About Culture Jock

Culture Jock is a name I’ve carried with me for years so that one day, far off into the future, I would write my book. My goodness, how time flies like an arrow (and fruit flies like a banana) 😊 I never dreamed I would ever be retired and on Social Security along with my wife, Kay. 

‘Culture Jock’ is a play on the term, culture shock, two words that describe what may happen when someone visits another country or in the not-too-distant future, perhaps another planet! (Let that roll around in your head.) And the local culture is much different than they are accustomed to – precisely my family’s 43-year journey from conservative upbringing in the church to the struggle of maintaining our family values through the complex and pitfall-laden world of broadcasting.

The actual catalyst to write the book, however, came from Pruitt Health Hospice, the dear people caring for Kay as she lay quiet and quadriplegic. Their chaplain, Jim Crews, called to stop by, to pray, and to bring some encouragement and sandwiches or… “sammiches” as he likes to refer to them. In the last year that I have been Kay’s caregiver, Jim has stopped by every couple of weeks, and he never fails to bring a “sammich".

On one visit, he said he had written a book – not for publishing, but for his family as a legacy of sorts. He, like me, is a child of the 60s and has had quite an interesting life. So, thank you Jim for that encouragement and for kindling a spark in my heart to write this book. It’s an honest book because I reveal more of my sinful nature than I would in person. (Unless I were confessing those sins to another) So please go easy on me and hopefully you will learn from my mistakes. Culture Jock will surely give you many of those opportunities. 

Finally, with respect to the timeline, there are several instances where I write outside of the normal chronology to continue the topic. My stories about flying and surfing are two examples. 

Sometimes there were years between flying lessons and my ‘adventures’ but I wanted to maintain the flying narrative for continuity’s sake. The same is mostly true about my surfing experiences. I made an exception in this instance because of a natural break in the narrative. 

I believe it is important to the reader to bring closure to stories that are best told from start to finish, like our son Sam’s near drowning, and the conclusion of the consequences of his survival as it related to me some 12 years later; this was crucial to the story.