Second episode of two about my experiences in grade school in the 1950s.

My first day of kindergarten in 1949 was all new to me. I had no conception of how to go to grade school. The other kids were strangers, who acted strangely in some cases. One girl poked me in the ribs with her elbow when she thought I was not observing the rules...as she understood them. The urinals in the boys room loomed higher than my head, and they called the boys room "The Basement." But I survived.

As kids in the 1950s, we were allowed to roam freely through the neighborhoods of our village without the close parental supervision that today's children endure. We created our own things to do, which frequently entailed a certain element of risk that routinely put us in harm's way. Left to our own devices, however, we mostly survived the dangers we encountered with little damage to body or soul. Along the way, we learned valuable lessons about coping with the capricious existence that we encountered in our daily lives. 

Local community events were the highest form of entertainment imaginable for us kids in 1950s Adams Center, New York. In this episode, listen to my stories of about donkey basketball and a carnival game where you could win a live duck to take home with you. 

Entertainment was not easy to come by in my small  town of Adams Center, New York in the 1950s. But simple things like radio shows, passing military convoys, playing in the snow, and stage performances like the now extinct minstrel show provided all the diversion we needed to keep ourselves amused. 

The Army's system for signing for property is notorious among junior officers in that branch of the military. Some examples in this episode show how bizarre the process is and the lengths to which it is deployed.

On a cold winter's night in 1952, my father, mother, brother, sister and I became snowbound in the family car on a stretch of highway in Northern New York State. AWe spent all that night in the car. The following morning, local residents shoveled their way to our car and took us into the home of a nearby resident. We spent the day waiting for the snowplow to clear the highway while we got to know the other travelers who were stranded with us.

This is the story of a fire at my father's business in a small upstate New York village. Heedless of any danger, we children rushed to the scene and began carrying items from his and the other affected businesses to the lawn adjacent to the store. Firefighters at first ignored us, but eventually erected barriers that kept us out of the burning building and ended our salvage operation. The fire was exiting for us kids, but not fun for my parents.

This is a reminiscence about a young man's obsession with radio broadcasting. I take you behind the scenes at a small local radio station in rural Northern New York State. As the only person in the station, I alone determined what hundreds of listeners listened to on the air during some long Sunday afternoons in the early 1960s.