We spent the day yesterday with our friends Jim and Shar Lewis, who had invited us to their beautiful home in Pinetop for dinner and a visit. It was a great day, with the comfort that old friends of many years just naturally share.
There are two or three men in this world that I consider to be my true brothers, and Jim is one of them. We’ve shared a lot of good times and bad over the decades, and I know there is nothing he wouldn’t do for me, or I for him.
Today Jim owns a small used book store here in the mountains, but when I met him a lifetime ago he was a guard at the Arizona State Prison. His resume also includes being a decorated Vietnam med-evac helicopter pilot, aerial surveyor, pilot for logging operations in the Pacific Northwest, fighting forest fires by helicopter, and massage therapist, of all things. Besides that, he’s a fine guitarist and cowboy singer! So he always has a lot of great tales to tell.
Jim and Shar have been talking about hitting the road, either as fulltime or extended travel RVers, so they had a lot of questions about our travels and RVing in general. We love sharing all of the great things about fulltime RVing, and they seemed to love hearing about it. Do we have some new converts to the RV lifestyle? I guess only time will tell.
We had planned on a two or three hour visit, but the time went by so fast that eight hours had passed before we finally said our goodbyes and headed home. When we arrived back at the Elks campground in Show Low, we noticed a couple more RVs had arrived in our absence.
Today we are going to spend some time with daughter Tiffany and her family, and maybe throw some steaks on the grill. I also hope to get some more work done on the schedule for our upcoming Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally.
I hope that whatever you are doing today, you take a few moments to remember the reason for this holiday, and the men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice so that you and I can live in peace and enjoy the freedoms we have. Our country has a lot of problems, but it’s still the greatest place on earth to live, and we can thank our veterans and those who died for all of us for that.
Thought For The Day – A veteran, whether active duty, retired, National Guard, or Reserve, is someone who, at one point in his or her life wrote a blank check made payable to The United States of America for an amount of ‘up to and including my life.’
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Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
Thank you, NIck, for your blank check which, fortunately, didn’t have to be cashed to the full extent offered. And thanks to all your readers who are present or past military. There’s little more that we can say other than THANK YOU!
You can also set your alarm for 3 pm and join many other Americans in a moment of silence for those whose check got cashed to the fullest. Or go to a cemetary and clean up graves; my family still calls this Decoration Day and that’s what they do with it.
Nick, thank you for your service to our country. You are one of the GOOD GUYS (as is my Charles). I did a tribute, on FB, to the men in my family that have served. I was even amazed that in only 3 generations we have 11 veterans. 5 are alive and 6 are deceased. None lost their lives during the war but too many were disabled from them.