What I Did As a Kid

First, let me say that I think that your first paragraph is s pretty good assessment of my personality. Of course you got most of that information from our correspondence over the last few years. I don't know if I can be considered an unbiased source, but I try to be.

What I did as a kid: Well, it depends on what age you're talking about. Like I said, I didn't go to kindergarten, and I was the first born, so I probably identified with my parents more than I did with other kids. I don't remember ever feeling bored or lonely, so I must have done stuff. I always had friends, but I don't remember being all that socially oriented. If somebody wanted to do something and I would rather do something else, I did something else. My mother told me that I made friends easily, and that I frequently befriended people who nobody else liked. I suppose that's right, but I didn't do it on purpose, it just came naturally to me.

In my early years we played fantasy games a lot. Usually we would re-enact a movie plot and then proceed to make a sequel. There were two or three summers during which we played something we called "Dog and Dog Catcher". It was inspired by the scene in Disney's "Lady and the Tramp" where The Tramp liberates a bunch of captive dogs from a cage on the dog catcher's truck. Our yard was fenced in and made a fine dog pound. The rule was, once you were captured, you couldn't let yourself out either of the two gates, but any "dog" that was still loose could open the gate from the outside and set you free. The "dog" role was more popular than the "dog catcher role", so the dogs usually outnumbered the dog catchers, making it easy for one dog to create a diversion at one of the gates while another dog went around through the alley and opened the other gate. We didn't keep any kind of score. On the rare occasion that all the dogs were captured before we had to go home for supper, one of the dog catchers would turn them loose and we'd start all over again. It was kind of a silly game, but we liked it.

When I was ten years old, I got a real shotgun for Christmas. Shortly after that, I lost interest in playing games with the other kids and gave all my toy guns away. My father worked a lot of hours and we didn't get to go hunting nearly as much as I would have liked. At some point, our family had a falling out with my Uncle Eddie and we stopped going to his summer home in New Buffalo, Michigan, which was where we previously had done most of our fishing.

Then, when I was about 13, I met Jack, who was three years older. Jack was kind of a loose cannon and, at first, my parents were worried that he would be a bad influence for me. Before long, though, they decided that, if anything, I was a good influence for Jack, and they stopped objecting to our friendship. Jack knew about places we could hunt and fish right in the city, and we started doing that a lot. Well, it wasn't real hunting because you couldn't shoot a gun in the city limits, but it was the next best thing. I'm sure that I told you about how I used to train my rabbit dogs in the big prairies behind the factories. Jack figured that there must be some way we could actually kill some of those rabbits without getting arrested. We tried a variety of home made weapons before settling on bows and arrows. We weren't exactly legal because, technically, we were trespassing, but nobody seemed to care, and we got away with it for years. I only remember shooting one rabbit, and I think Jack got one or two. It would take an expert archer to hit a running rabbit being chased by dogs, and we never did get all that good at it, but the dogs liked it, and the experience they got paid off when we went hunting for real with my dad on Sundays.

Our fishing was more productive, once we learned that there were lot more fish in the Sherman Park lagoon than in the Marquette Park lagoon. I did catch one nice catfish the first time we went to Sherman but, after that, it was all carp. Well, actually, they were oversized goldfish, but a goldfish is nothing more than a carp with pretty colors. They ran about six to eight inches, but they were tall like bluegills, and not bad eating. My mother wouldn't have anything to do with them, but she told me how to cook them for myself. Her exact words were, "You caught them, you clean them, you cook them, you eat them, and you wash the dishes.", which I did for years.

I think that I have also told you about the time I spent working for hunting privileges on Orin Bolin's game farm  near Kankakee. If not, and you're interested, I'll tell you tomorrow.