So apparently I've been mis-hearing the lyrics to "Margaritaville" since 1977

I was at a trivia contest the other night and in the "Next Lyric" category they played "wasting away again in Margaritaville........"

I've probably heard this song >100 times since it came out in 1977 and I've ALWAYS thought the next line was "...searching for my lost Chigger saw." I don't know what a Chigger saw is, but that is how 11 year old me heard it and I've never corrected it in my head. There were times when I wondered to myself what a Chigger saw was and rationalized that it was some fancy brand name chainsaw that people used on tropical islands to cut down palm trees that blocked their view of the ocean.

When the team captain wrote "searching for my lost shaker of salt", I thought he was crazy. When the other team members backed him up, I just played it off like I was joking. Of course, they were right (I googled it later to prove it to myself) and I was wrong. Thinking about it, I guess their lyric does make a little more sense.

I've been thinking for a while about pulling all my old childhood stories into one place

I figure they might make for an interesting addition to my future grandkid's 5th grade geneaology project. Anyway, it's mostly for my own entertainment, but, if you are interested, here is a link:

http://growingupphilo.blogspot.com

When I was a kid, there weren’t a lot of other kids that lived around me to play with

I lived on the wrong side of the tracks for that. It wasn’t really the “bad” side of the tracks; just more like the “old people with no kids” side. There was a total of 8 kids on my side of tracks, and 6 of them were in my family.
 

There were, though, a couple of kids that I was friends with who lived out on the highway. One summer, one of these buddies had a cousin stay with him for a few weeks. It was nice to have someone new to hang with and to call a friend. He was from a place that I had never heard of called Decatur. He was kind of quiet, but he liked to play baseball, and that was nice. He told us about cable television and a channel called Home Box Office where you could watch movies all the time. It all seemed a little far-fetched to me. I didn’t know it until later, but this kid’s family had all recently been killed in a house fire - his mom and dad, and his brothers and sisters. He was the only one who survived.

After his Philo vacation was over, he went back to live with relatives in Decatur. He gave me his phone number so we could keep in touch. A few times, I called him to see how he was doing.
 

My mom wasn’t happy about me having a friend in Decatur that I wanted to call on the phone. According to her, it was expensive to call there. Whenever she let me call him, she would set an egg timer out, with strict instructions not to be on the phone when the timer was up. That’s okay, though, we usually ran out of things to say before we ran out of sand.

 

Recently, I tried to do a google search of fatal Decatur house fires and his last name, but nothing came up. It would have been interesting to read about it after all these years. It could be that, even though his new home was in Decatur, that isn’t where the fire happened. I’m not sure. To this day, I can't see an egg timer without thinking of my month-long best friend Tim. 

My parents took me to a restaurant exactly ONE time as a kid

That was when I was 10 and we all went to Hardee's for Christmas Eve dinner. I kid you not, we never ate out at a restaurant any other time.

4 women who made a big impression on me as a little kid

Baseball Playing Gayne: In the early seventies, there were no organized sports in Philo for young girls. And a girl had never asked to be allowed to play Little League baseball. I’m guessing that her parents talked it out with the folks in charge beforehand, because when we gathered for our first practice one year, Gayne showed up and acted as if she had every right in the world to be there. We laughed about it a little bit, but I don’t remember anyone giving her any grief. It had never occurred to us that a girl would ever want to play on a real team. We were only 8 or 9 years old, so it wasn’t like there was a huge talent difference between Gayne and us boys. The next year, a couple more girls played. Years later, they added softball. Gayne broke the gender barrier in Philo sports.

Craig’s mom: One day during recess, we were playing buck-buck on the school playground. We weren’t supposed to be playing because the nuns said it was too dangerous. Craig lived about a block away, and during lunch that day, his mom walked down to drop off his lunch. It was 30+ years ago, but I still remember her walking up wearing an orange tank top with no bra underneath. Every boy just stood there and stared while she and Craig talked along the side of the road. You would have thought we were all staring at a naked woman.

Mizz Whats-her-name: When I was in 3rd grade, I was pulled out of my regular classroom to work on the pronunciation of my N’s and S’s with the speech teacher. For part of the year, the teacher’s name was Ms. Something. The unusual thing about this is that NO ONE had ever been called “Mizz” before. It was always Mrs. or Miss. I remember her taking a few minutes to give us a mini lesson in women’s lib and to explain what being called “Mizz Such-and-such” meant. It was like she had invented a new word or something. I couldn’t wait to go home and tell mom about it.

Next door neighbor Tammy: One day when I was about 7 or 8 years old, I was playing in the lot next door with some neighbor kids, including Tammy, who was probably 5 years older than me. The lot included a garden full of sweet corn. I had to go pee, so I walked over to the corn. Tammy told me that I had to try to run around the entire corn “field” *while* I was peeing. I don’t remember her daring me to do it – she just told me matter-of-factly that I had to. I did it, and I remember getting pee all over me, including in my mouth. I started crying and Tammy told me that if I told anyone what happened, that she would kill me. I kept my mouth shut, which is what I should have done while I was peeing. I was scared of not only Tammy, but of her whole family. More than once, her dad told me the story of how he got shot in the mouth during "the war". The bullet knocked out all his 4 front teeth and lodged in the back of this throat. Tammy's older brother Mike went to Vietnam. When he came back, he had a tattoo and an earing. He was the first guy I had ever seen with an earing. It freaked me out.

Back when I was in 2nd grade, I hated music class.

Our music class consisted of one of two things. Either we sat around and sang church hymns while Mrs. Brennan lead us on an old piano that was wheeled into our classroom by some lucky older boys, or we marched down to the public school to be taught by a real music teacher. That year, in preparation for a fancy recital, we walked the 3 or 4 blocks down to the public school for about 8 weeks in a row. Sister Dolorita led us along the route, with strict instructions not to talk, play with dogs or pick up anything along the way.


Our music class was in a tiny room above the gym. Until that year, I had never been in the room, but I knew it existed because we often climbed up the fire escape chute that led from the room. When we were older, on those wonderful days when we didn’t have school but the public school kids did, we sometimes climbed up the chute and banged on the little door to the room, thinking it would be funny to disrupt some music class. It turns out that the room was only used by either the Catholic kids from down the street or basketball referees.


Our class had been assigned two numbers for that famed recital, and I’d never heard of either of them. The first was “Hello Dolly” and the other was “Whistle a Happy Tune”. I should be clear that I hated music class, and there was no way I was going to sing in front of a gym full of parents and grandparents. We learned the songs quickly. The music teacher was especially proud of the part where we all whistled along. Of course I couldn’t whistle, so she told me to just pucker my lips and no one would ever know.

I don’t remember much of the performance itself. Too traumatic, I guess. I never opened my lips to sing, and never puckered up to fake whistling. I just stood there, alternating between staring at the floor and staring at the basketball hoop that had somehow been raised to the ceiling. My mom was furious. On the way home, she told me that she was never going to another school recital again if all I was gonna do was “stand there like a retard”.

When I got home, I hid in my closet and cried, while humming the words to “Hello Dolly”.

Back when I was in the 4th grade, I wanted to be a botanist when I grew up.....

I don't think I knew the word "botanist" but I knew that I liked to grow things in my little corner of mom and dad's big garden. Part of my fascination with gardening came from my parents, but a big part of it came from my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Komarek. I was fascinated by her, and we shared a love of gardening.

At the beginning of the school year, she had on her desk, a weird seed that I had never seen before.



She explained that it was an avocado seed and that, over time, it would grow into a big tree. I immediately knew that I had to have one, so I begged mom to pick one up at the store. Of course, they didn't have avocados at the Philo Eisner so I had to wait until mom had a reason to go uptown to Champaign. Mom couldn't see buying something just for the seed, so she made me try the avocado itself. 35 years later, I still won't eat them.

On my first attempt, the seed got all moldy before it ever cracked open. But I tried again, and it finally worked. Avocado growing definitely takes a lot of patience.



I grew my avocado for months, but I don't think it ever got big enough to transplant to soil. During the summer after 4th grade, without Mrs. Komarek's encouragement, I let the plant die. I'm not sure if Mrs. Komarek came back the next school year or not, but I never remember talking to her after that. I was probably too embarrassed to tell her that my plant had died. My last contact with her was this letter that I received that summer.




I just decided that I'm going to buy an avocado soon. And I'm going to grow it into a tree in honor of Mrs. Komarek.

When I was in the 7th grade, I was on my school’s track team

The school obviously had a tiny budget for track and field equipment. My dad made the hurdles out of used 2 x 4s. The high jump and pole vault standards were made of metal poles cast into concrete-filled truck tires. The coolest thing though was the landing mat for the high jump and pole vault. It was made of what appeared to be an old sewn together fishing net filled with brick sized pieces of foam; like the kind that you use when washing your car.

The mat was sort of a makeshift gathering place for hanging out after track practice. We would sit out there, smoke cigarettes and swap stories about school. Okay, we never smoked cigarettes, but one time somebody did bring some pop rocks and wax lips, both of which were strictly prohibited on school property. I was always uncomfortable hanging out with the cool kids, but because it was a carryover from track practice, I was tolerated.

One day, 6 or so of us were sitting out there on the mat, including Lindsey, a girl I had a huge crush on. Right in the middle of a serious conversation about how Mork tried to kidnap Fonzie last night on TV, all the guys jumped off the mat in unison, leaving just me and Lindsey. Before I could react, they folded the mat over on top of us, rolling us up inside. I was fear-stricken. I don’t remember ever being claustrophobic before or since, but at that moment, I was convinced that I was about to die. I was probably pressed up against the cutest girl that I had ever seen, but all I could do was scream like a little girl that I was suffocating.

Despite my pleading, the guys sat on top of mat for what seemed like an eternity. I didn’t even acknowledge Lindsey. I just kept screaming. Eventually, they unfolded it and let us out. I didn’t make eye contact with any of them, including Lindsey. I just ran across the playground as fast as I could, got on my bike and pedaled home. I never, in my whole life, said a single word to Lindsey ever again.

When I was little, this is what our swimming pool looked like:

It was just an old horse tank that my dad picked up somewhere. It was nasty and had a bunch of welds on it where dad had patched rusty holes. It would get filled up once a year and we were stuck with the same nasty water, unless there was a reunion or something, and then mom would change it. She did, though, add about a gallon of Clorox once a week. Everytime I swam, my knees and feet would get all scraped up from rubbing on the bottom.





Our pool toys consisted of an old innertube



quarters, and empty bottles of dishwashing soap that we used as squirt guns.

When I was a kid, I had a pet mouse

In fact, between my sister and brothers and I, we literally had hundreds of mice. Instead of a cages, we used old bookshelves with wire mesh across the front, and holes drilled in the shelves with ladders so that the mice could move from shelf to shelf. If was almost like a mouse village, with certain groups of mice ruling certain shelves. It looke kind of like this:

Because there were so many mice, they didn't all get a ton of attention, and, for that reason, some of them were really mean. Mean to us, and really mean to each other. I did have one favorite one though that was a mix of black and white. He was easy to pick out so I played with him a lot and he got to be very tame. I even taught him how to walk a tightrope. Kind of like this guy:

Sometimes when people would visit us, mom would say "get your mouse and show how he can walk the tightrope." Needless to say, I was very proud. One day, we were out practicing in the yard, and my mouse was taking a break walking around in the grass. I didn't keep an eye on him, and when I turned to look for him, I knelt right on top of him. When I picked him up, he was convulsing. And he actually died right in my hand.

I was so sad, but my sister and brothers thought it was funny. I hated them for weeks after that. To this day, they still tease me about killing my tightrope-walking mouse.

Mom should have made me apologize for this, but she didn’t.

For most of my childhood, I had a paper route. If there was a contest for best paperboy in Philo, I probably would have won because I could stuff, fold and rubberband papers really fast. Then, I’d cram them into my bike with the dual baskets on the back and take off. I was pretty quick. The only thing that slowed me down was dogs. I was afraid of dogs as a kid, and it seemed like Philo had a lot of dogs running loose.

To help with this, my mom bought me some stuff called “Mailman’s Best Friend”. If a dog got too close, I could just spray a little of this stuff in his face and he’d leave me alone. Everything would be fine; at least that’s what mom told me. The thing is, after she bought it for me, I never had to use it. Maybe just the sight of that red can bouncing around in my front basket kept the dogs away.

I couldn’t leave well enough alone though. One early Saturday morning, I was delivering a paper to Old Mrs. Brazelton’s house when her dog decided to go nuts. The good news was that the dog was inside a fence that I didn’t even have to go inside of; I just had to put the paper in a box on my side of the fence and move on. But the dog was going crazy and probably waking everybody up, so I gave him a quick squirt right in the face with “Mailman’s Best Friend”. The dog started crying and rolling around in the grass, and I went on my way, finished my route and went home.

A couple hours later, mom got a phone call from Mrs. Brazelton. Apparently, she had seen the whole thing through her window and was none too happy. She was back from the vet, where she’d had to have the dog’s eyes washed out. She informed mom that she would be expecting me to reimburse her for the vet bill, which was just short of $100. That’s where my memory ends. I don’t remember having to go down and apologize for being so stupid, and I don’t remember ever having to pay the bill. Then again, I never saw any of the money from my paper route until I was much older, so maybe mom did use my money to pay the bill. Mom handled all that part for me and, after I graduated from college, she finally gave me my money that she’d been saving for me for all those years.

Mom was normally very strict. I don't know why I didn't get severely punished for this.

When I was a kid, we raised rabbits.

You know, the cute fluffy white ones. Dad used to butcher them and sell the meat. We all helped take care of them, but only my 2 oldest brothers took part in the butchering. I steered clear on those days because I was usually too attached to the little things to think about what happened to them, although it never stopped me from eating the rabbit meat.

Every once in a while, a neighborhood dog would visit and think about getting him some rabbit. Mom kept a gun (it only shot blanks, I think) in the kitchen and would shoot toward any dogs that got too close. One time though, a dog got to the rabbits and ended up killing something like 10 or 15 of them. Mom must have somehow caught the dog, and called the owners. I have a vague memory of some 10-12 year old boy coming over to our house to get his dog. He was crying a bunch, but I’m not sure why. I don’t know if it was because mom was calling the dogcatcher or what. But he was crying as if he was never gonna see the dog again, so I don’t know if they took it away for good or what. When that kid grew up, he turned out to be pretty mean and picked on me a bunch. Thanks mom.

I think I’m gonna call mom right now and ask her if she remembers that happening. Then I’m gonna ask her what they did to the dog. Ugh, what if she tells me they shot it?

When I was a kid, my favorite jacket was

a bluejean jacket that was covered with iron-on patches of Freakies characters.



Just about every square inch of that jacket was covered with them. In addition to the iron-ons, I also had multiples of every magnet. The real prize, though, were the Freakies figurines. Those things were the best.

I have been knocked out 3 times in my life:

1. When I was 13 years old, I was at my buddy’s swimming pool. He was trying to show me how to do backwards dives into the pool. The first time I tried it, I didn’t spring far enough away from the edge and slammed my head into the sloped portion of the concrete bottom. My friend pulled me out. When I came to, he was laughing, and his older sister was crying and screaming at him for laughing at me.

2. About a month after I got my first real job in the big city of Memphis, I was out in the work parking lot helping a co-worker load some stuff into his car. I noticed a sword, some football pads and a football helmet in his car. When I asked him about it, he told me that he did medieval war re-enactments on the weekends. I got a chuckle out of it, so he offered to let me try it out. I put on the football helmet and he hit me as hard as he could with the stupid sword. I dropped like a sack of potatoes. When I came to, I told him that I didn’t want to play with him anymore.

3. About ten years later, I was out on a construction site watching a crew drill test borings for a project of mine. I actually had my hard hat on, but only because my client was also visiting the site and I wanted to look professional. While I was standing there, a 140-pound hammer came loose from the rig and fell about 10 feet, hitting me on the head. I then fell backwards into a 4-foot deep footing that, luckily, didn’t have any rebar sticking up. If it had, I might have been impaled. I don’t know which knocked me out: the hammer or the fall into the footing, but either way, it was lights out. The driller didn’t laugh though. He had messed up big time, and he thought he was going to get fired.