Happy birthday? Yes! Happy birthday

Today is that "special" day of the year; the day when I acknowledge I am a year older. Or, as someone has put it, I've made another trip around the sun. What do we mean when we say, "Happy Birtdhay!" Probably that we wish the recipient all good things and that we are glad they are here. What do we hear when people say, "Happy birthday"? This is not a downer post. Actually, quite the opposite. I am glad I turn 71 today. I am especially glad when people say, "I would guess you are in your 50s!" There are some advantages to being older and some of those advantages are tied to both happy and sad events in my life. I can remember back to when I was three years old and Dad and my uncle took me for a ride to look at "Christmas lights" on Third Street in my hometown, a neighborhood renowned for the lights and moving displays at Christmas. When we got home, Santa had come and gone that Christmas Eve and he left me a pedal tractor. Why I got a tractor, I can't remember. It was an Oliver 88 made in nearby South Bend and while other kids in our neighbrohood rode their tricycles and pedal race cars, I rode my tractor and planted pretend beans and corn and took the tractor to be repaired and the oil changed. While few city kids had tractors, I remember everyone wanted to ride mine. To remember a Christmas 68 years ago is a special gift. I remember vividly the 4th of July when I proposed to Linda and where. I remember thd ay of our wedding and the days when both of our kids were born. I remember great details of those days. Not bad for 40-plus years ago! My memories are some of my greatest treasures. There are bittersweet memories too, as you age. I remember both my grandfathers and how they smelled. That may sound strange if you are younger but odor is a great inducement to memory. I cannot smell the musty smell of damp wood without thinking of Grandpa Zellers' hosue in Winamac. I remember the smell of his chewing tobacco when he kissed my face. I remember the smell of Grandpa Phillips, too and I remember the many times dad and I would go to visit him and I would sit and listen while Dad and Grandpa talked about current events and so many things. We sat at the picnic table Grandpa built on a metal frame he bought. Later, I had that table until it was destroyed when a tree splingtered it during a storm. I also remember going to Grandpa Zellers' funeral visitation and repeatedly walking around and then back to the casket to see if he was really dead. I remember being asked to read scripture during Grandpa Phillips' funeral. That church was begun in Grandpa and Grandma's house on Oak Street. Grandpa Zellers had signed for the church furniture in the church he and Grandma Zellers attended. I don't remember either grandmother very well. Grandma Zellers died years before I was born and I was three when Grandma Phillips died. All I remember about Grandma Phillips was a time when a booger got wrapped up in my chewing gum and she cleaned up my nose and mouth. Then I recall the year I left the church ministry and went to work for a radio station when we moved in with Linda's parents. Dangerous Dan Jensen taught me how to run the control board. I was going to be a part time announcer. He introduced me -- "What name do you want to go by on the radio?" he asked. My first name was Terry but I always liked Frank, the middle name I shared with both grandfathers. So, "Frank Phillips" was born and the name stuck from 1994 to this day. I got an email from Dan this week. He has Stage 3 Colon Cancer. "Do you realize you and I were younger than both my kids when you and I met?" I asked him. I pray Dan makes it. I also remeinded him my wife had four surgeries for breast cancer 15 years ago and this week we got a thumbs up from her surgeon when we went in for her annual checkup. I remember when we moved to Elkhart. "You ahve met my family and now I will get to know your family," she said in the car as we followed the truck hauling our furniture. In the next few years, I helped do the service when my cousin, Kirby, got married and died a year later. I attended my aunt's funeral and her immediate family insisted I sit with them during the service. Then, in July, I was cleaning up the aftermath of a terrible wind storm that struck our small town when my cousin's daughter called to tell me her dad had died unexpectedly from a heart attck that morning. I have lots of happy memories with that family. They were the closest thing to brothers and sisters I had. I think it means a lot to me, also, as I age that I'm not as insecure as I was at a younger age. I trust my own thoughts and judgments more. I would definitely marry Linda all over again but there are a lot of other choices I would have changed. When people say, "I wouldn't do a thing differently in my life," I believe they are either lying or have not learned a thing. Getting older is a good thing -- if your faith is in Jesus Christ and you beleive you have an eternal home with a new body. Getting older isn't good or bad. But I consider it a blessing.

Folks get older but memories are sweet

Have you ever noticed how old people around you are getting to be, especially family and friends? 

My wife gave me a very special gift on Columbus Day. We went to visit my cousins in St. Joseph County.

Most of my family piled in to Louise’s house. Her husband, my cousin, Glen “Junior", passed away several years ago. 

We had supper together and spent the evening laughing and reminiscing. 

How strange that all those folks are getting older. Me? I’m not feeling it.

Young adults called them Mom and Dad and there were a few grandchildren present. Surprisingly, all the kids seemed to know who I was though we hadn’t been to visit for many years. 

I am an only child and these wonderful people were the closest relations I had to brothers and sisters.

In fact, one of my cousins climbed up on the couch next to me one day. He was maybe 3 at the time, and said, "You know what? You're my bestest brother cousin." 

When my Aunt Janice passed away, I attended the funeral. I was sitting near the back of the room with everyone else when my cousin, Junior, came and got me. 

"She looked on you as one of her own kids," he said. "You come sit with the rest of the family." 

It was confusing at times because my cousin, Junior, was some 25 years older than me and his oldest child was two weeks older than me. It gets more confusing because her name is Linda and I married a Linda. 

Like many families, Mom and Dad would take me to visit my cousins, aunt and uncle regularly in the summer. Mom said we kids were always shy and we didn't really open up and start playing together until it was time to go home. 

That all changed the summer after my sophomore year in high school. Mom and Dad were both in the hospital that summer and they thought it would be better for me to stay with my aunt and uncle in North Liberty, Indiana.

Mom and Dad were older than most parents when I was born. Mom was 40 and Dad was 35. Needless to say, I was unexpected. To this day, when I see a container of birth control pills I think, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Mom said I was her miracle baby and I made it a point of reminding her about that. 

Aunt Janice and Uncle Glen had four boys. All but one have passed away now. Bob was the youngest and I am told he is not in the best of health.

Junior bought a 20-year-old Chevrolet pickup truck that had been repainted black. It sported a homemade wooden camper on the back. After work that summer, he often picked me up at my aunt’s house and took his sons for outings in that pickup we called the "fishing buggy." 

Never content to stay on the bank and fish, I always got too close to the edge and went home soggy more times than not. The lake we fished had a muck bottom that irritated my skin and as soon as they dropped me off at Aunt Janice’s house, I headed for a hot tub of water. 

One weekend, Junior took my uncle and the boys camping on a nearby farm. There was a creek running through the property and we camped there in tents. 

The weather was wet and windy when we arrived. We didn’t know until later a tornado touched down about a mile from where we were camping. 

After dark we started cooking hamburgers for supper. That was my job. 

We didn't have a grill with us and it was starting to storm so we didn’t try to dig out the frying pan Junior had packed. We tried to cook the hamburgers on the top of a camp stove. 

A Coleman stove is fired by Coleman fuel, also called white gas. It has an open grate on top so you can pump air into the fuel tank, turn on the burner and light it with a match. 

Every time the wind blew the fire out, I would pump the tank and shoot more fuel into the burner so I could light it again. I didn't realize the fuel was also shooting into the meat. 

To this day, we laugh about the "kerosene hamburgers," named for Aunt Bea's "kerosene cucumbers" on the Andy Griffith Show. 

During our visit on Columbus Day, “my bestest brother cousin,” Mark, told me they still had the old fishing buggy out back of the house. So, Gary, Mark and I went out. When I saw that old truck, the memories came washing over me so thick I could have brushed them from my eyes. 

"When I want to find a happy place, I think back to those days," I told the guys.

Now, my Linda and my cousin, Linda, are both grandmas. Two of my cousins are drawing Social Security and still working. One of my cousins is in marketing and has two kids (Luke is into the Minecraft computer game.) One is semi-retired after doing very well buying and selling motorcycles and parts on eBay. Others are busy with their own lives but they all took time to get together on Columbus Day so I could see them and we could reminisce. 

"You know Junior and Aunt Janice and Uncle Glen, were there, too," Linda said during our long drive home late Monday night. 

I believe they were and it makes me very happy though a little emotional.