I’ve been a Detroit Tiger fan for as long as I can remember. When the kids in the neighborhood played pickup games, we often adopted the name of a Tiger. For several years, I was Frank Bolling. Bill Graham was Charlie “Paw Paw” Maxwell. Bill and Charlie were both lefties. Charlie was from Paw Paw, …
And Vermin
The move to Lake LeAnn was huge. Not only did we purchase a house on a lake, it had two fireplaces. Living on a lake, and having a fireplace, were big parts of my “dream house”. I thought both would provide great enjoyment for a number of years. I was right. Many years passed before …
Varmints
Ruth and I had our first run in with varmints the first year we married. We lived in our house on Stockbridge in Kalamazoo. It was a two story Victorian, with a third story attic, that had been retrofitted into two units. We lived in the lower unit and rented the upper. The exterior needed …
Jimmy Stewart and Me
Jimmy Stewart starred in the 1958 film, Vertigo, with Kim Novak. It’s a psychological thriller directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock. Stewart plays a former police detective forced into early retirement because a line of duty incident caused him to develop acrophobia (an extreme fear of heights) and vertigo (a false sense of rotational movement). …
The Summer of 69
My wingman got married on May 23, 1969. He celebrated his twenty-second birthday four days later, and I followed him on the 29th. That was fifty-one years ago. That wasn’t the only thing that happened that summer. The biggies in my mind were 400,000 people attended the Woodstock Music Festival, a concert in a New …
My Wingman
Mitch is my oldest friend. We met in 1951 or 52 at the fire hydrant fifty feet from my driveway. He wandered around the block, and I was standing atop my usual perch, surveying the neighborhood. We met, exchanged a few words, and have been friends ever since. That’s my first official memory. We served …
The Walker Girls 2.0
The Walker family moved to Rochester, Michigan and lived in a house on a hill. I believe they moved because of Uncle Jack’s job. It was either that or Aunt Emma simply wanted a different house. The place in Washington was vintage. The Rochester home was new. I don’t know how long they lived there, …
The Walker Girls
That’s how my mom referred to Diane, Elizabeth and Ruth Ellen. They were “The Walker Girls”, the three children of Mom’s youngest uncle, Jack Walker, and his wife, Emma. Mom’s mother, Margaret, was the oldest of the clan. She was born in 1899. Jack’s given name was John, but everyone called him Jack. He was …
Home Run Derby
With little sports action on TV these days, I’ve been revisiting my youth and what we “watched back in the day”. There was a weekly televised event in 1960 called the Home Run Derby. The Derby ran for twenty-six episodes. Each episode featured two current, high profile, baseball stars. One represented the American League and …
Kissing Cousins
A kissing cousin is, by definition, a distant relative known well enough to kiss when greeting. For example: I’m not sure exactly how I’m related to her, she’s just a kissing cousin. When I was a young boy, 0 – 12, my dad expanded my kissing requirement to any, and all, females related to me. …