Happy New Year, a look back....waaaaay back

The older I get... seems like every new year or birthday that rolls around, I force myself to remember where I was and what I was doing 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago. I'm not one that harps on the past or longs for those days. I am quite happy in the present. But I force myself to remember so those memories don't fade. I don't have a pensieve that I can just conjure up memories like Dumbledore. So I look through the few old photos and do the best I can.

Anyways, New Years 40 years ago in 1970 I was 8 years old, the same age that my little girl Paetyn is now. We had just settled into permanent base housing at Grant Heights Air Force Base in Japan. I was in second grade at Narimasu Elementary and a review of the report card says that Mary Galvin was my teacher. She wrote:" Dennis is an excellent student. He is intelligent, conscientious, mature, and enthusiastic. (He) is a very good all around student who continues to show consistent progress in all areas." A hand written certificate reveals that I read 40 supplementary books that year.

It's quite obvious that my academic prowess peaked in second grade. Haha. Truth is living in Japan we didn't spend hours in front of the television, the only English speaking show was Sesame Street on the educational channel. Of course there were no video games or computers to pass the time, we actually had to go outside and play. Makes me wonder if 40 years from now Paetyn will look back and say "We only had 200 channels to choose from and had these things called laptops that weren't even in 3D."

I was looking forward to summer because that's when I could officially start playing baseball. There was no tee-ball or coach pitch back then, it was strictly kid-pitch. Age groups were separated in two year increments, 8-9 year old, 10-11, 12-13 etc. On sign-up day you would get a number pinned to your back, then you went through a series of drills so the coaches could evaluate your skills. They would see how well you could field the ball, throw it, pitch, catch, run, etc. That lasted a couple of hours then they would have a draft. Coaches were allowed to keep the nine year olds of their team from the previous year. The draft would only last five rounds, then the players remaining were put on teams at random.

I was the fourth player chosen overall that day, and I went to the Tigers. Thus beginning my lifelong love affair with the Detroit Tigers. Coincidentally I also instantly started hating the Yankees that day. :) Anyways, as an eight year old on a nine year old team meant more bench time instead of playing time. I played a little outfield and short stop, but it would be the next year before I really played baseball.

Summer that year we went to Expo 70, the world's fair held in Osaka, Japan. Some things I remember: One was the seeing the Taiyo-no-to or the Tower of the Sun which was this double faced totem pole structure that was the symbol for the fair. Here is a link so you can see what I'm talking about: http://worldsfairphotos.blogspot.com/2009/11/expo-70s-tower-of-sun.html. The second was all of the different countries had pavilions. You could buy a commemorative passport and have it stamped at each pavilion. The most popular was the United States pavilion because they had on display an actual moon rock. The third thing I remember is my sister lost her military ID card and she got in big trouble.

I enjoyed the 4 1/2 years I lived in Japan. Now forty years later, I might get to go back because my oldest daughter Shana is trying to get stationed there.