Buckingham Palace, 1953 - The Finale

Buckingham Palace also offered a course in vicarious sex education. Many young men had magazines whose graphic photos came close to popping my fourteen year-old eyes out. Wow!

One guy had a framed photo of his German girlfriend prominently displayed on his dresser. She was standing by a country lane with both hands on the handlebars of her bicycle, and the bike was not sufficient to hide her immodesty. Another fellow had a desk full of post cards - French postcards.

Sometimes I’d go by a room and hear giggling or heavy breathing coming from behind the door. Once I walked into a room thinking it was empty only to back our with mumbled apologies. Curiosity got the better of me a couple times and I shamefully took to key-hole peeping, but those endeavors resulted in little reward because of the limited field of view. I took early retirement after that brief career of spying.

The Moose Lodge burned in the spring of 1960 and Don and I went off to college that fall. The Lodge built a modern structure on the south end of town so the Palace was no longer easily managed, and gradually went into decline. The city block emptied over the next fifteen years. The Courtland Hotel burned, a church next to it on Main went shortly thereafter, followed by the Detzen’s Bread building that faced Jackson Street.

Our old building was the lone survivor for a time. Mom and Dad sold it in the early seventies and the place was demolished a few years later. Google’s “satellite view” shows the city block is now one big parking lot.

Buckingham Palace, 1953 - More Renters

A heavy set women in her fifties rented room five for a short time. She was sick and produced a body odor that was powerfully offensive. Room five was in the back corner of the building next to a bathroom. Neither of us liked to go beyond room four as the noxious smell penetrated the whole area. No one else cared to go there either. I believe she went back to the hospital shortly thereafter, and I never heard anything more. We felt a guilty relief at her departure.

Many of the short timers were single men, itinerate drifters, who stayed a few weeks looking for work, catching their breath, or settling business. One was a young man of Mexican descent. He was in his early twenties, gregarious, always smiling, and outwardly friendly. He stayed for a month or two. I don’t know where he came from. He never mentioned family or friends, and seemed to have magically materialized into the flatlands of Indiana.

The guy was the first native Mexican we ever met. Mexican farm workers showed up in August every year. They came to pick tomatoes - one stop in their itinerate circuit through the states harvesting crops. We had seen them in other years working fields during the day, and sitting outside camps in evenings. They had always been nameless shadows until he came along. He was the first to have a human face

Don and I stopped to visit nearly every Saturday. We noticed he had a book on English grammar, another on math, and a notebook filled with his self-study. His effort seemed futile - maybe because he had such a distance to go, or maybe because he was alone, and had neither guidance nor support. His claim to fame was a broad smile that showcased a mouth-full of large white teeth. He bragged of being able to snap the caps off two beer bottles at the same time. - one at each side of his mouth. He demonstrated his prowess by opening a coke bottle one day, but I never saw his double play.
GO TO: Part 7, The Finale

Buckingham Palace, 1953 - Our Renters

There were several middle-age men, single, either recently divorced or widowed, who lived a suspended life for a few months before setting a new course.

Don came to me one Saturday and said he though the guy, Ike, in room number twelve, was dead. He had went in to change sheets that morning and quietly closed the door when he saw him lying in bed. He was still there in late afternoon in the same position, an arm hanging extended over the edge of the bed. Don went in to take a closer look and noticed an odor of decay. Ike had been dead for several days. No one missed the man, and it had been left to us to find him.

Most of the names have escaped me. There were two women, friends, that rented adjoining rooms on the third floor overlooking the street. Each carried a small suitcase, the apparent entirety of their possessions, and they stayed only a few weeks. Neither seemed to work. I would guess they were in their late forties. I only remember what one looked like because of a photo that set on her dresser. It was of her as a young woman, pretty, and sitting on the rail of a ship with a sailor standing beside. Maybe it was during World War II, maybe earlier.

That was then. Now she was broken, and had difficulty speaking, as if she had a mouth full of marbles. After they moved we found her dresser drawers full of empty booze bottles. I’ve always wondered what paths she followed to end up on our doorstep. I felt a great sympathy for this woman I hardly knew, and could barely understand. She was a human wreckage, a lost soul, that had landed on our shore for a brief time and then drifted back to sea.

Don was convinced the fellow in room number one was a cat-burglar. He took frequent trips out of town, and had a small bag of tools that he kept at the foot of his bed. They were the type a burglar would use - a least according to Don. The guy added suspicion one Saturday. He was drinking, a bit tipsy, happy, and wanted to talk. He kept starting to tell us something, a secret, but each time he would back off at the last minute, giggling to himself that he had better keep his mouth shut. I never heard whether he ever got caught, assuming that burglary was, indeed, his sideline.
GO TO: Part 6, More Renters

Buckingham Palace, 1953 - House Maid Service

We received fifty cents an hour over the summer, but were put on salary in the fall - ten dollars a week. On Saturday, our nine to five work day commenced with a stop at the laundry to pick up a tall stack of sheets before continuing on to “Buckingham Palace“. The informal name was bestowed by fellow Moose members shortly after we opened and it was thereafter referred to as “Buckingham Palace“. We had no sign advertisings the regal name, only a small note on the door directing potential renters to the Moose.

Every Saturday we changed sheets and towels, cleaned the bath rooms, vacuumed the carpets, and emptied the trash cans. The memory of those many Saturdays, the routine, has blurred to a singular image - any one would fit all. It is the memory of the people living there that sticks with me. Many tenants passed through in the seven years we were involved . Some stayed for many years, a few for several months, and many for only a few days.

Three or four were retirees, living the remainder of their lives on scant pensions in single rooms. Elmer Cox and his next door neighbor, Roy, come to mind.. They had the two smallest rooms, no more than ten foot square. Roy’s room never changed. The articles on his dresser: a comb and hair brush, a framed photo of his wife, and other sundry items, were always exactly positioned. It was spooky, like no one really lived there. Elmer and Roy were frugal, husbanded their money through the month, and then had a party with any leftovers - usually enough for a pint of whiskey each.
GO TO: Part 5, Our Renters

Buckingham Palace, 1953 - More Child Labor

Loose plaster sometimes hid behind the old wallpaper. Sagging sections often telegraphed their intent. This was especially characteristic of ceilings where large portions came down with the paper. The building was erected long before anyone thought of drywall, so the newly cleaned rooms possessed a “haunted house” aura with wood slats exposed.

Nearly every room needed some plastering, and since Don and I lacked experience in that particular craft the task defaulted to Dad. He was a jack-of-all-trades, and did the plumbing, electrical, and rewiring in the building. The only thing we didn’t do was to lay the carpets.

So Dad troweled plaster over the slats, and the putty-like material oozed into the spaces, anchoring the hardened end-product. He did a good job but the edges of the mended sections were still apparent. Painting helped. A professional might have crafted a perfect mend, but I expect plastering was becoming a lost art even then.

I cannot remember the paint colors, or if we used one throughout. A single hue would have been economical, but the truth of the matter escaped me sometime over the last fifty years. I do sort of remember a neutral pastel, maybe yellow. We learned to paint that summer, and Don and I paid a portion of our college expenses with paint brushes and rollers. But that’s another story.

The carpets were laid by a guy from Indianapolis and his college age son. Dad had previously measured each room, and the carpet man commended him on his accuracy. The Courtland Hotel was replacing some of its old furniture, so we acquired their discarded beds, dressers and writing desks. None of the rooms had built-in closets so we purchased sixteen new brown metal ones. By the end of summer we had the rooms set up and ready to rent. Don and I were transformed into chambermaids, and thus began the next stage of our education, an informal introduction to sociology, psychology, and the humanities.
GO TO: Part 4, House Maid Service

Buckingham Palace, 1953 - Child Labor

The basement, accessed from the rear of the Trustee’s, was lit by a single naked bulb that hung from above. The room, about twenty foot square, lay in the back corner. The ceiling rose to an height that was sufficient for Don and I, but compelled Dad, who stood six foot-three, to crouch in a perpetual stoop.

The place emitted an earthy redolence. The outer walls were part of the foundation, but inner walls rose to only four feet. A dirt crawl-space that ran throughout the building’s underbelly was accessable above the inner walls. Don and I, enticed by its dark reaches, tried to deflect light from our single source into that void only to have it swallowed by an eternal night.

We were there to work and never got a chance to crawl into that particular adventure. The two of us consoled ourselves with jokes of what might be found out there - rats, skeletons, buried treasure?

The boiler sat on a concrete platform raised above the floor in case of flooding. It was original equipment, old enough to be retired, but circumstance demanded that we coax a few more years out of it. Dad came down that first day to show us what to do. We removed the outer metal cover exposing the entrails of the rusty thing. There were eight or ten heavy cast-iron sections, each measuring about 3 feet by 2 by half a foot.

We took the sections apart, cleaned out the rust and reassemble them with new fittings. Dad dropped in a couple times each day to bring parts, check our progress, and show us the next stage. It seems that it took about a week, maybe a bit longer to finish the project Dad fired the boiler that fall, and there was much hissing and clanking as steam surged through the system to the radiators.

Wallpaper covered the upstairs rooms and halls, many layers, one pasted on top of another, decade after decade, till the rooms were smaller for it. Our next job was to remove the wallpaper from all sixteen rooms, three long halls, and four bathrooms.

Summer was coming into full heat, and Dad rented a piece of equipment, a wallpaper steamer, that made things even hotter and stickier. The commercial steamer delivered volumes of bellowing steam through a hose to a flat plate with a handle on one side and many holes on the other. We were to hold the plate against the wall, and until the steam penetrated the layers of paper.

In theory it worked fine, in practice, not so well. One of us would stand several minutes pressing the steamer against the wall, but when we shifted position hot gas bellowed from under the tool scalding our forearm. We donned long sleeve shirts when we would have preferred to work in bathing suits. And when it finished cooking we had one small patch of limp paper to peal off.

It wasn’t working, so we tried closing the room, firing the steamer, and doing something else for an hour or two. The room filled with hot vapors that soaked into the wallpaper. When the room cooled enough to get back in the paper peeled off in long wide strips.

Our goal was to see how long of a piece we could strip off before it broke. The ceiling was the best arena for this contest as gravity helped peel the strips, sometimes from wall to wall - that was equivalent to a “home run“. Some rooms had vinyl wallpaper within the layers. We figured those rooms might have functioned as kitchens at onetime. Those took more steaming.

We got so efficient that we could strip a room in a day, wash the paste off the plaster, and clean up the debris by the 5:00 PM quitting hour. We were usually cleaning up one room while steaming another.

GO TO: Part 3, More Child Labor

Buckingham Palace, 1953 - The Purchase

My parents purchased a building in downtown Kokomo, Indiana in 1953 - the biggest investment of their life. The place was on Taylor Street, sandwiched between the Moose Lodge and the Courtland Hotel. It’s unlikely they would have been interested had Dad not been the manager and secretary of the Moose. Mom worked as his assistant in the office. Both spent six days a week on the job, so it was an opportunity to have an investment that would be easy to manage.

They paid $16,000, which seems modest these days, and by late spring the family took possession of commercial property. Don and I learned that it was to be a family affair, signaling that we were to be involved. Thus began our passage into the world of child labor, informal instruction in various skilled-worker professions, and general education concerning the larger world of life.

I was thirteen years old in 1953 - Don, fifteen. When school let out that June we discovered our halcyon days of wandering leisurely through summers were forever curtailed. We found ourselves in the cramped, dungeon-like basement of our new property. The building was run-down and in significant need of repair. Don and I were to start at the bottom, and with Dad’s guidance, work our way up.

The property appeared to be two separate buildings when viewed from across the street. My impression yet is of two entities grown together like Siamese twins. They were probably constructed at the same time - somewhere around 1890. The one next to the Moose was two stories, while its taller sibling stood three.

They seemed large. I never heard any dimensions, but would guess the buildings’ footprint covered two to three thousand square feet of downtown, with all floors totaling around six thousand. Red brick facades, typical for the era, gave the two a nondescript acceptance. If I had not spent so much time in them, I wouldn’t remember they were ever there.

The bottom floor was occupied by the Howard County Trustee. Its drab interior had high ceilings, and offices looking out onto the street through big plate glass windows. Commodities for the poor were kept in its cavernous back reaches. I rarely went in, and have only vague memories of it.

The office was managed for years by a thin little man, who seemed shriveled and ancient. His name was Elmer Cox, and I remember him wearing black baggy suits, with matching vest, a broad tie, and a black fedora. He retired shortly thereafter and became our first tenet when we finished the upstairs into boarding rooms. He rented number three till he was moved to a nursing home or the mortuary - I don’t remember which.

The door leading to the upper floors was in front-center of the building. It opened to a long stairway that had a level section about half way up. A hall at the top lead straight to a restroom at the back of the building. If you turned right at the top of the stairs, you would pass under a broad archway into the “other” building. Another turn to the right led to the third floor stairway.

There were three bathrooms, each at the end of a long hall. Only one room had a private bath. It looked onto Taylor street, and rented for ten dollars a week. Four other rooms had street views. Most rooms were rather small, going for seven dollars. Three or four had sinks, so they cost eight. We had sixteen rooms, and they brought in about a hundred and twenty dollars each week when all were occupied.

The Courtland Hotel had once used the upstairs rooms, probably during WWII, but the place had remained vacant and neglected for years. The first inspection opened the families eyes to the amount of work necessary in repairing and redecorating the place. That is where Don and I came into the picture. We started in the basement rebuilding the old boiler, the heart of the heating system.
GO TO: Part 2 - Child Labor

Lamar (Mike) Hammer Our Boyhood Friend

Lamar got a job at the La Mode, in his senior year of high school. The La Mode was a downtown clothing store, owned and operated by father and son. Sammy Kopelov, the father, was little man, a first generation Russian immigrant with a pleasant round bespectacled face, grey hair and a charming accent. I thought he fit the classic model of the sweet elder Jew from the old country. His son, Jerry, a combat Veteran of WWII was tall, athletic, and animated.

Don and I frequently stopped to visit, and got to know Sammy, Jerry, and Mr. Raab, who owned the shoe department at the back of the store. Lamar started wearing suits, sport coats, dress shirts and ties - understandable considering where he worked, but he also seemed to like fashion, and the chance to “dress-up”.

Don and Lamar graduated high school in 1956, and Lamar joined the Air Force at the beginning of that summer. I remember walking with him after school the day he went to enlist. On the way back he remarked that he didn’t care to live past forty. I can’t recall how that came up, or the explanation he provided, something about life wouldn’t be any fun after that. I didn’t say anything, but planned to remind him of his statement twenty years hence, but never got around to it.

Don went to Purdue University that fall. Our trio broke up for good, and I was forced to find other social outlets. A few years later Don and I started attending Indiana University in Bloomington. That was in the fall of 1960, so several years passed in which we didn’t see a whole lot of Lamar - five or six. Friends in the Air Force renamed him “Mike” Hammer, and that stuck for the rest of his life. But he was always “Lamar” to us.

After discharge he worked in Peru and later at the Kokomo Chrysler plant. He had a television show in the mid-70’s called, ”Hook, Line, and Sinker“. I had a brief claim-to-fame when I appeared on it to tell about my adventures at caribou hunting in Alaska.

Don married in June of 1962. Lamar attended, and the two of us played basketball in our tuxedos at the in-laws house after the wedding. Six months later we had a riotous holiday celebration that lasted from Christmas Eve through New Years Eve - the last time the two of us spent an extended time together.

Lamar married a young woman, Bonnie Maish, in 1964 and adopted her young sons, Scott and Todd. I left for Alaska in 1967, and they moved to Minnesota in 1976. I guess he wanted to extend that fishing trip of so many years before. My wife, Mary and I, visited them in Minnesota in 1983. We met again in April of 2002, a week after brother Don died. Don and Lamar were nearly the same age; Don being 27 days older. Lamar returned to Minnesota and died eighteen days after Don. They were both about two months past their 64th birthday. Don died first, but lived nine days longer than Lamar.

Painting the House for A Fishing Trip, 1954 - Part 3, A Movie

We went swimming several times and tried our hand at movie making. The only artifact remaining of that trip is a fifteen second scene shot with Dad’s 8mm movie camera.

Don was the cameraman, director, and producer. Lamar and I were the actors. Lamar got the Star’s roll of Hero, and I was relegated to a supporting role as the Villian.

The segment started with Lamar standing on the bow with his hand on his left knee peering out to sea. The next sequences depicts me, in a T-shirt, slowly sneaking up on him and shoving him overboard. Then I am kneeling over the bow looking for him as he climbs out of the water onto the stern, edges up to me, and kicks me in the rear and catapults me overboard.

READY ON THE SET. LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION

OSCAR NOMINATION - BEST MOVIE, 1954

MAN OVERBOARD

GO TO: Lamar "Mike" Hammer, Our Boyhood Friend

Painting the House for A Fishing Trip, 1954 - Part 2

Little North Star Lake was on state route 38, about 25 miles north of Grand Rapids. Marcel, a nearby village, lay another five miles on north. That’s where we bought our groceries. Kamp Kokomo was owned by a guy named Vern, a former resident of Kokomo. The camp had six or eight log cabins, and an icehouse. The office/lounge was right off the highway. It had a few tables, and sold sodas, beer, and maybe burgers and fries, though I‘m not certain as we always ate in the cabin.

We had a great time fishing and playing. There was a juke box in the lounge and we invested several nickels playing the popular tune of 1954, Sh-Boom, Sh-Boom by the Crew Cuts. There was a big bird dog at the camp. It had an enormous head, hung around the dock, and would dive in to retrieve anything - even large rocks that seemed too big and weighty for it’s giant sized mouth.

In Indiana we fished for bass, but were captivated by the northern pike of Minnesota. Their sleek submarine bodies, primeval mouth, full of razor sharp teeth, and their savage willingness to kill and eat anything smaller than themselves captured our undivided attention. We eschewed the lowly pan fish for the killer. Lamar brought his 5HP outboard and we took it to several lakes. Once we toted the heavy thing a mile into Lake Lundeen, a body of water that turned out to be ridiculously small.
Lamar hooked onto the biggest pike. We were trolling in a neighboring lake and turning around to avoid a weed bed when it struck his lure. The fish, about four feet long, came rolling and cart-wheeling our of the weeds, and was gone just as quickly. I forget who caught the biggest one - not me, but we cut its head off and sealed it in a used canned ham tin to bring home. We tried our talent at amateur taxidermy, mounting it on a wooden plaque by attaching it by its gill plates. They stuck out perpendicular to its head giving it the appearance of an alligator with ears, but we kept it anyway, hanging it on the wall of our “Club Room” in the back corner of the basement.
GO TO: Part 3

Painting the House for A Fishing Trip, 1954

Early in the summer of 1954 Dad made a deal with Don and I. If we painted the house he would take us on a fishing trip to Kamp Kokomo in Minnesota that August. Don and I had fond memories of a fishing trip there a couple years earlier so we eagerly agreed to the contract. Lamar Hammer, our constant companion during those years, was soon brought in on the deal.

We commenced to convert the house from traditional white to an exceedingly bright yellow. We called it “city yellow” as it resembled the utility shade used in town. There was no difficulty in distinguishing our house after that. We‘d tell people, ”Look for the bright yellow house, you can‘t miss it”.

The three of us approached the project in a nonchalant manner. We were not avid workers, and could easily be lured to wander leisurely through nearby Learner’s Woods (now the Delco Park) or along Wildcat Creek. The job was finished some two and a half months later - a couple days before we departed for Minnesota. I would hazard to guess that a good portion of the job was completed during the last week.

The family had first visited Kamp Kokomo in 1952, and really enjoyed it. Minnesota was known as the land of ten thousand lakes, and though we lacked the opportunity to canvas all of them, we got the notion the number was most probably accurate as there seemed to be a lake around every bend in the road.

We had often sat on Indiana shores getting more bites from mosquitoes than fish, and after the Minnesota experience had concluded that Indiana was "fished-out". The northern state was a fisherman’s paradise in the early 50’s.

We would go fishing in the morning and bring back fifty to a hundred pan fish by noon - mostly blue gills and cat fish. We ate fried fish every day - they were delicious in a way we had never imagined. Fish bought at the local store could not compare in taste with those fresh out of water. Some older guy who worked at the camp cleaned, wrapped and froze our daily catch for a nominal fee, so we brought a cooler of frozen fish home to enjoy later.

The camp was 730 miles north of Kokomo, and we drove all the way without stopping for anything other than gasoline, rest stops, and to eat. Driving straight through, without an overnight stop, was the family practice for as long as I could remember. Mom would sometimes spell Dad for a short break in the middle of the night, but if the destination was within a thousand miles he would go all the way. Don turned sixteen that year and had a license, so he probably helped Dad drive, but I have no particular memory of that part of the trip.
GO TO: Part 2

Lamar (Mike) Hammer - Mad Dogs & Bull Markets

One summer evening the three of us ventured nearly fours miles along the creek, and twilight was upon us as we started home. We usually followed the trail running along the creek banks, but, we were tired and the sun was going down. The path was getting difficult to follow, so we decided to cross the field and walk the road.

The pasture was no more than fifty yards across and we could make it in a few minutes. The trouble was that this particular field looked very much like the one that had a big bull in it, and the farmer also kept a mean dog that was usually chained.

Both animals had unsavory reputations in our minds, and we had, until then, made it a point to avoid confrontation. So, there we stood on the banks of the creek looking over the fence toward our objective, the road. The field was open and treeless, a no-man’s land that seemed harmless to the unwary eye, but we knew the enemy was out there waiting.

We spoke in whispers, “Do you hear anything?”

“No! Maybe we ought to go a little further before crossing!”

Finally it was decided, like Doughboys climbing out of the trenches we scaled the fence and started across. Instead of rifles, we each carried a fishing pole, and since I was of the lowest rank I got assigned the fishing box. By the time I cleared the fence Don and Lamar were already several paces ahead. We were moving swiftly across the field, but had gotten no more than a quarter of the way when the silhouette of the bull appeared off to our left. It was moving at a slow but deliberate pace toward us.

Panic! We made a dash for the road. I fell behind, my legs and arms pumping, the fishing pole whipping back and forth; the tackle box rattling and gyrating. It never occurred to me to drop the box. It was comforting to have something to hold on to, and I doubt that anyone could have pried it from my clutched fingers at that particular moment.

At the half-way point I realized that it was not the bull, but one of the milk cows that shared the field. I slowed my pace but only for a second. Somewhere behind, not far, came the baying of the mean dog. It was loose, out there, and gaining fast. A fourth of the remained to be crossed. The other two had climbed the fence to safety. My pace was near frantic. The tackle box swung violently back and forth. Its momentum forcing me in a zig-zag pattern - left to right, while my fishing pole hissed right to left.

The rattling provided a noise scent. The mean dog could have been half deaf and tracked the din I was leaving behind. I kept looking back. I had no wish to see the fangs and mighty jaws that would soon rip chunks from my backside, but I couldn’t help myself. Soon it was at my heels. The fence was just a head, but not close enough. Should I drop the box or turn and throw it at him? Maybe that would give me time to escape? I elected the diplomatic approach. I turned and said, “Nice doggie, nice doggie.” This was stated in a tone that was more pleading than friendly. It was then that I realized it was not the mean dog, but an old friendly one that had come out to greet us.
GO TO: Painting the house for a fishing trip.

Lamar (Mike) Hammer - Our Huck Finn

Central School stood one mile up Sycamore Street from our house. The two-story red brick building occupied a city block in the downtown area and sat two blocks east of the town square. Kokomo High School was across the street. The rest of the campus included a vocational building to the west, a gymnasium across the street to the east, and the football stadium behind the gym.

The Memorial Gym, the pride of Kokomo, was completed in 1949 with a capacity of 7000 fans. That’s fairly large when you consider the whole town numbered 30,000 at the time. I never saw an empty seat at a basketball game, another example of why basketball is known as “Hoosier Hysteria” in Indiana.

We met Lamar Hammer that first year at Central. He was in Don’s 6th grade class, and the three of us became inseparable over the next seven years. I remember the many times that we walked between his house and ours. We spent more time at our place. That was because ours was on the edge of town. Also, Lamar’s parents had divorced several years before we met, his three siblings were several years older, so he became more like a brother to us, and a member of the family. He often stayed over night and shared meals.

We had many adventures over those years, most centered on fishing and hunting. We were kids that a present-day Mark Twain might write about. Don was probably closest to being a Tom Sawyer and Lamar was undoubtedly Huck Finn. Me? Well, I did not fit any character in Twain’s stories. Tom and Huck did not have a younger sidekick following them around, so the parallel does not quite fit, but I could have been a good model for a third wheel in a story.

Don and Lamar gave me the privilege of carrying things for them, and often used me as their gofer. I was a full partner in our adventures on the river, though it was of a junior-grade.

Our river was not the mighty Mississippi, but the wee Wildcat - a creek small enough that the junior partner could throw a stone across it. The stream flowed parallel to Sycamore, a half mile south . We lived on the edge of town, ranged for miles along the creek, and knew most of the spots where a fish might be hiding. On many days we would not get home until evening. One time we had to run for our lives.

GO TO: Part 2, Mad Dogs & Bull Markets