The Original Old Farts Club

AC Infinity
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ness said:
Now flower would be a different story. Beautiful display. Been shopping for marigolds and can fine any in the shops. I have seed I'll be starting soon but still looking when I go to town.
Click to expand...


no marigolds!?

dang , i thought they were pretty common

if you dont find any just give me a holler , i have a bazillion seeds!
 
Unca Walt said:
I write novels in a peculiar way; I just begin writing and seeing where it goes. Here is an vignette from a work that is not yet complete. I append it here, because some Long Islanders my get a memory kick out of it.

From: The Twelfth Magic Summer <-- For alla youse younguns, we are talking 1952.

We had gone fishing in Cold Spring Harbor on a schoolday. He had said to me, “Slug, which would you rather do... go fishing with me, or go to school today?”

My God, there are kids, old folks, and in-betweens that would never have the temerity to even dream of having the opportunity to answer such a question. Dad had just purchased a Sears-Roebuck Sea King 4 1/2 horsepower outboard motor, and he wanted to try it out. As it turned out, I got nailed by my fourth-grade teacher (an ugly old harridan, and a ***** to boot) for truancy. It has always been worth it. Perhaps even more than if Dad and I had gotten away with it clean. No big thing, but Dad had to write a letter.

We went to Cold Spring Harbor, rented a boat, put the outboard on, and zoomed out into the great beyond. Of course, I got to steer, while Dad set up the spreaders and sinkers on our poles. I was ten feet tall. Also, I had never caught a fish in my life up to that point.

We anchored near a buoy and dropped the lines overboard. In less than a second, I had a bite. The fish came into the boat a second later, and I can still see it today, fins spread, tail flicking. It was an inedible something called a bergall. We threw it overboard after I had played with it for a few minutes. I felt like I had spent the morning in a secret fort, or like I had been inducted into a secret society. I had caught a fish!

Dad put heavier sinkers on the lines so they’d go to the bottom faster.

Bam! A bite. I reeled in the line, and there were two flounders on the spreader. This went on for quite a while -- we fished and fished; using progressively smaller pieces of worm (Dad had only bought a dozen, since they cost a nickel apiece) until we had no more. Then we used Dad’s pocketknife to scrape dried worms off the rowboat thwarts. After they were gone, we went to shore and dug some more worms, climbed back into the boat and caught some more flounders. Suddenly, there were six inches and more of fish in the bottom of the boat, and we had to stand on them.

Finally, Dad said, “OK, Slug, we’ve got to knock off now.”

When I asked why, since they were still biting, and we had a couple of pieces of worm left, he pointed at the waterline on the rowboat, which was right up near the oarlock.

“If we put any more in the boat, we’ll sink.”

{Super careful ride back with panicky bailing every now and then}

What a day. And he cleaned and filleted them all. Beats the hell out of school.

If folks would like some other vignettes, I will post them. They all still have notes for expansion, etc. (as in there is a bailing-in-panic story for on the way in -- this was before life preservers came with rented rowboats.)

Just lemme know.
Click to expand...
What did you just say....no intendo...
 
Unca Walt said:
I write novels in a peculiar way; I just begin writing and seeing where it goes. Here is an vignette from a work that is not yet complete. I append it here, because some Long Islanders my get a memory kick out of it.

From: The Twelfth Magic Summer <-- For alla youse younguns, we are talking 1952.

We had gone fishing in Cold Spring Harbor on a schoolday. He had said to me, “Slug, which would you rather do... go fishing with me, or go to school today?”

My God, there are kids, old folks, and in-betweens that would never have the temerity to even dream of having the opportunity to answer such a question. Dad had just purchased a Sears-Roebuck Sea King 4 1/2 horsepower outboard motor, and he wanted to try it out. As it turned out, I got nailed by my fourth-grade teacher (an ugly old harridan, and a ***** to boot) for truancy. It has always been worth it. Perhaps even more than if Dad and I had gotten away with it clean. No big thing, but Dad had to write a letter.

We went to Cold Spring Harbor, rented a boat, put the outboard on, and zoomed out into the great beyond. Of course, I got to steer, while Dad set up the spreaders and sinkers on our poles. I was ten feet tall. Also, I had never caught a fish in my life up to that point.

We anchored near a buoy and dropped the lines overboard. In less than a second, I had a bite. The fish came into the boat a second later, and I can still see it today, fins spread, tail flicking. It was an inedible something called a bergall. We threw it overboard after I had played with it for a few minutes. I felt like I had spent the morning in a secret fort, or like I had been inducted into a secret society. I had caught a fish!

Dad put heavier sinkers on the lines so they’d go to the bottom faster.

Bam! A bite. I reeled in the line, and there were two flounders on the spreader. This went on for quite a while -- we fished and fished; using progressively smaller pieces of worm (Dad had only bought a dozen, since they cost a nickel apiece) until we had no more. Then we used Dad’s pocketknife to scrape dried worms off the rowboat thwarts. After they were gone, we went to shore and dug some more worms, climbed back into the boat and caught some more flounders. Suddenly, there were six inches and more of fish in the bottom of the boat, and we had to stand on them.

Finally, Dad said, “OK, Slug, we’ve got to knock off now.”

When I asked why, since they were still biting, and we had a couple of pieces of worm left, he pointed at the waterline on the rowboat, which was right up near the oarlock.

“If we put any more in the boat, we’ll sink.”

{Super careful ride back with panicky bailing every now and then}

What a day. And he cleaned and filleted them all. Beats the hell out of school.

If folks would like some other vignettes, I will post them. They all still have notes for expansion, etc. (as in there is a bailing-in-panic story for on the way in -- this was before life preservers came with rented rowboats.)

Just lemme know.
Click to expand...
Share them stories anytime Walt
 
ness said:
Morning late for yesterday.🤪 I must have got carried away somehow. 👾 And a late start for today afternoon is in order. I hear a thunderstorm coming in from the east. 69 degrees and Cloudy. Sure, am enjoy this spring weather we have been having.
Enjoy :32110marijuana: pass left
Click to expand...
It’s nice here too Ness. Maryjane got her stitches out today and is free to chase the ball and squirrels and rabbits again. She’s so happy bougie little mud hound.
our flowers are all starting to bloom here and summer is on the way I think.
629EABA2-CB41-4A5E-BC63-81C748A57A8C.jpeg
 
SubmarineGirl said:
It’s nice here too Ness. Maryjane got her stitches out today and is free to chase the ball and squirrels and rabbits again. She’s so happy bougie little mud hound.
our flowers are all starting to bloom here and summer is on the way I think.
View attachment 323877
Click to expand...
Beautiful Subbie. They is a thunderstorm coming in from the east. I have to get off the computer. Have fun.
 
RosterMan said:
Share them stories anytime Walt
Click to expand...
Unnerstan'... these are unfinished vignettes plucked outa an unfinished-as-yet novel. That's what the smaller notation print stuff can be seen -- there will be side stories, etc.

Moar:
The Twelfth Magic Summer

©Walt C. Snedeker​

It’s true that you can’t go back. Perhaps that’s really for the best, since it makes what you remember safe, immutable, and maybe a touch sacred. The memories of a short, nearly magical time in my life have a special place and a special sort of immortality. These memories have become polished like church-pew oak with much reverent use. They reside in that quiet section of the mind that each of us have -- the part of us that is the sanctuary for remembered warmth and pleasantness. It was my twelfth summer, a time when life was so much simpler.

Twelve years of age is universally regarded as a time of mixed misery and complications for both boys and girls. I must have had my share and more of those problems, but they were gone... no, to be more accurate, they were different for me than they were for anyone else I have ever met. The normal mixups and surges were rendered secondary, unimportant, almost unnoticed by the incredible things that happened during that twelfth magic summer.

The summer of 1952.

It was a time in America when roadside carnivals would suddenly appear. The news would somehow travel instantly through all the neighborhood kids. We all knew, although we don’t know how we learned of it, that there would be a carnival a mile or two away, on Sunrise Highway in the town of Freeport. Carnivals were seen by us kids as being especially placed there for our own personal enjoyment -- sort of like the Christmas morning feeling. And while they were horribly expensive, they weren’t seen by us as money-making enterprises. Money was not very available for carnivals and the like in the fifties. We’d go there with two quarters or so (everything we could scrape together on short notice), determined to make them last as long as possible. The terrific expense was understood as being just a part of the overall package. It wasn’t until many years later that I saw the tawdry, desperate side of these traveling roadshows. The small trailers that represented living quarters for the carny people were simply never visible, never noticed amid all the beautiful bright lights and glitter.

The bright lights and glitter. In 1952, there were very few lights being used anywhere for anything other than basic illumination. In those days, kids would get on their bikes and ride several miles just because a park somewhere had a baseball diamond that was to be lit for a high-school night game, and the spectacle of the bright lights was something wonderful to see. There was a single oil-burner repair store at the edge of town that had a blue neon sign in the window. Sometimes, a bunch of us would ride down in the evening dark just to look at it spilling blue radiance on our faces, appreciating that it was lit up even though there was no holiday or other celebration going on.

So a carnival, with colored bright lights that flashed and blinked and whirled was a dazzling place. Adding to the excitement was another extreme rarity: the fact that zesty music could be heard from more than a block away. The only other times that loud, cheerful music could be heard outdoors in the early fifties was during parades or football games -- and that music was always something disciplined and regimented from John Philip Sousa. But here was clanging and crescendos, trumpets and bells. Several different and unidentifiable pieces playing at once, joining into a potpourri of excitement. It was intoxicating.

{the cannon} {what to do with goldfish} {first time I saved a life} {Freeport Raceway secrets}

Superhighways were something you read about as imminent in Popular Science. The Korean War had just ended. Girls were beginning to be mysterious, and were certainly unattainable. They were so beautiful, suddenly.

{Unca Harry and Omaha Beach spearhead device on his Bronze Star with "V"= John Wayne} {Unca Irv – Hotdog P-51 pilot shot down by groundfire, then had 900 Germans surrender to him}. {I find out my Great Unca Ed is the highest ranking US Marine General there is. And I am named after him.}

My father was a tall, romantic giant of a man with just the trace of a limp caused by a motorcycle accident, who knew the answer to any question I might ask. It was a good time.

A 1936 Buick is a big car. We traveled with it nearly empty, as my father never seemed to plan for the future. I found out we were driving to Canada when I asked him. My mother had given me a dollar, and a paper bag of clothes; I was overjoyed. My sister Judy and I had gone with Dad to Maine two years before, and we'd had a glorious time.

Our camping gear on that trip consisted of one old horse blanket and a folding Sterno stove, with no plates, pots, forks... nothing. It didn’t matter -- the three of us had no trouble at all. It amazes me today how much luggage seems to be necessary even just to stay in a motel and eat in a restaurant. Back in those days, it was different, and easier.

For example, on that previous, much shorter trip, I remember Dad piling us in the car from the lake shore where we had parked the car and slept. He drove awhile down the dirt road, and there in the distance was a farmhouse. While Judy and I explored around the farmyard, Dad talked to the people living there. When he came out of the house, he had a bottle of milk, some plates and cutlery, and the makings for pancakes (yes, he had syrup, too). To this day, I don’t know if Dad had to pay anything for the food, but I do know the rest of the stuff was freely loaned to us. Dad could charm, all right.

We drove back to the lakeshore on the bumpy dirt road in the brilliant Maine sunshine, pointing out to each other the wonders in the woods. There were coils of steam coming from the ponds we passed. A deer (the first I had ever seen even including photographs) went bounding across the road in a fantastic leap that seemed to defy the law of gravity. We had to stop twice to pick wildflowers, and Judy put a couple in her hair. We played “she loves me not” with the daisies. If it came out wrong, you could always cheat by taking two petals at a time, or just take another daisy and start over.

When we got back to the campsite at the lake edge, Dad started to make pancakes. We were all astonished to see that the bumpy ride had caused butter to magically appear floating on top of the milk. The little Sterno stove was given a day off, and a small campfire with a neat circle of rocks was our cookstove that morning. Dad was extremely funny at times. He would give the frying pan a thrust upwards, lofting the cooking pancake ten feet in the air to turn it over. I don’t know how we ever got enough to feed the three of us, because he was horrible at it and pancakes were going everywhere. One got chopped in half by the edge of the pan, “OOP, there’s one we don’t get to eat.” he’d say, and I’d roll on the ground with laughter. Another would land in the fire completely, “OOP, there’s another one we don’t get to eat.” My stomach hurt from laughing.

We washed the plates and things in the icy water of the lake, scrubbing them clean with the sand, and returned them to the farmhouse. That night, under the ghostly streamers of Milky Way stars, while Judy and I gasped and pointed out meteor trails, Dad told us a screamingly funny story about the whiffle tree, which grew upside down. In order to find one, you first had to row out to the center of a dry lake -- that’s where the whifflefish could be found. To catch one, you simply drilled a hole in the lake floor, and put some pepper down the hole. When the whifflefish smelled the pepper, it would sneeze and jump out of the hole and into the boat. Then, you would nail the whifflefish to a board, put seaweed over it, and bury it in the bottom of a campfire for a week. After a week, you would remove it from the fire, scrape it off, and eat the board. It was a wonderful trip.

And now, Dad and I were going back; only this time, we were going even farther.

We were going to Canada!

{father/son grow 1000X closer} {the mountain}
 
Unca Walt said:
Unnerstan'... these are unfinished vignettes plucked outa an unfinished-as-yet novel. That's what the smaller notation print stuff can be seen -- there will be side stories, etc.

Moar:
The Twelfth Magic Summer

©Walt C. Snedeker​

It’s true that you can’t go back. Perhaps that’s really for the best, since it makes what you remember safe, immutable, and maybe a touch sacred. The memories of a short, nearly magical time in my life have a special place and a special sort of immortality. These memories have become polished like church-pew oak with much reverent use. They reside in that quiet section of the mind that each of us have -- the part of us that is the sanctuary for remembered warmth and pleasantness. It was my twelfth summer, a time when life was so much simpler.

Twelve years of age is universally regarded as a time of mixed misery and complications for both boys and girls. I must have had my share and more of those problems, but they were gone... no, to be more accurate, they were different for me than they were for anyone else I have ever met. The normal mixups and surges were rendered secondary, unimportant, almost unnoticed by the incredible things that happened during that twelfth magic summer.

The summer of 1952.

It was a time in America when roadside carnivals would suddenly appear. The news would somehow travel instantly through all the neighborhood kids. We all knew, although we don’t know how we learned of it, that there would be a carnival a mile or two away, on Sunrise Highway in the town of Freeport. Carnivals were seen by us kids as being especially placed there for our own personal enjoyment -- sort of like the Christmas morning feeling. And while they were horribly expensive, they weren’t seen by us as money-making enterprises. Money was not very available for carnivals and the like in the fifties. We’d go there with two quarters or so (everything we could scrape together on short notice), determined to make them last as long as possible. The terrific expense was understood as being just a part of the overall package. It wasn’t until many years later that I saw the tawdry, desperate side of these traveling roadshows. The small trailers that represented living quarters for the carny people were simply never visible, never noticed amid all the beautiful bright lights and glitter.

The bright lights and glitter. In 1952, there were very few lights being used anywhere for anything other than basic illumination. In those days, kids would get on their bikes and ride several miles just because a park somewhere had a baseball diamond that was to be lit for a high-school night game, and the spectacle of the bright lights was something wonderful to see. There was a single oil-burner repair store at the edge of town that had a blue neon sign in the window. Sometimes, a bunch of us would ride down in the evening dark just to look at it spilling blue radiance on our faces, appreciating that it was lit up even though there was no holiday or other celebration going on.

So a carnival, with colored bright lights that flashed and blinked and whirled was a dazzling place. Adding to the excitement was another extreme rarity: the fact that zesty music could be heard from more than a block away. The only other times that loud, cheerful music could be heard outdoors in the early fifties was during parades or football games -- and that music was always something disciplined and regimented from John Philip Sousa. But here was clanging and crescendos, trumpets and bells. Several different and unidentifiable pieces playing at once, joining into a potpourri of excitement. It was intoxicating.

{the cannon} {what to do with goldfish} {first time I saved a life} {Freeport Raceway secrets}

Superhighways were something you read about as imminent in Popular Science. The Korean War had just ended. Girls were beginning to be mysterious, and were certainly unattainable. They were so beautiful, suddenly.

{Unca Harry and Omaha Beach = John Wayne} {Unca Irv – Hotdog P-51 pilot shot down, then had 900 Germans surrender to him. (I find out my Great Unca Ed is the highest ranking US Marine there is. And I am named after him.)

My father was a tall, romantic giant of a man with just the trace of a limp caused by a motorcycle accident, who knew the answer to any question I might ask. It was a good time.

A 1936 Buick is a big car. We traveled with it nearly empty, as my father never seemed to plan for the future. I found out we were driving to Canada when I asked him. My mother had given me a dollar, and a paper bag of clothes; I was overjoyed. My sister Judy and I had gone with Dad to Maine two years before, and we'd had a glorious time.

Our camping gear on that trip consisted of one old horse blanket and a folding Sterno stove, with no plates, pots, forks... nothing. It didn’t matter -- the three of us had no trouble at all. It amazes me today how much luggage seems to be necessary even just to stay in a motel and eat in a restaurant. Back in those days, it was different, and easier.

For example, on that previous, much shorter trip, I remember Dad piling us in the car from the lake shore where we had parked the car and slept. He drove awhile down the dirt road, and there in the distance was a farmhouse. While Judy and I explored around the farmyard, Dad talked to the people living there. When he came out of the house, he had a bottle of milk, some plates and cutlery, and the makings for pancakes (yes, he had syrup, too). To this day, I don’t know if Dad had to pay anything for the food, but I do know the rest of the stuff was freely loaned to us. Dad could charm, all right.

We drove back to the lakeshore on the bumpy dirt road in the brilliant Maine sunshine, pointing out to each other the wonders in the woods. There were coils of steam coming from the ponds we passed. A deer (the first I had ever seen even including photographs) went bounding across the road in a fantastic leap that seemed to defy the law of gravity. We had to stop twice to pick wildflowers, and Judy put a couple in her hair. We played “she loves me not” with the daisies. If it came out wrong, you could always cheat by taking two petals at a time, or just take another daisy and start over.

When we got back to the campsite at the lake edge, Dad started to make pancakes. We were all astonished to see that the bumpy ride had caused butter to magically appear floating on top of the milk. The little Sterno stove was given a day off, and a small campfire with a neat circle of rocks was our cookstove that morning. Dad was extremely funny at times. He would give the frying pan a thrust upwards, lofting the cooking pancake ten feet in the air to turn it over. I don’t know how we ever got enough to feed the three of us, because he was horrible at it and pancakes were going everywhere. One got chopped in half by the edge of the pan, “OOP, there’s one we don’t get to eat.” he’d say, and I’d roll on the ground with laughter. Another would land in the fire completely, “OOP, there’s another one we don’t get to eat.” My stomach hurt from laughing.

We washed the plates and things in the icy water of the lake, scrubbing them clean with the sand, and returned them to the farmhouse. That night, under the ghostly streamers of Milky Way stars, while Judy and I gasped and pointed out meteor trails, Dad told us a screamingly funny story about the whiffle tree, which grew upside down. In order to find one, you first had to row out to the center of a dry lake -- that’s where the whifflefish could be found. To catch one, you simply drilled a hole in the lake floor, and put some pepper down the hole. When the whifflefish smelled the pepper, it would sneeze and jump out of the hole and into the boat. Then, you would nail the whifflefish to a board, put seaweed over it, and bury it in the bottom of a campfire for a week. After a week, you would remove it from the fire, scrape it off, and eat the board. It was a wonderful trip.

And now, Dad and I were going back; only this time, we were going even farther.

We were going to Canada!

{father/son grow 1000X closer} {the mountain}
Click to expand...
Thks Walt
Made me think of the times i got to spend with my Dad, Not many but there were some good ones .
I remember him teaching me to play Golf, He wanted me to be the next Jack Nicholson,
I soon learned to hate the game of golf after being yelled at to keep my dang head down and not to kill the ball. But Fishing out in the Ocean for Tuna and Mako made up for it.
 
RosterMan said:
My Dad was OLD SCHOOL
When he taught us to swim we were very young and he tossed us in the water .
TINS............
Click to expand...
So did mine. Getting out of the sack was tough.

Also from Rosty:
Made me think of the times i got to spend with my Dad, Not many but there were some good ones . I remember him teaching me to play Golf, He wanted me to be the next Jack Nicholson.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Meh. I was born without the Snedeker Golf Gene.

My cousin, Brandt can hit a clay pigeon with a golf ball using a 4-iron. <-- Duckie it yourself to see the video. He is worth over $6MM, so I have stopped worrying about him.

My brother, Clayton (we have weird names** in the Sneakydicker Clan) always spotted me two strokes a hole when we played. Do the math: If I parred a Par 3, he would have to get a hole-in-one to break even. :oops:

**My middle name is Cornelius. I grew up tough and mean.

I never, ever beat him. Or even came close. I dropped a hog at 275 yards with my Weatherby... but all skill leaves my body when I pick up a golf club.

We had one other deal. We quit for the day when I lost 12 golf balls. Did that many times.
 
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