Snapshots, we've all made them, seeing something neat before us and grabbing a camera to record it, without any preparation or prior intent. Something we can share with others or use to remember it more clearly. Children in one's household necessitates making lots of camera-type snapshots. The kind I want to tell you about are not made with lens and shutter but are created in the synapses of your brain, the kind that only you can see in your minds eye. With this manuscript I'll try to share with you some of the mind snapshots I've made in the last two years.(Sorry I haven't written since then, but the time thief has been quite active around here.)

Probably the first mind snapshot I should mention is best described as "looking like a wet St. Bernard trying to come in the cat door." That would be our son, making his appearance on October 30, 1995. Forrest Kirkpatrick Pilkington, hereafter known as Forrestman (he went through a stage where he looked just like a little man and the name stuck). Next snapshot that comes to mind is me watching him like a hawk because there was another male Pilkington infant in this small rural hospital. However, I needn't have worried too much, the other baby was nine days old with breathing problems and not likely to get mixed up with ours.

* Looking through the rain-splattered windshield of a '61 Corvette in Oberschleissheim, Germany, with my new found friend Helmut Veidt at the wheel. I had met Helmut, owner of this one and six more, the self-described "Corvette King of Bavaria," when I was running through his neighborhood and had heard the strange sound of a small-block Chevrolet idling and had to trace down the origin of such an unusual sound in Germany.

* Proudly pinning a small silver rectangle with a black square in the middle of it on Emily's dress just minutes before one of the same rectangles would be officially pinned on my shoulders as I graduated from Warrant Officers Candidate School at Ft. Rucker, AL. Escaping from the rank of Sargent in the enlisted world into the cosmos of officers has been revealing in many ways, but the increase in my collection of presidential portraits is appreciated by my wife and my banker.

* My first day at German 101 at the University of the South watching the professor "etwas aus dem, Fenster werfen" (throwing things out the window) to teach us by action the words he was saying. I have been trying to learn German (Deutsch) off and on for a while, but I don't have time right now to apply myself to it like I would wish. I really enjoy learning the language, but the gender of the nouns just kills me.

* The visualized image of a small gentleman's pocket knife engraved with an Egyptian Tutankhamen theme that I am even now just finishing. I have been working on it in my head for over two years. This piece and the small gun I'm planning to engrave to accompany will be the high-water mark of my engraving for a while.

* Standing on a street corner in Buenos Aires, Argentina trying to get a street vendor/craftsman to understand what a canoe was and to make one in red, yellow and orange (the colors my dad uses in his canoe rental business). The only one in our group who spoke any Spanish was the 15 year old shotgun shooter, Kim Rhode,. who a year later would win a Gold Medal at the Olympics.

* Staring deshabille at the still black Atlanta skyline as the morning news announcer told of a bombing in Centennial Park some five hour earlier. Hoping and praying that everyone I knew was OK and would be at the range and wondering if there would be more bombs today. Knowing that the only way to answer those questions is to go ahead with the day's activities as if nothing had happened. Calling home, waking up Rhonda to tell her the news and that I was OK; I had been sound asleep some 10 miles away when it went off (during the Olympics I had parked the UltraVan at a friend's house about 300 yards away from the Shooting Venue).

* Emily carefully holding with both hands a cup of corn as she walked through the snow with me. This was our daily ritual of walking to the pond to feed our Canadian geese, Candy and Ralph (Nader). I really enjoy waterfowl and hope someday to have ponds full of them.

* Sitting in a nearly empty auditorium in Emporia, Kansas at their community theater waiting for a play to start. Wondering what the heck I was doing a thousand miles away from home on my son's birthday. I'm actually there in Emporia teaching some engraving classes for GRS, a company that makes the engraving equipment I use. This is rewarding for me both financially and pedagogically.

* Looking through the picture frame of the UltraVan's aluminum and rubber windshield bracing at the seemingly ceaseless asphalt ribbon. This year alone 14,000 miles have been added to the UltraVan's odometer. I guess my favorite picture through this frame is Emily and Forrestman bouncing up and down on the steps because their Daddy's home.

* The bright green steel roof sections of our new house being slid upwards into place like great big green snakes (they were 3 feet wide and 40 feet long). At this writing, our house is mostly complete but not quite move-in-able (Scott thinks so, but I don't RP). I am engraving inside the shop which is the 12'x8' cupola located on the third floor. Overall, I am very pleased with the house, but it has been a year and half since we started on it, and sometimes I wish that I had hired a crew and said "just do it."

* Watching my red & white '61 Rampside (a Corvair pick-up with a very handy side-loading ramp) disappear down the driveway. I had just sold it to raise money for the house, but didn't realize how attached to it I was.

* Emily and Forrestman, wet and muddy as we were all trying to catch "froggies" in the spring. (Well, Emily and I were, Forrestman just wanted to get wet).

* Kindermadchen (German for Nanny, literally, children's girl, and the name of Emily's Great Pyrenees dog) standing and barking furiously as I tried to pull a coyote out of a hole. Kinder and Pete (another dog half Pyrenees of whom I'll say more later) had started barking at daylight one morning while I was working down at the house. I looked towards where the dogs were facing and saw two coyotes crossing the powerline. I ran over and grabbed a .45 (pistol) that I had in the UltraVan and ran back to a point where I thought they might cross. Sure enough, here they came, with Kinder and Pete closing the gap. I fired a shot from about 50 yards at the lead coyote. It yelped and turned into the brush with Kinder after it and Pete following the other one. Both were quickly out of sight, but Kinder's barking soon was concentrated over by the bluff. I went to investigate and found Kinder had run the coyote into a small cave with only its tail and one leg visible.
I crawled into the hole and began pulling the coyote backwards with one hand and Kinder raising a ruckus above me. The coyote obviously did not want to reverse itself but finally I got enough of him pulled out to put a .45 slug thru its rib cage and that finally took the fight out of him. I threw the neutralized coyote (It's heck when you've got to be politically correct in your own newsletter) upon the bank for Kinder's inspection. She sniffed the carcass from head to tail, decided it was no longer a threat, quit barking and went back home. Unfortunately, Pete the newcomer, was an older dog that we "inherited" who had several bad habits including going up the road and out to the highway. Kinder was soon tagging along and got run over. Emily has been wanting a new Kinder but we've told her that it cost too much, we've got to finish the house. So now every time she sees someone with change, she asks for it so she can "get big money to get a new Kinder". We need to teach her to ask for dollar bills!

* Some mental snapshots are more felt than visualized. Like the warm wet funny feeling I frequently had when I was wearing two heavy sweatshirts doing my "mother tree" imitation for two orphaned fox squirrels. Or the instantaneous ascent from the ground to my shoulder by one of those same fox squirrels a few months later after he had grown and the weather warmed enough that my attire consisted only of a pair of shorts. The feeling of his four sets of tree climbing razor blades is best not imagined too vividly by the timid mind.

* The nearly blinding, heart-rending fear experienced when my beautiful blonde-headed, blue-eyed daughter disappeared at the flea market; just knowing she'd been kidnapped. After a frantic search, making a fool of myself shouting her name, I began running to the parking lot exit to watch for her abductors and sending Rhonda to watch the entrance when Emily comes out of the crowd 30 feet away...What can mean more?

* Escandido, California, this past September (my worst moment in my parenting career), 4:00 in the afternoon, standing at the closed gate to the San Diego Animal Park. We have driven two hours to get there and have been promising Emily she will get to see elephants, zebras and monkeys, etc. We get there and the park is closing, (it doesn't get dark for another four hours). I grab Emily thinking that maybe I can sneak in the exit and maybe see a few animals but they have one of those one-way turnstiles and we can't get in. I take her to the outdoor vendors with their realistic looking stuffed animals and try to interest her in those and would gladly have paid their outrageous prices but Emily said, "Daddy I want to see real animals". So I take her to the front gates to show her the bars across it, that it is closed. She goes up to the bars, grabs them and shakes them with all of her 21 month old might and says "Daddy tell them to open up so I can see animals".
Drag my heart out and throw it on the concrete, what could I do? The ending of the story was that we came back the following week at opening time, spent all day and enjoyed all of it. (Except the Wild America Show, as Rhonda said, it's hard to get excited when we've raised almost every animal they showed.)

Just for a good measure here are a few snapshots from my life as a whole.

* Staring at a pay phone in Heber Springs, AR, calling my father back in Tennessee to tell him that his father had died. I never would have imagined that I would end up being the one to make that call.

* Trying to replay the moments of the impact of when I was hit by the car August 21, 1991. My mind can follow through the events immediately prior and those after, but when I try to think of what actually happened, my mind goes up to a point then just skips, to a totally different subject usually. I don't know whether the data is simply not there or is too traumatic to be remembered. I presume the latter, which is why I keep trying I suppose.

* Frantically retracing our catena of footprints in the sand of a Charleston, SC beach, as the sun was peeking above the water. Finally, finding the small box with the ring in it and shortly thereafter asking Rhonda if she would be willing to spend the rest or her life with me. An affirmative answer and 10 years later, we're still looking for little boxes cause we keep packing things up to move and we haven't done it yet.

* A cold rainy winter day. I was out walking for the first time the perimeter of the property we were considering buying and now own. Coming to a big rock bluff and crawling out on it (I was cold, wet and tired by this point and didn't trust myself walking on it). Looking out across the gulf and being able to see 50 miles or more. Knowing that if there was any way possible, I would own this land.

Well that's about enough for now, let us know how each of you are doing with your journeys in life, and send us some of your "snapshots".