Have you ever wanted to leap out of bed because you look forward to doing something you truly enjoy?  Well, I get to do that everyday. 

But, it wasn't always that way.  I was an aerospace engineer in Southern California working for a major defense contractor.  Plus, I was a pilot, first in the Marine Corps Reserves for five years, then the Navy Reserves.  I was away from home every other weekend, and the weekends I wasn't flying, my wife worked.  We rarely saw each other awake in our fabulous executive home.  We would go for weeks only seeing each other asleep as one would go to bed or get up to leave for work or for flying in the Reserves.  Some life we'd carved out for ourselves, no?  We had stuff, money, LOTS of debt, and high dollar careers, but on our quest to obtain the bounty from our educations, we started out on Empty and never stopped for gas.  We gave our two small boys to perfect strangers disguised as child care providers and with our college degrees, actually thought they could raise them for us.  Oh yeah, we were on that rocket sled called Success! 

One morning, after we hadn't seen each other awake in the house for two weeks, we both sat down at the breakfast table, Vicky poured me a cup of coffee and asked, "So how've you been?"  That was the siren and it blared REAL loud.  At that point, all I could do was try to figure out how to get out of the rut we dug so deeply.  I tried to cut back on work and on flying while expectations and responsibilities grew.  The only thing I knew to do was get out of that super fast paced environment and cut all ties.  And, that's what we did.

The next Friday, I walked into my boss' office and said, "Monday's my last day."  It took a while for the house to sell, but once it did, we had a two day escrow.  Not knowing where we'd live once the house changed title, we threw a dart at a map of the United States. The dart hit northeast South Dakota, so that's where we moved.  When the smoke cleared, we had four thousand dollars, two credit cards, no income, no retirement, no insurance, but also, no bills.  The Ryder truck pulled into Arlington, South Dakota two days after Thanksgiving in 1994.  Five minutes later, we rented a house in town, moved the stuff in, and the following Monday, The Russell Pottery was founded and located in an empty storage building behind the local grocery store.  Plus, Vicky and I got to see each other and be with our sons every day.  Nice!

Six years after establishing a wholesale pottery business in South Dakota, Vicky (being a born and raised city girl) held me at gunpoint and said, "Get me the hell out of this state, or I'm pulling the trigger."  We looked around the country (well, everyplace east of Glenwood Springs, Colorado and south of the Northern Plains) and found Clarksville, Missouri.  It was close enough to the big city of St Louis for Vicky and far enough away for me.  No darts this time.

Now we have a wonderful studio right next to our big old brick house and a retail gallery called The Clarksville Pottery, named after the town (no affiliation with Clarksville Pottery in Austin, TX).  Our place is right across the street from the Mississippi River, located in a tiny hamlet historic district 75 miles upstream from St Louis.  Come see us!