Let me introduce ME!

 

GBE-R.7 Introduce yourself

 

Wow! What genius mind thought up this great topic? Oh yeah. ME!

In real life, I don’t usually talk about myself. I’m normally very quiet. I can add to a conversation, but I’m not a conversation maker.

When writing a blog? I can pontificate for immensely indeterminate amounts of time. And this blog is going to be all about ME Me me! I don’t know where I will go with this, but I am sure it is going to be long. You may want to make arrangements for your next couple of meals to be brought to you.

As of this writing, I am a 69 year old AWM (Average White Male). I can tell you that 69 was much more exciting when I was 25.

This is me last November hanging out with Billie Eilish at the Wax museum in Gatlingburg, Tennessee.

 

 I got married within six months of graduating High School. That was 1971. For some reason, she still puts up with me. We have two adult sons, who gave us three grandsons. They are 7, 3 and almost two. The oldest one can go to a playground, and within five minutes, he’ll have a new friend. The three year old knows all the Star War movie characters, knows the names of dinosaurs I never heard of and says things like “There ‘ya go.” and recently “What the hell?” No idea where he got that. No. It wasn’t me. The youngest one giggles and barfs. A lot. Usually on me.

On the rare occasions when I hear someone describe me, they always say “He’s so…nice”. Yes. It’s a curse. They never say “He’s sexy, handsome and smart”. My older brother got those traits. I got curiosity. It has led me to having quite a few talents and skills. More on those in a moment.

The other thing people usually say is “He’s BIG!” My name almost always comes up after the phrase “We have some heavy objects to move”. I’m 6’-2” tall and have weighed over 300 pounds. I currently weigh about 260. I weighed 220 in high school. People say I “carry my weight well”. Since I am about twice the size of a normal person, I’m pretty sure this is a safe and polite way of saying “Hey, fat boy.” Being this big is probably one of the reason I can afford to be so nice. Not too many people want to piss off a 300 pound gorilla.

Most of my life I worked in the field of making custom trade show exhibits. When I stumbled into this job, I had never heard of a trade show exhibit. If you don’t know what it is, google it. There are lots of images on the subject. It was a fast paced line of work that satisfied my curiosity and my need to create.

I became a carpenter, painter, electrician and plumber. I would also build the crates to ship them in, and then help load them on a truck. Quite often, I would drive the truck, unload it, then set the exhibits up. When the show was over, I would tear them down and bring them back. I visited a lot of convention cities: New York, Dallas, Chicago, Orlando, Seattle, Las Vegas, and Anaheim to name a few.

For a while, I would even build scale models of the exhibits as a sales tool.

I saw most jobs as a challenge to my capabilities. I would take on just about any task just to see if I could do it. I wasn’t as fast or as good as some of the other workers, but I was one of the few that could do it all. No brag. Just facts. (Guns of Will Sonnett TV show reference. Yes. It’s an ancient reference. I’m old! When I was younger, I had Stegosauruses for friends. They’re all dead now)

Later in life, I would do something my younger self would never thought possible; I started my own business building similar type constructions, usually custom commercial cabinetry and vending machine surrounds. (You may want to google that one too. It’s a fairly niche market. Or check out L Brooks Enterprises on Facebook) I did this for almost 30 years. I was an army of one. On more than one install, I would have people ask “Where is the rest of the crew?” They were usually surprised to find out I was the whole team.

My curiosities led me to other hobbies: Drawing, Oil and Acrylic painting, scale model railroading, which led to photography. I am an avid Halloween nut. I have built an operational Guillotine, an electric chair, and a haunted house false front which is used as the entry way into a haunted maze at some fairly serious Halloween parties. Somewhere in my garage is an eight foot wide spider.

I am currently in the process of renovating a house we have been renting for the last 10 years. I am constantly amazed at how renters can trash a house.

The renovation is keeping me from my other love: Traveling. My little RV is waiting for me to fire it up and take off. Soon little RV. Soon.

Well, that’s actually the short version of getting to know me. When I first started blogging on Myspace there was a section called “About me” where you were supposed to write a short blurb telling a little about yourself. That turned into about 80 pages. A lot of it wound up as separate blogs.

So now I am looking forward to learning more about my fellow GBE writers.

If you made it this far, leave a comment. If I can figure out how, I will probably subscribe to your blog, or add you as a Facebook friend.

I’m nice like that.