About

 I was born in Scranton, PA in 1951, but moved to a suburb of Los Angeles when I was three years old. The world was a different place then. America was different. And the people were remarkable.

Most of this blog is a hodge-podge of stories about my youth and my days in the Navy.I hope you enjoy reading my stories as much as I enjoy writing them. They are true for the most part, but the world doesn’t always obey the laws of Physics - in love, and life there isn’t always an equal and opposite reaction, and sometimes nothing is conserved, not even the truth. Please feel free to email me any of your comments, or suggestions.

If you came just for the pony rides, see the bottom of the page.

About my father:

My father was a sea of contradictions. He only had an eighth grade education, but he was the smartest and most resourceful man I’ve ever known. He loved my mother dearly, but hurt her irreparably. He was incredibly kind, and immeasurably cruel. When he left us, we missed him terribly but there was no denying the weight that had been lifted from our shoulders.

Not long after my father died, I found an old wallet that he was carrying at the time of his accident. In the back was a photograph, brown with age, of a proud Corporal in the paratroopers, with airborne wings on his chest and the unmistakable ball on his garrison cap. My dad carried that photo with him ’til the day he died. There were some other things too - a heavy St. Christopher medal sealed in a cloth pouch, and a flat piece of leather. I have since come to believe that the medal was once stitched inside his cap, behind the ball. Paratroopers did that, to have a weapon at hand when they went to town. I also think that the leather, might have been a piece from the tongue of one of his jumpboots. On the back of the photo were written MAX 3-3165 and words that look like MARU and NANNIE. He had also written C.O. followed by a number, and below it a long name that begins with a B, but is now illegible. Maybe someday I’ll have it examined under ultra-violet light, where it should be easily discerned. There was one other thing, a small piece torn from a silver certificate dollar bill, that contains a tiny “statue of liberty” face etched into the design, and just below that, a dot surrounded by concentric circles.

I think my dad had a story in his wallet, that he was burning to tell me, but he died before I could get home to hear it.