Author: bdkempfer72

Senior Year: Class of 1990

Good morning my friends.  Today we talk about my senior year of high school and the summer leading up to it.  This was an eventful time for sure.  Both good and bad.  It had a profound affect on me for not only the short term, but for a majority of my life.  As I stated before, parts of this are going to be a bit difficult for me to discuss.  Please enjoy joining me on this journey.

Working at McDonald’s had helped me to come out of my shell a bit.  I am by nature a bit shy with self-esteem and self-worth issues.  However, it seemed the more time I spent at work, the more open I became.  With the revolving door of employment that fast food seems to breed, I was meeting and becoming friends with people I never talked to in school on a regular basis.  Quite a few females in particular.  I learned fairly quickly that my form of “flirting” though, lent me more to acquiring many female friends and no girlfriends.  Let’s just say I ended up with a lot of women who “loved me like a brother.”  Hey, at least people seemed to like me.

Alcohol also began playing a larger part of my summertime fun at this point.  I knew a guy who knew a guy who ran a liquor store, so it was easy to come by.  We began partying at various locations around town.  The occasional random corn field.  Someone’s hunting land.  One spot in particular was known as Rabbit Trail.  It was a large gravel pit where parts of it were no longer being used on a regular basis.  This meant that some holes had filled with water and there were trees growing up around.  It was almost like camping by a pond.  This is where I was the last time I drank beer.  The beer was Black Label, it was nasty, I got violently ill, and I then switched to Schnapps and Wine Coolers.  Insert joke about a guy drinking wine coolers here.

Another common tradition was road tripping.  As you age, you realize just how dumb this was to do, no matter how much fun you had doing it.  One of my friend’s brothers had an old Dodge Diplomat.  We’d pile in with some adult beverages of choice and head out on the back roads to just drive around and drink.  We even made custom mix tapes that were specific for this action.  I can remember one night in particular where we decided that we wanted to collect “No Trespassing” signs.  This of course is illegal and not recommended.  We came across one that was metal and attached to a metal post.  One of my friends decided he needed that sign, and when it wouldn’t come off, he wrestled it to the ground.  Needless to say, the sign won that round and he woke up the next day trying to figure out why his hands were all cut up.  Ya, we weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.

This summer was made up of a lot of this kind of stuff.  Working, partying, hanging out at the lake, you know, normal teen age stuff.  Green Lake is just a few minutes away from Ripon.  On the South-West end of the lake is the beach of County Park.  This is the common hot spot in the summer for just hanging out.  Due to my larger size and self-esteem issues, I tended to be one of those guys who never took his shirt off, even when in the water.  Regardless of this, I still had a lot of fun out there.

When the summer came to an end and it was back to school, it felt different.  This was our senior year.  This was it.  Our last time being “forced” to go to this stupid place.  Our last chance to tear things up before becoming men and women in charge or our own lives.  Our last chance to stick it to the establishment.

We came in with the brilliant idea that as soon as we turned eighteen, we’d start writing out own excuse notes to get out of classes.  They couldn’t tell us not to smoke, we were Seniors.  Nobody was going to tell us what to do.  We knew better than those “old” people.  You could just tell when my friends picked me up that first day back that we all were thinking the same thing.  We were in charge now.  This attitude may be why I racked up so much detention this year, but I’ll dig more into that at graduation time.

If I remember correctly, we made it two days before we skipped our first day of the year.  There was a concert down in Milwaukee and we were not going to miss it.  Somehow it took us the entire day to get to it.  We were walking around a mall in downtown Milwaukee when an officer approached us and asked why we weren’t in school.  I saw my friend’s chest start to pump up, but my mind was working faster than his and I said, “we aren’t from down here and we don’t start until next week.”  Probably a good thing, because my friend was kind of an idiot and I can’t imagine what he was going to say.

Early in the school year, Moraine Park Technical College had something they called the “Skills Olympics” where students were invited in to participate in different technical tests.  My two closest friends and I decided we needed to sign up for this because it was a day off school.  We all signed up for the welding part.  I did the arc welding part.  My welds weren’t pretty, but my metal box held water and couldn’t be broke with a hammer and pliers.  One of the other guys did MIG welding, and the one who didn’t set himself on fire in class did the gas welding test.  We then spent the rest of the day walking around campus with my boombox in my duffel bag listening to Metallica.  Much time was spent sitting outside the Cosmetology area for some reason.  None of us won by the way, but we did get reprimanded by no less than four instructors for our music being too loud.

I had missed enough school by Christmas break that I had been placed on probation.  If I missed one more day, I was going to be suspended.  I thought it was kind of nice of them to award me with three free days off for missing so many days, but my parents did not see it the same way as I did.  So once break ended, I started becoming the model student.  Sort of.  I was at least there every day.  We were creeping up on February where I was going to turn eighteen and was going to put my whole “I’m an adult and can write my own excuse notes” plan into place.

But then my life took a turn.  Wednesday, January thirty-first.  I had gone to lunch with four friends to McDonald’s.  During lunch it was discussed to take the afternoon off and go to Princeton.  One of my friends’ uncles lived there and would have beer and booze.  Due to my probation situation, I had to pass.  One other friend was failing a class and had to take the test that day to try and bring his grade up, so he passed also.  The other three dropped us off and headed out.

I ended up walking home from school that day.  I didn’t figure they’d be back in time, so I thought nothing of it.  When my best friend didn’t show up for his shift that night, I just figured he got too drunk.  I got home and gave him a call to see how things went, but the person on the other end, who’s voice I didn’t recognize, told me he couldn’t come to the phone.  Something didn’t feel right.  I didn’t sleep very well that night but couldn’t quite figure out what was going on.

The next morning, I got ready for school and went to sit on the front porch to wait for my ride and hopefully figure out what was up.  A different friend of mine showed up and asked if I needed a ride and my heart sunk.  I guess I knew something bad had happened, but I didn’t want to believe it.  My friend asked if I knew what happened.  I said, “something bad or you wouldn’t be here.”  But I had no details. 

He filled me in on more of the details.  There was an accident.  One of my friends was in the hospital in bad shape.  The driver was ok and being released.  My best friend didn’t make it.  I don’t remember speaking another word the rest of the day.  I couldn’t think.  I couldn’t process anything.

I got to school and put my stuff in my locker.  The next thing I would have done is wait for those two to show up and walk a few laps before classes.  Only today they wouldn’t be coming.  So, I just started walking by myself.  A couple of other friends joined in behind me.  I picked up a few more as the first lap continued.  By the end of lap one, I had about fifteen people behind me.  I don’t think those people even realize how much that simple act meant to me.

I didn’t go to any classes that day and didn’t come back after lunch.  I instead went to my friend’s house to see his Mom.  He was the only child she gave birth to, and I couldn’t imagine what she was feeling at this time.  I gave her one of the biggest hugs I’ve ever given and sat with her and cried while listening to her tell stories of when my friend was child.  Times before I even knew him.  Other relatives showed up and I worked my way out.  The family had things to attend to.

I walked the two blocks back to my house not knowing what to do, what to think, how to react, or even what I “should” feel.  I was full of anger at the driver for what happened.  Wasn’t he paying attention?  I was full of guilt for not going with them.  I could have seen the danger and warned the driver.  I was full of sadness over the loss of one of the best friends I’d ever had.  I was about to turn eighteen, an adult, and I felt more lost than I’d ever felt before.

The friend that showed up the day after it happened to drive me to school showed up every day after that.  He started bringing me to his house at lunch time and his Mom would make us lunch.  We had been friends before, but we became much closer through all this.  I don’t know what would have been my outcome if he hadn’t stepped up.  He pulled me out of my funk and helped me through the most difficult period I had lived through at that time.

The school year continued, but it wasn’t the same.  I tried to avoid the hallway where his locker was.  I stopped volunteering to pick up attendance sheets because I didn’t want to walk past the classroom I saw him in every day.  I tried to visit his grave at least once a week and have a cigarette with him and fill him in on what happened that week.  Sometimes I’d play him music.  He was the one who introduced me to Metallica, so I figured I owed him that much.

Because of what had happened, they dropped my probation.  With the attitude I had at that time, that just meant I’d miss a lot of school going forward.  I knew my grades were good enough for me to pass as I continued to do well on tests, I just didn’t feel like being there most days.  The detention would pile up because I usually didn’t show up to serve it.  As we reached graduation time, it caught up with me.  I was told that if I wanted to walk across the stage with my classmates, I would have to serve detention the two weekends prior.  I didn’t care if I walked the stage as long as my diploma had all the signatures on it, but I knew my Mom would have been devastated.  So, for two weekends in a row, eight hours on Saturday and eight hours on Sunday, I sat in a room while the Vice Principal would occasionally pop in to make sure I was still there.  She was new that year and took her job very seriously.

The school stepped up and did a wonderful thing.  They had determined that my friend would have had enough credits to graduate, so they allowed his Mom to walk across the stage and get his diploma.  I doubt there were very man dry eyes in the building during that moment.  I welled up just now thinking about it.

Well, we made it through my high school years, and now you understand why this year was so hard for me to write about.  I hope you enjoyed this story and I hope you tune in next week as I get to tech school and continue my process of becoming one of those “adult” things.

As always, we’re all in this together.  Luv Luv.

Ripon: Junior Year

Sorry for the missed week.  I was fighting an illness and didn’t feel my brain was working well enough to write something coherent.  I’m back this week to continue my original timeline and talk about the time of my Junior year and the summer leading up to it.  This was a little bit of a strange transition year for me and the family.

Dad had quit his job as Maintenance Director out at the Conference Center due to “political reasons,” and began working at Ripon College in their Maintenance Department.  Without a license or a family member out there on a regular basis, that would have made it difficult for me to continue working there myself.  Plus, I was looking for more of a year-round employment instead of just a seasonal three to four-month stint.

So, a decision was made for me to get a job at McDonald’s in Ripon.  Over the summer I would take any shift and any job they asked me to do.  I had a goal to reach.  At that time, I still wanted to go to culinary school and knew I was going to need money to make that happen.  I was constantly being scolded for being on overtime to which I simply reminded them that they called me in to cover those shifts.  Heck, I’d even be the one who came in on his day off to mow the lawn.  Seventy-five to eighty percent of every paycheck went into my savings account with the remainder being for fun.

Working that many hours, and not having a driver’s license at the time severely hampered my ability to have fun though.  I still would manage to walk uptown on the weekend nights I wasn’t working and hang out with friends.  Usually hitching a ride with them to cruise around and listen to music.  The nights would normally end with us heading down to Country Kitchen, Hardee’s, or of course McDonald’s to eat.  Occasionally this would lead to me jumping back into the grill area and cooking our food as it was close to closing and I knew what a pain it was when you are trying to get everything done for closing and someone comes in.

I worked with some interesting characters there as well.  The managers all had very different personalities.  Everyone’s favorite was a female who primarily opened.  She’d go from manager to Mom to friend in quick progression.  She did her job well, took care of her flock, and ripped on them mercilessly when they did something dumb.  There was the confidant and slightly arrogant store manager who seemed really nice, but something about him made you question his motives.  The assistant store manager who felt he was better than everyone and that he should be store manage already.  There was no pleasing that guy.  Your crew could set a record for quickest average drive thru times for a shift and he’d complain you wasted two more cheeseburgers than yesterday.

I spent almost five years working there, so I’ll have a few more stories at time progresses here including the acquisition of my nickname.  But that’s further down the pipe.  As far as my first year goes, that is pretty much it.  I worked hard and as much as possible.  So, let’s get back to school.

Junior year for me was a pretty uneventful one, but one that would also change my direction in life.  As I chose to focus on work, sports were pretty much dropped all together.  After taking typing and realizing how important computers were going to be going forward, I decided to take word and data processing classes as well as computer programming classes.  At the time, this was Basic and Pascal programming languages.  I seemed to take to it rather quickly, however programming was a bit too boring for me.  Far too much work for such little return.

Then came career week.  They had speakers come in and talk to classes about what they did for a living to see if there was any interest.  I was a bit excited to hear a chef was coming to talk.  Unfortunately, he was very underwhelming.  I didn’t feel he wanted to be there.  I asked him questions on his schooling and he told me he had gone to a Culinary School in Chicago and graduated near the top of his class.  He then went on to tell us he was working at Old Country Buffet.

That was not what I expected.  I’m not sure what I expected, but when you have spent several years focused on what you wanted to be when you grew up, you have a certain image in you head. You don’t think about for every five-star chef in a fine dining establishment, there are thousands of chefs running buffets.  I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that, but my dream was to make new and innovative dishes, not meatloaf and fried chicken every day for the rest of my life.  Doubt began to set in.  I started questioning my own dreams.  I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.

Then I heard a guy speak about being a Computer Engineer.  He had a two-year Associate Degree.  He got hired within a month of graduation.  He worked in Milwaukee.  He was making six figures.  I was sold.  Less school, more money, an industry that was growing in leaps and bounds, and still something I was interested in.  I had my new career path.  Although, mine would not quite follow the same path as his as we will learn in later installments.

Outside of this, school progressed at a fairly gradual pace the rest of the year.  Just normal stuff.  Walking the halls in the morning.  Taking all of study hall to collect attendance sheets.  Boombox in my locker playing Metallica and Megadeth on a regular basis.  Skipping school to go to concerts or to just go fishing with friends.  Normal stuff.

I know this is a very short one, even though I missed last week, but not much happened this year in my life.  The next installment is going to be a tough one.  I’m not looking forward to typing it up, but I owe it to myself as well as you guys to put it out there.  I’m probably going to start writing it tomorrow just because I feel I will need to re-read it about a hundred times to make sure it fully conveys what I need to say before posting it.

Stay strong my friends, and Covid is no joke.  It sucks.

We’re all in this together, Luv luv.

Caution: Detour Ahead

Today we are taking a slight detour, but I just need to get it out of my head to help my mind calm down a bit.  We will return to our regularly schedule blog next week.  Just a heads up, this is kind of a mind dump.  If you are Facebook friends with me, you know what that means.  For those that don’t, it just means that there is no real structure to this.  It may jump around a bit, but it is something I need to do from time to time to clear my mind.  Sort of a reboot.

This year has my anxiety and depression on such a roller coaster ride it’s unreal.  My health, home life, and happiness are much better.  My financial situation is somewhat stable and about twelve months from making a big turn to the good.  But everything outside my control is going nuts.

This country seems to be at war with itself.  Not so much a full-on Civil War, but a cold war for sure.  Hate is at an all-time high.  The politicians running this country (not just the President, EVERYONE) seem more concerned with cutting each other’s jugulars than actually doing something productive to help our nation.  Sad thing is, I don’t feel this upcoming election is going to change anything regardless of the outcome.  I only feel it will get worse.  I have never been so close to throwing my hands up, selling everything I own, saying I quit, and moving to Costa Rica to become a bar tender in a beach tiki bar.

This America is not the country I grew up in, but I suppose every generation can say that.  I guess change is inevitable, both good and bad.  But for all the good strides we’ve made over the years, the bad seems to keep finding ways to be dominant. Racism is bad. Racial profiling is bad. Racial violence is bad. But damn, if half the effort and money put into “bringing awareness” to a problem we all know exists was actually put into helping prevent the situations from arising, I feel we’d make better strides.

I know, I know, “if you don’t have a valid alternative solution, don’t complain about what is being done currently.”  How about we look into what’s causing the violence in these communities?  How about we investigate why the police force is spending so much time in these areas to begin with?  Maybe instead of spending millions of dollars on coach busses to bring people to protests, we take that money and donate it to struggling public schools to help improve education.  Maybe we stick it into public transportation to make it easier for people to get to other areas of cities for work.  Maybe we stick it into scholarships for adult education.  I’m not talking four-year colleges; I’m talking trade and technical schools.  I’m talking paid intern or apprenticeships.  Something to help get people struggling back into the work force.

Will that fix racism.  Of course not.  But it might help get people struggling to improve their lives.  Maybe allow them to help others.  Maybe get some off the streets.  Maybe quell some of the crime.  If you earn money, you may be less likely to steal it.  If you make your life better, you may be less likely to turn to drugs and violent behavior.

Right now, you may be saying, “he’s being racist by saying minorities are poor uneducated drug users who commit crimes.”  I get it.  That’s what it looks like.  But I’m not talking about any race in particular.  This covers all races.  If you think the situations I mentioned above are exclusive to prominently minority filled neighborhoods, then you are sadly mistaken.  “But Bart, you were talking about racism.  How can you now be saying this helps all races?” 

Let’s look at the definition of Racism.  “Racism is the prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group.”  Does the definition say anything about one specific race?  Racism can be against anyone of any race. 

Is Racism a problem? Of course it is, but it’s only one part of the bigger problem facing this Country. Hate.  People in this country hate because of race, religion, sexual preference, political affiliation, gender, social class, and so much more.  Hell, I once went to Philadelphia for work and couldn’t get served at a bar because I was wearing a Packer hat.  I’m not even kidding here folks.

Hate is toxic.  Hate tears apart communities.  Hate snowballs.  Just a small amount of hate can turn into something horrific.  After Germany was defeated in World War I, Adolf Hitler blamed the Jewish community back home for undermining the war effort.  Charles Manson wrote a song that the Beach Boys recorded, and he didn’t get credit for it.  These two instances in particular led to hate that snowballed into horrific levels.

With the election looming, I’ve also been seeing a lot of abortion talk again.   Everyone has their stance on this topic, and I’m no different.  I don’t think the government should be the deciding factor on whether or not someone can legally have one.  I feel there are far more important things our government should be focusing their time on.  However, I don’t agree with late term abortion in any case.  I do feel that abortion in the case of rape or molestation should be completely legal in early term for sure.  I don’t agree with using it as birth control though.  If you had consensual sex and produced a pregnancy, that’s on you.  But that is also my feeling today.  If you’d asked me in my late teens and early twenties, I know I would have had a different opinion on this.

That’s another point I’d like to make.  Our opinions on just about everything changes as we get older change.  Through our personal experiences and knowledge gained throughout the years, we tend to draw different conclusions.  People my age look at the next generation and the one after that and say they don’t understand.  They know what they are talking about.  The generations before us said the same thing about you and me.  And we are all right.  When we were in our teens and twenties, we hadn’t had the experiences that taught us what we know now.  If I went back in time with my current knowledge and mind set, I can bet my stance on many topics and political policies would be different.  There’s a good chance I would have voted differently back then too.

This next one may be a very unpopular opinion, but I feel that religion has no place in politics.  A majority of the people in this country owe their existence to people fleeing religious persecution.  They fled England and other European countries that enforced laws of only one true religion.  Yet here we are again, with people trying to force their religious beliefs as law.  How many times have you heard the statement, “the Bible says….”  I am not saying you can’t believe that way.  I’m saying not everyone should be forced to believe that way.  There are eight major religions practiced in the United States, and at least a dozen minor ones.  Many of these do not believe the same thing, yet I continually hear people saying that laws need to be made because the Bible says so.  And many of the people I hear saying those things I know for a fact do not follow all the rules of that bible they are thumping so proudly.

Every election, I hear the same rhetoric.  If my guy gets elected, everything will change for the better.  I got news for you.  No, it won’t.  Some stuff might, but only if they are allowed to.  The only people who can fix hate are the people hating.  The only people who can fix racism are the racists.  The only ones that can stop the violence are the people committing violent acts.

Our country is going to hell and we’re responsible.  All of us.  I see it in Facebook every day. Hate.  The anti-Trump versus the anti-Biden.  The BLM and Antifa comments and arguments.  The attempts to justify the hate with facts and figures both made up and actual.  There is no justification for hate.  If you feel your stance is the right one, then good for you.  But if you go out there and spout hate toward those who feel differently than you, then you are part of the problem.  If you don’t think so, go back and read your posts and comments over the last year or so.  Pretend someone was saying those things to your child or your Mom.  Would you get angry with them?  Then you too are promoting hate.

Maybe it’s because we don’t have a common enemy anymore.  We’re not talking about what’s happening in the Middle East anymore.  Everyone seems to have forgotten all that.  The Cold War with Russia is long since put to bed.  When was the last time you heard something about North Korea?  Maybe we need that outside foe to focus our anger on. 

I don’t have the ultimate solution to hate.  I don’t know how to get people to stop being so angry at each other.  I don’t have the magic wand.  I know running away to Costa Rica to be a bartender might help me, but it doesn’t help those I care about.  Maybe I should run for office.  Maybe I could make a change.  Probably not.  The extreme right and the extreme left will both hate me because I fall somewhere in the middle.  I don’t want to leave my country, but it gets harder every year to be proud to be an American.

Thank you for letting me get this out.  I hope to see you tune in next week for our regularly scheduled programming.

We’re all in this together. Luv Luv.

Ripon: Sophomore Year

Welcome back folks.  Today we’re going to talk about my Sophomore year and the summer leading into it.  This was a very enjoyable summer for me.  I made some great friends, got into a bit of shenanigans, learned a lot, and thought I figured out my career path.  The school year became far more interesting as driver’s licenses began being earned.  This one’s going to be one of my longer ones, so prepare yourself.

The summer of my fifteenth year on this planet found me doing a different job out at the Green Lake Conference Center’s Hotel.  I moved into a kitchen position.  I was in charge of opening up in the morning and getting the ovens and grills fired up, getting breakfast started, assisting with cooking throughout breakfast, and helping prep for lunch and dinner.  This meant I was in at three in the morning and done by eleven.  It sucked getting up that early, but it was awesome to have my afternoons free.

Due to me having to start that early, and not being able to drive legally yet, it was decided that I could live in the dorms on the Conference Center grounds through the summer.  I ate for free at the Hotel, so food wasn’t a problem.  I had my Dual-Sport motorcycle there for transportation.  Being private property, it wasn’t illegal for me to ride it down the big hill to the hotel in the morning and back up after work.  I also shared the dorms with several people that were much older than me, so my parents were ok with it.  Besides, my Dad was the Maintenance Director on the grounds, so he was there every day during the week anyway.

The building we stayed in doesn’t exist anymore, but it was just inside the front gate and just past the golf maintenance shop.  Our back door opened to the eighteenth tee on the golf course.  Being employees, we could golf for free.  I would occasionally grab one of the extra carts by the maintenance shop and just start on the eighteenth, stop at the pro shop to check in, and work my way through back to the dorm.  I wasn’t supposed to take those carts, but then they shouldn’t have hidden the shop key where I could see them putting it away in the afternoons.

The group of people that I lived with that summer were a blast.  It was almost like a sitcom.  You had the jock twin boys who worked out a lot, the quirky lovable girl with the southern drawl, the mother hen who tried to look after us, the shy quiet girl with glasses, the lovable geek who also played guitar, and me, everyone’s little brother.  They were a great group of people and never looked down on me for being the young one.  Even the night we all piled into the boss’s truck and went into a local bar.  I cannot confirm nor deny that I drove us back that night being the only sober one.

I thoroughly enjoyed working in that kitchen.  Being that we served cafeteria style, we would make up a ton of food to run down to the line for the start and just keep replenishing at time went on.  We recycled the bacon grease by straining it through a coffee filter and putting it in a metal pot on the grill.  I had a five-gallon pail of eggs mixed up in prep for scrambled eggs or omelets.  Scrambled were fun because it was just ladle on some bacon grease, dump a bunch of egg mixture out of the bucket, spatula in each hand and start mixing.  When it was all done, slide it off into a big rectangular pan, sprinkle on some shredded cheddar (my addition,) a little parsley flakes for color, and off it went.

We cooked mostly for the conferences that came through.  Some of the biggest were Boy Scouts of America, The Southern Baptist Conference, and Math Teacher’s Conference.  We did a lunch for the Boy Scouts once of burgers and hot dogs off the grill.  How do you do that for a conference of over two thousand kids you ask?  Well, your maintenance department builds you a twenty-foot-long charcoal grill out of old metal barrels for starters.  Then you run and assembly line on both sides of the grill with all available cooks on hand.  First one lays down the patties and dogs, second one flips or turns them, third one pulls them into the pans that the runners are carrying.  We were a well-oiled machine.  The kids loved it, and so did I.  The non-stop movement made the time fly by.

Occasionally one of the conferences like the Southern Baptists would request a plate serve dinner for one night.  These were tough, especially for larger conferences.  We would give them two main options and a vegetarian option to choose from ahead of time.   We couldn’t do made-to-order and get hundreds of people in and out in an hour or so.  As it was, all employees had to be on hand for those nights.  It was tough but rewarding to make it all come together.  Plus, then we got to peek through the doors and watch service that followed.  I had never experienced a church service with so much singing and dancing in the aisles.  I find it interesting how things work in other areas of the country.  It’s almost like experiencing another culture without leaving the United States.

The head chef was a retired Navy chef.  His skill set made him perfect for this environment.  It also helped that he always had a plan for the leftovers.  The soup of the day was what he referred to as “five bucket soup.”  Meaning we would go down in the morning, look at the leftovers from lunch and dinner the day before and come up with a soup idea utilizing those.  It kept our waste down and taught me to think of leftovers as more than just what they are, but what they could be.  I still utilize this in my cooking to this day.

I did have a couple of “incidents” in the kitchen that I’m not proud of, but I guess I should mention them.  The first was a little minor but involved a burned foot.  One of the cooking devices we utilized were steam cabinets.  These were metal cabinets that would seal and lock and cook the contents with steam.  Worked well for veggies keeping them firm, colorful, and delicious, but it also worked well for hard boiled eggs.  You’d fill a deep pan with some water and eggs and throw them in the steamer.  One day while making said eggs for the salad crew, I pulled the pan out to check the eggs.  After doing the spin test and realizing they weren’t done yet, I went to put the pan back in the cabinet.  I caught the pan on the door of the cabinet and dumped the boiling hot water on my left foot.  I immediately took my shoe and sock off to see it blistering already.  The lunch cook was already there doing some prep work, and breakfast was over, so the head chef told me to go see the nurse.  If anyone has ridden a motorcycle, you know that you shift with your left foot.  With the top of that foot burned, I couldn’t shift out of first gear.  I was also barefoot on that side which didn’t help either.  It was a long slow ride to the nurse to get some ointment and even longer back to the dorm.

“Incident” two involved the preparation of ingredients for club sandwiches.  The cooking of the bacon went fine.  The slicing of the tomatoes went fine.  The slicing of the turkey…well not so much.  After finishing the second turkey breast and going to set up the third, somehow the ring finger on my left hand dipped low enough for it to touch the blade.  I immediately wrapped it in a towel and threw the turkey in the garbage.  I then told them to clean the slicer and called my Dad.  Now I’m ok with movie blood, but my own is a different story.  I passed out on the way to the hospital and again when they started cleaning the wound before dressing it.  I only missed one day of work with the foot, but this finger thing cost me a week and it was still hard with a big glove on my hand after that until the main bandage came off.

I occasionally would work the snack bar that we ran on the weekends.  This was for people coming in off the lake and was basic bar food fare.  Burgers, chicken sandwiches, deep fried everything, hand scooped ice cream, and soda.  I didn’t enjoy this as much because there was a lot of downtime.  Not many people knew we were there, so it was usually the same handful of people coming in.  I did make some outstanding burgers for myself at times back there though.  My favorite I think was the Philly-ish burger I did with two patties, sautéed onions, peppers, and mushrooms and a couple slices of provolone on a toasted hoagie bun.  Great, now I’m hungry.

My brother and I had bought a boat prior to this season, and he worked at the boat house just down from the hotel that summer.  This meant that our boat was docked in the unused slip at the end of the piers.  So, when I got done with work at eleven, I would quite often go grab the boat and head out on the lake for a while before heading back up to the dorms.  It was fun being the fifteen-year-old anchored in Norwegian Bay with all the much nicer boats and much older people.  I’d get into some frisbee or football toss with some of the college kids hanging out down there.  I would be offered adult beverages quite often, but of course I turned them down.  I was underage.  Did that sound believable?  I tried.

So, you can see why this was one of my best summers.  It’s one I wish I could relive for sure.  It’s also what made me think that I wanted to be a chef for a career when I was older.  At that time, I had planned on going to the tech for Hotel and Restaurant Management and then maybe to a culinary school.  Those plans changed as I got older which I’ll talk about in a later installment.  Now back to school.

As you know, Driver’s Education is two parts, classroom, and behind the wheel.  Classroom was easy and I had it knocked out right away.  However, there was a backlog for behind the wheel, and they were going alphabetically.  I know “K” isn’t that far down the alphabet, but there were still Juniors taking behind the wheel when school started, and I likely wouldn’t have gotten in until almost the following summer.  So, I made the decision to go with an outside source and went through a driving school out of Fond du Lac.  I believe it cost me three hundred dollars, but I didn’t care at the time.  I “needed” to be able to drive.  Not the best choice on my part as I got my license on the first try, but after three accidents and a speeding ticket in the first five months, I lost it.  I wasn’t allowed to get it back until I graduated from high school and needed it to go to college.

My first accident happened out at the Conference Center when a person stopped in the middle of the road to take a picture of a deer at the edge of the woods.  I came around the corner messing with my CD boom box, not fully paying attention, and rear ended their car.  My second one was in the school parking lot.  I pulled into a stall and flung my door open without looking, directly into the fender of the car pulling in next to me.  The speeding ticket happened when going to lunch and driving behind the middle school.  I was going thirty in a fifteen mile per hour school zone.  My third accident and the final straw occurred leaving the school parking lot.  I looked to my left to see a minivan with its blinker on, looked right, and hammered the gas.  The van did not turn, and I plowed right into the side of it.  Because two of my accidents ended up not being point violations, I wouldn’t have lost my license that way, but the insurance company was going to drop my parents if I remained a licensed driver.  So, I surrendered it and had to wait until I was eighteen and had to have my own insurance. 

Most of my friends fared better than I did, and I unfortunately leaned on them to get me everywhere.  The two friends that I was walking to school with were now picking me up in the morning to drive to school.  Instead of stopping at The Breadbasket for donuts, we now would make runs out to Hardee’s or McDonald’s before school.  Cranking out eighties metal music and smoking cigarettes on our drive in.  We had an open campus, so lunch runs began every day too.  McDonald’s, Hardee’s, Dairy Queen, A&W, and the occasional run to Fond du Lac for Taco Bell.  That last one got us a few detentions because we never made it back in time.  We also found out we could go to Jim’s Liberty Inn downtown, come in the back door and get bar food while playing pool.  They had the only thirty-five cent pool table in town and I can still remember that Guns N Roses – Sweet Child of Mine was A2 on the juke box.

On the weekends, I would either walk up town and watch the people “scoop the loop,” or get a ride down to Double R Lanes to shoot pool.  Scooping the loop, I feel needs a post all its own, so I’m just going to explain what it was to those who don’t know.  It was basically just cruising.  Our main street (called Watson Street) had a double drive at the start of it that lent itself to driving down one side, turning around, and back up the other side to head back down the street.  Three blocks later, you could turn left and there was a triangle shaped block that going around would bring you right back to the main drag.  Pretty much everyone did it and it was the place to be on a Friday and Saturday night.

Double R Lanes was obviously the local bowling center.  It’s changed hands a bunch of times since I hung out there back then and looks nothing like it did inside.  I would quite often get a ride from my brother down there to shoot pool.  Several of my classmates as well as kids older and younger would go down there either to bowl, play video games, or shoot pool.  I feel like I was a better shot back then than I am now, probably because I was down there multiple times a week and shot all night long.

There was really only one or two times I can remember there being any trouble down there and one of those times was because of me.  This situation started in school.  I was in shop class working on a lawnmower engine with one of my friends.  This class had some Juniors as well as Sophomores in it.  Due to a theft, we only had one set of metric sockets and due to me getting there a little early, I had that set.  A couple of Juniors decided they wanted that set and tried to take it from me to which I did not relinquish said sockets.  After using my sarcastic wit and intelligence to make them both look stupid, it ended with the larger of the two holding my arms and the other one grabbing me around the neck.  The teacher broke it up and one of the two said, “I know where you hang out. I’ll see you Friday night.”  I laughed him off and went about my business.  I mentioned this to my brother, who also hung out at the lanes with his friends, and he said, “if it happens, it’ll be fair.”  That Friday, this gentleman showed up with one of his friends and got in my face while I was shooting pool.  I agreed to meet him outside.  Once him and I walked past my brother, my brother stepped in between this guy and his friend telling him that his friend was staying inside.  After much back and forth, and me waiting by the door, he said, “You’re not worth my time,” and left.  So technically, it wasn’t actually trouble.

Now that some of us had licenses, this is also when concert time started kicking off.  Kiss, Ratt, Motley Crue, Poison, Tesla, you name a big hair band, and we saw them.  One of my friend’s family had a fifteen passenger Plymouth van that was quite often the transport bus to and from the shows.  Many good memories of very stupid things being done.  One that I feel I can talk about now involved a spotlight, some colored filters, and another vehicle in our group.  We were coming back from a show in Green Bay, and we passed the other vehicle for whatever reason.  The driver of that vehicle decided to pass us back.  This back and forth continued most of the way home.  Between Pickett and Ripon, we came up with a brilliant idea.  I pulled a red and blue filter out of the bag that had the spotlight in it, held them up by the windshield, and someone from the next seat back took the spotlight and moved it from one filter to the other and back again.  Now before we did this, we had dropped back a bit and then came flying up on the other truck with these lights going.  He of course pulled over and we passed him laughing hysterically and came into town first.  I know, that’s extremely illegal, but we were dumb teenagers, it was pretty funny at the time, and not one got hurt.

You’ll notice that I didn’t talk much about classes, homework, tests, and all that school related stuff.  That’s because it’s not really what I cared about at the time.  School was a social thing for me.  The learning was secondary.  I know my parents would be upset to hear me say that, but I made it work for me in the end.

I think that’s more than enough for today.  You’re probably sick of reading this stuff anyway.  So, until next week, you know how this goes:

We’re all in this together.  Luv luv.

Headed to Ripon Senior High School

Hello friends.  Today I’m going to get into the high school years.  High school, a time we all remember fondly…or something like that.  Good times, bad times, and just ok times.  But we can’t argue that high school may have been the single most important time in forming who we would eventually become.

The summer before my Freshman year, I worked out at the Green Lake Conference Center at the Hotel as a Dining Room Orderly and dishwasher.  They served food cafeteria style, so as a DRO, my job was to bring the food in the warming cabinets down from the kitchen to the dining room as well as bring the empty pans back up.  Plus, stock all the beverage dispensers, ice cream, cereal containers, plate carts, silverware stands, and general cleanup after meals.  Grunt work, but I was fourteen, what else is there at that age.  Once school started, I was done out there for the season, but I still helped my Dad on his side jobs on the weekends.

Freshman year was a pretty good one. I had lockers next to one of my good friends, and I knew some of the upper classmen from early football practices, so that helped a little.  Almost all my classes were on the same side of the school which kept late to class detentions to a minimum.  We also started a tradition.  A couple of my friends, including one of my best friends who lived near by me, would walk to school together.  When we got there, we’d drop our stuff at our lockers and just walk laps around the halls talking stupid and saying hi to our other friends.  It doesn’t seem like much, but you’ll learn in a later post just how awesome that was.

I was far from the model student, and I may have had acquired a detention or ten here or there, but hey, I showed up most days.  And that’s something, right?  I had a knack for making teachers a bit upset with me because I wouldn’t do the homework most of the time, but consistently got As and Bs on the tests.  I understood the stuff, I was just a bit lazy.  I heard that “if you would only apply yourself” speech so many times I should have gotten it tattooed on my chest.  I was even accused of cheating by the biology teacher once, so I told him to give me another test and I’d sit alone in the room with him watching the whole time I took the test.  I ended up getting a better grade on the second test.

Shop class got a whole lot better.  We got to start welding.  I enjoyed this immensely, except for maybe that day a classmate set himself on fire with the torch and proceeded to yell, “I’m on fire, I’m on fire” while trying to put himself out with the hand that was still holding the lit torch.  We did finally get him to drop the torch so we could put his arm out.  He suffered very minor injuries, but we were done welding for the day.

How many of you remember the trick of jamming two pennies into the bottom of your locker door so it wouldn’t lock?  I couldn’t remember the combination to save my soul, so I did that on week two and it stayed like that almost the whole four years.  Almost.  One morning during second semester, I came in to see my locker partner standing by the locker with his backpack in his hand.  He said someone had taken the pennies out and he couldn’t remember the combination.  I couldn’t either, but lucky for both of us, I had scratched the combination into the metal above a locker three lockers away from us.  I know, destruction of school property, blah blah blah.  But smart.  Wasn’t above our locker, so we wouldn’t get blamed for it, and it saved us that day.

I wasn’t much for study hall.  I usually just sat there listening to Metallica’s Ride the Lightning on my Walkman (Walkman is a registered trademark of the Sony corporation, I don’t know if they’ll see this, but better safe than sued) the whole time.  I found out a good way to waste time was to volunteer to pick up attendance sheets.  At a normal pace, this would take maybe ten minutes to complete.  Our school wasn’t that big.  You just had to grab them off the door and drop them in the office.  I managed to make this task take forty-five minutes.  Now that’s talent.  I also knew which classes my friends were in so I could slowly walk by the door making faces or gestures to make them laugh.  I only got in trouble a few times for that.  One of the English teachers stopped me one day as she had witnessed my sluggish retrieval of said sheets.  She proceeded to tell me how much potential I had, and that she really loved my imaginative stories I came up with for my writing assignments.  I blew it off like most speeches I got back then, but in hindsight, it was really nice of her to say.

I had two after school activities.  The first was football.  Football was fun because you get to hit people and not get in trouble for it.  I liked defense better than offense because there seemed to be less rules and less plays to remember.  I wasn’t the best at it, but I enjoyed playing until a knee injury my Sophomore year put a damper on things.  I’m sure I would have lost interest in it anyway because most of my friends stopped playing after Freshman year.

The second was weight club.  This one I enjoyed even more.  Mostly because if you start lifting weights in your early teens, your strength gains are quite rapid.  Plus, we got to go on a river rafting trip.  Most of this trip was like tubing.  Tying off with each other and drifting, although the Freshmen were in charge of keeping the raft city off the banks.  Towards the end there was a stretch of rapids and my partner and friend fell out of our raft almost at the start.  He rode the rapids down with one arm over the front of the raft and the paddle in the other hand while I tried my best to steer away from the rocks.  I can’t remember if he broke anything, I don’t think he did, but he was pretty bruised and scraped up after.

Speaking of football, sometimes when it rained, Coach would have us run laps in the halls.  A certain janitor, who lived across the street from me and had two lovely daughters (I don’t know if either of them read this, but if they do, brownie points for me,) used to give us grief when we did.  It was a friendly back and forth with him.  One time I grabbed his garbage can on wheels and took it with me for a lap. Hey, at least I didn’t leave it in the opposite hall.  Of course, then he tried to trip me with his dry mop the next time around.  He was my favorite janitor. 

Let me tell you a little story about Freshman Algebra.  I was always a fan of Math.  I even took four years of it in High School including the ones where you had to write out proof of how you came up with your answer.  But myself and the teacher of Freshman Algebra did not see eye to eye on things at all.  First thing we didn’t agree on was me sitting next to my close friend in the back of the room.  Something about disrupting those who were actually there to learn something.  We also didn’t agree on me being the one who had to move to the front seat.  She also didn’t like me doing the homework she hadn’t assigned yet.  I picked up on the basic concepts of Algebra quite quickly, so while she was teaching the next chapter, I was doing the problems at the end of it.  This apparently was “not the way we do things here.”  Let’s just say the time spent with her was very unpleasant and may have netted me a good chunk of my first year detentions.

Oh man I just loved school dances.  Ya, I don’t believe me either.  So, I went to some winter dance in the cafeteria because a few of my friends said they were going.  After opening the windows, reaching down, and bringing snowballs in to throw, we were asked very politely to never come to any more school dances.  I was happy to oblige.  Less pressure for me to try and find a girl that would actually say yes without having a full-blown panic attack in the process.  I believe my friends ended up going to at least one of our proms, but I think they were drunk when they did.

Well my mind isn’t coming up with anything more to talk about this week, and it’s past my bedtime.  I know because the dogs are giving me “the look.”  So, I’ll close this week out and we’ll start next week with the summer before Sophomore year.  The year of living away from home for a few months and starting to drive legally, for a little while at least.

Until next time, we’re all in this together.  Luv Luv.

My Welcome to Ripon

Welcome back my loyal readers.  Today our journey moves to the small city of Ripon, Wisconsin.  Ripon is the second “largest” city I’ve lived in with a population hovering around seven to eight thousand people.  I moved to Ripon at the age of twelve.  This move was not totally planned over time, but rather sudden.  We moved the summer between me being in sixth grade and seventh grade.  I’m going to start these stories with a few tales of what it was like for me to be and outsider in this little berg.

For starters, I had been in little league almost the entire time we lived in Redgranite and would have been going from “B League” to what was called the “A League” that coming year.  This would have meant moving from overhand moderate pitch to overhand fast pitch closer to what one would see in High School ball.  However, I wasn’t signed up early enough in Ripon to play at that level, so at twelve years of age, I was stuck on a team of nine and maybe ten-year-olds hitting off a tee.  The parents of the other teams wanted me kicked out of the league saying they were afraid I would hurt their kids.  I was also five nine and a hundred sixty-five pounds at twelve years old, so I kind of understand their concerns, but it wasn’t my fault.  It’s just where they stuck me.  Needless to say, getting yelled at by opposing parents and occasionally benched for games so as “not to cause issues,” caused me to lose interest in playing baseball.

Then the school year started.  If any of you have moved schools in your life, you know its hard to find “where you belong.”  Having gone from a school where there were maybe twenty kids in my one classroom to a new school with lockers and constantly changing classrooms was a bit stressful.  This was made more tough by not knowing a soul there.  As I said, I was a bit big for my age and I inherited the dreaded acne curse as well, so it was fairly easy for people to make fun of me back then.  The first “who’s the pizza face?” comment hit before they even unlocked the doors to let us in in day one.  This in turn almost immediately drove me into my shell.

It took me almost a full semester to start to make friends.  Coming from the tiny town mentality where everyone hung out with everyone, I didn’t fully grasp the “clique” mentality.  I learned very quickly though.  One of my first and eventually best friends was a guy that was considered a bit of a troublemaker.  And I guess to an extent, he was, but it was harmless fun…I mean trouble.  He ended up playing a pivotal role in my life, but I’ll discuss that in full later.

I never agreed with this clique separation thing, so I did my best over the next several years to make friends in as many of them as possible to try and blur the lines.  I fit in well with the metal heads and gear heads because that’s my bread and butter.  But I also shot guns and went fishing with the outdoor sports guys.  I played football for a couple years and that got me in a little with one or two of the jocks, but I was primarily on defense, so not the super popular ones.  We did have a handful of what I liked to call the “Fringe folks.”  These were the people who were better looking and popular but didn’t believe in class lines either.  I still talk to a few of those to this day. 

Unfortunately for my grades and extra curriculars, seventh grade was also a time when I just stopped caring about school.  I would pass the tests, because I picked up on what was being taught, but I wouldn’t do the work.  I didn’t make it past a week in band, and left choir after just one year.  I tried basketball but wasn’t very good, so I rode the pine the whole time.  I wrestled for a little bit, but hated trying to make weight, so I quit that after seventh grade too.  Believe it or not, I was a sprinter for a year, but lost interest in that too. Just because I’m on sports, I’ll fast forward a little.  I made it through Sophomore year playing football, but then I decided working and earning money was more important.  I ended up having to do summer school a few times to be able to advance to the next grade, but I always managed to do just enough to skate by. 

Because I wasn’t doing little league anymore, much of my summers were spent working for my Dad with his side work.  Growing up, Dad never seemed to have just one job.  He had his main nine to five, but always did carpentry and insulating on the side.  With me being the only one left in the house, that made me his only employee.  I’m not saying I didn’t make good money loading the insulation into the blower and hauling shingles up ladders, but that was tough work for a twelve and thirteen-year-old (who had never lived on a farm and would later become a soft fluffy computer geek) to do.

We first lived in a lower apartment on Liberty street in Ripon.  This road is also referred to as “the double drive.”  We lived in a corner house and that meant that if you were coming from the West, you had to drive to the end of the block and make a U-turn to come back to the driveway.  Let’s just say my Dad tended to ignore that rule all the time.  I think he only received two tickets from it though.  Being on that end of town, much of my time was spent at Pamida.  Perusing their cassette tape selection, flipping through the poster display with posters of Motley Crue, Judas Priest, and of course, Heather Locklear, and dumping quarters into the Donkey Kong 3 and Tapper games out front.

It was strange those first couple years in Ripon because I felt I had more things to do and more places to go when I lived in the small Village than when I was in the significantly larger City.  I know this is a pretty short post for me, and there isn’t quite as much fun stuff as usual, but we’re going to call seventh and eighth grade my rebuilding seasons.  Next week I’m going to start off with Camp Webb, move to a different street, and head into the High School years.  I promise some much better stories from those years.

As always, we’re all in this together.  Luv Luv.

The Formative Years: Pt. 3

Welcome back.  We made it through another week in these uncertain times.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to get into that.  That topic’s been run into the ground on every social media and news outlet in the world.  I know I originally said it would only be two parts, but I keep coming up with stuff to talk about.  If you remember, last week I spent a lot of time talking about some of the fonder memories with me and my cousin.  Today we do something different.

It’s time for school.  I think I mentioned before that we only lived a block away from the elementary school in Redgranite.  In those days, it was normal for kids my age to walk to school by themselves.  For sure not out of the ordinary.  Mom would usually watch as I crossed Highway 21, but once I was passed that, I was pretty much on my own.  Our school building at the time was very old.  It had been the high school back in the days when the town was bigger.  It was actually built in the 1800s.  It has since been torn down and a new modern style school has taken its place.  Not going to lie, I was pretty sad the first time I went there and saw that it was gone.  I stopped in front of the empty lot in my car for a while and reflected on the memories I had.

I don’t remember much of first grade as it was mostly spent getting to know everyone.  I do remember coming home and telling my Mom about the girls in class and which ones were going to be my girlfriends.  Ya, I was a six-year-old player.  But much like my later years in life with women, none of those plans came to fruition.  I think I just heard a collective “awwww.”  Don’t feel bad for me.  There were a lot of bullets dodged by those plans not working out.

Second grade was a big one.  I turned eight in February that year, and in March, my sister gave birth to her first child.  I was the only uncle in my second-grade class.  I asked her, and she agreed for some reason, to bring him into my school so I could use him for my show-and-tell one week.  He was a hit, even though many kids were confused because their uncles were “really old.”  Granted, back then we thought sixth graders were “really old.”  This was also my “dinosaur” phase.  If you’ve had kids, especially boys, I’m guessing they all had a dinosaur phase.  Every picture I drew, every report I did, every book I read, dinosaurs.

Third grade was one of my favorite years.  I had a great teacher, who’s name escapes me because I absolutely suck at remember people’s names.  Math, which was my favorite subject at the time, got a little more challenging.  We learned a few basic Spanish words like gato, roja, and verde.  These come in handy when Spanish speaking people are looking for their cat or you want to know what color the salsa is.  I was put into a gifted program for a while to do even more advanced math because I had picked up on everything so quickly.  This ended when I realized none of my friends were in there with me.  I sort of sabotaged the situation until I went back into general population.  I was also reading a lot more and loved it.  I feel bad because that has changed as I’ve gotten older.  I may need to reunite with books soon and try to reignite that flame.

My dinosaur mania switched to cars.  We started going to Jefferson and Iola.  Dad would take me to just about any car show in the area and I would study the differences between the years.  The headlights, taillights, roof lines, grills, bumpers, and anything else that distinguished them.  It started with Mustangs because my dad loved them.  I always struggled with the ’64 ½-’66 but could nail everything after that up to the ’74.  Then it went to Corvettes and I’ve kind of been obsessed with trying to know the year, make, and model of just about every older car I see ever since.

I think fourth grade is when a long-term crush on a girl in my class started.  Of course, I never had the guts to say anything to her, and we moved before we were at the boys and girls “hanging out” stage of our lives, so that never happened.  It’s also the year that I became really close friends with who turned out to be my best friend for the last three years I was there. 

He lived in that subdivision that I had mentioned my Dad and Uncle developing outside of town.  He had an Atari, I had a ColecoVision.  I had my little Kawasaki; he had a Honda ATC three-wheeler.  We got along great.  His back yard was woods.  We’d be outside all day together just doing kid stuff.  Climbing trees, building forts, and avoiding his jerk of a brother.  We’d race our bicycles around the block of the subdivision.  The road was all loose gravel, so that sometimes didn’t end well and in one case required a trip for some stitches in his hand.  His Dad did taxidermy, so it was always fun to go into his shop and look at the mounts he had on the walls.  Deer, elk, a moose, a string of bluegill, a sturgeon, and he even had a full black bear standing on his hind legs in the corner. 

Fifth grade was when art and music started to pick up and we got to do more stuff there.  I think that was when the recorder made its evil presence known, and my personal favorite at the time, the autoharp.  I liked it because it was kind of like a guitar laying down.  Or at least that’s what I told myself back then.

In most places, sixth grade means moving up to middle school, but in Redgranite, it was your last year before being bussed to Wautoma.  I don’t know why they did that as I think the Wautoma kids started middle school in sixth.  I guess we just weren’t mature enough to roll with those big city kids.  Sixth grade could almost get an entire post to itself, but I’m going to boil it down to just a few high points.  This was my introduction to personal computers.  We got ourselves a Tandy TRS-80 computer in the classroom.  I was drawn to it like a magnet.  It had some educational games for it that took a while to load.  I believe they were math based, so of course I was all over that.  We didn’t get a lot of time to play around with it at the time because most people just looked at personal computers as simple toys at the time.  If only we’d known.

Do you remember being asked, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”  Well, we got an assignment to do a report on that and explain why.  People in my class did the usual, Doctor, Nurse, Veterinarian, Policeman, Fireman, Astronaut, Farmer, or whatever their parents did for a living.  Then here’s Bart over in the corner of the room putting the finishing touches on a picture of his future-self jumping a big pile of dirt on his green Kawasaki dirt bike as he wins the Motocross Championship.  I always liked to add an illustration to my reports for that little something extra.

Sixth grade was also the start of band.  I loved music, so I was all in for band.  However, being the small unwanted stepchild of Wautoma, their kids got first pick of instruments.  When it got to us, all that was left for us to choose from was French Horn, Clarinet, Oboe, Flute, Piccolo, and I think Bassoon.  No drums, no guitar, no sax, and no keyboards.  Well, I had agreed to do it already, and my Mom played the clarinet in high school and still had her extremely nice 1950s instrument, so I played the Clarinet.  For that one year only.  I’ll speak more on this when I get to Ripon.

Of course, I must mention the dreaded broken chair incident of 1983.  One of my favorite female classmates had a chair that was different than pretty much every other chair in the room.  We all had that thin flat plywood type seat with the curve at the front for your knees to wrap around.  She had an older chair that had a thicker solid wood seat with a sort of butt indentation in it.  Well, during an especially heated round of musical chairs, (probably to see who was first in line at lunch, and this guy loves him some lunch) I made a move to sit rather aggressively on her chair and broke the seat right down the middle.  Now, I felt a little bad at the time, and she could have just gotten a different chair, but instead she kept it so she could remind me of how I had wronged her the rest of the year.  At least I’m pretty sure that’s why she did it.

That’s going to be it for elementary school.  Maybe one more post next week to finish out general life in town and we’ll move on to teen years in Ripon.  Got a lot to talk about there too.  I hope you enjoy my stories as much as I enjoy writing them down.  It’s very therapeutic for me and I thank you for sharing in this with me.

Until next time, we’re all in this together.  Luv luv.

The Formative Years: Pt. 2

Welcome back everyone.  I’m glad you decided to read on.  Today I’m going to delve a little deeper into my time in the small community of Redgranite, Wisconsin between the ages of six and twelve and one person in particular who made that time special.

I’ve mentioned my cousin before, and she’s part of a lot of memories and experiences from that time, so I’m going to start with some of the experiences that she and I had over the years.  One of her favorite stories to tell involves ice cream.  I have mentioned the restaurant that my Mom worked at, Griff’s in my previous post.  Griff’s had a side window in it that you could walk up to, ring the bell, and someone would come and server you ice cream or drinks out of it.  It was primarily for the people swimming in the quarry so they wouldn’t have to get dressed to get some refreshments.

Quite often throughout the summer, my cousin and I would walk up to get a couple of twist cones.  With everyone working there knowing who we were, those cones quite often ended up being far taller than they should have been.  On one particularly warm summer day, we left with our cones and headed off down the street.  In front of Elmer’s Pizza was a stone wall that had some lower sections that were in the shade.  We decided we would hop up on this wall and enjoy our treats.  Right before this happened, her ice cream slid off her cone and onto the ground.  I of course, thought this was quite funny and started laughing as any kid would.  She did not think it was that funny at all.  Before I could offer to share mine with her, she grabbed my ice cream off my cone with her hand and threw it on the ground.

After my initial shock, I started laughing again and told her I would have shared.  At this point, I can’t for the life of me remember if we went back and said our ice cream fell and got more, or we just dealt with it and enjoyed our cones.  There’s obviously a lesson in there about patience, sharing, and friendship, but I’m sure we learned nothing that day.  For some reason, when the two of us got together, our IQs seemed to drop a few points.

I also remember when we first heard the word “puberty.”  We didn’t know what it meant, but we thought it was one of the funniest sounding words ever.  We would say it over and over, focusing on the first syllable and stretching it out, “puuuuuuuuberty.”  It drove her Dad and Stepmom so crazy, I thought they were going to kill us.  Her Dad asked us what it meant, and I said, without missing a beat, “A stinky bird.”  Oh, the childish laughter that followed that.

For a few years, she lived in a house by Pearl Lake.  Across from her house was a tree filled hill down to the lake.  One winter, after the lake had frozen, we decided we needed to sled down to the ice.  After scoping out the hill for a while, we decided that there was a spot where it was a straight shot to the lake in between the trees.  Out came the plastic saucer, and I was going to be first…of course.  About halfway down, and after picking up some decent speed, the saucer veered off course causing me to lean to one side and slam into a tree saucer first.  The saucer broke and my tailbone hurt a bit, but we were determined.  A decision was made that we just needed to be able to steer.  So, we grabbed the plastic canoe and some paddles.  Needless to say, that didn’t end much better.  At least we didn’t break the canoe in half.

When we were may be eight or nine years old, we decided to do a local bike-a-thon.  I don’t remember what the charity was that we were raising money for, but we went around town and got pledges on a per mile basis.  The route was about fifteen miles.  We showed up on ride day on our BMX style, one speed bicycles.  The only two people not on ten speeds.  It was at that time when a small amount of doubt entered my head as to whether or not we would make the full fifteen miles.  We started off and all was good.  The route took us past Pearl Lake, and I’d ridden out to that lake many times, so that was a walk in the park.  But this route kept on going, and going, and going.  At about the halfway point, I believe she started blaming me for getting her into this stupid ride, and I was blaming me too.  But we kept pushing.  I kept telling her that at least we weren’t at the back of the pack because surprisingly, we weren’t.  There was a car following to help anyone with mechanical issues, and it wasn’t right behind us, so there had to be more back there.  About two hours later, we made it back to the start/finish line.  Extremely tired with legs on fire, but we did it.  And there were some older kids on ten speeds that finished after us.  That garnered us a certain amount of pride, but we agreed to never do that again.

Speaking of two wheeled vehicles, I’ve been riding minibikes or motorcycles since I was five years old.  They’ve been a huge part of my life.  In my early years, I started on a Honda QA-50.  A relatively small and slow minibike.  Dad had even changed out the sprockets so mine only topped out at maybe fifteen or so miles per hour.  Well, one day, she and I were taking turns riding my minibike on a small farm my Dad had bought.  It wasn’t really a farm, but it had an old barn, silo, and a couple out buildings.  She was riding along and decided that she couldn’t turn or stop as she was heading straight for my brother’s car.  She got it to turn a little and ran right into a shed.  I freaked out a little and she justified it by saying, “hey, I didn’t hit the car.”

She’s probably going to get a little mad at me for this, but I told you that story to tell you this much funnier one.  When I was ten, I upgraded to a little Kawasaki KM-100.  This one had a clutch, five gears, and would do almost fifty-five miles per hour.  One day, I brought it out to her Dad’s farm, and we began riding it in the cow pasture.  This was her first experience with the clutch, so I was teaching her and trying to keep her no higher than second or third gear.  Well, she was doing pretty good for a while, then she came in a little hot, panicked, and yanked on the front brake.  It just so happened, the front wheel hit a somewhat fresh cow pie, locked up, and caused her to lay the bike down.  Not a pleasant landing for her as you can imagine.  A quite humorous one from my standpoint though.

At around age twelve, we had our first alcohol experience together.  We snuck some wine coolers up to her room and proceeded to giggle and drink them.  Things went pretty good for a while, but then her gut started churning.  Before I get to the inevitable conclusion to this story, I’m going to preface it by saying that part of our delicious dinner that night was peach slices and cottage cheese.  At the time, one of my favorite little side dishes.  I’m not going to get into the gory details of what happened next, but have you ever seen a whole peach slice come out of someone’s nose?

I’ll give you a minute to scrub that image from your mind.  I’ve probably been a little mean to her in these stories, but come on, some of that stuff is golden.  But I do love her dearly and don’t know what my life would be like without her.  We aren’t as tight as we were back then, but we always know we can turn to each other for anything.  Her daughter is my Goddaughter and I love her as if she were my own.

People say that your cousins are your first friends.  I’d have to agree with that.  The stuff you read today is only some of the highlights of a lifetime of friendship.  We’re to, how should I put this, experienced to do many of these things today, but we’ll always have these memories to look back at.  We’ve had some highs, and for sure some lows, but through it all, we know we will always be friends.

Looks like I’ll be turning Redgranite into a sort of mini-series as I spent this whole post on my cousin.  Oh well. Now I don’t have to think as hard about what to write about next week.

So, until then, we’re all in this together.  Luv luv.

The Formative Years: Pt. 1

Many believe that the formative years are your life between birth and eight years old.  Although I can see what they mean by that as that is the time when who you are begins to take shape, I feel that what you remember and your experiences can affect who you are as a person just as much as what you are taught.  Yes, early years teach you the basics, walking, talking, feeding yourself, potty training, but I feel that you learn so much more between ages six to twelve that truly shape you.  You learn to read, basic math skills, socializing with classmates, communication skills, history, geography.  You start to understand the world outside of just your neighborhood.  You do kid stuff.

This is the period of my life where I lived in Redgranite, Wisconsin.  A very small town that only had about six hundred people living in it when we moved there.  At one time it had been a much larger community of over two thousand inhabitants when the granite quarries in the area were in full swing.  In the twenties, the change from paving block to concrete and asphalt for roadways began to put the dagger in the granite business there.  The great depression twisted that dagger and did even more damage to the community as a whole.  Not long after that the quarry began to fill with water.  With no one working it and pumping the water out, it didn’t take long.  I heard a lot of rumors of what’s at the bottom of the quarry growing up.  Everything from cranes and mining equipment to cars to campers to complete trains to mobster bodies.  Almost all of these have been disproved over the years by divers, but they were fun stories back then.

Living in a community of this size means that everyone pretty much knows everyone.  You’d go to one of the four local restaurants at the time and everyone greeted you by name and asked how your family was.  In some ways it was nice, in others, well let’s just say you get a speeding ticket, and everyone knows before you even get home.  My mother could have attested to that.  I believe her one and only ticket in her life was gotten when she was coming home from Oshkosh and was a bit distracted and in a hurry.  She got pulled over for speeding, and by the time she started her shift at the restaurant, they had a little toy police car with her name on it proudly displayed in the pie case for all to see.

We got to Redgranite the summer before I started first grade.  At that age and in a community that size, it was easy to make new friends.  My first good friend was a boy nicknamed Popcorn.  He shared my love of Matchbox and Hot Wheels, and he had a basketball hoop on his garage.  It was also nice that he lived right by the softball diamonds and the park and was only a block away from our house.  We had so much to do around there that we were never bored.

As the school year started, I got to meet the rest of my classmates and I latched on to even more people.  Even some of the girls in my class were fun to hang out with.  I didn’t really have that “girls are icky and lame” idea at the time, because my female cousin was one of my best friends.  Always has been.  I also think that being a small community and small class size helps boys and girls to interact with each other much better at that age, and I personally feel it lends to more respect between the sexes.  My Mom worked the day shift at the restaurant known as Griff’s and Dad was out doing his Real Estate selling thing, so when I got done with school for the day, no one was at home to watch me.  The solution was for me to walk from the school, that was a block from our house, down to the restaurant downtown and sit there doing my homework and watching Woody Woodpecker until Mom got off work.  I must have been a hit with the other waitresses there because one would always bring me a dish of twist ice cream with butterscotch topping when Mom wasn’t looking.  I wonder where those magical powers over women went when I got older?

About once a month or so, we got to go to Elmer’s Pizza for dinner.  To this day, I love their pizza.  So much so that it’s my go to for my birthday every year.  It’s become a tradition that means more to me than it probably should, but hey, you only turn….every year once.  My family and friends look forward to making that run too.  They just wish it wasn’t in February because it always seems to snow that day.  I’m saving a discussion on the day of my birthday for another day, but just know that I’m not super exited that it lands on the day it does.  For that purpose, I started doing what I like to refer to as an Un-birthday.  I share it with a close friend who also has a birthday at a cruddy time of the year, and we share it with all you people out there born during Wisconsin winter.  This Un-birthday is a floating day.  It happens some Saturday in June or July, when you know the weather will most likely be pretty nice.  We just celebrated this yesterday as I’m typing this, and we went to (drum roll please) Elmer’s of course.  Its pretty amazing the amount of memories that flood your brain just from the taste of a particular food.  I practically relive those six years there every time.  Almost all those memories are good too. 

As with my hometown in my last post, many things have changed over the years there, but a ton haven’t.  Our old house has been re-sided and changed very little.  Our old garage has been torn down and a new larger one fills the back yard.  The F/S Service Station kitty corner from the house hasn’t been in operation for years, but it still stands.  Our old church burned down several years ago.  The building that housed the arcade has been torn down.  The building my Dad ran his business out of still stands and I think is an antique store of some kind.  My Uncle’s Real Estate office is gone.  Griff’s hasn’t been Griff’s for a long time, and I think is closed completely now.  But that small-town feel is still in the air there.  And going back there still brings that good feeling in me.  Would I feel the same way if I had continued to live there through my High School years, or would I have gotten to that “I can’t wait to get out of this place and never look back” stage that so many do.  Who knows? 

That’s all for now.  I decided to split this up into two parts because I want to start telling some of the many stories of my years in Redgranite.  Many of them I find quite funny, silly, stupid, you know, kid stuff.  I felt if I did that on this post it would be way too long.  So, if you want to read about those, tune in next week.

We’re all in this together.  Luv Luv.

Who Says You Can’t Go Home

Throughout my life, when I’ve been asked where I was born, and I responded with “Hartford,” more than half the responses were, “Connecticut?”  Hartford, although the largest city I’ve ever lived in, is considered a small community. Back when I lived there, it was just under 9,000 people and is currently around 15,000 strong.

Although I was only six when we moved, many bits and pieces of the memories I have are pretty clear. I’m sure some aren’t totally accurate as your mind has a tendency to fill in the blanks when you forget things from long ago. But I’m going to tell you about them as if they were gospel. It’s my blog, I do what I want.

Right now, you are saying, “how does this tie in with your title?” Well, stop being so impatient. I’ll tell you.  Recently I took a motorcycle ride and ended up in ‘my hometown’. (Queue Bruce Springsteen) You expect there to be changes when you return to places from your youth, especially thirty-six years later. Being that young, I didn’t go downtown often, so I don’t have any memories of main street. But when I got to my neighborhood, nothing looked the same.  Our house was completely different. The big side yard had another house in it. Our big back yard now had a big garage in it. I thought the end of the street was the alley, but I found out from my siblings that the road carried past that by at least two more houses.

The big hill I used to push my big wheel up and then stand on it while I rode it down, barely looks like an incline now. I remember my best friend, Davey, lived across the street, but I have no idea which house was his. None of them look familiar. There’s still a car wash behind the old house, but it looks nothing like I remember. I don’t think our old church is a church anymore. When I rode past, it looked like there was a mannequin dressed in 80s female concert goer gear out front. Thrift store maybe, or just some strange event going on.

Although a little saddened because things weren’t exactly how my mind remembered them more than thirty years later, I began remembering fun times (and not so fun times) that still made me smile.  I rode around some more and saw an alley that I’m pretty sure my brother’s friend lived on. He had a Saint Bernard that I got to ride like a horse. Rode past the mill pond where my brothers would take me to go frog hunting. We’d bring them home and Dad had to cook them because Mom said they looked like little baby butts so she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

There were also lessons learned. I remembered my middle brother pushing me on my pedal tractor as fast as he could run, then losing control of said tractor which netted me a lovely smiley face scar on my knee. What lesson did I learn you ask? Was it to hold on tighter to the steering wheel of my tractor? Nope, the lesson is, “it’s all my brother’s fault.”  I remembered walking outside and seeing the same brother and our cousin looking in the trunk of a car. I walked up and wanted to see what they were looking at. Not seeing me come up behind them, my cousin closed the trunk on my head. You guessed it, my first head scar. Six stitches I believe. What was the lesson here? To make sure people know you are around them before sticking your head in a trunk? Nope, somehow that was my brother’s fault too. Trust me, everything was his fault back then.

There were some lessons learned through observation as well in my youth. The large tree in our front yard grew at a bit of an angle. Not like a 45, but not a full 90 either. I witnessed my older brother try to ride the middle brother’s bike up said tree. I don’t think he got the desired result. Lesson learned: when trying a stunt that may wreck a bicycle, never use your own bicycle. I watched my brothers play catch with a metal tipped dart. How you say? There was a piece of round metal ductwork pipe hanging from the ceiling in the basement. They each had a piece of wood. One would throw the dart through the pipe, and the other would catch the dart with the piece of wood. This was fun to watch, until one of them caught the dart with the hand that was holding the board. Then it went from fun to funny…. because it wasn’t me. Lesson learned: don’t play darts with my brothers.

As my ride to the next stop continued, I started thinking of those trips “up North” we took in the summer to go stay at my Aunt and Uncle’s land. Riding minibikes and sleeping in the pop-up. Riding up there “in the way back” of the station wagon. Good times, but still, lessons learned. Lessons like deep soft sand is hard to ride a minibike through, you can only hold your shoe on an exhaust pipe for so long before you foot starts to get hot, people who don’t swim so good should not follow their much taller sibling out into the lake, marshmallows taste better brown than black (again, my blog, my opinion….but I’m right), and of course, bed wetters should not sleep on the table made into a bed if you ever plan to eat on that table again. Feel free to ask my therapist about that last one.

What does all this mean? What can I take away from all this? What does it mean that you can’t go home?

The general consensus is that “you can’t go home” refers to things physically changing over the years. Going back to your hometown, you won’t recognize it anymore because everything will have changed and evolved over the years. Time doesn’t stop.

I tend to see this a little different, because, well, I’m a little different.  Can you physically go home? Yes, of course you can. What you can’t do is change anything that happened there in the past. You can remember as much as you can possibly remember from your past, but you can’t change it. The past is set in stone. You can only learn from your past. Try to repeat the good if you can. Try to do similar activities to what you remember fondly. Try to learn from past mistakes and not repeat them, over and over and over…….  

I went home. It wasn’t what I remembered, but it triggered so much more. It triggered smiles and happy memories of a simpler time in my life. A time of virtually no responsibilities. No concept of time. No stress or anxiety. And of many lessons learned.

Thanks for taking the time to give this a read. I hope you enjoyed it and maybe took a little something away. Or it at least put a smile on your face. We all need that these days.

We’re all in this together. Luv Luv.