Come take my hand and walk with me
Across a moon-lit night.
We’ll stroll beneath a canopy
Aglow with candlelight,
To places no one’s been before;
Where ecstasy is ours.
To heights of love yet unexplored,
We’ll dance across the stars.

Let’s find the land of Wonderful
And weave ten thousand dreams.
Let Ordinary float away
On laughter’s loving wings.
Let’s chart a course to Evermore.
Come journey there with me.
We’ll scale the peaks of Marvelous
And sail the Awesome Sea.

Come take my hand and lie with me
Beneath a bright rainbow,
Where storms of passion overwhelm
And pleasures overflow.
May each day start and end the same;
With passionate embrace.
And may my last awareness be
Your lips upon my face.

... Jon Gardner ...

Here's one of the things I finished recently on the CNC machine.

I enjoy running a good vacuum cleaner. Some people think that’s odd. But after giving it a little thought, I think I understand why. I genuinely admire it as a machine.

That’s right, I admire the vacuum.

Here’s why. A good vacuum is powerful and efficient, and it performs without over-analyzing its work. In fact, it uses absolutely NO analysis as it works. It applies its suction to everything it encounters without making any value judgments. If an object that it encounters is small enough and light enough to be devoured into the vacuum – it will be. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a piece of dirt, a thread, a scrap of paper, or a piece of lint. Nor does it matter if it’s a diamond that recently fell out of an expensive ring. If it’s there – the vacuum will go after it until it’s gone.

The vacuum never underestimates itself, either. If you push it toward a bowling ball, the vacuum will work with all its suctioning power to try to devour the impossible adversary. It will not stop trying until you force it away or it burns up its motor in valiant effort. What a noble and gallant machine!

No analysis. No judgment. No logic. No hesitation. I love it.

The vacuum is so many things that I am not. And that is why I admire it so much.

The second of my treasures is this chair.




It belonged to my grandfather, Roy Gardner. During many of my summers as I was growing up, I would work on the farm. I remember going over to grampa's house on Saturday afternoons and turning in my hours for the week. He would sit in this chair at his desk and write everything into a ledger and then hand me my paycheck. I worked all summer one year in order to pay for a stereo. It was an eight-track stereo in a really nice wooden deck with a built-in receiver. The most amazing thing about it was that it was an eight-track recorder! I was SOOOO cool to have an eight-track recorder.

Here's a photo of 4 generations of Gardner men. The skinny guy on the left is me! That's my Dad, Douglas Gardner, on the right. My sons, Evan and Nicolas, are in the foreground, and that's my Grampa, Roy Gardner in the truck. This was taken around 1991 I think.




Oddly enough, when I did a google image search on Roy Gardner Safford AZ, this is one of the photos that I found.


It's the memorial marker at the grave of my grandparents, Roy and Grace Gardner. Weird, huh?

In my next few posts, I plan to show some photos of things that I have in my posession that I treasure because of the people who owned them before me.




This is the desk that belonged to my great-grandmother. Her name was Mamie Cox. Everyone called her "Momma Cox." She was a sweet old woman whom I will never forget. Not many people are so fortunate to have known any of their great-grandparents. I knew three of mine. In fact three of them lived on the same street in tiny Safford, Arizona when I was a child. Momma Cox passed away when I was a freshman in college. I have many wonderful memories of her.


Now, here's a photograph of Momma Cox and Daddy Cox. I never knew Daddy Cox. He died before I was born. And I don't remember Momma Cox looking like this! Even in my earliest memories of her, she had long silver-gray hair.


I miss you, Momma Cox! And I hope to see you again some day!