Teacher And Triathlete: November 2018

Thomas Frazier III Eulogy

My father was a great man. He was proud, strong, and driven. He was full of élan, dash, swagger, and bravado. The grandchildren did not know who their grandfather was in his prime and so I would like to direct this eulogy to them.

Born into a middle class family, my father did not come from money. In his early teens he travelled throughout the west and Midwest as a roadie where he unloaded trucks. The young Thomas was angry feeling that he had been forced to take on too much responsibility too early. After being thrown out of three high schools, and never graduating, he asked his father to sign the papers that would admit him into the Air Force at the age of 17.

Dad was sent to Korea with the First Special Beacon Unit, or ISBU. His plane would drop flares on enemy targets and then the high altitude planes would come in behind his plane and drop bombs on the flares. Dad remembered that when he first flew into Pusan, South Korea, he saw flashing lights below his plane and he thought that the South Koreans were setting off fireworks to welcome their allies to the war. In fact it was the North Koreans who had surrounded Pusan and were trying to shoot down his plane. Nothing sobers you up more than being shot at and he quickly realized how difficult the Korean War was going to be for him.

Dad suffered from eczema all of his life and this skin disease had become much worse during his time in Korea. He was sent to a hospital in Japan at first, and then he was transferred to an Air Force base in Vermont for a long convalescence. It was there that he met Virginia Strachan and, after a brief courtship, they were married. From that point he never looked back. Moving to Minnesota, he earned a GED and then graduated cum laude from the College of St Thomas. Dad worked for Frank Eiple at first, then the Bartlett Brothers, and then took a job with American Commercial Barge Line where he would work his way through the ranks to become senior vice president.

My father had many hobbies. He liked fast and powerful cars and God help you if he was stuck behind you in traffic because he would yell and honk and flash his lights until you got out of his way. He loved his dogs and on any given night he could be seen feeding the dogs potato chips in front of the TV while watching U of L basketball. More than anything else, he loved to read and work the crossword puzzle and it was with this hobby that he learned to use college words like élan, dash, swagger, and bravado.

After almost 30 years with ACBL my father retired and gradually his health failed him. When the grandchildren last saw him he was a helpless old man, confined to his living room, drifting in and out of consciousness. But that is not the way that I want to remember my father. I want to remember him as the proud man that he was. Proud to put all four of his children through college. Proud to send my sister Laura through law school. And he was proud of all of his grandchildren.

At the end of his life my father was stripped of everything that he loved, of everything that made him proud. Yet even at the end of life he was more concerned with others than himself. During the last phone call that he made he told my Aunt Jean not to get emotional about his death because it was just part of the life cycle. There were no midnight confessional or last minutes regrets. My father remained stoic and true to himself until the very end. For that he will always be my hero and I will miss him

Virginia Gail Strachan Frazier III Eulogy

My mother entered into the Masonic Home four years ago and I would visit her every Sunday and I watched her health go downhill. Her eyes became hollow, looking around but not seeing anything because she was almost blind without her glasses and she was always losing her glasses. In those hollowed eyes I saw the constant look of fear and anxiety. Her body had become wrecked. Her once strong back had taken the form of a perfect “C” as she became molded into the wheelchair. Her shoulders turned narrow and hunchbacked and the muscles in her legs had turned to jelly from lack of exercise. My mother forgot that she couldn’t walk and when she tried to stand she would fall and so her face and arms were full of bruises. Her ankles became bloated because of poor circulation.

Just like her body, my mother’s mind had become wrecked as well. It was always in another place. I always wondered what my mother was thinking about as her brain was coming to grips with Alzheimer’s. Could it be that in her mind were swirling her favorite memories and she would play those memories in her subconscious over and over again.

Among those favorite memories must have been the time that there was a snow storm in Vermont. My mother and my Uncle John took out their sleds to slide down the roof of their parent’s barn. My grandmother chased them down and chastised them for doing such a foolish thing.

Another favorite memory was riding the trails on her horse at Inchfawn. My grandfather had taught my mother how to ride on his horse, Tipperary. Once my mother became proficient he bought her Clio and Honey. She became so good at riding that she won a prize for finishing a 100 mile trail ride with Honey.

Among those memories must have been the time that she went to the USO dance in Burlington but not to dance, she wanted to sit in a corned by herself and read. It was then that my father, that brash young man, saw her and strutted across the dance floor and introduced himself. She fell in love with his energy and drive and the two were married within a year.

My parents moved into the GI housing on the campus of the College of St Thomas. My father went to class, studied, and took a part time job unloading boxes from trucks to earn some extra money. My mother worked at Dayton’s Department Store and, when she had gas money, would drive their old maroon Dodge like a banshee through the streets of St Paul. For one of the few times in her life she felt a new sense of freedom.

And then came the hard years when Dad was establishing his career and Mom was raising four children virtually by herself. Dad moved our family, in quick succession, from St Paul to Stillwater to Kansas City to St Louis to Louisville. Mom was overwhelmed with responsibility and she knew it. When she was admitted to the hospital when my sister was born in St Louis she had to write her occupation in on the admittance form. My mother wrote for her job title “zookeeper.”

Once she had raised her family and her children were grown my mother was free to go back to her favorite past time, riding horses. She bought Andy and Lucky and rode out at Liberty Lane. After she was thrown from her horse and could no longer ride, my mother would load her dogs into her car and drive out to the pastures. Her pockets were filled with carrots to feed the horses and she would walk her dogs along the fence line before dawn, arriving in time to watch the sun come up.

And then my mother lost her mind. No one wanted to put her into the Masonic Home but she had become a danger to herself and others. We had to trick my mother into the nursing home and when she realized what was happening she fought back, literally kicking and screaming, holding onto the door frame to stop herself from being forced in. From a detached perspective the scene must have been somewhat comical but it still haunts me to this day. Over time she grew to accept her new condition of housing and, over time, her mind diminished and she was gone.

I visited my mother on Sunday mornings and whenever I turned to leave she would always ask me to take her with me. I asked her where she would like to go if she left the Masonic Home but she could not give me an answer. When pressed she would just say that she had to take a train up North but she did not now the ultimate destination of that train. But I think that I know where that train was going.

She was going up North to ride her horses again like she used to when she was young, spending hours upon hours on the back woods trails of Renwick Hall and Inchfawn. Her horses were Tipperary, Clio, Honey, Lucky, A.J., and Andy.

She was going up North to find the comfort of routine in the long walks along the fence line at Liberty Lane with her dogs in the predawn hours to watch the sun come up. Her dogs were Thor and Seeba, Roux and Sonailles, Duke and Danny, Beau and Giselle.

She was going up North, going to heaven, to be with those people that she missed the most, those who had died before her. Donald. Arline. Jimmy. Lanni. James.

She is going to heaven to lay beside my father, the love of her life, only this time when they lay together it will be side by side, for all eternity, at Cave Hill Cemetery.

Frazier Family History

Thomas Frazier

The Frazier family originally came from Scotland. They immigrated to New England in 1738 and eventually settled in Virginia as tobacco merchants.

Thomas Frazier I, my great-grandfather, was originally from New York. He was sent to New Mexico to attend a military school. He eventually entered into the general store business in Sante Fe. He them moved to Hiawatha, Kansas where he met my great-grandmother. She was from the Elliot Family, a border clan between Scotland and England. The Elliot branch of the family moved to Einade, Oklahoma but grandfather moved his family to Minneapolis where he would become the vice-president of Butler Brothers. This was a huge department store and was owned by the Corn Exchange Bank. Great grandfather had stock in this bank, which was bought out by the Chemical Bank, and it had held its worth during the Great Depression. Great grandfather Frazier lived off of the stock until he died. Grandfather Frazier used to like to say that his father and his father’s stock expired at about the same time.

Thomas Frazier, Jr. was born in 1905 in Hiawatha, Kansas but grew up in Minneapolis. He sold rugs at Marshall Fields, a department store, after school and while he was in his teens. He met my grandmother when she was 16 and he was 20. They married, bought their first house in 1931, and my father was born in 1932. In 1933 Grandpa moved to Rock Island, Wyoming to speculate for oil but failed at that venture and he gave up after a year. He then took a job with Acme Fast Freight, moved to Davenport, R.I. then to Omaha, Nebraska. Finally, when dad was just 5 years old, Grandfather moved back to Minneapolis in 1937.

Grandpa took a job with Tri-City Line, a division of Midnight Express, which is now called Glen Denny Trucking Line. In 1940, he moved to Northwest Freight Line, a much bigger company, when Frank Wallace hired him as manager in the Twin Cities. He worked there from 1940-1945.

Through a loophole in the I.C.C. regulations, my grandfather, Steve Francis, and an attorney set up F. and F. Truck Leasing. F. And F. leased the tractor, trailer, and driver to companies that could not afford to own them. The I.C.C. eventually ruled that the driver of the tractor/trailer had to be an employee of the employee that used them. However, as part of the settlement F. and F. was allowed into the regulated freight business. F. and F. bought a regular route carrier called Green Bay Transit which ran from Minneapolis to Green Bay. Then they bought Freight transit, an irregular route carrier of truckload commodities that allowed them to run from Minneapolis to Iowa. This is important because my father worked on Grandpa’s trucks. Dad was in his teens and he traveled all over the West, from Montana to Oklahoma, on these trucks.

In 1955 Grandpa sold his part of the business to his partner over a disagreement over the direction of the company. In 1958 he invested in the Minneapolis Harbor Service, but withdrew from the company when he realized the owner, Frank Eiple, was cheating him. This was the same man whom my father worked for when he graduated from St. Thomas.

In 1960, when Grandpa was 54 years old, he went to work for American Commercial Barge Line. A.C.B.L. bought out Blasting Lines in the Twin Cities and needed someone to manage the freight. Grandpa took the job under the condition that he could take off every winter while the harbor was closed. He bought a trailer in 1965 and kept it on an Indian reservation during the summer. In the winter they went to New Mexico at first, and then to Big Pine Key in the Florida Keys. He retired in 1972 and continued to make trips to the South until his eyes gave out and he couldn’t see well enough to travel. He died in 1982.

Grandmother Frazier

Grandmother Frazier came from a German family by the name of Eigle. They moved to America I the 1800s because of the constant state of war that Europe was always in. Great, great grandfather was a Burgermeister, or mayor, in Germany. He brought all of his money with him and founded the small town of St. Michael in Minnesota.

Great Grandmother Flannery (her married name) married a man whose family came to America in the 1840’s during the Irish Potato Famine. They were originally from Cork, in Mayo County, Ireland. Born in 1852, Great Grandfather Flannery fought in the Union Army at Vicksburg and Sherman’s March to the Sea. The Flannery’s then moved to Red Wing, Minnesota. My great grandfather owned the hotel where Jesse James stayed before the outlaw began his bank-robbing career. Great Grandfather Flannery’s last job was working on the Great Northern railroad. He lied about his age, realizing that if he told the truth about his age he would not get full benefits when he retired. So instead of working until he was 65, he was able to work until he was 75 and he died in 1940, one year before his 50^th wedding anniversary.

Great Grandfather Flannery was survived by his wife and his four daughters. Great Grandmother Flannery lived another twenty years before having a stroke. She was given a free pass on the Great Northern Railroad to use whenever she wanted to use it after her husband died but she only used it twice.

Strachan Family History

Donald Strachan

Donald Strachan was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. on July 26^th, 1885. He tried to get into West Point and was attending a prep school when the congressman who was going to make the appointment died. The new congressman refused to honor the appointment and so Grandfather went to the University of Virginia’s law school. He graduated in 1904 and established a law practice in New York.

Grandfather joined the New York National Guard and before WWI he was sent into Mexico to find Pancho Villa. During the Great War he was in the American Expeditionary Force, Rainbow Division, and he fought in France. He made captain, and then major, and after the war he became a founding member of the King’s County American Legion in Brooklyn.

After WWI grandfather continued his law practice. He was the assistant U.S. Attorney General in Brooklyn and was in charge of prohibition. It was said that grandfather had the best stock of liquor in Brooklyn because a lot of the confiscated liquor went into private stocks. Yet grandfather made a name for himself by successfully prosecuting Ginger Jake, who was selling liquor that had been tainted with gas and that would poison anyone who drank the alcohol.

In 1932 Grandfather ran for the U.S. Congress. He was the republican candidate from the seat that was centered in Brooklyn. Uncle John likes to say that if Grandfather made the same speeches today that he made in 1932, he would be lynched. This was the time of the Great Depression and Republican candidates were not popular. Grandfather lost the election.

Free from military obligations and political constraints, Grandfather concentrated on his career. He traveled the world working on oil leases. He passed through the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan before his friend, Lowell Thomas, the American write and traveler who was best known as the man who made Lawrence of Arabia famous. He took care to dress well and bought his heavy wool clothes from Bonn Street in London. He was in Germany in 1936. It was in that year that he moved his family to Renwick Hall, his mansion in Connecticut. He went into the sugar mill business and started Fajaba Sugar with Mr. Bass. This is the same man who founded the famous Bass Museum in New York. He was bitter about being denied a partnership in Fajaba and so when WWII broke out Grandfather joined the Judge Advocate general and traveled to North Africa and Italy. He was discharged after suffering a stroke. At that point he was over 60 years old and he was sent home to recover.

In 1949 Grandfather moved his family to Warren, Vermont. When the Korean War broke out he was invited to take a R.O.T.C. station but Grandfather declined saying that the military had no right to ask him into the service after discharging him in WWII. Donald had a series of strokes and in September of 1956 he became incapacitated and was eventually moved to an institution in Waterbury, Connecticut. He died of malnutrition on November 13^th, 1957, having a massive stroke the year before and he was in a coma until he died. He was a great man but he left very little for his family. He was unable to manage his funds during WWII, he had a lot of medical expenses, but the main problem was that he let three states act as executors of his will. He had residences in N.Y., Connecticut, and Vermont. These three states bled off a lot of funds and Grandmother was left with less than $50,000 and a National Guard pension. Grandfather Strachan is buried in Cypress Hill Cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Arlene Strachan

John Berith Warnock (Mom called him Papa Daddy) married Eleanor Phillips and they had two children: Arlene and Evelyn. John Warnock had worked at the Fajardo Sugar Company, a sugar plantation in the West Indies, all of his life. When the president of Fajardo, Mr. Coombs, died John Warnock was able to become a partner of the company. First, however, he had to prove the viability of his partnership and his son-in-law, Donald Strachan, was able to make this possible. Donald had many political connections and used them to help his father-in-law. However, Donald was cut out of the deal. He was bitter about how he was treated and so he joined the army to fight in WWII. Meanwhile, John Warnock’s wife dies and he remarried to Helen McClain. When John Warnock died his estate was worth about a million dollars and it was cut up into thirds: Helen McClain, Evelyn’s and Bill Zinke, and Arlene and Donald Strachan. Helen and Arlene feuded over the money and the fact that Arlene married a man much older than herself while Helen would remarry a man much younger than herself. Donald would sue Helen for a large part of the estate and the legalities on came to rest with the death of Donald in 1956.

Arline Strachan was born on October 17^th, 1907. She attended the Northfield School for Girls and The Packer institute. When she was 23 years old she married Donald Strachan. Born on July 26, 1885, Donald was 22 years older than Arline when they married on October 3, 1931. Donald earned an undergraduate degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. West Point. In 1910 he graduated from the University of Virginia’s Law School. Donald moved back to Westport after the war to become the town prosecutor.

Arline and Donald had four children. Virginia Gail Strachan was born on November 10, 1933. She was named after the state of Virginia, where Donald Strachan earned his law degree. Leonie was born in 1935 and received a PhD. in education. John was born in 1936, earned his undergraduate degree from Bowden College, and graduated from the University of Virginia’s law school. Blair was born in 1940 and has been married to Bob Hall since 1964. Sharon was born in 1944 and worked at Rutgers’s University for almost 30 years. After Donald was buried, Arline remained in Burlington until 1962, when Sharon graduated from Northfield. After a series of moves, she lived in a townhouse in Warren from 1962 to 1966. After that she moved to Florida to be with her sister. Wanting to see a change of the seasons and to be close to Blair, Arline moved back to Vermont in 1973. Her son-in-law, Bob Hall, built her a beautiful house, the black and blue house, in Starksboro, Vermont. She would remain in that house for eleven years.

In 1984 Arline moved out of the black and blue house to live in Bristol, VT. She remained in that house for ten more years until it became apparent that she could no longer care for herself. In September of 1994 she moved into the Converse Home in Burlington. It was a long-term health care facility but she couldn’t stay there because she could no longer walk on her own. Her final move was to The Birchwood Home in July of 1995, where she would remain until she died on January 3^rd, 1996. Like her husband, Airline’s cause of death was malnutrition, and she was buried in the Warnock family mausoleum in Westport, Connecticut.

Virginia Gail Strachan

Virginia Gail Strachan was born on November 10, 1933. She attended grade school and high school in Westport, Connecticut. She was very proud of the fact that her father built Renwick Hall in 1935. I have never seen it but apparently it was a mansion sitting on 150 acres of land. So large was the estate that Mom took her horse, Clio, out for rides for hours at a time. Grandfather sold Renwick Hall and then moved the family to Vermont. Renwick Hall was on the market for two years before it was sold. The first time it was sold, in 1952, the Joseloff Family bought it. The house was featured in Town and Country Magazine after it had been redecorated. It would soon pass onto Winn Elliot, a sportswriter an east coast newspaper, who would set the hall on fire not once, but twice, presumably to get the insurance money since he was over his head with bills.

Grandfather bought Inchfaun, a new estate in Warren Vermont, which was settled on 400 acres of land. Uncle Bill and Aunt Ev Zinke shared the property with Grandfather Strachan. Grandfather died in 1958 after being in a coma for two years. The family fortunes suffered and Grandmother Strachan must have been forced to sell the property.

My mother graduated from high school in 1950 and it was in this year that she and her family moved permanently to Vermont. Mom attended Green Mountain College but only completed one of a two-year program because she was so unhappy there. In 1951 Mom moved back to Inchfaun and worked at Sears. In her spare time she would go to U.S.O. parties thrown for the servicemen and it was there that she met my father. They were married one year later on June 6^th, 1953.

My parents waited five years before having their first child in1958. Dad spent that time going to St. Thomas College and establishing his career. Mom spent her time working at Dayton’s and driving that little red sports car that she loved so much around town. They lived in an old army barracks at first, then they moved into an apartment, and finally they moved to Stillwater, which is about 30 miles outside of Minneapolis. Dad worked at Frank Eiple’s barge line after he graduated. The first three children were born in Minneapolis: Cheryl in 1958, Thomas in 1960, and I was born in 1962. My parents moved to Kansas City for just over a year, and then to St. Louis for about six months. Laura was born in St. Louis in 1965 while Grandmother Strachan came down from Vermont to help. Finally, in 1965, we moved to Louisville. Dad bought two dogs, Thor and Seeba, because he felt like every family should have its own dogs.

Thomas Frazier III: Notes

Dad suffered from eczema, a malady that would remain with him for his whole life, and, since he was the oldest, he often asked his younger siblings to apply the medicine onto his back. Sometimes he itched so badly that he couldn’t sleep and he ended up reading the night away before attending school the next day. He had read so much that he had read every historical novel in the Minneapolis Public Library and he had his name on their list to read the new book arrivals. When the itching became so bad and Dad missed more than one night of sleep, he was prescribed phenobarbital, a very strong narcotic. Occasionally, his family woke up and found that my father was nowhere around. The narcotic had make him so groggy he couldn't figure out how to get into the house and to bed so he slept outside and underneath a tree.

While he was in high school, he frequently worked setting pins at the local bowling alley. Curfews were strictly enforced so he had to develop strategies for avoiding the police as he was setting pins after the nine p.m. curfew. Once he hid up in the machinery, and at another time, he ran down the alley and pretended he was with the family he was setting pins for.

After his freshman year in high school, my father decided to join a traveling circus. He hitchhiked to Texas and joined the circus for a summer job. The summer before his senior year in high school, a truck driver in the circus got sick, and Dad took over driving a semi. The truck had a Ferris wheel on it and that is a heavy load for a novice to handle. While driving down a road towards a Montana town, Dad lost his brakes because he had not down shifted enough, and he sped straight through the town with his horn blaring. This same situation had happened to other drivers, so the townspeople knew what was happening and cleared the streets before anyone could get hurt. When the truck finally came to a complete stop, and the police showed up, no one seemed to know who was driving. Dad had skedaddled. When the circus came back up north to Fargo, Dad left it and hitched a ride home.

An assistant principal at Washburn High School claimed he spotted my father smoking from three blocks away. My grandfather went to the assistant principal’s office to voice his disbelief that he could have seen my father violating the rules from such a distance. The assistant principal would not give an inch so my grandfather pulled my father from Washburn and sent him to Roosevelt High School for his senior year. Dad continued to be a rebel, sneaking out every day after lunch for a cigarette, and he decided that public school wasn’t for him. After a semester at Roosevelt, he decided withdraw and join the Air Force, where he earned his GED.

The skin disease that had plagued him did not leave my father while he was serving in Korea. The local farmers fertilized the soil with manure and once the stuff dried up it blew away with the wind. Dad’s eczema became much worse when the dust settled onto his skin and he became so debilitated that he was sent to a hospital in Japan to recover. Eventually, the Air Force sent him to a base in Vermont, where he enjoyed a long convalescence and he met my mother.

While he was attending St. Thomas, my father earned extra money by driving a tanker for Archer Daniels Midland. He would left school after his last class on Fridays, pick up his fully loaded tanker, and drive to New England, and be back in time for his classes on Monday.

Good Childhood Memories

· At the Ocean Ranch there was a children’s hour where we played games like, “I see something that you don’t see and the color is…” and you got a free milkshake if you guessed correctly. They also had a sand castle building competition. Finally, we could order a burger from the restaurant and charge it to the room without getting permission first. We thought that was the greatest thing ever.

· In Vermont, we distracted ourselves by going swimming in the pond. There was a long wooden pier that we jumped off, and then we swam over to the canoe or rowboat that the Hall’s had at the pond. Other attractions were playing in the barn and going to Grandma’s house for dinner.

· In Minnesota, we walked to Lake Minnehaha to swim. It was probably too cold to get into the water but we did it anyway. Also, we walked to the creek and played with the clay that made up the banks.

· Dad used to love to barbeque steak on the charcoal grill. He had it down to a science, letting the meat marinate all day and then having the meat cook on the fire for a very specific amount of time. He served it with French fried onion rings and it was the best meal that I ever had.

· Swim meets were a big deal while I was growing up. They were held at Plantation Country Club and we built tent cities underneath the bleachers where we would play cards while waiting for our events. Mom made us jelly sandwiches on raisin bread that has a frosting on it.

· Dad’s favorite meal that Mom cooked was leg of lamb served with mint jelly and strawberry shortcake for dessert. He liked to let the short cake to stew in the strawberry juice for a while so that it could soak up the juice.

· My father always kept catalogues of boats for sale on the table in the family room. He always wanted a boat and the one picture where I think he was at his happiest was the one where he went deep sea fishing on a daylong expedition in the Gulf.

· We raced home after school so that we could watch “Presto the Clown,” “Speed Racer,” and “Ultraman.” On Saturday mornings, we watched “Lidsville,” “The Bugaloos,” “The Hudson Brothers,” “Sigmund the Sea Monster,” “The Land of the Lost,” and “The Banana Bunch.” On Sunday mornings, we watched “Star Trek” at 11:00 and, while waiting for that television show to start, we watched old movies. There was a rotation of “Abbott and Costello,” “Martin and Lewis,” “Shirley Temple,” “Tarzan,” “The Three Stooges,” and the old black and white monster movies like “Frankenstein,” “Dracula,” and “The Wolfman.”

· If the teachers at Holy Trinity wanted to show us a filmstrip then we would have to go to a special viewing room next to Principal Julie Anne’s office. For example, we saw “Cree Finds the Way,” and “Jot” in that room.

· We used to walk up to the “Convenient” store, even if we didn’t have any money, and stare longingly at the “Icee” machine, wishing that we could buy some of that liquid sugar.

· Dad was a serious poker player and he kept a jar filled with his winnings on his dresser. Mom told us to go to their bedroom and grab a few coins when we needed lunch money.

· Our grandparents drove through Louisville on the way back to Minnesota in their mobile home. They parked it on Long Boat Key for the winter or drove it to Mexico. The souvenirs that they bought back for us included maracas, hermit crabs, and Mexican jumping beans.

· We all felt pure joy when we saw the spire of the Eifel Tower at King’s Island when our parents took us to the park during the summer.

· We used to sneak downstairs after my parents had a bridge party so that we could eat the left over candy.

· Dad used to stand on the front porch and whistle loudly to call us to dinner. Mom would ring a bell.

· On Saturday afternoons, Mom made grilled cheese sandwiches. On Sundays, after mass, she made waffles.

· ACBL had an annual picnic on the Ohio River. They had ponies, Bingo, clowns, sack races, and a seemingly bottomless trough of Coke. We were in heaven.

· The neighborhood kids would get together to play “Ghost in the Graveyard,” “Hot Potato,” “Four Square,” and street volleyball.

· Searching for salamanders under the drain and crawdads in the creek, and playing in the woods behind the Rowan’s house.

· Climbing the Morton’s tree, crawling through the sewer tunnel, floating down the creek when it flooded, swinging on the Helmeyer’s swing, scaling the wall in the Pfeiffer’s back yard, and jumping on the Rowan’s trampoline.

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