Visionaries

What sensibly-thinking (unskilled) laborer surrenders his ditch-digger shovel to chase after and secure an even lesser-paying job?

It seems a reasonable question.

When he spotted the simple flier announcing, “Plumber’s Helper Wanted”, Clyde wasted little time pondering its meaning. Shedding his less-than-promising vocation as dirt-shoveler along open trenches in the nearby neighborhood, he soon found himself loading and unloading lengths of galvanized pipe, odd-looking pipe-threading devices, and a sewage-clearing apparatus nicknamed “the snake”.

A companion question follows the earlier one. What kind of mindset would propel a poor young woman hailing from a dusty Oklahoma village to set out by bus and travel mile upon mile across several states to arrive at a “foreign” destination with scant understanding of what may lie ahead?

By the time the paths of Clyde Baxter and his bride-to-be Thelma Christine finally (after their months of separation) reconverged near a sprawling body of water called San Francisco Bay, they had each unwittingly entered the world of VIM.

Several decades were to crawl by before a Philosophy Professor – Dr. Dallas Willard of another Golden State setting (U.S.C.) – would introduce the VIM acronym.

Vision – Intention – Means

Clyde’s mind and heart had given birth to a vision. To one day marry his sweetheart, Thelma.

Clyde’s vision, however, called for significant risk and extraordinary courage. If his dream of gaining this pretty country girl as his life-long companion were to become reality, both he and Thelma must leave behind the dust-laden, increasingly barren, cotton fields of their beloved Sooner State.

It was a daring, costly venture the couple had struck out on, from the moment Clyde had leapt aboard his first freight train departing Oklahoma. And now, clarity of focus had – across the Greyhound miles – settled more deeply in his fiancé’s soul. There would be no going back. Thelma, too, owned the Vision.

©2025 Jerry Lout

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