School Times

 First day of 9th grade

When I was in the 4th grade I was friends with this kid who was pretty strong. I was a skinny weakling so he was one of my bodyguards. Well one day he wanted to beat this one kid up so he told me to start something up with that kid. The kid started to push me around then my friend came in and saved me and got the added pleasure of taking care of a kid he didnt like. A teacher saw the fight and asked me what happened. I told the teacher this kid started pushing on me and my friend saved me. The teacher told my friend "What a nice friend you are to help Jim out!"

Funny Little Stories

Back in the mid 60s my Dad went to the local grocery store to buy some steaks to celebrate his new job. He cooked them on the grill and made them medium-rare the way we all liked them. Well as we started to eat our steaks they seemed to be kinda chewy. It took 5 minutes to eat 1 tiny piece. My dad got some cardboard and a nail and hammered up a sign on a tree in our back yard facing the road. The sign said " This Grocery store's steaks taste like Shoe Leather". I wish I had gotten a pic of that sign!        
I'll never forget the time me and 2 friends "found" a bag of oreo cookies, some cigars and a Penthouse magazine at a gas station. 1 friend went back to talk to the mechanic while we did our "finding". This was the great summer of 1966 and it was time to build our fort. We found this huge grapevine bush and gutted it out and proceeded to drink pepsi , eat oreos, "read" our magazine and then smoke cigars for dessert. We had a blast.
One winter when I was around 9 years old I found this cacoon so I brought it in the basement. Well i had no idea the warm house would make my cacoon think it was spring time , but around late Feb I heard my mom scream. She said she saw a bat in the basement so I went down to look. What I saw was a beautiful huge Cecropia Moth. It must have had an 8 inch wingspan. The sad thing is she made me set it free outside so it probably froze to death. To bad I didn't get a pic of it.
One morning  my brother Brad and 2 sisters, Mindy and Missy, were having breakfast in our downstairs kitchen by the lake. It was a school morning and it was sprinkling out. As we ate we happened to see this big old fat toad on the sidewalk and he was eyeing this green caterpiller. His tongue shot out and grabbed that caterpillar and he swallowed it as his eyes tightly shut. I ran out to grab the toad by Momio said "Leave it alone you will give him an upset stomach and go catch the Bus instead."
Growing up as a teen we had a siamese cat named "Mai-Ling" It was a very well behaved animal, always kept himself clean but hated to be held over 15 seconds and only 5 seconds upside down. Mai-Ling was a prolific hunter and he liked to show off his "trophies" by placing them in front of the back door. I have seen dead birds,mice,moles,chipmonks, even baby rabbits laid upon our back door while Mai-Ling basks in his glory. He was very proud of his booty. One day I was watching him stare at a sandstone wall. There are lots of little holes in this wall where chipmonks have made tunnels. A chipmonk started to come out a hole, then he saw Mai-Ling but instead of running was petrified with fear. This cat had some kind of hypnotic power that could freeze many animals in their tracks. Well that chipmonk could not move and Mai-Ling just bit on to the back of his neck and just carried him off. What a fun day to be a cat! One time Mai-Ling was staring at the sandstone wall and I snuck up behind him and put my hands on his sides. Boy he jumped straight up in the air about 4 feet. That was pretty cool. I guess his legs were so tense so to be able to jump at a moments notice. This cat loved to be warm, if it was wintertime he always had to be on something warm, the stove, the TV or if they both were off, on your lap. This cat did not feel comfortable untill it was 95F out. Siamese cats are from Egypt so this may explain his Love of Heat. As he cleaned himself he would put one back leg straight up in the air. My Mom would say "He's got his Flagpole up".
Every spring we had a wooden dock that we set out on Gilletts Lake. It had about 7 or 8 sections depending on how old or rotten each section was. If 2 were real bad my dad would get some wood sections and we could hammer a dock section together. These dock sections had lead pipes that help them up and steel S-Hooks that went one end under the dock and the other end inside the empty pipe. Well all winter this dock has been stacked on the sidewalk and the pipes set under the dock sections. In the spring my brother Brad and my dad, Dadio take a section of dock and float it in the water then we set it on the wall where it will rest. The next step is lining up 2 lead pipes next to each side of the other end of dock section leaving space at the end for the next 2 pipes. Brad holds the dock up while I hold the pipe and Dadio pounds it with a sledgehammer into the sand [sometimes muck]. As he pounds this lead pipe, pieces of lead come flying off on my hands and can sting. I even have been cut a few times but that's alright, I was more worried about Dadio missing the pipe and breaking my arm :-] He never did miss . As he pounds these pipes in, serveral sized spiders will come crawling out of the pipe, being upset over having been disturbed from such a nice spring nap. I suppose the loud clanging of the sledgehammer on the pipe and the hard vibration doesnt help much either. One year Dadio was pounding a pipe into the water and a little toad popped out from the pipe, jumped off and swam towards shore. Its weird, all animals I saw that fall in the water always seem to know which way the sore is.As you can guess, this one chore was not the most pleasurable one. In fact Id saying putting in the dock was the worst chore next to taking out the dock. I'd say taking out the dock is a tiny bit easier due to not having to pound the pipes in. I just had to pull them out but some were stuck in the mud and muck a lot harder than others. Overall taking out the dock took less time. Then 2nd worst is cleaning the eaves which was very dangerous since Dadio used this old wooden ladder that was long and was very wobbly. I had to climb up 3 stories high on the front of the house while Dadio held the ladder. There's no way Dadio would climb while I held because if he fell I'd be crushed and I think I had better chances if he tried to catch me. The best time to clean the eaves was during a dry spell because wet leaves are heavy and the water can be pretty cold. Lots of spiders like to live up there also and worms plus a few other nasty bugs I never really tried to catagorize.The 3rd worst chore was raking leaves because our yard was so huge. I would rake up lots of small piles cause it seemed I was getting done faster but believe me, it doesnt help. What did help was when the entire family was out there raking and sharing in carrying the tarp, which eased the boredom, especially with our jokes and recollections on acheiving World Peace. Another nice benefit was Momio was cooking up a fantastic dinner and would bring out hot chocolate for us all to keep warm with. Maybe I should move this chore down to 4th worst.the 4th worst chore was shoveling snow. We had 2 driveways and sidewalks going all around the house. Even with 2 inches of snow it would take me an hour or more to clear it all off. One year we had a big snowfall and this guy asked me if he could shovel the long driveway with his truck for a discounted rate of $10. I was working then as a teen so I said "sure I got $10". What I didnt know was when the snow melted, it showed where his blade had scraped all the grass off near the driveway. Dadio was furious but didn't punished me. I suspected he actually liked the idea of spreading seed and straw because he loved yardwork. It was his challenge to see if he could get that destroyed section looking exactly like the rest of the yard. I learned never to let a plow on our driveways.The 5th worst chore was mowing the lawn though I kinda liked it, it just took time away from my turtle hunting or water skiing.My 6th  worst chore was actually fun. Burning the trash has its benefits. The burning barrel was behind the garage so no one could see me smoking the cigarette butts Momio and Dadio threw away. 

Mail Chess the Old Way

In this segment I will  attempt to put my readers inside the mind of the old style Correspondence Potal Chess tournaments. I tried a beginners section but I dont recommend any beginners postal tournament due to the number of people who dropout and lose interest. I dropped out because all my opponents dropped out =B-] So its best to start right off in a decent qualifying tourny of serious players if you want to get any kind of competition. My favorite amount of games was 3 sections of 6 players. 18 games in total. I realize that todays computer postal tournaments use email which is very fast, but im my days we used the old mail system which is 30 days of reflection time [the day after you recieve the move till the day your reply is postmarked] so about 3 days to make each move on average. You can take 20 days on 1 move but then you only got 10 days on the next 9 moves. If you go over 30 days in a 10 move series, you lose on time. You can even take 30 days Excused time off for vacations or sickness. Some of my games have taken longer than 2 years to complete. I heard there was a postal match between Havard and Yale where they made 1 move per year. Now that's a deep long correspondence game :-] What I love about Correspondence Chess is you can really get super deep into the positions on the board. Many games I would try 5 or 10 different variations, going up to 20 moves or more deep. It was a blast finding a forced win in many of my games as well as squirming out of lost games with a win or a satisfying draw. One opponent I had claimed he never made the move 4Nf3 and said he did the move 4d4. Well I had to mail all my postcards to the Tourney Director to force him to make his 4th move Nf3. This cost me postage money as well as 6 weeks lost time but the TD did penalize him by taking some of his reflection time away and I did win that game. I bore down on that game trying to find the most killing move as it made me upset he would lie about his move when it was clearly marked Nf3. he was the only guy I really had any problem with besides a few that just stopped sending moves but that was ok as I automatically won on time. I played many opponents from different countries and we would occasionally chat about our cutlures and lifestyles and even prices of things. The first card they will say "Nice to meet you" or "Good luck in our game". this one guy says "I'm 46 a Bank Trust Manager and an Artist". Playing 18 games at once can get a bit hectic if many cards come in the mailbox at once. I once recieved 12 cards in 1 day. I try to send out any cards with "forced" moves [moves that must be done or are the best move and easy to see] right away, then I decide which games I can study next. With so many games I even studied at restaurants while eating. I have this small flat pocket set I carried around. I studied while visiting my family and at the mall and at various other places. I even studied my games while at work. Most of the games I could set up by memory. My complete postal record is 101W - 18L - 30D My Rating is 2094. Maybe some day I'll start up postal again but it wont be the same now that it's email.

Turtle Adventures on Gilletts Lake

When I was 8 years old my family moved from the city out to a lake  in early May. It was an average sized lake about a mile across and it had a smaller bay atattched to it. My first day at our new home was pretty exciting for a little kid. The first time I looked down at the seawall by shore [it was a cement wall] I saw thousands of mayfly larvae's swimming along the bottom of the wall. Well about 2 weeks later millions of Mayflys were covering out lawn and the birds were trying to stuff as many as they could in their beaks. It was a wild sight. Summer finally came and I got to try out our rowboat. This thing was long and made of pure steel and it was heavy, but i did my best to row it. I decided to go over by the west end of the lake where lots of lilypads were. As I was rowing I noticed what looked like sticks in the water but all the sudden the sticks would go under so i knew it was something alive. I went closer to shore and saw all these beautiful weeds and bushes. These birds with red patches on their wings would swoop down at me cause I guess I was getting too close to their nests. I even saw water snakes crawling along the bushes, I felt like I was on "Wild Kingdom of Omaha". I tried to catch a few turtles but I couldn't grab them fast enough. I was out too far and too deep where it was too open. Soon I learned it was easier to go near shore where all the weeds were thick. I'd row really slow and when I saw a turtle head, I'd slow more and drift as close to the head as I could. When it went down I slowly moves some weeds out of the way and sure enough, that turtle was usually just waiting there so I grabbed him really fast by his shell. Luckily for me snappers were hard to catch or I'd learn a painful lesson. They are mean even as babies. I caught a few baby snappers and when you touch their snout with your finger they bite fast, but its funny cause they are too small to hurt. I just pry their jaw open and take my finger away. My record for most turtles in one day is 16. My biggest turtle was a big old Snapper. I saw some weeds moving so I rowed my boat over to investigate and this huge snapping turtle was tangled up in these weeds. I just grabbed him by his tail and put him in the front of the rowboat. On the way home he started to come near me hissing so I took 1 oar off the hitch and pushed him back to the front. When I got home I rolled him on his back and hundreds of bloodsuckers were in his armpits. So I asked mom for some salt and I poured it on the bloodsuckers and I watched those guys fall off like crazy. I felt as if I saved that turtle's life that day. I was only 12. I like how their tails have ridges on top like an alligator or a dragons tail. Some turtles I have caught have legs missing or a piece of their shell missing from being hit by a propellor but they seem to go on and live despite their handicaps. Some turtles also have moss growing on their shells due to not sunning themselves enough. Most turtles like sunning themselves because it kills little mites and bugs which can cause itching. Also, I thought the turtles with the long fingernails were the females [hey I was only a kid and thinking of how human women like long fingernails] Actually the plastron [belly shell] is concave on males and convex on females. Also the males tails will be fatter and longer than females. The long fingernails are more likely to be males, the long claws attract the females and I guess can be used to get a better grip.                                                                                                                                             I also had quite a blast raising baby turtles during the summer. My first "Turtlearium" was a big round white old mixing bowl from my
Mom's kitchen. In later years I used a 50 gal aquarium. I used our well water because the lake water and too many little organisms that my Mom was afraid might get loose in the house. I had a few tanning rocks for the turtles which were usually about a quarter or 50 cent piece  in size. Painted turtles, Miss Map turtles, leatherbacks, snappers and musk turtles made up the yearly summer assortment. I fed them worms that I chopped up. Afraid they might choke, but their front claws were pretty good at tearing the worm into smaller pieces. They also liked lettuce and flies I caught from the window. After a few weeks I noticed their shells getting dull looking, then all the sudden sections of their shells were falling off and underneath was a shiny bright new shell. It seems they were growing and had to moult their old smaller shell off to make room for their new bigger shell. They grew bigger in a summer I could tell. Every morning when I came down to see them, they would be sunning themselves on the rocks with their necks and legs sticking all the way out. One summer I was allowed to keep full sized turtles in this huge galvanized tub I put in the basement. I kept 7 turtles in there. One named after each member of the family plus grandma. One reason why fall was such a sad time was I had to let my turtles go so they could hibernate. I didnt mind too much, knowing I would catch more next summer!