Time to lighten up a bit...

I was young once, the blondest baby boy in the hospital when I was born, amazing in Minnesota considering the number of Vikings up there. This is a picture of me and the neighbor girl, my friend. She was a real blond, too. The curls I can't tell you about.

Cowboy hat, canted and pistol in my hand, I am sure I had holsters in the house, but pockets always worked well for light work.

When I was close to twelve my mother decide this was the time to go to South America to visit my grandparents, and uncle and aunt (her sister). There was Mom, me, Joycelyn, Wynn and baby Nanette. The last would tell you that she wasn't a baby, but close. The reason we had to go then was the children all were half price tickets. So, we flew from Pittsburgh to Miami, to countries along the Andes to Montevideo, Uruguay. That was where my grandfather and grandmother had the Friendship House. I got to see a lot of the places my mother grew up, try to eat a wax apple, had too much wine, go to a church camp in the eucalyptus trees (the smell was great) and there meet the first real crush of my life. Graciela, a brunette of almost fourteen years. I was too young and terribly smitten.

I bring it up, because Sunday in the gathering room while I had coffee and talked about stuff with the other men, I caught a good look at a beautiful teen with black hair and a smiling face. What I noticed is that I wish her a wonderful life, and I wasn't thinking that she and I should hook up. I am so old, but I still think that is the kind of girl/woman I have always been attracted to - I just no longer have the impatience of youth - and the true appreciation of a fool old man. Life is good, remembering it makes me happy and hopeful for the future generations.

The girl, Julie, in the picture was killed by a bear in Glacier National Park, where she was camping. My mother wrote me about it, I was just in the Army.