Eccles' Stories

                        In the beginning all is right in the world.  Well now, let me correct myself for there has never been a time in history (since the fall of man) when all was perfect with the world.  For even  when all seems, perfect there is still pain and diseases.  So, all is not always right in the world.  It never  has been, and it never will be!                       We may say things are all okay in the world of an infant, yet they cry to tell us things are not okay.  They cry to say they are wet, or messy, or hungry, or in pain.  So, in the beginning the infant  would tell us things are definitely not alright with the world.  Yet with all its imperfections the world still turns on its axes. and will until the end of time.                        Today we have computers, and in the beginning computers looked harmless.  As time  passed by more things were added to the computer to make them more harmful.  We had to put safe  guards up to stop viruses and other mighty villans

                              I first heard reports made in church of an oncoming snowstorm that could cancel  church Christmas morning.  The music minister did not put much faith into what the meteorologist  had to say so he just pushed that announcement to the side.  The elder made sure that the  announcement was made though.  I was sitting in the congregation in a state of shock for this is the  first, I'd ever heard of it.                             So, once I got home, I started to listen to reports about it on the internet from other  states.  I had heard from the elder that his youngest son worked for the Department of Transportation (DOT), and they were already preparing to treat the roads.  The elder went on to say that his grandson who worked for a shipping company had pulled freight lines off the road, while they were awaiting the coming snowstorm.  So, I was frightened and started watching the radar as I recalled the blizzard of  1978.                            I made

                       As old as Thunder was he still did not quite understand what all the hoopla was about  December the 25th, after all it was just another day to him.   So, he thought that if anyone could  explain what was so special about December the 25th it would be the Wise Ole Owl (aka W.O. Owl). Thunder went to go visit W.O. Owl in his little red corvette.  He drove his little red corvette to the  woods at Oak Crossing.                   Thunder arrived there in the woods and got out of his car to see W.O. Owl.  He went to the  Owl's apartment and said, "Wise Ole Owl, I know you may not know everything, but I thought maybe  you as being one of the most intelligent of all the animals could tell me about the festival on the 25th of  December.   I mean I know humans have to have festivals to mark the times and seasons of the year as  it has been since the beginning of time, but as for the 25th of December they do odd things.                   "My roommate Jimmy eve

               It was cold and grey out with no promise of snow in the forecast for several days.  That made little difference to Joe though for as long as he had Jo Anne all would be right with the world.  For Joe  was eighteen, and Jo Anne was sixteen.  Between the two of them they felt they knew all of the  answers that there was to know, and if they did not know it probably was not worth knowing.  Anyway  that is how they seemed to behave to the world.              Jo Anne went to school to get an education but did not take her education to serious.  Where  as Joe went to the Other University located in Some Other Place Else to get a degree in fiction.  So,  both Joe and Jo Anne had their lives all laid out ahead of them.  Their lives would be in a world of  fictitious fantasy.              When people accused them of living in a world of fantasy the two of them would just blow  them off.  After all Joe's major was in fiction so his philosophy was in a world where unicorns and 

                        Back in August 2005 hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana.  It left the area in a trash heap with people crying out for help.  None was prepared for such a devastation of this magnitude.  None were  allowed to go down to help them until October 2005.   For that is when Central Church of Christ from  Kokomo, Indiana, sent out five men to help restore the area of New Orleans.  The time spent there is  what this story is about.                       Living in Kokomo, Indiana, the five men were Dean, Dick, Lynn, myself, and one other  young man who had heard the cry from the souls in New Orleans to come help repair their land.  We  took the trip in the church bus, and later drove moving vans.  The states we went through to reach  Louisiana was Indiana, Illinois, Arkansas, Mississippi (where we stopped to eat), and then to Louisiana. Our final stop was at Mandevlin, Louisiana, where we slept and took showers in a M*A*S*H* tent.                     The folks at Tamney Oakes