Life is Good, Just Spit the Pit

During the Second World War I could not get out of school fast enough to begin to work and earn money and embarked on a very checkered career in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, involving a sign shop, ice delivery and twenty-seven years managing a beer store. I bought and ran a 100-acre farm with a cow-calf beef operation, started a seafood takeout restaurant at the same time, driving fifty miles each way daily for five years, from beer store to restaurant to farm and return. It was in the middle of this whirlwind activity that, through my daughter's prayers, God apprehended me and restored me to some semblance of sanity. My life took a 180-degree turn and, with my usual exuberance, brought me into full-time church and Christian television activity, culminating ultimately in my wife and me relocating from Ontario to British Columbia in order to reconnect with our children, who were by this time living there. This wonderful new chapter in our lives continued until the death of my beloved wife Margaret at eighty years of age and saw a totally unexpected birthing of poetry in me. This phenomenon has flowed unabated up to this day and, by God's grace, will continue to the end of my life. My poetry is quite varied and reflects, I suppose, all my life experiences, so please stay tuned; more should follow. Born in Toronto, Canada, in 1926, Depression years, I had stints in the R.C.A.F., Great Lakes Shipping, Canadian army. Finally, I spent twenty-seven years as a beer store manager. At fifty, I had a very intense spiritual experience and went to missionary school, Y.W.A.M., Hawaii. I became a Christian counsellor, was fifty-four years wed, then widowed. Finally, an unexpected explosion of poetry resulted in this collection.