I have finally finished my 42nd or 43rd edition of our annual newsletter, Summer Scene. I don't have exact dates on anything here since all of our original records and most of our original cottages burned up in April of 1974. As our CPA firm stated the only good thing that came out of that fire is that all of my Mom's book keeping records burned up. Anytime Mom or Dad wanted to "appropriate" a little spending money from the company, she thought that she had cleverly hidden her tracks, but such was not really the case. After the 1974 fire, we put in a real book keeping system. We have no records that date back to our beginning year of 1957.
Sadly, we have very few early photos or memorabilia at all of the years from 1957-1974 because we were in the process of building Mom and Dad's house at that time. They were living in our home on Lake Seminole during this period of time, and had most of our family photos, early hunting scenes, and all of the family jewelry and silver stored in the old main lodge that burned during the wee hours of the morning along with eight bedrooms, our office, Mom's car, two golf cars, and a riding lawnmower. I do plainly remember that we had $25,000 worth of insurance on a property loss that exceeded well over a half-million dollars.
I made it my business to learn more about insurance after that, but I forgot to learn about having flood insurance until the great flood of 1994 almost swept us away. That loss was well over two million dollars, and would only pay off if one had flood insurance. I had tons of other insurance in force, but NO flood insurance. I've had it ever since then. That's why I have always believed that experience is the best teacher IF she doesn't kill you or break you first.
I want to close this short history lesson with a couple of observations that struck my funny bone recently. I have a fresh summer cold. That's all in the world it is, but I sure feel badly. I got tickled last night as I recalled the saying of an old mentor of mine when I was a kid. He said, " Son, a toothache in MY mouth is worse than a famine in China as far as I'm concerned". I now know what he meant.
And lastly, I have kept up with the water crisis in Flint, Michigan because every time the subject of the Flint River comes up on the national news, I just can't help but perk my ears up since that is also the name of the river flowing below my house and all of theses cottages. It just struck my funny bone to think about the fact that years ago, GM made cars in Flint Michigan, and you could not drink the water in Mexico. Here we are today and GM is making cars in Mexico while you can't drink the water in Flint, Michigan !
Rise up America, and let's take our country back from career politicians and bureaucrats before it's too late! The native Americans took care of this national treasure. Come to think of it, they did a lot of things right. The men hunted, made war, love, and smoked the peace pipe while the women cooked, sewed, and looked after the kids. Then along came us white folks and screwed up a pretty darn good system in my opinion. That's an opinion that I will pay for when my bride of 46 years reads this blog later today.
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