Highlights Magazine

Stories by Alan Vargason

When I was a child (Maybe six or seven) I remember in school having the opportunity to subscribe to Highlights Magazine. It only cost a quarter or fifty cents I don't remember which. I just remember wanting not to be the only kid in class not getting it.

Being from a family not having much, my parents said I couldn't get the magazine. So I devised a plan to get it any.

One morning my dad was getting ready for work when I looked in his wallet, to see if maybe he had a dollar so I could get it and say it was a gift from some one.

All he had was twenties.... so I did the UN-thinkable and took one. At school the teacher told me I needed to get change. I don't remember where but I did.

Having done that now the hard part returning the change... I put it in his socks?????

What was I thinking????

They never said anything as I remember!

Thanks My Evil Twin.

Shop Class Wrestling

Stories by Alan Vargason

When I was growing up I fell of my grandfathers tractor and hit my head knocking me out. This then caused me to have mild seizures from time to time (the local Dr. said it caused me to have mild epilepsy). The Dr. excused me from P.E. in high school.

While I would have liked to go to P.E. and have some extra sports involvement I was unable.

Some sports coaches saw it as me being a wimp, one in particular was the high school wrestling coach.

I took wood shop all four years that it was available to me and one year that coach came through our class going around the large work benches trying to recruit boys for his team. He came to me and I told him I had no interest in wrestling, and explained I had been on a physicians care who had excused me from P.E. .

He then started giving me a hard time accusing me again of a wimp, so I proceeded to show him, pushing him back to one of the benches and pinning him to the table.

He never bothered me again about being a wimp or joining wrestling.

Hall Monitor

Stories by Alan Vargason

Our high school had hall monitors to make sure the halls where classes were being attended would not be disturbed by persons milling around out side classes.

Our high school principal was a large man, he reminded me of my grandfather in size, but in that size he harbored great feelings. He would address the high school student body proclaiming his fondness for the school coming close to tears when talking about his having attended there as a student and now as principal.

One day my cousin and I were standing waiting to go down a hall where there was a monitor sitting, we were talking about going down the hall regardless of him being there. We were kind of teasing him in the process.

The next day we were called into the principal's office, we were told to stand in front of his desk while he explained in uncertain terms that it would not happen again and we would have after school detention for a week.

WOOLY BULLY

Stories by Alan Vargason

Exploratory classes in school I took Wood Shop, Electronics and Drafting. The Drafting class was in a room with no windows. It was in the mid sixties when the song came out Wooly Bully (SAM THE SHAM AND THE PHARAOHS).

Coincidentally the name of our teacher for this class was Mr. Wooly. He was a younger red haired man who until that day we didn't have a clue of his temperament.

We came into class after hearing that song, still singing it, wow did he react, he didn't want to hear one more peep out of us until class was over.

We were required to use clip boards for his class and shortly after he pronounced no more talking I snapped my clip board and it was ten times louder than and other room in the school, his face went from red to scarlet. No one ratted me out either.

Hang Time

Stories by Alan Vargason

Gym class on a rainy day we were all in the gym playing with basketballs and volley balls, some of the volley balls were a little flat and were easy to palm when we were trying to dunk them in the basketball hoops.

A few of us decided to try our luck dunking the volley balls, the boys who played basketball weren't having much trouble, but some of us that didn't were.

After a few tries though we were starting to get a little more height until some of us finally got it. Just about then the coach came back from his office downstairs.

He was talking to someone across the room when I took my turn as I dunked the ball I hung on the rim and then I fell a burning on my stomach, he had slapped me for hanging on the rim. Though I was wearing a tee shirt I still had a hand print on my stomach.

3-5-1 (Paging My Evil Twin)

Stories by Alan Vargason

One Saturday I heard the page 3-5-1 so I picked up a phone and was told my boss wanted me in the maintenance room. When I got there he told me to take the medical waste stored for the week down to the dump and bury it.

I told him I could not and he asked why so I told him I could not drive the truck. He then told me he had seen me driving my dad's car, to which I said it was an automatic not a stick transmition.
 
He then had Donny paged. When got to us he told us to go to the dump and don't come back until I was driving.
 
Donny drove us to the dump and we got out then he set the truck so it drove around in circles while we buried the waste then threw rocks into the river.
 
We then started to learn to have me drive the truck (a three speed on the column). The entire time we were there, three hours then we headed back, some what jerky driving at times but I learned how to drive a stick.
Our boss never questioned why it took us so long to get back.

3-5-1 (Our Page Number)

Stories by Alan Vargason

3-5-1 is what was paged when someone wanted one of the three youths, Dave, Donny or my Evil Twin. Our boss number was 35 and his boss was number 3.

The three of us were High School students and would assorted jobs i.e. painting, cleaning, laundry and gardening, week nights and on Saturdays.

Some nights after the boss had left and we had finished our assignments we would have wheel chair races in the basement corridors.

There was also a place where we openly burned rubbish in the back of the hospital which had a wire fence around it. We would punch the middle out of the screw area of light bulbs then fill them with used paint thinner. We would dump the burnable trash in and start it on fire, then we would throw the light bulbs full of thinner at the wire enclosure and watch them explode.

Grape Wine in a Mason Jar??

Stories by Alan Vargason

In my junior and senior years of high school I worked at the local hospital doing cleaning, laundry and maintenance.

One winter evening our crew was assigned the job of painting a second floor restroom, it was quite warm in there with the heat on and one of the three was off doing trash detail.

My friend Donny left for more paint and upon his return I discovered he had also brought back several travel size bottles of alcohol. He handed me one and we opened two and chugged them, "wow" did it suddenly get hotter in there.

We continued working till Dave came and got us to go home, Donny gave him a bottle and he drank it. Then we cleaned up and went home.

The next night our boss stayed late so he could show us something we had done wrong the previous night in the restroom. We thought he had found the liquor bottles but it was something quite different.

He took hold of the paint and gave it a pull, the paint peeled off the wall we had just painted. We were then told to read the directions on the can before we did any more painting.

This was a new type of rubber based paint and required water clean up and thinning, we had used paint thinner, oops!

We had to sand the entire restroom and wipe down the walls with water before re-painting.

My First Ticket (Or Pumpkin Stealing Gone Bad)

Stories by Alan Vargason

The person I had (after graduation I had to quit) worked for at the hospital had a place out east of town, and he grew watermelons, tomatoes and pumpkins. One night my brothers friend talked us into going out and seeing what we could get. So we took two cars, his and mine.

We put the stuff in his trunk and left, I was having trouble seeing out the windshield and had my bright lights on when no cars were approaching. This one car was just even when I put the brights back on and I noticed it was a police car.

He pulled a u-turn behind me and caught me and pulled me over . He came to my window and flashed his light around inside the car noticing our pants were wet he asked why and I told him we had slid into a ditch and the grass was wet pushing the car out.

Then he asked to see in the trunk, there to his supprise was nothing.

He came back to my window where he wrote a ticket for failure to dim my lights to on comimg traffic, I didn't complain.

I drove back to where were going to meet and found my brother's friend had dumped the goods not wanting for us to get in trouble for that. At first I was angry but then I thought better of it.

I went to see the required Justice of the Peace a week later. She and her late husband had formerly owned a paint store down town and I was working at the other paint store. I got her talking for some time (twenty to thirty minutes) about the business and got her mind off the ticket.

When she finally got to looking up the cost of the ticket she lowered it to a quarter of the actual amount she could have fined me so I paid, then thanked her and left.

Thinking it could have been much worse.

Bottles by The Case

Stories by Alan Vargason

When I was a teen soda pop came in glass bottles in six packs or wooden cases of twenty-four. The bottles had a three cent deposit and cases had a three dollar deposit.

This one summer day as my brother and my evil twin were walking on the other side of town near the Texico station we spotted piled behind the returned bottles.

There was one attendant working there and we saw our opportunity to make sum money. We grabbed one of the cases and walked away from the station. Then we returned making sure the attendant saw us walking to the station from a distance.

After giving us the third degree as to where we got the bottles, where we lived and where were our parents, he finally gave us three dollars and change.

That was the last time we did that!

Red Lights on Bland Blvd (Lovers Lane)

Stories by Alan Vargason

One Friday night I got the use of dad's car and with my brother and his friend were out cruising main street. His friend had a six pack and passed around some cans. I was driving and took some cautious sips. As we crossed First street bridge I noticed a construction cone in the middle of the street and as I passed it I grabbed the top and carried it a couple blocks and set it back down.

Just as I set it down I noticed a police car turning on to Main street a block or so ahead, so I turned and we went toward Bland Blvd to see what was going on.

As we were driving back toward town we saw a parked car and decided to have some fun, we had one of those flashlights with the flashing red blub on it. So as we were approaching my brother held it up with the red light flashing. As we got closer we could see cans being thrown out the windows.

All of a sudden my brother's friend yelled for me to hit the gas and get out of there fast, I did and later he explained that car belonged to one varsity football players.

 

Mom Almost Lost an Eye (A Loaded Cigarette)

Stories by Alan Vargason

I remember when exploding cigars and cigarettes were funny stuff in the movies and on TV.

One day at our local five and dime I noticed a package of cigarette loads and reading the package I found this to be what was used in TV and movies.

My mom smoked an occasional cigarette each day and I bought some and loaded one of the cigarettes in the pack laying near her chair (I thought it would be funny as on TV). I left the loaded one sticking out of the pack a little hoping she would pick it first.

After much coaxing she picked it up up and lit it, after a couple of puffs the end of the cigarette blew of and shot into her eye.

This was not funny as it was on TV.

Peaches Before Dinner

Stories by Alan Vargason

My brother and I were always hungry when we were teens.

This one summer day we decided to sneak into the basement through the window to find something to eat.

Would it be crystal pickles, apple sauce, dill pickles or the other canned goods stored there, no!

It would be canned peaches, we opened the jar and started eating, him then me until they were all gone. 

Just as we finished and were trying to find a place to hide the empty jar we heard mom calling everyone in for dinner.

We waited to make sure no one would see us then climbed out of the basement and went in for dinner.

Fore

Stories by Alan Vargason

We had a neighbor move in one summer that had a couple of kids, one a girl about twelve and she asked if we wanted to play with her dad's golf clubs in their back yard, so we did. We had played for quite a while around the yard when we discovered some interesting wedge shaped clubs and decided to give them a try.

We hit the ball and found the clubs caused the ball elevate quite quickly. Our neighbor had an enclosed porch on the back of the house with multi-pane windows (3x3).

We were hitting the ball with these clubs toward the house when my brother hit his through one pane of glass, we all paused as her dad came out to see what had happened and chew us out.

Not five minutes had passed when we decided to play more, bad mistake, the first hit of my evil twin and the ball went through an adjoining pane not six inches from where my brother's went.

This time he took the clubs and I told him I would fix the broken windows and he said he would if I just bought him the glass.

Damming the Dry Run

Stories by Alan Vargason

In the summers we as a family would often visit our grandparents on their farm in Lamont on Sundays, it was a wonderful place for us kids to roam and play.

This one particular Sunday being the only family to visit them, my brother and I set out alone. We had just started walking through the old pasture when we spotted the tile run off near the road. We stopped and found a place we thought would be great to build a dam. Not thinking of the consciences when we started.

The banks of the creek were badly eroded and it was easy to remove large chunks of sod. We were pulling sod and layering it back and forth until it was nearly three feet tall and holding back the water quite nicely.

It was just as we were standing and admiring our handy work when we heard mom calling for us because they had decided to go home, cutting the visit quite short. We had no time to break down the dam as she was calling for us again, so we left it and ran to the car and got in wet pants and all.

The following Tuesday mom got a call from her mom, grandpa was mad because he had only found about our dam as the water backed up some two hundred yards and was blocking the lane going down to the farm buildings.

This was actually the first time we did the thing we were being accused of.