Christmas tree

In the past I would wait as long as possible to put up the Christmas tree.(One year I didn't even put the tree up.) This year I put the tree up the earliest that I ever have. Jenn and Jordon came over with Paul and the girls to help Ashley and Christopher decorate it.

Owl House Update

Well, it has been almost a year since my project was completed. It was quite a chore getting the house to the top of the tree. It was a big production getting it attached to the tree limb as well. Looking back, building it was the easy part! I keep looking up at the box but I have not seen any signs that anything has moved in. The perch looks the same as does the paint job. I even keep looking on the ground under the house to see if I can see any droppings or even an owl pellet. Nothing. No visible signs at all.

Then, the other day Christopher tells me that the owls are too loud and he can't sleep at night. I said "Yeah, right." "No, really Dad you need to pull the house down." he tells me. I have been listening but I didn't hear anything. We came home late on Thanksgiving from my dad's house. As I was walking up the walkway to the front door I heard it. "Whoo.....Whooo". I opened the front door and let everyone in and then went back outside to see if I could see anything. I heard it again. It sounded like it was coming from the tree on the side of the house. I stayed very still looking in the dark to get a glimpse of what was making this sound. ( I researched the sound on line and it sounds like a Horned owl.)

I waited but could not determine where exactly the sound came from or what had made it. It is still a mystery. I now have a new past time in the evenings, looking for owls. I may have to just sit up on the deck for an evening. I will see if I can get a picture. If not then maybe I can get a sound track to post.

Spell check

This was so funny I had to pass it along.

Archery

It had been many years since I shot archery. I guess it's like riding a bicycle.

Blood donation

It was a typical Saturday morning for me. I was up at 5:30 and out of the house by 6:30, heading to the blood bank for my platelet donation. The deer were on the side of the road munching on the green grass and paying no attention to the cars driving by. I arrived to be blood bank at 10 till 7 and am amazed to see that there are no other cars in the parking lot. Usually there are 5 or so cars. I park and walked up to the building and see all of the usual faces.

John greets me as usual and knows my name before I even give him my ID. (That is impressive given his advanced years.) I fill out my paperwork and Shari checks me in. I get to the donation room and there are staff sitting all around with nothing to, how sad. This time of year it is so important to keep the supplies going. The truth of the matter is people are going out of town or have family in town and don’t take the time for the donation.

I sat down and selected my movie. I watched Ghost of Girlfriends Past. It was very funny movie. I turned down the shirt post donation. I have so many shirts at home I don’t have room for any more. I went to the snack room to have a juice and coffee before leaving. That is when I met Mr. P.

He walked around the corner and smiled before having a seat across from me. His grey hair was cropped in military style and he was dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt. He appeared to in his seventies. I struck up a conversation with him. He was there to give platelets. He explained that he would organize the blood drives at his work and someone mentioned to him he could give platelets. He said that he gives his 24 times a year and has been since he doesn’t know when.

I am certain that Mr. P must have at least 60 gallons of blood product donations. That simply amazes me. I went over 19 gallons with this donation and still have a few more donations to go before I reach my 24 for the year. Mr. P is my new hero. He takes the time to give of him self to help others for so long. I hope I can follow his example and keep giving as long as I am able.

I often think of the lives that I have touched with my donations. Who received my blood product and why? Were they young or old? Were they a good person? Did they survive what ever the reason for the need of my blood product? I will never know.

This Little Piggy

I have a pair of shoes that I keep at work. They are very broken in. In fact I have had to suture them up several times now. I just can’t part with them. That is one reason why they are at work. If I brought them home I would be afraid they would disappear. I have a new pair that is exactly the same only in black. The problem is most new shoes hurt my little piggy that cried all the way home on my right foot. That is a story all its own.

The house we lived in while we were in Pecan Valley had a laundry room just inside the back door. That was one of our play rooms. There was a pipe that ran across the ceiling. Donnie and I loved to climb up on the washer and dryer and leap to the pipe. We then would swing out from the pipe and land on a pile of clothes. All the while yelling like Tarzan. Oh what fun!

We also make our lunch quite often. Peanut butter and jelly was a staple. We liked to use the Bama swirl. It is the two swirled together. Back in the day most everything came in a glass jar. Donnie was making his sandwich and the jar slipped out of his hands and fell to the floor. Of course not wanting to get into trouble he cleaned up his mess with a towel. (I’m sure by now a picture is starting to form.)

Latter that day we were playing Tarzan in the laundry room. I pushed the dirty clothes out the door to have a soft landing place. I climbed up on the washer and started my very best yell. I jumped out and grabbed the pipe, swung out and let go. I made a perfect landing in the pile. I felt a pinch on my foot. I looked down and saw blood everywhere.

I backed off the clothes and looked down at my foot. The little toe was dangling off to the side and blood was dripping very fast. Donnie grabbed a dish towel and wrapped up my foot and hollered for Mom. One more trip to the emergency room. I think they knew us on a first name basis as we were there a lot!

The toe was stitched back on with apparently little trouble. I don’t recall how many stitches it took but the scar goes completely around the toe. To this day I still can’t bend the little toe or even move it. I just started to get feeling back in it.

That is why I love my old shoes. I have them broken in really well. They have stretched in all the right places and my little piggy doesn’t cry all the way home!

The Leap of Faith

It was one of those summer days where we had nothing to do. So, being the children of our father, we went looking for something to keep us entertained. We went all over the neighborhood looking for friends but everyone was busy doing something inside (that usually meant they were grounded!) So we kept looking. I suggested that we explore the area around the water tower, so off we went.

There was a gravel road that made its way up a hill and at the top was the water tower. Well, it was more a storage tank than a tower. Think of the oil storage tanks at a refinery, about thirty five to forty feet tall with a flat top. We arrived to the top of the hill and proceeded to check out the boonies. We noticed on the side of the tower there was a ladder that went to the top. I looked over to Donnie and said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” “Let’s do it!”

The ladder started about ten feet from the ground. We spent a few minutes jumping up to catch the bottom rung. No go, we were too short and could not jump that high. After a few more minutes of problem solving, Donnie gave me a boost up. I was able to grab the rung and then interlocked my fingers around the ladder. Donnie then used me as an extension of the ladder and climbed over me. At last we were on our way to the top.

The view was great! We could see the entire neighborhood. We walked the perimeter of the tower and took it all in. On the back side of the tower you could see where they had to clear out part of the rock structure that the hill was made of to get the tank to fit. (Actually it was coral, not rock. It’s an island!)What we failed to realize is that as we could see the neighborhood, the neighborhood could see us!

We heard the car driving up the gravel road before we saw it. We went to the road side and then we saw the flashing lights of the Military Police vehicle. Oh crap! Busted! We backed away from the side so they could no see us. That’s when we heard it. The bull horn, “Get off the tower now!” I looked at Donnie, “What the hell do we do now?” “Dads going to kill us!” he proclaimed.

We had little time to think it over. We got on our bellies and crawled over to the edge where the ladder was located. There were two MPs standing at the bottom trying to reach the bottom rung. They tried and tried with out success. “We’re saved” I thought as I saw one walking back to the car. Then my heart fell when I realized what they were doing. They were pulling the car up to the tower so they could climb on the car to reach the ladder. We backed away and started looking for a way out.

The back side of the tower where the hill was excavated was our only chance. The ledge of the hill was about ten feet down and about fifteen feet away from the tower. We had to make a decision and fast, we could hear them coming up the ladder. “Let’s do it” I whispered. I went to the middle of the tower and ran as fast as I could. I made a running leap and landed about a foot onto the ledge and rolled to the tree line. When I looked up I saw Donnie running in mid air. It was like it was in slow motion. He landed in about the same place I did and rolled over to the tree line as well. Talk about a pounding heart!

We ducked into the trees and laid flat against the tall grass. We could see the MPs walking the top of the tower. Reaching up and wiping the sweat off their brows. They looked very perplexed. They couldn’t figure out what happened to us. It was as if we disappeared into thin air! We headed off down the back side of the hill and off into the boonies. We were hauling butt because we could not be sure if they would investigate further.

We made it to Hells hole and then stopped for a breather. There was no way they could catch us now. We sat down and I looked over at Donnie. He had blood on his leg! The bleeding had stopped and didn’t look stitches bad. The only thing we could figure is that when he rolled with the jump he must have scratched it on a piece of coral.

We made our way through Hells hole and slowly through the neighborhood, making sure that no one was looking for us. What had started off as a boring day turned into a great adventure.

Hells Hole

The most favorite place for the Mullins boys to hang out while on Okinawa was the boonies. It was like our playground. There was always something to do or someplace new to explore. One such place that we found was thick with trees and always felt much hotter than it was on the street. That is why we called it hells hole, it was hot as hell!

It was while we were in hells hole that we discovered another aspect of the island. When people would move from the island and they did not want to take their dog with them and could not find anyone to take it, they just turned it loose. The dogs formed packs of feral dogs that roamed the boonies. We referred to them as boonie dogs.

One day while we were down there the dogs caught our sent. They were not afraid of us in the least. Before we knew it we were surrounded by a pack. There must have been 15 to 20 dogs. There was no place to go. That’s when Donnie shouted “up, go up”. And that’s what we did. We all scrambled up the trees as high as we could go.

Before we knew it we were at the tops of the trees and out of the dogs reach. We were trapped! There was no place to go and the dogs were not going anywhere. So I continued to climb up. Up and out the top for the tree. I looked around and it was a sea of green. There were vines growing across the tops of the trees and was binding the branches together. I lay flat as I pulled myself completely out of the tree. It was like I was floating!

I stuck my head down and shouted for the rest to continue up and out the top. Before long everybody was lying on top of the trees and poking our heads down to see if the dogs were losing interest. They were still sniffing and roaming around. We could either stay where we were or we could try to move away. It was decided to see if we could travel the tree tops.

We started off spider crawling across the tops of the trees. It was slow at first but then we got the hang of it. Before we knew it we were a distance from where the dogs were. In fact we were having so much fun we had completely forgotten about they dogs! We poked our head through the trees and the dogs were gone.

That was the first time we had encountered the dogs and it wouldn’t be our last. As that was our first time “tree crawling” but it wouldn’t be our last either. It was so much fun to travel the tree tops and explore the boonies from a new perspective. It amazes me how we were so inventive back then and dared to think outside the box.

Think outside the box. There is no telling what you can accomplish and no telling what you may find out about your self. You might be surprised!

Fireworks and young boys

Fireworks on Okinawa were no big deal. Anyone could go to the market and purchase them. In fact, most of the Mullins boys spent our allowance money (and birthday money and Christmas money) on fireworks. Nothing was more fun than finding new and interesting ways to use what we bought.

One firework that we just loved to pop was called a 2B bomb. This one was way cool! There was no need for a match. The firework struck on a match box. It would smoke white and then smoke yellow before popping. We learned that if you waited for the yellow smoke you could toss it in water and it would still pop. There was a creek that ran through the boonies and it was full of these eel looking fish. They would act like Koi, if you tossed something in the water they would school around it. We would spend a lot of time down there tossing in the 2B bombs and disorienting the eels. Oh what fun for boys with nothing better to do!

Models were very cheap over there as well. We would put the models together and spend hours blowing them up with just about any firework we had available. Sometimes we would open up the firecrackers and spill the contents to another container in an attempt to make a larger impact on the object of our “affection”. We tried to make a small cannon once. Our first attempt used aluminum arrow shafts. All they did was mushroom out on us after the fuse was lit. Something sturdier was necessary if we were to make this work. We took an empty CO2 cartridge and packed it with the powder from firecrackers. We used the fuses twisted together to make a long fuse and when we lit it we ran! It turned out to be more like a rocket than a cannon! It shot off in one direction while the projectile went the other. A few minutes later there was a small grass fire that was in the general direction the projectile went. Oops!

Perhaps the worst thing we ever did involved the use of bottle rockets. We would use them to send messages up. Not that we would ever find them, it was just fun, for awhile. Then we had this hair brained idea to launch a lizard. Why not, they were all over the place. We caught several lizards and tried several methods of tying them to the bottle rocket. We had them tethered with a sling, tied directly to the stick, what ever way we could attach them. Sadly, looking back, I don’t believe that any of the poor creatures survived.

I highly recommend that if you have boys mixed with fireworks you keep a close eye on them so they don’t try these themselves. Model rockets have a compartment for sending up a payload safely!