The 33rd Headden Family Reunion

On Sunday, September 12, 2010, we had the 33rd annual Headden Family Reunion. “Before we get started, let me tell you where the restrooms are.” Then the Master of Ceremonies, Cousin Tex Roberts, went on to explain about the registration table, the auction items table and the memorial table. Everyone had already found where to put the food. Cousin Calvin Fletcher said grace and the eating started. Eating seems to be the central activity at most family reunions. There was a lot of good food for everyone to nibble on while they talked to family members they had not seen in a long time.


When you haven’t seen some relatives in years, you can be sitting next to them and not have a clue who they are. There are a lot of my relatives that I wouldn’t remember because I was just too young the last time I saw them. I didn’t remember Uncle Lee Headden’s children who were a little younger than me. I do remember going to Moncks Corner where they lived. I remember priming the hand water pump in their front yard and the taste of the water I drank from it, but I don’t remember them. For some reason, when I think of going to Moncks Corner to see Uncle Lee as a child, I think of a Ferris wheel. Maybe we went to a fair when we were there. I don’t know.

Tex went down the list of all of Granddaddy Lewis Headden’s children and asked who was there from each family. Someone was there from all but one family. There were also over 100 people in total. Unfortunately, the last of Granddaddy Lewis’s children, Aunt Roberta Barnes, passed on last year. The “baby boomers”, my generation are now the ones fading into the sunset. We were kids and we played together. We grew up and went our own ways to make our lives. Now it feels good to sit together and talk about those days before we went our separate ways.

Eddie and the Cadillacs played some great country music. The band was lead by Eddie and Ernest Headden. Their father was Uncle Kenneth (Caney) Headden. A number of family members have been big fans of music. One of the interesting items on the memorial table was a guitar owned by Uncle Shep Headden. His grandson, Leroy Headden, brought it for us to see. I don’t remember if it was the same guitar that Uncle Shep played, but I remember going with my father, Foch Headden, to his house and listening to them record music. I was too young to understand how it worked, but we were with Uncle Shep in one room while he was playing the music and someone was in another room with a recording machine. I’m pretty sure they were playing some Hank Williams songs.

I talked to as many of my relatives as I could. I met new relatives. Some of them told me about things that are going well and some told me about things not going so well. I hope the next family reunion finds everyone in a better situation. Thanks to Alroy, Janis, Dale, Tex, Azalea, Eddie, Ernest and others for making this year’s reunion enjoyable for the rest of us.

Headden Family Reunion

I will post a story about the annual Headden Family Reunion on Monday, Sept 20.

THE HEADDEN FAMILY TREE IS AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING

I HAVE UPLOADED THE HEADDEN FAMILY TREE TO THE ANCESTRY.COM WEBSITE. IT CAN BE VIEWED ON THE SITE, BUT YOU NEED FOR ME TO SEND YOU THE LINK. SO IF YOU WANT TO LOOK AT IT, SEND ME YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS AND I WILL SEND YOU AN INVITATION FROM THE ANCESTRY.COM WEBSITE. IF YOUR FAMILY IS NOT ON THE TREE OR IT'S NOT COMPLETE, SEND ME THE INFORMATION AND I WILL ADD IT TO THE TREE. AS OF TODAY, I HAVE ABOUT 1000 PEOPLE IN THE FAMILY TREE. THAT INCLUDES OTHER CONNECTED FAMILIES. MY EMAIL ADDRESS IS:

Robert Headden
anydaythisyear@gmail.com

The Early Years More Hanover St

I remember a couple more things about Hanover St. I think I was about 3 years old at the time. One day I was playing on the sidewalk in front of the house. There were two tricycles out there, but I don't remember either of my brothers being there with me. One of them was probably out there earlier, but went somewhere else to play. So I somehow hooked the tricycles together with a rope. I got on the one in front and pedalled down the sidewalk. A couple of houses further down the street the street ended and there was a fence. The fence was made from tall boards and one of the boards was missing. Sometimes people would come through the fence apparently because it was a shortcut. When I got to the fence, I couldn't get the tricycles turned around. About that time, a man came through the whole in the fence and scared me. I left the tricycles and ran for the house screaming. I guess that's what you would expect from a kid that hides behind the couch during a thunderstorm.

My older brother always found more creative ways to get in trouble. There was an old garage in our back yard. Dad parked his car back there and my brother was drawn to mechanical things even at that age. I guess he found some paint in the garage one day and proceeded to paint the headlights on Dad's car. After many years of practice, he finally got good enough at painting cars that he could do it without painting the headlights.

The Early Years Hanover St

My earliest memories were when we lived on Hanover St. in Charleston, SC. As I recall the house was a one and a half story house. My Uncle, my Father's brother, and his wife lived up stairs. There are a few things that stand out in my memory of those times. My baby brother had a scary fall down the stairs one day. I think he was trying to get up the steps on his hands and knees as he was barely able to walk. I have been accused of trying to take him up stairs by his hand and let him go when we got to the top. Since I don't remember, I am sure that is not true. Anyhow, he fell down the steps and the one or two teeth he had punctured his bottom lip. I think he still has a scar.

I don't know if Moms still tell kids these kinds of things, but there was a thunderstorm one day and lightning and thunder was popping all around the house. We were scared and I remember Mom telling us that if we didn't settle down and be quiet, the lightning would strike us. So we got on the floor behind the couch and shut our mouths. I still get behind the couch during a thunderstorm.

How We Made Money

I have been working on four other Blogs and two web sites, so I haven't had much time to work on this Blog. Here is a link to "Myrtle Beach Explorer" and here is a link to "Is This Your Money?"

My brothers and I found ways to make money at an early age. The earliest “job” I had was selling newspapers. At about 8 years old, Mom would loan me 50 cents and I would walk uptown to the Press and Standard office and buy 10 weekly newspapers. My route was the streets on the way home. There were a few people that were regular customers each week. Some didn’t have the 10 cents for the paper and they would “owe” me. I stopped by one of my Aunts every week and she would usually pay me with a coke. By the time I got home, I wouldn’t always have enough money to pay Mom the 50 cents I owed her. If I had known Don would have turned out to be good at business, I could have hired him to be my business manager.

The next “job” that I can remember was in the cotton fields next to our house. I was about 9 years old and we had moved from in town to the country where it was too far to walk to get the weekly newspaper and sell it. Anyway, I was getting burned out on that job and was ready for a career change. This new job wasn’t the kind of job where we had to get hired. There was a man with a scale and a truck that he kept parked on the dirt road that ran through the field. Anyone could just walk into the field and pick cotton and then take it to him to have him weigh it and pay for it. The first time that the field was picked, we might get about 1 cent a pound for it. Then, as the cotton thinned out from subsequent pickings, it would go up to about 4 cents a pound. I could tell fairly quickly that this new job was what people called real work. Even though it was probably costing me (or Mom) 10 cents a week for me to sell newspapers, I was beginning to doubt my decision to change careers. We soon realized it was also taking a toll on our play time. Fortunately, at this point in our careers, nobody cared if we showed up for work anyhow.

At about 11 or 12, we got jobs setting up pins in the bowling alley of a place called the Rifle Club. It was a private club and we had to have a Social Security card to work there. I don’t know why we needed a SS card. If they withheld any money, it never showed up on my SS record in later years. Back then bowling alleys were only partly automated. After each bowler threw the ball, we would have to quickly pick up the ball and put it in the return chute and then pick up the pins and load them in the pin setter. Then we pulled a cord and the pin setter would lower the pins into position and stand them up on the alley. That was the only part that was automated. We had to do this all before the ball got back to the bowler. So we had to be fast or we wouldn’t be put on the schedule to work anymore. Most of the time there would be enough “pin-boys” as we were called to set the pins in each alley. There was a small step type opening between two adjacent alleys where we would position ourselves when the bowler threw the ball. This would give us some protection against being hit by the pins when the ball knocked them into the pit at the end of the alley. How chaotic the pins acted depended on the bowler. There was one bowler that we called Superman. Whenever he bowled, we feared for our lives. He threw the ball so hard the pins would sometimes fly over the backstop of the pit or come into our protected step area. I remember being hit by pins when he bowled and having bruises the next day. Sometimes, we would be short of pin-boys and we would have to set pins in two alleys. We got double pay then, but it was hard to set pins fast enough to do both alleys. The good part about setting pins in two alleys by yourself was that you didn’t have to keep an eye on the other pin-boy. One night Ron was setting pins in one alley and another pin-boy (it may have been me, I don’t remember) was setting pins next to him. Ron and the other pin-boy attempted to put the balls in the ball return chute at the same time and Ron’s finger got caught between them. I cringe when I think about it. Stuff squirted out of Ron’s finger and he appeared to be in considerable pain for a while after that. What with child labor laws, kids just don’t seem to have those kinds of character building opportunities these days.

Shouldn't We Practice More?

There was a period of about ten years when I engaged in a lot of adventures. One Sunday I got up and headed for an airport south of Atlanta. They were giving lessons on parachuting. When I got there a group of about 6 of us started practicing jumping from a platform. We were learning how to hit the ground and roll. This is supposed to absorb some of the impact of the landing. After about 2 hours of this, to my surprise, the instructor said we were ready to parachute.

The airplane that was to take us up was relatively small. All the seats except for the pilot's seat were removed from the plane. This would be what is called a static line jump. That means one end of a line is attached to the plane and the other is attached to the parachute. When we jumped from the plane, the static line would tighten up and pull the rip cord of our parachutes to open them. We put on our parachutes with the main chute on our backs and the reserve chute in front. The right hand door of the plane was removed. Three of us got in the plane along with the pilot and the jumpmaster. There was very little room for all of us. I was the second one in which meant I would be the second one to jump.

As the plane took off, my head was spinning with all the things the instructor had told us that morning. It was a list of "what if this happens" sort of things. What if the parachute doesn't open, what if the parachute lines get twisted, what if we landed on the runway or in the trees. The one I was worried about was "what if I can't find the emergency rip cord handle if the main chute doesn't open?" I recited these "what ifs" over and over in my mind and then we had arrived at the jumping spot.

I thought to myself that at least I'll get to see the guy in front of me jump first. Then I heard him yelling over the sound of the air rushing by because there was no door on the plane. He was telling the jumpmaster that he wasn't going to jump. The jumpmaster pulled him over out of my way and told me to slide forward. We were all sitting on the floor so I slid to the open door spot. There was a foot step on the strut that supported the right wing. The jumpmaster attached the static line to my chute and told me to put my right foot on the step on the wing strut. As I moved to do that I was now outside the plane facing forward and holding on to the wing strut. The jumpmaster gave me the signal to jump and I let go of the plane. For the few seconds before the parachute opened, my only thought was that of terror. Then my fall was interrupted with a jerk as the chute opened. I immediately felt myself twisting and I looked up to see the parachute lines wrapped. Fortunately I could see it was unwinding itself and I didn't have to do anything to correct that problem.

This was the fun part of parachuting for me. I looked around at the fields and all the earth below me. It was eerily quiet as I floated down. Then I realized I needed to be guiding the parachute to the bullseye on the ground. By pulling cords on the right or left side I could direct the glide of the chute in the right direction. I was approaching the ground much faster than I expected and then suddenly I hit hard. I had landed on the hard runway. This was one of the "what if list items". If I land on the runway, get off of it immediately to keep from getting hit by a plane that may be landing. I was in pain. My right ankle felt as if it were sprained. I got up and began hopping and gathering up my parachute. When I was clear of the runway, I stood on one leg and finished getting my chute contained. Then I hobbled back to the shed where the instructors were. It was about a quarter of a mile away.

When I got to the shed, I took off my boot and my ankle was badly swollen. One of the instructors put an air splint on my left leg. I left my car at the airport and caught a ride to the hospital back in Atlanta. When I got to the hospital, the xrays indicated that I had broken my right ankle and lower leg. I still have a screw in my ankle from that adventure. That was my first and last time to parachute.

I am adding this paragraph after I reread the blog. I would have just corrected it, but it reminded me of what happened later in the hospital. If you noticed, I said that I hurt my right ankle and leg. Then I said that an instructor put an air splint on my left leg. I did break my right ankle and leg and that's the leg the air splint was on. When I got to the hospital they put a plaster of paris cast on my right leg. To put the cast on, they attached my toes to a frame above the bed with something that looked like Chinese finger cuffs. That was when I finally asked for some pain killers. Later, when I was laying on a gurney outside the operating room with the cast on my right leg, a nurse came up and asked me which leg was supposed to be operated on. Wouldn't that have been obvious?

What do you mean you're REALLY going to Viet Nam?

This is the last post about my trip to El Paso. For some reason, my memory of this part of the trip is very fuzzy. So I called Ron to see if he had a better recollection of the events than I did. When he started talking about the migraine headache I got when the car broke down, I knew his memory was faulty, too. When I told him that the way I remembered the trip just didn't make sense, he said "well, that's the way we did things back then."

Rather than take that nice air conditioned Greyhound bus back to Georgia, Don, Ron and I hooked up his 57 Chevy to his 59 Chevy convertible and towed it back to Georgia. As Ron explained it, the 57 Chevy was to provide parts for the 59 Chevy to make the trip. That turned out to be exactly what happened.

I was driving and it was dark. We were in the middle of the Texas desert and I could see the lights of a town way off in the distance. Ron and Don were asleep and I noticed that the headlights were getting dimmer. Ron is the mechanic, so I woke him up and told him what was happening. By this time, the lights were almost out and if I shut the car off, the battery would not be strong enough to restart it. But we didn't have a choice. Ron said the generator was bad and we had to take the one off the "parts" car and put it on the one we were driving. So that's what we did. During all this time, only one or two cars had passed us. Now with the generator installed, we tried to flag down a car to jump start the 59 Chevy. We had a few near misses when cars veered around us as we stood in the road trying to flag them down. I suppose they thought we were banditos trying to rob them. We eventually got a car to stop and got our car running again.

We drove the rest of the night and we were getting close to Georgia the next day when the rearend of the 59 Chevy started making a noise. We stopped and Ron got the tools out and he and Don started taking the rearend out of the 57 Chevy. This is when he claims I had a sudden migraine headache. If I did, that was the time to have one. This was a big job. Eventually we were on the road again and we made it to Moultrie. What a trip! Then Ron took all the scavenged parts off the 59 Chevy and put them back on the 57 Chevy and drove it back to Texas. Or did he drive the 59 Chevy back to Texas. I don't remember, but when he got there, he learned that he was going to Viet Nam for sure. Apparently, he wasn't sure he was going before then. So he drove his car back to Georgia, left it with us and took the bus back to Texas. Then he went to Viet Nam. We made an unnecessary trip to Texas, wrecked a car, had a miserable trip back to Georgia, and had a falling out the Ford dealer and never did get that new Mustang. On the other hand, we had an adventure, bought some priceless art in Mexico and got to see Ron before he went to Viet Nam. Well, that's the way we did things back then.

South of the Border

Picking up where I left off in the last post...Don and I were kicked back in an air conditioned Greyhound bus on our way to El Paso. The last time I saw that Chevy and busted cooler was that day when we left Houston. Looking back on it now, I think we were lucky to get out of Houston at all. I don't remember the police being too concerned about the wreck, but the tow truck operators were promising us trips to the Bahamas if we let them tow the car. Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but they were unusually interested in towing the wrecked car for us.

When we got to El Paso, Ron took us on a grand tour and showed us all the places the tourists go. All those places seemed to be popular with the MPs, too. The next day Ron took us to Juarez. He was a really good tour guide. We got to see some of the cultural spots and even went to a rodeo. When we parked the car, a kid approached us and said he would watch the car for us for a dollar so nobody would mess with it. He was kinda like a roving parking meter. We strolled up and down the streets looking for bargains. Don showed us his negotiating skills and got a really good price on some art that would be hard to find these days. Artists that paint on velvet are rare nowadays. I'll bet a painting like that that Elvis personally posed for would be worth a lot now. How we got back across the border with all that treasure still amazes me. More later.

El Paso or bust

I was trying to remember when this story took place and I found out that the first Ford Mustang was introduced on April 17, 1964, one of my brother Don's birthdays. The Mustang plays a minor role in the story. I had a 1964 Ford Galaxie at the time. When the Mustang came out, I decided to trade it in on a new Mustang. The dealer ordered the Mustang and took my car so it could be sold before the Mustang came in. I needed a car so I bought an old 1959 Chevrolet.

Shortly after I made these trades, my brother, Ron, called. He was at Fort Hood in El Paso, Texas. He said he was being shipped out to Viet Nam and if we wanted to see him before he left, we better come to El Paso. So, being the loving brothers that we are, Don and I packed up the old Chevrolet and left for El Paso. We were working in Moultrie, GA at the time. So it was about 1500 miles to El Paso. A cooler full of sandwiches could probably get us there. Well, it actually got us to Houston where the cooler exploded. The reason the cooler exploded was because it didn't stop when the Chevy hit that other car. We arrived in Houston in an $800 Chevy and left Houston in a $60,000 Greyhound bus. Before we upgraded to the bus, we exhausted all of our alternatives for continuing our trip. I think this was one of the first times I saw Don's talent for wheeling and dealing. He suggested we call the Ford dealer in Moultrie and get them to let me take delivery of the Mustang that I ordered in Houston. After that call to the Ford dealer in Moultrie, I decided not to do anymore business with them. In fact, they may have been the ones that suggested it would be better for all concerned if we took the bus to El Paso. More later.

Mom's Day

This is Mom and two of her sons, Don and Ron, in the old days.

This is Mom and three of her sons, Rob, Ron and Don, in the REALLY old days. I don't know if it was the sun in our eyes or if we were all having a bad day, but I don't see any teeth. Ron must have done something wrong. I'll bet it was because Mom had us all dressed the same and Ron insisted on being different by getting a bow and arrow. Sorry for all the gray hairs we gave you. HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!

Dreamcatcher

Do you remember your dreams? Generally, I don't remember my dreams. There are a couple of times in my life when the dreams were so vivid that I remember them. I've had dreams that I have remembered for a couple of days and then forgot. Dreams always seem to mix up a lot of different things. Like a baby driving a car or someone being in a dream about something they were never connected to.

The first dreams that I had for a period of time was when I was about 5 or 6. I had a nightmare over and over for a while. It was scary and I woke everyone up with my screaming and crying. That nightmare faded away over a few weeks, but I've never forgotten it. What I needed back then was a Dreamcatcher. It was first made by the Ojibwa Indians to hang over a child's bed and catch the nightmares. I guess Indians knew about psychology before we did.

The next series of dreams that sticks in my mind took place over a period of time about 6 or 7 years ago. I frequently dreamed I was flying. I wasn't in an airplane. I could just stretch out my arms and fly. It felt very real. A friend of mine told me she had the same kind of dream.

After those flying dreams, I began to do some research and found that there are quite a few websites that tell you what dreams mean. It doesn't appear to be an exact science because I've found that different websites interpret the flying dreams in different ways. The most common interpretation is that when you have flying dreams, you feel like you are in control of your waking life or at least some part of it. If you have a dream you want to interpret, here's a link to a website.

Through the eyes of a kid

When I was a kid, I liked to look at the ads in Popular Mechanics Magazines. There were a lot of fun looking things they were trying to sell.

One of the ads showed a picture of a big muscular guy kicking sand on a skinny fellow at the beach. In the background, there were a couple of girls in bikinis laughing at the skinny guy. In the caption, it said "are you tired of being a 90 pound weakling?" I was thinking, "yeh, I am, but I'm only six".

Then there was this small package that turned into a kayak looking boat. That must have been fun. I think it was called a Folbot. They still make them. They look even better now.

Another ad I liked was the sawmill. You could take logs and cut them up into boards. It reminded me of the saw my Uncle used to have. It was a huge circular saw blade mounted on some posts. He would go out to the woods and cut down some trees and load them on his logging truck. Then he would bring them back to the field beside my grandmother's house and cut them up with the big saw. After he unloaded the logs off the truck, he would jack it up and take the wheels off one side of the rear axle. He then put a long belt around a wheel with no tire on it and around a drum on the shaft with the saw blade. Then he started the truck and turned the blade with the truck axle. This was long before OSHA.

Maybe it was because Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen were popular at the time, but I really wanted to learn how to be a ventriloquist. The ads said it was easy and anybody could learn. I just never got up the nerve to ask Mom if she would buy me the lessons. It may have been because I knew she would say "if you want to play with dummies, go find your brothers." Sorry Bros.

Beautiful Snow

Almost everyone I know thinks I'm crazy because I love snow and cold weather. The few years I lived in Michigan were enjoyable because of the snow. I guess when people get too old to shovel snow, they move to Myrtle Beach. The picture was taken from my condo in Myrtle Beach in February of this year. I have seen it snow in SC several times, but it's rare.

My Walden Pond

 

I spent a year at my brother, Don's, place on Lake Marion. During that time the lake level dropped dramatically. I don't remember if the photo shows it before or after it was at it's lowest level. It was much lower at one time. People were seeing trees, buildings and artifacts that had been submerged for years.

The year I spent there was peaceful and quiet. Sometimes with the noise of Myrtle Beach, I wish I was back there. Thanks Don and Judy.

A Charlie Hall Moment

This post was written on Friday. I got up a little earlier than usual this morning. The sun had not risen yet and the sky on the horizon was red. That brought to mind the saying "Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning and red sky at night, sailor's delight". When I've been on sailing trips, I have often looked for that weather predictor. I can't remember if it was an accurate weather predictor or not.

I was curious about the reasoning behind this saying and I found this explanation on Wikipedia. "Weather systems typically move from west to east, and red clouds result when the sun shines on their undersides at either sunrise or sunset.[6][7] At these two times of day, the sun's light is passing at a very low angle through a great thickness of atmosphere, the result of which is the scattering out of most of the shorter wavelengths — the greens, blues, and violets — of the visible spectrum, and so sunlight is heavy at the red end of the spectrum. If the morning skies are red, it is because clear skies to the east permit the sun to light the undersides of moisture-bearing clouds coming in from the west. Conversely, in order to see red clouds in the evening, sunlight must have a clear path from the west in order to illuminate moisture-bearing clouds moving off to the east. There are many variations on this piece of lore, but they all carry the same message."

Even though there were red skies this morning, the weather forecast for today is sunny skies. The next time I go on a sailing trip, I'll get up early and have coffee while I read the sky for it's weather prediction. Then I'll listen to the weather forecast and decide what I'll do that day based on the forecast. Where's cousin Larry, the meteorologist, when you need him?

What did I forget?

Did you forget to read my Blog? I think you did. Did you forget to check out the ads? I think you did. Did you forget to take your medicine? Apparently as we get older, we forget to do all kinds of things. I was just kidding about the Blog and the ads, but forgetting your medicine, if you take any, is obviously not a good thing. I take medicine every day and I use an organizer to make sure I take the right ones at the right time. I have one brother who takes a truck load of medicine every day. He doesn't use an organizer, but somehow he remembers how many, which ones and when to take them all. That's amazing to me.

I have written before that I get a daily email from "Real Age". They provide a lot of useful information. Friday's email gives some tips on how to remember to take your medicine. I suppose it would work for other things that you do or forget to do regularly. Here's the link to the page where you can find the tips that help you remember things. It's a little "quirky" and I don't know how it works, but it's worth a try.

I'll be back.

It was just another day at work. I was working on a line crew as an apprentice lineman. We were rebuilding a transmission line outside of Athens, GA. Transmission lines are the electric lines with tall poles and the big wire that are built mostly cross country in the woods.

The whole crew was large, but it was split up into several 4 man crews. Two linemen would do the work on the pole and two men would work on the ground. On a job like this, we did basically the same work on one pole as we did on the next. As a result, we had some competition going with one of the other crews on which a good friend of mine worked. So we didn't waste any time getting up the pole when we got to the next one.

I had only been climbing poles for about a year. I still had the tools I bought at a pawn shop when I first started working. My "hooks" or "climbers" were not well designed and I had to remember to keep my knees away from the pole when I climbed. Otherwise, the gaff on the climbers would kick out of the pole and if you were lucky, you would only get a belly full of splinters. My tool belt was an old style belt that had the hammer loop in the middle of the back. Newer belts were made with the hammer loop over the hip. This was safer belt configuration if you "cutout" or your gaffs kick out of the pole and you fall. The safest way to climb a pole is to "hitch hike". That means you put your safety belt around the pole and lean into the pole and flip your safety belt up the pole as you climb. I had only seen old men climb that way. It was slow and most linemen just held onto the pole with their hands.

My friend on the other crew was an excellent lineman, but neither crew was out working the other that day. As soon as I got to the next pole, I put my tools on and started up the pole. I was about 40 feet up the pole and I remember looking out at the treetops. Then I was falling. As I fell, my body slowly rotated backwards. Then I hit the ground on my back and the breath was knocked out of me as I bounced into the air and landed on my face. I couldn't move and I was in a daze. I could sense a lot of rushing around by my crew mates and they began taking off my tools while someone got in a truck and went for help.

After a while, I heard an ambulance pulling up. They put me on a stretcher and loaded me in the ambulance. The road was a very rough woods road. The ambulance was an old hearse style ambulance. I could feel every bump in the road and acceleration of the ambulance in my back. When we got to the hospital, I remember still being in a daze. As I was pushed down the hall on a gurney, I could see the faces of people I knew leaning over me saying things that I don't remember. Later, I learned that I had fractured 3 vertebrae where my hammer in the middle of my tool belt was. Eventually, I recovered and went back to climbing poles. This time with new climbers and a new tool belt.

Man the Sails!

When I lived in Michigan, I bought a 27 ft Hunter sailboat on eBay. It was in Chicago and I had to have it moved to the Upper Peninsular of Michigan. I worked out an arrangement with a marina to store it in Oconto, MI, which was about 60 miles south of Escanaba where I lived. The boat had to be taken out of the water in October each year because that part of Lake Michigan froze over during the winter. So at the beginning of the summer, I went to Oconto to get the boat and sail it back to Escanaba. I had planned on sailing the boat about 30 miles the first day and finish the trip the next day. The boat had a small diesel auxiliary engine and I motored down the river from the marina out into the bay near Oconto. I was headed straight into the wind, so I had to motor instead of sailing. After a few miles out into the lake, the engine quit running. I raised the sails and sailed off in the direction I didn't want to go. I didn't have the option of returning to the marina under sail. The river was too narrow and shallow to tack. I sailed in that direction for about 6 miles until I reached a point where I could tack and sail past a light house that was jutting out into the lake. With all the tacking I had to do, I was making very little progress. I continued to tack back and forth in the direction I wanted to go. It was getting darker and I decided I needed to find some kind of sheltered water to anchor overnight. By now it was dark and I had not found a suitable place to anchor. Then all of a sudden a storm came out of no where. I put a rope around the tiller to try to hold it on course while I reefed the mainsail. In the process of doing that, the boat came to a sudden halt and the bow dipped down into the water. The boat twisted around broadside to the wind and it laid over on it's side. I was struggling to get to the sheets without being thrown overboard to cut them loose and let the wind out of the sails. I finally managed to do that and realized I had run aground. With the boat at a 45 degree angle and the wind and rain tearing at the sails, it was a nightmare to keep from getting thrown off the boat while I was trying to secure the sails. After getting the sails and the boom secured, I sat in the cockpit with the rain beating furiously against me. I was too exhausted to think at this point. After a few minutes, I decided to abandon the boat. I had a dinghy that I was towing behind the boat. I pulled the dinghy up to the boat and put the boat's anchor in it. I got in the dinghy and rowed out as far as the anchor line would let me. I dropped the anchor over the side to keep the boat from drifting away if the winds changed direction. I then turned the dinghy in the direction of the shore, which was about a quarter of a mile away, and paddled. The waves almost swamped the dinghy a few times, but I finally made it to shore. I threw the dinghy anchor out and waded the rest of the way to shore. I laid on grass by the water. Exhausted, soaked and relieved that I was alive. I looked out at my sailboat in the distance as it was being tossed and battered by the wind and the waves.

Country Bumpkin

There have been times when I really felt like a country bumpkin. Like the time I thought I would try this new restaurant when I lived in Atlanta. Usually I could go to a restaurant that served food that I had never eaten before and just order off the menu and the waiter would bring it. But this was a little different. This was a Mongolian Barbecue Restaurant. When the waiter seated me, he just pointed to what appeared to be a salad bar and left. He probably knew that I didn't speak Mongolian, so he didn't even give it a try. I got a plate and started picking out the things that looked interesting. There were several different kinds of raw meat and all the vegetables you normally see on a salad bar. I wasn't sure about the raw meat, but I thought "what the heck, I'll give it a try." I went back to my table and started eating. After a few bites of the raw meat, I was thinking that I won't be eating here again. Then I noticed that the other customers were taking their plates to a guy standing by a big grill. He was throwing the plate of food they had picked out at the salad bar on the grill and cooking it. Well of course he was cooking it. I guess I had it confused with a Sushi bar.

I was on a ferry going from the North Carolina mainland to the Outerbanks and I was starving. This was before microwaves. It wouldn't have mattered anyhow, I was a real country bumpkin back then. There was a vending machine with food in it. I put some coins in and got a hamburger. I ate it. As I stood there thinking that it was the worst hamburger I had ever eaten, I saw the oven that I was supposed to cook it in.

On another occasion, I made reservations at a restaurant in Atlanta. In order to get in, I had to make them 3 months in advance. When they told me they only had two seatings each night, I was thinking "no wonder it takes so long to get dinner there." The evening was totally confusing from beginning to end. The meal was served in courses and it seemed like an excruciatingly long time between courses. Besides that, I had never eaten a meal with that many courses. The waiter was extremely pretentious and when I couldn't understand what he meant by "boof", he whispered so that the other customers couldn't hear "beef". Then the ceremony the Sommelier went through with the wine almost put me to sleep. Again my country bumpkiness was showing through and I was growing impatient. When I thought we were through eating, I got up to go look for the cashier so I could pay the bill and get the heck out of there. Well the waiter headed me off at the door with a look as if I was trying to get out without paying. After all the pomp and circumstance, I should have realized there wasn't going to be a cashier.

You would think that I would have made a fool of myself enough, but no not quite. I went to see a play, "Streetcar Named Desire". I was pretty bored with the performance and after what seemed like forever, everyone stood up and applauded. I didn't want to get caught up in the traffic, so I made a beeline for the parking garage. I was the first one to get to my car and thought to myself that we had beat the rush. Then I realized that we were the only ones in the parking garage. It turned out that we left before the play was over.

Reading

As a kid, I hated reading books. In the summertime, the library had a reading program for kids to encourage them to read more books. They had a poster on the wall with all the kids' names and a star beside their names for each book they read. The stars were what they used before they had smiley faces. At the end of the summer, I had one star for the book I checked out at the beginning of the summer and returned at the end of the summer. I never read the book, but I got the star, anyhow. I guess the librarian thought that anyone who would keep a book that long must have read it over and over again.

In college, one of the basic courses was English Literature. We were assigned some classical novels to read. I still had not developed a taste for reading and by then there were ways to get around a lot of the reading that I would have to do. Most people know about Cliffs Notes. Apparently Cliff saw an opportunity to make some money by reading books and condensing them down to a small pamphlet of notes. You could read one of his abbreviated versions of a book and write a report or participate in a discussion with almost the same result as if you had read the book. Unfortunately, I didn't discover Cliffs Notes until my second semester of college. So I had to read the books I was assigned. That turned out to be a good thing, because for the first time in my life, I enjoyed reading books. At least I enjoyed reading classical and other well written books. It was interesting to me how some writers would put words together in ways that I had never heard them used. One particular phrase from the "Mayor of Casterbridge" that always stuck in my mind was "I heard an illegal noise." I still don't know what constitutes an "illegal noise".

As it turns out, Cliffs Notes didn't help me all that much. It seems Cliff didn't enjoy reading engineering books. Maybe one of the reasons I didn't like reading was that I was a miserably slow reader and had mountains of stuff to read. So I found that they had a speed reading course at the college and I could get credit for it. Before I knew it, I was reading 100 pages per minute. The trouble was, I could only process about 100 words per minute. By the time I got to page 100 while reading, my mind was still back on page 1 trying to figure out what I had read. I think all that grits I ate as a kid permanently slowed my mind down. My first math professor in college called me "Mr. Pedestrian Mind". I eventually got through college by spending all my awake time reading.

Over time I have developed a sort of hybrid method of reading. It combines some of the speed reading skills I learned in college and my natural plodding style of reading. If it's boring information I read the first line of the paragraph and skip to the next paragraph until I get to something that is interesting. Then I revert to my plodding style of reading and toil over every word absorbing each of them like a sponge. This is the way I read news and research data. For recreational reading, I discovered audio books several years ago. I guess I should actually call it recreational listening. For someone like me who has an innate curiosity about almost everything, you have to come to terms with reading.

Carolina Bays

I don't know how many of you I've told about this. I've always been interested in history and especially SC history. This includes some things that are almost, but not quite unique to SC. When I moved to Myrtle Beach, I discovered something called Carolina Bays. In all these years, I had never heard of them. Even when I first heard of them, I thought they were just ocean inlets along the coast of SC and NC. After some research, I found that they are not even that kind of bay. In fact, the bays in Carolina Bays refer to the bay trees growing there. Carolina Bays are oval shaped depressions in the earth. They range from small to very large. Some are filled with water and some are not. At the eastern end of the oval there is a sand berm along the edge. If you took a handful of rocks and through them at some sandy ground, you would probably get a formation that is shaped like a Carolina Bay. There are similar formations along the eastern and gulf coasts and they're known by other names in other places. If you look on a Google map of Myrtle Beach while it's in the aerial view mode, you can see the Carolina Bays just north west of the city. Carolina Bays have been studied and while there are theories about them, no one is certain about how they came to be. Someone took a large map and drew lines through the long axis of the ovals and extended the lines until they intersected. The lines apparently intersected somewhere in Ohio. My theory is that a very large meteor exploded over Ohio thousands of years ago and all the pieces landed where all the Carolina Bays type depressions are. Hey, you in the back of the class, wake up!

Flyboys

I remember my first solo flight. This was back in the early 80's. I had about 15 hours of training recorded in my flight book and I landed the plane with my instructor on board at the Stone Mountain Airport after finishing another lesson. He looked at me and said, "Ok, I think you're ready." I said, "Ready for what?" He said,"Your solo." I said, "Let's not rush into this, I think I would be happy if you just keep flying with me." But he wasn't listening, he was just walking back to the hanger. I taxied back out on the runway and gave it full-throttle. I had never been in a plane alone and it handled differently. It accelerated faster and when I got up speed and pulled back on the yoke, it seemed to jump off the runway. It made a lot of difference not having the extra weight of another person in the plane with me.

After that, I decided to buy a plane and then I was flying back and forth to South Carolina from Atlanta to visit the family. After I had enough hours of flying, I went for my license. I flew up to Conway and picked up the Flight Examiner. We started going through the maneuvers and I was winging it (no pun intended). I had not been trained for half the things he wanted me to do. I managed to get through the part where I was flying under-the-hood, which is when you put this contraption on your head that looks like a welding mask and only allows you to see the instruments. Then he killed the engine and told me to land the plane. I was pretty sure he knew what he was doing because I knew I didn't. So the idea is to fly the plane back to the runway with no power and land, which is to simulate this same sort of thing if you have an engine failure. Well, I was to close to the runway and too high. I had never even been trained to do an engine out landing. So I didn't know how to zig-zag to bleed off some airspeed and altitude. When I got to the runway, I was about 200 feet above it and there was no way that I could get it down to make the landing. By the time I got it down to the ground, I would be past the end of the runway and in the trees. At this point I had not touched the throttle. Doing so in my mind would be telling the Examiner I couldn't make the landing, which I couldn't. So rather than allowing the two of us to end up in the trees, the Examiner leaned over and gave it full throttle. I was thinking to myself, you blinked. Because I would have argued that I could have landed it if he had not given it power. So we made another circle of the airport and I landed. He told me I needed to practice the engine out drill and he gave me my license.

Since then, I have had a few more scary moments in a plane. I am licensed for Visual Flight Rules (VFR), which means I can fly when I can see far enough ahead to land. So I've never received any training in backing a plane up. On one of my trips back to Atlanta from SC, I ran into a rain storm. I turned around and went back to an airport I had just passed and landed the plane. I waited for awhile, but the rain just got worst. I called my cousin Dan who lived in Conyers at the time and he came and took me home. Thanks again, Dan.

On that same trip before I got to the storm, my engine just quit running. I fiddled with the throttle and it finally started again. Now fiddling with anything implies you don't know what you're doing and you end up fixing it just out of blind luck. So that correctly describes what happened. I don't know why the engine stopped and I don't know why it started.

On another occasion, I landed my plane at the Walterboro Airport and applied the brakes. When the brakes don't work, it seems like either the car or the plane, whichever you're in, begins to go faster. I don't know if it actually sped up, but I started doing everything you would if that happens in a car. I turned the engine off and looked for a gearshift because panic had set in. By the time I realized none of that would help, I was at the end of the runway. Fortunately, at Walterboro, there is a lot of room at the end of the runway. As I ran off the runway and hit the grass, the plane slowed down enough so that I could make a big u-turn.

On yet another occasion, I was in my brother Ron's plane. He was flying, which is a much safer thing than flying with me. He is Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) rated, which means he doesn't have to turn around when he comes to a storm. Besides that, he's a much better pilot than me. Anyhow, we were headed for the John's Island Airport when the door next to me popped open. When you're in an airplane flying over a 100 mph and the door within inches of you pops open, your life flashes in front of you. Being the cool dude my brother is, he tells me to close it. Well it turns out that it's impossible to close the door when the plane is flying so I pull it as close to being closed as I can get it. Ron slows the plane down to where it only sounds like a hurricane rather than the tornado it sounded like before. While I'm struggling to keep the door from being ripped off, Ron is grinning and asking me if I'm having fun. I'm sure Ron has a lot more stories of near death experiences than I do.

Myrtle Beach

"The convenience of living in this modern world" he said to Ethel as he sat by the window overlooking the beach, "we don't have to go out and look for them signs no more, there goes another one." Jimbo was talking about one of those long banners trailing behind an airplane as it flew by their hotel. It was advertising a sale at the Eagles Beach Shop. There must be a thousand of those shops in Myrtle Beach. They advertise that they are selling t-shirts with "My Mama went to Myrtle Beach and this is all she brung me!!!" printed on them for $4.99. When you go in the shop looking for it, they say "you see that lady walking out the door? Well, she got the last one, but we got this one for $12.00. How many you want?" But Ethel wasn't paying Jimbo no mind, cause she knew they had some killin' to do.

If I was going to write a book, that would be the first paragraph. Living in Myrtle Beach is a mixed bag. I can look out at the beach and see families having fun and playing in the water, but when I read the paper it tells about a different side of Myrtle Beach. It tells about the corrupt politicians and the ongoing battle between the people who ride motorcycles and those that don't. Then there's the crime. I don't know if there is statistically a lot of crime here or if that's all the Sun News can find to write about. The people who comment on the stories in the online version of the paper call it "Murder Beach". But maybe their perspective is jaded because there sure are a lot of tourists here. Or maybe the tourists just don't read the paper.

We Are What We Eat

I've read a lot of articles about the foods we eat. I get a daily email from "Real Age", which has an overwhelming amount of information about the foods we should eat. Overwhelming is the key word. As a result, I'm also confused about what is healthy eating. I received an email from a friend of mine who wanted to make a point. She invoked her status as a medical professional and told me that my "food experiments" are, this is my word, "crap". She's right. She asked me if I had read a book by Michael Pollan and I haven't. But I have now looked it up on the Internet and at least have the gist of it. In his book, "Food Rules" (not to be read as yeh man, food rules, dude), he lists 64 rules about the kinds of foods we should eat. There is a short article here that tells you about 7 of them. I don't want to over simplify or misstate what Mr. Pollan has written, but he seems to be saying that you can eat almost anything as long as you eat it before it gets to the processors. My friend seemed to be particularly offended by the Ramen noodles that I put in some of my "food experiments". I don't know how they are made or what is in them, but I am pretty sure that if you buried them and they were dug up in a million years, you could still eat them. I think that breaks one of the food rules, "if it won't rot, don't eat it". That reminds me of the comment that I made about letting food "rest". My friend said, and again this is my interpretation of her words, "if it's already rotted, don't eat it".

Thanksgivings Past

Mom sent me an email and said that I should write a story about the time I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for the family and my neighbors cooked some things to help me out. This appears to be a slippery slope to me. What she really wants to know after all these years is did my neighbors actually cook the whole meal and I just took credit for it. I think Mom has a list of things she is suspicious about and if I spill the beans on this Thanksgiving thing, she'll want me to write stories about other things on her list. Well, as my brother Ron would say, "do I look stupid?"

The truth of the matter is that I actually did cook that meal and my neighbors gave me more moral support than anything else. They cooked a couple of dishes and tried to tell me how to cook the rest of it. They weren't completely successful, though. When I started cutting the turkey, I happened to notice there was a bag inside of it. You people who have cooked a turkey are way ahead of me. I don't remember what he said at the time, but Ron probably said "do you look stupid?" more as a statement than a question. Well, how many turkeys have you cooked, Ron?

Did you see that? This writing business is great. At the end of the previous paragraph, I allowed my self to have the last word with Ron. I'm sure he'll notice that. Now if I can just write a story about winning an argument with my brother, Don, my Mt. Everest of personal achievement will have been accomplished. Mom, if you have any suspicions about anything my brothers did, I'll be happy to write the true story about that.

The Fighting Sioux

When I'm in my car, I always listen to National Public Radio (NPR). Their discussions are usually interesting. Today I was listening to a debate between leaders of two different groups of Sioux Indians in North Dakota. The athletic teams of the University of North Dakota (UND) are nicknamed the Fighting Sioux. One of the leaders, Mr. Iron, was in favor of UND keeping the nickname. The other leader, Mr. Taken-alive, wanted UND to stop using the nickname. When Mr. Taken-alive was introduced, I couldn't keep my mind on what they were talking about for wondering how he got that name. I'm just glad I already had a last name or I could have been known today as Mr. Don't-take-that-last-biscuit.

The End of the Swamp

This is the rest of the swamp story. We awoke the next morning early and loaded our stuff in the canoe. Not far down the creek we came to that tree I saw the night before that had fallen across the waterway. It looked as if it had been there for quite a while. We laid in the bottom of the canoe and pulled the canoe under the tree. We were covered with spider webs when we got to the other side. Obviously no one had been this way in some time. I was beginning to wonder again if we were going the right way. We continued on as the waterway narrowed. It eventually became a ditch with barely enough water in it to keep the canoe afloat. We moved the canoe along by pushing against the side of the ditch with the paddles. The vegetation was thick and at times blocked the waterway. We encountered dozens of huge spider webs that stretched across the ditch. Finally, the ditch began to get wider and the water deeper. Fish were jumping out of the water. Several of them landed in the boat and we threw them back in the water. Then we came into a river. At last we had found something we could identify on that map. It was the Suwanee River. By this time we were snarling at each other again and in the wide river we were having a problem guiding the canoe again. I just gave up and let the river take us along. At times we were floating down the river sideways. The landing where we were to meet the man to take us back where we started came into sight. We loaded the canoe on his truck and began the 40 mile trip by road back to the other side of the swamp. The silence was thicker than the spider webs we encountered earlier. When we arrived back at our starting point, everyone was talking about the huge alligator that attacked and killed a smaller alligator in the cove where they kept the canoes. If that would have happened the day before, there would be no story to write about. Earlier today, I checked the Okefenokee Swamp website. Apparently they don't allow the public to take the kind of trip we took anymore. They do allow day trips in rented canoes, but they also give a warning. If we have to send a rescue team out for you, you will have to pay the cost of the rescue. I don't think that was even an option when we took the trip. In fact, if we had not found our way out, they would still be charging us rent on the canoe.

More Swamp

In my previous Blog, I was telling you about my trip through the Okefenokee Swamp. My friend and I had arrived at the half way point of the trip. We were tired, frustrated and not in a good mood. The bugs, heat and humidity were constant. The darkness was rapidly approaching. We got our things out of the canoe and put them in the tent. We talked about the days events. At least for me, this was not a fun adventure. The waterways through which we had passed to get to this point were about 15 to 30 feet wide and weren't a problem to navigate, but there was always the question "did we take the right waterway?" Up this point, apparently we had. As I looked in the direction we were to go the next day, I could see trees and limbs that had fallen across the waterway. We were at a camping site, but was it the right camping site. When I say camping site, I'm talking about a small elevated platform only slightly larger than a two-man tent surrounded by swamp. I seriously considered going back the way we came. As we settled in for the night, I took the flashlight and scanned the swamp and waterway. It was a little disconcerting to see red eyes looking back at me. We had the company of several alligators. More later.

I had a request to review the movie "Death at a Funeral". So I watched it last night. It was pretty funny, but as I watched it...it was obviously not the movie I was asked to review. I think I was supposed to be reviewing a movie with Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence. As it turns out there are three movies with the same name. There are two British versions and an American version. The original one, the one that I watched was the first British version made in 2007. Then there is another British version made in 2010 and the American remake with Chris Rock made in 2010.
So for what it's worth, the 2007 version is not MKI friendly and I would give it a 3 star rating.

Alligators, Snakes and Monkeys

The Post and Courier has a story this morning about the TryCharleston event. There seems to be concerns about the swimming part of the event. It takes place in an alligator infested lake. It just doesn't seem to be a good idea from a PR standpoint to call it a half Ironman triathlon when you might come out of the lake as half of an Ironman.

This story brought back memories of of an adventure I had back in the early '80s. A friend of mine and I decided to take a trip through the alligator and snake infested Okefenokee Swamp close to the Georgia-Florida border. We rented a canoe and took enough food for two days. This was the first time that either my friend or I had been in a canoe. We weren't well prepared for this adventure. We had a crude map provided by the park service, but as we paddled our way through the swamp it became increasingly confusing as to which way we should go. There were only a few markers and too many opportunities to go in the wrong direction. The whole trip was supposed to be about 26 miles and take two days. After about 5 miles, I had the same feeling I had on my first and last skydiving trip. It was that feeling that I felt just after I jumped out of the airplane and before the parachute opened...exhilarating nausea. But that's another story. As we ventured further into the swamp, we passed one hungry looking alligator after another. They stared at us as if they were sizing us up for their next meal. Will it be the skinny one in the front or the big one in the back. As the sun was setting, we reached the the small two man tent set up on a small platform in the middle of the swamp. It was a relief to get a break from snarling at each other. That was due mostly from the frustration of my friend continually trying to guide the canoe from the front. I wasn't an expert on canoeing, but after a few miles into the swamp...I could tell that the person in the back of the boat should be the one guiding it. So with great relief, we had made it to the half-way point of the trip. More later.

This movie reviewing business is getting complicated. I was calling the movies some family members like "vanilla", but that doesn't seem to be the kind of strict standard that is needed. If you've heard of Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru, then you're on the right track. The standard needed for this category formally known as "vanilla" should be called the MKI standard. If it meets the MKI standard, people with movie tastes like Mom can look at it without fear of being offended. The MKI standard is based on the three monkeys...Mizaru (see no evil), Kikazaru (hear no evil) and Iwazaru (speak no evil). There actually is a fourth monkey...Shizaru (do no evil), but what's that got to do with looking at a movie? I thought about changing the order of the monkeys so that it would be the KIM standard, but I'm not sure my niece would appreciate that.

I have reviewed two movies, "Up" and "Everybody's Fine" that meet the MKI standard. I reviewed another one tonight that also meets the MKI standard. "The Blindside" was a pretty good movie. Sandra Bullock got an Oscar for her performance in that movie. All through the movie I was trying to figure out who the actor was that played Sandra Bullock's husband. In the credits I saw that it was the singer, Tim McGraw. I think that was the first time I saw him without a cowboy hat. I would give this movie 3.5 stars.

Sugarjack

Sugerjack is eligible for Medicare. Happy Birthday Sugarjack. It seems like only yesterday when we rode our bicycles together down the dirt road we lived on. Three of us shared our first bike together, but now the brothers had outgrown the small bike except for Sugarjack. So at Christmas time there were two new larger bikes and the smaller bike looked all new again. Daddy had painted it for Sugarjack. I think looking back on it now, that little painted bike was more special than it seemed at the time.

I watched the movie "Everybody's Fine" last night. It was a real tear jerker. If you like that kind of movie, I would recommend this one. I have seen a lot of Robert DeNiro's movies, but to me he has always played Robert DeNiro playing Robert DeNiro. This is the first movie he has done that I can remember where he took on the role of the character he played. He did a good job and I would give this movie 4 stars and an ok for Mom.

Slow that car down!

An interesting website was sent to me yesterday by Sadie. You can look at it here. The site lists thousands of speed traps around the country. I found a lot of them around Myrtle Beach. The only one I found in Colleton county is near the intersection of Hwy 17 and the Greenpond Hwy. My brother travels that route about 4 times a week. I'm sure it doesn't concern him because he drives slower than my mother. The same with my cousin at Edisto Beach. There are several speed traps in that area, but he doesn't drive fast enough to worry about it. On the other hand, my brother in Mt. Pleasant should memorize the speed traps in that area.

Taxes and Census

It's tax day. The IRS has admitted to being confused and making mistakes with tax returns this year. So I have decided to give them a little more time to figure things out. I filed for an extension. I have actually finished my taxes, but they haven't figured out what they owe me from last year. They need help.

I read where SC was one of the leaders in the percentage of people who had returned the 2010 census forms. I waited patiently for my form to come in the mail. On census day I had not yet received a form. I started trying to find out why. I found out that the Census Bureau doesn't send forms to P.O. Boxes. So with a little more research I found that forms could be obtained at the local library. Now I've been counted. I don't know how many people would go to much trouble to fill out a census form. I've learned the value of the census other than being sure your state gets its share of federal funds. A few years ago, I began to research my family's history. I found that one of the major sources of information for doing research is the US Census. So when my family's descendants research this year's census, they will find that I was living in a P.O. Box in Myrtle Beach, SC.

I do not have any food experiments today, but I can verify the value of my previous post about allowing food to "rest". The corned beef I cooked a few days ago was ok when I cooked it, but now it's delicious.

Murton, Bacon and Hamburger

I found this article in the Charleston Post and Courier this morning. "Murton's walkoff single cuts Power". I have been following the career of Matt Murton for a few years and he fell off the radar. He played for the Chicago Cubs for a while and the last time I heard about him, he was in the Oakland A's organization. As it turns out this Murton is not Matt, but his younger brother Luke. He is playing for the Charleston Riverdogs. Both of the brothers played for Georgia Tech in college and I know about them because they are the sons of my long time best friends' neighbor. My friends, Harold and Davina, live near Atlanta.

This reminds me of the "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" theory. I think it means that everyone is related to some famous person within six relatives. For example, my cousin's cousin's cousin's cousin's cousin's cousin is Luke Murton. In the case of my friend Harold, his last name is one of the most common names, so I think he is related to everyone by two degrees. In my case, even though it seems like I am related to everyone within 2 degrees, it's probably more like eight degrees.

Another thing about my friend Harold, he is an excellent cook. I think that's what I should call him. I would have said excellent chef except I think chefs get paid to cook. On the other hand, as you may have read in some of my previous articles, I experiment with food. Here's another experiment. Put a lb. of ground beef in a skillet. When it is about half cooked, add 3-4 cups of fresh mushrooms. I love mushrooms. When the mushrooms have cooked down for a while, add 3 cups of water. Bring it to a boil and add two packages of Ramen noodles. Turn the heat down and let it simmer for about 5 minutes. Then add a family sized can of mushroom soup. Stir all that up and let it simmer for a while. This is kind of a homemade version of hamburger helper.

I reviewed a couple of movies last night. One was "The Closed Book" and the other was "Drool". You will see from these reviews that there is a benefit to reading my reviews. You won't have to go to the video store and waste your time and money on these two dogs. I've done that for you. "The Closed Book" was like a basketball game to me. It only gets interesting in the last few minutes. The main actors were two that I haven't seen in a while...Tom Conti and Darryl Hannah. I would rate this movie at 1.5 stars. With a title like "Drool", you might really get excited about the movie. Don't let your curiosity get the best of you. I've never heard of the actors in this movie except the guy who was dead most of the movie did look familiar. I would give this movie a half star. As a public service, if you've heard of a movie that you might want to see, leave the name of it in the comment section below and I will review it and give you my opinion.

Sweaty Grunt

When I was 17, I went to work for a power line construction company. A crew consisted of a foreman, linemen, apprentices, equipment operators and grunts. The grunts were the entry level jobs and they were called grunts because they did all the heavy lifting and hard work. Grunt was also a derogatory name that the crew members who had "paid their dues" called us. I was a grunt and as a result, I sweated profusely everyday from the hard work. I can remember sweating while working in 8 degree weather one winter in north Georgia. It was the equipment operator's responsibility to fill up a 10 gallon water can with ice and water every morning. On the side of the water can was an attachment to hang a container that dispensed salt tablets. I would take them by the handfuls. Since then salt tablets seem to have disappeared.

I read an article in the Post and Courier this morning that brought these memories back. You can read it here. It caught my eye because it would have been useful to have some BANa when a family member was sick recently and became dehydrated. She eventually had to go to the hospital to recover. The first thing they usually do in such a situation is to administer an IV. In the P&C article a Charleston doctor had a light bulb moment and wondered why there wasn't an IV equivalent that could be taken orally. As a result, he created BANa. This idea of replacing electrolytes has taken a long time to evolve from taking handfuls of salt tablets to the safer Gatorade to BANa. It still has some controversy associated with these electrolyte replacing drinks, so as they say, consult your physician first. It would have been great to have Gatorade when I was a grunt.

More Movies

The movies I reviewed earlier today were as I said "weird". I reviewed 2 more tonight. One fell into the weird category and one in the vanilla category. The weird one was "The Dark Backward". I reviewed it specifically because it was on the top of a list I found of weird movies. There were some notable actors in the movie, but in addition to being weird, it was in the running for the worst movie I've ever seen. It gets "0" stars and I plan to zero it out of my movie files because it was so bad.

There are some folks in my family that like vanilla movies. So in an effort to find a movie that they might like, I tied myself to my chair and forced myself to watch Disney's Up. It's an animated movie that I heard good things about. I think the vanilla lovers might like it because I barely made it through the movie without jumping off the balcony. That's a good sign. If I can momentarily force myself to see the movie from their perspective, I would give it 3.5 stars. So this is one I would recommend to Mom.

Movies

Movie critics seem to have an easy job. I've never found one with whom I completely agree. So if I give you my opinion on a movie, I'm just as likely to have people not agree with me as I don't agree with them. With that bit of logic, I declare myself a MOVIE CRITIC.

I have hundreds of movies that I've never watched, so I will review them for you and maybe there will be one you like. In the 70's I used to go to "art" movie theaters in Atlanta. One of the strangest movies I have ever seen was made by David Lynch. Actually, he's made a lot of strange movies. Remember the tv series "Twin Peaks". But the strangest one was "Eraserhead". I consider myself a logical person and when I see or hear something that doesn't make sense, I get an uneasy feeling. It's sort of like driving down a road that you think you know where it goes and suddenly you find yourself somewhere you didn't expect to be. I remember feeling shocked when the audience started laughing at a scene that was horrifying to me.

Another movie that I saw back in the 70's was the cult movie "Rocky Horror Show". It played at the same theater every night at midnight. The cult following would dress up like characters in the movie and when the actors would say certain memorable lines, the audience would say them in unison with the actors.

Recently I watched a couple of newer movies that were a little strange, but not in the same way that "Eraserhead" and "Rocky Horror Show" were strange. "Memento" and "eXistenZ" are both weird movies. These are movies that while watching them you have to keep rethinking what just happened. "eXistenZ" appears to be a movie that was made on a $10 budget. In the scene where they are driving down a road, it looks like the car is sitting in a studio with a screen behind it like old 1930's movies. But with actors like Jude Law and Willem Dafoe, you have to think it's worth watching.

Using a rating system of 1-5 stars, I would give all of these movies 5 stars for weirdness. If you don't like weird or strange movies, don't even watch them. Among the reasons, at least for me, for watching movies is the potential for being weird. Here's a special alert for MOM, don't even think about watching these movies!

Howard, thanks for the corned beef idea. I have already ruined the one I bought Saturday. I'll try your idea when I finish this brisket next year. Now that I think about it, corned beef does go with cabbage.

Thank you for reading my blog. Before you leave, please check out the ads that interest you and I will name my next child after you. Moon Pie is anxious to have a little brother. This is not how I make my living, but it gives me enough change to ward off the panhandlers when I go to Walmart.

Summer

It's 64 degrees outside today. It's a perfect day to be at the beach. There's a bright orange ice cream truck parked at the end of the street next to my building. If he drives another 100 feet, he'll be in the ocean. Music is coming from the truck to let the people on the beach know he's there. The song is Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Except for the song, it sounds like music you would hear coming from a merry-go-round. I wonder if there is some kind of marketing psychology behind playing Christmas music in the summer.

I have a lot of relatives and I may mention them occasionally. Today one of my cousins is getting married. I want to wish him and his bride a long and happy marriage. He doesn't play golf so I don't think his wife has anything to worry about. It's time to tell a secret. My cousin's wife should ask him "how can you get in a wreck when driving down an airport runway in the dark?" This is another thing I suggest you not try at home.

I don't have a food experiment today, but the leftover from yesterday required a serious amount of Texas Pete to make it edible. I did have a good day at the grocery store. I bought 10 pounds of potatoes and a 3 lb. corned beef brisket for $5.48. I think I'll cook the brisket along with a couple of lbs. of potatoes in the slow cooker. This will be another first for me and I'm wondering if I should peel the potatoes. That would break my "too much preparation" rule. I think I'll just throw it all in the cooker and go watch tv.

Fire!!! Fire!!!

I live on the 18th floor of a 23 floor condominium building. The fire alarm has gone off twice so far today and 5 times this month. The first one was an actual fire. The elevators shut down as they were supposed to do and I walked 18 floors down the stairs. When I got to the first floor, I just went to my car and went grocery shopping. Nothing like a fire to get you out of the house to do what you keep putting off. When I got back about an hour later I only had to wait a few minutes to catch the elevator.

Since the actual fire, I haven't really paid much attention to the alarms. I stood at the window and watched the people watching me. They probably don't know I have a highly developed sense of smell and I know nothing is burning. By the way, don't try this at home or anywhere else.

Here's my food experiment for today. I pretty much do all my cooking in a stainless steel frying pan. It's easy to clean. Put a can of salmon in the frying pan (remove the can first). Add two cups of V8 juice, one cup of water and some curry powder. Bring it to a boil and add two packages of semi-crushed Ramen noodles. Turn the stove down to simmer and go watch tv. Don't get to comfortable because it will be ready in about 5 minutes. This is one of those dishes that's better if it's given time to "rest". My nephew taught me about "resting" food. It just seems to help some food. I'm not sure any of you will think that this concoction could get enough "rest".

First Blog

It just occurred to me that I am starting this blog on the same day that Tiger Woods is playing public golf again. In fact, if I keep writing Tiger Woods here, some news outlet may google his name and make me famous. My brother and I do have something in common with Tiger, but I'll keep it a secret until CNN calls.

My intention with this blog is to gradually over time tell the world every secret I know about. That should get some of you on the edge of your seats. On the other hand, I will probably never be told another secret.

I am single and do what a lot of single men do. I cook and eat food in ways that most women would never do. The basic rules for my cooking are; NEVER use a recipe, explore the grocery store for foods that MAY taste interesting if they are combined, don't buy any food that requires a lot of preparation (think can opener) and cook things that require a minimal amount of watching (develop a sense of smell that can detect food that is on the edge of burning).

Here's my food experiment for the day. Go to Walmart and find those little pound cakes that come 8 to the box. Slice one of the cakes in two pieces so that you have two thinner pound cakes. Put some foil on a cookie sheet to avoid another dreaded couple of words to a bachelor....wash dishes. Lay the pound cakes on the cookie sheet with the cut side up. Spray the tops of them with butter flavored cooking spray. Put the cookie sheet in the oven on the top rack. Turn the oven on broil and go watch tv. Well, that's what I do because I have developed the sense of smell needed to keep them from burning. In your case though you may have to keep checking them until they are slightly toasted. Good with coffee.