A LITTLE ABOUT ME...
After forty-one years in the same profession, I took early retirement in order to pursue my dreams of becoming a writer. My lovely wife and I have since relocated to a small community outside Knoxville, Tennessee, where we now reside in the majestic foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains amidst some of the most magnificent scenery nature affords anywhere. We are blessed to have our three grown children, along with their respective spouses, all residing nearby. We are even more blessed to have the seven grandsons they have given us close enough to grow up knowing who we are.
Albert Einstein once famously quipped that imagination is more important than knowledge. It has taken me more than six decades of life to appreciate the truth of this simple statement.
As a child growing up in rural Georgia, my life was largely filled with wonder. Virtually every item I stumbled upon in my early years on that beloved old farm served to fire my imagination. A sun bleached cow skeleton in the back of the pasture became the fossil of some fearsome prehistoric beast; a rusty old machete in the tool shed became King Author’s sword, Excalibur; and a dented and dust-covered old Farmall tractor parked in my grandfather’s barn became Richard Petty’s gleaming blue "STP" Dodge hurling down a Nascar track.
Sadly, though, as I aged, I soon found that much of the mystery and wonder of childhood was replaced by the many burdens that so often accompany awareness, knowledge, and growth. Alas, like Adam and Eve of old, my naiveté found itself supplanted by a tremendous load of responsibilities.
These days, however, I have undergone a further transition - one reflected in the old adage that says "the child becomes the father, and the father becomes the child". I am okay with this because it means that I now get to become a child all over again. And with that transition has come a return to wonder!
As one who has been blessed with seven little grandsons, I find that I have been reminded of what it was once like to be a little boy myself, and to be filled with curiosity and amazement by a great big fascinating world. My hope is that I can now find ways to fuel their little imaginations and fill them with a similar sense of wonder.
For these reasons, I have set myself the lofty goal of spending my retirement years writing novels that I can only hope they will one day grow up to read. Each of these works, when completed, will prove to have been inspired by some specific memory I acquired as a little boy while traipsing about one of the two farms owned by my father and grandfather.
If you choose to read them, I hope that you too will experience some degree of wonder. If so, then I will have accomplished what I intended. To quote old Kris Kringle in the original Miracle on 34th Street movie: "To me, the imagination is a place all by itself - a separate country. You've heard of the French nation or the British nation. Well, this is the Imagine nation. And it's a wonderful place!"
Come go there with me!
Albert Einstein once famously quipped that imagination is more important than knowledge. It has taken me more than six decades of life to appreciate the truth of this simple statement.
As a child growing up in rural Georgia, my life was largely filled with wonder. Virtually every item I stumbled upon in my early years on that beloved old farm served to fire my imagination. A sun bleached cow skeleton in the back of the pasture became the fossil of some fearsome prehistoric beast; a rusty old machete in the tool shed became King Author’s sword, Excalibur; and a dented and dust-covered old Farmall tractor parked in my grandfather’s barn became Richard Petty’s gleaming blue "STP" Dodge hurling down a Nascar track.
Sadly, though, as I aged, I soon found that much of the mystery and wonder of childhood was replaced by the many burdens that so often accompany awareness, knowledge, and growth. Alas, like Adam and Eve of old, my naiveté found itself supplanted by a tremendous load of responsibilities.
These days, however, I have undergone a further transition - one reflected in the old adage that says "the child becomes the father, and the father becomes the child". I am okay with this because it means that I now get to become a child all over again. And with that transition has come a return to wonder!
As one who has been blessed with seven little grandsons, I find that I have been reminded of what it was once like to be a little boy myself, and to be filled with curiosity and amazement by a great big fascinating world. My hope is that I can now find ways to fuel their little imaginations and fill them with a similar sense of wonder.
For these reasons, I have set myself the lofty goal of spending my retirement years writing novels that I can only hope they will one day grow up to read. Each of these works, when completed, will prove to have been inspired by some specific memory I acquired as a little boy while traipsing about one of the two farms owned by my father and grandfather.
If you choose to read them, I hope that you too will experience some degree of wonder. If so, then I will have accomplished what I intended. To quote old Kris Kringle in the original Miracle on 34th Street movie: "To me, the imagination is a place all by itself - a separate country. You've heard of the French nation or the British nation. Well, this is the Imagine nation. And it's a wonderful place!"
Come go there with me!