I remember my first week of school we had this large slide in our school room and we got to take turns sliding down it. After our lunch time we would take a nap on the special rug we brought to school. I seem to be remembering the happy things by this time. One day at recess this girl name Pamela starting throwing twigs at me. Well I wasn’t going to put up with this so I told her if she threw one more at me that I was going to kiss her. I guess she wanted a kiss because she threw another one and Wow my first kiss. That romance ended that same day. I guess now days I would have been expelled from school, that’s another whole story.
I liked school those early years but didn’t really have to many real close friends. We lived about 4 blocks from school so we almost always walked to school. We always played a baseball game at recess by choosing up sides. I was playing second base and made a bad play. This girl named Connie came over to me and was giving me an ear full. Then all of a sudden she kicked me real hard and it hit that special spot. Well you know how this story goes there I was laying on the ground moaning and groaning and was glad to here the bell ring. I managed to get myself back to class but still didn’t understand why she kicked me there, maybe she didn’t really mean to. Later she said she was sorry and we became friends. She lived just down the street from us and one day I went down to see if she wanted to go do something. I knocked on the door and her mom told me to come in and wait for her. So as I enter the room there was her mom with slacks and a bra on. She was ironing a blouse to put on and said she hoped that it didn’t bother me being half dressed. Well I was very embarrassed and tried not to look her way. I think she enjoyed making me feel bad. Connie then came out and we left to do something I can’t remember, as all I remember is her mom half dressed.
As a young boy I decided to mow lawns for the summer to earn some money to buy a bicycle. I worked hard mowing lawns up and down 5th street. I finally earned enough for this special bike. Even though it was a used bike I was proud of it. I decided to take it all apart to give it a new paint job. I went to the Western Auto store and picked out a special blue paint and worked on it for several days. I then decided to make stripes on the fenders so I masked off a design on both the front and back. Then another trip to the Western Auto to look at all the reflectors and lights I could put on it. After making that final decision home I went to install all these new gadgets. Oh yes I had to have these handle bar grips with the plastic strips hanging from them. And there it was that super bike all done and ready for that first ride. I thought I need to put some playing cards to flap on the spokes making the roaring sound as I raced down the street. Those were my super wheels and I was so proud of my handy work.
I remember as a child I loved to look on the cereal boxes for those special treasures that you could send for. After saving several box tops and sending them in it became a daily game to see if I had some mail. We also would receive these special fliers selling fireworks by mail. I guess you can’t do that anymore. I would go through them trying to figure which box lot of fireworks I wanted to buy and save my money for them. When the 4th of July finally came we would have a blast firing them off till the wee hours of the morning. We would take two cans that fit together tightly, take a nail punch a hole in the bottom, put in a firecracker fuse out the hole slide the can together light the fuse and shoot them high in the air. It also worked great to throw them in a large bucket for a louder bang.
Since I am the oldest of eight kids we didn’t have a lot of fancy toys as kids. My brothers and I decided one day to make some trucks and tanks out of blocks of wood. We used nails for the guns on the tanks. Dad had build us a big sand box and we were playing with them building roads and tunnels and running our new homemade toys on them. My brother Jim had this nice tunnel but it collapsed as he drove his truck over it. He looked over to see this nice tunnel my sister had and kind of stepped on it. She had a temper, so she grabbed one of the tanks and threw it at him. Jim ducked and it hit its mark in Dennis’s wrist. He started screaming as he looked at this tank with a nail sticking in him. I grabbed his arm and tried to pull the tank out to no avail as it was stuck into the bone. So I had to twist it out all the while he was screaming. When Mom found out what happened we had to destroy our new toys.
This brings to mind another time earlier when us kids were playing in the front yard. We had this file with a sharp point on it and Marsha was throwing it up in the air and trying to get it to stick in the ground. Well maybe we were all taking turns but anyway just as I told her to be careful here it came down and stuck in the top of her head. It’s a wonder that we survived those youthful days. I always teased my sister about not being the same after she had a file stuck in her head.
As I got older I was ready to get past a bicycle and get a motorcycle, well it was a Cushman motor scooter. I bought it used and proceeded to run all over town and getting stopped by the cops and told not to drive it in town as I didn’t have a drivers license yet. So I would run it on the dirt roads on the edge of town. Sam, down the street also had one and we decided to race. Well I ran off and left him in my dust making him to wonder why my scooter was so much faster then his. Come to fine out it had been bored out so had more horsepower. I remember my first wreck as I came around a corner a little fast I went along the curb and ran through some leaves. To my surprise there was some mud under them and down I went. As I looked over my scrapes and scratches, I up righted my scooter and went on home with a lesson learned.
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