Well, the Broncos weren’t the better team on the 2nd. Wait till next year.
I need to go back to Louisiana briefly. I fell in love with cowboy movies while we lived in Forest Hill. Understand, we didn’t have a movie theater, but on some Saturdays a tent movie theater showed up and either only showed cowboy movies or I only went to them. We saw Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Randolph Scott, William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy), Red Ryder (I should remember who played him, but I don’t right now), Lash Larue/Whip Wilson, and others. I was hooked.
For movies like Bambi and Song of the South we went to Alexandria. And there was one movie shown at the school that made a deep impression on me, but now I can’t remember its name. Back when I could remember its name, I tried to find it again many times with no success. That may not make much sense, but there was something magical about the movie (that didn’t involve magic), which made me aware of the basic good in people – and it has stuck with me all these years.
Now, back to Guam.
One day when I went to play with Joe 5, a fire truck was parked near his house and firemen were keeping people back. Something had sheared a power line, and it was lying on the ground. I remember it because part of the wire was in a small puddle, and it kept sparking – bright blue sparks that were like erratic fireworks. I watched for a while waiting for the electrical crew to show, but since we couldn’t get close to it, I eventually got bored and left.
While we lived in Camp 2, someone organized a soapbox derby. Most of the race cars were made of a few boards and various kinds of wheels. I’m not sure where the wheels came from but most of them were hard rubber on a solid steel rim. The drivers steered the racers by ropes attached to a pivoting board that held the front axle.
The race course was somewhere near Apra Heights on what is now route 17. The road sloped enough that even the hard wheeled racers made good time. I think some of the racers had brakes that consisted of a board attached to the side that the drive could pull up on, but other than that the drivers had to rely on coming to a flat spot and dragging their feet.
However – One racer had fifteen inch or more diameter balloon tired rear wheels (at a guess motorcycle front wheels) with smaller tires on the front. I think it disqualified from the race because I remember it coming down the hill after the other racers. It was going like the proverbial bat, and the flat spot the other racers had used to stop didn’t even slow it down. It flew past the finish line and was going so fast it couldn’t make the turn farther down the road. Instead, it went straight ahead and took off as went over the embankment. It crashed into a thicket of the boondocks trees and came to a stop. Miraculously the driver wasn’t hurt, but I’ll bet he had to change his shorts.
As far as I know that was the first and the last soapbox derby on Guam.
I feel I need to say something about going to school on Guam. When we arrived, Richard and I went to school on Adalupe Point, where the governor’s office is now. I think we started our second year there, but the school was closed so it could be rebuilt. It stayed closed the rest of the time we were there. Our next school was a temporary one at Apra Heights, a Navy housing area. Or was the second school the one in Agana (Hagatna now). I don’t remember much about either school. At Apra Heights my best friend, Stanley Brown, became the target of a bully or excessive tickling, I’m not sure which. He ended up giggling uncontrollably. He couldn’t stop for over half an hour. I remember two things about Agana: a red pepper plant that just touching one of the peppers released enough oil that you couldn’t touch your face without it burning, and a friend who wrote plays that we performed in school.
I had this ready on Thursday, but I couldn’t make up my mind where to stop.
Next up some more odds and ends about Guam.