Memoirs of a Country Boy

By Tim Conley

An autobiography that covers some of the high and low points of my life. It is by no means all inclusive and some things I just can’t remember anymore. Too much water under the bridge. But it does highlight a lot of the things that occurred during my boyhood, traveling with the U.S. Navy and through 60 years of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tim Conley
• Release date: Apr 6, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452404851

Tim Conley

Hi, my name is Tim Conley. I live in Philadelphia, MS with my beautiful wife, Carmela. My son,James (JD) is in the Air Force and has a son Joshua who is 21/2 with another boy on the way. Carmela's son - Enrik just graduated from Mississippi State University with a degree in Teaching.I have been writing for over twenty years and have published 67 books so far - two recently with Amazon/Kindle. I'm currently working on a fantasy anthology of 28 books called The Rhumgold Sagas.I have always been interested in publishing via eBook format but just haven't found the venue until now. I'm really looking forward to participating in the eBook experience. There are 22 e-books available now and 16 more that are being prepared for release in 2020. Read, explore and enjoy!

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Table of Contents

About Author

Acknowledgements

Author’s Comments

Black Sheep

Comments

Conclusion

Dedication

Dinner

Disclaimer

Dragons

Family Tree

Father

Friendship

Grampa

Hills have Roots

Indian Gold

Introduction

Lifeline

Northbound 209

Other Books

Reason for Writing

Rights

Something to Say

Thunder

Time

Tours of Duty

Memoirs of a Country boy

by

Timothy J. Conley

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Timothy J. Conley on Smashwords

MEMOIRS OF A COUNTRY BOY

Copyright © 2001 by Timothy J. Conley

ISBN: 978-1-4524-0485-1

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/tinytim2

Rights

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is not a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are the product of the author's recollection and are not used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of non-fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Did you ever stop to think and then forgot to start again?

Acknowledgements and Dedications –

My thanks go to my parents especially, and to all those other people who've made both positive and negative impact on my life.

James Riley Conley (Father) gave me tenacity, stubbornness and grit.

Ervena Conley (Mother) gave me a nurturing ability and feminine insight.

Pemm Riley (Brother) – inquisitiveness

Thomas Dale (Brother) – unconditioned love

Gary Wayne (Brother) – closed mindedness

Daniel LeRoy (Brother) – persistence

Margaret Ann (Sister) – acceptance

Glen Erwin (Brother) – overcoming physical adversity

Paul Edward (Brother) – someone who tagged along

Nancy Alice (Sister) – Dad's sweetheart

Mark Allen (Brother) – Baby brother by 20 years

Roy Blaine Conley (Grandfather) – spiritual locus.

Mary Alice Conley (Grandmother) – a feeling of belonging to a larger than life community.

Ervin Childers (Grandfather) – how not to do things and to consider carefully my belief system.

Anna Jewel Farley (Cousin) – the ability to step outside my world into one of unlimited possibilities.

Roy Zacharias (Minister) – the ability to accept the heretical thoughts within me.

Dick Sorak (Federal Express pilot) – how to accept extreme pain and carry on regardless.

Spence Roberts (Federal Express pilot) – Belief in self and my ability to produce quality.

Tim Sorrells (Delta Computer Services) – willingness to take a chance and develop whatever dream one has into a concrete concept.

Lindy Adams (Friend) – Acceptance without judgment.

Michelle Lockhart (Girl Friend #1) – Realization that all helpless creatures need our help.

Dr. Bill DeLoach (MSU Professor) – Don't accept the mediocre in your output.

Rose Paratore (MSU Teacher) – Accept the female part of your being.

Rose Mickelson (Navy Chief Petty Officer) – Strive for Excellence.

Vanessa Schall (Navy Petty Officer) – The first step to losing is underestimating your enemy.

Gwen Smith (FEC Secretary) – True friendship with no strings attached.

Jenny Wilbourne (Friend) – How to recognize the really dark side of ourselves and live life anyway.

Brice Hamlin (Friend) – Someone who has my back in any fight.

Ron Davis (Friend and Student) – Probably the best programmer I’ve ever met. He taught the teacher.

Eileen Anderson (Friend/Editor) – Unconditional love of the sweetest kind. Passion and love for life dipped from the deepest pool.

Judith Ann Conley (x-wife) – Permission to be original and at times ambiguous, but mostly patience to sort through the debris to locate the important bits.

Tanitha Marie (Daughter and Friend) – A mirror on my soul.

James David (JD) (Son) – Keen wit, intelligence and a ready smile for his daddy.

David Paffrath (Friend, Navy Sailor) – the ability to see what is really real.

Carmela Santos-Conley (Best Friend, Lover and Wife) – acceptance and love for an old man who behaves like a little boy.

To all the above and to many others:

Watch for the Dragons – Watch me fly!

Introduction

This work is not fictitious and is composed of both prose and poetry. When most people think about poetry, they consider Shelley, Yeats and Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven sticks in their head with repetition. Will Shakespeare’s rendition of Julius Caesar’s mid-March debacle reminds us of those days we spent in high school lit class wishing we were somewhere else instead. Let’s admit it – most of us think poetry is boring.

I think poetry is the most powerful form of writing. It is also the quickest. Consider that most novels take months or years to develop and write. A good poem can take minutes – sometimes an hour, but not often. Plus, poetry is usually from the heart – in whatever state of mind that heart is in at the time of writing.

Poetry displays emotions – sometimes in its rawest forms, poetry can reach into the heart of the ‘intended (the person being written for)’ and cause extreme response to the words written. I’ve found that women like poetry. For some reason a man appears to be very vulnerable when he reveals his thoughts within the framework of poetry. What woman can resist that?

If someone were to ask me what I really (at my absolute center of being) consider myself to be – I would have to say a poet. I look for rhythm and rhyme in everything. Walking beside a brook with its gurgling sounds speaks of all the detours the water has made in its trip to the point where I met it. Car horns insistently calling someone to the door mix with traveling boom boxes to produce a cacophony of irrational noise that mean little until you realize where they fit into our modernistic society. When you stand at the fence and listen to a horse gallop or walk you feel the full measure of his gait. Now go and put all that into a piece of poetry. Remember that your audience will approach your written work from their own very personal point of view.

Each person interprets poetry in their own way. That is one of the beauties of poetry. No one person corners the market on ‘what the poet really meant to say.’ Everyone is right – and no one is right absolutely. By that I mean that even the poet may look at his own work later and wonder exactly what he meant, however, most of the time the emotion he was reaching for comes flooding back as he re-reads and like riding a bike he feels again the individual reasons why he wrote the piece originally.

Many of the poems you will read in this book were written in response to powerful outside stimuli internalized to the point where something had to come out or pop. I often have no idea what is going to come out. Something feels ticklish inside my head and I know that that something is knocking – trying to get my attention. Sitting down with pen and paper or word processor soon produces