Mitchell WayI’m Marty Mitchell, aka Captain Crash, the guy behind Mitchell Way. MitchellWay.com is the story of my misadventures in life and reflections on faith. ... Is Mitchell Way a state of mind? A real place? A way of life? Tough to say. You be the judge.
“Hello. My name is Marty. And your name is. . .”
I leaned forward and squinted to see the name on her identification badge.
“Angus. Nice to meet you, Angus.”
“It’s Agnus, you insulting twit!” she barked as she spun around and walked away.
Iris and Lincoln Stodge live at 1835 Fernhook Lane, a very long drive through fields of corn which ends at the base of the Whatcom Timber Reserve. Iris and Lincoln are fourth and fifth graders.
Cheryl and I have visited four of the Hawaiian islands: Oahu, Kauai, The Big Island, and Maui.
I would rate them as #1 Kauai, #2 The Big Island, #3 Maui, and #4 Oahu. This is based on things that interest me.
In the fall of 1974, at the start of my songwriting career, I was given the song for Christmas entitled “Little Baby Boy.” That was 50 years ago.
As with all the music and stories I have written, I consider them all to be gifts from God and not a talent which I have.
December of 1973, my girlfriend was killed in a sliding accident at the local ski area. The grief for an 18-year-old was beyond belief. It was because of the support of my church, Pastor, and the teens in the youth group who believed in my music that I was able to climb out of the depression. With the backing of our high school youth group, I was able to perform “Little Baby Boy” for the first time at the church in December of 1974. It has always been a favorite that has been requested through the last 50 years.
The video clip filmed in 2022 is of an old me and my wife Cheryl performing the song at Christmas. I hope you will enjoy the song too.
Little Baby Boy (Lyrics)
Little baby boy, dressed in swaddlin’ clothes,
Lyin’ in a manger, so many years ago.
Little baby boy, little baby boy, how I love you so.
Little baby boy, born the highest King.
Through the years we’ve turned around
What Christmas morning means.
Little baby boy, little baby boy, how I love you so.
We took the Christmas story, and we laid it on a shelf.
We traded baby Jesus for a jolly little elf.
But did Santa hang upon the cross and die for all our sins?
And can he give us happiness long after Christmas ends?
Can Santa cause the blind to see and cause the deaf to hear?
Can you get to heaven on a sleigh and eight reindeer?
That’s why I say little baby boy, little baby boy, how I love you so.
Little baby boy, dressed in swaddlin’ clothes,
Lyin’ in a manger, so many years ago.
Little baby boy, little baby boy, how I love you so.
And on that Christmas morning
When the church bells start to ring
I’m going to celebrate that day as the birthday of the King.
Little baby boy, little baby boy, how I love you so.
Little baby boy, dressed in swaddlin’ clothes,
Lyin’ in a manger, so many years ago.
Little baby boy, little baby boy, how I love you so.
Little Baby Boy (c) 1974 P.M. Mitchell
Faith Family Life Getting Older Growing Up Misadventures Music Patriotism Pets or Pests? Snips Tributes
Forty-five years. That is a long time to wait for a project to become reality.
Great Men, the ones that are few and far between. The ones that inspire you to greatness. The ones you want to emulate. How can I best honor them when they are gone?
In the early 1920s a phrase was coined which stated, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” That being the case I started thinking, “Maybe my audience includes story writers who don’t know they can write stories.” So here is my idea, I’ll post some photos and you make up your own stories of what you think happened in each photo. Then I will tell you the real story behind the photo. We’ll compare your creativity with the truth. This will save me a great deal of time that I would otherwise have had to put out for this week’s blog post. It seems like a simple exercise; let’s try it.
I have been asked by many of my readers, “When are you going to put all of your stories into a book? I’d buy one.”
In 2009 my mother, Patty, decided she would like to take her family to the Big Island of Hawaii. She had time shares in a condo, so she acquired two waterfront rooms for seven days in Kona. There were four families in the group. Mom’s husband had recently experienced a heart attack and was in a rehabilitation center, so mom had a spare airline ticket. She asked her niece, Gae, to join her.
For the longest time he had no name. Perhaps if he had not made a simple mistake, we never would have known his true identity.
The piano melodies of Bach, Chopin, Beethoven, and Brahms echoed around the walls of my small room. Occasionally, my mother would sing an opera or classical favorite from the 1940s while accompanying herself on the piano.
As far as I can tell, there are two groups of boys in high school: those who are comfortable with girls and those who are terrified of them. I personally, though not being afraid of girls, was still of the elementary school mindset that they were icky. As far as I was concerned, life in high school would have been far less stressful without two of the annual school sanctioned activities: Prom and Tolo.
“Seat belts on; Doors locked; Brakes set; Circuit breakers in; Fuel selector valve on both.”
Four of us were sitting in a Cessna 172 at the parking area of the Roche Harbor Resort airstrip preparing to depart.
Thou shalt not sit down on T- Bars
For you first time users, T-Bars like rope tows are a means of pulling you to the top of the hill. You must first stand in an interminable line of skiers watching the skiers at the head of the line move into position where the attendant slaps them on the rear end with a T-bar as it comes around. To the first-timer watching the process, it all seems very straight forward. The cable with the T-bar comes around the bullwheel, the attendant slaps you in the hips with the bar and up the hill you go. What you may not know is that the T-bar cable is on a retractable reel and must feed all the way out before it catches and starts pulling you up the slope. It came as a bit of a surprise to me, a first-timer, when I skied into position. I felt the attendant slap my hips with the bar, which I assumed I could sit on. The result was a rather unglamorous flop onto my back in the snow as the cable continued to feed out of the retractable reel. Then, when the full length of cable had retracted, the T-bar shot up the hill, raking down the back of my legs, slapping the skis off my boots and causing raucous laughter from the interminable line of skiers behind me.
Isaac Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion is: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
I have been known to be a grouch at times, maybe even a curmudgeon or as my kids likes to call me, Debbie Downer. I tend to pessimistically see the glass as half empty.