One step closer to the holy grail...

I had a restless night......we are going to be cleaning out the garage today and all I can think about is firing up my gasoline-powered washer AND opening up my new toy....um....er......an essential piece of  equipment....My new welder.

I can't wait to make some "stuff" today

The power-washer has sat dormant for about two years. This usually doesn't happen with my must-have armory of guy stuff...but the last time I had used it, I almost went to the emergency room after falling off my ladder made of one bucket on top of another bucket....(that's another story)...anyway, I picked up an additive to dissolve any varnish that might have accumulated in the washer's gas tank, in order for it to fire up right away....After I have it shooting a stream of water 50 feet...I'll put it back to bed and open my latest treasure.


There are 3 tools that have been on my bucket list for many years.....and of course the holy grail as well. A chain saw, a nail gun and a welder.


I finally convinced Pattye last year that I wouldn't shoot myself in the foot if she "approved" me buying a nail gun. She did, and I started making frames for her paintings...well,  I made one or two...and then I got involved in making other things or maybe just side-tracked a little.


The chain saw will probably remain on my bucket list as an untouchable item for obvious reasons. I calculated the amount of time to get to the closest hospital if I should happen to sever my femoral artery with a new chainsaw...so, even I think it would be a bad decision to own one. I have used then before and I must admit I've come close to losing an appendage .


The welder finished off the list of desires (except of course for the holy grail of shop tools).....I picked one up last week and it has remained in the box since then....It's kind of like getting that Christmas present you always dreamed about but you just want to savor the excitement for a little while longer....almost like cookies from home when I was in the service.


The welder will come out of the box today and after a few moments of exhilaration, I'll fire it up and start making stuff. The welder isn't a dangerous tool, it's just that I have a bad memory of Dad burning down our house when I was a senior in high school.... http://ireadthenews.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-christmas-i-will-always-remember.html ....Dad and his friend were designing a camper (tho we never camped) and was welding some pieces together when the torch set off a can of gasoline...Everyone got out okay and my brother, Rick, performed some heroic actions. And yes, alcohol was involved with Dad's mishap.


So, after I make some stuff...I'll be sure and post some pics later on....I'll put my welder away and then dream of sometime in my life getting a Shopsmith, the true holy grail of a man's cave....er...well... a man's garage.

The holy grail of a man cave

On bein' a Grandpa.....

Kass and the boys are visiting this weekend and when I had learned about the upcoming trip to town earlier in the week I thought it might be fun to take the two older boys on a Rapid Transit ride to the Dallas Zoo.....

Well, that idea was quickly ixnayed even before I got the idea out of my mouth......."You'll lose one on the train....you'll lose one in the monkey cages....you'll forget how to get home".....whatever.... I still thought it might be fun.....but this morning, I think I understand now what was actually being said.

Brendon, my youngest grandson

When Caleb, my oldest grandson, arrived last night, I noticed he had a couple of rubber bracelets on his wrists much like kids wear these days....one was from church and I think one was from school.....

So, this morning while Nathan, my second oldest grandson, and I were messin' around in the kitchen, I saw a zip-tie laying on the counter...you know one of those plastic ties they are used everywhere to secure things including the wrists on criminals that cops arrest....because the ties are permanent until cut off.....(I think you know where I might be going)

 Well. I put the zip tie around Nathan's wrist so he could have a bracelet like his brother and just as I was snugging it up a little bit he kinda pulled his hand back and it got a little more snug than I expected....I thought I might just clip the end of it off, so it wouldn't have a chance of tightening even more and then it kinda dawned on me...."Uh, this probably isn't such a good idea"

 I got the scissors out of the drawer and figured I would just cut the thing off before anyone thought I was an idiot...well, as I slid the scissors under the tie what room that was left now began to tighten up on little Nathan's wrist....he said, "Grandpa that hurts"......well crap, just about that time I hear a fire truck siren wailing in the background (we live near a fire station) and I'm gettin' images flashing thru my mind that I dang sure don't want to have to take him to the fire satiation to get this thing off....

And then to add to the dilemma...I'm hearing voices from the living room saying..."What's going on in there?"....Obviously my reply was..."Um.. Nothing!" I tried to snip it off once again and Nathan now was gettin' a little more nervous and was saying.."Grandpa, don't cut me".......again more voices..."What's happening in there?"

So, I think I need to just get this snipped off, and smile and tell Nathan..."wasn't that fun?"......and I did just that and he kinda smiled back and that's when I realized..."Yeah, maybe I might hold off on the zoo thing until they are old enough to keep ME from gettin' lost in the monkey cage .........

"The Boys of Spring"

               All of my teammates either went on to Fairview, Chaminade or Colonel White.

As Winter fades into Spring, you can see the daffodils and tulips as they begin to push through the snow covered gardens.  And as the trees begin to show their buds ,  yet a new scent begins to waft it's way through the basements and garages as young boys and now young girls begin to massage their dried out leather ball gloves with oil, making the gloves flexible and able to scoop up that ground ball in the coming days.

The father/coaches begin to dust off their rosters from the previous season lamenting the loss of their number four hitter who has moved on to the next older division. But this will be the year. ...This will be the championship year as they plot each inning, each pitch, each decision,  long before the first pitch will be thrown.

Coaches are born, not made...just like the young charges that will come before them. Good coaches have the gift of compassion, the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job.......they have to be...they will leave an imprint in the lives of the innocent followers for the rest of their lives.

My close friend while growing up, Eddie,  retells the story of a coach that he and I had when we first started our careers in baseball. Although he was our coach, he was also my dad. I didn't witness the conversation, but if Eddie says it happened...you can bet your Willie Mays baseball card it happened.

Our official baseball world took place at Triangle Park in Dayton, Ohio. There were three small fields that bordered the Stillwater River and we would practice on the dirt fields and play our games on Friday nights. There were six teams in the league, and as Eddie likes to remember, the kids that played for Inland Mfg. all had beards and probably drove their own cars to the game.

One sunny afternoon during practice while we were catchin' fly balls or tryin' to field that hot grounder apparently, one of our teammates had an "accident" in his britches and the tears began to roll down his cheeks. He was embarrassed beyond belief and knew he would be labeled for the rest of his life.

Our coach (my dad) walked over to the young boy and asked why he was crying...The boy whimpered as he tried to tell my dad what had happened.

Dad was simply a hard working man without any formal education but he was a father of 3 boys...so he knew what to do.

As Eddie recounts the story...in  my Dad's Stengalese wisdom,  he proceeded to  put his arm around the young soul and said..."Son. all of us have accidents....all of us  make mistakes....I'm a man, I'm married and even I have crapped in my pants......but what you do from then on is what is important....you wipe your butt  off....you wash away the tears and you go out and try harder".

It wasn't profound but Eddie says the scene stayed with him over the years and he remembered how important coaches can be in our lives.

So here's to the lads who will wait for the snow to melt away....wait for the grass to begin to sprout and listen for the sound of "Play Ball" as yet another season begins.

A Christmas I will always remember...

One of the problems with writing and telling stories is that often times one tends to lose touch with what is fiction and what is reality.....I know when growing up my Mom always would remind me of the adage " Tommy, if you cry wolf too many times, no one will believe you"....but I always wanted to tell stories.....granted, as a young Skeeter boy the stories I made up were to keep me from getting into trouble....but I would enjoy going to my special head brain place where I could be whomever I wanted to be and make up stories and retell them to my friends....a true Walter Mitty

So now ....I have to confess.....maybe the previous Thanksgiving and Christmas stories on this blog were embellished a little......ok....maybe they were embellished a lot....BUT... this next story is all fact....and I have a newspaper clipping to go along with it.

It was a Christmas story I'll always remember and one I enjoy telling.

Forty seven years ago tomorrow, December 11,  our house on Sandhurst Drive in Dayton, Ohio burned. 

 I was a senior in high school and had been down at the Univ. of Cincinnati for the day with a couple of friends who were going to enroll there the following Fall.  We had just pulled up to the house and I saw my home in flames. The fire trucks had just arrived and my Dad and his friend were trying to back some cars that had caught fire out of the driveway .

 Dad and his friend had bought this ambulance/hearse and were torch-cutting the rear end off of it in hopes of making it a camper...I still don't know why...Dad never went camping....I guess it was just another of his projects.

He and his friend somehow ignited some gasoline on fire and the heat and flames from the torch set the Cadillac hearse on fire....then the gas tank exploded followed by the oxygen tanks for the cutting torch...it was hot!.....um....yes, alcohol was involved.

 My brother, Rick, who was home for Christmas from Ohio Univ., heroically, saved Dad from going back into the flames. 
                                                                                                 Click here for an enlarged picture
                                                                                  

I watched as the flames subsided after thousands of gallons of water  poured down on the only home I had ever known and I wondered what Christmas would be like in the coming weeks and more importantly, where on earth would we celebrate it.

It was a depressing thought.... All the presents that had been under the tree were water or smoke damaged....Hell, the only clothes I had were the ones on my back. My aunt who lived just up the street immediately said we would move in with her. 

So, I got Mom's credit card to Elder Beerman's and got a set of clothes for the night ....I went to my aunt's house and showered and went out later.

When Christmas came, we celebrated as always (I didn't sing the Ave Maria that year) all of us packed in tight in my aunt's small white clapboard home and tried to be as positive as we could be under the conditions.

But you know what.....it was actually one of the best Christmas's that I can remember. ...We had our family.  We had each other....Everything that was lost in the fire could be replaced and we would eventually move back in to our home in the Spring......We learned that Christmas isn't about the gifts...it's about your faith, your friends and your family. 

Merry Christmas you' all

A Kender Family Christmas Tradition

One of the earliest Christmas traditions in the Kender household that I can vaguely remember was the singing of Ave Maria right before we would open presents on Christmas Eve.

This all started in my youngest of days, when our family would visit the various Hungarian Gypsy tribes that populated the West End of Dayton, Ohio. My Dad, would seek out the elders of the camps and attempt to citify them by bringing them text books and hiring them to work in his machine shop on West 4th St. 

I would wander around the camp fires and watch the gypsy women twirl in their dresses with scarves wrapped around their bodies, sometimes showing a little thigh when the dresses would spin way up high. You can imagine me as a little Skeeter boy staring at those white, fleshy legs, albeit unshaven, but at least it was exciting.

Sometimes Dad would invite members of the tribe or clan, to visit our home. He always asked that they come after dark so as not to alarm the neighbors thinking they might be there to kidnap any young children in the neighborhood.

Dad had converted the basement into a combination dance hall/root garden. He and mom would teach Hungarian folk songs and dances and Mom used the root cellar to store all of the needed vegetables to make our weekly Hungarian dishes.

My two older brothers, David and Ricky, I think both named after the Ozzie and Harriet children, didn't participate much in the singing and dancing. Dave, the genius of the family,  was always inventin' things and readin' school books. He would later go on to attend the University of Chicago and later graduate summa cum laude from Miami University. Ricky, on the other hand was more into the social scene. His good looks and taste for expensive clothes, made him quite the catch for the catholic girls in the neighborhood.

I was fortunate to inherit not only the genius head brain characteristics, but the looks and charm as well. So it was only natural that I was always on hand to sing and dance and entertain everyone...especially at Christmas.

Back to that tradition of singing Ave Maria.    It was my Dad's favorite song. And one day, after getting kicked accidentally in the testicles by my friend, "The Jer"...my voice suddenly changed and what had been a normally young boy's voice....had now reached soprano level....but the odd thing was it only happened when I sang....So here I was joining my family and some other Hungarian friends singing Ave Maria and I was hitting high "C". 

Dad was so excited that from then on....every Christmas Eve...I was asked to sing for the family and friends. Although it's been 43 years now since I have spent Christmas with my brothers....I still sing Ave Maria here in Dallas and of course...I can still do it in my soprano voice.....and I thought I would share it with you.....Merry Christmas everyone.