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Today's Featured Biography
Chris Dixon
A long, long time ago in a land far, far away, during the summer just before our senior year, my dad was transferred to the Chicagoland western suburbs. So technically, I did not graduate Raytown South. After attending Southwood, South Junior, and most of Raytown South High, this was pretty hard to take. You won’t find me in the yearbook for 1972, but RSHS has always been the only high school in my heart. Just as soon as my Senior year was over, I came back to Raytown, having bonded with very few people during the one year in Illinois. After a year or so back in MO, I found that things could no longer be the same. Friends had married, moved, started careers, met other people; time stops for no one. So dazed and confused, I ended up back in the Chicago “burbs” to use my dad’s insurance and undergo a much needed tonsillectomy. Got a job, made friends, next thing ya know, decades have gone by. Wazzzzz-up wit dat ????
In ’74 (on the day Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army) I landed a job in a retail optical shop. A couple of years later the optometrist broke away, opened three shops, and I went with him, expanding my abilities to the actual manufacturing of eye-wear and retail management.
In 1978 I found myself in the middle of a conflict between a fast motorcycle and a very slow tree. The tree won. A short ambulance trip later, covered in poison ivy and paralyzed from the waist down, I spent a few weeks in the hospital. After an extensive surgery which fused seven vertebrae and added two stainless steel rods to the spine; I recovered surprisingly well. That episode however, put an end to my passion for long distance running forever; but not for going fast!
We had one son, Ben in 1983. He is married and lives near Omaha. He is an accomplished artist, has a master’s degree, and builds some of the wildest, cutting edge computers you ever saw .... simply as a hobby.
I was in wholesale and retail optical for 22 years; sold that business in ’95 and got into real restate. Buying, re-habbing, selling, renting, (and taking tenants to eviction court!) Seven years of schlepping drywall and toilets came to an end when the economy took a dump in the late 90’s.
In 2001 we bought a little log cabin for my sister to live in near Sainte Genevieve, MO. She was only able to stay there a couple of years and so I came down to fix it up for sale. Looking back, the one common denominator for all my life has been the love of nature. Used to camp and roam the endless woods around Lake Lotawana. That used to be a 20 minute ride out 50 Highway .... whats up with solid neighborhoods surrounding it now??? Once back here, I again felt the calling of the Missouri woodlands, lakes, and streams. We decided to make the little cabin at the end of a dirt road our home. I hired a group of guys from the local church, and we built on a second story for more room; then built a three car garage. This rural area at the foothills of the Ozarks is over-run with deer, turkey, fox, raccoons, and even an occasional Bobcat or Black Bear! The hummingbirds here are thicker than moths around a porch light. I need to fill three feeders 3-4 times a day during the middle of the summer using 40 pounds of sugar during the season.
Then in 2008, one of those raccoons chose to launch itself across the road in front of my Harley. (yea …. I actually kept riding after the first wreck). He took me out at the apex of a curve around a big drop off. The bike and I bounced off oak trees like a ping pong ball, twenty feet out in the air. When I woke up face down in the dark, I found the bike upside down, wedged between two small trees, and lying across the back of my legs. Long story short, I was pinned there in the dark forest, below a rural road from 9:PM until about 6:30AM. My phone and Leatherman tool were thrown somewhere, so I couldn’t even call or cut myself loose. As I listened to a "flock" of coyotes howling out in the valley, I thought, “what a stupid way to come to an end”. After a few hours, I discovered that I could sometimes operate the horn with the heel of my boot, but almost no cars came by. Finally, after daybreak, a guy stopped. He told of how he had been on his way to the gas station and thought he heard a horn, so on the way back through, he slowed to listen, heard nothing, and went on. But at the end of the road, he just knew he had heard something, so he came back a third time! WOW! That time I was able to honk. Soon several police cars, an ambulance, and ultimately a rescue helicopter came to look at the strange sight. It took six guys to lift the big bike off of me on the steep hillside. The result of that adventure was eight ribs broken in at least eleven places, a collapsed lung, dislocated sterno-clavicular joint, both rotator cuffs severed, one of the little bone “fins” broken off the back, a concussion and multiple cuts and bruises. However, three years, three surgeries, and endless months of re-hab later, I am still going strong. Just not nearly as fast as before.
Currently I am owned by the sixth Boxer dog in my life. Alba is 60 pounds of love and wiggles. Rescued from a puppy-mill, caged all her 2 years of life and had two liters of puppies; she was skin and bones and frost bit. She was nursed back to health, and will turn five years old this summer. She is my constant buddy, smart as they come and adds so much to day to day life!
Often you can find me (and the dog) roaming the woods with a camera, on the ATV (4 wheels this time) looking for mushrooms, or sitting in the canoe out in the middle of a lake filling the freezer with fish. I enjoy photography, hunting, writing, selling “treasures” on eBay, and old cars. Somehow, I keep dragging them home whenever I can work a deal, and currently have four Ford Festivas and two’98 Isuzu Troopers .... and most of them even run! You can never have too much “yard art”!
My dad used to say “it ain’t bad getting old .... just hell falling apart”! Wanna know the definition of life? That which happens to you .... while you are making other plans. With that said, I’ve pretty much given up making plans and just try to take each day as they come. Other than breaking body parts due to my bad habit of running into stationary objects at high rates of speed ... I have been completely healthy so far. That counts for an awful lot in the long run ... Don’t take things for granted as the only thing you can count on is ... that they will change.
Looking forward to catching up with all y’all at the get-together!
L8R, Chris
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