"We all do things we said we never would"
So said a sticker that was on a car that belonged to somebody who parked in the same parking lot I've been parking in for 30 years. The quote was attributed to "Soccer Mom".
For some of that 30, I've parked a real car there. The cars were, in order of ownership, a 1954 Chevrolet sedan I once owned, a 1973 Mercury Comet, and a 90s vintage Mercury Cougar. The Chevy I bought when I was still a college student. I loved it, but owning it turned you into a part time mechanic and I didn't have the time. Additionally, at the time I sold it, I also had the Comet, which I had inherited, which was a nicer and more modern car.
I regret selling the Comet, but I did just that when we had our first child as I was able to buy a 1995 Ford F250 diesel for a good price, part of which was trading the Comet and a F150 to the person who sold it to me. I had too many vehicles anyway, I thought, and it was a good deal. The Cougar came along later when we picked it up from a friend of my wife's. It had a lot of miles on it but it was in good condition and I drove the stuffing out of it, even though the heater didn't work.
Otherwise, I've driven 4x4s to work.
Often they've been pretty heavy duty ones that could do ranch work as well as sporting transportation. More recently I've added an old Jeep. The Jeep is my current daily driver, but my Dodge D3500 4x4 takes me to work a fair amount and to out of town work when I go out of town. None of these vehicles is new by a longshot.
Most of them look like I'm ready to go pull a trailer full of bulls or go into the hills. But there they are, in the parking lot.
The point of the quote above?
Today is the opening day of turkey season.
I won't be going today. The weather is awful anyway, cold and lots of snow on the ground, but that's not the reason why.
I'll be heavily engaged in work.
When I was first practicing law, I cancelled an elk hunting trip here in the state (a Wyoming type of trip, not a guided something) as a partner in the firm assigned me something that conflicted with it. Another partner later apologized and noted that one of the advantages of being a lawyer was "the illusion that you could take time off when you wanted to." I've found it to be just that, an illusion.
I've been introspective a lot recently.
An old friend. . . my oldest friend, reminded me the other day that when we were in high school I maintained I'd never have a job in which I'd wear a tie. The conversation came up as we were at a funeral, his son's funeral, and he wasn't wearing a tie as his son always tied it for him. He doesn't wear them often. I was wearing one, and I know how to tie one, as I wear them so often.
My youthful declaration about ties was because I didn't want an indoor job. At that time I was going to be a game warden. I've written about that before, so I'll forgo doing so again, but I didn't take that path. Instead I pursued geology, but the bottom fell out of that. Then I went into law. I didn't know much about the practice of law and I didn't know any lawyers.
A different friend of mine, who is a lawyer and who is married to a lawyer maintains that law was the only occupation, other than the clergy, that would suit me, and as I'm Catholic, and married, obviously the clergy wouldn't be for me (unless, of course, I was Easter Rite, but that's another story). Religious are called in any event, and I lack that calling. Anyhow, that fellow is a German and has a more ordered sense of the world, I think, than I do. Maybe he's right. I hope so, and that would give an element of necessity to the otherwise complicated way we govern or our lives.
At any rate, as a lawyer, I've been a litigator. It's not that I pursued that, but fell into it. Lots of lawyers used to say that "the law is a jealous mistress", meaning it would take all your time, and whether or not that's true of all branches of the law, its certainly true of litigation.
Or perhaps my personality just works towards devotion to duty and work over anything else. But after two weeks with two untimely deaths, thinking back on the younger me, I've found that the sticker has been true to my personality more than I would have ever have guessed.
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