I had a friend die on Thursday. He was an older gentleman, who grew up riding horses and wrangling cattle in Montana and other non-California states. He was a fine example of a man - but I don't know for certain if he was ready to go. His wife was always so glad when I would come over to see him, and I must admit I should have done it more. He was glad to - there certainly was nothing stopping me from doing it far more often than I did.
But he's gone now, and I have no more chances to say anything to him him in this life.
I weep not because he has been released from his body which was letting him down, nor that he is no longer dependent upon others - something he disliked immensely. No, I have been weeping because I think I could have done more to help him with eternity. Now I have all the great things to say, but nobody to say them to. I missed my chance, and it means more than just not showing up for an appointment. I may have to bear this one for the rest of my life.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The Big Balloon
OK - so I don't have much to say about the big balloon. We have a huge balloon which we use for advertising. We put it up on top of the building to bring people in to buy big expensive boxes of hot water to put in their yards. Our son has risked life and limb numerous time to put the thing up. It is 25 tall, I think, and it fills with a very powerful blower. Once its in place and full, it moves a little with the wind but generally stays put unless we get a real gale. But getting it to that point, or taking it down... another story altogether. It is a giant sail as it begins to fill - and you would have to see it to believe how dangerous and vicious the thing can be as even the slightest breeze will turn it into a moving wall of death trying to sweep you over the edge of the building and to the ground below.
I can't even guess how many time the thing has been put up and taken down - we have had it for about ten years or so I think. In fact, it was left up in a gale-force wind just three weeks ago and actually tore a long seam out. The wife patched it up with the help of several strong men and a sewing machine, and then we did the exact same thing and had the exact same results just last week.
So - it might be time to find another type of sign or attention-getting device. Maybe we will just paint something on the side of Boot Barn or something which doesn't risk life and limb. The real point is that without our son, I don't know if I want people up on our roof man-handling the Big Balloon. He could do it with amazing skill and grace. We had another employee try it the other day, and it sounded as if a herd of elephants was up on the roof doing a break-dance. Or is that brake-dance? Whatever - we have NEVER heard anything as loud as they went running back and forth, yelling at each other at the top of their lungs, scattering gravel from the roof over the cars parked below, and causing little avalanches of dust and dirt from the lights, vents, ducts, and other things near the top of the building.
You know how you don't appreciate certain things until they are gone? Well, we are seeing other people try to do the very same things our son did, and we have come to be amazed at how he did things left and right which were just amazing.
More later...
I can't even guess how many time the thing has been put up and taken down - we have had it for about ten years or so I think. In fact, it was left up in a gale-force wind just three weeks ago and actually tore a long seam out. The wife patched it up with the help of several strong men and a sewing machine, and then we did the exact same thing and had the exact same results just last week.
So - it might be time to find another type of sign or attention-getting device. Maybe we will just paint something on the side of Boot Barn or something which doesn't risk life and limb. The real point is that without our son, I don't know if I want people up on our roof man-handling the Big Balloon. He could do it with amazing skill and grace. We had another employee try it the other day, and it sounded as if a herd of elephants was up on the roof doing a break-dance. Or is that brake-dance? Whatever - we have NEVER heard anything as loud as they went running back and forth, yelling at each other at the top of their lungs, scattering gravel from the roof over the cars parked below, and causing little avalanches of dust and dirt from the lights, vents, ducts, and other things near the top of the building.
You know how you don't appreciate certain things until they are gone? Well, we are seeing other people try to do the very same things our son did, and we have come to be amazed at how he did things left and right which were just amazing.
More later...
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
A thank-you which may be late in coming
I doubt I have anyone who will read this other than a couple of people who are involved in an issue which looms large on the horizon of my life right now. So I will be very careful about what I post. If you want to contact me about the 'issue,' use email or phone and I will gladly talk with you. This blog is not about that, and what I am about to say I will say without apology.
We will miss our son at work. We already do.
To begin, I want to say that I have mixed emotions about the fact that our son will no longer be working for the family business. He and I reached a point of mutually agreeing that he needed to go find something else. He does not enjoy working outdoors - he said, "I don't enjoy weather, ANY weather," and I had to laugh. I know exactly what he is talking about. I sold a very profitable business tending commercial pools for the very same reason, so I fully appreciate his feelings. And I fully appreciate how good a job he did for us working out doors the whole time.
It is amazing what a great job he did for us over the years, and that's where the mixed emotions come in - I love having him around, I love blessing him, but he needs to move on to grow. Experience work away from Mom and Dad and the family business.
Even though he became very surly and grumpy with me at times, he always seemed to be able to buck up and treat the customers with professionalism. And we began to finally realize that he simply didn't enjoy the work in the least little bit, so the surly part was an outgrowth of that. I can understand. Also, he didn't like the fact that every time he saw his mother or I work had to some how be involved. That is very understandable. But even though he was set to move on months ago, when I injured my back and was flat for five months, he said he would stick around and keep us going while I underwent surgery and recovery. He did, and I appreciate it immensely. He sure didn't have to, but he not only did it, but did it with excellence.
We hope and pray all the best on him - and pray that his next job will be more than just a job.
I didn't tell him often enough that I appreciated him and all he did. Let me take a few lines here to do so - our son is gifted in the areas of administration and he helped us to organize and set in place some simple systems for tracking work and customers. He also set into place some very complex system with computers and such to help us with bookkeeping and accounting, and to help us track serial numbers and other detailed data on our customers. This was not amateurish stuff, it was all very advanced and functional. Label machines were purchased and used to mark things, shelving systems set up, forms created and used, bags and tags brought in, shrink wrap and packing materials, and much much more.
He set up a computer network, wired our building for phones in every corner of a 7000 square-foot building with two story offices at one end. He set up a wireless network, and password protected everything. I am just now figuring out how to change all the various passwords - a daunting task for me which would have taken him seconds. Seconds - and I would have loved to have watched him do it because he always was so very techie. He can walk into a room with in which a computer was giving me grief, and the computer will straighten up and fly right before he even touched it. I have seen it happen a thousand times in the years he has been with us, and you may think that I am exaggerating, but I assure you I am not and I have plenty of witnesses who will corroborate. He has skills.
He was careful with the trucks. OK, not perfect, but careful. I had several folks over the years who I had to let go because they did not treat the equipment in a way which would keep it (and them) alive. From trucks to trailers, to large items such as forklifts, amazing care must be exercised to keep things running - let alone safe. Thought must be expended, the picture must be big, and possible accidents must be foreseen. And the man did that. It was clear he took ownership as much as I did. Yes, there were the occasional dents and dings, but when you consider all the hours spent on the road towing a huge trailer full of heavy spas and covers, and the hours spent in the seat of the forklift, there were very few slips or goofs. I remember one time when one of the trucks got beat up a bit. He came to me as if he had just made a big mistake, and was so apologetic. But as I surveyed the damage, it became clear that he wasn't even to blame. Yet since he was in charge of the person who did it, he took responsibility. That is character, and leadership in one.
I was just moving a couple of spas around the warehouse yesterday, and I marveled at the thought of the way he just took to it so naturally. It was as if he was born doing it - and to a certain degree he was - but the way he could stuff large bulky items into shelves with that forklift was poetry in motion. Many of our spas are close to eight feet square, and that is the exact size of the shelving which he helped to build. And the forks are six feet long on our lift truck - do the math - it equals an equation which should have spelled disaster after disaster. But it didn't. I think I dinged more spas than he ever did, and I know I have the distinction of being the only one to put the forks through the wall of our warehouse so that they popped out into the storage space of our neighbors. That was in a warehouse from a few years ago, the one we are in now has cement block walls and would be a bit less forgiving.
He dealt with people so well. Ask him, and he will tell you that he hates dealing with people. We got the brunt of that from time to time, but I would rather we got it than the customers. In fact, I don't recall any customer ever saying anything less than glowing things about the team. They always did a wonderful job representing us. People would use words like, patient, knowledgeable, careful, even 'gentle.' Yes, I could take a cheap shot and say that we sometimes wondered who they were talking about - but we knew. We saw things that even he didn't see in himself. The man knows his stuff, and has a gift for teaching. The funny thing was listening to him tell you how much he didn't like teaching and working with these people even for one minute, and then hearing a glowing report of how well he did it all another. Thank - you for doing this as well as you did, even though you didn't enjoy it. We knew how you felt, but the customers didn't, and that takes a certain amount of maturity and grace to pull off.
OK - I have to go. I now get to do some of the many the jobs he did, so I am back to going in early and leaving late like I did in the early years of this business. I want to expand on the many other areas our son touched and blessed us - please don't think this is the end of the list. Far from it.
I love my son like I love life. I wish I could have done a better job of being his dad. I was new to the whole father thing when he came along, and if you could have seen the panic it produced and the hours of study I put in you would have laughed. But I did what I could, we both did. Let's leave that, and I'll tell you more about the amazing things he did for our business in later blogs. Maybe I'll even put one together about all the musicals he did sound and lighting for at our church (I'm now running sound and his sister is running lights for the Easter musical this weekend - you are all invited).
Stay tuned -
Next time - "the big balloon..."
We will miss our son at work. We already do.
To begin, I want to say that I have mixed emotions about the fact that our son will no longer be working for the family business. He and I reached a point of mutually agreeing that he needed to go find something else. He does not enjoy working outdoors - he said, "I don't enjoy weather, ANY weather," and I had to laugh. I know exactly what he is talking about. I sold a very profitable business tending commercial pools for the very same reason, so I fully appreciate his feelings. And I fully appreciate how good a job he did for us working out doors the whole time.
It is amazing what a great job he did for us over the years, and that's where the mixed emotions come in - I love having him around, I love blessing him, but he needs to move on to grow. Experience work away from Mom and Dad and the family business.
Even though he became very surly and grumpy with me at times, he always seemed to be able to buck up and treat the customers with professionalism. And we began to finally realize that he simply didn't enjoy the work in the least little bit, so the surly part was an outgrowth of that. I can understand. Also, he didn't like the fact that every time he saw his mother or I work had to some how be involved. That is very understandable. But even though he was set to move on months ago, when I injured my back and was flat for five months, he said he would stick around and keep us going while I underwent surgery and recovery. He did, and I appreciate it immensely. He sure didn't have to, but he not only did it, but did it with excellence.
We hope and pray all the best on him - and pray that his next job will be more than just a job.
I didn't tell him often enough that I appreciated him and all he did. Let me take a few lines here to do so - our son is gifted in the areas of administration and he helped us to organize and set in place some simple systems for tracking work and customers. He also set into place some very complex system with computers and such to help us with bookkeeping and accounting, and to help us track serial numbers and other detailed data on our customers. This was not amateurish stuff, it was all very advanced and functional. Label machines were purchased and used to mark things, shelving systems set up, forms created and used, bags and tags brought in, shrink wrap and packing materials, and much much more.
He set up a computer network, wired our building for phones in every corner of a 7000 square-foot building with two story offices at one end. He set up a wireless network, and password protected everything. I am just now figuring out how to change all the various passwords - a daunting task for me which would have taken him seconds. Seconds - and I would have loved to have watched him do it because he always was so very techie. He can walk into a room with in which a computer was giving me grief, and the computer will straighten up and fly right before he even touched it. I have seen it happen a thousand times in the years he has been with us, and you may think that I am exaggerating, but I assure you I am not and I have plenty of witnesses who will corroborate. He has skills.
He was careful with the trucks. OK, not perfect, but careful. I had several folks over the years who I had to let go because they did not treat the equipment in a way which would keep it (and them) alive. From trucks to trailers, to large items such as forklifts, amazing care must be exercised to keep things running - let alone safe. Thought must be expended, the picture must be big, and possible accidents must be foreseen. And the man did that. It was clear he took ownership as much as I did. Yes, there were the occasional dents and dings, but when you consider all the hours spent on the road towing a huge trailer full of heavy spas and covers, and the hours spent in the seat of the forklift, there were very few slips or goofs. I remember one time when one of the trucks got beat up a bit. He came to me as if he had just made a big mistake, and was so apologetic. But as I surveyed the damage, it became clear that he wasn't even to blame. Yet since he was in charge of the person who did it, he took responsibility. That is character, and leadership in one.
I was just moving a couple of spas around the warehouse yesterday, and I marveled at the thought of the way he just took to it so naturally. It was as if he was born doing it - and to a certain degree he was - but the way he could stuff large bulky items into shelves with that forklift was poetry in motion. Many of our spas are close to eight feet square, and that is the exact size of the shelving which he helped to build. And the forks are six feet long on our lift truck - do the math - it equals an equation which should have spelled disaster after disaster. But it didn't. I think I dinged more spas than he ever did, and I know I have the distinction of being the only one to put the forks through the wall of our warehouse so that they popped out into the storage space of our neighbors. That was in a warehouse from a few years ago, the one we are in now has cement block walls and would be a bit less forgiving.
He dealt with people so well. Ask him, and he will tell you that he hates dealing with people. We got the brunt of that from time to time, but I would rather we got it than the customers. In fact, I don't recall any customer ever saying anything less than glowing things about the team. They always did a wonderful job representing us. People would use words like, patient, knowledgeable, careful, even 'gentle.' Yes, I could take a cheap shot and say that we sometimes wondered who they were talking about - but we knew. We saw things that even he didn't see in himself. The man knows his stuff, and has a gift for teaching. The funny thing was listening to him tell you how much he didn't like teaching and working with these people even for one minute, and then hearing a glowing report of how well he did it all another. Thank - you for doing this as well as you did, even though you didn't enjoy it. We knew how you felt, but the customers didn't, and that takes a certain amount of maturity and grace to pull off.
OK - I have to go. I now get to do some of the many the jobs he did, so I am back to going in early and leaving late like I did in the early years of this business. I want to expand on the many other areas our son touched and blessed us - please don't think this is the end of the list. Far from it.
I love my son like I love life. I wish I could have done a better job of being his dad. I was new to the whole father thing when he came along, and if you could have seen the panic it produced and the hours of study I put in you would have laughed. But I did what I could, we both did. Let's leave that, and I'll tell you more about the amazing things he did for our business in later blogs. Maybe I'll even put one together about all the musicals he did sound and lighting for at our church (I'm now running sound and his sister is running lights for the Easter musical this weekend - you are all invited).
Stay tuned -
Next time - "the big balloon..."
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