Timeless Autobiography

By S. Markham Fish

In the fall of 1983 while attending the University I was driving in my first car a 1970 Toyota Corona with the radio on one morning. The radio station broadcast an air disaster with the Soviet Union. The Russian port of Vladivostok detected an American passenger jet aircraft wandering close to the USSR submarine base for the Pacific Ocean. The flight was warned to change course: did not and was shot down by a surface to air missile. October 1983.

At the University in a night course for Political Science called Public Policy the professor asked us to write the standard twenty-page paper on a subject of our choice. The Iran Contra affair was in the news and the Professor helped with a comment that there would be on going problems and a difficult conclusion for the student. The paper was not finished before the student withdrew but oil came to mind and a high school friend who told his school mate forty percent of the worlds known oil supply was in Kuwait bordering Iraq next to Iran. Therefore, he was in for an adventure for the right reasons.

This also started to change the course of the son's life during the fall semester in Manhattan out of West Norwalk, Ct. I ran short of food and started to look toward the military for answers in my life. I needed justice for the evil in this world, three meals a day and a paycheck. My grandfather served in the Navy as an officer during, World War II and my stepfather in the Air Force enlisted rank to second lieutenant. I was living with my father at the time of my final semester who also served in the National Guard during the Vietnam Era.

I went to the local armed forces recruiter in Stamford Connecticut and began the application process for the U.S. Navy. The first series of questions were about drugs and psychiatric hospitalizations. I lied. The crew needed my birth certificate and High School diploma both they got in three days from New York City hospital and Hingham Massachusetts. Then education and technical training were discussed and jobs in the Navy. When this ended I was offered two choices for employment, the mail or Core Man. I chose medical and continued with pre-enlistment.

I was further screened in a facility for physical health and ability in New Haven Ct and given an opportunity to pass the nuclear fleet exam. I failed. Then I continued with finger printing and signatures plus, drug testing and blood samples for disease detection. I passed and received directions to set off from the Norwalk Ct recruiting station. The final procedure for enlisting; you are on time or in the reserves. I made it! It was LGA to ORE in January of 1984 on American Airlines from Uncle Sam; otherwise known as LaGuardia airport in New York City to OHare airport in Chicago Illinois one-way paid.

When we arrived in Chicago our leader was unknown that got us to a bus outside the airport to the Navy Base called Great Lakes. The trip was not really long when we got there the driver exclaimed smoke em if you got em and our entrance was tough your DRUNK! We had small duffel bags with a change in them and nothing else. Our first night we spent in our civilian clothes on something called a rack

The Navy started to issue uniforms shortly after we arrived with some very carefully selected boots. My half cut industrial shoes were first given me at 10E and were returned for 10EE with a friendly look. All of our uniforms were stenciled with our names and company numbers. We got an extensive compliment of trousers, shirts, sweaters, jackets, underwear, and outerwear, footwear, and of course the Navy Pea Coat. We were taught to fold each garment in a special way for storage in a sea bag including the Blue Jackets Manual.

My service started in January of 1984 and I was to face a cold winter on Lake Michigan. The base did a great job of helping us with weather requirements. When temperatures were twenty below zero to sub twenty they would instruct us to

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493126255

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The Timeless Autobiography uses an older name for a new literary technique. The memoir is of course a modern name for a life history but it is limited to a chronological order to structure the book. The new way of the writer treats each story as unique and individual distinct from every other. As a writer, I dreamed of my story at a young age but never found the time or ability to script the events of Michael Frenz. In 2011 due to unforeseen circumstances, I was left alone for two years that freed the time necessary to author a book. Each of the sixty eight stories was written as an encapsulation of one life; mine.

ONE

In the fall of 1983 while attending the University I was driving in my first car a 1970 Toyota Corona with the radio on one morning. The radio station broadcast an air disaster with the Soviet Union. The Russian port of Vladivostok detected an American passenger jet aircraft wandering close to the USSR submarine base for the Pacific Ocean. The flight was warned to change course: did not and was shot down by a surface to air missile. October 1983.

At the University in a night course for Political Science called Public Policy the professor asked us to write the standard twenty-page paper on a subject of our choice. The Iran Contra affair was in the news and the Professor helped with a comment that there would be on going problems and a difficult conclusion for the student. The paper was not finished before the student withdrew still oil came to mind and a high school friend who told his school mate forty percent of the world’s known oil supply was in Kuwait bordering Iraq with a 1,000,000 man army currently next to Iran. Therefore, he was in for a dangerous adventure but for the right reasons.

This also started to change the course of the son’s life during the fall semester in Manhattan out of West Norwalk, Ct. I ran short of food and started to look toward the military for answers in my life. I needed justice for the evil in this world, three meals a day and a paycheck. My grandfather served in the Navy as an officer during, World War II and my stepfather in the Air Force enlisted rank to second lieutenant. I was living with my father at the time of my final semester who also served in the National Guard during the Vietnam Era.

I went to the local armed forces recruiter in Stamford Connecticut and began the application process for the U.S. Navy. The first series of questions were about drugs and psychiatric hospitalizations. I lied. The crew needed my birth certificate and High School diploma both they got in three days from New York City hospital and Hingham Massachusetts. Then education and technical training were discussed and jobs in the Navy. When this ended I was offered two choices for employment, the mail or Core Man. I chose medical and continued with pre-enlistment.

I was further screened in a facility for physical health and ability in New Haven Ct and given an opportunity to pass the nuclear fleet exam. I failed. Then I continued with finger printing and signatures plus, drug testing and blood samples for disease detection. I passed and received directions to set off from the Norwalk Ct recruiting station. The final procedure for enlisting; you are on time or in the reserves. I made it! It was LGA to ORE in January of 1984 on American Airlines from Uncle Sam; otherwise known as LaGuardia airport in New York City to O’Hare airport in Chicago Illinois one-way paid.

When we arrived in Chicago our leader was unknown that got us to a bus outside the airport to the Navy Base called Great Lakes. The trip was not really long when we got there the driver exclaimed smoke em if you got em and our entrance was tough your DRUNK! We had small duffel bags with a change in them and nothing else. Our first night we spent in our civilian clothes on something called a rack…

The Navy started to issue uniforms shortly after we arrived with some very carefully selected boots. My half cut industrial shoes were first given me at 10E and were returned for 10EE with a friendly look. All of our uniforms were stenciled with our names and company numbers. We got an extensive compliment of trousers, shirts, sweaters, jackets, underwear, and outerwear, footwear, and of course the Navy Pea Coat. We were taught to fold each garment in a special way for storage in a sea bag including the Blue Jackets Manual.

My service started in January of 1984 and I was to face a cold winter on Lake Michigan. The base did a great job of helping us with weather requirements. When temperatures were twenty below zero to sub twenty they would instruct us to use face masks and skull caps with utility jackets under our Pea Coats. In the spring I wore a blue utility jacket with black office trousers and was quickly told not to do that again. No utility blue with black pants. With blue work shirts nothing is put in the pocket without buttoning it. Our winter coats were issued with silver metal buttons that needed to be changed to Navy black. Only a CPO wears metal buttons and they are gold to signify the highest enlisted rank aka Chief Petty Officer.

When we were in uniform the Navy started prevention medicine that included physical examinations inoculations and oral dentistry. In addition we received competency exams. I tried to cheat and was reprimanded. During this month, we received classroom instruction including an hour with a Chaplin carrying an M1 rifle, a comedian and a Master Chief plus CPR and venereal diseases, birth control and the vasectomy. Further training educated us in more serious health emergencies such as puncture wounds, tourniquet application and survival in conventional and nuclear war.

As a Company, 020 faced some serious challenges we were made of sixty men formed in the beginning of winter. We all had a reason for serving from health benefits, to educations, to housing, to enlistment pay, reenlistment bonuses and of course adventure. The snowfall for the season was high and we were the second furthest barracks from the mess hall. Within the company, some of the men failed their drug test. I was a prior user accused by a positive test recruit petty officer candidate as someone who lied. Moving forward into the base regulations, the toilets were a problem and we tried to use two out of four. This changed with a complaint and resulted in a swap with the CPO. We were now a bad reputation on the base and needed discipline. A different Chief worked us until we straightened out and some of us were excused for giving blood that afternoon for volunteer reasons. On Sunday, we were given the privilege of sleeping in and I always took it for health reasons.

In the third month of the training, we entered the firing range for instruction in pistol shooting. The PO gave a lesson in how to follow orders during the target practice. The group of us lined up twenty strong and listened to instructions. Next safeties off! Then I got confused and put a finger through the trigger guard before told to do so. The POs approached, crossing the line of fire and stuck their .45 caliber semi automatic colts made in; Hartford, CT three quarters behind his head and center left and told him to lower the .22 caliber sleeve gun for the duration of the exercise.

The next, order of business were the mess halls. The most expensive diet we ever had in our lifetime was served in Great Lakes, Ill. On that base they treated us to three different places to eat three times a day for sixteen hours approximately. With a fare that was very various through out the morning noon and night. The food service was staffed by professionals and recruits during service week. We fed approximately one thousand men and women a day. We would serve food and clean sixteen hours a day and night to test our work ability toward graduation from basic training. During the extended workweek the recruit began to cheat on his feet and was told more than once stand up! Near the end of the work test, he had a friend who helped him move cooking equipment on to the conveyor belt to get it into the washing room. We received blue ink for the task and that means a good job!

The final week of basic training included parade marching to salute the admiral and base commandant. We were in Navy dress that represented Cracker Jack uniforms from cap to toe. As a company of sixty men we were organized low to high and our steps precisely measured on the curve of an oval with American flags and fanfare for a perfect presentation. When basic concluded the E-1 sprained and pinched a neck bone hauling laundry so I screamed and treatment was with depression force plus Motrin pain reliever: the first year in use. When we graduated all of us went on to military education. Before classes started, chest pains forced the recruit out of his bunk to cardiology for a blood pressure test and an EKG 240/130 not good.

The enlistment was O.K. because 080-38-1884 lied. This resulted in a final problem on the base; Mental Illness. He was talked to twice in the Core man school for strange expressions as a problem student and missing lineup then reporting liquor as poison. The recruit was then seeking admittance to the psych ward through a bomb scare and a voices complaint as a result; his behavior became unacceptical for the base. The hospital staff was given a statement from the patient of previous drug and alcohol abuse serious enough to require psychiatric treatment. Two doctors staffed this ward, a Marine first lieutenant MD psychiatrist and a Navy second lieutenant PhD psychologist. The first paycheck handed over was on the psych ward. It was before months of observation proving a substance abuse problem and paranoid schizophrenia that, received no dispute. The other side of the problem involved mixed abuse of drugs and impaired intuition with eye, skin, and lower problems. At this point I requested the maximum amount of life insurance $100,000—paid for. In an effort to stay in the military, the recruit speculated on an invasion of Panama against General Manual Noriega and the subsequent sack of Kuwait by King Sadaam Hussein of Iraq with the tape recorder off. This did not get a response. At the end of treatment, his rebuttal stated E-1 would be acceptable, was passing drug tests, and wanted to serve.

The job for military service ended with pre-existing health problems. The money I could deposit and keep in the bank every month I would never see again. The discharge was for pre-existing medical reasons with an Honorable Character of service plus a ticket to Newark New Jersey from Chicago Illinois. The three monthly paychecks bought a used car and insurance to get to the next job in Connecticut.

THE ECONOMIC DIET

In 1971 when I was a boy we were taught some very strict table manners and one was to chew with your mouth closed. I was unable to do this very well because of olfactory breathing congestion that made it very difficult for me. Time and time again I was disciplined for chewing with my mouth open. Until finally I exclaimed I have a cold. The reason was unknown. It would not be revealed for twenty years the cause of my breathing difficulty. It was second had smoke. Research found smoke in the air results in serious health hazards for non smokers and my mothers smoking in the kitchen was causing congestion for me. These lessons in table manners more than anything else gave me a very serious understanding of food as a child.

When I was a teenager my public school system sold a lunch for .35 cents. Occasionally I would eat two or have extra bread and butter or milk for .05 cents. I always wondered when they would raise the price. They did not, something to think about. Since then I have had failure after failure with food shortages. Until one day I invented the economic meal. This tough diet cost .25 cents a day and night that can last six months or longer and save $3,000.00 + a year.

Food became a problem again at a University when I was forced to skip meals for six months with a successful smoking quit and nothing in the refrigerator. This reached a crisis, when Mike lost his job for the summer due to a mistake on the golf course. My father in anger told me to get out of my house and I assaulted him. I was hospitalized for mental illness for three months. The error in judgment was too little food during six months of physical activity and no psych. I cut it too close! They say of mutiny food food Food! . . .

In my final semester I returned with next to no money. I got a job for fifteen dollars a week that shorted my diet by twenty dollars. As a survival tool, he would buy a pack of cigarettes a day for $1.50 that enabled him to survive on a street hot dog for .90 cents a day. As November ended the street vender departed, it became too cold for him and nothing was available for dinner at school or at home. Next stop, the armed forces recruiting station.

In the Navy there was no end to the high quality and quantity of food for service men and women. Unlike the military of old the food service is one of the great attractions to the military. An example is scrambled eggs and bacon or sausage plus pancakes then cheeseburgers, chilidogs and French fries and strip steaks with mixed vegetables and a baked potato for just one day out of seven all served and washed for you. There is no economic diet in the Navy!

With a life on the tennis court growing up I was advised to try a teaching position from a Psychologist who was the second lieutenant. I took a job from an ex touring pro in Greenwich Connecticut. My car needed one too many repairs that jeopardized my job and, Civil Liberties. This threat forced me to try an economic diet at the tennis club. I tried to use salt to keep weight on but I needed too much food with the physical requirements of professional club tennis. At one time, Mike would drink some beer for fun but the pro got on a health kick at the indoor racket club that accelerated weight loss along with a New Years resolution to quit smoking and a refusal of medical advice by doctor Fish. In three months, Mike was anorexic and tried to leave the hospital twice still his illness kept him there for six months to regain mental health and body mass. He almost died. Cigarettes are now eight dollars a pack and are a different kind of economic problem, loss, and addiction. I still take my medication twenty five years later and see a psychiatrist with a three pack a day habit.

At the age of twenty seven, another Psychologist recommended a computer training program in Norwalk Connecticut. At that time I lived in Greenwich about twenty miles from the opportunity and I had bought a new car with a monthly payment of $165.00 including disability and life insurance. The bank loan insured at a cost of $200.00 per month was with liability, casualty, and collision. Gasoline was $60.00 for the same time. To graduate from the program I needed to spend no more than $50.00 on food for six months. This was the challenge of a lifetime. My operational base was the Grand Union Grocery Store Chain now bankrupt. The strategy was to buy food that could be prepared in five minutes against sixteen hours away from home. This included a night job not just computers.

At that time the store stocked packaged pressed meat at .25 cents per item. These were available in assorted meats and provided two sandwiches for the day and night. Three months into training I needed a cup of coffee to stay awake for the final five hours at work and the commute home. The price 400% of my daily diet; $1.00 for a bottomless cup! There are options to packages of discount meat such as the potato, vegetable oil or pasta plain including margarine, salt and pepper plus discount peanut butter or cheap tuna with two slices of bread plus a can of corn or cup of soup and rice finally, the discount hot dog @ .13 cents each for a package of eight. One more thing, do not forget the egg versus the fowl. Requirement Water. This is for all three meals and in between but you must stay on the diet to call it economic.

The easiest part of thrift eating is in the morning and at work where there is not much excitement or stimulation that leads to a strong appetite. At work there is usually little social pressure to eat too big a meal. So simple and cheap is OK. Discipline is also a key, because to save four figures plus you can not deviate for months at a time. When a standard lunch costs $5.00 and a typical dinner $7.00 you have spent twelve dollars versus twenty five cents. To see this at work in one week a typical man or women has spent $84.00 against thrift of $1.75 and forget about breakfast.

I graduated from computer education and training in March of 1989 with two full certificates of achievement that were based on strong computer learning, perfect attendance and hard work. The Economic Diet gave me an advantage over six months of transportation that got the job done for $50.00 VS. $2,000.00 after all I had to pay to get there. With an economic diet you will also save 20 hours a month or more in cooking time because the meals are so simple. Grocery shopping can be done once a month that saves four hours and your waist line will love it. Due to this form of money management I went on to work for Federated Department Stores, Xerox Corporation, and Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd.

$300 A WEEK MAN

Our marriage began in earnest in September 1987 when Mike was receiving Title IXX benefits and Social Security Disability with a job in cable TV for $7 and change. The state is granting the citizen $250 a month and the Federal Government has determined the benefit is $300. The job income is $1,120 for the month meaning Mike has about $400 bucks a week gross Taxed at 25% or $300 a week. The winter of 87 did not go well. We bought a car under financing by lying about a marriage that did not start yet creating a stress and guilt in the fiancé man because his persona did not want to pay for five years with his name for a car his girl fiancé just wanted from a family that did not care about borrowing or credit and honesty. By March, there is not much to be happy about and mental illness becomes more of a problem resulting in a truck accident then a termination bouncing the employee into the hospital for two months.

We were now living in Greenwich at double the rent and then fiancé has done the impossible she has by passed $300 a week from $250 to $400 in one year and is having a good time on Greenwich Avenue. Therefore, the pressure is getting high to make good or face rejection and go back. The next stop was Macy’s part time in the basement making less than $200 gross a week but Social Security is willing to play ball until the citizen can earn $300 in a week. The mall becomes a merry go round between three stores for a year ending in no job but a Quality Information Processing certificate earned full time during the day. Mike had a friend in the family who had money and influence with his father known as Michael Frenz’s wife Betty that agreed to marry us expensively. What was expected was what we got a great ceremony and a greater party blasting off with the greatest in10X $300 for gifts so Mike had a place to stay for the new-year.

Within a month after the mall, the computer trainee starts retail again with a three hundred dollar a week deal that includes the government. In the spirit of Uncle Sam, Mike has a friend known as Edward who is different like himself starting in this world as discriminatory part time labor at the minimum wage plus college at $300 a course not including transportation. The brothers teamed up for $20,000 in their first year again equaling $300.00 a week for the men. This was to be short lived with the beginning of a blue chip job starting at $2,500 a year lower than three hundred a week and then destroyed by Social Security’s termination of benefits in 1990. The partnership is now embarking on mission 1 2 3 (rent, social security, credit) for the next ten years with a tremendous amount of guilt and work in our minds @ $21,000 in debt.

Three years following a new friend Mike has achieved a corporate award sending him two dollars an hour further to $10 getting him $300 a week by himself in 1992. His friend finally got his feet wet with $300 a week in 1993. After job loss in 1995, the husband worked 30 overtime shifts in 1996 to reach $300 a week for the year then had a nervous breakdown in 1997 ending with the government. In 2003, a best friend has lost his job due to bankruptcy and two years later regained $300 a week at his sister’s hospital with overtime. That brother graduated with a degree in general studies following fifteen years of struggle living with a marriage of debt and disagreement. The college in May 2004 honored the men and women with bagpipes and traditional ceremonies that included Edward’s family and his fiancé. He was married the same year he left and returned to North Dakota three years later nearly as planned with his wife and daughter.

LOVE SICK

People and Things loved the most always gave a profound physical feeling called Love Sickness. Once in a lifetime, a precious gift at high risk startled Mike and it left a breathless person and stomach in a vacuum. When mom gave her boy, a tennis racquet a transformation started from innocence to Love with a Jack Kramer junior hardwood model. With a conquest in the classroom from assignment to completion, the feeling of sickness was never greater than an A and or 100% this was pure love. In the spring at a higher altitude when the dew was fresh and bright at 6:30 am before daylight savings time a breath would bring the ultimate in butterflies on top of Otis Hill so pure it brought tears to your eyes and sugar to your tongue.

As a friend of our father died he gave Mike a book called Know the Birds by Roger Tory Peterson. This encyclopedia of ornithology was the first of his boy hood after a text on Natural History given to him by his grandfather. We went hunting with that father and my father used a Browning over and under shotgun to shoot two pheasants on farmland inhabited by wild game birds including Grouse, Quail, and Partridges. After the birds struck the ground, I was told to pick them up by the neck to make sure they were dead. After he passed away, we read the letter from the sportsman on the notes of the book introduction and Mike cried and cried and cried over the death of a close friend of his father and son.

His grandmother also never stopped loving Mike and took him to a wonder of modern engineering called the Aviary that left you light headed with a cloth opaque top raised one hundred yards in the air that gave enough space for ducks to fly. Manumit bird sanctuary mentioned in school became a reality for us when our stepfather drove hours to find the Audubon ornithology preserve. Here netting, banding, veterinary, and sighting takes place all for the love of our fine feathered friends and their guests who become breathless with the beauty of wild birds in their own habitat.

One of the most exciting New England birds to watch is the Arctic Tern (Sterna Arctica) it is lean and maneuverable with a flying and feeding duration of four hours. The Mikeings of this natural wonder are black, grey, and white with a black cap and orange webbed feet. When Mike was a boy, he would walk everywhere and found one at the bottom of Otis Hill between the cove marsh and Hingham Harbor whirlpool. The friend never let him down and every spring, he/she would be there diving, turning, accelerating, gliding, scooping, feeding, and thrilling a bird watcher named Mike Fish. Farther North on Cape Cod an ever-vigilant uncle would take canoe trips in cold weather that included a nephew with an aspiration to be an ornithologist. Another Arctic friend was spotted as a pair called Eder that are diving ducks hunted by sportsman up to the polar circle. A third star is found in northern Maine in secluded water places both fresh and salt. These famous waterfowls are known for their eerie call at dawn sounding like a whistling cry and have brilliant red eyes and a black and white body with a sporty long shape used for fishing. They are also used to insult people with mental illness who are called Loons with disrespect. This is one of the world’s greatest natural wonders and the call of the Loon is truly music.

Ocean rain and seasickness are two odds of the yachting world never to meet. When a downpour happens, at sea oxygen levels increase and as the rain disappears some of the deepest breaths ever heard occur for pure air inhalation. As swells reach four feet or sometimes called high seas an illness can set in called motion sickness. This problem can debilitate the traveler to vomiting on the deck and staying there for the duration of the voyage. There are treatments for the sickness such as Dramamine and bread and peanut butter also staring at the horizon but the best answer is calm seas. Finally, a funny side effect caused by ocean journeys is sea legs. After four hours or more on the high seas when you get off the ship you still experience the movement of the water and balance is a little difficult.

Whiskey made famous by president, Abraham Lincoln the republican of all time who sold the liquor in X XX XXX XXXX qualities and made more money as a businessman than a lawyer. In drinking, the taste can be mistaken for the result. Liquors when mixed properly are always sneaky and due lead to abuse and a whiskey is not a whiskey.

A scotch can come in all kinds of sizes and years but is always a rather spicy taste whatever mixing happens. American whiskeys have a different flavor, it is sweet with the same proof, and there are 100 of them all a good buzz.

A small furry friend never tires of pleasing his master and leaves the person sick with love. A little bit of water hears the cliquey click of the fur ball’s tongue helping him-she to a drink. Food to build healthy bones and teeth, muscles and immune systems, plus fur and skin is soft and delicious bringing a tear to the big wolf’s eye. The bond between man-woman and dog takes some time until the friend proves he and she is worth it. The canine learns to behave and gains trust with guarding the home and owner. This happens when the teeth are in during the first year and the love created lasts until the end of time.

Tennis is one of the oldest sports originating in England in the 1800s on grass. When playing the game the most important part was that, you did not appear too conspicuous so every player wore whites. Even the balls were white the sneakers too and the net tape plus the lines. Scoring did not count 1 2 3 Even it is 15 30 40 Deuce and the competitor must win by two points. The start of the match is Love or Zero and the ultimate victory is a 6-Love, 6-Love, 6-Love three sets for a perfect match. The result of losing is usually the agony of defeat from an honest man. The Mike of winning will always be a healthy body and mind and owe what a feeling.

At 25 Chipmunk Lane there were many joys such as an artesian well for water, woods and privacy, and horses in a mile of coral fencing behind the property. This was horse country in Connecticut and hosted by the OX Ridge hunt club. There were some unusual sights such as polo tournaments and barn swallows with thrilling flight plus an owner running after her equine on the golf course. The love of these massive friends can be experienced with an apple some day if you approach the animal and brave a quiet walk toward yourself from the horse that can be terrifying but hang in there; he might eat out of your hand!

Travel can be the elixir of life even if it is just a day trip. One Sunday our father offered to take us to a magic lake in New York state rumored to be a deep water cavern fed by a glacier spring. The road was North and quite far for us to travel up the Taconic state parkway so you really needed to have good directions. We had guidance before starting out from another son and made the trip in about and hour. You climbed a steep hill before reaching lake level and viewed an old hotel towering above Lake Minewaska that became dilapidated and abandoned, left over from the days of expensive weekend vacations at the famous resort. We visited the spot to go swimming and packed a facemask to test the depth of a natural wonder close to home and with all our bravery never saw bottom. The water was so pure Michael and Carey would have thought they were in a bathtub and tested a waterfall for kicks but did not go as far as the cliff dive. The Lake will always bring a tear to our eyes due to its natural beauty and water so clean it made purity passion.

Anther water of beauty is a personal aquarium. These became popular in the seventies when filtration technology advanced along with a wider variety of tropical fish. I remember the first tank of mine holding ten gallons of tap water kept clean by a charcoal and cotton filter receptacle with a siphon tube apparatus. As a Fish, this was true joy and the water was treated with Neon’s, Siamese fighting fish, Angelfish, Zebra fish Suckerfish, and a Gold fish or two. Tetra-Min was a thrill, and wonder, and we never met a fish that did not eat—believe us.

When you have some experience in Love, sharing the feeling is the most important thing you can do. The opposite nature of man and woman electrified by the first touch leads to strength over weakness and the power of joy. From beginning to end man and woman is what makes life worth living from here to eternity. Emotions are the spice of life but also can be the poisons of the mind and body. Happiness in its truest form is between husband and wife. Sadness in its darkest form is from death. Psych doctors repair the damage of emotions that cause illness and behavioral problems leading to a danger for a person and others. A Healthy person has clear skin or even a tan a good waistline bright eyes and a sense of humor. In behavior, a good man or woman is productive, honest with friends and family, and financially is competent until death does him or her part. In conclusion, when life is creation and God becomes witnessed there is the gift of man to woman with a little feeling of ick.

THE GLEE CLUB

We did things differently in our club and had a ball in Hingham as an eighteen minority. Most of us knew each other when we were five years old all the way through twenty-one. Mike entered the club at eight and Nick at fourteen with the rest at birth. Our parents were intelligent and promoted non contact sports like baseball, basketball, tennis, and tunes VS. football, hockey, and wrestling. They had a heart for us as great sons and friends and feared for our bodies and futures. As football goes, we did not date the cheerleaders but made almost every game at home and away in our father’s cars. The club began from the neighborhood and school with sports for teenage boys who liked to stay out of trouble and girls were not a part of the male organization that kept very much to itself.

Our meeting place started at the bottom of Otis Hill Road known as the bus stop. This was about as scenic as it gets right on Hingham Harbor within sight of Button Island and the Yacht Club. What mike remembers clearly is the winters at this spot with high velocity winds off the water resulting in sub zero wind chills, frozen hair, and cold skin bite. This meant fighting the weather with snorkel jackets having hoods that extended a foot in front of our faces and then down when it first came on the market. Down the road on Downer Avenue apiece and over was a place called Seymour’s that was our second beer hit. This business was essentially a retail beer store that would sell discount brands and that included Narragansett know as Hey neighbor have a gannie. A friend in the Glee Club started a collection of cans in the hundreds with every update for the product. He even visited the brewery in Rhode Island home of the famous Narragansett Bay. We were all extremely enthusiastic about beer drinking but the police should have doused the alcohol before eighteen since the Glee Club was just too young for adult products.

Off Downer Ave. stood Foster school a meeting place for us in the seventies that was a Mecca for basketball, indoor outdoor and covered outside including tennis courts with lighting plus a small baseball field. We would gather from points around the vicinity at three o’clock until five primarily for hoop inside the school that the janitor would leave the door open for us. He was a special friend of us ours we called Red who swept the court and kept the building clean. The man was very old to us and always had a cigar but in his mouth, still being friendly was a way of life for him and us. The court was elementary in size about one fourth of regulation so it made it easy to play and score for hours after high school. Every so often, there were visitors to this jewel that always were welcome and all got the ball. On one