SOMETIMES THE BEST THINGS ARE UNEXPECTED

I've always been a collector. As a kid I gathered baseball cards, GI Joe's, rocks. But in that I loved history, I always gravitated to military items. 

There was an old fellow in my little town who, though he had debilitating arthritis, carved things. "Little" Henry could reproduce most anything. When I was about six, I begged my grandfather to get Henry to carve me a P-51 Mustang (WWII fighter plane). I found a photo in an encyclopedia and my grandfather and I took it to him. 

Henry's little tumbledown house in Elkmont Ala was stiflingly hot on a bitter winter's afternoon. And stacked to the rafters were finished products in various stages of completion.

I envisioned that plane for months. When my grandfather took me to get it, Henry handed me mules. I don't know who was to blame. My grandfather was an old mule whisperer, and possibly thought his peculiar oldest grandson needed something more practical. 

I've dragged those mules from that day, to college, and now they sit on my wife's grandmother's China cabinet. I still collect stuff. But some thing's can't be replaced or upgraded, so don't try.

Chris Paysinger