The majority of my summers as a lad were spent at the YMCA day camp. They wisely took us on all kinds of fun field trips, but Fridays were always for roller skating.

Finally there was something I could kick ass with – I was the best skater in the entire camp, counselors included. I could back skate and chose to often to show off to anyone looking. That got me in hot water with the wheeled referees monitoring the floor. Nobody was allowed to back skate unless it was an official “back skate.”

The problem with that rule was no one else could back skate. That was, until JoyceLynn came into the picture. She could skate better than any of us and somehow managed to get an official back skate. She and I would have the entire floor and two songs all to ourselves. Too bad there was never a roller skating team in high school; that would have made a big difference to my student status on campus. Well, maybe…

Get a load of my “skating” shirt when I was all of eight-years-old. And how about those ears, huh?

My visit to Cleveland went by in a flash. One of Ma H’s cousins had his one year anniversary party a year late. They were obviously supposed to have it the year before, but his wife had this little breast cancer thing so it was postponed till the last weekend of July. She is healthy and thank God, the cancer is in remission. Ma H, being the extreme giver and super party planner, put the shindig together and made it a blast, can you tell?

I was investigating some dressers downstairs and came across some photo albums. Ma has taken hundreds of pictures dating back to where she and my dad first started to hook up so you can imagine the enormous trip I had down memory lane. I took about 20 pictures of myself dating from when I was two-years-old to my high school graduation picture. Under threat of grievous bodily harm I had many of them scanned for use here on Hazzard Ahead. Just a little something to look forward to here in the final weeks of summer!