I was listening to Max Morgan reminisce last week about beginning to work for Baker Implement 48 years ago.

As I was talking to him for a story the newspaper was going to run about his retirement, what he was saying caused me to reminisce as well.

I was surprised when Max said he used to work on my father's cotton pickers, and those of Milfred Collins.

I was surprised again when he said he had been to my house lots of times when I was a kid, to work on my father's cotton pickers.

I didn't remember Max -- I was just a kid. I do remember, however, making lots of trips to Baker Implement with my father, as well as standing around his pickers in the back yard watching men from Baker Implement working on his farm equipment.

There is something soothing about the familiar, isn't there? There is something…something warm, something nice. The familiar always seems to eventually give way to the unfamiliar, though.

From the familiarity of work comes the unfamiliarity of retirement. From what was a constant comes a change.

That made me think of something I've heard: In every change or adversity there is the seed of a greater or equivalent benefit [I heard this at a SEMO Press Association Conference last week, but I've heard it before from someone].

Here is seeing the equivalent or greater benefit in every change or adversity!

Jack Rollins is the managing editor of the Daily Dunklin Democrat