some other quotes—

My 5th grade teacher, Florence Carlson – You can’t do two things at once and do them both correctly.

My father – While we were working on my 41 Chevy and I remarked how nice it was of him to know how to work on cars and he said, “yeah, but get an education so you can pay someone else to do it for you”.

W. C. Fields – Youth is wasted on the young people.

I think when we were young we all wanted to get older faster so we could get out of school and make money and enjoy life. We didn’t realize that those years would be some of our finest in life.