So this is 50?

“I’m older but wiser,” in all cap, block letters is what it reads on the card shaped like a chubby, grayed owl with a cane and spectacles. That, among other assorted, age-related accoutrements is what my family laid out for me to find on my way to the homemade, caramel cake. They know I’ve always liked caramel better than chocolate.

So, I’m older, but I’m wiser. I’m certainly experienced, and I suppose under some situations that does make me wiser, but I struggle with the question… “Do I really care?” If given the choice, would I be happy with the experience, or would I go back to do it again for the very first time. Of course, that means taking the good with the bad, but when I look back, it’s the greatest moments I remember most.

I’ll never swim to Dad again for the very first time. I’ll never lean over the front seat as we top that last hill and see water that goes past the edge of the earth for the first time ever again. I’ll never ride a bike for the first time without training wheels. I’ll never press the throttle of my first motorized two-wheeler again. I’ll never break-in another glove. I’ll never catch a ball again for the first time. I’ll never again play football, have a first day at school, experience a first kiss, hold hands for the first time, experience puppy love, get my first drivers license, go on a first date, move away from home, buy my first truck, buy my first house, etc, etc, etc. Those are all events I can only relive in stories now.

One half of a century… I have achieved that and everything that goes with it, but I’m really not sure how I feel about it. Truly it is a moot point because like it or not, there is nothing I can do about it. I’m sure there are others turning 60, 70 or even 80 who would tell me to stop whining and they are right to scold me, but this is my moment to commiserate and I’ll do it.

I think it is safe to say that I have fewer years in front of me than I do behind me now, but before I dwell on the clock counting down my time to make an impact on this world, I’ll look back on my 50 years and the stories my experiences will help me to tell.

I didn’t find much about the day air touched my slimy head for the first time, but 35 days later, Joe Frazier beat Muhammad Ali in “the Fight of the Century” and oddly enough Frank Sinatra took the photo of the bout that made the cover of Life magazine. That doesn’t have anything to do with me, but I did find that an interesting story to tell.

I was born in Indiana and the first home I remember is a trailer in a trailer park in Churubusco. Before moving back to Mom and Dad’s home in Greeneville, Tennessee, we moved into a home in suburban Fort Wayne and later a house on the edge of the city with 10 acres and a creek. With Mom and Dad back in Tennessee we lived in three different rentals before finally settling in a double-wide on the 20-acre family farm, which I now own. In my adult life, I’ve owned nine homes starting with a trailer in a trailer park in Johnson City. I’ve rented twice, once while stationed in Germany. I currently still own three homes to include the Seaton homestead and the double-wide on the 20-acre farm and our forever home in Rogersville, Tennessee. In total, I’ve moved 17 times and unless I’m forced into a home in my older age, I never intend to move again.

Nixon was President when I was born, though I don’t remember his administration. I can remember nine Presidents, from Gerald Ford to Sleepy Joe. Six presidents have died since I was born… Maybe seven, are we really that sure about Jimmy Carter? The most recent to die was George H.W. Bush and the most memorable was Ronald Reagan. I have been able to vote in eight elections and my pick won in only three.

I remember the Iran Hostage Crises, the failed rescue attempt, Iran-Contra, the Ayatollah, the Shah, Grenada, Panama, the Falkland Islands, Brezhnev and Perestoika, and “Mr. Gorbachev… TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!” I saw the end of the Cold War and watched the Berlin Wall come down as well as the World Trade Center Towers all on color television.

I remember when Tom Landry was the only coach of “America’s Team” the Dallas Cowboys, and when the NFL was still relevant and entertaining. I remember my first Louisville Slugger with Mickey Mantle’s signature engraved near the end of the barrel, and I remember being a die-hard Cubs fan until the 1994 strike and I never watched MLB again. Oh, and I remember I always hated basketball but watched the Indiana Hoosiers with Dad religiously only to see the next time Bobby Knight would throw a chair across the court.

I was fortunate enough once to be in the right place at the right time to attend one Super Bowl match-up with the legendary Peyton Manning still leading the Indianapolis Colts. Unfortunately, the Colts didn’t win that one, but several years later I watched from my Fountain, Colorado home as Manning became the first quarterback in history to win a Super Bowl with two different franchises. I’m sure that record is about to be broken, I’m sorry to say (choke Tom Brady), but I haven’t watched the NFL since the start of the 16-17 season when Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall took a knee during the National Anthem. The NFL is dead to me now, nothing but a bunch of cheaters, punks and spoiled brats.

As a kid, and even a little now, I was a science and space junkie. Vividly, I remember sitting barefoot and cross-legged in my pajamas, in our Indiana country home, in front of a Magnavox, floor model, color television – I knew was made in Greeneville, Tennessee, my parents’ hometown – to watch STS-1 (Space Transportation System) Space Shuttle Columbia, the world’s first, reusable orbital vehicle launch into space. Five years later, in Tennessee, I remember my uncle meeting my Mom and me at the door of my grandparents’ house to tell us the Challenger just exploded, and I was glued to the set for the rest of the day in sadness and grief. Then on my 32nd birthday, February 1, 2003, I watched with the rest of the world that brilliant feat of human advancement I first saw 20 years earlier, disintegrate upon reentry killing seven more astronauts. Finally, more than 30 years after that 10-year-old boy watched in awe the first shuttle launch from his color TV in Indiana, he stood near the countdown clock at the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida to watch in person, STS-135, Space Shuttle Atlantis embark on the very last shuttle mission.

I’ve traveled by foot, ski, horse, bike, car, motorcycle, jet ski, train, bus, plane, boat and ship. I’ve been in the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Adriatic, the Mediterranean, the English Channel and the North Sea. I’ve been to 47 of 50 states, all but Vermont, Oregon and Washington. I’ve lived in Germany and visited Poland, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Andorra (it’s a country; look it up), Spain, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech, Austria, Hungary and Lichtenstein. I also traveled to the United Kingdom a couple times where I visited Scotland, England and Wales. I served on official business in Bulgaria, Moldova, Japan, Egypt and Canada and have been deployed to Macedonia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq; the last I have spent a total of 29 months of my life.

I’ve skied the Alps of Germany, Austria, Italy, and France, the Rockies of Colorado and Canada and so far, only the not so exciting Ober Gatlinburg in the Appalachians. I’ve been to world class cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, Toronto, New Orleans, Miami, London, Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Prague and Cairo. I’ve also been to other major cities like Denver, Anchorage, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Nashville, DC, Inverness, Cardiff, Frankfurt, Munich, Nuremburg, Plovdiv, Chisinau, Alexandria, Pristina, Riyadh, Baghdad, and many more. I’ve seen The Pyramids at Giza, the castles on the Rhine, the Brandenburg Gate, Gettysburg Battlefield, the Polders of the Netherlands, the windmills of Holland, the Tigress and the Euphrates, Gracanica Monastery in Pristina, Big Ben, Parliament, Loch Ness, The Eifel Tower, The Arch de Triomphe, The White House, The US Capitol, The Tomb of the Unknown, the Sears Tower, The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Lake Michigan, Great Salt Lake, Mount Rushmore, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Smoky Mountain National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park and the Hoover Dam.

I’ve rode a BMW through the Appalachians, East and West Coast highways, the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Mediterranean and the Adriatic. I totaled my 2000 BMW in Zadar, Croatia, went home to Germany via train then came back with my Dodge and hauled the carcass back 13 hours to Bavaria to trade it for a 2002. Earlier on that trip, I got into an argument in German with a Hungarian border guard coming out of Slovakia then paid off a Hungarian police officer every last Forint I just changed at the border so he wouldn’t arrest me and impound my bike for speeding. I’ve ridden highway 50, the loneliest road in the country through Nevada into a total whiteout coming out of Ely over the mountain into Utah. I rode through a dust storm at Four Corners that looked like the face of Mars and was indirectly struck by lightning… twice, leaving Peterson Air Force Base trying to dodge a storm on my way home. In 20 years, I’ve put more than 40,000 miles on two wheels and about 7,000 miles two up with “one headlight.”

I spent 25 years in the Army starting with four years in the Army Reserve and a combat tour to Desert Storm where I collected lots of stories like grabbing all my gear in one trip and running out of the last tent on Log Base Echo before the hoard of Bedouins stole the floor out from under us. I came back to finish school at ETSU, contracted with ROTC as the only combat patch wearing cadet and completed Airborne School between my junior and senior years. I got my commission in the Corps of Engineers and went back in the Army for the next 21 years. My first assignment as a Sapper with the 326 Engineer Battalion at the 101st Airborne Division in Fort Campbell got me tickets to Air Assault School, Sapper School and Ranger School all of which I completed in my first three years in the Army.

I’ve spent at least two and a half years in training in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; a few months in Fort Mead, Maryland; three months in Fort Lee, Virginia and sorted trips to Fort Bragg, North Carolina and Fort Benning, Georgia. Germany was a fairytale assignment where I gained life-long friends. Colorado would be the end of the road for my Army career with assignments at Fort Carson, 27 months in Iraq and then four years with the North American Aerospace Defense Command and US Northern Command. I spent three Christmas’s in Iraq including one Christmas Eve with a Lebanese shop owner outside of Baqubah where we ate grilled lamb and almond stuffed dates and smoked an apple flavored hookah.

I retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in December 2013 and in all my years of service, I saw firsthand all the Iraqi munitions stockpiled on the beaches of Kuwait City. I witnessed fighter escorted B52s flying into Iraq and felt the ground rumble minutes later as they carpet bombed the Iraqi Regular Guard. I witnessed the construction of the hailed “eighth wonder of the world,” Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. I watched the world change forever on 9-11 while in command and I changed the nature of how I trained my soldiers. I saw the enemy vehicle identification photos in a former Soviet war college and shuddered to realize that the vehicles I was looking at were our own. I imparted wisdom on Guard and Reserve to prepare them for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. I helped to organize and document two free Iraqi elections and I worked to implement an Iraqi free press (they weren’t very good at it). I was there when we built a wall around Sadr City to keep the bombmakers from getting in or out and I’ve been too close for comfort to flying bullets and bursting munitions on many occasions. I’ve seen the not so soft underbelly of an SU-27 at 30,000 feet over Russian air space as part of a multi-national exercise and I watched in awe the last shuttle launch of the U.S. manned space flight mission. I’ve even officially tracked Santa joyfully on behalf of NORAD for millions of children around the globe, but sadly attended far too many memorial ceremonies for those who would never be afforded retirement because their service, and their lives, were ended prematurely.

I’ve been through three hurricanes and a tornado passed between my house and my neighbor’s while in Kentucky. I remember my Dad taking his boat to his car to get to work, leaving Mom and me stranded in our home on an island during severe flooding in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I’ve seen several blizzards, as many ice storms and 10s of feet of snow, including a white Christmas in Iraq.

I’ve been married, divorced, and married again. I’m a stepfather but was never blessed to be a father of my own. I’ve survived many friends and family to great sorrow including my Grandfather, Grandmother and by the most extreme grief witnessed my father’s death.

If I be blessed to start on the second half, albeit the last third of my life I will focus more on love for my wife and my family and the talent the lord blessed me with; the talent to manipulate words and spin a good yarn. I begin this part of my story, with one novel, a novella and four short stories published and available and a stockpile of words yet to appear in print. I begin Stave III, an accomplished, though also humbly defeated man. I will undoubtedly end it proudly accomplished and as equally defeated by this world though I be heralded a victor when the Good Lord calls me home.

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