We had a bird back during the time my father-in-law, Wally, lived with us.  I had always wanted a bird.  Then I got one.  It turns out it was the second one but I didn’t remember that when Sherry brought the chick down stairs one Christmas.  He was a Quaker Parrot.  I had to close my eyes while she came into the room.  When I opened them up I saw a little bundle of feathers and fluff.  There were probably a few tears shed as I looked down at him--or her, you never knew for sure unless you had an expensive procedure done which we didn’t do.  My father in law named him, Herbie, after the car in the Disney movies.  He became “a him” because we just assumed he was a boy.  He was green and the car was green, anyway Herbie became his name.
          He spent a lot of time in his cage hanging upside down and babbling.  I assumed that he was going to talk but he didn’t early on.  He just babbled.  As I look back on it now, he was probably behaving the way a baby does who doesn’t speak yet.  He was making a noise that sounded like words but didn’t mean anything to us.
          I used to take him out of his cage and cuddle and talk to him and he became my buddy.  They tell you to exercise your bird so I let him perch on my fingers and then put another finger in front of him encouraging him to step to the next finger.  When he did that I moved my other finger back for him to step on.  Each time I did this I said step up and that was his first word, or words, “step up.”  I was excited the first time he said step up and said so.  Shortly thereafter part of our routine after the step up exercise was for me to say give me a kiss and I would put his beak under my lower lip.  Herbie really got into that and said “Give me a kiss.”  Then, he said his name, “Herbie.  We were thrilled that he knew three words, or phrases. 
          We were adding on to the house at that time and I used an air hammer a lot.  While I was renovating the house Herbie was in his cage make renovations of his own.  I would press the hammer and put three nails in place.  Herbie would make the same sound of the air hammer and put three nails in place.
          Sherry’s dad had a very distinctive way of yelling for her when she was upstairs.  It was kind of a sheRRY.  With the first part a bit softer and lower than the last.  It wasn’t long before Herbie was saying that too.  He probably got a real kick out of her running past his cage to see what her father wanted when Herbie was the one who had summoned her.
Of course he also said “Hi” when we waked past his cage and then “Ok” after we said “Hi Herbie” to him.  Then he began to put few of his words together.  He would stand there very calmly in his cage and say “Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”  Our cat would come over to his cage and stand on her hind feet and stick her nose in between the bottom bars of the cage.  Herbie would then swiftly bite her nose.  As she jumped back, he would laugh at her with a throaty “Ha Ha Ha.”
          As I said, this was the time of the great renovation project where I was adding a room in the back for Wally, and also adding an extra seven feet to the second story which was to become additions to the rooms upstairs but will probably forever be the side attic.  During this project it was our custom to ask everyone at the front door where they were going in case they could pick up something for the project, which had taken on a life of its own.  The front door was also next to Herbies cage and it wasn’t long before he was asking everyone as they left the front door “Where you goin.” 
          But it was with Sherry that a real routine started.  When she went into the front room Herbie would say, “Hi.” And she would say “Hi, Herbie.”  He would then say “sheRRY.”  She would say “What Herbie.” And he would say “Where you goin.”  She would say “I’m going to the store.” He would say “Ok.”
          Herbie thought of himself as part of a flock, his flock, and when he was on top of his cage he was nearly at tall at Sherry and me.  His flock had two birds that sat in the “tree” higher then Herbie and they were Sherry and myself.  He was third in line and the animals were at the bottom of the tree and, since he was third in line, were beneath him.  They could and should be pecked.  The grand kids were also pretty small at that time and lower in the family tree.  Although he thought they deserved a good pecking we didn’t let them handle him much.  He was a bird living with his flock in a human house.
          Herbie was my second bird.  My first bird was a crow.  I was about 4 years old and we lived in Arthur, Nebraska.  When I went outside to play, I pretty much had the whole outdoors available to me.  We lived on the edge of town where it was Arthur one minute and ranches the next.  Of course calling Arthur a town was a bit of a stretch.  It was a village really of about 200 people in a county of about 700.  My mom tells me that you could hear the vroom, vroom, vroom of the diesel engine that powered the town but I don’t remember that.  I just remember that it was a great place for a kid to grow up.  My Dad used to sit on the porch.  When I thought I was walking over the range by myself he had me in his binoculars.  I remember one time hearing a hum coming from a telephone pole and thought it was Roy Rogers talking to the other cowboys out on the prairie.
          The telephone was a pretty new device in Arthur.  It had been around for years, just not in Arthur and so my Dad and the other people in town and out in the country used to prank each other when the phone came.  That fun continues to this day but it was a novelty then.
          I had a bird back in Arthur, or at least we were friends.  I named him Jimmy Crow.  When my dad taught classes at the high school across the street made of sand and round stones all of the kids would run to the window and say “Dougies’ playing with Jimmy Crow again.”  I never really did like that name but as I got older but at four I didn’t really care.  Jimmy would flutter down to my window when I was taking a nap in the afternoon.  He’d see me through the window and tap at the window with his beak until I woke up.  When I did, I got up and went out to play with Jimmy Crow.  I always wore a Santa Hat because he rode around on my head and poked at the spot where my ears would be.  One of my favorite places to play with him was the old water pump in the back yard.  Our duplex had inside plumbing but there was still a pump in the back yard.  I used to pump the water by the handle and Jimmy would bath in the water and take a drink.  We must have been friends for a long time but I don’t remember much else except one day I came out to play with Jimmy Crow and forgot my Santa Hat.  Jimmy flew to my head and began to pick at my ears which were exposed without the hat.  It really hurt, and knowing now how Herbie could get with his beak it probably did.  I threw my hands up on my head to protect myself.  I must have hit at him too.  Anyway, Jimmy promptly dissolved the friendship.  My last memory of him was Jimmy flying away from me, high in the air over the little two room school house where the next year I would start kindergarten.  I never saw Jimmy Crow again.

     At Cedar Falls High School in Cedar Falls, Iowa our main rivals were the hoods.  I’m not sure what they called us.  In tenth grade someone was always saying that there was going to be a rumble in Mandalay Park this Friday night.  Of course Friday night came and went and there was no rumble.  That’s probably because we all had other things to do but I can imagine the scene at the park if all the hoods showed up with all of us there also.  There would be a lot of shouting and nothing would happen until Orv showed up and then we would scatter like ants.  You spoke his name with reverence.  Orv, or Orville Morris, you said his name in hushed tones.
     I remember one time in 8th grade, shortly after I had moved to Cedar Falls from Mankato, Minnesota.  I was in Peete Junior High and was sitting next to Orv.  He looked at me a few times and scared me to death.  When he spoke to me it was always with a sneer and threat.  I remember one time he and a bunch of his friends had cornered a friend of mine in the lockers.  Now the lockers were set up in rows that that extended out into the hall.  There were small lockers set on top of each other.  Coats were to be hung in the large space under the lockers.  I’m sure the mastermind who designed the lockers thought the teachers could see under lockers and that would be good enough to stop any of the monkey business that might happen in the secluded part, way in the back.  It was certainly an interesting design, and a huge failure.  A group of persons could go back into the lockers and do who knows what.  With so many legs and feet to see, no one would be the wiser.  Well, as I said Orv and a group of his friends had cornered my friend in the back of the lockers.  I heard the loud sound of someone fist connecting with someone else and the next thing I saw was my friend flying out of the lockers completely horizontal to the tiled floor.  I was concerned about my friend but at the same time was pretty impressed.  I figured my friend did have a wise mouth and probably deserved what he got.
     Each day the stories about Orv grew bigger and bigger.  It was said that he could lift a car off the ground standing in the front of it.  The person who told that story had his listener’s rapt attention as he told of Orv walking to the front of a car, grabbing onto the bumper and lifting the front half of the car into the air.  Cars have gotten smaller and lighter since then but in 1964 they were heavy and everyone left believing the story to be true.
     Orv had a way of walking.  You could see with each step he made, he commanded attention.  There wasn’t a wasted pound on him, and as he walked, you knew it.  He had a swarthy dark complexion and long wavy black hair that reminded you of Danny in the movie Grease.  I remember one time in 11th grade he came out for football.  He played fullback and was given the ball.  He wasn’t fast but everyone got out of his way except our big linebacker.  This linebacker was easily 6 feet tall and weighed close to 200 pounds.  Orv didn’t put a move on him, he just ran at him.  When they collided Orv was still running and the Linebacker was headed backward, in the air.  It was simply amazing but Orv quit the team.  The rumor was that it interfered with his 8 hour night shift at the John Deere Tractor plant in Waterloo. 
     It was about then that our class’s attention turned from the local Hoods to the very real problem of guys from Waterloo schools dating our girls.  From then on the Rumble in the park was always going to be with the guys from West High School in Waterloo and it was always at Mandalay Park and it never happened.  It was about that time that everyone started carrying sticks for self-protection.  Now I don’t know if this is true or not but I may influenced that.   My family had relatives who were missionaries in Africa.  They probably hadn’t been there for 30 years but I remember that they brought back some gifts for my dad when he was a boy.  There was a strange tooth brush that was made out of a curved branch with a frayed end.  They brought a war hatchet that looked every bit like you would imagine a tomahawk to look and they brought with them a walking stick.  This walking stick was about 18 inches long, a couple inches round and had a face carved into it.  I was told by my dad the purpose of the club was to be carried by the elders as they walked around the village at the end of the day.  It looked peaceful enough but it was carved out of Iron wood and it certainly could be used as a club.  I have no doubt it would lay a person’s head open if that was the need at the time.  I kept these things on display in my room and told everyone who would listen of their purpose.  It was about that time that people started carrying sticks or clubs in their car in case they happened to run into the boys from West.
     Each stick was different.  One of my friends carried a sanded down 2 by 2 with wire wrapped around the end.  He told of the time he was jumped by four guys from West.  He reached under his car seat for his stick.  He did some damage and drove them off.  Or so he said, some of his stories were more entertainment then real fact.  Unlike the stories about Orv, which we believed to be true, my friends stories were very entertaining but probably didn’t happen. 
     My stick was in fact a boomerang cut out of ¾’s inch ply wood.  It was big and cut at a 90 degree angle.  Actually it was cut and sanded down during my ninth grade boomerang phase.  A  ¼ inch boomerang always came back but broke in the first day or so.  We tried to cut a big one out of thicker plywood to solve that problem.  The ¾ inch ply wood didn’t break, but didn’t come back either.  When you threw the boomerang it flew about five feet above the ground and then at about 25 feet out it went straight up in the air. I took it to the park and threw it different ways to try to make it come back but it always went about 25 feet straight out and then up in the air.  I never figured I would actually throw it at anyone but it was sure scary looking and I think that was the idea.  One time I did throw it.  I was driving my 1949 fire engine red Plymouth convertible.   The top was down, it was a sunny day and school was just out.  I was following a bunch of my friends who were in a car about 25 feet in front of me.  They were slamming on the breaks, making faces and generally being a pain.  So I slammed on my breaks and quickly grabbed my big boomerang from under the seat, stood up and threw it at them.  I can still see their faces turn from goofy grins to looks of abject horror as the boomerang flew toward their back window.  It came very close to them and then, just as I knew it would, it went straight up in the air as their car peeled off.  I ran and got the boomerang and got in my car and headed home.  If I saw kids behaving like that today, one or all of them would be in jail, but it was a different time or maybe I was just younger. 
     We didn’t hear about any more episodes with the sticks as that phase ran its course.  However, I did see Orville Morris every day in school.  I always believed that he probably did work at John Deere because Orv could easily pass for 25.  From then on I only heard occasionally about him and how he slept through class.  I saw him most days in the halls carrying the books of a girl he had gone with throughout Senior High School.  Then I graduated, and I never thought I would hear about Orv again, but I did.  We had a 30 year class reunion and into the room walked Orville Morris and his wife, the girl he had walked the halls with every day in high school.  My wife said to me, “Who’s that.”  I turned, looked and a shudder went up my spine.  I said, “That’s Orville Morris.”  Sherry said, “He doesn’t look so big and bad.”  She went over to talk to the couple.  I gulped and went over too.  It turns out his wife was an RN.  Orv had retired from John Deere and they raised foster kids for many years.  It was a good life.
     Later my wife said to me, “What a nice man, he’s just a pussy cat.  I can’t believe that man is the same person you told me about, that you were all so scared of.  He’s just a nice person.”  I said, “But that’s Orville Morris.”  She just laughed, as I thought, if she only knew.

I probably learned about stocks and bonds in High School.  The one point that didn’t sink in was that stocks were created and based on real value.  All I heard was that a person could create a company and finance whatever they wanted by the sale of stocks.  That’s how T.R.E.L. was born.  T.R.E.L. was short for Technological Research and Engineering Laboratories INC. 
                I had a conversation at the time with a friend of mine about making wine and it seemed pretty simple--it was easy to make wine, all we needed was money for supplies.  Never mind that I didn’t drink.  If we could get money we could make wine for parties for kids our age in high school.  Never mind the fact that we never intended to make any wine.  What we really needed was money to make a canon--a real canon that shot off something.  You couldn’t sell stocks to fund a canon, but you could sell stock for a wine making business particularly to high school kids.
                I had a group of friends who signed off on the idea right away.  We had a guy who was a second in state wrestler, a pretty good offensive tackle and was perfect for our Sargent at Arms.   We had a guy who was so darned good looking the girls literally swooned as he walked by.  He would be a good President.  There was another guy who could talk you into anything if he set his mind to it.  He would be our head of sales.  There was another guy who knew how to make wine and the canon.  For lack of a more appropriate place for him he was named vice president.  Then there was me.  I came up with the idea but more importantly I could make the stock since my Dad had a stencil machine and my Mom could type up the stencil for the stock.  So logically I became the Secretary.  I told my parents of the plan leaving out a few of the details.  They must have known something was up, but also must have thought this would be such a wonderful learning experience for me.  Oh Parents.  How wonderfully naïve they are.  I only learned how naïve they could be when I became a parent myself.  So one Saturday my stencils for the stock in T.R.E.L. were made and I (literally) cranked out 100 copies.
                I took the stock to school on Monday and everyone in TREL was impressed.  We set our basic price at 25 cents per stock and our head of sales began to formulate his sales pitch.  He rightly figured the girls would be easy.  He gave the President of our organization some stock to move and it wasn’t long he sold about 50 shares.  The guys would be harder and here’s where his sales pitch came in.  He told prospects of our plan to make wine for parties.  He said all we needed was the financing which we could get with the sale stock in our company.  The idea sounded good but most guys were suspicious and immediately said no.  Our head of sales said to our prospect that’s fine, he would move on, but he sure hated the fact that this person would miss the stock holder’s parties.  Of course the prospect then perked up and asked who had bought shares so far.  After a few names of some very popular girls were reeled off the prospect caved and bought a share or two.
                We knew that there never would be any stock holders parties, much less money spent on wine production.  We should have gone to jail but we didn’t and the sales machine continued on.  When we needed more shares I simply ran off some more copies.
                Eventually, when we didn’t come through on our promises, a few people demanded their money back.  It wasn’t the girls really.  They had their time in the sun and so what if it never amounted to anything, they had their stock certificate signed by our president and were happy.  They probably would have spent $10.00 instead of $1.00 for the same thrill.  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately we didn’t know that at the time.  But the guys were different, they spend their 25 cents and they wanted their party.  So at first, we asked them if they had received word yet on the bonus.  When they said no, one of us would pull out a few pennies from our pocket and say with pride, here you go.
                The penny trick only worked so long and eventually they would corner our head of sales and ask for their money back.  He said, he was only in charge of sales, not refunds and they would have to talk to our president.  He very aloofly said he was the president all right but didn’t handle refunds they would have to talk to the vice president.  When they talked to the vice president he said he only did vice president things which certainly didn’t involve refunds.  He sent them to me and I said as secretary I am responsible for a lot of things but not refunds.  They would have to talk our sergeant of arms who was in charge of refunds.  Then then approached him and asked for their money back.  Not only was he a fun guy to be around he was also one of the biggest guy in school.  So when they asked him for their money he slowly turned to them and said, “Well, you ain’t a gona to get it.”  And that was the end of that.
                I already mentioned that my Dad taught at the University in Cedar Falls and he had, among others, Norm Jespersen, our Vice Principal, in class.  Dad told how he had made the stock on his Stencil machine and they all laughed.  Norm told the class a few adventures of TREL and if it wasn’t so darn funny he could shut the whole darn thing down.  I wonder how many stock adventures start out like ours did and the main people end up in jail.  We of course were oblivious to that and continued to sell our stock. 
I’m sure we ended up with 30 dollars which we spend on the canon.  Our vice president made the thing out of a pipe in shop class and then made a stand for it.  We spent the rest of the money we made on a week end retreat in the woods and thought this would be the perfect time to try out our canon.  Our sergeant at arms poured a bunch of nails down the front of it and was ready to light the fuse.  Before that happened, someone decided that we needed a picture for posterity of the canon going off.  I was the only one with a camera so I was designated the picture taker.  I hid behind a log about five feet from the barrel.  I took solace in the fact that it wasn’t pointed at me.  The fuse was lit and everyone ran back about 20 feet from the canon and hid behind trees.  I suddenly thought, “Oh my God, what if it blows up.”
                At that precise moment the canon fired with a terrible loud boom.  After the smoke had settled everyone came out laughing, shouting and jumping.  Mostly they were laughing at me and how I could be so stupid as to lay that close to the canon.  On the upside, the canon worked beautifully.  We saw nails in trees several hundred feet away.  Now I don’t know if the canon was ever fired again, in fact I don’t even know where it is to this day.  But thanks to T.R.E.L., Technological Research and Engineering Laboratories Inc. we built a canon, it worked and I have a picture of it.
                                                                          

                  If you heard the name now, you would probably think it was a real name.  The first name Harley has become a popular name in the movies and you see it pop up now and then as a real name.  It’s become a girl’s name and, I suppose in some instances, a boy name.  Well, it’s always been a boy’s name but mostly a name you heard from older people in the southern part United States.  The last name Grew is plausible and it probably always sounded like a person’s real name.  So the name Harley Grew could be a real person now, but in the 1960’s nobody thought it was real, well, almost nobody.
                We had an assistant coach who was quite a catch at Cedar Falls High School.  His exploits on the mat were legendary.  In addition to being a national Champion, he was nearly undefeated in his college career.  He was a short man but his shoulders were so broad no one ever noticed his height.  But he was short.  His nickname was Beets which did not come from his wrestling career in that he was difficult to beat.  It came from the fact that he was little and when he stood up in the beet fields that grew near where he grew up you couldn’t see him.
                He was like a lot of coaches then who were wonderful in their sport but were hired only for that sport.  Their other job at school involved a lot of study hall supervision, drivers training, and so on.  Now he may have moved beyond study hall, I simply don’t know, but at Cedar Falls High School his main job was assistant wrestling coach, which was followed by assistant track coach, and Study Hall.
                I loved having him for study hall.  He let me go to the gym to work out which was important for wrestling.  A lot of people signed out for the library and Harley Grew was one of them.  Now Harley Grew was a fictitious person.  He was cut from whole cloth.  Some of the smarter kids in my class signed him up as a new student in high school with all of the necessary paper work.  Harley had a list of classes every year and he had homework which was completed by someone.  His classes included study hall and it was someone’s responsibility to sign him out for the library.  All of the teachers knew he was made up but graded his papers anyway.  The principal, C.C. Standard and Assistant Principal Norm Jespersen knew he was fiction but dealt with his attendance or lack there off in stride.  Almost all of them, students and staff, knew Harley Grew was made up. 
               My dad was an instructor at the University in Cedar Falls.  He was a Professor of Education.  I used to say, when the topic came up, he taught teachers to be teachers.  Many of my instructors in High School had a class with him.  Dad’s specialty was school administration so Norm took several classes from him and during their break Norm told dad of the exploits of Harley Grew.  I suppose he told him because I was in the class who had made up Harley though, in truth, I only signed him out a time or two for the Library from study hall.  Everyone knew Harley Grew was made up except one person who thought he was real and supervised him in study hall, Beets Dotson. 
               Mr. Dotson’s main job was making sure everyone sat in their seats and the hour didn’t dissolve into spit wads and paper air planes.  It was also his job to make sure everyone was where they were signed out to be and it was the inquisitive mind of Beets Dotson who discovered Harley Grew was never where he was supposed to be.  He often said one day he would catch Harley Grew somewhere other than the library and was slowly putting together a case on the truancy of Harley Grew.  Naturally the person he spoke with the most was Norm because it was Norms responsibility to punish those cutting classes.  One day Beets marched into Norm Jespersen’s office.  He slammed down a bunch of paper work on Jespersen’s desk and said “I finally have the goods on this Grew kid and he isn’t in the library.  He’s never gone to the library and I can prove it.”
Norm held his laughter through many of these discussions. 
                Beets clenched a fist full of sign out sheets from study hall and turned red with anger as he told Norm about how he had looked everywhere for Harley and the kid wasn’t where he was supposed to be.  Norm finally told him, “Beets there is no Harley Grew.  He doesn’t exist.  The kids in the 11th Grade just made him up.”  I can imagine how Beets anger and the flushed red in his cheeks slowly subsided as the truth sank in.  His shoulders slowly slumped as he turned and walked away to the sound of Norm Jespersen’s laughter.
                I probably heard story at the supper table one night because Jespersen had shared it with my dad who then told everyone in our family the story of Beets and Harley Grew.  As you can imagine my Dad got a big laugh out of the whole adventure as did I.   But it was with pride when I heard Harley’s name again spoken by our class Valedictorian as she talked his adventures in Cedar Falls High.  His name was announced as part of our graduating class.  C.C. Standard said his name with all of the others as we walked across the stage to accept our diplomas.  Harley Grew had graduated from High School and could now go off to college, or get a job or go off to fight in the Viet Nam War or could do all three provided a member of our class was there too.