Some Random Thoughts

Here I sit in a house thats much too large. I've succeeded I would say, and most would think; I've left my home and my family. I have an education and a good job. I have new friends and old, and I have this large house. I should be happy. I have money in the bank, I'm getting a new car. I've left the countryside that I knew as a home for many many years for the prosperity of city life. I've risen above the poverty I knew as a child and that many of my childhood friends are still mired in, and I have a house thats much too large.

Its a house like the rich folks in town had when I was young. Its a house like my parents dreamed of but never did have, right now they live in a used trailer-house, on some land near the ranch that we used to own until the bank and the loan payments made it impossible for my dad not to sell out to some rich Coloradan.

I suppose they talk about me back home now and then, my childhood friends, "yah, I alwyas knew he'd do well, he was always a smart one", "got him a good job out in Seattle now, doing something with computers"; they might be right, but I wonder.

I tell my brothers to go to college, to get an education, that its the only way to get out and get ahead, but sometime I really wonder what getting ahead really is. There's more to life than leaving home, getting an education, getting a good paying job, and a house thats much too large.

As I sit in this large house I think about my education and my high paying job and I wish I was back home again. The hustle and bustle of the city life may be the place for high paying jobs, new cars, and money in the bank; but does it compare to home?

September 5th, 1983