Blog 3609 – 09.20.2025

3609

On Halloween 1960 my Mom, Dad, my almost ten year old self and my eight year old brother and I moved into a a small rental house at 3609 Second Avenue in Chattanooga, Tennessee. For the next eight years until I signed up for the Army on my eighteen birthday, November 22, 1968, that little house would be home.

So much of these lives, these adventures in time and space seemed to be defined by-the-numbers. That was the teaching concept behind all the training that I received in the military. Everything was by-the-numbers and broken down in to easy to follow steps – do this first, then that… till you complete the task. Everything from “spit-shining” boots to disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling an assault weapon were all done by-the-numbers.

I have always been more of a word guy than a numbers guy and yet I do realize the importance that we give to certain numbers. 3609 is a number that I committed to memory years ago along with my birthdate, my Army Serial number, my Social Security number and a series of phone numbers that I have hadover the years.

So many numbers to remember and we file so many things away behind numbers that are known only to us like some secret Swiss Bank account number. Today as I was wondering what I might write about the number of today’s blog made the topic immediately clear.

Do you still remember the house number of the house that you lived in as a child, or that first locker combination, or the phone number of your first sweetheart? These are just a few of the many numbers that stick with us. Numbers can also be encouraging and not just words.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sk-ef416oFcIyBk9P3ZyAPa0oUjddrFp/view?usp=drivesdk

100 Years

Author’s Note: When I was a boy just, starting out in grade school, I remember thinking that fifteen would be the perfect age. It is still a pretty terrific age to be, yet so are they all, when you’ve only got a hundred years to live.