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About me?I'm guess I was born into one of those generations that seems to be an eye witness to change. I can reach back into the dusty shelves of my memory bank and pull out stuff now only seen on the History Channel.
For instance, as a youngster who had just been transplanted from the potato fields of Idaho to Cleveland, I lived a few doors away from a blacksmith shop. I'd visit and watch the owners (twin brothers) go about repairing metal things that I'm sure today have been all melted down and are part of my Buick now. The one brother even asked once if I would like to be an apprentice some day. I should have taken him up on it, but I was too enamored by the new jet planes and a thing called an 'automatic transmission' then to pay much mind to the old ways. There were still horse and wagons going about our neighborhood. One picked up cloth and rags...He was the 'Rag man'. He'd take his old wagon pulled by an even older swaybacked horse and yell out "Rags, Rags fo' da rag man here". I guess he made a living doing that. The vegetable man had a horse and cart too. He'd be yelling, "Water melon" but He pronounced it "Waaa ta maa loooon" In kind of a song like fashion. He was an old Italian fella who didn't speak much English but still knew how to give us the 'one arm' salute when we made fun of him. My neighborhood was on a hillside. When the watermelon man made a turn, many times some fruit or even a full grown water melon would role off the cart and us kids would grab it up before he could stop.Cars didn't have air conditioning and you started them by turning the key then stepping on the starter pedal and gas at the same time. Why one of those beast could fit 19 or 104 of us kids easily in it. Two laying up in the back window and the rest crammed onto a bench seat 38 feet wide! Not a seat belt was seen back then. If the brakes were jammed on...well, we just became a kind of like superman. Those old steel dash boards were kind of unforgiving though.I graduated High school knowing how to wield a mean slide rule. Back then you had to be accomplished in Algebra, Trigonometry, Geometry, and Calculus English literature and History to graduate. E-bonics? Slap my grandma!
I fished in Lake Erie. I'd go up to Vermilion where the fishing fleet would bring in their catches of huge Lake Erie Perch. Those fleets along with their long nets stretched out in the sun to dry are now long gone. If the Perch we caught were small, less than 12 inches, we'd toss 'em back and wait until they got big before claiming them a keeper.
My fondest memory is of hanging out at the rail yards with my friends. If we were lucky, an Engineer would let us hop on board one of those coal fire breathing, steam spewing behemoths and let us ride it to the end of the yard. My God they were powerful! It's no wonder back then we thought the USA was the strongest nation in the world. Who else could build such a beast?Well, those days are long gone and now I sit typing (is it still called typing or keyboarding?) onto a laptop that is somehow connected to an mysterious ether that lets my words be read by the world. My world sure has changed a lot. From Sod buster to city fella, back to rancher then down to the Florida beaches etc etc. (Short abbreviated story here but you get the idea.) Change sure has been part of my life.One thing that hasn't changed...Humor. I still think a man slipping on a banana peel is funny! I actually saw that happen as a kid and vowed to remember it...I did. Laughter is generation to generation without change. What's funny may change, but being funny never changes. Just ask my kids...they all say I'm kind of 'funny in the head'.
Speaking of kids, I got four of them. Proud of every one of 'em too.If you visited my site here, write me and say "Hi". Let me know who you are! I think myspace is such a great place to meet people from the world over. Nice to meet all of you.
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