{"id":310,"date":"2011-12-27T10:03:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-27T17:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/?p=310"},"modified":"2021-01-08T19:32:05","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T03:32:05","slug":"welcome-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/2011\/12\/27\/welcome-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

As folks go back to work for the few days until New Years we begin the come down from the capitalist carnage “high”.<\/p>\n

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This year I baked cookies and tried to give of myself instead of running up the credit cards. I bought few gifts, I made the Christmas card and in general I enjoyed this Christmas as much as any other.<\/div>\n
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I got some nice material gifts but they weren’t excessive. <\/div>\n
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I got the strongest reminder about the importance of giving of yourself when I dropped some cookies and a card off to a gentleman here in town. He was at his shop wrapping packages for his kids and appeared a bit frazzled. We’ve done business a couple of times and he impressed me as a man of honor and decency.<\/div>\n
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This guy was a Rodeo Rider until the past few years. <\/div>\n
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He took a look at the cookies, so obviously homemade and in just a couple of steps was around the counter hugging me. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart”, he said and he meant it. The look on his face was a gift to me. <\/div>\n
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Hell I’d even miscounted on the cookie tins so I was handing him a big ‘ol ziplock of cookies and a card nothing more. It didn’t matter to him, he appreciated the time, and that I’d made time to drop a small token off and wish him a Merry Christmas.<\/div>\n
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It was the look on his face that took me right back to Kentucky and Tennessee. <\/div>\n
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While I’d spent time growing up in those places, I discovered a kind of people who valued your actions more than the material goods. <\/div>\n
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Whether it was me as a scrawny 12 year old responding to a call of help from a complete strangers barn, or 14 year old me telling my best friend that he was joining my family on a sumer vacation to Florida. <\/div>\n
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The “Worth” was in deeds not in trinkets from the store.<\/div>\n
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What a lot of folks seem to have forgotten is that when you give a gift of yourself it’s almost immediately rewarded by the look of appreciation on peoples faces. <\/div>\n
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Jack, here in town reminded me of my roots this Christmas. Unknowingly he took me to a place in my heart and head where I got to appreciate the season again. Jacks gift was among several that I got this season that I’ll treasure. <\/div>\n
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The gifts of time, company, companionship, and friendship as it turns out are worth more to me than  the “Made In China” stuff you can buy in the mall.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As folks go back to work for the few days until New Years we begin the come down from the capitalist carnage “high”. This year I baked cookies and tried to give of myself instead of running up the credit cards. I bought few gifts, I made the Christmas card and in general I enjoyed this Christmas … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Welcome Back”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,13,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-friendship","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7280,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions\/7280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bone-in-the-throat.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}