A Scout is Trustworthy

 

A scout is:

               Trustworthy

               Loyal
               Helpful
               Friendly
               Courteous
               Kind
               Obedient
               Cheerful
               Thrifty
               Brave
               Clean
               Reverent             

I learned those words some 40 plus years ago.  More than learned them, I built the structure of my thoughts and habits and goals around them.  I lived and breathed them then, and live and breath them now.

That’s not to say that I am perfect in any way.  Far from it, I have failed to live up to that standard most of the days of my life.  But I try. 

The first point of the Scout Law above is that a scout is trustworthy.  And like all things that point can really be taken a bit too far.

Some 35 years ago one wonderful summer day, I came across a boy that truly believed in the absolute of the Scout Law.  It surprised me then, it still confounds me now.

I was at summer camp along with 250-300 other boys just outside of Willits California at a camp that is now known as Wente Scout Reservation.

Being one of the older boys in camp, in addition to swimming and sailing, I had duties to make sure that everyone around me was doing the right thing and being safe. 

I needed to relieve myself and so headed back up onto the hill that held the various campsites to use one of the “outhouses”.  For any of you that may not know what an outhouse is, it is a small wooden building built over a deep hole that has been dug in the ground.  Within the building is a floor and raised bench with one or more places to sit comfortably suspended above the hole so that you can urinate or deficate into the pit below.

One of the more aromatic of locations in an outdoor camp, though not the most pleasant.

At this particular camp, the outhouses were actually fairly large and accommodated two or three boys side-by-side.

In any case, I walked up the hill to the outhouse and opened the door to find two fairly large boys holding a third boy by his ankles with that boy lowered down through the seat hole and into the pit below.

I immediately  began to chastise the two boys for what they were doing and demanded that they haul the third boy up.  I  challenged them to explain to me how it was that they were living up to the Scout Law by suspending the poor boy over a pile of shit.

I was just hitting full volume and stride when I heard a voice issue from below the seat saying: “Its okay, I asked them to.  I saw a snake down here that I wanted to catch”.

The two “holders” confirmed that indeed, they had been down by the waterfront when the third boy came up to them and asked if they would help catch a snake.  And so they had followed him, up the hill and he talked them into holding him by the ankles so he wouldn’t fall in while trying to rescue the snake.

 

Now I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t trust my two older brothers to hold me by the ankles over a pit of that muck (course, if you knew my brothers back then, maybe that isn’t saying so much).  But certainly, if family can’t be trusted, complete strangers shouldn’t be.  At least that is the cynical side of me thinking.

Now I cant say for sure what would have happened if I hadn’t come along when I did.  But I have often wondered what happened to that young man, that boy who truly believed that all scouts were trustworthy.

 

 

 Copyright © 2011 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved

"I Said; Rev'er Up, Son"

My eldest brother’s first car was a 1960 T-bird.

 

Beautiful, royal blue exterior, cream colored interior.

 

Front end lowered.

 

Rear end stacked up.

 

360 Cubic Inch Interceptor V-8 powered.

 

Glass-packed dual exhaust turned down 60 degrees right under the rear seat.

 

8-Track powering 12 speakers; long before throbbing music was in vogue.

 

 

 

That car didn’t idle, it roared.  Throaty, deep, powerful.  You could hear it coming, feel it passing, and remember its going away.

 

And it was fast.  Speedometer was wide, with markings up to 160 miles per hour.  Pegging the needle on the far side of that was no problem when you put your foot in it.

 

Crager slots front and back, wide rear tires, lots of chrome.

 

Every cop who saw it just knew it needed to be ticketed for something or other.

 

 

And Barry loved to drive.  Heck, most days after school he would run Robin out Mines Road to her house, then up over Mount Hamilton, on down into San Jose, and back up to Livermore just to be going somewhere.  All that driving and all that speed meant that there was a lot of love that went in to that car.  Every week, sometimes several times a week Barry was tinkering on that thing.  Adjusting brakes, timing, fine tuning the carb, whatever.

 

That thing idled at a disjointed 450 rpm.  So slow you could hear the individual cylinders fire; the car rocked side to side by the torque.

 

 

One afternoon rolling out east on Highway 84, just almost to the city limits sign, one of the local cops fell in behind Barry and trailed a couple blocks before hitting the lights and pulling him over.   Highway 84 headed east out near the city limits was a two-lane blacktop back then with bare dirt and gravel shoulders.

 

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the locals were Barney Fife caliber.  In fact, thinking on it, I am sure that most of them weren’t even allowed to carry one round in their pocket.  And come to think of that, my brothers and I should be thankful for that. 

 

But, what they may have lacked in skill, reasoning, and intelligence, they made up for in enthusiasm.

 

In any case, this old boy had been bored and looking for something to do when Barry drove by.  So he just naturally saw that car, and knew that he could write himself a few fix it tickets to please Chief Michaels.

 

Barry, worrying about just that thing, and knowing that his pipes were too short, and too loud, shut the engine down even before getting off onto the shoulder.  In retrospect, that might not have been the smartest move.  That cop was intent on giving Barry a ticket, and if he had left it idling, not only would the ticket have been faster, but the cop might have had some warning about what was racing towards him at roughly the speed of sound. 

 

 

But as they say; “If I knew then what I know now, I’d a been born rich and retired”.

 

 

Officer Jameson came strolling up and bent down to look in the car window, leaning heavily on his ham sized fists on the driver’s side sill.  He looked each of us over, slow and serious, kinda like he knew exactly what we had been up to the previous Friday.  

 

He turned his mirrored glasses on Barry and said: “Let’s see if’n this thing is fit for driving on the streets shall we?”   

 

Then he set in on a road-side inspection.  He checked the head lights, tail lights, and turn signals.  He got out his tape measure and made sure the front bumper and exhaust pipes were above the minimum height limit.  He checked the tread depth on the tires, and the function of the wipers.  Yep, that man was on an enthusiasm fueled mission to make the world safe from a 1960 Ford Thunderbird.

 

Unfortunately, none of those checks turned up anything that he could write up.  Barry was just starting to relax a bit, thinking that he may have gotten lucky.  But Jameson had been saving his ace-in-the-hole for last.  He came back up to the driver’s window, kneeled down, looked Barry in the eye, and said; “Let’s hear her run, boy”.

 

Barry’s color faded some.  He moved his right foot as far away from the accelerator pedal as he could get it, and just barely bumped the starter.  The engine caught, without an rpm surge, and just started to roll over in that cylinder-at-a-time firing, as quiet as it could possibly be.

 

Barry’s color started to improve some.

 

Then Jameson did the oddest thing I’d ever seen a cop do.  Now at that point in life, I had seen cops sleep on duty, race each other to the donut shop, spin tires away from the police station for no reason, and do any manner of odd things.  But never something like this.

 

Jameson got down on his hands and knees, lowered his head down below the car door level, getting his ear right down by the ground and told Barry to “Rev her up”.

 

Barry’s color ebbed again.  He gently placed his foot on the accelerator pedal and just barely tickled it.

 

The RPM’s surged, and so did the sound.  Loud it was, but maybe not loud enough to ticket.  And so, we heard Jameson say again, “Rev her up”.   Barry tried to walk the tightrope again, just tapping the gas.  RPMs up higher, noise up louder, and while the engine sure hadn’t done much more than hit a 1,000 RPM, that time we knew it was gonna be a ticket for sure.

 

 

Yep, old Jameson had us, he could of written a noise fix it right then and there, and if he’d been smart, he’d of done it then and been off. But he wasn’t done making his point.  Unfortunately.

 

He raised up, looked at Barry long and hard and said, “I said; Rev’er up, Son, and when I say Rev’er up, I mean REV’ER UP; You hear me?” and put his head down again.

 

I saw it coming from the back seat.  Jeff saw it coming from the passenger side.  Barry saw it coming, cause I saw his muscles tense.  Old Jameson however, he didn’t.  He just stuffed his face down to the gap between the car and the dirt and yelled; “Now Rev’er Up”.

 

Barry planted his foot on the pedal.  While I don’t know for sure, I expect that he might of dented the floor with the accelerator right then.

 

The 360 Interceptor V-8 jumped from 450 RPM up to 3,000.  The decibels blew right past the acceptable range and peaked right up in the 175 db range.  60 cubic feet of hot exhaust, dust, sand and rocks blew out from underneath the car.

 

Jameson came up coughing, tearing up, and coated in dust.  His normally blue uniform looked as though he had just sold out and joined the Confederacy.   

 

He was talking a bit louder too.

 

 

Barry got his ticket.  Jameson went back to the station and got a shower.

 

Copyright © 2013 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved

Mom Wants a Girl

I am the youngest of three brothers.

My mother had my oldest brother when she was 17, me when she was 20.

My brothers and I were high energy to put it nicely, but Hellions is a lot more honest.  In fact there were a lot of people back in the late 50’s and early 60’s (and mid-and late 60’s and into the 70’s if truth be told) that tried to get mom to drug us boys down so that we were a little more manageable.  Bless her, mom always just responded with “Their just full blooded boys” and let us exercise and run it off.

Anyway, one day when I was in the 8^th grade or so, I got to wondering if my mother had wanted to have a daughter to share all those girl things with.  So I decided to ask her.  The conversation went a bit like this:

“Hey mom, did you ever want to have a daughter?”

She looked me very deliberately straight and level in the eyes and said; “Yep”.

Now I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t the night before, so it didn’t take me long to realize that she had intended me to be a girl….Now there was a truly frightening thought. 

But I am if nothing else prepared to see things through, so…..I thought about it and said; “Oh, I see, well why didn’t you try again?”

She looked me straight in the eyes again and quietly said: “Cause I ain’t dumb enough to risk having 4 boys”.

 

Copyright © 2011 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved

Getting the Right Deal

I grew up frugal. And while I could lie about it to you all, I suppose things haven’t really changed much.

Of course, in weaker moments, I have been known to blame it on my genes. You know what they say, if you ever want to hear Abraham Lincoln scream, just give a Dutchman a penny.  Notoriously tight fisted we tend to be.

And given my propensity to make copper wire out of a penny by stretching my dollars as far as I can, there are few things I enjoy more than a good old fashioned garage sale or flea market.

That is genetic as well. Whenever my father was asked by a sale’s proprietor what he was looking for, my father’s most oft quoted response has been; “Just the thing”. Meaning that he has no specific thing that he needs, but just that he enjoys poking through other people’s cast-offs for a good deal.

So, at least I can say that I come by my second hand browsing honestly.

 

Some years back, the Boy Scout troop that I was associated with decided to drive out into the Central Valley of California to the small town of Turlock. Twice a year, Turlock hosts one of the largest old car swap meets in California.

If you haven’t gone to one lately, I must say that swap meets have changed some since I was a boy. Back then, a swap meet would be a gathering of mostly men who dumped a hodge-podge collection of rusty and greasy used car parts on the ground and if you could figure out what it was, you could haggle over the price and head home with your new “treasure”.

Now-a-days, heck, fully half of the sellers are selling new parts, half of what is left is selling antiques and collectables, and the last few are rusty-greasy types from days of yore.

 

In any case, on the ride over to Turlock, some of the boy's fathers who were aware of my garage sale haunts began to chide me some.

One said with a laugh; “Hey, Marty, when we get there will you give me some pointers on how to get a really good deal?”

Another chimed in with: “Marty should have to stay in the car for the first half hour to give the rest of us a chance”.

And so the good natured kidding went for the last 30 minutes or so of the drive.

Now, I’ve been know to dish it out a bit. A dry witticism here, and pointed remark there. And so, as all was in fun, I laughed along with the group and agreed, that they could learn a thing or two from an expert such as myself, and that I would only charge them a dollar or two a piece to for the pleasure of watching me operate.

After gaining entrance the boys headed off to look at the show cars, and we fathers headed towards the sellers.

 

Holding up my end of the kidding from the drive in, I turned to the rest of the fathers as we approached the first booth and said: “Okay gentlemen, if’n you want to learn, watch closely now”.

The booth was some 40 foot wide and 10 feet deep. Tables piled with small items were up front along the isle and larger things like fenders and doors and engine blocks were stacked behind.

Looking over the junk on the first table, I noticed an unused sharpening stone. I picked it up and asked the man behind the table how much he wanted for it. He looked and said, “Oh, that’s Bob’s, he’ll have to give you a price”, and pointed towards another man on his side of the tables some 30 feet away.

I held up the stone and hollered “Hey Bob, how much do you want for this”

He glanced my way and said: “What is it?”

“Worth less than it was 5 seconds ago if you don’t even know what your selling”, I replied with a grin.

Bob waked over.

He looked at the sharpening stone and said “How about a buck?”

I said; “I was thinking a quarter”.

“Tell you what” Bob says, “I’ll flip you for it, if you win, a quarter, if I win, a buck”

“Okay“ I say, “but we have to use your quarter”.

Now if Bob had been paying attention right then, he would have known that he was headed for trouble. But he was caught up in the spirit of the thing and promptly dug into his pocket and came out with a quarter.

“Call it in the Air”, he said, flipping the coin up high and catching it against the back of his left hand, covered by the right..

I called heads, to Bob’s dismay, when he lifted his right hand, the shiny head was pointed at the sky.

“Well, guess you get it for a quarter” Bob told me.

I dug a dollar bill out of my pocket, smiled and said; “Can you make change for a buck?”

Bob just looked at me a moment, then shook his head and said: “Aw hell, just take the damn thing”.

 

I walked back to the open mouth scout fathers and said: “And that gentlemen, is how its done”.

 

You know, come to think of it, none of them have said a word about my second hand shopping habits since.

　

- © 2013 Marty K Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

I've Been Told I Snore

There is a nasty rumor that has been spread around. 

It has been reported that I snore.

Loudly.

Sonorously.

Enthusiastically.



Spread by good authority, too.

By universal authority in fact.

But it bears note, not by universally good authority.

And so, rumor or no, I remain unconvinced.



Now, 20 years ago when I was camping and backpacking a lot with the Scouts and 4-H, I used to laugh it off and claim that my snoring was “Self-Defense”.

You see, if a night prowling predator were to come around, their keen hearing would pick up my snoring from a great distance. And any critter that heard a loud, deep, regular growling coming out of a camp, wouldn’t willingly try to sneak into the camp just to meet up with something that is so obviously bigger and by implication meaner than it.

And truth be told, in all of the thousands of nights I have spent sleeping in the hills, mountains, forests and deserts of this land, I have never had a camp raided by a bear, mountain lion, coyote, or raccoon. So maybe, just maybe, I have to accept a kernel of truth about the rumor.



And I have been told that I snore loud enough to raise the dead.

And while I really can’t say yea or nay to that, I tend to disbelieve it as well. You see, I can attest that if I raise the dead, none of them have been bothered enough to come calling at night. Not even in my dreams.

At least, not yet….

Thankfully.



And the most vocal of the rumor mongers is my wife, of course.

But you already knew that, didn’t you?

The problem there is that I have lived with her long enough to know that she has a tendency to exaggerate. To add colorful embellishments into stories to make them more impressive. Like her claim that I snore so loud it wakes her up. Obviously a gross overstatement.

I should know, I’m a whole lot closer to it than she is and its never waken me up yet.

- © 2013 Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Our First Million

My brothers and I were good capitalists.  Or at least we had fond hopes of being good capitalists someday.  At the time, the best you really could have said of us was that we were good capitalists in training. 


We grew up at a time when that was rather counterculture here in the California.  At least for capitalists.


The upcoming generation at the time was pretty anti.  Anti most everything that existed to be honest, but especially anti-capitalism.  In their minds, capitalism was the root of all evil.  Never mind they drove a car to school that had been made by an evil corporation; or that school was paid for by taxes gleaned from business; or that their parents were using money they earned to pay for Spring Break. 

Nope, that generation knew that capitalism was wrong, right up until the 1980's when they became the "Me Generation".

But at the time I was Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll; Oh, and Free Love; and all that went with it.  And let’s be honest, if sex isn’t selling….what will?

 

But my brothers and I were too young then to understand all of that, and so, we were wrapped up in dreams and schemes to make our first million. 

We mowed lawns, peddled papers, pushed brooms, and weeded gardens.  Anything and everything to earn some extra money.

We did live pretty careful as a family when it came to spending money.  And all in all that was a good thing.  Now, I’m not trying to say that we were poor, ‘cause we weren’t.  I have known a whole mess of folks that had a lot less than we had.  I’ve known some few that had a lot more too. 

And given the choice of staying where we were; of losing ground; or of gaining a few dollars, that was a simple enough call.  And if all it was gonna take was a bit of extra working, well , heck, we had dug plenty of holes and such so….my brothers and I were up for it.

 

And so, regardless of the “anti crowd”, and like any budding capitalists, we boys were always looking for opportunities to earn some more money.  Because we knew that while you could work for the other guy and do well, if you really wanted to make some real money; if your goal was to become a millionaire, then you were gonna have to take some risk and go into business for yourself.

By the later part of the 1960’s the use of anti-venom to treat snake bite had been well established.  But it was new news to us boys.  We went to studying on it.  We knew we lived in hot dry country.  And we knew that the hills outside of town had rattlesnakes.  And we knew that if those snakes were caught, they could be milked for their venom and that could be used to treat snake bite.  Not that we understood how, but we knew that the doctors needed real snake venom to start.

So, we spent a couple days figuring out how to make snake loops.  A snake loop is basically a long stick with a cord that runs through a few eyes screwed into the stick and one end of the cord fastened down.  If you pulled some slack into the bottom end, you have a loop coming off of the pole.  Our plan was to slip up on a snake, drop the loop over its head, pull the cord tight trapping the snake, pick it up, and deposit it into a gunny sack.

And though my brother’s tried hard, I wasn’t dumb enough to let them practice their “catchin” on my big toes.  Heck, I knew how much hurt you could put on a big toe by yanking it the wrong direction. 


I’d won a number of fights with my eldest brother using that move. 

Anyway, after what I can best refer to as some spirited conversation, it was decided to use some bent sticks on the ground to practice on.

We then gave some thought to protecting our feet and ankles from snake bites.

We did that for self-preservation.

You see, since we were confident that doctors would willingly pay us for the snakes we caught, then we really had to have a basic belief that there wasn’t enough anti-venom to go around. 

And while we may not have been the sharpest knives in the drawer, we were able to figure out that the goal was to catch the snake in some manner that didn’t include getting small holes punched in our hides.

 

Armed with snake sticks and gunny sacks we packed up lunches and headed for the hills.  We stomped up and down a lot of hills that day.  Didn’t find any rattlesnakes. 

We caught some nice gopher snakes, but never had heard of anti-venom for them.

I don’t remember ever going out again. 

Maybe that's because we were not as committed to capitalism as we had thought.

Or maybe we found a new way to sneak into the gravel pits to do some swimming, fishing, or frog gigging. 

Maybe a lot of things. 

But most likely it was simply that we had ADD and had forgotten all about catching and selling snakes by the following day.

 

All in all, it was probably a pretty good thing; cause I know that if we had kept at it, we would have caught us a rattler or two sooner or later. 

And the problem with that as I recall was that our whole sales and marketing plan consisted of carrying our loaded gunnysacks into the hospital………

 

Copyright © 2013 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved

Dutch Lion Wine

I grew up in old wine country; Its become new wine country since. Odd perhaps, there you go.
 

 

Commercial Wine growing is as old as California. Spread along the south side of the valley I grew up in were old vineyards. Some of those grape plants had trunks that were well over 10” in diameter. Those things had been driving roots down into that rocky soil for longer than anyone really knew.
 

Some of the vineyards were still actively cultivated by wineries such as Wente, Concannon, Cresta Blanca, and others. Many of the old vineyards though lay fallow, watered only by the winter’s rain, weeded only by the bunnies and deer that slipped up out of the cottonwood arroyos at night to clear the ground.

In the years since I left the valley, many small specialty vintners have developed. Some grafting onto the old stocks, some planting new, and some simply buying crush from some very large commercial outfit and bottling up their own distinct blends.
　


My brothers and I always flirted around the edges of that old wine country. It was great country for growing boys.

In the spring we would walk the rows, shotguns in hand impatient for a Jack rabbit, or cotton tail to leap up in front of us and streak away.

In the summer we would sneak into the old aging caves that Cresta Blanca had used; those caves were burrowed into the hills to enjoy some respite from the often triple digit temperatures.

 

In the fall we would pick and nibble at the small sweet grapes that the deer and rabbits, birds and field mice had missed.

 

 

 At some point growing up, our father became interested in making wine as a hobby.

Small batches; crushed by hand, fermented in a small plastic garbage can, aged in glass 5 gallon carboys, decanted and bottled in the basement.

And as with most things, my brothers and I were pressed into service. Saturday mornings gleaning a vineyard after the main picking had occurred. Afternoons washing and stripping the grapes from the leaves and stems. Evenings with glass bottle in hand, sitting round in a circle, crushing the grapes.

And the smell of the fermentation was always interesting. Fruity and sweet, bitter and musty.

 

 

 

On one occasion, Dad had been reading about Dandelion wine and decided that he was going to make up a batch. So one weekend, my brothers and I spent all day Saturday and most of the day Sunday (didn’t get started until church was over) crawling on hands and knees on grass lawns all over town.

Turned out to be quite the community service.

We picked dandelion flowers at the library; at the courthouse; and the police station, and several parks. You might well be surprised how many dandelions are needed for a small batch of wine.  

Then again, if you are like most people, you probably have never thought of Dandelion wine at all.

My knees were stained green.  For a good couple weeks.  My fingers yellow.  For about as long.  My back was sore, and my shoulders too.

 

But that batch of wine got started. 

We gathered and washed the flower buds. Then picked the yellow pedals and crushed just those into the "must" needed to start the wine. The fermentation smelled different, musty and bitter still, not so much sweet though.

 

Dad paid extra time and attention to that batch of wine. He nursed it and watched it as non before. 

 

He was noticeably impatient with it, though I have never known why. Crush and ferment, decant and age, decant and bottle, age some more. Finally the “Dutch Lion” wine was ready to be sampled.

 

I was too young to be allowed any, and I had always up until that batch thought it unfair. After-all, my brothers and I did so much work, and we didn’t get any benefit.  Seemed like unjust compensation after all, and if we had known then about the Employment Development Department (EDD) back then, we'd a likely sued. 

But my thinking on "sharing the spoils" changed with that batch.  Yep, sure did.  Watching the faces of the adults who partook, "spoils" appeared to be the operative word.

 

Now, I can’t honestly say that it was foul stuff, cause like I said, I never drank any.

 

But then, mostly no one else drank any either.

 

Apparently it turned out to be most useful as a mild paint stripped.

 

Oh, and also an instant drain cleaner.

- © 2013 Marty K Vandermolen, all Rights Reserved

Happy 4th of July

Women and men
forged this country
at tremendous
risk.

 

Creating

and sustaining
opportunity
and freedom.

 

Opportunity

unequaled
in human
history.
 

Freedom to grow,

change
and exceed
your reach.
 

They did not create

equality.
They did not create
fairness.
 

Those are merely

idealistic figments
of the human
mind.
 

Wondrous goals.

Closer to attainment
by virtue of
“We the people…..”
 

Celebrate

the future
they made
possible.

-        © Marty K Vandermolen 2013, All Rights Reserved

I'm the Baby of the Famliy

I’m the youngest; of three boys; spaced about every 18 months.

I have reason to believe that at least early on, my brothers were none too pleased that I had come along.  They had a head start you see.  They could walk and talk before I could crawl.  And they used every day of that advantage.  Heck, they even tried to kill me in my crib on at least one occasion that I know of.

Yeah, yeah, to hear them tell it, they were just trying to be nice; stuffing that donut down my throat.  And I can understand if you believe them, they have been known to be pretty charming convincing, deceivers now and again; usually several times a day when they were growing up.

And if it hadn’t been for the ritualistic daily beatings over the following 14 to 15 years, you might be right.

But the beatings did commence.

 

And there were several years there where they played a game called “who can make Marty cry first”.  And though I can’t tell you who won most of those games, I can tell you who lost them all.

And then there were the times they tried to ditch me, or lose me in the woods, or drowned me at the pool.

Yep, it’s a pure miracle that I survived to shave my first whisker.

 

But those times are long gone now, and strange as it may seem, I miss ‘em some. 

And I suppose in the spirit of full disclosure, I can’t exactly claim I had no part in any of that.  It wouldn’t be fair to them to disavow any and all antagonizing, and challenging, and orneriness on my part. 

Now, you’re probably thinking “most siblings I know fought”.  But truth be told, most siblings I knew tustled, and wrestled, and pushed and shoved some....I never really knew any others that really fought.  But us three?  We waged unconditional warfare on a daily basis on each other.  The term "root hog or die" was pretty much a reasonable description of our altercations.

There was a decade or more in there were it was two on one.  And the two was a constantly shifting swirling set of temporary alliances that would confuse and confound any tribal leader in the underdeveloped parts of the world today.

And okay, so we didn’t have AK-47s, or rocket propelled grenades, or land mines (though our R&D projects along those lines is a subject for other remembrances), but that didn’t make what we did any less of an armed conflict.

 

My brothers refer to me, now, as their bigger baby brother, and have for some decades. 

Cause in my prime I topped out over 6 foot.  And over 200 pretty solid pounds.

And now and again, while growing through those turbulent years, nature handed me a growth spurt. 

If you look at my hands these days, you will readily see, that when nature offered up, I readily took the chance.

And the retribution beatings began.

When I tell people this tale, they inevitably express their dismay that I have such a poor relationship with my brothers.  But that surely isn't the way of it.  

We are great friends.  Don’t get together as much as we’d like separated by all the miles between, but we do.  And when we do the conversations are full of fun, and good natured storytelling, and joy, and love and respect.

 Best I can figure is, that's cause we beat everything else out years ago.

-        © Marty K Vandermolen 2013 All rights Reserved