Stuff My Dad Said:

My parents had three children – one of each.


The day we got our wings:

There was a box factory in our home town, and one of their specialties was fabricating airplane wings. For those small planes they used during the war for reconnaissance. (I say that as if there were only one war.) My brother Bob, our pal Frank and I planned the trip to the factory to purchase two wings. They were about 20 feet in length and covered in canvas. They charged fifty cents per wing, and we were ready! Well what can three boys do with a couple of airplane wings? As you can imagine, it was a sight to see, two outspread airplane wings going down the road, with three sets of legs propelling them. Quite a mutation.

We took our “bird” down to the pond, which was in a park at the end of the road. Only it wasn’t a park back then, it was just a place. Up on one side there was a hill with the railroad tracks atop. It was a sledding hill in the winter. Some kids would toboggan down the other side, but there were trees at the bottom, so many of us didn’t see that as a smart thing to do. We transformed our wings into rafts when we put them in the water and rowed about on them, using sticks for motoring. When we had exhausted “all the things you can do with an airplane wing in the water,” we hauled them to the shore. I managed to step on a broken bottle and badly cut my foot. Blood everywhere! Three heads together – three boys heads together – had to come up with a strategy to get me home. Our brilliant idea was to leave one of the wings there and use the other as a stretcher. A new twist on the mutation - one airplane wing going down the road, with two sets of legs propelling it!


Head first, Scandinavian Style:

Idle hands are the devil’s playground? Well, boys have no intention of having idle hands. They build things. And of course, when they see any amount of standing water, they build diving platforms! And then they dive into the water. I proceeded to hit my head on the bottom. Hard. (One might wonder why my hands didn’t go in ahead of my head.) I probably had a concussion, or maybe I died. Maybe all of the years that followed have been a dream. After all, before that, my life was calm, well-ordered, exemplary. Did I conjure up my time in flight school? In Vietnam? Do I really have a wife and four daughters … nah! Who would make up a life with the ya-yas!

A Generation... Lost in Space

I caught the tail end of the baby boomer generation. Of late, I’ve noticed the way that patriotism is spinning in the minds of those around me who have been on the same ride. We were still young when the Vietnam war ended. Not quite old enough to really feel the philosophical effects of the war, apart from the angry messages flying on both sides. Any war brings the opportunity for an addled view. On one hand we had people saying that freedom comes at the price of bloodshed, as it always had. On the other hand, we had people telling us that the prize was not freedom; we were laying down our lives for the benefit of ideals that belonged to the greedy buggers who were holding all the cards… and not one of those cards had the faces of the American people on them. Well that was a long time ago. We’ve had a few years to mull things over. We’ve heard the stories of conspiracy and abuse of power from then and now. We’ve heard the songs of the prophets. We may have even considered the possibility that some of the “all you need is love” people were not really full of conviction, but a lung-expanding smoke that made it apathy rather than love for their fellow man that drove them. “Yeah man, we all agree… war is hell… now pass me another joint.” But I have a feeling that heads are clearing. While still holding a view of the great battles that made for great heroes, we are beginning to realize that the things we fought for then, are not the same things we fight for now. It’s no longer a mystery and no longer something we can pretend is just a matter of opinion. We now know that the only thing we’re fighting for is the face of a man. A man who is not content to live in a world that sees him as a blithering idiot. He is a man determined to do what it takes to show proof before the eyes of all the nations that he is a powerful… blithering idiot.

Napoleon Dynamite

well... I'm here to say... I saw this movie last night...
yes, it's a movie... an indie film... always a risk...
must be a character created by a humorous youngster (or two)...
high school story of the popular versus the... well...
let's just say... less-than-gifted...
I found the humor to be uncreative and idiotic...
attendance was less than fifty, and the majority were under 25...
I can only assume that they knew some of the cast, as the entire
audience found the film to be uproariously funny!
I must have been the only one who wasn't laughing...
not even a chuckle... and if I had been alone, I would have walked out...
Now... I can count on one finger the number of films that I wanted to
walk out on... Swordfish... that's it... and I've seen a LOT of movies...
this one was full of Idaho humor... which I can only sum up as "small minded"
and Utah humor isn't far behind...
now in all fairness, I enjoyed the actors, individually... and I would have liked the movie, if it were my kids, or my nieces and nephews, or anyone I cared about
or knew in it... it was much like watching
a video that your young ones put together, so you get a kick out of it...
but since they were none that I knew, it just turned out to be a waste of time...
or possibly... like watching a slide show of someone else's family! (remember those days? pleeeeeeeeeeeeez... not the slide show! :)