The Unfinished Journey/May 30, 2026/Wally Bornmann
Telling stories, yours or someone else’s, is something I’ve always thought we don’t do enough of.
Lookin’ to grow your YouTube channel or increase your profit margin, well, sorry, I can’t help you.
I’m here sharing my story and hoping I can maybe get you to where you’ll want to share yours as well.
I sure hope you’ll let me know about it when you decide to.
Welcome or welcome back to The Unfinished Journey.
I’m Grandpa Wally.
If you’ve been with me up to this point you know I’m at the Naval Training Center in Chicago, Illinois, and I’ve just been accepted into the Navy’s Blue Jacket Choir.
You might be wondering how I found myself there in some rather elite part of the Navy instead of getting ready to march around out on the grounds all day long.
Well, truth is I was wondering pretty much the same thing.
That’s where this story begins.
I’m not sure how old I was when I first heard music. I’m sure I’d listened to music most all my young life but in my case one day I heard it.
You do understand that listening to and hearing music are two different things, right?
Anyways, I was young, real young. We still lived in an apartment up over Billy Rabuck’s grocery store. I was playin’ around in the lot that held propane tanks on a deck raised up off the ground. The kind of place where a maybe five-year-old with an imagination could build a fort and hold off the bad guys with no problems.
Heck, one day my friend Sonia, who was the same age and lived in another of those apartments up over Rabucks, and me found the Devil. Like I say, kids with imaginations sorta stuff. Trouble is we let the rascal go so I’m sorry for the mess we’re in these days.
Now that I think back on it all I wonder what would have happened if we’d locked that trouble maker up and thrown the key away? One thing’s for sure, that pastor of mine would have had to find somethin’ new to worry us about.
Well, so there I was that summer day by myself and things weren’t any different than they were most every other day.
The Dahlke family lived on the other side of that lot. Carl was the shoe repair man in town. Come summer time he’d have the windows open and have the radio on while he worked.
Thinkin’ back on Carl and his place he kept himself busy for sure since he didn’t only have the shoe repair thing going he also had a bait shop in his basement.
So, the day’s warm, Carl’s got music playin’ that I can hear where I’m messin’ around at, and all of a sudden I hear music.
I’m four, maybe five years old, and I’m just goofin’ around entertaining myself when all of a sudden I ain’t listening to some song coming from Carl’s radio, instead, I’m hearing music inside me.
I was a kid who I promise you had no idea about anything to do with music.
Even today, recalling that moment, I wish I could remember who was singing. For some reason, I’ve thought maybe it was Nat King Cole. Hell, I wish I could remember the song.
But, at maybe five years old and not having ever sat around listening to someone on the radio saying, “Next we’re going to hear Nat King Cole singing “Smile,” what did I know?
What I did know then, what I still know now, is something changed inside me.
Anyways, who knows what it was. Maybe the song, maybe the singer, maybe the temperature or the way the wind was blowing for all I know, but something found me hearing the music and not just listening to sound coming from Carl Dahlke’s radio.
So, maybe you’re wondering what’s the difference between listening and hearing music?
Well, for all I know it’s different for everyone but for me listening is like the sound is just moving past you sorta like what the wind does.
Hearing, for me, is when I feel it in my head, my bones, my guts. Hearing music makes me feel something inside and not just have it slip by on the outside.
That moment when I heard music for the first time became the catalyst that would bring me joy and sorrow in buckets over the years.
Lookin’ back on that moment seventy some years ago I have to admit brings up more emotions than I maybe have words for. Emotions that find me wanting to smile, laugh, cry, but most of all just shake my head in awe over.
I sure don’t know how things work in this world but every now and again I have an opinion about some of it.
Folks talk about something they say is a callin’. That thing that you can’t help but want to become. That thing that they might say you’re born to do and be.
Maybe those folks are right, I’ll always tell anyone that the best I’ve got is that I know that I don’t know.
The thing I do know is that I won’t say those folks are wrong.
Hell, sittin’ here thinkin’ about that day more than seventy years ago I can’t help but wonder if they’re right.
There I was, a kid on a summer day in a little Wisconsin town.
The sound of a radio playing in the distance.
One minute maybe I’m listening to music and the next I’m sure as hell hearing it inside me.
What came next, well, that kid could never have imagined.
How could that kid have imagined that one day his mom would buy him an accordion and put him in lessons because she wanted him to be the next Lawrance Welk?
How could that kid imagine that one night, more than one actually, he’d be standing on top of the dam over the Lemonweir River, looking downstream, and singing “Fools Rush In” to his latest crush who wasn’t there?
Or, how about standing in a room at the Naval Training Center being told I was in the Navy’s Blue Jacket Choir?
How could that kid imagine that one day he’d be standing on a stage in New York City thinking that one of his dreams was coming true?
How could that kid, how could I, know that what happened in that moment in that lot with Carl Dahlke’s radio playing was the universe saying, “Welcome to your life”?
The thing is I might not have been able to use it right then but I sure wish it would have included an instruction manual when it said hello.
Still, I’m glad Carl had a radio playing that day.
I’m glad I was goofing around in that lot.
And, no matter the rest of the story, I’m glad I heard music in that moment.
Until next time, keep your Unfinished Journey unforgettable.
Happy Trails. https://youtu.be/UvKPS2-c7hs
The Unfinished Journey 
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