Rich Creason
Sept. 27, 1947. I was born. Sept. 27, 2002. I retired after working 32 plus years as head groundskeeper at the Indiana Reformatory.
If you look at that closely, you will notice I retired on my 55th birthday. Since that time, I no longer have birthdays. I only have retirement days. That means I still get presents, but I don’t get any older.
In 2002, I maybe had two friends.
Seriously. Working in a prison didn’t lead to making new friends.
Also, it wasn’t an environment which was conducive to having an attitude that encouraged new friends outside of work.
Since retiring, my attitude changed quickly and radically.
I learned how to smile.
I began enjoying being around people.
About that time, I became an outdoor/travel writer.
Susie and I traveled around the country, enjoying a wide variety of new activities and meeting new people. These people didn’t know I had spent the last three decades in a maximum security prison almost every day.
I soon had many friends in numerous states and even Canada.
I joined several writing groups and attended conferences and outdoor activities with other writers.
My circle of friends expanded.
We were invited to spend time with many of these people in dozens of states.
I began attending church with Susie and was even able to convince the people there I was always happy and friendly. (I can still fake it really good.).
They asked if I would like to be a greeter at the door for Sunday services. In 2002, I would have laughed at them except I never laughed and seldom smiled back then.
On my last retirement day, (2024) I received birthday wishes from people around the country. (Most of these still don’t realize I quit having birthdays many years ago.)
I checked my cell phone and had messages from several folks in Florida, two different families in Virginia, one couple in Tennessee, one in Michigan, two in Minnesota, several in Kentucky, a couple in Missouri, numerous messages from places in Indiana, and even phone calls from Florida and Ontario, Canada.
Two different people in Indiana actually wasted a stamp to send me a card.
Before I retired, I only knew two or three of these people.
Sept. 27, 2024. Pendleton was hit by the tail end of a Florida hurricane.
Our rain gauge showed just over five inches of rain descended on our area.
The ground was so dry, the rain didn’t cause a problem. But, my two huge maple trees decided to drop a yard full of limbs and branches that had to be picked up.
Since I have a hard time bending over (and standing back up), Susie picked up most of the limbs. She loaded them into our trash barrels and I pulled them to the street for our trash pickup on Monday.
When we knew the wind was coming soon, we picked up anything outside we thought might blow away. We put some of it in the shed, fastened some of it down with bungee cords, put some small items in the back of my truck, and thought we had everything ready for the wind.
It turned out we had our stuff under control. The next morning, after the wind died down, we had trash cans, tarps, flower pots, and assorted trash all over our yard.
Before the wind hit, none of this stuff belonged to us.
I guess I can set all of this out by the street and let our neighbors decide who it belongs to.
By the time you read this, September will be over. There won’t be any more September happenings for about 11 months.
Rich Creason is an award-winning outdoors and travel writer whose work has appeared in local, regional, national and international publications for 40 years. Born in Anderson, he is a graduate of Markleville High School. He lives in South Madison County with his wife, Susie. He may be contacted at [email protected].
