The EllGab Slice of Life Thread

[Walks_At_Night]

Nice!  Do hydroplanes still race there?

Yep in August this year:
https://detroitboatraces.com/

[Rikki Gins]

Yep in August this year:
https://detroitboatraces.com/

Fun!  We've got a boat-nik festival once a year, in an adjoining town.  They race the smaller sized hydroplanes.

https://www.boatnik.com/hydroplane-boats.html

[PB]

Haven't thought about Olympia in forever.  Used to watch Miss Olympia lock horns with Miss Budweiser in the hydroplane races on the Detroit River.  Good stuff

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The annual hydroplane races were a lot of fun.  Growing up in Washington State, they'd have them on Lake Washington in Seattle, and the Columbia River in the Tri-Cities area (Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco).

After his playing days were over, Sonics legend (heh heh) Tommy Burleson became a racer.  How his 7'2'' body fit in the boat remains a mystery.

The SF Bay must not be placid enough to have them here.  It was during the hydroplane races some kids were trying to sneak in when they found Kennewick Man.

[Rikki Gins]

For this slice of life tale, I must bring you to my upstairs bedroom back when I was a gangly, not to mention pimply, youth of 14.  It was March 27, 1964.  I had inherited the old black and white tv from Granddad's pool hall and had the set perched atop a dresser.  I was laying atop my bed watching a Friday night movie called I Bury The Living, starring Richard Boone.

One creepy movie, I must say.  It was about a successful business man named Robert Kraft (Boone) who had to run the town cemetery for a year.  (All the successful businessmen took turns running the cemetery, kind of a charity thing going on there to show that they cared about the community or whatnot.)  Kraft didn't want to do it, but his co-workers and an uncle talked him into it, so there he was, inside of a cold, tomb like room with a table, a couple of chairs and a broken space heater.  And one big cemetery map on the wall, covered with black and white pins.  The cemetery caretaker explained the pins to Kraft.  The black pins designated people who were at rest in the cemetery and the white ones were for folks who had purchased plots, but were still alive.  All of the plots on the chart had everyone's names on it, alive or dead.

Kraft thought he had it all down pat.  Someone buys a plot and voila, a white pin goes on the board.  Oh oh, someone died, so here comes a black pin.  Anyway, to make the plot short, Kraft slowly realizes that whenever he mistakenly put a black pin on a living person's plot, that unfortunate soul would wind up dead.  He thought it was a coincidence at first, but after experimenting with some black pins, it surely did seem that white pin people were dropping dead, and this despite the fact that Kraft had tried to convince his fiancé, a police inspector, a local reporter and his (Kraft's) uncle as to what was going on.  The movie progresses and Kraft is at his wits end because he is convinced that he had actually killed all of those people by using the black pins.

Mr. Kraft proceeded to loose his mind and thoughts of suicide began to occur.  Then late one night, there in the cold cemetery office, it came to him.  Yes, if  black pins were killing live people, then white pins would restore life to dead people.  So Kraft pulled the black pins he had used, and replaced them with white ones.

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Sure enough, outside in the cemetery, tombstones began to fall over and dirt would begin to roil up on some of the graves.

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I was getting pretty scared at this point when the television screen suddenly went blank.  What the devil? I wondered.  About ten seconds later the set came back on and it began to show video of the following...

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From bursting graves to destroyed cities?  I was confused.  The longer I watched though, it became clear that the movie I had been watching had been pre-empted by news of a massive earthquake that had occurred up there in Alaska.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Alaska_earthquake  News traveled rather slow back in those days, (no satellite news yet) and it took awhile to receive word about the quake.  As far as the movie went, well, it can be viewed on YouTube if you'd like to see how it ends.

[Walks_At_Night]

Just started working on my first of what will hopefully be a string of slices of the Life of WAN entries in this thread.  Time to practice a bit more writing. Writing is something that I've always been really self conscious about due to my poor education in English. Three of the four English teachers I had in High School were useless and while I had to take some English classes in college they weren't exactly emphasized as it was a small, engineering school. Thank God for Mr. Howard who taught Senior College Prep English in High School - he pulled me aside with a "WAN, in no way do you belong in this class" but instead of kicking me out, he worked with me to the point that I was able to manage a slightly above average score in English on the ACT and I was able to accepted to a couple of schools that I had an interest in attending. So writing has always bothered me and I think it's time to practice again. 

This inaugural slice will meander a bit - it will include a commercials silly jingle, a furniture store, Evel Knievel, the Detroit Mafia and a brutal murder on a wedding day. If you are a WAN fan, stay tuned. If not - just ignore!

[Smokin Hot Bob]

The old cat was asleep on the couch. A big, burly, sullen brute with only a stump for a tail. There was a rumor of actual bobcat lineage. That's right, we called him Bob. Imagine a 20 foot long rectangular living room with a mid century stereo console beside an old black and white TV the size of a small fridge. It was a summer's day, the doors were wide open and a crazed starling flew into the house, circling the ceiling and shrieking madly. There was quite the commotion as to what should be done. The cat opened one eye, instantly appraised the situation, leapt onto the console, then the TV and into the air. Just as it made its last revolution, the bird was put out of its misery with one swat. We were all a little stunned. The cat slowly walked back to the couch, laid down and calmly resumed his nap, in peace.

[Rikki Gins]

Just started working on my first of what will hopefully be a string of slices of the Life of WAN entries in this thread.  Time to practice a bit more writing. Writing is something that I've always been really self conscious about due to my poor education in English. Three of the four English teachers I had in High School were useless and while I had to take some English classes in college they weren't exactly emphasized as it was a small, engineering school. Thank God for Mr. Howard who taught Senior College Prep English in High School - he pulled me aside with a "WAN, in no way do you belong in this class" but instead of kicking me out, he worked with me to the point that I was able to manage a slightly above average score in English on the ACT and I was able to accepted to a couple of schools that I had an interest in attending. So writing has always bothered me and I think it's time to practice again. 

This inaugural slice will meander a bit - it will include a commercials silly jingle, a furniture store, Evel Knievel, the Detroit Mafia and a brutal murder on a wedding day. If you are a WAN fan, stay tuned. If not - just ignore!

Most of us know your work, WAN, so you'll do just fine.  Relax and let it flow, but uppermost, have fun.   

[Rikki Gins]

The old cat was asleep on the couch. A big, burly, sullen brute with only a stump for a tail. There was a rumor of actual bobcat lineage. That's right, we called him Bob. Imagine a 20 foot long rectangular living room with a mid century stereo console beside an old black and white TV the size of a small fridge. It was a summer's day, the doors were wide open and a crazed starling flew into the house, circling the ceiling and shrieking madly. There was quite the commotion as to what should be done. The cat opened one eye, instantly appraised the situation, leapt onto the console, then the TV and into the air. Just as it made its last revolution, the bird was put out of its misery with one swat. We were all a little stunned. The cat slowly walked back to the couch, laid down and calmly resumed his nap, in peace.

Great idea bringing up a pet, Bob.  We can all tell some tales regarding them.

[Rikki Gins]

March 21, 1960.

Ten years old.  Morning.  House on the hill.  Fourth grade.  Looking down the winding driveway, waiting to spot an approaching school bus.  Had a dime in my hand (milk money) and I started to tap tap tap on one of the window panes.  (There were plenty to choose from, the front of the house had three or four rows of window panes.)  I had it down pat, if the bus appeared way down the road, I had time to carry my books and lunch bag down the driveway and I would get to the bus stop just as the bus itself rolled to a stop.

No bus seen yet, though.  Tap tap tap.  Phone rang back in the dinning room.  Tap tap tap.  Mom answered it.  Tap tap tap.  She gasped.  Tap tap tap.  "Is Hibby Dead?" she cried out.  Tap....

Grandpa Hibbs had been in a Roseburg, Oregon hospital for gall bladder surgery.  All of us kids had sent him letters wishing him a full recovery.  A deadly blood clot had got loose in his circulatory system and became lodged in his heart.  Death came quick that sunny spring morning of March 21, 1960. 

I stopped waiting for the bus.         

[Rikki Gins]

Dinning - wtf?  Meant to say dining.

[Bart Ell]

March 21, 1960.

Ten years old.  Morning.  House on the hill.  Fourth grade.  Looking down the winding driveway, waiting to spot an approaching school bus.  Had a dime in my hand (milk money) and I started to tap tap tap on one of the window panes.  (There were plenty to choose from, the front of the house had three or four rows of window panes.)  I had it down pat, if the bus appeared way down the road, I had time to carry my books and lunch bag down the driveway and I would get to the bus stop just as the bus itself rolled to a stop.

No bus seen yet, though.  Tap tap tap.  Phone rang back in the dinning room.  Tap tap tap.  Mom answered it.  Tap tap tap.  She gasped.  Tap tap tap.  "Is Hibby Dead?" she cried out.  Tap....

Grandpa Hibbs had been in a Roseburg, Oregon hospital for gall bladder surgery.  All of us kids had sent him letters wishing him a full recovery.  A deadly blood clot had got loose in his circulatory system and became lodged in his heart.  Death came quick that sunny spring morning of March 21, 1960. 

I stopped waiting for the bus.       

At first I thought you were waiting outside.

[KSM]

At first I thought you were waiting outside.

Me too.

Good one Rikki. I love that you know the exact date of that particular slice.

[Rikki Gins]

At first I thought you were waiting outside.

Yeah, I should have clarified.  I was standing behind those window panes, waiting for the school bus to arrive, tapping on one of the windows with the dime.  When we first moved in, that area behind the windows was separate from the living room.  Sort of a walled in entranceway.  Dad knocked the wall down and the living room was instantly bigger.

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[Rikki Gins]

Me too.

Good one Rikki. I love that you know the exact date of that particular slice.

Thanks, KSM.  It was easy to remember because it was one of my first experiences with death.  Oh, I understood death alright, but not when it applied to a relative.  (Mom took us kids up north to view his body, and that was an experience in itself.)  Also, I managed to save the little booklet that the funeral home handed out to friends and family of the deceased.  As the years passed, I could never remember if it was 1960 or 61, so I'd dig up the notice and check the date.

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[Smokin Hot Bob]

My usual crawling across the web in the early morning hours was interrupted by a noise downstairs. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I thought it was a clicking sound. Then the power went out. Then it came back on again. Out on, out on, like a pulse. The rest of the family witnessed this as well. The porch light of the property across the street was pulsing in unison. I was about to check outside to see how far this went, but it stopped.  I phoned the power company the next day. Nothing untoward had happened. No one had complained of anything.