50 years ago this summer.....

This summer marks 50 years since St. Matthias 8th grade baseball team won the City Championship. I'll list the names of the players, some of you may want to know who is who:
Top Row L to R: Coach Tom Watson, Don Pilson, Bob Tabler, Bill Ralston, George Pearl, Larry Hunter, Mike Sills. Bottom L to R: John Bray, Ernie 'Junior' Wallace, Ray Demonbrum, Jerry Blandford, Duke Corey, Mike Baum. Two that I know were missing from this photo but were a big part of the team were Dub Jansing and Steve Weismueller.
I played a lot of baseball from age 12 to 18 years old. I was lucky to have good coaches and played with a lot of good ballplayers. These guys were the core of a good Flaget High School team that came in 3rd in the State tournament in 1963. A Tournament to this day is one of the big regrets that I have. We should have won that thing. We lost a close semi-final game that we should have won and the team we lost to went on to win the Championship game in a route.
When I was a kid, we played a lot of ball. We didn't just play when we had games or practice. We met at fields, chose up sides and played most every day. Those were the days. It was never "to" hot to go outside. It was to hot to stay inside. No air conditioning. My air conditioning back then was going out on the front porch in the morning, when the porch was shaded, and laying on the cool concrete. Oh well, 50 years ago. Wow! Congratulations Team! The first 8th Grade City Championship ever won by a St. Matthias Crusaders Team!

Teaching an Old Dog new Tricks

..................About a week ago Mary Lynn and I were watching Erin and Jill for awhile and Erin taught me how to finger knit. She was a very good and patient teacher. I really was amazed at how well she could show me how to do this, especially how to tie it off at the end. At the right is my first ever finger knitted piece. Pretty good, eh?

While looking through old pictures....

..........I was looking through old pictures today and found this one of Mark and Kevin in the tub. I thought 'I bet I could find one of Erin and Jill in close to the same pose'. Well, I looked and looked, but couldn't find one similar. But I did find one of my favorite pictures. This is a picture of Erin when I was asking her if I could come to her 2nd Birthday Party. She looked like she really gave it some thought but decided that "No, I don't think so".

More Olden Days

I know these are poor quality pictures. They are copies of a copy. I'm sure I've got the original picture, at the bottom, someplace. But this is a picture of me and Jean in our new Hopalong Cassidy outfits we got for Christmas, along with our very fast stick horses. Hoppy was my favorite cowboy. I even had a Hoppy watch at one time. The watch came in a box draped over a little cardboard saddle. You can tell by the picture we were cold, at least Jean was, so I know it was taken very near Christmas. Probably 1950-51. By the way, Hopalong Cassidy's horses name? Topper. I know you can't tell the difference, but that's really me on the right in the bottom picture, not Hoppy.

Bad Weather, Not much activities...Let's talk about the past

I was in the Navy, but when I was in Vietnam I was assigned to "Defense Communications Agency - Southeast Asia Mainland", or as the military liked to call it, "DCA - SAM". This was a Joint Service outfit, meaning it was supplied with people from all four services, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. You would think we belonged to all four services, but the fact was, we belonged to none of them. Therefore, we had no military base, no barracks, no chow hall...no anything. Everything we had was attained by begging, borrowing, or stealing. Yes, stealing. We did a lot of that.We made arrangements with the Navy for me to stay with the Navy people in their billet, which was about 2 miles from the base in downtown NhaTrang. When I tell people I stayed in a hotel while in Vietnam they think it must have been a nice one. Well, here it is, painted Navy grey. The rooms were quiet luxurious, too. Here I am eating my dinner. Room service sucked! You'll also notice the mosquito net over my bunk behind me. It was very necessary. As a matter of fact, I know this sounds healthy, but I sprayed bug spray all over my net before retiring for the evening to kill all the mosquitoes inside the net, then crawled in quickly. This was a typical dinner. Some can of stew or soup from the canteen heated up over a sterno stove in your room. If you were the first one to take your shower in the evening, the water was fairly warm from the tank on the roof heated by the sun. That was if there WAS water. Not only was there very often not any water, but sometimes when you were in the shower, all soaped up, the water went off. Well, at those times you ran over to the other rooms to see if you could use their shower. No they didn't have water either, but you could turn on the tap and get a little water to drain out of the lines. Sometimes that was enough to get the soap off! Sometimes there were 3 or 4 guys running all over the place trying to find enough water to rinse off. Yep, a luxery establishment. Notice how clean the streets are? By the way, my room was on the bottom floor, far right.

Happy Velentine's Day!!!

What do you do when you're in Vietnam and your wife sends you a pair of Valentine boxer shorts? You have your picture taken.

Snowfall in the Lower Highlands

Once again I had to get out my High Tech Dopler Snow measuring device. The official total here was 5 - 3/4 inches. This measurement was taken at 10:20 a.m., and additional snow fell, but I believe as much melted as fell, so I don't think it got any deeper than that. The other picture is the snow below our deck chairs. I thought the cones it made was kinda neat.

Killer Bees in Kentucky

Some of you may not have been up to date on how fare the 'Killer Bees' have progressed since crossing the Mexican border 10 years ago. They rapidly moved northward and are now in Kentucky. I was attacked yesterday when clearing snow from the steps in the backyard. Yes, they've adapted to winter weather so well that they're active in very cold weather, too. Well, it's a good story. Actually, I've had to use a cream to my faced and neck to attack all sun damaged skin that could lead to skin cancer, and this is the result. I have to apply the cream every day for 3 weeks. This is the end of 2 weeks. My skin burns like I've got a sunburn. It's worse when I apply the cream and when I take a shower. I'll be glad when these next 2 weeks are gone.

Olympic Athletes

With the Winter Olympics coming up, I thought I'd take this opportunity to visit the Athletes training for the summer games. I followed this one little gymnast just to see what these athletes have to go through to get ready for Olympic competition. Her grueling training schedule was amazing. She went from one event to another, no rest in between. Her stamina was only rivaled by her extreme tallent. It was a thrill to watch her.

Winter Golf, Round #2 for 2010

I played Iroquois GC today for round #2 this year. We played the back nine first again and I shot a 43 - 48 = 91. I just don't play well in the freezing weather and muddy fairways with no grass. I guess it was nice to get out to swing the clubs in February but it's really not ideal golf conditions. The first nine the greens were frozen and any ball hitting the green bounced off the back. When we got to the back nine they had thawed out a bit and we were having trouble getting the ball to the hole. It was cold, cloudy, and the wind was blowing a little. The wind doesn't have to blow much on cloudy, cold days to seem like it's blowing hard. I can't say I enjoyed the round, but I got it in. I need warmer weather. If it's not at least in the 40's when we tee off, I'm not going to play again.

Phrases I've never liked

There are certain 'phrases', or words used that I've never cared for.

"NO BRAINER" - No, you must use your brain even if it is an 'easy decision' to make.

"HEADS-UP" - As in, Let me give you a 'heads-up' about what's coming up next week. No, you mean you'd like to let me know what's coming up. When I hear "Heads-Up", to me it means 'hit the deck!'

"YEARS YOUNG" - As in Mrs. Johnson is 98 years young today! No, She's 98 years old!

Sports sayings:

"SUDDEN VICTORY" - As in the game is tied at the end of regulation, so we'll play until the tie is broken. No, it's Sudden Death! I hate that 'put a positive spin on it' crap.

'THREE BALL" - No, it's a three point shot! The ball is the same one you use for two pointers and one pointers.

'TRUE FRESHMAN" - There are Redshirt Freshmen and Freshmen. If they're not a Redshirt Freshman, they're a Freshman! What are the other Freshmen, liars?

And finally, my pet peeve traffic word:

"FAST LANE" - No, it's not the 'fast lane', it's the 'passing lane'. If you're not passing someone, get over to the right. Stay to the right except to pass. You can't drive in the left lane just because you're going 'fast'!

Some of you may disagree with my pet peeve words, but I bet you have some of your own. What are they?

Metal detecting on Dog Hill

I wasn't dressed like the fellow at the right. It was muddy, the ground still frozen, and not the best day to try to metal detect. But, I didn't fall down! I checked around the bottom of the hill. I found $1.07, a key, and 'Lucky's' Dog Tag. I got my pants, knee pad, gloves and ground cloth very muddy. I'll need to clean them up again. I couldn't believe how frozen the ground was. I thought it'd thawed out from the big January freeze, and I didn't think it would be frozen beyond the very top inch of the ground, which I then thought would've thawed out quickly each day. I was wrong. It was frozen down about 3 inches, almost as bad as the last time I tried to metal detect Dog Hill. About half the money I found was 'surface coins', detected by eye rather than the metal detector. I would think that if that much is lost on each sledding snow, the hill must be a good place to detect.