Little Milton

When I was about 25 I was living in an apartment in Omaha, NE. I would occasionally visit a small record store in town and on one of those visits I bought the album, Little Milton Sings Big Blues. I really liked it and played it quite a few times. 

A few months after I bought the album, an upcoming Little Milton show was announced for the Carter Lake Ballroom on the outskirts of town. I decided to take the opportunity to see him live. The Carter Lake Ballroom was a huge old building with a stage at one end, a large dance floor, and about a 2 dozen small tables in the back.

I arrived at the venue a bit early and found they had filled the dance floor with chairs to accommodate the guests. I decided to sit at one of the small tables in the back and it wasn't long before the Ballroom began filling up with people there to see the show. Shortly before Little Milton's show was about to begin, a nice middle aged couple stopped by my table and asked if they could join me. I said, "Sure."

The show was great and the 3 of us enjoyed it together. 

As near as I could tell, of the several hundred people there for the show, I was the only one who wasn't black. 

  

The 50 mile hike

Before we moved to Pawnee City, NE we lived in San Anselmo, CA. where I was a freshman at the Sir Francis Drake high school. My friend Karl, a sophomore, and I used to hike together in the hills near San Anselmo.

Around that time President Kennedy was actively promoting 50 mile hikes as a way to get the country in shape. Karl and I managed to get a 50 mile hike approved for our school. The plan was to go from the high school to Pt Reyes Station and back which worked out to about exactly 50 miles. It was scheduled to start the next Saturday morning.

That Saturday at 4 in the morning Karl, my brother Chuck who was only 12 years old, my friend Laura, and I started out. We alternated between walking and jogging - we would walk for about 15 minutes and then jog for about 15 minutes.

At that time our family had a 54 Ford 9 passenger station wagon. My mother and my younger sister, Dorothy, loaded our car up with 2 large water jugs, 3 packages of paper cups, a first aid kit, and the 50 sandwiches they had made. The spent the whole day going along the hike's route stopping to help the hikers. They gave them water and sandwiches, massaged legs that had developed cramps, and used the first aid kit to deal with blisters.

When they came across hikers that wanted to give up, they loaded them into the car and took them back to the high school. Mom and Dorothy did a really great job of supporting the 50 mile hike. Without them it could have turned into a catastrophe.

The guys from the school's cross country track team finished first in 11 1/2 hours. Karl, Chuck, Laura, and I came in second in 12 1/2 hours and were really sore for about the next 3 days.

In retrospect, it was a pretty stupid thing to do, but what's the point of being young if you can't do a few stupid things once in a while.