More Adventures

 

Well, it has happened again and I’m not talking about the blizzard we had out here this week. Last week in our blog I was talking about the first time I spent the night with Pam in bed with me. We did it again last night and the difference was the passing of 61 years since we first did it. Married now 61 years and her still with me. Looking back, we were for sure two scared kids 61 years ago. We were just two young people that were maybe a little head strong that we were going to be together no matter what, with what seemed everyone trying to separate us. Her parents treating me with the law if I kept trying to see her. With them so hard on us we made a plan, and I picked her up at school when she got off the bus before school started on a Friday morning and we ran away together to Georgia. Lied about our age and got married. The big deal was her being 15. No one cared about me being just 17 it was all about her being 15 years old. Another thing was how pretty she was. You’re showing how dumb you are if you don’t think how, you look changes things.

This is a picture of Pam taken when she was 17 years old. Can you see the determiation in her eyes?

Her being that pretty it was like I had soiled her and messed up her life. Pam has always been a good girl and having sex was out before marriage, but after we were married, we had a little boy when she was 16. More disgrace and people looking down on us. Not finishing high school and now teenagers with a baby. How did this work out? Got a pilot license at 19 and you can bet she has always been right there beside me telling me how to fly when I’m flying a plane. Saying, “Bank it harder or give it to me and I will. Fly back over that so I can get a better look.” We both worked at some really good jobs but early in our twenties we gave up on what other people wanted and set out live in motion for what we wanted more than ever. A crazy life of doing things. Living on a lake in a log cabin we built together cutting the logs and finding ways to get them to the house. First trip we made in a tractor trailer truck together she said, “I can drive this thing it only has ten more gears than our pickup truck.” Together driving as a team is so much better than leaving her home waiting on me to get back. Having her with me on the road doing things as a couple will do but one thing Pam being Pam we tried to stop on the road and have one good meal a day. This meant me driving and her in the sleeper getting ready. Hair and a touch of makeup. Dressed for the occasion. As a driver we knew said one night as I was told to go get us a table, she would be on in a minute in a truck stop we like to stop at. He said, “Pam is in the building.” Like they use to say Elvis has left the building as she walked in the restaurant part of the truck stop. Everyone now looking. Her bright red hair combed out in high heels and a nice dress. Later with our love of travel it took us ten years building our sailboat the way we wanted we have lived and travel on. Her right there helping me put the pieces together after her working all day helping raise the money we needed for the boat. Most people never realize we had to raise the money as we went to build the schooner, we designed ourselves we have traveled on for over 20 years now. (The Schooner Pamela Ann) Guess where the name came from? Now with us buying this little house out on the prairie we have no indication of giving up our boat or that way of life. Hoping to put all this together and create a new lifestyle. Publish a book, sell some art, finish the car we are building from plans we drew up. Bring the boat back to the US and put it in boat shows. I been told I need to self-promote, to sell our book and my art. Even our lifestyle may help. I will try to put some pictures of our car we are building next week but for now, I guess we will never know what our lives would have been like if we married in our twenties, got degrees and lived like we were told we needed to. Going fishing sleeping in a tent camping out for weeks at a time. Would that have been better if we lived our life like we were told we needed to, to be successful? What about all the times we finally made something happen like making it to Mexico with the sailboat we built ourselves. After three days getting it there, with the main boom broke in a storm at sea. After getting the anchor set going to bed to rest. Would waking up there together been better if we had waited to get married and went along with what we were told to do. It’s hard to explain what that felt like with the adventure of getting that far working at it together. And knowing the adventures that were coming. Doing art and publishing a book doesn’t make you a writer or an artist. Working together at another dream is an adventure no, one can take away. Marrying at 15 and 17 has been a dream no one can take away from us now and how full a life we have had is just someone else opinion. We have always took on life together as an adventure, and now getting old is no time to stop.

                                       The Adventure of Life Goes On

Our home away from our boat, Pamela Ann we call home. 

This truck is our main transportation while we are out here on the prairie in Kansas. Great for riding around on dirt roads watching the moon come up.

Moon Watching

If you read our blog last week our life is changing. I put in last week’s blog we are dreaming again. Working on it really. Art contest coming up and working on a deadline coming up Wednesday. With the book we published we heard things we needed to change so we stopped promoting it and stared rewriting it as a revised addition. Working on it two years now and I think we are about ready to try it again. This time I think with the changes we made we will feel more like promoting it. Story line, everyone is not born the same and everyone doesn’t like living the same even if you hear it everyday day. Were all born equal and we must live by the rules set for you to live by. In last week’s blog I put I only finished the eighth grade. That puts me in the loser category with most educated people. Then after quitting school I fell head over heels in love with the prettiest girl I had ever seen. With what people say, I messed up her life too. Now, Thursday this week, March 20^th it, will be 61 years since I spent my first night in bed with her. Yes, we were married and broke a lot of rules to make that happen and no we didn’t have sex the first night. We were so tired with what we went through to get married we fell asleep in each other arms and it was daylight when we woke up. No need to say how happy we were. Why was it so hard getting married? Rule number one in the deep south back then was no dating until you’re past your 16th birthday. Married her at 15 and no we didn’t have sex before we married but she was pregnant at 16. I was a lot older myself at 17 the day we married. No more public school for her. This has been our life now as they say living outside the box all these years. Out here this week at our little house on the Kansas prairie away from our boat we left, in the Caribbean, we have lived on for years it was the Lunar Eclipse. We stayed up and watched it. Quite a site but this was not our first. I think the most romantic eclipse was on our first cursing sailboat. We were anchored in Southport, North Carolina in the Yacht Basin. Sat in the cockpit of our sailboat with no air moving, the water was calm. You could see it happen in the water but what was romantic was watching people holding to each other and making-out onshore. Lots of people came down to the waterfront to see it. Even now with Pam and I getting older making out a little under a full moon eclipse is still special. How have we stayed together all these years; I don’t have a clue. Maybe it has something to do with us always enjoying being together. After the moon eclipse the next night Pam and I were out riding in our old truck on dirt roads out here to watch the moon rise with her seating as close to me as she could like we were dating backing in 1964. With the wind blowing, we were dodging tumbleweeds watching the moon come up. Maybe with us, its life is still good.

Been working hard getting this ready for the Smokey Hill Art competition and exhibition. 

Don’t have a lot of pictures to put in the blog this week but this is the oil on canvas painting I’m presenting to the art contest. Won’t know if it will be selected in the show and if so, will someone want to buy it for a few more weeks. Been selected twice. Remember dreaming again. What a dream now with how we have lived our life if any of it happens. Selling some art. Maybe our book selling a little more.

Our Car Plans. We hope to drive it this summer.

Driving the car when we are out here away from our boat, we are building from plans we drew up from scratch and maybe putting our sailboat we built from our own plans in boat shows when we bring it back to somewhere on the Gulf Coast next year.

Aboard “Pamela Ann”

Anyway, with us being such failures with not finishing high school and not making loads of money to put in the bank what a life it’s been so far.

                                      The Adventure of Life Goes On

More Dreams

As I have put in lots of our blogs Pam, and I stared our life together early. Quitting school and having a baby as teenagers everyone treated us as losers. We worked ourselves into some really good jobs early and set our lives up the way most people live and wanted us to live. House, cars but with us not that happy living the way everyone seemed to want us to. We both dreamed of living a different life. With Pam it was to travel with me it was go to Alaska and build up a little homestead. Live in a log cabin in the wilderness and maybe run a trap line. Oddly enough I’m really good at running a trap line and know how it done. It was my granddaddy on my daddy’s side. I helped him trap when I was growing up on the farm for years. This was not a hobby this was how he made a living. One of my sisters still has all his and my traps in a barrel of oil at her house. My granddaddy on my mother’s side was a really smart man and I told him about my dreams of Alaska. He said, “Dreams can be deceiving once you get there. When you talk, I hear in there somewhere you want more freedom than just having a forty hour a week job you need to make a living for the rest of your life. Be careful what you dream it may be just that. Just a dream. That is a hard way to live up there and you have a kid and a woman that you need to take care of.” He also said, with simple living there is simpler ways to live here. A little later in life we did give up our life working those good jobs. Sold what we could including our house. Brought some land on a large power lake and built the log cabin of my dreams. Was this better than going to Alaska? The dream of going there was still strong but this was doable and going there was not. I will never know how this compares to going there but I know doing this with Pam and I still young with our boy still in school and us only finding work we could do when we needed money was a dream life for us. Not for our family’s and people that knew us. We heard we were living hard and living poor. What did we learn living this way? Building a log cabin Pam still calls a house was a learning experience. Of course, we designed it and with a garage and utility room under the house our first log we laid was eight feet in the air. Remember on a lake no basement. After living there and raising our son there we learned that it’s hard to keep the chinking tight between the logs. Cold windy days made it hard to heat. Now with that in mind we were not in Alaska. Now out here in Kansas we are snowed in. Again. “Our little house on the prairie. The temperature hitting -30F below zero.” Now thinking about dreaming about building a log cabin where it can be dark most of the day and 60 below in Alaska. I think my granddaddy was right. Even if it wasn’t in Alaska in a way, it was a dream, and we did it. Now as for the people that know us know we dreamed of living on a boat. We sold our log cabin and bought a boat we didn’t like that well after we bought it. With the dream of what we wanted we sold that and built the boat of our dreams. Again, designed and built that. Now after all these years of traveling and living on our sailboat and getting older life it’s self will throw you curve balls sometimes. Maybe that’s what happen with us buying this little house out here. It being so cheap near our son out here we bought it. Now this may be bringing changes to our life. Our sailboat has history now, and we are working on it in a boat yard in the Caribbean to bring it up to where (we think) we can bring it back to the US and put it in boat shows. “Part of what is the dream today. Out here we have been doing things that may change our lives again. I said things not just one thing. We wrote a book. Didn’t go well. We’re doing a revised addition. Been somewhat successful with my art doing shows out here. On top off all this when we are out here, I been building a car from scratch. Not just a car but a car Pam and I designed ourselves drawing our own plans. Running gear almost finished building the body next. Now with the dream we have now how to put all this together and make a living with all this we love to do as old as we are. We have written a book and have sold some art but I’m reluctant to call myself a writer or an artist. In the future we may be adding some of this in our blog and giving and update on our progress. Win or lose?

                                      The Adventure of Life Goes On

An owl painting getting ready for an art show.

One of the paintings getting worked on for an art show.