When I was young my mother used to always take me food shopping. My parents didn’t drive, so we always walked. One place we always shopped was the butcher shop. It was about two and a half blocks from our house, crossing local streets. It’s where we purchased most of our meats, dairy and fruits. The owner of the butcher shop was Jack. He was very friendly. I used to wrangle a free banana off of him by doing impersonations. A popular singer at that time was Eddie Fisher. One of the impersonations that I did was of Eddie Fisher singing the song, “Oh My Papa”. Jack would ask me to stand on one of his milk cartons and sing that song. At that young age, I wasn’t very inhibited. As a reward I got the banana. I always enjoyed going to the butcher with my mom.
Continue reading Keep your eye on that kid!…
January 2007
Personal Stories – Using Story Prompts
Finding ideas to write about in your own personal past is sometimes difficult to do. I’ve listened to a number of tellers, who tell stories about their childhood and their families and events that happened in their lives. I’ve often thought to myself that I would love to tell lots of stories about growing up, but I really don’t have many stories that are exciting enough to tell. At least not that I can remember on my own.
That’s where the book, Telling Your Own Stories, by Donald Davis comes in. The cover description states, “For Family and Classroom Storytelling, Public Speaking, and Personal Journaling.” What he has done in the book is come up with a number of story prompts that can be used to trigger the memories you need to develop these stories. You can use the book for yourself, or use the prompts to get others to tell. Granted not all of the stories shared will become great tales to tell, but some of them might. Over the next few writings I hope to respond to some of the prompts in the book.
Where’s the Fire? Original version
When I was 5 years old, my father took me on a venture to the local branch of the Chemical Bank. While he was inside waiting on line to deposit money, I was allowed to free roam the bank. Free roaming the bank meant that I could go inside or outside the bank and just hang out. Times were a lot safer back then, which allowed my father to let me leave the bank and hang out outside without his supervision.
Safe or not, I explored the area immediately outside the bank. There in front of the bank was a red structure. This structure was about two feet taller than I was and similar in shape to a queen’s chess piece. It also had a black handle near to the top. As a curious and naîve boy, I could not help but notice that if I climbed onto the red structure I could reach the black handle and probably had enough strength to pull it. So I did.
