Amazing places you may go, amazing places you might not have ever known existed or lasted.... A blog - I started in 2009 shortly after I got back from the 30th year class reunion is STILL here. Why? Who cares? Where is it and where has it been. It's like an archeaological dig that never happened but unearthered some writings written by me back in time, a very different time. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that today, March 7, 2022, seems like a quantum light year away from the meager key strokes of September 2009. I think that one thing remains the same, these keystrokes? Will never, ever go away - they resurface like stones after a spring thaw. How strange to have survived to this point in time where I am 60 years old and m.o. But gawd knows I'm still, WILLIN'.

Brings in a Broom and a Dustpan

(sounds of sweeping, groaning - kicks a tumbleweed out of the way - fills up dustpan, empties it - changes the name of the place and shuts the door behind her)

Enjoy the Rain

The rain gives us everything that we have and without it we wouldn't have anything, so enjoy the rain.............

When the Winds of Changes Shift

Maybe everyone has that time in their lives when they become distracted and while not paying attention they end up detouring or in my case derailing the progress made up until that point. You're in a foreign land with foreign streets and you don't speak the language suddenly you find you have a different name . . . that name became Riley. Growing up on the border of three different school districts, on a long dirt road surrounded by corn and soybean fields, made making meaningful relationships or just plain 'ole friends difficult. The pool was small and shallow. While playing musical chairs with my grade schools;

Kindergarten -1966- Crestview Elementary
First Grade -1967- Crestview Elementary
Second Grade -1968- Edgewood Elementary
Third Grade -1969- Crestview Elementary
Fourth Grade -1970- Cedar Island Elementary
Fifth Grade -1971- Cedar Island Elementary
Sixth Grade - 1972- 1/2 year in Cedar Island Elementary &
1/2 year in Edgewood Elementary

I made and lost friends at a blistering pace.

Never having any difficulties making friends...keeping them was challenging, we had moved four times within the same school district. Happily, 1972 would become the beginning of stability if only in living arrangements. The remaining school years would be spent in one place, I was beginning to grow roots.

This brings me back to the shallow pool and living on the border(s). There was one girl my age that lived nearby and we formed a very close and special bond. I've always likened that friendship to the main characters in Steinbeck's novel, "Of Mice and Men". I would be the character of Lenny taking a backseat to George's character whom was light years ahead of me in life experiences, at the tender age of twelve. We had a good run - from the 2nd half of sixth grade through the early summer between junior high and senior high. When her tender life experiences, once accidentally confessed to my parents, put an abrupt end to a very significant chapter of my life.

Soon after that chapter close I began working, I had just turned fifteen, I was very young, it was 1976. Keno's pizza would become, MY FIRST LITTLE JOB, and subsequently became the place where I met, MY FIRST LITTLE BOYFRIEND. Until the Winds of Changes Shift, somewhere around Good Friday the 13th of April, 1979.... he and I had a good run too. Looking back now, it is a time that I rest my weary wits upon as a time of innocence, love, trail blazing and friendship and old cars. It is a good place.