of the travels of the Billy Goats Gruff
Here’s something that, if you read it in a book, or saw it in a movie, would be rejected as too unbelievable.
We now live some 200 miles from where my wife Carol grew up.
The other day she went into a local antique store and picked up this old book, thinking it looked familiar. When she opened the cover, she found her own signature from some 55+ years ago!
The intervening circumstances are a complete mystery! She bought the book for $1.60. Believe it or not!
snapshots of boyhood yearnings
I present to you: Timmie and his outdoor playthings, some summers ago. Locked inside the fenced-in yard wasn’t my favorite, because I preferred to roam the surrounding farm fields and woods.
But inside that wire prison, my parents had provided me with all the backyard prosperity of the baby-boomer 1950s: a sandbox, swingset, and a tall sliding board that could cook your hiney, but which was made all the faster by sitting on a sheet of waxpaper.
Despite the attractions, I sought freedom in other ways. I once found expression by wearing just my birthday suit and hat in the sandbox (my other apparel I thoughtfully hung on the fence). And I was always up for a ride in the red wagon my Pappy built for me. Judging by the wash on the line in this snapshot, it was a Monday.
A year or two later I began coasting down the unfettered hill in our front yard with my little brother Brian, which inevitably spilled us onto the ground after a sharp curve at the bottom near the springhouse. And, along with our dog, Sparky, we took to the woods and fields, whose airy adventures have always beckoned me.
