Since I keep a record of these beautiful days (remember,this is a work of fiction, right?...or is it? You'd think I'd know, being the author (and I use that term loosely) and all).
Nice use of double parentheses there...
First ...today's clip...in honor of John's birthday tomorrow (if I get this posted today)...
Anyway, to the best of my memory, here's the top five...totally subjective and these would be top five for no one else...just me.
5) May 4, 1974. Record low humidity. This enabled a nine year old kid (me) to hit a homerun at little league tryouts (ball was carrying well that day). Crowd (of 12) went wild....made me run the bases, just like Babe Ruth (except I'm not left handed, or bow legged, and I wasn't drunk when I hit it). I was the talk of Thornton Heights Elementary school the next week. The dark side of this story is that this was the highlight of my sports career (unless you count that unassisted triple play I turned on my slow pitch softball team...unassisted unless you count the other team being too drunk to run the bases as an assist...I don't). So in a sense, my years as an athlete were in a slow and steady decline after this day.
4) September 29, 1979. Coolest day/night of the Fall. This enabled me to have the stamina to stand up front against the barricade at the first concert I ever attended. Cheap Trick. Cheap Trick at the height of their Live at Budokan run. I knew EVERY word of EVERY song on that album (did I date myself by calling that an album), and though I haven't listened to that "album" in probably 25 years, I bet I still do. So I sang, and sweat, and got crushed against the barricade, and I loved it. I even loved after the show, waiting for my friend Kevin's Mom to pick us up (in front of the McDonalds on Congress Street - that isn't there anymore) and watching a fight break out. The excitement of the big city for a 15 year old boy...ROCK N ROLL !!!
3) June 5th, 1975. Hotter than hell. This predates air conditioning (at least in Maine, and in early June) and too early to have to have one of those monstro fans pulled out of storage yet, that used to have two settings....turbo and jet plane. Went to bed with my window open, no screens in yet. Woke up in the middle of the night feeling like there was "something" in my room. Then it happened. Attack. "What the hell was that?" Attack again. A bat...a vampire bat (I'm sure of it) with a wingspan of nearly six feet...or maybe it was six inches, either way...IT WAS A BAT! ...and I WAS OUT OF THERE! Down the thirteen steps to the first floor by leaps and bounds (this was not much more than a year after my glory trip around the bases, so I still had it in me at this point). I burst into my parents room, the room in which they would be sleeping, but not for long..."Mom, Dad, there's a bat in my room!" My Dad, "Go back to bed". Me, "No. there's a bat in my room...I can't go back up there". My Dad, still not registering, "What?"...and so forth and so on until I finally got them out of bed. My Dad's solution was to close "the bastard" in there, which by the way was much easier said than done...seeing as how when we got the wall to wall carpeting installed a few years before the rug wasn't cut "quite right" so that none of the doors would close tightly...anyway...a few feet of rope and a fews hours later, my room was safely cordoned off to be dealt with the next day.
Dealing with it he next day entailed me having to remove everything in my room and bringing it down those stairs and put it in the driveway...why the driveway, I don't know, but to the driveway my stuff went...and by stuff I do mean stuff. (Literal meaning of stuff is something of little meaning, significance, or worth...unless you're an 11 year old boy). Mad magazines (dozens), paperback books (hundreds), comic books (thousands), baseball cards (millions), Playboy magazines (one)...anyways, you get the picture. All with the constant worry of "that bats in here somewhere". After a few hours, a driveway full of my valuables, a lecture from my Dad (not the "titstick" one, but he would have used it , if it had been his repertoire at that point) and no bat.
To cut a long story short...and to get on to numbers two and one, the bat turned up on the curtain rod in the dining room that night. My Mom screamed, our neighbor Jesse Cook whacked it with a broom (bringing down bat, curtains and all), bat got scooped up, tossed into the woods, and that's the end of that. Phew.
What number was that one again?
2) Today. Unseasonably warm, over 80 degrees. Got the lawn taken care of, the gardens cut back, the Halloween decorations up (well mostly up, still have to do the ghosts in the trees, and the windows upstairs have not been turned into eyes peering out onto Clinton street yet) and ran into three friends at the grocery store.
First conversation (in the Produce department) was about the weather (appropriately enough) and somehow led to stories of swimming at Willard Beach in October....and yes, for those of you reading that don't know where Willard beach is, it's in Maine. Maine with the moose and snow and eight months of Winter Maine. Anyway...
Second conversation was in front of the Meat case with an old friend (old in time of friendship not of age...well, ok, maybe of age too, since we've been friends for so long, how could we not be old...unless, one of us was Ponce De Leon and we had discovered the fountain of youth...but, neither of us are, so let's just stick with old, ok?). She told me I was her favorite "facebook" friend...or I told her she was MY favorite "facebook" friend...I don't really recall, mostly because of my age. Either way , it was nice. Except for the people that were interfering with our pleasant conversation by actually trying to do some shopping. "Sorry, but by me blocking you from buying that bacon could have added at least a few days on to your life expectancy".
Third conversation was in front of the milk cooler with a wonderful friend from England (sorry Andy, my other wonderful friend from England). We talked about everything... ..pumpkins.....dogs......husbands and wives...surgeries......helicopters...writing....radio....Paul McCartney...get the picture? I was in no hurry, seeing as how I hadn't hit the frozen food section yet. Nice addition to a wonderful day.
Oh, and another friend gave me the title to this blog. Strolling the kitties. Doesn't get any better than that.
1) Number one...Numero Uno...best day EVER.
September 9, 2001. Beautiful Summer day in the Fall. Wedding day. Setting - Overlooking Higgins Beach Maine. Officiated by the Dad of a dear friend of both of us. Only other person if the wedding party was my wonderful daughter (only daughter at the time). Me and Stef in front of our closest friends with the ocean as our backdrop...the scene almost matched the magnificence of my bride to be. Nice...simple....perfect. I can't tarnish that day with all the nonsense that I used on the prior four.
So, that's it. The best five weather days of all time according to Pete Wildes.
Peace.
