Beer and soda distributing

In 1966 my mother was pregnant again and had a boy. He became very sick and they had to transport him to San Antonio, the nearest Army hospital that had a heart specialist. Before my dad left to escort Christopher to the hospital he told me that I should pray for my little brother because he was dying. While my mom was in the hospital giving birth to my little brother my dad came home late one night. I had already gone to bed. I woke up to find my dad in my bed playing with my pecker, then he made me play with his and I don't want to talk about what else took place. I didn't know what to think, he kept telling me that he loved me. My mom had become very sick during this pregnancy and I had to take care of my brother and sister. When I got home from school it was my job to take care of them till bedtime. I had to feed them, bath them, and put them to bed. So to say the least I was not happy that she was going to have another baby that I would have to take care of. When my dad told me to pray for him, that's exactly what I did, but I prayed he would die. Guess what, he did die. Now I was carrying that guilt around with me til I was an adult. When my mom got home from the hospital I couldn't talk to her about what had happened with my dad because she was so depressed about my dead brother. The next time it happened I tried to tell her but she wouldn't believe me, she told everyone that I was just a trouble maker.

About six months later my dad got orders to go to Germany and he took us with him. A couple of months after we got there I found a job working with the Beer-man. This guy, Rolland, had a 14 foot flat-bed truck and it was loaded with beer and soda cases. He went around to all the American housing complexes delivering the beer and soda. There were 24 bottles to a case, the cases were either wooden or plastic, the beer bottles had those ceramic caps held on with wires, just so you know how much they weighed. I got to where I could carry one on my shoulder and two with my other hand. During the summer I worked with him all day, during school I only worked after school til we were done. Got pretty good money too, and of course I had to pay rent and buy my own cigarettes and what ever food items I wanted for myself.
My shoulders had already stated filling out because of the hay hauling days, by the time I started playing football in the fall my shoulders were out there.
When we arrived in Germany I stated the eighth grade, the school I went to was run by the Department of Defense. The local school only went up to the ninth grade, the high school was in Frankfort about 20 miles away. You could live on campus if your family could afford it, or you could catch the bus every morning at about 6am. When it came time for me to go my parents said they couldn't afford for me to live on campus. They had heard that there were a lot of drugs on campus and they didn't trust me. School started in August and we were being transferred back to the stated in December because my dad got orders to go to Vietnam. So my folks talked me into not going to school till we got settled back in the states. I would only miss one semester and would be able to catch up. I don't know why they didn't trust me, when all my other friends were smoking dope I didn't. I didn't start smoking marijuana till I was in the Army, but that's another story for a later time.

Who Remembers That First Kiss

I remember it like it happened yesterday, yeah I know, kind of corny for a guy huh? It was a special thing for me, cause it has always been kind of hard for me being so shy and introverted . My dad was stationed in Germany and it was the only overseas duty station that he took us with. They had a club for the dependent children call the A.Y.A. (American Youth Activities). They usually had a dance every Friday and Saturday night. Friday night they would have a DJ and on Saturday night they would have a live band. Most of the time I would just stand around and watch everybody dance. To me it was just great to get out of the house and away from my parents. They were very controlling and most of the time they would go out and I would have to stay home and babysit my sister and brother. My siblings were too young to take to the dance, they were four and three years old.
My dad found out that a buddy of his was stationed not too far away and he had invited us to come spend the weekend with them. My dad told me that he had a daughter about my age. I found out that they also had a AYA. So I packed a dress shirt, tie and sports coat in my bag. I don't remember much of the weekend, but I do remember going to the Saturday night dance with Christina and how beautiful she was. She had long red hair, and a pretty nice body for a 14-year-old.
Their AYA was decorated a lot better than ours. You have to remember that this was in the late 60's. They had black lights and cool posters hanging all over the place, I thought it was cool how your teeth glowed. After a couple of dances we went outside for some fresh air and to smoke. We went back inside and started dancing again and during a slow dance she whispered into my ear to kiss her. So I did, the only way I knew how to kiss. She asked me if she looked like my mother, and I said of “course not”. She said, “then don't kiss me like I am”. I told her that I didn't know what she was talking about. She grabbed my hand and pulled me outside. She said, “your serious, you don't know how to french kiss”? I told her I didn't know what she was talking about. So she proceeded to show me how. I will never forget that night, a whole new world was opened up to me.
We wrote to each other a couple of times, but then it went by the wayside. That's what happens to military brats, I think that's why we have such a hard time with relationships. Here for three years, there for two. When you did befriend some one you know it was never going to last long. You pretend that it doesn't bother you, and everybody knows why.

Little Battle Creek

Last night I was watching TV just like any other night of the week, and while a commercial was on I was flipping the channels like I always do. As I was going up and down on the TV guide channel my eye caught the word Jefferson. Hum, I thought, it's on the history channel at that, but for some reason when I saw the word Jefferson, George Jefferson came to mind. So I punched in the number for that channel to further read that it was the live and legacy of Thomas Jefferson. But still my mind saw George Jefferson, and I thought, wow, some body took the time to research the corrector of George Jefferson. How he stated out as a neighbor to Archie Bunker and went on to get his own comic show, movin' on up to the east-side. When I realized the mistake I made I started laughing and it brought back a memory from my childhood, and why everyone said I wasn't the brightest blub in the pack.

On the main road to town, there was a creek that passed under the highway, and right about here was a sign. At first glance I thought it read Little Battle, so I just thought it was the name of the creek, Little Battle Creek. Well after my brother died my dad thought it would be a good idea to take mother on a trip to see her family for Easter. So we loaded up the station wagon and hit the road. With my dad you always left at zero dark early like 4am. This was in the mid 60's, if there were any interstates they were just starting out. We had to take state highways all the way from Hicks, Louisiana to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I don't know how many I had seen but there were a lot of signs that read Little Battle. I thought to myself, “Wow, this is a big ass creek.” 

Every once in a while I would get to sit shot-gun, to help my dad look for signs. We passed by another Little Battle Creek and I happened to mention it to my dad that I thought it had to be the biggest creek in the world. I told him it was crisscrossing the highway all the way from Louisiana. He asked me to show him the next time I saw the sign, so a couple of few miles down the road we came upon another sign. I pointed it out to him so he pulled over. He told me to read the sign again, I said it's not going to change what it read. But after looking at it long enough I saw what it really said, Litter Barrel.

I hope you weren't drinking something when you read that part. Remember I was about 13 when this happened, but to this day my family will not let me live it down.

But that's OK, I get them back on the return trip, stay tuned to hear the rest of the story.

THE PARROT FLOWER

THE PARROT FLOWER
This is a flower from   Thailand .
It is also a protected species and not allowed to be exported.
This will be the only way we will be able to view this flower.
THE VERY RARE PARROT FLOWER.

Proper English

English was not my original language, nor one of my favorite subjects in school. My original language was gibberish. English is such a hard language to learn with all the silent letters and such, as a matter of fact my favorite subjects were shop and PE. I could always count on getting good grades on these subjects. School was always such a struggle for me, I didn't get much help at home because my mother dropped out of school in the fifth grade because she had problems with school. My father graduated from high school but he was hardly ever around and when he was he wasn't. I had a really hard time with spelling, no one ever taught me how to sound the word out, the only thing my father taught me was how to memorize words. I think there's only so much you can memorize and that was my problem.

I pretty much taught myself how to spell better. I loved writing letters to my friends, as I was writing the letter I would underline all the words that I knew where wrong. When the letter was finished, I would reread it and underline more words that I thought were wrong. I would then look up the underlined words in the dictionary and correct them, then I would rewrite the letter with the correctly spelled words. As time went on there were fewer and fewer words I had to look up. Now with all this techno stuff, "spell check", I once again have gotten lazy. That's why I say if you find a mistake please email me and let me know. I don't even care if you just leave it in a comment, I'm not embarrassed any more. I just love to tell stories and you can't do that without writing. I'm trying to train a talk it type it program, I started this writing with it but it got frustrating about half way through. Later y'all. UnclePaul