Monday, June 1, 2009

It has been awhile since I did some things...


It has been more than 50 years since I:

* Turned all the glasses in the kitchen cupboard upside down to keep scorpions out.

* Found a copperhead snake sleeping coiled up on top of a laundry basket full of clean clothes taken recently from the clothesline.

* Went skinny dipping in a neighbor’s pond.

* Lived in a house that didn’t have indoor plumbing.

* Owned a pig.

* Drove my Dad’s irresistible 1952 Plymouth into an immovable hundred-year-old oak tree.

* Had a lime phosphate at Mayfield’s Drug Store after school and then walked two miles home in the blazing sun.

* Fed chickens.

* Rode on the back of Spike Austin’s motor scooter to the bank and deposited money collected for Senior Class Rings.

* Made a valedictory address.

* Played a clarinet solo.

* Played an alto saxophone solo.

* Marched in a half-time show in the pouring rain at a high school football game.

* Sat in the end zone seats at Texas Christian University on Band Day with a band that played the national anthem in a different key from all the other bands.

* Cleaned white suede shoes after marching in a big-city rodeo parade behind many horses who heard Nature calling frequently.

* Danced on American Bandstand in Philadelphia and breathed the same air as Dick Clark.

* Filled a paper bag with bat guano at midnight in a limestone cave on a scavenger hunt just to make my fraternity brothers happy.

* Drove onto a small wooden pier to wait for a ferry to take me across the Wabash to Vincennes, Indiana, and discovered the pier was the ferry.



It has been more than 40 years since I:

* Shoveled snow off a sidewalk.

* Bought snow tires.

* Saw icicles more than eight feet long with my own eyes.

* Flew 1500 miles in the back seat of a very loud, four-passenger Cessna 180 from Omaha, Nebraska, to Orlando, Florida, with a refueling stop in Memphis, Tennessee.

* Climbed to the top of the Statue of Liberty with two small children.

* Ate at a Chinese restaurant on W. 57th St. in New York City with Angie Dickinson and Burt Bacharach sitting at the next table.



It has been more than 30 years since I:

* Rode on Space Mountain at Walt Disney World.

* Visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

* Drove on Lombard Street in San Francisco.



It has been more than 20 years since I:

* Threw a snowball on the second of July at Mount Rainier.

* Saw eagles in the wild in British Columbia.

* Found someone with my surname on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.



But I have:

* Held a grandchild in my arms.

* Watched a man install a satellite dish on my roof.

* Taken a dog to the vet.

* Walked along a beach and gathered seashells.

* Attended the launch of a Space Shuttle and felt the sound waves pass through my body.

* Shown a child Orion’s belt and the Big Dipper and the North Star.


How about you?

7 comments:

  1. 40 years since i drove my dad's 57 chevy impala into my fron't slding glass door at the end of my dad's car port...well you asked din't you????said something like what about you????

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  2. no that has been 50 years ago

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  3. I'm still being impressed with the valedictory address and horrified by the white suede shoes (go Pat Boone!)being desecrated with horse hockey.

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  4. Fascinating nostalgia walk! Thanks for sharing your life in word pictures!

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  5. Oh my goodness. I don't think I've done a single thing on your "It's been fifty years" list. I'd love to know what lime phosphate tastes like.

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

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