Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

John's Journey

Things are beginning to pick up around here. What with the football team on a winning streak, the fair coming and going, and Forest Festival stuff in the news, it is becoming a busy fall in Gurdon.

I have started going to church at Gurdon First Assembly and also I finally moved into my place. With a little more freedom to be me, I feel more like working and socializing. Transition is hard on a person, especially when you are not a kid anymore.

The theme of this Journey might be called, "Setting up housekeeping." It is a one step at a time procedure to start over. I do believe I am beginning to be my old optimistic self at least. That was a big step in taking a deep breath and starting over.

The next big step was to sort through the past in my own mind long enough to leave it in the past. I am now ready to move forward. I have a two-bedroom house at the intersection of Highway 67 and Highway 53. I have a bed, a kitchen table, utilities and a little food. Plus I even have an old black and white television and a radio.

A friend of mine at church is saving me an orange kitten, so I will soon have a kitty cat.

I have never been the best at living alone, but serving this community helps a lot with that. Although it is not really housekeeping needs, I am looking for a 35 mm camera to do a better job at football games. I need something old-style and durable, like a Pentax 1000 to quote a camera bug term.

On the home front, I am looking for another six-string wide-neck guitar. It would help me pass the time out there, especially until I make a few more new friends and start having house guests. I hope to find some folks who might like to just come over and play a game of chess or cards.

At any rate, it was wonderful this weekend to finally sleep in my own bed again. The weather is perfect for me these days, cool enough to sleep good and yet warm enough not to have to use my heater. My grandfather, John Hans Nelson, as most of you may recall, raised me on a farm in middle Indiana. It was along the highway, just like my present place.

My grandfather and grandmother, and yours truly, used to sit out on the porch and watch the traffic.

It is funny about loved ones. They forgive one another's character defects and grab a hold of just being together and that alone can be so worthwhile.

I talked to my best friend, Michael Reddick, of Paragould, this morning. He has retired from service to his country and been in a wheelchair for more than four years. Yet he says he is inconvenienced, not disabled. He keeps fighting for his survival and to help as many folks as he can. I respect his example.

I look at his life and pray I can accumulate strength like that in my new household and with my new hometown, Gurdon. Because whatever housekeeping needs and wants come up in the future, I now have a place where I feel like I belong again.

By the way, not only do I have a new house, I am going to create a new section for the newspaper called "Poetry Corner." We only have a limited space, but will probably publish two to four poems a week, depending on how long they are. If you have something on your heart, get it to me by Thursday evening and I will do my best to publish it and share it with the rest of our community. Have a great day. I'll keep going on Johns' Journey.