Up The Creek Without A Paddle
Just a few flaws, well maybe more than a few
by Terry Toole
Someone once said "Time flies when you're having fun." Well, I must be having loads of fun, or time just flies if you stay busy and keep on keeping on.

If there is one thing that my first wife doesn't like about me, it's that I seem to be working most of the time that I'm awake these days.

If you are finished laughing, I'll agree that there are several other things my first wife, as well as my children and friends may not like about me, but they put up with. I have been told that am a workaholic. I must admit that over the years, since birth, I have been taught to work.

Now that in itself has been a job for my folks, especially since I have a lot of Cook blood running through my veins.

I've got some stories that would make Swamp Gravy classics about what and how I was taught to work, but if I can remember them that will be other columns.

I was also taught to enjoy what you work at and to do it well. Most of the time, I have enjoyed what

did. Since I also enjoyed eating, sleeping under a roof and paying my bills,

have enjoyed the jobs I've held and the pay received from them. I really don't believe am a workaholic. That word wasn't in existence until 1971. Up until that time, most of us were taught that if you didn't work, you didn't eat, or in my early days if you didn't do the jobs given to you, you got the devil beat out of you.

Both of my parents are deceased, but either of them would vouch that I am not a workaholic. I have gotten more whippings for slipping off fishing on the creek or going to hunt quail with one of our many good bird dogs instead of what I was assigned to do.

When I was a little older, I was the one who slipped into the store and got me and my dad some lures to float the creek while Ma, a former Cook, was in the store working.

I guess if I ever knew a workaholic, it might have been my grandma, Zula Brown Cook Toole. She was working all the time and expected everyone around her to be working just as hard.

I guess my first wife has come to the conclusion that I am a workaholic since I put in around 70 or 80 hours a week trying to get this newspaper out. I certainly don't love money, or I've been a miserable failure if that is the way you judge success.

It's not that I love to work that much. I inherited /bought into this job a little late in life. I was born into it, but never was responsible for doing it, until 1976. I literally went from the linotype to the computer in a short time with several learning spans in between. I find that it takes me longer to do things than it used to.

I may act more like a workaholic than I used to. When I was first married, I worked for others in retail business, the theatre and the railroad. That was when we lived in Atlanta. The only thing I enjoyed there was being with my new bride and making a few good friends who loved to fish and hunt as much as I did. We had to drive to Jackson to hunt and to Stone Mountain to fish. I then came home to work in Ma's store. She paid me $35.00 per week. She worked me as hard as she could, but I still took off with my new family and fished and hunted as much as possible.

As time went on, I got other jobs like mail carrying, being in politics as chairman of the commissioners and Ordinary (now probate judge) paying $600 per month for both jobs. I bought the Western Auto from Ma and later the Miller County Liberal from Uncle Bert.

I was taught to do my best, which many times was not too good, but keep trying.

Now I'm a workaholic because I won't retire. enjoy working as much as I enjoy being with my family and doing the things like fishing and hunting and being with our many friends. I intend to work as long as I'm able. I would hope until the day they haul me out of here. I'm too old to learn a new job, but had rather be a Walmart greeter than sit at home or in a nursing home and do nothing.

I love people even more than I love to work. I enjoy greeting the thousands of visitors who come to Colquitt each year.

I just hope the Good Lord lets me stay around folks and work until He calls me home with Him. Even there, I hope He has a few jobs I might do for Him.