Author: 610rrandtr

A Boy and his Music Going into fifth grade, I sat through a presentation by the elementary school band ‘guy’ (not to be confused with the music teacher, the snotty pathetic weasel of several prior posts). I decided to take up the trumpet. Almost immediately, I was enrolled in private lessons 15 minutes away. My… Continue reading Band

Hark! Doth that be a whispering hormone? As I started sixth grade, something shifted. A small seismic crack…lava bubbling. I noticed a girl in fifth grade. And noticed. And looked at her in a way that was kind of different. And totally mystifying. Unsettling to feel something weird that made no sense. Music on the… Continue reading Tickle, Tickle!

Poised on the sharp edge of a knife Your cardboard report card had a place on the back where the teacher wrote in your name “is/is not promoted to ___ grade for the 19___ school year.” Very ominous. Black ink. Everybody held their breath. The sixth grade teacher was the best. He was a statewide… Continue reading Sixth Grade

A Man’s Got to Know His Limitations…. From the time I was small, there was one cop for our wee hamlet. Which is all it needed. Nothing ever happened except speeding. No car accidents, no fires, no break-ins. He got older, as did we all. He lived around two blocks away–they lived alone, and seemed… Continue reading Goodbye to the Cop

You may ask: “WTF is an antenna?” Here’s a bedtime story….. As daddy aged, he became as obsessed with TV as I was………at age four. He had to have perfect reception (No cable invented yet…….this was the Ice Age). Philadelphia seemed like the other side of the Pacific. Storms and regularly disruputed his viewing pleasure.… Continue reading The Antenna

The Scum Also Rises When I was in college, we occasionally talked about serious things, besides girls, weed, girls, beer, and g–. Um, let’s move on. One guy lost his brother in Nam. I guess he was around 10 or so. He talked about the horrible fate that hit the family hard. Shortly after they… Continue reading Vietnam–Epilogue

yes, I’m going to talk about it. If you’re under 50, you probably have a cognitive understanding of the war. And maybe sick of those of us who went through it. All I want to do here is try and impart the visceral emotive impact of the war. Not from a political viewpoint or from… Continue reading Nam

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Brakes!! In the beginning……………since our street terminated up a hill, that was the winter meeting place. The hill on my street had a nice angle, but it was a short ride. And once cars started traveling, its hours as virgin snow were limited. Snow chains were Godzilla to snow paths.… Continue reading Winter Sledding & Contemplating Death

A time not too far gone, when I was changed by just a song Steve led the way upstairs, two fresh bottles of Green Spot in hand. He motioned to the right–his bedroom–but we turned left. It was another world. Posters of groups on the wall–the only ones I knew were the Beatles. A lava… Continue reading And so, the journey begins

I could have flown half way to heaven. Blue, my favorite color. With Grandma’s cash in hand, I went to to the local bike store with one simple question: “What can I get for $50?” More money than I had ever seen, I might add…..and it was all mine! The latest thing were Schwinn Sting… Continue reading My Blue Bike