Technical Issues and a Couple of Hellos From Long Ago

I have discovered I can't make posts from home. Blogger moved over to Google, who made some changes and long story short, for some reason when I sign in, the new dashboard doesn't come up. It does here at work, so it has to be an issue with my machine at home. The problem is, between the honey-dos and please Daddys and the woulda-coulda-shouldas, I haven't had much time to work on my machine. But I will.

In the mean time, you see that Susan Rudd has stopped by. Brenda has been beating the bushes lately trying to contact some classmates, one of which was Bo Carey. Susan said that Bo was "very effective" in spreading the word. So, thanks Brenda and Bo, keep up the good work.

In the meantime, I've been trying to get the word out as well, and I got an email this morning that was very nice.... in part it says....

Doug,
I apologize for not replying sooner. I had my team out of town for our conference tournament in Ohio. I didn't return until Sunday. Even though it has been a long time, I do remember you. Loudon holds some great and fond memories for me. I still stay in touch with several people there ..... You would be more than welcome to come by and say hello. I would appreciate it. Please let me know in advance when you might come by. I also coach the golf team in the spring and will be out of town frequently in the months of March and April. I will check out the web site.It was nice to hear from you and I look forward to seeing you.
Take care.
Mac

I'll let you guess who the Mac is, and yes, I'll take some pictures.

Teenage Angst

Time for another song. I remember distinctly the first time I heard this song. It was a handful of years after graduation and we were hanging out in our backyard having a cook out with some friends. We had the radio on and they played this song. It was almost over when I caught the line "and those whose names were never called when choosing sides for basketball". I made it a point to listen closer the next time I heard it and was blown away by the idea that this lady had somehow crawled inside my life. She may have written it from a girl's perspective, but believe me, it pretty much nails it for teenage guys too.

I learned the truth at seventeen, that love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles, who married young and then retired
The valentines I never knew, the Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful, at seventeen I learned the truth

And those of us with ravaged faces, lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home, inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say come dance with me, and murmured vague obscenities
It isn't all it seems, at seventeen

A brown eyed girl in hand me downs, whose name I never could pronounce
Said, pity please the ones who serve, they only get what they deserve
The rich relationed hometown queen, married into what she needs
A guarantee of company and haven for the elderly

Remember those who win the game, lose the love they sought to gain
In debentures of quality and dubious integrity
Their small town eyes will gape at you, in dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received, at seventeen

To those of us who know the pain of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called when choosing sides for basketball
It was long ago and far away, the world was younger than today
And dreams were all they gave for free, to ugly duckling girls like me

We all play the game and when we dare to cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone, repenting other lives unknown
That call and say, come dance with me and murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me, at seventeen

Cutting School

Last Monday night it started snowing. By the time I left for work Tuesday morning there was about 3 inches on the ground. By quitting time there was about 10 inches on the ground but the roads were in reasonably good shape so I had no real trouble until I got on my street where the snow was drifting up past the bumper and I bogged down almost in front of the house. I rocked back and forth a couple of times and got thru that but there was a 2 ft drift across the driveway and the front yard. I had to dig my way INTO the garage because I didn't want to leave the van out all night since the storm was not over. Apparently my digging altered the wind flow because on Wednesday morning there was now a 4 ft drift across the drive AND a one foot drift right up against the garage door. Of course being a macho man who never asks for directions or help, I tried to plow thru both of those drifts plus the mound the snow plow had left at the end of the driveway. I didn't make it. Almost 5 hours and what felt like a ton of snow later, I got most of it shoveled.

Anway, the point to this whole thing is I was expected to be at work, snow or no snow, but with an achey back and sore shoulders, I decided to call and tell them I wouldn't be in. While I recouped with my hot chocolate it got me to thinking of the times I didn't go to school.

I remember once in 8th grade Wayne McNabb and me decided not to go to school one day and we jumped the fence behind the junior high school and headed down toward the river. It was a dumb, spur of the moment idea, because we ended up exploring the woods behind the school on what turned out to be a very drab cool day. If we had planned it we could have at least stashed fishing gear someplace and that would have given us something to do.

That experience affected the way I cut school in high school. Usually if I didn't want to go I said I had an upset stomach or something and just stayed home. I did go to Knoxville once with Freddy Lindsey and that got me yelled at but that was about it.

Another odd thing I thought of was we used to call it "laying out" of school. I have no idea what the term meant or where it originated, but I can recall my older brothers and sister using it. I didn't use the term "cutting" until I got to high school.

So, ever cut? Want to share who with and what you did? ;)

Birthdays

I remember once when I was a kid I heard an older person say, "I didn't sleep right last night", and I thought it was one of the silliest things I ever heard. How in the heck do you not sleep right? You get in bed and close your eyes. How hard is that?

Well, now that I've gotten older I understand what they meant, and this morning when I woke up with a stiff neck and I was waiting for the aspirin to do it's job, the though occurred to me that it might be fun to post our birthdays. I gave mine in an earlier post, January 8th.

So when's your birthday?

I know this isn't much of a post, but I can't help it. I didn't sleep right last night. :)

Happy Anniversary

Today is this blog's birthday. It's been a year.

You can thank Kathey Guider for the idea. I can't remember exactly what it was she said, but in an email she said something about all of us being able to connect and I figured, why not try a blog? So she hooked me up with Donna and they both sent me a few more names and email addresses and the rest, as they say, is history. :)

We have grown a little, here and there. Not quite at the rate I first imagined but I guess I thought everybody was like me and spent hours a day sitting at one of these boxes... okay.. so most of that time I'm supposed to be working, but I'm sitting here nonetheless.

This will be the 125th post. That works out to 10 posts a month, and I don't think that's bad at all. Granted, on some of them I had to stretch a bit for something to write about, but most of them were suggested by someone or came about out of something they said. Heck, a dream I had the other night made me remember the one about dissecting. (Another item Freud would have had a field day with, and no, I wasn't cutting anybody up in my dream) :)

It has been fun. I have enjoyed it a lot, and I fully believe it can and will get bigger and better. I would still like to get pictures and stories from all of you when you can. If you send me the write ups in an email, I'll make sure they get posted on here... under your name, not mine. And I'd also like to remind you of the other site, and to give some consideration to sending me your info for that site too. Again, if you know anyone not having access to the internet, I'll be more than happy to post their stuff too if someone sends it to me.

Thanks guys and gals... it's been fun.

Cuttin' Up

So what does a worm about 6 inches long and a frog have in common?

That's what we dissected in biology. There might have also been a fish, but I'm not certain about the fish.

Anyway, they looked almost like little plastic toys and had the heavy smell of formaldehyde. The girls acted like they didn't want to touch them and the boys tried to figure out how to use them as fish bait or tease the girls with them. :)

The hard part was trying to see all the little organs and pieces of them you were supposed to see.

Drawing pictures of them were easier, but not nearly as much fun.

Championships

So the Colts won and this town is going bananas. Downtown at 5 this afternoon they held a parade and a rally for the team. The temperature was 9 and the wind chill around -20. Lots of people went, but I wasn't one of them. It's not that I don't like the team, I do. I just like the cold less. I found out a long time ago that you can hide from the cold temperatures, but you can't hide from the wind.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about championships, and while this one is great and the Braves in 95 were super and Tennessee's national championship in 98 was 10 times great, neither compare to 1970. You knew I was going to say that, huh?

The state title in 1970 was sweet for so many reasons; the first year of playoffs, we won on our home field, it added to the history of that football crazy town, and countless more. We all have our own reasons for enjoying that season, but probably the biggest reason for me was that I knew every player on the team and several of them were guys I'd gone to school with since first grade.

How could any other championship top that one?

Maturity Is A Fickle Thing

Maturity has to be fickle since it takes so long to latch onto, or at least it did for some of us guys. I've said a few times that I became a man in high school and I firmly believe that I did. I can pick out several things that happened that were milestones along my journey.

I don't know why girls mature quicker than guys... generally speaking... but in some respects it does take guys a little longer to "put aside childish things". Some might argue that we never do, we only substitute the games we played then for the bigger and more expensive toys of the games we play now.

I remember once in junior year a friend (no names) sat next to me nearly in tears about a personal situation he was going through. In hindsight that had two milestones in it. One for him for opening up and one for me for listening. I had reached a point where my first impulse was not to make light of the situation. I let him talk and I just listened.

Later that year I sat in Study Hall with June Clinton and had a very enjoyable chat. She talked a little about her and I talked a little about me and we talked a lot about a few things we had in common. Around that same time I walked home one day after school with one of the more "popular" girls, who after a time opened up a little bit about an issue she had with the guy she was dating. I remember both of these because it was the first time I honestly talked with a girl without clowning around or feeling the need to ask her out. The first time I fully realized that I could be friends with a girl with no need for any other obligation.

I would like to say that I also discovered the importance of school, but that one didn't sink in until a couple of years after graduation when I found myself facing a major life decision, only this time I had a wife and young son to worry about. Funny how a situation like that can make things so much clearer. It made me see that if things were going to work out I was going to have to get off my butt and make something of myself.

Anyway, looking back it's plain which stops in the road helped make me a man. Too bad they're not that obvious when you're coming from the other direction.