Golden Times

Some of you folks have called me a story
teller,

Let's see if I am.

As, I'm
sure, like most of you, I draw what I write from an
event

or happening from my younger years. An instant
or time revisited

and prose or poetry builds from
that. This actually happened.

Since my girls were old
enough to halfway understand,

I've teased them with
stories of my "Golden" days.

Such as my "sailing with
Christopher Columbus back in "42" when

I was "trail
blazing" for the Navy." One such story didn't hit close to
home.

We were bombarded with it.

My
oldest was in the third grade and back then

if the
school needed Patty or me for minor reasons,

they'd
just send a note home, via my kids.

Once I came home,
dead beat from a hard

day at work. Something alerted
me when only my

second greeted me at the door. To
this day I wished

I had just packed my bags and left
the country.

Wondering, curiously, what the oldest
had done to be

restricted to her room,( That's the
only place she could have been.),

I stepped into the
house.

Patty waited, ever so patiently, until I sat
at the

table and took off my boots, before she
dropped the "bomb."

THEN, she told me. The school had
called about

an incident happening that day. Shawna,
my oldest,

had called her teacher a "DAMN"
liar!!!

Startled, I looked up from exercising my
toes.

"What?" I exclaimed, "Shawna?" "What
happened?"

Shaking her head, she said she wasn't
sure, but could

"Mr. Nichols" come to the Parent/
Teacher conference that night?

I had never been into
stuff like that, but

I grudgingly showered as Patty
called a setter for the girls,

and away we
went.

Now, back then I was six -four in stocking feet
and weighed

Two-forty and pretty much had my way?.
Until that night.

Have you ever introduced yourself
to a five foot-three inch,

not weighing more than
one-twenty, third Grade History teacher

with "steam"
rolling out her ears? If not, I'll tell you right
now,

"It ain't fun! That "steam" seems to shrivel the
skin,

to help lose weight. It must, for by the time
I left her class room,

I may have retained four
inches of the height, but I promise,

I wouldn't have
tipped the scales at more than a few ounces.

"At
last! I have met the infamous Hamp Nichols,

The
greatest sailor of all the "New World."( Folks,

that
Was a "quote!")

It seems as though just that day, she
had been

enlivening the children with how Christopher
Columbus

had discovered the "New
World."

Shawna, bless her heart, proceeded to call
the teacher

"A DAMN LIAR," her dad discovered the new
world.

He had been in the crow's nest of that ship
and had seen the

"Golden Arches Of Mc Donald's"!!!!
He had told her so!!!!

Believe me, this is not the
only visit to school,

but this site isn't big enough
to hold them
all!!!!

                               
HAMP NICHOLS