Stories From My Life

Growing up we always had gardens. Adding in the fact we lived in the country we had access to every vegetable and fruit grown in the area. We would harvest our own home-grown food, buy bushels and bushels of fruits and vegetables, and pick cherries originally from our friends the Bakers and later the Reinebergs (friends who were close to one of the Von Trapp Family children of  The Sound of Music  fame). The Reinebergs' orchard looked like this in the spring. My stepmother always had a small patch of rhubarb next to the house that was probably not more than 10 feet square. It was surprisingly productive and we not only ate many rhubarb pies each year, but frequently there was enough rhubarb left over to freeze. A word of advice - never eat rhubarb without plenty of sugar nearby. My recollection is that it's very bitter. One thing I've never bothered to look into, it was grown on the side of the house, an area that was not exposed to the sun very much. I guess they n...

Everyone knows that teeth are important - how else would we chew yummy things like marshmallows, ice cream, or cheeseburgers? Nevertheless I've had mixed results with my teeth. First, the good part. Until I was 18 I never had a cavity! That's pretty much all I have. In case you were wondering what their numbers were. My problems began when I was 8 years old. Despite never having played baseball I decided I wanted to play. One of the neighborhood kids, a year older than me, named David Miller was also on my team. He came to our house and asked if I wanted to practice. You see, he wanted to be a pitcher so he asked me to play catcher. I squatted down as I'd seen catchers do; Dave wound up and threw a fastball - right above my glove hitting me squarely in the mouth. Being 8 years old I ran into the house with blood streaming everywhere where my parents informed me that I'd broken one of my teeth, #8 or #9 to be exact. Off to the dentist I went. Nitchkey Field whe...

Countryside in Strinestown area When Joe and I were young boys we loved going to our Aunt and Uncle's farm in Strinestown PA. At the time they farmed about 90 acres with much of it being pasture for their herd of cows. They had a stream on their property, fruit trees, a garden, pigs, chickens and lots of hay and silage. Strinestown, York County, Pennsylvania near the Susquehanna River Uncle Doll and Aunt Helen had 3 boys - Dean who was my age, Troy who was Joe's age and a younger brother Carson. They had their chores every morning and evening but in between they had a lot of time to play. This blog post is about one of those times we were playing. Their farm looked a lot like this one It must have been the late summer or early fall of the year because we were playing out behind the barn in a pear tree. The tree was literally next to one of the pastures, defined by electric fence that ran next to the tree. The 4 or 5 of us had climbed the tree and were eating pear...