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Our theme song for this bloodbath (I love you Tommy): It was June, sixth grade had just finished. My grandmother had been dead for almost a year. My bike was two years old. The old man came home and after dinner, said to me, “How would you like a new bike? “No,” I said. “I… Continue reading The Final Strike (Part One)

Sorry, gotta ‘get real’ for a sec I will be telling a sobering story in the next few posts. There’s no humor here; no laughing at my father the buffoon. This will be the completion of the ‘three strikes’ on daddy. It’s a tale of mental abuse and lasting damage. After this, he was not… Continue reading Announcement about next posts

I can hear you now: ‘WTF is this boomer talking about??” Fiction was king in the 60’s. No, I’m not talking about fictional tabloid stories about the English monarchy or Hollywood actresses. I mean books. JFK even endorsed Ian Fleming’s Bond novels. There have always been English crime novels, led of course by the prolific… Continue reading The Hardy Boys

WTF!!! My father had one brother that was near his age; he lived in the Poconos. They never got along, even from their childhood. He had several children; I often think that the only reason daddy ever had me was that his brother had just finished having his fifth. Can’t fall behind his brother. The… Continue reading Who the hell puts salt on Watermelon?

Oh, how embarrassing….. Everywhere you look in schools today, there are banners with slogans telling kids how great they are and how they are welcomed. Not in the sixties–no banners, no nothing. The teacher welcomed you first day and that was it. You had low self-esteem, deal with it. A school’s job is not to… Continue reading No Bumper Stickers (poor us)

The field trip to end all. I mentioned our sixth grade teacher was very involved with local history. We had our first ever final exam in June on history of the county and the state pf PA. But before that, we took a field trip like we’d never had before. All over the county–6 or… Continue reading Gambling with your young life and the film ‘Sorcerer’

The Sights, the smells One advantage of living close to the Amish/Pennsylvania Dutch population was the wonderful food. They had been coming to our area for years, as there was still a significant number of them in the county limits (by the 60’s, their numbers were noticeably thinner). There used to be a man who… Continue reading The Glory of the Farmers Market!

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