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Joseph D. McCarthy

Mike, I believe you missed one (usually attributed to "Rednecks"):

     He's gotta "Dope in a Poke".

He's got a COKE in a Sack.

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

CONGRATULATION MIKE B.....a well-deserved honor that couldn't happen to a nicer, more genuine guy!!

Mark Schweickart

Mike – I had a sense of what is meant by "tits up in a ditch" but your hint of "moooo" made it more obvious (along with a bit of googling) that it is analogous to a cow who has slid into a narrow ditch and has landed on her back with her udders therefore pointing skyward. And since this is not something a poor cow can easily rectify, the expression must mean that one is in a precarious, not-easily-solved, predicament – not unlike "being up a shit creek without a paddle."

As I said, I had some sense that this is what your phrase might mean, but, on the contrary, I had no sense of the analogy of your next expression – that a one can "smoke like a green stump." I guess I have lived a fortunate enough life that I have so far avoided the need to remove tree stumps from my lawn, green or otherwise. So this definitely required plunging into the the world of googlefication to learn more than I care to know about stump removal. I will spare you the complexities and options available. Suffice it to say, that one method is to burn the stump to the point where its remains can be shoveled away. It is a slow and tedious process, that requires drilling a multitude of  holes, and applying potassium nitrate to the holes (never gasoline), then building a teepee of scrap wood over the stump, then lighting the concoction and finally waiting patiently (for several hours) until you can shovel away the cremated remains. Oh, and before you begin, make sure to check to see that this is not outlawed in the area where you live.

And since a green stump is going to burn far more slowly than an old dried out one, I am  guessing that one might be watching the smoke rising from the burning green stump for a long period of time, not unlike your put-upon father-in-law forced to watch his chain-smoking wife.

Then again, he could have just said, "She smokes like a chimney," and everyone would immediately know what he meant... but where's the fun, or the down-home poetry, in that?

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mike B.

Really a great honor and makes our whole class proud of you! (Just don't trip as you run out on the field at halftime! 🙄)

Mark,

Just recently we had to have three pine tree stumps removed from our front yard (one died from winter kill, 2 broke trunks from heavy wet spring snowstorm) then chain-sawed off at just above ground level. Our arborist sent a couple of guys out with the meanest looking big, rotary-toothed machine on tracks which pulverized those stumps in about 20 minutes to sawdust. Burning in a dry state prone to wildfires was not an option.

Jim 

Michael McLeod

yep Mark you are in the ballpark re: the bucolic expression "tits up in a ditch."

It's used to describe a difficult situation.

Imagine being a farmer who has to get that cow out of the ditch it fell into.

Had it landed feet first it would not be nearly as difficult. But on its back? Tits pointed skyward? Udderly impossible! 

Ok you'll just have to forgive me for that. Couldn't resist it.

The expression is used as either a chapter title or the title of a short story - I forget which - written by the fabulous Annie Dillard, whose work I recommend.

Mark Schweickart

Mike -- when googling your mooing clue-ing I saw that this was a short story title used by Annie Proulx not Annie Dillard. To be honest, I have never read either of these authors, so what do I know? Not much, but just wondering. 

Michael McLeod

Rght you are Mark: welcome to what's left of my brain. Mooing clueing indeed.

You coming to the reunion?

Daniel Cody

Congratulations Mike and long overdue.  Its about time 66 received some recognition .  How about Don Holland and Kevin Ryan? Please add more names of our overlooked athletic stars. Brad N started for the 1968 national champs aling with Brian Donovan from 67!

Joseph Gentilini

Congratulations, Michaelo!!!!  nice going.  joe

Joseph D. McCarthy

Congrats Mike !!!!!

Dave I apologize in advance for waiting to get you car sick again, but I have the rest of my trip to Columbus unfinished and there are a few people who never got completely bored.  I should say that I arrived in Columbus ten days ago.  Since then I have one trip to Dayton to visit with one of my wife's roommates that we have been trying to locate for 45 years.  She took a job with Red Cross then became disabled.  Then  my younger brother and I drove up to Detroit to visit with our cousin, our Mothers side, and her husband.  Had a long talk with them catching up, then went to dinner at the Original Detroit Pizza - Buddie's where I had the four piece pizza.  They live on the far Northern part of the city.  Then drove to the south of Detroit (Monroe) for the night.  Next day we drove around for a little while to see some sights.  Then drove to our one niece's (our Father's side) house spent some time with her and her bo friend then and followed  them to a restaurant where we met our other Niece and Nephew for dinner.  Took our leave about 6:30 P.M. and drove back to Columbus.

Now the trip from Bloomington IL to Columbus.  Down I-74 to the start of the Fourth worst part of the drive.  The outerbelt around Indianapolis.  The speed limit, as most of the roads in Indiana is posted at 65mph.  To which everyone drives a minimum of 75.  Eventually we reached I-70 East to Columbus; still part of the Fourth worst.  We eventually reached Columbus and our hotel ( I-270 at Fishinger/Hilliard Cemetery.)  Left Bloomington around 7:50 A.M. and arrived at the hotel about 4:20 P.M.  One aside, last year we stopped at an exit in Richmond, IN for lunch at the Bob Evans we had stopped at for years, It was shut down.  This year we drove further to stop at another Bob Evans, we had a good lunch at the Perkins.

Nebraska and Wyoming had miles and miles of construction areas, usually with NO construction.

Oh well, tomorrow it's off to Defiance to see a friend.  Then if all works out we return to Dayton on Tuesday. Fun never ends.

I apologize again Dave.

Michael Boulware

Thanks so much for the kind words great friends. I deeply appreciate the congratulations. The amazing thing about our team; any individual would be deserving of the award. We were very good because everone was very good.

I believe the award is more for the years I spent teaching and coaching at Watterson, but I am proud to accept the induction in honor of our class, especially the captain of the football cheerleaders (my wife Sue Lally).

Mark Schweickart

WTF (What The Frank), Glid, first you send me searching for moo clues, and now I need to decipher texting abbreviations to understand your response. Okay, okay, I'll bite. So here's my guess -- "WTG M.B." perhaps means "Way to go. My bad." Am I getting close? Please don't respond with another texting cipher like YIYAC (which I just made up for "Yes indeed! You are correct!).

And to answer your question -- no, sadly, I won't be making it to the reunion next month. Hope everyone has a good time. I know it will be hard to without me, but do your best. 

David Mitchell

Kudos to Mr. Boulware! 

And I second Dan's comment about a few other names in our class from Athletic to Social accomplishments - from Kevin Ryan (best RB I ever saw) and Tom McKeon (3 sports, and good at all of them) to Margorie Davis and her remarkable charitable work. 

Yes, I still remember watching my good friend from OLP run circles arround defenders on the gridiron. But he was aslo the best punter I can ever recall at that age - didn't he punt the ball above the lights (those old low light poles) at Newark stadium - so the punt returner kept losing sight of the ball in the dark for a moment?

David Mitchell

I stand corrected (or so it seems).

A classmate has informed me that Al Standish was our punter. 

I thougt I remembred Kevin Ryan doing the puntingI

Joseph D. McCarthy

Mike I miss writers such as Ben Hayes of the Columbia Dispatch 

Michael McLeod

Joe: Don't forget the Columbia Citizen-Journal. They had some great writers too.

John Maxwell

Anne Devaney (Wilcheck)

Looks like ole Shifty has finally gotten the goods on Trump.

Or it strike three.

Lawrence Foster

Joe McC, and others ... 

You miss writers like Ben Hayes?  Here is an article he wrote in 1962

It is an interesting story and he wrote it as he knew it.  But ... 

The person in this story wa not a Frenchman.  His name was John Robinson.  He came to America in 1832 from England.  He and his family had helped do the remodeling of Windsor Castle from 1825-31 with lots of woodcarvings.  His ancestors were French.  At that time their name was Robeson.  They were Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants) in mostly Catholic France.  They left France after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572 and went to England.  Over the years their name morphed into Robinson.  

Robinson lived in Delaware County near Ostrander.  The woman who was supposedly murdered and whose ghost walked the the Scioto River would have been his wife, Elizabeth.  He was also a painter and did work for an 1855 book called something along the lines of "Flora and Fauna of the West."  It was printed in either France or Germany and most of the copies were destroyed when the the ship bearing them to America sank.  He also did much woodwork of the Ohio Capitol building (newel posts, staircases, fireplace mantels, etc.) in Columbus in the 1850s and then again after the Civil War ended and construction began again..  

There are two books that tell versions of the Robinson ghost story and many other ghost stories..  One is "Haunted Ohio III" published in 1994 and the other is  "Haunted Heartland" published around 1991.  Both are available on Amazon but I bet you could also find them in a library.  

I first started hearing these stories from my mother and my aunt when I was a child and we would come visit family in Ohio.  It wasn't so much that I liked ghost stories; it was because John and Elizabeth Robinson are my great, great grand parents.

And as Paul Harvey would say, "And now you know the rest of the story ..." and I will say that there is even more to the story and "the ghost who walks the waters." 

Janie Albright (Blank)

Ann, so good to hear from you on the forum. I hope you are planning to come to the reunion on September 4!

Janie Albright (Blank)

Larry, you should write a book of short stories like this with your illustrations.
 

How did the move go? Keep us up to date. 
 

Lawrence Foster

Thank you Janie.  The move has gone well and the settling in is coming along slowly but surely.   We have rented a small house in San Carlos about 3 miles from our son Eric and his family.  I still have a lot more downsizing to do even though I had done a lot before the move.  The weather has been very fine being between 60 and 78 degrees.  One day we had some rain sprinkles for about 15 minutes.  The lawn at our rental house is absolutely green and gorgeous.  But is is astroturf so it should be that way.  There is a large oak tree in the small backyard area so there is shade all the time.  The grandsons here, Sam and Robin, ages 5 and 3, are fine and they keep us busy.  Sorry I can't make the reunion this year.  Please tell everyone hello for me.      

Lawrence Foster

Janie,

Your comment about stories with illustrations sent me off searching for another old newpaper article about John Robinson.  I scanned this years ago. I don't know if it will blow up large enough to see on computer screens.  But there is art work with it.  To the best of my memory this was published in 1936.  It does say in it that the story of John Robinson is just over 100 years old.  That would fit with it being published in the mid-1930s.

This story and the previous one I posted talk about the house burning down.  Here is a photo/postcard from the early 1900s showing the ruins 

In the early 1960s a cousin gave my mother a "xerographic" copy (before they were called xerox copies which even now is an old term) of a drawing of the house.  My sister made a colored version of the drawing and they are here.

David Mitchell

Larry,

Great story.

Speaking of local newspaper writers, if I recall correctly, Our OLP and Watterson classmate Margaret Huntzinger's dad was a columnist (or editor?) at the Dispatch for many years. Wonder if anybody is till in touch with her?

I'm jealous of your being so close to your grandkids. My three grandkids are grwoing up without me in the Pacific Northwest. I hope to visit the this fall. 

------------------

Once again here in the South we have the Northern Transplant not taking local conditions seriously enough. Today, we had an elderly lady, a resident of local retirement community, Sun City (pop. about 16,000), killed by an alligator. I think she was walking her dog and slipped and fell into the edge of the pond. Police took two hours recovering the body becasue the gator was "guarding" her body in the pond. The gator was euthenized. I worked at Sun City some years ago and the place is dotted with small ponds with numerous gators here and there, and warning signs throughout the property.    

This happens every few years down here and you'd think people would grasp the reality of it. But I guess not. A few years back, a woman was walking her small dog (like bait to an alligator) one night without a flashlight and a gator came out of the pond and got her dog. She wrestled with the gator to save the dog but the gator got her and killed her instead. The dog got away. True story!

If your curious, you can find news reports by Googling someting like "Woman killed by Gator at Sun City".

This Just In - -  USA Today article says the lady "slipped while gardening". The photos on the news reels show just how close (and casually) people live near the ponds.  

James Hamilton, M. D.

Dave, et al, ​​​​​​

I had just read on the internet news of the senior lady apparently killed by the alligator.

I don't know if it is becoming more common or just more reported of these human-wildlife encounters/attacks/deaths of which we are reading recently. It is obvious that people are more frequently living in, vacationing in and recreating in places where "dangerous" animals have lived for millennia, occasionally with unfortunate results to humans and animals.

Just recently a six year old child here in Colorado Springs suffered a fatal Prairie Rattlesnake bite while bicycling with his father on a trail through a grassy plains area near our airport (classic rattlesnake terrain). There have been several stories of bison attacks in National Parks, Grizzley Bears in the Rockies, Black bears, moose, wild boars, cougars, sharks, ticks and other critters throughout the country. Don't get me wrong, living in and visiting places where wildlife exists is a great experience and is, in many ways, the destiny of the human race. But those who choose to do so need to realize - and respect - the fauna (and flora) that also lives there. 

People need to do a little research as to what they may encounter (and how to deal with such encounters) when visiting or relocating to a different environment. And this goes for physical environmental (climate, altitude, etc.) as well as zoological. And, at our age, this is even more important. As the old saying goes, when you and a friend are being chased by a (insert animal name here) you do not have to be faster than the animal, just faster than your(soon to be ex-) friend 😉.

Jim