Share one of the best gifts you’ve ever received.

I’ll never forget the notecard left on my doorstep along with a bouquet of a dozen red roses. It shocked me as a young 21-year-old. My first bouquet and words of wisdom written from a sailor that had just graduated from bootcamp. I’ve saved the notecard all these years.

I was driving my Volkswagen along a scenic drive when I spotted a young man hitchhiking. Not prone to picking up hitchhikers, something told me to pull over. He was hitching back home to Mount Whitney, the highest mountain in the contiguous United States and the Sierra Nevada, after graduating from bootcamp. He was carrying a large cylinder knapsack and couldn’t have been older than eighteen.

But he wanted to be dropped off at a local bowling alley before getting back on the freeway for which I obliged. Later that evening out of the blue, he called my apartment and asked if he could spend the night before leaving the next morning. Throwing caution to the wind, I went to retrieve him, and he slept on my couch. Next morning, he was gone and when I opened the front door there set the flowers with a notecard attached reading, “It pays to be nice.” Rick.

I wondered, and still do, how he got those flowers to my doorstep without a car. Did he have them delivered? No idea. I also wondered how he got my phone number to call me. He must have been very self-sufficient. I also wondered why I let a mere stranger spend the night in my apartment. I must have been very trusting; albeit it was a time before Ted Bundy’s reign of terror. It was a time of innocence.

These small words of wisdom together with my mother’s old adages like “nothing ventured, nothing gained” (which has landed me many jobs over the years) and the Golden Rule have been the best gifts that have helped me through life.

To this day whenever I drive along scenic Highway 395 passing Mount Whitney, I think of that young sailor boy and wonder how he turned out. I also thank him for his wise-beyond-years gift of advice. I’ve tried to instill his words in the raising of my own sons and think I made an impression.

What were your parents doing at your age?

This prompt made me feel like I am living on borrowed time. They both passed away way too young. They never saw their grandkids graduate from high school, college, and marry. They never met their great grandchildren. This was hard on my sons as most kids their age had grandparents at their baseball, basketball, soccer, and football games. I always wonder how it affected them in the long run never knowing their grandparents.

My grandmother lived to the ripe age of 99, leaving behind 22 grandchildren and many greats. That’s remarkable and hardly ever achieved these days. I miss my parents every day and wish they were able to live a longer life. I remember the last words my father said to me on the phone while he was in the hospital with a failing heart. He said, “I’m shot” meaning that he wasn’t going to recover this time. He went into a comma after that day, and I never saw him again.

My mother died at the same age as him four years later from cancer. It was a humiliating disease for a woman who was very modest and proper. Anyway, they would be surprised at where our country has gone. They were never really political but pretty conservative. I can remember my mother voting for Bill Clinton because she thought he was handsome. She didn’t really follow politics and there wasn’t news 24/7 back then. 60 Minutes was their go to. That was her last vote for a president. They both missed the PC, cellphone, and internet. They missed our attack on 9-11 and would not understand BLM, Antifa, and the crime we have in our streets today.

They wouldn’t even recognize the world we are living in now, especially the public school system. But I miss them both and hope their spirit is living on. They were taken too soon.

That’s what my parents were doing at my age. Being terribly missed.

If you had the power to change one law, what would it be and why?

I have noticed the downturn of America since many states have legalized marijuana (pot) and opened up stores selling it freely. We have more homeless, crime, and civil unrest since they legalized it. We have lazy youth that don’t want to work for a living but would rather live off the government or their parents. We have adults behaving in immature ways and allowing their children to smoke marijuana. We have celebrities in reality shows eating marijuana treats which sets a bad example for our youth.

One worst case scenario is a loving couple who actually purchase pot for their unemployed thirty-six-year-old son who lives in a condo they bought for him while he sits around all day playing video games. He refuses to look for a job while his retired parents are supporting him, and they must smoke the dope too. He dropped out of college and has never held down a job. It is pitiful. And the icing on the cake is that he calls his parents delusional and out of touch, i.e. he’s ungrateful but truthful.

But he is just a symbol of how our youth feel about America. They have no respect for the American flag, our statues, our constitution, traditional family, our history books, our laws, the police, our gender, or the government that they live off of. They hate Capitalism as that means people are making a living. They love Socialism.

The town where I raised my children around fifteen years ago is becoming unrecognizable due to homeless tent encampments and 150 trailers parked along a wetlands reserve containing homeless folks probably smoking pot and littering a once beautiful bird migration area. The city enables homelessness by bringing them port-a-potties and dumpsters. What’s next running water for showers and daily meal deliveries?

Half our elected leaders must be smoking this stuff as they have no idea how the economy works or foreign diplomacy. Look at our southern border; look at our skies. We have millions of illegals, and now UFO’s, crossing over our borders carrying Fentanyl which will be sold to our high school children. This drug problem is out of control and started with legalizing marijuana. We gave them an inch and…well… What ever happened to “Say ‘No’ to Drugs”?

I don’t think we know the long-term effects of smoking pot on our health. Does it cause lung cancer like cigarettes? Does it cause brain cancer? It is smoke after all. I don’t think the FDA has done any studies on weed as far as long-term effects on our health. If they had, I’d like to see it. I doubt that it would be healthy for anyone. If you are inhaling a foreign substance into your brain and organs daily, how can it not affect your health deleteriously? Sure, it is a plant but not all plant life is eatable either. And what chemicals are dealers adding to the pot? Is that business even regulated like they regulate auto and factory emissions? I doubt it.

The result is high school students’ math and reading scores are dropping. They are probably smoking the weed. When we used to sneak a sip of our parents’ wine, they are stealing their weed. Weed is the gateway to stronger drugs and the failure of America’s youth. We need to outlaw the weed nationally again. Stop the pot. It was a trial program that failed, yet more and more liberal states are legalizing it under the false premise that it helps to boost their economy and reduces arrests. Bull. I blame our liberal governors. They wouldn’t know how to run a state if their life depended on it. Look at Governor Newsom. It may soon if their state is looking like the Summer of Love.

If I had the power to change one law, it would be making marijuana illegal again.