Chief Logan State Park

I just posted a video that somebody posted on youtube from Chief Logan State Park. I grew up a couple of miles from the park and I spent a substantial portion of my time there so I thought I would do a blog or two or three...

It was always a great treat to go to the park of course. We had all of our family reunions there and still do to this day. We always had a ball, whether it was just me and Billy and Rhonda or we added in assorted friends and cousins. The big lure was the creek. Every visit would start out with our mothers telling us to stay out of the creek. Our job was to spend the day wearing them down until they finally relented and allowed us to play in the creek or if worse came to worse we would play far enough away that we would just get in the creek anyway.

If we had to sneak into the creek we always had the best intentions of staying dry. Invariably we would slip on one of the mossy rocks that we had to overturn to find the salamanders or crawdads or just get wet doing what kids do in general while wading around. If we had to sneak then we would have to stay gone until we actually dried off because the whippin' for being late was not as bad as the whippin' for being wet. I also learned that there was a time that our clothes looked dry and we could go back as long as we avoided hugs for aunts and grandparents who would exclaim, "why child, you're soaking wet. How did that happen?" Sometimes the excuse, "I accidentally fell in the creek," would work - sometimes it wouldn't.

The other kids were braver than I was when it came to the squirmy creatures that we tried to catch. They would just pick them up and put them in the cup. I always had to have 2 cups so I could trap them. We hardly ever saw a snake which of course was our mom's perennial warning everytime we went anywhere, "Watch for snakes!" One time I saw a world record sized crawdad. It was the size of a small lobster! It was at least 8 inches long and it was surrounded by at least 100 babies. It was truely one of natures marvels. It kept me out of the creek for the rest of the day.

Building dams was our favorite pasttime. Usually they didn't amount to much. But every now and then (usually with the help of our teenage uncles) we would build an engineering marvel that didn't allow as much water to seep through all the cracks as it held back. Then we could lie back in our cool pools of bliss and take it easy. Usually it would take hours to build those dams and we would have to go home shortly after they were done.

One of the greatest days ever was the day my mom took my cousins and us and dropped us off for the day. We followed every inch of every mile of every creek in that park. This was somewhere between 3 to five miles of creek. By the time she picked us up we were so dirty that she wouldn't allow us to ride in the car. We rode home in the trunk! Before you guys start screaming, "child abuse", please realize this was in the 70's when people did things like that. The trunk was open and we laughed and played all the way back to the house. It was great.

First Do Gooder Announcement for 2010

Ever since Thanksgiving Fruth Pharmacy has been giving me food to give out in our building almost everytime I go to work. The stuff is newly outdated or damaged in shipping and could not be sold and they would just throw it away anyway. I always check for signs of food poisoning because some of the people I give it to are not able to look for such things. (for example I had them throw away about 10 jars of mayonaise they were going to give me).

It is nice that my bosses care enough to make a difference and it is not costing anyone a penny.

Thanks to Maggie for giving me the crochet footies. I gave them to a woman with cerebral palsy who is confined to a wheelchair. Even though the footies were sized for children they fit Dianna perfectly and her apartment is always cold.

Thank You Kay for my Swahili Lessons

You can say: ndio, nime maliza - yes I have finished baado, kidogo ime bakiya - not yet, some is still left :P Asante sana...squashed banana lol just a line from the Lion King animation ume maliza ku nunua vitu va krismasi? Have you finished ur Christmas shopping? Asante sana ;) karibu - welcome tafadali - please :D how's ur book coming along? Jambo jambo. Shikamo? (you say marahaba) ;)

My Sugar Curl

My mom is still proud of my sugar curl. That is my curl on top of my head. She made it out of real sugar.

I think I offended her one time when I asked her if bugs would swarm my head.

On the back of the picture it says, "please send this one back".

She didn't have a lot of money so she would send the family my picture so they could see it and when they sent it back , she would send it to somebody else.

She got this particular picture back about 6 months ago. I am 46 years old. It took my aunt 45 years to return it.

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A Shock to the System

When I was little my mom says I stuck a barette in the electric outlet.

The electric shock was so fierce that I was thrown across the room.

After that I wouldn't even go into the room. We had one of those houses that had the 4 doorways in the center and you could step into any room or walk around. She said that I would always walk around after that. no matter what room I started in.

If I saw an electric outlet anywhere I would say, "BITES!"

Awful Knawful!

Awful Knawful was my brother, Billy's, nickname. It was a play on Evel Knievel. Billy was as awesome on a bicycle as Evel Kneivel was on a motorcycle. He did stunts that others have just started doing in the last 5 to 10 years or so and they are using modern day bicycles that are built much better than the old "banana seat specials" that we used to have in the 70's.

Billy was always building ramps both big and small. There was NEVER a neighborhood contest that he didn't win. He could outdo anybody on a bike. Probably his greatest stunt was he would sail out over the riverbank. It was easily over 50 feet horizontally from the top of the bank out to the river and there was about a 50 foot vertical drop as well! There was about a 25 or 30 foot drop to the first bank that was about 10 foot wide and then there was a dropoff again to the river. He would consistently sail out over the bank and slide his bike sideways down the second bank stopping right beside the river without ever getting his tires wet!

Others tried. All failed. Most would just kind of flip over the side of the first bank which resulted in a nasty head over bike roll to the first bank. Even more painful would be the flying out and landing solid on the first bank. (a true ballbuster move which brought chortles of glee from all who watched). The few who did manage to land exactly on the bank like Billy (he was the gold standard after all) would invariably careen into the river and then we had the tedious task of digging their bikes out of the sucking river mud. (these rescues had to be conducted in secrecy because we weren't allowed over the river bank afterall).

Anyway Long Live Awful Knawful!

I was a Centipede Wizard!

When I was a teenager, I was a Centipede Wizard! Centipede was a video game like PacMan only much more fast paced.

People use to pay me to play. Sometimes the game room owners would unplug the machine. I could play for up to 45 minutes on one quarter.

If I saw a new machine , I would play 3 times. The top 3 scores were permanent. Someone had to beat you to take off your name. The only person in the state who could beat me lived in Charleston.

I found a machine after not playing for 20 years.

I still set the high score!