A great read.. heartwarming and inspiring..

(I have never posted someone else's writings in this blog. But, this is so execellent and I do not know how else to get it out to other people. Therefore, I am taking the liberty to post it and encourage others to read it. I will link it to facebook and email a link to as many as I can. --HF) STEVE JOBS CEO, Apple & Pixar Animation (This is a commencement speech that Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, gave at Stanford University in 2005. In it, Steve recounts three personal stories and his advocacy of 'following your heart and doing what you love to do.') I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle. My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now. This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much.

First Dental Visit

I recently went to a new dentist. I like to change every so often, thinking that someday I might find one who could work wonders without costing me an arm and a leg. I have horrible teeth. They were always straight, but there was a bite that caused them to wear each other out. They always say it is caused by grinding my teeth, but I don’t think so. I think it is just the way they hit each other. It is the same bite causing the wear on teeth that my father had to contend with. But, he died young so the wear didn’t get as bad as what I am experiencing. They are wearing off down to the gum. They can be fixed. But, the last estimate I had was $30,000.00 and that was nearly ten years ago. It would probably be more like $40,000.00 today and at my age, 66, with my level of health, fair to OK, I see no reason to spend that kind of money.

I credit my problems to the bite which is something my father passed down to me through his genetics. And, another thing I suspect may have contributed to it was penicillin. Penicillin had just been discovered, or invented, when I was born. Suffering from serious ear infections, I received 21 consecutive daily injections of this new wonder medicine as a tiny infant. I’m not sure this didn’t tend to weaken the enamel on my still forming teeth.

My latest dentist was doing a review of the condition of my teeth. There is not a tooth in my head that doesn’t have a cap or a crown or a filling. A majority of them have had a root canal. And still they look like they belong to a hillbilly from the mountains who has never seen a dentist. Or, a meth addict. He was inspecting each tooth and his aid was keeping notes. He was giving the number of each tooth when he came to an anomaly. He said it looked as if one was missing, however the space seemed to have filled with the other teeth pushing in. I told him there was one missing, it had been pulled when I was in my early teens.

It was my first visit to a dentist. A cavity had developed in one of my permanent molars and got steadily worse. It hurt from time to time with the pain getting more intense and more constant. Finally, one night I bit on a tube of toothpaste to squeeze out the last of the paste. Tubes of toothpaste in those days were made of aluminum rather than plastic and, for some reason I still don’t understand, chewing on aluminum will set off a toothache like nothing else. It hurt all night and the next day my mother announced she would be taking me to the dentist.

Roger Miller was raised in my small town. (Those who don’t know who Roger Miller is should ignore the foregoing sentence, or google his name.) He once said that we didn’t have a local drunk in Erick (our home town), so the boys took turns. That’s not really true; we had several. And Doc Bonefield, the local dentist, was one of them.

Mom took me to see Doc Bonefield the next morning. They lived in a nice house in town and his office was set up off the living room in what would ordinarily have been the dining room. Mom introduced us and told him of my complaint. He took me into his dental office, sat me in the chair and leaned me back. After laying out his tools, he stepped into an adjoining closet, retrieved a bottle of whiskey and took a large drink straight from the bottle. He returned and proceeded to pull the molar. Only one of us in that room had any deadening that day and it wasn’t the guy having his tooth yanked out.

I didn’t go back to the dentist for another twenty years. Another cavity resulted in an abscess. It was my own fault because I had discovered a toothache kit at the pharmacy and had used it to ward off the pain. I held off the pain all right, but it allowed the decay to get worse until the tooth could not be saved. Actually, it could have been saved but the dentist I used wasn’t much better than Doc Benefield. He liked to bend the tooth until it broke at the gum line; then he would cut the roots to separate them and dig them out individually. I lost two teeth to that barbaric treatment, but at least I enjoyed some deadening. The abscess was painful, but I was introduced to the wonder of codeine.

I eventually became concerned with the condition of my teeth and started seeking out better treatment. They look horrible and if anyone could see them, which I have learned to prevent, they would have no idea I have spent tens of thousands of dollars getting them to where they are today. I keep looking for a dentist to pull them and make me some dentures. But, they don’t want to do that. They all tell me what wonderful bone structure I have and how good the roots are. I haven’t been without pain in my mouth for ten or fifteen years, but I have great roots and bone structure. I recently changed dentists and asked the new one about pulling them. I got the same response, great bone structure and roots. He built them up some and improved them, but they still look like something from the 1920s or 30s.

I’ll bet Doc Bonefield would pull them.

Mordecai the Mortician

I never knew if Mordecai was his name or if that was just what we called him. He was at least a decade older than me, not so noticeable at my present age but quite a difference when I was in my early teenage years. He was a little slow and had probably been relegated in life to hard labor, if employable at all, had he not found an opportunity in something which had been his dream job all his life. Mordecai’s mother’s sister was married to the man who owned the local mortuary. She had been particularly fond of her nephew and her training as a school teacher, together with her love for her sister, had softened her heart, making her want to do all she could for him. She had singlehandedly seen to it that he got through school with a high school diploma as good as anyone’s. After he was out of school, college being out of the question, Mordecai was as prepared as possible to enter the work force.

Following a brief stint as a fry-cook at the local drive-in, it looked as if he would never be able to hold down a job again. He lost the fry-cook position for reasons which were absolutely not his fault. The drive-in became infested with mice and when that knowledge became public it was bad for business. His boss told him to do something about the mice and Mordecai, with his limited imaginative powers had only been trained to run the deep fryer. So, he applied his knowledge to the problem at hand and had it remedied in no time.

When word of Mordecai’s firing reached the ear of the public, there was a reaction against the owner of the drive-in which resulted in a loss of business from which he never did completely recover. People were furious that Mordecai had been treated in such an arbitrary and capricious manner. But, sympathy doesn’t pay the bills; he had to find another job. After a month or so of unsuccessful job search, his lovely aunt came through again. She demanded her husband hire Mordecai as an assistant at the funeral home. He didn’t want to, but he could never say no to his wife’s requests. We all assumed it might have been because she seemed to be one of the dearest, most beautiful saints we had ever seen, but we later suspected that it might have been because her requests were not requests at all.

Mordecai was hired to be just a general helper around the mortuary. His duties at first were to clean up around the place and he took to his new job with alacrity. His uncle had to admit that the place looked better than it ever had before. He would have been perfectly happy to keep Mordecai on forever in his custodial position. But, Mordecai had greater plans. It was a while before his uncle allowed him in the embalming room. That was where he really wanted to work. Like any successful person, Mordecai was working himself out of custodial work, looking for more and greater responsibilities. It was a proud day when Mordecai informed the locals over morning coffee at the café that he had been promoted to “Embalmer’s Assistant.” It wasn’t very good for business right at first; there was a noticeable drop off in the number of funerals for women who were put off by the idea that Mordecai would be touching their naked bodies. But, where else could they go. The funeral home was the only one in town. So, as time went on people became more accustomed to the idea and business picked back up.

He seemed to do well in this career change. He did not get to conduct the funerals; that would have demanded more class and dignity than Mordecai could ever muster. He did, however, work his way out of the custodial role and did everything necessary for the preparation of the body and the service.

Mr. Davis owned the local hardware store. He wore a toupee for as long as anyone could remember, and he was known as “the man with the moving hair.” When it fell off, Mr. Davis would simply pick it up and stick it back where it belonged. His hair was never situated the same two days in a row. You didn’t know if the part was going to be on the right or the left or right down the middle. One time it was even across his head, running from side to side. He might have bangs one day and a receding hairline the next. When he died we all wondered how they would get that thing to stay on his head. At the funeral, as we walked by paying our respects, more than one of us laid our hands on his head imparting a special blessing from God. And while we were at it we gave it just a slight push to see how well it was on there. To our surprise, it seemed solidly attached. Later, when we were through grieving and mourning, we asked Mordecai how he got it to stay on so well. All he said was, “Nailed it,” and we changed the subject.

After he had been working at the mortuary for several years, his aunt prevailed on her husband to take a vacation. They hadn’t been anywhere in years and she was reaching an age that she was a little restless and needed a change. She needed a change in scenery or else she might start looking at changing something else. Her husband didn’t feel he could get away, his was the only funeral home in town and Mordecai was his only full-time employee. She was confident Mordecai could take care of things and, after great entreaty, persuaded her husband to take her to the beach, one of those resorts in Mexico, for a week-long holiday in the sun. It was December and cold where they lived and, if the truth be known, he, too, was looking forward to some time off in a warmer climate.

Her husband prepared a list of instructions for Mordecai. He told him to just keep the doors open and keep everything looking good and professional. He had made arrangements with the mortician in the next town to cover any funerals which might arise. But, he also gave him a list with about a dozen names on it with strict instructions that if any of those particular people died, Mordecai was to call him immediately. He was to take possession of the body and keep it cool. The people on the list were simply too rich to allow the other mortician to bury them. He could net as much from one or those funerals as he would from ten normal ones. And it wasn’t just a matter getting that funeral. He knew that if he did a good job with that one it would be good advertising for getting more and bigger funerals in the future. He had a bearing about himself like a gentleman from the Old South. Often calling himself a Southern Planter, he dressed and spoke and held himself out like a character from a Tennessee Williams play. He cultivated his image wherever and whenever he could and he knew doing a rich man’s funeral was the ideal time and place to showcase his many talents.

Mordecai, left alone and to his own devices, went about the daily work of the mortuary. Only one person died that week and since she was not on the rich list, he called the neighboring mortician to come get her and conduct the funeral. Mordecai stood in the back and observed with a very critical eye. He was critical of the dress she was wearing, her makeup and her hair. Nothing was right as far as he could see. His uncle could have obviously done a better job and, for that matter, Mordecai could have done better himself. It was the first time he allowed himself to think that maybe he could run his own funeral home someday.

With little else to do, Mordecai visited with his friend, an old eccentric living outside of town, by the name of Taylor Hanks. He was a large man with a full head of white hair and a long white beard. He was known for drinking to excess, usually a cheap whiskey. But, when Mordecai’s uncle was gone, he and Taylor would break into his private stash of Jack Daniel’s Black Label. And now he was gone for a week. On the second night they had pretty well emptied the cabinet of the good stuff. Taylor had done most of the drinking, although Mordecai did his share, and as he normally did when he went on a binge, Taylor went to sleep.

Mordecai decided he needed more of the good stuff, but he was short of cash. His uncle didn’t pay him all that much, but he wasn’t in the work for the money anyway. He had a job he loved and his salary was just a little bonus for him. But, clearly he had enjoyed the liquor from his uncle’s cabinet. He wanted to buy some more of it, and he knew he needed to replace what he and Taylor had consumed. His aunt and uncle were scheduled to come home in three days so he really didn’t have a lot of time to come up with a suitable plan. There were limited opportunities to make a good living in his small town and Mordecai knew there were even fewer opportunities to make extra cash quickly. And that was what he needed, extra cash quickly.

Fortunately for him, he had visited a neighboring town just the previous week and had seen at the local Walmart a sign saying, “Pictures with Santa.” As he was thinking about this, he took inventory of what this might require and compared this to what he had on hand. He had a camera and had mastered putting pictures on the computer where he could print them off if he so desired. They printed their own funeral programs and obituaries so he had everything he needed to print pictures. He still had an old Santa Claus suit he used to wear to schools and rest homes during the season. It was a little worn, but it was still red. The only problem he could see was who would be Santa and who would take the pictures? He couldn’t do both.

As he pondered the predicament, he cast his eyes toward Taylor where he was sleeping off his inebriation, lying on the embalming table. He was a large man with snowy white hair and beard. He was perfect for the part. And Mordecai knew from experience that Taylor would be asleep for another day or so.

It wasn’t easy getting Taylor into the Santa suit. It was like working on a dead man, but, of course, Mordecai was accustomed to working on dead people. It was a struggle, but he finally got Santa dressed. Now there was another problem. Taylor was sleeping so soundly there was no way he could possibly sit in a chair with a child in his lap. About the only position he was capable of maintaining was what he was already doing, lying prone on the embalming table. There was only solution as far as Mordecai could see. He rolled the finest casket from storage into the embalming and, with the aid of ropes and pulleys, placed Taylor into the coffin. He did a little last minute touch-up on the makeup and splashed some talc on his hair and beard to make it look even whiter. As he looked at him, he was satisfied with his work and looked forward to the day Taylor would be there for real and Mordecai could do it all over again.

A makeshift sign was placed out front. “Pictures with Santa.” All was ready and Mordecai waited with camera in hand.

Mollie Thompson worked at the local day care center. She wasn’t much smarter than Mordecai, if any at all. She had grown up with him and had gone to school with him. She and he had dated a little and most of the townsfolk thought they would make a good couple. They enjoyed the idea of their dating, but rather cringed at the thought of procreation. About the only people who expressed any concern for Mollie’s working with small children were people who didn’t have any of their own in the day care center. Those mothers who had children there really didn’t have any choice in the matter. They had to leave them somewhere and that particular center was the only place in town that provided such a service. So, they either knew Mollie better than the other townspeople and knew she was able to provide safe and nurturing care for their children, or they simply didn’t want to admit their misgivings. People with little alternative often have to accept the unacceptable.

Mollie was taking her young charges, aged 4 and 5, with a few just having turned to 6 years old, on a walk. It was a pretty day for December, the weather was unseasonably warm. They had a long rope on which the children held as they walked. Mollie took the lead and her subordinate followed behind, with the children strung out between them. It was a sight familiar to the people of the town and it pleased them to see the small children being so orderly and well-behaved.

As they approached the mortuary, Mollie saw the sign advertising the pictures with Santa. She didn’t know they were doing this as she had heard nothing about it and the sign wasn’t there the day before. She didn’t have the parents’ permission to have pictures made, but she thought what a treat it would be if she could just step in and let the kids see Jolly Old St. Nick. She turned off the sidewalk onto the walk to the front door. Her charges dutifully followed her like a flock of ducklings following their mother. And her aid came along unquestioningly, like a caboose bringing up the rear, following the engine without any input where or when it would go.

Mordecai was a little surprised to see them. They were his first visitors for the morning. He didn’t know anything about parental consent before taking pictures. He simply thought this was a windfall. Mollie thought she saw a little glow in Mordecai’s eyes as she entered the building and was convinced it was because of her. Mordecai smiled at her and she smiled at him. And she then smiled a little smugly at her underling who didn’t have a boyfriend like Mordecai, and probably not even the possibility of ever having one of such high quality. After the greetings, Mordecai took them into the viewing room.

Neither Mordecai nor Mollie had sense enough to see the wide eyes of the little tykes as they looked deep into the room and saw Santa lying in the coffin. Mollie could only see Mordecai and Mordecai could only see dollar signs, still having not been told there could be no pictures at that time. Everyone was seeing their own reality and the reality of the children was Santa lying in a coffin.

It took a little coaxing to get the kids up near the coffin. And as they stood there looking at him, Santa awakened.

(The above is purely fictitious. It was based on a sign I saw outside a funeral home a year ago which read, “Pictures with Santa.”)

Talking to the Monkey

My children are full of requests. They do not hesitate to ask of me whatever it is that they want. Which is alright as it’s my responsibility to fill their needs, not necessarily their wants, but their needs. I once heard a man tell his daughter that it was his responsibility to provide her with a pair of jeans to cover her butt in the wintertime, but it was not his responsibility, legal or otherwise, to cover it with “designer jeans.” I liked that and have made it my own since then.

When friends ask me what I will be doing over the weekend, I tell them simply that I do not know. I haven’t yet been told by She Who Must be Obeyed. For me, I have no plans, I have instructions. I am instructed where to go, what to do, what to eat, speak and think.

Today, when my children make a request of me I simply tell them, “You’re talking to the monkey. You need to ask the organ grinder.” That’s their cue to go to She Who Must be Obeyed with their request. I’m trying to cultivate in them a proper respect for authority.

Lucky the Squirrel

I’d never seen a baby squirrel. I had seen younger specimens (probably akin to human teenagers) playing in the springtime, doing a lot more playing than the serious work of finding food for then and later (again, probably akin to human teenagers). I just assumed they stayed in their nest, close to their mother, until they became those teenagers.

We lived in Norman at the time, on a tree lined street. Norman is run over with squirrels, a remark probably totally misunderstood and misapplied, and yet appreciated, by people from Stillwater and Austin, Texas. Not far after leaving our driveway, we came upon a small animal, looking something like a small mouse, in the middle of the street. She Who Must be Obeyed ordered me to come to a halt and I did as I was told. She ran out and gathered the thing, barely having any fur on his little body, into her hands and She became the proud owner of a squirrel. Following a visit to the veterinarian, who gave us a formula for making something to feed him, we bought a medicine dropper and accepted him as our new responsibility. The vet had told us that he may have climbed out of the nest and fallen to the ground or his mother may have kicked him out. He said that if she did, it was probably because he was sick. I have since learned that veterinarians sometimes speculate on things now and then.

We got a bird cage and kept it in our bedroom. We would take him out and feed him the formula the vet gave us and watched him grow. There is nothing cuter than a baby squirrel. Of course, a baby anything is cute, but this little animal had a special place in our hearts because of his uniqueness. We would take him out and hold him. He fought a little at first when we placed the dropper to his mouth, but then he tasted the formula and grabbed it with his front feet and drank like a man athirst in a desert. As he got older, he graduated in his diet to Cheerios. That was a learning experience as I did not know he had such ingrained intelligence. He would eat his fill and then take a Cheerio from our hand, jump down on the carpet and go through the motions of burying it. When he finished, the Cheerio was there on top of the carpet but he was satisfied that he had hidden it away for later.

As he continued to grow, we could take him from his cage and allow him to run through the house. He always returned to his cage in the bedroom. And then he started chewing some things which did not need chewing. I still have some books which have corners he damaged. He began to run around and around our hand while holding him, from the palm to the back to the palm. It seemed to be a fun thing for him to use your hand in this manner, much as one in the wild runs around and around a tree branch. After he was through, you would have scratches all over the back of your hand. Whatever he was doing, we enjoyed having him for a very unique pet. And then, puberty set in.

A horny little squirrel is a mean little squirrel. Puberty in a male animal, even a human animal, causes him to want to dominate anything and anyone around. We had named him Lucky when we found him and the name fit. He was lucky he was found by us rather than by Mookie the cat. He was lucky we were willing to feed and nurture him. And now that he was turning mean, he was lucky I didn’t put him in a cooking pot.

We continued to handle him, thinking familiarity with humans would make him a better and calmer animal. What we ended up making, though, was an animal that wasn’t afraid of humans. And the absence of fear makes an animal dangerous; it invites the animal to try to dominate humans. As we continued to handle him, he got a little more aggressive all the time. He added biting to his repertoire of favorite things to do. Not serious biting at first, just gentle nips. Sometimes he would place his mouth on your finger, letting you feel his teeth, and I would marvel at the restraint he would exercise as I gently slipped my finger out of his mouth. But, controlling him was getting more difficult all the time.

One Sunday morning we were getting dressed for church while he was trying to tear heck out of his cage. I was dressed and was waiting for She Who Must be Obeyed when I decided to take him from his cage and try to calm him down while petting him. When I did, he turned vicious and violent. He was going crazy, biting and scratching. Finally, he got my thumb in his mouth and bit down. I heard and felt his teeth crunching down on the bone in my thumb. As the bone in my thumb is not any stronger than a walnut, which he could chew open, I could see in my mind having to go into the hospital with a crushed thumb. I threw him off and he landed somewhere across the room. He turned to come back after me until he saw I was prepared to get hold of him and put him back into his cage. He didn’t exactly back off, he held his ground, baring his teeth and daring me to try to pick him up.

While I was fighting the wild beast, She was in the adjoining bathroom applying the finishing touches of her makeup. I told her what had happened and that I was going to get some leather gloves out of the car. Coming back into the house, She met me at the door with a look of terror on her face, and there was blood all over her white robe. “Lucky attacked me,” She said tearfully. Her hands looked like they had been cut up in a knife fight. She had tried to coax him to her, thinking she could get him back into his cage. But, he had turned on her with a fury normally reserved for wild boars or bears or mountain lions.

Returning to the bedroom, I cautiously opened the door and looked in. Lucky was not to be seen. I stepped inside, closing the door behind me. We had recently painted the woodwork in that room, including the door, a clean white. It had brightened the room. But, when I looked at the door I saw blood smeared all over it and the door facing. There was a heavy covering of bright red blood smeared around the doorknob where She was obviously trying to get the door open so She could escape the mean little devil. There had been an obvious fight and so far that morning it looked like the squirrel was winning.

Lucky appeared on the headboard and glared at me with evil intent. He jumped down on the bed and came toward me. I reached my gloved hand down and he attacked me. He was doing a number on my hand even through the leather gloves. I had hold of him and had no intention of letting him go. I eventually got him back into the cage where he stayed until something could be done with him.

We cleaned the human blood from off the woodwork and laundered the robe. We bandaged the hands of She Who Must be Obeyed and I wondered about Lucky. Perhaps his mother really did kick him out of his nest.

Barry and Me

My first active participation in a presidential campaign was in 1964 when I campaigned for Barry Goldwater. I invested a great deal of time and energy in that losing effort. I handed out flyers, put up posters and talked to just about everyone who would listen to me as I extolled the virtues of Goldwater and conservative politics. Most of my circle of friends and acquaintances were Democrats and were perfectly happy with the direction Franklin Roosevelt had taken the country, beginning just about three decades earlier. Most of them were older than me, and most were kind and considerate as they gently tried to explain why they were going to vote for Lyndon Johnson who promised to continue utilizing government programs as much or even more than did FDR. The irony was that by the time of the election, I would have just turned 20 years old, still, at that time, a year too young to be voting in a federal election.

When I look back on my youthful exuberance, I see a young man completely devoted to conservatism, and not just conservatism, but a radical form of those principals of government. I actually bought into the whole concept of libertarian philosophy. I was fond of the phrase, “Build my roads, fight my wars, and leave me the hell alone.” And, at the time, in my very limited life experiences, I was serious in those sentiments.

I come from a family that benefitted from the politics and domestic policies of Roosevelt. He was elected President of the United States during the Great Depression, the same time period as when my parents came of age. They were children of the depression and recalled vividly the suffering of the people in Western Oklahoma while the area was being ravaged by the Dust Bowl and the worst economic depression the country and the modern world had seen. Tom Brokaw later gave this entire group of people the title, “The Greatest Generation.” I sometimes question whether it is wise to call them a greater generation than any other because it appears every generation plays the hand they are dealt. It’s just that they had had a particularly difficult hand laid out for them and they didn’t have any choice except standing up to their responsibilities; in the game of life you aren’t given the luxury of folding and taking your losses. Perhaps in some instances you can, but not when the survival of your nation is at stake and, in fact, the survival of Western Civilization. But, I don’t believe anyone can say that the generations immediately before and after them would not have gallantly faced and survived the Great Depression and World War II, and flourish in their aftermath.

Our loyalty to the Democratic Party was seriously challenged in the campaign of 1960. Events had weakened the hold it had with the common people even before that. In 1948, the Party had adopted a platform that called for an end to segregation and the Jim Crow laws so prevalent throughout the South. It called for integration and even condemned lynching which was still a not uncommon occurrence against African-Americans. The American South was a dark place which had finally had some light shown on it during and after World War II. The nation saw what was going on in that mysterious region and what it saw was not good. The condemnation of segregation and the Jim Crow laws that enabled it, and even lynchings, caused rebellion in the Democratic Party which resulted in a walk-out of the party by members of the South, the Dixiecrats, who ran their own candidate, Strom Thurmond. These Dixiecrats would eventually find a new home in the Republican Party and in less than two decades would move from being its most stalwart members and supporters to a position whereby they could claim ownership of a second national political party. That mass political migration was racially motivated, inspired and sustained.

The elections of 1952 and 1956 weren’t a referendum on anything. There was a movement developing in the country in the 1950s which eventually resulted in the creation of the John Birch Society in 1958, the precursor of the Tea Party movement of today, and the influence of this movement was evident in the presidential elections of that decade. But, their hatred for Democrats was little more than their hatred for Republicans; they seemed to hate everyone.

The turning point in the elections of the 1950s was the popularity of Eisenhower. As a slogan, “I Like IKE” was an altruism which transcended party lines. Everyone liked IKE, Republicans and Democrats alike.

In 1960, the campaign was ugly; the ugliness raised the specter of religious bigotry. John Kennedy had to make a courtesy call to a group of Baptist ministers and pledge that as the President of the United States he would carry out his responsibilities independent of his own church and independent of the Pope. The very idea that a candidate would have to make such a pledge should be offensive to Americans, and those who currently are haranguing for an American Theocracy should be held to the same level of religious independence as they held the then candidate Kennedy.

My own family, steeped in fundamentalist Christianity, was furnished a strong diet of anti-Catholicism. Suddenly, preachers and others became aware of the Catholic Church. The Bible was read with new interest in prophesies of the New Testament which, in the interpretation of the reader, referenced the Catholic Church and the Papacy. Of course, the interpretation just happened to confirm the suspicions and biases already held by the reader. There was one preacher who had spent his life becoming an “expert” on Catholicism; he spoke on little else. During the campaign of 1960, his services were in great demand as a travelling evangelist. He confirmed our greatest fears and ratified our preconceived notions.

With the continual weakening of public support of the Democratic Party, it was alright for me to support Goldwater in 1964 and still claim to be a nominal Democrat. In Oklahoma, at that time, there were few Republicans. Among elected officials, there were hardly any Republicans whatsoever. In most districts, the results of the primary election determined the officeholder as there were no Republican candidates to field a contest in the general election.

It wasn’t just the decline of the Democratic Party that made it alright for me to campaign for Barry Goldwater. I was being heavily influenced by the Libertarian thoughts of the time, probably due to my youth and youthful ignorance. And, the influence of the John Birch Society, and lesser inflammatory propaganda machines, spreading information on the evil of communism, socialism and big government, had an effect on my own thoughts. But, the primary reason for my endorsement of Goldwater was, probably, that Johnson was the candidate of my father and his generation. I was looking for something different.

While racism did not come into significant play in the campaign of 1964, there was a great deal of campaigning against the poor. It was the beginning of railing against the welfare system, as if that alone was bringing about a decline in America and Western Civilization. Cursing the “welfare state” had been a staple of the Birchers and was quickly becoming a staple of the Republican Party. The peculiar thing about all this is that I had no idea at the time what the John Birch Society was, but I was obviously heavily influenced by their doctrines. And, secondly, I was not too far above the poverty line myself, if any at all. I have often reflected on that time and find my conduct somewhat curious. While I am disappointed in myself and my failure to analyze current events and social problems better in those days, I take some comfort in the fact that I eventually became more astute in my observations and better at applying the teachings of Jesus to my daily life.

I came to understand that the government is not my enemy; it is a tool to be used for the benefit of everyone. Problems were simply too big for us to think we could ignore them. And the problems were too big for a single person or a few people to solve. Neither could we address them by expecting responses from organizations occasionally rushing to aid those less advantaged. Sometimes, droughts were too extreme, storms were too severe, national and regional catastrophes were too serious, and economic recessions and depressions were too destructive for the problems to be addressed by anything or anyone short of the entire corporate body of America. There is only one association in which we are all members; we are all citizens of America, and live under the Constitution of the United States and the government created under the auspices of that Constitution.

When campaigning for Barry Goldwater, I was often dismissed with the observation that, in the mind of my hearer, it was a good thing that I wasn’t old enough to vote. I was trying to convince my father, a child of the Great Depression, that he should consider voting for Goldwater, and in the course of the conversation I made some remark which reflected a haughty attitude toward the poor. He listened for a while and finally said, “Son, your problem is that you’ve never seen a man begging for money to pay for burying his little girl who starved to death.” And, with that, I started to think.

The Stovall

Beckham County Courthouse
Sayre, Oklahoma

There weren’t that many institutions for a kid when I was young, the early part of a transition stage when society was moving from adult-centric to one being focused on youth. We were moving from a culture that honored adults to one that worshipped youth and set kids up as the beneficiaries of our largesse. By being on the wrong side of history and time, I essentially missed both eras. Few things were provided for us as kids but we did have two experiences, dragging Main Street and the Stovall Theater.

“Dragging Main” was something we could do for hours. In Sayre, Main Street was four or five blocks long, depending on where you started counting the west end. The County Courthouse sat at the east end and you could either go to the left, out of town east on State Highway 152, or make an approved U-turn and go back west on the same street. Dragging main had a set pattern. Beginning at the Courthouse, we drove west two blocks to where Main intersected U.S. 66, turned right and drove north on 4th Street (U.S. 66) nearly to the end of town where the highway veered toward the east. A block or so east we circled the Dairy Mart Drive In. Sometimes we stopped there for a drink or fries or their best offering, the Chili Cheese Burger. As we circled we got back on U.S. 66, drove south on 4th Street and back to Main. Turning right on Main, one could drive either one or two blocks west, shoot a “U” and then drive east on Main. At the courthouse, we made another U-turn and started the drive all over again.

If we saw friends afoot, we would stop and give them a ride. Sometimes we would ride together and leave a car sitting for a few rounds. Some nights we had a girl friend with us and others it was just a carload of boys or girls. It was a constant flow of traffic on and around Main Street for hours on end. We could do it because gas was less than a quarter a gallon and we did it because there wasn’t much else to do. An alternative was to stop and go to the movies at the Stovall Theater.


The Stovall was an institution which was born, grew and thrived, and then declined and died before my very eyes. Built, owned and operated by George Stovall, it opened for business June 22, 1950, and provided just about the only entertainment available to young people, and even families, for more than two decades. Of course there were ball games and a few other activities available through the schools but that was about it. The theater was the dominate gathering in town. There were many churches and social groups but there was only one theater. There were surrounding towns and settlements, each with their own schools, social organizations and churches, but there was only one theater. George held sway over the community bringing the world to our little town, thereby laying claim to at least a portion of most of the entertainment dollars, few as they were, which were then available.

He hadn’t always been a theater operator. He became a jobber, involved in the wholesale delivery of gasoline, when he purchased the local Magnolia Oil Company in 1925, along with the Mobil station on South 4th Street. But he moved into the new industry shortly after that. Hollywood was cranking out movies as never before. The industry was converting from silent movies to “talkies” and the public, longing for both entertainment and escapism, was taking to the movies with alacrity. In 1934he built the Rio and claimed his place in the business of theater.

The country was deep in the Great Depression during the 1930s and Sayre and the surrounding area was hit hard, perhaps as hard as or harder than the rest of the country. Not only was there an economic depression, there was also a crippling Dust Bowl over a large area of the Great Plains which included Sayre and most of Western Oklahoma. People were suffering, trying in vain to squeeze productivity out of a land without water. People were jobless, sometimes dying of the most rudimentary problem, starvation. Many people fled the area but many more stayed and tried to cope with the elements, tried to play the hand which they had been dealt.

Those people suffering the depression had to have something to draw their minds off their everyday suffering. They went to the movies, watched Hollywood’s fantasies and imagined themselves in those grand places and glorious costumes doing those exciting things while living those exciting lives. It was in this setting that George built the Rio. In 1936 he bought the Ute Theater from his competitor and from then on he had a monopoly on this type entertainment in Sayre.

I remember the Ute and I think I remember the Rio. We lived on a farm in the Hext community, located between Erick and Sayre. Closer to Erick, it was our town for most purposes. As a small child in the late 1940s, there were three small theaters in Erick, a town of about 1500 people. My family enjoyed going to the movies. The Depression was over, having ended with the public works provided by the Roosevelt Administration and the successful involvement in World War II. But there was still the need for escapism and there was more money available for entertainment than there had been in the 1930s. There were a few times we would go see a movie in every available theater in Erick during a week or weekend and then go see whatever was available in Sayre. This was during the 1940s and on into the 50s for a brief while. Then there were other things that became important to our family and took up our time, thus restricting time we had available to go to the movies. We became involved with church and its activities which took up more of our time and there were, beginning in 1950, four children in elementary school which placed demands on our time as well. These things, together with the introduction of television locally in the mid-1950s, meant our own reduced involvement in the movies.

We attended the Ute Theater often in the latter 1940s. Mainly western fare, the Ute was an enjoyable theater, about the same quality as the ones in Erick. I have many memories of seeing old black and white movies of the 1930s there, along with many westerns of the same era. There was always the standard fare of morality plays, good guys and bad guys. Good guys always won. They rode the fastest horses, shot the fastest and straightest guns, won the fights and gained the hearts of the prettiest girls. Bad men lost. Indians were nearly always bad, an unfortunate stereotype of early Hollywood. One time I even remember seeing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a black and white silent movie. It was the only silent movie I ever saw in a theater.

In 1950, sixteen years into the industry, George built the Stovall and shortly afterwards closed the Ute. (The Rio had been closed earlier.) The Stovall was a grand theater for that day. A single screen theater, everything was new and beautiful. The architectural style of the theater is often spoken of as western but a closer look reveals a mid-twentieth century modern appearance. The box office was just off the right side of the entrance and there was a large and inviting lobby in which you entered. George or another family member was there to take the ticket you had just purchased from the box office. There were two entrances into the theater itself from the lobby and a large concession stand was situated against the wall between the two entrances. You could get just about everything from that concession stand. It was my first experience getting pickle juice or a “pickle Coke.” I would buy a nickel’s worth of pickle juice which was the limit they would sell you. They didn’t want you getting sick during the movie. There was a boy’s restroom off to the left of the lobby and, I assume, a girl’s to the right. That was the first place I ever saw a urinal built into the floor. While the “standing urinal” is one of humankind’s better inventions, to build it right into the floor was a work of genius. The only way to make it better would be to construct an artificial tree in the middle of the restroom with drains all around the bottom in the floor.

The screen was larger than any I had seen before although it was probably not any larger than most in other towns. Two aisles with three sections of seating, there was a larger section in the center and smaller ones on each side. It was a good theater. The facilities were clean and beautiful. They were comfortable. The movie selections continued to be the morality plays, mainly westerns, that didn’t change much. Color movies became commonplace and Hollywood started making some epics. Stars became bigger than life. The MGM musicals of the 50s all made their way to the Stovall.

I attended high school in Sayre, graduating in 1962. I dragged main and I went to the Stovall. I watched many movies, some not worth the time I invested and some leaving an impression on me I will never forget. I took dates to the Stovall, sometimes went alone and sometimes met friends there. There was usually someone there I could sit with. One of the things we did back then that I still find quite amusing was that we would go to the movies when it was convenient, often coming in after the movie was already in progress. We would go in, take our seats and watch from that point forward. We would watch to the conclusion, watch the credits, the advertisements, the previews and the comedy and then begin the feature film. When it got to the point where we came in, we would get up and leave.

George would walk up and down the aisles from time to time. He carried a flashlight in his pocket and used it when he needed to see better or call attention to someone or something. We were expected to behave. We could hold hands, put our arms around our date’s shoulder and maybe sneak a kiss now and then. Sometimes there was a little more than that but it wasn’t openly tolerated. Not by our parents, not by our social structure and not by George. He demanded and he received respect and proper behavior. I never saw him eject anyone from the theater but I always knew he could and assumed he would.

I graduated in 1962 and left town. From time to time I would return to Sayre and go to the movies. With improvement in television, the movies took a beating. They couldn’t compete for a time. George, like the rest of us, got older and the day came he couldn’t run the theater anymore. And then he wasn’t there at all except in a memory, a cherished memory. The theater changed hands and Barbara Lewis completely rebuilt the interior, putting in a smaller screen and reducing the seating capacity. The outside was in a state of disrepair. It closed and someone else tried to reopen it. Finally it closed for the last time. It sits there on Main Street, a block from the courthouse, recognizable to those of us who came to see her and her offerings of entertainment in better days. The owner advertises that she is for sale and more than one of us looks at her longingly, wondering if we could possibly take it over and make a go of it. Probably not.

The Ute and the Rio are gone. The Stovall is also nothing more than a memory. George is gone. His daughter, Micki, is a dear friend of mine. We dated in high school and went to the movies in a neighboring town. Her dad walked the aisles of the Stovall.