Story by Jon Stalnaker AKA The Studebaker Dude
January started out promising, and then… I have no intention of comparing how many good things happened versus how many bad things happened. But I will say that the good and the bad were particularly extreme so far this year. I sure hope this isn’t a reflection of how this year is going to play out. I will be turning 75 this year, and the bigger that number becomes, the bigger the chances of something terrible happening in my life or the lives of my loved ones; that’s just the way this world works.
It reminds me of the old saying that I used to say when I wanted to be funny (which I wanted to be often). I used to laugh after saying, “Life sucks, and then you die”. When I was young and invincible, it was easy to scoff at the bad things in life because chances were that I had more good things going for me than bad. Especially after making it through 3 years, 8 months, and 9 days of military service during the Vietnam War unscathed. It’s not so funny when you are a senior, and you begin to see more bad news than good news. And you begin to say goodbye to loved ones at an increasing rate. That’s the way it works, and being on the decline side of your earthly journey is less fun than the invincible years. I keep telling myself that it’s still better than the alternative.
The first week, I had an opportunity to meet new Studebaker friends by attending a meeting in Oklahoma City. I enjoyed that immensely and met some awesome people. They took me to a cool “carseum” that was basically a private collection that housed many cars that suit my fancy, including 5 Studebakers. I also attended a presentation on the Route 66 events taking place this year: interesting and informative.
It was a great day. So, what was so bad about that? I drove myself there from Sapulpa, and the weather was horrific. It rained so hard that I could hardly see the road. Had I been going to the meeting from the south, I could have encountered a tornado. Driving in this kind of weather is not on my favorites list, but I made it, and the rest of the day was well worth it.
I was feeling reluctantly good about my Broncos football team as they made it to the last 4 standing teams, wanting to go all the way to the Super Bowl this year. Their performance this year was productive, even though they certainly didn’t dominate at any point of the season. But 14 wins and 3 losses got them there, and only one other team matched that stat.
Unfortunately, we lost the last game against them, and now, our season is over. I didn’t have any expectations about going all the way, so I was not devastated, just meh… It did give me some hope for next year’s season. Perhaps this loss will be motivation enough to dominate next year. It’s just football, and it’s just a game. Our son Danny and my nephew Gregg were both big-time Seahawks fans, so now we can root for them. We can still enjoy the Super Bowl.
And the worst thing that happened this January is the loss of our sweet dog of 15 years, Sally. That alone made January a month I could do without. All the good things in the world could not counterbalance the loss of our precious dog. All things considered, Meh is not so bad a rating for this month.
And the SNOW! They told us it was going to be extreme, and it was a little short of that forecast. But it was still the most snow I have seen since we have lived here, and it gave me another opportunity to take a picture of the house and property covered in snow. The thing I like most about the snow in Sapulpa is that it is just enough to look pretty without being so much that it becomes a problem to deal with. They projected 14 inches of snow, which would have been a bit scary, but it wasn’t even half of that. Now, I don’t have a reliable way to measure the depth of the snowfall, so I’m just going to use that new word in the dictionary this year, and call it six, seven…
