Good Stuff Stories by Tom Poe

Good Stuff Stories by Tom Poe GOOD STUFF STORIES BY TOM POE is a small business which helps folks record anecdotes from their life to share with family, friends and the general public.

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05/25/2020

IT’S NOT THE CONTAINER but what’s inside...

Such a good story:

A woman by the name of Mary Bartels had a home directly across the street from the entrance to a hospital clinic. Her family lived on the main floor and rented the upstairs rooms to outpatients at the clinic.
One evening a truly awful-looking old man came to the door asking if there was room for him to stay the night. He was stooped and shriveled, and his face was lopsided from swelling—red and raw. He said he’d been hunting for a room since noon but with no success. “I guess it’s my face,” he said. “I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says it could possibly improve after more treatments.” He indicated he’d be happy to sleep in the rocking chair on the porch. As she talked with him, Mary realized this little old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. Although her rooms were filled, she told him to wait in the chair and she’d find him a place to sleep.
At bedtime Mary’s husband set up a camp cot for the man. When she checked in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and he was out on the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, he asked if he could return the next time he had a treatment. “I won’t put you out a bit,” he promised. “I can sleep fine in a chair.” Mary assured him he was welcome to come again.
In the several years he went for treatments and stayed in Mary’s home, the old man, who was a fisherman by trade, always had gifts of seafood or vegetables from his garden. Other times he sent packages in the mail.
When Mary received these thoughtful gifts, she often thought of a comment her next-door neighbor made after the disfigured, stooped old man had left Mary’s home that first morning. “Did you keep that awful-looking man last night? I turned him away. You can lose customers by putting up such people.”
Mary knew that maybe they had lost customers once or twice, but she thought, “Oh, if only they could have known him, perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear.”
After the man passed away, Mary was visiting with a friend who had a greenhouse. As she looked at her friend’s flowers, she noticed a beautiful golden chrysanthemum but was puzzled that it was growing in a dented, old, rusty bucket. Her friend explained, “I ran short of pots, and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn’t mind starting in this old pail. It’s just for a little while, until I can put it out in the garden.”
Mary smiled as she imagined just such a scene in heaven. “Here’s an especially beautiful one,” God might have said when He came to the soul of the little old man. “He won’t mind starting in this small, misshapen body.” But that was long ago, and in God’s garden how tall this lovely soul must stand!

REMEMBER OUR FATHERS!
04/24/2020

REMEMBER OUR FATHERS!

04/27/2019

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1542354192692508/permalink/2231063733821547/

AN INSPIRING STORY OF HER DAD...WRITTEN BY TONI WAGNER

When my father was 10 years old he was cleaning his bicycle with kerosene when his mother called out to him to burn the trash. He caught on fire and began running down the street. Our neighbor, Hub caught him and rolled him in the grass saving his life. He was sent to Long Beach Community Hospital. He had third-degree burns over 1/3 of his body. He laid in bed for a year while they let his arms and legs grow together with scar tissue. One day a doctor from Harbour Hospital was making rounds when he noticed my dad. He was horrified by what he saw and Immediately had my dad transferred to Harbour Hospital.
He started receiving treatment. Extensive skin grafts and the healing began. Soon he was instigating wheelchair races down the hallways. He returned home in a wheelchair and the doctors said most likely he would never walk again. He didn’t believe that and he did walk again. He was a Merchant marine during the 2nd World
War. Went on the become a master carpenter and built
the house I grew up in. Also built a couple of of boats in our
backyard. Later he specialized in door hanging and invented and made special equipment that would allow
him to hang institutional doors by himself in schools and government buildings. He was quick-witted, funny and
told great stories.And I was lucky enough to be his little
buddy. Whenever he said does anyone want to go, I said me. We went to a lot of hardware stores and boat and fishing stores. My favorite was going to the docks to work on the boat.

01/25/2019

DEL DANIELS WRITES...
2019 Short Story #4
High School Pranks

Hi gang,

The year was 1959. Life was good for us seniors at Jordan High School. Especially if you were members of the Jordan High tennis team. They were the first Jordan varsity team to win a league championship in the newly formed Harry J. Moore league.

Dean Burgess and I were doubles partners and we had not loss a match in two years. Dean was also a straight A student and happened to be our class valedictorian. I was not a straight A student. Oh I got an A in any class I shared with Dean. I guess it was just a guy thing.

Tennis class was always 7th period and Dean and I shared a double period social studies class during 5th and 6th periods. Mr Penn, a big man and nice guy, was our teacher. Mr Penn liked Dean and I and had gotten into the habit of giving us the keys to the bungalows so he could arrive leisurely after lunch. We opened it and took our seats usually—but not every time!

We opened the doors about 15 minutes early and let a few friends in. Our big mistake we let in Bob Parnell, class clown. Great guy but trouble in the making.

Bob sat down in the teacher’s big rolling chair and the trouble started. He ended up at the back of our bungalow while a class was in session on the other side of the attached bungalow. Mr Penn approaching, time running out. What to do? What to do?

Three of us grabbed the back of the chair and pushed and ran as hard as we could with Bob bellowing to slow down. Too late! We let him fly. He stuck out his feet. We looked on horrified. Bob’s feet went all the way through the wall and he was trapped with his feet in the class next door.

We tossed the keys to the room to Bob with our own prayers took a seat and buried our noses in a book.

So what was Mr Penn’s reaction? He laughed. Then he added that maybe this will help get us out of these #%£¥ #}%+• bungalow sooner. Thank God some teachers got it!

01/24/2019

KITTY RESCUE BY DEL DANIELS....

My family lived in NLB in the smallest four room house you could imagine in 1945. We lived at 232 E. Coolidge St just a block from Artesia and Long Beach Blvd. Ours was a little green house at the back of a large residential lot. My dad paid a little over $3,000 dollars for it when he was discharged from WWII. But it was a place to raise his family which consisted of his wife and three young sons, of which I was the oldest at four years old.

One of my first fond memories, of which there are many, of my dad was a small incident. Our house sat back on a paved alley. For a couple of nights we had been receiving distress calls from a kitten whom we could not find. Finally the kitten was found sitting on the top of giant telephone pole behind our house. It appeared to be too scared to climb down. After dinner my dad said he was going out but he would be back later.

When he returned, he had gone to Sad Sacks and had managed to borrow some metal cleats that were used by telephone high wire electricians. My dad was going to climb that pole in the alley and rescue that kitten.

There were probably 20-25 people gathered in that alley to watch. I was one of them. I was scared as he started his climb. He carefully began and as he got higher in the air I could feel everyone getting tense.

Anyway, my dad got to the top, the kitten actually jumped on him, and he carefully brought him down. He had the neighbors cheering. And me too!

It may not have been the best of stories but it is the rambling of a mind here in the hospital. It was written on my cell phone which is hard for me. I want you to know that I am coping and have been in the hospital since Dec. 24. Never give up! When you think you can’t go on. Think of that kitten and the unrewarded man who came by and saved him. My dad.

01/24/2019

Great story from Del Daniels...

2019 Short story #3
Are there alligators in the Sacramento Delta?

Hi gang,

I apologize for the amount of posts recently in these great Long Beach groups but the mind of a hospitalized cancer patient twists and turns and wants to yell out at times. I guess this is another one of those times. Bear with me.

The year was about 1970. My bowling team, made up of several NLB folks, had finished our league and we decided to go to San Francisco for the California State Championships. After that about 12 of us we’re going to spend a week together on a houseboat touring the Sacramento Delta. It was late August because we celebrated my birthday on that trip.

Some of those who were on that houseboat you may know. Clarence Roland (Ro) was a great left handed bowler who had lost his right thumb and when you saw him standing ready to bowl it appeared his thumb was already in the ball. It wasn’t. Kind of mystifying.

Frank Kurzi and his pretty wife Janice were there. I played golf with Frank once at Green River and saw him throw a putter for what surely would have been a world record. It went through the woods, past grandma’s house, over the trees and into the middle of the lake. It took some colorful language along with it.

John Hays and his wife were there. Both Jordan High grads they were a fun couple. His wife owned an upscale gift shop in the Lakewood Center Mall. John was the buyer for the store.

Steve Silverman and his pretty wife were there. She was very pretty as well as speaking the most beautiful Spanish.

Finally Richard Burdick and his date Carol Runne were there. Richard was one handsome dude. My sister worked on him once in Dr Merle Anderson’s dental office and called me to say she just worked on the most handsome man she had ever seen. She swooned and then found out he was a fishing partner of mine. Love those minutes.

We were having a great time touring the Sacramento Delta on the boat. We traveled through so many unique bridges and canals and tied up in the small towns built by the Chinese laborers along time ago. At night we would just point the boat into the shore of some slough and the tide would go out and we were beached for the night. Except for two of us. Rich and I, the fishermen. We had our own agenda.

About 10 pm we were on the back of the houseboat. We said our good nights and started putting out our fishing gear with bobbers all around the boat. We had at least a dozen out and we sat back and watched. If I remember correctly we may have shared a drink or two. We were on a cloud. Then things changed.

We glanced down the slough. It was very dark and eerily quiet. But something was out there and we didn’t know what. Scared? Maybe he was a little. I was very scared.

Oh my goodness. I saw it first. It was huge. My best guess was it was 10-12 feet long and it was headed right for us. Rich and I thought that a better position at that time would be on the roof of the houseboat and that my friends is where we ended up.

It looked as if a 10 foot alligator was swimming up to us or perhaps a big grizzly bear. We could not tell in the dark. We were in the pasture lands of the Delta.

A cow had fallen off a piece of land and he was swimming toward the lights of our boat. He swam right through all of our bobbers before bellowing right next to the boat. He woke everybody else up while Rich and I laughed and told everyone it was just a cow and to go back to sleep. If they only knew how fast we climbed on top of that boat. When he was swimming you could only see the top of that cow and his tale at the top of the waterline. And so I say a big Moooo to you. That’s my story and I am sticking to it.

Sent from my iPhone

09/13/2018

Del Daniels fesses up after 70 years...

Hi gang,

It is always hard to admit to past indiscretions but this one happened a very long time ago. Honest! I know some of you will be upset but admitting a wrong doing is supposed to help get past it. So I will try it.

The year was 1947. I was in second grade at Starr King Elementary School in North Long Beach. We lived in a small Spanish stucco house which was located at the back of a big lot and was adjacent to the garage of our neighbor. In fact there was about a three foot walkway between our front porch and their garage which lead to the back alley. The scene has now been set and it is time to recall my crime.

For whatever reason I found myself alone while my mother was probably at the store with my two younger brothers. I always thought of myself that I was a good student and I loved math, science and writing. I know that saying, that the ‘best of intentions sometimes go awry.’ In this case it certainly did for me and one small cat that happened to wander on to our porch. Now I want cat lovers to know that I need not admit to this and you would never know about it but now that I am 77 years old and still recall the events of that day vividly, you should know that I regret my actions now. But I was seven then and I thought at that time it was a science project of sorts. Let me explain.

I was just smart enough to have heard the term ‘cats always land on their feet’ when falling or jumping. I needed to test that for myself. I picked up that small cat, climbed over the porch wall, and readied myself for my experiment. He was a pretty and small cat. I started slowly. I held him upside down in my arms and from about three feet high I dropped him. And sure enough, he landed on his feet. My mind said that shouldn’t happen if I dropped him from two feet. He just won’t have time to turn over. I was wrong. He again landed on his feet. The same happened again from about one foot. Something was amiss. It had to be the speed. I was dropping him too slowly, or so I thought.

I was now wanting to get to the bottom of this. I held that poor kitty upside down by his feet and threw him down from three feet and watched him land on his feet. Yes, I tossed or threw that poor cat down from ever decreasing heights and he always landed on his feet. Finally I tried my hardest and threw him down from only about six inches above the ground. Yep, he landed on his feet. That was my final toss though. The cat made a dash for it and he jumped at my chest and back over the porch wall.

Okay, the cat escaped without harm from my ‘science experiment.’ And what did I learn from it? The expression that cats always land on their feet must be true. And I also thought that maybe someone else had already done my experiment or how would they have known this. I also learned that even small cats have sharp claws and that I needed my mom to come home and put a bandaid on my chest . And finally I guess I thought that this experiment was probably not a good thing to do. Why else would it take me 70 years to come clean? Thanks for listening and for forgiving, I hope!

09/05/2018

WRITTEN BY BARBARA KIRKPATRICK TITLE

By the time I got into Junior High School at the old Hamilton Jr. High School on PCH, the Long Beach Unified School District offered to provide, at no cost, musical instruments and lessons to 7th graders. This picture from the 1948 Hamilton Jr. High School yearbook showed the result of this fabulous offering. When I look at that picture now I see my friends: Dokey and Ro both on saxophones, Frances on clarinet, and Irene on trumpet. None of them had ever played an instrument before 7th grade. Now they were in a band. What a great thing for a school district to do for children.

I was not in that band, but it wasn’t for not trying. I don’t remember exactly how it happened but I, being a quiet, unassuming shy kid, probably ended up at the back of the line, and all that was left for me to take was a single bassoon. Now I had never heard of a bassoon before; I don’t remember them showing it to me either before I said “YES”. But my friends all were going to be in the band and I wanted to also, so I took it home that night to try it.

It was not a good match. The bassoon was a reed instrument, long and unwieldy. In fact it broke down into three parts to get into the carrying case. I was a small-framed, scrawny kid, and the instrument was bigger than I was, by far. It took me almost 2 weeks to get a noise out of it; what came out was definitely not a note but more of a shriek – a very embarrassing shriek. Everyone laughed. I gave it my best try, but finally my folks, tired of driving me to and from school each day because I couldn’t easily carry the heavy bassoon case, suggested I might want to join the choir instead! Well, I didn’t do that, but I did quit my instrument.

I was not a poster girl for the success of the school music program, but my friends were. In fact, all those friends spent the rest of their school years in school bands, and had a wonderful time at all the football games and parades. True, I didn’t toot my horn, but I was a good rooter! Dokey, who had learned to play the sax, joined the Army after she graduated from Poly and spent her career traveling around the country with the Women’s Army band before she retired.

It’s true, I missed out on the fun, but many years later in an Ontario, California junior high school, a music teacher put a cornet in my 7th grade son’s hand and taught him to play cornet, baritone and French Horn. After high school my son Sean joined the Navy and kept up his French horn practice on the atomic submarine he was assigned to. (It was in dry-dock being re-cored most of the time!) Sean’s son plays French Horn, and Sean’s wife and daughter are flutists. All because of a School District making such things happen.

Did I drop all things musical because of the bassoon episode? Not on your life. Choirs caught me at college and I never looked back, except to laugh at myself and my mismatched Bassoon.

08/07/2018

GRANDMA & GRANDPA’S HOUSE IN DOWNTOWN LONG BEACH by Sheril Cunning
This is partly a Christmas story, but it is also the story of the Big House, a dove, and an ice cream cone, my little daughter and Grandma.

THE BIG HOUSE
I was going to save it until close to Christmas, but Richard Feller has just identified the Big House, which was next door to my grandparents’ house near the corner of 10th and Alamitos. The Big House belonged to Richard's great-grandparents, and they surely must have known my grandparents. His great-grandfather was William Watkins, and that area was named after him. Richard said they had 10 children.

The house looked Victorian style to my childhood eyes, and its front door, reached by many stairs, faced diagonally into the intersection. It had been boarded up all during my childhood, except for two small rooms on the side of it nearest my grandparents’ yard. Old Mrs. Baker, who was very feeble, lived in those rooms with a caretaker. The gardens surrounding that house had gone to ruin and were a tangled jungle of weeds and a few exotic plants that had managed to survive without care for a great many years. But somehow Grandma had forged a little path to the door of Mrs. Baker's rooms, and she was always making some kind of treat for her, and she often had my sister and I take the treats next door. A big old garden swing was rotting away under some of the trees. Just to the side of Mrs. Baker's door there were the sloping doors to a basement, and they always reminded me of the rhyme about playmates sliding down cellar doors.

THE CHRISTMAS TREE LOT
After Mrs. Baker died, the house was put up for sale and I begged my father to buy it. I envisioned myself gliding down a magnificent stairway in formal gowns to go to dances as well as in my wedding dress some day but my pleas went unheard. The house was torn down and I cried for it. Then the whole lot was scraped clean, just sitting there empty of all life, UNTIL.... Then around 1948, when I was about 13, and it was getting close to Christmas, one day a man came to the back door of my grandparent's house, and I can still hear Grandma calling out, "Charlie there's a man here and he wants to use our electricity and water. You better come talk to him!" Well, the man was proposing to stock the lot with Christmas trees, and he wanted to string up lights around the whole lot. Grandpa gave him permission, and we were told we could have our pick of any tree, one for their house and one for our parents' house. AND, best of all, my sister and I were deemed old enough to help out with the trees, putting them in holes of the wet soil, to keep them fresh, and to show the trees to the customers. It was like a true forest occupying almost the entire lot, save for a small space at the rear for a trailer where the men could cook, and sleep. They kept a small fire going near the trailer so everyone could warm up during those cold winter days. We loved being able to walk among the trees and breathe in their fragrance every day, and nights too, of our Christmas vacation from school. It was like a magic place!

CHRISTMAS EVE
Finally it was Christmas Eve and Grandma was getting ready for our big dinner that would be a traditional Czech meal of a special kind of fish served in a sauce of dried fruits and a gingersnap gravy, her braided Czech bread, and apple strudel. My sister and I had helped to make this meal ever since we could stand up next to the table to help stretch the dough and put the sugar, cinnamon, and apples on it, then help roll it up and put it in the pan to bake. We helped stir the gingersnaps into the sauce for the fruits, but we really did not like the fish and sauce at all, and Grandma eventually added fried shrimp and oysters to the meal.

Doing all that baking and cooking in one day was a big operation, starting as early as 7 in the morning. But it was also the last day for being out among the trees and visiting with the men who were roasting hotdogs over the little campfire. As if she didn't have enough to do, Grandma made a pot of hot chocolate for them and sent a plate of baked goods over to them too. We had been dividing our time all day between helping Grandma and helping with the trees.

THE WHITE DOVE
Then just about sunset, after being in the house to warm up for a while, we were going out the back door from the kitchen when we discovered an all white dove on the back porch. It had a broken wing. Grandpa carefully brought the dove inside and put it near the heater while somehow managing to "set" the wing. We thought the dove was a special "sign" and we named it Noelle. Grandpa kept it in the laundry room just off the kitchen with a nest of straw and a lightbulb on for warmth, just as he did when he raised baby chicks at Eastertime. The dove grew stronger and well, but its wing was never good enough for it to fly, so Grandpa built an aviary for it in the backyard, and other birds joined the dove there for several years.

HONEYBUNCH
Of course the trees had to go away, and the lot was scraped bare again. But eventually some kinds of buildings were put up on it, a little cafe I think, and also something where you could walk up to a window to buy an ice cream cone. I was married by then, we had a family, and were no longer living in Long Beach, and Grandpa had passed away, but Grandma was still living in the house. One day we were home for a visit, and were at Grandma's house when she gave our little girl, who was about 3 or 4 years old, some money to go buy a cone. Grandma stood on the front porch to keep watch on her and give her directions. Grandma was having trouble remembering names by this time, and she had taken to calling all the grandchildren HONEYBUNCH. Our daughter somehow thought that was Grandma's own name, and began calling her that. All the grandchildren called her that too then, and so to this very day, Grandma is still known to everyone in the family, and beyond, as HONEYBUNCH!

08/06/2018

LEMONADE TIME BY SHERIL CUNNING...My grandparents moved to LB in 1923. They had a huge back yard with apricot, peach, fig, and avocado trees, Concord grape vines and boysenberry and blackberry vines too. Grandma made jams, jellies and pies from all their fruits, and canned them too. Just before all the fruits ripened, she did a major house cleaning. Rugs were taken outside, hung over the clothes lines and then were beaten with a wire arrangement attached to a long handle. All the lace curtains were taken down, washed and then put into boing hot starch, and finally they were taken outside where they were put on big "stretcher bar" frames to dry. In the meantime, all the windows were washed. My sister and I were around 7 & 8 years old, and we were amazed as all this activity was carried out by Grandma's friends and relatives. That cleaning accomplished, the cooking of the first ripened fruits could begin. A kitchen with boiling pots of fruit and sterilizing jars was no place for little girls, so Grandpa put sheets and blankets over the clotheslines to make "tents" for us to play in. The cooking season finally came to an end, and everything had been used except the lemons. I don't know if it was our idea or Grandpa's, but it was decided that we should sell lemonade. The bus stop at 10th and Alamitos was only a few yards away, and we felt we would have lots of thirsty customers who were waiting for the buses to arrive. Grandpa somehow fashioned a lemonade "stand" with a card table and made a sign reading lemonade 1 cent. Grandma made some cookies to go with the lemonade. There were not as many customers as we had imagined there would be. I think we made less than 25 cents during the whole afternoon!

07/18/2018

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LONG BEACH ARTIST ROBERT HALL?

Around 1948 an artist who was a veteran of WWII opened a gallery/frame shop on Redondo between Vista and 3rd Street. His name was Robert Hall, and he hung his paintings in the window. They were all dark and of the war-torn buildings of Europe that he had experienced, but in the center of each one there was always a beautiful ballerina in a pink tutu with arms raised, signifying new life to come to that devastated world. A year later he started giving group painting lessons in a little building down by the Belmont pier. I took lessons from him on Saturdays and that following summer. I loved that pier, and there was a very large Pelican that called it home. It was such a fixture of the pier that everyone called it by name, tho I don't remember its name. A few years later, I had to write twelve stories in Spanish as a "final" and Bob did the illustrations for them, made into a book. I kept it for a long time but don't know what became of it. I think my mother paid him $100 for his work. I have always wondered if he became well known in LB.

CHICAGO...before they were super famous. In the Spring of 1970, I managed the USC Men's Swimming Team. The PAC 10 Champi...
07/13/2018

CHICAGO...before they were super famous. In the Spring of 1970, I managed the USC Men's Swimming Team. The PAC 10 Championship was in Pullman, Washington at Washington State University (WSU). As manager, my job was to handle all the flights, rooms, transportation, payments, per diem money and then help with stats (and anything else) for the coach, Peter Daland, at the meet. Due to classes, midterms, etc. the coaches and members of the team went on two different flights. I was on the first flight along with some of my favorite team members and friends - Tom & John Ludwig and Mark Mader - all champion swimmers.

All three of these guys were super outgoing and struck up conversations with another group about our age in the seats adjacent to ours. It turns out that they were a newer band that was on its way to play a concert at WSU the next night and they were known as the Chicago Transit Authority. They told us how they are having to change their name to just "Chicago" because the real Chicago Transit Authority (transit system in Chicago) thinks the are infringing on their legal name and don't want it besmirched - especially if the band isn't good.
They're good guys and eventually offered us some house seats for the concert.

The next night after getting ready for the meet to start the following day, Tom, John, Mark and I headed to the box office where indeed our house seats were waiting for us. The concert was held in the large two story gym where the basketball games were held. Our seats were way up in the balcony but the music was blasting and it truly didn't matter. They were spectacular and we were hearing all the first songs from both their first and then second album that made them famous!

Fast forward to last night at Leisure World in Seal Beach where a Chicago "Tribute" Band is playing an hour and a half long set of these and many more of their hits from their decades as a band. The old memories kept flooding back to that night in Pullman, Washington, sitting with all the college kids and rocking out to some of the music that will forever be intertwined with our lives. The tribute band did a very good job and the crowd was rocking with them. The only disturbing thing was that instead of a bunch of great looking, fun loving college kids at the concert was this group of 2,500 mostly gray haired, wrinkly, people in their 60s or more doing their best to rock and sway to the songs of their past. As I sat there with my 93 year old mother-in-law and Leisure World resident, I couldn't believe that 48 years had passed since I first heard this band in concert. It sure did bring back a lot of great memories though!

06/22/2018

LISA RAMELOW'S REMINISCE OF "FRIDAY NIGHTERS" AT ROGERS JUNIOR HIGH. Lisa grew up locally and is the owner of the great Belmont Shore restaurant - La Strada!

I was 14 and in 9th grade at Rogers Junior High School. It was “Friday Nighters”, the monthly (I think) dance that was held on Friday nights. It was October and you could dress up.
My mother had shown me how to sew the year before and I had gotten very good at it. I decided I wanted to go as the “I Dream of Jeanie” character. I went to the sewing store, probably Woof and Warp in Naples, and bought yards of turquoise blue sheer fabric (I liked blue better than pink at the time). I was able to fashion the balloon-pants and had the right amount of fabric for the top. But I needed a secure base underneath that wasn’t just undergarments. My friend, Julie Burt, lent me her white bikini since I didn’t have one. I fit the costume around it and made sure everything was secure, and went on to the dance.
All the girls were really nice to me, which I was excited about because I was pretty quiet and only socialized with a couple friends.
I remember Maggy May by Rod Stewart was playing, and I had said hello to Kenny Hamilton – we were in Advanced Math together and we were both short.
Then the Vice Principal came over and told me I would have to go home. He thought the costume was too revealing. I explained that it was a bathing suit and not underwear, but he didn’t care. He called my mother to come get me. And then, to make matters incredibly horrible for me, he took off his suit jacket and made me sit there and wear it until my mother arrived. I was a tiny little thing and his jacket was overwhelming. And everybody was watching.
My mother got there and I dissolved into tears. She drove me home and was desperate to find something else for me to wear. I told her no. I was way too proud to go back wearing something different after all of the time I had spent working on that costume. And I never wanted to see that Vice Principal again.
———
The good news is….. I still love the song “Maggy May”. AND, I get to see my friend Kenny Hamilton at every Stroll and Savor event. He is now “Mr. Hamilton” and teaches Marine Biology at Wilson High School. He has a band that plays in front of Rubio’s at every Stroll and Savor – he plays the harmonica and sings. I feed all his band members, and when I walk by, he changes the lyrics and puts in my name.
Kenny and I are both 60 now. But I’m sure he also remembers what it was like to be 14. I will try to get a picture with him tonight at Stroll and Savor!!!!

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