Why are we so different...

Some people are good at math, some at English...a few are good at everything. Some can sing, some can't and some shouldn't even try.

Even within families there are noticeable differences. Brothers and sisters can be night and day different from each other...even if they have the same parents. Siblings can look at the same situation and see completely different things.

For instance, my dad lovingly remembers his father while several of dad's sisters have told me his father was a tyrant. Dad remembers his father singing so loud in church that the pastor told him to be quiet. When I told this story to one of dad's sisters, she doesn't remember her dad even going to church.

Since you can't turn the clock back 80 years and find out for yourself, about all you can do is chalk these differences up to how people are different and how they look at things differently.

Some of us are romantics, and we tend to smooth over the rough edges of the world and try to put the best face on every situation. I think that's my father. After all, he's one of the few people that I know of that thought his experience in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II was among the treasurered moments of his life. He liked the other soldiers, the travel to different states and different countries...he even liked the food. His stories of service to the United States are filled with plesantries about checker tournaments, boxing matches, riding trains and ships. He doesn't talk about battles, marching around the barracks or KP duty. Instead, he says he got the "plush" jobs because he knew how to use a typewriter. Uncle Sam even sent him to college in Utah during during his tour of duty.

When he talks about working at the coal mines, his stories are about happy times there. It seems the mines hired just about everyone...as long as they were able bodied. Anyway, some of the miners would tap on the bulbs deep in the black, underground mines to make the bulbs shine brighter. However, the bulbs didn't last as long if you tapped on them. So the miners were tapping and the bosses were shouting because of the number of replacement bulbs needed. Now, that's an interesting story, but no mention of spending long hours bent over digging out coal for hours on end. Instead, dad says working at the mine had its advantages. You didn't care if it was cold, rainy, night time or day time, because in the mine, the environment was always the same. Now that's a romantic.

And his work on the early oil rigs is similarly about the people he worked with. There was Don Soape and L.P. "Peanuts" Anderson and, of course, his favorite subject was Charlie Bellew, the ne'er-do-well driller who was getting picked up by the Highway Patrol for not having a driver's license, because of some previous infraction. Or Charlie, the man with the voracious appetite, who put his fork in somebody's fingers because he thought they were going to steal his food.

No need to talk about the horrendous safety conditions on the old rigs, often called "widow makers" by the rough necks. No need to talk about the weeks away from home while drilling on the Highline of Montana near Havre during brutal Montana winters. Instead, dad talks about finding rare fossils and arrowheads by walking around the rigs. In his stories, the drilling rigs were a way for him to have access to all of this great land to find rare artifacts. This story is similar to a favorite World War II story when he was stationed in India. Instead of talking about the deplorable conditions in the Asian subcontinent, he talks of finding beautiful rubies that he was later duped out of by a crafty trader. However, dad thought it was okay because he might find some more rubies.

Now that's a romantic. So if I sometimes see the world as a green garden, full of friends and wonderful places to enjoy, don't think of me as strange. I come by this naturally. Life is a pretty sweet place, and we need to enjoy it.