Story of a Life Chapter One

(Preface) I see that as of today not one person has evaluated any of my musings. I guess I'm as popular on the internet as I am in real life. I shouldn't be surprised as this seems to be a pattern in my life. For the last several years my life has seemed to be an endless journey headed to nowhere with very few surprises. Lately, I've been wondering where I took that wrong turn. With that in mind I decided I might use this blog as a way to tell my life story. The creative writing class I'm taking requires me to blog at least once a week so why not turn it into something useful. I've been trying hard to come up with things to talk about for the past few months and it seems that using this forum as a way to chart how I got from there to here might be something that someone might actually want to read sometime as opposed to the crap I've been posting up to this point. Anyway, for anyone who knows me and wants to know my life story here it is, told in my own inimitable fashion.

The Story of a Life
by
Adam Long

Chapter One

I 've often heard that the great cartoonist, Charles M. Schulz, used to tell people quite often that his greatest talent was living backwards. Those who knew him well have often said that if he could have had anything at his disposal he would have loved to have had a time machine to take him back to where it all began.

I've often felt the same way. I am fully aware that it's not a good thing to live in the past because you miss so much of life in the present. Still, no matter how hard I try, I find myself living in the past much of the time. My mind drifts back to the times of my life when opportunities stretched out in front of me like so many miles of open highway. To simply say that I'm nostalgic would be the understatement of the year.

I was in a very sentimental mood one afternoon several years back when I decided to pull some of the local newspapers from the days before, during, and following my birth on August 1, 1970. I wanted to see what was happening on the national level and around my hometown of Lincolnton, NC.

On the national level, the veteran newsman Chet Huntley was signing off on his last broadcast.
Also, some containers of turpentine had been mislabeled as castor oil and several people had nearly died as a result after ingesting the turpentine.

A curious five year old boy named Dennis Glen Simpson had just turned five on, July 31, 1970, the day before my birth. Dennis resided in the small town of Belmont, several miles Southwest of Charlotte. This little five year old boy was attempting to cross highway 74 over several lanes of traffic when he was struck by an oncoming car driven by one Dennis Michael Crews. The car skidded ten feet but to no avail. The boy was thrown into the air and died instantly. I can't help but wonder where his parents were or if his family thinks of him after all these years. He would be exactly five years older than myself. I wonder what his life would have been like had he lived.

The movies would become an important part of my life over the years so it's interesting to note what was playing in theaters in our area at the time. The Village in Gastonia was playing "2 Mules for Sister Sara" at 5:30, 7:30, and 9:30 and coming August 5 was "Airport". The Webb in Gastonia had two movies that were more to my taste, "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" and "Myra Breckinridge". The Belmont Drive in had "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" and Diane 29 in Besemer City had "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".

The events leading up to my birth were almost as difficult as the birth itself. A terrible storm rocked the area and the road that my parents usually used to get to the old site of the Gaston Memorial Hospital were washed out. My dad was doing the driving as he usually did and somehow found a way to navigate through the treachorous condtions and get my mom to the hospital.

The doctors had told my mom that her due date was July 7. As it turned out, mom had to wait for nearly another month before her water broke. On August 1 at around 11:30 in the evening, and after quite a few hours of labor I might add, I was on my way to making my grand entrance onto the stage of life. My birth was physically difficult for my mother and my father was greatly concerned about her. Luckily, after several days she snapped back to her old self and was allowed to go home.

My dad always says that I was angry the first time he ever laid eyes on me and I've been angry about one thing or another ever since. That is true for the most part. I'm very intense by nature. Always have been, always will be. There's no denying it and if you can't beat it, then join it I say.