Mobility

I enjoy traveling to new places. Forty-five years ago, a military recruiter assured me I could do just that in the U.S. Air Force and he was right. It wasn’t long till I was trained and winging across the endless blue of the Pacific Ocean to places I had difficulty spelling. I learned that folks eat stranger things than our sauerkraut and snitz un knepp, hog maw, and other Pennsylvania fare. Things like big rice bug (a giant-type of water bug) or baluts (a fermented chick embryo); the kind of things that Andrew Zimmer, the Travel Channel star relishes. I bought contact lenses in Japan before most folks in the US knew what they were. I watched roosters with silver spurs fight to the death and discovered smelly sewage laden Binjo ditches leading to the Klongs in Bangkok. I shared the beaches on Guam with giant Gooney Birds. I have many travel memories. Later in my military experience I was attached to an elite response force stationed in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Our team’s mission was to airlift those warriors anywhere in the world with just twenty minutes notice. I maintained two large packed bags in my room. One was for cold climates with a fur-lined parka and snow pants, etc. The other was for tropical climates and included mosquito netting, etc. Interestingly enough, even though I was dispatched with cold weather gear several times, I always ended up in the tropics—most of the time back to Viet Nam. I was activated with cold weather gear for both the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention riots and the Pueblo crisis in Korea and somehow each time ended up back in the jungles of Viet Nam. Unfortunately back home, I had a prospective bride trying to establish a wedding date. (The “unfortunately” for the date—not the bride or wedding!) I remember quite a few of those hurried calls to say, “We’re leaving and I don’t know where, when, or how long.” Guess that helped contribute to me not being a “career man,” although I happily became a “career husband” within days of discharge. In fact, a few years after getting married, I was mobilized again. This time it was teamed with my bride as a traveling troubleshooting and training team for a family restaurant chain. Although we occasionally flew, we normally fit eight pieces of luggage under the hatch of a Datsun 240Z sports car. (My kids always thought we only had station wagons!) We traversed up and down the east coast from Detroit to Miami and Brookline to Huntsville. Remind me to tell you about Miami in August in a car without air conditioning! Later we operated a family business for almost thirty years that involved traveling to the customers to fulfill their needs. (Hopefully nothing they didn’t think they needed!) That saga was wonderful and I was sad to gradually lose contact with hundreds of wonderful folks that we served. I guess I’ve taken you on this odyssey to explain my bias supporting some of my thoughts. I believe we were designed to be dispatched to reach out to folks and situations. In this era of bailouts and massive organizational efforts, we’ve lost sight of our personal effectiveness especially when we sincerely reach out to other individuals. My heart breaks when I see so many well-meaning folks waiting on the sidelines. Often they’re waiting for others to ask them for help or for specialized organizations to discover and reach all the needs. I am anxious for those individuals to experience the joy of personally reaching out to those who come to their minds. Let’s spend some time reflecting what special person or family we can touch today. You’ll be blessed and I can assure you that your caring will impact folks in ways you never imagined.