OCC's 1964 Freshman bonfire and my Jeep

I transferred to OCC from Fort Worth Christian in 1964. That Fall OCC still had, as a Homecoming Activity, something known as the 'Freshman Bonfire'. All types of wood and other flammable objects were brought together, on the North side of the Learning Center. It was a good opportunity for people to get rid of all kinds of combustible objects...including wood. Guys risked their lives, stacking telephone poles, old furniture, cross-ties and other objects, in their attempt to build the biggest of allbonfires.

The bonfire was guarded a good bit of the time -- for good reason. More about that later...

A little background info:
I transferred in as a junior, and I had a vehicle..of sorts. It was an old jeep, made of parts of a Willys jeep and a Ford jeep. It looked like the old proverbial 'camel put together by committee'. It looked awful. It had no sides, so it was strictly an open-air vehicle. It also had no paint, except in places where I had not sanded and primed the metal. A lot of the metal was rusted. It was not a pretty thing, but it WAS fairly dependable. The carburetor was not made for the vehicle, so the air cleaner and filter would not fit under the hood. I had to improvise an air filter out of a pair of pantyhose, held on top of the carburetor with a hose clamp to try to keep dust and dirt out of the carburetor. It was a fun vehicle, though, and both boys and girls liked riding around town in my little jeep! The jeep was so unattractive it was cute! 

When I took girls out for dates in the fall, winter and spring, I had to bring blankets to wrap them up so they wouldn't freeze! Now, back to the bonfire! One day, when the bonfire-to-be was left unguarded, some guys and I took my jeep and raided the bonfire materials before they were erected. We hooked a cable around the telephone poles that were going to be the corners of the bonfire. Having secured the cable to the jeep, we took off! To the west of the campus, before the days of sewer service for the campus, there was this thing that the uninformed called a 'pond.'  A more accurate but ominous description would have nailed it perfectly -- a 'sewage lagoon'. We drove around the earthen embankments that surrounded the lagoon, dragging the telephone poles behind the jeep. We couln't believe our good fortune!  We had stolen the freshman bonfire telephone pole supports and had gotten away without getting caught!

As I whipped around the top of the retaining wall, the telephone poles followed dutifully behind the jeep, rolling and rolling, twisting the cable and mowing down the grass and weeds.  The guys who were with me unhooked the cable and with great effort we threw the telephone poles into the lagoon.  It was not a pretty sight. The telephone poles floated like basking sea lions in the sewage. We were elated! We couldn't quit laughing! We went back to campus and by now, at the site of the bonfire-to-be there was outrage among the freshmen over the disappearance of their coveted telephone poles. Without the telephone poles, there would be no grand bonfire! Eventually we were found out (maybe because we were all rolling on the ground, red-faced from laughing).

The freshmen had no way to get the telephone poles back to campus. We decided that the prank had been fun but that we had to help them out, so back to the lagoon we all went. The freshmen, brave souls that they were, waded out into the lagoon to secure their telephone poles. At the time, I thought that they exhibited unbelievable valor! There was no way that any of us upperclassmen would have waded into that lake of sludge and floating 'cookies.' We secured the other end of the cable to the jeep again and headed off for campus, going south on Eastern and then uphill on Memorial Road. The telephone poles were on pavement this time, and dragging on the pavement, they caught fire, and were smoking pretty good by the time we got them back to campus. No harm was done. Nobody got hurt. We all had great fun at the expense of the freshmen. The freshmen had to bathe...and bathe...and bathe (and, who knows--they may have had to burn some clothes). The bonfire happened without further incident. The sad looking little jeep got to have its 15 minutes of fame.

Later that year, the little jeep got to perform again when I took eight OCC girls down to Denison, Texas for the weekend. We didn't all fit in the jeep, and the jeep wouldn't go faster than 45 mph down old highway 77, but we were a funny sight, with legs hanging out on all sides as we went down the highway! We looked like a spider on wheels! Cheryl McKee, a wonderful OCC girl who went on to be Homecoming Queen the next year, provided two of my jeep's legs during that trip! Cheryl lived in Denison, Texas and she hosted the girls' visit. We all had a great weekend, but, on the return trip to OCC, it became bitter cold. I had to drive, so different girls took turns holding their hands over my ears so I wouldn't freeze while driving. We were NOT prepared for cold weather --not at all! By the time we got to Norman, we were in a blinding snowstorm. Some of the guys from campus came to meet us and take the girls back to campus in their cars...cars with windows, heaters and the works. I came back to OCC from Norman, finally having had about enough of the little Jeep. I needed a real car, with windows and doors -- protection from the elements. Dating, in an open-air jeep, was beginning to lose its allure.

In the spring, I succumbed to the flashy sales presentation of the Southwestern Company, of Nashville, Tennessee. They recruited a large number of us to be Bible salesmen. I needed a car, so I sold the little Jeep and bought a 1959 Chevy Impala, via the unbelievable kindness of Ralph Burcham, who, not really even knowing me, co-signed a bank note for me to buy that car. Years later, when I developed a little bit of common sense, I was embarrassed for having put Ralph on the spot to help me out. He could have refused me. No one would have blamed him. I was an idiot for having asked him. Ralph, however, did what he has done all his life --- he went out on a limb to help someone else out. He trusted me to make the payments on that Chevy Impala. I love Ralph and Gladys..for all they are and all they have been to so many, for their entire lives.

The memories of the Homecoming bonfires, the many trips in the Jeep, the wonderful guys and girls I met while at OCC comprise a lot of the best memories of my life.
Many of the friends from those days at OCC are still best friends -- and, over the years, the memories of those friends and the good times we had, grow sweeter by the year!

'Totally Immobilized....TOTALLY!"

Okay, this has been 'true confessions week'. I have one more really embarrassing moment from my youthful days. Here it is...

The summer of 1957 was a great summer. I was 12, going on 13. After my paper route -- after supper -- I would often get on my bicycle and ride all over our neighborhood. After I wrecked my old balloon-tired bicycle showing off at school at an earlier time, I got a newer bike. It was maroon, and wasn't an antique. It wasn't expensive, either, but I loved that bike! I became so familiar with that machine, I felt like the bike and I were 'one'. It almost seemed like part of me. I polished that bike and adjusted the spokes and cleaned and oiled it, almost compulsively. I got it with some of my paper route money and unsanctioned candy sales at school, and I spent a lot of time on that bike, exploring my world.

One summer evening, I had been riding all over the neihborhood at breakneck speed, up and down the gently-sloped hills in and around our neighborhood, wearing nothing but a pair of long jeans and a t-shirt. I didn't want to go home -- not yet -- and still, I needed to stop for 30 seconds to relieve myself. If I go home, I thought, Mom will make me come inside for the evening --- take a bath and get ready for bed. So, I pulled into the alley behind our house, and without getting off of the bike, unzipped my jeans and took care of business off of the side of my bike. Then I hurriedly zipped up my jeans and --- OUCH!...I had managed to zip up 'Oscar' in the zipper of my jeans! That really hurt! I was frozen in pain, and yet, I knew I couldn't stay in the alley all night. I tried to free myself from the zipper. I tried and tried, to no avail. The pain was almost unbearable! Then it gradually got dark.

I decided to try to ease back up on the bicycle seat and carefully coast down the alley and around the corner back to our house. Big mistake! As I carefully eased back up onto the seat -- still in terrible pain -- I slowly put my right foot up onto the pedal to give it a tiny push. I pulled my shirt down over my open pants, and then started rolling down the alley toward the street. I no sooner began pedaling than I realized that the cuff on my 'high water' jeans had gotten caught in the sprocket of the bicycle! "OH, GREAT!", I thought. "Now I've done it! I'm stuck here in the alley. I can't pedal and I can't get off of the bike without tearing 'something vital.' " I couldn't move! I WAS TOTALLY IMMOBILIZED! TOTALLY!

I stood there quietly in the alley for a long, long time. I had a vivid imagination, and began to think of all sorts of 'outcomes'...none of them pleasant!

I had mental pictures of people driving down the alley, plowing into the 'paralyzed kid' on his bike! I thought that I might be there all night, until someone could see me the next day. Then I thought of my parents. They will think that I've run away from home when I don't come home tonight. They may call the neighbors or the police and I may be 'discovered' by people with very bright, utterly revealing flashlights! I'll be ruined at school, I thought. How can this be any worse? I know how it can be worse --- what if they have Sylvia Harrell and her Mom and Aunt join in the 'search' and Sylvia finds me? (Sylvia was a young girl from church who was, at that moment of my life, and for years thereafter, the love of my life, as the saying goes). She lived half a block from our home. I would rather have died than for Sylvia or her Mom and Dad to find me in that ridiculous, embarrassing situation in the alley!

Very late that evening, my Mom went outside our home, looking for me. None of the neighborhood kids had not seen me in hours. Mom and Dad were bound to be worried. I didn't know it at the time, but they had gone out looking for me. Dad went one direction and Mom went in another direction, talking with neighbors and calling my name. I heard Mom coming, and I responded with an answering 'yell'. I was both so glad to see her, and yet mortified to have to have my Mom, of all people, help me get 'free' so I could go home. How embarrassing! It took awhile, but eventually, both 'Oscar' and my jeans were free and I went home. Eventually I healed up and the humiliation subsided. Mom didn't tell anyone what happened and I didn't either, for many, many years.

I learned a lot from that episode...but the most important lessons I learned were:
Don't 'whiz' off of a bicycle, put the chain guard back on the bike...and never forget to remember ALL of the kindnesses of parents. They go through SO MUCH in trying to raise their kids!

Gunplay at church - a lie - forgiveness- a life changed

In 1957, I was 13. I had a paper route in the afternoons after school in Oak Cliff. I had somewhere around 120 papers to deliver every day. The papers were Dallas newspapers, and they were heavy. It was a tough route to walk every day. It was good for me, though. It made me tough. I carried two bags of papers -- one over each shoulder. I walked for a couple of miles, delivering those papers. Delivering papers was a way I could contribute to the 'Shoemake family income.' I helped buy groceries with my paper route money and never minded doing it one bit. I felt like a real asset to the family. I felt important--I 'contributed' and that's a good thing for a kid (then or now!).

I was still an immature kid, however, and once or twice I got into trouble via the afternoon paper route. My papers were delivered each day on the north side of the Sunset church of Christ parking lot, out by the curb on Jefferson Boulevard, just west of Hampton Road. On one particular day, I decided to take my pellet rifle with me. I chose a day when the papers were pretty light, and the added weight of the air rifle was not going to be a burden. While waiting for the papers to arrive by delivery truck, I started plinking at things -- cans and bottles that I found next to the church parking lot. I got bored with those targets and soon spied targets I could not resist! The large floodlight bulbs esconced within metal reflectors, situated high up on the auditorium building of the Sunset church where we were members. I knew it was wrong, but I was a dumb kid, with no sense of the cost of things or the mess that I would make. I was tempted and I gave in to temptation. I began aiming at, and exploding the bulbs. I was having great fun, until Jack Hardcastle, our pulpit minister, drove up and got out of his car.

Mr. Hardcastle asked me if I was the one who was responsible for the glass on the ground under the reflectors on the sides of the building. I was standing there with a pellet rifle. I was the only person for a hundred yards. The glass had barely stopped 'tinkling' on the concrete, and, if this had been a Western film, my rifle barrel would still have been 'smoking' from the firing of the rifle! No, I didn't look guilty...NOT MUCH! A reasoning person, 'caught with the goods', would have instantly confessed to the crime, knowing that it was all over. Instead of doing this, I stood my ground and came out with what I remember as the first whopper I had ever told in my life. I denied what I had done! I LIED!

Mr. Hardcastle was not pleased, but he outwardly expressed his acceptance of my denial as 'the gospel truth'....and he never told my parents! I would have been beat within an inch of my life had he told Mom and Dad. I was ashamed, but kept my conscience in check, and covered up the lie. The guilt in me festered like a boil.

My conscience bothered me for years. In 1964, after having enrolled at Oklahoma Christian College, Jack Hardcastle was on campus, for the OCC Lectureship, if memory serves me correctly. I saw him from a distance and worked my way through the crowd, wanting to talk with him. When I got my chance, I introduced myself to him...hesitantly. He remembered me, and smiled a kind smile -- not the reproving scowl I deserved and half-expected. I told Mr. Hardcastle that in the summer of 1957 when he drove up and saw me with the air rifle and asked me if I had been the one shooting out the flood lights and had denied doing so ---that I WAS the one who had been doing just that! He smiled a forgiving and understanding smile, put his hand on my shoulder, and told me that he had known it all along. He told me that he forgave me for what I had done and had watched me over the years following my 'Sunset shootout', and knew that I had become someone different...someone with 'admirable qualities'. He told me that he knew that I had done things for my family and that he appreciated who I had become -- adding that he had often inquired about me over the years. He told me that he could tell that I was truly sorry, and that now I had to forgive myself.

I walked away from my talk with Mr. Hardcastle, and as I left him I felt like I had been reborn! I had confessed something that had bothered me for years, and had been forgiven. I had never known that kind of forgiveness from my own Dad, who I am sure, loved me and my brother George and my other siblings, but we were never TOLD that we were forgiven...or loved. Forgiveness, or an arm around the shoulder, or kind words were not something that we got from our Dad. We were disciplined, and we were provided for, but what we really wanted and needed was always missing from Dad. I know he meant well, but all four of us kids wished things could have been different.

As a consequence-- in my adult life, I have 'seized' on the qualities I have seen in men whom I have respected. At Fort Worth Christian College (1962 and 1963), I locked in on Elmo Hall, one of my professors. I also homed in on Marshall Keeble, a fiery black minister, who was the best preacher I had ever heard in my life to that point in time. I admired Jimmy Allen, the evangelist.

When I transferred to OCC in the fall of 1964, I again saw and watched Elmo Hall. I saw how he treated his family, and how he treated people with whom he came into contact every day. I saw his compassion, his love of the Lord, and the constancy of his devotion to family and the church. I watched and learned from Ralph Burcham, Mickey Banister and Bailey McBride, in whom I have seen an uncommon kindness and a gentleness of spirit that is magnetic! I found wisdom in all of these men, and a 'composite' of all the things I hold dear, and treasure in godly men. I have never told any of these men what I am sharing with you now, but I will. They need to know what an impact they have had on my life (and the lives of countless others).

People are watching all of us all the time, observing how we treat others...looking to see if we are the 'genuine article.' Lives are being changed all the time by the way we live our lives...by the way we treat people...by our words, our actions...a warm smile, a word of forgiveness or encouragement or a hand around a shoulder. Let's all remember to love each other. Life is over so quickly...each of us has a chance...as well as a responsibility...to be a light in this world.

'Redemption' by candy at Lida Hooe Elementary

I was in the 6th grade, in Dallas, Texas. We lived four blocks from the Sunset church of Christ in Oak Cliff (when Oak Cliff was still a nice place to live -- before it became a ghetto). One day when dad was at work and Mom had gone somewhere for the day, I thought it would be cool to skip school for a day. With no parental oversight, I had a grand day. Dressed in a pair of summer shorts and a t-shirt -- barefooted and free -- I decided to get on my old-timey-ugly-brown-rusty-no-handle-grips-balloon-tire bicycle and ride back and forth in the street next to the playground of my school---Lida Hooe -- my elementary school on Hampton Road. I knew when my classmates would be out on the playground, right after lunch, and I wanted to taunt my friends and make them feel like they were really missing out on the great fun I was experiencing, skipping school on such a grand day! I wanted them to suffer a little bit after seeing my apparent freedom. I rode grandly back and forth -- up and down the street on the north side of the school building, smiling and waving at my buddies (and hoping the girls were watching). Then I started doing the 'no hands' maneuver, whereby one steers the bicycle, sans hands, weaving from one side to the other like a surfer riding his board.

Suddenly, without any warning at all, the front fender on that old heavy clunker of a bicycle, dropped down over the front tire! The front of the bicycle stopped instantly, since the tire abruptly quit turning and the front of the bike stopped! The rear of the bicycle, however, went into a rear-over-front flip. Naturally, since I was perched up high on that semi-tractor seat, (which had its own set of strong springs), I was propelled over the front of the bicycle and onto the pavement. Just as you might imagine, it was another instance of 'teeth, hair and eyeballs' splattered all over the street. My bare elbows, kneecaps, hands and other body parts slammed into the hard pavement. As if this was not bad enough, the rear end of the bicycle, along with the bicycle seat, then slammed into me. I didn't have handlebars on my old bike, and one of the metal handlebar tubes drove itself into the space between the first and second knuckles on my right hand -- hard enough that I couldn't use that hand for days (and had what appeared to be a reddish blood clot between those two knuckles for years).

I picked my body up off of the pavement, to the laughter of a large number of my classmates and other hecklers, who thought that my nearly getting killed, while showing off in the street, was GREAT FUN!

By now, all my joints were getting into some serious 'synchronized bleeding'. Later on, I got 'busted' by the teachers, for skipping school, and had to stay after school every day for a long time. I also got busted with a belt that night when Dad came home. I wrecked my sole means of transportation, and made myself the laughing stock of Lida Hooe Elementary.

The ridicule went on for a long time, but I finally redeemed myself in the eyes of my classmates when I began furnishing them with a steady supply of cinnamon sticks that I would buy on the way to school (a small store next to a funeral home that I passed while walking to school each day). I loaded up my pants pockets with various articles of purchased contraband that I bought for a nickel or a dime and then re-sold at school, furtively, lest I get caught, for 3 times what I paid for them. My hottest selling item was a cinnamon stick called a 'Fire Stick.' Eventually I quit 'carrying' all the other items and focused on Fire Stick sales. The sticks were 4 or 5 inches long and about twice the thickness of a piece of chewing gum. I could pack a lot of them into my jeans pockets. I started doubling or tripling my money every day, and eventually pocketed some serious money...for a 6th grader!

The candy sales made me a 6th grade hero (others could have done it, but were afraid of getting caught -- or, they had no store in the route they had to take to get to school). I was able to make the embarrassment and ridicule from the bicycle fiasco fade away in time ---and I did it with cinnamon sticks! Redemption by candy at Lida Hooe Elementary!

The first ten years are sometimes the hardest!

When I was a newborn, my Mom was at the home of her in-laws in Sherman, Texas. She was holding me and she leaned over to latch a screen window in my grandmother's bedroom. As she leaned over, I moved suddenly and she lost her hold on me. I fell into the window, and past the still-unlatched window screen. I landed on the gravel outside the window. My mother and grandmother rushed me off to the hospital, thinking that I had sustained some internal injuries. I was not 'broken', but my Mother lost standing in the eyes of her mother-in-law when the accident happened. She felt like she was not a good mother, at least in the eyes of my grandmother.

I survived that first 'fall', and went on to move, with my parents, and siblings, to Houston, Texas. We lived out on Yale Street -- sort of out in the country -- and we had chickens. When I was two years old, and was chasing chickens one day, I slipped and fell onto an old washtub. The bottom of the washtub had rusted out and had become a sickle-shaped piece of rusted, yet sharp metal. When I fell, that rusted metal went across the top of my head, effectively almost scalping me. Off we went to the hospital. I got sewed up and months later, my thick, curly blond hair didn't betray the horseshoe-shaped sutures beneath. See the pic of me and sister Nancy -- before the chicken-chasing, washtub disaster. The other pic is of me, AFTER the hair came back. (Raegan, your Poppy gave you your pretty, curly hair -- don't ever forget it!).

I didn't want to go to school as a little kid. On the first day of kindergarten, my Mom left me with my kindergarten teacher at the Woodrow Wilson Elementary School in Houston, Texas. I made it through part of the day, but the little girl, Antoinette, who took a nap on a towel next to mine, on the floor, soaked us both while she was asleep! Wet, thoroughly grossed out and embarrassed, I left -- walked right out of the classroom -- out the door -- and went straight home! I didn't care much for school!

I felt pretty good about going home. It was a good decision! I enjoyed the walk. When I got home, however, the novelty left when I got a good paddling --- with Mom's Fuller Brush hairbrush (the good one, with the wooden handle). She marched me right back to school (with dry pants), and I suffered through the rest of the day, looking at the alphabet, trying to duplicate what I saw on the blackboard on my Big Chief tablet, trying to learn the alphabet while taking turns learning to tie shoes on a giant red wooden shoe...and staying WELL AWAY from Antoinette!

The next few years in grade school were better. I fell in love with all of my teachers and not a few of the girls in the classes.

Saturdays saw a bunch of the guys in our neighborhood, going to a local theater for the Saturday matinee, to watch 'shoot-em-ups'. The tickets cost a quarter, and my folks allowed me to do that-- unsupervised, since a bunch of guys all went there together (safety in numbers I guess).

Some of us managed to pick up ring worm at that classy theater. Our school picture showed several of us wearing those flat caps boys wore in those days --you've seen them. Like they wore in 'Little Rascals.' A small brim in front. There we were -- as bald as bald can be. No hair, no eyelashes, no eyebrows. We looked like little Martians. I was especially homely looking, as I was sporting a wicked set of Mortimer Snerd buck teeth. To have been 'street legal', I probably should have been wearing a sign, warning people to avoid bumping into me. The teeth I was sporting could have been their undoing. And that's the plain 'tooth!' The teeth, combined with the bald head, capped off by a dorky looking cap from the 1030's, made me a real looker! See the pic above of my 1954 Grade School class. I'm the guy, 2nd row from the top, left of center, with the dark cap. A kid that only a mother could love! My only comfort was that some of the other guys were in the 4th grade and also bald! As bad as this was, it gets worse...

I went to a doctor (of sorts). The standard treatment among the learned physicians back in the 1950's included irradiating peoples' heads when they picked up ringworm! They would lay what looked like heavy truck tire innertubes lined with lead, on our chests and then blast away at our heads with radiation...x-rays!...to kill the ring worms, of course! Our hair, eyebrows and eyelashes grew back, over time, but the humiliation faded away much more slowly.

In June of 1953, when I was 8, and going on 9, the Alco Fireworks plant, near our home in Houston, exploded! My brother, age 6, and I had been taking a nap. I had awakened, and was 'sneaking' out of the room, so my younger brother would not awaken and start following me around again. As I started to leave the room, a monstrous explosion shook our home, knocking me off of my feet. I landed hard on the floor. My brother, George, came flying out of bed, and barely missed being sliced and diced by a large mirror that shattered and sent large shards of glass all over our bedroom floor.

We ran outside and looked around. To the right, past the Baird's Bakery that was located a few blocks away, right next to the River Oaks Shopping Center, we saw a huge fireball -- a gigantic mushroom -- rising into the air. There was a lot of damage in our neighborhood, from broken windows and structural damage to homes, shaken by the explosion. Later we found out that people had died -- a large number of people had been hurt. An automobile ---a Crosley automobile, if memory serves me right -- had been thrown hundreds of yards through the air. The fireworks plant was blown to smithereens. At this time, however, we didn't know that the explosion was caused by the detonation of a fireworks plant. We all thought that we had been attacked by Russia!

We lived in a time, back then, of drills in the schools, to prepare for the possibility of nuclear attacks from the Russians (as though 'duck and cover' would help when ones' city had just been vaporized!). We had regular 'duck and cover' drills at school, and, as kids, had a sense of impending doom, even though we didn't really understand the threat. We didn't get bombed, however, and so life settled down after awhile. In the fall, school started again, and we went back to buying stamps to put into the pages of our little books. When the pages were filled, we got a War Bond! It was the patriotic thing to do back then. We all wanted to support the Korean War effort, although we didn't know where Korea was or why we were at war. We just did what we were asked to do.

Occasionally, Mom would take my brother and I shopping for shoes. They had this nifty device in the stores in the 1950's that was a kid's delight....none other than a small x-ray machine (they called it a fluoroscope...but an x-ray machine is an x-ray machine...no matter what you want to call it). One could stand in front of the device and stick a foot into the opening, and then press a button and see the bones in ones' foot! What a neat toy to allow kids to play with while Mom shopped for shoes! We played with it endlessly....(no wonder most of us who grew up back then are a little 'different' now!). Sometimes my brother or I would stick our hands in the machine and let the other brother look at the bones in our hands as well. Great fun! Playing with x-ray machines! The thing was probably developed by Hitler's henchman, Mengele, to genetically alter all of America's kids!

I made it to age 10, and watched 'Superman' every afternoon after school, at the home of 'Lalo' Reese, my little neighbor who was short and chunky, and, with her chili-bowl haircut, looked a little like a tiny, female Friar Tuck! My, did we love Superman! Her Mom always served us chocolate cookies and Kool-Aid. The Reese's were also more affluent than we were...not only did they have a television, but they had a window air conditioner as well. Rich people! ....Back to Superman...

I had a lot of confidence as a kid, and became convinced that with a proper cape, I, too, could learn to fly like Superman. One afternoon I strapped on a less-than-perfect cape...certainly not flashy like Superman's cape, but one that I was able to craft out of one of Mom's old bed sheets. I got up on top of our garage and then leaped, and soared off into....the ground! I didn't get hurt too badly, other than two sprained ankles, but came close to landing on one of the 54 turtles that I had collected...turtles that roamed all over our backyard during the warmer months.

We stabled our horses at the Post Oak Stables (Dad was a member of the Harris County Sheriff's Mounted Posse -- something he did as a hobby), and the turtles were, I guess, attracted to the bugs that were attracted to all the manure. Mom didn't like the turtles too much. We didn't have a clothes dryer in 1954, and Mom would hang the wash on clotheslines in the backyard. While she was looking up, putting clothespins in the clothes on the clothesline, turtles would clamber over her feet, sometimes almost sending her into orbit! Great fun, I thought!

Speaking of doing laundry, Mom also made our laundry soap. She made it in large basins, out of lye and what else I do not remember. I can still remember Mom grating large pieces of that lye soap, using a cheese grater. I would also grate soap, and the trick, of course, was to not run ones' knuckles over the cheese grater! We used an 'agitating washer', but, I can also remember Mom using a scrub board for some of dad's clothes. That was hard work. Looking back, I don't know how she did it....leaning over the bathtub with a scrub board and her homemade soap, scrubbing dirt out of three boys' jeans and dad's clothes. We had a 'wringer' on the washing machine, and we were given strict instructions to stay away from it. We had heard lots of stories about people getting hair, hands, fingers, arms, and other appendages caught in the wringer. One still hears an occasional reference to someone getting his/her '(blank) caught in the wringer...'.

When I was 10 we went to the Houston zoo. Nice zoo. I ran ahead of my parents and stuck my head between two of the vertical iron bars outside the zoo - bars that were part of the fence decoration at the entrance to the zoo. Bad move. (Why do kids stick their heads between bars?...because they're THERE, of course!). I got my head stuck and all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't get my head back through the bars. Finally, in desperation, the zoo people called the Houston Fire Department! Here they came, sirens blaring! A small crowd gathered. What a humiliation. If I hadn't been crying so persistently, I probably would have gotten a huge whipping by my Dad for that stunt.

Not long after this, my family and I witnessed the event in Houston that, even today, remains unexplained. All of Houston, TX., saw the event in the sky. I wrote about it in an earlier post. THAT was an amazing day, and I still think of it often and wonder. When you have a minute, read that earlier post, 'You tell ME what they were!'

Not long after, while messing around in our garage, I found dozens of old shotgun shells that belonged to my Dad. I had been experimenting with the rolled caps from my cap guns and the way the gunpowder 'flashes' when one scrapes a sharp object across the top of the caps. I thought: "I know -- I'll open up all of these shotgun shells and collect the powder that it inside them and make a bigger flash!" Another not-so-bright idea. It took hours, but I got all of the shells opened -- collected the powder and then began my experiment. It flashed all right...so big that when it ignited, it blinded me and seriously burned my face, fingers, hands and arms. I had to go to the doctor a lot that summer....it took months to get over that 'experiment.'

In late fall, my neighbor Bobby, who was about 13, decided to dig a 'fox hole' in the vacant lot on the corner of our street. He had his dad's pick-ax...you know, a blade on one side and a sharp pick on the other side. He had been digging for a long time when I showed up with a couple of buddies. I stood on the other side of the hole where Bobby was diging. As he plunged the blade down into the hole, I looked down in the hole to check on the progress. He yanked the pick-ax back up, and it hit me squarely in the center of my forehead. It hurt....oh, yes...it hurt a lot! And then the bleeding started, and I bled like a stuck pig. I was skinny back then and I ran home, with blood coursing down my face, neck and chest. Back to the doctor. Stitches. My forehead was mangled...I looked like a 10-yr. old Charles Manson...without the swastika carved into my forehead. It took years before the scar faded.

Later that year, near Christmas, Bobby, the 'old' 13-yr. old neighbor, was throwing a knife into a chinaberry tree. It was a beautiful knife. It has a fake pearl handle, and the blade was about 4 inches long (maybe a little less...to my eyes back then it looked like a Bowie knife!). He was pretty good at throwing it hard enough and accurately enough for it to usually stick in the tree....usually being the operative word here. I was impressed. He threw it once more and it richocheted off of the tree and embedded itself in my thigh. I took off for home, with the knife moving back and forth as I ran. Mom had to remove the knife and...you guessed it...take me back to the doctor again. More stitches. This time, however, Bobby got the whipping-- from his dad. If I had thought about the pick-ax and the knife and had ever put the two events together, I might have had second thoughts about running around with Bobby.

Right after the end of the year, after my dad's shooting-the-ornaments-off-of-the-Christmas-tree-stunt, with his cousin, Otis, (Matt Gayle's great uncle), the neighbors put their Christmas trees out on the curb for the trash man to collect. Good old Bobby -- our mentor and teacher -- collected the trees and put them in his back yard, in order to construct another, in a series, of ill-fated 'forts'. It was a grand fort, and we set about making the fortifications secure -- against imagined 'foreign invaders'. My brother George, as part of his preparations, brought matches from home -- the big kitchen matches. One day in January, George-- ever one for experimentation -- lit a match and accidentally set the fort on fire! He managed to burn down Bobby's parents' garage and everything in it!

We all got a whipping for that...all of us. Especially Bobby. His Dad nailed his hide to the wall! And come to think of it, George and I each got two whippings for that stunt....a 'two-for-one-stunt'---one from Mom and another from Dad once he got home from work. Mom used her Fuller hair brush (I still have it...broken wooden handle and all).

After the Christmas tree fort fire, one of the neighbor boys (from over the back fence, behind Bobby's house)-- still mad about the whipping he got from his participation in our fort activities--- beat up my brother George one day. I heard George crying, as the boy, 12, and his brother, 11, let my brother have it while George was on their side of the fence. George was only 8 years old, and was trying to climb the fence, to come home, and the boys kept hitting him. I grabbed a brick, climbed up the 'hog-wire' fence, and heaved the brick at the older of the two brothers, to try to make them leave George alone. The brick hit the older boy in the shin and he went down like a 'TON of bricks'. Those boys were never friends again after the brick incident, but they also left George alone.

The next summer, while I was still age 10, George and I were at my grandmothers' home in Sherman, Texas (the site of the cannon incident I told about in an earlier blog). We were across the street, down at the bottom of the bluff, just outside the weeds, in the creek bottom. We were playing with Dad's magnifying glass. It was a big, powerful magnifying glass. You could burn your initials into boards in seconds! George got tired of burning words into wood, and he experimented for a bit with dried weeds. You know where this is going....seconds later, the fire he started was racing up the steep wall of that bluff. From the creek bed to the top of the bluff was about 50 feet. The flames were immense! It was an raging inferno! It was loud! I had never heard a fire make so much noise. The cedar trees along the way went up like Roman candles! The heat created wind, that swept the flames up the side of the bluff. In a few minutes, we heard the fire trucks coming. They finally put the fire out. Two telephone poles were charred. The wires between the poles were 'toast', and had to be replaced. Just like my dad had received a hard whipping for setting a cannon off right over the same place (when he was a young kid, maybe 25 years earlier) where my brother George started a fire, George and I both received a 'belt' whippping (much worse than a hairbrush whipping, since it was administered by Dad, and he hit harder than Mom did).

This pretty well summarizes my first ten years! Most of my early years were filled with wonderful days-- fun times that I remember like they were yesterday. Carefree days of wearing a pair of shorts and nothing else...running like the wind, riding bikes and exploring and pretending. These years were just punctuated every now and then with unusual events --- probably much like your lives have likely been!

Putter pics for interested bloggers!

Here's what the putter looks like with a printed name in block letters, or a signature.

This is going to be fun! I can't wait for the drawings, late this year! Good luck!

How to get 'comments'...bribe 'em with golf putters, of course!

I just read my daughter Gena's blog. She's changing her 'address' so her name is not part of the blog name. Good move...I guess. I'm not very technically literate, and I'm too trusting to really understand why that's a good idea, but maybe it has to do with fears of 'identity theft', or a fear of weird guys stalking little children (I can understand that...big time!).

Gena said something funny on her blog tonight...it had to do with her trying to squeeze comments from people who read her blog.....good luck with that one, Gena. Most people like their anonymity, I guess. Part of the fun in blogging, at least for me, is having someone leave a comment. I want to try to 'draw out' some visitors who read my blog but never let me know they've been here. That's kind of like going to a friend's wedding and not signing the guest book....and then slipping out of the church building before the ceremony is over. Right?

I have always wished more people would let me know they've read my blog. That makes it more fun for me, too. I comment a lot on others' blogs, and enjoy doing so. Some people don't want to comment, however, and I understand that...I guess. Stay with me here. I've got an idea!

I'm going to try something FUN! For those of you who don't read blogs without pictures, you can sign off now. This won't have pictures--at least today. Don't get me wrong -- when I was young I wouldn't read things either, if there were no pictures on the pages. Now that my maturity has reached such an advanced level (major grin here), I'm deliberately weeding out the intellectually-challenged readers who rely on visual stimulation along with their printed pages. Such 'mentally dwarfed individuals' will drop out along here somewhere, I'm guessing.

I'm going to save all my 'comments', where people actually identify themselves as having visited my blog. Toward the end of the year, I am going to type out all the names and put them in a container and have a little child stir the names up (Raegan, maybe?), and pull out a few names. The owners of those names will receive a gift! A custom-personalized golf putter. The retail value of the putters will be substantially over $100. I'll share with you the retail value of the clubs later this year, in another blog.

One day soon, I will have the time to post a picture of one of the golf putters on my blog, so you can see it. I will custom-personalize that golf putter with the name of the recipient in block letters or something more cursive, such as Zaph Chancery font, or, should the recipient want me to do so, I will use his/her actual signature and custom-personalize the club with his/her signature!

I make these clubs in a proprietary process that I developed back about 1989. The club head is made of stainless steel, and will be fitted to the recipients' wishes as to length.

A length of 35" is standard for putters. The putters will have a genuine black leather, fur-lined putter cover, with a velcro strap. The personalized area on the club looks like black glass, with the gold lettering appearing to be floating in the cavity of the club, within the 'black glass.' The material is invulnerable to sunlight, and will never pull away from the putter head. It will not fade. It is simply gorgeous! The club is not just a 'pretty face', however. It is a functional club, and has been used by many customers since the late '80's It comes in a right hand model only, at this time.

These clubs are soon to be re-introduced in the U.S. market after a 7 year absence. We produced these clubs for 11 years, and sold them to companies all over the U.S.--companies like Coca Cola, ESPN, AC Delco (a division of GM), American Airlines, all the major oil companies, and so on. Every country western star you are likely familiar with has one of our golf putters -- given to them by Bob Woods, an OKC man who worked with and recorded some of these people -- Vince, Reba, Garth, Roy Clark, George Strait, and lots of others.

These are beautiful clubs, and you can't get them anywhere else! We designed the club heads, and they carry our logo. Our former logo was 'BackNine', and we dropped that after 11 years. Our new logo is 'OneStroke', and we've trademarked that name. You won't ever see our clubs in stores. We haven't and won't -- advertise them. We sell directly to companies, primarily, and they use our clubs as gifts for their best customers-- people who spend a lot of money with them.

We do sell to individuals as well, but the vast majority of our clubs were sold to large companies. We think our internet sales will also, over time, bring in buyers who want that special, unique (redundant?) gift item that can be custom-personalized with a name and a message, and given for birthday, retirement, job advancement, or any of a dozen other reasons. Wait till you see the pics of our clubs on my blog next week. The club will knock your socks off! We sold many, many thousands of them until 7 years ago when we could no longer obtain club heads in the United States. Our U.S. foundries couldn't seem to make metal heads without at least 30% of them having serious flaws. So, with the help of a well-connected friend, we are having them made overseas now. Our first shipment came in two weeks ago. We're having a web site developed and are getting the last few things put together so we can start producing them again. I will get the site up and running and then Paula will take it over -- at least until I retire someday from Premiere Roofing and join her.

This will be a fun experiment. I may or may not draw out the heretofore 'anonymous' visitors to my blog. There's no harm in trying, is there? There's no cost involve, so there's nothing illegal about this. There's no gambling involved (we couldn't have that, could we, Joetta?...a little private family joke here) :)

So, now that we have long ago weeded out the bloggers who have to have 'picture-pages,' you tough, stalwart bloggers who stay with me and identify yourselves when you visit my site, will have a better chance of winning a beautiful golf club for yourself or your significant other! As my Mom would have said: "How 'bout THEM apples?"