The more things change…

Andrea gets on me because I won’t blog, I keep telling her I have nothing to blog about, today that changed. For those of you who don’t know I’ve recently changed jobs, twice actually. Back in April

I went to Miles Farm

Supply to be a custom applicator. I spent most of this spring and early summer spraying crops. Then in the last few weeks I was ‘invited’ to apply for the ag teacher’s job at South Knox. To make a long story short I got the job and as I was going through my new classroom I found some old textbooks as I opened them most of them had the name “Fred Rowe” and Monroe City stamped on the inside cover. So these books came from Monroe City when they consolidated. Ok neat. Then I got to thinking my ag teacher from Princeton started at Decker and they consolidated into South Knox, if there are books from Monroe City hmm… So I began to dig through the pile, but each book only showed the same stamp as the last one. Until finally I came across a soils book and opened it up. And there it was, in the same neat cursive writing I had seen countless times. Paul E. Potts. I had to sit down, here I held in my hand one of the same books my ag teacher started with. Hard telling how many times he picked this book up and read from, took notes and instructed students with it. I began to dig through the rest of the shelves. I found a few other books with his name, some simply had “Decker School” stamped in them. I shuffled some books around and placed all of Mr. Potts books together at the end of the shelf. I stood back to enjoy the view of my new ‘library’ when it suddenly dawned on me. Here I stood in the SAME school and the SAME classroom as my old teacher. He had been right HERE and I knew but it just didn’t sink in, I don’t know why. Maybe God hid it from me until know. You see when I decided to go to school to become an ag teacher I had it in my head that I could replace Mr. Potts when he retired. The timing was just about right for me to take over. Well as they say, “Life got in the way.” He retired a year too early and graduated a year too late for my “perfect timing” to work out. So I came home and worked on a farm, which was just what I wanted out of life. But now here I am. I did get to replace Mr. Potts, just at a different school, 30 years later.

I’ve been a bit apprehensive about talking this job, jumping back into a field I had walked away from. People would ask me if I would try teaching again and I’d say “I don’t think so.” But Mr. Potts had taught me to “Never say never.” And now as I look at this small collection of books that were his, sitting in his office. I have all the confidence in the world