Tiptoeing through darkness

Good morning blogsters:

I had lunch yesterday with a guy who was on his way down to the mountains to fly a helicopter around.

He’s looking for two prize cannons Texans either abandoned, or were killed by Apaches and just left up there somewhere during the Sibley retreat I’ve referred to in earlier entries.

The pieces have been seen over the centuries since occasionally by hunters and cowboys, but the location’s so vague and difficult nobody’s been able to relocate them.

A couple of cowboys found a civil war rifle with a bayonet stuck into a tree diagonally somewhere in the same general vicinity during the 1950s, but they never saw the cannon.

My bud’s been looking for those cannon on and off for 20 years as part of a larger search for some other things that have led him into countless tales and adventures.

He can afford to do these things because he’s a self-made multi-millionaire. 

A quarter-century ago he lost his job up north because of down-sizing and moved to New Mexico, where he took a grunt-job at minimum wage just to keep alive.  The place he was working was a fabrication plant, and he studied what was going on around him.  He saw a lot of industry standard things going on that looked stupid to him.

So, Marsh got to thinking how it could be done better.  He went to the bosses and told them about it, hoping for a raise, but they laughed at him.  So he started making the changes in his garage and trying them out.  Sold one tool and the people wanted more, so that was the beginning.

Now he owns several large ranches and a company that makes more money than he can reasonably spend, so he set his son up in a smaller business doing other things, and his son’s company’s making a lot more than Marsh’s… a million dollars a month.

But the reason I’m telling you this involves a side conversation we had.

“You’ve got to do it in the dark.  That’s where things happen.” He observed, concerning any dream, idea, project.

“Anything that’s different or innovative, you have do do in the darkness of negativity from others.  You have to keep the faith in yourself and your ability to do it, and keep on despite the multitudes around you who’ll tell you at every turn that you can’t do it.”

Seems to me that’s worthy of mention to you younger blogsters.

Marsh was talking about looking for those cannon.  He was talking about setting up a company and making millions of bucks.  He was talking about anything worth doing in life.

His son was lucky enough to have a father who knew, who taught the same thing to him.  Taught him that he could do anything if he believed in himself.

Marsh credits his grandfather for drumming the mindset into his head that he could do anything.  He gave me a quote I can’t recall, because it rhymed so well with something my own granddad drummed into mine.

“You can’t stop a man who knows he’s right and keeps coming.”

There’s an addendum to the anecdote of the last entry that ought to be added here.

Marsh is awfully proud of that son of his. Not because he’s bringing in a million bucks a month, but because of the way he’s using it.

“He’s not loading himself down with more houses, boats, big cars, like some rock star,” he glowed. “He sponsored a church group. They’re in Afghanistan building thousands of cheap houses for those people over there! Just trying to get them into some shelter to keep the weather off them.”

Jack