tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62845619468554737122024-02-07T10:13:32.152-08:00Childhood LivedConsole Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-25795975430111460622011-02-27T05:03:00.000-08:002011-02-27T05:07:35.591-08:00Man's Best FriendMost of us got a puppy growing up. Those of us who did can remember our ankles being attacked, our socks begin destroyed and the smell of “puppy breath”. One of my more memorable dogs was Prince. He was born on my eighth birthday. So my birthday present was to go see my newborn dog. For six weeks we would go visit my puppy every few days. He had a little pink spot on his nose that none of the other puppies had, so it was always easy to pick him out of the crowd. Being a breed dog he only lived for around eight years. He got cancer and in the end we had to put him to sleep. Thinking of him always reminds me of that poem by Lord Byron:<br /><br />EPITAPH TO A DOG<br /><br />Near this spot are deposited the remains<br />Of one who possessed beauty without vanity,<br />Strength without insolence,<br />Courage without ferocity,<br />And all the virtues of man<br />Without his vices.<br />This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery <br />If inscribed over human ashes,<br />Is but a just tribute to the memory of "Boatswain," a Dog<br />Who was born at Newfoundland,<br />May, 1803,<br />And died at Newstead Abbey<br />Nov. 18, 1808.<br /><br />The words of this poem certainly ring true. Prince had all of those qualities. It's no wonder that dogs are called man's best friend.<br /><br />Prince was one of the biggest dogs in the neighborhood and, as pit-bulls had a bad reputation, people were a little nervous whenever he was around. Sam's first encounter with Prince, but without us, is worth relating. This goes back to when Sam was probably ten or eleven. He had just started hanging out at our house and he had been around Prince maybe two or three times. Sam felt perfectly safe around the dog provided that we were right there with him.<br /><br />We wouldn't have deserted Sam to the dog willingly, at least not until he knew Prince better. However, Prince was very head strong and, on occasion, he would decide he wanted to explore the neighborhood without us. When that mood took him he would suddenly make a break for it without warning. It was during one of these getaways that he ran up on Sam.<br /><br />Prince had decided to make a dash out of the yard just as Sam was walking up the street to our house from his grandmothers. He was about half way there when he saw Prince come flying down the road. It seemed to Sam that there was murder in the dog's eyes and he appeared to be running strait for him. He knew he had to react quickly or become the first kid in the neighborhood killed by a bloodthirsty pit-bull. There was no time to reach any of the houses around and beg for entry, he had do do something instantly.<br /><br />He looked around and saw that his only real resource was a clump of trees beside the road. He grabbed hold of a nearby pine tree and began to climb with everything he had. He had gotten perhaps ten feet in the air when Prince reached the base of the tree. In a flash Prince flew past him without so much as looking up. Sam hadn't been the target at all, he just happened to be standing right where Prince wanted to go. If Sam had known Prince better he would have realized that he was actually safer with Prince around than without. After musing for a moment Sam climbed down and finished his journey to our house.<br /><br />We all had a laugh when Sam told us what had happened. There were actually several occasions when Prince gave us a laugh at Sam's expense. The next one that springs to mind happened years later around the Christmas holidays. Sam, Joshua and I had been left home alone while Mom and Dad went and did some shopping. One of our duties was to make sure we took Prince out whenever he needed to go.<br /><br />The faithful animal always started whining long before he actually had to go, so we always had plenty of time to get him outside. Of course, there were times when he simply wanted to get out and get a bit of fresh air. You could never be sure if he was whining because of one thing or the other. Usually we didn't chance it. If he said he needed to go out then we took him.<br /><br />However, on this particular night we were playing with the video camera. As I said, Mom and Dad were gone to town, so we started making funny videos to show them when they got home. While we were working on that Prince began to whine. We were right in the middle of things and didn't feel like stopping so we gave him the “Love” treatment. Dad had taught the dog that it was time to be affectionate whenever you said “love”. So, at times, we would use it to distract him if he was whining.<br /><br />Sam rubbed the dog down telling him “love” again and again until Prince was content. Then we went on with our recording. After just a few minutes he began asking to go out again. Once more Sam gave him the “love” treatment and once more he got quiet. This went on for perhaps thirty minutes. Prince had started whining every couple of minutes or so and we assured him that we would take him out as soon as we were done.<br /><br />Sam gave him the treatment one last time. He put his hand on Princes head and rubbed all the way down the dog's back as he said “love”. Well, as Sam's hand ran down the creature's back it became obvious that the beast couldn't wait any longer. Prince had given Sam a steaming pile of “love” right on the living room floor. This put us into action at last. Josh and Sam took Prince out for a walk while I cleaned up the mess. For the most part he was a faithful, patient animal, but nature can only wait so long.<br /><br />Of course, his patience didn't do anything for him when he was eating. He brought the expression “Inhaling your food” to life. I remember once Dad had given him the ham bone from Thanksgiving dinner. It still had plenty of meat on it and so we figured he would really enjoy it. Dad dropped it on the floor and we went about cleaning off the table. As I was going back and forth between the table and the kitchen I looked down and saw Prince laying on the floor, but no bone.<br /><br />Dad said that if he swallowed it he would be able to digest it and we went on with what we were doing. A few minutes later Prince was walking around the house wheezing. He seemed perfectly normal. He was smiling his dog smile and wagging his stubby little tail. However, he wasn't breathing normally. His breaths were quick and short and wheezy.<br /><br />As I was looking him over he suddenly threw his jaws apart as far as he could and made a loud puking noise. I saw the ham bone slowly working it's way up his throat. It came out of his mouth like a snake coming up out of a read basket and then dropped on the floor. Prince immediately began to breath normally again. I picked up the bone to throw it away and realized that it was basically as big around as the dog's throat and that it was hollow all the way through it. Then I realized that the dog had been breathing through the hole in the bone. That was why he had been wheezing. Needless to say, we never gave him another bone like that.<br /><br />There were times, of course, when a mere bone wouldn't satisfy his hunger. I myself have seen him attack a cow. Well, he didn't really “attack” it I suppose, and honestly he wasn't trying to eat it either. I think Prince merely had a hunger for adventure that he was trying to satisfy. That would at least explain why he did what he did.<br /><br />Joshua, Sam and I were all down at Mrs. Woody's house hanging out in the yard. As I have mentioned in other stories, Mrs. Woody was Sam's grandmother and her house was by one of the pastures for Folk's dairy. There were a number of cows out in the field that day. Mr. Folk would rotate them in and out to let the cows graze or the grass grow.<br /><br />As we were playing in the yard suddenly Prince flew past us and ran under the fence that surrounded the pasture. The three of us ran to the fence calling the dog, but he didn't pay us any attention. He ran in amongst the herd of cows, jumped up on one and bit it right behind the neck. The poor animal began to “buck” (for lack of a better word) like no cow I had even seen before. It was like watching a rodeo. As soon as one cow had thrown him, Prince would jump up on another.<br /><br />This continued for perhaps ten minutes with us standing on the sidelines yelling for him to come to us. In the end he cut out of the field heading a different direction.<br /><br />“I have never seen anything like that... I've never even heard of anything like that...” I said as I stood there stunned.<br /><br />“I have.” Sam replied, looking out over the pasture.<br /><br />“What?”<br /><br />“I live here remember. I've seen Prince do that before...”<br /><br />We burst out laughing and went back to our game. This is one of those things were I am glad there were witnesses. Most people might not believe even though three of us saw it happen, but if I hadn't seen it by myself I don't think even I would believe it. Still, “Truth is stranger than fiction” as they say.<br /><br />All in all Prince was an amazing dog. I think all children should get at least one puppy growing up. Amazingly those dumb brutes can teach us a lot about the better parts of human nature. Prince has long been dead, but I hope and believe that I will never forget him. I can say in truth that he was one of man's best friends.<br /><br /><br />In closing I have to say that all good things come to an end. It may be hard to believe, but this is my fifty second post. That makes it a year since I started. I do have other stories to tell an one day, Lord willing, they will be told. However, for the time being I have to put these tales down to begin work on another writing project. It is my intention to try and have these stories published. If I can I may add a few more stories to the printed version. I would like to thank you all for taking the time to read these stories. I hope that you've gotten as much enjoyment out of reading them as I got out of writing them.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-9043877505333400332011-02-20T05:11:00.000-08:002011-02-20T05:12:06.296-08:00You'll Shoot Your Eye OutFor those of you who may not know it “You'll shoot your eye out” is a quote from the movie “A Christmas Story”. It is a general warning to young boys that even a BB gun can be dangerous. Speaking for my own childhood I can attest to the truth behind it. As a child I often forgot that a BB gun wasn't just another toy. We certainly did things we shouldn't have and it was the grace of God that we didn't shoot our eyes out.<br /><br />We spent a good deal of time outside and we spent many hours shooting at inanimate objects. As a general rule we weren't allowed to shoot anything living and if we did we had to eat it. It was a simple rule and kept me from ever wanting to shoot rats or mice or any other generally unwanted little rodent. All of us were fairly good shots. One Christmas we went around shooting mistletoe out of the oak trees in the neighborhood. It wasn't easy because you had to cut the stem with a BB. However, our aim was accurate enough that we ended the day with a garbage bag of mistletoe.<br /><br />One fine spring day Danny Flint and I were out playing in the back yard with a couple of BB pistols. They looked very cool, but they weren't worth much as guns. Their aim was terrible and they had absolutely no power. He and I were out shooting at this and that when a little bird landed in the top of a nearby tree. We decided that it would be fun to scare it away and started shooting near it. I felt certain that even if we hit the bird it wouldn't do any damage at that range.<br /><br />I never found out whether or not those pistols had enough punch to kill a bird. While we were standing there shooting again and again Josh walked up behind us with his BB rifle. He took one look and said “You guys trying to shoot that bird?” We both said “No!” in unison, but it was too late. In a flash he had raised his rifle, pulled the trigger and killed the bird.<br /><br />An argument ensued because Danny and I really didn't want to hit the bird. However, Josh pointed out that if we hadn't meant to hurt it we shouldn't have been shooting at it. He made a very good point, so we got quiet. Having killed the bird there was only one thing we could do. Yes, we cleaned it, cooked it and ate it. To be honest, it was very good. There wasn't much meat on the little guy, but it had a good flavor and was very tender. Considering the fact that we had only roasted it over a little camp fire and didn't even have any salt it was truly excellent.<br /><br />Still, in truth Williston was and is a bird sanctuary. We shouldn't have killed the little thing and I knew it. I made sure we all knew it after that. For many years none of our BBs ended the life of any little animal. However, one time Josh forgot his own rule. We were walking down the road and he saw a dove land on a telephone pole perhaps two hundred feet away. Josh was carrying his BB rifle. He decided to shoot at the bird even though he knew he was too far away to hit it, much less kill it.<br /><br />He aimed carefully, pulled the trigger and the dove dropped off the top of the telephone pole like a stone. We all expressed our own version of “No way!” as we ran over to take a look at it. Josh picked it up and looked it all over. There wasn't a mark on it.<br /><br />“Maybe my shot got so close that it fainted and then the fall killed it...” He said turning the dead bird over and looking for any obvious wound.<br /><br />“What!?!?” I replied with a half-laugh.<br /><br />“Well, look at it!” He said and handed the bird to me.<br /><br />There wasn't a scratch on it. No open wound, no blood, nothing to indicate that it was injured at all.<br /><br />“Maybe it had a heart attack at the same moment you pulled the trigger.” Sam suggested.<br /><br />“What are the odds of that?” I asked.<br /><br />“Well, look, the bird is dead and there's no bullet hole. Something weird happened!”<br /><br />I had to agree with that, but I couldn't believe the bird just happened to up and die just as Josh shot at it. We continued to search the bird all over. Finally Sam found a small hole and a little blood right inside the bird's arm pit. (Not that bird's have an arm pit, but if I wrote “wing pit” no one would know what I was talking about.) What had apparently happened was that third bird had lifted it's wings just as Josh fired. The BB happened to hit in such a weak point on the bird's body that it went strait into it's heart and killed the bird almost instantly.<br /><br />We were all amazed. The odds were astronomical. However, that is exactly why you shouldn't play with guns. My Grandmother used to say “Never point a gun at someone you don't intend to kill.” and she was right. Josh had forgotten the cardinal rule and the dove paid the price. (Cardinal... Dove... sorry, I couldn't help it.) That was the last bird we ever killed by accident. After that we didn't point a gun at one unless we were hunting. However, it wasn't the last time we did something we shouldn't have with a BB gun.<br /><br />A couple of years before Josh accidentally killed that dove I learned a valuable lesson of my own. I had borrowed a pump BB gun from Jim Melvin and Josh and I had gone out and done a little shooting. On the way back I picked a handful of small seeds from a little bush growing on the side of the road. They were just small enough to fit down into the barrel. This gave me, what I thought was, a very clever idea.<br /><br />I decided to cram several of the seeds into the barrel at a time and pump the gun up a good bit in order to make a seed shotgun. In case you don't know, a pump BB gun is more powerful than a regular BB gun. It has several pressure levels and the more you pump it the more power it has, up to it's maximum pressure. So, I crammed a few seeds in the barrel, gave it a few pumps and fired. The seeds shot out just like I had hoped. It was fantastic.<br /><br />Having done a successful test I thought it would be funny to shoot Josh. I figured the seeds we fairly soft, at least compared to a BB. It seemed to me since there was more than one it would also make them fly slower and therefor not hit as hard. It felt safe enough to me, so I crammed about ten seeds in the barrel and pumped up the gun. I thought it best to give it ten pumps, which was the maximum, just to make sure it hit him hard enough for him to feel it.<br /><br />Josh had been playing around near me the entire time, but hadn't really noticed what I was up to. We were out by the close line and Josh had been jumping up and hanging from one of the cross bars. I waited for him to do it again and as soon as he did I shot him in the lower legs. He was wearing a pair of high socks and I felt that if there was any chance of it hurting him the socks would stop it. I was wrong...<br /><br />He let out a scream, dropped from the bar and ran in place for a moment. As soon as he could move in a single direction he flew into the house. There he began to explain to Mom, between fits of screaming, that I had just shot him. He pulled down his socks to reveal a number of large whelps. I felt terrible and apologized immediately. Josh accepted like a gentleman, as soon as he could speak properly, and then asked me something along the lines of “What in the world is wrong with you?!?!?” to which I had no answer.<br /><br />That moment cemented the fact that BB guns are not toys, but rather small guns, in my mind. Seeing what those seeds had done to Josh showed me just how dangerous a simple BB gun could be. One would also naturally expect that Josh would have learned the same lesson, him being the victim of my mistake. However, the next story clearly shows the such was not the case.<br /><br />Joshua, Brandyn, and Jeremiah Berson decided that it would be great fun to have BB gun wars when they were teenagers. They would go out into the woods and shoot each other until one of them gave up. None of them bothered to wear face masks of any protective equipment other than heavy clothing. I suppose that they felt not trying to shoot each other in the face was safety enough.<br /><br />One hot summer day the three of them headed out for a fight. Each of them had a different kind of weapon. Jeremiah had some kind of semi-automatic rifle. Brandyn had actually gotten a CO2 powered BB machine gun that would fire a hundred BBs a minute or so. Josh had a single shot pump BB/pellet rifle. They decided the only way to be even slightly fair was to break up and go their own way for a few minutes and then start hunting each other.<br /><br />Each of them picked a direction and started walking. Josh knew that he wasn't going to get many shots, so he found a place to hide and waited for them to hunt him. After just a few minutes he heard a fire fight between Brandyn and Jeremiah break out. In a mater of seconds he heard Jeremiah screaming and running through the woods. The BB machine gun was winning.<br /><br />As Brandyn made his way through the woods he was calling out to Josh as he randomly shot one group of bushes after another. Josh didn't move, he just waited on Brandyn to get closer. He had decided that, as he only had one shot, it had better be something special. So, he loaded it with a pellet pointing backwards. A pellet is kind of shaped like a shuttle cock used in badminton. So loading it backwards pointed a small lead cup right at your target. He also gave the gun a full ten pumps, just to make sure it hit good and hard.<br /><br />Brandyn ended up walking strait for where Joshua was hiding. He fired his BB machine gun right into the clump of bushes that my brother was using for cover, but managed both to miss Josh and still not see him. As Brandyn got closer and closer Josh lay there silently waiting for the moment to strike. <br /><br />Here I have to take a moment and explain one of the differences between my brother and Brandyn. As I mentioned earlier it was a very hot summer day when they decided to do this. Each of them had put on a different level of protective clothing. Josh had the sense to pack himself in so much cloth that even if he got hit, it wouldn't be very damaging. He had gotten into a place to hide and laid in the heat without so much as moving a muscle. Brandyn had started very lightly dressed and once he had gotten good and hot he even took his shirt off. So, by the time he pushed into the bushes where Josh was hiding he was completely bare chested.<br /><br />So, when Josh fired directly into Brandyn's chest there was nothing at all to protect him. The pellet stuck right in his breast bone. The result was that Brandyn threw down his gun screaming and began to work on getting the pellet out of his chest. Josh jumped up and helped him and in no time the pellet was removed and only a little bleeding circle was left behind. After that the game was over and Josh was declared the winner.<br /><br />I would like to say that it ended there and that they never did it again, but that would be untrue. I don't know when they got old enough to decide that getting to shoot your friends wasn't worth the pain of being shot, but they did eventually outgrow it. As you can see it truly was the grace of God that we all kept our eyes intact. Before I give any of my children a BB gun I am going to have to give them a firm lecture on how you can, in fact, shoot your eye out.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-37497000571342096002011-02-13T05:22:00.001-08:002011-02-13T05:22:58.351-08:00Always Expect the UnexpectedI'm not sure where I first heard that phrase. “Always expect the unexpected!”, it sounds like the kind of thing Inspector Clouseau would say right before he broke something. I suppose it's good advice, although, I don't know if anyone alive could actually do it. My Dad certainly couldn't. There were plenty of times when Dad was going along, minding his own business, when the unexpected hit him like a freight train. The following two stories show my Dad's two basic reactions to unpleasant surprises.<br /><br />The first tale begins with me deciding that we needed to dig yet another hole in the yard. On this particular occasion we made the mistake of digging it a bit too close to the house. We jammed our shovels into the ground around a hundred feet from the back door and began to dig with a will. In a few hours we had dug a mighty pit down into the earth. It was probably five or six feet across and perhaps five feet deep at the lowest point.<br /><br />When Dad got home Josh, Chris and I were laying in the hole, resting and admiring our work. Surprisingly enough Dad didn't want that huge hole dug right in the middle of his back yard. He immediately went through the normal list of questions: “Why had we done it?”, “What were we thinking?”, “What was wrong with us?”, “Did our mother know what we were doing?”, etc. We, in turn, replied with the usual answers: “We don't know.”, “We don't know.”, “We don't know.”, etc.<br /><br />On this occasion Dad decided that we needed to be taught a lesson. He insisted that we bury the hole immediately. He wanted the hole gone before the end of the day. We had no choice and so our lovely hole began to disappear one shovel full at a time. After only a few minutes we realized that the burying was going to be worse than the digging. We were already tired and we had a long way to go. Finally Chris chimed in with an idea.<br /><br />“We should fill this hole with junk.” He said as he paused for a moment leaning on his shovel.<br /><br />“What's the point of that?” I asked, throwing another pile of dirt into the pit.<br /><br />“Well the more junk we throw in it, the less dirt it will take to fill it up.”<br /><br />“I see that, but where will we get the junk?”<br /><br />“From behind Uncle Fritz's shed! There's all kinds of junk there.”<br /><br />I had to admit that he was right. Dad was a collector of all kinds of things that young boys might consider junk. Also, it was stuff that we were allowed to do basically whatever we wanted with, so I figured Dad couldn't have cared much about it. Within a few minutes we had dragged all the junk we could find across the yard and thrown it in the hole.<br /><br />“That's hardly made a dent....” I said looking down at our micro-landfill.<br /><br />“Well, it's not as deep as it was.” Chris replied.<br /><br />“No, we've filled it up maybe a foot between the dirt and the junk, but we're out of junk.”<br /><br />“No, we're not. What about those old freezer lids?”<br /><br />Again, Chris was right. Dad had worked for years at a plant that made chest freezers. He had gotten a large number of defective lids and used them for all kinds of things. They weren't really complete lids, they were just the metal shells that would have become lids had they not been defective. They were both light and strong and we had a load of them sitting at the back of the shed.<br /><br />“OK, so we have a bunch of those lids. They will never fit down in that hole.” I said, pointing out the obvious.<br /><br />“They don't need to fit in it, just over it.”<br /><br />“What?”<br /><br />“We can lay the lids over the hole until it's completely covered. Then we can bury the lids and we'll be done in a snap.”<br /><br />I stood there thinking it over for a moment before I spoke.<br /><br />“Brilliant!” was my simple reply.<br /><br />We went to work and in moments the lids were laid across the hole. A few minutes more found the pit completely covered with a mound of earth. When we got inside Dad was surprised at how quickly we had gotten finished. He went out and looked over every thing and was completely satisfied. We felt that we had done a great job and had even out-thought our problems. Everyone was happy.<br /><br />However, we now have to push on through time. The pit had been dug and buried in the fall and before long spring arrived. Grass had grown up in the back yard and it was time to mow. Dad got out the old tractor and began merrily cutting the grass. It was one of the rare times when he just walked out to the shed, cranked the tractor and began to mow. This should have tipped him off that something was wrong, but sadly it didn't.<br /><br />He had no idea as he headed for that low mound of grass covered earth that he was actually heading for a pit trap filled with old junk. There was no way for him to know in advance that those earth covered lids wouldn't hold up the weight of the tractor until he was right over the middle of the hole. It wasn't until the lids buckled and he found himself, and two-thirds of his tractor, down in a pit that he knew something was wrong.<br /><br />At first he was a bit stunned. He had just been driving along mowing a moment before. Now, he was sitting on a tractor that was sitting in a hole filled with dirt covered junk. The wheels in his mind slowly turned as he figured out what had happened. Here many people would expect Dad to have one of his explosions, but he didn't. Over the next few hours he got the tractor out of the hole, got all the junk out that he felt he needed to and then reburied the hole properly.<br /><br />Josh and I had been gone the entire time, so we knew nothing about it when we got home. Dad began to tell the story and as he did so he got more and more excited. It all ended with him yelling “You will never be allowed to bury another hole in this yard as long as you live here!” It strikes me as an odd thing to say, but he stuck to it. Over the following years we dug a few more holes, but whenever it was time to bury them Dad took care of it himself.<br /><br />That was an example of Dad calmly dealing with the unexpected. He got a little worked up after the fact, but at the moment of action he handled the situation very well. I don't think many men would have been nearly as calm about having fallen into a pit trap dug by their sons. Of course, where as Dad might handle an extreme situation with grace, there were other times when a much smaller problem would get a much bigger reaction. Needless to say this next story is about that.<br /><br />During my teen years I constantly had self-induced car trouble. One day my Mustang might overheat because I hadn't put water in the radiator (It used to leak a little.) Another day would find me stranded on the side of the road having run out of gas (I broke the gas gauge at one point.) Most of the time I could sort these problems out myself with the help of whoever happened to be riding along with me. I did open the radiator when the car was hot once, but first degree burns on my face kept me from ever making that mistake again. All in all I rarely needed help to get my car back on the road.<br /><br />On the day that this story takes place that was not the case. The car had overheated a little and wouldn't crank after I had given it some time to cool off. That struck me as a bad sign, so I decided to call Dad. We were right across the street from a gas station, so getting to a phone was no problem. He told me to wait with the car, so that's exactly what Brandyn, Ron and I did. We were only a few miles out of town and Dad got to us within about fifteen minutes.<br /><br />He got out of his brand new car and closed the door behind him. (It was a hot summer day, so he decided to leave the car running and the air-conditioner on.) Having looked my car over calmly, he said he didn't think anything was really wrong, that we probably just needed to put some water in the radiator. It was decided that he would drive across the street to the gas station and get something full of water and bring it back over. He walked over to his car, pulled the handle and then it happened.<br /><br />The door didn't open. He pulled the handle again and again with the same results. Then it struck him. He had locked the door as he stepped out and left his key in the ignition. Now, in most cases, this would be a minor annoyance, but not this time. Dad had just gotten that car and was filled with “new-car love”, he had also been working crazy hours and didn't feel like having to deal with any unexpected aggravations. What happened next was amazing to see. It began with Dad talking to himself.<br /><br />“Of course! I've locked my keys in the car!” He said as he stood there pulling on the door handle.<br /><br />“We can just call Mom to bring the spare set.” I suggested.<br /><br />“Oh no! You see the car is running and it will overheat and blow the engine up before she gets here!”<br /><br />“I don't think it will blow up that fast.”<br /><br />Here Dad began to have a genuine meltdown.<br /><br />“Oh yes it will! Because this is a new car! I'm not supposed to have a new car! I'm supposed to ride around in junk! I'm supposed to work all the time and never have anything!”<br /><br />Keep in mind that he had been working inhuman hours at the plant for weeks at this point. He was so tired he couldn't think. In fact, as he was explaining how bad the situation was going to be I think the speech center of his brain must have shut down.<br /><br />“Then we'll have to!! And that's going to cost!! How can we!! I don't believe!! And!!! New!!!! AHHHH!!!! AHHHHH!!!!”<br /><br />At that point he jumped on the ground and started kicking his feet in the air and slamming his fists into the dirt as fast as he could. Even I had never seen Dad loose it to that extent. Brandyn and Ron looked at me hoping that I had some idea. Only one came to mind: “Run” I yelled as I set the example by flying down the side of the road as fast as I could. You see, I felt that Dad had actually lost it and that it would be better for us if we were out of the area. He had been a golden gloves boxer, back when he was younger, and could have easily killed the three of us if he wanted to. I wasn't sure how far off the deep end he had gone and, at the time, discretion seemed to be the better part of valor.<br /><br />We ran for over a mile. Finally we found ourselves, panting for breath, at Brandyn's door. We were there discussing the situation and trying to get in touch with Mom for about ten minutes before Dad pulled up in the yard. He got out as if nothing had happened.<br /><br />“Are you alright?” I said as he stepped out of the car.<br /><br />“Of course,” He laughed, “why?”<br /><br />“Well... I mean... I thought you might have had a heart attack. I've been trying to call Mom to tell her we might need an ambulance.”<br /><br />“Because I got a little upset. No, we don't need an ambulance. Anyway, it was your mother that brought me the spare key.”<br /><br />“How did she know she needed to?”<br /><br />“I called her.”<br /><br />“Ahhh.”<br /><br />It turned out that as soon as we had run off Dad decided that he was acting like a child. He got up, brushed himself off, walked across the street, and called Mom. She certainly drove past us as we were running down the road, but didn't even see us because she was so focused on taking the keys to Dad. He opened the door and turned the car off. Then he took the time to go get the water, fill my radiator and test crank the car. It started without a problem and so he came to get us. He knew to go to Brandyn's because the next closest house we could have gone to was miles more down the road. The entire affair was wrapped up in about half an hour.<br /><br />As you can see he reaction to that particular unexpected event was a little more explosive than it needed to be. Although I had never seen Dad get that upset, and never have again, it was always the little things that upset him the most. Something big he could handle, because you have to handle it. With little things he gave an almost open vent to his emotions.<br /><br />Although you can't expect a particular unexpected event you can come to understand that unexpected things are going to happen. Once you make the decision to deal with whatever comes your way calmly you'll be better equipped to do just that. We always need to keep in mind that whatever comes our way, the Lord has a handle on it. He, at least, always expects the unexpected.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-62147216949040973892011-02-06T05:48:00.000-08:002011-02-06T05:55:56.742-08:00Tarzan Boy Scouts 2I'm sure the title will give away the fact that the following stories return to the theme of our wild boyscout troop. In truth it might not be fair to call most of them stories. They are merely snippets of the kind of wild things we did during our years as scouts. Still, they make me laugh when I think about them, so I believe they belong here.<br /><br />Out of our entire troop Sam was probably the biggest slob. He was as un-tucked, un-brushed and often as un-washed as a boyscout could be. However, no one could argue with the fact that he was the rugged outdoors type. One morning we were running late and hadn't had breakfast before Dad said it was time for us to roll out. Sam had just cracked a couple of eggs into his frying pan and said that he had to finish them before he could go.<br /><br />“Eat them now then, but move!” Dad said as he walked past.<br /><br />With less than a second's delay Sam lifted the frying pan to his lips and drank the eggs raw. He said that he wasn't marching on an empty stomach. One of our scout mothers almost threw up, but the rest us thought it was great.<br /><br />Jim wasn't near so rugged, but he was still good for a laugh. Once when he was reciting the boyscout law, which goes “A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.”, he got confused and looked to me for help. I tried to mouth the next one to him, but he misread my lips.<br /><br /> “And a scout should be naval!” Jim said confidently.<br /><br />Dad stared at him for a moment before asking “What does it mean to be naval, Jim?”<br /><br />Jim opened and closed his mouth like a fish a few times before confessing that he didn't know. We all burst out laughing and “Be naval!” became a saying amongst us for a while.<br /><br />Of course, Jim didn't always make the rest of us want to laugh. There was at least one occasion in particular when he called down the wrath of the troop. You see, there were times when the entire troop decided that one of us had done something that had to be punished. It almost always came in the form of mockery and we certainly never hurt one another, but we all made sure to show our disapproval to the offending member.<br /><br />Jim's offense had simply been being a wimp. Jim was the biggest of us and arguably the strongest, but he didn't have the “Never give up!” drive that most of us had. On the particular day in question we had gone out on a hiking trip. Dad was showing us all how to use a map in the woods, which is a lot trickier than it sounds. You have to know how to use your compass to line the map up and get your bearings. Poor Dad probably spent close to an hour trying to show us how to do it before we started marching through briar and bramble.<br /><br />The idea was to lead us all a fair distance out in the woods and then have us navigate our way back out. For the first couple of hours we were enjoying it, however, as time wore on our packs got heavier and heavier. We were carrying all of our equipment as if it had been a normal march. Part of the exercise was to get us used to hauling our packs through the woods for hours at the time. Jason, in particular, was loaded down like a pack mule. He probably had more in his pack than any two of the rest of us.<br /><br />As we pushed on our weariness increased and the troop began to complain. We had been on the march for a good long time before we came out of the woods. As soon as we hit the road our spirits rose. All we had to do was march down it back to the cars and we were done. Most of us picked up our spirits and pushed ourselves on step after grueling step. Not Jim, however, he collapsed on the side of the road and said we could pick him up on the way home. Needless to say we all began to make fun of him and do our best to get him to march on. He refused to move an inch. So, we marched on without him.<br /><br />When we got back to the car all the boys agreed that we shouldn't stop for Jim, but should wave as we drove by. Our plan was to drive ahead where he couldn't see us and park for a minute or two and then go back to get him, just to mess with him. However, Dad backed out at the last minute and stopped to let Jim in. The rest of us were furious, but there wasn't much we could do other than make fun of Jim about it for months.<br /><br />On another occasion we decided to pretend to punish Jermaine in order to mess with my Dad. Our scout headquarters was in a small building on the edge of Folk's pond. We came up with the idea that Jermaine would say something and that the rest of us would react to by dragging him outside and throwing him in the pond. Of course, we weren't really going to throw him in, we just wanted Dad to think we had. <br /><br />We got a cinder block and a couple of bricks and put them right down by the edge of the pond for easy reach. Then we went inside the building and started our fake conversation. When Jermaine said his line we all grabbed him and dragged him out of the door yelling “Into the pond!” As soon as we got out of the door we put Jermaine down and all grabbed our bricks and block. We threw them on the count of three and Jermaine began screaming about how cold the water was. <br /><br />Dad flew out of the building, nearly tearing the door off it's hinges and was met by his entire troop laughing. Dad looked the scene over and saw Jermaine standing there bone dry. He quickly put two and two together and joined in the laughter with us.<br /><br />However, there was a day not to long after that when Kevin Dial actually did fall into the water and nobody laughed. The troop had gone to Edisto Memorial Gardens for some reason, although now I can't remember what it was. For the most part we boys had been left to do whatever we liked and we spent a majority of the time running around the woods and playing near the Edisto river.<br /><br />Kevin had gotten right up to the edge of the river and was looking intently into the water. I decided it was the perfect opportunity to give him a good scare. So, I crept up behind him, slapped him on the back and yelled “RAA!” right in his ear. I never expected him to do what he did. I mean, most people would have jerked a bit or screamed or something like that. Not Kevin, no, he jumped out into the middle of the river like a frog.<br /><br />He also went to the extra trouble of sinking like a stone. Under most circumstances Kevin could swim, at least a little bit. However, I suppose the current of the river and the pounding of his terrified heart were working against him that day. Whatever the cause he didn't swim a stroke. In the movies when someone falls in the water and is drowning they splash around screaming for help and taking gulps of air before they sink below the waves. Kevin didn't do anything like that. As soon as he hit the water he sank up to his hat and stayed that way.<br /><br />In fact, it may have been that hat that saved his life. You see, as soon as Kevin was in the water the entire troop was at the river's edge screaming for help and trying to save Kevin. Within moments the adults were right at the spot where Kevin had jumped in an were trying their best to find him. I noticed that Kevin's hat was slowly floating down the river and an idea hit me. I felt certain that the hat was still on his head. However, in all the panic and amongst all the screaming I didn't take the time to explain, I just ran along the edge of the river following the hat.<br /><br />After what seemed like forever Kevin's hand shot up out of the water and grabbed a stone on the river's edge. In a flash I grabbed his hand and a moment later I had pulled his gasping form up out of the river. As soon as he was on dry land I yelled to everyone that he was safe and the panic was over. As they were drying him off he was asked how he came to fall in the river. I had to confess that I had scared him into it. The entire event was used as an example lesson for us boys. You have to be careful when you are playing near the water. After that I was a lot more careful about where and when I scared anyone.<br /><br />As you can see, my time in the boy scouts was filled with adventure, excitement and the occasional dose of danger. We all had a great deal of fun and learned a great deal about taking care of ourselves and each other. That is something all boys need to learn in order to become men. They don't have to do it in the boy scouts, but they have to do it somewhere. You can protect a little boy so much that he will never really become a man. You have to let him take risks and deal with consequences. If everyone understood that fact the world would be a better place. At least, that's my humble opinion.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-22767896931263243422011-01-30T04:48:00.001-08:002011-02-06T05:47:55.695-08:00That Old Time ReligionNow, those of you who don't know me may not realize that I am a very religious man. Even amongst the dedicated Christians of the Southern United States I consider myself a devout Christian. As a result I certainly don't think of making fun of the Lord as acceptable. Nor do I like making fun of Christians or Christian ceremonies as a general rule. However, the Church is made up of people and people do funny things. I believe it is perfectly acceptable to laugh at someone who does something funny whether he's a Christian or not and whether or not he's in a church building at the time. <br /><br />I mention these things because the following stories touch on that old time religion. I wanted my views known so that I wouldn't offend anyone who's religious scruples are a little more sensitive than my own. I find humor where I find it and I certainly don't intend to offend anyone. Now that I have the disclaimer out of the way we can move on the the meat of the matter.<br /><br />As young men Sam, Joshua and I would often discuss things of a religious nature. More times than not these conversations led to religious mysteries that no one alive can answer. I'm sure most of you are familiar with the old “How many angles can dance on the head of a pin?” discussions. (If you aren't familiar I would suggest looking it up. It's an interesting piece of history.) We would bring up similar questions and talk about the possibilities.<br /><br />Sam, like many young Christians, was obsessed with the book of Revelations. It's depictions of Armageddon, and what most people believe to be the end of the world, have fueled the fires of many a young imagination. Sam was giving vent to those fires one night as we lay on the roof of the house looking up at the stars.<br /><br />It was a warm summer night and we had stayed up until after Mom and Dad had gone to bed. For whatever reason the mood struck us to head up to the roof. As we lay there looking up at the sky the conversation naturally turned to the beauty of nature and from there it was a short step for Sam to move to Revelations.<br /><br />He had a flare for setting your nerves on edge while he talked about the beast and the abomination that causes desolation. We had been discussing the subject for about half an hour when I decided I wanted to take a walk. From some reason talking about the end of the world filled me with nervous energy. We all three climbed down and started out on one of our usual romps around the neighborhood. As we walked under the street lights Sam continued the discussion. He had just introduced the subject of demons when I saw two points of red light shining out of the bushes.<br /><br />“One sec bro!” I whispered, interrupting Sam mid-thought.<br /><br />“What it is?” He asked.<br /><br />“Am I seeing things or are there two red eyes watching us from the bushes?”<br /><br />Sam took a careful look and replied “No, you're not seeing things. They are there....”<br /><br />“What do you think we should do?”<br /><br />“Run!”<br /><br />“AHHHH!!!!” We all three screamed together as we ran back to the house as fast as we could.<br /><br />Once safely home we discussed the situation and decided that if those had been demon eyes we would have all been dead. So, there was only one thing to do: We had to arm ourselves against any animal attacks and go find the whatever-it-was. We each took something with which to fight off whatever wild animal the thing might turn out to be and headed back to where we had seen the eyes hoping to pick up the trail from there.<br /><br />We returned to find the eyes still sitting there looking silently out over the night. I had seen many animal eyes in the dark before. The reflective blues, greens and reds of dogs and cats and other animals. These eyes were nothing like those. They were a deep ruby red and they glowed more brightly than any eyes I had ever seen. I was also certain that they hadn't moved an inch. They were still where they had been, almost as if they had been waiting for us to return.<br /><br />The three of us stood in a tight group and slowly advanced on the unblinking eyes with our weapons at the ready. Suddenly Sam stopped, squinting ahead into the darkness. Then he burst out laughing.<br /><br />“They are reflectors!” He said.<br /><br />“What?” I replied.<br /><br />“It's those two reflectors on the sides of that driveway back into those woods. You must have seen them a thousand times.”<br /><br />Immediately I realized that he was right. I had, in fact, seen them thousands of times during daylight hours. Josh and I joined in the laughter and I blamed Sam for the whole thing. He had gotten us all worked up about the end of the world until we thought we were seeing demon eyes. It was a lesson in keeping our imaginations in check. When the end of the world comes there won't be any question, everyone will know it.<br /><br />This next tale opens years before our little demon hunt. We were at church along with a number of my cousins. We would all run around in what amounted to the church parking lot after services while the adults stood around talking. We had just come out of evening services and it was dark enough that the adults who were standing on the porch of the church building couldn't see what we children were doing. <br /><br />Here I need to mention the fact that we were very young at the time. I don't remember what age we were exactly, but we were young enough to think that mooning was one of the funniest things in the world. If you don't know what mooning is I have to wonder where you've been all your life. However, so there won't be any confusion, I'll tell. Mooning is the art of dropping your pants at just the right moment to make someone look at your naked butt. As I say, we were young and this was something we found very funny at the time.<br /><br />Somehow the conversation turned to mooning and how funny it would be if people driving past the church building were saluted with a row of children's butts. We all agreed that it would be hysterical because of all the places you wouldn't expect to be mooned the church yard is pretty high up on the list. After a few minutes discussion we decided to do it. A row of us lined up with our backs turned to the road. The next set of headlights that came along was greeted with a number of little wagging behinds.<br /><br />We did it again and again as one car after another drove by. Each time we laughed a little harder. Now, this story doesn't end with any big bang. If you have read many of my tales you may expect it to end with us begin caught or someone pulling over to find out why we were doing that, but it doesn't this time. Nothing at all happened. A number of people were mooned from the church yard one night and we children laughed until we almost cried. We never did it again. Somehow when we looked back at it the thing wasn't as funny as it had seemed before. We had outgrown it. I suppose that's the real moral. You don't always have to catch your children doing everything you don't want them to so you can stop them. Some things they will just outgrow if you give them time.<br /><br />Of course, there are things that are funny no matter what age you are. I have found, for myself, one of those things is someone trying not to laugh. The moment I can tell that someone is trying to keep themselves from laughing it makes me try not to laugh myself. The result is almost always that I laugh, which makes them laugh. This only ever happens when people aren't supposed to be laughing which makes the whole situation even funnier, at least to me.<br /><br />I remember once when Joshua, Sam and I were serving The Lord's Supper and Sam had to try his best not to laugh. For those of you who don't know, The Lord's Supper is something that we Christians do in remembrance of Jesus Christ. Some Christians call it the sacrament, others call it other things. We call it The Lord's Supper. It's not a particularly somber ceremony, at least to me. In a very real way it's a celebration. However, it does celebrate the last meal Christ had with the apostles before being crucified, so one does tend to turn their thoughts to the crucifixion which is a very somber subject.<br /><br />In any event, The Lords Supper is a ceremony where one doesn't often hear laughter. In fact, one doesn't hear much of anything. A number of prayers are said, but other than that it is mainly silent. It was a prayer in fact that caused Sam to have to try not to laugh. Joshua was saying one of the prayers and said:<br /><br />“Thank you for sending your son to be murdered for us.”<br /><br />Now, that isn't really funny at all and it is something we should be thankful for. However, it's not usual in a prayer like that to use the word murdered. The normal phrases are “to die for us” or “to shed his blood” or even “to receive our stripes”. If you're not a regular church goer you probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but trust me, “to be murdered” is something you hear very rarely.<br /><br />It certainly wasn't a case of Josh being wrong to put it that way, Sam just didn't expect it. As a result he started to laugh. He caught himself immediately, but I heard him make a sound like an engine about to crank. Before I knew it I was making sounds myself. I had a huge smile on my face and I was very glad that everyone's eyes were closed.<br /><br />Again, Sam made a sound, no doubt in response to mine and I had to do everything I could not to snigger again. Then I head someone in the crowd do their imitation of a car that wouldn't crank and that pushed me over the edge. I laughed, but just a bit. That, of course, caused Sam to laugh. Fortunately by that time Josh had finished his prayer. He said “Amen” and was met with waves of laughter. The entire congregation burst out laughing. Everyone in the crowd had been doing their best not to laugh during the prayer. Once it was finished no one could hold back any longer. As soon as the laughter died down we had The Lord Supper as usual, but there were a few more smiles than normal.<br /><br />Now, there are some people that might think it was terrible to laugh during such a serious Christian ceremony. However, I disagree. God has given us many things to be happy about and Jesus laid down his life so that we could be together forever. The Lord wants us to be happy and what we were laughing at was one another, not anything Holy. Laughter is one of the great gifts God has given to man. I think it's wrong to mock the Lord, but not to laugh when our fellow men do something unexpected or outlandish. Not all Christians see eye to eye on this. It seems to me that some of them think of Christianity as a burden rather than a gift. For myself I can't help but feel that “My soul was lifted at Calvary” and one of the things that makes my spirit soar is a good round of laughter.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-19784048257486790792011-01-23T06:05:00.000-08:002011-01-23T06:06:16.056-08:00Bad Days For BrandynI've had a few bad days over the course of my life. I'm certain that most of us have. However, Brandyn Boatwright specialized in them. I've already recorded the histories of a few of his bad days. If you haven't read “Brandyn Ninja Carpenter” or “That's Gonna Leave a Mark” you may want to do so. They will help demonstrate what I mean. He often brought things on himself, but not always. The tales that follow represent a little of each side of the coin.<br /><br />On the particular day of calamity in question we were all in school. Joshua and I had been put in private school shortly after I started the ninth grade. Brandyn Boatwright and Jesse Dicks quickly followed us. Since we had all been friends for years outside of school this made for a wonderful educational setting. Every day was more like going up to the clubhouse than going to school. Plus the guys at school were great and we all became close friends. Each day found us playing some sport during every one of our breaks. On this particular day tag football was the game of choice.<br /><br />Now, as a general rule, tag football is one of the safest games in the world. For the two people on earth who have never heard of it I'll explain, just in case they decide to read this. Tag football is just like regular football except all the tackles are replaced by tags. That is to say you only need to touch whoever has the ball in order to “tackle” them. Now, if you are asking yourself what a “tackle” is then I can't help you. You'll have to look up some information on football. I don't have room for all that here....<br /><br />In any event, we were all out playing tag football. Brandyn had gotten the ball and was flying across the field toward the end zone. I fell in behind him and ran right up on his heals. Literally. You see, I was a great deal faster than Brandyn. I had closed the distance between us in no time and was running right behind him just toying with him. My plan was to let him get within about ten yards of making a goal and then tag him. However, when I stepped on his heal it tripped me. I was so close to him that when I fell I landed right on him. The result was that I actually tackled him.<br /><br />Normally this wouldn't have been a problem at all. Brandyn was as tough as nails. I had seen him take some major hits and recover without so much as batting an eye. On this particular day that was not to be the case. As Brandyn fell the ball slipped from his fingers. It hit the ground a moment before he did. He landed with his forearm laid right across it. So, when I landed right on top of him it dropped the weight of both our bodies right onto his arm which was stretched across the ball. It snapped the bones of his forearm like twigs.<br /><br />To say that he screamed doesn't really convey the emotion which Brandyn displayed. He did something more than simply scream, if we have a word for it in the English language then I don't know what it is. There was the terrible sound he produced to which he added a general flailing and a kind of Curly-esk running around while laying down. (If you've never watched the Three Stooges then you don't know what I mean. Find a DVD and watch it, but only if you are male. Women seem to hate the Three Stooges for some reason...) Mrs. Lane, our teacher, tried to help him to his feet, but was met with some rather unpleasant language as she grabbed his broken arm in order to lift him up.<br /><br />We finally managed to get him into a car and on his way to the hospital. The next day he showed up at school sporting his new cast. Sadly for Brandyn this was going to be another day that didn't end very well. It was the very end of the school day when things took a bad turn. As usual Brandyn brought it on himself by begin stupid.<br /><br /><br />Joshua and I would occasionally catch a ride home with one of the other guys from school. Charles Elledge had offered to give us a lift in his truck that day. Charles was a lot of fun and played music so loud that your ears would almost bleed, so we immediately accepted his invitation. If we had just ridden home with Mom or if Charles had been driving a car Brandyn might have been spared a little pain, but it was not meant to be.<br /><br />Just as Charles was backing up Brandyn jumped up on his bumper, grabbed the tailgate with his good hand and began waving his broken arm above his head as if he were a cowboy riding a wild stallion. We came to a stop at the end of the driveway waiting to pull onto the road until Brandyn had hopped off. However, Brandyn just stood there waving his broken arm in the air. Charles yelled for Brandyn to get down, but Brandyn ignored him.<br /><br />“What should I do?” Charles asked as he watched Brandyn in the rear view mirror.<br /><br />“Drive on. He'll get down.” I said with confidence.<br /><br />Charles pulled out onto the road and started getting up to speed. Brandyn continued to cling to the tailgate with his good hand and wave his bad arm in the air. We got up to ten miles an hour, then fifteen with no change in situation.<br /><br />“What do think?”<br /><br />“Keep going, he'll jump for it before long.”<br /><br />Charles pressed the gas and we got up to twenty. Brandyn began to yell for us to let him off.<br /><br />“Should I stop?”<br /><br />“Nah, he had his chance. Let him jump for it or ride home with us on the bumper.”<br /><br />Before the truck got to twenty five Brandyn jumped off onto the road. He hit with so much force that he rolled around on the pavement like a piece of old trash. He actually rolled off the road and down into the drainage ditch right beside our school.<br /><br />“Oh my gosh! Should I stop?”<br /><br />“Nah, he'll be fine. Drive on, Charlie, drive on.”<br /><br />Drive on he did. The next day at school Brandyn yelled at me with everything he had in him. He had actually cracked his cast in several places from where it had slammed into the pavement. Needless to say his broken arm had not enjoyed the treatment it had gotten.<br /><br />“Well, you shouldn't have hopped up there in the first place.” I said with a bit of a laugh.<br /><br />“I was just playing around! You could have killed me!”<br /><br />“Jumping from a vehicle that is only moving twenty five miles an hour isn't enough to kill you Brandyn. Besides, what makes you think we even saw you back there?”<br /><br />“Oh, you saw me!!!!”<br /><br />This discussion was met with laughter on all sides. When all was said and done Brandyn was laughing as loud as anyone. Brandyn always liked to look tough in front of the ladies. His little jump from the truck certainly made him look tough. Not very smart, but tough.<br /><br />It may seem to the casual reader that we were very cruel to Brandyn. This was not the case. We were his best friends, we just liked to ruffle his feathers a bit. Had Mother Teresa been there she would have laughed along with the rest of us. Brandyn was fun to be with, but given time he would get under anybody's skin. Joshua and I were the score settlers. We made Brandyn pay the piper for all the things he did to other people. It may seem hard to believe, but Brandyn really did bring these things on himself.<br /><br />It was on another day, not long after, that Brandyn annoyed Joshua and me until, yet again, he found himself in the middle of a bad day. Joshua and I were headed to the mall and then a birthday party in Aiken and Brandyn wanted to come along. By this time Brandyn was already a smoker, ever though he was a little under age. Joshua and I didn't smoke and we didn't like to be around it. Knowing that Brandyn wouldn't be able to refrain from smoking for the hours we planned to be gone we told him we wouldn't take him.<br /><br />Our decision was met with pitiful pleas and assurances that he wouldn't smoke the entire time he was with us. I found this hard to believe, but figured I might as well give him the chance to prove himself. I felt that if he went without smoking that day it would be good for him anyway. A few minutes later we picked Brandyn up and a few more minutes found us all in the mall parking lot.<br /><br />As soon as we got out of the car it began.<br /><br />“I'm going to have a quick smoke as we walk in.” Brandyn said pulling a pack out of his pants pocket.<br /><br />“No you're not. That wasn't the deal.” I said looking Brandyn in the face.<br /><br />“Well, I got to have one.”<br /><br />“Well, then I guess Josh and I will just have to leave you here then.”<br /><br />“You wouldn't do that.”<br /><br />“Wouldn't we?”<br /><br />“Let him have one.” Josh said with a smile.<br /><br />“What?”<br /><br />“I think we should let him have one. Provided... he smokes it backwards.”<br /><br />“I'm not doing that!” Brandyn said indignantly.<br /><br />“Suit yourself. Go without all that lovely tobacco. What do I care?” Josh replied.<br /><br />“Would you let me smoke one if I smoked it backwards?” Brandyn asked me.<br /><br />“Sure, I guess. It would be interesting enough to make it worth while.”<br /><br />Brandyn pulled a cigarette from the pack and put it in his mouth backwards. He then lit the filter end and began to smoke. As soon as he inhaled he began to cough his lungs up. Josh stood there encouraging him to go on. Reminding him of all that excellent tobacco just one filter away. Brandyn tried his best, but I'm not sure anyone could have done it. He had smoked about half the filter when he threw it down and stamped it out.<br /><br />“I can't finish it! It'll kill me!” He said as he ground the smoldering cigarette into the ground.<br /><br />“Ah well, that's too bad.”<br /><br />“Can I smoke one normally now.”<br /><br />“A deal is a deal and you didn't smoke the filter. I'm sorry Brandy, you'll have to forgo.”<br /><br />We continued into the mall with Brandyn grumbling the entire way. I know that some of you (probably smokers) are incensed by now. You would no doubt have stormed off and let me drive away. Well, in truth I would have driven away without a second thought. A deal is a deal. Brandyn was famous for making deals and then going back on them. In point of fact, I myself would let him weasel out of his agreements, I just didn't make it easy.<br /><br />We wandered through the mall until we ended up in Pipe Dreams. It was a neat little store that sold a number of things that included tobacco, cigarettes and cigars. As soon as we were inside Brandyn began again.<br /><br />“Hey bro, buy me a cigar.” He said as he looked over the counter.<br /><br />“What?” Was me predictable reply.<br /><br />“Well, they smell good. You and Josh couldn't mind my smoking one of them.”<br /><br />Here Brandyn had scored a point. My Papa had smoked cigars since long before I was born and I did like the smell. Still, there was the deal to consider. Brandyn was just trying to find a way to smoke. However, in all deals there is a bit of give and take. I decided that I would show Brandyn what it was like to take too much.<br /><br />“I won't buy you one cigar, but I will buy you three.” I said with a smile.<br /><br />“What? Well, that's generous.” He said smiling in return.<br /><br />“On two conditions. First, should you smoke one of them you have to smoke all three back to back.”<br /><br />“Back to back?”<br /><br />“Come on bro, you can do that. It will take care of your smoking for the rest of the day.” Josh said joining in my mischief.<br /><br />“What's the second condition?” Brandyn asked mulling the first over.<br /><br />“We each pick one of the three. It's the only way to be fair.” I replied, my smiled broadening.<br /><br />Brandyn stood there considering the offer for a few moments. He knew it was a challenge as much as anything else. At last he decided.<br /><br />“Deal!”<br /><br />Brandyn selected what one might call a normal cigar. It was a Tampa Nugget or something like that. Joshua's selection was a little more exotic. It was a thin cigar perhaps nine inches long. I myself went for the fatty, as we use to call them. It was only about four inches long, but it was bigger around than my thumb. Having made our selections we checked out and were quickly on our way.<br /><br />By the time we were done at the mall it was time for the birthday party. We arrived fashionably early and were mingling when Brandyn decided he needed to get his smoking over with. The party was at a bowling alley and I suppose he wanted to get his nicotine levels in a good place before we started to bowl. It wouldn't do to loose a game because he was nick-fitting.<br /><br />Several of us headed outside with him to watch. It wasn't everyday that you saw someone smoke three cigars back to back. Brandyn pulled out the Tampa Nugget in front of the small crowd and lit it to the sound of cheers of approval. Everyone had heard about the deal and wanted to encourage Brandyn in his chosen feat of stupidity. He burned the first one away to ashes like a champion. He looked like a man that had been born with a cigar in his mouth. As he smothered the butt out he was met with warm approval from the crowd.<br /><br />Then next smoke-able he selected was Joshua's long thin cigar. As soon as he lit it he observed aloud that it was a little harsher than he had expected, but assured us all that he would press on. As the brown cigar changed to ashy white, so did Brandyn. The color had begun to drain out of him as if he too were burning away to nothing. About half way through he began to complain.<br /><br />“I'm not sure I can make it.” He said, a bit of cold sweat on his forehead.<br /><br />“Nonsense! You're half way there my friend. You can't give up now, not in front of the ladies.”<br /><br />Brandyn screwed up his courage and smoked on. More slowly than before, doubtless, but one breath after another left a shorter cigar behind it. Brandyn was met with cheers once again as his shaking hand snuffed the burning embers of the second cigar butt out. As the final cigar, the mighty fatty, was pulled from the bag concern spread across Brandyn's face.<br /><br />“I can't get through that one, there's no way.”<br /><br />“You can and will Brandyn, it's just a matter of getting started.” I said with a grin.<br /><br />“No, really I can't.”<br /><br />“Well, that would be to bad. Because if you don't smoke the third one then the deal is off. That means that you just smoked two of my cigars. For that I'm afraid Josh and I will have to rough you up.”<br /><br />“You wouldn't do that!”<br /><br />“Wouldn't we?” Josh said with a cold smile.<br /><br />Here you have to understand that once again Josh and I were just giving Brandyn a bit of his own back. He was constantly aggravating people to the point where this crowd, filled with many of his best friends, felt no sympathy for him at all. The deal was the deal and he would smoke or face the consequences.<br /><br />“Fine! Give it here!” He said at last.<br /><br />As he lit the fatty the crowd cheered once again. Once more Brandyn followed the example of his cigar. As it burned lower and lower so did he. He smoked for a while sitting on the curb covered in a sweat cold enough to defy the summer sun that was beating down on his face. Each puff of smoke found him closer to the ground. At last Brandyn was laying on the curb with half a smoldering cigar hanging out of his mouth. With one final effort he spit it into the street.<br /><br />“You guys can kill me... I'm not taking another drag...” He said slowly.<br /><br />“What do you think Josh?”<br /><br />“Hmmm, I call it close enough.”<br /><br />The crowd went wild. Brandyn had passed the ordeal of smoke. I'm sure he would have been jumping with joy had he been able to jump at all. As it was, he had nicotine poising so bad he couldn't stand, let alone jump. In the end we had to lift him up and carry him to the car. He moaned the entire way home. Still, there was no permanent damage done. The next day he was back to his old self and smoking as much as ever. I had hoped the experience would kill his love of tobacco, but no such luck.<br /><br />It may seem that we were a cruel lot, but we weren't honestly. Brandyn dished it out plenty of times, these stories are simply centered on when he had to take it. I suppose that is the moral of the story. Don't dish it out if you can't take it and don't buy three cigars if you can't smoke em.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-68848231443162459252011-01-16T05:45:00.001-08:002011-01-16T05:45:29.107-08:00Jim and IHere I have recorded a few more stories concerning Jim Melvin and myself. If you haven't read any of my previous tales about him I would suggest you take a look at “Fireworks Battle” or “Knight on a charging Schwinn” for a little bit of background. Of course, you can feel free to press on without it. Jim was a simple character to understand and it's easy to laugh at him with absolutely no background information at all.<br /><br />For those of you who may not know it, I was just a little obsessed with gold and treasure when I was a child. I was constantly on the look out for hidden rooms or a secret map that was going to pave my way to riches. When I was four or five I got a book about divers bringing up sunken treasure. I would flip through the pages imagining myself in a diving suite picking up golden coins by the handful. The book actually had maps in both the front and back covers and I used to wonder if the people that made the book had printed those maps as a clue.<br /><br />My mind turned toward hidden treasure and lost gold at every opportunity. When I was around nine years old I got another book. It was about rocks and geological processes. One of the pictures in it showed a rock being melted and turning into what looked like gold. What that page was actually about was super heated rock and lava and other geothermic transformations. However, to my nine year old mind it was a clue to hidden gold.<br /><br />Having connected the dots in my mind I grabbed the book and headed for Jim's house. As soon as we were alone in his room I pulled out the book and began to explain.<br /><br />“I've found something out!” I said as I flipped through the book looking for the right page.<br /><br />“What is it?”<br /><br />“It's a kind of rock that when it melts it turns to gold!”<br /><br />“No way!”<br /><br />“Then explain that!” I said triumphantly pointing to the picture of the melting rock.<br /><br />“It does seem to be gold doesn't it!” Jim replied, getting almost as excited as myself.<br /><br />Here I have to point out that neither Jim nor myself bothered to read what the book had to say about these rocks. Both of us were excellent readers and could have read the entire book in a matter of minutes, but that would have been of no use. We were looking for secrets. People don't just write secrets in a book and then publish them for the world to see. No! You have to learn to read between the lines. In this case a picture was worth a thousand of those in between words and what those words all said was GOLD!<br /><br />“I have seen rocks like that before.” Jim said after a few moments.<br /><br />“You have? Where!”<br /><br />“In the swamp.”<br /><br />“Can we reach them?”<br /><br />“We can, but it won't be easy.”<br /><br />Within a few minutes we had gathered our supplies and headed for the swamp. In truth, it was a few hundred acres of woodland right beside Jim's house. It did contain a few acres of swampland out in the middle of it, but it wasn't truly a swamp. We spent hours wandering in the woods as Jim tried to remember where he had seen those rocks.<br /><br />The entire time I was filled with a nervous excitement. I was finally close. We were finally going to be rich. As soon as we found those rocks we could load them up, carry them home and melt them down into gold. As the hours passed I wasn't the least bit discouraged. However, Jim began to get tired and started complaining that he wanted to go home.<br /><br />“What? We are practically rich and you want to give up?” I said with disbelief.<br /><br />“Well, we can't find them.”<br /><br />“They are here! We will find them! We just have to keep looking.”<br /><br />“They aren't here...”<br /><br />“What?!?!”<br /><br />“I have never seen rocks like those.”<br /><br />“Then why did you say that you had?”<br /><br />“I felt certain we would find some in the swamp and I wanted you to come with me.”<br /><br />“You could have just told me that!”<br /><br />“Sorry...”<br /><br />With that we headed home. At the time I wasn't sure that Jim wasn't lying about lying just so I would let him go home without fighting about it. As a grown man I realize that the volcanic rocks displayed in that picture are fairly rare in South Carolina. In any event, my dreams had been dashed for the moment. Jim didn't know where to find the secret rocks. Still, our friendship was too strong to be setback by anything as small as that. We had fun wandering around the swamp whether or not we found any gold.<br /><br />Often times I ended up having more fun than Jim did in the end. My next tale, which opens years later at Wonderful Williston Weekend, is another example of that. Most small towns in South Carolina have some weekend celebration where the carnival comes to town. There are always a number rides to enjoy. There are the classics like the Merry-Go-Round and the Ferris Wheel and there's usually one that you've never heard of before. The last carnival I went to had something called the Zipper. It's hard to describe, but it scared one of my daughters so bad that she broke down crying after she got off.<br /><br />One of my personal favorites was something called the Tilt-A-Whirl. If you've never ridden in one you've missed out. It consists of a number of free spinning cars attached to a platform going around and around and up and down. The result is that the cars spin at a variable rate in a variable direction. There is also a stationary wheel in the center of each car that the riders can grab hold of in order to slow or speed up the spinning of the car. Joshua and I only used that wheel in order to speed things up. We love to increase the g-forces.<br /><br />In fact, as grown men we invented our own ride at some park. We had taken all the children in the family to a birthday party and, as usual, I was looking for something to do with myself while the children played. In the end I ended up sitting on a Merry-Go-Round while my brother, several of our friends, my Dad and a couple of Uncles stood around it in a circle spinning it as fast as they could. We each took a turn and all ended up very sore the next day. It was worth it. We always loved that spinning sensation.<br /><br />In any event, that night we had been on the Tilt-A-Whirl a few times, but there was always room for more. Josh and I ran into Jim and we decided to run around together. After a brief discussion we decided to hit the Tilt-A-Whirl up again as soon as Jim had finished his second hotdog of the night. I didn't mind waiting because he was already half finished. He gulped the remainder down and in a flash we were all sitting together in one of the cars.<br /><br />The ride began to move slowly picking us up to the top of the first little hill. We all three grabbed the wheel and waited for the first spin to start. Between the three of us we could apply a fair amount of muscle and we all intended to give it everything we had. As soon as the car began to move down the first hill it spun just a little. That was all we needed to get things moving.<br /><br />We knew what direction to pull in and helped build up the momentum of the car. We fought to keep the car from slowing as we went up each hill and pulled as hard as we could to speed it up each time we went down. The other children in the car with us screamed with delight. As the g-force increased I focused all my attention on the wheel in the center. There was no ride, there was no world, there was only the wheel and my only purpose in life was to pull it with every once of energy I could muster.<br /><br />(Here I have to insert a bit of a warning. Jim had just had two hotdogs and then climbed on the Tilt-A-Whirl, so you can imagine where this is going. If you easily experience nausea or find it disgusting you may want to skip a few paragraphs. I'll let you know when it's all over.)<br /><br />As our speed climaxed Jim yelled to me above the general noise of the ride and the screams of our fellow passengers. “I don't feel very well!” He bellowed as loudly as he could. “Maybe we should slow the car down!” I yelled in reply. Jim didn't answer me. I think he tried to, but when he opened his mouth no words came out. Sadly a column of projectile vomit did.<br /><br />Due to the spinning of the car the vomit didn't fly strait through the air. Actually I guess it did from a scientific point of view. We were spinning, not the stream of vomit that was flying through the air. However, from my point of view it looked as if Jim had spouted an arched rainbow of puke that ran directly from his mouth to my brothers chest.<br /><br />For what seemed like minutes Jim continued to blow chucks in an uninterrupted stream onto my brother as Josh yelled at the top of his lungs for us to stop the ride. At last it all came to an end. The ride clunked to a halt and we climbed off. Josh was literally dripping with vomit while Jim was as clean as a spring rain. Needless to say, Josh and I headed home to get him a shower and some fresh cloths. After that night we christened that ride the Tilt-A-Hurl and we've called it that every since.<br /><br />(It's over now. You can safely pick the story back up from here.)<br /><br />On another occasion, not too distant in time from that night, Jim and I stood at the end of my parents driveway waiting for cars to come by. I had shown Jim that you could put alcohol on your hand and light it on fire without burning yourself. In truth, it may have been that he had showed me. It's been too long to remember which one of us first ran up on the fact, but I know for certain I was the one who came up with a use for it.<br /><br />In case you don't know about this scientific oddity I'll briefly explain. If you pour rubbing alcohol on your bare skin you can ignite it without getting burned. As the alcohol burns away the process of evaporation will actually draw heat out of you. The fire will, in fact, cool you. There is an art to it and I am not recommending that any of you try it, but it does work.<br /><br />That night we had gotten a bottle of Sea Breeze, which is a teenage skin care product that has a very high alcohol content. Jim poured a little on his hand and lit it on fire. As it burned away I got a brilliant idea. It was that idea that led Jim and I down to the end of the driveway.<br /><br />As soon as a car came into view Jim would pour Sea Breeze all over his thumb. As soon as his thumb was sufficiently covered I lit it on fire. Jim used his flaming digit to try to thumb rides from passing cars. We stood there laughing at the thought of the drivers as they looked out of the window and saw a young boy trying to catch a ride with a thumb covered in six inches of open flame.<br /><br />As a grown man I am amazed that nobody stopped to ask us what we were doing. Still, if I were driving down the road late at night and saw a shadowy figure with a flaming thumb trying to hitch a ride I might just drive on as well.<br /><br />As each car passed Jim would quickly shake his hand and put out the flames. It worked well time after time right up until the point where it didn't. As the last car we pulled this on drove away into the night Jim shook his thumb to put it out. This time, however, it didn't blow out. He began waving his hand wildly as he screamed out in pain. Still the thumb burned on. Finally he had the presence of mind to rub his thumb all over his jeans. That did, in fact, extinguish his pore hand. <br /><br />That was enough for both of us. Knowing that sometimes you might not go out kept us from lighting ourselves on fire again. We had gotten a few laughs and learned a valuable lesson. The only thing it cost us was Jim getting a tad toasted. All in all it was a success. It turned out a lot better than a lot of the things Jim and I had done together.<br /><br />It's an odd fact of life that as you grow up you often grow apart. Jim and I were best friends for years on end. Then as we grew older we drifted apart. I ended up going to a different high school and then got married and each of us spun off in a totally different social circle. We're still friends, but I haven't even spoken to him for years now. Still, that's how grown up life is. The busy years fly by and some things simply get left behind. However, as long as we remember them they will always be part of our lives. That is why I make it a point to try not to forget.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-24157708193526222342011-01-09T05:03:00.000-08:002011-01-09T05:15:46.373-08:00Stunt RidingIn one of my earlier tales I said that I was eventually going to share a few more stories about my old motorcycle. The time has come at last for me to do that. For those of you who aren't familiar with any of my bike stories I'll give you a bit of background information. I was given a motorcycle for my twelfth or thirteenth Christmas. The first thing we did with it was learn to pop wheelies with some fairly amazing results. For years that bike was a source of fun and excitement. It is that very excitement that I hope to share with these brief tales.<br /><br />Having had the motorcycle for a while we fell into a fairly regular routine of taking it out when the weather was nice and riding it around in the yard. The only problem was that we didn't really have a track. Dad kept about an acre of the yard mowed, but the rest was let go for most of the year. (He would mow it once or twice just to keep trees from growing in, but it was always covered in chest high weeds.) As we didn't have a track we would ride around the house again and again.<br /><br />We had done it so much that we made a kind of soft dirt track of our own that circled the double wide. For the most part it worked out very well. It might not seem like much fun to ride in circles around the same spot for an hour at the time, but it was. All things considered it was a fairly satisfactory track. However, the amount of sand in the soil was a problem a couple of times.<br /><br />Once, for instance, I was going around the house for perhaps the fortieth time when I decided to cut the turn as tightly as I could. I sped up and leaned into it as I came around the corner of the trailer. I was doing wonderfully when the back tire decided to slip in the sandy soil. The result was a sudden ninety degree turn that slapped me into the house at full speed.<br /><br />On another occasion I had decided to take the turn around the house as widely as I possibly could. There was a hedge that separated Dad's property from the Buice's yard. My wide arc would bring me within a few feet of that hedge on every pass. Finally the moment came. The back tire slipped in the sand and I ran straight into the hedge. I hit with so much force that it threw me off the bike and into Mr. Buice's yard.<br /><br />Needless to say, after a while, the going around in a circle wasn't enough to keep us interested. Now, it was more exciting than in sounds. If you have a motorcycle then you know what I mean and if you don't then there's no way for me to explain. Either way, in time I had gotten bored with it and wanted to do more. The more that stood out as most obvious was ramp jumping.<br /><br />Most young men have a bit of the dare devil in them and none of the boys in our group were an exception to this rule. We all loved to take a chance for a bit of excitement. So, when I suggesting building a ramp for the motorcycle I was met with everything short of actual applause.<br /><br />The spot we selected was by the old oak tree. That oak tree was something worth seeing. Three trees had grown together into one and it was massive. Before it was killed by lighting people would actually use “That oak tree on lake drive” as a point of reference when giving directions. That tree was in our yard and it was beside that tree that we built our ramp.<br /><br />The ramp itself was a simple dirt hill affair with a piece of plywood on top. It was around three feet high and perhaps ten feet long. The location was excellent. We had room to get a perfect full speed start across the yard before we hit it. There was also enough room to stop before you ran into the hedge after you landed. Well, most of the time there was enough room for that.<br /><br />The top of the ramp was perhaps forty feet from the hedge. Now, a normal jump at full speed would give you about twenty five feet of air time. So when you landed you still had fifteen feet or so to bring the bike to a full stop. Under normal circumstances that was more than enough room. However, for one jump we changed the circumstances just a bit.<br /><br />Two friends of mine who rarely came over to the house showed up. Bucky Scott and his younger brother Seth. They watched us for a couple of jumps and then wanted to get in on it themselves. Seth was a little young for it and a little small, so I offered to give him a ride and take him for a jump. His extra weight right on my back tire gave me extra traction. I could tell as I got up to full speed that I was going faster than normal. When I hit the ramp I hit it with more force than I ever had before.<br /><br />The result was spectacular. We shot up into the air like a low flying air craft. It was incredible. I was watching the ground fly by below me and getting ready to land. Then I noticed we were getting closer to the hedge than normal. In point of fact we were getting far too close. I began to feel like a cartoon character who is about to fall into something terrible. I wanted to grab the handlebars and pull us up a little higher, but sadly that doesn't work in real life.<br /><br />We were dropping like a stone and headed strait for the hedge. I held on for dear life and prepared to crash land as best I could. The next moment we had actually shot over the hedge. The back tire touched the top of it, but only just. We landed right in Mr. Buice's yard and I slammed on the brakes. Other than leaving a long strip of torn up grass right in his front yard everything was fine. I turned the bike around and drove back into our yard to the sound of cheering.<br /><br />That jump had been close to fifty feet. We tried again and again to match it, but we never got close. Seth had to leave right after the first jump, so we had to try it without him. I think that was the real problem. He was the perfect size and weigh. Either that or he was an alien and made the bike fly for the last twenty feet or so. I was young and it's hard to remember whether his finger tip was glowing or not. One way or the other, the Seth Scott jump was the greatest we ever had.<br /><br />This next tale takes place years later. I was about sixteen or seventeen and Jesse Dicks had started coming over to the house for manliness training. Not that he would have called it that or even known that's why me and Josh had him over, but that was really what it was for. Not that Jesse wasn't a lot of fun to hang out with, he just needed a bit more in the manly category.<br /><br />He had been very sick as a child and his mother had protected him just a bit too much. By the time he was a teenager he was perfectly capable of looking out for himself, but she hadn't realized it yet. Fortunately he had. As soon as he got over the “I'm going to die!” factor he became unstoppable. After years spent not being able to do this or that because of his health he was out to challenge himself in every possible way.<br /><br />Any young man who was craving excitement after years of captivity might turn to motorcycles as a possible source of thrills. Jesse certainly did. For a long time he had been afraid to get on either my or my brother's bike. One day he decided that he had been timid long enough and decided to take one for a spin. After a little debate he decided to cut his teeth on Josh's machine.<br /><br />Josh had a street bike whereas I had a dirt bike. His was also smaller and had a lower horse power than mine. When we had gotten them he was smaller than me, although by the time this story took place Josh was a little bigger than me. In any event, the point is that Josh's bike was smaller and less intimidating to Jesse. He hopped on and Josh cranked it for him. He revved it up and took off across our field. Of course, it was a street bike and wasn't meant to be used like that. We kept yelling for him to come back as he bumped up and down through the uneven un-mowed field. Finally he felt like he could use a break and headed back to where we were waiting for him.<br /><br />He said that he had really enjoyed it, but that it had been a little too bumpy a ride. Josh and I explained that the reason was simply that he had taken a street bike on a cruise through a field. In the end Jesse was persuaded to hop on my bike behind me and let me take him for a real spin through the field. Jesse climbed on board, I cranked the engine and we were off.<br /><br />I got up to speed fast because I wanted to give him a bit of a scare. Fear was part of Jesse's manliness training. He had to much of it, so I let a little out whenever I could. We were flying at close to top speed through chest high grass when Jesse screamed in my ear.<br /><br />“Cinder blocks!”<br /><br />Jesse had spotted a small pile of blocks right in our path. I dodged to one side as fast as I could and we shot past them.<br /><br />“Plow!” Jesse screamed at the tops of his lungs.<br /><br />I had actually already seen the upside-down disk harrow and was correcting our coarse by the time he yelled. We were leaned over because of the turn I had to make to avoid the cinder blocks and there wasn't enough distance to come to a stop. We had no choice but to dodge. If we had hit that thing at the speed we were going it might have killed us. As it was we barley missed it. I could have easily reached out and touched it with my foot.<br /><br />“Cinder....”<br /><br />He didn't have time to yell that final warning. As soon as we had gotten past the harrow another pile of cinder block popped into view. We hit it dead on. The result was Jesse and I flying a few feet and then landing in the field. We both got up laughing.<br /><br />“What are the odds of that?” I asked brushing myself off.<br /><br />“What is all that stuff doing out here?”<br /><br />“I don't know. Dad was doing something with the plow months ago. We never ride in this field.”<br /><br />“I can tell.”<br /><br />Jesse and I decided to walk back to the house. He was finished with the motorcycles for the day. I couldn't say that I blamed him. He had gotten his start and that was enough. A little while later he headed home and I didn't see him until the next day. I had gone over to his house to pick him up and was waiting for him in the living room when his mother started a conversation with me.<br /><br />“What did you and Jesse do yesterday?” She asked with a kind of “make conversation” voice.<br /><br />“This and that, you know how it is.”<br /><br />“I do. Did you take him out on your motorcycles?”<br /><br />“Yes, Ma'am. He wanted to go for a ride. I figured why not.” I replied, beginning to grow suspicious. <br /><br />“I see. Y'all had fun?”<br /><br />“Yes, Ma'am.”<br /><br />At this point she called for Jesse. He walked slowly into the room with a bit of wry smile on his face.<br /><br />“Show him your leg.” His mother demanded.<br /><br />Jesse pulled up his pants leg and revealed a nasty bruise on his shin. It was like a black line drawn on the bone. You could see where blood had run down his leg under the skin almost down to his foot.<br /><br />“Jesse didn't tell me about your wreck. He didn't even limp and perhaps I would never have found out if he hadn't walked from the bathroom to his bedroom in his underwear. I understand that he is growing up and that he is old enough to decide if he wants to risk his life doing something. However, he is still my son. If something like this happens in future I want to be told. Do you boys understand?”<br /><br />“Yes Ma'am!” was our immediate reply.<br /><br />As we were heading out I asked Jesse what had happened.<br /><br />“Well, my leg hit the disk harrow as we flew past. My genes kept me from getting cut, so I just got that nasty bruise.”<br /><br />“Why didn't you say anything to me?”<br /><br />“It wasn't your fault. Either way I had a good time. I wanted to make sure we could go riding again.”<br /><br />That was one of the greatest moments in our friendship. Jesse had manned up, kept quiet about his pain and hidden his wound from everyone so we could go and do it again. I felt proud of him and a bit proud of myself. The manliness training was working. Over time Jesse got as good as any of us on the motorcycles. His first attempts hadn't been great, but his last ones were and that's what really counts.<br /><br />I suppose motorcycles can be dangerous. There have been far too many injuries to argue with that. However, I feel that the risk is worth the gain. Those bikes brought us adventure and excitement and helped us along the road from boyhood to manhood. I have yet to get my sons a dirt bike. I think that is something that is going to have to change. Every young man needs the chance to let his daredevil out before it's time to settle down. A motorcycle is a good way to do that. At least, it was for us.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-41536029857762561172011-01-02T06:15:00.001-08:002011-01-02T06:15:28.559-08:00Raiders of the Lost Septic TankMy Nana was a remarkable woman. For those of you who don't know it my Nana was my mother's mother, or maternal grandmother, if you prefer. She had been a grandmother for a while before I was ever born, so by the time I came along she had all her grandma skills honed. She was famous wherever we went to Church as the “gum giver”. It didn't matter whose child you were or whether she knew you or not. If you were a child you got gum, that's just the way it was.<br /><br />She was generous to a fault. (Some people say that and don't mean it. I do. My poor Papa was always a step or two from the poor house because of all the gifts she was constantly giving.) This generosity with wealth was coupled with a general generosity with freedom. Much like Dad, Nana would let us do pretty much whatever we wanted provided that it wasn't a sin and that no one was going to get hurt. To all this she married the heart of a willing servant. She wanted to be helpful to all those around her. In fact, that is where my story begins.<br /><br />We had just gotten out of Church in Allendale and Nana and Papa decided that we should all go out to eat. Usually we went to some fast food restaurant for a quick burger and fries, but on this particular Sunday they decided they wanted to go somewhere a little nicer. I can't remember the name of the place we went to, but we were all lead to a table and handed a menu.<br /><br />After a few minutes the waiter came back and took our orders. He had taken long enough that Dad was a little annoyed. Well, that is to say, he talked as if he were a little annoyed. Dad is one of those funny people who starts to complain before he is really upset and will criticize you if you dare to murmur yourself. Had I said anything about the speed of the service I would have been told “Look around! You see how busy they are? These people have lives too! Give them a break!”<br /><br />Still, in truth, the service was a little slow. It took a bit of time to get our drinks and when Dad and Papa had run out of coffee there was no sign of anyone coming to refill their cups. Nana had watched in silence and, although she would never have complained about the slow service, she decided something needed to be done. She got up quietly and walked over to where the coffee machine was behind the counter. She picked up the pot and filled Dad and Papa's coffee cups. She then went from table to table asking everyone if they wanted a refill on coffee. When she got back to our table Dad told her to apply for a job since she had already shown the management how ready she was to work.<br /><br />As a child I never noticed how Nana waited on us hand and foot. Whenever I stayed with them I was given whatever I wanted for breakfast cooked just the way I liked it. In fact, when I got older I would go down to Nana and Papa's for breakfast sometimes during the Summer. She was never too busy for us grandchildren. I remember laying in the foldout couch-bed with Josh, Tara and Chris and listening to Nana read us bedtime stories to put us to sleep.<br /><br />It's funny that the woman who would give us matches whenever we asked wouldn't let us touch the fairy tale book by ourselves. In fact there were a number of little rules that we children were never allowed to break. One was that we couldn't handle certain books without supervision. Another was that we could never go into Papa's study. One that applies to this story is that we weren't allowed to talk while Nana was reading aloud.<br /><br />One night Chris decided to break that rule and start making funny comments about the stories that Nana was reading. After a little while I began to join in the fun myself. At first Nana just told us to be quiet and stop interrupting, but as we continued to disobey the situation escalated. Nana warned us that if we didn't stop she was going to get Papa out of bed. Normally that would have put a stop to us, but for some reason that night Chris and I felt we had to go on. At last Nana put the book down, got up and headed for Papa. All we could think to do was pull the covers over our heads and hope that Papa thought we were asleep.<br /><br />When they walked into the room Papa asked “What is the problem?”<br /><br />“These two won't be quiet and listen to the story.” Nana replied.<br /><br />“You mean this one?” He asked as he hit Chris through the blankets with his belt. “And this one?” He added as he popped me as well.<br /><br />“Those are the ones.”<br /><br />“Well, I better not hear anymore about it tonight.”<br /><br />Needless to say he didn't. Those little warning blows were enough to keep Chris and I quiet for the rest of our childhoods. We never again talked while Nana was reading aloud.<br /><br />Now, what will surprise some people, having seen that Nana and Papa would spank us for things like talking out of turn, is what they didn't spank us for. I believe they used a couple of simple guiding principles. Did the child know they were wrong? Had they been warned? You can see with the previous spanking that we knew we were wrong and we had been warned. Of course, it's amazing what children don't know is wrong and no one can possibly warn them about everything. It was because of these two facts that I rarely got a spanking.<br /><br />I remember one morning when Chris, Tara, Josh and I were all over at Nana and Papa's house. I was around nine, meaning Chris was thirteen or so and Tara and Josh were seven. We had decided to do a bit of exploring and had wandered over to the deserted lot right beside Papa's land. No one had lived there for years and it was overgrown with briars and tress. As we were pushing through the underbrush we stumbled upon a block of concrete that was buried in the dirt. There was only a very small corner poking out where the rain had washed the dirt away, but it was enough to fire my imagination.<br /><br />I kicked some of the dirt off and felt certain that a large concrete slab was buried right at my feet. There was only one thing to do: we needed to dig it up. We walked back over to the house and asked Nana for the keys to the shed. She asked why we wanted them and we very truthfully answered that we wanted to get a few tools. Without any more questions she handed us the keys. We grabbed a couple of shovels and a sledge hammer, just in case. Having gathered what we thought we would need we returned the keys and headed straight for our concrete corner. We immediately set to work and in just a few minutes we had uncovered the large slab that I was expecting to be there.<br /><br />“We need to break it open.” I said as soon as we had finished brushing the last of the dirt away.<br /><br />“Why?” Tara asked.<br /><br />I didn't know whether to laugh or sigh, the answer was so obvious. I decided the best course of action would be to explain in small steps.<br /><br />“Well, we just found a concrete slab buried out in the middle of nowhere, right?”<br /><br />“Yes, but what does that mean.”<br /><br />“You have to ask yourself why someone would put a concrete slab out here.”<br /><br />“Well, why would they.”<br /><br />“To hide something of course!”<br /><br />“To hide what?”<br /><br />“Oh anything really, but probably treasure.”<br /><br />“You're sure?”<br /><br />“Can you come up with a better explanation?” I asked with a knowing smile.<br /><br />Slowly smiles dawned on each of the three faces looking at me. My logic was perfect. It had become equally obvious to them. Someone had at some point in time buried a treasure here. They had poured a concrete slab on top of it to help hide it and protect it. Now, years later, we had stumbled upon it. It was our duty to break the slab and recover the treasure. Our parents and grandparents were about to be rich. All that stood between us and the gold was a few inches on concrete. That wasn't going to stop us for long.<br /><br />We set to work with a will. The hammer fell again and again as we took turns raining blows on our inanimate adversary. At last the moment came. The slab broke and a large piece of concrete fell into the depths below. It quickly became obvious that there wasn't any treasure to be found at all. What we had discovered, in truth, turned out to be the top of an old septic tank. We had spent all our time and energy getting to something we had no interest in once we reached it.<br /><br />Papa had heard all our noise, but sadly he was a bit too late to stop what we were doing. He stood staring at us, the tools and the tank with a dazed expression on his face and then hurried us all back into his yard. It was a while before he even took the time to explain what we had found and why we shouldn't have done what we did. I think he was a little overwhelmed with the moment and the freshly opened septic tank.<br /><br />We didn't get spanked for that. Why? We didn't know it was wrong to go breaking up some concrete slab we found out in the woods. In addition we certainly hadn't been warned that we would be spanked if we broke open an old septic tank. However, Papa did use it as a teaching opportunity. We learned that there was no such thing as “Out in the woods.”, all land belonged to somebody. We also learned that you have to make sure you know what is inside something before you open it. All things considered we did learn our lesson, we never did anything like that again.<br /><br />Nana and Papa were both wonderful grandparents. They were generous, caring and merciful. I have tried to show those qualities to my children and I hope to continue to show them when I have grandchildren. My Nana, much like my Dad, knew that you had to guide children without controlling every little thing they do. Sometimes it's best to just give them a match and then help them put out whatever fire they start with it. That is a lesson that most of our society has forgotten, but I think it is one that's important to remember.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-55340348510159124482011-01-02T06:05:00.001-08:002011-01-02T06:05:32.010-08:00The Trip Is Half The FunI don't know how many times I've heard that in my life. “The trip is half the fun.” is usually what people say when the trip has become incredibly tedious and they want you to stop complaining about it. However, I have to admit that when I was a child and Josh, Sam and I would walk up town the trip was, in fact, half the fun. A lot of things can happen right on the side of the road that will give you a good laugh. I hope that these stories will share a few of our laughs with you.<br /><br />The trip from home to the video house was a couple of miles I suppose. We would make that walk perhaps three times a week during the summer. The video house rented out video games as well as movies and that was what we were after. If we could scrape together two dollars we were off to get something new to play. The time between our house and the games was filled with conversation, observation and whatever entertainment we could find on the side of the road.<br /><br />We would often pick things up that we found. It gave us something to talk about if it was anything of any interest and something to throw into the woods if it wasn't. You did have to be careful what you picked up and how. Not everything everyone throws out of a car as they drive along is safe to be handled after it's landed. We found all kinds of things over the years. Beers that hadn't been opened and things like that.<br /><br />One time a friend of Josh threw his false teeth out of a car window. He had taken them out while he was eating and put them in his fast food bad. When he was done he threw the bad out of the window. He eventually realized what he had done and went back for them. He found the bag but the teeth had flown out. In the end he had to get a new set. One has to wonder if kids walking along that road found his teeth. Either way, the moral is don't litter, it's just not a good idea.<br /><br />The only trouble we had with roadside garbage happened just before we got home one trip. Josh saw a broken beer bottle and decided to throw it into the woods before someone got cut on it. Just as Josh reached down to grab the bottle Sam stepped on it. They timed it so well that Josh jerked on the bottle just as Sam's weight stopped it from moving. The result was that the bottle sliced right into Josh's hand. Fortunately we were able to get him home and cleaned up in no time. The cut wasn't very deep and we even took the time to dispose of the bottle properly.<br /><br />We were all more careful about what we grabbed after that. Of course, Sam still managed to cause more road side problems over the years. He had a tendency not to think about things. One day we had been out playing with water balloons right before we decided to go up town. For whatever reason, Sam brought a small one with him when we headed out. He was tossing it from hand to hand and generally seemed to be waiting for something interesting to throw it at.<br /><br />Before long his patience provided him with a target. An older boy he knew from school came driving down the road in his truck. Just before he passed us Sam threw the balloon right out in front him. It burst on the windshield and the driver slammed on brakes.<br /><br />“Run!” Sam yelled and he flew off through the woods. Josh and I followed as best we could since we were being chased by someone we didn't know at all. I finally realized that the young man wasn't interested in us at all, he was only after Sam. However, Sam had vanished. I had no idea which way he had gone and after standing in the woods and screaming for minute or so the pursuer gave up and left.<br /><br />As soon as he was out of site Sam popped up out of nowhere. It seemed a bit of an over reaction to a water balloon on the windshield, but you can never tell how people are going to react to things like that. After hanging out in the woods for a few minutes we continued our trip. We felt that where ever that boy had been going before the water balloon he was probably back on his way. We didn't intend his ill temper to keep us from renting a game.<br /><br />Not much further down the road we ran into a little unexpected confrontation. Not with the driver, as you might anticipate, but with the police. It turned out that the water balloon had broken the windshield. The officer was convinced that someone had put a rock in the balloon and that Sam was covering for either Josh or myself.<br /><br />I'm not sure what the officer's grounds for suspicion were, but he kept asking Sam “Who are you protecting?” while looking Joshua and I over carefully. In the end we finally convinced him that it had, in fact, been Sam that had thrown the balloon and that there was, in truth, nothing in it but water. The end result was that Sam had to pay for the windshield. It was another lesson and Sam never did anything like that again.<br /><br />Of course, that's not to say that it taught Sam to consider everything he did before he did it. I mean to say that when most of us come up on some poor dead animal on the side of the road we have enough sense to avoid it. Only a very small percentage of the population at large would show any interest at all in some road kill cat that was swollen up like some disgusting Halloween balloon. However, Sam is not with the majority on that.<br /><br />When he saw the unfortunate bloated creature lying there his brain flicked off and instinct kicked in. As we walked past it he kicked it with everything he had. It burst, like some sick twisted nightmare of a water balloon. However, unlike a water balloon it sprayed hot, festering, dead cat everywhere. To say that we were covered in it would be untrue, but it certainly felt like we were. A little dead cat goes a long, long way. Sam could never explain why he had kicked it. It was a bit like why the man had climbed the mountain. “Because it was there!”<br /><br />All in all those trips up town and back provided us with a good deal of adventure, excitement and laughter. Life itself is a kind of trip. We all come from somewhere and we're all going somewhere. Most of us could use a little more slow down and relax. The trip really should be half the fun.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-43975268724780589282010-12-19T04:55:00.000-08:002010-12-19T04:56:10.002-08:00The Greatest GiftSeeing how this is the week of Christmas I decided to try to come up with something a little Christmas themed. I could have gone in several directions. I could have talked about memorable Christmases of the past or things I did with the presents I got over the years, but I decided to go a different route. I finally decided to tell a couple of stories about the greatest gift ever given to anyone.<br /><br />Now, it may seem that what constitutes the greatest gift would vary from person to person, but it doesn't really. The gift I am talking about is the gift of life. It is the gift without which no other gift matters. Our Lord gave us life and then went even further by making it possible to attain eternal life through the spilled blood of his Son. Being that we celebrate the birth of Jesus and his life here on earth at Christmas I am going to focus on life in the here and now. Plus, of course, I've never been dead, so my stories about the afterlife are limited.<br /><br />I suppose I could start these stories at my birth, but I don't really remember it and it's not very funny. I've decided instead to focus on the Lord preserving my life. The first tale opens many years ago when I was around four years old. I believe at the time we were living down in the old trailer in Moncks Corner. On the particular night in question I had decided that I wanted some lime Jello, but Mom had said that she didn't feel like making it at the moment.<br /><br />I did what many children have done throughout history when presented with “Not right now.” from his or her parents. I decided to take matters into my own hands. I got a chair (or something to climb with, it was almost thirty years ago and it wasn't very memorable.) and climbed up on the kitchen counter. As I was trying to open the cabinet door above me I slipped and fell.<br /><br />Normally this wouldn't have been a big deal. A less than three foot drop wasn't the kind of thing to give me much trouble most of the time. However, this time Dad had put a big mason jar up on the counter top. It was a jar I had broken earlier that day while doing something else. When I slipped and fell I landed on it. I slid down the broken edge, which sliced deeply into my jaw bone, and landed with a thump on the floor. (In fact I still have a dimple in the bottom of my chin and have to explain to each of my children what happened to Daddy once they get old enough to notice.)<br /><br />I hadn't turned on the lights when I went into the kitchen for some reason. It may have been that I was trying to be sneaky or I might have simply felt that there was enough light coming from the living room, but I can't remember. The important thing is that I couldn't see. This is important because I also didn't feel any pain at all. Most of the time when someone cuts a gash in one of their bones they feel at least some small amount of pain. I felt nothing. I didn't feel numb or anything like that, I just felt normal.<br /><br />After a moment I noticed that my chin was wet. I put one hand up and rubbed my chin and then looked at my hand. I couldn't see anything. I thought that it might be something wet or that it might be my imagination. Being a child I did the same thing with the other hand. Again, I could see nothing. My hands and chin might have been wet or they might not as far as I could tell. I knew that it was possible that I was bleeding so I decided to go ask Mom and Dad.<br /><br />Having rubbed both my hands all over my bleeding chin and throat I must have looked like someone out of a horror movie when I walked into the living room threw my head back and asked “Am I bleeding?” My mother screamed like a crazy person and Dad began flying around the room like a madman. In a flash Dad had checked me and found that it was just my chin that was bleeding and that I had fallen on the jar on the counter. I started crying during all the havoc. I was asked if I was in pain and I answered truthfully. “No, but Daddy is going to spank me and that is going to hurt.” That statement was met with laughter and I was assured that I had been punished enough.<br /><br />A quick trip to the hospital got me sown up with no more permanent damage than a scar. However, the way that the jar had broken it could have been much worse. It was only the grace of God that saved my life. The jar was like a two edged knife blade sticking strait up. If I had been over the jar a fraction of an inch more I would have slipped down the other side of that glass blade. The result would have been that one of the arteries in my throat would have been cut. I would have been dead before anyone could have done anything.<br /><br />I suppose all of us have a number of near-death experiences throughout our lives. That was the first one of mine that I remember. The second was years later. I was somewhere between thirteen and fourteen years old and we were coming home from having gone to visit grandma down in Moncks Corner. We stopped at some store along the way and I saw my first Flip-It knife. I thought it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen, so I begged Dad to get it for me. All things considered it was a rather inexpensive knife so he bought it for me.<br /><br />For those of you who have never seen a Flip-It knife I'll do me best to describe one. They work very much like a lock blade, except when they are closed the entire blade is hidden in the handle. Part of the handle is the “lock” and you have to pop it up with your finger nail in order to open it. You then pull that part of the handle up, slide it around and push the blade out. Once that is done you push the handle down to lock the blade out. Once the knife is opened it most resembles a long razor blade on a plastic stick. This was the knife that I couldn't wait to get home to try out.<br /><br />Sadly by the time we had gotten home it was dark. Mom didn't want me wandering around in the woods looking for a stick to whittle on, so I was going to have to wait until the next day to try out my new knife. Now, as many of you may already know, patience has never been my greatest virtue. After a few hours of looking at my new knife I had gotten bored. I began considering all the possible ways I could use it that night. Finally I came up with an idea.<br /><br />I got an old piece of news paper and spread it out on the coffee table with most of it hanging off the edge. Then I put a book on top of the edge that was on the table in order to hold it in place. The result was a long bit of news paper hanging in the air. I took out my new knife and began shredding the news paper one stroke at a time. As I sat there slicing through the paper Josh and I got into a conversation. I don't remember what it was about, but he asked me a question about something. In answer I raised my left hand in an “I don't know” gesture and went back to cutting my paper.<br /><br />I was looking at Josh, waiting for him to continue what he was saying, but he didn't. He turned as white as a sheet and slowly pointed a very shaky hand in my general direction. “What?” I asked him. He began to mumble and sputter a bit, but didn't say anything anywhere near English words. This got on my nerves and I raised my voice a bit as I again asked him “What?” His shaking hand and quiet burbling told me something was wrong and I was beginning to get concerned. I raised my left hand in another gesture and blood sprayed all over me.<br /><br />I looked down and was met with another horror movie scene. There was blood all over the table, the paper, the knife, and me. I looked at my left wrist and blood was shooting out of it like a fountain. I had sliced into it when I had raised my hand. Again, I was seriously injured and again I felt no pain at all. I might have sat there and bled to death if Josh hadn't been there simply because I wouldn't have known I had cut myself.<br /><br />Now, I had been a boy scout long enough to know a slashed artery when I saw one and I reacted immediately. I dropped the knife in my right hand and gripped my left hand as hard as I could. There was blood pouring out between my fingers, but I had at lease stopped the spraying. I jumped up and stepped over to Mom and Dad's bedroom door. I knocked as firmly as I could with my left hand while cutting off the blood flow with my right. I then said “Mom, Dad, I think I've cut an artery.”<br /><br />A sound came from the room as if a tornado was going through it and before a complete second had passed Dad had thrown the door opened. He grabbed my wrist and told me to let go of it. When I did we were sprayed with a shower of blood and Dad clamped down on my wrist with his hand instantly. “Yep, that's an artery!” He said.<br /><br />He led me into the bathroom and began washing out the wound. Mom brought him some paper towels and some scotch tape in order to make a tourniquet. While he was working on that I was watching my blood pour down the drain in the sink and slowly my vision started to fade. <br /><br />“I'm going blind.” I said calmly. <br /><br />“That's shock. It's from the loss of blood. You'll be all right.” Dad replied confidently. <br /><br />“Are you going to be sick?” Mom ask as I stared into nothing.<br /><br />“No, I'm fine. I just can't see.”<br /><br />“Well, if you feel like you have to throw up don't try to stop yourself.”<br /><br />“OK, but I'm fine.”<br /><br />Right after I got through saying that some of my vision started to return. I could see the dirty clothes hamper. Without warning I turned and threw up into it.<br /><br />“I guess I am sick.”<br /><br />“It's just the shock. It will pass.” Dad reassured me.<br /><br />In less than an hour we were at the hospital. A rather young medical intern removed the tourniquet and tried to get my wrist to bleed. He couldn't. Dad had collapsed the artery so far back in my forearm that it couldn't get the blood through. Because of this the intern was sure that I had cut a vain. We argued with him, but he insisted on sewing it up as it if were just a vain.<br /><br />The result of that decision was that two days later the artery broke loose and years later I had to have reconstructive surgery on that artery. I ended up with two scars and a bit of exposed nerve because some intern didn't take the eye witness accounts of the people who saw what happened. The moral of that is not to be pushed around by your doctor. If he won't even look into what you are talking about go somewhere else. Keep in mind, you are the customer. In the end, however, there was no great damage done. It could have been much worse. In fact if I had been unable to get help I very possibly could have bled to death.<br /><br />It may seem that all the blood in these stories would have been more appropriate for Halloween rather than Christmas, but they remind me of how great a gift God has given me. Life is a wonderful thing and eternal life will be even better. That is what Christmas is all about. That is what the birth of our Lord brought to this world. As the Lord said himself, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.“ God saw fit to give me life and has preserved it for me even when I haven't done such a good job of preserving it myself. Life is a gift he has given to each of us. Eternal life is something he wants us all to have. That is something worth thinking about. Merry Christmas everyone!Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-77171416102021388832010-12-12T04:49:00.001-08:002010-12-12T04:49:35.566-08:00Some Men You Just Can't ReachIt's a famous movie quote. “Some men you just can't reach.” In my own experiences it has certainly been true. There are people in the world that you can tell not to touch something because it's hot who won't touch it because they don't want to get burned. Then there are people who will only touch it once, just to make sure that you were telling the truth. Then there are the kind of people that will pick it up again and again each time hoping it's cooled off already. I mention this observation of mine because Ron Smith had a hard time learning lessons when he was younger. He was a boy who was just plain hard to reach.<br /><br />One of the hardest things Ron ever had to learn was that it usually wasn't worth getting into it with Sam. Whenever there was any kind of minor confrontation Sam would have to escalate it just a bit. He had to have the last word or strike the last blow. In fact, Sam is still like that. At a recent birthday party Sam and Ms. Pat (His mother if you'll recall) got into an argument about whether Sam would pull the table cloth off the table with things still sitting on it. She said if he did it she would hit him with a chair. So... he did it and she threw a chair at him and actually managed to hit him. (Of course he would never have done it if his mother hadn't told him not to, but she was determined to tell him. I wonder where he gets his hard head from....)<br /><br />Ron had known Sam for years and they had gotten into many arguments and more than a few fights. He could never do what I did with Sam. If Sam and I got into it I finally reached the “Whatever” stage where I would ignore whatever Sam did or said. The choice was that or shoot him because he's too hard headed to realize that when you start stabbing each other with needles over what channel the TV is on you've gone too far. Ron never understood that the options were to kill Sam or leave him alone. Sam would just keep escalating things until you stopped or died. So, the best thing to do was let Sam have the last word and go on with it. Ron could never do that.<br /><br />Ron also didn't have another of the advantages I had in dealing with Sam. When Sam and I got into an argument I was right at least as often as I was wrong. If I was right Sam's having the last word didn't matter (and it was often something like “takes one to know one!” which I could ignore) and if Sam was right he deserved the last word so, again, it didn't bother me. Ron had the gift of almost always being wrong when he got into a fight with Sam. As unreasonable as Sam could be at times he usually looked like a saint when dealing with an incensed Ron Smith.<br /><br />One sunny summer afternoon Ron and Sam started getting into it. I don't remember what it was about, but Sam was basically minding his own business when Ron started getting louder and louder and up in Sam's face, as the saying goes. Sam must have been in a good mood, because he ignored Ron for a good while. Finally he decided he was going to have to shut Ron up.<br /><br />Now, I have to take a moment and explain why it was that Sam had a machete on him that day. It was actually very common. We spent so much time in the woods and going here and there that each of us kept our woodsman's tools about us. I would often have my long wooden staff in hand, Josh usually had a knife on him and Sam would walk around with his machete stuck down in one leg of his pants. At any given moment on any given day you would be likely to find us armed with our tools.<br /><br />It was because of that fact that Ron wasn't at all surprised when Sam pulled a machete out of his pants. What was surprising was the conversation that took place between them:<br /><br />“Ron, you don't want to talk like that to man with a machete in his hands.” Sam said after he had drawn his blade.<br /><br />“Why not? You ain't going to do anything with it!” Ron yelled defiantly.<br /><br />“I might, if you don't get out of my face.”<br /><br />“You ain't gonna hit me with a machete!”<br /><br />“You keep thinking that.”<br /><br />“Well then do it, if you think you're man enough!”<br /><br />Chop! Right in the leg. Ron howled and jumped around cussing at Sam, but he didn't do anything else. Sam had barely broken the skin, but he had in fact, chopped Ron with the machete, just like he said he would. Ron had seen countless examples over the years and should have know better than to start something with Sam over nothing. In stead Ron kept raising the ante until he was the one who got hurt. Once he was in pain he calmed down and stopped fighting. However, even pain couldn't reach him in the long run.<br /><br />We have to fast forward to another beautiful summer day to find Ron's next lesson in not messing with Sam. Once again Ron had started an argument with Sam and gotten louder and louder while Sam maintained his quiet countenance. To drive one of his points home Ron had jammed his forefinger right in Sam's face. That was just a bit too much.<br /><br />“Ron, you better get your finger out my face.” Sam said calmly.<br /><br />“Or what!?!” Ron replied waving his finger right under Sam's nose.<br /><br />“Or you're not going to like what happens.”<br /><br />“You ain't gonna do nothing Sam! I'll put my finger where ever I want.”<br /><br />As he said that he shoved his outstretched digit once more into Sam's face. As quick as lightning Sam grabbed Ron's finger and snapped it strait up. Now, there has been some debate about whether on not the finger was actually broken. It might have merely been that the tendons were damaged and that the bone itself didn't break. However, if the scream that Ron let out was any indication it might very well have been that the bone did, in fact, break. Once again, screaming was Ron's only reaction. Well, that and keeping his fingers out of Sam's face. One would think that he would have learned his lesson from all this, but no it took more than that.<br /><br />Years later both Ron and Sam were living with Jesse. I should actually say they were living with Jesse's parents because Jesse was still at home. They stayed there together for several months. Here I must take a moment to mention why Ron finally got thrown out. Jesse had a job and Ron was living there and looking for work. One night Jesse had to work overtime and so he got home after dinner. He opened the fridge to get out the plate his Mom had put in there for him, but it was gone. “What happened to my dinner?” Jesse asked aloud. “Oh, I ate it because you weren't home from work yet.” Ron replied. That night Ron had to find another place to sleep.<br /><br />In any event, the point is that Sam and Ron were living there together. One night Sam was sitting out on the porch talking to his future wife Becky. Once again, Ron had gotten mad at Sam and was walking back and forth in the front of the porch cussing at him. For a good while Sam ignored him and continued to talk on the phone with Becky. Finally Ron got loud enough that Sam was having trouble hearing the phone, so he decided something had to be done.<br /><br />“Hold on Becky, I have to go slap a B****....” Sam said and then laid down the phone.<br /><br />“Oh! You have to slap a B**** eh Sam? Why don't you come slap me then boy? Why don't you do that and find out what's going to happen?! I want you to!!”<br /><br />As Ron said all this Sam walked to the screen door, opened it and walked slowly down the steps. As soon as Ron was within arm's reach Sam pulled back and slapped him down onto the ground. Then he turned silently went back up onto the porch, sat down and picked up the phone.<br /><br />“Where were we?” Sam asked.<br /><br />Ron jumped up rubbing his face and again began to cuss at Sam full volume.<br /><br />“Hold on, some people just can't learn the first time. I'll be right back.” Sam said and laid down the phone.<br /><br />“I didn't expect that! You hit me like a coward! I'm ready for you now boy! Try that again and see what you get!” Ron bellowed as loudly as he could.<br /><br />Sam walked down the steps without speaking. Then he reached back and slapped Ron down onto the ground again. Once more he turned went up on the porch and picked up the phone.<br /><br />“Back.” He simply said.<br /><br />As far as I know that was finally enough for Ron. He never bothered starting anything with Sam again. So, I guess in the long run, Sam did reach him. This story certainly does have a moral and I believe it's a good one. Don't get slapped down again and again before you learn your lesson. If someone tells you that something is hot don't touch it. The faster you learn the less pain you are likely to go through. That is certainly something worth learning.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-45731176952006392642010-12-05T04:23:00.001-08:002010-12-05T04:23:45.391-08:00My Dad Works ConstructionAs some of you may already know, I decided to build a house a few years ago. It seemed like an excellent idea at the time. There were a large number of pros that couldn't be ignored. First, you can save a lot of money by building your own house. Second, you can make sure the quality is as high as you like. Third, you will get a lot of exercise. When we added these things together the decision was made, we planned to build rather than buy.<br /><br />What we didn't take into consideration was the fact that there was one serious drawback. That drawback was, of course, that we had to build a house. It's funny how you can over look little details like that when you're overwhelmed with the idea of moving out of the single wide and into a real house. (Not that there was anything wrong with the single wide, but by the time the house was done we had five children living in it.) Having looked at the pros and never even considered the cons we pressed on and began to build.<br /><br />The Lord blessed me and I managed to get a number of co-workers lined up for the job. There was myself, obviously, Josh, Jonathan Cooper, Adrian Fealty and Jake Anderson. Before long we had two more on the construction team and that was Joshua Fealty and my Dad. These stories are actually about Dad as a construction worker on the house, if you hadn't already figured that out from the title.<br /><br />Now, I do need to set the scene a bit before we proceed. All of us construction workers had different levels of experience. Josh Ethridge and Josh Fealty had done a number of odd jobs and knew a good deal about house construction. Adrian and I could do a little carpentry. Jonathan and Jake could pull the hammer out of a pile of miscellaneous tools in less than three guesses. Now, Dad could handle electrical, plumbing, duct, and wood work. He knew a lot about all the essentials, but had never done much drywall, tile or flooring work. (Not that he couldn't, it just hadn't come up a lot.)<br /><br />Out of all us Dad was probably the most flexible and he was willing to do whatever needed to be done no matter how bad the job was. Considering his experience he was given the electrical and plumbing work, as well as planning out the duct work. The electrical work was a piece of cake. Dad decided where things went and I pulled the wire for it and hooked up the outlets. We were done in no time. The plumbing turned into a nightmare that I can finally laugh about. More than anything else it was frustrating. In fact, there were a lot of things that we thought would be easy that turned out to be very, very frustrating.<br /><br />I don't remember how many days we had been working since our last real break. We only worked on the house five days a week, but the weekends were never enough to rest us up for the long days of house building. As we got more and more worn out we all got more sensitive to aggravation and more easily angered. I have mentioned in earlier stories that my Dad has gotten more and more calm over the years. Well, these months of long, hot, frustrating days had worn that calm away just a bit. There were times when he would fly off the handle as if he were in his twenties again. Except for the screaming it was good to see the vigor of youth in him again.<br /><br />Joshua Fealty had kind of grown up with us, but he had rarely seen Dad loose his temper. I know in these stories it seems like Dad is doing it all the time, but that's not an accurate depiction of the man. (It's simply a matter of him being funny when he was angry.) For the most part Josh was used to a calm, caring, gentle Dad. So he wasn't ready when Dad had finally had enough.<br /><br />The rest of us were taking a break in the garage. We were all lying around on piles of flooring resting up for the next big push. We could hear Dad in the kitchen fighting with the cabinetry. That was also a frustrating job because things had to be just right. Because of the delicacy of the job Dad had ended up with it. As we sat there talking Dad began to get louder and louder. There was closed metal door between us, but we could have repeated every word that he said if we had wanted to. Joshua Fealty sat there with a concerned look on his face. Finally he decided to speak:<br /><br />“Is he going to be all right?” He asked looking at the closed door.<br /><br />“Who Dad?” I asked, surprised by the sudden introduction of the subject.<br /><br />“Yea, your Dad! Don't you hear that?”<br /><br />“Oh, yea. He gets like that, he's just frustrated.”<br /><br />“You're sure?”<br /><br />“Yea, bro. He's been my Dad for thirty years. I know the man.”<br /><br />“Well, OK.... Seems to me that he could have a heart attack or something.”<br /><br />Here Jake Anderson decided to chime in. He had been working with us on the house since the beginning and had seen Dad get angry a few times all ready. He wanted to assure Josh that Dad would be fine.<br /><br />“Man, you ain't seen nothing yet. I mean, he hasn't even started throwing things.”<br /><br />As Jake finished his sentence we heard something rattle across the floor and slam into the kitchen wall. We all burst out laughing. Jake and Dad couldn't have timed it better if they had been working on it for weeks. However, since Dad had reached the “throw things” stage we all piled into the house to help. It turned out to be a piece of trim he was working on that wouldn't fit into place no matter how he cut it. Of course, five minutes later he had it cut and in place.<br /><br />It may seem unkind to laugh at Dad's frustration, but it's not the frustration that's really funny. It's his reaction to it that makes people laugh. I mean, after they realize he's not going to have a heart attack or a stroke. Once they know he's alright, they can't help but laugh. The man is simply funny.<br /><br />After the cabinetry was complete Dad had started working on the corners of the soffit. They were hard to get at, so we borrowed Phil Huggins' bucket truck. (Phil Huggins is a side character in some of my stories. I have known him since I was six and our families go back generations. Just a few years ago my Papa married his mother making us uncle and nephew by marriage. Papa was over eighty and she was over seventy. Isn't love grand.)<br /><br />We had been using the bucket truck for a few days and everything had been going well. (For those of you who don't know a bucket truck is one of those trucks that men from the electric company use to get up to the power lines.) Dad had moved the operation around to the front of the house and had parked the truck on the driveway right in front of the garage. Now, the garage was raised up off the ground about four feet, so there is a steep hill at the very end of the driveway. It was on this hill that Dad had parked.<br /><br />Normally this wouldn't be a problem at all. Once you've parked on a hill you take out the wheel chucks and put one in front of both the tires on the high side. Well, whoever chucked them (we never got a clear confession) did it as if the truck had been on level ground. When the truck is level you chuck the front and back of one tire so the truck can't roll either way. This doesn't work on a hill, instead you get a situation where one side of the truck can't move, but the other can.<br /><br />Dad had actually backed the truck up to the garage so he could get the bucket up over it's roof. He wanted to be able to reach as far as he could before he had to move the truck again. This meant that the front of the truck was pointing strait down the driveway. The only thing between it and the road was the car Jonathan had just bought. Most of us parked on one side of the yard or the other. However, Jonathan liked to keep his car on the driveway. So the massive, improperly chucked, bucket truck was parked on a very steep hill looking down the driveway directly at Jonathan's beautiful car. What could have possibly gone wrong?<br /><br />I'm not sure how long Dad had been working in the bucket before he decided to take a breather, but he had very good timing. He lowered the bucket down and got out on the roof of the garage. He was considering what he had to do next with the soffit when he decided to make sure he had a tool he needed in the bucket. He turned around to where he had just stepped out of it and it was gone.<br /><br />It took his brain a moment to process the information. He was looking right where it had been. How far could it have gone? He did what anyone would do in that situation and looked around. The bucket hadn't vanished, it had just moved a few feet away from the house. At this realization I think a minor case of shock set it. As Dad was trying to figure out how a bucket could just start moving around on it's own it dawned on him that it was still moving. That revelation gave birth to the understanding that the truck itself was rolling down the hill strait for Jonathan's car and then the road.<br /><br />My Dad has always been a man of action. His mind accesses the situation and almost instantly he comes up with a plan. As soon as he realized what was going on his brain began firing at full speed. What could he do? What resources did he have? Well, he was trapped on a roof roughly ten feet from a concrete stop at the bottom, so jumping was out of the question. He had a number of hand tools, none of which would keep a stationary truck from rolling down a hill, much less stop a vehicle in motion. The only thing he had that could be of any use at all was his voice. He knew in a flash his message had to be short and convey the idea of absolute urgency. Everyone working on the house heard his clear call ring out:<br /><br />“AHHHHHHHH!!!!” Dad screamed at the top of his lungs.<br /><br />Most of us were out working in the yard. I stopped what I was doing and looked to where I had heard the call.<br /><br />“AHHH! AHHHHH!! AHHHHHHH!!!” Dad repeated as he stood jumping up and down on the garage roof while waiving his hands generally in the direction of the driveway.<br /><br />Both me and my brother flew into action. We had no idea what we were going to find, but we were both running full speed. Dad saw that we were moving and decided the encourage us.<br /><br />“AHHHHHHHHHHH!” He bellowed as we ran with everything we had.<br /><br />I came around the corner of the garage and saw the truck rolling toward Jonathan's car. It was too far ahead and had gotten up too much speed. Even if I had been able to catch it I would never have been able to stop it in time. All I could do was stand there and watch as Dad made a number of inarticulate noises at full volume just above my head. I felt certain that Jonathan's car was a goner. There was nothing we could do.<br /><br />However, at the last moment the truck made a hard right turn. It flew off the edge of the driveway and hit a pine tree. The tree was about six or seven inches in diameter and the truck pushed it to the ground with ease. The little pine did put up enough of a fight to stop the truck though. So there it was, sitting without a scratch on it, parked on top of a little tree. Nothing was damaged in the least, except maybe Dad's heart (and the poor tree, of course). We all stood there panting for breath as we considered the scene. After all the excitement everything was all right. There was nothing anybody could have done to stop that truck, but the Lord had a handle on it. We should keep in mind that he always does.<br /><br />The house has been complete for a good while now. It was worth all the effort, all the blood, sweat and tears that went into building it. It has truly been a very great blessing. Among those blessings I count being able to work construction with my Dad pretty high. He is a very talented man and, what's even more important, he's a riot when he gets mad at inanimate objects.<br /><br />“AHHHHHHHH!!!!”Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-6067199159922028282010-11-28T04:41:00.000-08:002010-11-28T04:42:02.095-08:00Down At Mrs. Woody'sMrs. Woody was Sam's grandmother. Both Sam and his mother moved in with Mrs. Woody when they first came to Williston. Now, those of you who know anything about Sam can imagine how much he enjoyed living with both his mother and his grandmother even as a little boy. He loves them both dearly, but they never were the type to let you get away with a lot. Because of that we all spent a great deal of time at my house. My Dad would let us do pretty much whatever we wanted provided that it wasn't unchristian or overly dangerous. (Sam's mother, Ms. Pat, felt like Dad knew what he was doing, so if he let us do something she never said much about it.)<br /><br />Of course there were days when we were simply sick of hanging around my house or when Sam was on restriction and couldn't go anywhere but could receive company. On those days we all ended up over at Mrs. Woody's. We would often play on the road right beside her house. At the time skateboarding was a big deal and half the neighborhood would turn out to hang around skateboarding up and down the road. When we did that we always had to be on the lookout for Mrs. Woody.<br /><br />I never felt like she could see very well, at least when driving. Sam said that she could see perfectly and that she simply wanted to kill us. Whatever the truth was you had to watch out when she was driving around in the neighborhood. Her driveway was on a bit of a hill and she had to back up in order to get out on the road. Every time she went anywhere you would hear the squeal of tires and see the smoke of burning rubber billowing up above her car.<br /><br />As soon as her car touched the road she would whip the wheel around and slam her foot on the gas. It was even worse if she was coming into the neighborhood from a trip to town. You wouldn't get the warning signs that got when she was pulling out. Suddenly Mrs. Woody's car would be there flying down the road at full speed making strait for her driveway. More than once I dove into the bushes at the side of the road to keep from being hit. <br /><br />I'm sure she never noticed. She would park and start carrying in groceries or whatever it was she had gone to town to get without so much as looking in our direction. I wouldn't have let any three-year-olds play on any road she was going to drive on, but all of us were old enough to know to get out of the way. We didn't spend all our time playing in the road either, so most of the time it didn't come up.<br /><br />Her trailer was actually setup on a piece of property that belonged to her son Mr. Elbert. We spent many childhood days running around in that yard. It was right beside one of Mr. Folk's cow pastures and Mr. Elbert had a pool we were allowed to swim in during the summer. He also had a giant spool setup in the yard that was like a table for us kids. He had gotten it from the electric company or something like that. Over the years the spool rotted away and became two giant wooden wheels.<br /><br />One day we decided to put one of the wheels to use. We thought it would be a good tool with which to cure our boredom. The idea was that we would get the wheel rolling down the hill and then each one of us would kick it until it fell over. At first the game went well and each of us got a chance to knock it down. As each round of wheel knocking passed we let it roll further down the hill. The further it rolled the faster it got and the faster it got the harder it was to knock over.<br /><br />The last round arrived and we let it roll. Josh kicked it and it didn't fall. I kicked it and it didn't fall. Sam kicked it and it didn't fall. It ignored our attacks and kept rolling down the hill increasing it's speed with every rotation. We declared a free for all and everyone began kicking it with everything they had. The wheel wobbled, but it didn't fall down. Sam attempted to salvage the situation with one mad flying jump kick.<br /><br />The wheel had already outdistanced most of us, but Sam managed to run it down. He threw everything he had into a single beautiful kick. He hit it right at the the top and then fell onto the grass. The spinning wheel leaned over as if it where about to collapse, but then gyroscopic forces pulled it up again as it continued rolling down the hill. There was no way to stop it, it had gotten too far ahead of us. We could only stand and watch.<br /><br />It rolled faster and faster and was headed strait toward Mr. Elbert's shed. We were all yelling for the wheel to turn or fall over or something, but it ignored us and rolled on. At the end there was the crunch of wooden siding being crushed as the wheel struck the shed and stuck into the wall. The game ended with a result that none of us had expected. The wheel won...<br /><br />Sam knew we were in trouble, so he decided we needed to get to work immediately to fix everything. (Keep in mind we were ten or eleven at the time.) We pulled the wheel out of the wall and rolled it back up the hill. Then we took lawn chairs and bits of wood, whatever we could find in or around the yard, and piled it all up against the side of the shed. When we were done we felt very good. There was a five foot pile of junk leaned against the wall and the long gash in the siding was completely hidden.<br /><br />We were all a little surprised by the fact that as soon as Mr. Elbert saw our pile he instantly looked behind it. It amazed us all that a pile of junk piled against the shed made him suspicious. Having made the discovery he gave Sam a few good ones with his belt and then called my Papa to advise him to do the same to us. (Josh and I had gone over there after we left Mrs. Woody's. The two trailers were about a hundred feet apart, but Papa had a small pine wood that separated the two properties.) For some reason Mr. Elbert's suggestion incensed Papa and, although he and Mr. Elbert were great neighbors and good friends, Papa told him to mind his own business. Lucky for us, we only got a verbal warning. Of course, that was enough we never did it again.<br /><br />In point of fact we were never really up to any mischief. I mean to say that we never meant to be up to no good, we were just trying to find things to do. Had we imagined for a minute that we would have smashed a hole in Mr. Elbert's shed we would never have played with the wheel. Our real problem was that we didn't think far enough ahead.<br /><br />My family knew this and, in general, let us pretty much do what we wanted. Sam's family was a little different. They always suspected us of being up to much more than we were. By the time Sam was a teenager Mrs. Woody began to suspect him of dealing drugs or something like that. She kept a very steady eye on him and checked up on him whenever possible. As Sam lived with her it was very possible most of the time. I know she was just looking out for him and trying to keep him out of trouble, but it got on Sam's nerves.<br /><br />Finally Sam and Josh decided to put a stop to it. Every time Josh called Sam's house Mrs. Woody would put Sam on the phone and then go into a different room and pick up the other extension so she could hear what they were saying. Whenever Sam asked her about it she would say she hadn't been listening. However, her hearing wasn't great and she couldn't tell she was breathing loudly into the phone every time she was listening in. She thought she was as quiet as could be as she made a myriad of little noises in the other room.<br /><br />This eavesdropping was the opportunity Sam intended to use for his humorous revenge. The phone rang and Mrs. Woody picked it up as usual. It was Josh calling Sam, so she handed the phone over to him and left the room. A moment later they heard the extension get picked up and Mrs. Woody's slow steady breathing on the other line. The stage was set and they began:<br /><br />“Did it come in?” Sam asked with a certain urgency in his voice.<br /><br />“Not yet, but it's supposed to tonight.” Josh replied<br /><br />“Full shipment?”<br /><br />“It's supposed to be.”<br /><br />“Good. Who's bringing it in?”<br /><br />“Same as always.”<br /><br />“Excellent. We can meet them tonight and start breaking it up for distribution.”<br /><br />“How are you going to get out of the house?”<br /><br />“Sneak out, what else.”<br /><br />“What about the old lady?”<br /><br />“What about her?”<br /><br />“I mean, what if she gets in the way.”<br /><br />“I guess we'll just have to rub her out.”<br /><br />Here they heard the phone in the other room slam down. Needless to say, Mrs. Woody never listened in on their conversations again. I know it seems cruel, but Mrs. Woody could drive people up the wall. As Sam himself pointed out, if she wasn't lying about being on the phone then they didn't scare her at all. It was some other eavesdropper who was having the heart palpitations.<br /><br />It's only been a few years ago that Mrs. Woody went the way of all flesh. Now other family members live in the home that was once her own. They have no idea what wild adventures took place just outside their door, just as I have no idea what happened outside my own door a hundred years ago. The lives we live truly are like smoke. They can be seen for a little while and then they are gone. Although I know in time all these things will be forgotten it makes me feel good to know that they are not forgotten yet. You only have a little while to write things in the sand. Write something worth remembering.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-16195235556036657452010-11-21T03:54:00.001-08:002010-11-21T03:54:54.535-08:00I'm Thankful For LaughterAs most of you probably know this coming Thursday is Thanksgiving. Obviously, I wanted my story to be thank-themed as it were so I began considering all the things I am thankful for. Now, there are a load of things I could list that make me truly thankful to God. I could start with my wife and children then move on with more family and friends and continue with a long heart warming list. However, it wouldn't be very funny and would only interest a handful of people.<br /><br />After a bit of mulling it over I decided that I should jot down a few stories about something that almost everyone is thankful for. Laughter is the only running theme in these few tales. It's something that makes almost everyone happy. I only say “almost” because of the few people out there who are determined never to find anything funny under any circumstances for any reason. The vast majority of us, however, should be thankful for laughter.<br /><br />I am going to open this series of stories with a story that was told to me once while I rode along down the road with my brother, Jonathan Cooper and Chris Holland. We were discussing something (none of us remember what it was) when Chris decided to chime in with an amusing anecdote. As soon as there was a pause in the conversation he started.<br /><br />“Yea, my uncle has a... no wait... he sold that...”<br /><br />We all sat in silence for a perhaps three seconds. Then Josh, Jonathan and I burst out laughing in unison. By the time we had stopped making fun of Chris's story telling style (which took us a good twenty minutes) we asked what it was his uncle had owned, once upon a time, that had related to what we had been talking about. Sadly, he had forgotten what it was and we couldn't remember what we had been talking about before that. As a result whatever it was has been lost to history. However, we can feel good that I have recorded Chris's fabulous ten word story about it for posterity.<br /><br />Chris has always been good at inspiring laughter, even if most of the time it's at his expense. Another member of our little group that was great at getting laughed at was Aaron Miller. I haven't described Aaron yet in these pages so I'll do my best to shorty sum him up. For the most part Aaron is a combination of every stand up comedian, funny movie and sit-com ever to be laughed at. I don't mean to say that he's that funny, I mean to say that he's seen them all and can repeat them like a parrot.<br /><br />He would use the same joke so often that Joshua and I nicknamed him the Grim Jockey because, as the old saying goes, he would beat a dead horse. He would also occasionally say things that were original “Aaron”, but most of the time he didn't realize they were funny. For instance, one time Josh and he were walking through the mall and Josh spotted an attractive young girl. He tried to point her out to Aaron.<br /><br />“There you go bro! There's a girl you could talk to. Look at her!” Josh said looking in the girl's direction.<br /><br />“Yea. And look at her mom!” was his reply.<br /><br />Needless to say we all got some good laughs out of that. Not that there is anything wrong with an attractive mother, I am married to one. However, as a teenage boy I wasn't looking for the mother of a teenage girl. Of course, Aaron made the whole thing funnier by trying to deny it later on. We still laugh at him about it from time to time.<br /><br />Josh and I also loved to torment Aaron just because he would never see it coming. One winter it had snowed (As I pointed out in and earlier story snow is a big deal down here) and we decided to get out in it. There was an unusually large group staying at my house at the time. My cousin and some friends, including Mike Sanchez, were visiting and had gotten snowed in. We had walked out into a field that was very near my house and started rolling up a giant snowball as we were walking home. It had gotten to be over half my height and was getting to hard to push, so I decided I wanted to do something else with it.<br /><br />“Josh,” I said as I stopped pushing the giant snow bolder for a moment. “I need you to do something.”<br /><br />“Alright, what?” He replied looking me in the eyes.<br /><br />“Well, it's very important that you do it immediately after I say it.”<br /><br />“I can do that.”<br /><br />“Speed is of the essence. You can't hesitate or think about it. You merely have to do it as soon as I have spoken.”<br /><br />“No sooner said than done.”<br /><br />Now, my cousin knew that when I said something like that out of the blue I was up to something. I think Mike was aware of it as well, but Aaron stood their like Gomer Pile without the slightest suspicion that something wasn't right. Having gotten reassurance from Josh I issued the order.<br /><br />“Grab Aaron, throw him on the ground and hold him down.” I said with a smile.<br /><br />By the time Aaron had managed to get a surprised look on his face he was on the ground, pinned. I asked Mike for a hand and we raised the snowball above our heads and slammed it right into Aaron's face. He got up covered in snow and laughing as loud as the rest of us. To him the funniest part was that he actually hadn't seen it coming in spite of the fact that we incessantly did things like that to him.<br /><br />For another example of not seeing it coming I am going to go back to my early childhood. I was over at Marcus Stevenson's house. He lived right across the street from us and was four years older than me. Occasionally I would get to go over there and he would take me through the woods or fishing in the pond in his back yard.<br /><br />On this particular day we had wondered around the in the woods and come out on the side of the pond that was opposite the house. Marcus's older brother Terry was out doing something in the back yard. Terry is considerably older than Marcus and was probably sixteen or seventeen at the time. I was somewhere between seven and nine. (I can't remember how much older Terry is than me) Marcus decided that since the pond was between us it would be safe to mock his older brother.<br /><br />“Chunky Cheese!” Marcus cried out as loudly as he could.<br /><br />“You better watch that boy!” Terry cried back.<br /><br />At some point in time Terry had gotten the nickname Chunky Cheese. All the kids in the neighborhood would call him that if he was too far away to “get us”. As I said, he was almost a grown man at this point and I'm sure he didn't really care, but he would pretend to just for fun. However, with Marcus it was a little different. He wasn't just one of the neighborhood kids, he was Terry's little brother. Having been warned Marcus did the only thing he could and accepted the challenge.<br /><br />“Chunky Cheese!” He yelled at the top of his lungs.<br /><br />“I'm warning you, you better knock it of.”<br /><br />“Chunky Cheese!” was Marcus's steadfast reply.<br /><br />At this point Terry started to walk down to the edge of the pond. I am sure Marcus thought he was safe with the pond between us.<br /><br />“Chunky Cheese!” again echoed across the pond.<br /><br />Terry bent down near the edge of the water and started making a giant mud ball. Marcus didn't see this apparently and continued.<br /><br />“Chunk...” was as far as he got that time.<br /><br />Terry had thrown his mud ball all the way across the pond and hit Marcus right in the mouth with it. It hit him so hard that it knocked him down into the mud at the edge of the pond. Marcus jumped up and started yelling at Terry with everything he had as he brushed mud off of himself. Terry just laughed at him as he washed his hands off in the pond. Marcus's surprise helped make the situation funnier, but there was a fair amount of good old fashioned pie in the face humor. I can still see that giant, well aimed, ball of mud flying over the water. It always makes me smile.<br /><br />Each of these brief tales make me laugh when I think of them even now. They say that laughter is the best medicine and I believe it. It's also one I have made it a point to keep on hand at all times. It's very akin to plain simple happiness and it certainly does a body good. In summation, this Thanksgiving I have decided to remember laughter with thanks and I would like to encourage you do the same. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-90465295818853960312010-11-14T05:07:00.001-08:002010-11-14T05:07:30.317-08:00Tarzan Boy ScoutsThe title of this story incorporates two themes that were mingled together in my childhood. The first is “Tarzan Boy” which is the title of an eighties song by Baltimora. The next is, of course, the Boy Scouts. Our Scout troop combined these two ideas. We seemed to be a group of wild boys that my Dad had caught in the woods and put into boy scout uniforms in order to show people how good the Scouts was at taming young men's wild instincts.<br /><br />We were a wild looking crew. Shabby at best, but goodhearted and fun loving. We were also very good at all the activities that scouts were supposed to excel at, building fires and things of that nature. I remember one year we were at some regional weekend get together where a large number of scout troops were gathered to get to know each other and compete in a kind of scouting playoffs. <br /><br />We were bottom of the pile when it came to inspection because of our disarrayed uniforms, but in everything else we took first or second place. The things we took second place in our webelos (Sub-scouts, the rank between cub scout and boy scout.) took first place. I have to mention that this wasn't true of the tent competition. Most of us could put a pup tent up in the dark in roughly thirty seconds. (That's not an exaggeration, Dad drilled us on it after dark and thirty seconds was the goal.) Of course, the rush did occasionally lead to mistakes. One time Jim couldn't find the hole for the tent peg in the dark, so he hammered it into the ground right through the side of the tent rather than slow down.<br /><br />For the competition we had to take the extra step of buttoning both sides of the tent together before we put it up. This was something we never did with our tents. In the Army each man would carry half a tent. Then they would button the halves together and two men would sleep in the resulting tent. All our test runs had been done with an already buttoned up tent, so we hadn't had any practice buttoning as a team. As we all worked to get the thing buttoned together as fast as we could Jason realized that we were one button off. So, he grabbed both sides and jerked them completely apart so we could start over. That lost us enough time that we came in last. <br /><br />Of course, Jason and Jim were always bad with tents. Once Jason's Mom bought him a flame resistant tent. So, the two of them kept decided to test it by holding lit matches to it just to see the thing resist the flames. The end result was easy to understand and very predictable, they finally caught the thing on fire and burned a big hole in it. They were quiet a team....<br /><br />It was late one night during that same gathering that Dad was summoned from his tent by a strange sound. It's hard to describe on paper and even when Dad tries to imitate it now it doesn't sound like anything you would normally find in nature. It was this low growling kind of a sound, but it didn't sound like any animal he had ever heard. Both Jim and Jermaine's Dads had come along on the trip, so my Dad hoped to have a bit of backup when he decided to go looking for the whatever-it-was that had crept into camp.<br /><br />Jim's Dad had also been awakened by the noise. I don't remember if he and Dad had been sharing a tent or if they both happened to come out of their tents at the same time, but they ended up heading out to search for the thing together. They didn't want to wake everyone up, because the whatever-is-was didn't sound safe or happy. It was also hard to tell exactly where the thing was by the sound it was making.<br /><br />They decided it would be best to go wake Jermaine's Dad up as well. As they got closer to his tent they noticed that the sound was getting louder. Finally they had the sickening realization that the whatever-it-was had actually slinked silently into Jermaine's Dad tent. After a moment's hesitation Dad decided to rush in swinging and do his best to save the man from the dreadful sounding whatever-it-was.<br /><br />Just before Dad made his charge Jim's Dad stopped him and told him to listen carefully. He asked Dad if he couldn't imagine anything that sounded kind of like it. After a moment Dad said he thought it almost sounded like someone snoring, but that he had never heard anyone that loud or growly sounding. They stood outside the tent for a little longer, just to make sure. Finally they made the decision that the whatever-it-was was, in fact, Jermaine's Dad snoring.<br /><br />The next day all us boys got a good laugh out of the story as Dad described the cold sweat on his forehead and how he had wished for a better weapon than the stick he had found. If Dad had taken a moment to think he could have armed himself from Jason's backpack. He might have had several knives a machete or two and possibly an ax tucked away in there.<br /><br />Jason's Mom often got him more equipment than he would ever need. We called him GI Jason now and again. Out of all of us he was loaded down with the most junk. Not that it wasn't useful, all of it was useful. It was just that most of it would be more handy if you were lost in the woods a hundred miles from civilization more than when you were merely hiking through the woods. He was also as full of questions about anything we planned to do as he was equipped to do it when the time came. This always got on Dad's nerves. I remember one time when Dad had decided to nip all these questions in bud. He began with:<br /><br />“All right boys I have something to tell you. Please wait to ask any questions until after I finished. Do you understand?”<br /><br />“Yes, Sir!” Was the universal reply.<br /><br />“Good! Now we are going to take a trip...” Here Jason's hand shot up. “Yes, Jason.”<br /><br />“Where are we going?”<br /><br />“I was just about to tell you that. You see, that's why I want you to hold your questions until the end. I may answer them in the explanation. Do you understand?”<br /><br />“Yes, Sir!” Jason replied.<br /><br />“Good! Now, we're going on a camping trip.... Yes, Jason.”<br /><br />“When are we going to go?”<br /><br />“Jason son, I was going to tell you. When you ask a question it interrupts me and slows me down. I am going to tell you where we are going and when, but you have to give me a moment. After I've told you everything I'll ask if there are anymore questions...” Jason's hand had shot up again, while Dad was saying this. Dad stared at Jason. I think he was trying to figure out what, if anything, was going on in his head. With quiet resolve Dad said “What is it Jason?”<br /><br />“How are we going to get there?”<br /><br />“You see Jason! I was going to tell you that!”<br /><br />“You said you were going to tell us where we are going and when, but you didn't say you were going to tell us how.” Jason looked up with complete innocence. It may be hard for a normal person to imagine, but he was being completely sincere.<br /><br />“OK, Jason... I am going to tell you everything I can think of and then let you ask questions when I am finished. Do you understand?”<br /><br />“Yes, Sir!”<br /><br />“And that's alright with you?”<br /><br />“Yes, Sir!”<br /><br />“So, no more questions until I'm finished?”<br /><br />“No, Sir!”<br /><br />“Good! Now, as I was saying, we are going on a camping trip two weeks from now.” Here Jason's hand shot up, but Dad ignored him and continued on. Jason began to wave his arm around as Dad pretended not to see him. He stood up waving his arm back and forth and still Dad carried on. Jason was actually hopping in place before Dad cracked “What is it Jason?!?!?”<br /><br />“What do we need to bring with us?”<br /><br />“I give up!” Dad said, and that was exactly what he did.<br /><br />The rest of the explanation he handled by letting Jason ask every question he could think of and then answering it. It probably took longer than it would have, but no one had any questions after Jason was finished.<br /><br />Those were wonderful days for us. I loved the companionship and the sense of adventure we often got from the Boy Scouts. I've never gotten involved with them as a grown man, which may be surprising considering the fact that I have two sons at the moment. Still, every Dad does his own thing with his own sons. For Dad and his sons it was the Boy Scouts (and camping and a bunch of other crazy things), for me and mine it's other things. Of course, I have to admit there is something about taking your boys out into the wild. Remembering all these things makes me think that it may be time for me to buy my own tent. Who knows what wild snoring animal my sons and I might stubble upon.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-5800849850083117142010-11-07T04:26:00.000-08:002010-11-07T04:27:08.064-08:00More War StoriesLater this week is Veteran's day, so I thought it only fitting to record a few more of the war stories I've heard for posterity. These tales are centered around my Granddad Ethridge and my Great Uncle Grover. Each of them had his own outlook on military service. My Great Uncle said he didn't want to be eaten by sharks, so he joined the Army. My Granddad said he wasn't going to die face down in the mud, so he joined the Navy. This difference led to very different war histories for each of them.<br /><br />We'll start with my Granddad because I only have one war story for him actually. As I mentioned, he had joined the Navy. He had been made cook on the ship he was on and so was in charge of all the comestibles. He and the first officer didn't get along at all. Now, knowing my Dad as I do I would have known never to provoke my Granddad, even though I never met him. The first officer had never met my Dad, partly because he hadn't been born, and so didn't have the advantage I would have had in dealing with cook Ethridge.<br /><br />The first officer continually annoyed my Granddad without thinking about the fact that this was the man that prepared his food. Now, my Grandfather was not the kind of man that would spit in someone's food or give him something he was allergic to, so in that way the first officer was safe. However, Granddad also liked vengeance and a bit of the old eye for an eye. In this case of course it was annoyance for annoyance.<br /><br />A very special night arrived. An admiral was coming on board and the first officer wanted to make a good impression. He ordered that a side of beef be prepared and served for dinner. The time arrived and the food came in. Hamburgers were set on each plate and the servers withdrew. Needless to say the first officer was furious.<br /><br />He stormed into the kitchen and demanded to know what had happened to the side of beef. My Granddad explained that it had been tainted and that, as a result, he had to throw it overboard. The first officer had a conniption fit, but there was nothing he could do. As ship's cook my Grandfather had the first, last and only word on whether or not food was fit for human consumption. The side of beef was gone and the testimony of the ship's cook was unassailable.<br /><br />Now, we'll never know whether that side of beef was really tainted or not. I like to believe that it was and that it wasn't my Granddad taking revenge, but rather one of those ironic twists of fate. Whatever the truth was behind it we know what the results were. Cook Ethridge was transferred off the ship and out of the Navy. He was put in what amounted to the coast guard for the remainder of the war. I, for one, thank God for that. As I said, my Dad hadn't been born until after the war.<br /><br />My Great Uncle Grover's history was a bit different. After having joined the Army he became a career soldier. He went from the Army to the Army Air Corps to the Air Force as that branch of the service was evolving. He ended up in both the European and Pacific campaigns and was awarded more medals than his chest would hold. As one could imagine my Dad was fascinated by Great Uncle Grover's war record and, like most young men, amazed by all his medals.<br /><br />Of course, my Great Uncle wasn't a huge braggart and was more than willing to explain away his medals. He said that all he had done to become a “war hero” was to try to stay alive so he could come home. To him those medals represented times he had to run or fight for his life and that was all. From his point of view he had done no more than any man would have under the circumstances. If he had been right about his fellow men the world would be a better place.<br /><br />Of course, in truth, he was a survivor. He wasn't particularly interested in medals, but posthumous medals absolutely put him off. Most of his stories were about his avoiding death and being given a medal for it. One such example took place after he had gotten separated from his unit and had been wandering around alone for a while. This actually happened several times. Great Uncle Grover said it was hard to stick together in a group during a war. Soldiers would be going this way and that and before you knew it you were all alone.<br /><br />Having gotten lost or having lost his unit, depending on how you look at it, he would always join up with the next group of US soldiers he ran into. In this particular case he wound up in a group led by lieutenant who hadn't been in Europe long enough for his last US haircut to grow out. While marching from one place to another the lieutenant decided it would be best if they took shelter in the upper room of an old church building for a bit of a rest.<br /><br />There were probably only around twenty of them and the church building had ample space. The upper room had a window looking directly out over the road at the front of the church and another overlooking a section of woods out the back. After they had been resting there for a while someone spotted a group of Germans heading down the road that went right past the church.<br /><br />The lieutenant took a quick look and decided it would be suicide to fight. They were overwhelmingly outnumbered. I suppose it never occurred to him that the Germans didn't know they were there. It's possible that the idea of hiding out until they were gone completely escaped him. For all I know he was already tired of war and wanted to give it up. Whatever his motivations were, and before anyone could stop him, he was waving a white flag out the the front window as a sign of surrender.<br /><br />Great Uncle Grover didn't say anything to him, he didn't hesitate a moment, in fact, I'm not even sure he took the time to blink. As soon as he saw that white flag poked out of the window he started running. Within a second he had crossed the room they were in a made a mad jump for the back window. He busted through and fell from the second story to the ground. As soon as he hit the dirt he was up and running through the woods surrounded by machine gun fire.<br /><br />By the grace of God he wasn't hit as he serpentined into the woods and over the hills and far away. The Germans quickly gave up perusing him. It wasn't worth the effort to try to catch or kill one US soldier. My Dad asked Great Uncle Grover what had happened to the other men in the church. Uncle Grover replied quite honestly that he didn't know, but that they were probably taken prisoner. None of the others jumped out of the window and the white flag is a sign of surrender.<br /><br />So, he used his instincts to avoid capture and live to fight another day. The same instincts served him throughout the war and allowed him to keep serving his country. My Dad asked him once if he had ever killed a man during all the fighting. He said that he didn't know that he had. Uncle Grover claimed that he did a lot of shooting, but that he never went to check to see what he had hit. Dad asked for a story about one of the times he might have gotten close. (Keep in mind that Dad was young and most boys go through a phase where they are fascinated by war before they understand what it means to take another man's life.)<br /><br />Finally Great Uncle Grover decided to tell him about the closest he has ever gotten to knowing he had killed a man. It was near the end of the war in Europe and the group he was with at the time was very low on weapons and ammunition. They got into a situation where they needed to search a town for any remaining German soldiers, but they simply didn't have enough weapons to go around. So, they did the only thing they could. They drew straws. Uncle Grover said that he had been very fortunate when he got a flare gun, because it still had one flare left and a lot of guys ended up with nothing but a knife.<br /><br />He took his flare gun in hand and started searching a section of the town with the rest of his fellows. He would kick the door in and call out for anyone inside to surrender and then make a quick search of the house. Door after door led to nothing. Still, he knew he couldn't let his guard down. If only one house in the town was occupied it could be deadly. He kicked another door in and cried out for surrender and again was greeted by silence. He stepped through the door to begin his inspection of the house and as soon as he was inside the door slammed behind him.<br /><br />A German soldier jumped from behind the door armed with a bayonet. In a flash Great Uncle Grover raised his weapon and shot the German in the face with a flare. At this point in the story my Great Uncle grew silent for a moment. My Dad asked “Did it kill him?” Great Uncle Grover replied “Well, I don't really know. I ran for it. As far as I could tell he still had that bayonet and by my count I had only had one flare...”<br /><br />So, yet again Great Uncle Grover lived to fight another day. He was a brave man, but not a fool. Having survived in Europe he made his way into the Pacific and was there during the storming of several islands right near the end of things. Once more he survived to do duty to his country and was rewarded with an every growing number of medals. However, as I said at the beginning he felt he wasn't a hero, he had just done what he needed to do to come home. That was what he felt every good soldier should do.<br /><br />Our family was very blessed in the war. Both my Grandfathers and my Great Uncle went and came back again. Not all families are so lucky. It's not just the soldiers who sacrifice their lives for our freedoms that we need to remember. It's the families of those people who never come home. It is important to always remember what others have given up so we don't have to go without. We should be thankful to them for being willing to make that sacrifice. We should be thankful to God that their sacrifices haven't been in vain.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-80747354602852500212010-10-31T05:42:00.001-07:002010-10-31T05:42:40.797-07:00She Was A Witch You KnowNot that anyone would have called my Great Grandmother a witch, they would have called her a fortuneteller or something like that. Dad's family called her a Ducamunger (If that's how it's spelled) which, I believe, is a word meaning fortuneteller. Needless to say, all of my knowledge of her comes from my Dad, Aunts and Uncles. She had gone to meet her reward long before I was born. <br /><br />Most of you have probably put together the fact that today is Halloween and may have even guessed that I was likely to tell a ghost story or something like that. Well, this is something like that, but it's a bit different. These things didn't happen to someone, somewhere at sometime, they happened right in front of my Dad's family perhaps twenty years before I was born. You can look at them as lies if it makes you more comfortable, but you can't think of them as merely some old scary stories.<br /><br />One of the first things that Dad ever told me about my Great Grandmother was that she made a living telling fortunes. She was good enough at it that people would come from as far as New York to the swamps of South Carolina to ask questions concerning future business deals and things of that nature. She had a little room off the side of her house where she did her work. It was dark, mysterious and filled with religious symbols like any good gypsy setup should be. (Yes, we are part gypsy. Part everything else really. We Ethridges see a pretty face and before you know it the next generation is part whatever.)<br /><br />One day a man came in wanting to buy a totem. He wanted a charm to protect him from harm, as it were. Dad happened to be in the kitchen when my Grandmother and Great Grandmother started putting it together. It seems that the man had been seeing this other man's girlfriend or vice versa, either way he was expecting trouble and felt he needed protection. He was assured that for fifty dollars he would have a talisman that would protect him in the upcoming struggle.<br /><br />Dad was standing right there when they started their work. They took a small silk bag and dumped some ashes in it. Then they took bits of this and that and threw them in along with it. The only bit Dad remembers with perfect clarity is that Grandma took a chicken bone and broke it almost in half with a certain twist and held it up for inspection. “How's that?” she asked and my Great Grandmother looked it over for a moment and replied “That should do.” The bone was then thrown into the bag which was quickly sown shut and given to the customer for fifty dollars. (Keep in mind this was in the fifties. I have no idea how much that would be today, but you can figure a lot.)<br /><br />Later that week Dad was sitting on the front porch of Great Grandma's house when he saw that same man coming up the road with a bandage wrapped around his throat. He looked as if he had been hurt pretty bad. Great Grandma told Dad to go inside and she headed for her little room and awaited the former customer. As it turned out he had been hurt very badly. However, as he said himself “If it hadn't been for your totem that man would've cut my head clean off!” He was very satisfied and had come back to give her an extra ten dollars.<br /><br />Did the totem save his life? I doubt it, but who am I to say. It might very well depend on how you look at it. What my Great Grandmother gave that man was confidence. It was confidence in the form of a talisman. Did that confidence save his life? Could be. So was it the totem, the confidence or coincidence? I am certain that most of you feel it couldn't have been that bit of ash and old chicken bone, but I'm not so sure. There were strange things that happened around that little old lady in the swamp.<br /><br />Many years later my Great Grandmother lay in the hospital dying. A few members of the family were there with her while others were at her house packing up what was going to need to be moved after she died. It wasn't a case of if she was going to die, only of how many hours before she did. A few of the family were sitting in the waiting room talking when an old man in pajamas came in and sat down. After a few minutes they asked him if he needed anything and he said he didn't and that he was waiting for Great Grandma. They told him she was dying and that he might not be able to see her, but he said that it was alright and he would wait.<br /><br />A little later they went in to see her and told her about the little old man. She told them that it was alright, that it was just Great Grandaddy who had come to wait for her. He had died years ago and so everyone figured she was a little delirious all things considered. Someone stepped out to invite the old man in, but he was gone. Now it could be that he was just some old man that happened to be in the hospital and knew my Great Grandmother who finally got tired of waiting and went back to his room. However, by the time they got back in the room to tell Great Grandma that the old man was gone she was dead. It's hard to be sure that he wasn't waiting on her and when she left this world so did he.<br /><br />Shortly after Great Grandma had passed away the family members at the hospital called the family members at her house to notify them that she had died. No one at the house was surprised. This was for two simple reasons. First, she was very sick and they were expecting her to go any moment. Second, of course, was the scream that had echoed through part of the house.<br /><br />There were a few things about that scream that made everyone think it might have been caused by Great Grandmother dying. It was a wild banshee like scream that made your blood run cold. None of the family would have been screaming like that at a moment like that, it might have been humorous enough at certain times, but this wasn't one of those times. The strangest thing was that everyone standing in the kitchen heard it. In fact it was so loud that it hurt their ears. However, all the family standing in the living room, which was right beside the kitchen didn't hear anything at all.<br /><br />The combination of these two things made for a rather uncommon departure out of this world. The old man can be explained away by chance and the scream could have been lied about. However, the old man's timing was remarkable and a handful of the family uniting to lie about something like that scream is rather hard to believe. I guess you have to decide which thing is the hardest to believe and then believe the other.<br /><br />There was another strange event that took place in that house years after Great Grandmother had died. My Dad was staying with my Great Aunt Sadie in Great Grandmother's old house. In the bedroom he was staying in there was a closet that was boarded up. It's odd to find a closet that has been sealed on the inside of the room by having three boards nailed across it. Dad thinks the boards had been put up because some of the closets in that house were connected and you could pass from one room to another by going through the closet. Uncle Tecky had his room on the other side of the room Dad was staying in. So it made a certain sense to board up the closet so that no one staying in that spare room could go through into uncle Tecky's room. I would have just asked people not to go through, but that's me. Whatever the real reason the closet was boarded up.<br /><br />By this time Dad was eighteen or nineteen years old and his fears of monsters under the bed had long ago been put to rest. His first night in that room he climbed into bed and quickly fell asleep. He was awakened a little later by the sound of scratching. It sounded like something was pulling clawed hands across the inside of that closet door. Needless to say this bothered Dad enough to get up and take a look around. He turned the lights on and the sound stopped. A close inspection of the door revealed nothing, so Dad went back to sleep.<br /><br />There were too many things that it could have been for Dad to be too worried about it. It might have been an animal outside scratching around that just sounded as if it were in the closet. A squirrel or some other small animal might have had a nest in the roof over the closet. It could even have been that he had dreamed it. All things considered he decided it was best to just crawl back in bed go to sleep.<br /><br />However, the next night he was awakened again by the same scratching sound. As he laid there the sound got louder and louder. Finally he looked at the door. In the dim light he could see it bowing out towards him. The door creaked as it flexed and bent. It began to look as if it were made of plastic rather than wood. It bowed to the extent that it should have broken, but it didn't. Then Dad saw the impression of a clawed hand pushing out of the center of the door. Here Dad did what most of use would have done. He screamed his head off.<br /><br />My Great Aunt came rushing into the room and turned on the lights. Just like in every other ghost story in the world, when the lights were on nothing was there to be seen. My Uncle and Great Aunt figured Dad had just been dreaming and had woken himself up when he screamed. I myself have yelled in a dream and woke myself up because I was actually yelling, so I know that it's possible. However, Dad wasn't convinced. He felt certain that something wasn't right about that closet and, grown man or not, he was going to take something in the room to protect himself, just in case.<br /><br />The next day he got a short piece of two by four and put it in his room. He figured it was better than nothing and even if he started swinging a board around in the dark he wouldn't kill anybody accidentally. (You can't start shooting a pistol all over the place in the dark, somebody will often get hurt.) He laid down to go to sleep on the third night with his weapon close at hand. Once again he went to sleep and once again he was awakened by the scratching.<br /><br />Again, the door looked like it was made of melting plastic. It bent and bowed and flexed in unnatural ways. Once more Dad saw the hand pushing out of center of the door. As he lay there watching he grabbed his board. He wasn't sure what was going to happen. He couldn't even be sure that he wasn't just having a nightmare. The clawed hand pushed out on the door and moved from place to place as if looking for a weak spot. Dad watched on in silence waiting to see what was going to happen. The sound of the creaking wood got louder and louder as the hand pushed further and further out of the door. Finally the door gave way in an explosion of wood. Whatever it was had burst into the room.<br /><br />Dad was out of bed swinging his two by four in the flash. He didn't bother to yell, no one could have gotten there in time to help him. He swung wildly all around him. He hadn't seen the thing, but he had seen the door explode, it had to be in the room. Finally he hit something solid. It was a lamp. He busted it to pieces with the force of his blow. For a a few more seconds he stood there swinging away and then the lights flicked on.<br /><br />There was my Great Aunt standing silently looking at him. There he was in a fairly trashed room, standing by a broken lamp with a bit of two by four in his hands. There was the closet door as solid and as boarded up as ever. Again, she tried to convince him that he had been asleep. This didn't hold much water with him. Someone might yell in their sleep, but get up and start swinging a board around, that was too much to believe. She assured him that there was nothing in that room that could hurt him, but he wanted a different room. My Aunt wouldn't hear of it and made him go back to bed. That was the end of it. Dad stayed there for a while, but the closet never gave him anymore trouble. <br /><br />Many of you will laugh and believe that Dad was just dreaming. Me, I'm not so sure. That house had seen some strange things and my Great Grandmother was not an ordinary woman. There are those who believe that nothing super natural ever happens, but most of us know better. There's an instinct inside that says “Not everything that is can be seen with the eyes or touched with the hands.” There are a lot of things in this world that we don't understand. I sit here wondering just how much my Great Grandmother did understand. Still, for myself, I prefer to leave the unseen world unseen. The Lord has, in his great wisdom, hidden some things from his children. I think it's best not to go looking for them, even if my Great Grandmother would disagree.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-58899674150583742462010-10-24T06:53:00.001-07:002010-10-24T06:53:28.634-07:00Ice, Water and MudIt may never be as popular as Earth, Wind and Fire, but it gave us a few laughs as children. I am, of course, referring to the title of this story: Ice, water and mud. There was a lot of it my childhood. They are, after all, some of the basic play elements of the universe. Almost every child loves to play in the snow or walk out on a frozen pond. It's also a joy to take a swim or dance in the rain. Most of us have made a mud pie or gotten in a mud fight. All these things show up in most childhoods (at least where the climate allows for ice.) and they certainly showed up in mine.<br /><br />The dawn that rose up over this first tale was cold and frosty. I can't remember if we had been snowed out of school or if it was just Saturday. However, the these two facts stand out: We were not in school and we were in one of those winter wonderlands that are so rare in the south. The main thing that I do remember was that Folk's pond was frozen.<br /><br />That pond was a central theme for many of our childhood adventures. It was easily accessible and it was right down the street. It was also a place where we were allowed to trespass. That is to say that we thought we were sneaking onto the property. I found out years later that Mr. Folk knew all about us going onto his land and had OK-ed it with Dad. Even without the adventurous edge of sneaking around the pond it was a pond and therefor a lot of fun.<br /><br />As I said, on this particular day the pond was frozen over. We had decided to take Prince with us that morning, so I had him on the leash. (Prince was a dog we had that was born on my eighth birthday. He probably deserves a set of stories written about him, but I haven't gotten to it yet.) We reached the frozen edge of the pond and started to walk out on it's solid surface.<br /><br />“I'm going to see how far out I can get.” I said leading Prince out on the ice with me.<br /><br />“Be careful, I think the ice get's thinner out there.” Sam said as he was carefully walking around the edge.<br /><br />“Thinner? No man, it's as solid as rock!”<br /><br />“Prince doesn't seem to think so.”<br /><br />Prince had started to fall behind me. In fact he wouldn't get off the very edge of the ice and I was just about at the end of the leash.<br /><br />“So what? He's just not used to it.”<br /><br />“No, dogs can tell where the thin ice is. They won't step on it, so you can follow them safely.”<br /><br />“You're out of your mind Sam. You pay to much attention to old wives tales. How can a dog tell...”<br /><br />At this point I broke through the ice and was standing in close to knee deep, ice cold, water. I looked up at Sam and saw he and Josh and the dog staring at me with knowing smiles.<br /><br />“Oh, shut up!” I said as I stormed back to the bank and started for home. Fortunately I didn't have to go much more than two blocks. By the time I got home the water on the outside of my shoes was frozen. Needless to say, my feet were a bit on the chilly side, but I was no worse for the wear. I was also able to put the entry “In case of being stranded on the ice try to find a dog to follow.” in my mental survival guide. All in all, the knowledge was worth the cold. Still, I suppose it could have been a coincidence, but it's not a chance I'll take again.<br /><br />We now need to make the transition from winter to late fall. There wasn't ice anywhere, but it was still cold. Once again Sam, Josh and I had headed down toward the pond. On this particular day we decided to creep down to our old fishing hole and poke around. For whatever reason we decided not to go fishing that day. It seemed enough that day just to wander around looking at this and that.<br /><br />Our fishing hole was right off of Folk's pond. In fact, it was where they had dug the spillway out years and years before. The pipe that formed the spillway was probably twenty feet above the land it came out into. The force of the dropping water had dug out the perfect fishing hole after a few years. It was one of the few places we went fishing where we always caught fish. Although, that is really beside the point at the moment because, as I mentioned, we weren't fishing.<br /><br />I had walked down the hill to the edge of the little spillway pond and was messing around on the beach. There were all kinds of little creatures digging in the soft mud. It was more than enough to keep me interested for a few minutes. Sam and Josh had stayed up on top of the hill and so were out of my direct line of view. I could have seen them had I bothered to try to keep and eye on them, but I was busy with other things.<br /><br />I'm certain Sam could have also seen me had he taken a moment to look, but taking a moment was never Sam's thing. He had found a huge piece of concrete laying there in the woods. It was like a cement bolder and was probably left over from the building of the spillway. Having found it he realized there was only one logical thing to do with it. He needed to throw it off the edge of the hill down into our fishing hole. If that doesn't seem the obvious thing to do then your mind doesn't work like Sam's. That's something to fell good about.<br /><br />Here I have to underline the fact that this was a bolder. I don't just say that for effect. It was almost as wide as Sam's chest and probably weighed close to one hundred pounds. It's important to understand that, so you can imagine the size of the wave it would create if dropped into a pool from a height of around twenty feet. You can also apply your imagination and form an image in your minds eye of that wave heading strait for the pond bank, not ten feet away from it. Do you have an image of the wave? Good! Now keep it there for a moment.<br /><br />“Lookout!” Sam screamed as the boulder flew out of his hands and he realized that I was on the beach below.<br /><br />I looked up to see this giant concrete blob hurtling for the surface of the water. I knew there was no time to move so I bundled myself into a ball and awaited the inevitable. Now, take your imaginary wave and smack it into my small crouching body with everything you've got. What it looked like from my point of view was a tidal wave reaching far above my head. Fortunately my bundling technique had worked. After the wave had gone back out to pond I was still dry. That is to say, the fronts of my upper thighs were still dry. Everything else about me was soaking wet, but if I hadn't reacted so well and so fast I could have had soaking wet upper thighs as well.<br /><br />“Why did you do that!” I yelled up at Sam.<br /><br />“I'm sorry, I didn't see you.”<br /><br />“Well, I was here all the same. Look at me!”<br /><br />Sam and Josh took a moment to look at me and burst out laughing. Needless to say I had to walk home to change. Again, it was just over two blocks, but I was freezing cold by the time I got home and was done with the fishing hole for the day. At least I learned something I can share with other people. If you're ever about to be hit with a tidal wave pull yourself into a ball. That way your upper thighs will stay dry and warm.<br /><br />Fortunately this next tale opens with everything dry and warm. It was a beautiful Spring day. It might even have been early Summer. The exact date slips my mind, but I can still see the green grass and the oak leaves blowing in the warm wind. So that takes Fall and Winter out of the running anyway. Once again, we had decided to sneak out onto Mr. Folk's property and take a walk. His land was beautiful and it was a gorgeous day so the obvious thing to do was to go out there and wander around.<br /><br />It happened that this was a work day out at the Folk farm. That meant that there would be workers out there doing their jobs who might spot us. Normally we didn't go out there if anyone else was there doing anything, but that day was too good to let pass. We were just going to have to sneak past the guards. It is also important to note that the pond had been drained at the time for some repairs or cleaning or something. (Don't ask me what repairs or cleaning a pond could need. I just know that people around here drain them some times and when you ask why you get answers like “Repairs”.) So, what was usually the pond was a small sea of slick black mud.<br /><br />“How are we going to get in?” I asked crouching down in the woods at the edge of the road watching a truck full of workers pull through the gate.<br /><br />“Well, not by the gate.” Sam replied.<br /><br />“We could go around the fishing hole and just step over the barbed wire fence.” Josh suggested.<br /><br />“Nah, as soon as stepped out of the woods on that side we'd be right out in the open.” Sam pointed out.<br /><br />“Well,” I said, “we need to stay close to the gate. If we go too far on either side our options are crossing swamp land or stepping out in the open.”<br /><br />After a moment's silent thinking Sam spoke again. “We're going to have to army crawl through the pond.”<br /><br />“What?” Both Josh and I replied.<br /><br />“Yea, that's what we've got to do. We can cross the road real quick and throw ourselves onto the mud. Then we'll crawl along until we reach the fence on the left side of the gate. From that side we can easily cross the work road and be in the woods again before anyone sees us. We need to go one at a time. Josh is the youngest so I think he can go first.”<br /><br />This plan actually seemed reasonable. Who would be looking over the edge of the road expecting to see a person crawling through the mud. Josh took on the mission like a soldier. He waited for a moment to make sure the coast was clear then he ran to the edge of the road and slipped over like a snake. From where Sam and I were we could see him, but only because we knew right where to look. No one driving along the road would ever have spotted him. This clear view of my brother is what gave Sam and I pause.<br /><br />“He's doing great!” Sam said as we watched from the woods.<br /><br />“Yea, but the sun is beating down on him.” I replied.<br /><br />“That's true and it's very slow going in that mud.”<br /><br />“And it looks pretty nasty too. It can't be pleasant slinking along in it.”<br /><br />“No, I'm sure it's not. Plus, if we all three take this long it's going to be a while before we can get to exploring.”<br /><br />“We need to find another way in.”<br /><br />“I agree, but how?”<br /><br />“We could just run up the road and jump over the gate.”<br /><br />“What if we get caught?”<br /><br />“We'll be careful.”<br /><br />“You're right. We just need to time it right.”<br /><br />With that Sam and I made a dash through the woods beside the road up to the gate. We looked around and no one was there so we hopped over and hid in the woods opposite the road where Josh was supposed to come up. After what like seemed like an hour we saw Josh's head pop up below the fence and look slowly left and right. We started waving at him from the woods and whispering for him to hurry up. He jumped up, crossed the fence and jumped in the woods with us. He was entirely coated with mud.<br /><br />“How did you guys get in here?” He asked as he was brushing some of the moist back dirt off of himself.<br /><br />“We jumped the gate.” Sam replied.<br /><br />“You jumped the gate? You let me crawl on my stomach through five hundred feet of drained out pond and you jumped the gate?”<br /><br />Josh went on for a while, but I'll spare you the details. Josh usually felt that we did things like that on purpose, but we didn't. That's just the way the cards fall sometimes. In life there are going to be times when you're the guy crawling face down in the mud and times when you're the guy jumping the fence. You have to take each as it comes.<br /><br />In any event, ice, water and mud. They always were a lot of fun. It's something mothers need to remember. With my own brood I sometimes have to overrule Mommy's decisions about playing in the rain or wallowing in a mud puddle. I've heard it said that girls grow up to be women and that little boys grow up to be big boys. For my part that's true. Just because I don't go around building dams in the rain doesn't mean that I've forgotten how much fun it is. It's just that a wife can give her husband more trouble about dirty cloths than a mother can her son. So here I sit recording all this history with clean cloths on. I'm sure my mother will be pleased to know.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-47464360304522103312010-10-18T03:46:00.001-07:002010-10-18T03:46:53.623-07:00Smoke If Ya Got EmAs a child I was exposed to smoking by my Mom's side of the family. My Papa smoked. My Aunt Sharon and Uncle Jimmy smoked. My Uncle Ron and Aunt Diane smoked. Most of my cousins smoked as soon as they were old enough to get away with it. I'm sure that there are loads of people out there who would say that greatly increased the chance that I would smoke, but it didn't. For the most part I don't like the taste of tobacco. So, although I may have the occasional pipe or cigar or even cigarette, I have never been interested in taking up smoking as a habit. <br /><br />However, I will say this, I was probably more interested in the idea of smoking because Papa smoked. He was not only the one who peaked my interest, he was also the one that killed it. I was around the age of ten and as I was walking out of his house one day for some reason we were discussing smoking.<br /><br />“Any wimp can smoke. There's nothing to it.” I said as I was stepping out of the door.<br /><br />“Come back in here.” He said before I had completely crossed the threshold. “Perhaps you would like a cigar then, if your Dad doesn't care.”<br /><br />“That's up to him.” Dad said smiling.<br /><br />“Sure, if you don't mind, then I'll have a cigar.”<br /><br />“Let me get you one.”<br /><br />Papa brought me one of his cigars and helped me get it lit. After a puff or two I decided that perhaps cigars weren't for me.<br /><br />“I've had enough I think.” I said as I reached for the ash tray.<br /><br />“Oh no, no. You can't waste a good cigar. You lit it, now smoke it.” Papa replied with a smile.<br /><br />Papa let me off the hook before I had finished half of it. He wasn't really trying to make me sick, he just wanted to leave a bad taste in my mouth as it were. He succeeded. Although I have smoked here and there socially I never became a smoker.<br /><br />Even though I was never personally tempted to pick up the habit I still found smoking interesting. One day I got the idea that we grandkids needed to make Papa a pack of cigarettes. Josh, Tara and me talked it over and decided that we would make him ten cigarettes or so and a pack to put them in. We went to work immediately. We took dried cherry tree leaves, bits of grass, a little pine straw and whatever else we could find that would burn. We used plain white notebook paper to roll our cigarettes up in and we used Elmer's Glue to seal the edges.<br /><br />When we were done we had a nice little pack, that Josh and Tara had illustrated, full of the cigarettes we had made. We had been at Nana and Papa's while we made them, so when we were done we walked up to the trailer to give them to Papa. He was very touched that we had gone to the effort. To please us he stood there and coughed through one of the smokes he had just been presented with. All things considered they smelled nice. However, if one could judge by his face they didn't taste very nice though.<br /><br />I was old enough that I considered the fact that Papa was probably just humoring us. I figured that the rest of them would be stuck in a drawer somewhere as a memento of us being young. I didn't care, we had made them for him to enjoy. If he enjoyed them in a drawer more than in his lungs who was I to complain. It was years later when I found out what had actually happened to the rest of that pack. I was asking Nana if she remembered us giving Papa those cigarettes. She laughed and said that she did. She also told me that he had smoked every one of those cigarettes, it took him a while to get through them, but he smoked every last one. It takes a lot of love to smoke through a pack of pine filled cigarettes, but Papa had plenty to spare.<br /><br />When I was just a little older Nana had started taking me to a magic shop that was up in Aiken. She would buy me little things with which to practice the art of illusion. I actually had a few tricks that were worth seeing, but none that were worth talking about. However, the magic shop also sold things like flash paper and, you guessed it, cigar loads. I thought it would be great fun to put one in one of Papa's cigars.<br /><br />Nana bought me the loads and then explained that I couldn't possibly use one on Papa. He had been in world war 2 and any sudden loud noise put his nerves on edge and she could never tell what he might do. She would often underline that warning with the story of how Papa had run out of the house with a German Luger in hand one night shortly after coming home from the war because some fireworks went off too near their house. We were never allowed to shoot fireworks near him either, so that point had been made. She also went on to explain that Papa's heart wasn't in the best shape (He had triple bypass surgery. Twice, in fact) and that a sudden noise like that could kill him.<br /><br />Disheartened I had to admit that she was right. However, she gave me hope. All I had to do was ask him if I could put one in his cigar and see what he said. I felt like I had a good chance, so as soon as we got home I asked. Papa put a cigar in my hand and helped me get the load pushed into it. He then walked outside with Josh, Tara and me and smoked the cigar until it blew up in his face. We all cheered! We had gotten Papa to smoke a loaded cigar and we hadn't killed him! It was win/win.<br /><br />Of course smoking cigars can lead lead to ill health. At least, that's what they say. I don't know that they have much in the way of pre-smoking medical history to go on, but we'll let that go for the moment. I have seen at least one cigar that I am certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt was bad for the health of the smoker. It was one Chris made himself.<br /><br />He was probably twelve or thirteen at the time and was down at Nana and Papa's with Tara, Josh and me. For whatever reason he decided he was going to make himself a “Man's cigar”. To start with he took a paper grocery bag (Yes, there was a time when groceries came in paper bags. I mention this for some of my younger readers who have never heard of such a thing.) and slit it down the side. Then he filled it with leaves and pine straw. In truth, it was mainly pine straw. He wanted to make it fast and didn't take the time to search around for leaves. Papa's trailer was parked in the middle of a pine wood, so pine straw was always readily available. Once it was loaded down with combustible material he rolled it up into a giant cigar and sealed it with scotch tape.<br /><br />The finished product was probably an inch and a half in diameter. Had it been made of pure tobacco I still don't think “Man's cigar” would have covered it. “Eight hundred pound guerrilla's cigar” might have truly represented it. Of course, when you keep in mind that it was probably ninety percent pine straw by weight the title “Cigar of death” springs to mind. Whatever you choose to call it the bizarre brown paper smoke-able was complete.<br /><br />Now all Chris needed was a light. We all headed to the door of the trailer. Chris held his giant, ugly cigar behind his back. Nana came to the door as soon as we had knocked and asked us what we wanted. Chris said we needed a match and Nana asked why. (We were always allowed to have a match, we just had to explain why and bring the box of matches back as soon as we had lit whatever it was.)<br /><br />“I want to light my stogie!” Chris said as he proudly pulled the cigar from behind his back.<br /><br />Nana smiled and said “Alright, wait right there.”<br /><br />She came back in a flash with the box of matches. Chris lit his monster and pulled as much pine smoke as he possibly could into his lungs in one long draw. Needless to say an eruption of teary eyed coughing immediately followed. Chris threw his wonderful creation on the ground and stamped it out. We all had a laugh at his expense and he learned that not everything that burns is worth smoking.<br /><br />All in all my experience with tobacco resulted in humor, which I must admit is habit forming. Still, it is important to keep in mind that we, as children, watched the adults around us and imitated them. We in turn are being imitated by our children. That is why I try to make certain that the things I do are worth doing. Whatever you do you always have to keep in mind that there's a good chance your children are going to do it to. So save money! There's a thought!Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-22111076224179736452010-10-10T09:49:00.001-07:002010-10-10T09:49:30.864-07:00Change The ChannelI've explained about my Dad's, shall we shall, overexcited behavior in several of my earlier stories. Here I am going to share another example of Dad loosing his cool, blowing his top, flipping his wig, whatever analogy you want to use really. I also hope to use it as an opportunity to show that Dad was often provoked into doing whatever it was he did. In fact, Dad often just did what most people would have done had they not been afraid of social stigma, financial loss or jail time. So, a lot of the things that look like the actions of a complete crazy person could be construed as rather misguided courage instead.<br /><br />It all started with Dad very calmly doing one of the things he loves to do. He was watching TV while laying on the couch in the living room. There may have been an empty milk glass with a banana peel in it around there somewhere, I can't remember. (Dad used to drink a glass of milk while eating a banana then stick the peel in the empty glass and stick the glass somewhere. It drove Mom nuts.) Either way, Dad was watching some murder mystery show that had been on for what seemed like hours. It may have been part of a mini-series or have had far too many commercials in it or both.<br /><br />Whatever the cause Dad had been watching it for a long while. The entire time it had been on Mom had been sitting there quietly reading a magazine. Here I have to take a moment and say that Mom and I hated these kind of shows. Mom has a gentle spirit and certainly doesn't want to see anyone get brutally murdered on TV. As for myself I was set down to watch 'An American Werewolf in London' at age five. Some friends of Mom and Dad said it was kid safe. I ran into the room where Mom and Dad were bleached white after one of the gore scenes and never liked those kind of movies again. However, this movie wasn't a gore fest it was low key murder mystery where the villain was sure to get his in the end. I still didn't like it, but it was squarely in the “ignorable” category.<br /><br />Both Mom and I had been ignoring the show the entire time it had been on. After hours of suspense and mystery the show had finally culminated in a chase scene. The heroine was running from the villain having finally put it together that he was the common denominator behind all the deaths. The music picked up to help set every nerve on edge as the camera flashed back and forth between the running damsel and the pursuing monster. Tension was crackling in the air. Would the police arrive in the nick of time? Would she find an old shotgun and blast him through the door? Would he catch her and her unsolved murder be the setup for the sequel? We'll never know... <br /><br />At the moment of truth Mom looked up at the TV and for the first time in hours her pupils focused on something other than her magazine. For a moment she sat there in silence. Her brain was slowly changing gears from “What a lovely fabric!” to “Why is that girl running through that building? And who is that man?” I blame the change in music myself. I think she could have sat there quietly until the end if her nerves hadn't started to warn her. “You hear that? Something's wrong!” Those composers are amazing. Little did that guy know that he had betrayed my dad when he wrote that piece. He was just trying to play up the drama of the scene. Oh well... Once Mom's mind had locked onto what was going on she decided to put a stop to it.<br /><br />“Change the channel!” She said in a nervous voice that expressed how badly she wanted the young girl to get away.<br /><br />“Hold on! This is the very end of the movie.” Dad replied, not daring to look away from the screen.<br /><br />“Change the channel!”<br /><br />“No. It's almost over.”<br /><br />“I don't care. Change the channel!”<br /><br />“Barbara, be quiet. It's the very end and I want to hear it.”<br /><br />“I don't! Change the channel!”<br /><br />“I've been watching this for hours with you in here!”<br /><br />“I don't care. Change the channel!”<br /><br />“Just go in the other room. It'll be over in ten minutes!”<br /><br />“No! Change the channel!”<br /><br />At this point Dad decided to stare at the TV and do his best to hear it over Mom or at least read the actor's lips. He had gotten down to the last five minutes and he was missing it arguing with her. When Dad stopped replying Mom realized she would have to use another approach. Unless something happened immediately she was going to inadvertently see the end of the movie. Why didn't she just get up and leave the room you ask? Good question! Moving on! She decided to take a more direct approach.<br /><br />“Change the Channel! Change the Channel! Change the Channel!” She said over and over as fast as she could.<br /><br />Dad sat there for a moment waving his hand back at her as if he were trying to knock the sound away from his ear before it reached him. This just made Mom get faster and louder.<br /><br />“Change the Channel! Change the Channel! Change the Channel!”<br /><br />I wish that I had gotten a video recording of the whole thing. I am sure we would have been able to go through it frame by frame until we reached the moment when it happened. “There! Right there!” I would be able to say pointing triumphantly at the frozen frame of video focused on my Dad's face. “That's the moment where he snapped!”<br /><br />Sadly we have no video, no slow motion, no freeze frame. A great opportunity for scientific study in psychology has been lost. All we have to record the event is the human memory which is very useful for telling a story, but a bit short on the scientific necessities. For example if they were to ask me “How big did your Dad's eyes get in millimeters?” I could only say “Big!” “Could you be more precise?” “Real big!” It's all very well for amusement, but not much for the science of the thing.<br /><br />In any event, even though the moment wasn't caught on video it had arrived. Dad snapped! He leaped up off the couch with the speed of a ninja (keep in mind it was the eighties) and jerked the TV up over his head. (This wasn't a small TV, it was our main living room TV.) He held it there just long enough for me to think to myself “Whoa! Seriously?” Then Dad threw it down on the living room floor with everything he had and, with Dad, that was quite a bit. The set exploded in a shower of golden sparks. I can still see the scene in my imagination. It was really awesome. They should put a scene like that in a movie one day.<br /><br />Having completely destroyed the TV Dad glared at Mom and screamed at the top of his lungs:<br /><br />“There! It's changed now ain't it!”<br /><br />Mom looked up from the magazine she had immediately gone back to reading to reply:<br /><br />“What do I care if you smashed your TV, I've still got my radio.”<br /><br />“Is that so?” Dad said and walked out of the room heading for the back door.<br /><br />Here again, I have to take moment to give you a little additional information. Mom didn't just have a radio. She had a house wide radio with speakers strewn everywhere. Whatever housework she had to do could be done while listening to whatever she liked on the radio. It was very nice and one of the things that sold them on the particular double wide model they selected. It was this radio that Mom was so happy to still have.<br /><br />“With all do respect, that was the stupidest thing I have ever heard come out of your mouth.” I said starting at Mom in disbelief.<br /><br />“Why? I do still have my radio.”<br /><br />“You really think that don't you?” I said with a slight sad smile.<br /><br />At that moment the back door flew open and Dad ran into the house. He had a hammer in his hand and as he came into the room he shook it with a “Hahahahah!” (I'm not making this up, he seriously did that.) He then proceeded to beat the radio out of the wall. When he was finished he turned to address us all.<br /><br />“And we will never have another TV in this house as long as I live!” He screamed before collapsing on the couch.<br /><br />The next day Josh and I were standing outside of school waiting for Mom to pick us up and discussing the entire affair.<br /><br />“How long do you think Dad will make it?” I asked.<br /><br />“I don't know. He was pretty upset.” Josh replied.<br /><br />“A month, do you think?”<br /><br />“A month! No, no. I mean he couldn't make it a month. I figure a week on the outside.”<br /><br />“Yea, I hope it's not that long.”<br /><br />As I said that the car pulled up. Mom was sitting in the passenger seat and Dad was driving. As we got in Dad spoke.<br /><br />“We're going to town to get a new TV.” Dad said as we were buckling up.<br /><br />“And a radio.” Mom added.<br /><br />It may be that some of you think my Dad's behavior was inexcusable, but none of you were there. I was and I am here to tell you that you need to walk a mile in a man's shoes before you say too much about his actions. In truth the TV was very old anyway and Dad had been talking about replacing it for years. He just chose a dramatic way to get rid of the old one. What he did may not have seemed sane, but I'll tell you this, it was the last time he was ever pelted with “Change the channel!”Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-18965031755331985162010-10-03T14:02:00.001-07:002010-10-03T14:02:47.597-07:00One Moonlit NightRon Smith is one the characters that appears here and there in my childhood stories. That's because he was kind of here and there in my childhood. He was certainly always one of our friends, but he lived a ways out of town and so, until we could drive, we only saw each other now and again. Once I had transportation Ron became a more permanent fixture in our group. This story begins with the fact that Ron didn't like the way I drove at night. If we were going anywhere after dark he wanted to be at the wheel.<br /><br />On this particular night we were heading home from some Church get together. As usual Ron was driving. There was a beautiful full moon shining down on the deserted road we were traveling. Ron decided to to do something unusual that night. He made the observation that the moonlight was so bright that you could drive by it. In order to prove this, he turned the headlights off and drove along by moonlight. I thought that it was unwise, but the truth was that you could clearly see everything around us. Josh got tired of it after about ten seconds and opened a dialog.<br /><br />“Turn the lights back on.” Josh said firmly.<br /><br />“No. I don't need them.” Ron replied defiantly.<br /><br />“I don't care, turn them back on.”<br /><br />“No. I'm not going to hit anything.”<br /><br />“I don't care about that. I don't feel like getting pulled over by the police.”<br /><br />This argument escalated until two things happened. First, Ron did turn the lights back on. Second, he reached behind him and slapped Josh right in the mouth with the back of his hand. Now, I would have warned most people that hitting Josh was a bad idea, but Ron already knew it. Here I have to take a moment and explain one of Ron's limitations. He couldn't fight. I mean, he was strong, probably one of the strongest in our group. He was also ripped and looked tough enough when he pulled his shirt off. However, he hit like a girl. (There may be some big girls out there who would just love to show me how they hit, but I don't mean them. I mean princess-y type girls who love flying rainbow unicorns. Girls like my little girls... anyways, he hit like one of them.) I know that if Ron reads this he will deny it. Well, deny away, Ron, deny away.<br /><br />For a moment nothing happened. The sound of Ron's slap was still hanging in the air. I could feel the moments ticking away. I knew that something was about to happen whether Ron had put that together or not. He had struck Josh in the face without even showing enough respect to look at him when he did it. Then he looked at the road as if there wasn't going to be a rebuttal. Poor Ron, he never saw things like this coming. After perhaps a second and a half it happened.<br /><br />SLAP!!!!<br /><br />Josh had drawn his hand back as far as he could in the car and swung it with all his force. He hit Ron so hard that the side of his head slammed into the window. (Yes, I mean slammed, I don't use that word for effect. Had his head hit the window any harder it might well have broken.) The car swerved all over the road. With a sound of squealing tires Ron got the car back under control. He then opened another dialog:<br /><br />“That is it! It is ON!” Ron screamed at the top of his lungs.<br /><br />“Good. I hoped it would be.” Josh quietly replied.<br /><br />“I am pulling this car over!”<br /><br />“Good. I don't have room to beat your brains out here.”<br /><br />“Wait until I get you out if this car!”<br /><br />“There's a good spot. Pull over right there.”<br /><br />The car skidded to a stop and Ron jumped out.<br /><br />“Get out!”<br /><br />“As fast as I can!”<br /><br />Now, by this time I had decided that this had gone far enough. I stepped out of the car.<br /><br />“You two stop it. Each of you has hit the other. Let's get back in the car and go.”<br /><br />“Oh no, he's going to get it!” Ron shouted.<br /><br />“Well, come on.” Josh said.<br /><br />“Josh don't hurt him.” I said loudly.<br /><br />“Hurt me!” Ron said derisively as he threw a kick right at Josh's face.<br /><br />Josh decided that I was right and that there was no reason to hurt Ron. In a flash he had thrown one arm behind Ron's outstretched knee and the other in front of his shin. He had Ron's leg trapped between his arms. He pulled his leg up so high that Ron was standing on his tip toes on one leg. Josh began to explain the situation.<br /><br />“See Ron? I got you. What do I mean by that? I mean I can move you this way.”<br /><br />As Josh said this he began to pull Ron's leg to one side making him hop in order to stay balanced.<br /><br />“Or I can move you that way.”<br /><br />Josh moved Ron's leg to the the other side, and Ron couldn't help but hop along to remain upright.<br /><br />“See Ron. I've already won. Don't get yourself hurt.”<br /><br />After Josh said this he threw down Ron's leg. Ron stared at Josh and fire blazed in his eyes. He knew he couldn't take Josh fighting on his feet, but he wasn't ready to give up. Suddenly he sacked Josh. They both toppled over into a pile of briars and began rolling around, each struggling to get the advantage over the other. While this was going on I decided that diplomacy might be my best option.<br /><br />“This is ridiculous guys! Look at you! Now your both rolling around in the briars when we could be heading home. We're all friends here. What's the point of all this. Let's just stop and go home.”<br /><br />As I was saying this I heard Josh's voice rise above the tussle.<br /><br />“Ron, you are going to let me go or I am going to jam you eye out.”<br /><br />Nothing happened. They were still struggling on the road side.<br /><br />“One... Two... Three...” Josh counted out loudly.<br /><br />Then:<br /><br />“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Ron screamed with everything he had.<br /><br />Josh got up out of the briars and began brushing himself off.<br /><br />“I warned you Ron. You need to learn to stop while you can.” Josh said walking back towards the car.<br /><br />Ron crawled up out of the briars with one hand over his eye like a pirate's patch. He stood there panting staring at Josh. Again, I tried diplomacy.<br /><br />“See, this is going nowhere. We all just need to get back in the car and go home. This entire thing has been stupid!” I said.<br /><br />Josh tried a different type of diplomacy:<br /><br />“Yea, Ron, you lost. Plain and simple. So let's get back in the car before you really get hurt.”<br /><br />As Josh said this he turned around and started to walk away. At that moment Ron drew back and sucker-punched Josh in the back of the head. <br /><br />Now, this was Ron's second big mistake of the night. This time it wasn't because Josh was someone you didn't want to tangle with, but because I was standing right there. I am a calm, peace-loving type of guy. It's hard to make me angry and I don't like to hurt people. However, once you step over the line I'm not going to warn you about it, you're just going to have to deal with the repercussions.<br /><br />In a flash I shot my right hand up from my hip and punched Ron right in the eye. There was a loud “Crack!” and Ron was reeling on the back of his heels. As he slowly straitened himself, moving from side to side as his brain was working out what happened, I again tried diplomacy.<br /><br />“Ron, do you see what you made me do?” I said, gently putting both my hands against his chest. “You made me hit you. I didn't want to. I even warned you that you needed to stop, but you wouldn't listen. I don't want to hit you again, but if you make me I'm going to be ready this time.” Here I dropped into my boxing stance and waited to see what Ron would do.<br /><br />Slowly his eyes stopped spinning around randomly and he regained the ability to focus. He looked at me considering the situation and then looked over at Josh. He was clearly furious, but decided to open a dialog instead of start another fist fight.<br /><br />“So! I see how it is! Ganging up me!?!? Takes two of you to beat me eh!?!?! Well, that's just fine!” Ron yelled right in my face.<br /><br />“Ron, it wasn't like that. You just punched Josh in the back of the head.” I said apologetically.<br /><br />“Oh no! You two wanted to jump me, that's fine!”<br /><br />“Come on Ron, get back in the car and let's go home.”<br /><br />“What!?!? Get in the car with you two!?!? Forget it! I'm walking!”<br /><br />“It's a couple of miles into town.”<br /><br />“I don't care! It's better than riding with you!” As he said this he stormed off down the road with me calling after him.<br /><br />When he was almost out of earshot Josh and I climbed back in the car and headed for home. There was nothing I could do, I had tried to keep something like that from happening the whole time. Josh and I both felt like he would be over it in a few days. Fight or not we liked Ron and we didn't want there to be any bad blood between us.<br /><br />Ron got over it more quickly than we thought he would. As soon as we walked through the door the phone rang. It was Ron, he wanted a ride home. He had walked about a mile down the road to where a friend of his lived. So, Josh and I climbed back in the car and went and got him. When we got him back in the light we could see his eye. One side was about as black as a black eye gets. He looked like he was wearing half of the Lone Ranger's mask. Between Josh's thumb and my fist that poor eye had a rough night. Still, none of us were worse for the wear and none of us held a grudge. Josh and I even helped him hide his black eye with Mom's makeup the next time we went to Church. It's wasn't perfect, but it was better than nothing.<br /><br />Again, there are a few morals one can find here. The lesson could be “Don't start nothing, and there won't be nothing” or perhaps “Always drive carefully and you're less likely to get hurt.” Of course the point that stands out more readily than any other is “Don't start a fistfight if you hit like a girl.”<br /><br />Writing all this has been good for me. I'm becoming a regular Aesop.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-37342351808485811712010-09-26T09:44:00.001-07:002010-09-26T09:44:59.903-07:00It's Not An AddictionThey say that the first step towards a cure is admitting that you have a problem. I don't think Sam would have ever admitted to being addicted to video games as a child. There were a few reasons he wouldn't have been able to stand up and say “Hi, my name is Sam and I'm a video-game-aholic.” First, he thought that everyone should be playing games basically all of the time, so he was only acting as a person should. Second, he would have refused to acknowledge the signs of withdrawal he had when he was separated from games too long. Third, he wouldn't have wanted to go to the meeting until after he had beaten this level. Whether or not he would have admitted it at the time, I think he would now. It's just part of Sam's personality, he loves to say things like “I had a video game addiction before it was cool.”<br /><br />Some of you who are familiar with the modern concept of VGA (Video Game Addition, obviously) probably think of it as the kind of thing that affects most teenage boys in our country. You may also think of it in terms of forty-year-old men getting out of work and heading straight for WoW. (If you don't know what WoW is you probably don't know anyone with VGA. It stands for World of Warcraft. You can look it up, but be careful. The first hit is free.) If you're old enough, you think of it something like “and those lazy kids are always messing with that idiot box making that little guy do stupid things and...” All three impressions are wrong. Modern VGA is nothing compared to what Sam had. Of course, back in the day we did have the good stuff. So I guess it was easier to get hooked.<br /><br />To begin to explain I have to go back just a bit. My brother was generally a good sportsman. He could lose a game and shake hands with the winner. He was fairly even tempered when it came to people. However, he hated our Nintendo. I don't know how many times I saw him slam the controller down on the floor while screaming “The game cheated me!” (To be fair, RC Pro-Am did cheat. Almost everyone who has ever played it knows that.) The reason that this is important is because, over time, the controllers stopped working because of these beatings.<br /><br />In fact, at one point we were down to one controller. The more we used it, the less it worked. Before it was all over with, it was so hard to push the directional pad that it was impossible to use. After about three minutes your thumbs would be too sore to use them anymore. As a result Josh and I gave up. Sam, however, kept trying to think of a way to use it. Finally he came up with idea of biting the directional pad and pushing the buttons with his fingers. He put in a game where speed didn't matter and sat there playing the Nintendo by mouth for hours. Until you have watched someone playing a game with the end of a controller in his mouth and playing the buttons like a flute, you haven't seen how bad VGA can get. Fortunately I have more information that can be passed down to posterity.<br /><br />The next example was a few years later. By this time we had a Super Nintendo. I was home sick and didn't even feel up to laying there playing a video game. Sam had gone up-town and rented a game. Since the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) was at our house, he had come over to play even though I was stuck in bed. I remember lying there trying to sleep as Sam sat at the foot of the bed playing for hours. Finally, this just wasn't enough for him.<br /><br />“Hey, Bro,” he said to me, turning away from the screen for a moment to look at me.<br /><br />“What?” I groaned.<br /><br />“Want to play two player?”<br /><br />“No.”<br /><br />“Come on, it'll only take a few minutes.”<br /><br />“No, I'm sick.”<br /><br />“You can play while you lay there!”<br /><br />“No, I don't feel up to it. Just let me rest.”<br /><br />“Look, I'll beat you in like five minutes and then you can go back to sleep.”<br /><br />This actually made a bit of sense to me. I knew that Sam couldn't control the craving once it was on him. The easiest thing to do would be to sit up for five minutes, get beaten and then go back to sleep. However, I wasn't the type of guy to just let myself lose without trying. Still, Sam played so much, he almost always beat me, whatever the game was. All things considered I decided to sit up and play one match with him.<br /><br />It was a war game called Super Conflict. The idea was simple enough: take your army and destroy your opponent's. Fortunately for me this was one instance when Sam forgot a cardinal rule: Never let your enemy control the bridges. Perhaps an hour later I had won. Sam's forces were humiliated and defeated. He wanted a rematch, but I told him no. The fates had been with me because I was sick. I did what I had to do in order to go back to sleep. It wasn't my fault that I won. Sam was satisfied with the idea of a rematch at a later date and I was allowed to go back to sleep. Of course, it wasn't the last time Sam's addiction kept me up.<br /><br />Here I have to explain the fact that Sam was always beating my games before me. For the most part I didn't care, but he could go the extra mile and make it annoying. For instance, one time I got a new game and he came over to play it with me. When it was time for him to go home he asked if he could borrow it because his bedtime was later than mine, so he would get to play it even if I couldn't. I told him to go ahead and take it, but to bring it back the next day after school. He said that he would. I didn't see him again for three days. Finally he returned with my game and apologized for having taken so long to beat it.<br /><br />That was enough for me. After that, I laid down the rule that Sam couldn't beat any of my games before I did. Now, this was a terrible fate to befall Sam. I was and am notoriously fickle when it comes to gaming. I pick something up, play with it for a while and then put it down. It may be months or years before I pick it up again. For instance I didn't beat The Legend of Zelda until I was a grown man, even though I reached the last level when I was twelve. Mom and Dad bought me a game for Christmas one year, and I didn't beat it until summer-time two years later. It's not that I'm not a good gamer, I just get distracted and bored very easily. Either way, Sam knew that it might mean never beating another of my games. <br /><br />All things considered, he took it well. That is to say, up until I got my next new game. It was Star Wars for the original Nintendo. Sam began foaming at the mouth right after I got it. He held out for a few hours, but then it began.<br /><br />“You going to beat it soon?” Sam asked shortly after we started playing.<br /><br />“I don't know, we'll see,” I replied, having just started the game.<br /><br />“I'm sure you could beat it tonight if you tried.”<br /><br />“Maybe I can. We'll see.”<br /><br />An hour or so later I decided to stop. Sam couldn't just let that go.<br /><br />“What? You can't stop now! Look how far you are,” he said with a big smile.<br /><br />“I'm getting tired, you guys can play something else.”<br /><br />“Can we play this?”<br /><br />“No, you'll beat it.”<br /><br />“I won't!”<br /><br />“I don't trust you.”<br /><br />“Well then, the least you could do is play a little more.”<br /><br />I conceded his point. If I wasn't going to let him play until I beat the game, it was only fair that I try to beat it as quickly as possible. So, the game went on. It got very close to my normal bed time and I had been playing Star Wars all day. I decided I had done my best and that it was time to quit.<br /><br />“No! You can't stop now! You're almost there!” Sam said as I went to turn off the Nintendo.<br /><br />“I'm not almost there! It's almost bed time anyway,” I replied, tired of the very sight of the game.<br /><br />“What! Almost bedtime! It's Summer, Bro! What's the point if we can't stay up late once in a while?”<br /><br />“I'm tired!”<br /><br />“Non-sense! You just need to hit your second wind. You're close, Bro, I can feel it!”<br /><br />My sense of fair play made me sit down again. I couldn't give up while Sam was so excited about beating it himself. I would have to go the extra mile for my friend. The hours flew by, but I reached the end of the game. It was after midnight, and I was so tired that I couldn't see straight. I knew that I couldn't win, I was just too tired.<br /><br />“Sorry, Bro! I can't make it,” I said as I began to get up to turn everything off.<br /><br />“What?! I can't believe this, you're right there!” Sam replied with a shocked look on his face.<br /><br />“I can't beat it right now! I can't see straight! Literally!!”<br /><br />“You can beat it! You just have to try!”<br /><br />“You are out of your mind! I'm too tired to play anymore. I'll just beat it in the morning.”<br /><br />“No, tonight! It has to be tonight!”<br /><br />“Why?”<br /><br />“Because tomorrow you'll want to do something else. You'll get distracted! That will be it!!”<br /><br />Again, Sam had made a valid point. Would I be willing to beat it in the morning? The way I felt at the moment I wasn't sure I would ever want to see the game again, much less play it. Still, it didn't matter, I would have to beat it tomorrow. Beating it at that moment was impossible, I didn't have the strength.<br /><br />“Sam, I will do my best to beat it in the morning, honestly. I just can't do it right now.”<br /><br />Sam looked at me for a moment in silence. Then he spoke:<br /><br />“I'll help you!”<br /><br />“How?”<br /><br />“Just start playing!”<br /><br />“OK, I guess. At least when I die you'll let me go to sleep.”<br /><br />I started playing again. Sam was calling out warnings and suggestions almost non-stop. I was slow to respond and was certainly losing. I began to fall asleep where I was sitting. Suddenly I felt Sam's arms reaching around me.<br /><br />“What are you doing?” I asked as I looked back at him.<br /><br />“I told you I would help you and I will!” he said as he took each of my hands in each of his.<br /><br />“Sam, this is crazy! You've gone insane! Let's just go to bed!”<br /><br />“No! Play!”<br /><br />So, play we did. I don't remember much. I was falling asleep even in the uncomfortable position of sitting up while being enveloped in the arms of Sam. Had I had the strength to fight him off, I would have told him to keep his hands to himself. However, at that moment I was so tired I would have slept if he had decided to pick me up and cradle me like a baby. I don't how long we sat there with Sam's hands on mine making me push buttons, but I do remember being fully awakened by shouts of joy.<br /><br />“You did it, Bro! You won! Wake up and look, you beat the game!” Sam was about to cry he was so happy.<br /><br />“Good job, Bro!” Josh threw in there. He had stayed up with us through this insanity.<br /><br />“That's wonderful. Well, goodnight,” I said, not caring about anything but sleep.<br /><br />The next morning I made a decision. It hadn't been worth it. I would rather loan Sam all my new games for two weeks before I ever played them rather than go through that again. I loved Sam like a brother, but I had no desire to be wrapped in his arms during another midnight gaming session. I told him of my change of heart, but he seemed indifferent. He was too busy playing the game to take any real notice of what I was saying.<br /><br />Sam got older and got his addiction under control. His wife still has to keep an eye on him, but he's very manageable. So, if you're concerned about a child or grandchild or husband who seems to have VGA just compare them to Sam. His was a real addiction, and he beat it. He just found something he loved more: his family. Your loved one can beat it too, they just need a reason to turn the game off. In any case I doubt they are bad off enough to wrap their arms around me in order to get to play, so it's not as bad as it could be. That's something to be thankful for.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-30143255914555125512010-09-19T10:17:00.000-07:002010-09-19T10:18:12.009-07:00That's Gonna Leave a MarkI've already described Brandyn Boatwright and filled out that description in previous stories. If you don't know who I'm talking about it would be worth reading “Arboreal Brandyn” or “Brandyn: Ninja Carpenter”. It will help you understand what kind of person he was and why my brother and I loved to torment him. It will also explain why it's perfectly acceptable to laugh at his pain even if pain-laughing isn't something you do as a general rule.<br /><br />When we were teenagers, Brandyn would call my brother constantly. Literally there were days when he called more then ten times. If we planned to get together and do something this was unnecessary. If we weren't planning to get together it was merely obnoxious. I suppose there are people out there that could call me ten times a day without bothering me at all, but Brandyn was not one of these people. For one thing the conversation was often like this:<br /><br />“Is Josh there?” Brandyn asked whoever answered the phone.<br /><br />“Yeah, hold on.”<br /><br />“This is Josh.”<br /><br />“Hey Bro!”<br /><br />“Hey, what's up?”<br /><br />“Nothing... what are you doing?”<br /><br />“Watching a movie.”<br /><br />“That's cool. I'm bored.”<br /><br />“Sorry, Bro, I need to go. We're watching a movie.”<br /><br />“That's cool.”<br /><br />“I'll talk to you later.”<br /><br />“OK. Bye.”<br /><br />So far it may seem dull but not that annoying, but that's just the first call. Ten minutes later:<br /><br />“Is Josh there?”<br /><br />“It's me, Bro, what's up?”<br /><br />“Nothing... what are you doing?”<br /><br />“I'm still watching that movie.”<br /><br />“Oh sorry... I'm bored.”<br /><br />“Sorry Bro, but I need to go.”<br /><br />“OK. Bye.”<br /><br />This would happen every few minutes until everyone in the house was ready to scream. He would also try to keep Josh on the phone for as long as possible. I shortened it up a great deal for you, the reader, in order to keep you from getting annoyed with it yourself. After a while my brother got tired of it and decided to shake things up a bit. Josh answered the phone for the tenth time:<br /><br />“Bootie-Cam Incorporated, how may I direct your call?” Josh said as he picked up the phone.<br /><br />“Can I speak to Josh?” asked a bewildered Brandyn.<br /><br />“I'm sorry, you have the wrong number,” Josh answered, and hung up.<br /><br />We all busted out laughing, but it only lasted a moment. The phone rang again.<br /><br />“Bootie-Cam Incorporated, how may I direct your call?”<br /><br />“Who have I reached?” Brandyn asked, expecting it this time.<br /><br />“Bootie-Cam Incorporated, how may I direct your call?”<br /><br />“What do you do?”<br /><br />“We are makers of the famous bootie-cam. Would you be interested in buying one?”<br /><br />“Yes!”<br /><br />“I'll transfer you to sales, please hold,” Josh said, and then hung up the phone.<br /><br />Again, a torrent of laughter, and again the phone rang.<br /><br />“Bootie-Cam Incorporated, how may I direct your call?”<br /><br />“I was trying to get in touch with the sales department, but I was disconnected.”<br /><br />“I'm sorry, Sir, please hold,” Josh said, and once more hung the phone up.<br /><br />This happened again and again over the course of half an hour. Sometimes Josh would hand the phone to me or one of the other guys and we would pretend to be Bootie-Cam executives trying to help Brandyn with his problem until we hung up on him. Finally this got old. Brandyn was enjoying the game too much and we just wanted some peace and quiet. I decided to do something about it.<br /><br />The phone rang again for roughly the thirtieth time. I told Josh to hand me the phone. I took it and I walked into the bathroom followed by all the guys that were currently at the house. I lifted the lid and seat of the toilet and carefully put the phone down in the bowl (it was a cordless phone, for those of you who may be wondering how long the cord was). I answered the phone and flushed the toilet. As soon as it had sucked the last few drops of water down the drain, I hung up.<br /><br />Amazingly this didn't stop Brandyn. For the next half hour we took turns flushing the toilet at the phone and then hanging up. We could hear Brandyn yelling at us from out of the bowl and calling us all kinds of interesting names, but we ignored it and went on with our great work. Finally Josh couldn't take it anymore. When the phone rang again, Josh picked it up and said “Hello.” He heard the sound of a toilet flushing, and then it hung up. We all burst out laughing.<br /><br />After all that, I think we decided it would be worth taking the trouble to drive all the way out to Brandyn's house to pick him up. At the time Brandyn didn't have a ride so we were constantly picking him up for one thing or another. Most of the time he would be sitting out on the porch, talking on the phone waiting for us. One Sunday evening, however, this wasn't the case.<br /><br />We were coming to pick him up for Church. As we got near the end of his long dirt driveway, we saw him sitting in a lawn chair, talking on the cordless phone, right in the middle of the driveway. Both of us were looking at him as we pulled up. Finally, I spoke.<br /><br />“Hit him with the car,” I said with a slight smile.<br /><br />“Don't worry, I was going to,” Josh replied.<br /><br />We slowed down to perhaps three miles an hour. Brandyn looked at us, smiling, and refused to move. Just before we got to him he threw his feet up on the hood of the car. No doubt he thought we intended to stop at the last moment. That was, strictly speaking, true. However, our last moment was later than he thought. With Brandyn's feet propped up on the hood Josh rolled forward and hit the chair with the car. The result was spectacular.<br /><br />Brandyn shot backwards, flying heels over head. The phone flew out of his hand and up into the woods, and the chair shot straight back about ten feet. Brandyn hit the dirt and rolled around on the ground several times before coming to a stop. He jumped up and said some very colorful things as he kicked the car again and again. Finally we got him calmed down and into the car, and we were on our way to Church. Not that Church was always a safe place for Brandyn.<br /><br />It was on another night not that long after that, when he found out how dangerous the Church yard could be. Sadly I wasn't there to witness this first-hand. I have had to piece it together from the many eye witnesses. Fortunately for me, and for those of you who have taken an interest in my youth, there were a large number of reliable people there who saw the entire and affair, and most of them loved to talk about how bad it had been and then laugh until they couldn't breathe.<br /><br />The youth group in Aiken was going through a bit of teamwork training. This training consisted of running through different obstacles as a team: working together to climb over walls and that kind of thing. The idea was that young Christians are stronger together than they are alone. My brother, being who he is, had decided through most of it to prove that he could “win” each of the team events. Now, to those of you who know Josh this will come as no surprise. The fact that he was also the best at every event will surprise very few.<br /><br />However, this introduced the wrong spirit into the exercise. Whereas it had started as a group of events to show that we all have our strengths and weaknesses, it had become a contest between the boys to impress the girls. The guy coordinating the event kept trying to put a stop to it, but to no avail. Each challenge came, and Josh was first every time.<br /><br />At last they came to the high jump. One by one, the teenagers failed to get over the rising rope. In the end it came down to two guys: Josh (no shock there) and Brandyn. Here I have to take a moment to explain a few important facts. First, the fact that Brandyn had gotten to the last stand-off with Josh was very impressive. Out of our entire group, Brandyn was the heavy guy. He wasn't fat, but he had a lot more body weight than Josh. Second, Brandyn had just gotten the cast off his leg from where he had cut his toes almost completely off (if you haven't heard that one, read the stories I mentioned at the beginning; it's worth the extra time). I mention these things because I want you to understand how amazing Brandyn's feat was and to what extent he would go to impress girls.<br /><br />They raised the line again. By this time it was up to Josh's neck. He knew he could make it, but that it would be close. He and I had often jumped over this and that, and each of us could get over something up to our necks, but no higher. Josh mulled this over and decided there was no way Brandyn could make it. He decided to warn him.<br /><br />“Hey Bro, don't try this jump,” Josh said as they looked at the rope.<br /><br />“Why? I'll make it,” Brandyn replied with confidence.<br /><br />“No, you won't. I watched you on the last jump.”<br /><br />“Afraid of competition?”<br /><br />“No, I'm afraid you're going to get hurt.”<br /><br />“Well, I'm not.”<br /><br />“OK.”<br /><br />They were told to jump. Josh got a running start and jumped over the line. Brandyn was next up.<br /><br />I am going to do my best to describe this just as Josh described it to me. He said it was one of the most impressive things he ever saw. Brandyn prepared himself mentally and began to run at full speed. He jumped sort of sideways and kicked one leg up over the rope as if he were doing a flying kick. Then he used his momentum to throw his body up and over. As his other leg passed over the rope he jerked it up behind him. All this happened in a flash, and he was over the rope. He had done it.<br /><br />However, sometimes great success leads to great failure. His unique jumping style had left his lead leg stretched out at a bad angle. He was so distracted with the jump that he hadn't considered his landing. This lack of consideration ended in his landing badly. In point of fact, he broke his ankle. Well, I say broke; shattered or pulverized might give you a more accurate picture. Brandyn let out a scream that might have been heard over half of Aiken (it didn't actually make the papers for some reason; perhaps it was a heavy news day...). He then collapsed into a twisting, writhing, screaming ball that needed immediate medical attention.<br /><br />Fortunately they were rather near the hospital. The entire youth group was loaded into the Church bus and they rode out to get Brandyn the help he needed. Several hours later Brandyn was put back together as best as could be with a cast the ran up his entire leg. He was expected to make a full recovery in around six months. The youth minister got in a bit of trouble because no one called anyone's parents due to the emergency. However, pity for Brandyn bought sympathy, and in the end all was forgiven.<br /><br />Now, some of you may be thinking that it's just wrong to find this funny. Well, I can't help how it seems. It was and is funny. Brandyn ended up wearing a cast on his leg for right around twelve months. He had been warned that what he was about to do was dangerous right before he got both his casts. He heedlessly pressed on, which is what he basically always did. In these two cases it turns out he should have listened to his councilors. Plus, one has to consider that in the end he was no worse for the wear. When the dust had settled, he was the same old Brandyn, and he hadn't even learned anything from it.<br /><br />We were a wild crew and loved to give each other a hard time. Brandyn was often the butt of things just because he was the loudest. The moral there may be not to draw too much attention to yourself. At least not the kind of attention that makes people think “I would love to see him get hurt. I would laugh until I cried.” Attention like that always was Brandyn's specialty.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6284561946855473712.post-60118535149743467072010-09-12T10:38:00.001-07:002010-09-12T10:38:46.034-07:00Jim's TrampolineAfter my family moved to Lake Drive, taking our trampoline with us, Jim's parents got him one. It was one of the more modern round ones that you still see around today. It wasn't covered in padding and fenced in with a net, but the metal wasn't quarter inch steel plate either, so it was a little safer than our old square one. A number of things happened on that old trampoline and I intend to share a few of them.<br /><br />Jim and I loved to trampoline fight, as you may recall from earlier stories. One of the things that Jim loved to do was to double bounce me and send me flying to outrageous heights. By this time we were ten or thereabouts so I was around four foot nothing and Jim was close to six foot three. I also weighed about half what Jim did, so when he double bounced me it was something to see.<br /><br />We had been out playing on it for I don't know how long when Jim got me with the perfect double bounce. I don't know what the mechanics behind it were, only that as far as it could be perfect it was. I shot up above the trampoline twelve to fifteen feet. (I know some of you aren't believing this and that's fine, it happened all the same.) I also shot up so fast that Jim didn't see what had happened.<br /><br />What happened next will take a while to explain, but it all happened in about three seconds. I clearly remember looking down from above and seeing Jim turn around in a circle trying to figure out where I was. He was stunned. I had simply disappeared. He called out to me.<br /><br />“Jeremy! Where are you?” He said looking this way and that.<br /><br />“Up!” I said right before I landed.<br /><br />Jim looked up and saw me, but only a moment before I landed on him. Needless to say I had no control of where I was going. I had gone up and I had to come down, but the “where” wasn't really up to me. As I was falling I could see that I was going to hit Jim, the best I could do was try not to hurt him. I decided the wisest thing would be to try and land with my feet on his shoulders. I managed to do it, just as he looked up. He had no time to react. I am certain that if I had been able to see his eyes I would have noticed some glimmer of sudden comprehension as my feet slammed down on top of his shoulders. As it happened I couldn't see his eyes and I didn't have a lot of time for making observations anyway. I knocked him down and we collapsed into a laughing heap. That was the best double bounce I ever got and I'm sure it was the best Jim ever gave.<br /><br />We enjoyed the trampoline so much that we would share it whenever we had the chance. Obviously any kids that were around were more than welcome to come have a bounce, but we didn't limit it to people. Dogs, cats and whatever other animals we could get up there with us were welcome. In fact we were so opened minded that we had a snake come up for a bounce one day.<br /><br />Jim and I found this young green snake crawling along through the grass. Being the type boys we were we immediately picked it up. It was emerald green and very small. It couldn't have been over a foot long and it was about as big around as a pencil. It had enough sense not to bother trying to bite us. It just slithered slowly through our hands trying to get away.<br /><br />“So what do you want to do with it?” Jim asked as it curled around his hand.<br /><br />“I don't know. Something.” I relied.<br /><br />“Well obviously, but what?”<br /><br />“I guess we could put it on the trampoline and give it a bounce.”<br /><br />“Great!”<br /><br />Without further debate we crawled up and started bouncing. At first we kept the little guy in our hands as we bounced around, but then we decided to let him go solo. As soon as we put him down he started to make a break for it. I suppose he figured it he could get back in the grass he would be over the hills and far away before we could do anything about it.<br /><br />As he started to head one direction we would bounce him back in another. We had to be very careful not to step on him and not to bounce him too hard. Seeing the snake trying to slither while hanging in midair was something else. He just kept moving no matter what. As soon as his body hit the mat he would be moving along. Then, before he could move a foot, he would be bouncing back in the opposite direction while still slithering with all he had.<br /><br />I'm not sure to what extent snakes think. I believe most of their actions are guided by instinct and that they do very little actual thinking. I mention this because it's hard to believe that the snake came up with a plan. However, it's equally hard to believe that it was inspired by instinct with a method to get out of the situation it was in.<br /><br />Whatever it's motivation it suddenly when limp. It bounced whichever way it was heading without putting up any resistance. We stopped bouncing and it just lay there with it's mouth slightly open. Jim and I began to speculate about the cause:<br /><br />“It can't be dead!” I said as I picked up the little guy.<br /><br />“It could be...” Jim replied as he looked it over.<br /><br />“How? We didn't touch it”<br /><br />“The shock of the bouncing could have been too much for it.”<br /><br />“I doubt it! Snakes are tough.”<br /><br />“Maybe it had a heart attack... It couldn't have been used to that kind of thing.”<br /><br />“I've never heard of a snake having a heart attack... Still, you may be right.”<br /><br />“What should we do?”<br /><br />“Let's just put it in the grass and see what happens.”<br /><br />That is just what we did. It lay there looking as dead as it could for a few minutes. Finally we decided that we would have to walk away for a little while and give it the chance to notice we weren't there. After around five minutes or so we went back to check on it. The snake was gone. I have no doubt it headed out as soon as it realized we weren't looking. I know that playing dead is a normal getting away method, but I had never seen a snake do it. I also didn't think it would have found bouncing on a trampoline a life threatening situation. Still, in that regard snakes may be wiser than people.<br /><br />This next tale should stand out as a lesson for mothers. Too many times a mother over-thinks what her children may be up to. I admit that to a certain degree a parent has to do that. Otherwise the child may cut his or her hand off before you get there in time to stop them. However, Jim's mother stumbled into one of the classic blunders. She actually took the time to tell us not to do it before we had even thought of it.<br /><br />“Boys!” She cried out as she walked out of the back door.<br /><br />“Yes Ma'am.” We replied.<br /><br />“Now you know we have the pool setup beside the trampoline?”<br /><br />“Yes Ma'am.”<br /><br />“You also know that the trampoline is setup beside the shed?”<br /><br />“Yes Ma'am.”<br /><br />“Good! Now, I don't want you two jumping off the shed onto the trampoline and then bouncing into the pool. Do you understand me?”<br /><br />“Yes Ma'am.”<br /><br />“Good!”<br /><br />Having made her point she headed back into the house.<br /><br />“So... that's a brilliant idea.” I said as soon as she was out of sight.<br /><br />“I know! I wonder how we never thought of it before.”<br /><br />“We shouldn't do it though.”<br /><br />“I know... Let's do it anyway.”<br /><br />“Yea... it's just too good.”<br /><br /><br />A few minutes later Jim's Mom came pelting out of the back door. I think the noise we were making was probably what attracted her attention. There was no way to jump off a twelve foot building onto a trampoline and into a pool quietly. She caught us right in the middle of things.<br /><br />“Boys!”<br /><br />“Yes Ma'am.”<br /><br />“Didn't I just tell you not to do that?!?!”<br /><br />“Yes Ma'am...”<br /><br />“Then why did you do it?!?!?”<br /><br />“Well, we hadn't thought of it until you mentioned it. After that the idea seemed too goo not to try....”<br /><br />It may seem hard to believe, but she actually accepted that explanation. I suppose at that moment she had learned a valuable lesson. Don't tell us not to do something that would be that much fun until she actually caught us doing it. With a short warning that we had better not do it again she headed back into the house. Jim and I never did it again. His Mom was kind of like my Dad in some regards. You might be able to get away once, but you wouldn't do it twice.<br /><br />There are several morals one could take away from these stories. First, buy your kids a trampoline, it's worth every penny. Second, don't mention things your kids shouldn't do, dangerous things aside, until you actually catch them doing it. Third, a snake isn't necessarily dead just because it's not moving and it's mouth is hanging open, so watch your back. Like so many things that happen in life there's a lesson there if you take the time to look.Console Classix - Retro Rebornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10712811284431041533noreply@blogger.com0