My brother Rick for some unknown reason would play pranks on me, then in return when he least expected….. Revenge!…. This went on for some time until one day this game had an unexpected ending. You see, my brother Rick was lying on his back in the living room floor reading a comic when I creped up and punched him in an area …. Well lets just say below the belt!
At that moment in time it seemed like the right thing to do … You know, pay back! But after the hit I knew that maybe this idea of mine was the Wrong One!
Rick must have been that man of steel because he jumped up faster than any human alive and started chasing me!

Good thing I had my PF Flyers on (You can run faster and jump higher)

I was just like Flash in the comics!…Because he couldn’t catch me.

In our home you could go from the living room into the dining room through the kitchen and back into the living room, a circle. Around and around we went. I knew I was getting a big lead on him so when I went back into the kitchen I went out the back door into the garage, and out the open garage door, down the drive way and onto the side walk. As I turned to see if I needed to keep running, I saw Rick grab a hold of the opened garage door and gave it a gigantic hard pull. Instead of the big garage door shutting, it came crashing down, off the track and onto the garage floor with a big crashing noise! The look on his face I will never forget! In an instant the game was over, and time seemed to stop!
After a short time I walked back to the garage. Rick was sitting on the garage steps that led into the kitchen. We didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes, then Rick said “Can you help me fix the door?” So I did. After a couple of hours the garage door was back up and like new. Dad never knew the difference.
From that day on there was no more pranks and no revenge from me. I think he and I became more than just brothers that day…. We became friends.
Grandpa Tom

The house we lived in had two bedrooms, one for Mom and Dad, the other for us kids. Rick and my bedroom was designed to mimic a sailing ship’s cabin with built in bunk beds, each having there own Porthole window. Each window could actually open, and if I wanted to, I could stick my head out of, which I did quite often!



Next to the bunk beds were built in drawers and cabinets and all the walls in our room had Tung and grooved pine boards that were stained and varnished. On the ceiling was a boat steering wheel that was made into a light fixture. When you turned the lights out at night, stars and planets would suddenly appear on the ceiling just like you would see on a clear night on the open sea….. It was very cool!
As time passed my brother Rick wanted his own space so he moved into the basement, it was like having his own apartment. He was then happy and so was I.
In an earlier blog I mentioned a few Television shows that I watched as a kid. One was called the Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. The show was a television hit! It was about a boy named Rusty that was orphaned from an Indian attack, he and his dog Rin Tin Tin were adopted by the troops at fort Apache in Arizona.
Like any kid show, they saw a profit to be made so they started making kid toys that are now collectables.
I don’t remember asking Mom or Dad for any of the toys from the hit TV show but I was given a Rin Tin Tin Fort Apache set.



I had tons of fun on the floor in my room setting up the fort and fighting the Indians. By the way, if your being attacked by Indians you just had to have music playing in the back ground on my old suitcase record player.



The only record I had at the time was a 45 rpm called Davy Crocket King of the Wild Frontier, that I played over and over and over during the Indian attacks…… Ah the good old days!
Another game I played in my room was with a card board box. If you take the box apart and lay it flat on the floor it looked like the letter “t”. On the top of the “t” I would draw a face. The left and right side of the flat box were the arms and at the bottom of the “t” were the legs. It then became a pirate. Why a pirate? Remember ! Because you’re in a ships cabin. Or maybe my box would become a see monster?! I also had Dominos that I had fun setting up in long rows on my floor, I always enjoyed knocking them over and hearing the clicking noise when they hit each other as they were falling down. Another game was stacking playing cards on top of each other to make a tall structure then shooting rubber bands at it. Then there was always game of marbles. If I ran out of stuff to do I could always stick my head out the porthole window!
Grandpa Tom