About 20 or 25 years ago Sharyl and I stretched (wrecked is probably more accurate) our budget, and bought a second hand mobile home and rented it a place to sit at the lake.  We thought it would be fun to once again enjoy being on the water. We did enjoy being back on the water, in fact we enjoyed it to the extent we have wrecked the budget a few more times and upgraded our “lake place”.  It is nothing fancy, if you know us I probably didn’t need to say that.  We now have a double wide (yes it was used) on a pretty nice waterfront lot.  Please forgive the reference to “we’ I just can’t get the keyboard to say “my” or mine; it will always be our lake place.

We quickly realized that being on the water; skiing, fishing, or just boat riding was secondary to just being here; yes I’m doing this from “our” lake place.  It is about a two-hour drive from home, our normal route is through Hughes County; we don’t get near the county seat.  The route is through Wetumka and Dustin.  Wetumka has a pretty good Dairy Queen; Sharyl always had a vanilla shake with one squirt of chocolate I had whatever sounded good at the time.  Dustin, well “we” never stopped in Dustin, when she wasn’t with me and I was a little sleepy it was a pretty good place to get a Red Bull and some peanuts to keep me awake, but I didn’t tell Sharyl because she didn’t think those things were good for me.  I think my girls share their mom’s opinion.

I didn’t mention Hughes County to talk about Dairy Queen and Red Bull.  On the way here as we passed through Hughes County, we would leave things like house payments, insurance premiums, tuition and books, mammograms, high blood pressure, next weeks business trip, the pile of unsigned leases, her mother’s illness, my mother’s illness income tax, prostate exams, last week’s business trip and even just a little bit of the physical and emotional hurt from the cancer.  Those things would be strung along highway 9 through Hughes County; of course we had to pick them up on the way back home, after all they were our responsibility, but being up there on the shoulder of the road we didn’t need to think about them while we were here.

If you knew Sharyl you know that relax wasn’t one of the things she did often nor well, however with all those trouble items up there beside the road she could actually relax and do nothing for extended periods here at the lake.  We thoroughly enjoyed our time here; if it were just the two of us, our entire family, just a couple of the grand kids, or some of our friends, it really made no difference.  The weather didn’t affect the good times much; some of the good days were when we just sat on the porch and watched it rain.  Fishing was fun anytime; catching fish just an added bonus.

Sharyl still skied occasionally until about 10 or 12 years ago; her skills didn’t decline (a few of you know the lady could ride a ski) I think she just got bored or didn’t like to ski by herself and the girls wouldn’t ski if their mom was on the same lake.

We were often asked if we planned to live here fulltime some day.  The answer; a quick and emphatic no, if we lived here we couldn’t leave that stuff beside the road up in Hughes County.

I hope I can learn to litter the Hughes County roadways with some of the things that trouble me today, I believe I will get there, I had some extended periods this time when I only thought about today’s lake stuff.  I think that is progress.

Please keep me in your prayers.

Good Night and God Bless.

Dave