Dad used to bowl in a league at a  bowling alley in Davison - he was  pretty good at it,  with an average of about 200  - like Fred Flintstone, he had his own ball and  bag (unlike Fred, he did wear shoes) -  sometimes we would watch him bowl but, more  often we would roller skate at the rink  downstairs - I was never that great on roller  skates, but I did enjoy it - this was a fairly,  regular routine for awhile...

Debbie: I loved roller skating. It was like  floating to be able to go so fast and  the turns and going backwards  were great! I can still hear the  "ORGAN" music that they played.

Despite any other sexist attitudes that I may have been brought up with and the fact that my mother did do MOST of the cooking, we were all aware that dad did know how to and DID cook sometimes - he was a pretty good cook too - so neither Jerry or myself have ever believed that cooking is "Women's work"  - one of the things that he made fairly regularly was a big pot of chili - he makes great chili...

Of course this may have been the origin of the family's pet term for farting too...

Debbie: I can't ever remember liking chili when I was small. I only remember his pizzas - of which I only ate the crusts - and his macaroni and tomatoes. To this day, I can not stand stewed tomatoes!

Once we (Debbie and I) went back in the field behind Bud and Betty's house in Davison where the Flint river flowed - there was another smaller creek that emptied into this there - we decided that we would use rocks to build a dam across this creek and create a pool behind it - we worked really hard with Daryl, Boyd and Gail to build this dam - we moved a lot of rocks and then started to cover the top with chunks of sod - we also put a spill gate into the middle and we really had a nice little dam by the end of the day...

We also built a campfire while we were back there and baked apples from local trees in it - this was the first time that I had apples baked like this and they tasted pretty good - the taste was probably enhanced by the knowledge that we weren't supposed to even be building a fire,  let alone cooking in it...

Debbie: We really did have some great adventures together. Even if we weren't supposed to.

I really didn't do ANY dating in high school - I simply wasn't interested - there were a few girls that showed signs of being interested, but I never responded to any of their overtures and a girl asking a guy out just wasn't done - naturally this contributed to the speculation that I was queer - I didn't attend any high school dances or go to the prom - (and I stayed right away from anyone as the Sadie Hawkins Day dance approached)

Debbie: I always used to tell you to ask a girl out, like Neva or Sylvia, but you were too chicken! That's what I thought. I knew they liked you.

I am told that I had a big thing for Davy Crocket (along with millions of other American kids at that time) - that I had a coonskin cap and that I went around singing the Davy Crocket song all of the time - I actually don't remember this, although I do remember  watching Davy Crocket battle Indians, bears and Mike Fink,  (King of the River Pirates) on Walt Disney...and I do remember most of the words to that song... Hmmm...Davy, Davy Crocket, King of the wild frontier - born on a table top in Tennessee - killed him a bear, when he was only three...

Mom: Yes Mike, you did sing Davy Crocket all the time. If you weren't singing, you were whistling.

Davison billed it's self as The City of Flags - between flag day in June  and the fourth of July, there was an American flag on every post, building and light pole in downtown Davison - we lived in Elba which was about halfway between Davison and Lapeer (but we lived in Lapeer County so that's where we went to school),  - most of dad's relatives lived to the west of Elba and most of mom's lived to the east - I knew Davison probably as well as I knew Lapeer and I had a lot of relatives there, but my sense of geographical identity was centered in Lapeer...

Debbie: Did you know we actually lived in an apartment in Davison when we were little? (YES... Deb. I actually remember a small bit of it...) It was before Patti was born I think. I remember Mom showing me pictures of a tornado taking a big toll on the town, the year I was born, 1952. She had some old newspaper pictures and articles.

I don't ever recall seeing a live skunk anytime during my childhood - but there was always a lot of evidence of their existence in the area where we lived - many would be hit by vehicles on the roads, with the result that the immediate area was a distinctly mal-odorous section to be temporarily avoided or driven through as quickly as possible - once a skunk was hit by a train on the tracks right behind our house - the smell was horrible for days - finally one of my uncles worked up enough determination to go down there and bury it - the smell lingered for a few more days but eventually faded away... I always liked Loudin Wainwright's song "There's a Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road" (and it's stinkin to high Heaven!), but then I also liked "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer"...grandma might not appreciate that association...

The only daughter in a family with 6 brothers, Joy drowned while swimming in Houghton Lake - I was Very angry at her funeral because the preacher asked the mourners to implore God to let her into heaven because she was so young that she couldn't have had TOO many sins against her. - the relatives seemed to feel that this was ok and took some comfort from it, but I felt that ANY god who would even think about denying entry into heaven for a child, was not a god that I wanted any part of...

Aunt Karen (who was only three weeks older than I was) was killed when she was riding in a car with her boyfriend driving on the wrong side of the road (passing a car) - they crashed head on with another car and Karen was in hospital in a coma for several months - when she finally died, Grandma Running went a bit nuts for awhile - she would often be out at the grave talking to Karen (fairly normal behavior) and she began reading a lot about spiritualism - I don't know if she ever went to a seance - she also started wearing things like mini skirts and WAY too much makeup - many in the family were embarrassed by her behavior but she was still grandma as far as I was concerned... Karen used to play with us a lot when we were kids - a few months before the accident Karen had me paint silly pictures of green cartoon birds, flowers and peace signs on the car that her boyfriend was driving when they had the accident - I don't remember if he was injured in this or not...

Mom: The boyfriend was not killed in Karen's accident, but a woman was killed in the other car. The other family was from Canada on their way home from a funeral.

Deer hunting is an obsession with many of the citizens of the state of Michigan - my family on both sides, was no exception - I went on several deer hunting expeditions with my dad, but only on two where I had a hunting license and carried a gun - the first time we were hunting at a favorite family hunting site in Mio, but by the time I was able to join in these hunts, everybody and their brothers and grandmothers were hunting in the same area - when we went out, before daylight,  we positioned ourselves strung out along a wooded valley - hunting couldn't legally begin until daylight, but as soon as the sun began to rise you could hear guns going off beginning at one end of the valley and getting closer all of the time - dozens of shots apparently missed whatever deer was running through that valley - the shooting stopped before it got too close to us,  so someone apparently finally downed it...

When I went back out hunting later that day, I finally had an opportunity to take a shot at a buck (a 3 pointer) - the fact was that, although I really liked going out hunting, I really didn't want to shoot a deer (they are really beautiful animals) - I was using a .20 gauge single shot shotgun with lead slugs - when I "aimed"  at this deer,  I deliberately pointed behind it (so that it wouldn't run into the slug) - I had to actually shoot, in case anyone saw that deer anywhere near me - as it turned out I probably needn't have worried because as I squeezed the trigger and fired the shot, the wood mount under the barrel separated from the gun and the shot went flying up into the air - the gun almost hit me in the face - of course when I got back to camp, THIS was the reason that I missed - for the rest of that trip, I used my grandfather's vintage .306 rifle - this was a beautiful gun (although not as nice as dad's with the scope)

The next time that I went out with dad we were hunting around Iron Mountain in the Upper Peninsula - this time I had a .30-.30 lever action rifle that dad got for me - I had no opportunity to test my desire to actually kill a deer that year (or test my ability to hit it) as I didn't see any in the woods where we were hunting - dad got a HUGE buck that year and this was the last time that I went out deer hunting...

Like many, I watched this on TV - I was angry about the death of Robert Kennedy - I knew that my candidate (Eugene McCarthy) was not going to win the nomination of the Democratic Party for President - I wasn't too thrilled about LBJ's Vice-President (Hubert Horatio Humphrey - HHH ) getting the nomination - and of course we were all seeing the unsettling images (projected by the media) of the American flag flying over the convention center, surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by riot gear equipped troops - TV news footage clearly showed Chicago Mayor Daley's police to be over reacting - this pushed me further into radical political sympathies - I did finally wind up supporting Humphrey for President (against republican Nixon or independent Wallace - there just didn't seem to be much choice) - dad  was of the opinion that the student protestors were getting just what they deserved - he claimed to be a Nixon supporter, but often espoused many of the views of the Wallace campaign... (Nixon won...)

We went to the Detroit Zoo a few times - by today's standards, this facility would not be considered as a class act, but during our childhood, it was thought of as one of the best zoos in the world - I don't know what it looks like today - I was very impressed by the animals and my favorites for comedy were the bears eating the peanuts thrown by the onlookers - for beauty, there was nothing finer than the tigers that we saw...

Dirty  Magazines

The first time that I was ever allowed to be home alone for an extended time, I looked the house over pretty good - one of the places where I looked was in a cabinet above my father's closet - I found some very interesting magazines showing women with very few clothes on - I had never seen any pictures like these before and although they caught my eye I was sure that people were going to be coming home any minute and I put them back quickly - I actually only looked in that closet once, but it was a bit of an eye opener to know that dad had some of these things - I think they were some new magazine called Playboy or something like that...

Once when dad and I were out fishing on a lake on State Land, he hooked the ugliest looking fish that I had ever seen - I'm not sure that he knew what it was either, but he decided that it was a dogfish - he threw it back, which was a bit of a disappointment to me because I wanted others to see this thing and confirm just what it was - I usually had a lot of confidence in dad's ability to identify anything that we caught but the look on his face on this occasion gave me some room to doubt...

Debbie tells me, that about the time of her puberty, she got a vaginal infection of some kind and mom took her to see Dr. Ferris in Davison - he took one look and asked her if she played with herself - not knowing what he meant by this, she replied that sometimes she did, but usually she played with her friends - after explaining to her what he meant, this doctor then insisted that this was the only way that she would have gotten this infection -(Deb says that she didn't - then...) -  he prescribed gentian violet, which is a very deep purple color, to be swabbed on this area several times a day - when mom administered this medication, she repeatedly reminded her and admonished Deb NOT to play with herself...

Don't scratch down there either, it's rude and people will think that you're playing with yourself... and get your hands out of your pockets, people will think...............

One of my favorite jokes as a kid (one that I DID understand...):    People were always talking about Johnny jacking off - they said that he would stop that after he settled down and got married - Johnny did get married - however, soon after, Johnny was observed to be jacking off again - Johnny  was asked why he needed to do that, since he was now married? - didn't his wife take care of that for him? - Johnny replied that, she really TRIED to help, but her poor hand just kept getting too tired...      -    I didn't hear this at home of course...

Mom: By the way dear, mamas do figure out that little boys play with themselves. Mamas are so smart.

When my dad was in the Jaycees, they did a lot of fund raising activities - one of these was to make fresh, deep fried doughnuts (fried cakes) at different events - as kids, we got to help out making these sometimes - this was actually a lot of fun and the payoff in doughnuts was a real bonus...

I REALLY liked to draw a lot - and I did! - when I look back at those drawings now, I think about  just how crude they actually look - but they were the practice foundation for how I can draw today - my first painting in oil (in 10th grade) was a copy of a picture of Simon Bolivar astride a white horse rearing up dramatically - it wasn't just bad, it was UGLY! - I just couldn't seem to get the knack for using those oils - later, I tried a different style (cartooning in oils) that seemed to produce more satisfactory results - the first (a cat done mostly in reds, oranges and yellows) encouraged me to continue with the oils for a few more paintings - I really liked the one of the drunken scarecrow - I still found oils to be a frustrating medium because of the length of time that it took them to dry...

When I was introduced to acrylics and allowed to use them for the first time, I thought that I was in heaven - finally, I had discovered a paint that I could manipulate in the way that I wanted - I also enjoyed using colored pencils, but I wasn't too big on conte or charcoal - pen and ink always seemed too messy and no-one thought to introduce me to rapidograph technical pens...
 

The best painting that I did in high school was also the simplest - although I did redo it from the first version - I called this one "Biafran Child" - it was simply an outline of a crouching child on a stark reddish pale background... one of the paintings that I did after I got back from Mexico, was a long horizontal landscape in yellows and browns with a Mexican church - there was a procession of people carrying a coffin to a graveyard - this was done in a cartoon style and it sounds a bit gruesome, but it was done in a very light hearted manner and reflected the Mexican attitude of seeing death as a part of life...

Drive In movie theatres were much more common when I was a kid - the one that we went to the most was the Sunset Drive-In in Lapeer - as a kid however, my choice of drive ins would be to go wherever they had a good playground to occupy time before the movie started - the one in Lapeer was ok, but not as good as some of the ones in Flint - the best times were when we had a station wagon and we kids could curl up in the back and watch when we felt like it or sleep if we didn't want to watch the movie - (NO, we never snuck anybody in by putting them in the trunk) -  I don't think that they have changed some of those intermission "Let's all go to the snack bar!" shorts since before we were kids - sometimes we would go to an indoor theatre, but usually it was the whole family packed into the car (often with us already dressed in pajamas) going to a drive-in...

The first indoor movie theatre that I went to by myself, was in Davison and I saw "The Alamo" with good old John Wayne - (this movie was released in 1960 so I would have been 9 years old)

I went to a movie theatre in Norfolk, Virginia (when I was staying with Aunt Lil...) and had one of the few experiences of Deja Vu in my life - I really felt as if I had been in THAT theatre before (not just one like it, but THAT actual theatre, which was impossible of course)  - no video rentals in those stone age times...

Mr. Peterson (my American History teacher) was also one of my Driver's Training instructors (the other was Mr. DeCou)  - this course was offered by the high school each summer - I got through the training ok, although I did gain a temporary nickname of Lead foot (I tended to start out a bit too fast on occasion)

While I was taking this course mom and dad and the kids were on a camper trip up around Port Huron - I couldn't go because I needed to complete the course, so I stayed overnight with my aunt Barb and uncle Dennis - I finished the course but my parents weren't going to be back for another day -  that Friday night we went to visit another one of my uncles' families (Bump & Dolores & kids), where we stayed up really late playing games (mostly Risk) - we got back to Barb's and Dennis' house late and I slept on the couch - however they got back up relatively early and suggested that I go sleep in their bed upstairs, if I still wanted more sleep - this sounded like a good suggestion to me - when I finally woke up and started down the stairs, some of Dennis' relatives were just coming in the door - my hair was all mussed up and I probably yawned, but it was fairly obvious that I had just woke up - I later learned that these people were going around saying that I had been "sleeping"  with Barb and Dennis - this was a big scandal among his side of the family - when I heard about it , I just laughed and said "not likely"... so obtaining (and renewing) my driver's license often makes me think of that incident...

I did get my driver's license and when dad found out he wanted me to take him out for a drive - we drove to Hadley where he suggested that I pull in to get gas - he told me that I wasn't getting close enough to the pumps, so I adjusted my angle to pull up beside them - because of this, I scraped the side of the car along the concrete pedestal supporting the pump - oh well, so much for impressing dad on our first drive out together with me behind the wheel...
Getting my license did give me a lot of freedom to roam all over the county (regular leaded gas only cost about 18 cents per gallon at the time) - I often drove back into state land on roads (trails) where I had no business going (especially alone), but I always managed to get unstuck or make my way through some pretty rough areas...

One of the ways many of us learned the correct way to turn the wheel of a car when skidding on ice,  was to go out on a frozen lake and practice - there was plenty of room and as long as you were sure the lake had a few FEET thick of ice then everything was great - well, you did have to worry a bit about the ice shanties and all of those silly ice fishermen, but hey! - they COULD see you coming from a long ways away!

Community landfills were always very fascinating to me - despite the smell, which was pretty bad and distinctive, these were always enjoyable outings - I was very interested in what other people were throwing away - sometimes dad would find something that he figured that he could use at home - the dump in Elba was filling a small swamp pond area next to the railroad tracks - (turn right by the "Dead Horse Inn" and head towards the railroad tracks...) -  the one in Metamora was filling a large gully area - sometimes dad would take his .22 to the dump and shoot rats for target practice...