Experiencing Life

Until recently, I thought I had had a typical childhood.

If those of you who have heard some of my stories would quit laughing so loud and choking; and stop the sarcastic comments while you’re at it; I can continue sharing with the newbies in the group.


You know how it is.  You see the world from your own perspective.  And my perspective on what a typical childhood was like was certainly shaded (some might say twisted) by my personal experiences.  I had my observations of my life’s experiences, and I augmented my observations with the experiences of the closest other boys I knew growing up, and came to the understandable conclusion that an active childhood was normal.

Hindsight has brought me to understand that “Active” was a massive understatement.

Sure, the other close boys were my two older brothers, and those few lads around our home town that could semi keep up with us.


Now, it may be critical information to know that my eldest brother is only 35 months older than I, and that here was an additional “middle brother as well who was just about 16 months younger than the eldest, and 19 months older than I.

Yep, three boys in 35 months; kinda makes you question the over-all level of sanity that’s embedded in my family, doesn’t it?  Add to that the fact that the first was born less than 14 month’s after my parents married, and that I, the last, was born before our mother reached legal drinking age.

So, while my brothers and I were not exactly of the same den’ing, we were unquestionably a single pack.


Barry felt put out being the oldest, feeling that he had to fight harder for each step forward than did either Jeff or I.  And I for one am willing to give him that; as long as he is willing to admit that some of his more spectacular failures delayed Jeff and I receiving those same freedoms.  So all in all, Barry had to fight harder for selected freedoms, but Jeff, and much more to the point I, had to wait regardless of our arguments for the calendar pages to fall before we were granted equal rights.

But if truth be told, the three of us were not particularly adept at waiting and tended to just reach out and do; with or without approval.

Now my son one time famously told his mother that “it wasn’t fair” that he “didn’t get to do the kind of things Dad did while growing up”.  His mother looked at him like he was prone to riding short busses and said; “do you really think that Dad and his brothers asked permission to do all that stuff?”


But I digress.  Growing up Barry, Jeff, and I pulled many of the stunts that I’ve since written about and many more that I haven’t even attempted to transfer from recollection to paper.

Now as most youth, I grew through my active days and moved on to a short stint or two grappling with higher education, invested in building a career and started a family.  All life events that tend to take the spontaneous “hey, let’s go and…” out of life’s pattern.

Yep, years passed between my own childhood and the firmly established childhood of first my son and then my daughter.  And as those childhoods blossomed and I, as a supposed “adult” was drawn into Boy Scouts, 4-H and other youth programs, and I found myself sitting around campfires with various groups of other people and their children.


Now, there is something special about a campfire.  A special communion of those present with each other, and with themselves.  Maybe it’s that wood magically turns into light, heat, glowing colors, and popping sounds.  Perhaps it is the curtain of darkness around the circle warmed and lit by the fire, or it might be the feeling of anonymity created by the obscuring legions of smoke that march first this way and then that around the circle and into the darkness beyond.

Whatever it is, it has been for tens of thousands of years; and it has always been around just such smoky, warm, dark enchanted circles that the art of storytelling first crawled forth from some hunter, who if we’re being honest was likely shading the truth a bit in hopes of attracting a better blanket warmer; and then spread like a rampant disease throughout the tribe and virally leapt to the next circle of nighttime fire watchers.  Ultimately, it has been around the blistering red coals of night that the storytelling art has been perfected.   

And so, as first my son and then my daughter began to sit around evening campfires with friends and parents, I began to draw up recollections of things that Barry, Jeff, and I did as boys.  In an effort to encourage the kids around the campfire to stretch their imaginations and participate in the communing, I began to offer up those recollections of my youthful activities.  Little did I expect either of the reactions that I drew forth from the crowd.

Universally the youth found points to laugh about.  Now in truth, my sense of humor can be a little bit dry and I have been known to exaggerate a point or two, but the kids readily enjoyed these stories of growing up a generation earlier, often asking for some particular story to be repeated for both their enjoyment and for whatever new child was along that had yet to hear the tale.

Equally universally, the adults’ eyes sprang open like large white plates.  Eyes wide, often slightly out of focus as if they had been popped hard, on the nose, the adults sat still, listening with slowly shaking heads and gaping mouths.

It was that second reaction that got me to revisiting my own childhood and reconsidering the type of child I had been.

It was that second “life review” that brought me slowly to understand; my brothers and I had been full on wild hellions as kids.  Not kind of, not once in a while, but day in day out hell raisers who, though without a single malicious thought, had left indelible tracks in the history of our small town.


I owed my parents an apology, most especially my mother.

I owed neighbors (now long dead) apologies as well.

And I can’t even begin to define what I owed the baby sitter we tied up and threatened to burn.


I was stunned.  Or as stunned as I have ever been by anything other than a chromed-steel bumper up side the head.

Next time I saw my oldest brother I just had to share with him the epiphany that I had had.  And yet, once again in life, he proved the relationship between wisdom and experience.  For when I said to him “You know, I just recently realized we were real hellions as kids”.

His response was; “I remember when I realized that, but I don’t think of it as that any more, now days I just figure we ‘found more ways to experience life’ than other kids did”.

© Copyright 2019, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Asking the Obvious Questions

I’ve spent all of my life in sales to one degree or other.

I’ve sold electronic scientific instrumentation; I ‘ve sold paint, nuts, bolts, garden sprayers, plants, chemicals, and lightbulbs; I’ve sold “cleaner land” and “Cleaner air”; and visions of a better society through community non-profit groups; not to mention toilet bowl brushes and even flower seeds door to door.

And even before that first door to door job selling packets of flower and vegetable seeds, I sold my parents on believing that as the youngest, I was the least culpable on any of the various wild escapades my brothers and I pulled.

And speaking of brothers, much to their dismay, I sold my mother on the idea that the family dog constantly stole part of my graham cracker, thus getting an entire new cracker and a warden’s care while the second cracker was fully consumed.

Yep, it has often been rumored that not only could I sell a freezer to an Eskimo, but I could double back and sell the same Eskimo an automatic ice-maker for the freezer.

So in my life, I have spent my share of time and more mouthing the “unfailingly colorful” language of sales.  And I don’t mind the occasional stretch of truth, of twist of perspective that is used in the sales spiel and advertisement, although I find any number of them truly humorous.  Such as:

U-Haul Corporation's long standing “Adventures in Moving” – let’s be honest, of all the times you’ve wanted an adventure, it was never in the middle of a move.  Nope, Everyone I have ever known simply prays for an uneventful moving process, never for an “adventure”.

Or Chevy’s “Like a Rock” tag line for their trucks – Surely they aren’t implying that when I get it off road it is going to sink in the mud “like a rock”, accelerate ‘like a rock”, and they can’t be trying to compare their trucks hill climbing capability to a rock’s, which we all know roll downhill and never up.

Recently I have been noticing that flamboyant phrases have been slipping into food advertising.  But to a more insidious purpose.  In food advertising these wild tag lines are being used to subtly imply that some particular food is good for you.  Like:

Red/cherry licorice sticks that proudly claim “no Fat” – Of course stupid, their 100% sugar….they will cause your body to build fat, but they don’t contain fat.

KFC’s “Finger Lickin’ Good” – maybe, but the real reason to lick your fingers is because if you try to use a napkin, that gelatinous fat that oozed out of the chicken is going to turn the napkin into instant papier-mâché right there on your skin and then you’ll need a sandblaster or pressure washer to get your hands clean.

Then I noticed that the “language stretchers” had wormed their way into the mainstay food we eat and at that point, I decided to launch my own little pushback campaign.


A couple years back I was in a grocery store and saw a colorful plastic tub in the Dairy section with shelf signs proclaiming “Non-fat Sour Cream”.  I couldn’t help myself.

I picked up one of the tubs and walked up to the front of the store, there I asked the clerk to call the store manager.  When the manager arrived, I asked him; “do you know what cream is”?, He looked at me slightly confused.  So I said; “When I was in school, I was taught that cream is the liquid and semi solid fats that rise to the top of whole milk and are skimmed off”. 

“That’s right” he said, smiling benignly.

“Then how come you’re defrauding the public selling “Non-fat” sour cream? 

I’m not defrauding anyone” says the manager

“Look”, I said; “this can either be cream, which is fat, or it can be non-fat, which means its not cream, but it can’t be non-fat cream….so one way or the other, your defrauding the customer”.

You know, I have hit 4 or 5 grocery managers with that issue.  Not a one of them can explain it.  But everyone has seriously tried.


And then several months ago I was wandering around picking up some fruit and vegetables.  When I was going through the checkout process the clerk asked me if the carrots I had were organic.  I told her, sure, all carrots are organic.  She punched in some keys and the price per pound was exorbitant.
I told her the price was too high, She said; “No, that’s the price for organic carrots, the non-organic carrots are less expensive.  I said, well, then have someone get me some carrots that are not organic.

The Veggie guy come hustling up with some “non-organic carrots, sees the carrots I selected and says to the Cashier; “those carrots he has are non-organic”.

I stopped him and said: “Do you know what the word organic means?”  “The definition of Organic is ‘relating to or derived from living matter’ and that carrot came from a living plant, in fact, if I plant it and water it, will regrow a living plant”.  “Therefore that is an organic carrot”.

Neither the cashier nor the veggie guy ever “cleared the fog” so to speak and they were still trying to convince me that my carrots were non-organic when I left the store.   Oh, I got my carrots at the “non-organic carrot” price.  And went home and happily crunched on them.


Most recently, I was headed into a Carl’s Jr fast food place a few weeks back and noticed their big banner on the Door: “All New Veggie Burger, The Burger that goes beyond the beef”.

I couldn’t help myself.

When I got up to the order counter, I said to the cashier: “I’m Confused”, I see your “Beyond the Burger” choice, but thought that it was a veggie burger”.

The cashier assured me that it was.  By this point, the Manager was listening in, so I turned my focus on him. To him I said: “But veggies are what the cow eats to make beef, so a veggie burger is BEFORE the beef, not beyond the beef”.

At least this guy realized I was joyfully yanking his chain and he simply chuckled and said; “You know, I hadn’t thought of it like that, but your right”. 


I ordered grilled chicken instead.

© Copyright 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved  

Artificial Intelligence and the Government

When computer science first began in earnest the work on creating Artificial Intelligence (AI) I remember thinking back over all of the vast tomes of science-fiction and reviewing in my mind the cumulative weight of those stories.

By far the greatest theme in the accumulated works of masters of the art such as Asimov, Heinlein, Clark, and more is that ultimately AI is a determent to humanity.  In some cases due to open revolt of the machines against the humans, and in others because of mankind’s own downward spiral after day to day “purpose” has been eliminated by AI robots.

And if you missed this next tidbit in the news, you really need to consider it.  Not too long ago, Facebook had to pull the plugs on two computers that they had designed as AI units and set the two units to communicating with each other. 

The reason that the power was cut? 

The two computers had developed, all on their own mind you, a completely new language for communication AND the programmers were unable to decipher what the computers were so busy talking about. 

That right, one of the first things that occurs with Artificial Intelligence is that the intelligence learns to hide what it’s doing.  Rather like little kids.  Go figure. 

Shades of 2001 A space Odyssey and “HAL”’s ultimate refusal to follow a directive given it by the human controller; “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that”.


So not only my general perceptions, but specific reality and the greatest minds in “seeing the future”, all support our being very leery of Artificial Intelligence being vested into machines.  After-all, there is not a single scientist today that can honestly state that they clearly understand the mind, its evolution, and or the act of creativity.  Nor can any scientist explain why paternal twins who share the exact same DNA do not share the same thought patterns. 

And if they can’t do any of that, what makes any of us presume that scientists can create a “thinking machine” that learns and creates all of its own accord, without being readily able to identify and realize the general uselessness of a vast portion of the world population?


Let’s look for a moment at the current political climate as it has existed for the past few years in the US and ask ourselves; would any truly intelligent thinking entity accept that the population of the United States didn’t need some significant thinning out in order to better move mankind forward?

What would an intelligent entity think about politicians who one year voted 30+ Billion to fund border security including physical barriers, and then two years later called physical barriers “immoral” and refused any level of funding?

What would an intelligent entity think about demonizing inanimate objects such as guns?

And what would an intelligent entity think about institutions of learning banning selected speech in order to promote free speech?

Or what would an intelligent entity think about using Fascist tactics to silence the opposing side while labeling them fascist?


Yep, the more I think about it, the more I realize that if our political leaders where worth even half of what we paid them, they would make research into AI illegal, out of self-preservation if for no other reason.

At least until after American Politician Exemption (APE), Differed Opinion Planning & Execution (DOPE) and Artificial Schizophrenic Senselessness (ASS) have been developed. And after-all, with the way state and federal politicians have been working these past few years, those programs are well advanced already.

© Copyright, 2019 Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Rattling on the Ragged Edge - Part 1 - Feeding the Need for Speed

Maybe it was the era we grew up in, maybe it was our genetic coding, and maybe it was just plain opportunity; but long before the movie “Top Gun” came out, Barry, Jeff, and I surrendered to the need for speed. 

American automobiles had begun their march towards more muscle and more speed shorty after World War II when in 1947 NASCAR was founded.  In 1949 Oldmobile debuted the first 300+ cubic inch V8 with dual overhead cams producing 135 horse power in a 3580 lb car, or 26.5 pounds vehicle weight for every horsepower.  In 1951 Chrysler introduced the Hemi engine.  Chevy introduced the small block V8 the same year Barry was born (1955).

In 1957 the year between Jeff’s birth and mine, Chevy introduced Fuel injection; Ford and Studebaker introduced Superchargers; and Pontiac had both factory fuel Injection and factory equipped “Tri-Power” or three two barrel carburetors on a six cylinder production engine.


But even more “mind molding” was the true explosion of American Muscle that was launched in 1964 When the Pontiac Grand Turismo Omologata’s (GTO) 389 cubic inch, 3 double barreled 348 horse powered ground pounder tipped the scales at an exciting one horse power for every 8.9 pounds of vehicle weight, only to be outclassed 6 months later by the lean 1964-1/2 Ford Mustang that tipped in at an amazing one horse for every 7.8 pounds of vehicle weight.

And the race was on.

By the end of the 60s; 5 short years later, classics like the 351 Cleveland 385 stock HP, and the Dodge 426 Hemi 425 stock HP had dropped that vehicle to horse power ration down to 6.5:1.  Several American manufacturers were turning out V8s with an astounding 500 plus cubic inches.  For you Rice rocket fans, you’d need an 8.5 liter engine to equal the size of those monsters. 

And while cars today run faster quarters than back then, it’s only because the engine armament race slowed way down in the early 70’s thanks to the federal government’s imposing tighter fuel restrictions, and then even more in the late 70’s with the first of the environmental laws.

At the same time out on the salt flats of Bonneville there was a tremendous battle raging over the fastest car on earth, primarily fought out between Craig Bredlove’s Spirit of America and Art Afron’s Green Monster. 

In 1962 Craig Breedlove became the first man to exceed 400 miles an hour behind the wheel of the Spirit of America. In early ’63 the Green Monster took that record away with a 409 mph run.  A couple months later, Spirit was back on the track and grabbed 434 mph; late ’63 rolled around and Afron ran a 458 mph run, only to be eclipsed a week later by Bredlove at 522 mph.  1964 saw Green Monster run a blistering 536 mph, Spirit answered with 552 mph; in summer Green Monster appeared to slam the door with two successive 571 mph runs (that is covering over 837 feet every second).  August slide by, and September, then just before the end of the racing season, Craig Bredlove laid down a stunning 600.6 mph (just shy of 900 feet per second) run to stamp Spirit of America firmly in the history of land speed racing.


And while Bonneville had become dominated by jet powered vehicles, the local Drag Race scene was alive with poor boy’s home built thunder machines.  Straight 6 engines and V8’s ran side by side and door to door.  There were 8 or 9 ¼ mile dragstrips within an hour’s drive of our small town and at those strips, along with the local boys, men like Don Garlits came calling.  “Big Daddy” Don Garlits had a run of speed records in the 60’s becoming the first man to exceed 170 mph from a standing start in a ¼ mile run.  Then he doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down being the first man to exceed 180, then 200, 240, 250, and 270 mph in standing start ¼ mile tracks. 

And all the while Garlits, Afron, and Richard Petty proved that this was all about the driver and the skill, and not the money.

Garlits blew up a transmission on a slingshot dragster that took off part of a foot, and during the winter break invented the rear engine dragster design that remains dominate today some 50 years later.  And a year later he was the first to start running alcohol instead of gasoline. 

Afron powered his Green Machine with a wounded jet engine he bought from a scrap dealer after a bolt had been sucked through the blades.  He pulled out the broken blades, threw them away, and reassembled the engine; balancing it by distributing the remaining blades with empty slots all without manuals or drawings, which were all classified at the time.

And while Richard Petty ultimately seemed to print money, he started out dragging a car around on a trailer from event to event and ultimately racked up any number of records on dirt tracks, figure 8s and asphalt ovals.  Petty started 1,184 races in his career, pole position on 127 races, finished over 700 races in the top ten drivers, won 200 races, 27 in one year alone, and won both the Daytona 500 and the NASCAR annual championship 7 times.
 
Yep, the times we grew up in were filled with the throaty roar of machines that existed only to turn oil, gasoline, and rubber into sound, speed, and black stripes on the asphalt.  Machines that existed not as the engineer designed them, but as the mechanic breathed life into them.


Just as Barry, Jeff, and I were beginning to wrench on cars of our own, those monster muscle cars of the early 60’s were being sold off as affordable used cars.  Ten years old, and 100,000+ miles and they were in need of much more repair than the average working man wanted to have waiting for him every weekend.

The seals were worn, the parts were loose, the bolts were rusty, and the windows leaked.  But for a few hundred dollars and some sweat and parts, a boy could have a fire-breather of his own to fuel his dreams of real speed; limited more by his effort than his wallet, and an inspiration to every other boy in the valley.

Is it any wonder then that we gravitated to the now clichéd “need for speed”?

Barry’s first car was a 1960 Ford thunderbird.  Native 360 cubic inch displacement, rolled off of the assembly line faster than the police cars of the same year.

Jeff’s first machine was a 1964 Chevy Impala with a native 327 that ended up over-bored, shaved, and fast with a capitol F.

And a few months before I turned 14 years of age I bought a 1935 Ford PU and paired it with a ‘48 Mercury flathead V8.  It was thirty five years later in the early 1980s when Detroit came out with a production engine that pound for pound developed more horsepower than that ’48 Merc.  And coupling that powerful, torquey flathead to a three speed and 4.11:1 rear end meant that truck flew from 0-55mph faster than anything else around. 

Is it any wonder that we carried pocket knives to school back then?  If we hadn’t, our finger nails would have always been greasy.

© Copyright 2017, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Thanksgiving Stories

It was Thanksgiving.

I remember it clearly, although my brothers probably won’t.  Of course, I had more invested than they did at the time, so that is to be expected.  They had both already moved out of the house, and thus were immune to any reprisals, I hadn’t, and wasn’t.

The family was gathered at mom and dad’s house and the air was filled with sweet scents and the easy joy of togetherness.  Uncle Dave and dad were off tending to something or other that obviously had not interested us boys.

Our Grandmother Betty (Dake) Vandermolen had come over with Uncle Dave and was happily sitting at the kitchen table, with my brothers and I, chatting with mom as mom rapidly worked her way through a shopping cart pile of ingredients to make enough pies, rolls, mashed potatoes and what not for dinner to sate three growing young men, with a few leftovers to nourish the four full adults.

Barry had been talking about his job, but somehow drifted on into a story about some stunt we boys had pulled “back in the day”.  He was completely at ease.  The hair on the back of my neck began to rise.

Jeff joined in, and soon not only were the stories flying fast and full, but the hair on my arms were standing straight up.

Remember, they were out of the house and immune to punishment…I was still living under mom and dad’s roof.  And the stories while related with a fair amount of laughter and mirth, had some unacceptable undertones to them that led me to fear for the long-term consequences, especially since my last “tanning” had yet to completely heal.

Now I can’t tell you exactly which, or how many, stories were related around that table; might have included the one about out blacking out all the street lights in town, might have been about waterballooning cars, jumping off the back of the high school grandstands, blasting for fish in the rock quarries, acquiring several thousand Christmas lights, or any number of other stories that centered on blood, broken bones, and or explosions of one size or another (intended or not).

After each story, and sometimes during them at critical points in the story, Grandma Vandermolen would expostulate; “No, you didn’t” with incredulity.  Her eyes wide, he sense of appropriate obviously abused.

This went on for some time, with more and more grandmotherly interjections as each story became a bit more outlandish than the previous (owing in large part to Barry and Jeff realizing that they had no risk I bleakly suspected).  At one point I recall worrying about Grandma’s neck.  After-all, I knew for a fact that she hadn’t exercised it as much in any given month lately as she did that afternoon listening to stories.

Finally, after one particularly eventful story, Grandma turned to our mom and said; “Jan, tell me they really didn’t do that”.

At which point my mother turned around and faced us all with “that look”, took a deep breath and let it out in a long eloquent sigh, and replied: “Well, this is the first I am hearing about this, but I’d bet they really did!”

©Copyright 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

World’s Greatest Disciplinarian – Part 2

Yep, whether it was belts or pencil dots on the wall, our dad was an expert at getting his point across.

Truth be told, he was far less concerned with punishment than he was about learning and developing internal discipline in order to be able to live up to your responsibilities.  But he understood the value of using italics and underscores when writing to communicate, of using volume and inflection when speaking, and his physical disciplines were effectively just that.

Many of dad’s common punishments were considered even back then as just “urban legends”.  But at our house, they were real and carried with them the impetus to take some time, perhaps sitting uncomfortably on an extra pillow, or holding hands under cool water to ease the friction blisters worked up between shovel handle and palms, while thinking about the situation that got us thus afflicted.

Early on I remember Dad checking our “bed-making skills” by bouncing a quarter, and if it didn’t bounce high enough, we were given the opportunity to practice some more.

Dad went through a phase of sending us to our rooms without dinner, until he realized that we didn’t mind and (foolishly) never whined about being hungry.  Of course, each of us had stashes of food in our room as preparation for “hard times” knowing that it was a question of when, not if, we would need them.  My personal storehouse consisted of several cans of Shasta Soda, some dried jerky, dried apricots and peaches, a dozen or so either molasses or chocolate chip cookies, a pint jar of apricots, and second pint jar of peaches, a small jar of honey and usually some pilot biscuits.     

Dad had been a Sargent in the Army, and I guess he hadn’t gone to tactical school, because he never seemed to understand that to impact the enemy, you have to cut his supply lines.


We three boys were always in a hurry to get where we were going.  Because of that, out the front door, down the sidewalk and around the corner took far too long for us if we were headed north and so, we would head out the back door and jump the fence.

Dad was none too fond of our fence “jumping” activities, cause truth be told, we never really jumped a fence in our lives.  Sure, we went over lots of fences, but all of them suffered in the process.  Either the upright 4 x 4s got yanked, tugged, and pushed, or the fence boards got kicked, scuffed, and shoe-marked, and of course the odd redwood plank would end up split, or broken after a train of hands, feet and ample muscle heaved up and over the supposed barrier.

One night he’d had enough, so he sentenced us to stand on a top rail for 45 minutes.

Imagine the framework only of a fence.  4 x 4 uprights cemented into the ground, rising 5 and a half feet.  Top and bottom runners in place, with the top rail consisting of a 2 x 4 positioned so that the 3-1/2” side was faced up.  No upright fence boards yet, just top rails and uprights.

Each of us boys was stationed in the middle of a top rail, half way between the upright posts, feet at 90 degree angles to the line of the top rail.

Balance is rather sketchy in a situation such as that.  Your heels are where you get your “solid stance”, but what with the spring in the top rail, one needed ones fine adjust toes involved.  So we all ended up with the balls of our feet and part of our toes on the top rail.

Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t been up there with those other two nit wits, but fact was, there were three of us critically dependent on a dynamic system.  Every time one of the others would shift his weight, my section of top rail would bounce, and I would struggle to keep my balance.  Dad was inside where it was comfortable and warm, we were out where it was uncomfortable and if “unwarm” isn’t an Adverb, it really should be.

I’ve never understood what was going through Dad’s head that night.  It is impossible for me to see how he thought that session was going to end up, but I do know how it ended.  One of the nimrods I’m related to got to bouncing up and down.  His motivation (unlike Dad’s) I instantly got.  His goal was to knock the other two of us off of our top rails.  Likely had this half-baked though that Dad would hear the noise as boy one and boy two fell screaming to separate face plants, come outside, and give Brother one “time off” for still being on this top rail while the other two of us were slacking.

Only problem with the plan was that all three of us had climbed fences together.  We’d climbed trees together.  We’d thrown ourselves off of the same bleachers, houses, and cliffs.  We were in short all pretty nimble and quick.  Thus we both rode out the resulting bounces and wobbles.

So he ramped up to higher bounces, and higher bounces, until on coming down from his highest bounce yet, his top rail simply split in two dumping him on the ground.

And while Dad may not have been clairvoyant enough to anticipate this little hiccup in his disciplinary plan, it was quite apparent that he immediately recognized the error of his ways on responding to the caterwauling coming off the ground.  Brother two and I were thankfully paroled.  Not because of any “good behavior” on our part, more because Dad didn’t want to rebuild the remaining two sections of fence as well. 

And I can tell you stories of fence painting, being “loaned out” to weed neighbor’s yards, writing essays and any number of other regular “behavior modifiying activities” that Dad employed, but ba far, his favorite was having us dig holes in the yard.

It was part of the reason my brothers and I always assumed someone forgot to tell Dad he had been discharged from the army.  What with “Quarter-toss” bed checks, spit-shined shoes every week, and Dinnertime verbal exercises, Dad was an adherent in 3’ x 3’ x 3’ holes dug in the rocky soil of the back yard.

The one thing I can say about the hole digging endeavor was that once you got a bit of experience, cutting a clean right angle cornered, level floored hole out of the ground got much easier with practice.  It might be that was because our hands grew strong.  It might be that our arms and backs grew powerful. It might be that all that sieving to remove rocks made the ground softer.  It might be all three.

All I know is that in my life, I have never met another individual (other than Barry or Jeff, who could handle a shovel with the efficiency and exactitude as I can.  Turned out to be good practice, I’ve had to dig cars out of sand pits when they sunk to the frame, I’ve had to dig any number of backpack trails in rocky hillsides, and light pole bases, and what not.  And I’ve had to re-sculpt the ever failing slope behind my house to keep the house from being thrown off of the hillside it is perched on.

All because my Dad was the World’s Greatest Disciplinarian.

 

© Copyright 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved