I grew up in the Apollo era. That was the era in which Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Neil traveled there on the top of an explosives laden cylinder called the Saturn V rocket. According to wikipedia, the main engine churned out the equivalent power of 85 Hoover dams, albeit for just as long […]
There is this inherent gap in the summer. It is when summer comes to an end, the days get shorter, and then we hit the friggin’ “Fall Back” wall of death that suddenly causes it to get dark at 5 PM. Little kids can no longer play baseball; basketball season has not started; and football
If you travel down the main arterial that goes through my home town, you would think that it has always been a thriving metropolis, of sorts. It looks like any other little suburb with a shopping mall and eleventy four different varieties of fast food, hair salons, clothing stores, and the like. Long before there was a
Now back when I was a kid, there weren’t no such thing as a hair stylist. We only had barbers, educated in barber school, wielding sharp pointy scissors and straight edge razors. Years later, a strange fellow with the mysterious monicker of “Mr G” would arrive on the scene and forever change the state of
The Barber of De Village Read More »
OK, it is time to fess up. I realize it has been approximately fifty five years from that fateful day, but I feel a great need to get it all off of my chest. Officer, I don’t know why I did it! I just had this crazy mad need for famosity and prizes. It all
I Can Do That Blindfolded Read More »
The only pizza place in town was a little take out joint called Gloria’s Pizza. The pizza that was produced here was to be the standard by which all other pizzas would be judged. It was the benchmark, baseline, and foundation against which all future pizza makers would be compared. My memory is not perfect,
I don’t see anyone flying them anymore, kites that is. The most probable reason is that we are all obsessed with sitting around on our fat arses, living vicarious lives on sundry electronic gadgets. You may doubt my conclusions, so let us assess the data. From 1940 to about 1980 there were around ten or
Go Fly a Kite, Would Ya? Read More »
Nothing is more traumatic for a kid than losing a pet that he loved. I will herein attempt to recount just such an event in the creator’s life, with a few side trails down the path of psychoanalyzing the American teenager’s brain pan. This is the story of a black and brown mongrel mutt that
The Short and Eventful Life of Scamp Read More »
Back in the 70’s, kids were allowed to engage in all sorts of pyrotechnical activities with no supervision and with little or no repercussion. We could walk into any hobby store and buy Estes rocket engines, various flammable liquids, dynamite fuse, and Testors glue. No one asked us if we were 18 or 21. No
Now I am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds Read More »
A cool nickname! That’s what we all wanted. In my neighborhood, we had Stringbean, The Big Shoe, King Phlegm, Ollie, The Great Luigi, Melvin, Duck, Monty, Punkinhead, and Booger Flansberg. There were probably many more, but my memory ain’t what it used to be. In this installment, I shall recount the eventful life of one
The Ballad of Booger Flansberg Read More »
