(Book 2!) Greg, Steve and I decided to escape the brutal August heat by camping out in my backyard in our big Lake Thunderbird tent. I’m not sure why tents amp up the goofiness of 12-year-old boys, but they do by about a million percent. The first time Steve cut a major cheese, I lit […]

(Book 2!) I was an “old hand” around guns before I started grade school, thanks to my Fanner 50 cap pistol and daily TV doses of the "Foreman Scotty" television show. But my Cowboy world expanded exponentially when Bill, my sister Lynn’s future husband, started taking me hunting when I was 7 or 8. I […]

(Book 2!) "Every civilization has a rite of passage where boys become men. American Indian braves had to kill a buffalo. Africans had to kill a lion. And on Nebraska Street, you had to pick up a horny toad with your bare hand. Even if you'd been told a thousand times that horny toads didn’t […]

(Book 2!) I’m not sure why I thought I was going to be the Best Man at my oldest sister, Lynn’s, wedding, but that’s what I thought. I was nine at the time, and she was 18. At some point my role was clarified. I was to be the Ring Bearer, which I heard as […]

(Book 2!) There comes a time in every boy’s life when he gets way too big for his britches. When I was 11 or 12, my little 5-2 Mom was still taller than me, but she no longer seemed bigger. One day Steve and I had made a mess in the kitchen with Root Beers […]

(Book 2!) I’m not sure exactly how much extra power I coaxed from my Deluxe Renegade bicycle when I put a playing card in the spokes, but I’d guess at least 900 horsepower. You had to bend the card just so, reach inside the chain and attach it to the frame with a strong clothes […]

(Book 2!) I’m pretty sure that banjo-playing hillbilly kids from Arkansas smoked a LOT of grapevines in the Sixties. Steve and I were keen to try them when we were 10 or 11 after he smuggled some back from a family vacation.  Strangely, our parents didn’t seem worried about it. In fact, I think I […]

(Book 2!) Of all the really great songs from the Sixties, without a doubt, the one we sang loudest and with the most gusto, was 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall  on the church youth group’s epic trip to Six Flags Over Texas. I bet we sang it eleventy hundred thousand times, give or […]

(Book 2!) The simplest grub was the best grub for young cowboys on Nebraska Street, so every saddle bag had to be filled with Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches. Grape jelly was best, but strawberry would do. Anybody who tried to use marmalade, whatever the heck that is, was cruisin’ for a bruisin’. If Steve […]

(Book 2!) One minute, I was running around Safeway’s aisles, catching the winning touchdown pass, launching my patented half-court hook shot, and sliding into second for a double. Then, somehow, I was hurled into the very tall L’eggs display at the end of the aisle. What happened next was sort of surreal, in slow motion […]