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  Long Island – My Home Town My Family's home in the Township of Huntington Summer/Winter H olidays are upon us and it's the time of year where one thinks about family. As an adult, I have rarely seen my family on holidays as we live on separate coasts. Even though I have not been a huge fan of the holidays I have to admit that I do reflect back on my family back east and growing up on Long Island around this time of year. So with that in mind below are a few thoughts on my old home, Long Island. L ong Island lies just east of Manhattan and it stretches for about 118 miles. It sits below Connecticut and Rhode Island on the south side of the Long Island Sound. Long Island is long but it's thin as it is just 23 miles wide at it's widest point. The island's peak elevation is only about 400 feet above sea-level and the house I mostly grew up in sits at the base of that hill. Long Island has 4 counties on it – Queens, Kings (AKA Brooklyn), Nassau, and Suffol...

The Scheffleras Part 1 I t was either late '81 or early '82 when I joined a group of co-workers on a company co-ed softball team. We weren't a very good team and as proof I was one of the better players on the team. I enjoyed getting to play ball again, as I hadn't played since I left Eugene in the summer of '78. I only remember playing one season and as I recall, we were a middle of the pack type team. There are three things that stick out to me about playing on that team. T he first one is we had a guy from the Operations Division named Frank. Frank could hit the ball a long way. He was older than me, maybe by 5 or so years. I was coaching 3 rd the first time he hit the ball well over the outfielder's head. He took off and as he was coming into third the ball was still in the outfield so I waved him home but he stopped at 3 rd , bent over, and put his hands on his knees. He was too winded to continue to home.  I don't think he ever hit a hom...

A Foray Into Golf Me hitting my 5-iron I first played golf with my father when I was 13 or 14 years old. I am left handed but the only clubs available were my father's and he was right handed so I learned to play right handed and played with his We went to a course called “Hill and Tree”. My memory of playing the course is there were some small bumps that maybe a 3 year old might call hills and hardly any trees at all. It was a rather short course making it good for hackers and beginners and the course was populated with exactly those types of golfers. The holes were close together with the fairways right next to each. That combination of bad golfers and holes on top of each other resulted in golf balls flying every which way. You had to continuously be watching for balls flying your way from other fairways. As a result my father dubbed the course “Hit and Duck”. We felt lucky to escape unscathed and, not wanting to press our luck, we resolved to not play there again. ...