Growing up in Chillicothe back in the day was like no other time in my life. As I flashback to the mid 1970s, I stop and think about what a typical day would be like, I can only produce the following based on my memories. 

The perfect day would start off by contemplating what to have for breakfast? I ask myself if I should call one of my friends and ride our bikes to BB’s and get one of Gnile Beebe’s cake donuts, or should we go downtown and get a couple of donuts at Weitz’s Bakery. After satisfying our hunger bug, we pop on over to see Bill Devoss at his barber shop. A fresh quick trim sets the tone for the rest of the day. After getting my ears lowered, we stroll over to Ben Franklin and look through their comic book and baseball card selection. I start to think about how many times I sat on Sandy the horse, wishing I had change to make her come to life. After browsing the ample of amount of time without buying anything, we would then head back home to call a few friends to start a pickup game of baseball on the corner lot next to my parent’s house. A couple of solid hours in the hot sun, drenched with sweat, we grab a quick drink. Nothing quenches the thirst like ice cold water out of the garden hose. I catch myself wondering what time it was, so I run inside and see it is about 11:45am. We all pile in the kitchen and see what is in the fridge for lunch. We decide that a quick PB & J sandwich would digest fast enough and still give us time to get head down to the Shore Acres pool for a 1pm opening. Along the way, we need to stop to air up our bike tires at Wareco. On any given day, this stop could also be a stop at Kerr McGee or Jerry’s Standard. Once we got to the Pool, we slam our bikes in the bike rack and get in line to wait for the concession stand to open. Helen Gould, Angie’s grandma, is working and she makes the best Suicide drink of all time—mixed of all the fountain drink flavors. We cannot actually swim today because we have a baseball game that night at the Pearce diamond. We stroll the fence line around the pool multiple times with our drink in hand just hoping to catch one of our teammates breaking the rule of swimming on game day. We will not actually tell the coach, but they do not know that. We know the game is still a couple of hours away and we need to conserve our energy, so we peddle our bikes in high gear over to the Chilli Bowl and play a few games of pinball. We need to be to Pearce by 5pm to start warming up. We know it is going to be a good game, as our team Barb’s Boys sponsored by Barb Truitt is taking on Sid’s Radio sponsored by Sid Crabel aka the Coax Kid. It is a close game, but in the last inning my teammate David Buckman hits a home run over the left field fence onto the roof of the school. Our team would end celebrating the victory by going to the A&W Root Beer stand and enjoying the best drink served up to a youth in a frosty mug. On my way home, I stopped off at Jim Miller’s house and convince him to come to my house. I tell him that my mom would drive us downtown to pick up a pizza at Alfano’s, where Mrs. Pottinger had it waiting for us. We take it back home and devour it. Just as we think the night is winding down, Wade Crabel calls the house phone and tells us that he and David Lauber and Buckman are heading down to the Town Theater to catch the last showing of Smokey and the Bandit playing that night. Of course, we cannot miss that. Mom drops us off and agrees to pick us up after the movie is over and drops my friends off at their homes. We all agree before we part ways that we will do it all over again tomorrow! 

Those were the best of times!