Archive | June, 2016

Going to Junior High

19 Jun

After finishing the sixth grade it was time to move on to the seventh grade. So off to Dr. Leroy L Doig Jr. High. Yes back before political correctness, we went to a Junior High for the seventh and eighth grades. Today it’s now called an Intermediate school. But back then, it was a big step, we were almost in High School!!

Doig

My best memories of time here, include forgery, floods, and a few fools. I guess I should first come clean with my criminal past, in the eighth grade, I had a history class where I couldn’t stand the teacher. This was also the class just before lunch. As it turned out if your teacher approved you to work in the cafeteria for lunch, you could get oout of class 15 minutes early to help get ready. So I knew my teacher wouldn’t approve it, so I helped him a bit. I signed his name to the form and turned it in. And guess what, I was picked to work!! Well the first day came for me to report and the teached looked at me strange when I stood up and started to leave class.

“Excuse Mr. Johnson, where do you think you are going?” The teacher said.

“I have to go to the cafeteria, to get ready for lunch.” I replied.

“I don’t rememberr signing any permission slip for that” he says.

Oh-oh, I shrugged saying “Well I put the form on your desk and came by to pick up after class to pick it up and it was signed.”

He looked at me quizically and then shook his head and tells me “Fine, just don’t expect me to approve this for the next quarter”

So for a quarter I got out early.

As floods went, it maybe hard for some people to believe this, but one year we had torrential rains. It would rain hard enough that mom would actually have to get up and drive us to school, just for safety reasons. Well the school had a huge side grass area, this was so big that the Garden Grove Little League was able to build a regulation little league field for the “majors” and still have room for a snack bar and multiple other baseball fields for us non major ball players. And for the record, Doug was in the majors most of his little league career, while the closest I made it was, working in the snack bar behind home base, or working as the official scorekeeper, when my mom couldn’t make it.

Any how, with this torrential rain the main runoff was down the side of the school yard. To this day I can remember that for days the gutters were flooded. The water extended out into the school field for 10 feet in some places. It was amazing.

When we graduated from the eighth grade, I can still remember how proud my parents were that I was moving on to high school. But that was nothing compared to the joy the parents of one of my classmates. I can still remember Randy walking up to me after the ceremony and tell me that his dad was so proud that he had graduated, that he bought him a car!! A freaking car!! Turned out that Randy ended up being the only kid in our class who was old enough to drive himself home.

Elementary School Aliens

3 Jun

While at Eisenhower I had a friend, Greg, who I hung out with a lot. One of our favorite illegal activities was to sneak into the auditorium and climb under the stage. We thought it was a great place to hang out and also look for the alien that was sending mental images to us. Yeah I know, stupid huh? But heck we were young and at the time I thought my friend was receiving the same mental images as me, this made it more imperative that we find the aliens so we could see what they were up to and who knows, maybe save the world in the process.

At the time I remember my friend asking me what the aliens looked like and as I described them to him. He just shook his head up and down agreeing with me, that yes that was exactly the same alien that was communicating with him. It was only after a year went by that I figured out he was just jerking my chain.

The only good thing that came out of this was it led me to take a creative writing class over the summer between 5th and 6th grade, which I nailed, naturally. I wrote a story about finding alien life on the moon, probably a few other things that I don’t remember, and a poem which I remember to this day.

I will include it here but remember I was just going into the 6th grade that year

Over the hill lived a chicken

Who thought he had easy pickin’s

But when Christmas came

It was such a shame

As he ended up in the kitchen.

And with that I will take my bow.

 

 

Busy Year

3 Jun

Wow hadn’t realized how long I had been away from this. Guess I need to get started again.

So I guess the best thing to do is start with a brief recap of the past 11 months.  So since my last post we completed our Road trip around America and I have to tell you if you ever get the opportunity to take a mustang convertible (okay I’m partial) and drive through the U.S. then don’t hesitate just do it. Even though we finished this trip last August both Helen and I are ready to throw everything into the car and take off again for an extended road trip again, I promise to post more of the trip in the future.

We bought a house and moved in in September. I can safely say this is our dream house, while we bought it new, we did a lot of updates following our move in to make it just right for us. We absolutely love the place and I plan to post pictures and memories of the process as we go, Best part of this is that buying the house also plays an interesting part in our Road trip.

We took another cruise, this time to South America, around the Horn, from Valparaiso, Chile to Buenos Ares, Argentina. Biggest thing from that trip is we saw penguins, lots of penguins! Oh and we were stranded on an island, for most of the day, when our tour boat couldn’t get off the shore.  Of course more on that and the rest of the cruise later as well.

We also bought Disney passes so we could tag along with our kids and grandchildren when they went. Now I love Disneyland, as much as anyone, but to be honest there is nothing like seeing the park through the eyes of a 2 year old. We’ve been twice, 5 months apart, and the difference in what is fun and exciting for the little one brings a new sense of joy and wonderment each time. And with the coming of Star Wars land, I will definitely be keeping my pass current..

And lastly and most importantly we found out one of our daughters is pregnant and due in
October. We couldn’t be more excited. Tells us that things are going to be exciting as the year progresses.

That’ it for now.