Back to 1983….
Through all the excitement and trials of the early ‘80’s – transitioning from college back to the farm, business challenges on the farm, facing down a cancer diagnosis, meeting Ellen, starting a new career, I had the fun of singing in a barbershop choir and learning a specific song that had a great positive impact on me:
Fun In Just One Lifetime, a song taught to our chorus by Joe Liles and Frank Marzocco, the songwriters. The melody, words and inspiration have never faded for me, even after 37+ years. When it came time for our wedding, Ellen agreed that we could have the best of my barbershopper buddies sing two songs at our wedding service, this one and The Lord’s Prayer. The banner with this theme hung above us, and the words have not lost their power for me to this day. We have just “one life to live, one life to give”. We dare not waste it, not a day of it.
Here are the lyrics to the song:
One life to live, one life to give…
I wanna have fun in just one lifetime,
I wanna have fun before it’s done.
I’ll find some friends that I can trust,
and on my way, I know I must
find love with just one person,
to share with me a family,
And let me write a song for the world to sing,
and I’ll have fun in just one lifetime!
Soak up your Moments of Grace. Enjoy them. Appreciate them.
Catholics have a type of service where the celebrant places the Eucharist (also often called a “host”) in a gold stand which has 
In 2019, I had the chance to finally meet Rocky Elton, a former classmate of my late uncle Darell (who also happened to be a classmate and good friend of my mother’s). My mother had referred to the fun times she had had with Rocky and Darell numerous times over the years, but I had never met him before. Rocky was also Darell’s college classmate at the University of Minnesota, and both were on the Varsity football team as freshmen in 1951, a rare feat for anyone at that time. I never met Darell – he was my dad’s younger brother, and was killed in an Air Force jet training accident three years before I was born. A tragic loss of a wonderful young man, and a loss that I believe my dad felt sad about his entire life.
Most of my angel moments have been amazingly uplifting and soul-filling. A couple others have fulfilled their purpose, but in a more humbling way.
A few years ago, I had the incredibly fortunate opportunity to “follow” one of my sons to Tanzania. He was a new young doctor in the midst of his pediatric residency, and his resident program included a 6-week rotation at the Bugando Children’s Medical Center in Mwanza, Tanzania. My wife encouraged me to follow him to Africa and join him for some time together when his rotation experience was done. He had recently married and she said, “You may never get a chance like this again to spend some time with him. He’ll be incredibly busy when he returns and so will you. Do it!”
Here’s a lesson we can all learn from a child’s point of view. Recently, we were helping for a weekend with a couple of our grandkids. Our grandson, Emerson, 5, had a pretty great thought.
I appreciate angels helping us on so many days. At the end of a trip up north, I goofed up and set my wallet and iPhone on the tonneau cover on the truck box, right behind the cab, “just for a second” as I loaded up the cab of the truck. Right. Just for a second. So we took off for home, and after a few minutes driving, my wife suddenly asked “Is that your phone ringing?” I reached around in the bins and the console and gasped, “Oh my gosh, I don’t have my phone, or my wallet!” And then I remembered putting them behind the cab, so I pulled slowly to the side of the road and went back to see if they were still there. Nope, gone. So I turned around, trailer and all, and we started driving back the way we came – we’d only gone a few miles, but we were on a busy state highway. Driving slowly, looking along the shoulder and in the road, after 3/4 of a mile I saw my wallet and jumped out. It was already emptied of credit cards and cash, and I found myself thinking, “Could someone already have grabbed it and emptied it?” and then I saw a $20 bill, and then a single, and then all my business receipts, then a credit card, then another. Spread over several hundred yards in the ditch. Then Ellen found more cash and credit cards on the other side of the road. We found every piece of paper and plastic spread over 1/4 of a mile on both sides of the road. No phone, though, so we got in and kept driving, ever so slowly, with Ellen calling my phone number with her phone, windows rolled down. I heard my ring tone and saw my phone sitting on the far shoulder. Otter case dinged a little, but otherwise perfect after doing a flying double twist, triple somersault at highway speed.
I was 16, and had gotten a summer-long job working for a very busy local dairyman. My official job was to cut hay, and in between that do whatever was needed on the dairy. He had a really nice new self-propelled John Deere swather, and being able to spank down huge fields at pretty high speeds, spinning 180° at the ends of the rows, was a huge treat after only using a pull-behind Hesston mower-conditioner. It was sweet, and typically occupied me for 6-7 days straight of 12-15 hour days to knock down about 400 acres of alfalfa, then do it again 28 days later. Other jobs in between included hauling chopped alfalfa to the silo blowers, or even baling or stacking small bales if they needed some baled hay in the barn for winter feeding. “Grandma” always made sure I had a good breakfast (including fried blood sausage every day) before I hit the fields. I worked alone nearly all the time, and one day I was blowing alfalfa haylage up one of the three blue 24’X80′ Harvestore structures. I knew that first unit was nearly full, so I started the electric blower, set the wagon to unload at a reasonable pace, and headed up the 80′ silo to check how it was filling. It was about 6′ from the center hole, and you shouldn’t fill a Harvestore tight full to the top. There are two holes on the top of a Harvestore, one in the center where the product fills, and one nearer the edge that functions both as a ventilation air release and is an access option if you fill tight up to the hole in the center. It was getting close to being filled, and if the flow was stopped even momentarily, the pipe would have plugged immediately, all the way to the ground, and with the blower and wagon running without supervision, there would have been no way for me to have scrambled 80′ down before VERY significant damage was caused to the blower and unloading wagon below. I started in the center with my pitchfork, tossing haylage out toward the sides while the blower kept blowing it in fast, first from outside, on top of the structure, then I scurried down the outside hatch and furiously pulled haylage toward the outside while the blower poured it in the center. There is always the possibility of either running out of oxygen in a silo, and fermentation gases have killed more than a few people who have entered silos. I was 16, ok? Anyway, it was fast and furious work, but in the end, the load finally ran out and I was ok.
