February 08th, 2012

Neil P Brady 's Story

Birth Year: 1959




Table of Contents





     


    Let me just say that, "I have not lived a dull life!"


     


    CMYLIFE - FOR MY 2 CHILDREN & YOU 


    [Pic]



    PROLOG


    Many people through the years have suggested that I take time to tell my stories. When people hear of my defeats and successes they somehow feel the time was not wasted. Through the years I have kept people fascinated with my life adventures. Like everyone I have no issues with talking about myself. As such this story, my story, will be written in the first person. I am glad Cmylife.net was created, a forum for us all. I as well hope to read your life story here.


    I have been bothered for some years now because my father has spent the last 15-20 years researching and building our family genealogy. It is said "you can't know who you are unless you know from whence you came."


    I do not get excited about the thought of trying to know a list of unknown people some that today are just a name. There is no reality with that name. With genealogy I'm given a name, date of birth and a time of demise not to mention whom they are related to. That is fine.  But unless they became famous I know nothing of their life story and that really is what I truly find fascinating. I love to hear the stories of the people I meet.


    For example: For real I am a direct descendant form the Mayflower or that I have my share of famous ancestors some who you can find in an encyclopedia such as Boss Tweed From New York who ran the Tammany Ring. These people have history to them that is past on because of some stroke of luck or really hard work. But usually the history you read in history books or what someone else writes in an encyclopedia is developed from their slant, or from their own conflicted opinions. I find for all the rest of the family tree that I know absolutely nothing about their life. So to build on what my father started for my family and other personal reasons I will share my life here for them, for you, and for anyone. I hope you to will take the time to do as I and post your history here. I really want to read it. You have the chance to fascinate me! What is to be your legacy? I really want to know.


    The most widely published, translated and read book in the world started with these three simple words. I will use them also because I can accept that they work.


    1. IN THE BEGINNING...


             My parents and two older siblings were living in a three family house in Dorchester, Massachusetts. It was a small apartment located above my father's aunt's home. It was July 5th 1959 that my mother went through the pain of my birth. (Thanks Mom, I owe half of me to you). I had great parents. I could not ask for better. Claire and Joseph, with deep love, THANK YOU, for being you.


    What I don't know is my parent's thoughts on the subject of me or very little else for that matter. I was sitting on my front porch with my dad who was visiting me a few years ago. I had my infant daughter in my lap as I did most every evening that summer. I would be out in my swing and rocking back and forth making up songs and words that rhyme to the rhythm of the pendulum motion. I had a brief conversation with my dad and I said. "You must have many memories of moments like this that you shared with your 5 kids." He said in fact, he did.


    I replied that "The problem with the memories you have with me is they are yours, not mine."


    "So for my children, all three, you could not possibly know the depth of love I have for each and every one of you or the pleasure you gave me when you were very young, even now! I hope you have that same love, as I know you will with your own kids. Only then will you understand."


    As far as my parents are concerned, they never told me much about their youth. They have never written about themselves or their thoughts for me. I could put in a thimble the knowledge I have of their lives. The other side of that universe is what I know to be, my side of the story.


    I was told that the day after my mother left the hospital with me, my family moved into a newly bought  small 2 bedroom house in North Reading, MA [Pic]. The cost of that home was $13,000 at that time. It was located about 20 miles north of Boston and about 15 miles from the Atlantic coast. This home had one bath and a tiny kitchen a beautiful living room that had old wooden windows and a brick fireplace. The dinning room was located in the center of the first floor of the house with steps leading upstairs to one room that was above the kitchen and dinning room. There was a triangular window cut out of the stair case wall so you could easily see people going up or down. Off the side of the dinning room there was a front hall with a closet and behind that my parents bedroom.


    I remember my older brother chasing me around the house my parents were in the bedroom and I hid from my brother in the front hall closet. I must have been about 3 years old or so. Well he found me, opened the two swinging doors very fast and said BOO! I followed my first instinct; I punched him in the nose. My mom was right there behind him at that very moment to stop him from killing me. He had plenty of time to do that later. We had somewhere to go.


    This house [Pic], it was barn red and sat on 2 acres. The home of my childhood has more memories than I can shake a stick at. Although the bulk of my story comes when I left home. I will spend some time to give you a synapse of those early years.


    My parents lived there around 30 years, maybe a few more before they retired and moved to Labelle, Florida. So you could say I had a stable childhood without the moving around that others may have experienced. There was an attic that I remember my father turning into 2 additional bedrooms above the living room and his bedroom. Between the living room and front hall were the stairs down to the cellar below these rooms. As I mentioned he converted the attic to bedrooms and closets for us because he had 2 more children after me. He was a handy man but this is not about him. This is ABOUT ME!


    2: My Early Years


             I have just 2 memories of those first years of my life that are truly mine. I remember at about the age of 2 I crawled under the backside of our Christmas tree and saw my reflection in a large red glass ornament. The returning gaze mesmerized me. I was a handsome boy then. I can say that the other accessible first stored memory was when my Uncle Arthur Brady, (my favorite uncle until he died), I believe it was him, came over with some other family or friends possibly my great aunt Rena. It was summer and there were these two beagles that they had on leash out behind the house and I asked if I could hold them. I remember that as I did they pulled me down and I cried. You could say at this point I was a crybaby. But it's true I was a baby. As a youngster I was terribly afraid of dogs. Maybe this was the cause.


    In fact there was a large dog husky or shepard mix named Patrick that lived 3 houses down. No one fenced his or her yard back then. They were too big anyway. When the dog would come to our yard my older brother thought it great fun to torment me by telling Patrick to get me. I would run to the house screaming; he would enjoy great pleasure at this. The unfortunate thing about this is one day that dog did bite my older sister on the face. No lasting marks that I am aware of and no lawsuits in that day. It was considered part of life. An apology ment something then and it was normaly accepted.


    Some background: I am the middle child of 4 siblings [Pic] with an older sister Kathleen by 3 years, an older brother Joseph who we called Jay by 2. My younger sister Carol was a year younger and Tommy who was 3 years younger than myself. We now call him Tom because he grew up.


    There are a couple of incidents I will refer to here that I think have some bearing on my childhood. I was up in the middle of the night or I guess very early one morning it was still dark outside. Everyone in the house was asleep but us. Carol and I were playing on the stove and she was messing with the knobs. She turned the stove on and I did not know how to turn it off. All I knew was the light was on and that meant we were both in trouble. She got down and I started chasing her around the dinning room table. As she came around on the side of the steps located beside the front window, I pushed her. She fell and hit the corner of her eye on the corner of the steps. Her right eye was slit open and when her screams of death brought my dad running out of his bedroom naked. He saved her. She got to wear a butterfly bandage for a few days and she carries the battle wound as a scar to this day. She got me back a few years later. For my scar is on the eyebrow of the opposite eye.


    There was one other incident involving those stairs that comes to mind. This memory haunts me to this day. In the cold of the winter we had forced air heat that came out of registers located at floor level. There were two on the central wall of our living room. When we were cold you would find us always sitting with our feet to the register. It was the middle of the night shortly after my grandfather and uncle Arthur died. Jay and I were sitting by the register closest to the dinning room and we both at the same time saw two ghosts come down the stairs. They were just like white smoke. They never turned the corner at the bottom. I never saw that again. But they walked or should I say floated down the stairs and had the shape of men. It is a mystery that I have never forgot nor will I ever forget. It is one of two such events in my life that keep me believing in an afterlife or spirits. It provides me with my fear of God. After the second experience, which I will mention later, I never messed with supernatural stuff again. I think for now I will just wait my turn.


    We spend most days outside. Growing up I remember all the days my mom would say "get out" mostly to all of us and always with the suggestion came a wave of the arm and pointing in the general direction of the back door.


    The other thing I remember about that back door was her telling any one of us at any time "Don't slam the door, Now open and close it 50 times."


    There were other times when she didn't have to tell us to get out. We had advanced warning such as her pulling out the vacuum cleaner. When she did that, it was time to get out of her way. You know she always talked to that machine as if she were possessed.  As I recall they were never repeatable or at least not memorable conversations. It was best to just get out of the room if at all possible. When we were older we all got the chance to vacuum not to mention wash the dishes. It was always a two-person job, one to wash and one to dry.


    "Who will do it tonight?"


    We had a large yard and plenty to do. We played in the swamp behind our house we called it the "Cranberry bog" because in these early years there were in fact cranberries and it had water. There was the "Blueberry Bush" a southwest section of our back yard above the water and off the south side of our hill. It was between the hill and the bog. You guessed it! It had blueberry bush plants. Our hill we called the "Pine Grove Hill" because there was a pine grove behind it on our land.  At the top of this hill was the granddaddy of all white pines. It towered over the others mostly because it was on the top of the hill. I never climbed that one it was too big and had no lower branches. But it stood out among the rest. I have always wondered as a child what the view would be like from the top of that one. An adventure unlived by me. I guess I will never know.


    Martins Brook was a small river [Pic] that ran across town and the back southwest corner of our land. It was the source of all the water. It connected down the road at the Park St. Bridge to the Ipswich River. A railroad bed with tracks removed ran east to west along the southern boarder of our family's property. This brook and swamp and all the woods out behind it played into many of my early year adventures. One got me a spanking. But I will tell you that later.


    Down the street to the west was our church St. Theresa's Church, where I had received my 1st Holy Communion and on a good day my mom would let us go there to ride our bikes in the parking lot. It is also where my older sister took me to learn to drive a car with a stick. Across the street from that was the drive in theater where in the trees you would find a hole in the fence where the kids would cross to go sit beside the speaker poles and watch the double feature. (and beat away mosquito's!)


    You go down a little further and you came to Route 28 where we had the local lumberyard and hardware store. I bought many an axe handle there. Since before I can remember I have just one other early memory. The circus came to town and set up tents next to that hardware store, and I remember my dad taking me there where I rode a pony. This occurred right down the street from our house.


    Adventures you say? What adventures can a small boy have on 2 acres of land? With an older brother and sister and a good imagination what was stopping us. Well, we had big and small trees. We had rock walls across our yard and gardens and a concrete patio between the house and garage to ride our tricycles [Pic]. There was also a patio on the backside of the house that would get very warm in the summer and we would lie down on it to get our tans after we were done in the pool. Which by the way was almost never. We had a dirt driveway at that time that parked the old gray Chevy. This car looked like a Volkswagen bug but much, much bigger and heavier. We used to climb up and slide down the windshield and hood. I am surprised today that we never broke the windshield wipers. I don't know whose bright idea that was but I am sure it was my older brother Jay who instigated it. He and I did most of the trouble making in the family. My older sister Kathleen would suggest things and he and I would of course have to act them out. Guess who got the most spankings? Being younger had its benefits. Not that I avoided them all, but skipped probably what should have been my share thanks to him. Unfortunately I don't feel I owe him. He's my brother. He was older and should have known better.


    I was talking about adventures. My parents did not have money. My father worked hard my mom was at home for years. That changed in time but as I was saying there were many adventures starting when my parents would go out of course they needed to find a baby sitter. We would of course have a new one all the time because they hated us, or at lease that is what I perceive now. Maybe they just couldn't handle us. We would do things like slide down the stairs on our pillows. What fun! The problem was those stairs took a 90° turn to the left at the bottom and as you know there was only one thing to do. Hit the wall!


    I truly don't know why we went through so many baby sitters. Mrs. Kennedy was one that I believe lasted the longest. The reason I know this is I remember her name though not her. These people were all kids once they should have understood us. I guess there was just to many of us to understand at the same time. Right?


    When my older sister was old enough to baby-sit us younger ones that is when the real fun began. My older brother one night at about 9 PM suggested that we get flashlights and put on our rubber boots and go down the back for a "romp in the swamp". We did! The only problem was that the water at that time was up over our boots. Not a problem for us. Yet. There was this aching thought simmering in the back of my mind at the time that we really were not supposed to be out there.  But in the moment it never blossomed.  We saw the eyes of frogs by our lights and had a great time. When we came back to the house we went in the cellar hung up our wet cloths and went to bed. Somehow my mom discovered the cloths. I suspect maybe my older sister told her, I just don't know. Hence, because they were not there earlier that day only one thing could have been deduced from that. She was smart and we weren't, we got the spanking.


    Another spanking came late one night when we were woken up by my older sister Kathy. There was this strange noise in her bedroom in the middle of the night she got scared. We all went down to the living room and eventually woke up my dad. We all got spankings and got sent to bed. It was after he got home from work the next day that he found a bat flying around in the upstairs bedroom. To this day I can't figure out how it got in but it was fun watching him chase it down with a broom. He did in fact apologize to us.


    Ok, I was talking about spankings so I will let you in on one more childhood event. My mom was doing laundry in the basement and Tom and I were up to no good.


    My mom looked over at us on the stairs and said "If you don't stop it I will give you a spanking"


    Well I am 3 years older and it was not in our make up to listen the first time or second for that matter. We were warned but we did not stop what ever it was we were doing. Possibly nothing more than annoying her, but she came over and gave us each a good one.


    Well, Tom said. " Ha, ha that didn't hurt!"


    I wish I could have had a picture of the look on my mom's face the moment she heard that. The Challenge offered, Challenge met! He was not laughing after the next one and I sort of held back my smile as I left for upstairs. Unbelievable but true!


    Our backyard is where I gained my love of the outdoors. This is where we spent all of our time when the weather was nice sometimes when it was bad. I have many memories of sitting in my upstairs window watching the blizzards dump on us. We had a swing set halfway down the yard below where our pool was. There were large rocks to the east side of the swings that eventually were turned into a picnic area. There were 4 large choke cherry trees beside the swing set on the west. We strung large 1-inch hemp ropes that my dad got from either his father or uncle Arthur. They worked at the Boston Ship yards and I guess that is where the rope originated. Was it free to them? I don't know. I didn't care. It became ours.


    Times were carefree and we would swing like monkeys on the rope strung around these trees. It was an idea of Jay's. Now Tom who was much younger than us thought he would try it. He was a brave youngster and 3 years younger than me. He was about 5 that made me 8 and Jay 10.


    Tom fell and broke his arm. There were other things we did with this rope. My dad climbed a ladder and set up a rope swing for us way down back in another large choke cherry tree. There was a simple loop at the bottom we could sit in.


    Another idea was Jay's and I think a friend of his. They took another section of this rope and a pulley that fit it and made a line from a tree at the top of the pine grove hill down the backside to another big pine. They attached a wooden seat and rope to the pulley so we could ride it down then pull it back up again. This worked great for Jay and I. But I remember Tom wanted a turn. He was placed in the seat and we tucked the extra hanging rope in the back of his bathing suit. We didn't want it to drag and slow him down. That way he could make it all the way to the bottom. Well he got halfway down and stopped. With that sudden halt he fell foreword and off the seat. Lucky for him we had tucked the rope in his swimsuit. He was hanging upside down by the back of them sending Jay to the rescue. He was oldest, and tallest so he could reach him. No one got hurt.


    In the summers we played on the swings. It was early one day just after lunch, I believe in those days I ate Franco American spaghetti that came in a can, I was with a neighbor from two doors down, my friend Joey Corbett. He was my age and we were 5. It was after kindergarten one day we were swinging back and forth together on the double-seated swing. There was a platform for your feet to rest on between the facing seats. He sat across from me facing my direction. Somehow he slipped his leg down between the platform and the ground and the swing broke his leg. I didn't know what to do. So I ran to get my mom. She was great and she took care of everything. As kids, when we were not playing in the pools we had, we could be found on the swings. We would tie our swimming towels in a knot around our necks and have capes that flew behind us in the wind like the super heroes of our day. We would hang upside down with our legs wrapped over the center bar running across the side A frame.


    Speaking of super heroes mine was Superman. He was on TV, a show that we watched on our black & white. I loved the idea of saving Louis Lane and the x-ray vision. My family did not have a color TV until I went to college. And then it was only because my father's mother Alma wanted to give my dad hers. She was getting a new one. He was content at the time with his 20 inch black and white model. Anyway he said he did not want it.


    So I told him "if you don't want it, I do. Lets go and get it".


    We did and between you and me I think he is glad we did, it became his.


    Do you remember when you actually had to get up and change the channel? There were the Little Rascals a show about kids playing outside. Well there were 5 of us to play with at my house and kids in the neighborhood our ages. They also came over. So we didn't need much TV. On TV I watched in addition to Superman the Three Stooges. I remember my mom putting a stop to the Stooges watching because of my older brother would try out their antics on us/me. Then there was 1963-4 when the Beatles came to N. America. I remember I got to stay up and watch them play on the Ed Sullivan Show. Boy did they change things with their long hair. At that time I had hair and I always had a buzz cut.


    Summers were the best. We were at a very young age when my dad bought two canvas pop tents. I must have only been 6-7 at the time. But we used to sleep out. my older brother and me, in those tents on nice summer nights. We had blankets because we could not afford sleeping bags. Kids today just can't appreciate the aroma of wet musty canvas that has been out in the weather for a summer.


    We would be up at the crack of dawn playing in our sand pile. There was this sandy area [Pic] below the picnic area that we could dig for buried treasure; In fact my older brother and I had planned to dig all the way to China. We knew it would take some time, but it was down there somewhere. We would be the first to find it.


    Aside from just digging holes and covering them with boards for a fort there were the Tonka Trucks. I can't imagine how a boy could grow up without one. We did not have any of the expensive ones like cranes and pay loaders, just a standard red dump truck. Hours and hours did we spend playing in the sand. Heck as I recall there was plenty of sand in my bed too. We took baths once a week then and shared the bath water. Don't ask me about laundry, (my poor mom), I didn't have a clue about that until College. We just threw our cloths down the cellar stairs.


    There were also the swimming pools we had. They were initially 1 and 2 ring blowup pools [Pic] that we could splash around in. But as soon as we got just a little bigger, my dad bought us a 3-foot deep pool [Pic] that was round and 12 feet across. It was installed just off the back patio in the upper lawn. My older brother discovered that the little blow up pool would fit and float in the big one. So we had our first boat. My little bother and sister had to do without. There was of course the never ending fighting and screaming going on. My mom one day came to grab my older brother in the big pool. He backed up and she fell in. I can still laugh about that today. Boy was he in trouble then. It never fails. We cheer our older siblings on when they are about to get a spanking. We know it, but we just can't help it. You go boy!


    As time went on and we got older the pool got larger. We had graduated to a round 4-foot deep one [Pic] that was 15 feet across. My father built a platform that he installed beside it to get up and in. The stairs were attached on hinges and you could pick them up and over to place them on the platform. Anymore, No one wants you to jump or dive into pools these days. But we would dive from the platform into the pool through round blowup rings and then someone got the idea to climb up on the railing around the platform and dive in. We were almost 4 feet above the water diving in. Of course when you hit the water you had to head for the other side instead of the bottom. No one got hurt. Probably the most fun we had in the pools was when my dad taught us to make whorl pools forcing the water to go around. We would go as fast as we could in a circular motion around and around then go drifting on the created current. It also moved all the dirt to the center of the pool for easy removal. Before we were out for the day or night we made the whirlpool for cleaning. Who would think that preparing for cleaning could be so much fun.


    In the winters when we were young we had sledding and Ice-skating, making snow angles and snowball fights. We shovel the driveway, which was not small and buried under the snow piles to make forts.


    Sledding began behind our garage and graduated to the Pine grove hill. When we were much older we then got a ride to the local country club though not very often. The public golf course had huge hills with sand traps to jump out of, but that was later. The pine grove hill was on our land behind the neighbor's lot.


    When we were really young my dad would build some small ramps of snow behind the garage. There was a small hill there that dropped maybe 6-8 feet for a short distance. As we got older then we would build ramps on the back patio behind the house out of snow. We would start there and take a 90° turn on a snow bank built up and to the right and drop down across the upper lawn, down a set of rock steps to the picnic area. This was Jays idea built on practical staircase and pillow education. It worked and we had a blast. When it was time to go out it was truly a chore. My mom would break out the winter coats and we all had to have ski pants and hats mittens boots and so on. It would take her 20 minutes to get us all dressed up to go out. We would always come in through our cellar. There was a back door there and we would take off all the cloths and hang them on hooks along the side of the cellar stairs. The wet ones like our wool mittens were hung on a cloths line crossing the room. We played on the swings also. Do you remember when you were 5-6 sticking your tongue to ice cold metal? I remember doing that on the swing set. Yup, it stuck! We didn't have parents there to pour warm water on it. We just pulled a little harder. What fun! Now can you imagine a not so bright adult doing that? I have seen that too.


    I think winter was my favorite season as a child growing up north of Boston. There were so many things to do. We were beyond the suburbs at that time in the 60's. I think there were only 23,000 people in our whole town. There was so much to do. We could watch the pheasants that came to our yard. My dad would feed them. It was 1964 and my friend Ted Equi who lived across the street and a few doors down said his dad saw a deer in the back yard of his house. He had large apple trees there. When we were older we would hide in the brush by the street and throw them at passing trucks and cars. It was fall and they were the soft one that we picked up off the ground. There was at that time a very large wooded area behind his house so we could run and get away. As a teen I spent a lot of time out in those woods.


    Speaking of throwing things at cars. My older brother Jay thought seeing as it was summer one year and we had no snow balls it might work with ice cubes. Not a good idea at all! I did hit a car and the guy stopped and came looking for us. No one got hurt, but Kids don't try this at home! In retrospect, it is a really bad idea and yes someone could get hurt.


    There were times when we would build fires in the living room fireplace and cook hotdogs on large forks made with metal coat hangers. We had single pane windows so in the early mornings during the winter when the sun would shine in you had frost patterns woven across the panes of glass, a kaleidoscope of crystals, just beautiful.


    My older sister and brother got to have and do things much sooner than I. For some reason my parents always grouped me with my younger sister and brother. I was young, I don't remember my age and I wanted a pair of ice skates like Kathy and Jay. She had nice white figure skates and Jay, hockey skates. I can only assume today that my folks didn't have the money for a pair for me. But I sure felt left out. One year my great aunt Millie on my father's side bought a pair of boys figure skates for me. They were new and black. I was very happy. I would get regular hockey skates later.


    The cranberry bog had lots of bushes in it. So we would skate upstream on the river where it was always over its banks in the winter. We stayed on our side of the railroad bed. This area was down behind the houses in back of the pine grove. The older neighborhood kids would go there. But truly I don't know who owned it back in those days, it did not matter, it was ours to use. My dad would come out late in the day and whistle loudly for us. When we heard it that meant it was time to go home.


    My first pair of skates was a moment that I remember had a change in my life. I acquired freedom because I could now skate the length of the brook behind my house. We would go for long distances. I believe one year I actually skated all the way to Martins Pond the source of our brook. It was miles from home. The river passed under a bridge in the railroad bed at the back corner of our property. That is where I took my first fall through the ice. I was about waist deep in water. My brother and older sister helped me climb out. We sat on the bridge and rang out my socks and pants. And boy was it cold. I had to put them back on in order to get back up to the house to change. There was no fear of drowning it wasn't deep on that side of the bridge. The boys swimming hole was on the other side of the bridge. There it got deep. We would fish there later when I got older. You know, I can remember when the wind was blowing and we would open our coats and let the wind sail us down the river.


    There were times when we would be outside in zero degree weather under a full moon at night sledding on the pine grove hill. We would get water from the swamp in buckets and ice it down. I can still see the low of the moon moving across the snow as we whizzed down the hill. There was always competition as to who could go the farthest. When I was a boy there was plenty of snow and it stayed all winter. We did have a January thaw most years. But February would come and the snow would be back until March and April.


    In those years as a young boy we would take snow shovels down to the cranberry bog and whack off the tops of the bushes that stuck through the ice. We would clear a large area and then with buckets of water from the river we would spread the water over the cleared area to cover the tops of the stems of the bushes as it froze. We built boundaries for an ice rink with the snow that was pushed to the side and make imaginary nets at both ends with an open faced rectangle made with snow. These were our hockey nets to stop the puck. We played hockey with the kids our age. At night we would go down and as we had seen people who were older that had made a fire on the ice to stay warm and cozy. We did that also a few times with the guidance of my dad.


    I got to do things that ordinarily I would not have done if it were not for having an older brother. Thanks for leading the way Jay.


    For example. We used to get inner tubes from truck tires and jump on them like a trampoline. We would stack them together and climb in and roll down the hill until they fell apart. There were long metal stems that stuck out into the center hole used to blow them up. We always made sure they were pointing down. Today you would think someone could get impaled on them. So you would be told don't do that. Or you can't do that. But for us, no one got hurt. Now inner tubes for us were not hard to come by. There was a gas station across the street from our house and the owner Mr. Richardson ran dump trucks and serviced cars. So beside his garage we could find tubes that may have needed a patch or two. He had a compressor there for the car tires so we always had a place to get our air for our tubes and bikes. Can you believe we didn't have to pay.


    We could also go inside and buy gum and candy bars for a nickel. Ten cents got us an 8 ounce coke in the old bottles.


    One year I think my brother Jay was in junior high. He and a friend took two truck tubes and tied a large piece of plywood across them both and with his hockey stick paddles he and this friend decided to Huckleberry Finn it down the river behind the house. The raft was large 4X8 the size of a plywood panel. I did not go on that trip. But I rode my bike down the street to Park Street Bridge to see them coming. The river was not deep and he had to push through some brushy and low areas. It took them a long time because he did this in the summer when the river ran low.


    But it was not long before that changed. The next spring we both went. We had an old aluminum flying saucer sled. It was a round concaved plate that was used for sledding. It was that next year my brother thought of the idea that we tie it to the inside of a large truck inner tube using 4 ropes. That being done we had a single man raft. We needed a paddle. If we broke hockey sticks we didn't throw the sticks away. We just cut the broken end off and with a block of plywood nailed to one end we where good to go. We had paddles.


    Well what good is a raft or two without water? We would float around on the cranberry bog behind our house in the spring when there was high water. This was our practice area. They had not grown back yet from us cutting the tops off in winter. Controlling the raft was easy with a little practice.


    It was spring the river was high, so when that became boring we spiced it up. I don't know if we had our parent's permission or not. I don't think so. We were outside so we went down the river. I remember it was April and the blackbirds were back. We took one friend with us at a time. It was Jay, our friend and I. I am not currently sure or remember who was with us on those trips but we had our own separate rafts. It never failed. When we went it was the friend that would always get dumped into the river. It happens like this. We would get under the Park St. Bridge where it turned into the Ipswich River and got a little larger. Then moved on and down to Chestnut Street. There were two large culverts there to go through.


    As you went further down toward Central Street Bridge there was this tree that grew out and across the river and the current would take you towards it. Now this tree in the spring was right at water level or just below it depending on the flow. You had to stay right or you would hit that tree. Jay would take the lead and go around it. Our friend would follow and I took up the rear. Well sure enough our friend hit the tree causing the front of his tube to go up. The end result was a swimming person. No one ever got hurt but the water was cold for them! Talk about good clean fun. Who said you can't swim with your cloths on. It was a following trip that we took someone else. They also wound up swimming.


    Swimming was not a problem for the kids where we lived I don't think I knew anyone that didn't' swim. My first bad experience was when I was very young. My family and a friend of my dads Tommy Currivan and his family went to some lake for a cookout and picnic. We all went into the water. I remember I was walking out and was up to my chest. The next step I took there was a hole I stepped into and was over my head. I know I was scared but I didn't panic. I just turned around and stepped back up. I looked around and no one noticed I had even gone under. At this time I was too young and I could not swim. That never happened to me again.


    My uncle and aunt Robert (Bobby) and Eleanor (Ellie) Godheart who lived in Hydepark, a town just outside the city of Boston, had a trailer in Blackman Trailer Park on the ocean in Marshfield, MA. It was just below Brant Rock a wonderful small town of summer cottages. They were all gray as that is what happens to cedar shingles attacked by the salt air. In town was a little penny candy store called Bud's. The town of Brant Rock sort of wrapped around Green Harbor. There were two piers there one a large marina for all sorts of boats.


    At the boat ramp there were times when we would play like we were assisting the people bringing in their boats. But instead we would be hanging on as they pulled us in. I am certain they knew what the game was but they were total strangers to us. There are very good people in this country. I would prove that to myself over and over in my life. You just need to read on.


    The harbor used to have moored boats in the center and a very large pier with an ice cream/bait shop. You could buy an ice cream and bloodworms or clams and fish from the pier. You had to cut the head off the bloodworm before you put it on your hook or it would bite you.


    We used to catch flounder and such when we were boys. Once I even caught a stripped bass off the pier. I was fishing with my cousin Billy. The older men that were around saw what happened and came over to us. They told me that they had never known anyone to do that. It was less than 17 inches so I was told I would have to throw it back. Who threw back hard caught fish in those days? But I did as suggested. You did not need a fishing license to fish in salt water in those days. I don't live on the ocean any longer so I don't know if that has changed.


    I went back there to visit the trailer park in the late 80's. The trailer park was closing; someone was going to build condos. The pier, which used to have tons of muscles and children fishing, was dead! There was nothing living in the water that I could see. It was very depressing to me. I have not been back.


    Now in the early years of my life we managed to get down there a few times every summer Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day and maybe other special occasions. There were the occasional times we got to stay overnight. I think just about every trip we made there all the kids would walk up to Bud's at the end of the day and get a small brown paper bag of penny candy and some sticks of incense. We called them punks. They were great for lighting firecrackers. The pavement was hot and we always wore no shoes. I couldn't manage that today.


    My mother's uncle and aunt Red and Sally had their own trailer a few doors down and in back of the Godhearts. So I have many memories of times at the beach. I can tell you when the weather was cold and rainy my aunts trailer had an attached room built onto the side of the trailer with bunk beds for the kids and in it there was a potbelly stove. On rainy or cold days they used to start a fire in it. Talk about a warm cozy feeling. I don't believe I can describe it in words. But with the storms blowing and the rain pounding on the windows I remember a time when my Uncle Bobby and my father left to go down to the beach during a brake in one storm. I believe there was a hurricane off shore. They came home with a bunch of lobsters that they pulled from traps washed up on the beach and we had a feast that night. If the trap was washed on land it was legal to remove the lobsters. I was very young and I remember the ocean waves breaking over the sea wall at Brant Rock. My dad drove us down to see that. It had to be 20 feet from the top of the wall to the normal high tide level. I was young but that was a storm!


    I love lobster plus fried or steamed clams. In fact there was a salt marsh right across the road behind the bathroom and showers from my aunt Ellie's trailer. We kids would go out there with a bucket and shovel. You would sink to your knees in the mud and cut your toes and feet on the broken clamshells as you walked. But as you walk along you see small holes in the surface of the mud. If you stepped down on them water squirted back up at your face. You didn't want to look to close or they would get you. But you knew that the clams where there. You could dig down and in very little time fill your pail.


    For those of you who have not been clam digging. And I can imagine it is quite a few because back then we didn't have red tide or pollution like today. You had to soak the clams overnight to get the sand out of their bellies. If you don't you will chip or break your teeth eating them. Don't eat freshly dug clams unless you like grit. I was told you put them in a mixture of corn meal and water and they take in the cornmeal as they eliminate the sand. Makes them better eating. We would just let them soak.


    Red my mothers uncle was the only person I knew at that time of my life who used to have a boat. He went out fishing one night and came back with a large wooden basket of haddock. They were what I considered large fish at the time. I also consider them one of the best tasting of all.


    You can't get them anymore. They're gone. So are the wooden baskets.


    Red was coming in one night late from fishing and hit the jetties beside 2nd beach. He had a little too much to drink and sank his boat. I remember that he was very embarrassed and I thought, I would never do that. I never did! They pulled the boat out the next day. I don't know what ever came of it. I spent the night at his trailer just once that I can remember with my sister Carol.


    I remember that night because it had a significant moment for me. I watched my dad shaking this mans hand. He did not kiss Red goodbye and I finally made a connection. That night when Sally and Red went to put me to bed he asked for a kiss and I held out my hand for him to shake it. He did, but then said "I still want my kiss". He wanted a kiss and of course he got it. I went to bed. But it was the first time in my life that I offered up my hand for a handshake. I was growing up.


    Red and Sally are now gone. I am sorry to say I don't know this man or woman. I do know he had lost a finger. And once I spent the night at their house. There were real live railroads tracks down behind that house somewhere. My cousin Richard told me "if you put your ear to the track you can hear the train coming". I never did hear anything. Richard their son had a tinker toy set that was more complex than I had ever seen. I couldn't create anything with it. I guess that was the beginnings of thought that I would never be an engineer. That is all I can remember.


    I don't like Lego's today. I just don't have the mind to put something together. Of course that is my problem, not Lego's.


    There were three areas of coastline at Blackman's Trailer Park. The center section was 1st beach. There were some very large rocks on the right side of this beach at the waters edge that the older kids would jump off. You could only do that at high tide or you would hit the rocks at the bottom. The rocks separated it from what we called 2nd beach. Right past 2nd beach was the jetty. We would fish form the jetty and I was out there with my cousin Kurt and Jay one day. They are the same age. It was a full moon high tide. That means the water is much higher. Anyway I was out at the end of the jetty and those two were coming out towards were I was.  A rouge wave came in hit the jetty and came right over the top of me I was soaked. They just pointed and laughed!


    1st beach was not a sandy beach but all pebbles. It always had a line of seaweed at the high waterline. There were these green headed horse fly's in those weeds that when they bit they really hurt. In fact they drew blood. This beach we didn't use much because of the pebbles. It was not sandy and it was hard to walk on in bare feet as we never wore shoes then and it got worse as we got older.


    There was this large boulder that looked like the head of a sperm whale on the side of the big rocks I made mention of. I can remember throwing rocks at that whale head as the waves washed around it for many an hour saving myself from that hungry, imaginary, sperm whale.


    My two children have inherited the same rock-throwing gene. They have to throw rocks into whatever body of water we come to. I have to drag them away!


    There were always small skiffs or dinghies that were turned upside down above the high tide line on 1st beach. People who owned them would remove the oars and it was a good thing they did. We probably would have used the boats had they left us their oars.


    When we were small we used to tunnel under them in the sand. We could not lift them but my older brother, my cousins and I would tunnel under them and play. No one would find us there. And in fact that is probably true. But no one at that time was looking for us. We were outside that was all that mattered. Parents today, I think are to overwhelmed with saving the lives of their kids. We all made it. We all are going to wind up in the same place. A little simplistic, but people today are control freaks, Of course that is my opinion, I'm here to talk about history not the present.


    To the left of this beach was a very rocky shoreline. Here is where we would hunt for crabs and anything left in the tidal pools. You could lift rocks and find all sorts of things. There was no shortage of periwinkles (snails) that we used to throw at one another. The tough part was walking on the rocks that contained barnacles. They were sharp and hurt because of course we were always barefoot. When they cut our feet we would just wash them with the salt water. We found skates or stingrays once and there were sometimes jellyfish we could play with.


    The trailer park extended over and above this rocky area also. My grandmother, Elsie Jameson, who lived in Roslindale, MA, bought a trailer[Pic] a few years later and put it here on the rocky shoreline for a summer home. It had no services but Electricity. A 50-gallon drum up on a tower beside the trailer is what you filled with a hose for gravity fed running water. The gray water ran out on the lawn. We visited there for many years. If you had to go in the night she would have a can or pail to go in. I was always to embarrass to use it. So I didn't.


    Red and Sally's son Richard my cousin was much older than I. I remember a time walking along the dirt road coming back from what we called 2nd beach. This was the sandy beach you could lie on with a towel comfortably. Anyway he and my brother were singing this new song that came out Can't Get No Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones. I didn't know the words then but thought they were so cool being able to do that. I remember they left me behind. I resolute in my pursuit of fun, made a stop seeing as there was a large muddy puddle at the corner of the road that I should play in. The water was so very warm it was beside the fresh water marsh and I had a little plastic toy boat with me. (Later to be lost at sea, 2nd beach). I was happy. I was very young. No one knew where I was. My dad found me alone in the puddle. I can't recall, but I don't think he was happy.


    It was here on 1st beach that I saw some kids for the first time flying a kite with a deep sea fishing pole. It worked great. You had no problem with the string breaking because it was fishing line and when you wanted to bring it down you just reeled it in. To get it started you had the advantage of being able to hold it up higher in the air to catch the wind. Boy you could fly it high.


    I think the only time you did not have a breeze or wind at the beach was at sunrise. I loved waking up there. No adults would be up. Just us kids and we would go outside and head down on the rocks to the waters edge. Or if in our tents behind the trailer we would just get up and go.


    I can think of no other sound as comforting to me than to wake up at waters edge to the sound of the waves lapping at the rocks, the sea gulls making their hunger calls and rippling across the flat undisturbed ocean the hollow thud, thump, thud sound of a diesel engine on a lobster boat. Today that memory always brings me home.


    Down bellow the town of Brant Rock the trailer park where my grand mother placed her trailer was right on the water. It was a short walking distance from my two aunts trailers. You would step out the door and it had about 10 feet of grass lawn then it was rocks all the way down to the water. I had the chance many times to spend the night there growing up.


    We had the Blizzard of 78 that pushed my grandmother's trailer 100 yards inland. You have to know that was HIGH water. So why are they building condos there? I guess people who don't read history tend to have it repeat itself. Granted where my grandmother had her trailer it was high above the water. But so was the top of the breakwater wall in Brant Rock. But sure enough I have seen the ocean water going over the top of that wall. It did not matter when the right storm comes that property is underwater.


    I had one cousin my age Billy (now Bill) who was always playing with me when we went down there. My mother's sister Phyllis and her husband Bill Sr. are his parents and they live in Marshfield also. They had a house across town. We also would visit with them every time we went down there. Bill grew up to be a lobsterman with his own boat. I am still jealous, but it was not to be my life.


    It seems that as a boy I had a conflict of interest. This all boiled down to would I rather go to the mountains or go to the ocean. I once had the chance to go backpacking in New Hampshire or go to the beach. I choose the mountains because I could be there one day longer. As it turned out in life I would eventually choose the mountains. I left to go to Colorado for good in June of 1981, at the age of 21. Now that is when the real adventures began. I will get to them.


    I started to tell you that we could all swim. Well I guess by now knowing that we spent so much time at the beach and had swimming pools in our yard you know the answer.


    I recently in May of 2007 took my children to a place called the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, Colorado close to their home that they live in with their mother. Inside is an ocean fish tank and in the tank are horseshoe crabs. I told my daughter that when I was a boy we used to play with them. I remember a time my cousin Billy and I had walked over to 2nd beach and up the channel to the harbor and pier where we found a few of those crabs. We took them and as we were walking home we past someone's pickup truck that had the window down. We thought it would be funny if we tossed them in the cab of the truck. I still to this day don't know that answer to whether it was funny or not. But we did it. I think the person who owned the truck probably didn't think so. We had all kinds of wildlife to play with. There were jellyfish and skates also known as stingrays. No one ever got hurt.


    3. MY SCHOOL YEARS


    I went to Kindergarten it was optional in those days. I have a few memories of that. Busting my lip on my knee when I dropped of the monkey bars. No problem. I still have my lips. I remember Mrs. Dora asking us to color a tomato on the paper we were working on. I colored it brown. She treated me like I was an idiot until I told her I though she called it a potato. Kindergarten was at her house. Not the elementary school in those days.


    1st Grade:


    I went to Murphy school in North Reading. I remember the first time I went to that school my mother left me in some room and disappeared on me. I was there for some time and what ever it was we were doing when I was done, I left the room traumatized because I did not know where I was or where to locate my mom. I finally found her in the lunchroom. I was safe again. I had substitute teachers for most of my 1st year because my teacher was sick. I don't even know her name. My mom said I didn't learn much that year. The bright side was there was a girl there that chased me around the play ground at recess. She was beautiful with long brown hair and her name was Rhonda Gill[Pic]. I had a big crush on her, my first LOVE. I don't know what ever happened to her because she moved away.


    2nd Grade:


    In second grade I loved to look at picture books. I could not understand why anyone would have an interest in a book with no pictures. It was at the end of this year that my teacher Ms Dugan was going to get married. She was a pretty blond woman. And like any boy in any school at any age (every age) there are just these certain teachers that get your attention. She was mine. She invited me as well as all her students to her wedding. My mom took me. This was my first.


    The school year was out and I will never forget this day for the rest of my life because it was a day that defined me in who I was to become. When we got home from the wedding, I remember as we walked in the side door of the house into the kitchen my mom said to me she had to talk to me. As I stood there in the doorway she told me that she had kept me back in 2nd grade. Even today as I write this I can't think of one single event that hurt me more than those words. And I have been through plenty. My friends on my street Ted Equi and John Kodis who were my age were no longer going to be my friends. They moved on I was put back with my little sister. They graduated High School tops in the class. I was just a middle of the road student.  I believe that is the day that made me shy, made me anti social and a loner in life. Now, I don't blame my Mom any more for she had her reasons. But it never should have happened. Boy was I mad as I told her there was no way I was going to stay back. It was the moment I went from a safe and secure child to a child that turned on his mom. In my defense there was nothing she could do to me now if I talked back to her. In that moment I did not care. That never happened before that moment that I can recall. She had always commanded the up most respect from me.


    The reason for her keeping me back was I could not read. And I know this to be true. I used to sit at the end of the dinning room table with a book as she stood cooking dinner off to my right.


    "Sound it out" came issuing from her direction every few moments.


    I can only now appreciate, with 4 other kids and a husband, how frustrated she was with me. She got me extra help and in fact had to fight with the school principle to make it all happen. They put me in this special room and they had slide projectors that would flash on the wall sentences off a roll of film. The projector would put them up on the wall and I had to read faster and faster as the sentences would come. The problem with this, looking back, is they never took one moment to explain to me what the purpose of the exercise was.


    I know now as an adult what they hoped to accomplish. But I truly did not learn how to read until I took a speed-reading course in College. Up until that point I read slow and word for word. It affected my schooling and grades for that I am sure. I flunked the courses in High School that required me to write papers on ideas and comparisons of stories like Shakespeare. I loved his stories! I flunked that class. Anyway all the teachers had to do was tell me that you can see all the words at once, so read the sentence not word by word. I more than doubled the speed in which I read, in college, but by then I had lazy eyes. My habits were engrained. If I wish to read fast, I have to consciously want to read fast today.


    There was a brighter side to all this. I had the same teacher again. She wanted us to write a paper. In fact I was a profit in this regard. We had gone to New Hampshire for the weekend and we visited two tourist attractions, one "The Flume" and the other "The Basin". Now these were not accessible if you were not capable of walking over rocks and tree roots down or up the paths to see them. I had to write a story for my English class and I wrote this story from the point of view that wild places should always be wild and if you can't get there it is your lot in life. (What I mean by that is irrespective of others points of view "political correctness", I live in the real world and it is my lot in life that I will never give birth to a child.) So I mean, and you can quote me on this "wild places should remain wild for the benefit of the wild place not the benefit of people".


    Anyway I wrote this paper for school describing the trails being smoothed out and there being concrete paths and parking lots so everybody without discrimination could see the Flume and Basin. Well of course I was years ahead of that thinking because if you go there today it is exactly as my prophetic statements had described. Not bad for an 8 year old.


    Things got worse for me in school now. I was constantly daydreaming. Looking out the window wishing I was anywhere out there as apposed to inside. And I would talk to the kids beside me. I spent my share of time down at the principles office. His name was Mr. Powell. I used to joke that we were on a first name basis. He was ok with me. I had an older brother that left a rep before me.


    3rd grade:


    I was moved to a different school called Little School in a different part of town. I would remain there until Jr High. We rode the bus to get there. My Mom always managed to have the school buses stop in front of our house. Magic I suppose. I can't think of anything that sticks out about school this year.


    But there was this girl Susan Gerard[Pic] she was so pretty and I was in love. I had a acquired a paper route that was passed on to me. Her parents were one of my clients. It was my very first job and I delivered the afternoon Boston Globe by bike and Saturday mornings I had to collect my money. I had a cool 5 speed stingray with a banana seat that my parents had gotten me for my birthday, and I would wrap the strap of the paper bag over the handle bars and off I would go. My mom made me split all my earnings in half. I collected all the money and put it in a Tony the Tiger piggy bank that I had. I got that bank by mailing in cereal box tops. Times were good for a kid, this kid. I remember that one day I counted that money and I had over 45 dollars in coins. I was rich. I don't remember now however what I did with it all.


    Speaking of my paper route. I used to deliver to some families in this apartment building. I remember there were a number of arrests there not long after my time as a paperboy ended for operation of a brothel. I had no idea! I was so innocent.


    I think it was about this time in my life the Christmas before that we got up in the morning and down stairs were two new bikes under the tree. One was for Kathy and everyone including me thought the other was for me. When I went in to wake up my mom I was so excited because Santa had brought me a new bike.


    She asked me. "How do you know it was for you. Did you read the tag?"


    Well it wasn't for me it was for Carol. Talk about depressing. I was older and she got the bike. But as I mentioned I got taken care of a few months later on my birthday.


    Now when I did get my bike but I do remember Jay and I riding our bikes down the street past the church to Sully's Donut Shop. Jay taught me that if you went to the back door and knocked he would come out and give us a donut. He sold them inside for 10 cents each. We couldn't buy one. But he was a good man to us.


    We also used to take our bikes down to the new store for milk. Mom would send us down there. We would put the milk on the handlebars and take it home.


    Speaking of shopping I know for a fact my mom would always say "I am just going to run into the store for a moment."


    And be gone for what seemed an hour leaving us in the car. That is how she did her grocery shopping without us! Now the silly government considers that child abuse. I consider it a break for MOMS!


    4th Grade:


    There was Tina DiFranco she was beautiful with her long brunette hair. Girls take note! Boys like your hair and your smile not your boobs. Mostly cause there weren't any at that time to consider. My crush got me no were. I still had my paper route.


    I think it was this year we went to Canibie Lake Park on a school field trip. It was an amusement park in southern New Hampshire. Nestle had just come out with toll house cookie dough in a tube. All you did was cut them and cook them. I decided that I would roll out the whole thing and make a super cookie. It took longer for me to cook it. But it turned out just fine. Other people got the same idea 20 years later and you can find them frosted in the cookie stores in the malls today. I should have started a business. OH! I did, many times, later in life. Anyone can come up with a good idea!


    I had met this kid named John McNeil back then. He was one of the tough kids who believe it or not I met at church one Sunday morning. I remember him and this other tough kid named Frank Desimon. I was on my bike across town over by my school hanging out with these two and I wanted to spend the night there. We were going to get up early in the morning to go fishing at some sand and gravel yards back in the woods behind their homes. John asked his mom if I could spend the night and she said no. So John told her I was going to stay at Franks house. My mom said ok. Franks mom I never met. I slept in the top of John's barn with a horse blanket for warmth. I remember not sleeping so much cause my mouth was getting horsehair in it all night. During the night a storm rolled in. It rained. At 5 or so in the morning John came out and we got on our bikes and headed off into the woods. We got to the ponds but did no fishing. We built a fire because we were soaked and cooked some bacon and eggs in the rain. I think that didn't last long and I rode home on my bike.


    Now it was this event that caused me to want to take the lead and do the same for myself. I took my younger brother Tom and another boy who was younger than I and we were out in the woods across the street behind his house. We built a fire and stared to cook some bacon. I was having a great time and I started walking around, lighting and dropping the lit matches in the dry oak leaves. No problem, I could just stomp them out, but not this time. It was too dry! The fire grew and got way out of control. We boys ran to the neighbor's dad and told him there was a fire out in the woods. He called the fire department and they came and got it all taken care of. About a half acre burned, I never heard a word more about it. I also never did that again. Boys will be boys right? So what do we do with boys today. It becomes big news and we put them in the court system! People think they have to pay! We as adults sometimes forget that they are just boys.


    I also was learning in 4th grade to play the trombone. I was pretty good at it for a kid. I did a solo once at a concert I had in the summer. I had to stand up in front of everyone and play my part. We did a crazy song called Petrology. I really enjoyed that because it was real music. I remember we had a concert one night in the spring and the day or two before I was playing in the woods in the blueberry bush out in back of the house. There were all these sumac trees that created this great jungle. We would go in there and play and blow milkweed seeds all over the place. Anyway I in just one day acquired an allergic reaction to these plants. My face exploded and turned all scaly and red. I went to the doctor and he gave me some kind of pills. But I had to get up on stage looking like Frankenstein. I felt embarrassed because of it but for the most part I was fine because I could not control it. It was again just another lesson in life. I played until early in the 8th grade.


    5th grade:


    I had begun to "become me". I was getting confidence except with girls. I was not afraid of any of the boys at school. I had this teacher I will never forget He was tough and a man. His name was Lou Restie. I also had him later in Jr. high as he moved up. At this time in my life my dad was not around. I would sweep the gym floor after school for free. Then walk home. I got along great with the janitor. There was this father and son night that I really wanted to go to at school. The janitor told me that if my dad were not around he would go with me. I really wanted to go bad. My mom said no. That was that.


    There was this other event in my life stopped by my mom. It was time to sign up for little league baseball. I loved sports and played them with the kids from the neighborhood. I really wanted to play. I was riding my bike across the street at the gas station the day we needed to sign the paperwork to play. I only remember my mom coming out of the house yelling at me for playing over there. She told me she would not sign the papers for me to play baseball that day and I never did. This could have been another event that could have prevented my life as a loner. I think the truth was she could not afford the uniforms and the expense of it all. We did not have extra money in those days.


    Now there was this girl named Brenda Lastinger. She had long blond hair and an angel face. I remember we were in line at school and I took her winter boot from the rack and tossed it back over my head. I got caught and had to wear that boot on a string around my neck for a class or two. I never did that again. I never dated Brenda either. It took 30 more years for me to get the woman I wanted. Brenda I wonder what you are up to today?


    It was also this year that I discovered the bike path short cuts through the woods in the direction of my home. I realized that fall that when the bell rang and we were out all the busses would line up in front of the school. I could run through the woods and be home 15 minutes before the bus would get there. I don't know how many times I did not take the bus but it was a lot. I don't think my mother ever knew. That is why I could stay and sweep the gym floor. This practice of walking or running home continued in Junior High and High School on the nice days.


     


    4. MOVEMENT ON TO JUNIOR HIGH:


             I was small and kids thought they could pick on me. Or they thought they could pick on me. But for the most part people knew I could take care of myself so they would leave me alone. I had a brand new winter coat that was very nice and cost my mom plenty. We were assigned lockers now and you could hang your coat and put your books there. We had to share them with another person. One day I went back to the locker to get my coat and it was gone. I did not understand and I had to go home without it. My mom was mad at me. She called the school to have them help and the Janitor found it flushed in the toilet. She told me what had happened and the principle allowed me to have my own locker from that point on. Mr. Bell my homeroom teacher found out and pulled me aside and told me that was not going to happen. I had to share my locker. I was never disrespectful to adults. It was not part of my make up. I was shy and quiet when it came to that. But for the second time in my life I stood up to him and told him he had no say in the matter. My mom made every effort to clean the coat but there was no way I would ever wear that coat again. I never did. Welcome to Jr High, Neil.


               This was really a carefree time in my life. I played in my back yard. Or you would find me in the woods doing something. I would cruise around on my bike. I stayed out of trouble. But we did our share. When we would sleep in the back yard at night it would be 11 or 12 and we would go down the railroad bed and across the hwy to the department store. They would store the broken shopping carts behind the store and we would flip the children's seat part over or use the ones that didn't have a back on them and sit in the cart and play bumper cars pushing them around backwards and crashing into one another.


               My brother Jay and I would build forts in the pine grove and then a little later out behind the farms deep in the woods across the street from our house. We were always getting wood from the landfill behind the lumberyard down the street from our house. We would load up my red wagon and tie it off then pull the lumber to where ever we needed it most at any one time.


              One other childhood event would cause in my mind a dramatic change later in life. Jay had found this farm across town I don't remember where or what the name was. But you could go there and for a couple of bucks you could ride a pony for an hour in the back pasture. There were these trails and such but there was no guide. You could run or walk the pony whatever you had the mind to do.


    We rode our bikes there one time and I watched as Jay took a ride with a friend of his. I got the chance to go back once again with Jay. He was older and smarter and I always looked up to him. He got his pony and headed out as they finished saddling mine. I knew it was not going to be a good experience when I got on for the first time and the horse spun his head around and tried to bite my left leg. Of course now I was scared. I had ridden a pony that I can recall twice before. But it was at the mobile circus where you had them all attached to the merry go round contraption and one other time at a theme park [Pic].


    The farm owner opened the gate and sent me off on my first pony adventure. It did not last. I got about 30-40 yards from the gate. I could see my brother having a good time up ahead of me I was trying to join him. This pony had other ideas. I could not control it and he spun around and headed back to the gate at a cantor. Now I had not walked a pony not even a trot. This one was moving.


    So the farmer caught me at the gate and said. " get back out there and if you come back again I will take you off the pony."


    Sad but true I don't remember that ride. I do remember being in the barn waiting for my brother watching this girl groom her horse. I asked a lot of questions and possibly just annoyed her. She had long hair and was cute. I was too young! But somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I was not done with horses. This would be the last experience for years to come.


               Down the street beside our church lived this boy Claude. I think he was a year older than me. There was a time when this kid Claude and I went down to the joke store up on Route 28. It was this little novelty shop. He bought some itching powder that came in small can like chewing tobacco. We were walking home later on and he opened the can to check it out. As he did a small amount of powder got on his wrist.


    He said "OH, OH."


    I told him, "Don't brush it off it will just get rubbed in."


    I instructed him to hold out his hand and I would blow it off. Well he held out his hand but he didn't take the can or powder out of it. I blew real hard and the itching powder went all over him. The plan to get someone with the powder worked. For ME! I still can laugh about that to this day. He went home to take a shower.


              It was at some point around this time in my life I had the second and more intense experience with the supernatural. We had company and I think a couple of the girls from the neighborhood were over playing with Carol and it was just before Christmas. It was evening and getting late and we were upstairs playing when Carol or someone got the idea that we should have a séance. I had never experience anything like it so as a group made up how we would perform this ghostly event.


    In those days my family would decorate for Christmas like others in town. We used to have those plastic Christmas candlelights with colored bulbs in the windows at this time of year and we never unplugged them. It was a warm soft glow that was great to fall asleep to. Late at night before my parents went to bed when we wanted them out we just loosened the bulb. No need to go looking for plugs in the wall. It was quick and efficient. When we wanted them on we would simply screw them back down tight.


    I pulled down the shade in the window and loosened the bulb and the lights in the room were turned out. It was totally dark now and we got down to business. As a group we sat indian style facing each other in a circle and held hands and closed our eyes and decided who we wanted to call from the dead. I don't remember who it was I think it was Abraham Lincoln or someone famous. Anyway we started chanting this call asking the spirits to give us a sign. After a while it worked. The shade on the window went flying up and the blue Christmas candlelight came on immediately after the shade went up. Both signs could not have been done by a person in the room because we all held hands. It was not an accident where the springs in the shade had let loose, because that would not have affected the candle.  And I myself had unscrewed the bulb so it was defiantly not connected. There was no one else in the room because as soon as that shade let loose we all opened our eyes.


    Now that freaked everybody out! We all left that room in a hurry. And I never mess with the supernatural. Never again! I don't want to know. Not yet!


               I had lots to learn in Jr High. I loved band playing my trombone. I was taking private lessons every week. I hated playing scales and the teacher always wanted me to do that. I guess it made him feel superior being a control freak. I don't know. I wanted to play music. I loved music and I could even play my sheet music on the piano because we had an old upright in my garage. He would say to me you couldn't become good at this if you don't play your scales.


    Now you would think that if the music was my strong point he could have used it to educate me. But I truly think it was the power over me that was what was most important to him. He was always telling me I need to practice X amount of hours per week. And I hated it. One week I made a great effort to please him. I practiced for 4 hours. I was proud of myself for putting in the effort.


    I got to my next lesson and he asked me "how long did you play this week."


    I was hoping he would encourage me and be proud of me when I told him 4 hours.


    What he said was "you needed to do 5 hours".


    I was shocked and said nicely to him forget you. Packed up my instrument and left. I never picked up my instrument to play again. He truly ruined the experience for me. My parents tried to intervene but it was to late. I should have found a new instructor and continued on. But it was not to be. All he needed to do was give me more difficult music to play. I had the ear for it. I could hear when it was right. I could tell the difference between when I was playing with feeling or just replaying the notes. I might not have been the best yet. But I would have gotten there a whole lot faster had he encouraged me with music instead of putting me down. So please let this be a lesson to those of you younger folks who wish to or struggle with your learning. Don't give up! Just find another way to accomplish your goal!


              I am not sure what year it was but a new girl moved in next door to us her name was Lisa Maci. As I recall she had the look of Maureen McCormick (Marsha Brady of the Brady Bunch). Boy did I fall for her. I had a crush on her for the next 4 years in fact right through 10th grade. It did not matter we were the same age but I was very small for my age not to mention a year behind her in school. There was this other issue such as, she liking older boys. One time around 7th or 8th grade my older brother was wrestling with me and he held me down so Lisa could kiss me. I told her don't do it or I would spit in her face. Now that is not what I really wanted to do at all. But how embarrassed could a shy boy like me be to be restricted into doing something I really wanted to do but couldn't. Jay got to. Not me.


              These years of my life were very innocent for me. I was not afraid of any of the school bullies. I just kind of minded my own business.


    My parents used to take us into Boston every Christmas. We would go in for the day and visit Jordan Marsh. Up on the 7th floor of this department store they had Santa's Village. It was great. We would walk around Boston Common and see the lights at night and they would have Reindeer in Cages there to contain them. When we were done with dinner we would take bread up to the common and feed the reindeer. I seems we would always eat in China Town then walk back up through what was known as the Combat Zone. Jay had discovered that they put naked women pictures in the windows of some of the clubs and as we walked by He always noticed. One year he made a comment and my dad over heard him.


    I asked him what he was talking about and he said, "come on I will show you."


    So we turned and started to head back down the street and we got the whistle from my dad. That meant that I was not going to be educated that night and we joined back up with the family on the move. I never did see those naked girls pictures.


             There was also this girl Susan Ray who was a friend of my sister Carol in 8th grade. I liked her a lot also. She never knew. She was visiting us and spent the night one night. She was at the kitchen table playing some game with my sister and I walked up behind her to watch them play. She had on a sleeveless nightshirt and it was low cut around the underarm. I for the first time in my life saw a breast that was not my moms back when I was fed as a baby.


             When I went back to my High School in 1998 for my 20th year reunion, Suzanne Ray was the last person I spoke to before I left. I was married then and my wife was with me. Sue introduced me to her fiancé but never told me his name. The attraction I had earlier in life was of course gone by then. I am glad I had the chance to talk with her and I would still consider her a very nice person.


    That is not to say there were not a few woman there that I met again that night. Or at least would see again that night. When I walked into the building this one very attractive woman knew who I was. She came up to talk with me and invite me into the party. I was a little embarrassed because I didn't know her name. I did not recognize many of those people for I had not seen any in 20 years. Once we had the chance to talk or they where kind enough to reintroduce themselves I knew of course everyone's name or would then recognize their face. Now I was attracted to this one lady there Lauren Bozzuto she was beautiful when young and also today as an adult. My embarrassment was not unexpected by me. But I did not find it an inhibitor because that is the reason you go back to these functions. My 30th is next year. I will be single but I don't know if I will go. I don't know if any of those people would be interested in seeing me.


    Anyway, Sue Ray said to me. "I read the 20 year back ground info you provided for the reunion and it seems of all the people here tonight you are the only one that has had a life."


    I took that statement in stride, looked at my wife, gave myself a mental pat on the back. I thought to myself, you are right. What am I doing here? So we left. There were some people there that I was happy to reconnect with. I don't want to offend anyone by that last statement. I have been gone from New England for many, many years. If I had been single I would have asked Lauren out. That's easy to say now. But I don't know her status and I never would have at that point thought to ask. I was very happy with my wife. But for the most part the couple of friends I had hoped to see. Tim Riese and Mike Murphy, well they did not show up.


             I did only two really bad things in Jr High School that I can remember. One was breaking and entering the house of my neighbor Lisa and the other I am not going to tell you here. I think there are some things you should be taken to the grave. I will take those up with St. Peter at the gate. Maybe he will still let me in?


    But lets talk about the little things. I got detention a lot especially with my 7th or 8th grade math teacher Mr. Cohen. I had no problem with math. I didn't do my homework all the time but I always knew what he was talking about. I was not an "A" student but at the same time I didn't have to work to be a "B" student.


    In fact it was not until I got to a geometry class that I started to fall behind. That had never happened to me before. I asked the teacher after class one day could I get some help. He said yes and met with me after school. I didn't care about missing the bus I could still get home faster by running or walking through the woods and peoples yards.


    Anyway I stayed late one day and he was asking me about the theorems.


    I didn't know what he was talking about and he said. "They are right there in the chapters of your book."


    I said ‘I didn't read the book. I didn't know that I was supposed to".


    Who knew you had to read a math book? All my life up until that moment I never actually read a math book. I just did the problems in the back of the chapter and handed in my homework. I had a new outlook on school. I also began to do better in geometry.


    I did other things of interest like putting tacks on some of the guy's chairs and I would watch them jump when they sat down. I never really  did my math homework for some time. But whatever it was I did my parents never knew. I didn't feel the need to get in trouble twice. I don't think I was any different than any other kid.  I got my share of detention slips which I forged my parent's name by putting the slip over a paper with their signature on a sunny window. I did my time! Not for forgery but for my misdeeds. I guess I didn't need it at home too.  All water under the bridge now.


               I was smaller than most of the boys. We used to walk down the hall with our books under our arms. There were no book bags then. This tough boy was running down the hall with a couple of friends coming up from behind me. As he ran by he deliberately hit the top back of the books in my left hand and they sailed all over the floor. He just ran on and everyone was laughing at me. No one that I can recall helped me pick up my book and papers. Maybe they were afraid that that kid would get them next. Or they just thought my miserable experience was to good to shorten. I collected what I needed to and then moved on.


    It was a little later that day that same boy came running back in the opposite direction this time he was coming towards me. Now he was one of the tough kids but he didn't have my older brother to fight with. What I mean by that is, I fought all the time with my brother. He was a much bigger boy than me. So I surely was not scared of this kid. So as he passed me I had gotten ready for him, lowered my left shoulder braced for the impact and connected with him hard sending him helter skelter to the floor. He sat there with me looking down on him. I felt like I got my revenge. I don't recall the faces of the people around us but you know they were not expecting that to happen. He had this look of shock on his face what with this little kid knocking him down.


    He got up and we were just outside the school Cafeteria doors. There was this sort of hall section that you could put your coats and books in racks as you enter.


    So he said. "Come with me."


    Well he asked the wrong kid that day. We stepped in to that area and all the kids surrounded us as they do saying "get him, fight, fight". I knocked him down again and we wrestled around a bit. I never threw a punch in a fight and in fact I think the only person who I ever punched was my little brother Tom. I do regret that day with Tom. I always loved him. Anyway I was getting the better of this kid and someone said teacher and I got up and left him on the floor. I was called to the Vice Principles office for the first time in years. Nothing happened to me and he got what was coming to him from me. Other than his and my share of embarrassments, I think he learned his lesson. So beware of the little guys, you don't know whom you are messing with.


     


    5. THEN OF COURSE THERE WAS HIGH SCHOOL:


             The day I started High School with the relief of my 2-3 months of in the house confinement. I didn't go to jail for getting caught breaking and entering. My father negotiated the trouble away from me. I did without a doubt get confined to the house. There was one other punishment that happened when my Dad felt like we had crossed the boundary of decency. When we did something terrible, we all got a trip to that barber. Yes, It was the 1970's long hair was normal. So when you messed up you got a hair cut. That way everyone knew you did something bad. Again I thank my Dad for that. I entered 9th grade with short hair.


             This took four years of my life and many things happened to me and for me at this time. First my mother was the vice principle's secretary so I did not get into any trouble in that regard. I never skipped school because she would be the first to know. I don't remember having any real friends in the first years. I was truly a loner. I wanted to get out of school and go to Alaska and become a hermit. But I still liked girls and that was a draw that I couldn't break from. Hermit was out!


             This is supposed to be best time of your life? It was not mine! I did of course manage to get past it with my share of scars. In addition I can't say that for me it was all bad either. I guess we all survive it our own way. I did have a few adventures along the way. But Girls were not on that list. There was this girl I considered to be a perfect model. Karen Prusik was her name, she of course wouldn't even consider giving me the time of day. And another young girl Donna Martino, I was way beneath the level of boy they would be interested in. In fact I don't think Karen would even know my name then or today. I can say I did not know her for real in person. I would have been much to shy to talk with her and start a conversation anyway. I am no different in that regard even today. But from an outsider looking in, she to me was the most beautiful girl in our school.


    Brenda Lastinger who I had a crush on in 5th grade had became in 9th grade the girl friend of my older brother who was then a senior. She was even prettier then. Talk about a confidence builder when the girls you liked start dating your older brother. He always did do better with girls. I did nothing! Didn't matter I was in unrequited love with another girl, Lisa. I had all kinds of fantasies but never got to live them.


             Now I mentioned that I was in band for all those early years and I quit the trombone in 8th grade. Well I signed up for band again. I went to the first class and the teacher said he would be conducting auditions. I thought there is no way I can compete to play and I didn't really care what chair I sat in. So I was done and dropped the class. I did manage somehow to stay on the outskirts of the band people as friends. But in 9th grade I didn't have any.


             Early in the year I did something more fun for me where I could follow my first love, eating. I got a job for free lunch working in the school cafeteria. It helped out my family because they did not have to pay for my lunches any longer. I would lift and move heavy items for the woman. I would wash dishes and such. Now this man Larry Stevens he was new and he was in charge of the school lunch program. He decided to make one half of the food line a snack bar where we had a shake machine, hot chocolate for the cold days and he brought in a real fry grill and I would run the grill flipping burgers for the line. The kids would just tell me medium/rare whatever and that is what they bought. The food was good and it was all I could eat. Vanilla Shake on a Hot Chocolate, that was great and I had many.


    Now Larry and I got along great. He and I eventually began to hang out together. What I did not know was he was a child molester. So I did not know this until one time he took a couple of other kids about my age and myself up to New Hampshire camping one weekend. My folks trusted him my mother worked at the same school.


    He molested me that night while I was asleep and I woke up and wow was I in shock! One I did not know what he was doing, and two I had no idea I could get the results he gave me or that my body worked like that.


    I hurt physically for a day down there. I had never had that type of experience before. What an education. So that is one for the books. I would have preferred to find out any other way. I never got emotionally down about that event. I was, emotionally speaking, secure as to who I was. I just never let that happen again. I didn't of course say anything because of the embarrassment. And the thought he was hurting others never even crossed my mind. He never was coercive and never ever made any threats to me. In fact, other than that ever so brief moment in my life, it never happened again. He did have a way with telling people what they wanted to hear. That is not a trait I ever picked up.


    In January of that school year he was going to Florida to visit his mother. He had a bed in the back of his old van. We drove down there and there were 3 other boys that he took with him including me. I had only met one of them before the trip. He was a few years younger than me. It was my first trip truly away from home. I was only 14 young and dumb. Had I known better, I probably would not have gone with him.


    Speaking of dumb. Larry Stevens had this plastic weather vain that had a wind gauge on it. There was a red plastic arm that would swing up with the force of the wind that indicated wind speed. Now when the arm was straight back that indicated 60 mile an hour wind. So here we are driving down the highway just outside the Norfolk Bay Tunnel going about 65 miles/hour or so. I thought I would see if it was really accurate. So I rolled down the window and held it out there to see the wind speed. We were going faster than the contraption allowed and as soon as I put it out the window the red arm snapped off. I guess there was too much wind at that speed.


    When it was time for sleep we all slept in the back of the van. There was room under the bed and that is where I slept when I needed sleep. I had this new type of blanket a space age reflective aluminum tarp like blanket supposed to reflect your heat back to your body. I only had a summer sleeping bag and it was January. I folded it in half and put it inside my bag. What I did not know that night was that it would not breath. I was in a few short hours soaking wet from perspiration. As a result I got very cold. I never did that again!


    We drove down south and highway 95 was not completed all the way. So we drove route 1 for quite a way. In Virginia we crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.  That was amazing and we stopped out on the island in the middle of the bay. We drove by areas in the south such as Savannah, GA where I saw the homes of the very poor for the first time in my life. I had never seen anything like it. Now as I indicated we didn't have money. But that sure put into perspective the wants and needs of the people I guess our family was not at the bottom of the list. We had wants but my dad met our needs. What an eye opener for a boy of 14.


    I visited Disney World and had the run of the park with these two other kids. We stayed at a campground the night before and the 3 of us stayed up all night (away from Larry) hung out and watched the sun come up. They told me he had molested them, which is why they were not with him but with me. There was a younger boy with us on the trip but he did not stay with us that night. He was sleeping in the van, we think. I don't know any more than that. I was not mentally old enough to know what to do. It was never a thought for us in those days.


    I remember going to some Polynesian Restaurant resort and I got there on the monorail train. We went swimming in some hotel pool that was part of the resort but we were not staying there. It might have been the Contemporary Hotel the large one with all the mosaic tiles. For two days we 3 we got around alone. I have been back to the park a number of times. But I have never again rode the monorail anywhere but to the entrance to the main park and back to the parking lot. I don't remember how I managed to get to the other areas that are now faded memories in my mind. I guess I was smarter then in some ways. Maybe you just needed to stay on the train?


    Just so you know, one of the lunch ladies had a son who told his mom that Larry had molested him and so the cops came knocking on the door at my house one night. They wanted to speak to my younger brother and me.  I didn't do any thing and wondered what they were coming to blame me for. Yes Tom had come with me some times I would go to watch TV or something at Larry's house. But Tom never told me anything and to this day we never discussed it. To the cops I gave them no info I was not gay never have been never would be and I was just to embarrassed to talk about it. Nonetheless Larry went to jail. The lunch program was never the same again. I moved on. Now I am old and don't care. So until now no one ever knew I had my first sexual experience without my consent or permission for that matter or really my own knowledge. I had been truly innocent until that moment, sad, but true.


             I got a new job at the school with my mothers help. It was my first real job that I got paid other than my paper route which was all for tips. I got an hourly wage and I would work the ball grounds and clean the pitchers cage in the basement of the school. I think now I was making about a dollar and a quarter and hour. I never knew our school had a basement until then. It was like my own private playground. I would pitch a few balls and was good at it. I could pretty much hit the target as well as any pitcher. It was a good job that I had. Coach Carey, my boss, was one of the best baseball coaches in the state. But other than working for him I think it was my sophomore year. I didn't know him I honestly don't think he wanted to know me. I was not a "jock". Not that I couldn't have held my own with any of them. I never had the opportunity.


             It was some time I think the summer of my freshman year that I went backpacking in NH with my brother Jay and a friend of his Brian Wheeler. We would be going for 4 days and my dad drove us up and dropped us off.


    We were starting just off the Kangamangus Hwy and would head up the Wilderness Trail. (This by the way is the location for a book I read as a child where the story is about a boy that got lost after he walked off the back side of Mt. Lafayette and got lost. He was found down on the Wilderness Trail.) Now this trail meant a lot to me because first off the name was Wilderness. That is exactly were I wanted to be. The farther away from people I could get the happier I was.


    We hiked up to 13 Falls Shelter where we sent the night. I am not sure if I ever did count accurately the number of falls. But it was nice to wake up in the morning and wash your face with the cold river water. The next day we headed up Garfield ridge to the shelter there. It was a freezing cold night in August and I met this guy who was in the process of hiking the whole Appalachian Trail. Now I had read Collin Fletcher's book The Complete Walker, about hiking long distances. But I had never met a person that would or could do such a thing. He shared with us some hot chocolate mix that he had and he was boiling water in a large can over the fire. I never saw someone cook out of a large can. I was drinking the hot chocolate he had provided us and I had plenty. The problem I discovered later when I was in my bag was that the water was boiling and it was so cold I did not notice. I had burned the whole inside of my mouth.


    In the shelter we would sleep on the hard wood floor. We had blow up mattresses that we would use under our sleeping bags to get us up off the ground so we would be warmer. The ground would not sap the heat from our bodies. The problem was we froze anyway because our bags were summer bags not designed for the type of cold you experience at that altitude and the air in the mattress had to much volume for our bodies to heat that up. Not what anyone would consider a comfortable nights sleep.


    We got up the next morning and we were cooking pancakes and we had no spatula to flip them. So we did our best with a fork. Jay had his and Brian was attempting to cook his and the heat on our stove was way to hot. Brian burned his but good. Jay started to make fun of him and his cooking abilities.


    Brian came up with this brilliant reply. "That's the way I like them."


    We were coming off of Mount Lincoln into Franconia Notch and we got the new that Elvis had past away or Nixon had resigned I don't remember which. I suppose I could check the dates but it's not that important to me.


             At the age of about fourteen I guess I really changed. My life opened up and I had a lot of new adventures. For example I learned to ski! I will talk about my skiing later. I got a to go hunting, again I will talk about it later.


    For my 14th birthday I was given a new 10-speed bike. I would ride everywhere on that bike until after High School. I even bought a odometer for the front wheel to watch the mileage grow.


    It was summer and Jay had this idea to take his bike and ride all the way to Marshfield with a friend. They would make my Grand Mothers trailer on the beach their destination. That trip would be his story.


    But it was because of this trip that he got the idea to go all the way to Biddeford Pool, Maine. I had my new bike now and it worked out that I was going to go with him. Our neighbors the Mutch's lived across the street. They took a week vacation in Biddeford Pool. Now during that time I would normally take care of their chickens, cat and dogs while they went up to their cottage. But for some reason uninvited as we were, we were going to meet them there.


    I think another friend of Jay's was to come along but that didn't happen so it was just him and I. I guess he wanted to go up there to spend some time with Katie. I know now, only a girl could make you want to ride a bike that far, for no particular reason, to see a place that you have never been and knew nothing about. I went because I was interested the length of the trip, the adventure and of course I was very excited to go.


    We left at 5:30 am just after sunrise. We headed up route 28 north and before we even got out or town my legs were killing me. So here I am peddling along 4 miles or so from home and I am wondering how the heck am I going to make it all the way to Maine?


    It was a beautiful in New Hampshire riding through the rolling hills on country roads lined with cow pastures. Along the way we would stop for breaks one I needed to fix a flat tire. Yes we even prepared for that. It was about 125 miles for the whole trip and we got in late that evening just before dark. Mrs. Mutch put us up on a foldout couch.


    I remember for some reason during the evening's conversation


    Mrs. Mutch asking, "Why do boys always sleep with their hands between their legs?"


    I don't know why, but that is all I remember of that conversation. In fact as a older man now I still don't know the answer. I think maybe it's because our hands are cold.


    The next day we got up and headed to this place I think it was called The Race. We would do some fishing there. All the water form the bay, as the tide was going out or in, had to go out/in through The Race. So the fish would gather at the head of The Race to feed. It was a very strong current. Jay and I caught a few Pollack. They were good size. We set the fish on the dock behind us and we had some visitors. Sea Gulls showed up just like in "Finding Nemo." It actually happened that this sea gull grabbed and swallowed a whole Pollack while we weren't looking. They were about 14-15 inches in length. That fish was as big as the sea gull. I have to this day no idea where that bird put it but my fish was gone.


    The next day we had to leave. We did not leave as early in the morning for the return trip because it did not matter what time we got home. Once there we would be were we needed to be. So we left about 8 O'clock in the morning and we made great time going home. I think because we were headed south, in the direction of the equator, we had the pull of gravity working for us. Anyway I cruised for miles using no hands, very comfortable. It rained on us and we were soaked for most of the day. Maybe it was the cold that kept us going. But we rolled into home by about 4 PM.


             You see in High School I was small and must have only been 4Ft. 11inches in 9th grade when I entered my 9th year. My little sister was taller and bigger than me. She was 5ft tall. I was at that time very self-conscious about it. This also didn't get me anywhere with the girls. My experience is that if a boy is shy the girls treat him like he has some kind of disease. Well in fact he does have one, "being shy." They sure could make a shy boys life a little easier by not ignoring them. They might also find they make the most loyal and of course the best friends.


    I weighed about 125 lbs. I had a growth spurt somewhere in those four years. I managed to get 10 more lbs on my frame. And grew to 5ft, 5 ¾ inches. That height would follow me through life and in the process I learned something about myself. I could not change my height; it was what God gave me. So I had only to worry about my attitude. To this day I have my physical flaws just like everyone else. But they are not controllable by me so I am happy with who I am. I don't understand cosmetic surgery for the sake of appearances! I am not going to get any taller now!


    Now without a doubt I was strong for my size. That was not my problem. I had a great build for a little kid. Still do! I had big muscles for my frame and as a junior I could military press 180lbs. Additionally I could bench that much and more as well. Eventually I discovered I could bench 216 Lbs. That was the highest amount of weight I have lifted. Not to shabby for a small boy.


    I was not a weight lifter. But when we had gym I had to do something. That to me was better than trying to compete in sports. They offered us a choice to run cross-country in gym. If you ran 50 miles in the semester you would get a T-shirt. Well I earned my T-Shirt. I discovered something about myself. It never failed that about halfway on my 2.5-mile run I would have to go to the bathroom. I would have to stop in the woods alone the way and find a tree and squat. I see joggers all the time. I figure it only happens to me where the running works everything out. I don't know if I am alone in that one.


             All the years I grew up I watched football. I played on a pop warner team in 8th grade for one season. I was ok. But the majority of the boys had just started to move into puberty.  I was not much smaller than them at that point. Of course that all change rapidly when we got to High School.


    Now in High school I wanted to play. So I went out for football in the summer of my junior year. I got on the team and worked hard to do well in the summer months. I was the 3rd fastest boy on the team. I came to realize a few weeks later that I really had to play to hurt someone because I was so small and it just ruined the game for me. I was wearing cleats for the first time in my life and the arches of my feet were killing me. It hurt to walk and was even worse to run. I figured nobody else was complaining so why should I? I never wanted to hurt anyone when I played or in life. I still don't to this day.


    It all came to an abrupt end one day in September before our first games. I walked out of school one afternoon when it was over and I just got on the bus to come home. I don't know why I did this I was not thinking as I was leaving the school. I was sitting on the bus not thinking about anything in particular when it dawned on me I was supposed to be at football practice. We had practice everyday; I knew right then and there that I was done. I went just went home. The next day I spoke to the coach and told him that I had decided that the game was not for me. I never played a game that year or again.


              A few other memorable things happened when I was in High School. For example my family went down to the Esplanade or Half Shell in the park on the Charles River across from Harvard. The Boston Pops played with Arthur Fiedler as conductor for the Fourth of July Celebration in Boston. That was the largest crowd I had ever experienced in my life. They said the next day that it was estimated that there were over 100,000 people there for that historic event. I was there with my Mom and brothers and sisters.


    It was not until my senior year that I also saw my first real concert that was not an orchestra. I went with Carol to see Linda Ronstat in Boston Garden. We had balcony seats and you really needed binoculars to see her she appeared small. I can't today say I remember anything else about it.


             I really started to have an interest beyond the childhood fantasy's in regards to girls now for real. There might have been some hope of my breaking out of my shell. But being so shy I did nothing about it. I could among my friends talk the talk. But by no means could I walk the walk. I could not even call a girl on the phone, especially from home. Someone might know that I have an interest.  I could not get past it all. It also came to pass that my crush on Lisa faded away. She had graduated the year before me as I had stayed back in the 2nd grade.


             There was this group of guys that played in the band and I sort of hung out with them. There was this pond in Andover. This pond was closed at dark. They would run and lock a cable across the entrance. I don't remember the name of the pond now.


    Generally at night about 9 or 10PM we would go there and park in front of the cable blocking the entrance and walk in. This only happened a few times because someone in our group found the fire lane entrance through the woods. So from that point on we would drive in. We could hang out and park by the water. My friends would drank beer there. I hated the taste so that was not for me. Now Tim Riese was one of my closest friends and there was also Mike Murphy. The law changed in that time you could buy alcohol at 18 so it was not a problem for me, I was 18. The issue was I didn't look 18. So once I gave my license to Tim who was younger and not 18. He looked older and he bought the beer that time.


    One trip there I saved two people at this pond from drowning. There was Phil this kid from England who lived across the street from me. He was there very drunk one night and we had all swam out to this floating raft. He was sitting on the side and just fell in. He went straight under. So I and another kid jumped in and got him back to shore. We put him in one of the cars in the passenger seat and put on the seat belt to hold him up and keep him there. We all went back to the raft. Short time later someone says he is not in the car so we go looking for him and he is floating in the water. We pulled him out and decided it was time to leave. We brought him home carried him up to his bed dropped him on it, face down, and left him there. We knew nothing of alcohol poisoning in those days. He was Ok.


    Another time Diane a friend of my sisters was swimming away from the raft and she got a cramp in her leg. I reached her and was holding her head above water and working to get her back to the raft. Another guy, I don't remember who now, came to help and was dragging us both under. I made him to get away because I could not save them both at once. She manage to get to the raft with my help and after a while she made it back to shore.


    This was a good time in my life going out partying with the guys and gals from this pretty large group. Mike had a GTO. That was truly a fast car. Tim drove a VW bug. We called it the cancer mobile because of the rust. He almost killed me one day in that car. I will explain in a second. But I was about to say we used to go to the McDonalds in Reading MA the next town over. One night we decided to go back to the bowling alley in our town and we all left in a hurry. I drove my fathers car. In Tim's car the gearshift you had to lift up or push down( don't remember) and put it in first gear to find reverse. So in his attempt to leave fast he missed reverse and put it into 1st gear instead. He floored it to back up and went forward right into the side of the building. It was funny! We all had a laugh at his expense. He didn't miss the second time and got out of there fast. We were pretty much gone by the time the manager was running out the door to see what hit him.


    I did not have a car of my own in those days. I drove my dad's Mercury Capri touted in 1973 as the "sexy European". He had traded in a 1967 Mercury Cougar for this car. I wish he still had that Cougar. The Capri was a 4 cylinder and it was a nice looking sporty car that got about 23 miles per gallon. Gas was only about 29 cents in those days. By the time I got to drive it. It had been sort of worn out. So I think the fastest I ever got it to go was about 100. Jay told me it went much faster. But he had used it 2-3 years before my time came. I could hold my own driving across town with any of my friends.


             My friends had those typical kid accidents in the cars at this time. No one ever got killed in our school in those few years. But not for lack of trying! We were out drinking one night. We planned on getting up and going skiing in the morning. It was very late about 11 Pm I was sitting in the rear center of my friend Scott Mahn's father's car a new Audi Fox. Here is a good lesson for you parents. Don't let you kids drive your new car! Get them a beater whether they like it or not!


    Scott was driving and my neighbor David Kodis was with us, John's younger brother. This car was a new type of expensive foreign car. We were going way to fast across town doing about 55 in a 30-mile an hour zone. This other kid from school who drove this old 60's Buick came from the opposite direction. He wanted to turn into a driveway that was on our right. So instead of coming up to the driveway in his own lane and yielding to traffic by taking a left turn into it, he made the mistake of driving up our lane attempting to cut the corner. The result was he was coming straight at us in our lane. It was truly his fault but we contributed by driving way to fast. We hit that car dead center and crushed the front end of audi I was in. We didn't use seat belts in those days. So Scott the driver of our car got his face busted up a bit on the steering wheel and Dave cracked his head on the front window, the window getting the worst of it. I busted my left hand up, I think on the drivers seat, around the knuckles. I felt like I had punched a brick wall.


    We left shortly after we got the car to the side of the road. We didn't need the cops for everything back then. They just exchanged info. The Audi Fox was totaled. The Buick, which was all chrome and steel, was fine. David Kodis and I started to leave our only choice now was to walk home.


    A woman came along in another car and stopped at this stop sign at an intersection we were at. So I walked up to her window and tapped to ask if she would help us. She became very scared because she did not roll the window down and got out of there fast. Some people wouldn't help you regardless, because of their fear of life. I have a tendency to disagree with everyone else. I usually do just the opposite and I know that would have asked if the person needed help. We walked the whole way home.


    Now I didn't wish to miss the ski trip in the morning so I slept with my left hand curled up so I could slip the ski pole into it. I went skiing my hand hurt but what was what was most important to me that I could still hold the ski pole. Times were different in those days.


             I was involved in an accident I mentioned above where I was not driving but Tim was. I don't remember where we were headed but were going down Main St. in Reading. The Lights were changing yellow as we reach each intersection. So we were having fun trying to beat the lights. We were not speeding but as we came upon the very center of town there was an old large circular concrete stand in the middle of the road. I believe a cop would stand on it to direct traffic. A woman in a large station wagon was attempting to back out of one of these diagonal front-end only parking spots they had along the street. She did not look over her right shoulder as you are supposed to and here we were cursing along having a great time with the lights when out she came. Tim locked up the brakes and turned left to hopefully go around her. She continued out of the parking space without looking as we slid sideways and to our left. We could not go to far left or as we past her we would hit the center concrete block.


    As Tim spun the wheel right to get the back of our car over to our left we slid into her as she backed into us. The right rear bumper of her car crushed the panel right behind my seat. We were uninjured and as luck would have it her bumper came about halfway in depth across the front seat. So if we had we hit a moment sooner my right hip would have been crushed. The good thing about VW bugs were they could be fixed!


    Some other fun things about High School I was for a moment in the schools spring play Hello Dolly. I was helping to build the sets for the play. I found that to be fun. They needed someone to push a train they had for one scene across the stage. I got the job. My acting career started and ended with that moment. Except for my TV show and commercials that I did much later in 2003-4.


             I think it was my junior year April 1977 I took a school trip to Quebec Canada with kids from the French speaking class. I know my mom was the connection that allowed me to go. She knew someone! I did not speak French nor had I taken the language as a class. The only foreign language I did take was Spanish and I learned next to nothing from that class.


    This trip was over a long weekend so we were there for a couple of days. We were staying in the old city at the very nice Frontinac Hotel. One night we were going out to eat at this French restaurant and Tim who I was with on this trip spent some stressful moments wondering how to talk with the waiter in French. But all was put to rest when the waiter came up and spoke to us in English, so much for practicing the language. But it did put to rest normal fears I might have had later in life when I left the US to live in Costa Rica.


             One evening I was sitting on my fence out in front of my house on the street as I often did watching traffic go by. This guy in our class Stephen Repucci was going by or he stopped to drop Phil off across the street. Any way he stopped and I asked him what everyone was doing that night. He said nothing was going on and he was going somewhere but not the pond in Andover.


    It was about 8-9 PM I borrowed my dads van and drove over to the pond. I parked and everyone in our gang was swimming and having a great time. So because of what Steve told me I didn't immediately join them. I just sat alone up above them on the beach at a picnic table between the water and the cars. I then hear Steve yell out to everyone this funny story. He says to everyone how he ran into me and told me that everyone was going somewhere else. His goal was to send me out looking for everyone on a wild goose chase. Everyone thought that was funny. I got to hear it all! He of course did not know I was sitting there. A few moments went by and my friend Mike Murphy came up on the beach for some reason and discovered me sitting there. He sat for a bit and we talked. He was a friend. I can't remember now but I think I just left after that without making them aware I was there. I can tell you I was hurt when everyone thought that was funny. I became truly aware I was not welcome in the group.


             Towards the end of High School I had a crush on this girl cute little girl Amy Mollica. She was fresh and adorable a spunky personality. I took her to the senior prom and still have our photo. I went because I remember my dad saying that it would be a shame if I missed it. It only happens once. So I spent the money, got the tux and borrowed my mother's car. I doubled with this other kid I believe his name was Steven Parks. I did not dance in those days. I was very shy it took every ounce of courage I could muster just to ask her to go with me.


    She was in her junior year. So she might have felt it was cool to go to the older kids prom. I don't know why she said yes. But she did and I was happy. I had a lousy time. I did not enjoy it at all. I was shy, socially and emotionally unprepared for the event. There are two things that I can remember. One I only danced one dance at the end of the night with her. That took all my courage just to do that. I was devastated when another guy earlier in the evening came over and asked her to dance and she said yes. Doesn't this only happen in the movies? I guess I was the nerd who could be laughed at by everyone else. Also, when I got out of the car at the end of the date I would play the gentleman. I went to passenger side of the car opened the door to take her to the front door of the house. She just bolted past me and ran up the stairs and into the house. What a fitting ending to a bad night for me. But, I can say, I went.


             The night of graduation we had in our town an all night party. I went to that also. I had a great time there. There was food and dancing. I only remember one girl who I danced with that night. Kathy McDevitt. She was this pretty red head girl that I never really got the chance to get to know. Thank you Kathy, for the dance, even if you don't remember that or me, even if you never read this. That meant a lot to a shy boy who never knew how to dance.


             Another event took place that I was not part of in high school and am glad I had the foresight to avoid the situation. I was at lunch at a local steak house with a group of the guys. Afterwards they were all going to the department store next door. I decided not to go and they all got caught shoplifting. For this I had learned my lesson at the same store some years earlier when I was in jr. high with Carol. We got caught lifting a few inconsequential things. I a large pack of gum her some other little things. Well as we were stopped at the door and asked to follow this guy back to some room I said to Carol whatever you took get rid of it right now as we walked. She did! But I did not take my own advice. She had nothing when the man asked her to empty her pockets. I had the pack of gum. Now I knew I was going to get the crap beat out of me. I had seen my dad do that twice to my older brother. He came and got us when we got home he said go to your rooms. He came up a few hours later and I will never forget for the rest of my life what he did to me. He looked me in the eye and said "I am very disappointed in you." Turned and went back down stairs. I was amazed, and cured.


             I went in August 1977 on an excursion to Colorado for just short of a month. I found out in school about a series of outdoor courses with Outward Bound. I will talk about that in a bit.


    June 23rd of 1978 just after I graduated my Dad, Kathy, her friend Nancy and my sister Carol and her friend Diane Brockbank and myself went on a two-week cross country trip. It was a long road trip and I spent my birthday that year in LA. I will list the thing we saw along the way. First stop was Niagara Falls. We crossed below lake Erie and headed out on the plains. It was S. Dakota were mile after mile there were these signs for Wall Drug. So of course we had to stop there. Mt Rushmore. I was amazed at the complexity of the Mt. Crazy Horse Mountain carving was not where it is today. So it was unknown to us then. We crossed Wyoming and saw wild horses and plenty of pronghorn antelope. I remember crossing the Big Horn Mts. for the first time, I believe it was in the town of Cody Wyoming that there was this western museum we stopped at. They had paintings by Remington and others, a large collection of rifles and artifacts from the turn of the century.


    We entered Yellowstone Park from the east entrance. The snow banks towered over the van along the road. I had never seen anything like that or the park itself for that matter. It is one of a kind. I think that area including Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons are unsurpassed in beauty.


    There was plenty of wildlife to see along the way. At one point a Bison came across the road in front of us. He was a big bull and I remember him being as big as the large econoline van we were in. I have never seen one that close or that big again. We have them here in Colorado in the zoo. There is one that is used as the CU Buffalo's football mascot. But none I have seen since compared in size. I am aware that the bison is the largest land Mammal in North America. So I keep wondering if it was all a mirage. Or are they really that large.


    We crossed out the west side of Yellowstone into Montana and headed south though Utah. We traveled across Nevada through Reno and passed through the Sierra Mountains down to San Francisco. Fisherman's Wharf reminded me as being like in Boston's Haymarket Square. They call it Quincy Market today. It was down the coast to Big Sur and beyond. Driving down the coast we stopped on the rim of the road and looked down at the ocean. Right below was a nudist beach. I never did get to see anything there either. Kathy had the Binoculars. My dad being ever so conservative got us back in the van and we went on to LA. We saw Hollywood and Vine and walked on the stars, the wax museum and some other tourist attractions. The crowds or should I say characters on the streets of Hollywood today are completely different then back then.


    San Diego was nice we swam at the beach there as well we went to the zoo. It was one of the best in the world at that time. I don't remember now if we went that trip to Tijuana, Mexico. I have been there few times, but I don't remember if I went that trip.


    We came back across through Arizona and New Mexico where we went to Carlsbad Caverns. I remember seeing the poverty across the border with Mexico and the difference was amazing at that time. Beyond that I don't remember much or what else we saw on the way home. But mostly we camped along the way. This was the longest road trip I had made in my life up until this time. I have had much longer since.


    6. U-MASS, AMHERST:


             I got a scholarship from my high school to help me attend the University of MA. The rest came from my mom. She bought my books and helped me with the other things. It was a deal she had made with my dad.


    I had applied to University of Maine, located in Oreno, which was considered the top school for wildlife biology at the time. They did not accept me as a middle of the road student. As a resident of MA I did get accepted at U-Mass and I stayed in the dorms. South West Residential area was considered the party area of the school. As far as people, it had the largest density per square mile in New England. There were more than 5,000 people there in the dorms. There were about 23,000 attending the school. I stayed in a dorm called James for the first year. It was an all male dorm. Then I moved to what was considered the party dorm the third semester. I was at this school for 3 semesters, fall of 1978 though fall semester of 1979.


    I was not much of a drinker back then and I never drank a beer. I did not do pot or anything else for that matter. I was there to fulfill my life long dream, which was to get in to the wilderness and have a career there.


             The first year I had a roommate Geoff. We got along just fine. He was cool and once in a while he would have his girl friend visit and spend a night or two. That was a new experience for me and maybe a little uncomfortable for me because his bed was about 2 feet from mine. But it was not the end of the world and I dealt with it.


    We played ultimate frisbee as I was always athletic, though small, it worked out well. It is a game I really liked. I also had a commissary that if you wanted to eat it you just had as much as you wanted. I put on almost 15 pounds this semester. So I started to jog and do sit ups. I was running about 2 miles a day and I would do 100 pushups and 150-200 sit ups a day. I lost the weight again.


             The first Halloween there we went up to the campus center to the most incredible party I have ever experience. I could legally drink and I liked hard liquor but that was about it. The Blue Wall, which was the campus pub, had at that time the largest over the counter beer sales in New England. The drinking age was just 18. There was a reason they called it "Zoo Mass".


    These two big guys got in a fight close to me and I didn't want anyone else getting hurt so I dove in to break it up. The only way I could do that was grab one of them and when I pulled him away I fell over backwards. They were big guys!


    The guy who I grabbed landed on me and was about hit me and I said. "You don't want to hit me".


    And he started to explain what this other guy did to him. He got a tooth knocked out. That is exactly why I don't fight. You can get hurt. He got up and the fight was over no one got hurt but me. I banged my tailbone on the way down to the floor and that hurt for a while. But the crowd was to tight with a lot of women there. I put an end to that.


             One night just after supper there was a roar of noise coming from SW. My roommate and I went outside to see what it was all about and for no reason everybody in SW was screaming out their windows and we had streekers on the roof of the dinning halls. Rolls of toilet paper were flying from the towers. It was crazy. It just happened I don't know what the catalyst was.


    I did not do well my first semester though I was trying. My grades ranged from A-F. I had to take rhetoric and the first semester was I think writing. Now as you know I was not a writer. I hated my English classes in early schooling because they never made sense. Still don't! I had this Professor and every paper I would write he gave me an F. So one day he told us all to write about any topic. I chose a topic of chopping wood. Now I know that is a strange topic for most folks. But for a guy who asked for a doublesided axe for a Christmas present one year you might not consider it so strange.


    I began my paper with this sentence.


                        "To wield an axe is an age old art...."


    He read and graded the paper and at the end of next class he handed them out and he took me aside. He asked me were did I come up with that opening. I said it was easy. I got my first A.


    So we talked and he was the first person who told me "if you wish to write a paper from now on stick to subjects that you know".


    I never had the F problem with him again. Even today I have no knowledge of sentence structure grammar or any of it. I am not sure what a semi colon is for. I just use now and then when I need to combine two sentences that are one. I might be wrong, but that is the best I can do. You have probably noticed grammar issues in this story. But I am ok with that it's who I am!


    When it was all over at Christmas I went home with a cume of 1.95 or close to it. If you were below a cume of 2, which they considered average, they put you on warning get it up to 2 or be gone. I had the next spring to get it together. It was not for lack of studying that put me there.


    I was told. "In the Wildlife Biology Major the objective of the school was specifically to weed out the weak students."


    They had a fixed course for the first 2 ½ years. Then you could do electives. The semesters were 18 credits until then. Well it eventually worked for them though I did last longer than some. I did not understand pass/fail and how to drop classes make them up or just the system. I did not know how to extend the 4 year program to 5-6 so I could take fewer classes. I still don't know if that was even possible. There was no one I could ask to tell me how the system worked. So I just did the best I could. Heck it was my dream at stake, no one else's. I would fail!


             In the spring semester I don't remember anything major happening. My roommate and the guys across the hall would always get high this had no effect on me. I was still hanging out with my 2nd semester roommate Tim [Pic] he and I got along fine. He was into drugs and all. He wanted me to try some mescaline and LSD, but I never did. I didn't need that in my life. I got high on life and adventure. His was not the type of adventure I was looking for.


    The Grateful Dead came to the school in the spring we had tickets because we went to school there. It was a concert to remember. I think they had some other acts like I believe it was Bonnie Rait. I hung out in the beginning. There was a huge crowd outside the stadium that wanted in. The crowd started to rock the fence around the stadium. Eventually they had to let the whole crowd in or loose the fence. That fence was coming down. I listened to the first two songs of the Dead and thought that the music was terrible and just left and went back to my room. I was not interested in the flower power and drugs that were there.


    I had not been a concert person growing up. We did not have the money to just buy tickets to those types of events. So I was not interested.


    I was on probation this semester for my cume. I ended the 2nd with 1.97or 8. Because I had made an improvement I was not suspended and they allowed me to come back again the next fall.


             While school was out for the summer of 79, I got a job with my Dad at RCA. I made good money and everyone liked me. I did my job and got overtime, which helped me out a lot. I was working 12 on 12 off some days at one point with this other guy trying to get this project out. I was working assembly on complex classified military equipment. I remember my check of two weeks being more than 800 dollars. That was huge money for me back then. I still did not own a car. But that helped.


             It was the fall of 1979 that I had some fun in school. I was moved to Coed dorm with Coed bathrooms/showers. The classes and my schedule were hard again. I had a new roommate named Jeff. I guess his dad worked for Kraft so he had a cushy life and he was from out of state. So responsibility was not his strong suit. I was taking the hardest classes the school could offer at my level. He was studying to be an elementary school teacher.


    Talk about discrepancy in work. I take calculus, and chemistry. He gets to read Judy Bloom books and write a deblockedive paper. I can't think of his name at he moment. But he and the guys would buy a case of Dawson Ale every weekend. It was like 2 dollars a case. Very Cheap! They would smoke an ounce of pot in a night. It was early like the first few weeks of school my roommate asked me to wake him up in the morning because he had an important test. He was not used to getting up by himself. That night he was across the hall getting toasted. The next morning came and I got up and headed off to biology class and left him sleeping. Later that day I got back to the dorm and he was really pissed at me. I looked him in the eye and asked him what was he mad at me for? I did my thing and it didn't involve him. I knew that if I woke him up the rest of the semester I would become his mom and I didn't need or want that. From that point on he respected me. He got his own butt out of bed when he needed to.


    I learned how to play ping-pong and for the rest of the semester I was like Forest Gump. The table was at the end of our hall. A few people were in there playing and they asked me if I wanted to play. Now I am athletic. I have great hand/eye coordination. I could not play that game to save my sole when it was introduced to me. So I played when someone wanted to play then later when no one was around I would bounce the ball off the wall to myself. By the end of the semester I was one of the best on the floor and I had no problem betting a case of beer on my abilities. I even won a few. Problem was I did not drink beer.


    I did get to go out and watch on the big screen the Boston Bruins get their butt whipped by Montreal, at the pizza parlor across the street. Yes they had them back then. That was some of the fun I had on my allowance my Dad gave me. It was 10 dollars a week.


             One weekend night in September I discovered from our floor rep. peppermint schnapps. Now this was like drinking candy canes. I was a new fan. Which leads me to how I stopped drinking peppermint Schnapps.


    It was Columbus Day weekend my X roommate Tim and I hitched up to VT. Well that is where we planned to go but for whatever reason we went to Canada instead [Pic]. We came back down through NY and back east to school. But a lot happened in between. I was brought up not to hitchhike! It was dangerous!


    What I learned from real life is- "life is much better lived than squandered in fear of what could or might happen."


    I also learned "Just say, Yes!" It opens so many doors for you that would never be there if you had said "NO".


    The trip did take place. We left on Friday morning and got to Williams Town MA in the northwest corner of the state. It is also a college town. So we stopped for the night and had dinner in the college dinning hall.


    I remember when walking in we put our backpacks against the wall and from this group of preppy guys one said. "These guys look like they just got off the street."


    We were, in fact. We had dinner and hung out for a while.


    We needed to have a place to stay. It didn't take any convincing at all when I said to Tim if we are going to sleep on someone's floor tonight it might as well be a girls as a boys. So we found a girls dorm and knocked on some doors and explained our plight. We were form U-Mass passing through and needed a place to crash. NO PROBLEM! We got in on the first attempt. These three girls were going out but they offered us brownies and their dorm room unlike ours was a suite of rooms.


    The building was three stories high and we connected with the girls on the middle floor. The bathrooms were just outside the door to the suite. As you enter the suite there was a small kitchen straight ahead with a bedroom on the left. To the right was a living room and behind that a bedroom and when you first walk into the living room there was another room off to the right. They told us to put our packs in that room and they all had planned to go to a movie we were welcome to meet them there.


    That never happened. We left our packs and found another dormitory and spent some time in the sitting room where I started to drink some from a pint of schnapps I had. Tim had his own I don't' remember what. As it got later I thought, they have to have a snack bar here, like at our school, lets go and see what is happening there. So off we went. But on the way there these two very nice girls were walking behind us and a conversation was started. Not by me, I am positive of that. Now I am shy. I don't like to break the ice. Never did but once broken I am fine. Until...!


    We were invited back to their rooms were they were going to get together in a group of their friends. We arrived and the party began! I finished my bottle of schnapps and they had a unopened bottle of dark rum. Now I liked rum and coke. That was my drink through high school. That was the drink I tasted for the first time in Quebec. So there you have it. The bottle was let loose and the party continued.


    Now one of these girls that we met while walking was the most beautiful blond girl I had ever met. She had long soft and smooth hair with a slightly round face and a figure to kill. I can still to this day remember her name. It was Jenny Dear. She was from New Jersey and her family must have had money to send her to this prep school. If there was such a thing as love at first sight that was it for me. I was struck hard. But by now I was lost to the booze. It was not like I would have made a move anyway. I as you know carried my disease "the shy guy".  So you want to hear why this is in my life story. Where is the real interesting part? Well I am now going to tell you.


    Tim and I left there about 3 in the morning and headed back to the suite our packs were at. We did not wake anyone up going in. Tim lied down on the couch in the living room I took the room with the packs. I could not lie down at all for when I did the case of spins I had was sever. I sat there a long time then I had to go the bathroom. I got up went outside the suite and took care of business and came back in and sat down.


    Now it was Oct. It was in the 30's outside. This will matter in a moment. I sat back on the bed and rocked back and forth for some time and the mood struck again to go. I got up and went back to the toilet. I was sitting there because I couldn't stand, when it dawned on me. I was facing the wrong way. Not only on the toilet! But everything was rearranged like a mirror image of the bathroom I had used a half hour earlier. I did not know why. I had been here for some time with my face resting in my hands. It all was rather curious to me. I was not feeling great but got up and went back into the suite. And my pack and Tim were gone.


    I needed to figure out what went wrong while I was in the bathroom. So I started from there again. I walked in the bathroom and it was all backwards. Weird? I went back into the suite It was not the right one. I backed out to see if I changed floors some how. I went upstairs and into that suite. No doors were locked. This also was not right because I knew I was not on the top floor. So went back down a flight and I discovered I was on the middle floor where I was supposed to be. So I went back down stairs and stepped outside. I discovered by doing this that I was in the building across the small grassy park from the one I was supposed to be in. Now I don't know how I did that! I crossed the lawn in my bare feet and I did not have a shirt on, just my pants. I was not concerned about the cold. And when I got into the correct suite I did my best not to leave again. I still do not know how I got out and into that other building. Another mystery in my life! I think there might have been aliens?


    We left the school about 7AM and headed out on the way to Canada. Other than having a wonderful time, seeing some beautiful scenery and meeting some good people that picked us up, the trip was almost uneventful but for two other things. We got into Canada That afternoon with no problem. We camped out in some pine grove off the road. In order to have dinner we did not have a stove so we needed a fire. On the ground the pine needles were too deep. I found these very flat stones; I believe to be slate and cleared a spot put that down first so we could light the fire on that instead of the ground. The fire was going.


    Now I had read, as a boy in my books don't use stream rocks around a fire. Well every fire I ever had with a rock wall around it never had a problem. Well not this time. I was afraid to start the woods on fire so I thought I was being responsible and extra cautious. Again life takes over and you are not at the wheel. I had dinner on the fire and I was standing back and BOOM!  An explosion rocked our world and the fire went everywhere. I was running around putting out the little ones. Remember my boyhood experience? I had been here and done that before.


    Well this was not one match but a hundred at once because it sprayed the fire in all directions. Not a comforting feeling when you are in a pine grove with a large deep bed of pine needles. Our dinner was burning because it was still on what remained of the original fire. We had just got everything about under control I was just about to save our dinner and BOOM! It went off again. After scrambling to get control of the situation I think the next thing I did was remove the slate. We ate but it just wasn't the flavor I was looking or hoping for.


    The next morning we left Canada. We had no problem getting in. But the guys at our boarder were sort of Jerks to us coming out. (I thought that was bad then, compared with now, it probably was not that bad.) It must have been Tim's long hair that attracted attention to us because we were just a couple of road warriors. We got a few miles form the border and this Cop "Border Patrol" pulled up in a car wanting to check us out again. Just doing his Job! Thanks Buddy!


    We got back to U-Mass the next day.


             It was with this experience hitchhiking I was no longer worried as they say about meeting strangers. I went home I think the next weekend and brought my hunting gear back to school. Hunting season was going to start up in Maine and I wanted to be there.


    Imagine having my rifle at school in the dorm? No Problem! I did.


    To top it off the next weekend I hitched up to Maine to meet Jay at his house. I had my rifle with me. Granted it was in a case. But times were different back then. I don't think it a problem today. People then were not as afraid as now. When people get on with their lives and forget about being afraid of everything we will all live more comfortably. I don't include me in that last statement. I am not afraid of life.


             This third semester was really hard. To give you an idea of my class loads. I had statistics, which I never understood for the whole semester. I was flunking. I had Botany and Biology. Both tests were for me a breeze but Botany got me kicked from school. I will explain in a minute. I had to take some Comedy film class as an elective. Show up get an A. I had Physics and Calculus. That was a huge workload.


    It was the end of the semester and we were instructed if you have more than 2 finals scheduled in one day you could reschedule some. So I had statistics, botany, biology and one other all for the same day. I choose to do 3 and I could ace botany so I put that off a couple of days. I studied for 13 hours straight all night for statistics. I read the whole book! That was the class I was flunking. I got into the test and knew every answer and aced the test. I could not believe how easy it was. I was shocked you could say. I passed with a final grade of D for that class grade.


    The other two tests were not bad. But I had to take the botany test in two days.  I had the chance to see the test that I missed and I would have gotten an A with ease, I new it all backwards and forwards. If I had taken that 4th test that day I would have moved on with an A in botany.


    So I go to the professor's office for my makeup exam. And instead of giving us a 100 question multiple choice as was the one I skipped. This woman killed me as I get 12 questions fill in the blank! Now I knew my stuff but I never professed to be that good.


    My grade for the class suffered because of the little inequity of my life. You can see I had no part or control over any of that. I ended the semester with a 1.96 or so and I was done with that University. The deal was that if I flunked out my parents would not pay to for me go back. I had to do it for myself. I see nothing wrong with that. I went back to work.


     


    7. MY LIFE AS AN OUTDOORSMAN


    I did some fun things as a boy. I of course got to sleep out in the pop tents I mentioned. But I took that to an extreme on summer after school let out. My dad had acquired a new tent. It was sort of like a dome tent of today. But just had a fly over the very top. The fly did not extended down the sides like the good ones do today. So when it rained the tent would breath but you still had to pull everything away from the sides so that the water would not be drawn through the walls to the inside.


     


    What I meant by extreme I spent every night one summer sleeping outside in the back yard in this new tent. Of course I would use all the facilities the house had to offer. But I found myself very comfortable outside. I guess I was just preparing my mind for future endeavors.


     


    Another time my dad bought these new sleeping bags that were mummy shaped. They were supposed to keep you warmer than the old rectangular summer bags we always had. There was new material that had come out called Polar Guard. This Polar Guard was a thin very tiny single strand of hollow material that circled the inside of the bag. It was to prevent the warm air from escaping and the material would not bunch up in corners and leave other areas insulation free.


     


    I loved this new sleeping bag. It was one January night I thought it would be a good idea to go out and sleep under the stars with my dog Tiger. The bag was supposed to be good to 5° above zero.


     


    It got very cold that night I think it actually went below zero. My dog was sleeping beside me all curled up. He was a dobermin Shepard mix so he did not quite have the kind of winter coat for that kind of cold. In the middle of the night he was shaking. So I got up climbed out of my bag and brought him back up the house then returned to my frozen sleeping bag. It was amazing to me that I stayed warm all night. I had another very cold experience with my new bag in 1981. I will tell you about it in a minute I want to go back and cover 1977 first.


     


    Outward Bound, Colorado:


     


            In August, of 1977 my father allowed me to sign up and go on a trip to Colorado to participate in an Outward Bound program that I had found out about through school. The outdoor trip was for just short of a month and I had chosen the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. This course offered was about rock climbing. I had thought about the course they offered on sailing out on the ocean at Hurricane Island, ME. Again the Mountains won. I had been dreaming of going out west to the Rockies as I explained earlier when I climbed my first mountain. I had made up my mind that I wanted to be a wildlife biologist when I grew up. That dream was still alive at this point.


    I had never flown other than a little tourist flight I took for $4 once on Cape Cod. That was off Race Point in a little two-seat plane. I loved it then and I love it now. That I did when I was with my older sister Kathy. I don’t remember why we were down there.


    For Outward Bound I was to fly out of Logan Airport in Boston to Denver, Colorado and change planes there to get to Grand Junction. I was so new to this the stewardess on the plane asked me if I wanted something to drink as she came by with the cart and I said “no” because I did not know how much the soda cost and did not feel comfortable asking. I didn’t want everyone to know this was my first flight.


    I did get a coke on the flight to Grand Junction. I was learning. I had reservations at the Holiday Inn on the northwest side of town. It was 102 degrees there the day I arrived. I arrived but my bag was still in Denver. Talk about a very nervous kid. I could not use the pool because I had no other clothing with me. I had not been familiar with that kind of heat that was in Grand Junction that day. We don’t get that hot in Boston. My bags finally were delivered to my about 8:45 that evening, thank God.


    I went down to breakfast the next morning and had my breakfast. As I was eating and they called over the loud speaker all the Outward Bound students to the lobby for the taxi ride to the bus station. I finished my meal and just got up and left. As I was sitting on the taxi about 15 minutes later and I realized that I had forgot to leave the waitress a tip. That was not like me at all. I could not believe I had done this and as I was sitting there thinking about it upon further discovery I realized I had not even paid for breakfast. I am sorry for that. It was not intentional.


    We drove caught the bus and it took us south through Delta and Montrose and farther south before we turned east up this dirt road before we came to Ouray, CO. I really expected to see forested mountains. But what I got was dry desert conditions. It was not the Colorado I had envisioned at all. That all changed to more of what I expected when we got down south and into the mountains. Now I don’t know how it happened but the dust from that road came inside the bus through the air conditioning unit and everyone was choking on it. That was terrible.


    I spent the next three weeks hiking one of the wildest parts of Colorado. I saw deer and elk. I did get to do some rappelling for the first time. The instructors tied off the ropes and said and asked someone to sit at the top and belay one of the instructors down. It was 150 drop. This was longer than the first rope we had tied off so we had to extend that rope with another.  As I sat their tied in I was concerned because the first time I did that on a huge boulder we had practiced on I had a kid on Belay that actually fell. I burned my hands on the rope preventing him from hitting the ground. This was a drop of more than ten feet. But I as usual volunteered. As I sat there at the top of the rock everyone else got to move over for a vantage with which they could see the face of the cliff. I never did, at least not until I was on it.


    I was told before I inched my way over the edge because I was next that there were 2 roof formations. It was a long drop and at one point I got to this over hang the first roof. I didn’t know what to do. The instructor yelled up to me lower yourself until you get your face is even with the rock face then let your feet go. I did and found myself twirling in space 100 or more feet off the ground.


    To finish off the story on the way down the face I had yelled down to John the first instructor to go down, “I hope my knots hold.”


    When the next kid came down I was standing there telling him what I said and John said to me I thought you called me an “Ass hole.” He felt better now.


    A couple of things happened to me on this trip. One I was more experienced that any of the others in my group regarding hiking. I was always hiking out in front and the instructor would tell me you have to wait for the slow ones on your team. I didn’t know anything about teams. I had never really been part of a team. When we got there they told us take from your bags only what you wish to carry. Now in New Hampshire I always carried a down vest and hooded jersey. The mountains were always cold at night. I was very hot when we did this and I asked should I bring them they said it is up to me. But what ever you leave will be there until we were done. So not knowing anything about Colorado and seeing as it was hot I did not take them. I regretted it later but survived without them. In retrospect I would have carried the extra weight.


    We spent quite a few wet days and one night this guy Jeff Barnson and I could not get the nerve to climb into our cold wet sleeping bags so we stayed up all night. We got rain it seemed like everyday in the afternoons. I was from Boston rains there all the time. But not like this. We did not have tents just two large tarps we would set up every night.


    When we first got into our groups we had a very eclectic bunch totaling 9 guys. There was this Kid Jeff Barnson from Longmont and another guy John Blum from Dallas TX and we three got along fine together. They gave us barrels of food and it was all in boxes and cans. Now I know that was a lot of weight to carry and trash to haul. So I asked if next re-supply could they give me a box of Ziploc bags. A wonderful invention, and they did, but we had to deal without them for this first segment. So we loaded our packs and off we went without knowing where too. We would hike for 9 days and the come in for re-supply. The next time we got our food barrels on top was the bags I had asked for. I had everyone unwrap all the food and put it in the bags. We got rid of a ton of paper and cans. Everyone seemed to like that idea. I imagine Outward Bound used it from that point on.


    Later in the month the instructor John L. came to us and said tomorrow two of our group was to rock climb up Wham Ridge to the top of  Vestil Peak.


    He said. “You as a group will pick who you want to go with me but I want Jeff to be one of them.”


    So out of nine that left 8 to choose from. Three others said that they wanted to go. John Blum said he would like to but figured I was more deserving. So with that statement It became unanimous that I would be the one. I was glad for I felt for all I had done to support the team I did in fact deserve to go.


    So when John said, “ I want Neil to go he has done the most for the group”. End of story I got to climb the face with Jeff and our Instructor John L. Sorry I can’t remember his last name now.


    The next morning we headed out and we got up quite a ways and the instructor could see we were getting a little nervous as to how steep the rock face was becoming and he said we can tie in any time you want. Well I wanted to work with ropes. I had climbed trees and rocks my whole life. I came here to experience just this. So we tied in.


    We made the top just after lunch. It was about 12:30pm when we got up there. The last 2 belays were rushed because a very large storm was coming up the valley to our west and it was pouring rain unbelievable.


    I did not get to belay Jeff for it was faster for John to do it. He had me remove all my gear and go sit off to the side in a lower spot lightening being his concern. What an exhilarating climb for me. And like every high in life we get brought back down to earth in an instant when another instructor from another parallel group who was supposed to be with my other patrol group climbing Trinity Mountain comes up the face climbing without ropes and wearing flip-flops. So much for those $50 dollar climbing boots we needed to buy for the course. Thank you for cheapening my experience! #$%^! We walked off the back of the mountain and down a trail that took us only about a half hour to get back to camp.


    The day before our hike to the solo area, we had run out of food. Jeff and I went out looking for edible plants and met up with these troubled kids from the inner city of Chicago out on a confidence-building trip and they had all this extra food. This one boy invited us back for some spaghetti. Jeff and I obliged him. They were not subjected to the rigors of our course. His instructor was not more than 18-19. We befriended them and hung out with them for a bit. They gave us a big salami and crackers and some other stuff which be brought back to our tarp. We shared them with John I think. But when the rest of our group heard about the spaghetti they headed off to see what they could get. We were all hungry. But this was my first lesson on how to “Yogi” food, as we called it along the Appalachian Trail, that I would hike 15 years later. A 6 month odyssey.


    I was time for us to do our solo. That was 3 days and 3 nights alone with no food and limited gear.  They did require us to take our water bottles.


    They said. “You may bring a sleeping bag or not, your choice.”


    For my last meal we had very little food. So as a group we had one can of baked beans, Soup with our last can of beef. John L gave us half of a  tootsie roll. We had two boxes of chicken soup and one box of Ox tail soup. ( I had never had nor heard of that before this trip.) We borrowed some flour from the other group near by and made dumplings in the soup and that was it. We were done eating for the next 3 days.


    We basically had a knife our poncho, ensolite pad and a water bottle. I wore both my shirts knowing it would be tough at night. They put me on this little hill by a stream. I set up my poncho and I had decided to take in addition, only my sleeping bag liner. I thin single sheet of nylon cloth.


    I wrote in my journal of the trip that I was very skinny now but did not feel so hungry any longer. I did write about all the different typed of foods that I would sure love to experience again. I wrote I got bored the first day and I was sitting out in the sun and I was cold. I mentioned it was because of my lack of food with no calories to burn. I sat there and tried to make an arrow head but chipping the stone didn’t work for me so I gave up. I did have for the 3 days the company of one rabbit, maybe two.


    That night it appeared like it would not rain and I froze my butt off. About 4am I was awakened by raindrops falling on my bag. I pulled out my poncho from below me and made a quick sleeping bag cover. I found out later I was one of 2 people that stayed dry that night. The instructor who was not on solo also set up a tarp for himself.


    All that night I was praying for the sun to rise. I also had a dream that my instructor John had come by and put a sleeping bag by my bedside. A couple of times I believed it and had to look. My prayer was eventually answered and the sun did rise. (It wasn’t like I was praying for the lottery; I knew the sun was coming.)


    The next day I waited a long time for my instructor to make his rounds. He did not come soon enough so I walked back down to where our backpacks were and took my sleeping bag back up to my spot. I just got back to my little hill when my instructor visits me and asked me how I was doing.


    I told him “I got my bag”


    He asked me, “how.”


    But was cool about it. I was hungry but fine, by day 3 I was very weak. I also was light headed and it was a chore just to walk down to the stream to fill my water bottle. I had to rest twice on the way back up the 12 foot hill. I had no idea lack of food could affect a thin body so much. It seemed that every time I got up it felt like my pants would fall off.


    On my last day I experience as usual another brief thunderstorm. But as I looked up from under my poncho the sun was in the right position to cause all the raindrops on the spruce needles to glow and shimmer. It looked wondrous and beautiful. Not even to this day have I been able to picture a better decorated Christmas tree.


    It was the next morning I watched, as my group one by one walked by me headed back down to our backpacks. Then it was my turn. I had hoped that first on, first off, would apply, but not today.


    The instructor stopped as one of the kids walks by and he talks to me and gives me a carrot. We all got back to our packs and there was nothing to eat in them. But he gave us all a large carton of yogurt and fruit. We put all the fruit in the yogurt to be fair with everyone and split that up between us. We had to climb up this mountain and go over a pass that day; to get to the next re-supply. Then we could eat. Off we went our butts dragging.


    For the very first time in my life I learned what it felt like for food to have an affect on my body. We had a 6 mile hike ahead of us and had gone a few miles and all of a sudden that fruit and yogurt kicked in and I was good to go. I had all the energy I needed and was blown away by the effect the food had on me. I had never experienced that. It happened for me about the same time as it happened to Jeff. But we did not leave our group behind we just gave them encouragement. We got over the pass to our food barrels and there, out of our barrels, we pulled our food and cooked up a bunch of pasta.


    Then the instructors dropped a bomb. You have been reassigned to a new group. This time just six of us but now there one 15 year old  girl named Kathy in our group. How could this be I was paying for an all male course. Anyway it all worked out fine. By the end of the month it was very cold. We would sit around cooking dinner and I would be using my sleeping bag as a blanket because now I did not have adequate clothing.


    In fact it snowed on the peaks in August. I was shocked. It was August 26th and we were supposed to climb Sunshine or Red Cloud and the next day we were to climb Handies Peak. That was still summer back home. We had to climb 2 14ers. We did the one and the next night it snowed. We got up and I sort of changed our minds about climbing up there with all that “danger”. We had seen enough tops of mountains and it was probably not so dangerous with the snow up there but I allowed the group to think so and cancel that. Finally we came over a pass and down into Silverton Colorado where we camped for the night just north of town.


    We would run a 10 mile marathon the next day. To make a long story short, we had spent our last night in an area that had sheep all summer.


    I think I ate or drank something bad at dinner because I had the runs halfway through the race and had to stop. But in the end I still managed to come in 5th place. I was so close to 4th but this one guy would just not let me pass him when I caught him towards the end of the run. If I had just been healthy I think my stamina would certainly have allowed me to come in sooner. But I might have placed much better also.


    They roasted two lambs or sheep on a spit over an open fire basted in beer and I had the best meal I have ever had up till that point in my life. I wish I could relive that day. Truly delicious!


    We got on the bus the following morning after I had seen the most incredible sunrise. We all headed back to Grand Junction. We stopped in Delta and I bought a chocolate cream pie. I needed that! I was so skinny.


    Now just before I came out on this trip my dad had bought a large ford van. I helped him build a bench and table. There was a bed that also turned into a bench. His plan was to come out with the family and pick me up. My mom and Tom stayed home. Carol and Kathy along with my cousin Candy and my Dad came out. They showed up late the next day and we took a weeklong tour of the USA on the way home.


    I can’t now remember all the things we saw but I do remember the next morning my dad took us to breakfast. I was thin as a rail. I had lost most of my weight and I was about 115 lbs after the month of hiking. We had breakfast and I asked my dad could I please order again. I was surprised but he said yes. I got two breakfasts that day. I would use this gained knowledge about the affects of food 15 years later in my life.


    As a group we went to the Colorado National Monument west of Grand Junction. Then traveled to see Black Canyon of the Gunnison via the back roads. We hit Mesa Verde to see the Pueblo Indians homes. We went to the Grand Canyon’s south rim that year. I have been a few times now. We crossed through Arkansas and visited Onondaga Cave. The first cave I had been in. It was gorgeous. I managed to have all my weight back before we got home. In one week I put it all back on. The first time in my life I did this. It would happen again later.


    Outward bound had been a very positive experience over all for me.


     


    My Fishing Experiences:


     


    Every outdoorsman has a fish story. I have a few also.


    You know about my sleeping out in the yard adventures. They were great for a kid. Now also growing up in Massachusetts there was fishing. The powers that be stocked the Ipswich River every year with trout and there was an opening day for fishing season. I do remember my dad once taking me and my brother Jay down to the river at Central Street where it opened up into I guess you could say two ponds a very small one and then into a larger one. Jay caught a sunfish that day. We were very young so that was all I remember except in those days we had openfaced reels. They were not the spinning reels most use today.


    I can remember the excitement of getting our tackle and rods out and organized and going down the Chestnut Street Bridge on opening day.


    We were normally up before sunrise and it was Jay and I who would go. We would be headed down the street walking with our poles before the sun rose. There were a couple of big holes just before the culverts under the road at Chestnut Street and just past it.


    The fisherman would walk up and down the banks doing their best to wipe out the freshly stocked trout population. I think in the summer they all died off from the warmth of the water. But it took me a couple of years before I finally caught a trout. We used to go bare foot and it was an amazing feeling for the cold dark mud oozing up between your toes. I was older when I would get on my bike and go down past the center of town and out behind the pizza shop. There you could catch bass, perch and blue gill. Now I really like to fillet and fry up blue gill in flour and cornmeal. I find them very tasty.


    I also did salt water fishing when I got the chance. I prefer to go out on the ocean. One year I spent the night with my cousin Bill. The next day he, his dad and I went out on their 18 ft wooden boat across the bay over just off Province Town. The sea gulls were circling and there was a few boats there, trawling for blue fish and stripped bass.


    We used umbrella rigs on deep sea poles. The rigs were two crossed metal rods with the fishing line tied to the center and 4 lures off the 4 ends of the metal rods and the 5th and biggest lure to the center trailing the other four. The rig gave the appearance of a small school of fish chased by a slightly larger as you trolled it around. On the poles we normally used 40-50 pound test.


    I had my line way out there when something big hit. It started to take line off the reel fast.  As the reel would spin out you didn’t want to get what was called in those days a birds nest of tangled line. So you put your thumb with pressure on the spinning reel to only allow it to spin as fast as line is going out. If it would spin faster you had a real mess.


    I had noticed a knot in the line slightly covered and wound over on the reel and as I applied my right thumb, as soon as I did, that the line let go and we lost the whole rig and whatever fish was on.


    My uncle was immediately mad at me. He accused me of causing the line to break. There of course was no way a 11 year olds thumb pressure was going to break that line. But I looked and there had been that knot in the line from a previous break. You could see that it had become untied with the weight and pulling of the fish. The color of the line where the knot was was different because of the protection from the salt water.


    Nonetheless I never fished with my uncle Bill again. I was never invited. It was not my fault and even after I showed him that the line became untied he never apologized nor did he accept that it was not caused by me.


    I had one experience on my cousin Bill’s boat in the late 80’s I will talk about. My friend Tim Riese, from my high school, he and I did go out fishing with Bill one time. We left Brant Rock and crossed almost to Provincetown on Cape Cod in his wooden boat. We were bottom fishing and Tim caught a large cod and was bringing it up into the boat. As he lifted it out of the water and swung it over the side of the boat he hit me upside the head with it. This was the first of two times that has happened to me. My oldest daughter has hit me with a fish also. Hers was less of a shock it was a small trout.


    Getting back to my story. As I turned around there was this initial ring of water that came bubbling up beside our boat. It was like when you put your hand underwater and you flip your fingers upward. That initial ring out in the bay was bigger than the boat we were in. I tell you there are some big fish in that water. I never saw what it was but I believe it was a tail of a whale. You have now heard my whale tale! Then again who knows? Bill suggested it was a sunfish. He said they do that. But I don’t know what a sunfish is (in salt water) and it really does not matter. IT WAS BIG!


    Another time when we were about the same age or older I was staying over at Bill’s house and we decided to go up the coast by boat and up the North River. It looked no different then than the day the pilgrims landed. I was amazed at how wild it was. On our return we hat gotten almost back to the channel off the jetty when we ran out of gas. Someone came by and towed us in. We were so close! I can tell you that you don’t want to do that. Run out of gas I mean. In fact I heard Bill did it again later when he was older. He spent the night on his boat. But he would have to tell that story.


    Jay and I used to go into Boston when my dad worked there. My dad would park in Charlestown just below the Bunker Hill Monument and walk to the Government Center. One day he allowed us to stop and fish in the Charles River. We were just above the USS Constitution and the old Boston Navy yard. We didn’t catch anything. I don’t know now if there was anything there to catch. Boston Harbor was not considered in those days a clean body of water.


    One day we walked over by the harbor just east of china town and they had party boats docked there where you could pay to go out fishing for the day. We thought that was a great idea.  My dad also agreed. So one day we did. I was about 14 but could still pass for 12 so I got the little kid discount. People on the boat were not having any luck. There was a few fish caught, but for the most part the captain had to keep moving.


    You could win a prize for the largest fish caught on the boat for the day. So at one point late in the morning it sort of felt like I got stuck on the bottom because we were using bait (clams) just off the bottom fishing for cod. (You lower your weighted line till you hit bottom and the line stops going out). I could lift my rod up then reel line in as I dropped the tip. Some guy near me said there is some people caught on a cable on the other side of the boat, which by the way was good size.


    I told him “I don’t think so because I can reel in.”


    So I worked it and worked it and slowly my hook and line came up. My arms were getting tired  and I come to find out I had a 4ft sand shark on line. We also called them dogfish. It would prove to be the largest fish I was to ever catch for many years to come. It was also the largest fish caught on the boat that day.


    The staff gaffed it and brought it up into the boat. The staff removed the shark from my hook cut open the stomach and threw it back over the side. Now, I had no problem with the idea of throwing it back. Nobody ate shark back then. I just didn’t feel the need to cut it open or to kill it.


    I had caught the largest fish that day. But they did not count it because it was a shark and not something someone would eat. So this other older man got the prize for his cod, which was a little bigger than one that I caught a little later. I don’t know if he knew I had caught the shark and even thought the party boat people didn’t give the prize to me he also never owned up and offered it to the kid that out fished him. I did catch a small cod that day. It was also the 2nd largest one on the boat which I made into some fish chowder later at home.


    Some point in High School I was down at the bridge behind the house around dusk and some guy who moved in a few houses down showed up with a fishing pole, can of worms and lantern. It was just before dark. So I asked him what he thought he was doing. I had lived there for my whole life and never fished in the river behind my house. Who knew there were fish there? He told me he was catching hornpout. They were catfish and you had to be very careful not to get poked by the sharp spikes they have on their fins.


    Did anyone notice that this guy did not ask anyone’s permission to fish there? You didn’t have to, in those days. People were respectful of others property and the fish belonged to God.


    We were trout fisher boys and we fished early morning and dusk. I had never fished at night and never caught a hornpout and sure enough we hung out and watched. He was using worms and night crawlers. The best fishing started about 9-10 PM and ran till about 2 AM. So Jay and I started going down on the weekends late at night and catching fish. We did not have a fancy Coleman lantern that cast bright light. But we had the old kerosene lanterns that you had to wash the globes all the time. It wasn’t long before Jay bought a gas lantern and changed that.


    As far as the fish go we never kept them because they just weren’t something we would eat. No one in my family had any experience with eating catfish. I thought I would keep one just once. It was still alive when we went home that night. It was so late I put it in the bathtub without water. When I got up in the morning that darn fish was still alive. And they make this crying sound. Who knew a fish could make noise. I thought if you complain that much with that voice I figure you deserve to go free. I took it back down to the river and let it go. I had no plans to eat a talking fish.


    We caught eels off the bridge too. Eels always; creeped me out. We would beat them off the line with a stick because I didn’t want to touch them and they always swallowed the hook. We did not want to loose the hook and often we would save the worm in the process and use it again. So the eel never survived. Did you know when they get caught they wrap themselves around things so you think you’re stuck. But with constant pressure they tire and let loose. Then you know you have an eel. Come to find out people actually eat eel. I still to this day have never done so and don’t have the foggiest clue how to even prepare it. But those were romantic nights for a young outdoorsman. In fact if I could I would do it again. Accept this time I would keep the catfish and eat them. I still would probably beat the eels.



    I can remember some of the best fishing trips I made were when I was 18 to 20 or so. Jay was in the navy stationed in Maine and he met this family named Maxwell in Phippsburg ME through a man he knew in the service named Jim. They invited us up to go fishing & bear hunting in the spring of 1978. They had use of a small A-frame cabin on Clifford Lake leased to an old friend of Arnold Sr. It was along the coast up close to Canada.


    We had a new square stern 15-foot canoe that my dad had bought. Jay was able to rent a small motor for the canoe at the naval air base. The day we went in to rent the motor I thought I had read that it would use a maximum of 6 horse power so that is what we got. The guy renting us the motor wanted to know what we were going to use it on. After we told him about the canoe he thought that 6 horse was a little excessive and was cautioning us that we might want something just a little smaller. My brother took my word for it even though it was printed on a tag at the back of the canoe and we did get a 6 horse motor.


    When we got there and loaded the boat there on the tag it stated, I think now, use a 4-horse max. We being boys with spirit put it on the canoe anyway and started the motor. We took it for a test out on the lake and before we had it wide open the front end was on a plane and I who sat up front was an inch or two above the water. That motor really pushed us along. I would say that it took a little to get over the boats wobbling. But we soon had the throttle wide open and we had no problem getting somewhere fast. Only about 1/3rd of the rear part of the boat was touching water as we sped across the lake.


    We were fishing for pickerel and my brother caught one and was removing the hook. He took the lower jaw of the fish with his thumb in the fish’s mouth so the weight of the fish would hold the mouth open like you do with a bass. All was fine until that fish started flapping its tail. Pickerel have very sharp teeth like a pike and it tore his thumb up. I never did that because I had a good teacher.


    Now out on the lake we were fishing in some old logs and weeds. I got my line all tangled. I was using a treble hook spoon that was green with black dots. This spoon was just hanging over the side of the boat about 8 feet down while I tried to untangle my line. When I got that done I started to reel in and low and behold I had a large pickerel on the line. I never thought I could catch a fish on a spoon that was not moving. I do have a short video of us fishing and cruising in the motorized canoe. I had borrowed my aunt’s 8mm camera. This was filmed on actual film though it is now on VHS because no one has a projector any longer.


    While we were hunting in the mornings and evenings we fished during the day. So on one occasion we drove up to Grand Lake Stream and we were going to fly fish for land locked salmon below the Grand lake dam. We had no anchors so we put out into the river with our canoe and tied a heavy rock to the canoe. The Maxwell’s and Jim had a 14” aluminum boat with oars and a motor. They two were using a rock for an anchor.


    Both boats were out in the middle of the river and it was a very fast currant. They were up stream of Jay and I when their rope came loose from the rock and down steam they came. Now below us on the river were rapids and waterfalls and no place to have a boat. They came sweeping down upon us and our anchor let go also. So Jay yells at me forget fishing and grab a paddle. I threw my rod into the boat even with my line still out there. I am glad we had use of “strong ash” paddles because we were bending them in the hopes of saving our lives. We did not use life preservers. No need, we could swim. Needless to say we all did make it to shore safely, but not without a short adrenalin rush. That ended the canoe in the river below the dam experience.


    We had at this cabin plenty of good times. Arnold Sr. would catch a Red Sox game on the radio and we would hang out beating ourselves to kill the black flies that were annoying us constantly. The Cabin had plenty of mice when we first got there. And we wanted to solve that problem. So Jim took a 6-inch deep dish washing basin and filled it almost to the top with water. He took a coke bottle and put peanut butter around the top of the bottles neck and placed it in the center of the basin of water. On the floor in the kitchen is where he placed it off to the side with a small stick used as a ramp up to the rim of the basin with a little bit of an over lap to the rim. In the mornings we got up and there were a bunch of drowned mice in the basin. You remove the bottle and just throw out the water. I thought that was ingenious though it was probably not his original idea. He in my mind built the better mouse trap!


    Other than mice running around the cabin all night one night I was in need of a nature break. I got up out of my sleeping bag and headed for the outhouse. I had just finished my business and was getting ready to go back inside the cabin when a moose walked by the outhouse door. I did not go out to see it as it was dark. So I sat in the outhouse for another 15 minutes or so enjoying the aroma until I was sure the moose had moved on. When I went back in the cabin Jay who was in the bunk below me asked me what took so long. They did not believe at that moment what had happened to me. The tracks were there for all to see in the morning when we got up. Jim was walking around the south side of the lake and came face to face with a bull moose a little later that morning.


    I had gone to Clifford Lake twice to hunt spring bear with my brother, the Maxwell’s and Jim. But on one other occasion I went up to the lake with Arnold Jr. It was just the two of us and we drove up to Grand Lake Stream to do some salmon fishing. We had a wind that day blowing down the lake. We had planned this trip to rent an aluminum boat and head up lake to do some fishing. Now they should not have rented that boat to us that day. The wind was strong and would be getting worse. But they did and we went.


    There was this small stream that came down to the lake on the western shore. We chose to park the boat and hike up the stream fishing. Just about every stream up there you can drop a hook and worm and so long as there was a pool you could potentially catch fish. Arnold came first upon this large pool in the stream and on the other shore was a large rock. He caught a few fish below that rock and I was jealous of his success. I had moved up stream a ways. So when he was done with it I gave it a try. A few minutes later I caught a trout. And it was the largest of the bunch.


    Now just above where he was fishing this pool I had been above him and discovered that there was a very large expansive beaver pond. I was living the dream wilderness adventure this trip. There was nothing for many, many miles in any direction. And to this day, I had always wanted to go back there with a belly boat to explore the fishing possibilities behind that dam. I never did. Maybe one day?


    We got down to the lake a little later and launched our rented boat. The wind had picked up considerably out on the lake. There were more than just whitecaps now. There were white capped swells and these were large enough that when they came under the boat the bow and stern were out of the water. So we sort of rode them down the lake at an angle. We did make it out to a small island where we stopped off the lee side. We brought the boat up on the beach and got out and took a walk to the windy side. It was there that we could see the full affect of the wind and waves on the rocks below. The size of the waves washing the shoreline made us aware that it was defiantly time to get out of there!


    We headed back down lake using the island as much as we could to break the wind. When we got in and stored our gear we headed over to the small general store were we ran into an old timer who happened to know Arnold’s dad. He was a crusty backwoodsman. Of course he had his pladd flannel shirt, with a long tobacco stained beard and not the kind of person you would run into in Boston where I grew up. He was my hero and I didn’t even know him.


    He asked us what “we’d” been up to and we told him about he boat rental, the lake, the waves and such. How the lake was just a little bit rough that day.


    His response to us was. “ You damb fools! What are you do’in out there on a day like this?”


    Of course he was right but no one got hurt! That trip was quite the adventure. We canoed down a small stream out into the middle of nowhere on one of the days. Well come to think of it everywhere here is nowhere! We had to be 40+ miles from the closest town or establishment. Truly the only thing we had access too to get anywhere was logging roads. This small steam grew much larger and eventually entered an unnamed lake. We spent the day fishing then had to canoe back up stream to get back to our truck.


    We camped for a night or two on another lake. We were back in the trees. At dust we cruised the lakeshore fishing for bass. You could always find them spawning in the shallow water under trees that over hang the lake. The tough part was getting your lure to reach across and under the trees without getting it hung up. In the evenings you could hear the loons making their lonesome songs echoing out across the calm still waters. This all was 30 years ago now. How I miss those times.


    When my cousin Bill and I got older we would go out a time or two together. But now we were older and I had been living out in Colorado for a number of years. I was back east to do some work there as I was a national field service tech by then working for a large computer company.


    Though I for the most part didn’t drink anymore, this short tale is sort of two stories for the price of one. I took my cousin Paul Norton out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant that we always ate at with my mom’s family on Christmas Eve It was called the Tahiti Restaurant in Dedham Mass. We would go with all our cousins and the families.


    Paul and I had some beers that Friday night and just before I dropped him off we went to the package store or liquor store. We called those stores “the packy” back home. I picked up a 12 pack of beer for the next day. I was going to go out on the lobster boat with Bill. It was a beautiful Saturday morning when I drove down to Marshfield. When I arrived at his house I was asked if I wanted a beer.


    So I said, “yes” and did.


    When I finished the beer he was out of them in the house. So I went out to my car and brought the others in. He had a bite to eat then we went to get his partner. We went out for the morning on the boat and we finished off the 12 pack I brought along. It was on the way into the harbor that we ran into a friend of Bill’s and he tossed us each a couple of beers. They lasted no time at all. We had pulled his traps and took the lobsters that were legal. Those we unloaded at the pier.


    We got in to the marina took care of the boat and lobsters then we stopped at the store and picked up another case and finished that during the afternoon. Later after dinner we then went out to the local bar. I recall I spent 20 dollars on beers and shots that night and Bill got to the point where he just went home. It was a hour or two before me. I caught a ride from my cousin Monica to her uncle’s cottage were I spent the worst night of my life. I was so drunk. It was far worse than any of my college and post college experiences. I was still affected and totally drunk when it was 11 o’clock the next morning. As I was driving back home the next morning I got sick along the way and pulled to the side of the road. I was so sick I threw up bile!


    I did bring back a bunch of lobsters for my mom and myself. But I did not eat any of them. I have never had that much to drink and I will never again. I no longer mix drinking with hunting or fishing. I was in my mid to late 20’s when I did this. I did not recover until about 4 pm the next afternoon. You don’t want to know all the details of just how sick I was. But I don’t recommend this to anyone! And I brought it all on myself by making some bad choices! But the entire event of drinking put aside, I had a great time otherwise.


    I don’t know whether to tell you this as a hunting or fishing story. But the guys I hung out with back in my field service days pretty much all had an interest in hunting and fishing. They all knew I was an avid outdoorsman.


    I had been archery hunting and I had all the equipment I needed to succeed in my endeavors. Well a friend of mine named Dave Quapy got the idea at some point to turn his love for archery in to fishing expeditions. Out behind the new company office in Boulder, CO was a small pond. It was full of large carp and on the hot summer days they would be found near the surface of the pond.


    Dave converted his archery into sport fishing and bought fishing arrows, the line and reels. I like one other friend Steve Hilde did the same. I took my share of large carp out of the pond with my bow in those days. The problem was it was not at all acceptable to me after a while. It was not like once you caught them you could put them back. Their life was over. The other problem with this sport some might call it, was, that we didn’t eat carp. I don’t like the taste of carp for I have had them or should I say tried them in the past. Not a slight on carp eaters. I guess I just don’t have a clue how to prepare them to taste good.


    So the most I could do with the fish once caught was leave them on the bank for the raccoons, skunks or coyotes. I did not continue on with this though I still have all the equipment today to do so. Now if there was a lake or river were some other type of large fish could be seen or found then I would have no problem shooting them, if I was going to eat them.


    I have fished countless rivers, lakes and streams here in Colorado. I have caught plenty of trout though I am not a big fan of eating them any longer. When I was living in Nederland Colorado I guess it was 1993 and my neighbor Kirk was also an outdoorsman from Texas. He invited me once to go with him up to Grand Lake and go lake trout fishing. They are deep and you troll for them. The day we went up his wife was very, very pregnant. She was not due for a week. She had a problem with him going with me but you know men. We went. Now he was bothered the whole trip up and that day the boat would not start. So we went around to the backside of the lake to one of the inlets and fished the inlet river and caught a bunch of trout. He out fished me to him everything was a contest. All he could think about was his wife and late in the afternoon he decided to go back around and call home. Well his wife would not answer the phone. I was single so what did I know about wives and their attitude towards fishing?


    He made the choice to end the trip and we drove the hour and a half home. He pulled up into his house boat still attached and I walked over to mine. 5 minutes later he comes yelling up my driveway his wife is in the hospital. Because the boat was still on his truck would I drive him down to Boulder. We raced the whole way down and when we got there his wife was in the room with a new baby in her arms. I said hello but I don’t think she wanted to see me at all. I let them have their space.


    Later Kirk had to taken a trip to Costa Rica. I had never heard of it. Turns out to be a real country in Central America. Who knew? He was showing me some video footage on his return and telling me stories about his trip. He said he as talking to a fisherman along the coast. They  told him a story that they had taken out some guys fishing. The story went that one of the men had caught a yellow fin tuna. As they were getting it up close to the boat a huge blue marlin came to the surface and ate the tuna. Now they had a large marlin on line.


    I thought to myself “Now that is fishing. I am going to go there!” A year later that is where I was. I had recently closed down my company Visionary Realism Enterprises which I will talk about later and I held a short term job at a company called Micro House. I worked there for a few more months refinanced my home in Nederland and changed my life forever. I walked into my boss’s office one day shortly after we had a conversation that went something like this.


    He called me into his office and the first words out of his mouth were, “I have to let you go.”


    He was kidding and I being older than him knew it. But my immediate response was not what he expected at all. I told him. “That’s fine I was looking for a job when I found this one and I will be looking for a job when I leave.”


    He was not expecting that. In the beginning of April a few months later in 1994 I did leave to hike the Appalachian Trail and when finished there I was within a few weeks on my way to Costa Rica with a one-way ticket. I will explain all that later. This is about fishing.


    When I lived in Costa Rica I was not there long when I went down the pacific side to go fishing. I had gone to the casino early one day to play roulette and won a hundred dollars to fund the trip.


    I found a man in Quepos with a boat that would charter it to me. The price he was charging was reasonable though I don’t remember now how much. But I thought it to expensive for just me. So I was in the bar and I met this Canadian guy and his girl friend and struck up a conversation with them. They had planned on going snorkeling the next day. But I convinced the guy if we split the bill it would work out great for us both.


    So the next day we both went out and I did catch a large dolphin also known as Mahi-Mahi or Dorado down there. It was about 4 ½ to 5 feet long. The largest fish I had ever caught to this point. It put up a great fight and took me upwards of 20 minutes to get it into the boat. It would prove the only fish caught that day on our boat. I was sorry for the Canadian guy for there was nothing I could do for him. But I don’t think he wanted to go snorkeling anyway. His girl did and we met up with her later in the day.


    I gave half the fish to the captain of the boat and took the other half in to a restaurant in Quepos. This is the coastal town where we had chartered the boat. I would give the restaurant ½ of what remained in my possession if they would cook the rest up for this new friend, his girlfriend and myself. We all had the fish for dinner and shared it with others who were sitting around us and we had a great meal that night. A great time was had by all.


    A few years later I went up to Flamingo bay Costa Rica with my wife, two daughters and a friend of my wife’s Kenny. I negotiated a charter to go out for sailfish. I paid the whole fare for Kenny and myself, as this trip was my treat. My company was doing very well and I had money then. For my wife and oldest daughter I arranged as part of the deal for the boats owner to pay for a day of horseback riding for my wife and my stepdaughter. I would go fishing one day they would look after my youngest daughter Brittany. The next day they would go for the horseback trip and I would watch my daughter Brittany with Kenny.


    The day it was my turn to watch Brittany; I asked Kenny (a bachelor) if he could run down to the store and get me some diapers. We were out. He came back with diapers for adults. Not fitting for an infant, kind of embarrassing for him. Nothing to do with fishing but it happened.


    Kenny and I got up early and headed down to the dock to go out fishing. The wind was blowing strong that day and we trolled around all morning. At one point hundreds of porpoises surrounded us. We hoped that we had gotten into the tuna. But that never happened. We trolled on.


    At one point I asked Kenny if he would like to go up in the tuna tower which was two levels up, with the captain. He got up one level and turned around and sat down on the steps. I could see him turning green right before my eyes. Moments later he was jumping down and heaving over the side of the boat. The chop out there was about 8 feet. We moved to the south a few miles and got to the wind line. This is where I caught my first Sailfish. Kenny had been below laying down on the couch. He came running up when the assistant yelled in Spanish, “fish on!”


    It was a large sailfish and the only trophy I have of that fish is a picture on my wall. As soon as the fish was caught Kenny no longer realize that he was sick. I was asking the mate how do you know when you are about to have a fish?


    He said. “ You will see the sword come up out of the water behind the bait.”


    I watched American Sportsman on TV all the years I was a kid hosted with Kurt Gowdy. I fulfilled that day another dream that I had wanted to live as I watched the big fish break the surface [Pic] and fly through the air trying to shake off the line. I have a picture of that also. [Pic] What an adventure. I hope I will do it again some day.


     


    Two years ago before my divorce I wanted to have a talk with my 15-year-old stepdaughter. So I took her fishing for the day and we drove into the backside of Gross Reservoir a lake up in the foothills west of Boulder. I think for the most part we had a really nice time. We caught a lot of trout that day. We let them all go but she actually hit me in the head with one of them. I don’t know what it is about my head and its attraction to other people’s fish. My stepdaughter likes to catch them. But not unhook them. So from now on when they could be coming my way I duck! I also, will probably never take her fishing again.


    That was second time in my life that has happened as I was mentioning earlier. What didn’t happen was the two of us solving our differences. My daughter Raquel and my now X wife Eugenia have been fishing a number of times with me in different parts of the state like the Yampa River, Irwin Lake, west of Crested Butte, CO and on a local pond near our home. I have taken them to the high country lakes west of Rollinsville, Co. I don’t know if they really enjoyed it or did it because I do. I know my wife enjoyed seeing new and beautiful places with me. I loved being in the outdoors with her. For the moment those days are gone. I have two other children. They I hope I will one day get to have similar experiences with them. They don’t live with me now.


     



    • My Hunting Stories:


     


     


             I had great dreams of hunting at the age of 9-10 or so. Again I will say many were the Saturdays that I spent watching American Sportsman with my older brother. The dreams began with the suggestions from Jay. Though the experiences didn’t happen for a quite a few more years. My Dad was not a hunter though he had some guns. He had told me he had once hunted rabbits. But I don’t know the full story and I don’t know if he ever shot one. I think he did once tell me he hunted deer. But in fact he went on a trip but did not hunt. Those would be his stories. I just wanted to say my dad was of very little help in education in the field so to speak.


    I started by getting magazines like Outdoor Life and Field and Stream.  I joined the Outdoor Life book club and started collection of books that I sold 30 years later at a flea market for pennies on the dollar. I don’t remember how old I was when I enrolled in a life long membership to this taxidermy school. Probably only 12-13, but I had a problem, which I needed to solve and it involved the need for animals to work on.


    I bought some leg hold traps at the local store. Now my dad didn’t like them because he said you have to always keep an eye on them. Of course I was young and had no real idea what he was talking about. I decided to use them anyway. So I set them down in the Blueberry Bush behind our house and put nuts around them for squirrels. The next day I went down there and sure enough they worked. There was the leg of a squirrel in the trap. Problem was I was missing the squirrel. I never used them again. My dad gave them to the man who took away our trash.


    I was 13 when I went hunting for real for the first time. I went with the man who’s kid I baby sat for. He lived 4 houses down the street. He invited me up to Maine to his house up there and I asked if Jay could come along. It was just before Christmas and there was lots of snow and such. I have no idea where we went but the house was heated with wood. The Electricity was a large truck engine turned into a generator and water we got from a well out in front of the house. It was great!


    It was late at night when we left and this man was very tired so he stopped on the way up at night to take a short nap in the truck. We got there and we all got to bed. We only stayed for that next day and then came back home. Now my dad at first only would let me take his 22 single shot. We were going up for rabbits. This was a long way to go, when we had rabbits in our own yard. Anyway, Jay finally convinced him to let us take the shotgun. My Dad had a 16 gauge and he gave us a few rounds. I shot it once while up there at a tree. It scared the hell out of me to shoot it because we were alone. The man was in the house I think sleeping. We saw no animals as we walked the woods around his house. But he did let us cut a Christmas tree down and bring it home with us, our first free tree.


    It was some time around 12-14 I got my BB gun. It was a Crossman 760 pump action. It might have been a year or two after Jay got his. You can’t have a BB gun and not shoot the people you are with. We never got hurt for the most part. Once Jay pumped it up to high and shot me in the back and that one I felt through my coat.


    They can be fun but they are the way to learn about guns and the responsibility required to own one. I was at my friend Ted’s house we were inside and I was certain the gun was unloaded as I had always made that a habit before I went into my house. We were in his living room he had the gun in his lap and his mom came in. As soon as she came in he gave the gun to me and we were sitting there talking her telling me she did not like guns and all.


    I told her that it was unloaded and said, “see.”


    Now the gun was pointed at the ceiling in a safe direction so I pulled the trigger and it went off with a short blast of air. I was embarrassed and shocked. I looked at Ted and he revealed that he had pumped it without my knowing. There was no BB in the chamber but nonetheless I learned a very valuable lesson that moment. I also never had the gun in her house again.


    I also have discovered that the safes gun is a loaded gun! You never have a question or problem when you know the gun is loaded. All the accidents always happen like the story above. When you have the thought that it is not loaded. That is when you have an accident.


    I have twice since experienced miss fires on a loaded gun. So in light of my last statement accidents do happen! So I always assume a gun is loaded and make sure they are pointed in a safe direction! More than just that, I am very cautious when I am around others with guns.


    From my own experience one time bear hunting in Maine with Jay and some friends I had just got out of the truck and was walking up this old logging road. We were up in the middle of nowhere close to the Canadian Border. My had my own Winchester 94 lever action with which I had loaded the magazine myself and as I walked along I levered my round into the chamber. As I closed the lever of the gun it went off shooting into the road just 3 feet in front of my toes.


    The other time my brother Jay and I were on a guided hunt in Colorado’s high country hunting elk. He was sitting on the back of my truck on the tailgate with his 30-06 across his lap. Pointed off to his left. The two guides were in front of him sitting on the ground. He was on the tailgate and was lifting the bolt to unload. The firing pin released as the bolt came up sending a bullet through the side of my truck. The rear window of the truck was also shattered from the shock. Always assume your gun is loaded and always point it in a safe direction.


    My friend Leo who I hunted many years for elk and pheasant with always had the habit of putting the butt of the rifle on the ground and his arm he would rest on top of the muzzle. As many times as I told him don’t do that like I said it was a bad habit. I figured one day he would loose his arm. With luck as long as we were together it never happened with me.


    My first hunting trips for real were for deer in the woods along the coast of Maine just outside and south of Bath. We were hunting in a small town called Phippsburg.


    I had met friends of Jays I had mentioned earlier. Jay was stationed there at the Brunswick Navel Air Station. He would come home from overseas specifically to go hunting with me. I got a small 3 point buck my first year. I was just 17. It was early in the morning I was walking down this back woods road and I heard one break off to my right. I told my brother this when we were back at his friend’s trailer for lunch. Their name was Maxwell. He said if the deer are there then that is were I would go if I were you this afternoon.  So I did.


    Jay’s friends had gone up state where they thought they would have better luck. I was hunting the woods behind their home. Marilyn the mom was home. She and her family became close to Jay and I.


    As I was saying, we drove out back of their trailer. Jay let me out and I walked off into the woods and headed down this old logging road. I got off the road and slowly worked my way up this small hill taking my time. I was standing by this tree when off to my left I heard some rustling in the leaves. I look up and here is this young buck walking right towards me. So I turn a bit and lifted my rifle and on the way up the stock brushed my coat. I froze and the deer looked around then put it’s nose back to the ground looking for acorns. I start to lift the gun again and it hit my binoculars. The deer stoped and looked around for a moment or two. Then he put his head back down. I continue raising my gun and took my shot. He was mine. To dress the deer I used all the knowledge I gained from reading the books I had bought from the book club. They were good but there is nothing like doing an operation like dressing a deer, for the first time, with no instructor and all alone. I got the deer down the hill to the road and walked out. My brother and I got the truck and came down to get it. Later I heard the Maxwell boys were surprised that I did so well were they lived.


    The next year I was back again and I got lost out there in the woods. I was going down that old logging road again headed south, same one I had shot my deer off  of the past season. But down below that area the road takes a 90° turn to the east and there was a point where my bother told me he and his friend Jim got their truck stuck in a very low area. So no one ever drove past this low point in the road.


    On my left there was a swamp on north side of this road and I decided I would head off into the swamp. I came out on this road much farther to the south. (Later I found out it was the same road that went through that low point then east and south again. This is where I find myself in the story.) I have never been here or been before where I came out on the road again. I thought I was northeast of where I went in. But I had circled east and then south then back to the west. When I came up out of the swamp I found there were these ruins or a partial foundation for a house. I crossed the road and there was an old clear cut with a tree stand out in the middle. So I spent the afternoon in the tree.


    I was and still am not afraid of the dark I am always the last to arrive back into camp. But seeing as I had no idea where I was I figured I would hunt my way back before dark. Now I was out in the woods of Maine in the center of a large peninsular, so at some point in any direction I would come out to a paved road. I walked back up to the old house foundation and headed back out into the swamp. I did not use my compass because if I had I would not have had a problem. But as I was walking in the swamp for 15 to 20 minutes and unfortunately I came out right back out of the woods beside that old house. Now I was getting a little worried because when I first went into the woods I thought I was walking somewhat straight and to my left back towards what I though would bring me to the main logging road that I took in. As it turn out later I found out that I had in fact made a large circle to my right and came out beside the house again.


    So for the second time I headed back into the swamp. I discovered that because on the first attempt to get back I had cut a circle and wound up back where I was trying to leave. It unnerved me a bit. So I decided this time to pay very close attention. I did and I came out of the woods 180° away from the road I was trying to reach. I crossed a field and I could see this old farmhouse. So I new I was on the wrong side, the east side of the peninsular. I was nervous and sweating and no longer hunting because it was going to getting dark very soon.


    Instead of going up to the house and hitchhiking back around to my friend’s house, I realized were I was though I had never been there before and turned around and straight back out into the swamp I went. I headed for what I thought was straight west and in fact came out on the logging road to the west. I was a little ways up from the 90° bend where this all began. My daily adventure wasn’t meant to end there.


    I took a right and going north up the road, I start walking out of the woods. I had gotten to almost the end where I was to meet my bother at the truck and here is this big pig in front of me. He started after me so I jump up on a broken rock wall and climbed into this tree. I was to hang out for another 20 minutes or so in that tree before the pig finally left me. Now I had my rifle and it of course was loaded. But I really did not wish to shoot someone’s pig. But he was asking for it. Good thing he left. I got home safely.


    For a couple of years I walked those woods down the road from the Maxwell’s. One year Arnold Sr. in his 60’s would hunt with us.


    I heard him tell his son one day. “If you don’t trust your compass throw it away and buy a new one for no matter how accurate your compass is, if you don’t trust it, it will surely get you lost.”


    We decide to hunt some woods north of this little town, which consisted mainly of a gas station and small general store. That little piece of advice came in handy that day. I was out deep in the woods when I was sure I came into this place from one direction. I had looked at my compass first before heading into the woods because in Maine it is real easy to get turned around in those spruce and cedar swamps. I know I have plenty of experience doing that. The hills all look the same.


    I was going to head back to the truck and I got a bad feeling I was not sure which way to go. I pulled out my compass and sure enough it was pointing in the opposite direction from the direction I thought I should go. As I was sure the way back to the trucks was “my way” I though my compass was wrong. I remembered what Arnold Sr. told his son the night before and chose to go against my best judgment and follow the compass. I did find the trucks right where my compass told me they would be. I will never mistrust my compass again. Unless I am at the North or south pole which for me is not impossible but not likely.


    It was hunting in these woods with my brother those few years that I will always treasure. It was the times we sent together and we had great times drinking tea with Marilyn and the boys.


            One year Arnold and his sons were logging this large wooded area that was shaped like a very large triangle. It was some distance from their home northwest of Bath Maine. I had never been out there in these woods. We drove in from the east headed west to the west side of a large triangle of woods. We took a right then headed north up the west side of the triangle. It was about half way up we took a right again and headed east straight into the heart of this triangle of woods on a rutted logging road. There was a small shack there with an easy chair and a wood burning stove for warmth and cooking. We all would park our trucks there. This was the beginning of the area they were logging and we would be hunting. The shack was our starting point to go off in the woods.


    There was an easy chair inside and a small table. The older guys would get to use the chair in the shack. It was there for comfort and the stove was there to keep the loggers warm when they weren’t working. On the south side of the shack the logging road ran to the east with a branch off it heading just about straight south.


    Three strange events happened to me on this hunting trip and one to my brother. I will tell you Two that occurred to me first then how I caused the other to happen to my brother. I will save the best for last.


    As I was saying, I left the shack headed east along the logging road then headed south down this other road. I went quite the distance down that road then turned around. On the way back out I decided to take a seat on the eastside of the north/south logging road. I sat for some time and then got up to hunt my way back to the shack. I stood up and keep in mind I was on the east side of the north to south road. So I only need to walk up the road then take a left to get to the shack.  I crossed to the west side of the road and started walking northwest in the woods because I was east and south of the shack I thought I only needed to cross the road and walk north west and I would get back to the shack. The woods had a completely different idea!


    Again, I crossed the road and was walking along for a while headed in what I thought was Northwest direction when low and behold I came out of the woods right behind where I was just sitting. But I never crossed a road to get there. That was impossible! So I decide to try again this time I would pay more attention.


    So I CROSSED to the west side of the N/S road! I walked back north and west and again without crossing a road. I came out behind where I was sitting on the east side of the N/S road. It had happened again! I now was just a little frightened because I did the impossible twice. Well can’t fool me so I headed north up the road and this time took the left and got to the shack without going into the woods. I don’t know how that happened to me but it did. And I can’t figure out how I got across the road without knowing it. Once was bad enough. But twice?


    The second day we were back at the shack. It was going on lunch time and I was not far away when I heard a shot coming from the shack area. So I just headed straight back to see if someone had shot a deer.


    Arnold Sr. and Jr. were at odds, Sr. being mad and Jr. laughing non-stop. It turns out our friend Jim and Arnold Sr. had gotten to the shack first. It is late November and it is cold outside. They were starting the fire in the wood stove and to not waste time there was this squirt bottle with diesel fuel that they poured on the wood to light it. Well Arnold Jr. came along and looked in the window to see if anyone was in there. He saw them lighting the stove and just at Arnold Sr. threw his match on the wood Jr. fired his gun in the air. Both Sr. and Jim nearly had a heart attach as they raced out of the shack thinking it had blown up.  See what kind of fun we had on these trips.


    The 3rd event went like this. It was snowing the night before and was very wet and miserable out. We all go to the shack and no one really wanted to go out. So like good hunters we all hung around chatting.


    Now this logging shack I had been talking about sat on the Southwest side of a small triangle of dirt roads. The one going east that I had mentioned earlier. There was this road going north from the shack and then a branch off of that ran back east again connecting back to the first mentioned. I decided it was time to go out and hunt. So out and off to the north I was planning to go. I was the first to leave we had all made some arrangements as to who would go where.


    I got half way to the northern eastbound road and a fresh deer track had crossed the road I was on into the wooded triangle. It appeared to be a large deer so I figured I am looking for deer and here is one right here ahead of me. So I started to slowly follow being careful of my noise. I was hoping I might catch some movement ahead. I did not know that my brother had headed east on the road south of the shack and I was now working my way directly towards him. As I walked under a snow-covered tree I stepped out on the other road and I caught up to him. I did in fact I had pushed that deer so it came out on the road he was to be on and he told me as it turned out the deer I was following was a good size buck. It came out on the road in front of my brother and stopped and looked at him.


    Jay lifted his gun and pulled the trigger. NOTHING! He ejected the round and pulled the trigger again all the while the deer was standing there looking at him. I will say that my brother was a little rattled when I came upon him. It turned out he kept on firing but none of the bullets would fire. Of course his first thoughts were that the ammo was cold wet or just plain bad. That nice sized buck just walked away. Jay told me that after a moment or two after the deer left he realized that he never took the gun off safety. He eventually got his first deer out on a hunting trip I set up for him with me out in Colorado some years later. But that would be his story. I could also mention the two does that stood at 20 yards off the road from him on one of the first trips out here to Colorado and he never managed to hit one. They also just left!


    The final and most unusual and educational thing that happened to me out in these mysterious woods really affected me and still it does today. I was way away from way to the south of the shack and it was getting late. I came across Jim and Arnold and they said to me they were headed back to the shack. So they took off in what I knew to be the wrong direction. So I went “my way”.  I came out to this field I had been to earlier that day and realized I was going the wrong direction. So I turned around and head back to the north. I thought I was going ok. But discovered later that like before I circled off and to my right.


    I came out of the woods but I was defiantly not sure which side of the triangle I was on. It turned out I was on the opposite side from where I was supposed to be on the side of the triangle of paved roads and it was now just about dark. I had a simple choice of just three roads. So it would be simple to find my way back but I figured miles to walk all the way around, “if” I was on the wrong side, which I was, but I was not certain.


    I saw this farmhouse up the road and from previous lessons learned as I mentioned I chose this time to go and knock on the door. No one answered.


    I walked up the road to the next house. This very nice woman answered and invited me in. She had the kids and dinner was on the table and her husband had just walked in. I told him my problem and asked if he would be kind enough to drive me around till I recognized something then I would know which side I was on. He grabbed his hat and coat and took me for a ride. It was only a little while until I realized where I was.


    He took me all the way around to the west side of the woods where the dirt road headed into the shack. He wanted to take me all the way into the trucks. But I did not want him to, to save me much embarrassment.


    When he stopped just before I got out of the truck I took 5 dollars out of my wallet and handed it to him for his trouble of missing dinner and of course the cost of his time and the gas.


    He looked at me and said. “Don’t insult me! Put your money away, and if you want to pay me back the next time someone needs help, you help them, that will be payment enough for me.”


    As I walked east down the dirt road I could hear my Brother and friends blowing the truck horns so I could get a bearing on the sound and follow them out of the woods they did not expect me to come up on them from the entrance road.


    As for the lesson from the man I have done as he requested ever since and to this day. I in fact will continue to do so. I hope he has been rewarded at teaching me one of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned. Later when I had gotten much older, I found that years after this event happened to me, there was this movie made about this lesson. It was called Pay it forward.


             Now when I was in College in U-Mass out in Amherst I did have my gun in my dorm room like I had mentioned before. I hitchhiked in 1979 up to Maine to go hunting with Jay. So not only did I have my gun at school I got rides from total strangers with my rife with me. No one seemed to mind. I was no danger to anyone and I never did get another deer in Maine. Maybe I am not done hunting there. I can say that I just don’t want to get lost anymore.


    I have been hunting just about every year since I was in my late teens. When I moved to Colorado that is when I started hunting the big animals. Elk! I live for elk season. Not because I care if I get one. But it gave me an excuse to miss a week of work and head to the mountains. I can sit with my thoughts and for the most part never see an elk. That is not to say I don’t see elk. I have seen plenty. I just don’t get one every year I hunt.


    I fit in I guess with all the percentages of hunter success in this regard when it comes to hunting elk. If you don’t have money to pay for the privilege to hunt private ranches then what you have is national forest.


    Arnold Senior once said, “I have never shot a smart deer. The only deer I shoot are the retarded ones.”


    I have to agree, because if you have ever hunted elk on the edge of private property. They know exactly were you are not going to shoot at them and that is where to find them. They lie out there in the open fields basking in the sun and watch the glint of sunlight reflecting off the binoculars that you use to watch them. That is all you can do, legaly!


    Now a retarded elk, they are the ones that just don’t know any better. I have gotten a few of them. Let me tell you about my first few years in Colorado.


             It was the first year. I didn’t have a truck. I just had my little old wrecked corolla. I went up to Rainbow Lakes just above Blue Mesa Reservoir west of Gunnison. It was way back up in the West Elk Wilderness and I was hunting alone. I had my backpack as usual and I left my car behind at the end of the road and walked way back up in the backcountry and set up camp. I thought I would be alone. It was the night before opening day; it was my first time hunting elk without anyone to teach me. Then during the first night it snowed. I had an A Frame tent but I still would during the night wake up and beat the snow off the side of the tent to prevent a collapse. Soon enough that alarm would go off and daylight came soon there after.


    I was up just before first light and here I am sitting in the door of the front of my tent with my small stove cooking my oatmeal and making hot chocolate when these two guys come walking up the trail. I had my stove between my legs for warmth and it was still snowing. They looked at me and came over to comment on how comfortable I looked. Hey, they were right. When I was talking with them I asked them how would I know if I find fresh elk sign. They told me you would know you have found elk when you find fresh dropping. I asked them how I would know the difference between deer and elk droppings.


    This one guy said. “You will recognize elk droppings because they would appear to give a deer a hernia passing them.”


    I traveled all over the mountains for the first two days. All I had seen was one deer. I didn’t have a license and it was a doe way across the valley walking through the aspens. Now to my west was this canyon. I got down there and back up the other side. That is where I found the elk.  I took a stool sample in a sandwich baggie I was no longer using for lunch. As I was heading back to camp that night I stopped at where my car was and met the two hunters that I had spoke of. They invited me to dinner and I accepted.


    As conversations go I asked them if they had seen anything. They told me they have had no luck at all that they had not found the elk yet. So I told them I had found the elk.


    They asked me back “How do you know.”


    I pulled a baggie out of my pocket and inside I had collected a fresh sample of hernia producing deer crap.


    They both laughed at me and said, “ I guess you found the elk.”


    So I told them were I had found them. Yes, the not so bright ones.


             The next day I was on the top of that ridge early but to soon to know exactly were it was I found the elk. As a result as it began to get light I discovered that I had gotten right up on one. It was ahead of me in the trees and as I got close it would move forward just out of site and we played this game a couple of times but I never saw it before it broke and ran down hill. It was headed for the bottom of the ravine. I was camped way up above on the opposite side where the elk headed. I figured that one was gone so I made a large circle around the top of the ridge back to where I came up the hill that morning. It was unbelievable that right here in my tracks that I left behind earlier were fresh elk tracks in my boot prints. I thought it might have paid if I had just taken a seat there. But who knows when or where is the right place to sit.


    I will finish this first elk hunt story. I dropped down and across the ravine at the end of the day and again I went past the men’s camp to see how they did. They invited me to an elk dinner. As it turned out one of them was down below in the ravine where I busted that elk out ahead of me. He said he was just sitting there minding his own business when this elk popped out of the trees and started walking broadside to him. It was a cow. He shot it because he had a tag for a cow. I had a bull tag. So even if it was me that saw the animal. I would have just let it walk on.


    I told him better him than me. I realized much earlier that day, that I would probably not hunt there again, because if you shot an elk down in there you would have to bring in your salt and pepper and eat it there. It was too large and steep a hillside to climb out of, especially with an elk quarter strapped on your back.


    So the lucky one asked “So where were you when I needed you?”


    He did thank me however for telling him where they were. And that is how it all started. I have let people know where the elk are ever since. Some get lucky and others, not so. Except for the past few years I have always had a deer or elk for my freezer though never both in the same year. I don’t need that much meat.


             I met my close friend Leo at trade school. He loved to hunt also. He was down from Alaska and told me stories but those are his to tell. I will tell you ours.


    It was our first year working together at Norand and fall came along. We had time but neither of us had a truck. I had seen a large elk herd in unit 76 when I was on Outward Bound a few years back in 1977. So I thought it was a good idea to go where you find the animals unless they are in a bottomless canyon. Then you let them stay there. (Unless there is an accessible road lower than the bottom of the canyon).


    We rented a Toyota Pickup for the season and headed out to unit 76 in the San Juan’s. These are very rugged mountains in the southwest corner of the state. We came up out of Lake City and were heading from unit 66 into 76 when we stopped for a break at the top of the pass. It was about 10 at night the day before season opened and for some reason I pulled out the regulations while he took his break. I discovered as I read that all our planning was useless. Here it was in print that you needed to have a special permit to hunt in unit 76. I showed him that and we had to make a change. So we made an on the spot resolution to hunt unit 66 right were we were. I suppose one mountain range is as good as the next.


    We both had bull tags that year. There was this really nice group of trees some distance from the road on a stream which we could use for water. So off road we went in the truck up into the trees where we set up camp.


    There was usually plenty of snow in the San Juan Mountains this time of year. We in fact brought snowshoes with us and we had the chance to used them a few times. I was climbing late that afternoon up on the ridge high above camp and I saw a number of cow elk. The next day as we met for lunch I told him come with me that afternoon. I would set him up where he can probably get a shot with my Winchester model 94 30-30.


    I had earlier that year bought a used “sporterized” Springfield 30-06. That means the stock was changed from the old army stock to a hunting style stock. The rifle originally had a peep site that I a gunsmith take off and then replaced it with a new scope. Because I could take the longer distance shot; I gave him the best place to sit. It was shortly before dark he came walking over to me. And tells me he saw the cows.


    I asked “Then what are you doing here with me. You should be waiting to see if a bull will follow them.”


    We did not get an elk that year. But we had a wonderful hunting experience in the wilderness.  For example I will say that when we hunted this area most of the things worth talking about were our antics in the camp. It was cold and we had snow. I watched Leo walking along the ridge in his shoe shoes and in one step he would take a face plant. He looked just like a tree falling in the forest. I do have a few pictures of these hunts. They were also some of my favorite times.


    I had washed my dishes by the stream after dinner at this camp and as I was walking back towards the fire. My hands were frozen. I was shaking water off them and my right index finger hit the twig of a willow. Now you would not normally think that was a major problem. And normally it wouldn’t be. In fact if it were warm out you wouldn’t even notice. But as I said my hand were frozen from the water and cold temp out. As I held my hands to the fire, they began to thaw. I experienced excruciating pain where I hit my finger. It was like all the nerves stored up and multiplied the feeling and then let it go all at once when the blood flowed again. That had never happened to me before. For a few minutes that finger had excruciating pain and then it was over.


    We had fresh snow on this trip and we were sitting there drying our socks and boots beside the fire and I was distracted by something.


    Then I hear Leo who is just sitting there beside the fire say. “Hey Neil, your boot is burning!”


    He was not to excited and he didn’t make any effort to move, HIM or MY BOOT! I don’t know what he thought I was going to wear if I had only one boot? I still have and use these boots today. They are the LL Bean Maine Hunting Shoe with a lifetime guarantee. I saved my boot and put the fire out in the snow. The rubber on the side was lit like a candle.


             Speaking of these boots of mine they originally were my dads, size 10. I wore a size 8 in those days. He bought them for backpacking in NH. But the first time he used them he got terrible blisters on his heels where the rubber meets the leather. So like a good dad he gave them to me.


    They of course were much too big. Every year that I hunted in Maine I would stop at LL Bean’s to get any gear I needed but mostly to purchase my Maine hunting license. The year I got the boots from my dad I brought them with me and I figure I will put one of those felt liners in it. Then they should fit me just fine. So I take them in and I ask a sales man if he sells just the felt liners.


    He said. “Yes.”


    But he was looking at me funny. I asked him for a size 8 ½ felt. He gets them and brings it out from his storage room and I tell him I just want to see if it will fit in my boots.


    He said to me. “You can’t put a liner like that in that boot. It was not designed to have a liner.”


    This was before Sorrell’s were available. So I said. “I just want to see.”


    He tells me again that I can’t do that.


    I am my mother’s son and no one is going to tell me I can’t put a liner in my own boot. I slipped it in and it was perfectly snug. I took off my shoe and what was a size 10 boot now fit my size 8 foot. I bought the liners.


    The man working the store learned a valuable lesson that day. Give the customer what he wants. Especially if he has the money to pay for it! I was off to go hunting in my new snow boots.


             I mentioned that my neighbor of Nederland Colorado who’s name was Kirk was a fisherman. I also went one year hunting with him and a friend of mine Dick Waterbury who was my boss when I hired on as a stockbroker at Marshall Davis in Boulder. I made all the arrangements for the three of us to hunt in a location in the Flattop Wilderness where Kirk had hunted before. Well Dick had a friend of his that was supposed to be competent in the woods, Kirk and I invited him along also.


    The four of us met outside of Craig CO. The location was a campground and there is a spot up the road we passed where you can rent horses for any amount of time. We would use them to take the pack trip up in the backcountry. We rented a pair of horses. We figured that once up there we would take turns using them to get around. Now I was the one with all the horse experience from the previous years working on the ranch. So I pretty much took the responsibility of the horses. Dick and his friend drove up in his truck and Kirk and I in his.


    We loaded up the horses and headed up the trail walking them as they carried our gear. Up on top there are huge wide-open plains surrounded by heavy timber. Think of it like a plateau up there and the sides covered in timber.  We were off the side of this huge open area camped back in the woods for protection from the weather and winds.


    We were all eating lunch one day and about 8 elk come busting out of the timber to our right and off across the open area they go. We all ran for our rifles. But no bulls followed. They had been off about 300 yards anyway. I personally would not have taken a moving shot at that distance. But in a group setting you never can tell what will happen.


    I had the horse on one day and a snowstorm moved in. It was late that day I was coming back the mile or two to camp. And the snow had plastered the left side of me in the wind. The horse and I were covered with snow. As I got back into camp Kirk gets up and said he was going to bed and headed off for his tent. Dick was telling me a little later as I fixed my dinner that Kirk had been worried for me. Dick kept telling him I was fine. I know what I’m doing. But Kirk was the one that was hoping to be the hero on this trip.


    The next day was clear but bitter cold and I was not with the horse. I was way off on the other side of the meadow. I was sitting looking down the side of the hill. It was so bitter cold I knew I would not make it back to camp before my legs had frozen. So I built a small fire between my legs out of twigs. I opened my coat and let the heat soak in and when I had warmed up sufficiently I headed back to camp. I think it funny now when I picture my feet together and my knees open with a small fire between them. Hey I was hunting I didn’t want to go back to camp.


    That night the horses were off behind my tent. Dicks was to my right and Kirks off in front of me. Now he slept with his rifle because “Well you never know.” I don’t I keep is safe outside the tent. It was in the middle of the night I get waken up to.


    “Neil, then a pause, NEIL a little louder.”


    Kirk wanted to know what was that noise as he called me deep in his sleeping bag. So I listen and some small animal was walking around outside the tents on the crusty snow.


    I said. “If you want to know get up and look.”


    He was not about to do that. He wanted me to. Well I was not in the slightest bit concerned about a weasel, skunk or coon. Heck it might have been a nosey fox. Anyway I told him to go back to sleep. I did but I honestly don’t think he did.


    Kirk had a doe permit and a bull permit and he got a deer the next day and his bull the following. I never saw another elk after the first group. I got back to camp that evening and I was told down below our camp he had gotten his bull, a small one. I said we best go and get it figuring it would be a couple of hours work that night and it would be done and fine. He said he was not going down that night that he would get it in the morning. I tried to tell him that would be a problem. But he said he took care of it and I decided not to argue. It of course was his elk. Well I knew morning would be to late, that the animal would not cool enough during the night with the hide still on. It would ruin the meat. But I let him have his way.


    I said. “I will be hunting in the morning you will be on your own.” This was because of his attitude. He went off to bed. I in the morning went hunting.


    Now I would not have done that if we did not have the horses and pack saddles. But for the most part it would be an easy job for someone who knew what they were doing. I don’t know how he faired. But he did get the quarters back to camp.


    A week or so later after the trip when he brought over some steaks to my house, the meat was gamey as I knew it would be. I only ate the one. My dog Bud enjoyed the two others.


    I would be here for along time telling you about every trip and every animal I have gotten through the years. That would be it’s own book. But I will tell you about my first elk. It was the year following our hunt in unit 66 Leo and I rented a truck and went back again. This time we camped in the same place and in a couple of days we saw no sign of elk. So we packed up and headed for Gunnison around lunchtime. We took a side trip down through the Powderhorn area and into a canyon where we found this dirt road the lead up and out of the canyon. We got up on top and here were these sage bush hillsides working there way up to heavy timber. There were also large meadows. We took some time and scouted around and I could see that there were elk here. We had been on our way to Gunnison to spend the night in a motel and have a good meal and take a hot shower. So I suggested that first light we be here hunting. And we drove down to town.


    We got our wake up call for 3am and headed back to this new area. We got there about 5:30 in the morning and I dropped Leo off and told him where to sit. Then I took the truck farther up the road and instead of going where I told him I would go I headed out on to the sage flats to watch the whole hillside. I could also sit in the comfort of the truck because it was about 5-10 degrees out there. So there I sat and just before the sun came up I could hear an elk bugle as he walked with his herd across the face of the hill. He was up in the timber so I never saw him. I did later see the tracks.


    When I met Leo later that morning I told him what had happened and we set up camp below that spot and hunted rabbits for a while in the sage to kill time. Later that day there was a clearing up above camp and that is where the elk had moved out of that morning I told him go there and I will go off here to the west.


    We split up and I headed out and I had not gone far when I met this guy in his 20’s coming off he hill from above me. He said he had been up there on top chasing elk. He had been doing Coke to stay awake and now he was crashing and needed to go to bed. He said if you follow this trail there are three long meadows up above. When you get to the third one you will find a fence line running across the end of it. They always walk the fence until they get to the opening at the top of the third meadow.


    With this information, I could not hesitate. So instead of going where I told Leo I was going to go. I headed up the trail. I got to the 2nd meadow it was very cold and it was soon going to be dusk. I sat down on the west side and I was there about 45 minutes being nice and silent when I heard some noise off below the meadow where I had come from. A moment later a hunter comes out of the trees. He saw me as I was in my blaze orange up against a large aspen. He came by we exchanged some words and he told me he would go to the meadow up above.


    I sat for some time when I heard a coyote bark. It was off again below me. I thought well maybe I will just shoot a coyote for the pelt. Well a moment later this bull bugles off in the trees across and way up above the meadow I was sitting on. I thought that’s too bad he is way up there and it will be dark soon. I don’t think I can get to him with the snow being noisy and all. So I sat and a few minutes later the coyote barks and following him the elk bugled. He was moving down!


    I was very tense as I was witnessing this unfold. I heard the coyote go off again and then the bugle much closer. So here I am sitting by my tree when all of a sudden I see 3 elk, two cows and a spike bull out in the middle of my meadow. I have no idea how they got there. I think they had been there all the time they had just stood up!


    I could see off in the trees the legs of another elk about 250 yards away. It was across from me, then even more were moving through the trees. I could not see if any were bulls. But that coyote barked again and just as he let loose from off behind the elk whose legs I could see was another bugle from the bull. In a moment one cow came busting out of the timber at a trot down into the meadow. With that next bugle 13-15 elk came busting out of the trees down into the meadow followed by this 5-point bull. My adrenaline was so high and flowing I could not hold my binoculars still enough to count the points. It was a requirement that the bull have a minimum of at least 4 points on each side or they have a brow tine that is at least 6 inches long.


    I was so anxious I could not count the points do to my buck fever. But I could see he had a long enough brow tine. So I drew up my gun and waited. I wanted to make sure he was the heard bull. The coyote barked once again and my bull bugled back and as he was broadside to me I pulled the trigger. The bull made a 360 turn to his left and just stood there. I raked another round into my chamber and though I could not have missed at 200 yards. I was using my brothers 300 Weatherby Magnum. I thought to myself if you take just one step towards those trees I will let you have it again. He stood long enough for me to have my thoughts then dropped. The moment he headed for the ground all the other elk headed for the trees. I had my first bull! My hats today hang on his antlers by my kitchen. I did not get a head mount because he was to small and I am a meat hunter. But nonetheless I had my first not to be my last elk.


     


    Leo and I spent all night getting that bull off the mountainside. [Pic] I had dressed it out and headed down to camp as I was about a little over a mile away. It was plenty dark when I got there. I was taking off my coats and getting my pack frame together and the lantern to head back up when Leo came in to camp. I knew it would be very heavy workload until we were done. But I had never quartered and packed out an elk and neither had Leo. I took the heavier loads off the hill. The last one for me was the hide the neck and I wrapped it all up and put it on the frame. I carried the head and the antlers down in my arms. It was three trips apiece with a load and the trip up and down when I first came back to camp. So we were very exhausted by the time we were done.


     


    Leo talked about going up there again the next day. I talked him into going home! One elk was enough. I think he was the biggest of the elk I have shot though I have shot elk with much larger antlers.


              I will say that I am not necessarily the best marksman in the world. I have in fact made an incredibly accurate shot that I am sure few people could make. I also know that luck had its hand in the matter.


    I was hunting rabbits on the ranch for dinner one afternoon. I was out with my good friend Kevin and two other guys. I think one was my friend from the ranch. His name was Tim, but I just don’t remember now. We were spread out walking across a hillside. I was up top and Kevin was below me about 200 yards away. The two other were in between us. Now I have always been considered a safe person to be with around guns. The two in the middle had fallen way back I was standing there looking down when Kevin jumped a rabbit out in front of him. He did not see it nor did he even know that it was there.


    The rabbit ran forward and stopped under a ponderosa pine tree. The moment it stopped I could no longer see it. I knew exactly where it was and there was nothing below the pine to inhibit my view. The problem was even with a 4 power scope the rabbit became invisible the moment it stopped moving simply because of the distance between us. I raise me rifle to see if I could see it with the scope and that was not possible either. So because it was so far out in front of Kevin I took a shot at that spot with my 22. As soon as I did nothing moved. So I yelled down to Kevin to walk forward and check out under the tree. I told him there was rabbit there so that he would be prepared to get us dinner. Well he walked up and the rabbit never moved again. I had hit it right in the chest. An impossible shot you might say. I was a steady shot in those days I also had the wind and the elevation and of course luck! Kevin was totally surprised! I was quite the distance up the hill. He picked up the rabbit and held it up so I could see it and we hunted on. I have never again had the chance to do something so incredible.


     



    •  Hiking the Appalachian Trail: 


              I had traveled everywhere a person can go for the most part in the lower 48 states. For many years since I was a boy I had a dream to one day hike the Appalachian Trail. This to me was the granddaddy of all trails and I am a big fan of the mountains. What led up to my decision to take this long drawn out trip.


    I had mentioned earlier my circumstances with my job at Micro House. I was there for the cash flow so I could, simply put, pay my mortgage. I did refinance my house and I had about $12,000 cash from that transaction.


    For me it is important most of all to discuss what lead up to such a drastic change in my life at this time. I was worth about a quarter million dollars at the time and I could buy anything I wanted which wasn’t much. I have never been materialistic. I had the house I wanted in the location that for me was wonderful. I had my dog Bud. He was an incredible animal and I will tell you a few of those experiences with him in this chapter. The first experience I will share with you was what caused me to make the decision to hike the AT in the first place.


    I was at home alone as always one night in 1993. It was winter cold and I was sitting by my wood burning stove. I had already walked up to get my mail. That was about .8 miles from my house and I did that everyday with Bud. He was sound asleep by the fire and I was experiencing a point in my life where I was extremely depressed. I had shut down a company that I put a lot of heart and sole into. It also had cost me about $30,000 of my hard earned investment capital. To make a long story very short I was sitting in my chair by my stove much like I am right now. I had no TV and no computer. I just thought what is the purpose of my life. For what reason had I gone to all the trouble and heart ach to make so much money? I have no one in my life and my life sucked!


    I had made the choice to get my gun and shoot myself. That is how low I had gotten. Now right as I had that thought that I was all done with this world my dog got up and came to me and put his head in my lap. He was standing there. He was not wagging his tail. He was just there looking up at me. I was stroking his head with my left hand and a new thought went through my head.


    “What am I going to do with you?”


    To this day I don’t know what made my dog wake up and come to me the moment I had made the ultimate (and ultimately wrong) decision. But he did and this is what happened.


    No sooner did that thought hit me when I realized, that was my problem!


    I can’t explain the instant I made the discovery


    I had spent all my days worried about me living for me thinking about me, about me, ABOUT ME. Chasing money! I never gave a thought to anyone else. Now I am not saying I was truly selfish. For the fact is I have always been generous. But my DOG solved my problem. It was solved in that very moment and I have lived a different life ever since. Now I can’t tell you what made my dog get up from sleeping at that very moment I was done. But he saved my life!


    “What would I do about you?”


    This has been part of my life ever since. I have lived my life from that day on not for me but for you. I have had major impact on many people’s lives in what ever I have done. I have receive a few thank you’s in the process.


    I digress I would now start to live. I was going to work till spring and head east and hike the trail. I was going to write my book about the trail, I did, and finish that hike completely. I had then decide that I would move to Costa Rica where very large marlin eat the tuna you have on your fishing rod. I was going to LIVE!


    I signed up to take Spanish lessons with a local private school. It cost me $2,000. I then started to plan my escape from my previous life. Some friends one day were in my living room and the lady said I see you getting a black haired wife and have little children from your trip. She as it turned out was right but that story is later.


    I tried to sell off all my belongings. First I called around to some Estate Auctioneers. I remember not one would come and sell my estate.


    One company actually said to me. “We don’t sell estates for living people!”


    I asked him. “Why not?”


    He could not come up with a reasonable explanation to my question other than they had never done that before. He did not get the job!


    I did eventually after a few weeks get rid of everything. I started with a moving sale at the house. I put an ad in the paper. After I sold all the big things. Then I went to the largest flea market in Denver and weekend after weekend I unloaded all my belonging. By the time I was done I could put everything I owned except the house into the back of my truck. I kept only the most personal things and my freezer, which I gave to my sister in Georgia when I got there.


    I bought a new tent and a new water filter for the trip. I ordered some of the best books for the trip. I will not advertise them here.


    I picked up all the maps for the whole trip and I made arrangements for my sister Carol who I gave some money to help me by mailing periodically boxes of dehydrated food and other supplies to me at suggested post offices along the route. My mother also wanted to help me so she also bought a dehydrator and started drying all types of different food for me. I had been hiking for many years so I knew what to do.


    I knew that I was going to loose a lot of weight along the way so I started drinking some beer and eating a lot of Ice Cream and put on 10 pounds. I knew from experience that it would hurt me at first but the benefits far outweighed the cons. I was going to loose a lot of weight on this hike and I might as well start with the extra before I loose the remainder.


     


    I was not doing so well in my Spanish. I needed help. This girl at work Cybel [Pic] spoke fluently and I asked her for some help. I took her out to dinner and she explained the verb “to be”. I never knew what the heck the teacher was talking about. But Cybel made sense to me. I had a small liking of her. To me she was cute. In fact one day she was up at my house we were going to go horseback riding.


     


    She asked me. “What are you looking for in a wife.”


    I had not had a girl in a few years at this point.


    I responded quite honestly. “I want a woman that will take care of me.”


    She said. “What do you mean by that?”


    I replied. “I mean you’re never going to be my wife.”


    I figured if a woman has to ask a man what he means when he says he wants someone to take care of him, then he might as well marry a man.


    “Right?”


    So I was going to leave! She would become part of my past. As spring came along I now had my money from the refi on my house and as well I had cleared up all my credit cards. I rented out my house and left for Georgia. Bud would hike with me and Tom could have my truck. And the few personal items I had kept would stay in my sister’s garage until I knew what would happen in my life.


    My Spanish was not good by any means. In fact today it is still not so good though I can hold a conversation. I can work my way around subjects with my limited vocabulary.


    I stayed at Carol’s house for a week and my bother Tom got there some how. He would drive my truck back to TN. My Mother came up from Florida and she followed me up to Amachola Falls State Park north of Atlanta. They dropped me off we said our goodbyes and I headed up the trail.


    You must get to the summit of Springer Mountain GA before you can officially say you are hiking the trail. I spent the first night there beyond the summit in the shelter. They have lean to type shelters in every state along the way. You can usually find room if you get there early. But on occasion there are times you might regret that depending on who is there with you. I am not for example a fan of people who snore! You also might find that there are no mice or bugs in your tent.


    I sat today rereading my journals from this trip. I wrote in the cover of the first one.


    “I dedicate this page to those that have a dream and fulfill it!”


    I also wrote. “That with the grace of God I might complete this trip. Also I might make an entry everyday.”


    I in the past was not so good about keeping a journal. In fact I started that with Outward Bound and ended with Outward Bound.


    Now you would not believe the trouble I had trying to buy my second journal. It is here in front of me and I had no choice but to buy a book with ballerina slippers on the cover with a rose and sheet music. I don’t care about impressions. When I was running out of room in my first journal I needed a new blank book and that was all I could find in one of the towns along the trail. How pretty!


    What can I say about the trip? I can tell you I wanted to do this since I was a young boy. If you wish to know my daily adventures you will have to read the journals. I will only tell you a few of the amazing events here.


    I have always thought about doing a documentary of the trail. I am not into film. So I thought I would photograph in detail my trip, log all the photos and write a book when I was done. I did!


    But to make the kind of book I had in mind I would need photo equipment. I didn’t have photo equipment. So I borrowed my older sisters. All that equipment added about 10 more pounds to my over all pack. So, I started with more weight than I needed. This purpose also insured that I could not miss any of the trail; because if I did miss a section, I might not see some simple thing that was worth taking a photo of.  So I in fact walked the whole trail and I can think of only one instance where I missed 2 miles in Virginia and in another spot I hiked the old section and not the new trail, also in VA.


    I did that because it was hot. I also hiked that section totally naked! That was about 3-4 miles long. I didn’t expect to see anyone along the way. I enjoyed also the freedom! Hey if Collin Fletcher can do it so can I.


    Some background information: The trail is over 2,000 miles long. In 1994 over 2,000 people would start the trail in the hopes of walking the whole thing. Less than 200 would finish it.


    Not one day went by for me that I did not see, hear or experience something that made that day special. In fact it was not until I was hiking one day in NH I got emotionally down. I took an extra day at one of the huts. I got up the next day got out of bed and got on with it. For some reason I for the first time wondered what was I doing? But the next day on the way down the trail I saw this flower growing up beside a rock right in the middle of that trail. Now thousands of human feet had passed by this 8 inch rock all summer long. But in September when I got there the plants flowers had turned to berries. I could not help but marvel that that plant had survived against all odds the feet of the thousands. I felt for the plant and that cheered me up!


    It is said that you burn as many calories in a day as someone who runs two marathons per day. You climb up in elevation every time you go up a new hill or mountain the equivalent of hiking up Mt. Everest 6 times from sea level. This walk was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Now that I am single again, I now think I would like to do it again.


    I met hundreds of wonderful people out there. I saw plenty of wildlife. I was not one to wear headphones and listen to news from the outside world nor did I have music to march by. I paid attention to what was going on around me out there. You can discover very quickly that what goes on in the world doesn’t need to involve you. You are not escaping the world you in fact have become one with the earth. You can discover all the materialistic things you have that make your life, your life, you don’t need!


    I am sure the Indians of North American and other native people had living down to a science! Then my ancestors came along and ruined everything. Now everyone talks about going green. But they wouldn’t for one minute give up their electricity at home! They don’t need it, but they have it.


    I witnessed many people suffer the affects of hiking this trail. Blisters on the heels were one of them. I know, I met all kinds of people out there that use moleskin and swear buy it. But I think it would behoove me to share with you that you don’t need it. Yes, You don’t need it!


    When a blister forms all you need to do is get it to dry out. Pop it and let the air dry it out and you will have far less problems than those that chose to use the moleskin. So at the end of each day’s hike you take off your socks and let the air do it’s thing all night long. It will turn to calluses much faster. Then the problem is solved.


    It was the 3-4 day of my hike and I knew it was going to rain. I had a few miles to hike to the shelter and Bob who I was with started to get behind me. So I took off and at one point I was sort of jogging with my 65 pound pack. I knew I did not wish to sleep wet. Been there done that so to speak. I was the first to arrive at the shelter with Bud. We set up and by dark it was full. We were all in bed when this couple show up and they are soked. They have to cook their dinner as we were all trying to sleep. We also made room for them even though they annoyed everybody that night.


    It was in the morning I was the last to leave except for them. I was in no hurry. As I was the last I overheard the woman ask her man or husband.


    She said “What are we doing out here it is so ugly.”


    It was mid April and up on the mountains spring was only just beginning to spring forth. When I heard that I was heading up the trail. I did not go 100 more feet before I look down and a very large lizard was stopped in the middle of the trail. I could only think. This is why you are out here but your attitude will not get you far. I took a picture and walked on. I don’t think they made it. But they were behind me now.


    In every hut along the way there are notebooks left by hikers for hikers. They belong to the person that left it. Anyone can leave a notebook so long as the first is full and it operates on the honor system. Yes people are still very much blessed with honor.


    When done the whole hike I went back down to Georgia. I returned to Springer Mountain with my nephew Zach for a short day hike. I replaced the register in the shelter up on the top with one of my own. I was planning to use it for reference in my future book. Zach was 12 years old, I think, at the time. I let him drive down the mountain for a ways. I had my mom’s car! So why wouldn’t I? That’s what good uncles do. He did just fine.


    Of course the first thing he told his mom and grandmother when we got back was “Hey I got to drive the car!” KIDS! They just don’t know when to stay quiet.


    I went back up the mountain on a return visit from my new life in Costa Rica. I took a friend Joe who I met there with me. It was a cloudy day and I told him it would be a 45 minute jog up and 45 minute jog down. I had Bud with me. I parked at mid point up the mountain and Joe would stay with the car.


    Well it did take about 45 minutes up. But it was on the way down I got into trouble. So here is another amazing Bud story! Halfway back to the car along the trail was a shelter. A fog as thick as I can remember rolled in before I got there. The sun was now down and I had my flashlight just in case. As I was approaching the shelter a man came out and up to the trail asking if I was OK. I said yes I was fine. I had my light and I only had a mile or two left to go. So off I went down the trail working my way back to the car.


    I did not get 300 yards from meeting that man when the batteries on my flashlight quit. I could not see my feet  from the fog so I could not see the trail. I turned my light off to rest the battery and then back on to shine down the trail. I would turn off the light  and walk to the farthest point I could see then turn my light back on and I was able to cover some distance this way. I was to far from the shelter and I had Joe waiting for me. I had a real problem!


    Eventually the batteries no longer cooperated with me and the light was done. I took light jacket off and Called Bud back to me. I know he was having just as much problem seeing in the fog as I. But he had one thing I did not have an incredible nose! He had tracked me down many times in the mountains. He could find me anywhere. So I knew if he could find me he could help me. I tied one arm of my coat around his neck and the other I held like a leash. He walked me off the mountain and on down the trail. Now It was not so perfect but my dog saved me at one point. We were walking along I following him and he just stopped. I did not know why. So I got down on my hands and knees and started feeling around and found a 3 foot ledge. I sat down put my legs over and stood up. Then we walked on.


    I can tell you I got up to and just past the car when Joe for no reason turned the inside light on. I looked over my shoulder and was amazed I had just walked past the car. I did not say my dog was super human. He got me to the car divine intervention again saved my butt. We got in and drove back to my sister’s house. I didn’t get my register. Someone had taken it.


              Bud did not get to hike the whole of the trail with me. He went halfway through VA. When I got off the trail and Hitchhiked to Virginia Beach to see my brother and his 3 kids. I left my dog with him because he was going down to Florida to see my Mom. She would be going up to MA in August to see my sister. So she could return him to me there. And she did.


    Bud had to carry his own pack. He was an 85 pound Shepard Malemute mix. His pack would hold about 8 pounds of dog food. Depending on how far till each resupply I would have to carry the difference. As  he ate it down I would balance the pack with stones. He did not cause me much problems along the way.


    On day he ran off the trail to my left down a hill. I figured he would be chasing a ground hog. I hiked on knowing he would catch up when he was done. Well sure enough he did but when he came up to me he was not wearing his pack. Now I had a real problem. I told him to take me back to his pack. I was in no place to get him food. If I did not find it he would be stuck catching his own dinner. Well I took off my pack and went back to where I believed him to have gone down the mountainside. He headed down, I right behind him. Some ways down I find the hole he was digging in and there was his pack practically buried in the hole.  I know it was hot and he did not want to carry it. But he did not have to bury it also. I carried it the rest of the day for him.


              Bud could not cross the Great Smoky Mountain National Park with me. So I had a local shelter take him in and deliver him at the other end for me. I gave myself 7 days to go through the Smokies. I had to spend the night at Fontana Dam where I would meet the Kennel owner the next day. It was now getting warm and it was April 27th. I needed a bath. So Bud and I both went skinny-dipping down in the lake. That was a welcome swim.  The next day Bud was gone and being well taken care of I headed up into the Smoky Mountains.


    I heard a lot of Bear tales and about the wild Boar. I did not have an issue with them until I left the park. But I can say the only problem I encountered in the park was mice. One or two managed to find my gorp bag. They did not damage my pack because I left the pockets open. Just in case. If no mice no problem if we had them they did not have to chew their way in which they surely would.


    Up on Rocky Top we had thunderstorms. The day I got to Clingmans Dome, which is the highest point on the trial, some of my friends wanted to go down to Gatlinburg. I had been there before. But after a little discussion I figured someone there would have a pickup that we could all pile into and sure enough I worked that out with a couple of guys headed down. There were 6 of us piled into the back of the small truck with packs. Getting into town was no problem getting inspired to leave for some would prove much harder.


    We got a hotel and showered ate a few good meals and some of us headed back up the next morning. We dropped our packs along the way and caught a ride all the way back up to the top. Once there we “slack packed” our way back down to where we dropped our packs Picked them up and moved on.


    When Lida the kennel owner delivered him she also brought me a pizza and a six-pack of beer. I shared it with a couple of my new friends.


    It was upon my dogs return that we got to some lake along the way and the first thing he did was jump in food pack and all. He swam around for a while and I knew I had a food problem. I caught a ride down off the trail to a town where I met this man Pete. He allowed me to put my tent in his yard and I spent an evening chatting with him. He was asking me about bears in the park. I told him I had not seen any. I asked him about the mountains north of town. He said they had all be removed some years ago. Not a problem. Pete drove me back to the trail head the next morning. I headed up the trail. It was going to be a full moon so I decided to do a night hike. I was all alone with my dog and we were up on the very ridge behind Pete’s house late that afternoon.


    The trail took a 90 degree turn to the right and my dog was standing there beside this very large oak tree. His tail was straight out and he was looking up the trail ears forward and I knew he was not looking at a deer. I also knew it was not anything like a small animal because Bud would have caught it and eat it. I did not have a clue what had him so alarmed. So as I walked up behind him and turned the corner around the tree there is the largest black bear I have ever seen standing 50 feet from us. He had his left front paw up and was looking left over his left shoulder in a broadside stance.


    The very first thought I had was “@*&*!, my camera is in the pack”!


    So everything happened in less than a minute. I have spent years in the woods and know animals well. I looked the bear right in the eye and I could see that he was debating what to do up until I entered the scene. My dog was waiting for the bear to make up it’s mind and I know when I rounded that tree I changed the equation from 1 to 2 and the bear blinked. His ears went back and he spun to his right and head down and off the right side of the mountain. My dog as soon as the ears went down and the bear turn his head back to the right was off after him.


    I yelled to my dog I did not want that bear to come back after my dog. That would make matters much worse because I know my dog would come back to me and I was not prepared that evening to fight a huge bear. My dog stopped when I yelled and that was the last bear he chased until I got to Maine.


             It was a few days after that experience that I was hiking down a sloped hill. The hill itself rose off to my right. There was a flowing stream rolling over the rocks to my left. Again I was walking along camara in my pack when I see a mother bear and two cubs just off the trail to my right. I know they did not see me and I assumed because of the stream they did not hear me. So I just walked on to put a bit of distance between us. About 50 yards down the trail I took off my pack and grabbed the camara. I then proceeded to do what a few might consider stupid and some others might consider risky. I went back up the trail to get a few close pictures. They were gone! Apparently they noticed me walking by.


    As I had mentioned I did take Bud halfway up Virginia. I left him at my brother’s house. The last night before I was to go back west to the trail I took my brother and his kids out to eat. We went to a buffet restaurant and I eat all I could eat. The next day my brother drove me back to the trail, where he dropped me off. I did another slack pack the next day as I could leave my pack at Rusty’s place. He catered to the thru-hikers. I took my pack the next day he drove me up the highway to were I started the previous day and I was off into the wilds again. I was going to hike 13 miles that day. But I just could not get going. I tried to hike hard and I had no energy at all. About 7 miles up the trail which took me most of the day to do I chose to spend the night right there.


    It was not until the next morning 3 days after I eat like a pig in Virginia Beach that I finally went the bathroom and it was truly a life event. I got my pack on and that day was the longest day’s hike of my life. I traveled 32 miles that day before I stopped. I could not believe my intestines were so bogged down with food that as soon as it was out I could fly.


              It was in Boiling Springs, PA that another event happened to me. I had resupplied in town at the post office and I was heading out of town when I sneezed. I was a mile or two from town and my hernia finally gave way. I sat down to check and my intestines had fallen into my scrotum. This was not a good thing.


    I had had the problem for a few years. When I had to sneeze I just lifted my left leg to stop it from hurting. I was not interested in being operated on. So I got to a phone the next day. I called my sister who worked in the medical field and told her my problem. I was not about to leave the hike for something as small as a hernia. She sent me overnight a vasectomy support. I used that for the rest of my hike. It seemed to work just fine It pulled everything up where it needed to be. When I was done the hike, I would stay with my sister in Plymouth, MA, for a week or so, while I got the problem solved. I would have it fixed in Boston where the state offers medical insurance for people. Otherwise I was going to have to pay for the whole thing. I had no job. So I did, they did and I got on with my life.


     


     


     


     


    8: MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY MOM


    My mother like most has been one of the best moms a person could have. She had showed endless love and devotion to her children. She worked tirelessly to provide us a livable home with or without money. She was a good cook she cleaned and taught us all how to take care of ourselves. She was fair in her dealing with all 5 of us especially when it came time to lick the cake batter off the mixers. When she was baking a cake there are of course only two mixers for the mixing machine. So another of us who were around got a spoon and another the bowl. And if all five of us were around she would improvise with another spoon. We all liked cake batter.


    She could think fast on her feet. One Christmas Eve. I came downstairs in the middle of the night and walked into our only bathroom I must have been 6-7. My mom was in there with the light off. To get me out without a blink (it was dark so I can only hypothesis)


    She said. “You just missed Santa, He just went up the chimney.”


    I ran to the living room and looked up the fireplace to see. NO LUCK, I indeed had just missed him.


    My mom is the person who always told us and I think it as one of the most valuable lessons of my life.


    “DON’T TELL ME YOU CAN’T, TELL ME YOU’LL TRY!”


    Here is another one:


    "I will never ask you to do anything I have not done myself."


    For that is what she wanted to hear from all her children. I can’t speak for them. But I have never as a result of that, been afraid to take a risk, regardless of the consequences. I have through the years surely paid my dues because of it! But the experiences I have had far out weigh the losses I have incurred financial or otherwise.


    Risk? Would I continue to do so? Well, YES! Will I continue to loose? Don’t know the answer to that one yet. I do know just one thing and I think I get this from my mom. I am living in the real world. There is no political correctness. Things are what they are. I don’t hide behind “if only”. As Roger Whittaker said, in one of his songs, “If is for children.”


    As a result, I don’t answer people’s questions with fluff and I don’t beat around the bush. Some have told me I have no tact. Well maybe so. But if you don’t like the answer you should not have asked the question. I have not to my knowledge lost friends over that. Not if they were friends in the first place because my friends have always understood me.


    When I was 10 my older brother pestered her enough about getting a dog. My father was away in another state working. Jay showed her this ad in the newspaper for a puppy of German Shepard, Doberman mix. I went with her to get the dog. He was free, I believe. I remember carrying that dog home in my arms and we had a puppy. It was 8 weeks old when we got him. He was a great dog. I remember my dad who was out of state called that evening and they were talking on the phone she told him we had a dog and he got very upset. There was no way he wanted a dog. She told him not to worry. It was a Saint Bernard. He wanted a dog that big even less. Jay named him Tiger. My dad called him George. We the kids trained the dog he was great. He one time curled up in my bed with me when I was put down for a nap. I was TEN! He also would not let other dogs in the yard.


    One day a Saint Bernard dog came wandering into our yard and I was down the back with Tiger. I told my dog to get rid of the bigger dog and he looked at me like I was crazy! That did not happen. The St Bernard left on its own.


    This dog was a great dog. He would fight with us but never bite. He would listen to us for he was reasonably well trained. Could he break his chain? Yes if he felt badly enough about getting somewhere. But he was trained to stay in the yard and he did after we eventually got him fixed. He did manage to get some puppies with a pure bread Doberman. Never saw them. But know they did exist.


    Anyway dog stories have nothing to do with my mom other than if it was not for her we would not have had the dog. Claire my mom was always there for us kids no matter what they had done or needed. She is there for Tom to this day. He is a lucky man.


    I love my mom. I asked her in a conversation one night when I was back east visiting, shortly after her and my fathers anniversary. What it was that she wanted out of life. She said to me she wanted to raise good kids. I responded with, Ok you did that. What else did you want out of life. I wanted to travel. Well my father had taken her to Spain and she had taken cruises to Nova Scotia and lord knows where else at this point. I through our conversation guess that I had pointed out to her that with my father she had accomplished every dream or goal she ever had. Yes certainly the times were tough and she went through a lot. But he had always been there for her and it showed. I know she hated the house we lived in growing up. She got the house she wanted shortly there after in Florida.


    The end result is my mom stuck it out with my dad they are still together today. God Bless her. I know they love one another. They just don’t like to admit it. Now that would be their story accept that it is my opinion.


    I believe she is the communicator of my parents. It was because my mom was the strong woman that she is that could allow me to even have a conversation like the one just mentioned. Maybe she did not communicate so much to my dad but to us kids she could always speak her mind. Anyway their relationship is their story. I don’t have much else to say except that I would never trade her for any other person and that I will love her always. 


     


    9: MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY DAD


    My dad when I was age of 19 taught me the single most important piece of knowledge that I have used to live my life. It was “How Money Works”


    I still use that knowledge to this day with a twist. Thanks DAD!


    As I mentioned in the first paragraph or two I had a handyman for a father. Engineer by trade and a Masters Degree in Business Administration I believe. When I was young he would always work around the house and I always wanted to be there watching/helping him. Now I don’t remember how much help I was in the early years of my life. For example I remember him trying to put up drywall on the ceiling to the new kitchen he added on to the house between the old house and the garage. We had broom sticks and mops and all of us and my mom were helping to hold up the drywall while he got it nailed up. We didn’t use screws as they do today. Let me tell you that was fun. As he worked on this project he was cutting the hole in the brand new counter top for the sink and he was asking me to hold the middle so it would not break out as he cut. I got lazy and started to sit on the side of the countertop with its new hole and we heard a crack! Yup we used it anyway. So this is what I mean about being a big help. You have to learn some how.


    There were the Saturday mornings turned into afternoons of my dad starting out whistling a tune “I got you under my skin, I got you deep in the heart of me” (Frank Sinatra) while he started to mow the lawn. He would pull out the mower open the garage door and two hours later when he still had not got that machine working, there was no whistling! He did eventually allow me to mow the lawn I looked forward to that. We had a very large yard. Then one day I had grown up and it wasn’t so much fun any longer. I also acquired an allergy to the grass clippings. I loved the smell of fresh cut grass. But the watering of my eyes and the nose thing… Well you know.


    Some people moved away across the street and they gave my dad a snow blower. It was a large self-driven machine capable of handling the blizzards we had in New England. He allowed me to take the controls after carefully showing me how it all worked one day. I didn’t get far when I ran it into the new cinderblock wall he had built on the side of our driveway capped with red brick. The machine took off a few of the end bricks before he got there to take over for me. I loved my childhood.


    We had a pool in the back yard as I stated. He upgraded it to a 15 foot round pool that was set into the ground because the ground was not flat. We were putting up the frame together and before we placed in the liner I don’t remember why but we had the garden hose inside the structure and he asked me to wash some of the dirt out of the track for the siding. As I twisted the nozzle the full force of water came rushing out and the back spray made both our faces awash in mud. He had to have been a patient man with me. But it was very funny.


    I think of all my brothers and sisters I spent the most time with my father. I don’t remember him to much going out and throwing a ball to my brothers but I do remember him in the fall tossing a foot ball with me. He always threw it underhand to us. He had a great spiral toss. I just never understood why he didn’t throw it overhand like all the other boys or those guys on TV.


    There was one year he was out with me and my brothers and sister Carol playing baseball. My father was pitching Carol was at bat and I was playing catcher. The ball was tossed and she swung. She missed and that bat came around and hit me square in the eye. We took a short trip to the hospital and I had 4 stitches. My first. Of course, nothing was intended by my sister. It was purely my fault for being to close. But as I told you early in the story she finally got her revenge.


    I was 8 years old and my uncle Bobby my mothers brother in law (now gone) invited my dad and us older kids to climb a mountain in New Hampshire. We would go up and camp there for the weekend and do a day trip up the mountain and back down.  This was not my first trip to the top of a mountain. I was very young about 3 and my dad took us up to New Hampshire overnight. I remember him saying we were going up to the top of a mountain (Cannon Mountain) on the tramway to get an Ice Cream. This hike was going to be different. It was the first hike of its kind for my family and me.


    My father, Kathy, Jay and I from my family and Bobby and his two oldest Mary (candy) and Kurt made this trip. That was the one of the major events of my childhood that set my life in a direction that did not change until College. My love for the outdoors and mountains is still with me today and I can tell you some stories. Anyway it was cemented in my head. What a hike. We got to carry small rucksacks with food. We camped in a campground and had a fire and all the things that I had never experienced.


    The following year we went again. But we brought both families with mothers and youngsters. My mom hated it. It was this one event that caused her to realize if it was a cheap hotel that was camping to her. Her tastes were a little more shall we say refined. None of this, sleep in the back of a station wagon crap for her anymore.


    I on the other hand made the decision that I would become a forest ranger. I had a mission and it was my dad that suggested I write that year to all the government agencies to start collecting information on how that was going to happen. What did forest rangers do etc.


     I read two very important books for me at that time. One was My Side of the Mountain. It was about a boy our runs away and makes it on his own in the wild. The other was Call of the Wild by Jack London. I was around 9 and I to would make it in the outdoors; I had made up my mind. None of this could have been acquired without my dad.


    Now of course I realize that dreams do change some come true, some don’t. Life goes on if you want it to.


    The next year my dad, probably because of the experience with my mom, took us up the same mountain but without her. We had by then a couple of sleeping bags. We were going to sleep under the stars on the ridge up on Mt Lincoln and Lafayette. We had some dinner and the wind was blowing. The wind picked up my younger brothers sleeping bag and blew it out over some bushes. My older brother Jay ran and jumped in the bushes to grab it. He did but there was nothing under the bushes. He made it back just fine. My father on the other hand did not get a wink of sleep that night. He only had a blanket. He froze. Now we had years of experience sleeping out in our back yard but this was much better. So began the backpacking trips, as we got more and better equipment and the years went on. We would go up on the long weekends to hike different trails. In fact I still have and use the backpacking stove he bought in the early 70’s. It works great and I see no reason to change. It is more than 30 years old now. I have replaced the O ring twice in the gas cap but other than that it is fine.


    It was late in my High School years that my dad and I took a canoe trip down the Saco River in Northern New Hampshire over into Maine. It was a very memorable trip for me. There was this older couple we came upon where the woman had decided to go for a swim She was tired and could not get back to her husband in his canoe and she grabbed a hold on the side of ours. We brought her back to her boat.  We spent just only one night out there and we cooked dinner to the buzz of endless mosquitoes and thank God we had a tent to keep them out. They were miserable to exist with. When we got to the take out point, which was predetermined, we pulled out and my dad caught a ride back up stream to the van. I hung out with all the gear for a couple of hours. Maybe 2 maybe it was 3. It seems now that I look back that most of my youthful fun had something to do with water. If I had the chance do this trip over again I would.


              When my dad was getting close to retirement I was out of college and working. I had money and time. He wanted to buy a sail boat and spent time living on the boat and traveling from port to port. My mom had entirely different ideas about retirement.


    I suggested that before he buy a boat lets take a trip for a week and learn to sail and spend some time doing that. I found a sailing school that would and could accommodate us. We had a wonderful trip! We took off from Ipswich, MA on a 40’ sloop. We sailed south to Plymouth and east to Provincetown and back to Ipswich. We got training on how to sail and at the same time had a wonderful experience. I remember waking up early one morning just before sunrise. My dad was up on deck with some coffee. We were moored in Plymouth Harbor. When I went top side my dad said he had just watched a rouge wave break over the harbor walls out towards the bay. All the seagulls were flying over the rocks.


    What a pleasant experience this trip was. We would wake up in the morning and the ropes would be slapping lightly against the mast. The Gulls would be calling their calls and the sea was tranquil.


              He did buy his boat, a 25’ Albin. It was a shallow draft vessel so it would not hold a line under sail. We spent most of the time motoring the boat around. It would, I think, go about 8-10 knots under good conditions. But it would not sink or roll.


    I was out in Colorado and I went home to help him take the boat down to Florida to my parents new home. It would be just him, Kathy my older sister and I. Again we had a great trip. I was to leave him in Norfolk VA and he took on the two oldest grandkids. I left for Colorado and they went the rest of the way on their own.


    A few things happened on the trip. It was in New York Harbor that I learned a few maritime lessons I had not known or read about. I came to realize sailboats who are supposed to have the right of way do not have the right of way when it comes to ships. They are much, much bigger and you must get out of their way. Second lesson learned was when going down the coast of New Jersey. Every time we got off shore from a river the water was very rough. I had to convince my dad that day to not go into the Intercoastal Waterway. I wanted to stay offshore. We did. It was almost a huge mistake.


    In fact I was below at one point and my sister was on the port side sitting reading a book. My dad was steering the boat. All of a sudden I was thrown across the interior and did not know what happened. I climbed out and here was my sister laughing at my dad. My dad was visibly shaken up and soaking wet.


    It turns out a rouge wave came up beside us and rolled over the top of the boat. My sister managed to escape the wave as landed smack on top of the boat. I drove the boat from that point on. The sea was getting worse very rough that day and as we approached Atlantic City we saw the coastguard heading out at great speed. The waves were extremely high to the point where you felt very uncomfortable getting broadside to them. I did get turned to the west and we rode them all the way into harbor. The next day a tropical storm was upon us and the winds were horrendous. We had entered the Intercoastal Waterway and continued south until the engine had trouble. Along the way was a house for sale. It was vacant and had a nice dock. So we sent the day there.  So it was not quite so bad. My sister and I walked across the short peninsular to the ocean side. The storm off shore was very bad. The winds extreme and I am very glad we had not been out there. I only wonder where the coast guard was going the evening before. But I can’t help admire the job they do for people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.


              I am certain I could write a book about all the things I have done with my dad or all the things he has done for me. But I will bring this up to date.


    As far as my Dad goes I have not spoken to him in about 2 years. I love him as a child will always love a parent. Will I see him again? I don’t think so? He will have another birthday coming up in a few weeks and I will send him another card. I wish him well in all his endeavors as I am sure he does me.


     


    10: Post 1980 -THE BEGINNING OF MY ADULT LIFE!


     


    So let me tell you about the conversation I had with my dad that change my life forever!


    He gave me the lesson of my life in just about 30 minutes. I was 19 at the time. I sort of dared him to educate me. I didn't think he could do it. The rest is history and of course I have lived that lesson and for that matter I still am.


    This is what happened. It was Dec, when school let out I had gotten back my job though a different area at RCA. RCA was a defense plant where I got paid to build military equipment. I decided later on that for me I would no longer work for a company that assisted in the creation of equipment for death. I did not have the money to go back to school and knew I could not make enough. I did not know anything about student loans at that time and had no way to learn about them. It was just not a thought I had.


    It was late in the evening about 7PM I guess and I was in the kitchen hanging out and my dad asked me what was wrong. He could see that I was very depressed. I had just watched a dream of mine disappear at the age of 19, or you could say, that my whole life just went down the drain. I had no idea what I was going to do from this point on.  So now I was adrift in life!


    My father was just coming out of a dry spell where we went for many years with no money at all. It put tremendous pressure on him. But that would be his story. Nonetheless I was there.


    He said to me. "I don't know what you are depressed about"


    He told me. "Even if you had gotten through college and got a job it would not pay you enough for a family. If you continue on and got a masters or doctorate you would be behind a desk somewhere not out in the woods where you want to be."


    I knew at that moment he was right.


    So he said. " I can show you in half an hour how to become rich. Then you can own your own farm and manage your own wildlife without having a boss."


    My immediate mental response was basic though I did not say it. If you could show me how to be rich then why have we been so poor all these years? So I did tell him. "OK, let me see what you got."


    He said, " Go and get a calculator, a pencil and a piece of paper and I will show you what you need to know."


    We sat at the table and he taught me the rule of 72. Not like in school but how it really works and how to apply it.  It is the way money works. I am not going to do it here. But I want you to know the basics.


    It works like this. Any amount of money will grow to tremendous amounts in TIME. At 10% your money will double every 7 years. At 15% it will double every 5 years. Now I have been teaching this lesson for the rest of my life to anyone that wanted to know. Some actually acted on the knowledge and I have gotten a thank you from many of those people years later when it actually was working for them.  We started with a thousand dollars and from the inception we worked it out for 65 years. This is the normal age of retirement. To save you the trouble it is over 8 million dollars at 15%. Anyone could retire on that! I was blown away!


    I started down a brand new road in life and I can say for me it worked. I started investing the money I made at RCA. I put $400 dollars in an account I opened with an investment firm and began to watch it grow.


    The next time it was another $400. I had to believe it would work. I had done the math. There could be no other result. 2+2=4. That will never change so I had to know that no emotional opinion is going to change that. Do the math it never lies! It sure makes decisions easier to enact in life. You will also know the results of your actions in advance.


    I went back to work and from this point on I was going to retire young. I also was going to go to Colorado. I did both!


     


    11: MY SECOND TRIP TO COLORADO


     


          


             In the late spring of 80 I had made a choice to go back to Colorado. I was looking for a dude ranch for a chance to go on a weeklong pack trip. I had read somewhere about a ranch there that would provide all the services I was looking for. I had been reading about these types of trips my whole life and I was working and had some money. I made all the arrangements to go. At the time I was going it would be mid August. So I started contacting outfitters who were advertising in the back of Outdoor life or Field and Stream magazine. I wrote them to see if I could get a job to work through the hunting season. This way I could stay out there for the fall and experience an elk hunt. I had no idea what was going to happen to me. But it did not matter. I knew it would work it out.


    Prior to my leaving on my trip I had heard back from two outfitters. One was up on the Continental Divide and way up in the backcountry. I let him know I would be done my pack trip and would be out there at such and such a date. He would take me on and meet me when I was done.


    In August I flew one way to Colorado Springs, CO I had instructions to catch a bus to Pueblo were I took another bus to Florence, CO. I was picked up there the following morning by one of the ranch hands Beverly Cooper [Pic]. She became a very good friend over time. I will say I have not seen her since her wedding [Pic].


    I got to this very rustic ranch called Bear Basin in Westcliffe, CO. There was no running water except the spring feed running into the horse trough [Pic]. There was no electricity, but there was a phone. The out buildings were heated with wood and they use kerosene lanterns at night.


    I was up in the high country for a week. The ranch owner Gary Ziegler [Pic] told me that he had considered just canceling the trip because he was not excited about going all alone with some kid brat from the city. He was rather amazed that I was not a city kid, not a brat and I could handle myself in the outdoors. We got along fine that week and as a result he asked me if I would like to stay on at the ranch for a while. Now I had time to kill before I was to head to White Pine, CO where I would be based through hunting season.


    Invited to stay at the ranch I chose to do so. I would work for room and board. Now how can you beat that? I could work for free and I got the chance to eat any all the food I wanted that was left over from guest trips that we had at the ranch. I was in Heaven. I got to ride everyday. Now I never told Gary that I have never been on a horse. My aunt Junie had horses but never let us ride them. We never thought to ask. I didn’t know that we could. So I was taking full advantage of the time I had here at the ranch [Pic]. There were two Girls, Bev. and Amy. We got along great and there were other people coming and going. But I would be there only a week or two more.


     


    I would be now responsible and become a guide. I was told with my very first hour ride to cross the road and head up to the fence. I would find a trail down the backside of the ridge and I would circle around to the left it would bring me back to the road. It would take about an hour.


    I did go across the road. But I did not find the trail. So we rode our horses down through the timber. These people had the ride of their life. They never expected such a wild experience. I was glad that I had the chance to lead them on it. It gave them truly something new to talk about. They were very happy with the ride. This taught me a new lesson in life. It does not matter that these people did not get to take a trail ride they paid for. They knew nothing about that particular trail anyway. What they got instead was a brand new experience for their money and that was more than they could have hoped for. It was far better than just another trail ride to them. So in their mind they got much more value for their small investment. I would find the real trail later on out on my own.


    The next time I took out a group I was told go down the road you will find a water trough. I did, it was where it was supposed to be. I was told when I get there take a right cross the road and you will find a gate. This was supposed to be a two-hour ride. I did not find any gate.


    So again we rode through the woods and arroyos and again my people had a ride to write home about. But later when I did learn the whole ranch. I could laugh about it. Because in the grand scheme of things. I hadn’t taken them anywhere. It was just a ride down the road and back. But they also had a great time and an unusual adventure. I apologized about not finding the trail. But at the same time they had more fun without it. They didn’t know any better and neither did I. Things would get much better for me day by day after that. I will talk more about the ranch later.


     


    I hitched a ride out towards Gunnison were I was to meet Bill Ragolli. He owned this log house and small lot up above White Pine by the old mining town Tomichi [Pic]. An avalanche had wiped out the mining town of Tomichi, so I heard, in the late 1800’s. The tiny graveyard is still there to this day.


    It started out ok. I would work there getting the place in ship shape for the hunters that would be coming in a month. He needed to build a log barn, [Pic] which I helped with and some corrals for the horses. He had gotten this blue healer puppy that he was always kicking around.


     


    I was not the only person there. He had a cook and these two other guys hired to build the barn. He asked us if we wanted to be paid by check or cash. The cook warned up to take the cash. So I did. Eventually a girl showed up and she was there to chink the cabin.


    One day the cook was packed up and leaving. I did not know why. I talked with him and he told me that Bill was just a little too crazy for him. Bill came to me and asked me if I wanted to cook. I said sure I can cook. I would be responsible for dinners and breakfast. The advice of the guy leaving to me was simple.


    When I asked him “How do you know what to cook for the people?”


    He told me. “Cook what I like to eat and that way I would never go hungry.”


    I took his advice and live by it to this day! I think of it as good advice. I did the cooking for another two weeks we were short of hunting season yet. So during my time off during the day I would be hiking in the high country behind the cabin. Other times I worked on the barn.


    There was this girl who had a small 400cc motorcycle there. She let me take it for a ride a few times. I never had a license for a motorcycle but I was in the middle of no where. I took it down to hwy 50 to the town of Sergeants east of Gunnison. It is the last town you hit before you go over Monarch Pass heading east. I stopped at the gas station to fill up the tank and just as I was done filling the tank. I was putting the hose back on the pump and the bike fell over. For some reason the kickstand just let go and folded back up. The clutch lever was bent the directional blinkers got broke. And worst of all, the gas cap was not on yet, so I lost a lot of gas before I could right the bike. 


    It was not the last time I got to ride it. I did get to cruise up the hwy for a bit going 60 miles an hour. What a thrill that was for me. One day I was down at the hwy and I was on my way back up the dirt road heading towards White Pine. This bike was a small street bike with street tires. I was going to fast into a left hand corner in the road and I was forced to the outside edge. I am so grateful that I was using a helmet with a face shield because the edge of the road was covered in willows. You know that feeling that if you lean any further you will wipe out. So I could not do that and stay in the center of the road. So I wound up driving up the right edge of the road through the willow branches. I am glad they did not knock me off. But I learned about motorcycles, speed and corners first hand.


    There came a day shortly there after that the guys building the barn would be done the girl working there had decided to leave and like the previous cook I was not comfortable there alone with Bill. It was time for me to go. I had no ties to stay and I am sure I left Bill in a bad situation. But it was not my problem.


    I needed to take a course in first aid to be a guide and there was this class at Gunnison State College that I was registered for. It was set up while I was with Bill. His guide back out and that left me. It was going to start the following week. I made a deal with the girl on the bike to come back and pick me up. I didn’t want to miss the course. She would get me with the bike and take me to her place in Pitkin, CO where I would crash for a while. I would meet her down the road in a clearing. She came up with this bright idea that she wanted to take the puppy with her because she felt that the dog was not well off with Bill. She was a girl so naturally I went along with the idea. She might have been right, I will never know. I certainly didn’t want a dog!


    We made a plan to get me out and save the dog and leave Bill to deal with life on his own. I packed the night before I was to leave in the middle of the night I took the dog and headed down the road and off into the woods where I tied him to a tree. That way if I had a problem with Bill in the morning I didn’t have to deal with the dog. I went back to the cabin and packed some food. It was about 6 O’clock in the morning when I left and off in the woods I went to get the dog and be gone. What was supposed to be simple turned into a disaster, which in the end had wonderful consequences.


    I was untying the dog when I heard Bill fly down the road in his pickup truck. So I knew right then that I had a problem. So instead of going down the road like an innocent thief, I paralleled the road with the dog in the woods. I got to the clearing and the girl didn’t show up on time. Now Bill had passed me two more times going up and down the road looking for me. Too much time had passed so instead of waiting any longer I headed down the road. I had gone a ways and Bill shows up grabs his 30-30 Winchester and approaches me with the gun pointed at my chest. He said where do you think you are going. I told him I am hitching home back east. I didn’t want him to think he could find me in Gunnison, which is in fact where I was going.


    He wanted to know why I was stealing his dog. I figured it is not wise to discuss a man’s flaws while he is holding a gun pointed at my chest.


    So I asked him, so he could think about how ridiculous this all was. “What are you going to do with the gun? You going to shoot me?”


    His instant response was, “Yes, if I have to!”


    I explained that I had made up my mind to go home, which was not true, and the puppy followed me. Instead of going all the way back up to the house I was going to leave it at the gas station in Sergeants, call and have him come and pick it up. That seemed to satisfy him.


    So I handed the rope to him and off he went with the dog. I headed down the road. I got almost to the bottom when along comes the girl on her bike. She picked me up but told me some things had come up that I could only spend one night with her. We headed back to her house at about 55 miles an hour. I don’t recommend this with a backpack on. It works like a sail and I was exhausted and my stomach muscles hurt by the time we got to her place. I did spend the night but not with her. It would not matter because I was going to be taking my first aid course the next night at the college in Gunnison just west of Pitkin. She didn’t seem so concerned about the puppy any more. I can say now the whole thing with the dog was stupid on my part. I don’t have any stories about that dog’s future outcome. That would be Bill’s story!


    Now I was homeless! I had to make some choices and the past experience in life kicked in. I had, I guess learned something or two about survival. I was not worried at all.


    First aid was interesting to me I had not considered leaving the class. In fact why would I? I needed it to become a guide. Well in the class the instructor was talking about poison snakes and she said don’t worry about viper snakes here in this part of CO. We are over 8,000ft. Rattlesnakes are not found above 8.000 feet. Well I wish she had been to Westcliffe because there were in fact snakes on the ranch there and it was at or above 8,000-9,000 ft. Located in the Wet Mountains. So that little lesson doesn’t hold water with me. But I was not going to argue with her.


     


    It was after class that evening that my life got very interesting. Remember me mentioning what happened to me at Williams College in Western MASS. Tim my X-roommate and I were looking for a place to spend the night and choose to check with the girls first. Well that experience did not escape me this evening either. I stopped at one dorm and I asked a girl if it might be possible to crash for the night. She was typical and told me to go over and ask in the guys dorm. So I went next door to the next building and met Nancy Conners coming down to empty her trashcan. She was a very pretty girl with long brunette hair and very appealing smile. [Pic]


     


    I popped the question. “Can I spend the night?” 


     


    She said she would have to check with her roommates. So up I went to the second floor room where I met the 2 roommates. But at the moment I think they both had the name of Lisa [Pic]. I offered to go to the liquor store for them and I was in. I got to stay with them until the end of my class. We became good friends as we sent time during the days together. I had an evening class so I would of course be with them after the classes. That was a long week that turned into almost a month. I got to watch a football game on the TV of a girl down the hall. The Bronco’s were playing the NE Patriots.


     


    In 1980 the Pat’s were a second half team. I got a lot of grief that evening because the Pat’s were loosing. Then the Bronco’s had things go against them in the second half. Pat’s won! I have never to this day even though I have been out here going on 30 years changed my mind. I am no fan of the Bronco’s, nor any of the team members. I can’t help it. Patriots are my team. Though you must know I don’t care about sports in general or stats. I just like to watch a good game.


    It was like the second day I was there I was up at the snack bar with Nancy and I heard for the first time this song by Willie Nelson “Momma's don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.”  I will never forget that song. I was very much attracted to Nancy almost at once. At the time I did not know what she was feeling though we got along great. You would have to read her story to find out. These moments in time were wonderful I just didn’t know “how much” I would fall for her yet. I stayed there and helped out with food and such. We went to a concert together I think I saw some other country band and John Fogerty. Maybe it was the Ozark Mountain Daredevils? He was playing the fiddle and I recognized quite a few songs that they played. I don’t recall who or what those songs were today though.


    One Lisa the roommate also had her boyfriend move in. Now I got the couch because that is where I had been sleeping. He got her bed. And the three girls shared one room. That is when things got weird for me. Dave was his name I think.


    This guy who joined us was living there for a little over a week when one day a older woman came knocking on the door. She was working for housing and asked me if I was living there. I was of course. She had complaints of some guy (named Dave) living there and she came to evict him. Come to find out It was not me. The people (girls) on the floor liked me. I was no trouble for anyone. Had I simply asked what she wanted first I would not have given myself up. Unfortunately I would now have to leave.


    I had no place to go and I was homeless again. It took a day or two to get my act together. I went up to Crested Butte. The two guys who built the barn in White Pine were living there. I looked them up and spent a night or two with them. I got this incredible idea to hitchhike to Montana while there. I have never been to Glacier National Park. I wanted to go. I left Crested Butte and headed up Kebler Pass. I stopped at Irwin Lake for the first night. I did not know that I would spend a lot time here later the next year.


    But for this trip I was on I hitched mostly and walked west until I came to route 133 where I headed north over McClure Pass just above Marble.


    I continued north until I came to Carbondale and took a detour to Aspen. There I spent the rest of the day exploring the town. I did not know I would ever be back with new memories I will tell you later. I headed east of town where I started to develop the attitude “out of site, out of mind”. If I was where no one would expect to find a drifter, then most likely no one would find a drifter. I camped under the stars in what is today a wildlife walk. It was just a field then with a river running through it.


    I woke up in the morning and my bag was very wet from dew. I had to lay it out in the sun on some rocks so it would dry. In the mean time I had cooked my breakfast and when done prepared to travel. I hitched up over Independence Pass and over into Leadville.  I was coming out of Leadville and I got this tremendous craving for a ¼ pounder with cheese. McDonald’s would be proud