Dive Bombing and Growing Older.

I was looking through some of the old pictures yesterday and I found this one.

Click to enlarge

I’m on the left and my older brother is on the right. I think this picture is over fifty years old now, but from what you can see it shows an extremely cute little Family Man and his older brother. I'm holding our dog from back then, but for the life of me I can't remember it. Notice the cowboy hats and boots. My father always wore a cowboy hat and boots. From a young age he got us these and my older brother took to the boots, but not the hat. I never took to them though. Even at that age I was a slacker. I ran around barefoot so much I felt like the boots were too heavy to wear and I’ve never liked hats.

This picture was taken at the first house I remember. It was out in Arkansas on the Mississippi Delta. Our main road was a dirt and gravel road and we had cotton and soy bean fields on both sides of the house. There was a big pasture out back with trees and cows. It’s mostly flat land out there and you could see forever, it used to seem to me. I was remembering around the time that this picture was taken one of the most fun things that my brother and I would do. It had to do with my Uncle.

My Uncle during WWII was a fighter pilot off of a carrier in the Pacific. Once he came back home to Alabama he and my Aunt decided to move out to Arkansas where we were. He started a crop dusting service and he would dust the fields adjacent to our house. Whenever he started to dust my brother would run outside and start waving at him. This was our signal that it was time to play dive-bombing. We would run out into the cotton field and my uncle would act like he was dive bombing us with the plane. He would come so low I could see his face and him waving at us. We would run as fast as we could and at the last moment we would hit the dirt and hide under the cotton plants. Out of a lot of things I don’t remember when I was that age, this is one I’ve never forgotten. As usual Fmom would come out and make us come in and at that age I didn’t understand why. It seemed like we were all having fun and my Uncle was always smiling when he went by. Later I realized he was probably burning a good bit of gas doing this, and he was trying to make a living. He told me later on that he had as much fun as we did.

I’m glad Fmom had saved these old pictures and I had scanned them in the computer. My memory has never been that good and looking at the old pictures helps give it a jump-start on some good memories. If we’re lucky enough, we get to become older. We may lose the energy and the world of wonders isn’t as large as it used to be, but that’s all right. There are so many things that I get to see from the youngest generation in my family. From the youngest baby to the ones in high school, I get to see in and through their eyes the joy of youth. I guess that’s just part of growing older and I really do welcome it.

I hope everyone has a good day and good week ahead.