Five frogs are sitting on a log

When I was a kid I remember hearing a riddle, "Five frogs are sitting on a log.  Four decide to jump off.  How many are left?"  This riddle probably created more angst in me than you can imagine.  You may be like me and said, "There is one left".  Well you and I were wrong.  All five are left.  The four only decided to jump off.  In other words they never did anything.  That is the point of this story.

When I was growing up and even when dad was 87 years old he said, "let's go do something even if it is wrong."  Two days before he went in the hospital he showed up at my house in Edmond about 6:00 A.M., yes, in the morning.   He drove from Perkins, just south of Stillwater.  Go figure.  That means "think about it".  He must have gotten up around four in the morning, got dressed, had breakfast at Around the Corner in Edmond and then showed up at my house.  If you have not figured out yet that my dad was a "doer, getter done" kind of person you are a little slow.  Anyway back to the house in Edmond, "Clifford Farms" which was named after him, he proceeded to tell me he was going to go weed eat.  There are two things about this that were ridiculous:  First, he was 87 years old and it would be embarrassing for me to have someone see an 87 year old man weed eating around my house.  Second, my driveway was about 1/2 mile long not counting the front of the property which he would also weed eat.  The property was 80 acres!  Dad and for that matter Mom were and are both crazy hard workers.  After dad informed me what he was gonna do I emphatically informed him that he could not weed eat my property.  He stuck his tongue out at me and said, "piss on you".  Now I know that is not the nicest way of talking but that is the fact of what he said.

If you ever watched the movie "True Grit"  with John Wayne you saw a 10th or 100th of the true grit of my parents.  They were Real Gold from the Osage.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• Deciding and doing are two different things
• You are not done until you are done and that is when you decide or your body just quits
• Dad never quit but his body did
• Put your value in doing something to the end
• don't quit early in life
• If you intend to do something, go do it, don't intend to the end

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com