Born just as the WW2 ended, and I have lived thru the best of times as a youth in my early teens. Hunted and fished myself to death starting at about 10. Can remember that first Daisy pump BB gun with that crooked stock....wore it out then on Christmas got a new one. Then at about 11 or 12 my cousin and hunting partner started to like the girls and every thing changed....had to do it all by myself for a couple years. That would put it at about 58 or 60....the best years of my life. Before the segregation set in, LBJ, space launch, '58-'60 cars, catching 8 lb bass off the bed, priming sand lugs, wood burning stoves, killing 8-10 hogs every winter, Mama giving me a bath outside in a tin tub that the sun had heated the water, helping her hang the clothes on the line, my first hamburger cooked over Daddy's home made charcoal pit, riding my first bicycle down a rain slick highway and going over the handle bars and busting my head open, getting on the school bus with my fingers taped up with black tape by Daddy because I would not quit biting the fingernails, playing "spin the bottle" at my first girlfriends house and got that first kiss. Made the high school basketball team 1st string and 4 years of being top scorer, lost the county championship on a last second shot that haunts me to this day. Oh, those were the days. Everything changed after high school and really started down hill since then....been some good times and good years but will always be the best of times when I was many years younger. Can't regain those years...just relieve the memories till I die.
