The day is cloudy but bright. It looks as if the sun will be making an appearance sometime later. It is 41°, cooler than the last few days but seasonal for March. The wind blew all day and all night. I was lucky my deck glass table top didn’t break because the wind toppled the umbrella which then took the table along with it. I didn’t expect that to happen as the umbrella is through a hole in the center of the table so the wind was a mighty wind. Today is calm; nothing is moving.

 The Globe mentioned that Rex Trailer of Boomtown fame, a local program we all grew up watching and can probably still sing the theme to, has been designated the state’s official cowboy. At first I thought it a bit strange that this state would have a cowboy, a state fisherman maybe, but not a cowboy then I gave it some thought. Every Saturday morning Rex Trailer did it all: rode his horse Goldrush, played the guitar and sang cowboy songs, did the best rope tricks and once, in 1961, rode a covered wagon from Greenfield to Boston, a distance of 94 miles, to raise awareness about children with disabilities. He made us all want to be cowboys. I would have given anything to be on Boomtown, maybe even be made sheriff for the day. 

I grew up with television. I doubt there were many days in my life when I didn’t watch something. The Mickey Mouse Club was a program I never missed when I was a kid. As I grew older, my interests changed, and I watched shows like Dark Shadows and Bandstand and so many more. It wasn’t until Ghana that I had to do without TV. There wasn’t a single set in my town. Reception never got that far north. We learned to entertain ourselves.

 Bill and Peg, my friends and next door neighbors, were also PC volunteers. Most nights we got together, listened to music and played a game. One game was the alphabet game. The letters went down the page in a line in order from A to Z then we’d find a sentence and put one letter of each word next to the alphabet letter. If you had A with a B next to it, you’d have to find a well-known name with those initials like Aaron Burr and then you did the same for all the letters. One of my fondest memories of this game is Bill’s choices. It was often a name neither one of us, Peg and I, had ever heard before. Bill always said the guy was a football player. We voted against him every time.

My mother had sent me a Password game. We played it so much we had just about memorized every card. Unsuspecting company would play against us. We never lost. Despite the absurdity of our clues, we always guessed the right word.

The red ball attached by an elastic to a paddle was our favorite. We’d go into the back courtyard and challenge each other. Our eye hand coordination was really bad at first then we got spectacular. I can’t imagine what our neighbor thought when he heard us from the yard counting in unison: one, two and sometimes all the way up to over 200. When the elastic broke, it broke our hearts.

Games are still a huge part of my life. My friends and I always play a game when we’re together. Phase 10 and Sorry are our current favorites. We keep track of the winners of each game, and we always make fun of the loser. I won’t quote any of the responses the loser usually gives. This blog is Rated G.