Great read Joanie !!
.......we are up too our hips in good kids around here. I have a coworker who told me a tale the other day about his son that wants to go on the rodeo circuit and be a bull rider etc .......He’s a awesome young man. He made a deal with a local rancher to get up every morning for a calender year and help that rancher feed and water his horses and he could pick a new colt from the lot of em.......
This kid gets up every morning, 7 days a week, at 0430L and works till 8AM when , during the week, he comes home and gets ready for school where he maintains a straight A grades.
This kid is 10 years old and now has a new colt he’s raising.......:o)
I think there is hope for our future as we have a whole lot of polite, intelligent, motivated kids that seem to get very little press for being good and doing the right thing.
We have our troubles as does all towns but when I see the few bad it is washed away, hidden and overcome by the good.
We need to keep throwing our time, money and praise to the local girls and boys in scouting, sports, tutoring and mentoring etc as much as our schedule allows as these kids are just like we were......just looking for a little recognition, respect an praise when they do the right thing for themselves and others.
We have lots of quotes on signs around the Schools and Scouting Huts etc and the one that seems to be popular on T-Shirts is :
Integrity .....doing the right thing even if no one is watching.
Stay Safe Young Lady !
You are so right. It was so uplifting for me to hear about your co-worker’s ten-year-old son. God bless him!
Rick and I know very well a similar young man in our neighborhood. He stops by every few weeks just to chat because he is thirsting for knowledge and (perhaps sometimes to his detriment?) :) he soaks in our ideas and opinions like a sponge.
‘John’ is twenty-one years old, is attending a local campus of Penn State, and is completing his junior year. He is the hardest-working young man I have ever known, as honest as the day is long, and, even in this staunchly conservative area of the country, is something of an aberration.
John’s folks are both what would be called blue-collar workers, work hard, but are not well off financially. Ever since he was twelve years old, John has earned money by purchasing old garden tractors, farm machinery, etc., repairing and refurbishing them, and then selling them for a handsome profit. By doing this, he has earned sufficient money to put himself through his first three years of college. He (and his Dad) also do odd jobs – painting (interior and exterior), small engine repair, moving, lawn work, cutting and splitting firewood, etc.
Yet John is something of a social outcast. Most young women want nothing to do with him, simply because he is somewhat shy, very family-oriented, and does not concern himself with superficialities like wearing expensive name-brand clothing or driving a hot car.
My point in sharing all of this is that young men like John, or your friend’s obviously similarly-oriented son, are not the norm. If and when they marry and start a family, they and their children will find themselves part of an ever-shrinking minority simply because certain other parts of society are not made up of the same hard-working stuff, and yet are procreating at an alarming rate (more often than not without benefit of a two-parent family, and often living off of the government dole).
Add to that the fact that our government’s promises to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into our country amounts to nothing more than lip service and you see before you a portrait of a nation being systematically over-run by succeeding generations that have no knowledge of work ethic, ancestral roots, or those things in life that have genuine and lasting value. A free society cannot long endure when its young citizenry bears no allegiance to our founding principles, is self-oriented, lazy and superficial.
It appears that both you and I are blessed to live in areas of America where the ‘pioneer spirit’ is still alive and well among many of our young people. But I am afraid that isn’t the case across most of America. And our increasingly liberty-loathing, entitlement-oriented, special-interest pandering politicians are simply serving to support and encourage the slackers, while our uninformed, apathetic electorate is serving as the catalyst that consistently enables our suicidal march to oblivion.
Thanks so much for your excellent, insightful contribution here. Hearing about that industrious ten-year-old made my day!
~ joanie
Allegiance and Duty Betrayed