Not a normal childhood

I was on a camp out last weekend with Boy Scout Troop 1000 at Lost Maples State Natural Area when a bunch of us dads got to be talking about our camping experiences when we were Scouts.

Specifically, we were talking about the foods we cooked and how things had changed since we were boys. I made mention of the fact that a bunch of us raised rabbits, so we ate a lot of fried rabbit on our camping trips.

“You didn’t have a normal childhood, did you,” one of the dads said, more statement than question.

That got me thinking. To me, my childhood was perfectly normal. I guess one person’s normal in another person’s weird. What was perfectly normal to me was, in hindsight, not so normal to the average person. Yes, I raised rabbits – by the hundreds. I was also a beekeeper. On our one-acre hobby farm we also had cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks and turkeys.

In addition, we also had a large garden, three dogs, numerous barn cats and a continual parade of pets, including lizards, frogs, snakes, hamsters, mice, rats, hermit crabs, goldfish, and even briefly a young raccoon.

This being the days before home computers, portable music devices and the Internet, my two brothers and I practically lived outdoors, unless a favorite TV show was on. We rode bikes everywhere we went around town. Our neighborhood was our playground and the gang of us boys played games endlessly, picked fights, went fishing and did all the things boys did together back then.

My teenage years were spent playing with shotguns, fishing poles, steel traps, pocketknives, chainsaws and other sharp and blunt tools. How it is that I still have all my fingers and toes I’ll never know!

I paid for my first car by mowing lawns. My first real summer job was at the Ben Delatour Scout Ranch in Red Feather Lakes, Colo., about two hours northwest of my home. I worked there four summers in a five-year span. My first summer was on the kitchen staff. There was nothing unusual about that.

The last three summers I spent there were a little less than normal. I was dressed in the buckskins of a mountain man, lived in a teepee and taught wilderness survival and Indian lore merit badges. The one summer I didn’t work at camp I did my college internship as a sports writer for the Monte Vista Journal.

Dressing as a mountain man and teaching wilderness survival was easily the most enjoyable and memorable job I’ve ever had. You get to master some pretty handy skills when you teach boys how to light fires without using matches, how to cook without using utensils, and how to make a shelter without a tent or tarp. As a bonus one year, I did rabbit skinning and hide tanning demonstrations. There aren’t any merit badges for those skills, but they still drew large crowds.

In light of what my own boys have experienced so far in Scouts, I’d have to say my experiences were not normal. As I’ve moved around the country and gotten to know other people, I guess it is safe to say that I did not have a normal childhood. That begs the question, however, of what is normal?

Most of my friends outside the newspaper industry work “normal” jobs. I can tell you that life as a reporter is anything but normal. The average person does not spend his or her days chasing disasters, questioning politicians, reporting on fairs and festivals, photographing celebrities, jumping out of airplanes, taking media flights in vintage aircraft, touring stadiums and arenas under construction, or sitting through murder trials.

Granted, those aren’t every day events, but they’re all things I have done in the name of journalism. So, in answer of the original question, no, I did not have a normal childhood. Neither am I living a normal life. But it’s the life God blessed me with and I’m sure enjoying the ride.

Finding greatness within

I described Peter J. Daniels to my wife as a cross between Zig Ziglar and Dave Ramsey.

All three men are Christian motivational speakers. Ziglar, who passed away in 2012, was one of the world’s most renowned motivational speakers. Ramsey is a personal finance guru who teaches people how to get out of debt and succeed. Daniels is the so-called international merchant of hope. He spoke last week at Christian City Fellowship and also at a luncheon by the Sealy Chamber of Commerce.

I got to meet Daniels and found myself very inspired by what he had to say. It was right in line with what I have learned from Ziglar, Ramsey and a host of other great thinkers of our age. Daniels is purportedly a billionaire, but I have yet to find documentation of that. He is undoubtedly very wealthy both financially and in wisdom.

I was surprised that I had not known of the octogenarian Aussie before he made his visit to Sealy. In addition do devouring books by Ziglar and Ramsey, I consume as many of the self-help success books and videos that I can find. I’ve read the books and listened to the recordings of many of the great motivators, including pastor Rick Warren, Napoleon Hill, Stephen Covey, Dale Carnegie, and more.

Given that I have studied so intently and that Daniels is such a profound and prolific writer and speaker, it baffled me that he was so obscure. While I cannot vouch for his fame or fortune, I cannot argue with his philosophy of success.

My life has been fraught with many failures and I long to know the secrets to success. In 2012 I published my treatise on success called “Distilling the Giants for their Keys to a Fulfilling, Happy and Successful Life.” You can find it at joesouthern.hubpages.com.   After carefully studying the masterworks of these great leaders (I call them giants), I distilled the core values they espouse and discovered some very interesting and consistent character traits.

I have concluded that these 10 attributes, in order, are the consistent keys to a fulfilling life: Belief, loving, giving, serving, integrity/character, dreaming/goal setting, purpose, attitude, contentment, and doing/engaging.

Next in no particular order are: Quality, excellence, value, trust, inspiration, focus, learning, creation, and will. It is my intent this year to start expanding that article into a book.

Getting back to Daniels, it struck me how consistent his message was with what I know and believe to be true. What really got me, however, was the way he said things.  One question in particular that he asked has just haunted me. “What are you willing to trade your life for?”

We are all given one life. We trade it for what we do and achieve in that lifetime. Has what I’ve done been worth the price? Have I made a good trade with my time, talent and resources? Can I do better?

I can do better. As I said before, I have seen tremendous failure in my life. I’ve lost a marriage, a business, a home, jobs, my life savings, friendships and my health. I was diagnosed with clinical depression about eight years ago. I made the mistake of letting that diagnosis define me. I believed that I was the victim of the disease and therefore incapable of feeling joy or being successful.

What I have learned is that I am not defined by my failures. I am not my disease. I am who God created me to be. I am what I believe my potential to be. Trust me, I have the potential to be great. Buried in the fog of my doubt and depression are incredible successes.

I am a husband and father with an amazing wife and children. I am an Eagle Scout. I was a three-sport athlete in high school. I am an award-winning journalist. I have climbed mountains, gone skydiving, mingled with celebrities and politicians, photographed pro sports and done a number of things the average person doesn’t normally do.

I don’t say this to brag, but to remind myself that I have made some good trades for my life. I believe Daniels and the other giants when they say that the best is yet to come. I want to thank Daniels for not only being a spark of inspiration, but for being the claxon call that has blown out the fog of my doubts and alerted me to the potential that I’ve been wasting. It is my hope that you, too, will find happiness and success worth trading your life for.

Remembering the fun that was the USFL

It’s hard to believe 30 years have gone by since the heyday of the USFL.

What, you may ask, is the USFL? It was the United States Football League – a professional football league played in the spring and meant to challenge the NFL in terms of professional football dominance.

I loved the USFL. Growing up outside of Denver, I was a huge fan of the Denver Gold. The league only lasted three years, but the teams were colorful and the games were fun. It was full of NFL has-beens and wannabes and a handful of future NFL stars. Jim Kelly, a hall of fame quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, got his professional start with the Houston Gamblers.

Texas had two USFL teams – the Gamblers and the San Antonio Gunslingers. Both were expansion teams in the 1984 season. The USFL ran from 1983 through 1985. It died the next year after an announced plan to play in the fall. The league sued and won an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL, but was awarded only $1 in damages. That ended any hopes the league had of living to play another day.

When the league was in full swing, it was great. Because the Broncos were always sold out, the Gold gave me the opportunity to see my first professional football games and my first visits to Mile High Stadium. I also got press credentials to photograph a game from the sidelines. Denver was playing the New Jersey Generals, with Doug Flutie at quarterback and Herschel Walker at running back. (The Gold won!)

I also vividly recall being at a game in 1984 after John Elway’s disastrous first year with the Broncos. My buddy Pete Larson and I were walking along the third deck concourse when we walked right by Elway. I looked up at him as he passed by and turned to Pete and said, “man, they won’t let him get any closer to the field than this!”

If there was any consistency to the USFL, it was in its inconsistency. Each year featured new teams and divisions. One team, the Breakers, played in a different city each year – Boston, New Orleans and Portland. There were 12 teams that started the first year. That grew to 18 in 1984 and then shrank to 14 in 1985. Of the original dozen teams, only six and a half played in the same city all three seasons. The Arizona Wranglers would have been the seventh, but they merged with the Oklahoma Outlaws to become the Arizona Outlaws.

It was also 30 years ago that the Gold took the biggest tumble in professional sports. They were atop the league at 9-0 and ended third in their division at 9-9. In their two years in the league, the Houston Gamblers proved to be one of the most successful franchises. They were 13-5 their first season and 10-8 the next. They made the playoffs both years, but lost both games. The Gunslingers were 7-11 and 5-13 and never made the playoffs.

While it has been three decades since the rise and fall of the USFL, at least one player is still profiting from it. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Steve Young signed a $36 million contract with the Los Angeles Express. It was to be paid out over 43 years, most of it backloaded. He had the contract insured, so this year he will make $1 million from the defunct league. That will escalate annually until it tops out at $3 million a year when the contract expires in 2027.

I think spring football is fun. I was able to photograph a game during the short-lived World League of American Football. It was a pathetic league with sloppy play. I have yet to see a single game of the Arena Football League, but it is starting its 27^th year. Two different Denver teams have won league championships. The Denver Dynamite won the inaugural title and the former Colorado Crush – owned by John Elway – took the title in 2005.

Texas has six former AFL teams and one current – the San Antonio Tallons. Houston had the Texas Terror, which later became the Houston Thunderbears. They lasted from 1996 to 2001.

Given what happened to the Houston Texans last year (and my beloved Broncos in the Super Bowl), maybe it’s time to take in a San Antonio stroll and watch a little indoor spring football.

Nostalgic for the thrilling days of yesteryear

Nostalgia is a feeling sometimes known as “I had one of those when I was a kid.”

One of the weird and cool things about Facebook is having so much of the past brought to the present. Whether it’s pictures of toys and events from long ago or videos of opening themes to long-forgotten Saturday morning TV programs, there is no shortage of nostalgia on the social media site.

Sometimes it’s just downright painful to be reminded of things I once had. As a young boy I had a huge collection of Mego action figures. I was especially attached to the superheroes and Star Trek figures. I played with them, broke them, repaired them and replaced them frequently.

One day I left them at my best friend’s house. That happened to be the day his parents packed his room – my toys included – and moved to Oklahoma. I never heard from my friend again and have often longed to find out if they kept my toys with the unfulfilled promise they made to return them.

I’ve thought of rebuilding my collection, but with the figures going for upwards of $100 on eBay, it hasn’t been practical. I don’t want them for their dollar value (though in hindsight they proved to be a great investment); I want them for their nostalgic value. I had many happy memories with those. Now that they’re making movies based on all those characters the feeling of loss is deepened.

At one point I had all the original Star Wars action figures. But the “grown-up” teenager that I was in the early 1980s was more interested in the 50 cents each I got for them at a garage sale. D’oh! I have nobody to blame but myself for that mistake.

I still have my favorite toys from my early childhood. My Lone Ranger and Tonto figures and horses by Gabriel are proudly displayed on a shelf at home. I also have my rubber pterodactyl and, thanks to the generosity of a former neighbor, I have my Charlie McCarthy ventriloquism doll.

The Lone Ranger figure, however, is hands-down my most bestest favorite of all. I’ve always been a big fan of The Lone Ranger and even created the Lone Ranger Fan Club. It began in 2002 when I took over a quarterly Lone Ranger newsletter called The Silver Bullet. The next year I created the fan club.

Ever since 2002 I have been following rumors, development, cancellation, and ultimately production of a Lone Ranger movie. For nearly a fourth of my life I lived, breathed and published every nuance of this movie that I could. Just as Disney was finally moving the movie into production, personal circumstances changed and I had to pass on ownership of the fan club and newsletter to another fan. It killed me to do it.

I wanted to be cast as an extra in the movie, but couldn’t afford to travel to Colorado or New Mexico for the auditions at the time they were held. I stayed in regular contact with Jerry Bruckheimer’s office throughout production and even had pre-production email exchanges with one of the writers.

After years of stalking this movie and promoting the heck out of it, the time arrived last summer for it to ride across the silver screen. It was – how to put it politely – different. The moviegoer in me loved it. The Lone Ranger purist in me didn’t. The average moviegoer and nearly all of the movie critics hated it.

If the filmmakers who dumped $250 million into making it were crushed by its reception, imagine how I felt after 11 years of eager anticipation. I had been emotionally invested in the movie nearly twice as long as the people who made it.

At least the movie received two Oscar nominations – for hair and makeup and special effects. Unfortunately, it didn’t win either one.

Maybe now that this Lone Ranger phase of my life is passing by I will return to my efforts to build my Mego action figure collection. Or maybe I’ll just grow up, save my money, and relive my childhood vicariously on Facebook. At least I’ve had the common sense to save my children’s favorite toys. Maybe someday they’ll use them for their own nostalgia trips – or retirement, whichever comes first.