-
Hi Guest - Come check out all of the new CP Merch Shop! Now you can support CigarPass buy purchasing hats, apparel, and more...
Click here to visit! here...
Spreading the cheer contest
- Thread starter moki
- Start date
BrewMeister
The Titus Pullo of CP
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2005
- Messages
- 1,732
Congratulations Shawn!
And a very "Christmas - y" (thanks for learnin me that new word Andrew! :laugh: ) thing to do, sending it to the troops, WTG!
And a very "Christmas - y" (thanks for learnin me that new word Andrew! :laugh: ) thing to do, sending it to the troops, WTG!
Hillbilly Steaks
Dr. BBQ
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2006
- Messages
- 2,481
WAY YO GO WURM!!!
cookie_1978
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2005
- Messages
- 3,352
Shawn - congrats on the win and very nice play on your part.
MX
Quietly getting back into the cigar culture.....
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2007
- Messages
- 4,878
I am not so good at story telling, anad I know the cintest is over, but I wanted to share anyway.
When I joined the Army 11 years ago I was married to someone other than the wonderful lady that I now call the Love of my Life. When I got married right out of high school the EX already had a 2 year old son that I have and will call my own until the day that I die. During our doomed 7 year marriage I had 2 more boys with the EX and in the winter of 2000 we both decided that enough was enough and got divorced. I was stationed at Fort Bragg North Carolina at the time and a few months later I deployed to Kosovo and returned just in time to have Christmas 2001 with my 3 boys, or so I thought. Turns out that old #1 had re-married and decided to move back to our home town in Texas. I found this out about 3 days after returning and the day before Thanksgiving. Facing my first Christmas with out my Sons devastated me so, to help dull the pain I thought it would be a good idea to spend the rest of the day finishing of about a gallon of rum. Needless to say, Thanksgiving day sucked, and if I remember correctly Dallas even lost the game. Well thats what they told me after my Mom brought me back from the hospital for alcohol poising. I made it through that Christmas somehow, and I tell you that part of the story to set up this.....
In 2002 I met Kelli, the Love of my Life, in 2003 we were married, and in 2004 while I was deployed to Iraq the first time she had our baby daughter Savanna aka "The Princess" and bought our home. When I came back from Iraq I was dead set on getting custody of my boys, the youngest 2, the army would not support the oldest because he was only a step-son while I was married and not covered now that I was divorced. So for the summer I had all 3, and all of the 2005 school year the 2 youngest lived with me. I decided that Christmas 2005 was gonna go down in the record book, trying to make up for all the time lost. Kelli jumped in with both feet and presents were bought, and not just filler stuff quality goods I tell ya, on an average of about a grand per child, and if you do the math thats around 4K for just my kiddos! After that and all the family gifts there was not a lot left for Kelli or myself to spend on each other. I knew this and I did the best I could to get what I thought she would enjoy and what she deserved (which was and still is the World, but its not on sell, I checked!)
Christmas morning was a blast, with all the bikes and toys and everything...and after it was just about all over Kelli digs behind a tree to find a box that Daddy Santa had missed and slides it to me. Perplexed and surprised ( I don't miss to many presents, especially ones for me) I open the box to find a Genuine Black First Calvary Stetson. The truest sign of Pride, Tradition and Honor any Trooper can can show. This thing was decked out to the nines, all the buttons, rank and trimming were right where they were supposed to be. Where she got the money for it she has never told me, I bet there is some piece of family jewelry missing. It had been a long time since I cried, in fact Christmas of 2001 was it as far as I remember...well Let me tell you I cried like a baby that morning, and every time I wear the Stetson I get just a little choked up.....
I will never be able to repay my wife for that gift, she gave me so much more than a hat that day.....
Tim
When I joined the Army 11 years ago I was married to someone other than the wonderful lady that I now call the Love of my Life. When I got married right out of high school the EX already had a 2 year old son that I have and will call my own until the day that I die. During our doomed 7 year marriage I had 2 more boys with the EX and in the winter of 2000 we both decided that enough was enough and got divorced. I was stationed at Fort Bragg North Carolina at the time and a few months later I deployed to Kosovo and returned just in time to have Christmas 2001 with my 3 boys, or so I thought. Turns out that old #1 had re-married and decided to move back to our home town in Texas. I found this out about 3 days after returning and the day before Thanksgiving. Facing my first Christmas with out my Sons devastated me so, to help dull the pain I thought it would be a good idea to spend the rest of the day finishing of about a gallon of rum. Needless to say, Thanksgiving day sucked, and if I remember correctly Dallas even lost the game. Well thats what they told me after my Mom brought me back from the hospital for alcohol poising. I made it through that Christmas somehow, and I tell you that part of the story to set up this.....
In 2002 I met Kelli, the Love of my Life, in 2003 we were married, and in 2004 while I was deployed to Iraq the first time she had our baby daughter Savanna aka "The Princess" and bought our home. When I came back from Iraq I was dead set on getting custody of my boys, the youngest 2, the army would not support the oldest because he was only a step-son while I was married and not covered now that I was divorced. So for the summer I had all 3, and all of the 2005 school year the 2 youngest lived with me. I decided that Christmas 2005 was gonna go down in the record book, trying to make up for all the time lost. Kelli jumped in with both feet and presents were bought, and not just filler stuff quality goods I tell ya, on an average of about a grand per child, and if you do the math thats around 4K for just my kiddos! After that and all the family gifts there was not a lot left for Kelli or myself to spend on each other. I knew this and I did the best I could to get what I thought she would enjoy and what she deserved (which was and still is the World, but its not on sell, I checked!)
Christmas morning was a blast, with all the bikes and toys and everything...and after it was just about all over Kelli digs behind a tree to find a box that Daddy Santa had missed and slides it to me. Perplexed and surprised ( I don't miss to many presents, especially ones for me) I open the box to find a Genuine Black First Calvary Stetson. The truest sign of Pride, Tradition and Honor any Trooper can can show. This thing was decked out to the nines, all the buttons, rank and trimming were right where they were supposed to be. Where she got the money for it she has never told me, I bet there is some piece of family jewelry missing. It had been a long time since I cried, in fact Christmas of 2001 was it as far as I remember...well Let me tell you I cried like a baby that morning, and every time I wear the Stetson I get just a little choked up.....
I will never be able to repay my wife for that gift, she gave me so much more than a hat that day.....
Tim
Treamayne
On the run...
- Joined
- May 19, 2004
- Messages
- 1,482
Wow, a huge thank you to Jim and Andrew for making the contest possible. And Shawn...uh.... huge wow, what a donation to the guys forward. I'm back for now (have a few months before round 4 kicks off) but I know how much this will mean to the gyus and gals that benefit from your generosity.
That said, I have two short things to share with the peanut gallery:
1... this harkens back to when my life was measured in months not years, and as such is not a memory for me so much as a story that, learning later in life, warmed and saddened me equally.
Back during Christmas of 75, when I was only 6 months old, the family went to spend christmas eve with some of my father's kin (a rare thing since no three people of that group can get along for 10 minutes straight, resulting in us always spending the holidays with my mother's family on Thanksgiving and christmas day, but I digress). I hear is was a nice, if short visit with me raising hell, buncing on grandpa's knee and doing that infant/toddler thing. At the end of the night, my grandfather, who had cancer and emphazyma, told my father that "I can be in peace, i met my grandson who will carry my name" (my father had earlier kids, all of whom went with the mother and didn't stay Goff's). My father, slightly shaken, nodded thoughtfully knowing his dad's prognosis wasn't to see another Christmas. We went home and the moment ended. The next day, halfway through Christmas dinner at my grandmother's house we get the call that Grandpa Harrold died. According to my Aunt, after the fact, he showed up to Christmas dinner, told her "To Hell with my diet, it's my last Christmas" gorged himself as best he could on a chemo-shrunken stomach. Then he enjoyed a 3 block walk home in still, snowy night and had a nap in his favorite recliner when he got there. He never woke up.
Heart attack, in his sleep. That the way to go.
------------------
2... This story is a memory of mine and is more uplifting, if long.
Flash forward to 1991...May to be exact. At 8:53 am on a Sat morning I'm relaxing in my skivvies with my shattered ankle in a cast up on the arm of the couch. My mother gets a call from my dad, the car's broken down and can she come get him? OK. So she asks me to go get her one of my bandanas for her hair and as I reach my room I hear a huge crash! I come hobbling out as quick as possible and my mother says "I think there's been a head on collision, you check the front and I'll check the side and we'll se if anyone needs help." So I hobble again to the front door, jerking my head back and forth like a frightened chihuahua on espresso, nothing! As I limp back to the back room, my mother enters through the side door and we both stop cold, 5 separate fires all over the laundry room where she had just separated the laundry. SO she grabs the first thing she can to try and smother it.... acrylic blanket, wrong move. The fire shoots from 2 foot to 8 foot in a second. I call the fire dept (which, mercifully is 1 mile from our house). Stupidy, we grab the birdcage ( a 6-ft aviary, really) and I get one of my 2 dogs out of the house (the other is in the back yard - we'll get to him in a second). Then I grab a pair of slacks on my way out the door, trying and failing to pull it up over my fiberglass cast, until a neighbor brought scissors and sliced it open from knee to foot so I could wear something other than my underwear. It was just over 5 minutes from call to arrival of the firemen, and despite the activity of moving pets and getting out, still seemed like forever to wait. The heros arrive and try to get around the side and back of the house (which at this point has flames shooting from the roof of the southeast corner) when I remember Bear, my wolf/german shepard hybrid throwback in the back yard that will not recognize the need to allow the firemen entry to his territory. I go hobble-sprinting across the street, stop the fireman with his hand on the gate latch (privacy fence, and Bear han't caught on yet) some how got him to delay 1 minute as I went to the back chainlink, vaulted one-handed (breaking the cast open on landing) and somehow got Bear out the opposite gate and into my mother's car. The fire was out at 0905, I believe, maybe 0915. I wasn't there, they took me to the hospital to see to my ankle and get me a new cast. When we I came back, 40% of the house burned to the frame (roof and all), 30% was burned and the remainder, which the fire hadn't gotten to yet, was thoroughly water and smoke damaged.
First the insurance tried to call it arson so they woouldn't have to pay. Then they refused to accept the cost of leveling it and rebuilding. Finally they gave us a paltry 40k to hire contractors to rebuild it ourselves (not including hotel cost and refurbishment for damaged items that could be saved). We could not afford to rebuild with that, so my father essentially rebuild the house himself, working hours after work every day for 5 months and we still had to drain all our savings to finish.
By now your asking, what's Christmas got to do with it... come 1 Nov when we finally move back into the house, no money left and very few pssessiosn saved, father annouces Chistmas is cancelled. We'll celebrate and go to my grandmother's for the normal christmas dinner, but we just can't afford Christmas. My mother had it the roughest, losing all of her family heritage items that were in the attic, so my brother and I go to my father and ask him to help us get some work so we can do something for her. He arranges some small jobs as barter to local business, harware store, landscaping place, etc. A family friend bought us a small tree and I made some signs in exchange for new decorations. We had a small chrismas inside and everyone turned early, then the three of us stole rom the house to play Santa for my mother. The rest of what little we earned in 6 weeks along with some bartered goods allowed us to set it all up. When morning came my mother awoke to find a few gifts for here, mst of them some more pictures adn stuff we got from family to replace what she lost, and the finale. Out the from window on the still scortch-marker eather we planted two small spruce and decoreted the for christmas too, and landscaped a small garden area over what was black and dead. Between the heirlooms and the scene outside she cried for almost an hour. Somehow father had managed a present for each of us, and though it was a small Christmas it is still the most potent in my memory for the feeling of hope and renewal it provided. It was turning point for the whol family after losing almost everything and spending the better part of the year "fighting the man."
Since then, my father has passed, my mother, who is disabled, lives with me in NC and my brother now ownes and lives in the house. But the Spruce still stand, somehere at the 25ft mark now!
-K-
That said, I have two short things to share with the peanut gallery:
1... this harkens back to when my life was measured in months not years, and as such is not a memory for me so much as a story that, learning later in life, warmed and saddened me equally.
Back during Christmas of 75, when I was only 6 months old, the family went to spend christmas eve with some of my father's kin (a rare thing since no three people of that group can get along for 10 minutes straight, resulting in us always spending the holidays with my mother's family on Thanksgiving and christmas day, but I digress). I hear is was a nice, if short visit with me raising hell, buncing on grandpa's knee and doing that infant/toddler thing. At the end of the night, my grandfather, who had cancer and emphazyma, told my father that "I can be in peace, i met my grandson who will carry my name" (my father had earlier kids, all of whom went with the mother and didn't stay Goff's). My father, slightly shaken, nodded thoughtfully knowing his dad's prognosis wasn't to see another Christmas. We went home and the moment ended. The next day, halfway through Christmas dinner at my grandmother's house we get the call that Grandpa Harrold died. According to my Aunt, after the fact, he showed up to Christmas dinner, told her "To Hell with my diet, it's my last Christmas" gorged himself as best he could on a chemo-shrunken stomach. Then he enjoyed a 3 block walk home in still, snowy night and had a nap in his favorite recliner when he got there. He never woke up.
Heart attack, in his sleep. That the way to go.
------------------
2... This story is a memory of mine and is more uplifting, if long.
Flash forward to 1991...May to be exact. At 8:53 am on a Sat morning I'm relaxing in my skivvies with my shattered ankle in a cast up on the arm of the couch. My mother gets a call from my dad, the car's broken down and can she come get him? OK. So she asks me to go get her one of my bandanas for her hair and as I reach my room I hear a huge crash! I come hobbling out as quick as possible and my mother says "I think there's been a head on collision, you check the front and I'll check the side and we'll se if anyone needs help." So I hobble again to the front door, jerking my head back and forth like a frightened chihuahua on espresso, nothing! As I limp back to the back room, my mother enters through the side door and we both stop cold, 5 separate fires all over the laundry room where she had just separated the laundry. SO she grabs the first thing she can to try and smother it.... acrylic blanket, wrong move. The fire shoots from 2 foot to 8 foot in a second. I call the fire dept (which, mercifully is 1 mile from our house). Stupidy, we grab the birdcage ( a 6-ft aviary, really) and I get one of my 2 dogs out of the house (the other is in the back yard - we'll get to him in a second). Then I grab a pair of slacks on my way out the door, trying and failing to pull it up over my fiberglass cast, until a neighbor brought scissors and sliced it open from knee to foot so I could wear something other than my underwear. It was just over 5 minutes from call to arrival of the firemen, and despite the activity of moving pets and getting out, still seemed like forever to wait. The heros arrive and try to get around the side and back of the house (which at this point has flames shooting from the roof of the southeast corner) when I remember Bear, my wolf/german shepard hybrid throwback in the back yard that will not recognize the need to allow the firemen entry to his territory. I go hobble-sprinting across the street, stop the fireman with his hand on the gate latch (privacy fence, and Bear han't caught on yet) some how got him to delay 1 minute as I went to the back chainlink, vaulted one-handed (breaking the cast open on landing) and somehow got Bear out the opposite gate and into my mother's car. The fire was out at 0905, I believe, maybe 0915. I wasn't there, they took me to the hospital to see to my ankle and get me a new cast. When we I came back, 40% of the house burned to the frame (roof and all), 30% was burned and the remainder, which the fire hadn't gotten to yet, was thoroughly water and smoke damaged.
First the insurance tried to call it arson so they woouldn't have to pay. Then they refused to accept the cost of leveling it and rebuilding. Finally they gave us a paltry 40k to hire contractors to rebuild it ourselves (not including hotel cost and refurbishment for damaged items that could be saved). We could not afford to rebuild with that, so my father essentially rebuild the house himself, working hours after work every day for 5 months and we still had to drain all our savings to finish.
By now your asking, what's Christmas got to do with it... come 1 Nov when we finally move back into the house, no money left and very few pssessiosn saved, father annouces Chistmas is cancelled. We'll celebrate and go to my grandmother's for the normal christmas dinner, but we just can't afford Christmas. My mother had it the roughest, losing all of her family heritage items that were in the attic, so my brother and I go to my father and ask him to help us get some work so we can do something for her. He arranges some small jobs as barter to local business, harware store, landscaping place, etc. A family friend bought us a small tree and I made some signs in exchange for new decorations. We had a small chrismas inside and everyone turned early, then the three of us stole rom the house to play Santa for my mother. The rest of what little we earned in 6 weeks along with some bartered goods allowed us to set it all up. When morning came my mother awoke to find a few gifts for here, mst of them some more pictures adn stuff we got from family to replace what she lost, and the finale. Out the from window on the still scortch-marker eather we planted two small spruce and decoreted the for christmas too, and landscaped a small garden area over what was black and dead. Between the heirlooms and the scene outside she cried for almost an hour. Somehow father had managed a present for each of us, and though it was a small Christmas it is still the most potent in my memory for the feeling of hope and renewal it provided. It was turning point for the whol family after losing almost everything and spending the better part of the year "fighting the man."
Since then, my father has passed, my mother, who is disabled, lives with me in NC and my brother now ownes and lives in the house. But the Spruce still stand, somehere at the 25ft mark now!
-K-
junkman_56
cigar smokin' caver
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2005
- Messages
- 2,860
Congrats Sawn and it's a GREAT gesture sending the cigars to the troops.
Moki, thanks again for having the contest.
It was wonderful reading all the stories.
Moki, thanks again for having the contest.
It was wonderful reading all the stories.
MilesMingusMonk
Breaking Wind Master
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2003
- Messages
- 3,549
With Moki hosting this contest, I would have definitely won with my horny-donkey-and-the-Virgin-Mary Christmas pageant story... 
moki
el Presidente
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2003
- Messages
- 9,418
Class move, sir! This is all set to go via USPS DC# 0306 2400 0000 6836 0139 -- but I won't be sending it out until tomorrow, we have a bit of a snow storm here, and I'm not venturing out today.
tone-ny
I smoke therefore I am!
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2004
- Messages
- 13,276
Kudos all around, but Andrew you are a wuss! Snow I thought you were from Rochester? Call for a pick up they do provide that service for free.
All kidding aside , Jim, Andrew and Shawn well done :thumbs:
moki
el Presidente
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2003
- Messages
- 9,418
With Moki hosting this contest, I would have definitely won with my horny-donkey-and-the-Virgin-Mary Christmas pageant story...
You can still tell it....
Strayvector
Like what you smoke, smoke what you like
- Joined
- May 30, 2005
- Messages
- 3,369
Wanna know how big of a wuss he is? After last week's snow storm, he had me drive him home in the snow. Arizona boy, driving on frozen Rochester roads. Then he had the nerve to tell me that I'm scaring him for driving like I'm still in Tucson.
My sentiments, exactly.
moki
el Presidente
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2003
- Messages
- 9,418
My life insurance policy still hasn't kicked in... and you were definitely driving like you were in Tucson! Freakin' dessert rats drive in snow like they're driving through the trailer park on a joy ride...
preembargo
Sleeping not so peacefully
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2005
- Messages
- 2,686
Received the package in great shape, they are now resting in the OpFTH coolerdor.
moki, thank you for a fun contest that helped us keep the season in perspective and Wurm, thank you for your selflessness and generosity.
Merry Christmas!
moki, thank you for a fun contest that helped us keep the season in perspective and Wurm, thank you for your selflessness and generosity.
Merry Christmas!
Wurm
Bratwurst and Beer
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2005
- Messages
- 6,141
No problem Mike, it was my pleasure, look at it as an old Army trooper handing down some joy to those who have followed. :thumbs: