A lost word from my childhood.

It snowed today.  Not a rare occurrence in my neck of the woods, but it was the kind of snow that got left on the side streets and the town cleared just the main highways.  I had a tickling at the back of my brain that this day would be perfect for something, but the image wouldn't fully emerge.  I stayed in and caught up on some projects, and it was later in the day when I found myself on our family website, that a post from my brother Ace, helped me complete the image.

Note the air hose on the ground.

     He had posted a note simply entitled "Remember" where he recalled sounds and smells from his youth and sadly some of them no longer exist. The one that stood out for him was the sound of a bell as you pulled into a gas station.  There used to be an air hose stretched across the driveway and it dinged a bell inside when a car drove over it.  The attendants would spring into action at it's sound, just like Pavlov's dogs.  They would wash your windows, check your oil and tire pressure, and pump the gas for you. Back then we called that "Customer Service".  I don't think it exists anymore.  Back to the point.....

  
The snow covered side streets and my brother's reminiscing, cleared the image up for me that I had been struggling with.  The word I was missing was "pogi".  It's other forms were "pogied" and "pogiing" (I just had to add them all to my dictionary to remove the red edit squiggles, which made me sad).  What?  You don't know these words?  It's kinda the point of this blog, but I'll help you out and use them in a sentence....

     We pogied our way to St. Mary's School this am. 
     We've been pogiing all morning and we never got caught.
     Why walk when you can pogi?

Parents holding, helmet, knee pads, elbow pads emergency backpack.

What?  Still nothing?  Tough crowd.  All right, the term, as it applied in my youth, was a verb meaning " to grab the bumper of a car, usually one stopped at an intersection, and to slide behind it on a snow covered street as a means of transportation".  You got extra points if it was a bus.  Oops, I forgot to warn people that this blog contained "dangerous" ideas.  My bad.  I haven't seen anyone pogi in a couple of decades, but look at where we have come in that time, seat belts, car seats, air bags, cameras for backing up (this would have screwed us in any pogiing attempt on a car), electric outlet covers, knee pads, elbow pads, bike helmets, childhood obesity to cushion our falls, the list goes on and on.  I got yelled at one time for calling a "Chinese Fire Drill" in a stopped car full of teens.  I was told that it was dangerous, but weird, all of them survived and were laughing their asses off when they got back in.  I feel a little racist in this blog now, because I  posted a picture of over-protective Asian parents and used the term "Chinese Fire Drill" right after it.  I hope my Asian audience will forgive me, but I digress.....

    So how did we pogi? We generally started out for school a little early.  You would think that it would be faster to pogi than to walk, but you had to wait for the right opportunity.  There were 2 or 3 stop signs on our walk to St. Mary's and that is where you could catch a car.  Your brothers or sisters would distract the driver while you snuck behind the car and grabbed onto the bumper.  The car would then take off with you and your Millbrook wrapper stuffed boots in tow (The Millbrook bread wrappers helped keep your socks dry if you ended up with a split or a hole in your boot).

The summer version of pogiing

You then just held on until you strategically decided to exit the
ride.  A car closing in from behind would be a valid reason to let go of the bumper.  If the car accelerated over 30 mph, that would be another reason.  A police car anywhere in the vicinity, yeah you would bail for that.  Once you let go, you tried to keep going as far as you could slide on the snow covered streets.  Eventually friction would slow your momentum and your pogi was done.  Points were awarded for the length of the ride, if you could stay on around a turn and how graceful your dismount was.  The picture on the right was the closest thing I could find on the whole World Wide Web to kids pogiing, adding further proof that the word and activity are both out of existence or at least since Al Gore invented the internet.  I asked some friends at a party this weekend if they knew the term, and no one did, except for one other person that had graduated from St. Mary's in Cdga (way to represent,  Jen Mapes Green).  I was beginning to think the whole thing was just a delusion until she confirmed and then told me the meaning of the word. I know I'll lose it someday, I was just relieved it wasn't that day. 

     After a successful pogi, you had to tell the story to your classmates, and of course the ride got longer, faster, more epic and dangerous, with each telling.  I personally went over a mile one time, going 75, with 4 cop cars chasing me, and my boots on fire. I could melt some Millbrook bread wrappers to prove it if you need me to. 

So that's my lost word and activity.  I would invite you all to comment with your own lost experiences, and words that you used to hear, but no longer do.  Tell me if this blog sparked a childhood memory of your own.  Share this post to your Facebook or e-mail it to your friends and see what the reaction is.

  I'd love to have more people confirm the existence of the word pogi, hey who knows, maybe it will even make a comeback? Well, maybe not. 

3 brothers, a shopping cart and a very steep hill.

By special request.

     So, I think I have mentioned before that my brothers and I used to belong to the Columbian Squires.  It was the junior order of the esteemed Knights of Columbus. We held our meetings on Monday evenings in the K of C hall above a furniture store in Canandaigua.  It was downtown, so it was walkable for us. I laugh at that statement because surely the definition of "walkable" has changed since the 70's.  Case in point, I have a sister who drove her kids to the high school each am, which really wasn't much further than where the High School that we went to was located, so it must not have been "walkable" any more.  When I was a kid, the lake was walkable, Roseland Amusement Park was walkable, and when I started college, CCFL was walkable, all from my home at the north end of town, on Fort Hill.  So, we walked to the Squires meetings and it was on one of these walks that we encountered divine providence. 

     It had no business being there.  It didn't.  There were no grocery stores near where we found it, the closest at the time was the Star market on West Avenue, but we were many blocks from there when we found it.  A perfectly good shopping cart, and placed at the top of Wood street in Canandaigua.  Now, for those not from Canandaigua, a description of Wood street is in order.  It is a steep street bi-sected in the middle by Gorham street (right near one of the two octagon houses in the county), and terminating at the bottom at a T intersection with Ontario street. Railroad tracks lay about 20 feet further at the bottom if you continue in a straight line. 

At the time this story takes place, it was winter, and the cart we found was on it's side, in the snow, just waiting for us, at the top of the hill. There were 3 of us as I recall it, brother Redface, brother Ace, and myself.  For some reason I don't connect my brother Aquaman to the Squires, or that night.  If he joined, it's been lost in my memory, but I'll bet that he was at least hit and miss for meetings if he was even a member.  On this evening, the sun was starting to set, and we three were staring at the cart and the incongruity of it in the snow, at the top of the hill.  It took us a while to come up with " Hey, maybe we should push someone in it?" 

Now how we decided who would ride in it has been lost to the ages, but we had the standards like everyone else, Eeenie, Meenie, Minee, Mo or Rock, Paper, Scissors, or Bet I can hold my breath longer, but in the end, it was brother Redface who ended up in the cart while we pushed.  I'm not sure if he felt at the start of that ride if that was a win or a lose, but I know how he felt at the end of it.  It was not a win.  To this day, one of the things I ponder is why he got in the cart the way he did.  In retrospect, I would have crouched on my feet and knees, but brother Redface entered ass first forming a V of sorts, legs and arms up, and almost completely unable to change his position once seated in the cart.  He always trusted us more than he should of.  This story needs to stay on point so here's what happened next..

Brother Redface (before we pushed him)

Neither Ace or I had more than a fundamental understanding of gravitational force, momentum, and Newton's laws, but we were about to get a quick education.  I started pushing the cart and it's occupant quickly down a rapidly descending slope, and the road surface was slick with snow.  You would think we might have anticipated that I might slip and actually propel the cart more as I fell to the ground, but you would be wrong, and that is exactly what happened.  I had only just started to push the cart, and lost my footing, and my momentum caused me to fall forward and push the cart as I fell.  As I quickly scrambled to my feet, I realized that the cart was accelerating more rapidly than I could, so in essence, it was out of control.  Everyone realized this, that is, except my brother Redface.  He was enjoying the wildly careening ride, oblivious to the fact, neither Ace or I had any control of the situation.  We screamed at him that we were no longer steering and he laughed, we yelled it again and again until his brain finally realized that our voices shouldn't be sounding that far away if we were still hanging on to the cart.  Then the panic set in, and with good reason.  I did mention that the hill was steep and bi-sected by Gorham Street, right?  It's a 4 way stop, or at least is intended to be.  On that particular evening, my brother Redface seemed to be blatantly ignoring the stop sign and as the cart continued downhill, the 30 mph speed limit as well.  There seemed to be no solution to his predicament, and it was getting increasingly more dangerous too.

The T intersection with Ontario street was rapidly approaching, and brother Ace and I had a bird's eye view of the impending crash of the cart and the curb.  We really weren't into praying much then, but I have to say I think we both prayed at least there wouldn't be a passing car at an extremely inopportune time.  Back to Redface, now screaming, pleading and making his own deals with God.  I suddenly had an epiphany, but unfortunately it wasn't a solution to the problem, rather it was a clear recollection of Newton's first law of motion, which roughly paraphrased is " A body in a shopping cart in motion will continue to remain in motion unless acted upon by a superior force". You see, the curb would do a great job of stopping the cart, but not necessarily of stopping my brother when propelled from the cart towards the railroad tracks.  A quick thought of explaining this to the police crossed my mind, " Well officer, he was still moving when the train came through, so I can't see how we could be considered liable...."   Back to brother Redface, now hoarse from screaming, and with fear tremors starting.

     We were feeling pretty helpless, unable to catch the cart, slipping on the ice and snow, and unable to even shout any soultions to our brother.  He was 2/3 of the way down the hill and destined for an abrupt stop, when he had an epiphany and fortunately this time it was a solution to the problem.  He couldn't get out of the cart, he couldn't steer it, but he could ROCK it, so rock it he did.  He started shifting his weight back and forth, realizing that the fall on the asphalt was far preferable to the ending at the bottom of the hill.  He shifted it enough to actually change the trajectory and suddenly the cart veered left and ran into a snowbank and ejectied our brother into the same snowbank, shaken up, but unhurt.  We gathered up our shaky legged brother, left the cart, and headed off to our meeting, and chalking this up as another "Remember that time you almost died story".  I remember being chilled in a different way that winter evening, not relating to the cold, but to the calamity narrowly avoided, and not by me, though I had started the cart running downhill. It made me more aware of the possible unintended consequences of my actions, and I have to say, that it was a long time before I used anything other than my own two feet else to propel myself anywhere, well, after all, most the places were walkable.

The End.

My girlfriend Stretch.

OK, this week's blog is pretty tongue in cheek, but enjoy it just the same.

     I have a confession to make.  I've had a girlfriend on the side for quite a while now.  I don't know how it happened, how do these things ever happen?  I'm pretty sure it started a few years ago at camp.  We were both leaders for a national organization for youth that encourages kids to get out and camp, and that I can't mention here. We ended up going on a few camp outs together.  Next thing you know, there we were sharing a seat on a log, and after the kiddies went to bed, we'd share stories of our lives until the wee hours (you know 10 o'clock). It was a special time, and I'm sure both of us could feel it.

These kind of relationships always start this way, they
come in with a whisper, but can build up to a gale force wind. While we talked, we discovered the most amazing coincidences about our lives.  She had 3 kids and I had 3 kids!  They went to the local school and so did mine!  She had 2 girls and a boy, and I had 1 girl and 2 boys!  She was married, and so was I ! She goes to church, and so do I ! Is anyone getting goose bumps yet?  It gets even better.  I sold pie, and she ate pie!  She worked in the medical field specializing in cardiac care, and I have bad tickers in my family!  I love to talk about my work, and she can't talk about hers because of  HIPAA laws (wait, that's not a coincidence, that's just a benefit, sorry). 
It was amazing that we had all these things in common, and we both could feel this instant connection. There was a small issue, however,  we weren't alone on this camp out.  There was another male leader who attended and he was more her height and was a good golfer.  I haven't described Stretch yet, so I probably should now.

     She's like 7 and 1/2 feet tall (or at least she looks it from my 5' 6 " vantage point).  She's blond, slightly older than me, and dare I say it, ugh skinny.  I can't really put up a picture of her, so imagine if Cheetara from the Thundercats had a Katy Perry moment with Hello Nurse from the Animaniacs, and they produced a female offspring....

  That's what my girlfriend Stretch looks like.  Back to the story...
So this other leader who can look Stretch in the eye, instead of her boobs (This is a huge tactical advantage), swoops in and starts talking about golf.  I can see her eyes glaze over almost immediately and I, sadly, have nothing to offer in a conversation about good golfing. By the end of the camp the other leader even has a cute nickname for her made up, and it looks unlikely that my relationship with Stretch will be able to survive, sigh.  That's the way these things go sometimes though, you are only interesting until something newer and shinier comes along (or taller).  I resigned myself to the fact that I couldn't compete at that level, literally, and packed my duffel and sadly left for home. 

(Wait, did you just go  Awww?  I have to remind you that, so far,  this is a story of two married people and what sounds like the starting of an inappropriate relationship between them.  You people are sick, each and every one of you, and are the reason that the Bridges of Madison County was such a popular book and movie.  Trust me I can't get away with the stuff Clint Eastwood can.  Historians in the future will surely trace the exact moment of America's moral decline back to the opening of that movie but I digress....)

So I'd see Stretch around for a while after that, but we never seemed to get back to the closeness that we had, that was, until I started a charity golf tournament!  You see, I have some people fooled into thinking I do it for altruistic reasons, but really it's all about getting the ladies. She formed a group and even though my tall competition was a member of her team, I could tell her eyes were really on me.  I made sure we gave the money to cardiac rehab center, just to impress her.  After a few years, my competition fell off her team, and we started to get closer again.  Did I mention that she likes a cigar every now and again?  Did I further mention how hot I think that is?  This soon became our thing, and I became her cigar buddy, Score!  Now I was guaranteed personal face time with her 1 or 2 times each year. Now, the question was, how to add more activities?   During this period, I talked my kids into joining the youth group of her church and they didn't even attend that church!!  My daughter even went on a Mission trip with them and I quickly signed up as a chaperone for the trip, figuring that Stretch would surely go as a chaperone too and we could recreate our camping moments.  Sadly, she didn't and I had to go anyway.  That's a blog for another day.  I still hadn't found the way to get closer. We started to hang out together as couples, and went to bars and stuff, but her husband was always there.  He's tall, muscular, funny, and hard working, Damn him. It was a few years ago that we realized that they didn't really do anything on Christmas Eve, and we like to host an intimate party for some family and friends that night, so it seemed a natural fit that they start to attend. Now I had her in an intimate setting and with mistletoe close by.  The only flaw in that plan was the height difference again, each time I would try to get amorous, she would peer over my head unaware and carry on conversations with the taller people at the party. Foiled again.  At this point in my pursuit of Stretch, I was beginning to feel a lot like Wile E. Coyote and I was the

one getting perpetually screwed by the Acme company, but things were about to change, and in a big way (picture a bigger Acme crate arriving). 
It was at one of these parties though, that she invited me to come and "exercise" with her at the local high school weight room and she did it right front of my wife! I coyly played along and we made a date for the following Monday at 6 am (She likes to do it early, like me). I could hardly wait until Monday came around.

     Before I finish the story, I should probably share a little tidbit about myself.  I tend to set unrealistic and high expectations and frequently set myself up for disappointment.  Every morning, and I do mean every morning, while I shower, I think to myself, "Hmm I wonder if my wife took this time to change into a negligee and will be lying prone on the bed when I enter my bedroom?".  So many mornings that leaves me entering my bedroom, glancing at the empty bed, and sighing heavily. I know it's stupid, but it's a pattern of mine, and hey, sometimes it happens.  So you can imagine how I looked forward to my upcoming "exercise" date.  Would showing up in a smoking jacket be overkill?  What cologne to wear (musk seemed appropriate)?  Show more skin or make her work for it?  The decisions were agonizing.  Finally, Monday came, and I set off for the weight room with expectations set high.

I had gotten up a few hours early to make sure I was appropriately dressed (see picture to right).  During the 15 minute drive to the school, I was certain that our first date was going to go perfect.  I mean, she set it up at 6, just so no one else would be there and if a sexier environment for a first date exists, better than an empty high school weight room, I don't know it.  I arrived promptly at 6, and went in to see what she had chosen to wear, but she wasn't there.  Now, that's an oddity of mine as well, I like my girlfriends to be prompt.  When she finally did arrive at 8 after, I was flabbergasted!  No lingerie, no sports bra, no Chanel  # 5 (in fact she smelled a little pre-sweaty), she had everything but her hair done up in curlers. Me, and my well oiled body were not happy.  You see, I've had girlfriends like this before, the ones that take you for granted, but I've never actually had it happen on the first date.  Stretch had revealed her true nature to me, and I didn't like it one bit.  I decided, at that moment, that we could be workout, cigar, drinking, charity working, party going buddies, but the romantic part of our relationship was dead, sigh.  
      So I've had a girlfriend on the side for a while now.  My wife knows, and she doesn't seem to mind.  Women have a sense for these things.  It's kind of sad how hard Stretch tries to get closer to me (she reminds me of Wile E Coyote sometimes), but the deck is stacked against her.  Now you can go, Awww. 
    

   

Sometimes, they call me Willie.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

It's true isn't it?  It doesn't really matter what they call us, but, then again, yes it does.  I get a different sense from each person that uses one of my monikers.  It could be the body language that goes with them or vocal inflections, but I hear them all differently, and I react to them that way.  They call me Bill, Billy, Will, Yarg, Yager, William Allen Yarger (especially when I am in trouble), Dude, Wilber, Taco Bill, Bilbo Baggins, Billy-Boy, and yes, sometimes they call me Willie.

     My dad called me Willie, but not all the time.  He would refer to me as Bill most of the time, but seemed to use Willie as a just- between -us name.  For the talks on his knee, I would be Willie.  For his life lessons on the farm I'd be Willie, like the time we went there to bury my dog.

My dad, Paul Cooper Yarger

I was Willie that morning.  I asked my mom today if she remembers dad calling me Willie, but she doesn't.  It's a toss up whether it's because of her failing memory or if he didn't do it in front of her, but I remember.  He didn't use it often,which made it special to me, and coincidentally since then, only people that I have a special relationship with, have called me Willie. 

     One of my first bosses,  Papa Frank, asked if he could call me Willie.  There was a Phil already working there when I started so to avoid confusion, it became Phil and Willie.  You'd be surprised how common a custom this is in the foodservice industry.  I had a great waiter at Bern's Steakhouse in Tampa this year, named Trebor.

Papa Frank

When I asked the origin of his name, he said sheepishly, it's Robert spelled backwards, because we can't have two waiters here with the same name. So Willie wasn't so bad, I could have been called Llib or Mailliw. Since Frank was a mentor, I didn't mind  him using Willie, and it followed that the people I worked with there started using it too.  Some of these folks still do today, but a lot of them have shortened it to Will.

     My Mother in Law calls me Willie.  I can't really fault her, and after all she gave me the best gift I have ever received in my life, my beautiful bride.  She would have guessed the golf ball mono-grammer she gave me a few Christmas's ago was the best gift, but she would have been wrong.  That comes in second. It's not like I find all the balls that I lose on the golf courses, but at least everyone else who finds them knows who to thank.  I'm pretty fortunate to have the MIL I have, even if she did move into our town. She is happy to have the regular interaction with us that she does, and she rarely turns down an invitation to join us for functions.  That's the kind of person Willie likes. 

     One of my favorite sisters calls me Willie (What?  You don't play favorites?  How do your siblings know how hard they have to compete to get to the top spot, then?  Weird.)  I haven't introduced her in the blog yet, so I'll do that now.  My sister, Hummingbird, is about 5 years older than me, but she acts and moves like she is 10 years younger.  I can categorically say that she is the only sibling I have, that has bitten by the "cleaning bug".

She smells like Windex every time I hug her.  I named her Hummingbird, because she reminds me of one.  She flits about from place to place cleaning, even if you are there having a beer, and she never lands.  She's kept at least 2 jobs for the majority of her life, one for the pension and benefits and the other to keep her active (Like she needs it).  I think I have this one named perfectly.  She started calling me Willie after working with me at Papa Franks, and she was one of the ones who never stopped.  Most of her e-mails to me start, "Heh Willie" and I smile when I read this even before I know what they are about.  I've got a couple of blogs in mind for this sister, but I'll leave it there for now.  I like it when she calls me Willie.

      My best friend from high school used to call me Willie, but eventually switched to Wilber, which took on a different meaning.  Everybody grows up, but given my choice today I'd have kept him calling me Willie, if it kept him as the same person I went to high school with.  It's natural for relationships to ebb and flow, but it still stings when you look back and see how little you have in common now.  His dad still calls me Willie. He is still the same as I remember while I was growing up.

      My girlfriend, Stretch, calls me Willie.  She's not really my girlfriend, she's my exercise buddy, and breakfast companion.  I don't know how she started calling me Willie, but it would seem strange to have her call me anything else now.  When she does call, it's always to sign me up to work on a charity thing, or to exercise or to go have cocktails. She's my kind of people, she likes to contribute, but she likes to have fun too.  I've got a whole blog on her almost finished, let me know if there is interest in hearing more about her, and I'll put in on the front burner.

      Lastly, my current boss calls me Willie.  He used to manage just the part of my business that fell into Canada (about 15%), but for 2011 he starts to manage all of me. We were peers first, before he became my boss, so the relationship started as equals, and he started calling me Willie.  It stuck, but now the relationship is changing.  I'm not a big fan of management, it's a character flaw of mine.  He likes to know what's going on with his people frequently, which is something I struggle with.  I am hoping that the relationship we had prior to his becoming my boss will survive.  I thought of him as a mentor but really appreciated our nights out together when he would let his hair down a little.  I know he appreciates my sales ability and has already expressed a great willingness to work with me to accomplish the company goals.  If I were a betting man, I'd bet things will work our great this year, and he will both continue to mentor me, and call me Willie.

     It's kind of an odd blog this week, but one that is perfect for interaction with the readers.  Do you have nicknames that carry special meaning?  Special people that have pet names for you?  Do you respond better to one name or another?  Do you hate one of your names or when people call you something in particular?  I had a secretary/customer service person for 8 years that hated to be called Mo (her name was Maureen).  I didn't find out that fact for years. I still want to call her that now, and catch myself often just before I do.  Tell me your stories, and I'll share them with Willie.

On Christmas trees, lost and found.

Stories like this one, are hard to believe, but you have my word that the things in this blog are entirely true.  It does beg the question though, why do I have so many of these things and stories happen to me?  I believe the answer is that God wanted my blog to be more interesting, so he continues to surround me with interesting people and events, and I haven't even told 10% of the good ones yet. Have I ever told you about the time I danced on Broadway?......

I lost a Christmas tree one year.  Go ahead, shake your head and scold me, I can already hear you.." Yarger, I can understand losing the remote, but seriously a Christmas tree?"  It wasn't like that though.  In my defense, that tree never even saw the inside of our house.... 

     Isn't life hard enough without starting harder traditions than your family passed on? Yes, but that's our nature in this family.  As far as I can recall my mom and dad never rounded the kids up and went off in the woods to cut down our own Christmas tree.  Now, that's not to say my siblings might not have done this with them, but by the time I started remembering things, I don't recall a single foray into the woods with my folks.  I have some vague recollections of picking one up at St. Mary's or from the Boy Scouts, but you can't prove it by me, that I was ever involved in an actual tree hunt.  Why then did Char and I start the tradition of bundling toddlers and all up and hiking through the tree farms to find the perfect tree that we all like and can agree upon?  Because we are stupid, that's why.

You can't see us, we are way, way, in the back

My family is at least consistent in this task.  We will hike the entire tree farm, no matter whose it is, or where it is, and always find our "perfect" tree at the furthest possible spot from where we started and will require the absolute most amount of dragging of the tree.  I think the kids do it on purpose because I make them do chores, it's payback.  One year we dropped our tree into a few feet of snow, tied a rope around it and tugged, and I didn't even shift it.  That was a fun next hour moving inch by inch to get way back to the farmhouse.  For the last few years we have gone to Darlings Tree Farm in Seneca Castle.  They have hot cider, they have the shaky thing that gets the dead needles off, the netty thing that wraps them up and they ship dozens of trees off to US soldiers abroad with the Trees for Troops program.  I highly recommend them.  This story, however, goes back about 20 years and the tree farm involved was on Rte 64 in Bristol N.Y.

 It was a few weeks before Christmas, and Char and I had heard about a good tree farm in Bristol NY.  We bundled up Molly, who was a toddler then, and my brother Ace rode over with us to pick out a tree too.

Dan, one year guarding his choice.

It turns out the tree farm was vastly overrated, and it took the better part of an hour before all of us found 2 trees that would pass muster.  We could only fit one inside the van, so we tied the other to the top with whatever we could find inside and headed for home.  We got about 1/4 mile away before the wind got underneath it and flipped it off the van and into the road.  After a mad scramble to re-secure it, we gave it a second attempt with the same result, we were 28 miles away from home and were destined to lose the tree every quarter mile. It dawned on me that my dad's recently built house was only a few miles from there and he had a pickup, so we decided to leave the tree on the roadside and go ask dad to borrow his truck.  This was not an easy decision, as my dad raised us all to be independent, and he likely taught Ben Franklin "Neither a borrower nor a lender be", but we had no choice, so off we went.  He really didn't give us much of a hard time and in less than 10 minutes we were back standing in front of where we thought we had left the tree.  I say "thought" because the area looked identical to where we had been....except there was no tree.

Ace and I examining the scene, I'm the pretty one. 

Now CSI was 10 years from being thought up but even Grissom would have been proud of our canvassing of the area and our identification of the pine needles that were strewn about. I think Ace even rubbed some deer dung between his fingers to test his working theory of the woodland animals needing a tree, but it was 2 days old so Bambi and pals were cleared.  What was left were 2 perplexed, cold, brothers standing on the roadside missing one out of two trees, and of course when we checked, it was my tree that was missing.  One of the only things worse than spending close to an hour combing a thin tree farm for a good Christmas tree, is to do it twice in one day.  Those were the hardest 25 dollars that ever left my hands, but after we went home and after it was up and decorated, it became like every other tree we had brought home, beautiful and ours.  I really didn't give it much more thought, that was, until 7 years later eating lunch at the end of that same road.....

     It's a good story so far, isn't it?  I agree, it lacks something, how about a surprise ending? 

     So that year I was on that road a lot.  I sold food to the local restaurants and my mom's house was there, so a couple days a week I would find myself on Rte 64 in Bristol NY.  A lot of weeks I would pick up food from Rumor's restaurant at Toomey's Corners and bring a cheeseburger to my mom and have lunch with her while I placed my morning orders.

Old gas station at Toomey's Corners (Rumors is back left)

It was during one of those times that I learned the ultimate fate of my misplaced Christmas tree.  As I was waiting at the bar, on one of these days,  just before Christmas again, I happened to start a conversation with a construction worker who was sitting next to me at the bar.  We introduced ourselves and got talking about the upcoming Holiday and whether we were prepared or not.  I, of course, told him of my trudging off into the woods the week before to get a tree, but I added "At least it wasn't as bad as the year I had to do it twice."  He curiously inquired how that happened, and I quickly told him my story of losing the tree 7 years earlier, totally convinced that I had the best Christmas story.   I was just as quickly proven wrong.  He set down his drink and asked me 4 rapid fire questions, "7 years ago?", "This Road?", "about 2 miles down?", and "on the right side of the road?"  I answered Yes to all the questions, and he laughed and said "Buddy, I think I found your tree that year".  He continued on to tell me the most fascinating story from the year that I lost my tree.  He was out of work, due to an ankle injury and times were tough.  He could still drive, but not climb ladders or do his job.  The night before his wife and him had discussed the looming holiday and decided to forgo the tree and to spend what little money they had on presents for their 3 kids.  The next morning, on the way to town in his pickup truck, he had come upon a Christmas tree laying on the side of the road.  He had assumed it had come off from a bigger truck carrying them, so he loaded it in his truck and brought it home to his family.

Nolan in front of his handiwork one year

He said that particular Christmas, to his kids, was indistinguishable from the others that they had, because of that tree.  He recovered from his injury and hadn't had a lean year since that one.  He insisted on buying both my mom's and my lunches and we shook hands, and I departed with a new found friend and a great story to tell. You see, my Christmas had been indistinguishable from my others too, I had the extra 25 dollars, and the time, so it hadn't impacted me at all, until he told me his story.  Then it impacted me, where it counts, in the heart, and not my wallet.  So I did lose a Christmas tree one year, but I got back a little of my humanity.  It was a good deal.

Fort Hill Christmas memories

Apologies to Raymond, my Buffalo friend who is usually the first to read the blog if I post it after midnight, I'm a little late this week.....

They say Christmas is for the kids or the young, and I would have trouble arguing with that statement.  Although at this age I find much more pleasure in giving than receiving, even that activity is less memorable than when I did it in my youth.  It's not hard to take the money out of a pre-arranged Christmas club account and go to several stores to spend it.  It is hard to break open your piggy bank and count the pennies and nickels and then agonize what you can spend the money on and who. I'm not a Christmas Scrooge, but I do like to think about how magical and overwhelming the emotions were in the time when my pajamas used to cover my feet and there was a zipper in the front and a snap up butt flap in the back....

We lived in the middle of Fort Hill Avenue in Canandaigua when I was young.  It started as a simple house that my dad kept adding on to, until it had 7 bedrooms.  It was cold in the winter in my bedroom when I was a kid.  My dad would tell me that it made me healthy, but in reality it just made me shiver.  We would scratch our names in the ice and frost that would form on the inside pane of our windows.  That's not to say it was 32 degrees inside of my room, but as a kid, it sure felt like it.  We shared rooms and I remember the day I got to move from a room shared with 3 brothers to a room shared with 1.  Although it should have been thrice as nice mathematically, I remember most how quiet it was and how I missed all the chatter and whispers that had been the norm for me for so long. That's probably the moment when I invented the string can telephone, just so I could hear what was happening in my old room (Later I would invent the Internet too).  Yes it was cold in the new room too, but the one morning I never noticed it, was Christmas morning.

We would go to bed early the night before under the threat of "the naughty list", but we could never sleep.  My brother Redface and I would talk until the wee hours about what might be under our tree in the morning.  Bikes were a common wish, but clothes were a more common reality.  We had bikes, but we always wanted bigger,better and with cooler options.  We would finally fade off to sleep, but even then we dreamed of the presents beneath the tree.  We never had to set an alarm, we just woke up at the crack of dawn. The next part though, was kind of tricky.   We weren't

Picture 12 kids by 2 filling these stairs.

allowed to be downstairs until Dad got up, and you wouldn't dare wake up my father (If a father was ever going to invent Christmas spankings, it would have been my Dad). So, one by one, we would wake up and start filling up the stairs from the bottom up.  My parent's bedroom was right at the base of the stairs, so the fidgeting had to be kept to a minimum. You try that on Christmas morning, before your first pee, when you are 7.  It's funny, we had 12 stairs, enough for 1 per kid, but we piled in 2 or 3 to a stair, like Richard Petty fighting for pole position. The bottom stair was the most prized.  It seemed like hours would pass before we would hear my dad stir.  He would walk out, either shake his head at us or ignore us completely, and he would go and start the coffee.  Back then we perked the coffee on the stove, talk about a watched pot!!  Finally, coffee in hand, he would come back, wake my mother and release the hounds.  We always started with our stockings while dad got situated in the living room near the tree.  We had huge hand made stockings that were gifts from a family friend.  I can't say who made them, but I bet a sibling of mine will at the end of this blog.  They were made of a burlap material, but were big and sturdy and each one had our name embroidered on it.  They were full to the top, and in the toe of each one was always an orange or tangerine.  My mother used to say it was a treat that went back to when you could only get citrus fruit in the summer.  I don't know how she explained the loose shell-on nuts that filled a lot of the rest of the stocking.  We would eat some things from our stocking and then stake out a corner of the living room to seat yourself and with room to stack your booty.  My dad would climb in to the stack of presents, glasses and white T shirt on, and start the distribution.....

OOPS, I missed a step.  My dad was an electrician's mate in the Navy, and he was responsible for playing the music on the ship. He inherited some old equipment and tapes, and especially liked an old Wollensak reel to reel recorder.  Many Christmas mornings, he would set this up first

with an open mike and just let it run.  You wouldn't believe how well it captured both the emotion as well as the sound, or maybe I just feel that way when I hear those tapes.  You would not want to be the last person to receive a gift, as the taunting would start immediately, about what you had to have done to deserve no gifts.  I would compare it to being chosen last in grade school for the
dodgeball team, but it actually was worse than that.  The other thing you wanted to avoid, was the dreaded "shared present".  I remember clearly the year I got the Walkie and my brother Redface got the Talkie.  I'd seen them sold in pairs in the store, but that's not how my Christmas present came. It forced me to get along with my brother for a while, but inevitably we would fight and then my present wasn't as useful as intended. There truly is nothing that looks sadder than a kid in his coat and boots (with Millbrook bread bags hanging out of them), walking around Fort Hill with a Walkie, talking to himself. Occasionally you'd pick up conversations between truckers or cab drivers.  A word of warning, if you do, these are not the "new" words you want to bring home and teach to your siblings (I can still taste the soap).   My dad would continue to hand out all the presents until the last branch was shook and there were no more. The teenagers sometimes would go back to bed at this point, but for me, I had a bunch of new toys and things that screamed to be played with and tot-tested.  The year I got the slinky, it lasted 8 minutes.  "They walk down stairs, alone or in pairs, and make a slinkity sound....."  Bullshit.

You know what you really get when you and your brother race your 87 foot coiled springs down the stairs all hopped up on Christmas candy, cookies and adrenalin?  174 feet of hopelessly tangled, stretched out steel.  Try putting that back in the box and returning it.
     Christmas morning was a time when you also found out the true meaning of "caveat emptor", let the buyer beware.  How about your dreams of reigning over mass villages of sea monkeys, only to find out you were raising brine shrimp?  Don't even get me started on my 5th grade fiasco with my X-ray glasses.  I remember mailing a bunch of pennies and a slip from the back of an Archies comic book to get one of these things, and it actually arrived a few weeks later.  I'm still amazed now that I think about it, that the envelope got through the mail to the place.  I had a friend, later in life, that mailed her dinner pancakes to "The starving children in Africa", but that is not a Christmas story, she just didn't like pancakes, but I digress.....

an unknown street in Buffalo during the 77 Blizzard

     So the toys would not live up to expectations and all too soon, Christmas day became like any other winter day off from school. We built igloos and snow forts, threw snowballs, and sledded down the hill across the street at Evan's Field.  I remember in 1976 or  1977, shortly after Christmas, we had a blizzard that was so bad that it snowed so much that we had to tunnel our way out to the street.  Anyone who lived through that week has no fear of global warming.  It was kind of cool to live in that environment for the following week, but to this day, I don't shovel unless I absolutely have to (just ask my wife). So those were some of my memories of my Christmas's on Fort Hill Avenue in Cdga.  Feel free to share your own by commenting at the end of this blog, or share this post to your Facebook and see what memories your friends have.  I'd love to read them all, while I wrap my Slinkys.

A 6 month old Ongion

If you are reading this blog from outside of the U.S., please leave a comment as to where you are and how you found the blog...

6 months ago I had the idea for this blog and a few days later posted my first one.  I appreciate each and every person who stops in on occasion and checks it out, but I really appreciate the regulars.    I thought the regulars might enjoy some of the more interesting statistics about the blog, so this week's blog is all about the history (a six month look back), and some stats on the traffic patterns.....

     I chose the onion as my symbol because I thought it best represented me.  I changed it to Ongion, because my wife tells me I can't say that word correctly.  I am a layered individual.  People that have only met me at work wouldn't picture me BBQ-ing and conversely the people I BBQ for, would struggle seeing me in a corporate setting.  My Scouts will never see me drinking or smoking a cigar, but you might,  if you meet me out.  The layers continue well after that, so I thought the blog was aptly named.  My first blog just spoke to my intentions and my plan for the blog.   I don't think I have strayed far from that mark.

  I started with a tale from my High Schools days involving red jeans (The Infamous Red Jeans Story).  I think it hit the mark I had intended and set the tone for the blogs to follow. Most of them I hope are humorous, but I have my moods too.  I've written about a dear friend who passed (My friend Eileen), and there were few chuckles in that one. I did a tongue in cheek blog about almost losing the franchise to be the fun Uncle, and that one was well received, even if not completely understood by some (The Franchise is in jeopardy). I went back to my altar serving days with another one, and that still rates as one of the least frequented blog, and it drew no comments at all (Time served - Adventures on the altar).   I was surprised that more people didn't connect with that one.  It's tough to gauge an audience that you don't completely know.  I can't tell who regularly reads the blogs, unless they comment or mention them to me later, so I do the best I can, and really write for people that I think have a similar sense of humor as me.  In one of my next blogs, I started to introduce my family, but in that one, my brother came pre-loaded with a nickname (They call my brother Aquaman), so it started the practice of only mentioning my family members by nickname.  I hope to put a running cast of characters on the left side of the blog at some point, so everyone that stops by will have a built in cheat sheet.  I don't know how to do this yet, so let me know if you do.

One of the next blogs was my take on facial hair (Of Beards and Men), and especially how I thought goatees were evil.  See the picture on the right and tell me you don't agree. 
I posted one about the college funding process and how hard it was to present to my daughter (I made my daughter cry that day), and I put one up on how I used to sneak in at night (Youthful Adventures- Avoiding the curfew).  At this point my blog has only been advertised to my Facebook friends, my family's website, and read by people known to me.  That, however, was about to change forever.  You see, my blog had always been open access and available by searching for it on the web, but no one had. I really wasn't writing for that audience either, but the first week in September I was forced to start to think about it.  I was on a trip and my wife called to tell me that my former boss had passed away.  I really liked him, so I penned my most emotional blog ever, and posted it ( Rest in Peace Papa Frank).  By the time I returned from that trip, the changes in traffic patterns were pretty evident.  Whereas the largest number of hits I had to any blog before that came to about 50, I suddenly surged to over 200 for that blog. I was confused until my brother had told me that the local paper had linked my blog to their Facebook fan page.  They later ran about 2/3 of the blog in a feature article too.  The blogger software I use had always had the ability to capture the country code of the visitors to the blog, but I never had any international visitors.  For that blog, I had over 10 different countries represented.   It was a departure from the norm, and it never went backwards from there.  The more blogs I posted, the more international hits I would get.  Now, I am not claiming that they are regular visits, I suspect that they are not, but they are real people finding the page and sometimes reading what they find. Here is an example of what my international traffic looked like for last week's blog....

United States  242

Canada  13

United Kingdom  9

Iran  9

Kuwait  5

Bosnia and Herzegovina  4

India  4

Germany  3

Iceland  3

Pakistan  3

It's kind of interesting, isn't it?  These are page views, not individual unique computer visits, which is probably the more accurate way of counting.  My counter on the blog tracks those, so you can see that the page views for last week totaled in excess of 290 hits, while the unique computer visits totaled around 150. I'm pretty happy with either one, and I am glad that so many folk check out the postings so often. 

So the blogging continued with one of my stories from work, entitled "The Accidental Pickup".  You can expect more work stories this year, but I have to buy a camera to get some good pics of the places I will blog about.  I take a lot of time selecting the pictures for the blog, to try and set the mood and tone.  I hope the audience appreciates the time that I spend, all I know is, that it looks "right" when I am finished.  My next few blogs were a combination of family growing up stories and my real world take on things.  The one I did on the field of my youth entitled "Reflections on Evan's Field" was very well received.  It was currently topical but also harkened back to the days of my youth and my experiences on the field.  That one got the most comments on my Facebook, but not on the blog itself.  A lot of people connected with it. I next did one on "My best magic trick ever" where I spoke of making my kids believe I could do magic. 

As I write this weeks' blog, I am digesting the sweet potato gnocchi with Gouda cheese sauce that my daughter made, which is a far cry from my blog, "The Night of the Skittle Pancakes" in which I revisited the first time I made her cook for the family.

     One of the things that all bloggers struggle with is the length of the blog.  Too short and people aren't entertained or they don't remember it. Make it too long and you risk losing their interest and your message along with it.  I found myself face to face with this issue, while penning, "Sweaty Hands and a Rotary Phone"  It was a recounting of the first time I called a girl on a phone to ask her on a date.

The blog wrote so easy, that I instantly realized that it was too long, so it became my first and only 2-parter. An oddity of these is that, to this day, the 2nd part has 20 more page views than the first.  Did some people really skip to the end and not read
the first part of the story?  I'm guessing that there
might be some verbiage in the second half that was not included in the first one, but is more popular as as Google search. A lot of people find the "Ongion" by searching on Google.  The most popular search to date is a combination of my name and the word Onion or Ongion, leading me to believe that those folks were actually looking for me.  That is obviously not always the case, however, and people find the blog with the weirdest combination of words (Try Bill Yarger + Swine and you will find my blog about my sister's pig roast "A Swine Time")  Some keyword examples from this week are....

Search Keywords

rubenesque women  6

james brolin hotel  3

calista flockhart lying on stomach  2

queen fat bottomed girls lyrics  2

bill layers  1

bill yarger evans field  1

full bodied women  1

i'll never falter i'll stand my ground lyrics  1

layers of a skittle  1

I fully suspect that the number finding my blog through keyword searches about Rubenuesque women, will continue to climb, solidifying the theory I posited in my blog "Giving Thanks for the Ample Derriere".  The pictures probably help too...

This was my most racy blog and I warned my youngest, Nolan that it would not be appropriate for him.  The following week, he inquired whether he could go back to reading my blogs or, in his words, " Was this week's blog racist too?" This prompted quite the discussion at home about the differences in the words racy and racist, and I still wonder when the call will come from his school asking  me to come in for a conference.  It's not like it will be my first one anyway.  I blogged just a few weeks prior about my pugilistic experiences in high school. That blog was titled "Of Fisticuffs and Loose Teeth"  I was reminded at a family gathering later, that I forgot to include the fight with my brother Ace, shortly before my wedding. It was at my bachelor party and I drunkenly antagonized him with some cheap shots at his character, and a fight ensued.  He showed great restraint in not laying me out cold, or even punching me in the face, he just sat on my chest until I gave up.  It's no wonder I didn't tell that one, I don't look good in it at all, and my brother looks like the hero.  He may have acted the part in that story, but it was my turn to shine in my blog " My time in tights".  This was a really fun one to do, and showed some people a portion of what I do for a living. My next blog was one of the more creative I had done.  I took a favorite of mine from my youth and fast forwarded it to 2010.  I called it  Please bring back Schoolhouse Rock. 

This one took several days to write as I went back and forth with ideas brewing and coagulating in my head.  I get asked the question often, how long do you spend on the blogs? The answer is about 2-3 hours each week, with some taking longer and some taking almost no time at all.  I like to get the idea for them about a week before I publish, and then it comes to me like a slow simmered stew.  I go to bed wherever I am that week and ideas on what to include pop into my brain and I might take a second to put them into the draft to remind me later of how I want to present it.  The notes for the Schoolhouse Rock blog included, Obese Bill, Lolly and Inflation,and Conjunction Junction and TSA screenings.  The blog wrote itself after that.  The final blog I wrote before this one, was one of the easiest.  What I did on my Thanksgiving Vacation was a look back at that 4 day weekend and I simply had to recount it. 

That brings us to the present and this blog.  I hope you have enjoyed the look back.  I wondered when I started this, whether I would run out of ideas for the blog, but honestly it seems unlikely that I will.  I also have taken a firm stance as to not monetizing the blog, there will be no banners or links on it that will create income for me.  I do this for my entertainment first, and yours second.  I'd love some feedback on what you have thought so far, and any ideas that you might have for future blogs.  I'm sure my family can think of a few family favorites that I haven't posted yet, and they are not shy.  The blog allows anonymous postings as I want all the feedback people are willing to share.  I don't edit comments and they go up as soon as you post them. Have at it and I'll see you next week!  Thanks for your visits.