As I look back on my life I can see definite instances where someone’s love for me made a big difference in why I am where I am today. Some may say it's not that much, but for a coal miner’s son that had little or nothing most of his life it's more than I could have dreamed of when I was growing up and even into my thirties. It didn't come easy, but nothing does.

From little stones of love to step on when I was a child, to the Rock that I stand on now. Each and every one of them had a special place to fill. Some of the stones that I stepped on were slippery and I found myself either starting to fall or go under from relying on the stone to do all the work of supporting me and my not giving in return any help to keep the stone in good condition.

Other times I would work feverishly to support the stone only to find the stone would crumble to my touch, not wanting to support me at all. At these times I found myself looking for anything near by that would aid in my not sinking out of sight.

You may find yourself knowing how I felt during a certain time in my life, for you may have had some of the same experiences I've had as you've stepped from stone to stone in your life. Let's see how many roads we've walked together.

As a lad I grew up in a small coal mining town in Colorado. The depression was a few years off and we didn't live that bad. The coal mines only operated during the winter months therefore my dad would be out of work during the summer months. He had been raised on a farm and he would find work for a dollar a day at some of the surrounding farms. If you have ever been a hired hand on a farm you know it's a hard way to make a living.

The first two stepping stones of love that I stood on when I was small was my mother and father. I put my feet on them and they showed me true love. My mother’s love was a tender caring love, and so it was also with my father.

A coal miner has to carry his lunch with him because when it's time to eat he can't come up out of the deep hole he is working in to eat. So coal miners in those days carried a round lunch pail. It had three sections. The first was small and the dessert would be placed in there. The second would have the sandwiches and whatever went along with them. The third was the larger bottom part and this contained water.

My mother and dad had worked it out so that my mother would put something extra in his lunch pail that he would not eat that day. Now that extra food probably looked very appetizing at times, late in the afternoon, but my dad wouldn't eat it. When he came home from work as soon as he drove up in the yard and opened the garage doors to put the car in, I would run out to see what he had brought me as a surprise that day. This didn't happen every now and then, it happened every time he came home from work. Something I will never forget.

I was the only child for the first eight years of my life. Then my first sister came, and I soon found that the surprise that had been for me, now went to my sister. It took a while to get over this new situation, as the rock that was my dad got a little slippery. He seemed to show his love more for my sister which caused me to wonder about his love for me. Another sister came our way and it seemed to get slipperier.

But two new stones had been placed in my path. The love my two sisters had for me was beyond my furthest dreams. No matter what I did to them, they were always there giving me back their love. These two stones still remain a strong support in my life today.

Now that I look back on my life it seems I have been going to, and enjoying, a school of some kind most of my life. But my first encounter with school was altogether a different story.

Growing up in a small town helped, but still I only had a few close friends that I played with, and only one of them was the same age that I was. The first day of school found me very scared. I was extremely shy. They had two sections of classes for all the grades, one through six, at our grade school. I went into the A section of the first grade the first part of the morning, but before recess they had put me in the B section, which was across the hall in another classroom. This scared me even more.

When recess came that morning for all of us to go out and play, I was ready. It was fun playing out on the school grounds, but it soon ended and we had to line up and go back into school. We had to be quiet before they would open the door and let us in. I got at the end of the line which stretched into the alley. When they started in, I started down the alley toward home.

We lived three blocks from school, and I knew my way home from there. When I got home my mother wondered why I was home and I told her that I wasn't feeling well and they sent me home. This worked for a while.

There was a knock on the door about an hour later, and it was the principal from the school. He had come to check and see if I was home and if there was some trouble. They talked for a while and he left. I was hiding on the back porch when my mother came looking for me. Instead of getting a whipping she smiled at me and told me I didn't have to go to school that day, but the next day I would. In fact she would take me. School soon became the place where lifetime friends were made. My mother had known the fears I had, and loved me in spite of them. My mother is almost eighty and you know something. She still loves me in spite of them.

Being brought up in a small town can have its advantages and disadvantages. There was no movie house in town; the nearest one was five miles away. So as I got older I found myself doing a lot of walking. Usually I'd get a ride over to the next town to see the movie and then have to walk back.

There was no swimming pool in town either. But there was one ditch and one creek. The creek was too shallow to swim in, but the ditch was just right for us small fry. Skinny dipping they call it now; birthday suit we called it. The best place was outside of town about a mile. It was a large irrigation ditch where a falls had been created with a large steel pipe that had been cut in half. We had about a ten foot jump from the banks and about five from the steel pipe. Fun? Why we had more fun than any city kids ever thought of having.

The only problem we could see was that it was out of town. We'd walk out there and be hot and ready to go swimming when we got there. Then we would have to walk back home. By the time we got back home we were ready to go again. Many a time I would walk back out to the falls and go in again, only to find myself hot and dry when I got back home.

A couple of small stepping stones came later in grade school for me when I got myself a girl friend. Usually the girls lived at one of the mines and not in town. There was no way I could go see them even if I had wanted to. I'd walk five miles to see a show, but not a couple of miles to see a girl.

My boyhood chums were very dear to me. We did everything together. From playing cowboys and Indians, to hunting arrow heads down near the creek where Indians used to camp. We made our own rubber guns from an apple case end, and large rubber bands cut from inner tubes with knots tied in them. These adventures drew us closer together than brothers.

I was one that wouldn't take a dare. If someone dared me, I would usually do it. Not always but usually. My dad paid for more broken windows and town street light bulbs than any other dad in town. In fact he threw my BB gun down the outhouse when he found out I used it to break street lights. I always wondered what had happened to it, till my mother told me a few years ago.