12-18-08

Hard times and Robert Earl Keen; nothing else needed for Christmas this year

Around this time of year I find myself STRESSED.
I work a little extra to make money for Christmas and then finding myself with no time to go shopping for gifts because I have spent all my time working to make money to go shopping. Phew!
Since I moved my family down here, it has been a struggle. We sold our house in Maryland so that we could stake our claim and be close to family.
From the start it was tough. I couldn’t afford to pay someone to build my house and we didn’t have a house to go back to. It was being lived in by a young woman and her new white Corvette.
We did get help from family who put us up and put up with us for a year and a half while Jim T. Norris and I built my house and shop. Bless that man’s heart for helping me.
Yes, I said shop. I closed a lucrative motorcycle painting business in Maryland to move it down here.
Well, we completed the construction, my family and I moved in and the house hasn’t fallen down... yet. All of the hard times have been forgotten and the real tough spots are being laughed about these days. I was probably crying about them during that time, but everything is good now.
We have been in the house for three years now. The walls are still white, no trim and one bathroom still needs some tile work.
By the end of the first year living in the house, my son had grown into a four-year-old going on 20 the economy tanked, I had to close my shop and my wife and I had another child.
When I had to close the doors on my shop, I was fortunate enough to get this job with the Times and my wife found a teaching job. Did I mention that she was going to school full time to finish her teaching degree while we were building?
We begged, borrowed and wiped out all we had saved and depleted my 401k to be able to move into our house. There was also a lot of sweat and a nail shot into someone’s kneecap from a nail gun, but that’s another story.
To this day, I wouldn’t change a thing. Talk about things making you stronger; I’m the Hulk at the early age of 36.
Now, to the point of my story. (Better late than never.)
I was listening to a Robert Earl Keen album the other night and yes, I remember LPs. It was a song about a man that was working his life away to send all of his money back to his poor family and this was the only way they could live.
Listening to the song, I quickly realized how good I have it. I have a ton of things to complain about but my family and I have a roof over our head, my wife and I have jobs and my kids have no idea that we are stretching every single dollar to make sure that they have no idea that times are tough.
I watched them playing with toys that have been handed down from my sister’s son. They were having so much fun with each other, not knowing that things could be better and not caring that they weren’t.
At that moment, I realized that I didn’t need a single thing for Christmas. I already have it.
Bryan Pinkey can be found setting up smoke and mirrors for his kids or at bpinkey@nccox.com.