A-salting the senses...

My muse presented me with some of her night thoughts which kept her mind aglow, preventing the onset of merciful sleep before the challenges presented by another day...In thinking her best course of action might lie in taking her latest puzzle with a grain of salt, she began to wonder why that axiom occurred to her, and in thinking she knew its meaning, she asked the Google ogre to confirm it...In its contrariness, the ogre disagreed with what her mind told her the phrase meant, yet she knew the ogre could only parrot what other glottologists claimed was correct...

Diving deep into the well of consciousness to do your thinking means there is less light to guide you on your way...That is why it's so easy to get lost down there...You have to move slower, and use your other senses to define for your mind what you've found...And like the blind men trying to describe an elephant, those sensors can only tell your mind what is available to them of this strange concept in your path...It's up to your mind to put it all together accurately before you can know what to do with it...

Coming across that grain of salt with your daylight senses would also give different meanings...Your eye can see it's tiny and might dismiss it as insignificant, until the wind blew it into your eye, then it would know that its size belied its strength...Your finger might decide the eye was right about its size, but its texture is hard and has some strength, but not enough to prevent it from being crushed...Your ear can hear it being crushed and knows that whatever else it is, it is vulnerable to pressure...Your nose detects a faint odor reminiscent of the ocean, and reports that it's large and wet...Your finger brings it to your tongue where your sense of taste tells you it's good, but it needs more french fries...

I like it that she comes to me when her thoughts hit a roadblock...It gives me some sort of meaningfulness that I seldom get because so few come to me expecting enlightenment...Reaching an age closer to one's terminal end than where life began imbues a person with the desire to pass on whatever knowledge has been gained by the experiences of a lifetime...This is why it becomes increasingly significant during life's journey when another thinker presents the thoughts that defy the attempts to define it...All I can offer is my own concept of meaning based on my own experience, offered with my appreciation for the perceived value of my thoughts...

Whatever it is that your heart is telling you, it is no bigger than any other obstacle you've faced so far...Your experience in overcoming problems up to this point will guide you when it reveals itself...And in the later moments of your own life, you may find another wanderer who asks your guidance...

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Up to date...

Recently a young lady of my acquaintance evoked a recitation of my activities over the last several years...After thinking about my response to her, it occurred to me that it might make an informative article for those few followers who wish a brief summary of Truckman's activities since retirement from business...It began with an explanation of what I commonly refer to as the gun dealer's retirement program, or in more cryptic terms, the precious metals business...

That term is how I've always referred to the hobos and winos who pick up trash in a shopping basket along the roads, and sell them to recyclers for their next meal or bottle or whatever...Now I'm one of them...I walk for exercise, and to lower my blood glucose reading on the advice of my endocrinologist, and the collection of discarded beverage cans I find along the way satisfies the capitalist in me as I sell them to a recycler when I visit my doctors...Sometimes I even get enough to finance the Medicare co-pay...My last divorce was final when I was 61...I was beat up emotionally, mentally and I was physically exhausted, so I said "To Hell with it all," sold my business (for less than it was really worth) and retired...I wasn't broke, but I was far from rich...I paid off all my debts, and since I don't drink, smoke, chew, dip, gamble, abuse drugs or rent hookers, my expenditures are low...Everything I have is paid for, and six months later I took early Social Security (even taking the 25% penalty for doing so), and for 12 years I've managed to live on that...

After becoming self-unemployed, it didn't take long before boredom took root, so using the internet forum where I've posted since 2003, I created Truckman Parody Studios situated on the palatial Truckman Estate and populated by the cast of my videos (all reformed, retired and rehabilitated former Nazis including Mr. Hitler) and a rotating staff of my beautiful and unavailable nieces, plus the members of the forum in the personas of their internet personalities, and guarded by my vicious patrol team of Peke-a-Poos (RIP)...It became a minor hit with them, but was ignored by the rest of the YouTube world who seem to prefer poorly written, grammatically incorrect and profanity laden parodies instead...

From that I moved to my Lefty In The News blog which was a continuation of the parody world which I situated in the Hobby Airport area where an old friend of mine lived with his daughter...I kept it alive until he went increasingly blind, and now he is deceased...I also proofread and edited his books for him since his blindness made that impossible...He led one of the most fascinating lives ever...Most people just thought he was the biggest bullthrower ever, and some (supposedly his friends) called him outright as a liar...I knew all he said true because I had seen the evidence, and it was all indisputable...I, and others, urged him to put it all down on paper before it was too late, and finally, since he was approaching 90 years of age, he let me help him...He assembled all his evidence collected over his lifetime (he never threw away anything), made digital images of everything, put down all the words and showed it to me...I proofread it, corrected spelling and typos and such, rearranged it all to be readable, all of which he approved, then he published it as his memoirs...

All the naysayers got a chance to read the book, examine the evidence and decide for themselves whether it was true or just imaginary...Some of them just shut up completely, but most admitted that he had truly lived a remarkable life...From there I helped with his other books, and got them published...He even wrote one about Lefty under his pen name of Ifar Toften, which was mostly just copied from what was already posted in the forums...Afterwards I started publishing my own books beginning with a reprint (edited and expanded) from Lefty's blog, and including some new material...It's still at the top of the hasn't-sold-a-copy-yet list...But I was undeterred and went ahead and published my other unread masterpieces anyway...

I started with Thoughts & Ideas which was a re-written and expanded version of some of the articles I had posted on my newer blog, which I had started for some of my more serious thoughts which did not fit within the context of Lefty's blog...I did it mainly for the benefit of my Mom, who had told me my entire lifetime that she had always wished for an author in the family...Since she had never, and would never get near the internet or a computer, I did the editing on my already-posted articles and published them for her...Some of those articles included some research I had done concerning her younger brother, my Uncle Vernon...Little was known about his wartime service in WWII because he preferred not to talk about it...And since he had passed away when I was stationed overseas, little could be gained from other relatives, not even my cousin who had made a post-retirement project of genealogical research of that side of my family...

With the help of my Mom I finally located some letters he had written to her from the Pacific during those years...Wartime censorship being what it was, he could tell her little of what he was doing or where, but from the postmarks I could at least know what ship he served as a crewmember...As it turned out, nothing had ever been written of his ship, and very little even of the type of ship, of which fewer than 100 ever existed...Everything I could find amounted to a booklength effort which I titled after the ship, APc-48 (ships of this size were never named, only numbered, the reason for which was explained in the book)...Its publication greatly pleased my Mom whose life's ambition had finally been realized...Following its printing, I came across a small, closed Facebook group dedicated to knowledge of this type of ship, and I also located in the National Archives the official War Diary of APc-48, of which a portion was mysteriously omitted covering about a month just prior to the expected Japanese surrender...Not redacted, but completely missing...Other than that one month, All the time from its commissioning to its postwar decommissioning was covered...My efforts to find this missing month have been fruitless although some clues still exist...

My new information led to a new book titled APc-48 - Journeys, which I published separately...I later combined both books, edited slightly with a little new material, and re-published it under one cover as APc-48 - Combined Edition...Both books went to print before the passing away of my Mom, which pleased both us immensely...Other than some of the members of the aforementioned Facebook group, few copies ever sold, and I've left both of the originals available for sale for those who bought one or the other, but the combined edition is the better bargain for those new readers who have interest...My books are now featured as recommended reading on the definitive source for all aspects of US Navy history, Navsource...My friend, Gary Priolo, who is Project General Manager at Navsource, and I have stayed in contact about any new developments...With this I made the assumption that nothing else would ever be known about my Uncle's ship, or of his wartime service...I should have known better as later I was contacted by another writer, who happened to have a copy of the complete blueprints of the APc series of ships obtained from the Bureau of Ships (BuShips)...He sent me a high quality TIFF copy from which I was able to gain the complete specifications of construction, even including the types of wood and materials used in construction...With that, I started yet another book shortly before the death of my Mom, the knowledge of which pleased her greatly...

Alas, further progress was curtailed by not only the many details and new duties I assumed following her demise, but by other events including my own health issues, two vehicle accidents which also initiated the search for another truck to replace my beloved Dodge, plus a sequence of repairs on my home and other events which caused my book research to lapse into disarray...My intention is still to take up research and publish another book to complete the tale of my Uncle's Navy service, and that of his ship...At this time of writing, I have about 200 pages of it assembled, and a basic outline of chapter headings...It occurs to me that some may wonder why I have never begun a book concerning my own life, and the reason is I am not a vain person, and think such an effort would receive little attention...If at some point, however, a future researcher found the project interesting enough, a thorough reading of my blogs, including my photo blog, plus the mountainous chore of reading the more than 38,000 posts I've accumulated at my most prolific internet discussion board (paying particular attention to a careful reading between the lines of all sources) might find enough to make this laborious task come to fruition...But I suspect no one will ever find the time nor the energy and ambition for such a project...

In the meantime, those of my readership champing at the bit for more Truckman will have to satisfy their odd desires by tuning to this and my other blogs, and to the more frequent forum postings...

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