Enjoying life and looking forward to going fishing

Since I learned of my cancer ordeal in early March and now undergoing chemo, I’ve spent a lot of time in the red Lazy Boy chair in our living room, taking naps, watching television, talking on the telephone and spending time on social media.

It’s really Debbie’s chair, as my Lazy Boy, also red, broke more than a year ago.

It needs a new chair lift mechanism. We just need to haul the chair to Homemakers Furniture in Des Moines, where we bought both chairs in 2014, to have it fixed.

Sometimes when I get up to take a restroom break, grab a bite to eat or fix supper, Debbie will ask to sit in the chair. Of course, I’m always willing, since it really is her chair. She’s just gracious enough to let me use it.

Getting my chair fixed has moved up the ladder of important things to do as of last week. That’s because I retired from my day job last week on May 20.

After I took an early retirement offer from newspaper work in October 2015, I enjoyed more than a year break, outside of covering the Poweshiek County Fair and attending an occasional community event.

I needed a job and learned that Bayer Crop Science (formerly Monsanto) east of Grinnell was hiring.

I applied in early June 2017, but opted not to take the job. I had spent years working in an office and covering community events, so the idea of working in a warehouse or walking cornfields was not in my DNA at that time.

As the summer wore on, so did my bank account, and I decided apply again, this time in late August of 2017.

I was hired and went to work Aug. 29 that year.

My first job was spent being trained and then working on the re-bag line. On the second day, I was sent to the green corn dump, and it was there that I learned how to unload semi trucks loaded with seed corn.

Having grown up in the big city, I didn’t know a thing about corn, outside of eating it for supper.

I knew nothing about the business, but I quickly learned, thanks to a co-worker and now friend, Joe C., and others who worked alongside me.

And over the course of the next 7 1/2-plus years, I spent time driving a forklift and hauling corn from the packaging room to warehouse and filling customer orders and much more. I helped with safety checks across the site and even published a newsletter for about five years.

I appreciate having the job and the learning opportunity.

It’s been many moons since I first went to work.

My first job started Sept. 1, 1972 throwing Tulsa World newspapers with my mom. All my buddies had newspaper routes, and I wanted one, too!

My mom didn’t want me on the streets of Tulsa in the early morning hours by myself, so she joined me in the business.

When I gave up my newspaper route in July 1977 (the summer between my junior and senior years in high school), Mom and I were throwing 400 newspaper a day.

We had 300 morning newspaper and 100 in the evening tossing the Tulsa Tribune.

My mom kept on throwing newspapers, and I got job at Sears, which I’ve mentioned in an earlier column.

Outside of that, when I was in 10th grade, I landed a Saturday morning job at a commercial refrigeration company on the north side of downtown Tulsa that installed freezers and coolers in grocery stores around Oklahoma and elsewhere. My job was to clean the storefront, the restrooms and the offices.

And I also spent my summer that year working at a local eatery, which I mentioned in last week’s column.

In retirement, the first order of business is getting through my chemo treatments. Once that is done, July 7, I’m going fishing.

Being 65, I’m eligible to get a lifetime fishing license from the Iowa DNR.

I’m going to continue doing newspaper work and writing this column.

I’ve been thinking about writing a book. I have my book of columns and plan to publish a second edition of some of my earlier work.

I’ve always wanted to write a book about what life would be like working on a threshing crew using steam engine power.

I don’t really know where to start, but as authors have said in our yearly writer’s conference, write down what you are thinking and go from there.

I’m looking forward to some great things in life on the horizon and retirement.

Have a great week, and always remember that “Good Things are Happening” every day.