For me, it all started with Ovaltine....

What makes us who we are today? What patterns did we learn early on to set our wheels in motion? What stimulus did we receive that is the basis for our being?....Pretty heavy thoughts, huh?......Nah, at least not for me, because my habits, my methods, my personal rules all began with Ovaltine.

If you have never had the pleasure of experiencing this concoction of barley malt, milk serum (whatever the heck that it is) rapeseed oil (yikes) and other ingredients, well my friends, you need to try it.....NOT!...and yes, they are still making it after over 100 years.

My first encounter with Ovaltine all started not because of it being a breakfast drink or a breakfast substitute, my initial contact was because of some persuasive, controlled advertising by the hawksters who decided back in the 50s to find a way to sell more product by offering something a heck of a lot better than that yucky drink. They offered a prize. One that every little boy and little girl desired.
The Captain Midnight Decoder Ring.

The way the scam went, was you simply sent in a label from the product and probably a dime or a quarter and a self-addressed stamped envelope and you got his incredible spy decoder ring that you would use to decipher messages broadcast at the close of the Captain Midnight Show on early television in the 50s. Prior to the TV show, there was a radio show of the same name as well as a radio show called, Little Orphan Annie, that also sent out messages.

Well, I begged and begged for Mom to buy a jar of Ovaltine. I wanted it so bad I found myself making bargains with her, cutting deals, doing extra chores just so I could have a chance for that decoder ring. We finally came to an arrangement...If I drank, or if I could coerce my brothers to help drink, the whole jar of Ovaltine, then she would send away for the prize.

This was my first lesson in learning that sometimes you have to make sacrifices, sometimes you have to struggle, sometimes you have to do a lot of hard work to get something that you really wanted. Even though in the end,  if it wasn't everything you expected, at least you learned to fight the battles to win the war.

As I grew older and the cereal companies grew wiser, they began to put prizes in cereal boxes as well. I can remember this cool scuba diver that was in a box of Cheerios, wrapped in plastic and placed down in the bottom of the box. You added a little baking soda to the diver and placed him in a tub of water and he would float along the bottom occasionally letting out a bubble....After you ate enough Cheerios you would begin to see part of the toy and start asking for seconds just to receive the reward for your efforts.

After that came Cracker Jacks....oh yeah....and they are still making that product and of course it has the secret ingredient to sell more product.....the toy inside. At least Cracker Jacks had a lot better flavor than the dreaded Ovaltine.

All in all, at least for me, they were all good lessons, although sometimes the reasoning was flawed.

I worked hard to get to the end result. The toy, the gift was dangled in front of me by the Madmen of Madison Avenue and they knew I wanted it. Their goal was to sell product. My goal was to win the prize. And I guess, somewhere along the way we both got what we wanted.

Later in life I learned that the end goal isn't so important as the effort that one puts into it. If we are rewarded a prize with little effort, then we have learned nothing. If we are rewarded a prize for just showing up, we have cheated ourselves of one of the most important things in life. The prize of learning.

By the way, after I got my Captain Midnight Decoder Ring, I couldn't wait for the next episode to air and send the message out after the show. I watched patiently as the codes went across the screen and I copied them down.

The message was...."Drink more Ovaltine"........that too was a lesson I learned and can remember some 60 years later.....

So many topics...so little time

Gosh, where do I begin. My head-brain is just racing with so many subjects it's hard to prioritize. I mean, I like my manic state and once I get it under control, well then I can produce a lot of inspirational thoughts, at least to me that is, until that ugly cloud of insecurity blows in over my being and I end up deleting half the stuff I put up.

First thing on my mind has to do with purple chickens, green ducks and pink rabbits. No, I haven't fallen off the wagon, it's just that it's gettin' near Easter time and well, you know how we have forgotten about the meaning of Easter for the most part and we focus on the secondary reasons such as candy, chocolate bunnies getting their heads bitten off and the poor little barnyard animals that some people think is a good thing to spray paint some iridescent color and offer them for sale.

OK, I confess, I got a purple chicken one Easter. Of course I didn't get my Mom or Dad to buy it for me because they had better sense than that. I bought it myself. It was pretty neat for awhile and I kept it out in the garage until it started to shed the purple feathers and started to bulk up. Dad thought it might be time to "take it to the farm" so it would have a good life out in the country. Yeah, right. I saw that chicken a couple of weeks later at my Grandma's house out in the back yard and it had grown huge. Next time I went to visit it had disappeared I'm sure into a plate of fried chicken.

The next thing on my mind is the recent passing of Stephen Hawking. Though controversial with his interpretation of how the universe began there is no denying that someone like Stephen only comes around once every so many hundred years. I really look forward to hearing from him soon and I'm sure he will be contacting me/us. The irony of Stephen's life is that he didn't need a physical body to produce the incredible theories and mind-blowing suggestions that he offered. He did it while his mind was trapped in a twisted horrible shell of flesh and bone. But that was ok, we didn't judge him on his appearance, we saw in fact an incredible human being. It's a shame we can't do that more often with the people we see and meet.

Thirdly, this morning Pattye and I were talking and I asked her a question while I was having a brain "fart". I said, "What was it that the Tin Man wanted in the Wizard of Oz?". She looked at me a little surprised by the question and answered correctly. "He wanted a Heart." And then I followed up with, "Oh yeah, and the Scarecrow wanted a Brain and the Lion wanted Courage". She then said to me, "What did Dorothy want?" I answered so quickly, I was almost like a school kid raising their hand shouting "I know, I know".

And then I blurted out "Shoes". Well, she kinda laughed, then I kinda laughed and then I thought, "Man am I a dumbass or what".

And then finally, after thinking about Stephen Hawking some more I began to wonder as I often do about why God allows mistakes to happen. Of course, Stephen wasn't a mistake, it's just that his body turned out to be a crappy one. But he had a beautiful mind. It's kinda how God makes artichoke hearts. Those outside leaves are horrible and you have to pull them through your teeth in order to get just a taste of the delicious flesh until you finally get down to the heart.

I still question His design on avacadoes, but once again, despite the large seed, the flesh is so wonderful. I just wish there was more meat and less seed.

There are so many of God's creations that I'm still trying to figure out. I keep working on it though. It's just those dang purple chickens that I keep seeing that gets me sidetracked.

Oh, and in the coming weeks, lets try to remember the real reason we celebrate the upcoming holidays of Easter and Passover it will do all of us some good.

Rites of Spring, "When a young man's fancy lightly turns to .....

One of my favorite poets...yes, I like poetry, probably even love poetry even though it took me 50 years to learn to appreciate it...anyway, one of my favorites is Alfred Lord Tennyson. And, one of my favorite poems by said author is Locksley Hall. And, one of my favorite lines from that poem is "In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." But until you've discovered love, the only thing that Spring reminds a young person of is either Baseball or Spring Break.

Since I've written about Baseball in the Spring, I guess that only leaves me to write about that time-honored tradition of college enrolled students or an occasional high school student or anyone for that matter who wants to participate in the Rites of Spring, i.e.  Spring Break . Spring Break is the passage of youth into...yep, that wild child syndrome, that kids gone crazy lifestyle that we hoped our parents would never find out about.

When the cult movie, "Where the Boys Are"  surfaced in 1960, I was just 12 years old and couldn't even imagine what an experience of heading off to the beach for a week of drinking, kissing, smoking and more kissing would be all about. Heck, I was still enjoying playing sandlot baseball and picking through neighbor's trash that was set out each Saturday morning. All that kissing and stuff was left for the older kids, for my older brothers and their friends. Well, that was until I saw the movie.

I guess it was hormonal and at age twelve, I guess I was curious as the "professionals" say. I loved that movie. I mean, come on, Yvette Mimieux. Who couldn't get "excited" over her. And on top of that her name sounded just like Corvette. I wasn't even in high school yet and already I was making my plans to go to Florida in the Spring while there was still snow on the ground in Dayton, Ohio. Pack the car full of my friends, get some of that near-beer, as we called it, and meet some girls and kiss them. Yep, that's about all I could imagine.

Fast forward to 1969 and I find myself at the University of Oklahoma and it's Spring Break. I hadn't done any of the crazy things that so many of my peers did the prior three years. Almost all of them headed off to South Padre Island, Texas or Mexico. I'm not sure what I did the earlier years. I know for sure it wasn't studying.

So here we were. School was out for a week. We had no money. But.....I had a Volkswagon bus. A truly hippe-mobile, though I was far from being a hippie. Sure we'd do a little doobie every now and then but nope, we were alcoholics, none of the stuff that altered your mind, we just did booze. So, we decide to head for Mexico.

I'm not naming names, but there were 4 of us. We had $10.00 each and one of us had a gasoline credit card. Hell, we didn't even have a spare tire for the bus.

We drove straight down I-35 from Oklahoma City to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, almost 700 miles ....stopping only to relieve ourselves every now and then and buy more beer if needed.

We arrived some time around 6:00 in the evening and as soon as we crossed the border, we started asking everyone we saw, "donde esta la ciudad del muchacho"....it was our rugged translation of "Where is Boys Town". Now that's not to be confused with the movie "Where the Boys Are". For those of you who aren't from around here...that stood for "Boys Town" as in..."Where are the hookers".

OK, so let's pause for a second. None of us were actually going to do any of that stuff. Sure we were stupid but we weren't dumb. We just wanted to go there. You know, just kinda look around. Unfortunately one of our group succumbed to "pleasures of the flesh" and he spent his entire $10.00 on a hooker. He did say it was money well spent, but he was already broke for the week.

The second member of our group decided to buy a taco from a vendor on the street. He gave the guy a dollar and the guy gave him a taco and some change. About an hour later, he realized he had given him his $10 bill by mistake, so now we were down to 1/2 of our loot and we had only been in Mexico for less than 12 hours.

We spent the next few days travelling along the border towns in Mexico and driving across the border to Texas at night to sleep in the bus. We headed over to Matamoros, Mexico got lost looking for South Padre and later ended up a few hundred miles north arriving in the middle of the night at Port Aransas and woke up with the bus submerged in the sand when the tide came in. Fortunately we had about 20 other college friends to pull us out.

We made it. We celebrated Spring Break and we lived to tell about it. Yep, it's a Rite of Passage by golly.

So, to all of you young-uns out there getting ready to make the big escape in the next few weeks. Here are two words of advice. Have fun. It's what life is all about and you'll have a story or two to share 50 years later.

"Changes to my Bucket List"........

A couple of years ago I wrote about my bucket list and my desires or dreams to have a chance to do a number of things before I departed this planet. Well, like everything else in this world, plans change. Goals change. People change. And of course, Life changes. But that's okay. That's how we grow. That's how we experience new things.

 And now I am adding something new to my bucket list. Something I had never thought about before until watching a series on Netflix. And when I Googled some information about the subject matter, I was floored.


First though, I am asking everyone, please don't let me become sedentary and sit and do the same thing day in and day out. Don't let me become something no more than a blob of flesh taking oxygen in and blowing carbon dioxide out. If I don't do things myself, then somebody shove me outside and lock the door until I move around. There are so many things I want to do and though I feel like I am doing them now, but a few things are really, really important. Yep, they are on my bucket list.


So, I've decided to review my bucket list from a few years ago and see what I have accomplished and add the new item. Right at the top.


Aw crap. Now as I look at it, I haven't crossed anything off of it yet. Well, that's okay. Tomorrow is a new day and maybe I can get started soon.


And now I add the newest dream.


I want to see wild horses run!....Yep, that simple.

Did you know there are 33,000 wild horses in the United States? The facts and yes, the myths, are a great read. The horse evolved in the Americas, but became extinct between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago. When the Spanish arrived on the American mainland in the 16th century, they brought horses with them and re-established the animals on the continent.


There are hundreds of different places around this wonderful country of ours to watch these marvelous creatures run free and I hope to have a chance to see them some day.


I'm gonna get started on that bucket list first chance I get. But I guess I have a few Sunday morning chores I have to do first.


Oh, and yep, I need to update my list also.

I really do want to see the horses run though.

A time when people took on responsibility...

There was a time in this great country of ours that if something needed to get done, if someone needed help, if some kids needed a place to simply play baseball, well then it got done.

There wasn't any contacting your council person and whining that, "We need another park". There was no petitioning the State asking for funds to build some pavilion for people to gather. There were no protests with people carrying signs wanting more government-paid for, more government- sponsored programs. The people of that time, that generation,  just simply got things done.

I was reminded of all of this when I received a true treasure trove this past week. One that brought back so many memories of  my youth in Dayton, Ohio, of my parents, of my brothers, of many relatives that I barely new and of a time when people took on responsibility.

My brother and sister-in-law sent a box of memories that they have had in their possession ever since my Mom and Dad's passings years ago.  Dave and Kutchie asked among family members who might want to be the new curator of the Kender treasure chest, I jumped at the opportunity.

And when I began to slowly remove each item, it dawned on me  how we have lost the presence of mind of taking on responsibility for ourselves and our community.

One of the first things I saw in this vault of remembrances was a picture of Dad and some other men as they constructed a backstop for a baseball diamond in a field that Dad had purchased off of Wolf Creek Pike. There was a need in that part of town for a place where kids could simply play a game they loved. A place where they could actually have bases, and a pitcher's mound, and benches and a home plate. And Dad decided to do something about it. He took on the responsibility of getting it done.

The Dayton Daily News published a picture of them working with Dad standing on a stepladder and the other men hoisting the chain link fence that would provide the barrier for any overthrown balls missed by the catcher. And then I saw more clippings of Dad from the same newspaper, and an interview telling his story of his growing up in a isolated Hungarian community in Dayton where the people worked together to make things better for all. I can remember him providing jobs for immigrants from Hungary who came to this country legally during the Hungary Revolution in 1956, and gave them the opportunity to learn a trade at his small machine shop, B. O. K. Mfg. near West 3rd Street and Broadway. I saw pictures of him gathering his All Star team as they got ready to play the season ending finale. You can't imagine the pride I had.

And then I realized. I have written numerous stories about my Dad  but I was always writing about missing Dad and how I felt as I now approach an age when he left this earth. But I don't think I ever said the two simple magical words, Thank You.

I didn't say Thank you for your contributions to the city where you grew up and where I grew up. I didn't say Thank You for the time, money and effort that you devoted to bringing the American pastime of baseball to so many kids. Thank you for organizing  a group of volunteers to bush hog a forgotten piece of land and build backstops, and benches and preparing an overgrown field that became a truly a Field of Dreams.

I never took the time to say Thank You, Dad. Thank you for being there. Thank You for setting a example that if I could be merely a shadow of what you contributed to a community, I would be a blessed man.

I guess I just saw you as Dad. A lot of the things you did either I didn't know about or maybe you simply kept to yourself.

You were a good man.