“I made up my mind when I was young that I was going to retire early. And I did it. I retired last August after 33 years with LyondellBassell, just as I was fixing to turn 57.

“Never been married. No kids. But I was married to my job, I believe. I was one of those guys that liked money. Others my age wanted off all the time to run around, goof off, and waste money. Not me. I wanted to make money. So I always volunteered to take their shifts. I worked holidays. I was an overtime freak.

“And I tried to play things smart by investing in everything I could out there. I wanted to pay everything off as soon as possible. I didn’t want to have any bills. I didn’t want to owe anything to credit or loan companies. In the end, I pretty much accomplished what I set out to do.

“When I was going to work, I would leave the house by about 4 in the morning. It’s still no different. Most days, I’m up at 3:30 or 4. I get a little something to eat, and then I take off on my bike. I love riding when it’s dark out and hardly anybody’s around.

“I ride seven days a week. I go all over town. I cross the Hartman Bridge sometimes and ride in La Porte, or go down to Morgan’s Point. I’m a member of the Dirty Bay BMX Riders, so we’ll ride together. I’ve done the MS 350 to Austin for multiple sclerosis.

“When you’re riding this bike here, it’s like riding a Cadillac. You lean your back against it, and just kind of lose yourself. It relaxes me.

“I never know where I’m going to go or what I’m going to do. But I have my cell phone with me. I always have money on me. I have things to drink and eat. I have all kinds of tools and patch kits if I ever have a flat. I have lots of music. And I ride until I decide I want to stop somewhere.

“I’m not as young as I used to be, so I work out every day. Matter of fact, I just got done doing all my pushups and squats out there on that floating dock. I do them at home, too, and I work out on a punching bag.

“I live life day by day. I wake up in the morning, kick the dirt off me, and see what the good lord offers me.”

— Jerry Puckett

Jerry and his partner have a shop where they build quarter-mile hot rods and custom bikes.

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“It was a couple months after hearing of the coronavirus that I really began to sit up and take notice. The case numbers kept rising. Worse than that, the death numbers were rising at an alarming rate. I’ve been retired 17 years, so I’m used to being at home almost all the time. So having to limit our comings and goings was nothing new. Even though it kept a lot of people from going to work, it provided an opportunity to do some things around the house, which is what we did. We took care of projects that we’ve been putting off for years. Other people had the same idea. I went to Lowe’s looking for wooden cedar fence pickets, and the man there said they sold them as soon as they got them in. A lot of that was from when the hurricane hit Louisiana.

“The pandemic has made me realize that there are people who can get a bit selfish when they don’t take things like this seriously. I heard several people say that they weren’t going to change their lifestyle. Meanwhile, they had parents living at home who were very susceptible to the virus because of their age, etc. It’s not always just about you. I believe that if people had taken this more seriously, we may very well have been over it by now. 

“I thank God for getting me and my family through this so far. It has made me appreciate the things that we have taken for granted. I am praying that this will soon be over, before more sickness and death occurs.”

— Don Cunningham

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“I’m from Louisiana, north of New Orleans. My husband works in the plants as a crane and forklift operator, welder and whatever else they need him to do.

“He’s been traveling for work for years. When I was still teaching, I would go with him occasionally during the summertime. But since I retired, we’ve traveled together quite a bit. We’ve been to Wyoming, Salt Lake City, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia — just all over. And I’m enjoying it tremendously. While he works, I like to read, people watch, bike ride, and just whatever else I decide to do.

“I was raised in a large family with seven children, and we were all close in age. So I was always around a lot of people. But now, there’s nobody around that I know. So it’s my time now. That’s a very big difference. I have a lot of quiet time to think and do just about anything. Before, you had to kind of go along with the crowd, whether that was brothers and sisters, or 25 kids in the classroom and 50 teachers in the school system. You kind of had to compromise. But now, out here, I don’t have to compromise at all. I can do whatever I want.”

And what is it that you want?
“I don’t really know yet. I’m still looking.”

— Elizabeth Rick

Related:

• Kindergarten teacher dropout enjoys retirement

The post She’s on the road again — and loving it appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“We had been wanting this house for 20 years and it finally came up for sale. It was the first house built in the area, back in 1948. At one time, the people who lived here housed troubled kids.

“It’s 5,000 square feet and kind of has a wow factor about it when you go inside. It’s got a library, a sauna, and my bedroom is almost the length of the house. I also have a man cave up on the second floor.

“I’m retired now and just enjoying things. There’s always something that needs doing around this place.”

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“I’m a retired school teacher. I taught 26 years, second and third grades, and have been working at our church’s child center with school-age children for another 10 years.”

What’s one of the biggest changes you’ve seen in schools?
“It bothers me that they’re no longer teaching cursive writing in most schools. Parents will ask their child to write their name, and they’re appalled that the child prints it. They’ve never been taught to write in cursive. It’s one example of why today’s children find it really hard to relate to what their parents learned.”

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“I’ve been retired for about six years. I sit here in the morning and watch all these guys going to work, and it feels good.

“I also made a bucket list and have traveled all over. I’ve gone to places like Yellowstone Park, Las Vegas, the Hoover Dam, New York, Washington, D.C., and Nashville. I still want to see Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon.

“I figure I better do it now. I’m going to be 70, so later on I might not be able to get around as easily.”

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“I’m their grandmother and he’s their uncle. I’m from Miami, but I actually spend more time here now.

“I retired from nursing three years ago. I was an OBGYN nurse, delivering babies for 40 years. It was awesome. Right out of nursing school I went to the delivery room and never left.

“In the end, there were just too many changes and things going wrong where I worked. I knew it was time to get out.”

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“We moved to Baytown from Denton about eight years ago. My husband came here to work for Navarre Funeral Home. He’s been a mortician for 40 years, and we’ve been married for 40 years. Now he’s retired, so we enjoy hanging out together and traveling.

“We don’t have any children, but we’ve got nieces and nephews that we call our kids. And we recently got a little rescue dog. I saw it on the Internet. Bless its heart, it had been in four rescue homes. I don’t know why people kept giving it up. I was looking for a dog. We had two schnauzers for 14 years and they died two years apart. We’ve had her for a couple months now. She travels well. She’s a real sweetheart.”

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