Odyssey Of Toby Grated (1) This is an autobiography of events in my life. I am 70 years old. When my Dad turned 75 he came down with Alzheimers and died 8 years later. A few years ago I thought that I would write down my most memorable memories in case I have Alzheimers. Perhaps it will help me stay oriented. After writing these memories down I thought other people may enjoy these memories so I made it into this book which I give away. I submit it in both .txt and .pdf. Toby Grated (Toby G Rated) is my pseudonym. Enjoy, Toby Grated [email protected] ODYSSEY OF TOBY GRATED By Toby Grated ([email protected]) Copyright � 2015 Toby Grated All rights reserved. ISBN-10: 1517253152 ISBN-13: 978-151723158 2 Introduction Hello Reader. I�m inspired to write this document because I�m getting old. As I spend more time reflecting on my life experiences I feel it would be entertaining and possibly educational to share some of them with you. Some will be humorous, some outrageous, some whiney, some embarrassing, some sad, some opinionated and you will probably find some boring. I have ordered these episodes chronologically because I can�t think of a better system. I sprinkle in a few of my favorite jokes for free. I write with a pen name as I�m revealing highly personal information and I am also ashamed of some of the episodes I describe. Also by being anonymous I feel I�ll be more honest with you and to myself. I also promised myself that I would follow some of Yogi Berra�s advice �tell it like it was�. In other words no phony modesty, no phony bragging, just tell it as best as I can remember. I�m 69 years old, married with no children, have BS & MS degrees in Earth Science Geophysics, lived in 10 States and Canada. I�ve worked in the US, Canada, Europe, India and the Philippines doing geophysical exploration for oil, minerals, treasures, archaeological artifacts and other buried manmade objects. 3 1946 � Detroit, Michigan � Born 2nd oldest with an older sister. Eventually had 5 younger brothers and sisters. Often wish Mom and Dad would have stopped with me. I�m not sure but I may have been the last white guy born in Detroit. 1949 - Michigan � Shot a key into the sky Got a kids bow & arrow set for my birthday. Mom and Dad couldn�t locate the car key. Asked me if I knew where the key was. I told them I shot the key into the sky. Sure enough they located the key on the roof taped to my arrow. 1952 � Kansas � Animal Trainer Mom liked to take us to the city zoo. The sign said the skunks in the cage were de-scented. However when I poked them with a stick they sprayed me. Mom had me bathe in Tomato juice which helped get rid of the stink. Thru my clothes away. 1953 � Kansas � Reader In 2nd grade and Mrs. Johnson would read a story to us every day at noon for one hour. My favorite time of the day. Eventually it dawned on me that if I learned to read I wouldn�t have to wait for Mrs. Johnson to read the 4 story. Started reading and have loved to read ever since. Thank you Mrs. Johnson! All in all I found school to be a very boring activity with a few excellent classes and a few outstanding instructors. I was a mediocre student during most of my education. Am always surprised how much I learned considering my lack of eager participation. My favorite way of learning was with correspondence courses � hate classrooms. But I�m glad I got educated. It was worth all the suffering I guess. 1954 � Kansas � Research Scientist Dad was an animal husband PhD graduate student at Manhattan State College (now University). Taught a Saturday morning meat cutting class. Each Saturday they would butcher a different kind of Animal. My job was to squeeze the shit out of the intestines and count the number of worms that came out. Some sort of research project. Can remember the smell. Got so good at it I only needed one hand to do the squeezing and counting � ate a sandwich with the other hand. 1954 � Kansas � Troublemaker At recess me and my buddy threw some rocks at some girls we didn�t like. When I sat down at class my teacher petite Mrs. McClain grabbed my collar from behind. I had sunburn on my neck so it hurt and I thought it was one of the girls so I elbowed her in the stomach and knocked the wind out of her. I got my first formal paddling from the principal. Three stingers � the paddle had holes in it. 1955 � Kansas � Christian Raised as a Presbyterian. Received a small bible from the church for successfully completing all my Sunday school lessons. My Grandfather was Irish Catholic his wife Baptist. She joined Catholic Church to marry him but later returned to the Baptist church. Created friction between 5 them all through their married lives. They had separate bedrooms. Very sad. I stayed a Christian till I went to college. Eventually became a secular humanist borderline atheist. My wife Joann became a hard core atheist. The organized religions have too many absurd beliefs and don�t make sense to us. Read the �God Delusion� by Richard Dawkins for a good summary of religious absurdities. Prefer Christians and other religions to the Islam religion. Other religions will shun atheists. Muslims consider it their holy duty to kill non-Muslims. Says so in the Koran. They have to change their ways. There is something like 1.4 billion Muslims in the World. They need to understand that the other 5.6 billion non-Muslims aren�t going to let ourselves be killed. I suspect in the long run the Muslim religion will join the ranks of the failed religions. Hope so. In fact I hope all supernatural religions will just fade away. A few months ago read results from a �Pew� pole. They had polled all of the Muslim dominated countries and asked �do you support violent jihad against infidels?� The results ranged from 15% � 45 % that supported violent jihad. Let�s say an average of 20%. That means there are 300,000,000 Muslims that want to kill me. Scary! That religion has got to go! Hope people will learn that it is more important to love each other than to love any God! 1956 � Michigan � Sex Education Spent part of every summer at my grandparent�s house. One day my friend Chas said �let�s go over and get Karen to show us her private�. I didn�t believe him but we went and got Karen and went out in the woods and she pulled her skirt up and panties down and sure enough! But the deal was we had to show her our privates. But Chas and I got in an argument who should show first and Karen got disgusted and went home. 6 Kids will be kids � no harm done. Nowadays if the psycho babblers and Criminal Justice Bureaucracy learned of such behavior they would put us kids in �counseling� embarrassing and traumatizing us and our families and destroying our friendships. Such is the current social absurdities and sex abuse paranoia. I heard Chas say something about intercourse so when I got home I asked my Mom what intercourse meant. She took me in the bathroom and explained that intercourse is when a husband inserts his private into his wife�s private to deposit a seed to fertilize her egg so she can get pregnant and have a baby. That was the extent of my sex education. The rest I figured out for myself from friends, playboy, x-rated novels and my imagination. Served me well. About this time I started getting sexual feelings and masturbating. I was bi-sexual at the time. Both girls and boys appealed to me. Have since learned about 30% of boys going through puberty start out as bisexual but most eventually become straight as I did. The rest remain either bisexual or homosexual. 1956 � Indiana � Environmentalist In the 5th grade Elementary School. Spring time �Clean up Paint up Fix up Week�. I and my friend were assigned the important job of painting all the trash barrels on the playground with green paint. After we finished we had some paint left over so we decided to decorate the side of the school with some graffiti. Unfortunately we were the only kids in school with green paint. Got paddled by the principle. That brings up the subject of butt paddling of kids by principles with the permission of the parents. I got paddled three times in grade school and deserved it every time and knew I deserved it every time. The biggest 7 hurt comes from the humiliation of all the kids in school knowing you are being paddled. Some of the best lessons I received as a kid. I�m all for it. 1957 � Indiana � Bird Hunter Bought myself a bb gun. Mowed lawns and saved my money to pay for it. Had a cool scope on it. Accidently shot out the neighbor�s large front window -$85.00. Dad said he would let that one go by with no punishment. My bedroom was on the second floor with several windows and Dad had just installed all new screens. Sparrows in trees outside my bedroom. Kept shooting at them but I wasn�t hitting them. Then it occurred to me that shooting through the screens slowed the bb�s down and that was why I was missing. When Dad saw the holes in the new screens he took my BB gun and smashed it against a tree. End of bird hunting days with BB guns. 1957 - Indiana - TV Star Jerry Van Dyke (The brother of Dick Van Dyke) had a small TV Studio close to where we lived. He had a local variety show and admission for the audience was free so us kids would sometimes go watch his show. His show was sponsored by a local dairy. He would pick a kid from the audience to be in the live advertisement. One day he picked me. He asked me if I liked the milk. I said yes. Then while he talked about the milk I drank a glass of milk. My most vivid memory was how filthy the glass was before they filled it with milk. Tasted OK. 1958 � Indiana � Boy Scout I had been a cub scout so advanced to a boy scout. Our troop went on a 50 mile bicycle ride to Turkey Run to camp out. Truck brought our camping gear and beans and hot dogs. Cold rain and sleet whole way. Got to Turkey run pitched tent in rain and ate raw hot dogs and cold 8 chili. We all got sick. Went on a winter campout in a park, 20 Fahrenheit snowy. Went to bed and the troop leader brought a fry pan with hot coals into his tent to help keep warm. Sleeping bag caught on fire and burnt him. Took to hospital. We all got sick. But I learned allot of good stuff in Boy Scouts. Allot of good memories. Even the bad memories are good memories if you know what I mean. 1958 - Indiana - Chicken Farmer For Easter parents bought us 6 kids 1 chick each. Dad was an animal nutritionist doing research for Pfizer. We raised those chicks on a special experimental food that was supposed to increase their laying capacity. Sure enough when they started laying they would lay several eggs a day. Only problem was that the eggs were the size of jellybeans. 9 1959 � Michigan � Fisherman Grandfather charted a cabin cruiser to go Perch fishing in Lake Erie. Strategy was to find a flock of feeding seagulls. Drive boat towards them and coast through the flock. Using three hooks per fish line. Sometimes brought up three perch at a time. The seagulls were feeding on a school of minnows that are being chased up shallow by a school of feeding perch. Caught 88 perch in one afternoon. Was an avid fisherman all my life till my late teens when all my fishing gear was stolen from my grandfather�s garage. One pole was a classical bamboo fly rod given to me by Jack Parr�s uncle that my grandfather knew. Never got back into it much after that. 1960 � Michigan � Hoodlum In the 9th grade I decided to go live with my grandparents. Crowded at home with five siblings. My grandfather who I was very close to just retired from the Railroad after 51 years. He started out at 15 filling oil lamps on the RR. Was superintendent of the Michigan RR yards at retirement! Got in with a group of young hoodlums; cut school, got in fist fight, shoplifted, drank whisky, smoked cigars, tipped over outhouses, broke into a hunting cabin and had a party. After about 4 months of crime I decided that wasn�t the route I wanted to follow so I drifted away from that group. Good thing many of those boys wound up in prison and lived short difficult lives. When I think back on it I think I did it for the thrill, something new and exciting. Luckily never did get caught. At my 50th high school reunion learned that one of those boys was still in prison! 1960 � Michigan � Hunter/Trapper/Fisherman Was closest to my grandfather, he was my idol and mentor. Every summer would spend with him. He would tell me endless stories of hunting, fishing and trapping. Bought me my first fish pole, 22 rifle and 16 10 gauge shotgun. Brought up hunting, fishing and trapping. Thanks granddad -lucky kid and kind of spoiled. Spoiled is nice. One of the biggest gifts he gave me was his Irish humor. Helped get me through many hard times. Trapped muskrats. Skinned and stretched the pelt and sold for $0.75 per pelt. Eventually found a restaurant that served muskrat and gave me $1.25 per fresh muskrat for whole unskinned carcass. Good deal! Went on my first deer hunt using a WWII vintage bolt action rifle. Sitting down resting with my back to a tree. Heard the hoofs of a deer off to my left and saw him just as he went behind a tree. Slowly I brought my rifle up and took aim. He stepped out from the tree looking head on at me. I fired and hit his chest he fell back then forward on his knees. I panicked (buck fever) and got the empty shell casing stuck in the chamber as I tried to rack in a new shell. Got my knife out and cut my thumb all up trying to Jimmie the casing out. By the time I got it fixed the deer had disappeared. I followed his blood trail into a swamp. Never could find him. Went ice fishing and had a small tent I used as a fish house. Sat tip-ups outside the house. My granddads collie would bark whenever a flag on a tip-up sprang up because he knew we had a fish on � smart dog. 1961 - Michigan - Free Car My great uncle had a 1952 Buick sitting in a field on his farm. He said we could have it for free if we removed it from his property. Me and my buddy towed it to my grandfather�s place. We cleaned the engine up, charged the battery, put some gas in it. When I turned it on it turned over a couple times then there was a big bang! We went out behind the car and there was an asphyxiated dazed rat with his nesting material. Apparently he had made a nest up the tailpipe. 11 1961 � Michigan � Skipper Uncle used to come up to visit and go fishing. He had a 5 horse Sea King outboard and we had a row boat. He left the motor for me to use during the week. Went out fishing one day but forgot to tighten the clamps that held the motor on the boat. Motor jumped off the boat and sunk out of site. Mucky bottom � never found motor. 1962 � Minnesota � Cool Guy Mom and Dad bought a 1961 red Ford Galaxy convertible. I had just got my driver�s license and was really a cool guy when driving it. Last day of school and I was doing wheelies in the high school parking lot � showing off to the girls. Unfortunately the engine died and I smashed into a station wagon. Instantly went from cool to fool. 12 1962 � Montana � Cowboy I and my friend Lon decided to go out West and become cowboys for the summer. Dad got us a Job on a Ranch by Great Falls. We hitch hiked from Minnesota to the Ranch. It was a fine job; cut, baled and stacked hay. Summer fallowed. Pick and shoveled out an underground basement. Worked 6 days a week, 10 hours a day. Paid $7.00 per day and room and board. Lasted one month, quit job, hitchhiked home. Never rode a horse. All the other jobs I�ve had since then seem easy. I have worked at 35 different jobs in my life. A piece of Mark Twain�s wisdom �Variety is the spice of life�. 1963 � South Dakota � Supernatural Experience I�ve only had one experience in my life I would call supernatural. We lived in a 3 story split level house. Me and Mom and Dad were in the recreation room in the basement. My youngest 2 year old brother was sick in my parents� bedroom two stories up and at the other end of the house. All of a sudden Mom jumped up yelled my brother�s name and ran up the stairs. My Dad and I both looked at each other in confusion then ran after Mom. My brother was having a convulsion and was blue in the face. Fortunately Dad had been a medic in WWII and knew what to do and my brother recovered. I asked Mom how she knew my brother was having a convulsion. She said she had started feeling short of breath then realized
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