Chapter 2

A move to the North. Well, more north in Virginia anyway.

Dad was on his way up the ladder. We were transferred to Springfield, Virginia, in 1967.

St. Bernadette's was a really nice school. I recall helping our teachers with the distribution of milk and juice at lunch time.

I can only chuckle as I remember 'falling in love' at 8 years old with one Patricia McCourt.

I smile as I recall the day I thoroughly embarrased her by proclaiming the very same in our classroom. I was so clueless. LOL.

We were crazy about go-karts that year. Every boy in the neighborhood was scrounging up wood and small wheels to build them.

I remember my brother making this really neat steering mechanism with wound rope around the steering 'pole'. And it worked!

For many years I thought we had been visited by owls in our neighborhood. Then found out later those 'whoooo' sounds were morning doves. Oh well.

My sister. Poor little thing. She nearly lost her pinky finger when we were playing in the house. Hide and seek. She ran into her room and her girl friend slammed the door. Sis just happened to have her hand near the hinges and her one finger got pinched. Ouch.

I was sick a lot that winter. Upper respiratory infections and a lot of stomach aches. Only in later years did I learn to blow my nose constantly so all the yucky stuff didn't go into my stomach.

And germs?! Heck, we didn't know or care about them at all. Always sharing soda cans and bottles when we visited the neighborhood 7-11.

Speaking of our 7-11. In those days we were always on the lookout for bottles and cans to redeem for real honest to goodness money.

And the money would buy baseball cards.

And the baseball cards would sometimes be used in the spokes of our bicycles.

Not all. Many heroes were saved outright and placed in shoe boxes for safe keeping. You know where this is going, right? Yep, the old "mom cleaned my room one day and tossed...". Yes, I remember all those 1968 rookie cards and the pain of knowing I had them all. Damn!

That summer, the local public elementary school offered a showing of 2001, A Space Odyssey. I know my Christmas list that year included anything about space craft.

I did receive that little moon rover thing where the roof would come off and you could see the interior detailing. It was so neat to my 9 year old imagination.

An Interlude if you will:

I was waking up a few minutes ago, and my mind was replaying the year that I wiped out my 2000 Ford Focus.