Posted tagged ‘Williamstown West Virginia’

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Like…and Other Annoying Words

July 5, 2019

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                      July 5, 2019

                              

Maybe I’m getting crotchety in my advancing age! Maybe, just maybe, I’m not the only one who gets annoyed by certain things.

It’s like this…I get tired of the word “like”! It…like…gets used too much! I grind my teeth when the word “was” is placed in front of it. “I was like, I’m not sure I can like do that this week, like I don’t know if it will work out.”

Reality TV shows…like…”Teen Mom” have destroyed the easy flow of conversational language. They use “like” more often in 30 minutes than a lifetime of Facebook “likes” for my blogs. 

Two nights ago I was at a Cincinnati Reds baseball game. My sister had purchased tickets that were…like, really, really great seats. Two women sitting in the row behind my brother-in-law talked non-talk in steady streams of meaningless dialogue punctuated frequently with “like”. My brother-in-law thought he was being afflicted with an audio episode of “Days of Our Lives.” He was…like, I can’t stand it!

“Like” gets used as filler space to complete useless information or incomplete sentences. Mrs. Blauvelt, my 7th Grade English teacher back in Williamstown, West Virginia, would have had a hissy fit if we had used “like” back in those more grammatically correct times. She may have “sentenced” us to diagram the sentence, or lack of sentence, we just said. Sentence diagrams were Satan’s tool to make us despise Language Arts!

The two women sitting behind my brother-in-law would have needed three pages of notebook paper to complete one sentence. Both of them seemed to be reluctant to bring a period into the conversation. If the game had gone extra innings my brother-in-law might have gone…like, ballistic on them!

There are other annoying words…like “Gucci”, “extra”, and “adult” that come out in the dialogue of young folk to confuse and isolate old people like me. On those I just shake my head like I know what they’re talking about, and try to make my escape.

I’m annoyed also by folk who can’t complete a sentence without inserting an expletive. Someone who says “I was like” and then transitions immediately to an expletive, I can’t handle. I mean, like, learn how to talk like Mrs. Blauvelt is your teacher!

Like’s reputation has been tarnished by how carelessly it now gets thrown around. It needs to regain its proper place in the English language. We need to return to the days when it was used in statements such as these: “Joan likes you. She wants to know if you like her?” “I like how that outfit looks on you!” “I would like to stay for dinner, if it’s okay?” Each of those statements would bring a smile to Mrs. Blauvelt’s face…and would be easily diagrammed.

In her eyes that would be extra Gucci sic!

Categories: children, Community, Freedom, Grace, Humor, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
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How Am I Still Alive?

June 26, 2019

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                             June 26, 2019

                                

There are numerous reasons as to why I should no longer be alive. They mostly fall into two categories: 1) Stupid Acts and 2) The Times We Lived In. I suppose I could do a third category, kind of a hybrid…”The Times We Lived In and The Things We Didn’t Realize Were Stupid!”

You be the judge. For instance, when we were growing up, and before kids were strapped into seatbelts, we roamed the back section of our family car freely. There were always the siblings’ squawks about my brother, Charlie, touching my sister, Rena, or me. Being the oldest, Charlie felt he had the right to antagonize us. 

To make more room in the back seat I’d sometimes lay down on that console under the back window, you know the area where the box of Kleenex would be set. It was nice and warm back there and on my family’s perilous road trips from Winchester to Paintsville, Kentucky, I’d take rear window naps. If, during one of the numerous curves in the road, my dad had collided with another vehicle I would have been a dead goose…a “flying through the front window” dead goose. 

Imagine if a law enforcement officer saw a kid laying in the back window nowadays as the Buick went down the road!

Yes, we gambled encounters with Death and came out without a road scratch.

And then there was the fog machine in Williamstown, West Virginia, that rumbled through town each evening in the summertime. Williamstown, being situated on the banks of the Ohio River, had its healthy share of mosquitoes that sought to take over the town. The fog machine pumped out some kind of pesticide fog to do battle with them. And what did we do as kids? We heard the fog machine coming and we’d run along behind it, inhaling the smoke and staying within the fog as long as we could. 

That couldn’t have been good for us!

We didn’t know that we shouldn’t have been doing those things, staying warm in the back window and breathing in toxins. We were just doing normal!

And then there was my personal encounters with stupidity! Like when I was experimenting with my brother’s chemistry set, mixed a couple of chemicals together, and decided to drink the mixture! I don’t know what it was I drank. I remember that it tasted bitter, like my mom’s perfume…not that I tasted her perfume, but I remember that being the thought that came into my mind. 

I was into experimenting. Like when I did an experiment with a facial tissue. I wanted to see how quickly it would burn, so I lit it with a match. 

Experiment Conclusion: A facial tissue will burn very quickly.

Teachable Moment: When setting a facial tissue on fire make sure you are a safe distance away from the kitchen curtains!

I was lucky enough to not set the whole house on fire, but unlucky enough to leave scorch marks on the curtains in the kitchen…right next to the table where we ate dinner. My parents were suspicious of the pile of books that suddenly had been stacked in front of the curtains that night. Busted!

And then there was the time I tried to light firecrackers in a pill bottle and put the cap on before it went off. The firecrackers I used were the next level up in potential danger, but I thought it would be cool to see want would happen. 

Well, what happened is that I was not quick enough to get the cap back on and it exploded in my hand. I can still remember the stinging sensation in my fingers and the ringing in my ears. Stupidity had made a special visit to me and exploded before leaving.

And I survived! 

When you think about it, it’s a miracle that any of us survived! We all did stupid things, stuffed ourselves (and still do) with processed food, and acted the fool! We thought “organic” had something to do with playing the church organ, Caster Oil was the cure for everything, and the more Coppertone you lathered on your skin to bake in the midst of a hot sunny summer afternoon the better. The browner we were the more awesome we thought we were!

How are we still alive? There’s only one reason, and that is so that we can tell the younger generations to not do the stupid things that we did!

 

Categories: children, Community, Death, Freedom, Grace, Grandchildren, Humor, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
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The Large Changed To Small

July 24, 2018

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                           July 24, 2018

                       

It’s happened numerous times it seems! I’ve revisited towns and places of my childhood and someone has found a way to shrink therm in size in the 55 years or so since I last was there.

I noticed it first back in Williamstown, West Virginia. The streets had been narrowed since I was a kid in fifth grade living there. I remember the main street that ran through town being like a four lane highway. It ran between the community park and the grocery. I’d find a couple of pop bottles to turn into the store. The store would give me three cents a bottle, which I would use to buy a PayDay or similar sugared-up product. I’d sprint across that street, heart racing, since I knew it was against my parent’s rules. 

In my revisit, however, the highway (in my mind) had been narrowed to where now it is barely wide enough for two compact cars to pass one another going in opposite directions.

And then my brother and I visited Central Baptist Church in Winchester, Kentucky- the church my family attended from the time I was an infant to the age of eight. We were in that sanctuary three times a week- Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday evening- but someone had shrunk it. A new sanctuary has been built that must seat a thousand or so. We navigated our way through the building that has been added onto a few times until we found the old sanctuary. It’s been repurposed and abused into a youth gathering room. (There’s something weird about that, by the way! Maybe because what once was has long since been changed into what now is!) I remember the old sanctuary being huge, but when we entered it what was once a large gathering place of God’s place on Sunday morning now seems more like a worship closet. 

After church we journeyed around town and stopped at the first two houses I remember living in. Back in the day they were mansions, huge homes where a good game of hide and seek could be played involving small people. BUT once again someone had zapped each one of them with a reducer gun and turned them into Polly Pockets residences!

The perspective of our youth often gets a vision test in our adult years. Our view has been changed. The far-sighted imagination of our childhood gets replaced by the near-sighted skepticism of our aged eyes. What was larger than life becomes the small reality.

There’s a sadness in this change. Perhaps it’s the discovery that what was our “world” as kids, and the specialness of those times, now looks insignificant in the present. When we take our kids and grandkids back to those sacred places there’s yawns and indifference. The mansion we remember now simply looks like a small two bedroom house on a street populated with other small two bedroom homes. 

In another generation they will experience the same thing with their kids!

However, whatever the reality now is the imprint of those times will remain massive upon us. Who I am today is a direct result of how large those days will always be!

Categories: children, Community, Grandchildren, Humor, love, marriage, Parenting, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
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Seventh Grade Peer Pressure…Er…Influence!

April 8, 2017

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                                April 8, 2017

                                 

I substitute taught Health class for 7th graders one day this past week. There is something about 7th grade that resonates with me. Maybe it’s because it was such an awkward year for me back in…1967! Lord, help me! That means that this is the 50th anniversary of my 7th grade year! (I should make a Chef Boyardee pizza tonight and relive the memories!)

In the Health class we talked about peer pressure. Or, put in a more positive term, peer influence! I don’t know about the students, but I enjoyed it. The discussion was interesting, as we identified different ways our peers influence us…positive and negative. I don’t remember “drugs” as being one of the conversation pieces when I was in 7th grade, but kids today are feeling the pressure to experiment.

Social media was not a temptation back in ’67! We passed notes that shared information like “Bobby wants Jenny to be his girlfriend”, or “Fred told Mr. Smith he was full of crap and he’s in the principal’s office now!” That was our non-verbal information system. 7th graders today are a little more sophisticated, and becoming wiser. They are increasingly knowledgeable about the advantages and dangers of social media. They know about SnapChat and texting, have heard the situations involving sexting, and the ripple effects of comments that people have made on Facebook.

The encouraging thing for me was that many of them identified the peer group they “hang around with” as being the most important decision. Wise choices flow much easier from a student who has friends who also make wise choices.

That is one factor that has not changed in fifty years. I remember one of the friends I had back in my Williamstown, West Virginia 7th Grade year was a boy who was fun to be around, but prone to “doing stupid!” I laughed a lot around him, but “did stupid” a couple of times when I was with him. Like when one of our teachers heard him utter a curse word and told him to watch his language. As she continued down the sidewalk from the school I hollered after her, “What are you going to do about it, you old bag?”

Dumb, dumb, dumb! Five minutes later I was in the principal’s office along with my cussing sidekick. That was back in the days when principal’s still had paddles in easy to retrieve places in their offices.

I went from dumb, dumb, dumb to my butt being numb, numb, numb!

I tended to make unwise decisions when I was with my cussing friend. Our family moved a year later to a new town, and as an 8th grader I hooked up with two friends who tended to make wiser choices, Terry Kopchak and Mike Bowman. Funny…as I think back on it now I realize I never saw the inside of the principal’s office that year!

Two years later we moved again and I connected with another positive peer group of Mike “Fairboy” Fairchild, Tommy Douglas, and Dave “Hugo” Hughes. They rescued me from a couple of other guys who tended to “do stupid” and seemed cool! Fairboy and Hugo were both groomsmen in my wedding, and I officiated the wedding ceremonies of Dave and Robin, and Mike and Carol. I’m increasingly thankful for these friends who rowed the boat with me in positive directions.

Most 7th graders today understand the positive influences of their peer group and the negative peer pressure of those who like to live dangerously. They know that we all make bad choices and dumb decisions, but also are acutely aware of the fact that a positive peer group will tend to minimize the number of poor decisions.

I asked the class the question “If you could put percentages on how much of the peer pressure you experience is negative and how much is positive what would be your assessment?” Several of them said it was 50-50, but one wise and intelligent young lady said 90-10! I assumed she was saying that 90% of the peer pressure she experienced was negative, so I asked her to explain her 90-10 assessment. That’s when she indicated that the 90% was positive, and it came down to the friends she hangs around with. I loved her simple solution: “If your friends tend to make stupid choices you need to get some new friends!”

Put another way, if your friend is very familiar with the furnishings in the principal’s office…and even has his name on one of the chairs…you need a new friend! Don’t abandon him, but don’t do a Friday night sleepover at his house either!

Categories: children, Community, Freedom, Humor, Parenting, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
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Blue Ribbon Bill

June 30, 2016

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                              June 30, 2016

                                      

I was an energetic eight, like a wind-up toy that takes off in unpredictable directions. That was me! Our family was living in Williamstown, West Virginia, home of the Fenton Art Glass Company. My mom and dad worked across the Ohio River in Marietta, Ohio. We were a family of five in a small town that was devoted to kids. One of those devotions was a summer program at the community park. Each morning, Monday through Friday, kids would come to the park for crafts, games, and Kool-Aid.

At the end of the summer was the annual gathering up the river in Vienna of kids from all the park districts in the county for various swimming races and track and field competitions. I had completed a week of decent behavior at home, not setting anything on fire or getting caught in a lie, so Mom and Dad said I could go on the bus to Vienna. I scurried off that morning, brown lunch bag in tow, headed for a day of adventure.

The community park in Vienna had a huge outdoor pool, even a terrifying high dive, which I kept my distance from. Buses filled the parking lot unloading children, most of whom had high-pitched voices like me.

Everyone got settled and the swimming competitions began. I was entered in the 25 yard freestyle for eight year olds, plus the 100 yard freestyle relay. I had my J.C. Penney’s swim trunks on, characterized by their lack of fashion and dullness. I, however, didn’t know that they weren’t in style. My mom worked at Penney’s! Everything I wore was from Penney’s, all the way from my “Chuck Taylor high tops” to my Towncraft “whitie-tighties” to the bow tie I wore on Sundays to church.

The announcement came for all eight year old boys to report to the deep end of the pool. I scooted along the concrete in that direction. Twenty five yards doesn’t seem like very much, but from the deep end of the pool it looked like the whole length of West Virginia. I stood there waiting and in another few moments one other boy arrived. He looked scared. Someone must have told him that he was swimming against an Olympic champion. He looked over the side of the pool into the water, and his eyes got bigger.

A man who looked all official approached us. We stared at him. We knew he was older than eight, plus he had clothes on, so he must not be in the race with us.

“Are you boys here for the eight year old 25 yard freestyle?” We both looked up at him and nodded yes.

And then my competition, while looking once again over the side of the pool, asked him a question. “Is this water over my head?”

“Yes, it is! It’s twelve feet deep.”

His eyebrows rose up to the top of his head, and then in a quivering voice he said to the man, “Well, I can’t swim!”

The man looked at me and said, “Well, I guess that means you win, son!”

I won! I hadn’t even gotten wet! I was the Wood County, West Virginia eight year old 25 yard freestyle swimming champion!

It did not seem like the right time to inform the man that I couldn’t swim either! I figured I could dog paddle at least until I got to the shallow end of the pool. However, I was okay with not having to find out whether to not that was the reality or not.

Honesty and openness had not arrived in my life yet. Those Sunday School lessons probably wouldn’t be taught until I was nine! He pointed me towards a table to the side where I was to go to pick up my blue ribbon.

A little later on our relay team was lined up to swim. Conveniently, we were the only team entered so we were awarded first place. I had won my second blue winner in the swimming competition that I didn’t have to get wet for…and even more bizarre, in the swimming competition that I couldn’t swim in!

In the afternoon, however, I outran about twenty other boys in the 50 yard dash. I moved like a young gazelle in my Chuck Taylor’s. Call me Speedy!

Three blue ribbons! Blue Ribbon Bill! One of them won legally with full disclosure, and two with tight lips, unable to spill the beans.

 

Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Humor, Parenting, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
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Doing Dumb, Meeting Grace

July 27, 2015

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                                             July 27, 2015

                                          

When I was in fourth grade I had a friend named Terry who was a bit rougher around the edges then me. Terry even would let a cuss word flow from his lips from time to time. He would walk the line between what was acceptable behavior and what was reform school acts.

And I hung around with him!

In some odd way I thought it made me took tougher. “Don’t mess with me! Do you see who I’m hanging around with?”

And so it was on a nice spring day at the close of school. Terry and I were leaving Williamstown Elementary to head home and we noticed thee was a kickball game going on at the school playground. We loved kickball, so we stopped and joined in the game. There is nothing better for a fourth grader than kickball after school…unsupervised!

We’d been playing a while when Terry kicked the ball to the outfield, but a player on the other team made a nice catch for an out. Terry let loose with an expletive!

Unfortunately, one of the fifth grade teachers, a beautiful lady named Mrs. Davidson, was walking by when the four letter word entered our world and she stopped and in a very nice way told him not to use language like that again.

“Yes, ma’am!”

End of story!

No!

My fourth grade bravado raised its ugly head, and with pumped-out chest I did dumb! I yelled down the sidewalk at Mrs. Davidson as she strolled away from school. “What are you going to to about it, you old bag?”

Don’t ask me why I chose that moment to be a tough guy, but I can still see Mrs. Davidson doing a sharp U-turn and heading back towards a fourth grader who was now completely void of bravado. I was trying to hit the rewind button on my mouth to no avail. The condemned prisoner was about to be executed.

Her words were direct and clearly communicated. “Let’s go see Mr. Morton!”

Not Mr. Morton! Mr. Morton was our school principal. His first name was Shirley, which, I believed, caused him to approach students in a gruffer way. He is the only male I have ever known who was named Shirley, and it is a name that still strikes fear in me. Mr. Morton had snow white hair, was short and thick and carried a big paddle.

Mrs. Davidson escorted the two of us, Terry and me…the condemned about to die, to the principal’s office. Mr. Morton warmed our behinds quickly. It was “bun warming” redefined!

Terry and I walked funny all the way home. It took a good bit of acting on my part, but I never let on with my mom and dad that my backside was a bit sensitive to sit on at dinner time.

“How was school today?”

      “Great…awesome! I got a 100% on my spelling test!”

     I had done dumb and dumbness has a way of rippling through you for a while afterwards. I got a glass of water with ice a bit later, went in the bathroom and tried to cool my behind with the ice cubes. It didn’t work! I slept on my stomach that night. Never again did I call one of my teachers an old bag.

Two weeks later on a Sunday morning I had my junior usher suit on at First Baptist Church of Williamstown. I was on duty, ready to hand out bulletins and help collect the offering. I was looking like a nice Christian fourth grade boy who was serving Jesus.

And then Mrs. Davidson walked in with her husband, who was the high school wrestling coach. My Cheerios started to rise from my stomach. I turned as red as a beet! And Mrs. Davidson looked at me and with a smile on her face said “Good morning!”

With a squeaky high voice I responded “Good morning!”, handed a bulletin to her.

“Thank you!” She smiled at me in a forgiving way. My eyes spoke repentance, and I met was introduced to grace.

The Davidson’s became a part of our church, but never once did she mention my transgression. Grace moved us past it…and I will always be thankful!

Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Grace, Humor, Jesus, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
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Winning My First Blue Ribbon…and Second

April 28, 2014

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                        April 28, 2014

 

When I was eight years old I was a non-stop mover. I was the hyper kid before we ever used that term. I may have defined it. I had short brown hair…no sissy long hair for us in those days…a freckled face, and most of my front teeth. Women were always telling me I was cute. Of course, they were also all my aunts. Unrelated eight year old girls seemed unimpressed!

In the summer time our community of Williamstown, West Virginia was a paradise for kids. There was the community swimming pool, Little League baseball, summer tennis lessons on the high school courts, and the greatest outdoor basketball courts I can remember.

Williamstown also had a summer parks and recreation morning program where kids could come and get involved in different crafts, games, and other kid-oriented activities. At the end of the summer the Wood County Parks and Recreation competitions were held in Vienna, a few miles up the road. Children from the various summer program areas came together to compete against one another in swimming, track and field, and other competitions.

I can remember hopping on the bus that morning with the other kids from my park and heading up the highway. I had my school lunch pail containing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white. (We didn’t know what wheat bread was in those days. If it was around it would have been viewed with a high degree of suspicion. After all, in 1962 we were told that there were all kinds of Communist subversive efforts going on. To us wheat bread would have been seen as a subtle pulling towards the dark side.)

      On the way to the competition my park director, a nice-looking young lady who I remember as being named Patty, informed me that I was going to be competing three events: the eight year old 25 yard freestyle and the 100 yard freestyle relay in the swimming competition; and the eight year old 50 yard dash in track.

I knew how to run fifty yards. I was fast. Whenever we played tag on the school playground none of the girls could catch me!

Maybe that wasn’t the best of ideas, now that I think about it!

The swimming competition started right after we arrived at the Vienna park, and being eight, my age group was to go first.

The announcer hit the volume on the loud speaker and said, “All those boys in the eight year old 25 yard freestyle race are to report to the deep end of the pool.” 

That was me! I entrusted my lunch pail to my friend Ronnie and trotted on my tippy toes to the  end of the pool that featured the diving boards. There was only one other boy waiting there. The starter waited another moment to make sure there were no other boys stumbling towards the deep end and then he turned to the two of us and asked, “Are you boys here for the eight year old race?” I nodded yes like a kid about to be given medicine, but the other boy looked up at the man with a pitiful expression of uncertainty and asked, “Is this water over my head?”

“Well, yes son, it’s twelve feet deep!”

     A couple of eyebrows rose towards heaven, and his eyeballs got as big as saucers, and he said to the man, “Well…I can’t swim!”

The starter looked a little puzzled and said, “Ohhh!” And then he turned towards me and continued, “Well, I guess that means you win, son!”

He handed me a blue ribbon, which I would have immediately pinned to my chest if I hadn’t been bare-chested.

The thing of it was…I couldn’t swim either! Honesty, however, had not arrived as a resident of my life, and I wouldn’t start taking swimming lessons at the Williamstown Community Pool until the next summer. I had the mindset that I could dog paddle twenty five yards. Lassie did it on TV all the time!

Besides, the deep end of a pool where the water was undisturbed looked deceptively shallow…like you could just reach over and touch the bottom.

But if you didn’t HAVE to get wet, why give out any incriminating information?

So I didn’t!

Thirty minutes later our relay team was the only team entered in the swimming relay race…so I doubled my blue ribbon haul…and was still bone dry!

The third blue ribbon was legit! I out-raced about twenty other eight year old boys in the fifty yard dash. I was like a greyhound in the midst of a bunch of dachshunds!

I enjoyed my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and hid my three blue ribbons in the safe of my lunch box, like I was The Man from U.N.C.L.E!

I’m not sure I learned any lessons that day on the value of good sportsmanship and fair play, but…I was eight!

I still have those three blue ribbons in my closet. Every time I come across them while looking for something else I simply chuckle and remember.

Those were good days, days that still make me smile, except now when I smile I have all my front teeth!

Categories: children, Community, Humor, Parenting, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
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