Prologue

Daydreaming about my life. Thinking back on my childhood

    The sun peeked out on the western horizon as the plane flew from Madrid towards Dallas. The frost sparked on the small oval airplane window as it glided 35,000 feet over the mid-west plains of the United States. The day is Sunday morning in June 1997 and I am returning from a consulting trip for Sony Corporation in Barcelona, Spain. I am an Applied Statistics expert instructing managers and engineers from fourteen different countries the technical 4-week series "Lean Six Sigma". Besides mastering the material, I became fluent in Spanish and was teaching to professionals in the client's native language. What events led to this stage of my life? How did I go from an Indiana farm-boy to where I am today?

    Gazing out the window on the farmland below, it reminded me of a patchwork quilt. My mother stitched together scrap pieces of fabric into distinct, colorful designs. The land below formed neat square patterns. Divided into one mile patches except where natural creeks, rivers, or terrain caused the borders to vary. Five thousand, two hundred eighty feet or 640 acres, separated on each side by a dirt roadway. They pave the country roads today. Back in the 50's when I grew-up, they were stone and gravel, stirring up a cloud of white dust whenever a car or tractor traveled the isolated road.

    If you split each square mile into quarters, you have four 160 acre pieces. Divide them again to get 80 acre homesteads. On one of these insignificant plots on the north-west corner of Wabash County, Indiana, my parents raised me and my sisters and we lived there until he was sixteen years old.

    In my mind's eye, I visualize that this piece of God's earth with a small farm pond. On the bank is a sun-burned farmer casting his line for bass and bluegill while he waits for the cows to wander in from the pasture. That's my Dad, Carl Steele, doing the one thing in the world he loved most ... fishing. He died in 2001, just a few days before the 9/11 attack, but I can still see him by the shore with me at his side. My mother, Lilah Steele, might be in the chicken pen feeding the chickens or in the house fixing breakfast. She died in 2007, but will always be in my heart.

    “Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke.”  ...  Julian Barnes, England

Author's Note

This is my first writing, so much to learn. Thx