Adding up my life

I often tell reporters not to fill their reports and articles with a bunch of numbers and percentages. This is a way of warning you that I’m going to do just that now.  There are the basic facts about my life that I have absolutely no control over, but I still like to show. 

As of last week, I have been around for 792 months, 3,432 weeks, 24,106 days and 578,544 hours. I have spent over 2,400 weeks working and earning an income. That has amounted to at least 144,000 hours. I am surprised with all the time I have been around that I haven’t gotten into more trouble. 

I mean let’s face it, as a kid I got into so much trouble my mother would often say she wasn’t sure if I would end up as the Pope or the most wanted man. She said this because no matter what I did as a kid I did it with all the muscle and brain power I could manage.  Whether I succeeded or not I went after everything I wanted to with gusto.

Looking back there are some fun facts too.  Needless to say I didn’t exactly keep track of the following facts so I had to use rough estimates but they seem to be close.  I have eaten 55,000 chocolate chip cookies.  They were not all cooked the way I like, but there was never a bad one. At one time I found a place on the Pennsylvania Turnpike around exit 4 or 5 (in the Pittsburg area) that had such good chocolate chip cookies that not only did I stop on each trip to and from the east coast to Michigan to buy some, but I had family members stop and get some for me when they visited. 

I have consumed 437,999 ounces of Coke, that comes to 7,065 gallons. That has been entirely with the original or as they call it now, Classic Coke. I managed to make it though the new Coke scare back in the 80’s by buying up all the original Coke I could fit in my storage area. The new Coke was on the market such a short time that I never ran out of the real thing.

I have had about 72,318 meals. That included almost 20,000 hamburgers. That is around 5,000 pounds of ground beef. Included in these figures is the first McDonalds’ in our area near Detroit and the first Big Boy in our area. I have also consumed more White Castle hamburgers than I could ever count. I’m still not sure if they were made with ground beef or soft cardboard – but they called them hamburgers. This goes back to when you could 12 burgers for a buck.  

To go with all those burgers, I have eaten about 6,000 pounds of French fries.  In all the years I have managed to stay away from that cure all for every generation – chicken soup.  I have probably not had chicken soup more than 60 times in my life.  Which, if you follow my columns, you know that that will be when you know my death is at the door step.

Travel and moving have been a big part of my life.  Whether it is to go fishing for a day, dancing for a week-end, a business trip for one week, or a vacation for three weeks it has been great to visit and see many of our states. I have driven over 2,500,000 miles in the US and visited 30 states and lived in 10 of them. I have also visited ten countries and spent almost three years in motel rooms.

It has been fun to live in so many places.   The shortest time I have lived in a state was two weeks, the longest was seventeen years. Each little town and state has been different.  Most bring back good memories, a couple - not so good. I have changed residences over thirty times.   On the small side. I lived in a room in  a house and on the big side on a 26 acre farm with a three story 10 room farm house.  

One hobby that I have enjoyed all over the world is dancing.  For years, before my back problems stopped me, I would dance three or four nights a week.  I have spent at least 10,000 hours dancing.

I have also enjoyed thousands of hours fishing.  Many of those were with my son.  I have fished in every state I have lived in and some I haven’t. The only regret I have is the day I caught my largest fish, a 20 pound cat fish, my son was not with me. 

On the business side of things, I have built nine small businesses and rebuilt four small businesses. In the process they created 25 full time jobs and 30 part time jobs.  This probably comes to over $30 million in wages paid.  Two companies I have been involved with were in the top one hundred in the country of their type.

When you add it all up, I have lived my life on my terms and done almost everything I wanted to.  If I were to die tomorrow no one should feel sorry for me. If I live at least as long as my father I still have ten years left, so there is still more to do.