Raymond, among the many middle-class families in our extended neighborhood, was very poor indeed. One look at the disheveled exterior of his house, crying out for the touch of a paint brush and a weed whacker, and you could see that not only was there little cash flow but an assumed degree of neglect....
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I don’t think I ever quite got the worth of Kindergarten. Back in 1956, pre-school hadn’t been created and kindergarten was the launching pad for your school years. Most of the kids in my class were discovering the wonders of their newfound social circle, while others were simply enthralled with their own boogers or...
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Of the many experiences one can rack up over the years, sometimes it’s nature’s unexpected revelations that become the most memorable. Your first tornado, your first look at birth, your first foray into Poison Ivy, but it was the onset of puberty that gave me an unparalleled hormonal triumph that I would never forget....
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I was 16 when I started working at Jack’s music store and there’s plenty surrounding that employ but one terribly distracting feature of the job was Pam. Pam was the store manager and was in charge of phone calls, ordering instruments and keeping track of student appointments for the teachers. I started guitar lessons...
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What a weird, weird thing that junior high ‘shop class’ thing was, and what was the point really? Of all of the nonsense that I created in shop class, none of it could have held a spec of worthiness compared to ‘home ec’ (home economics). You have to cook to eat or sew to...
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No, not that Pipeline, the mammoth coastal waves located in Hawaii, because that would involve a near-death experience with a surfboard and water rolling over head. Mmmm, not so much on that one. The Pipeline I’m referring to was born in the very un-surfer-like Detroit area and was the name that teenagers gave to...
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I sat in the rear of my 9th grade science class and I felt safe there because I could survey the entire classroom and dissect the sum of its parts (very scientific of me). It was all about perspective and I could watch interactions between students, interactions between students and the teacher; I had...
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I worked on it in 6th grade but 7th grade really brought me around to fine tuning a fundamental style choice, one that had its roots in the late ’50’s and still had traction for many of the boys in 1963. Ours was a variation on the greaser look and, while lacking the leather...
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I was still in grade school when I started playing Youth Football and my baby sitter had to pick me up from school and trek me over to the practice field every week day during the season and then the blur of practices began and that blur melted into the blur of league games....
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When I was younger I occasionally liked to fly kites from my yard, which was unusually large and offered plenty of runway to put it in the air and room to get it over the treetops. My success was moderate and more often than not a down draft would ground it on top of...
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