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Publisher’s Letter – Jan 2019

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December 31, 2018

Dearest EXPLORE reader, Many, many years ago a writer for this publication put in a simple sentence in an article…

Old Timer’s predictions for 2019!

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December 31, 2018

$chultz’s budget balloons on City Hall Already set at a staggering $20m, construction is well in swing. However, $chultz is…

Badass of the Month – Juliane…

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December 31, 2018

Christmas Eve. 1971. 17 year old Juliane Koepcke was on a plane to visit her father while over the jungles…

Art of the Draw For JP Rankin and his small collection of characters that you can find most days hanging out at the Cartoon Saloon, it’s never long between belly laughs. Built in Rankin’s property, the Cartoon Saloon is unlike any “bar” you’ve ever been. No security system. No cash register. Heck, there’s not…

Publisher’s Letter – Dec 2018

Dearest EXPLORE reader, Sometimes I think that I have lived two lives (so far). That might seem bi-polar, but if you think back on your own life, I bet that you could also identify some different “chapters” of your life that changed and shaped your life in ways that ultimately transformed many things about you….

From The Publisher

Dearest EXPLORE Reader, I just went on a long motorcycle ride. I have an old and cheap Suzuki cruiser (big and heavy) that I like to cruise around on. I bought it primarily as a money-saving vehicle because of fuel costs with my truck, but having spent the better part of my life in the…

Auntie Marj’s Guide to Surviving the Holidays

Well readers, can you believe it’s time for the holidays already? How did this possibly happen, what did we, enter a time warp or something? Here at HQ we haven’t even put away slip & slide! Of course, we still haven’t cleared up last year’s Thanksgiving paraphernalia either and there’s a stack of Dukakis yard…

Old Timer

We’re going to talk about one of the most controversial topics in all of Boerne. One that separates people, has led to gunfights, and has almost torn the entire town apart. Gateway Loop? Growth? $chultz’s beard? Nah. We’re going to talk about the River Road Park and Old Timer’s demands for how to fix things…

Publisher’s Letter – October ’18

Dearest EXPLORE reader, I knew a guy earlier in my life that was really the life of the party. He was extremely outgoing, the girls loved his charm and confidence, and when he entered the room the lights got a little brighter and the volume was turned up. He lived in a nice area of…

Badass of the Month – Santa Anna

There is probably no more famous villain in all of Texas lore than that of Generalissimo Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón , otherwise simply historically known as SANTA ANNA. Yes, THAT guy. The one that killed all the soldiers at the Alamo. Hated by the entire population of…

Old Timer – Sept 2018

God bless the Boerne Star. They did what is one of my all time favorite annual issues, which is their “BEST OF” issue. Now, MOST of the categories contain legit winners. From “Best AC Company” to “Best Housekeeper”, I am sure that these categories are won by companies that truly are some of the BEST…

Publisher’s Letter – September 2018

Dearest EXPLORE reader, Coach Stan Leech retired from coaching this past month. He was my basketball coach from ’90-’94 and I couldn’t even begin to start laying out the memories from those years as they would be an encyclopedia. Boerne was a different town in those times, and we were all just a bunch of…

From The Publisher

DEAREST EXPLORE READER, James Robertson is a factory worker in Detroit. Each day he wakes up and begins a 21-mile journey to his job that pays $10.55/hour. He has no car, so James walks that distance each day. At the end of his 8 hour shift, he reverses course, and completes his 42 mile roundtrip…

Unwanted Guests

For a long time I’ve been wanting to tell you the story of a Connecticut Yankee who, before he became famous as one of the first American landscape architects and the guy who designed New York’s Central Park, the grounds of the US Capitol building, the Biltmore estate in North Carolina, university campuses all over…

Old Timer

You just moved to Boerne? That’s great! When you’re done unpacking and installing your enormous security lighting system, I need you to come back to this article and review a few things that we all need you to understand. As Boerne’s newest citizen, PLEASE take at least a few minutes to recognize how to assimilate…

From The Publisher

Dearest EXPLORE Reader, When I was in college, I worked at the Rainbow Play Systems showroom on weekends in Lubbock. It was a pretty cushy job, I liked the owner (who was also named Ben), and the pay was pretty good. I could get a fair amount of studying done in between customers, and I…

I Give Up – Spiritual

I had a rough idea of what I wanted to write about for this month’s column, and as I frequently do, I hit Google just to help me find some inspiration and to hone my thoughts into the message I wanted to pass along. I like to simply review some verses and devotionals about the…

Old Timer

Ah, good ol’ Boerne local government went and surprised itself yet again by trying to sneak a giant monstrosity CVS drugstore onto the corner of River and Main. You know, the most visible intersection in the entire town. The entrance to our entire Historic District and currently the most congested intersection in town. Yes, that…

Publisher’s Letter – Jan 2019

admin

December 31, 2018

Dearest EXPLORE reader,

Many, many years ago a writer for this publication put in a simple sentence in an article he wrote that has stuck with me for the next dozen years that I’ve been doing this magazine. It was a simple sentence and I don’t think it was even really supposed to be the “point” to his piece, but when I read it, I inhaled sharply and have spent countless hours simply pondering upon it.

The line?

“Life should abrade, you know?”

Man, I like just typing that line on this laptop. It’s just so damn…DEEP. I know you’re thinking “Uh, Ben, it’s not that deep and you’re making a big deal out of nothing.” Maybe, but let me tell you the hows and whys of why I consider it so powerful.

I just had dinner with my older 2 kids, aged 15 and 12. While I cooked a simple pasta and shrimp dish, I hollered to make my 15y old daughter come sit on the barstool and just talk to me. She will normally pacify her old man when I call her for these chores, and I only occasionally have to admonish her to put “that godforsaken damn phone down”. She sat, I stood at the stove sipping a glass of wine, and we talked. Yeah, we talked. If you have a 15 year old you know that’s a rarity, but I’ll pat myself on the back that I have taught my daughter that when Dad hollers and says “Come sit with me” while I’m cooking dinner, then my daughter understands that she’s supposed to sit and just chat. I like to bug her and give her a huge hug and remind her that (as a single dad) she is the most important woman in my entire life, and sure enough, we talk about her future plans and who is doing what at school, and how life is just fully conspired against her. Typical teenager shit. But man, I soak it up. As for her, she rolls her eyes. But I like to think that she’ll tell her own kids about the nights that she stood in the kitchen talking with her dad.

Dinner was cooked and I called for my 12 year old son who is the carbon copy of both every good and bad thing that exists within me, though he has amplified the GOOD things up to the volume of 11, despite not knowing it yet. He was being cranky and whiny and my daughter and I chuckled while giving him a hard time about countless things, and he grumbled through dinner and, upon finishing the dishes, wandered back to his gameroom to play Fortnite or whatever stupid game is cool nowadays.

I took a sip of my wine and was cleaning the dishes and noticed that the wooden spoon we were using for the pasta had burned on the bottom as it sat in the pan with too much heat. Being who I am, I must have stared at the spoon for 5 straight minutes.

Because life had abraded.

The definition for “abrade” is “to scrape or wear away by erosion or friction.” The obvious applications of worn tires or ruined razors from the shower are easy applications, but what about LIFE?

“Life should abrade, you know?”

There I stood, stupidly staring at a burnt wooden spoon that had been abraded by use and heat…but really, it had been abraded by LIFE. It was a night of hugging my daughter and sharing a silly story and hearing about who was making out with who under the bleachers. It was a night of chuckling with my son and listening to his crazy thoughts as I sat and watched him and thought “Kid, if I can keep you out of prison, you’ll OWN the world.” Meanwhile, at the end of it, we ruined a wooden spoon. Because life abraded the spoon. The process of existence caused the abrasion of a wooden spoon and I stood and stared at the damned spoon and just smiled. Talk about a Hallmark moment.

I have scraped paint in my house and a random shoe laying in my backyard and I even have a couple of broken shutter flaps on my windows. Each of them make me groan a bit when I see them, but the reality is that I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the entire world. Because MY FAMILY made those imperfections, and our lives abraded, you know? In the pursuit of existence, we caused erosion. And thank God for it.

I have another son, and if we are friends on Facebook (if we’re not, we should be), you’d know that he doesn’t get to come around too much. We have a great relationship, but through a sad set of circumstances, I’m a bit minimized in his life. He’s the opposite of “abrade”. He should have the bumps and bruises and stupid memories of making pasta with me that my daughter has, but he doesn’t. It is what it is, I suppose, but he is far too smooth without the abrasions of life with his father. He doesn’t know to come sit and talk to his dad when I yell, and he didn’t have the pasta dinner that burned the spoon, and for this example, he was not part of the abrasion of our life. And that makes me sad.

A wooden spoon with some burned imperfections, a few messy dishes in the sink, a glass of wine, and I lean against the counter while the kids are in other rooms and just sort of stare at the floor.

I “abrade”, you know. I’m no different than the spoon. The heat and the friction and the bumps and the bruises of day to day life abrade me as a father, and a son, and a brother I used to be, and a worker…and some are good and some are bad, but I am refined by experience and my heart is molded by the friction. Life itself abrades me, and I become something a little different for a new day.

We hear all the time sayings like “You know, old Billy just hasn’t been the same since…”. His wife’s death. He lost his job. He found Jesus. He quit drinking. He cut out gluten. He changed his hair color. Whatever. The reasons are endless for life to abrade and shape us, and they will eternally be endless.

I nerd out sometimes on little things like a doorknob in a century old home. I can sit and stare and think about the countless number of hands that have grabbed that doorknob and opened the door…for good or bad. For laughs, or for bad news. For happiness, or to fight. For hope, or for desperation.

I stare at a burned wooden spoon and think similar thoughts. If that spoon was found in 200 years, nobody would think a second thought about the slight burned section of the spoon. But if I were there I would say “Friends, LIFE caused that slight burn and let me tell you all about that night and how I can remember it like yesterday.”

Because, you see, life should abrade, you know. The trick, I suppose, is to let it happen and then recognize it for what it is. Because the things you notice like a burned spoon are quite honestly, the very reasons for our existence. For without them, we are hollow and void of the appreciation that life can bring to each of us.

Welcome to January. A new year, a new opportunity for life to abrade. May you EXPLORE your life, find the imperfections, and then absolutely fall to your knees rejoicing about them because it means that life, my friends, has abraded. You know?

Smiling,

Publisher’s Letter – Jan 2019

Old Timer’s predictions for 2019!

Badass of the Month – Juliane Koepcke

Old Timer – Dec 2018

Featured Articles

Publisher’s Letter – Jan 2019

Old Timer’s predictions for 2019!

Badass of the Month – Juliane…

Art of the Draw

Publisher’s Letter – Dec 2018

From The Publisher

Auntie Marj’s Guide to Surviving the Holidays

Old Timer

Publisher’s Letter – October ’18

Badass of the Month – Santa Anna

Old Timer – Sept 2018

Publisher’s Letter – September 2018

From The Publisher

Unwanted Guests

Old Timer

From The Publisher

I Give Up – Spiritual

Old Timer

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