Tuesday, March 4, 2008

A big influence in my life



My cousin "Jim The Mountain Man" encouraged me to do a post about people that have influenced us all the most. I have always wondered what made some people think so differently from me. I often suspected that it was the way they were raised, or the people that influenced them in their younger years.
The biggest influence in anyone’s life is usually a persons parents. That was also true in my case. I was raised with a coddling, over protective mother that would have surely smothered me to death, if it hadn’t been for my “man’s man, devil may care Dad”, who did not smoother me, but gave my adventurous soul wings.
My earliest recollections of being out with my dad was when we would go fishing. He would fish and I would play on the shore and stack rocks, bang things and generally do things that you shouldn’t do while fishing. I remember that he would let me eat the fish eggs that he used for bait, and every now and then I would get a sip of his whiskey that he sipped to stay warm. It was great sport for me because I knew that I was getting away with things that my Mother would never allow.
Working in the garden with my mother, I would watch the birds swoop down and eat the worms that were exposed by the spading. Being the curious, adventurous, free spirit that I was. I picked up and ate a few worms. That was until my mother caught me. You would have thought that I had eaten dirt or something, I had already tried that and it didn’t taste good at all. I had trouble understanding why I got in so much trouble for tasting a few worms. Who knows, it could have been a new gourmet delight. I’m sure that my dad wouldn’t have had any problem at all with me tasting a few worms, he would probably asked me how I liked them.
That’s when I first started noticing that people were different.

17 comments:

Robin Shelley said...

That's a beautiful bird, Ernie!

Ernie Branscomb said...

Is that what influenced you the most?

Robin Shelley said...

That's an interesting question, Ernie. Heh, heh! I suppose I have been influenced quite a lot by that bird... or, at least, its name. I'll have to think about this. Hmmmmm.
I was mainly checking in to see if Jim the Mountain Man had logged anything yet...

Carol said...

Eew! Ernie ate worms. You are in good company. I ate dirt while making mud pies, as a kid. One time, I accidentally ate aphids on homegrown kale. It didn't hurt.

Kym said...

At different times, different people influenced me a lot. My kindergarten year, we had a bus driver on the crummy who was a preacher and he kept us happy by teaching us sunday school songs.

I still love "He holds the whole world in his hands" because of that guy. Today they'd hang him for mixing religion into the kids' bus ride. But it didn't hurt me, I'm an agnostic.

Ernie Branscomb said...

Religion has been a major influence in my life. Like Kym, I’m agnostic. I’m not agnostic by choice, I’m agnostic because I started at a very young age wondering about God, and how The God thing could work. It just can’t work for me. I’ve been accused of being pretty naive to believe that ALL this just happened, but it would seem to be just as naïve to believe that God Just happened. (This is where you don’t need to tell me God always was, always is, and always will be. And if you chant it in unison, it gets pretty spooky)

I still believe in the giving of Christmas, the family aspects of Easter, the great food, family and friends of Thanksgiving. I don’t believe in denying people their God, or religion, unless it starts stepping on my toes, or flying planes into my towers.

I believe in treating people good, as I expect to be treated. Conversely, I’ve seen many hurtful things come out of organized religion. Some things in my own family have happened that I felt were very hurtful to other people. All done in the name of religious belief.

But to deny the good things that I’ve learned, because of my religious background, would be unfair, and go against what I believe in, and that is treating people good, and fairly. Even if I can’t believe.

Kym said...

Ernie, stop saying things better than me!

And yep, 'where did God come from' always seemed to leave me right back where I started, too!

Carol said...

I heard a Ziggy Marley song yesterday. I think the title was "My religion is Love". That is my church, too.

Anonymous said...

Hay Earnie --you are rite as usual --
people are differant and a bird will eat a worm, and also a ogre will eat a child LOL but yuo say that yr a agnostic? why hesstate you need to jump rite in --why not just skip agnosticism and
jump to right to being a atheist cuz i know an u know too --damn well that thire aint no Godd...
ok maybe thire is but its all
symbolic and Suzy dont
believe in that kinda HIm but I DO bileive in jezus--

cuz i met Him once in front of Rays in Gville...

jezus is semi-retired now and he
wasnt realy a crapenter like peeps
thing he was -- actually
he was a fireman... witch is to say, a mediator tween heaven and hell. Between your house on fire and it being put out...

thats a metafor phor buying a radio
at radioshack and tuning into kmud

--its the same metafour as turning
H2O into cannabis --like was done in the holy book ...which btw was \
originaly writen on hemp paper,
in Jameaca and then importaed to here and the message -- the soul of it --witch is Love yr naighbor
was later disguised as music so that certain partys cuold go forth onthe river and party as we all dearly remember or sometheing -- i cant remember LOL but than i cant
remembre much --like where i put tht 20$ that Billy gave me this morning to get him some chickenshit... uh, whare was i?

Oh yeah-- but jezus is real and he said -take this wine --my spirit
thats a metafor phor becoming
once agoain like a litttle child
(wiskey works too speshly when yr
fishing cuz jezus is a cymbal for
the fish or vice versa) ---always
yuo gotta remember vice and versa
whan speeking of such things as these--
rite?

ok so than but what i mean and my
pooint is that peeps mite-as-well just forget about loving God --dont waste yr time --insstead love jezus --which like I
said way up there--is a metphor for a fireman,
and also for yr naighbor and if you get
the munchys then its time for some communion
wafer which yuo can get in the mail from England
which is a metpfor for anglers land...

so thats all yuo need to know --
jezus is the fish and the bait is
uh, is yr master if yuo take it--
thats why some churches will tell yuo not to masterbait LOL
what the original meaning was is
that yuo shouldnt take the bait cuz
you (jezus) is the kinda fireman that dont need a worm with a hook in it --which is whaat religon is...

huggles,
S

Anonymous said...

Yes Robin, I do have something to add here but it will have to wait till I have more time. I was not influenced with a typewriter and still type with one finger. I need more time so, maybe Saturday.

Jim

Ernie Branscomb said...

Dang, I thought I posted this and it wasn't there. It's a good thing I use the word processor, it was still on that.

Jim I'll stay on this same subject a long time. I'm going through everybody’s life crisis’s, one by one. So you’ll have time.

That is if I can get off the floor from laughing WITH Suzie Blah Blah. She must know that I’m a Fireman, but I’ll bet she didn’t know that I’m also a CRAPenter. She seems to have the religion thing all figured out. At least she has it figured out a whole bunch more than most.

Robin Shelley said...

I'm wonderin'... do you know who Suzy Blah Blah is? Just askin'.

Anonymous said...

Ernie... You must have developed a heck of an immune system.
Hiking with a friend the other day, he surprised me by stopping to eat the bud off a poison oak shoot. Said he does it every year and is pretty much immune as a result. I didn't try it as I'm already fairly immune and why mess with it? I always felt that eating dirt as a kid was what has kept me healthy. Had another friend who would eat the grasshoppers in his garden. He popped the heads off first. Said the heads weren't edible. I've only had them fried. Crunchy.

Robin Shelley said...

Saturday's come & gone & I don't see any "influential posts" from Jimmy here...

Anonymous said...

At the time I suggested Ernie write a blog on people that influenced them most,I was writing to this blog and a light went on in my head which is unusual for me. I'm better at just keeping my thoughts to myself as I don't seem to verbalize or speak what or how I feel. So, now I find myself under pressure here.
Ernie was not only my best friend as a kid but taught me how to build and fly model airplanes. Then the really interesting things like how two and four stroke motors work. And why a McCoy airplane engine would still run after disconnecting the battery, and why the different pitches of propellers were important. I learned about centrifugal force and escape velocities. I could go on and on here but you get the idea. He did all this with much patience and would make sure I understood.
That's saying a lot for someone that that is older than some 11 year old kid. I never understood how he knew these things. I figure he was just born already knowing that stuff and maybe a little inside information from his dad.
I do want to make a point here about escape velocities, it wasn't how fast you could run after being caught in that big beautiful cherry tree behind the Richfield station.
There are some things I had to learn on my own, like girls don't have to be cheerlears to be high maintenance or fickle.

Jim

Anonymous said...

Yikes! I just read this LAST comment to this post. "Verbalize or speak". That is not what I meant but I am a big fan of redundancies, like "dumb weatherman". I have lots more but can't be verbalized or spoken here.

Jim

Robin Shelley said...

Oh, for Pete's sake! Next thing you know, you'll be hitting on Suzy Blah Blah...
we knew what you meant!
Ha! Ha!
Good post, Jim 10:24. Very touching. Now tell us about the cherry tree...