Category: The Unfinished Journey Series

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/Wally Bornmann/05222026

You ever think about how folks don’t tell their stories?

I gotta tell you, it’s bugged me forever. No one I knew, parents, relatives, no one, talked about where they came from and what had happened to them along the way. They were there and that was that.

I swear I wonder if they practiced “staying in the moment” before it became a thing.

Well, that’s why I’m here. I’m gonna tell my story. You’re welcome to listen in. Hell, truth be told I hope you join in and share your own story.

Folks say it’s best to start at the beginning but I’m not gonna.

If you’d told me I’d one day be walking into a room in New York City to audition in front of folks from across the country I wouldn’t have believed you. But there I was, the first week of January 2020 and telling myself my dream was coming true.

But, dreams are funny things — they don’t always come true.

I tried to settle in as best I could all the while looking at the bright lights so I lightly strummed my guitar.

My partner looked like she’d done this a thousand times before, which she probably had.

I’d met her through my talent agent who thought that her and I would make a great couple doing stories and singing songs which is something I’d been doing on my own for years.

We’d connected while she was on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic and I was in my palatial Casa de la TinCan estate in Phoenix, Arizona.

Now, mere weeks later we’d met for the first time in New York City and were going to perform for folks looking for entertainment for their schools, colleges and universities, and God knows what else.

Talk about punching above my weight class.

I was a cowboy campfire singer and storyteller doing my thing around Arizona at resorts, cowboy gatherings, and folk festivals.

Now, there I was getting ready to get known to a whole bunch of important folks who were going to make a dream of mine come true — I was gonna be touring the United States telling stories, singing songs, with a partner, and we were going to encourage others to go for their dreams.

Three weeks later Covid shut down pretty much everything and my hopes of realizing my dream were left behind on a stage in New York City.

I’m not one of those folks who I hear about that had everything fall apart in their lives and by God they bounced back better than before. Nope. I’m the guy who gets knocked down and decides the floor isn’t such a bad place to be. I mean honestly — there ain’t a whole lot farther to fall.

There was a time when I was an almost somebody. Of course, that was in a high school with a total of about two hundred fifty kids in it. I got a few letters playing football, basketball, and baseball. For some unknown reason, got to date some of the prettiest girls around, and graduated dead center in a class of fifty.

So, about the worst day in my life up until then was when I graduated from high school. I’d been an almost someone, I knew that, and now I didn’t have a clue who I was going to be.

It had been a good life even when two doctors told my mom I was going to die within a year. I was told they played a basketball game in my honor — that ain’t something that happens every day.

Oh yeah, the docs were wrong. Turns out I’ve hung around another sixty years or so. Third doc, an old-time family doctor, said it was the worst case of mononucleosis he’d ever seen.

It had been a good life even when Glen had shoved my face in the mud one night when I was out getting nightcrawlers for fishing and a guy I thought was my friend, Dale, did nothing. Then to top it off I had to go home and explain to my mom what had happened and she got on the phone and gave Glen’s mother an ear full.

Righteous indignation was big with my mom but then she didn’t have to go to school and face Glen the next day.

It was a good life until that night standing there in that auditorium realizing that nothing would ever be the same again.

So I did what any scared eighteen year old would do, got together with Bob and Scott (he had the beer), went to the graduation party and got everyone huggin’ and kissin’, went out with Bob and Scott (remember the beer?), got totally drunk, cursed at the birds as I walked up the driveway with the sun coming up, collapsed on my bed, and the next day left that good life in New Lisbon, Wisconsin for La Crosse, Wisconsin.

I’m thinking this is a good time to mention Mary.

Remember those pretty girls I mentioned?

Well, for my money she was the best of the bunch.

She was the one I could have gone to sleep next to every night and wake up next to every morning.

Her auburn hair and blue eyes were only a part of what made her beautiful, her spirit and soul took over the minute you stopped gawking at her.

She made me Cowboy coffee.

She made me wish I never had to leave her.

She made my life mean more than it ever had.

I thought we’d marry — she said as much — and then we didn’t.

Maybe we should leave that story for another day.

In the end I tried going to school at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse and failed miserably. I’d never been a good student, told myself I wanted to be an optometrist and head out west to work with folks on reservations, didn’t ask anyone what classes I should take, found myself in way over my head and did what any self-respecting poser would do, when things got tough I bailed.

But to my credit I did leave my mark in La Crosse, well at my dad’s work anyways.

I got a job dispatching for the trucking company my father drove for. After I’d been there for a while, every now and then when a driver was coming to go out I’d jump in that big eighteen wheeler, drive it to the fuel pumps, and fill the tanks so they didn’t have to. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t something the company wanted me doing but that never stopped me.

So, one night, being the nice guy I am, I jumped in a truck, headed for the pumps, but pulled in too far away — the hose wouldn’t reach the outside tank.

So, I figure I’ll pull forward, back up, and get closer.

No big deal, right?

The thing is I’m not backing up my car with its rear window and a clear view.

There’s forty feet of trailer and no view of what’s behind that.

Being clueless I figure I knew where the pumps were when I pulled ahead, they shouldn’t have moved on their own, so a slight turn of the wheel and things’ll be good.

My first hint was when I couldn’t back up anymore.

My second was when the wheels started spinning and nothing happened.

No more going back and worse yet no going forward either.

That bar on the trailer of a big rig is called a Mansfield bar, and yes, I know why.

A pole anchored in concrete was bent over and the Mansfield bar was now behind it.

I bet you’ve never backed over fuel pumps with an eighteen wheeler.

I have.

One transit station shut down for the foreseeable future.

My dad never said a thing to me about it but I was told that out on the road he would sometimes tell the story and laugh.

For me decision time loomed big.

So, I’m figuring advancement within the trucking company was now at best questionable. I’d bailed on college and the draft was in my future what with me being a prime candidate.

The Vietnam War was going full tilt and the last thing I wanted to do was go over there and sit in some rice paddy ducking bullets.

Enter the Navy.

Until next time keep your Unfinished Journey unforgettable.

(Fade out singing Happy Trails)