ONLY a MAN

  Confidence: The state of feeling certain about something.   Feeling sure of yourself and your abilities. Confidence is something that I don’t think I ever really thought about as a youth or young man. The only thoughts and feelings during this period of life were invincibility and thoughts of being bulletproof. Nothing was impossible. Literally, I had the world by the balls!!! The model of confidence I must say. Slowly over time, this feeling has been changing. As I’ve gotten older, confidence has somewhat been changed to risk, doubts and the F word. No not fuck, even worse, FEAR!!! Go figure, just when I finally feel like I’m in a comfortable place in life, somewhat secure financially, children are doing well and on the path of growth as great human beings, and healthy. I also began to feel vulnerable and out of control at around this same time. Although only the closest to me would have realized any of this, a year or so when these feelings began to surface. During thi...

Some of you already know or have heard about Big Jake’s many antics. Today I’m going to share one of his many side kicks that make his adventures sound unreal or even made up. Believe you me, these stories are 100% true. Trust me, I am not that creative.  The character I will be writing about is Tom Bates, better known as Tom the Tire Man. Because what every small business owner with a major drinking problem needs is another drunk who happens to own a tire business as a side kick. At least I think he owned a tire business. He had a dingy old dented ford truck with shoe polish writing in chicken scratch on the door that read “Bates Tires”.  Tom always appeared to be hung over, dirty and unshaven. He had very few teeth which made him look like a cartoon drawing of a turtle. That’s it, he looked like a dirty fucking cartoon turtle. Tom was the one guy we all know that would drink warm beer out of a cooler that had been rolling around in there for god knows how many days. Surprisi...