Many of the roads where I traveled on  my bike were gravel - one of them had a fairly steep slope and as I went to ride down this,  one of my friends jumped onto the back of the bike to get a ride on the back fender - I didn't know that he was going to do this and lost control of the bike - he managed to jump back off but I went end over end with the bike and slid face first into the gravel - I think I was picking stones out of my face for the next week - (of course this helped to shape my ruggedly handsome (ha ha ) visage) - I have one small scar remaining  from this  just above my eyebrow -  I missed cub scouts that night...

I really hated it when mom would wash my face - it wasn't so bad when I was in the bathtub, because at least the washcloth was clean - what I really didn't like, was when she just HAD to wash my face as we were going out the door somewhere - usually that meant her grabbing a wet dishrag from the sink, "rinsing" it and then wiping my face with this slimy, foul smelling thing - UGH!

 Hey Mom! If there was ever a time when I felt REALLY abused, well, this would probably be it... I understand that this is a fairly common complaint among children and I'll bet that I have done it to my own kids - let's start an education movement to stop THIS cycle of abuse NOW,  before it continues into more generations... NO MORE DISH RAG FACE WIPES!

Mom: Dishwashers have taken care of the dishrag dear.When you were a baby, I polished your little white shoes every day and you were in the tub (your own) every day and I always washed all your toys in the washing machine and scrubbed everything that touched you. By the time that I had the last of you four, I was so tired, I was lucky if shoes were polished once a week. But God, you kids went to school clean (not like I did).

In the woods far back of the fields near our house in Metamora, we found a "magical"  fairy ring of mushrooms - the ring was about 20 feet in diameter and the mushrooms were anywhere from tiny, up to about 8 or 9 inches across the tops of the caps - I took a picture of it, but it was in black and white and it is difficult to see the mushrooms in that picture with all of the tall grass - we also found an old rusting model-T truck (?)  in the fields near the fairy ring that day - it was good fun to play in it for awhile -

I didn't see another mushroom fairy ring until we lived in Tswassen in Canada, but that one was much smaller (only about 5 feet across) and the mushrooms were all smaller as well...

When we were still small and living in Elba, mom discovered an eagerly awaited cheque in the mail - wanting to surprise dad, she prepared an upside down baking pan and covered it in white cake frosting - she put the cheque on a plate and then covered it with this fake cake - we all thought this was a great joke when dad tried to cut, unsuccessfully, into the cake...  (Mom also did make an excellent pineapple upside down cake from time to time - my favorite cake was NOT Devil's food cake - it was Angel's food cake...)

My dad had a full set of false teeth by the  time he was 35 - seeing him with them out  didn't make him look any older, but it did  make his face look awfully funny - once  mom fell and chipped her front teeth -  before they could cap them they filed them  down to pegs - for a few days, it looked like  my mom was a vampire - not that many  saw them that way because she would  hardly open her mouth during that time - I  almost never went to see a dentist - I had a  badly decayed tooth pulled when I was in Virginia with Aunt Lil, but since that time I have needed very little in the way of dental work - I've made it 10 years past when dad had to have his teeth pulled and I would just as soon keep my own for awhile - my current dentist yells at me for not taking good care of them, but admits that for some reason, my teeth are in better shape than most people half my age...

This was after my own trip because now they had adopted two more kids (Billy and Diane) - Dad drove the camper from Michigan, through Ohio, into Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland, we visited Washington DC and went through part of the capitol building, I took pictures of us climbing around on the statues - Washington DC is a beautiful city but it still has a lot of slum areas - we went crabbing when in Virginia using chicken backs / necks for bait. - Swimming at Virginia Beach in the Atlantic Ocean was where we saw our first jellyfish - swimming in the salt water surf was a lot of fun, but very different from swimming in the lakes back in Michigan - we visited several Civil War battlefield sites...

Movies:  The Music Man (with Robert Preston)
  The Bridge Over the River Kwai (mostly because of the whistling...)
  The Wizard of OZ

TV:  Too many, but probably, The Addams Family, The Beverly Hillbillies, Outer Limits

Actor:  Vic Morrow (Combat) - John Astin (Gomez - The Addams Family)

Actress: Agnes Moorhead (Bewitched) -   Irene Ryan (Granny - the Beverly Hillbillies)

Author: Robert Heinlein

Food:  Hamburgers and Grandma Running's battered shrimp

Drink:  COLD chocolate milk (Quick was acceptable, but Ovaltine was better)

Activities: Playing in the woods and fields / reading / drawing / playing with   (I mean BY) myself...

Music: Simon and Garfunkel

Mom: In the movie "A Christmas Story", which I love, are almost identical clothes that you kids used to wear.

 In the movie "Butterflies are Free", I think of Debbie and the things they always wore.

 The TV movie " Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring" always made me cry and hurt so bad because in the 70's my babies were all going away, I was losing all of them to drugs and everything. I truly hated the 70's. I think I still do.

When we were little kids we didn't ever shit, crap, excrete or take a dump - we made " Fishies " (feces) - sometimes we made big fishies and sometimes small but we always made sure to flush them - at least after we got the indoor plumbing installed - I can remember how damn cold it was to have to go outside to the outhouse to take a shit and there was no light in there at night either -flashlights helped but sometimes they just made it spookier - I believe that the plumbing got installed rather quickly, but our house in Elba started with an outhouse and we had an outside water pump from a well drilled by grandpa Skellenger...

Often we would simply use the signal system that we learned in elementary school - signaling to go number one (piss) or number two (shit)

Blue Gill, Sunfish, Bass, Perch, Pike, Bullheads, Carp, Suckers, Minnows, - fishing is probably an even bigger obsession with many of the residents of Michigan than hunting is... - we spent a lot of time fishing on the different lakes and ponds in the area, from the banks of streams and rivers and once dad took me out onto Lake Huron to go perch fishing - one time dad showed me how to wade in the weeds along the shore and go bow fishing - I learned how the position of the fish was actually different from what we saw due to the refraction of the water - we fished in the daylight, morning, twilight and at night - we fished in spring, summer, fall and ice fished in the winter - we fished with bamboo cane poles, rod and reel and with casting rods - I liked fishing, but I didn't like cleaning fish (it wasn't the "blood" and guts, it was those damn scales that got all over the place and felt so yucky on your hands - or even worse, on your face...)

I didn't really care for eating fish either - the taste was ok, but there were too many bones (give me beef or venison any day, thank you!) - dad had an aluminum row boat that we carried to the lakes on top of the car - the whole family enjoyed fishing but I don't think anyone loved it as much as Jerry did - he could sit out fishing for hours and seemed happiest when he was doing this activity...

I can remember watching the adults placing this small fish on Deb's hook while she was sleeping, waking her up and seeing her excited face as she found that she had actually caught a fish.

Flags 

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands - one nation under god - with liberty and justice for all... (recited just about every morning throughout elementary school - usually with a recitation of the Lord's Prayer)
or
Prometo fidelidad a la bandera de los Estados Unidos y a la republica que simboliza - uno nacion abajo de dios - con libertad y justicia para todos... (learned in Spanish class)

I have always liked flags and while I was in school I could identify just about any national flag in the world as well as most state flags and some flags of the various agencies or branches of world governments - (with so many changes to flags in Africa, Asia and the south Pacific, I can no longer do this ) - the colors were attractive even before I learned to read and I spent a lot of time studying this section in our encyclopedia and dictionary - I learned to fold the American flag correctly in elementary school during the daily flag raising and lowering ceremonies - (never to let it touch the ground) and I learned many of the rules of flag protocol - my rooms were always decorated with various flags as well as pictures and drawings of flags - my favorite flag was the Confederate flag - ( now it's the Jolly Roger...) - we patriotically flew an American flag from a pole at our houses in Metamora and on Lake Metamora...

One morning in Elba, mom was fixing some breakfast when Debbie came into the kitchen in her new dress that mom had made for her - she stood on a chair and leaned over the stove to get some cereal out of the cupboard above the stove - as she did so, the hem of her dress caught on fire and the flame was quickly consuming the material - someone  screamed and mom knocked her to the floor, rolling her over and over while beating at the flames - she did put the fire out before any serious damage could occur (although, I believe that she did lose a bit of hair from this experience ) - Debbie says that, at the time, she didn't know she was on fire and couldn't figure out why mom was knocking her down and beating on her like this - the image of Deb in flames has stayed with me for a long time...

Flint was the nearest "big" city - 20 miles west of Elba - this is where dad worked for General Motors - the life blood of the town is the auto manufacturing industry and autos were ultimately what caused the spread of strip malls that decimated the downtown business section - Flint seemed to be predominantly populated by black people and this was strange territory for me - it was always exciting when we would shop there,  just because it was so different...

(As we got older, this became pretty ordinary, but it still had something that our own community lacked - namely: a McDonalds - at the time, they only sold hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, pop and shakes - no Big Macs or even quarter pounders - pretty primitive, eh!)

The city  was named Flint because of the stone that once was found there in abundance - the Flint river flowed through it and through much of Lapeer County and others  as well -

My dad built a floating dock that we anchored out about 25 - 30 feet from shore at our house on Lake Metamora - I spent a lot of time laying out on that dock in the sun and this is probably about the only year of my life when I had a really good tan - my racoon Bandit would sometimes swim out (he needed to be helped aboard) and would lay there in the sun with me. Even more than swimming in the daytime however, I liked to go out swimming at night and remove my swimsuit and hang it up under this float so that it wasn't apparent that I had taken it off - I liked swimming naked in the moonlight (or starlight), but wanted to make sure that my swimsuit was available to put back on before I got out of the water...

The only real problem with swimming naked, was that this manmade lake had been stocked with many thousands of hungry small fish and they would sometimes try to nibble on you - this didn't hurt in any way, but it could be a very startling sensation, especially when swimming in the nude...

Just like "fishies", our family did NOT fart, break wind, cut the cheese or pass gas - we made floopers - I don't know  where, how or who started this and as a Small kid this may have been cute, but by the time I was a teenager, it was a bit embarrassing to have this referred to as a "flooper" around any of my friends - incidently, our family DID puke, vomit, throw up and belch - we WERE in sync with the rest of society on at least some things...

Debbie says that once we all got a spanking because dad came back out to the car in the Sears parking lot (where we were waiting) and asked who had made a flooper? - when none of us would own up to it, we all got the spanking - Debbie claims that she didn't do it - Me? - I really don't know...

Our house in Elba had a set of stairs that folded down so that we could reach our bedrooms on the second floor - this seemed like a very practical arrangement to me - sometimes we would get out of bed, lay down at the top and listen in down below - Aunt Marie and Uncle Paul had a set of these too, but theirs only went up to their attic...

Oh say! Can you see?.... - I always enjoyed the fireworks displays on the 4th of July - by the dawn's early light ... - usually we went to Davison or Lapeer somewhere to view these, but I can't remember where - what so proudly we hailed ...-  there were parades in the various towns and sometimes we would watch these as well... at the twilight's last gleaming... -  once my dad and uncles had a few firecrackers, one of the things that they did with these, was to put a lit one down the barrel of one of my toy rifles -and the rocket's red glare... -  this would blow apart just about any toy gun made today, but this rifle was made very much like a real rifle - except that the metal barrel did not go through the wood completely and have a firing mechanism - the bombs bursting in air... - this was good however, for confining an explosive force to discharge only though the end of the metal barrel - gave proof through the night... -  when they fired this , it sounded like a real gun going off and there was a flash of flame that leaped a foot out of the end of the gun - that our flag was still there... - they didn't put any projectiles into the barrel so this was relatively safe - still...  Oh say! Does that star spangled banner yet wave?...  the end of that gun could have exploded... boys with firecrackers will be boys, eh?... - o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

One Christmas I got a Fort Apache set, a Civil War set AND a set of Lincoln Logs all at once - this was GREAT! - I positioned all of these troops into battles and had a lot of fun - nobody else seemed to have as good a set up of these kind of toys as I did that year - sometimes I took them to my friend's house (Denis Zeitlow) and we would play for several hours - my only complaint was that he always wanted to line all of the soldiers up like dominoes so that he could topple one and see if the others would all fall...

We went to visit the fort that was still being reconstructed - they were also doing archeological digs at the site - we learned about the game of lacrosse that the Chippewa Indians played outside the walls of the fort as the soldiers watched - when the ball was "accidently" tossed over the walls, the soldiers were persuaded to open the gates to let them in to retrieve it so that the game could proceed - as the gates were opened, other Indians who had guns hidden beneath their blanket wraps, quickly distributed these to the players who entered the fort and massacred the British soldiers on June 2, 1763 (this was part of the Pontiac uprising) - I thought that this was a pretty interesting outing and I enjoyed sitting on the cannons with Debbie and Patti (and Jerry?)

*NOTE: The OTHER name for the Chippewa Indians is Ojibwa - your mom's people and your ancestors...

Mom: Your uncle Ed helped build the Mackinaw bridge and also paint it. Ed is an iron worker.

I don't remember what grade I was in when I started wearing glasses, (I'm not wearing any for my grade 4 picture), but I know that it was early for a kid - I was called four eyes, owl eyes and several other names by the kids at school - combined with the fact that I had a substantially larger vocabulary than most of my classmates, wearing glasses just confirmed their "professor" designation of me...the glasses were a pain to have to wear and to take care that they not get broken, but they definitely improved my vision and that was worth all of the hassle in the world...

Later, in high school, I was often referred to as "Mr. Spock" (from Star Trek) because I would try to use "logic" in every situation - rarely showed emotional highs or lows and I actually took some pride in being called this... I really didn't use "big words" just to try and impress - they just simply seemed to be the most appropriate words to use... NOT that I knew how to spell them... proper spelling didn't arrive for me,  until long after I had graduated - (and no, I DON'T mean using spell check on the computer!)

If you see any pictures of me as a kid,  you will quickly notice that I had a LOT of freckles - being out in the sun probably didn't help a lot but I don't remember being all that conscious of them at the time.  My dad had a dog (a beagle) named Freckles ( I wonder where he got that name from?) - I'm not sure why, but dad took his rifle out to the back yard and shot Freckles one day - (I think that he had become "gun shy" and was no longer any good for hunting... ) - dad once told me that my birth mark was just a big freckle... I guess I had better stay good for hunting...

Once in high school, Debbie expressed concern that I didn't seem to have very many friends (at least compared to her...) - she seemed to be liked by everybody and thought that I should make more of an effort to be popular - I told her that I had all of the friends that I really wanted and that I thought there was a big difference between having friends and knowing EVERYBODY in the whole damn school - Deb did have some very good friends, but I'm not sure that she understood what I meant at the time...

This is actually one of the things from my childhood that I am most ashamed of... Greg Granger and I had spent most of a September day back in the woods around his place - we caught a small garter snake and tied it's tail to a stick stuck into a large anthill - we were fascinated by  the way that the ants attacked and eventually killed this wriggling snake that couldn't escape - later that same day we went around the fields and collected dozens of leopard frogs and put them into a paper sack - we tied this sack up with a string and hung it from an old apple tree near his house - then we spent the next 15 or 20 minutes throwing green apples at this bag - the bag held together for quite awhile, but eventually began to break open with the mutilated and battered frogs falling into the tall grass on the ground - we just left them there - it was devilishly fun and exciting at the time, but this cruelty still haunts my conscience today...

Debbie reminded me about this one... she remembers that we saw this word painted on a stop sign - we didn't know what this word meant - we had never heard the word or seen it in print before  so we asked people what it meant... we only got horrified looks and responses  saying that we shouldn't say that word - that it wasn't nice and good little children didn't say it - I suspect that we got a spanking for this too, but I don't remember getting one... oh well, what the fuck!