Frank's Tavern

when i was younger the only time we ever went to frank's tavern was during wheat harvest while working at the grain elevator, wheat harvest was when the farmers would combine there field or fields of wheat and bring it to the elevator for sale or to sell at a later date. at that time we were to young for beer but old enough for frank's pork tenderloin sandwiches with horse-radish and lordy they were good.(wheat harvest occurred once a year usually around or before july 4th) the sandwich alone was good enough but the horse-radish was tremendous the way it cleared your sinus's and accentuated the already great taste of the meat. as we got older frank's became more to us than a place  for a good sandwich, there was always ample room,and they always had beer even if it was 3.2%, at least until we were 21 years old.

one saturday afternoon in 1968 or possibly 1969 my friends and i dropped by frank's tavern for a few beers and to enjoy several games of pool and play some pin-ball as usual frank's wasn't very busy. suddenly a limousine pulled in and parked at frank's(frank's always had plenty of parking space between the tavern and zion road which was directly in front of the tavern and parking in the rear of the saloon) it was probably a good thing because a limo would have stuck out on zion road it ran by directly in front of frank's tavern and everyone in the country would be wondering "what in the hell is a limo doing at frank's"? it seems that the beetles chauffeur had missed his turn while getting gas then while attempting to get back on I-70 ringo wanted to see some of the sights of central ohio, and the beatles ended up at frank's tavern located in thornport,ohio, near buckeye lake.

shortly before going to frank's my friends and i had enjoyed some of what perry county had to offer and i must say we were all on the verge of a hallucinatory experience and with john,paul, george and ringo at franks we may have been there.


when the beatles entered frank's there were five including the chauffeur and they took a table and ordered Pabst blue ribbon beer after asking ernie my friend what a good domestic beer might be, ernie didn't know exactly what domestic meant but he suggested Pabst blue ribbon, my friends and i introduced ourselves and to my surprise they didn't seem overly annoyed by some of our questions in fact they were asking the majority of the questions primarily about central ohio and buckeye lake, after several beers george insisted on going fishing but was reminded of there flight to a concert later in the day he seemed to forget about the fishing when i recommended the pork loin sandwich with horse-radish. he really enjoyed the sandwich and especially liked the horse-radish, he didn't seem to mind the clear sinus's or the steam escaping from his mouth. after he had finished he recommended the sandwich with horse-radish to everyone else setting around the table at frank's.


after the beers and sandwich and not fishing george had to use the rest-room which under normal circumstances is nothing to write home about but going to the rest-room at frank's was always a nasty chore and after eating horse-radish on your pork tenderloin sandwich and your sinus's were clear as they possibly could be frank's rest-room was the foulest smelling, dirtiest in need of demolition, crime against humanity, but if you've got to go? i suggested he go outside he reminded me of the paparazzi and i reminded him he was at Frank's where whizzing into the canal was a tradition.

soon after returning the remainder of the group were finishing their pork tenderloin sandwiches with horse-radish which they all enjoyed except john and he promised to write a song about it(revolution #9?9 just happened to be the number of times  he dry heaved, i guess he didn't care for horse-radish on his pork tenderloin.

wayne

my older brother visits from Singapore usually once a year and this year we were discussing our father and what we thought of him;he was a good man, a good dad but you wouldn't want to make him mad.( he died in 1991, and my brother agreed). as long as you played by his rules everything was fine, and there were times in my childhood, especially in my childhood that i would feel the sting of his belt or watch my brother fly across a room, although my brother probably deserved this i on the other-hand am nearly a saint but not quite, i did some of my own flying but normally it was into my dad's clinched fist. wayne did have a temper but the majority of the time he was an excellent father always encouraging us athletically and scholastically. growing up he was always taking us on trips/vacations to canada for fishing\leisure, florida for leisure, or to Cincinnati for a reds game,once to columbus, ohio for a columbus checkers hockey game, basketball games, and i'm sure there was more. wayne always provided us with a mode of transportation: a new vega of our own in 1973(it was a piece of crap),  "at least for my brother and myself and my younger brother" then a Volkswagen beetle. i suppose we were spoiled but we didn't  know any better at the time. my older and younger brothers both were college graduates and he was proud of both of them.

in the sixties(1960's) for several years dad flew homing pigeons. on sundays a truck driver would take the pigeons of my father and of the other peoples(members of a pigeon club) hundreds of miles away and release them, the pigeons would instinctively fly home and who's ever would arrive home first would win. i have absolutely know idea what?(possibly a donut?) but they would win. in the seventies my father ran for and became mayor of  thornville. thornville's a small town in ohio with around 1000 people, my father became mayor simply to remove the police chief and for some reason the policeman remained thornville's policeman and my father served only one term possibly because of teenage son's or son.

now when i look back on my childhood i think of all the things that i did or didn't do and wish that i could change but oh frick'n well, i wouldn't change wayne, except for his temper.

dirty dan "ernie" shade

i first met dan shade when we were both in 8th grade, he wasn't a great athlete or extremely smart but he was fun to be around and he had a mini-bike my brother's and i had a honda 50 a small child sized motorcycle. we first got together in bob borings 8th grade industrial arts class dan was a  good carpenter and i wasn't. one of the first things i remember dan saying was,"old macdonald had a cow, the dr.'s don't see how," i also remember his father or mother picking us up after football practice, they lived down around buckeye lake, in a trailer while his father was finishing up a house he was building not more than 30 ft. from the trailer. later that 8th grade year someone(dwight brown?) began calling dan, ernie because he resembled ernie on my three sons.in 9th or 10th grade brian jones hit ernie knocking out two of his front teeth,ernie was the type of guy you occasionally felt like belting but i never did. ernie played football and the only time he played was snapping(hiking), the football for punts, he was probably pretty good but i'm really not sure. after high school graduation dan went to osu in newark at least for several quarters, i also went to osu in newark where we did little or no studying, dan and i majored in partying with a minor in partying, i don't think either one of us was meant for higher education. for several years after the osu experience i lost track of ernie. i married then divorced and ernie had married and was living at some apartments in thornville with his wife and child and step-child, ernie was working as a dry-wall dude in the construction union, and making good money,"although he was still ernie." in 1979 when ernie was still married and living in thornville he and i played tennis probably several times a week, we were actually getting sort of good, we also drank a good amount of beer. in 1979, september, i was involved in a automobile accident, i was in the hospital for 4 months, when i was still in the hospital toward the end of my stay they would allow me to go home over the weekend it must have been on a saturday night that i visited ernie and his wife and kids and our old buddy jim walser also dropped by, the next thing i knew i was falling in the bathtub,"after going to the restroom,i wasn't exposed," just to much punch. shortly after getting out of the hospital ernie,wife, and kids bought a house in newark, it was a nice house on the semi-poor side of town, i don't think they lived there all that long before they bought a home on buckeye lake, a very nice home not far from ernie's parents or thornville. this must have been in 1980 or 1981 i'm really not sure but we were partying as often as possible and just enjoying life. eventually ernie and his wife decided on moving to oklahoma, they were there for a short time before deciding to divorce, so ernie moved back to ohio and the party continued.it was sort of bad for me that he did decide to move back i spent far to much time partying but it was fun. i forgot to mention that ernie wrecked his motorcycle one day at work when his wife went out west before they moved. i never did really like her but whatever.back to dirty dan: it seemed like to me at least, after the motorcycle wreck then his wife leaving him ernie sort of gave up, he no longer had a job, he had one girlfriend make that two girlfriends, but he smoked pot and drank at every opportunity. in 1984 i got married and eventually moved back to thornville to the house in foster manor where i grew up, i really didn't see ernie much, but one day my wife gini and i had a silly fight and i took the car and drove off, down the road towards buckeye lake i happened upon ernie and some ugly girl he was living with(non-sexual). i or we got out of our cars and decided to meet at a bar(the copperpenny), before going in the bar we each took a slug of some 151 gin,that ernie a his friend had been drinking. at the bar we had several beers making getting around quite a chore. ernie and his ugly friend,"she had some dopey looking tattoo's on her arms," and i were discussing god only knows what when for some unknown reason we were asked to leave, it was probably the first time that i was asked to leave,but i did a friend of my little sister,"well she's not really little,i should say younger," she drove me home and boy was my wife mad. i later found out that ernie had been killed going back to newark, and the girl was injured. that was in 1986 ernie would have been 29 or 30, now it's 2009 and ernie was sort of worthless but i miss him.

also: dan "ernie" and i went to several concerts primarily in the 70's while partying.

christmas,eve (for sara emily):2010

when you think of christmas and you think of elves you imagine the little elves making the toys for santa to give to the good little girls and boys on christmas but in all actuality the elves do much more. there are carpenter elves, plumber elves, tailer elves, maid and butler elves, chef and cook elves, and the list goes on.

once there was a small elf by the name of eve,she lived at the northpole with her family, santa claus, and quite a few other elves, the majority made toys for christmas day but she was even small for an elf, your average elf is probably 3 feet tall and she wasn't much taller than 2 feet with her shoes on,"and those were high heels," even though she was quite old,so i'm sure she was through growing. eve was too small to handle tools for making santa's toys, she often found herself loosing her grip on a big hammer or not being able to reach that first step on a ladder,and even though her family had been making toys for santa for quite a few years. she had been working in santa's workshop simply because it was the family business but she dreamed of being a cook, she eventually did leave the business of making santa's toys and pursued a career in the fast paced world of baking. eve always enjoyed cooking especially baking, cookies, and cakes, even though she was becoming about as wide as she was tall. her baking skills did earn her the title of santa's number 1 baker because her cooking was so delicious and santa didn't seem to concerned about his weight, although mrs. claus had different ideas, she asked eve if she could possibly make a low calorie cookie that santa would enjoy and never realize that it was good for his cholesterol and heart.

 after days of experimentation eve came up with cookie that santa and even the majority of the elve's loved, even some of the pickiest elve's, and mrs. claus , santa loved the cookies and never realized they were actually good for him. mrs.claus was thoroughly relieved knowing that santa will be around for years to come, so were the elve's and the billion's of children in the world.

trip to Z-town

august is typically hot and humid in ohio and today was a typical day in august in ohio. my wife and daughter and i went to the city where the Y bridge is located for my appointment with a urologist. the trip seemed uneventful with the filling out of papers, although there was a horrible smell in the obviously newer building where the urologist was located, they were having problems with there sewage drains so construction people had been called in. my appointment went well i weighed in at 174lbs. my height was 5'7", and i was somewhat concerned because when i was younger i was 5' 10" but that was quite a few years ago(i'll be 55 in several weeks) and i suppose i've settled with age.

the doctor(i hope he knew what he was doing) made a thorough exam of my prostate(since my father had died of prostate cancer at age 56). i'd been to the dr's before and had my prostate checked before but this by far was thorougher, to the point of being just a little uncomfortable,embarrassing and painful, in fact i'm sure(at least it felt like it) the dr. was up to his elbow in my keister.

after my appointment was completed i saw the dr. outside talking to the construction workers as i sat in the car knowing that only moments before he was goosing me like no man had been goosed before, i mentioned this to my wife and daughter and they were repulsed and didn't want to hear this information, T.M.I.( to much information).

i'll be returning september 15th for more testing(painful i'm sure).

uncle

i always remember him as an old man, with a cane and when he was setting it was usually in his rocking chair by a window reading a newspaper or magazine. he died in the 1980's in a retirement home in newark,ohio where i along with my grandparents would visit from time to time, i realize my grandparents would visit more often than me but i was just a kid.i've always been intrigued by some of his eccentric actions and had several questions like "why did he never marry?" "was he gay?""why did he build a brick outhouse?""did he hold a world record for his flatulence?"

when i was younger and living at home with my mother,father, brothers and sisters he would drive practically daily to sit with some other older dudes in front of the small town drug-store. now that i'm older i'm curious to exactly what they were doing on that kinky wooden throne from hell? i'd imagine they were drinking whiskey and having oral sex, maybe even smoking some whacky tobaccy.

dirt floor

when i was in the seventh grade they shipped us to glenford, a small farming community it was around seven miles east of thornville and the students would ride by bus. seventh and eighth grade meant that seventh and eighth grade kids from somerset , glenford and thornville and all the areas between, would combine for the remainder of our intermediate career.

seventh grade was a big change for a small farm-town boy(not that i was small) but i wasn't extra large either. the building that the glenford junior high was held in was once the glenford high school, built possibly earlier in the 1900's(i discovered while in the seventh grade that northern local school district was building a new junior high adjacent to the high school, between somerset, thornville and glenford.

but until the newer junior high was built i spent my seventh grade year at glenford and oh! what an experience. i can still remember the chorus room/industrial arts room was in a separate building(not far from the junior high building possibly 50 feet). lunch was held in the glenford elementary, located across state rt. 204, around 100 yards from the junior high, also the dances for the junior high were held in the elementary gym, i can still remember george harrison's(beatles) "something" and led Zeppelin's "whole lotta love" playing over the elementary p.a. the dances were probably the best thing about seventh grade, and the discovery of girls.

the thing that i found most disgusting about my time at the glenford junior high was the lack of a floor in the boys locker room, it was dirt, hard as concrete from years of small feet tramping over it but dirt. that alone was enough kill the educational spirit but youth conquers all, or at least some, it was a real treat changing for phys.ed.,basketball,football and track, on a dirt floor and the following year(eighth grade) would be spent in a new building and the locker rooms were modern but lacked the down-home crappy ambiance of a dirt floor.