- If we can't possibly improve our financial situation, let's be good to ourselves and
stop resenting what can't be changed.
Part Ten - "How I Conquered Worry"
32 True Stories
Six Major Troubles Hit Me All At Once
BY C.I. BLACK WOOD
Proprietor, Blackwood-Davis Business College Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
In the summer of 1943, it seemed to me that half the worries of the world had come to
rest on my shoulders.
For more than forty years, I had lived a normal, carefree life with only the usual troubles
which come to a husband, father, and business man. I could usually meet these troubles
easily, but suddenly-wham! wham!! wham!!! wham! !!! WHAM! !!!! WHAM!!!!!! Six major
troubles hit me all at once. I pitched and tossed and turned in bed all night long, half
dreading to see the day come, because I faced these six major worries.
1. My business college was trembling on the verge of financial disaster because all the
boys were going to war; and most of the girls were making more money working in war
plants without training than my graduates could make in business offices with training.
2. My older son was in service, and I had the heart-numbing worry common to all
parents whose sons were away at war.
3. Oklahoma City had already started proceedings to appropriate a large tract of land for
an airport, and my home- formerly my father's home-was located in the centre of this
tract. I knew that I would be paid only one tenth of its value, and, what was even worse,
I would lose my home; and because of the housing shortage, I worried about whether I
could possibly find another home to shelter my family of six. I feared we might have to
live in a tent. I even worried about whether we would be able to buy a tent.
4. The water well on my property went dry because a drainage canal had been dug near
my home. To dig a new well would be throwing five hundred dollars away because the
land was probably being appropriated. I had to carry water to my livestock in buckets
every morning for two months, and I feared I would have to continue it during the rest of
the war.
5. I lived ten miles away from my business school and I had a class B petrol card: that
meant I couldn't buy any new tyres, so I worried about how I could ever get to work
when the superannuated tyres on my old Ford gave up the ghost.
6. My oldest daughter had graduated from high school a year ahead of schedule. She
had her heart set on going to college, and I just didn't have the money to send her. I
knew her heart would be broken.