Hard Work

We are all familiar with Aesop Fables and the famous race between the tortoise and the hare. It’s not hard to see the advantages and challenges of both the hare and the tortoise, yet if the race were held today, in all honesty most bets would still be placed on the hare. I can picture…

When I was 12 or 13, my friend Gene and I started a lawn mowing business. Our services included: mowing, raking, and trimming lawns. We mowed with a push mower, raked with a real rake, and trimmed the border of the entire lawn, including around the trees and shrubs, on our hands and knees using…

A group of hunters were sitting around the campfire after a hard day hunting. Eventually the conversation turned to their dogs and who had the smartest one.   The first hunter started the bragging by talking about his Irish Setter. “When I send him to the store to buy eggs, he knows me so well…

In 1964, Goldwyn-Mayer released “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” a film starring Debbie Reynolds. This fictionalized biopic movie is based on the life of Margaret “Molly” Brown, born into the John and Johanna Tobin family of Hannibal, Missouri in 1867. The movie starts with a scene in which Molly, her father, and brothers return home from a fishing…

Uncle Neil lived his entire life in Afton, Wyoming. He was a rancher who worked hard and taught his six children how to do the same. He died at the age of 95 and at the time he was living in a care center. He always had an abundance of energy and couldn’t sit around…

  A few years ago I attended the funeral of my uncle who was a successful rancher for more than 90 years. During the funeral his son described his dad’s hands as rough, snarled, and callused by a lifetime of hard work. During the service I was sitting between my sister and another uncle who…