Gun Running in the Peace Corps

One Sunday morning I noticed a small canon on the lawn in front of the Governor's Mansion in the Casamance Region of Senegal. There beding no one in sight I managed to get the canon into the back up the Peace Corps pick-up truck. I drove south and crossed the border into Portuguese Guinea. My unlasful entry waw noticed by border guards who, when they saw the canon in the bed of the pick-up, ordered me to get the hell back to Bignona. I guess I was lucky that they realized I was just having some fun.

a Jeep Up a Tree and under the Wave

I was entrusted with a jeep pick-up truck by the Peace Corps in Senegal inasmuch as I was a lead person in our construction team of volunteers. The jeep had a winch attached to the front bumper. Ome boring Sunday afternoon I threw the cable over a sturdy branch of the tree and hoisted the jeep into the air. One of the PCVs playing around with a jeep played chicken with the waves on a beach near Dakar. A rogue wave finished the jeep.

Kramer Story

When I was about three years old one of my father's students, a rather arrogant man, asked me for a glass of water which I fetched for him. A little later he asked me for another glass of water to which I repled , "I cannot reach the chain."

Mitsi, our '36 Ford and my first trip to Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana and Utah

In the year 1947 my father purchased a 1946 eight cylindar 100 horse power engine for his 1936 Ford convertible. He had the car painted eggshell blue color. It had a rumble seat. He fitted the vehicle with a cover so that one could ride in the rumble seat in any weather. He also had a luggage rack made with straps to hold the suitcases. Here is a photo of my maternal grandfather C Frank Worman:

Thus outfitted my father and mother and I traveled west from Manhattan, NYC, to Allentown, Pennsylvania where we visited Aunt Edna Schatz (424 north 10th street) and my grandfather C Frank Worman (337 north 8th street). My grandfather was a contractor, he had built the house, doing some of the construction work himself. He was also an amateur photographer. The photo of my grandfather was taken during a trip to Texas that my parents did a few years before I was born. After a few days we journeyed onward via the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Mitsi to Pittsburgh, PA, where we stayed with Martha and Ellis Kleckner. The Pennsylvania Turnpike was an exciting road, it was the first high speed limited access divided highway in the country. Ellis was an officer in the Pittsburgh Steel Company. Ellis had a rifle which he fired into the sky, it then being the 4th of July. From Pittsburgh we journeyed through Ohio and the mid-west via Route 66 to Albuquerque. There, we visited with my sister Reva and her husband Ralph Edgel and their two children, Stephen (my age) and Reed, his younger brother. They lived at 601 Vassar Drive N.E. From Albuquerque we drove northwest to Salt Lake City, Utah, where I met my grandmother Marion Elizabeth Mitchell Hand. She like my grandfather Worman I knew only in their last years when they were mostly bedridden. On the way to SLC we stopped to visit with my sister Leola and her family in St. George, Utah. In the Sale Lake area we stayed with my Uncle David and my sister Marion in Sandy. Our trip back home took us through Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota. I remember Devil's Tower, Yellowstone National Park, Jenny Lake, the Tetons, Glacier National Park and Deadwood S.D. where Wild Bill Hikok was shot and killed.

Spaghetti Story

My father told me that when he first came to New York he had never eaten spaghetti. He saw it at a nearby table and ordered it. His companion, a musician who had hired my father to perform for a $100 fee suggested that he use a spoon to roll the spaghetti into a neat bite sized roll to make it easier and neater to eat. Afterwards, the check bounced for lack of funds; thus, my father said it cost him a hundred dollars to learn how to eat spaghetti.

Ketchup Story

My father told me that when he was a student in New York one day at lunch in a restaurant he sampled the kitchup that was provided to each table. He had never tasted ketchup; he liked it and took a second tablespoon of the ketchup. When the check came for his lunch there was a twenty-five cent charge for ketchup.