45 years ago

 July 11, 2021 – Sunday

On a Sunday afternoon 45 years ago today I packed my suitcase with my best clothes, which was not much, and when I got to the intersection Whitesand Road & HWY 13 I turned SOUTH.   Little did I know that afternoon, but I was about to start a whole new life and what would become home as I was headed to THE COAST.  Where I am from Gulfport, Biloxi, and Pascagoula was all lumped together as “The Coast”… the place we would come down for the day and play on the beach and pick up shells now knowing they had LIVE hermit craps living in them. 

Here I was starting a new job at the hospital being the third shift computer operator… If you had looked up CLUELESS I’m pretty sure my picture would have been on the page. Working nights and I couldn’t sleep, didn’t eat and was so homesick all I wanted to do was get back above I-10 and find a job.  A year later I got married and a year after that we had our first little girl.  This time if you had looked up CLUELESS you would have seen both of us. Here we were with this little girl and didn’t have any idea how to care of her. I think Ginger stayed on the phone with my Mom a lot… I was still working nights still could not sleep and still wanted to get back above 1-10 even above HWY 98 way above… We made it and Melissa survived somehow.  After about 7 years I got promoted to Lead Operator working days and made new “day” friends.  Friends that took an interest in me and started teaching me COBOL.  I soon found out I enjoyed writing computer programs and I was making life much better and easier for the night shift operators with what I had learned.  The night shift is when all the real work was done, and I do mean WORK. From there I have got Oscar Beck to thank for believing in me and giving me the chance to go into programming.  I got promoted to programmer, got a house then came my second daughter, Lauren.  Couple of year latter I was promoted to programmer analyst and yeah you guessed it … my third little girl, Mary.  I am glad I didn’t want to go for manger… LOL   Years went by Melissa became a RN BSN and is a manger in Surgery at the hospital. Tomorrow, exactly 45 years to the day I started, Lauren will start working at the hospital in the IPS Department.  Mary now lives in Cameron, LA and is a FULL Time Mother.  When I left 45 years ago never did I dream that I would have 3 daughters, 3 sons-in-law’s, and 8 grandkids.  If I could go back and ride with my young self today, I think all I would tell the young me is that the road want be easy, there’s going to be some hurts, some setbacks, lots of whys, but BOY you just wait and see how it’s going to turn out --- you just will not believe it.