Am I Square With You?

I grew up in a small community in Southeast Iowa. As a county seat, the community was important. One thing I learned while growing up in Sigourney was how that community of people took care of each other.

The person I am thinking about today was a developmentally challenged gentleman who lived in town. If I remember right, his name was Thollie. Now, had he lived in a larger town or city, he probably would have ended up as one of the homeless living on the street, or maybe in some type of institution. In Sigourney, though, he had a place to live and a whole group of people who looked out for him.

If you ever spent time with this man, the last thing he would ask before leaving you was, "Am I square with you?" The question was important to him, as was your answer. He would wait for you to respond.  He didn't want to feel as though he had ever shorted anyone in the dealings he had with them. It was almost as though he realized how fortunate he was to live in this type of environment.

As I look back, I realize just how blessed I was to live there too, but I was less likely to notice it. It is amazing to think about how many times people helped me out because we were part of the same community. It would have been just as easy to have fallen to the other side of the equation and been very harsh. One April when I was in college, I ran into Rob Marget. I knew I was overdrawn at his bank, actually by several hundred dollars. All Rob asked me was if I had summer employment and would I get the bank paid back when I had that job. No overdraft charges, no penalties, and no interest for what was actually a loan. He just wanted to make sure that in the end, we would be all right, that we would we be square. This was my experience living in that small town and I know that others had similar experiences.

I laugh at some of the students I went to school with at Drake. Generally, the student body at Drake came from a different economic status than I did. They were much more likely to have arrived in brand new cars and an allowance that was far beyond my family's means. From everything that I could tell, they lived in communities more like the one I live in today (Des Moines) than the one I grew up in. But as an undergrad, in a time where everything was quite surreal, these same students LOVED the cheese I brought from home for grilled cheese sandwiches on Sunday nights when the dining hall was closed. For those of you that haven't already made the intellectual jump, this cheese was square, came in about a three pound block and was part of the surplus food items available to families under a certain income level. Yup, my friends just loved the government surplus cheese. Again, though, it was a way my community took care of me and the people I surrounded myself with, even into my college years.

About two years ago, I started spending time in Neola, Iowa, where my company has a facility. It was the first time in years that I had been in a community that small. Sure enough, as I got to know the people in town I discovered there was a gentleman there much like the Thollie I had known at home. The community has things they ask him to do to keep him busy and out of trouble, and everyone looks out for him and takes care of him.

I absolutely know and believe this happens in larger communities as well, but I think it's harder to see. I knew Thollie well while living  in Sigourney. He was part of the community and involved in my daily life. You would literally see him everywhere and he went out of his way to wave or say hello. Where I live now, someone like him could live only blocks from me and I wouldn't know them. For heavens sake, I have a cousin that lived a short distance from me and it took a while to figure that out.

I'm not sure how I can be better at recognizing people who might need my help and then figure out how to help them, but in today's world, it seems more important than ever.

Okay, there is my personal challenge for the day. And  you have all heard it. We will see what can be done. Then, when all is said and done, I want to make sure that whoever I have dealt with, I am square with them.

Preparation

I spent the first part of my adulthood working for a company named Payless Cashways. The company is long gone at this point, but the people continue on. This morning in a post on Facebook, Scott F posted a note which really made me think. He posted a picture of his name tag from back then and said, "Just ran across this, made me realize how many great people I met through the years at a once dominant powerhouse in the industry. Never realized I was being groomed to potentially be a goal-oriented person with many traits from many people I was fortunate enough to work with along this crazy journey."

I thought about this all day. In every encounter we have in a lifetime, good or bad, we take something from the moment. I agree with Scott. Much of who I am today was shaped by the leadership of that company so many long years ago.  I know the way I look at expenses in a business and the relationship between expense and profit is one really solid example. We were all taught early-on how to manage in plentiful times and in times that were not. We didn't succeed in the long run, but I know we kept the company alive a lot longer because of the things those who had come before us taught along the way.

So I ask myself - what am I teaching today? Am I providing good lessons to others that will help them in the future to move lives and businesses along? I hope I am. I know the biggest thing any of us can do is to help the next generation to learn from the past. Not only did Payless do this for me, but my family also believed strongly in this virtue.  I remember walking around the cemetery with my grandmother as she talked endlessly about family that had come before and what they had done and how they changed things for the better. Of course I wish I had listened more at the time, but I did absorb a lot of it, and it has helped make me a more fully rounded person today. So again, back to the question - how am I helping the next group to be more ready than I was?

One of the things I have recognized in the last year or so is just how cyclical the world is. I know this is not new information, but sometimes it just takes time to totally get it. When I was in my teens in the late sixties and seventies, I really couldn't understand why my parent's generation didn't understand the way I looked at things. I also remember thinking I was sure I would never be that way. Fast forward three or four decades, and sure enough, I look at the people coming into the workforce and I think their approach is crazy. If I really stop and think about it, this generation's approach to this decade is no different than mine was to my parent's time. It is just different. And, with this, I have probably gotten a little more set in my ways and less likely to be as open to new thoughts and new ways of thinking. There, I said it.

So Scott, here comes the challenge to both of us, and probably a bunch of others too. The next time we find ourselves in a conversation where we want to tell the other person they are "just crazy" in the way  they are looking at something, we have to stop. We need to think of all of those people that took time and invested energy into each of us to make us better and more fully rounded, and we need to move that forward. We need to stop and listen and work to understand what is being said and why. Then we need to work to find middle ground and work with this next generation to help them to be more prepared than they are now. We need to do this to honor the time and energy that others spent on us when we were still feeling our way. I know that there were things I did and said in those times that I probably should not have been forgiven for, but I was, so I could move forward.  Let's find people that we can help in the same way.

Good God, Son!

I was raised, in large part, by my maternal grandparents. It wasn't that mom was not on the scene, it was just that with working and trying to get everything done, she needed help. The help came in the form of my grandparents. Like so many in our lives, I know I told them thank you, but as I continue to experience more and more of life, I wish I had one more chance to say those words. So, I do it here. I am so thankful for my grandmother, Jo, and my grandfather, Art. They have much to do with who I am today and the way I look at the world. They shaped me at some of the most critical times in my life, causing me to be as inquisitive and questioning as I am.

With that said, there is one lesson Grandpa taught me over and over that I believe has a place in the world today. Of course with the lesson comes a story.

Much of what we did at Grandma and Grandpa's house revolved around the horse business. Grandpa had always been around horses and was very good with them. We also had a reputation for being able to make progress with horses which others had not been able to do much with. One day we had a horse that didn't much want to be trained. Now, Grandpa had approached this horse just like every other, first getting them used to being around people. Part of this was simply working with the horse, getting them used to human contact, and then adding equipment that came with being ridden and driven. One thing we did was take a burlap sack and run it all over the horse, getting them used to being touched. On this particular day, with this particular horse, things didn't go well. Grandpa had tied the horse's lead rope to the corral fence and proceeded to run the burlap sack over her. All hell broke loose. By the time it was over, Grandpa was on the ground, with a horse on top of him still tied by the lead rope to the fence, She couldn't get her feet under her because her head was being held in the air, and Grandpa could not get out from under her. He called for me, had me untie the lead rope and as she got up, made himself the smallest little ball possible. Somehow, he did not get stepped on. Overall, successful all around. We started the whole process over again, much more carefully this time, and things went much better. She wanted to be a good horse, but she had been scared.

Now, from my vantage point, there was really nothing out of the ordinary here. Things like this just happened. You dealt with them and moved forward.

When we were at dinner that evening, I decided that telling this story of the excitement of the day would be appropriate. I told the entire story with every detail I could muster, even digging down into the emotions I felt when seeing my grandfather under a flailing horse. I remember mentioning that I wondered if this would be the broken ribs for the year, as rarely did we make it through a summer without at least one cracked or broken rib. Fortunately, neither happened. As I finished telling everything I could think of - the whole time watching my grandmother's face grow pale, and not fully understanding why - my grandpa said, "Good god, son. Do you have to tell everything you know?"

In hindsight, this summed up the whole situation. I had been privy to something pretty phenomenal and it was just not possible for me to keep it to myself.

I faced these words from my grandfather at other times in my life. Each time he started, I knew I had done it again - not understanding when it was time to just keep my mouth shut.

These words should resound more and more in the world today. With our ability to instantly communicate, it has become difficult to know exactly what should and should not be communicated. I would venture to say that almost all of us run into a story or a situation we would LOVE to share, but then we consider the people affected by our releasing the story and we determine it would hurt more than it would help.

The problem is that there are many who just don't have that filter, They believe a good story, or even bit of untested information should be immediately released to the entirety of the listening world. Off goes another story on a rampage. We must be the line of first defense in deciding what should and should not be told. I will always lean on Grandpa's words. "Good God, son..." is a good place to start. What litmus test will you use?

Mileposts

Each of us comes from a particular time with a certain set of basic information included because of that time. Whether you are a member of the Silent Generation or Baby Boomer or Generation Y - Millennial or Generation Alpha, this is always true. I am solidly a Boomer, born almost right in the middle of that group. It carries baggage, just like being a Generation Alpha will carry, although much of theirs is yet to be seen as we are only six years into that group's life.

One of the things I remember about being a child and young adult in the group to which I was born was how big everything was. Computers took whole rooms in a building and required their own cooling system; televisions were all console models and had to sit away from the wall because of the length of the main tube in the device. Heck, I remember a hay baler my Uncle Norm owned which you could climb up into and included its own motor. And then there were the cars. The first car I owned - a 1973 Grand Sedan - would easily haul eight, sometimes more, and had a trunk big enough to house a small family. I have kidded over the years that I never parked it, I actually docked it.

Anyway, in those days when someone reached 100,000 miles on a vehicle, it was a really big deal. Okay, first of all, the odometers wouldn't register more than a hundred thousand miles, so when you went past that number, it would turn over to zero. This was such a big deal, it was not uncommon to get the family and have them all in the car when this happened. It definitely would have been worth a post on Facebook - if Facebook would have been around.

A couple of weeks ago, I reached a hundred thousand miles on my truck. It was such a big deal I actually didn't even notice it until after the event had occurred. The biggest thing it did for me was to make me consider how long I wanted to own this truck. I decided to keep it for 220,000 miles before looking for something different. One big difference about this milepost from when I was younger is that number no longer indicates the end of a vehicle's life. People routinely put more miles on their vehicles. Many people I know purchase used vehicles with more than a hundred thousand miles and don't think a thing about it. My workplace owns vehicles with well over 600,000 miles that effectively do their job every single day.

There are certainly other types of mileposts in our lives, often regarding age. I hit fifty in 2006 and by all accounts, I was a horrible human about it. I didn't want to be there and I wasn't afraid to tell everyone about it. I actually have a couple of friends that have never reached out to me on my birthday since because of the person I was that day. Last year, I hit the sixty number. I actually tried to be more gracious and think I succeeded to some level. Probably still have work to do.

Earlier this week one of our neighbors turned 100. Now, that is a milepost. He has had a life filled with opportunities to learn and see things that others in his group never did. He has a tremendous perspective on all of it. He lives by himself in his own home and still drives his own car. Many of us (myself included) believe everyone ends up in a nursing home, but it is not true. I listened to a great TED talk yesterday showing that the percentage of older Americans living in nursing homes is only four percent and this percentage is actually dropping. Here is the link if you want to check it out.

What I would like to leave you with today is there are tons of mileposts out there. We see and go by them every day. They are only reminders of what we have done and where we have been. They need not shape us in negative ways. Our reaction is completely up to each of us. Yes, I will admit that more of my parts hurt today than when I was twenty-one, but the things I know and have learned in those intervening years are worth the miles.

If you ever watched the movie Dead Poet's Society with Robin Williams, remember the phrase Carpe diem and go out and seize today. For those of you in central Iowa, the State Fair is going on. That could be a great place to do exactly this. For those of you from other parts of the world, why are you not here at the Iowa State Fair?

Rhetoric

Having just celebrated the birth of the nation and thinking about the considerable rhetoric permeating our country each day, I stopped today to think about the way we converse with each other. While this is a much-discussed topic, and conversations take up a great percentage of our days, a couple of things in the last few weeks it made me think about it again.

Two weeks ago, one of my drivers had a wreck. Fortunately, no one was injured. But here is what I find interesting. When I was told about it, the first thing people wanted to talk about was the damage to the vehicle. Honestly, at that point, I could not have cared less. The first thing I wanted to know was that my driver was okay.

In the middle of that conversation I was taken back to the day when one of my kids had a small fender bender. Again, the first thing that they wanted to tell me was about the vehicle. Same situation, I could have cared less.

One of the things we need to concentrate on is where in our conversations we talk about the important things. Given the examples I just wrote about, both times the first thing I wanted to know was that everyone was okay. All the rest was relatively unimportant details to deal with later.

So where this brings me is to ask how many times our personal conversations dance around important topics rather than discussing them first?

My answer, regarding my life and the way I deal with others says that all too often I never get to the important topic. We know each other on a superficial level, having conversations about the news and other minutia around the day.

There are some relationships that I need to think about, work on, and change so that they can be better and stronger moving forward. As my children began driving, one of the things I told them was around exactly this. I told them, and I’ve told everyone that ever worked for me: tell me the important things first. If you’re in a wreck, tell me that you’re okay; if you fail a test, tell me what the plan is to overcome; if you’re changing your life plans, tell me all the details.

When I worked for Payless Cashways, as managers, many of us subscribed to the saying “ask for forgiveness rather than permission.” This worked relatively well for me, right up until the day that my senior vice president asked if that’s what I had done in a situation. It had been. I'd made a decision that I knew if I had asked permission, I would not have been allowed to do it. So I went right ahead and did what I wanted to do and waited for the questions and the consequences. I hadn't expected to be asked if that it been my methodology. When faced with that question, all I could do was answer honestly and truly feel embarrassed at my thought process.

Today, I think about the importance of honest and upfront communication. With all of these random thoughts, the place I land is that it is more necessary now than ever before to be truthful with those people who are important to us.

If you have a boss, tell them what’s really on your mind - you may be surprised at the outcome.

If you have friends and family that you care about deeply, tell them, don’t just think that they will know. Start with the important conversation first.

Think about conversations through the filter that is the way you would like to hear things. This will not fail you, however it may present some different opportunities and directions than you’ve seen in the past.

And for the sanity of everyone involved, if you’re in a wreck, and you need to call somebody, first tell them that you’re okay.

Okay, those are the thoughts of this simple woodworker from central Iowa. I get to go to the shop again today and work on the teardrop trailer for my sister. This is a labor of love, and I am thankful for every moment of it. Have a good week.

Opportunities

The last few days have been hot.  I would tell you middle-of-August hot, but I had a friend point out to me the other day it is somewhat typical to have days like this in June.  In the Midwest, in the summer, when you have weather like this, one of the things which we all think of is the possibility of a tornado.  Typically, this is something which comes in the evening as the day cools and the different temperatures swirl together. 

On June 13, 1968, forty-nine years ago, my mother, sister and I were on the floor of a cabin on West Okoboji in northwestern Iowa when several tornadoes hit at once.  The devastation was incredible.  The miracle was there were no lives lost.  The following days were miraculous for an eleven year old boy who loved mechanical stuff.  Mrs. Jones, the lady that ran the resort we were staying on offered me a bow saw and told me to cut up anything that had fallen.  And I did ... what fun.

But I'm not really thinking of any of this today.  I'm thinking about lost opportunities and the times I have said “No” when I should have said “Yes."  This time at the lake was a really good example.  After the initial cleanup was done, a lot of people flocked to the lake to help out.  One group of people that came were scuba divers.  In this group was a man from my hometown.  His name was Bob Smith and his son Larry was in my class through high school.

Apparently, one of the tornadoes at the lake had actually become a waterspout, pulling water into the sky and effectively lowering the level of the lake.  Immediately after the storm, we went outside and could see things that had been blown into the lake sticking out of the water.  Later, when Bob went in to recover these items, he found them under multiple feet of water.  This still isn't the important part of this story, but we are on the way there.

One day Bob asked if I wanted to try out scuba.  He wasn't talking about a class or anything like that; he was just going to get me “geared” up and take me into the lake.  This is something I had always wanted to do, but when presented with the opportunity, right then and there, I said “No thank you.” 

What? Why would I do such a thing?  Looking back on it now, I have no idea, but I remember being scared - not of being hurt or worse, but being scared I wouldn't be able to do it perfectly the first time.  Wow.  The funniest thing about it now is that seven years later, Bob was the person who took me through the training and got me scuba certified.

I am listening to a book on tape by Jon Acuff, and he speaks about this exact situation.  He talked about being invisible and making mistakes.  In that lake, in NW Iowa, if I had made a mistake, it would have been in front of one or two people.  I wasn't working on a television special with Jacques Cousteau diving off the Galapagos Islands to be viewed by millions.  It was a learning opportunity and a mistake would have been in front of a small group who knew I was just learning this skill.

But with all of this laid out there, this was not the time to learn this lesson.  There were multiple more times in which I behaved exactly the same way.  Whether it was skating, skateboarding, downhill skiing, waterskiing, it was always the same. I didn't want to make a fool of myself, and I always thought there would be another chance.

Well, sometimes there aren't second chances and the opportunity in front of you will be the only time it presents itself.  So, what am I going do with this info?  I am going to work  to  turn to the Jim Carrey movie and become the “Yes Person.”  I'm going to work to say yes at least more than I say no.  I'm going to work to recognize what things really are don't-miss opportunities.  And I am going to do a better job of recognizing when I am invisible.  When can I make a mistake or a misstep without the whole world watching?

You have been a big part of this over the last couple of years for me.  You've been part of an audience that reads the words I put out there, and when I make mistakes, you just understand them and we move on.  When I run into many of you face to face, you are supportive and encouraging of the things that I talk about.  I appreciate you and thank you for following me on this journey.

Now, go out there and find a way to do something that you want to and that you have said “No” to in the past.  Have a great day.

Lemonade

As the summer heats up, I find myself thinking of earlier times. People call them better times, and often they may be, but I just think of different times.

I was a small Iowa townie. My community was 2500 people, almost all of whom knew me. Not only my direct family, but my extended family lived there. Often times, I had trouble telling the difference between the two.

As days grew longer in the summer, we spent much more time at my grandparents' home. Both of my grandparents worked for the county - Grandpa drove a rock truck and Grandma worked in the county engineer's office. Neither one of them ever knew how to take time off, so summer at Grandpa and Grandma's was always about work. Mostly, it was about horses and the training of horses. Some summers we had as many as twenty horses belonging to other people we worked with and trained.

One night last week, as it was just reaching dusk, my memory took me back to those days. It was the time of the day you reached for all day long. This was when the last horse of the day was worked, cleaned, and put back in the barn. This was the time of day when friends and people that came over would say their goodbyes and head home. This was the time of day for a long exhale, finally finished with all that needed to be accomplished.

This was also the time my grandmother would break out the lemonade. This was never any kind of just-add-water product. This was lemonade made the way my grandmother had always made it - real lemon juice, real sugar, ice and water. This was lemonade served in the burgundy pitcher she always used for lemonade. It was good lemonade in and of itself but what came with it was better.

This was the time of the day when everyone there would stop, sit and relax, discussing the things that were on their mind. These were the times I got to see the world through others' eyes. Whether the discussion was about gasoline prices or the amount of rain we'd had, I always learned something. Even more important, at this particular gathering I was treated more like an adult and less like a child.

I wonder what the equivalent is today.

As we raised our own children it was hard to break them away from all the diversions in their life. The gameboys and computer games, the books, movies and television - all of it. We did not have the equivalent of drinking lemonade at my grandmother's picnic table. I think that was a miss. The interesting thing for me is now that the kids are older, when they're home, we work to make this exact kind of time. Although all our days are crazy busy, we try to stop at least once during the day and just talk. And just like those times of my grandma's house these moments are some of my favorites. This is when I find out what my children think and what's important to them. This is when I find out about new trends, new musical artists, and information I didn't even know existed.

In this mile-a-minute world in which we live, I encourage you to try and find time to have a glass of lemonade. Find time with family, friends, acquaintances, and even people you don't know very well but would like to know better.If we can find a way to do this we will all grow from the experience.