b-ums - buckhannon, wv - one summer in middle school

mark's dad taught science at the middle school. one summer i had the privelage of hanging around with mark and roaming the empty hallways and searching through the remnants of the year's locker usage.  i found a wind up watch that i still use to this day, i have no idea why someone would have left it.

highschool pool - buckhannon, WV - a young summer

i learned to swim under water on my own, without those stupid lessons. i remember realizing that i was buoyant when i went underwater.  it was only a small logical leap to take when i started kicking my feet and moving my arms. swimming on top of the water would come later, but would be far less memorable.

buckhannon, west virginia - late fall, between '94 & '98

jed and i, and possibly one other person found a pond with an island in the fields and forests behind where the drive-in movie theater used to be (the area is a housing development now). After playing around in the remnants of an old burnt down cottage turned junkyard, we decided it would be a good idea to swim across the pond, despite the mid-40s weather. Nobody drowned. When we got back, jed's dad ended up taking me and my bike home in the back of his truck.

buckhannon, west virginia - between '92 & '98

I rode my bike to Ames (no more than a mile away) to get a can of Clear Pepsi from the vending machine outside the store.

florida - 19~85

my parents took me to disney world in florida. we stayed in what i've been told was my great aunt's hotel. there was a fountain in the lobby with turtles that were allowed to run amok. there was also a flat topped pacman arcade game over to the left side of the lobby.

i vaguely remember waiting for my dad to ride space mountain, and hearing someone say that goofy was coming, but don't remember seeing goofy.

my mickey mouse balloon flew out the door that went to the balcony of our room, it was blue.

russell, pennsylvania - pre 1992

i bought a bright orange radio shack metal detector from the son of the Pet Store owner, for $9.

it ran on 9V batteries and i later used it to find some pocket knives i'd lost. i dropped the metal detector on the ground while running through the neighbors yard and when i went back to pick it up, i saw the knives laying in the grass where i had dropped them earlier that week.

jefferson city, tennessee - summer - 02

somewhere between the cherokee dam and my summer accomodations, i stuck my head out the window of my 88 Dodge Aries and my green corduroy dave matthews band hat flew out the window.

i never saw it again.