Empower Your Pattern 2 0

We rednecks can be damned determined       Most of my people came from East Texas and Oklahoma in the 1950s for job opportunities in the oilfield.  Why?  Because even though there was an economic boom after world war II oil was where the jobs were.       But in West Texas as we all know who have lived there most of our lives it can be either feast or famine.  There's time when employment opportunities are just not there.      The conventional logic might be to say "well why don't you just move to bigger cities where opportunities are?"      But there is another solution that people are overlooking.  Maybe we as Americans are asking the wrong question.  Why not look for opportunities and Bloom where you're planted?        And 1983 the west Texas area was plunged into a recession with record unemployment.  And while my daddy for brief time became a Long haul truck driver my grandfather my granddad on my mother's side of the family decided to form a b

I have three sets of grandparents. The first one is my real father‘s parents, grandma Hendrick and her deceased MIA husband, Richard M Hendrix, which marriage I know nothing about. There wasn’t much of a family cultured beer. Then there’s the grandparents on my godfather side. My grandpa was a hardline traditional Democrat, who believed that the Democratic Party was the party other people.. he grew up in southeast Oklahoma, where he learned the values of discipline and hard work to almost militaristic detail.. my grandma grew up in an upstate New York community and moved to Oklahoma to go to school with a brother when she met grandpa and they married in 1949 and daddy was born on May 21, 1950 in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.. they had three other children, a daughter, and two other sons.. they moved to Midland Odessa in the mid to late 1950s because of oil. Both believed in strict traditional values, and it felt like often a militaristic style household.. the family see

Daddy Was Great! You might say he was my stepfather! Wait! Don’t you dare call him tht! I was raised to hate the word “step”. Because he and my mother married when I was a weaning toddler I would rather call him Daddy, or in adult terms, my godfather. Because God gave him to me. Worked 35 years in the oilfield, 19 of those with Baker Hughes. Yes at times in their early marriage things between him and Mama were rocky, but I don’t care to think of tht. These were the times when Mama had a backup boyfriend named J who I was terrified of. Daddy may have been stern at times, but from the time I was 3 to the time I was 13, the man was my hero! Those times when I was sick and or in the hospital for testing, he was a rock for Mama and me. He was the Dad who stepped up to the plate and took care of us. Henry Alfred “Hank” Seibold was the hero of the family. I couldn’t see it back then but even when I disagreed with him, I’ve come to realize he was the glue

Come On Mama! One of the few people I could count on growing up was my mother. Betty Jo Seibold was in many ways my rock. When the country was in a recession in the 70’s and early 80’s, I remember Mama gathering us together to pray. “Don’t you worry none, James. God works everything out for the best.” My mother used to say. Sure, back in the 1970’s my mother went wild, but you know when you’re young that does happen. Some people bear the consequences for years. Others repent and correct quickly. I can’t totally judge my mother, because in college and afterwards I did get a little wild myself. I only had one complaint, I felt my mother enabled my brother too much. I stayed strong, but i always hated it when my mother tried to cater to him, and he would still grouse and sulk because he wasn’t getting his way when he wanted it. I guess I always resented that. I always felt my sister and I got the brunt of my sister’s bullying. I guess that’s why in college I

Growing up in West Texas Mama and my godfather “Daddy” took my family to church when occasion permitted. Ours was a Baptist family where Mama kept the Bible read. Daddy worked the oil fields in order to feed our family. I remember when I was 5, Mama took us to church where Grandma.taught Sunday school and she taught us to sing “Jesus Loves The Little Children” 2 years later the pastor taught us kids in vacation Bible school to sing “ Jesus loves me.” in fact, he used to hold me in his lap as we were singing it. I felt a special bond with that pastor.. The next time I was involved in anyway, church wise was the summer when I was nine years old and my mother put me in vacation Bible school at a Baptist Church about a block and a half from our house. I felt. like a fish out of water. I knew who Jesus was, but our family at that point was uncharged and worldly. I’m a go to church with my parents and some of the friends at times when they couldn’t make it a

To say the least, this part of my life story is very painful. it describe described the very turbulent strained, but almost beautiful relationship that I had with my birth father. I was born January 20, 1972 James and Betty Jo Hendrick. Doctors told my parents the following. “ Your son has the characteristics of a mongoloid child and will not live long.” Bring on flavor and eye doctor diagnose me as legally blind. when my mother came home to my father to tell him the news, he bluntly told her that he could not handle it.. For years, at least my first 25 years of life I’ve blamed myself for the dissolution of my parents divorce when I was a baby simply because I honestly believed that my father walked away because he was blind. My maternal grandmother, grandma Sawyer told me the truth that dad suffered from severe mental illness. Some of it, based on some trauma he had, and that was part of the reason behind the divorce which he filed.. The first time I remem