Speaker 1: This is going to be a little bit of a
different podcast. I haven't put one up in about six
or eight days, I think, but I've been busy on
the Steve Lily number twenty that I uploaded last Wednesday
or Thursday, I think. And I'm gonna talk about Steve
Lily further on in the podcast, and I'm going to
talk about some other things. So if this is one
of those podcasts that you hate to hear somebody ramble on,
then you can just click away. There are going to
be stories. I don't know how long the podcast is
going to be, but just hang on. I think this
might be interesting. But the first thing I want to
share with you is I picked up a book last week.
I have a list of favorite authors that I love
to read and seek out authors who may or may
not tell stories I'm interested in, but they write really well.
One of those authors is Dennis Johnson. D Nis Johnson.
You may know that name or you may recognize something
he wrote if you have watched a new film on
Netflix called Train Dreams. Dennis Johnson wrote that book. It's
a short I think if they would call it a novella.
It's not a very long book, but I stumbled across
that book about two or three years ago. I think
someone reviewed it. It looked interesting, so I bought it
and I read it, and I just love the way
this guy writes. He's won all kind of awards, and
he's written six or eight novels. He's a poet. He's
got two or three books of poetry out. So I'll
give these authors a read, and then i'll put it down,
and i'll write their name down, and then i'll go
to another author, and then when I want to come
back to them, I'll pick up another book that they wrote.
So I'm reading a book now by Dennis Johnson call
it's called Tree of Smoke. Now. I'm only five or
six chapters into it, and it's really good. It's a
Vietnam era book. The very first chapter I read a
short scene. It's about six or eight paragraphs long, and
I've recorded it. I want you to listen to it.
I know this isn't monster content. Listen to this little
micro story. Listen to the way he wrote it. Immediately
when it's over, I want you to hit the pause
button if you'd like to, and comment to me and
tell me what your immediate emotion is after hearing this
little six or eight paragraph scene at the very beginning
of Tree of Smoke, I'm curious to know what my
listeners can hear and pick up in a good piece
of writing. I'm just curious if you had any of
the same emotions I had when I stopped. I mean,
it's only a couple of pages long, and I read this,
and I stopped, and I reflected back on my life
at the time, when I was a kid and have
done this, I've done things like this, and how much
remorse I had at the time, and how at the
age of sixty three, I'll remember something all the way
back when I was eight years old. Whenever it crosses
my mind, just this wave of heat and embarrassment and
remorse comes over me for doing what I did. And
it is it is. I don't know how to describe
the emotion. But anyway, anyway, I want you to listen
to this, pause your video, tap the screen, immediately, make
a comment. Let me know the emotion that this evoked
from listening to this. I'm very interested in that. And
also let me know if you if you got to
the end of this and you a preated the way
he wrote it, to evoke an emotion from you and
to give you some kind of a microscope into this
boy's life and personality and demeanor. Because I think, as
I'm reading this book, it's gonna it's gonna give you
some insight into some of the things he goes through
in Vietnam, and you'll know who you're reading about. Okay,
I'll shut up. Here is the h here's the little
excerpt from Tree of Smoke. It was late in the
morning and Seemen Apprentice William Houston Jr. Began feeling sober
again as he stalked the jungle of Grand Island carrying
a Borrow twenty two rifle. There was supposed to be
some wild boars roaming this island military resort, which was
all he had seen so far in the Philippines. He
didn't know how he felt about this country. He just
wanted to do so hunting in the jungle. There were
supposed to be wild bores around here. He stepped carefully,
thinking about snakes and trying to be quiet because he
wanted to hear any bores before they charged him. He
was aware that he was terrifically on edge. From all
around came the ten thousand sounds of the jungle, as
well as the cries of gulls and the far off surf,
And if he stopped in and listened a minute, he
could hear also the pulse snickering of the heat of
his flesh, and the creak of sweat in his ears.
If he stayed motionless only another couple of seconds, the
bugs found him and whined around his head. He propped
the rifle against the stunted banana plant, and removed his
head band and wrung it out, and wiped his face,
and stood there a while, waving away mosquitoes with the
cloth and itching his crotch absent mindedly. Nearby, a seagull
seemed to be carrying on an argument with itself, a
series of protesting squeaks interrupted by contradictory, lower pitched cries
that sounded like huh huh, huh, And something moving from
one tree to another caught Semen Houston's eye. He kept
his vision on the spot where he'd seen it among
the branches of a rubber tree, putting his hand out
for the rifle without altering the direction of his gaze.
It moved again, and now he saw that it was
some sort of monkey, not much bigger than a Chihuahua dog,
not precisely a wild boar, but it presented itself as
something to be looked at, clinging by its left hand
and both feet to the tree's trunk, digging at the
thin rind with an air of tiny, exasperated haste. Semen
Houston took the money's meager back under the rifle sight.
He raised the barrel a few degrees and took the
monkey's head into his sight, and without really thinking about
anything at all, he squeezed the trigger. The monkey flattened
itself out against the tree, spreading its arms and legs enthusiastically,
and then reaching around with both hands as if trying
to scratch its back, and it tumbled down to the ground.
Semen Houston was terrified to witness its convulsions. There it
hoisted itself, pushing off the ground with one arm, and
sat back against the tree trunk with its legs spread
out before it, like somebody resting from a difficult job
of labor. Semen Houston took himself a few steps nearer,
and from the distance of only a few yards, he
saw the monkey's fur was very shiny and held a
heena tent, and the shadows and a blond tent, and
the light as the leaves moved above it. It looked
from side to side, its breath coming in great rapid gulps,
its belly expanding tremendously with every breath, like a balloon.
The shot had been low, exiting from the abdomen. Semen
Houston felt his own stomach terar itself in two Jesus Christ.
He shouted at the monkey, as if it might do
something about its embarrassing and hateful condition. He thought his
head would explode if the forenoon kept burning into the
jungle all around him, and the gulls kept screaming, and
the monkey kept regarding its surroundings, carefully moving its head
and black eyes from side to side, like someone following
the progress of some kind of conversation, some kind of debate,
some kind of struggle that the jungle the morning the moment,
was having with itself. Semen Houston walked over to the monkey,
laid the rifle down beside it, lifted the animal up
with his two hands and holding its buttocks in one
and cradling its head in the other. With fascination and
then revulsion, he realized that the monkey was crying. Its
breath came out in sobs, and tears welled out its eyes.
When it blinked, it looked here and there, appearing no
more interested in him than in anything else it might
be seen, Hey, Houston said, But the monkey didn't seem
to hear. As he held the animal in his hands,
its heart stopped beating. He gave it a shake, but
he knew it was useless. He felt as if everything
was all his fault, and with no one around to
know about it, he let himself cry like a child.
He was eighteen years old. All right, thank you for
your comments. If you haven't comment it, hit the pause
button on the video or the podcast. And I don't
know how to comment on these podcast apps, but I'm
assuming you can. The whole point of this exercise is
not for me to get comments. Comments do help the channel,
but that's not what I'm doing. I'm trying to demonstrate
for you how good writing can actually move a reader
to almost tears. If you want to listen to that
whole book on or if you want to read it,
just search for Dennis Johnson on Amazon and you can
buy the book or any of his books. I've only
read one book, Train Dreams, but if you want to search,
he's got six or eight novels out and I'm sure
they're all written extremely well. May not be the subject
matter you're interested in, but if you're like me, if
you just appreciate exceptional writing, Dennis Johnson is one of
those guys. Now, and let me say this, if you
want to listen to it on audible, Will Patten is
the narrator. He is the king of all narrators. He
did so much better with that little scene than I did.
If you listen to it, you'll hear it. You'll hear it.
You'll feel even more emotional when you hear Will Patten
when you hear Will Patten read it. But I just
wanted to share it with my audience, so I read it.
I couldn't grab Will Patten's audio and let you hear
it because it would have been a copyright. So anyway,
all that said, speaking of writing, let's talk about Steve Lily.
I don't have any notes here, and I don't know
exactly how to say what I'm about to say. And
it's not bad news. I'm going to keep writing Steve Lily,
but this for the last I think I've been writing
those for three four years now. And the first one,
just so you know, the first one that I put out,
I actually put it out on this podcast. I had
some free time and I just spent about three hours
and I just wrote this real quick story. And I'll
tell you why I wrote it is because all of
these Bigfoot stories they kind of run together, and they're
all basically the same. If you watch a Bigfoot movie,
the Bigfoot is always the terror in the woods, and
Bigfoot is the focus of all those films and all
of these stories. And I wanted to at that moment
when I wrote Steve Lily Number one, which would later
become I didn't plan it on being a series. I
just thought, you know, i've got an afternoon free, I'm
going to write something different. I'm going to turn the
tables and make the Bigfoot story about the people who,
in this case are hunting Bigfoot. And I kind of
ran through several scenarios of how this guy could get
roped into hunting Bigfoot by the government and just be
a personable guy that you could begin to know and like,
and then put some of his friends with him and
you begin to like them. I'm an old fashioned story
kind of person. I like the good guy versus the
bad guy, and there's a conflict and there's a resolution,
and there's an ending and the good guy comes out
on top. I may not write all the Steve Lilly
stories that way, but and then I got to thinking, well,
let me back up. So the first one so many
people liked it, I thought, well, okay, I'll write another one.
So I just kind of dreamed up another story, and
I put out number two. And I don't even remember
what I wrote in like two through I kind of
remember a three part series, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. I don't know.
I've got one that's two parts and one that's three parts,
and then I've got nineteen, and then I've got twenty.
But what is going on with the Steve Lilly thing? People?
I've had complaints about Steve Lilly. I've had these mostly
ninety nine percent people seem to really enjoy Steve Lily,
and thank you so much for the encouraging comments. This
is the best audience on the planet. But there is
a certain group of people that expect every story to
be like Steve Lily, maybe like one through ten but
you have to understand I didn't know how to write.
I had never written much of anything. I've always wanted
to write, but I've never had time to. You know,
to write, you have to sit down and think, and
you have to write and then go back and edit
it and clean it up and make it more legible.
And it's kind of a process that I didn't expect
that I would have to go through, but that is
the process. And you want to write something different, something,
you know, a story people can relate to. And anyway,
every guy in the Steve Lily, every person in the
Steve Lilly series is someone I know, even Steve Leary
Steve Lily, He's sort of a composite of several iron
workers I've known through the years in my business. But
here's what I'm trying to get across to you. I'm
teaching myself how to write. And around episode nine or ten,
I decided, you know what I need to I owe
this audience a better story, a better written story. And
I want to even though it's a silly, kind of
slapstick jamble of stories that really go nowhere, they're just
episodes of They're just little ideas I come up with
all these stories are kind of built off of some
little funny EPs I have in my mind. So for
instance nineteen where they go to help out Charlie with
the bigfoot that he dug up or the Bigfoot clan
that comes after him because he dug up a bigfoot skeleton.
That started out with a vision for some reason, it
just popped in my head a bigfoot sitting on a
tractor driving a tractor. I have no idea why that
popped in my head. Well, it wound up being a skeleton,
but it was some method that they used to draw
these bigfoots out and kill them, like that whole open
Door story. And I'll admit I went too far in
that story. That story was dealt with portals and hundreds
of bigfoots pouring out of the portals, and it was
kind of silly, and I don't really go into the
woo stuff. I guess I just felt like righting that
kind of story at that time. And then twenty was
about I had a vision of a baby big Foot
and a woman bringing it back to camping and attacking everybody,
So that whole story was built around that. So you
got to have a bad guy good guy gotta have
annoying characters. I like putting in annoying characters. Now, I
told you all I was going to ramble on in
this podcast, so hang with me. If you're still with me,
I just want you to know that I'm trying to
teach myself how to write, and I feel like that
you cannot become a good writer unless you're a prolific reader,
which I am. I read as much as I can
possibly read fiction nonfiction. I just finished a book, well
it's on my nightstand, but it's a nonfiction book by
Buddy Levy about a polar expedition into the toward the
North Pole, and it's a harrowing thing. I love good history.
But you can read good history and good contemporary narrative
history and you can get great ideas of how to write,
and you if those things teach you how to write,
and you also get ideas for stories. Now I'm reading
some other stuff by some non best selling authors, some
guys I actually met this weekend. Two of those guys
handed me their books, and I'm gonna I'm going to
try to do their audio books on the podcast, maybe
sooner than later, because they're they're kind of they're they're
real interesting to me. So anyway, all that to say,
if you're disappointed in Steve Lily or if you're happy
with Steve Lily, I want you to know that I'm
teaching myself to write how to write, and you're kind of,
whether you know it or not, you're kind of following
along the evolution of a man in his sixties who
has found a passion late in life. And I'm teaching
myself to write. And I am trying to teach myself
that by reading great authors like Dennis Johnson. I've read
several passages from several books. I've even read short stories
by really good authors, Tom Franklin, Michael Ferris Smith, Larry Brown,
and there are Jeff Crawford is a good author I've read.
I just put up a whole audio book on my
podcast network that he wrote. And I feel like the
more I read, the more I learned to write. And
you're getting not getting don't feel like you're I don't
think you're privileged to do this, but you're kind of
coming along with me on that road. And So I
had started a Steve Lilly novel two years ago, and
every time I read another book I think about what
I've written, and I go back and change it because
I think, damn, I can do that better, and so
I'll try to do it better. And so I hope
to get a Steve Lilly novel out, maybe by the
end of the summer. I don't know, and I'm going
to record the audiobook and put it out. Maybe we
can do a series. I have other stories in my
head I want to write that have nothing to do
with Bigfoot or they're just normal stories. So I wanted
to read that to you to tell you that good
writing will provoke these emotions from you. And that is
what I tried to do in Steve Lily twenty, specifically
that sorry couple on the side of the road, leaving
those dogs behind them. The goal was to get you
to hate them, and based on the comments I've got
on Steve Lily twenty, accomplished my mission. I've got so
many emails. There's a lot of people pissed off about that.
Matter of fact, I got about a half a dozen
comments and emails from people saying they're unsubscribing because I
wrote that scene in that story. It's fiction, it's not real,
but you know, those things do happen. I mean, there
are plenty of people who just leave dogs on the
side of the highway, and that is a part of reality.
But if it made you hate that couple that was
in the car, then I accomplished my mission. So I
consider that one of the best things I've written. Even
though it may have made you mad, it evoked this
emotion from you that was I want to use the
word visceral, but I don't really know what the word
visceral means, but it seems appropriate, like this visceral, obvious
type emotion from people. And so I learned a little
bit about how to develop characters and make you like them,
make you hate them, all those kind of things, and
I was just trying to do that in this story. Anyway.
That's kind of what's going on with Steve Lilly. Now
I want to read you a story I got from
This is actually an email I got. It's a story
a published author has written specifically for this podcast. I'm
sure he's published in other places, but it is his
struggle with depression. This guy went down a road that
was terrible, terrible, terrible, and he's just listening to the story.
But it's a happy ending. We won't drop off on
this podcast with a gloomy kind of mood. But I
think you're really gonna like this and you're gonna appreciate it,
and it ought to provoke an emotion from you that is,
I'll use the word again, visceral. You will. You'll actually
be moved by the story. So again, this is a
different podcast. It's just something I've been wanting to do
for a while. Talk about writing, talk about Steve Lilly,
talk about good writing, talk about emotional writing and how
it can move you. And here is one of those
stories that will do that. And then I'll sign off
at the end. But listen into the story, and when
you get to the end of it, even if you've
commented before, push the pause button and let me know
how this story makes you feel. It's going to take
you deep into the recesses of the human mind that
makes some of us want to do things that we
probably that are dangerous for us. So listen to it,
leave a comment and I'll talk to you at the end. Thanks.
This email is from Greg ball And Greg Ballin is
a published author. A published author, it's several books out
on Amazon. Greg Ballin, GR E, G. B. A L.
L A N. You can look him up. I've done
a couple of his creature stories on this podcast, one
being that I remember is called The War of the Species,
really good story he wrote. This is a personal story
that he sent to me. I called Greg, I said,
can I attach your name to this email? He said yes,
so let's read the email. Thank you so much for
reading the many of my stories. I'm extremely humbled and grateful.
This is a tale about a real experience I had
in September of nineteen ninety eight. I was experiencing an
incredibly bad depression. I had never been at such a
low point in my life. I've been through hard times before,
but nothing like what I was in during that late
summer and fall. I can no longer take the pain,
and I decided to end my life. I called in
sick to work on a cloudy Wednesday and went to
the gun range intent on suicide. The attached is the
true tale of my experience and how a strange old
man saved me from making a horrible, horrible choice. Five
years later, my best friend and hunting buddy took his
own life. Often wonder why I was fortunate enough to
escape my fate, and he wasn't. I witnessed the pain
his death caused his sons and daughter, at the horrible
months of tears and the questions that followed his passing.
I can only imagine what my young wife and small
children would have gone through. My death would have ended
my pain, but permanently scarred my children. My friend's children
have been scarred for life. And even today, twenty one
years later, I still miss my friend and long for
the times we had spent together in the woods and
at his dinner table, talking and laughing. I hope you
find merit in this true story. It is not as
creepy as the haunted forest, or the scary or as
scary as the war of the species or the binding Watch.
But I have never forgotten that afternoon when I almost
made the worst possible decision the human can make. Thank
you for getting me through my damn. I hadn't even
gotten the story in his Every time I read this note,
he said to me, it chokes me up. Thank you
for getting me through my long workdays. I feel like
we're old friends, and I have several colleagues following your podcast.
Very respectfully, Greg Balin, Well Greg, thank you now Here's
Greg's story. It's called a talk with an angel. I
had nowhere else to turn. No other solution seemed viable.
Why oh why want this pain and misery leave me?
I can't find the strength to get up in the morning,
and I find myself dragging through each day the misery
of mere existence more than my tortured soul can bear.
Work is hopeless. I'm falling further and further behind. Home
is nothing but strife and turmoil. I'm constantly being yelled at.
What's wrong with you? Why can't you just stop this?
You have responsibilities in a family to support. Everybody is
relying on me, depending on me, and counting on me
for some chore, some favor, some task that needs my attention.
Nobody asks how I'm feeling, how I'm doing? Am I okay?
I'm supposed to be strong and a warrior. I'm not
allowed to be weak. I have too many people counting
on me, and now I'm only allowed to be strong
and carry others. This is my sole purpose to give
and never receive. The well is run dry. The giving
tree has no more branches. No one can understand how
or why this happened to me. Hell I can't figure
out how this happened. I've fallen so far, so fast,
and I never saw it coming. This was the only answer.
It will end my pain and I can finally rest.
I drove my truck to the rifle range. It's the
middle of a weekday, so I'm completely alone. I took
out my nine millimeter auto and loaded a hallow point
into the gun. I cycled around and removed the safety.
I can feel the tears flowing from my eyes as
I stared down the barrel of the pistol. The muted
black grip feels perversely comforting in my hand, and the
weapon is waiting to bark, its doom filled answer to
my problems. My mood like the sky is bleak, cold
and gray, a perfect day to expire. Is this really
my only option? Something inside me screamed as my finger
starts to squeeze the trigger. Yes, A voice whispered back,
it's my own. I hear the words, but am I
actually saying it? A sense of peace washes over me. Finally,
I've made a decision to do it. I can feel
the release point on the trigger. Another millimeter and I'll
be free of all the pain and all the misery.
There'll be no more yelling, no more stress, no more pain.
Oh God, finally, no more pain. I hesitated for a second,
hovering over the brink of my life. An instant eradication.
The sound of footsteps make me ease off the trigger.
I lower the gun just as the stranger arrives with
his gun case in supply pack. You shooting today? Do
you mind some company, an old man asked in a
soft voice. Well, I don't own this place, and just
remember like you, I replied in an unfriendly tone. Snarky
reply I didn't seem to bother him. He unpacked his
rifle and opened his shooting bag. I'd never seen such
an elegant rifle before. The engraving was inlaid into the stock.
Beautifully breathtaking images were intricately carved and further embellished upon
the silvery gun medal. The stranger caught me staring at
his rifle and without warning, tossed the weapon at me.
I reached out on instinct and grabbed a stock and
twisted the muzzle toward the ground in one fluid motion.
Not bad for a Yankee, he said, walking toward me.
I knew you wouldn't drop it. Are you a member here,
I challenged, handing him back his rifle after admiring the
weapon's beauty, Oh, I just joined, the stranger replied. I
hadn't been to a meeting since the onset of my depression,
so I had no reason to doubt his word. I
turned my back, staring at my pistol lying on the
shooting bench. Couldn't do this with an audience. I'd head
into the woods and find a peaceful spot and make
it my final resting place. Have a good time. It's
all yours, I said. I grabbed my stuff, ready to
face oblivion alone in the woods. I turned to go,
and the old man sighed in frustration. I looked over
at him, and he asked me if I knew anything
about rifles. I nodded a great deal. Actually, I don't
know why I felt compelled to answer him. The bolt
isn't sliding properly. I think something's wrong, but I don't
have any tools, he commented, struggling with the rifle bolt action.
We'll put it on the bench. I'll take a look
at it. I sighed. I had come here intent on
ending my life, and I wound up performing a service call.
I started wrestling with the bolt on his rifle, and
he just began to talk. He spoke of his travels
and his love of hunting and shooting, and his appreciation
of nature. I found him. I'm annoyingly happy for the
first five minutes while he babbled on like we were
old friends. He began asking questions about me. Where did
I live, how did I find the love of the outdoors,
and other things that only two hunters can appreciate. I
don't remember exactly when I realized it, but suddenly, for
the first time in three months, I felt like I
had someone I could actually relate with. I began answering
his questions while asking a few of my own. Between
wrestling with a stubborn rifle action. We talked a great
deal more about our lives and our problems, mine in particular.
I never confessed to this stranger why I had come
here today as I finished freeing and cleaning the jam
bolt action. But since the old man knew all too well.
When he interrupted, he read the guilt in my eyes.
He knew if I walked away it would be to
finish what he interrupted. Where do you store this right
in alent factory. I lightly teased him, and he laughed,
a joyous sound that made me chuckle along with him.
The lent mixed with the gun ole and powder residue
coated this thing like tarl like coating. You're lucky this
thing cycled at all, I explained, as I threw away
two filthy cleaning rags. She smoothed in silk across the
babies behind now, I added, handing him his rifle. The
old man worked the action a few times and smiled warmly.
He haded my pistol lying on the shooting bench. I
followed his gaze and looked upon my weapon. He seemed
to be waiting for me to say something, offer up
a reason for what we both knew he'd seen. I
chose to keep silent. You any good with that? He
pointed toward the pistol. Uh good enough, but I could
always be better, I answered, in a much warmer tone
than I originally greeted him. So let's shoot, Yankee impressed me.
He gestured toward the range targets. We spent an hour
going through several hundred rounds of ammunition, chatting like we
were old friends as we paused to reload and examine
our targets. As I was firing round after round, my
mind began to visualize what would have happened when my
children learned Daddy splattered his brains all over this gun club.
They were too young to understand my pain and my problems.
It just knew Daddy wasn't feeling well, but he'd be
better soon. Now. I had visions of them at my funerals,
staring at my headstone, not really comprehending the fact that
I was never coming home. I envisioned the bank for
closing on the house, and other terrible visions. I put
the gun down and tried to fight back the tears.
What did I almost do? I mumbled, staring at the
target I had totally destroyed. I looked over and the
old man was staring at me concerned. Are you okay?
He asked me. Yeah, I think so, I replied, as
that morbid cemetery vision stayed with me. You sure, greg,
he asked me again. Yeah, I'm gonna be fine, I answered,
as a sense of relief washed over me. He packed
up his rifle and gathered his equipment and prepared to leave.
I watched him in silence, still thinking about what would
have happened had this man not come here. He walked
over and extended his hand. Thanks for fixing me up,
he raised his rifle case. I don't mention it. Clean
that beauty as soon as you get home. And thanks
for the company, I noted, and gave him a half salute.
You're welcome, he answered with a deep smile. Funny thing
about problems, Greg, they oftentimes seem bigger because you're in
the middle of them. Take a step outside of them
for a while, and don't be afraid to talk to somebody.
Even a warrior needs to rest once in a while.
After all, you are only human. Amen to that, brother,
I shouted back. As I turned together up my things.
I heard him laugh for a moment, and then I
heard nothing, no footfalls or rustling or twelve fabric that
had announced his presence. And I spun back around quickly
and he was gone. I made my way up the
path at a rapid pace, only to find an empty
parking lot and my truck parked nearby in the grass.
It was no way the old man could have moved
so fast. I would have heard his car start if
he had driven here. If he had walked, he would
easily be within visual range. And then it hit me
like an electric shock, A tingling sensation raced through my body,
and he called me by name. Never once in our
conversation did I give him my name, and I never
bothered to ask for his. I used the terms guy,
my friend bud on one occasion, and he always called
me yankee, but we never bothered to exchange names. But
through all of talking in conversation, I had never even
thought to ask him, how did he know my name?
Why did he use the term warrior? How did he
know that particular word would hit home with me? I
was a student of Bashido, the way of the warrior.
How did he know? There's no possible way he could
have known. I recovered from my depression in the weeks following.
I was able to step outside my problems and take
hold of them and control them, just as the old
man suggested. I talked to a few people at work
about my job, and I got the help that I
needed there. Things were turning around. And as for the
old man at the rifle range, I kept these mysteries
to myself. I attended the next club meeting and I
looked for the old man, but he never came. I
asked around if anyone had seen him before. No one had.
I asked the board members if they had voted in
any new members had, but they were all men my
age or younger, nobody as old as the man I described.
I spent the rest of the meeting in a fog.
I had been sent an angel in the form of
an old man. I would have taken my own life
that cold fall afternoon. Had he not been there to
stop me, I would have put that nine milimeter around
through my skull and left my kids without a father.
I look back, and I wonder how I ever let
things spiral so far out of control. Was it my
pride at always having to be perfect? Was I really
feeling like everybody wanted more than I could give? Will
I ever be able to thank that old man for
saving my life. I still don't know the answers, and
I've gathered enough wisdom to realize I'll always have more
questions than answers. The old man taught me that problems
aren't always as big as they see, provided there's someone
around to hell put them in perspective. The price for
my life, and that piece of wisdom was the twenty
minutes it took me to dissemble and clean a bolt
action rifle. I write this in the memory of my
dearest friend Glenn, who took his life in October of
two thousand and four. My friend, I miss you greatly.
Trying to get my composure here. That is a letter
from a real man. You know his name, you know
the problems he went through. He listed them all. These
are problems that men from twenty years old to eighty
year olds have. We have no one to talk to,
We have no one, and we can relate these feelings to.
Greg was provided. I believe one hundred percent it was
an angel. If you're in a season of depression and
you hear this story, there is hope. Just hang in there,
Just hang on. That's all you have to do. I'm
not a psychologists or a psychiatrist, and Greg, I'm sorry
if I'm adding some commentary that you don't appreciate. I'm
just asking these people to hang on, because that's what
I got from this story. This man that just showed
up at the rifle range just held him there and
he was hanging on for just a minute, just another minute,
just another minute, just another sentence. Until it all worked
out in Greg's head. Thank you Greg for sending this.
Please please please not comment for the sake of commenting,
but comment how this letter from Greg Ballin made you
feel he would be interested in seeing your comments and
so so I'll end that podcast with this. It was
a different podcast every once in a while, I don't know,
I like to do something different. Hope you enjoyed it
and we'll see guys on the next week.