The One and Only Don Hardin

Last time I was in Texas it was to attend the Six-Man football championship games at Shotwell Stadium in Abilene.  I had been looking forward to this all season because not only would I get to see some six-man football, but I would get to spend some time with my dear friend and six-man confederate Don Hardin.  We spent all day together, which started off with a bite to eat at Whataburger around 10am just down the road from Shotwell Stadium...I want to say here that Don knew just about everyone, and if he didn't know them he soon would, as this story will prove...Well as we sat there and visited and as we conversed Don eyed every person who walked in the door and wonder out loud if they were going to the games later...and he asked every person as they sat down if they were and if they told him no he politely suggested that they should stop in and watch the best six-man teams in the state play.  Well sure enough some folks wearing Follett T-shirts came in and old Don mosied on over to them and visited with them a while talking about their team and their feelings about how the State games would go...Don is about the only person I have ever known that the term "mosied" truly applied to...Well after we visited with the fine folks from Follett we made our way out the door and to our car to head on over to the stadium, but not without someone stopping Don and asking him how he felt the games would go...turned out the guy was the coach from Lohn, TX.

We arrived at the stadium well before kickoff and we noticed a man out side the stadium holding up a sign that had a name boldly written on it.  Don said something to me like, "I think I know the name on that sign he's got" so again Don mosied on over to speak with the man.  Turned out he was a six-man fan from Strawn, TX (if I remember correctly) and as he was introducing himself Don realized the two had met before at a game in the past, and sure enough the man remembered, saying something like "O ya your Don Hardin the six-man writer guy".  Well this man from Strawn was wanting to meet up with someone from Richland Springs, TX whom he had talked to but never met in person so he had come to the game with this sign which had the guy from RS's name on it...Don reads the sign...(I think the name written on it was Otis) and Don says "I know who that is and I think I have his phone number."  Don pulls out his phone and calls a number saved in it and sure enough he has this man Otis' phone number.  Don tells Otis this man from Strawn was there hoping to meet up with him and to look for a sign with his name on it "Yap he's carrying around a sign with your name on it in big letters, he'll be on the home field side, you can't miss him."  Then Don and I made our way into the stadium to claim our places in the press box...

That's a true story and only part of a wonderful day I spent with the one and only Don Hardin...he went out of his way to be a friend to a stranger, was known and respected by people all over the State of Texas, and was always willing to lend a helping hand.  Forever a gentleman and a scholar, their will never be another Don Hardin...I am heart broken now...our ambassador...and friend...is gone.

Sunday...My Friend

I can not remember the last time I went to church...those closest to me know that I am not a church going person but rather someone very open minded on the very idea of religion and God...some might say equally tolerant to all and skeptical to all at the same time...if I had to label my beliefs Gnostic is what I'd call myself.

With all that being said it will not surprise you then that I am not a prayer either...I have never put much faith in it...maybe that's my problem...inability to put faith into things...

However, Today I have found myself praying hard for a miracle...for a friend of mine.  For you see a friend of mine is dying...

I met Sunday Ibok at McMurry University back in 2001.  We both pledged the same fraternity that Spring...we became quick friends...the same as anyone who ever met Sunday did...for you see Sunday has that rare friendly, easy going, carefree attitude and outlook on things that makes everyone he meets glad to have met him and proud to call him friend.  Not long after we became fraternity brothers Sunday transferred to Abilene Christian University and I to Angelo State University and we lost touch...I can not remember the last time I saw him...but I know he had that huge smile on his face and was dressed to the 9's...as was his style...and boy does he have style.

I found Sunday on Facebook one day and reconnected with him there...to my regret now we didn't talk much...but I kept up with him and his life in New York...I always wondered how the hell he ended up in New York and have always been meaning to ask him...but I just never have...I hope I will get the chance to in the future...but it's not looking good...for you see my friend Sunday is dying...Sunday suffered a brain aneurysm the other day and is currently laying in a hospital bed at Baylor Medical Center on life support and brain dead.

Since I learned of this this morning I have went about my day with a heavy heart with thoughts of my friend Sunday...and I have done what I have not done in a long time...that's pray and ask God to help my friend, to bring him back to us healthy and full of life again...to spare him for a little while longer.  The world needs him and his kind heart and friendly smile.

I am going to do something else I have not done in a long time...Many of you who will read this do not know Sunday Ibok...but I am asking you to pray for him...he needs them as much as the world needs Sunday in it...please join me and pray for his full recovery.

Thanks,
Leman

The Week That Was...Running the Gamut

Starting Point:  Friday the 15th

In from work early...off to San Angelo to watch my friend's band play downtown...stay at his house...wake up early drive to San Antonio to visit a friend who was admitted to Brooke Army Medical Center...drive back home the next day.  Monday book passage on a bus to San Antonio so I can bring my friends car home and store it for her while she is on leave...my first ever bus trip here in the US.  Backed books to read...Plato's Symposium...Monday-Friday I spend with my friend trying to provide some comfort and aid when needed..my knowledge of the area around Brooke's Army Medical Center (namely fast food places, convenient stores and hotels) reaches the level of expert, I get a taste of true government bureaucratic, see wounded military members at every turn, little sleep, up for over 40 hours at one point...I fittingly read The Symposium and ponder its meaning.  Friday afternoon my friend is discharged and off on leave to get healthy...I worry and reflect on my week as I drive her car home.  Have to pull over to get some sleep in Paint Rock, TX.  Arrive home, pick up my fiddle and play it for the first time in a week...it smells good.  Rest and Sleep come easy.  Saturday I'm picked up by a friend and taken to San Angelo to get my pick up.  We bump into an ex-girlfriend at the mall with her husband...not as awkward as it seems like it should have been.  I check into the Inn at Sealy Flats downtown and wait for some friends of mine to arrive for a small party I organized a month prior.  Few show up but we have fun, good food, drinks, more drinks, and Blues music...I'm left wondering to myself Is the note "Facebook Me" with a name on a napkin the new equivalent of getting a girl's number?...10:30 we are all off to watch my friend's band play in Grape Creek, TX at a biker rally at the only bar in town...there till 12:30ish...off to a bar in San Angelo for a few drinks with a high school friend...we run into people we know...its a small world.  2am back to the Inn, we talk of the past, the future, growning anxiety and I'm advised on how to deal with a few of the curve balls life has thrown at me lately.  Bed at 5am.  Wake up at 11:30am...1 hour later...Home again.  "Color my life with the chaos of trouble" has gained meaning to me

Chafed Nipples

Chafed Nipples...I hate them!  Worst than a strained ankle or a sore muscle...because with those the pain will go away with a natural adrenaline rush or medication...not so with chafed nipples...

Anyone wondering what the hell I am talking about probably hasn't done a whole lot of long distance running.  Chafed Nipples, also called Jogger's Nipple, is caused by your nipple rubbing against your sweaty shirt (or clothing material) while you are working out...in most cases jogging or running longer distances.  IT IS ANNOYING AS HELL!!!

Well what got me on this subject is I have been working at trying to get back in to good shape.  Watching what I eat and drink, and doing various workouts at night and running longer distances (3-7 miles) several times a week.  I have thought about training for a half marathon lately (thanks in part to seeing my friend Craig running 17-20 mile runs and pushing the competitiveness in me up a little...thinking if he can do that I can too).  A good training tool is a runners journal or a runners blog to help keep track of what you are running and monitor your training easier...so I have decided to keep one...and I am naming it after the most irritating part about running for me and the one injury that no one really talks about...so if anyone is bored out of their skulls or is thinking about running and is curious to see what I do on a day to day basis feel free to check out my runners blog...Chafed Nipples

This is from my HS days

The REAL Villain of a Hero.... Hepatitis C

Summer is Upon Us!  And that means Comic Book/Superhero based blockbuster movies!  The Green Lantern is headlining the genre this year...well here is something for you to think about while you watch all that action, destruction and carnage that enevitably occurs in all movies of that genre...

Think about it...all those night out fighting crime, punching evil doers in the face, rescuing people from burning buildings and cars crashes...Batman, Superman, Spider Man and the like...forget about The Joker, Lex Luger, The Green Goblin and the like, the REAL villain to any hero goes unseen in all that blood from kicking ass and saving innocent shell-shocked by-standards...I'm talking about Hepatitis C and other very bad blood transferred diseases!

I would like to start this next part out by saying that I in no way shape or form consider myself a hero...I simple regard my actions in the following story that I am about to relate to you as standard and what anyone would/should do in the same situation...

Driving home late, late one night (it would really be considered early morning) at about 4am heading down HWY 277 from Abilene to Blackwell, I noticed something strange in the road up ahead of me.  My headlights caught the reflection of something blue in the middle of the road...my thought was "what the hell could be blue in the middle of the road?" So my attention was drawn to attention as I approached the mysterious blue object.  Slowing my speed down as I drew closer, I noticed that it was a person, a man, wearing a blue reflector belt (military issued).  A quick glance at the road with only the light from my headlights to make visible the scene, as it was a cloudy, moonless night, revealed that there was also a woman lying in the middle of the road...bleeding.

I stopped.

The man ran to my window and in a breathless voice tried to tell me what had happened:  The couple had wrecked over 2 hours before my arrival; the driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and flipped the car into and beyond the bar ditch...and I was the only person who stopped to help (several cars passed them by).  I called 911, reported the accident, and rendered what little aid I could to the young lady who was bleeding in the middle of the road.  Her foot was mangled pretty bad, obviously broken in multiple places, swollen to 4 times it's size and bleeding all over.  Her companion (who was seemingly uninjured) and I put her in my truck, I wrapped her foot in what I had...paper towels...elevated it by sticking it out the driver-side window as she sat slightly reclined inside the truck on the passenger side (her right foot was the one torn up).  I covered her in a sleeping bag I happened to have to help prevent her from going into shock.

Well  the ambulance came and rushed them both off to San Angelo...turns out the driver was fine, just some scratches...the young lady had a fractured back to go along with her mangled foot.  I checked up on them both the next day, and visited the lady in the hospital giving her a card with my number in case she needed anything from me as far as a statement for her insurance or anything like that....well....

Not long after that she called to thank me and we became friends, talking every so often on the phone or via a text message here and there...

One Day...we are talking and she informs me that I should get tested for Hepatitis C...for you see on that fateful moonless night on the side of the road while I rendering aid to her mangled foot I happened to have an open cut on my hand and in the heat of the moment I did not even think about the possibility of contracting some blood-to-blood disease as I handled her bloody foot...I was just trying to help someone in need...

Turns out I am in the clear!  But none the less this scary scenario regarding this incident got me to thinking about all those Superheros and all the diseases they my have caught from just helping people in need...

Beware Out There!  The TRUE villain to any type of hero (or the simple good samaritan) may really be the microscopic kind!  Kryptonite my ass!

On a little lighter side...the incident reminded me of how short life can be...so not long after I happened upon that wreck I decided to do something I have always wanted to do but never got around to...learning how to play the fiddle!  I am have had 1 lesson a week for 3 months now and love it!!!

Morals to be learned here:  1.  Don't be afraid to help someone in need, just remember to protect yourself!  2.  Life is short, do what you want to do today because there may not be a tomorrow.

Dave Campbell's Magazine & Meeting Famous People

This blog is just to get back into the routine of writing really...Part of the reason I have not been writing here is because I was busy writing a magazine...writing about six-man football for Dave Campbell's Texas Football Magazine...my first true writing job (all thanks be to Granger Huntress the six-man guru for recommending me).  The magazine is due out June 15th I believe...I can't wait to see how many things I screwed up...hopefully its a gig I can keep!

Famous Person Encounter #1:  Monday I took in a Texas Ranger's game.  Sat first row in the Commissioners box on the 3rd base side with my friend David, who was high school friends with Detroit Tigers' Center Fielder Austin Jackson.  We talked to AJ briefly before the game, and could have interfered with a foul ball pop up that Ranger's 3rd baseman Adrian Beltre caught...but we learned the Bartmen lesson and let him catch it...goes without saying they were great seats!  Too Bad the Rangers got killed. (Also had a brief encounter with Tiger's 3rd basemen Don Kelly who came over to our seats to sign a guys baseball...which Kelly bitched about doing)

Famous Person Encounter #2:  For Game 4 of the NBA Finals a group of 4 of us went out to Hooter's to watch the game and eat some wings...I watched the Ranger's game on the only TV in the place that was not showing the Mav's game...and numerous people bitched about that TV not showing the Mav's game...my thought on that "hey ass-hole, turn your head to the right slightly instead of to the left".  Well at half time we all decided to go to a little bar/lounge in downtown Denton to watch the rest of the game.  The Hickory Street Lounge I believe it is called.  Probably less than 10 people in the place...it was a nice little hole in the wall establishment...and owned by a man from Strawn, Tx which is a big PLUS in my book!  Well one of the other people bellied up to the bar...heavy emphasis on the BELLY part of that...Chris Burny from the band Bowling for Soup.  We visited a little with him after the game...talked about Freddie Mercury of all things.

What if…The World Real Did End Today?

Sure people have been predicting the end of the world for 1000s of years, and no one has got it right.  Each time when the predicted time draws near the reaction by the majority of the population is the same:  disbelief, doubt, mocking humor and completely warranted skepticism…after all everyone who has ever made that prediction has been wrong.  But deep down, and I mean deep deep, down in all of us isn’t there a little bit of fear…fear of the unknown and of the answer to the question we all secretly ask ourselves “what if it’s true?”

And pretend for a moment that it wasn't just the ramblings of some crack pot, Bible thumbing, crazy, attention seeking preacher…and it was true…that the world was going to end.  Now ask yourself what would you do.  Some undoubtedly would pray, while others lived it up in unprecedented fashion.  Others would just go about the same routine as they always would, their lives unchanged.  But most people…most would go out and spend their last moments with the ones they loved, with their mothers and fathers, their daughters and sons…their husbands and wives…their friends.  People would live their last day doing what they loved and being surrounded by the ones they loved…because in the end they would realize nothing else matters.

Now as I sit here and think about the answer to the rhetorical question “what if the world was coming to an end”...in finding the answer I am left with, and will leave you with, another question: “Why don’t we live each day like the world was ending?”