Oh, the Irish

Today is St. Patty's day. My favorite Irish joke goes like this. Two old Irish men were talking. One named Mike said, "Pat I am dying of cancer. When I am gone will you pour a bottle of the best Irish whiskey you can find on my grave so my bones will enjoy it forever?" Pat said to Mike, "Sure, but can I run it through me kidney's first?"

I will never forget my first look at the emerald isle. It was in 1967 and the plane I was on successfully crossed the Atlantic and through the clouds I saw the most different shade of green I had ever seen. The captain said, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to fly over Ireland." I was a small town boy and had never been anywhere and now I was flying over Ireland. It was almost more than I could take in. The quaint towns with miniaturized houses, scaled down cooking and heating stoves, diminutive refrigerators were like something out of Gulliver's travels. It was different, so different from the way we lived in rural Missouri. We live BIG here! We have lots of room to build big houses, cook with big stoves and have large refrigerators. The scale of the way we live was also driven home when Yumi (our Japanese foreign exchange student) came to live with us. Her first day here we were moving cattle with horses and motor cycles and all the rest of the family positioned at key locations. Yumi had never been in a place before that you could not see houses all around. The openness of the space was a little unnerving for her. I thought we lived in a big place until I traveled through Montana. It really is big sky country. An Indian chief we worked with on a mission trip left the New Mexican desert for a visit to the Ozarks. He was also uncomfortable in our forests. He had never been in a place like this. I am just like our friend the chief. I have never seen a place like the Ozarks either. It is my home and I love living here. So, if you want some good Irish whiskey poured on your grave give me a call and I will be glad to help.

Well I better go to the closet and find something green.