Do you have an amusing, happy or otherwise special story from your childhood? Jump into Mr. Peabody’s WABAC machine and see what you come up with!
Me: Growing up, we lived about a mile from a fairly large river. My brother, his friend and I would take our cane poles and go fishing on beautiful, sunny summer days. The river, however, was within an Army base and fenced off with very stern signage telling everyone to KEEP OUT. The boys had made a hole in the fence off in the wooded area, so we would sneak in and fish below the bridge.
When we heard a jeep approaching, I hid under the bridge (I didn’t want to get in trouble) and the boys would ditch their poles, run up on top of the bridge and await their capture. The soldiers drove them to the nearest gate with a “warning” to stay off the base. The boys waited for them to leave, hurried back to the hole in the fence, climbed through and resumed fishing. It was almost a weekly ritual with them. They looked forward to getting a ride in the jeep with the ‘army men’ and soon the soldiers knew their names.
One time, they were driving an armored personnel carrier and the boys were so excited to get a ride in a “tank”! I wasn’t there then, but I never heard the end of that escapade. My parents never knew about their shenanigans because the soldiers never did anything about it. I think they enjoyed the ‘capture’ as much as the boys!
Ok, now your story!
My grandmother used to like telling the story of me as a very young lad on a visit to her house of standing in her kitchen and holding the door open. She told me not to hold the door open because I would be letting the fly’s in. I guess I told her it was alright because they were my friends. Guess thats what happens in the country when there’s no neighbor kids to play with.
No. I’m going to stick with your story. I loved that story.
Really great.
No, I don’t. But the Freakin StoryLady does…..
Once upon a time, there was this miller’s daughter or sumpthin like that named Twanda. Now Twanda had a pathetic existence. All day long, she would do nuttin but spin straw. And all night long, she’d sit up and think how she would like to be famous. Oh, to be famous, with untold riches and mens falling at her feet, her own line of action figures, cardboard standees…
Then one night…. POOF….. a strange little man appeared before her.
“Sista” he said,”I can make ya famous overnight!”
“Who are you?”
“I am what is known as a PR man”, he squeaked. “You know, public relations. Publicity. Fakery. Glamorize the unglamorous. Turn the pedestrian splendorous. Now let’s see. What can you do baby”?
“Oh, I can spin straw.”
“Spin straw! I love it baby. Love it”.
“What you mean, you love it”?
“Don’t interrupt girl. I’m looking for an idea….the spark! Of course…you spin straw into gold”!
But I can’t spin straw into…
“Hush up. Don’t matter! Don’t matter! I’ll do the talking. I’ll just contact Oprah”.
And so it happened that overnight, Twanda did become famous. Gossip pages, talk shows, Anderson Cooper interviews and her own entourage of beefy security men who would beat up fans.
Of course, nobody had ever seen the gold. But through the PR man’s magic, and since it had appeared in all the papers and magazines, all the people believed it. Everyone one of them. Even the king.
Then one day, the king summoned Twanda to the castle.
“I understand you spin straw into gold”, said the king. “Well, I am going to put you in a room full of my very best straw and have you spin me a heap of your very best gold. Twenty-four karats, please. None of that Ten-karat crap ya see”.
“But…” protested Twanda .
Of course, if you can’t, you will be locked forever in my darkest dungeon. And I’m told the humidity down there is awful. Really bad on the hair follicles”
“Not so fast, my good king”, said a voice.
Who should it be but the PR man, who had magically popped into the castle. “My client isn’t giving gold away, y’know. However, she will spin one room of gold for you on one condition: that if she does, she becomes your wife and, therefore, Da Queen”.
The king agreed, and signed on the dotted line. So did Twanda . And then Twanda was left to her task.”Well, now what da hell am I gonna do?” she whined.
Have I ever let you down, baby?” the PR man asked. And, true to his word, as the girl’s eyes widened with amazement, the little man spun a roomful of pure, unadulterated gold.
“And now, my dear, our business ends. You are rich and famous. So until your firstborn comes into the world, I bid you adieu.”
Her firstborn? Twanda raised her eyebrows. But the little man pointed to the fine print at the bottom of the contract, conveniently providing her with high powered magnifying glass with which she could read it. And sure enough, there it said in black and white that her firstborn child must be given to the PR man. Twanda wondered if the PR man ever heard of adoption agencies, which would seem like an easier way to get some kin,but it was too late. She had already put her X on it.
About a year later, she popped out a beautiful child of the the king and queen (who looked suspiciously like the castle pool boy). And sure nuff, the little PR man came for the child, according to the contract. What the little man didn’t know is that in reading the fine print, Twanda found a loophole. “A loophole as big as a Mack Carriage, sucka!” the queen told the PR man. And then she read it to him.
“If the party of the first part (that’s me) within 3 days discovers the name of the party of the second part (that be you), the party of the first part shall keep the party of the third part (that’s the little kid)!”
Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. (Not that it was easy to say mind you.) She spat out dozens of names… from Winfro to Tyrone to Thelonious to Deon… but none of them was right. On the third night, Gladys was in despair, having exhausted all the names she knew. Just then there was a knock at the palace door. And who should come in but a man who has no importance to the plot other other than to get us out of this hole that we’re in. He spoke as if he came from a time long, long ago.
“Like.. hey.. man,” he said to the queen. “You don’t know me, but I got to hip you to some news! Like.. the other day, I’m trippin through this cool forest, when, man.. what do I see but this little freaky lookin Kat singin, ‘Ba doo oh bop, she-ram. I am the Rumpleystiltskin man. The king’s got his gold. The queens got her fame. And their baby will have my Rumpleystiltskin name.”
The Queen said Thank You and he was immediately taken away for psychiatric evaluation.
The next day, when the little PR man appeared again, the queen was ready.
Ba doo oh bop, she-ram. You are Rumpleystiltskin man! So hit the road ya little jerk!
“Ooops,” said Rumpelstiltskin. “I really F**ked Up!”….POOF.
And so Twanda and the King lived happily ever after, and Rumpleystiltskin was never seen in the kingdom again, but did go on to land a job as a image consultant for the Democratic party before being indicted for fraud, money laundering and tax evasion.
This story could conceivably identify me, but since it happened almost 60 years ago, I won’t worry about it too much.
My father was a Navy officer and he had been posted to the U.S. military advisory group in Buenos Aires, Argentina. But this story is about my mother, an ex-Navy officer (yes, a commissioned officer in the WAVES). One day, she got a phone call from the wife of the U.S. ambassador who asked her if she might be willing to undertake a job that would improve international relations as well as prove to be interesting and rewarding.
It turned out that First Lady Elena Frondizi, the wife of Argentine President Arturo Frondizi, wanted to learn English. She didn’t want English English, but rather American English. Since my mother was a college graduate and had teaching experience the ambassador’s wife though mom might be a good candidate. My mother, of course, enthusiastically accepted.
Twice a week, she’d drive to La Quinta (the presidential residence in the Buenos Aires suburbs) and spend a few hours with the first lady. Mrs. Frondizi had two nephews, one a year older than I was and one a year younger, and sometimes I’d go along with my mother and we three boys would find all kinds of interesting mischief to get into.
When the President was able to do so, he would leave the Casa Rosada (presidential offices) and have lunch with family at La Quinta, and so I got to know him somewhat. He was a nice guy, good humored, never officious or condescending, and always curious about what we boys had been up to.
My father was a long-time subscriber to Scientific American (it was a great magazine back then, not like now) and we’d pore over it together when it arrived, and paid special attention to the Edmond Scientific ad in the back. One birthday he gave me a 5-lb AlNiCo magnet that was supposed to have a 125-lb pull.
Of course I took it with me one day when my mother and I went for the (American) English lesson. After lunch with the First Family, we boys were out front messing around with this big magnet when the President came out the main entrance, saw us, and asked what we were doing. When I found out he was fascinated by our gadget and the four of us went around seeing what it would stick to and what it could lift: cast iron drain grates around the reflecting pool/fountain, ornamental iron work, and to our surprise we found that the huge (12-feet high?) main entry doors which looked like bronze were actually steel inside.
These doors were really heavy and took a lot of force to move. We were trying to move them with the magnet without actually touching them when President Frondizi’s secretary came up and reminded him that he had a cabinet meeting back at the Casa Rosada and that they needed to leave to be on time.
No way! The president laughed and told the secretary that he was having far too much fun and that the cabinet meeting would simply have to wait a bit.
Well, that’s all I’ve been doing the last 8 or 9 years here.
I think I’ll zip it here and listen. I mean read.
Everyone gets a like from me here. Except people trying to see if I’ll like purposeful dreg. 😉
Great story AL!
Was a Denny’s next to La Quinta like they are here? 😀
OH BOY, I HAVE A LOT OF THEM…AND I’VE TOLD THIS ONE B4:
MY MOM USED TO DRIVE ME AROUND WEST LA IN A CONVERTIBLE; I LOVED STANDING UP IN THE PASSENGER SEAT!! WELL, ONE DAY WHILE SHE WAS RUNNING ERRANDS, I SPOTTED AN ICE CREAM STORE…I COULDN’T WAIT TO GET SOME ICE CREAM, SO I OPENED THE DOOR AND JUMPED OUT AT ABOUT 25 TO 30 MPH..MY MOM DID NOT DO PANIC WELL, SO CRAWLED ACROSS AND FOLLOWED ME OUT THE PASSENGER SIDE..SHE DIDN’T STOP THE CAR, WHICH ALMOST RAN OVER HER WHEN SHE ROLLED DOWN THE ROAD..THE CAR TOTALED ITSELF AT A TELEPHONE POLE, BUT…BEING THE AGILE BENITO THAT I WAS, I SIMPLY BOUNCED DOWN THE CURB!! I FOUND MY ROCKY ROAD!!
IT WAS 6 YRS B4 MY PARENTS HAD ANOTHER KID!
Christmas 1967 my mother bought my sister and I sting ray bicycles and hid them in grandparents basement in the cold room with grandma’s canning supplies. Once done opening our gifts Mom told my sister and I to go down and get a couple jars of green beans. We obliged, walking right around the bikes not even realising they could be ours and returned upstairs with the green beans. Everybody started laughing and asking if we missed something. My sister and I were clueless as to what they were talking about. My mom worked hard as a single parent to provide us with the bare necessities so we never entertained the thought that those shiny new bikes with the streamers on the handgrips and the headlights and banana seats could possibly be ours. I’ll never forget that christmas.
Story 1: my grandfather drove over me, in the driveway, when I was 6 months old. to this day I have a hard time believing it, although every member of my family (dad, mom, granddads, grandmas, aunts, uncles swear by it)
Story 2: my great granddad used to tell the story of when he was a boy he used to play w/ his siblings, friends & cousins a ‘horse thief’ game where they would catch the ‘horse thief’ & ‘hang’ him in the barn. one time they caught his cousin & ‘hanged’ him w/out realizing they really were hanging him. they all applauded as he twitched & choked, saying he was so realistic. after a few minutes they cut him down & realized he was almost dead … my great grandad could tell some great stories
Story 3: when I was 14 I went on summer vacation to my best friend’s grandma’s place down in SC (this was back in the ’60’s; think ‘The Long, Hot Summer’-type scenario). we went Water Moccasin hunting w/ .22’s one day & met up w/ one of my best friends cousins (very comely southern maiden) where we proceeded to traverse a long creek, populated by large brush & second-growth trees, where moccasins were reported to habituate. we went several miles & didn’t see one snake. so we proceeded to turn around & declare our hunt a failure. about 100 yards from our entrance point a snake, all of a sudden, dangled down from the trees right before my face. startled, I backed up, bolted my rifle & blazed away at the vicious viper, killing it w/ my first shot (at least that’s how I remembered it). I yelled out my conquest & looked up & saw, what seemed to be hundreds of ‘targets of opportunity’ dangling from the trees! my best friend freaked out from the shear terror of the ‘massed death’ from above & ran for his life. I took advantage & discharged my weapon at every target that presented itself… needless to say I was a hero in the comely cousin’s eyes & enjoyed her ‘charms’ until it was time to go home. I was also introduces to sweet potato & pecan pie … love ’em to this day … Sweet Caroline … my thoughts often drift back to this wonderful girl
Story 4: told this one at my mom’s funeral … mom never had to weld a paddle until my brother was born!
I was only 7 that time I got hit in the face with a broken beer bottle. I needed stitches too.
@Zonga – That’s terrible! Bad enough if it was an accident, but if it wasn’t I sure hope you had a big brother to take care of things…
Story #2 above brought back a memory. We (me and a couple cousins) used to go up in my grandpas barn to the hayloft. In the hayloft was a large three pronged hook on a rope run through a block and tackle for pulling hay bales up to the loft. We used to run the free end of the rope through the eye of the hook and tie it off a few feet off the floor and then sit on the hook and use like a swing in the hayloft. If our knots would have ever come undone while doing this it could have had a bad ending. Stupid kids!
Here’s a follow-up to my Argentina story…
One day, my mother got a call from the CIA chief at the embassy. He had a different title, of course, but everybody knew he was the head spook. He asked my mother if she could come down to the embassy for a chat, and that he’d send a car for her.
When she got there, he angrily asked her why she hadn’t informed him of her new relationship with the wife of the Argentine president. He hadn’t known until that morning…even though my mother had been making twice-weekly trips in and out of the presidential residence in the middle of the day, driving a sky-blue 1959 Chevy Impala, the only car like it not only in the city, but in all of Argentina.
It isn’t just current events that have left me with contempt for the U.S. “intelligence community”.
i think i was 11 or 12 when this happened. Snowballing cars and trucks was a great pastime. Three of us were standing between 2 houses so the drivers couldnt see us and were beaning cars. We couldnt see the cars either so we lobbed them by sound, timing it to strike. I hit a truck but not in the side but on the windshield i think. The truck stopped and I took off running but that driver actually jumped out and gave chase. I must’ve run 8 or 9 blocks before he gave up. Guy was pissed.
Uncle Al — That was a wonderful story! And an interesting childhood for you!! Wow!
One of my sweetest childhood memories (age, about six):
1) Mid-summer, all my aunts, uncles and cousins came to visit for a backyard bbg. As twilight came, I became tired but I didn’t want to leave the area where everyone had congregated, so I wandered into the back area of the garage where there were stacks of boxes. I climbed up and over the boxes and onto an old mattress that couldn’t be seen from below (remember the ones that were really floppy?), laid down on it and went to sleep. It must have been very late, and I can’t imagine the panic my parents must have been in while trying to find me, because all I remember — and the episode was never mentioned again by anyone — was my dad’s face over the edge of the concealed mattress, softly saying, “Abigail. Abigail. It’s time to go to bed, now.” My dad gathered my sleepy body in his arms and took me into the house.
There was something very special about the way he just, as a matter of course, quietly woke me and lovingly took me to my (real) bed that has stuck in my mind. No admonishment, no sharp words, no taking out their anxiety on me. I think my dad really understood a child’s world.
Hey fur redo this thread in October or stop by and see me in the Story telling capital of the world Jonesborough Tennessee
https://www.storytellingcenter.net/festival/
Such a sweet story, Abigail.
Follow-up to my follow-up…
Oops. Somehow I left out that the CIA call came about six months after mom started her teaching gig.
How cool! Great idea, Claudia!
I’ll bookmark and come back later for the other stories.
Mine- Well, there was that one time when my schoolmates and I found out we were being tracked for several weeks by Libyans (in the al-Qadhafi era. You remember him.) when I lived overseas.
They were looking to kidnap and ransom but our military took care of them, or just spooked them.
I don’t know.
It was a hot August day, there were perhaps a few cumulus clouds in the sky just a hint of the storms that would arrive that night. I was about ten at the time, My older Brother and I were playing catch in the front yard of our long Island home. We began to see compete with each other trying to see who could throw the ball highest into the air.
When it was my turn I reached back and hurled the ball in to the high in to the air, but it was off course. At first I thought it would simply bounce of the roof of the house no harm no foul. But it didn’t it came down parallel to the outside wall smacking the cover of the electric meter shattering it (in those days the covers were made of glass).
My older brother being accustomed to lying said “don’t say anything tomorrow I will mow the lawn and tell mom and dad I just found it like that.”
That night a vicious storm swept through that shook the house with thunder lightning and wind waking everyone in the house except my youngest brother who happened to sleep on inside of the wall where the broken meter was.
The Next day my older brother “Discovered” the broken meter cover and some how convinced my mom that the house must have been hit by lightning.
For three decades at family gatherers we would occasionally recount the story of the night when my younger brother slept through a lightning strike that struck the wall just outside where he slept, until I told my daughter the truth and she quickly ratted out me and my brother.
As a kid, I got a ‘snag’ once in a fishing hole we used to go to. My friends and I walked all around, pulling from all sorts of angles, but it just wouldn’t give. Finally it did pop out and attached to the line was a set of dentures! We freaked. We bicycled back to town and told the cops who called the state police and closed off the whole area, dragged the creek and sent a diver in. Never found a thing. Cops figured they were tossed away by a frustrated fisherman. One of the guys I was fishing with was the son of our town cop, and he let me keep the dentures, which were later taken away from me after I popped them on the dinner table and said ‘look what we found today’
there was this one time at Band Camp …
Charlie WalksonWater OH man those were the days your childhood (at least winter time activities) sound like mine when I was a kid except we would throw from our yard and then if some one stopped we would let out our German shepard as we ran in the back door to hide in the house.
I went to band camp….
Great stories all and great idea C.
I grew up in a place called Co-op City. It was ‘Towers in the Park’, late 1960’s via East Germany Brutalism Socialism Proletariat HEAVEN, but not that bad really. Hey I met my wife and best friends to this day there and we made it out!
Growing up there, we lived right up against the beautiful Pelham Bay Park and Eastchester Creek.
It stunk at low tide but we didn’t really care, we would climb the ‘do not climb’ fence and proceed to explore the shores of the somewhat polluted creek. A dead horseshoe crab would be about the coolest thing we could find. Really early on there was an actual old ship wreckage of some type, a hull that we would climb in and around.
Well, around July 4th things really picked up and got fun.
We would take our Wiffle BallTM bats and cut the top end of the bat off and towards the handle poke a hole through the bat so we could put a piece of wood through it to make a handle.
What would we do with said converted bat is or was to use it as a bottle rocket launcher to do battle with on the river banks and yes we were not within feet of eachother!
In the later years we would play stickball against the dumpster in the cul-de-sac.
The years after that the dumsters area of the cul-de-sac became a place to drink and smoke…
I would later come to learn that the Col John Glover led 750 men and did real battle against the King’s troops right across from that very river bank at the Battle of Pels Point 210 years before for his own Liberty. They were battling a force of about 2000 British regulars and Hessians. Held them long enough for GW to skirt up to White Plains, after evacuating NYC, where Glover covered the retreat after leaving Pel’s point.
The Rest OF the Story…here. (how can I make ‘here’ red like BFH?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pell%27s_Point
Ghost
THE WET DREAMS, THE WET DREAMS, WHAT MORE CAN I SAY?
@ghost of brig gen j glover
You get the red HERE by coding a hot link, like so:
That will render to:
Band camp! Salvation Army, camp was called Echo Grove. Stolen week of my summer for many years. Hated it.
Different Tim, your Christmas bicycle story reminded me of another story. I had kind of the same childhood (financially) as you did. Our Christmases were great even though we got socks or gloves as gifts, whatever was practical. Money was tight but I never felt poor; I had what I needed. But gifts were only for Christmas; our birthdays were celebrated with cake only.
One time, when I was 11, Dad took me to the department store. I had my allowance, 35 cents, and wanted to buy a book. While there, I saw a display of wood fox sculptures and was admiring them. After I picked out my book, I paid for it and we came home. I went to my room to start reading when my dad called me into the kitchen. When I came into the room, he was standing there with a goofy look on his face and pointed to the table. There was one of the fox sculptures.
I still have it sitting next to Dad’s picture and it’s my most prized possession.
My childhood? Pretty boring. Decade of our twenties I can do better.
Claudia, I get what you’re saying. Now I think I understand your avatar. Always wondered about the story and the location of that little fur critter.
Stupid Wabbit. What a dick.
Different Tim, that’s mostly it – that, and they are so cute!
Stayed at a place once. . .
Got in late after a long drive.
Settled in and hit the sack.
At about 5 or 6AM
Knock Knock
Nobody there.
10 mins later, same.
Nobody there.
I’m mad and tired.
Happens again while I’m still up.
I open the door. . .
It was a tom turkey pecking at his reflection.
Pics arr proof too, maybe by Sunday.
My dad is 88.5 years old now. I take care of him and have the privilege to listen to some of his stories.
My grandmother (she died in the mid 1950’s and I was born in the early 60’s) had several chickens for eggs and some for meat. She also had a rooster that would attack her any time she came off the porch to feed the hens (get in her hair and scratch her up with his spurs).
Well, she needed more baby chicks (for eggs and meat) and they didn’t have money to buy another rooster, so she handled things her way.
The rooster wouldn’t attack her until she came down off the porch to feed all the chickens. So, one day she stayed up on the porch until the rooster got close enough for her to get a good shot at his spurs (about 10 or 12 feet). She shot his spurs off with a .22 rifle and the rooster never attacked her again. I guess even roosters understand that kind of message. I suppose it would work on turkeys too LOL.
The rooster never attacked her again and he sired many baby chickens for the family.
When we were kids in washington d.c., we found a nuclear weapon. We puy it on a timer, and set it off to blow while president Trump was out of town but congress was in joint session.
And blow it did.
When Trump came back, he found the swamp had evaporated.
America lived happily ever after.
(Oh – forgot to mention: this fairy tale is from the future.)
How very nice you are able to have a meaningful memento like that from childhood, Claudia. It tugs at my heart.
Dad bought a mini-bike that was a drawing prize at a Minyard’s hanging in the air for a while at the store. All us kids would dream of having it and he came home with it one day. Something I never even asked for, like your story. Another time felt loved without any words used. He bought it off the winner. an old lady.
So many of my mementos were lost from living on my own since 18 and getting lost in the shuffle of life. I miss the things that were Dad’s the most. Like a microscope he had from when he was a medical student that I used as a mantle display in my early 20s, but I really miss an item from his office called a Dictaphone used by his secretary to transcribe his prescriptions and reports. A rather fancy tape recorder I could play and hear his voice like he was still in the room. The only voice recording I had of him.
If I had left them with Mom when I moved to Wisconsin, I’m sure I would still have them today. I just wanted them with me so bad I never considered the risk.
My top item now is the .22 rifle he bought as a 13 year old at Montgomery Ward for $13. I had left that with Mom, but I had to track it down because she had no idea Dad gave it to me before he died and had given it to Sis’ first husband to get it out of the house.
I felt somewhat restored when I had it in my car as I drove home that day. It was a huge part of the time we shared together.
I’m so glad you are able to have yours!
Was separated from tour group in the U.N. for about half an hour. Up and down elevators, escalators, down halls…til I got nabbed. Age seven.
Wow, Bubba’s Brother, A crackshot Grandma! She had to have pulled that trigger an awful lot to make those kind of shots.
I bet she could have picked off any pest or food within 100 yards with minimal shots.
I feel your loss being born after her time. Same with my Grandpas. Never got to meet them.
Becoming an Eagle Scout in 1981 – in the BOY Scouts of AMERICA!!! (it’s auto-penned, but RONALD REAGAN’S signature was on my certificate! I was the FIRST Eagle Scout in my troop after he became President, and I gave the guys ahead of me a hard time, for having Jimmah Catah’s signature on theirs 😆 ) 😎
NOT, the present boi/girl-boi/tranny scouts of dystopia… 🤮🤮🤮
I saw Rich Little live at the Illinois State Fair in ’75.
That’s all I got.
Of course there was the time that I discovered that fecal matter floats, rather than my previously held notion that it sinks. I was fishing a stream in Squaw Valley CA when I was 11 years old, when an overwhelming need to crap struck. Being a half hour walk from any latrine and all alone in the middle of nowhere I decided to remove my knickers and wade into the stream about chest deep. An excellent idea, I thought.
But all of a sudden doodies started bobbing up to the surface all around me. Aaauggh!!!
I learn most lessons the hard way.
@Bob M – Eagle Scout same year! I didn’t get any of the letters though. But still working with my troop, a rewarding experience and many memorable trips.
My favorite story came from my dad as well as his older brother. When they were growing up on the farm in Dalton Gardens, Id. back in he 30’s they had a dog named Punk, any way got Punk got sick and there was nothing they could do to help save him so my grandmother decided to put him out of his misery and shoot him. So she took the dog out to the field and proceeded to shoot him but she flinched and missed and ended up shooting Punk’s nuts off instead and she left him for dead. My dad and his brother were devastated as Punk was their dog. They thought he was dead but Punk really wasn’t, a day or two later he came up to the house and was a mess but he was still alive and they were happy to see him. Evidently when my grandmother shot him in the balls he had an infection which caused his balls to swell and make him sick and when she accidentally shot his balls off all the pus and junk were able to drain out and the dog got better and lived for a few more years. My dad and my uncle both swore up and down that this was a true story and would tell it at family gatherings later in their lives with my relatives not actually believing them and laughing like hell at the way they told the story. And they always prefaced it with the disclaimer that this was a no shit story. Anyway we all believed it whether it was a true story or not, who knows. And Charliewalksonwater, we too used to pummel cars with snowballs until we hit a guy in the face with a snowball whose window was wide open. Boy did he ever chase us, yelling “You better run kids,” and we did but we got caught because the neighbor kid finked on us, we pretty much quit throwing snowballs at cars after that except then we started to build snowmen around fire hydrants and dared gullible kids to kick it.
When i was a kid my dad rebuilt an outboard boat motor. Needing to draw water in order to test it, he filled a 55 gallon barrel with water and secured the motor and was running it when the next door neighbor pulled in.
Neighbor said, “Roger, you cheap bastard! Why don’t you just buy a washing machine like everybody else?”
As a kid it was hilariously funny. I don’t think Dad laughed though.
First Stitches Story
Got my first stitches in Kindergarten. Climbing on the monkey-bars, slipped and slammed chin first into them. Get driven to Doctor’s office, 5 years old, 3 stitches, no Novocaine and NOBODY GOT FRIGGEN’ SUED! The bill was $7 and those truly were good times.
My uncle had another dog named Punk who a basset hound in the 60’s and 70’s. One time when my cousin came to visit us he brought Punk with him. Anyway Punk got up on the roof of the house thru the open window at the front of he house and couldn’t get back in and started howling and barking. A kid came to the door and told my mom that there was a dog on the roof howling so my brother and my cousin had to climb out on the roof and bring the dumb dog back into house. It was never a dull moment with all the animals we had as kids.
Got about half way down in the stories and wanted to throw something up here before we have to leave and this gets down to page three.
Spent a fair amount of time at my grandma’s place. Small farm type place with a mink farm, a very small vineyard, large garden and barn with out buildings for the roofing company that was my grandpa’s. Also had some chickens free ranging about the place and I (just past toddler stage) had free run of the place, excepting the mink farm.
Came in from playing in the back one day and my aunt asked what I had been doing as she could see a red welt under my eye and thought maybe I had been crying. I had bent down to look one of the chickens in the eye and and apparently she saw her reflection in my eye and pecked at what she thought was another chicken. I pulled back in time to just get it below the eye and came running back to the house. To answer my aunt I said “I have a new name for one of the chickens.” She asked what it was and I said, “Dirty Bastard.” She often told the story and said how difficult it was to not have a laughing fit when I told her what happened…
Great idea Claudia, got more but have to leave. Maybe revisit the topic every week or two?
When I was very young, all the adults were excited because General Douglas MacArthur had returned from Korea and was going to give his address, which everyone seemed to want to hear. That’s all they were talking about for days – the fact that MacArthur was going to give his address. I figured if it was that important, I needed to hear it too. So when the adults all gathered around the big console radio in the living room at Grandma’s house (very few people had TVs back then) there I was, listening with them.
At the end of his speech I was very confused, and I told my parents that even though he talked for a long time, he never told us where he lived.
True story. A bit embarrassing at the time, but true.
WDS at 945
My First Stitches Stories
1st Stitches
4 year old alone in a car parked on a hill
1960’s manual transmission
Push Me Pull Me ohh ohh
Backward scary ride.
2rd Stitches, 7 or 8 years old
Marshmellow campfire
Running in the park in the dark
55 gallon trash can with rusted edges, chin height
3rd Stitches, 8 or 9
A creek
Broken glass
Each stitch still visible in some places.
Remember in the old days when you needed a can opener to open a beer can, and you also had to open the can 180 degrees from the first opening or it wouldn’t pour well. Anyway my uncle was riding in the back seat of a car drinking beer and the driver had to slam on the breaks to avoid a deer. This happened just as my uncle was taking a drink and when the driver hit the breaks his head went forward and the can hit the seat in front of him, driving the beer can on to his nose. They couldn’t get it off without tearing his nose off so he had to go to the emergency room with a beer can stuck to his nose. That’s a “no shit” story.
This story is in response to the turkey attacks in Boston. We have three sons, all pretty close in age and then all pretty brave/foolish and curious. One year when they were pretty young were over in Bozeman, MT, country visiting an MSU prof I’d done some work with. They lived on the remnants of a small farm over on the E side of the pass over to Livingston. They had chickens, geese a horse and maybe some other stock. We were sitting in the living room of the old farm house talking when we all saw all three sons chasing the geese until they passed out of sight. The prof told me I’d better call off the boys because he said those geese would work the boys over – they bullied his kids all the time. I told him that the boys were pretty good at taking are of themselves and lets see what would happen. I thought the worst that would happen would be a few wing cuffs by the geese. A few minutes later, the boys reappeared in the window, the two older with a stunned looking goose under each arm and the youngest with one held to his chest. The prof later told me the geese never bothered his kids again. Later that day, I had to head shoot one of his chickens with his very nice .22 rifle (can’t remember what kind it was now) for him that we were going to have for supper. He couldn’t shoot worth a damn and after about a dozen shots, quiet laughter and amazement from the sons and total dumb panic among the flock of chickens, I asked him which one he wanted shot, took his rifle from him and killed the chicken. He was a damned good cook and the chicken was great!
I don’t have a lot of great stories about my childhood, other than going fishing and, later, hunting with my Dad. I guess the earliest memories are of following a neighbors dog well into the woods well out beyond our house and getting lost when the dog went home without me. I was two and a half. I lost a shoe and Dad Finally found me sitting on a stump crying, just before dark. My aunt was baby sitting me while my Mother was in the hospital having my sister. Our “relationship” was a bit strained for a few years after that before she forgave me for scaring the crap out of her. Another great early memory is standing on our boat dock (we lived on the bank of one of the Finger Lakes) in the Fall, watching Dad and his friends wade out in the lake and fly fish for Ciscoes. And that reminds me of the time we were trolling for bass in late Fall – in a full moon – and I hooked a bass large enough to tow the boat a little way before we landed him.
Damn, Claudia! Thank you for this thread! At age 78, I haven’t brought up those memories in quite a while! Now there are more – but I won’t bore you all with them. They’re not really exciting – just fun kid stuff.
That would be a Church Key `round these parts.
Triangular on one end for those cans and round on the other end for bottle caps.
No idea how that name came to be. Adults did and said the damnedest things back when I was a kid.
VV – I kept envisioning a Cessna with fruit like apples, grapes, oranges, pineapples, etc, strapped to the outside as a yoot and wondering what was above that fruited plane.