Life just keeps getting more and more busy! Between my taking classes every morning, working long shifts driving a truck in and around St. Louis, and dealing with all of the intricacies of living alone, I just have not been able to keep this up like I want… I’ll try to do better! For those ‘newbies’ just getting started here, there is LOTS of material already posted!
I did take time to upload some of my songs from my Electronic Music Production class last spring… check ’em out in my Audio file…
I wrote and used this article in the November 2001 newsletter, and felt it was appropriate for today…
St. Louis was known, in the early ?60’s, as having been the ‘starting place’ for such celebrities as Vincent Price, Tennessee Williams, Harry Caray, and Scott Joplin, to name just a few. Alton was famous for having been the site of a Lincoln/Douglas debate, the first violent conflict regarding slavery (the burning and destruction of Elijah Lovejoy’s printing press), and for having been the home of Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest man. Hartford had its celebrity, too. Clint Walker starred in such movies as Baker’s Hawk, The Bounty Man, Send me No Flowers, None But The Brave, Yellowstone Kelly, and The Dirty Dozen, but was best known for his role as ‘Cheyenne Bodie’ in the television series ‘Cheyenne’. And he was born in Hartford!
I can still recall his coming back for what must have been our Fourth of July parade two years in a row. I remember because Dad was on the Hartford Police force on a part-time basis, and he always got to put on his uniform and stop traffic during Clint’s visits. But after a couple of visits, he started sending his sister to fill in for him, and finally, nobody came at all. I’m not exactly sure where I got the notion from, but it seemed like he was just too busy and important to mess with the likes of us poor common folk.
For years afterward there was an empty lot with a huge oak tree in one corner that had a sign identifying it as ‘Clint Walker Park’. I never knew, but I always envisioned that our ‘mayor’ dedicated the park in Clint’s honor on one of his first visits. At first the grass was kept trimmed and neat, although there was never anything else there but the tree and the sign. After a few years though, the weeds began to grow tall enough to cover the sign, and the whole place was just an unsightly embarrassment. Twenty-odd years later I would drive by when visiting the town and note that at least the weeds were being mowed fairly regularly again, but I could never be sure if the sign was still there or not. Today, the oak tree is gone and a new house stands on the lot. So much for fame.
As I began my research for this article, I came across an interview that Clint gave in April of 1999. In it, he corrected the interviewer, who had asked him about being born in Alton, by stating that he had actually been born in Hartford, and raised in nearby Alton. I guess he does remember! I learned that he had started out at age nine working as a water boy and such for any traveling circuses and carnivals. Later on he worked on the riverboats, pushing barges from Chicago to New Orleans. He sold vacuum cleaners and insurance door-to-door, and, due to his size, eventually became a security officer in Las Vegas. There, he came in contact with actors and other screen people who kept telling him he should get into movies. He was introduced to Cecil B. DeMille, who liked him enough to give him a part in his current epic film, ‘The Ten Commandments’. (He’s the helmeted guard who towers over everyone else in the scene.) In short, I learned that he really was just a ‘regl’r’ guy. I also learned that during the time period that Hartford was wanting him to come, his studio had him under such a tight schedule that he really couldn’t get away. And he gave credit for his being able to play an honest, sincere cowboy on screen to his actually being an honest, sincere Midwesterner (my words, not his, but that was the gist of it).
From the tone of the interview, I think it is safe to infer that he was very thankful for having been born and growing up where he did, because of the values that he learned and used throughout his life, both on and off screen.
How many things in our lives do we take for granted? Our birthplace? Our hometown? Family? How about the clothes that we wear, or the food that we eat? A roof over our heads and a warm bed to sleep in? Every one of these things God either helps us with directly or gives us the skills and tools we need to obtain them for ourselves. He is blessing us everyday and we just get too busy to acknowledge it!
Some blessings are easy to see…a new child, a successful career and/or marriage, or the myriad of ‘things’ that most of us have. But even these can be too-easily relegated to the look-what-I-did file. So what happens to all of the daily blessings like food and clothes? Do we get so accustomed to them that we begin to ignore or forget them?
This is the month that we set aside one special day to consider all of the blessings that we have in our lives, and to thank God for them. Some may look at the turmoil that our country is in right now and wonder what we have to be thankful for. Let me tell you of at least three things!
- LIFE – we live! We are breathing, eating, and thinking individuals. And whatever else might happen, “Where there is life, there is hope.”
- FREEDOM – we have the freedom to live our lives in any way that we see fit as long as that freedom does not infringe on someone else’s freedom.
- JESUS CHRIST – from the teachings of Christ we learn what it means to be alive, and in what direction we should use our freedom. And through His death and resurrection, we are cleansed of our sins and made whole.
If there were absolutely nothing else to be thankful for, I could still spend all of Thanksgiving Day praising God for just these three things. But when, in addition, I consider all of the wonderful, miraculous things that happen all around us everyday, then twenty-four hours is not enough! Twenty-four days is not enough! Twenty-four years is not enough!
This Thanksgiving, take time to reflect on all of the things that God has done for you and yours that are taken for granted. Then you will begin to realize…
just exactly how much you have to be thankful for!
scluebbert 