With respect to the introductions, here's another stab at it

The very first post of this blog was a short ( very ) introduction of myself.

The brevity of it probably says it all about me.  Never been a man with a lot of words.  In fact, the tendency is very strong on the other side.  If there's anything I don't do enough of, and that is to communicate.  The "Great Communicator" is not me, but the very opposite.  Even though I've written over 8000 posts here, I don't think I've communicated enough about who I am.

Or have I?  How much is enough?

As I've indicated before, I don't really like to go into too much detail about myself.  I am a private person.  However, like a lot of things, that may be an anachronism.  There's no more privacy anymore, especially on the internet.

If I'm going to be known, at least I should get my shots in first before someone decides to define me first.

So, here we go into the Wayback Machine, because I've been around for awhile.  I'll be 60 in July.

I've lived in Texas all my life, and in Houston almost all my life.  But I wasn't born in Houston.  My folks came up here from Corpus Christi before coming here about the year 1958.  I'm not really clear on the exact date, but Wishbone says it was then, and he was attending first grade at the time.  So, this was before the school year ended, and it had to be in about the Spring of 1958.  I've been in Houston pretty much since that time.

But I was born "In the Valley" before the family moved to Corpus.  Near McAllen near the little town of San Juan.  Heck, I'm almost a wetback.

My folks originally came from West Virginia.  There's a lot of Meadows's from that part of the country.  I looked it up recently.  It was said in the household that you could throw a rock and hit a Meadows in that part of the woods.

I'm thinking that my mom had it pretty good, and maybe should be considered pretty well off by some standards.  But rich in money, no.  She grew up on a farm, and it probably wasn't very big.  Yet this farm had its own coal, and they could raise animals and crops.  They had everything they needed.  That's what I mean by being "rich".  If you've got that, you have got everything you really need.  Coming to the city was not really a move upwards for her.  In my opinion, that's how a lot of people went wrong.

Dad grew up in the coal mining camps.  Mom said he had a hard life.  I can imagine.  One thing that he was not is bashful.  She said he was a "big showoff" because he could tap dance.  But he couldn't sing.  Dad had some musically inclined relatives who auditioned him once and said that he couldn't sing.  Mom said that really hurt him.  I couldn't fnd anything wrong with his singing, but what do I know?  Dad ended up as a truck driver.  He handled the big rigs for most of his working life.

So, there was seven of us kids, and I was next to last.  The first born died at six months.  That death was quite a blow, so I am told.

Dad was married previously.  His first wife had two children.  I never knew my half-sister, but I knew my half-brother a little.  He was a "lifer" in the military.  He had something of a reputation, how much of that he deserved, I don't know.  A "soldier of fortune"?  I don't know.   He passed away not that long ago.

As for me, I never went into the military.  It may have been useful to know some of the ways of a soldier about now, in my opinion.  We may have to fight soon.

I went to college like my Mama wanted me to do.  But it wasn't much good.  I ended up like the old man, driving a truck.

As I probably mentioned, I tried a number of things, but nothing ever really stuck.  But the driving part did.

Can I sing?  No, and even if I could, I am not the performer type.  Besides, we don't need singers right now.

It looks like I want to be a leader, but I've never done that either.  Since I'm not much of a talker, that way seems blocked to me as well.

I can write a little, but I am finding out that my abilities here are a bit overextended as well.

One thing I can do is think.  But we need something better than thinkers.

Sun Tzu says we should know ourselves and our enemy.  Best to take that at heart for whoever is reading this.  We are going to need that kind of wisdom in the days ahead.