Thursday, December 1, 1977

I think I will start climbing buildings. This is a newly rising activity that is gaining more and more popularity across the country. I like climbing rocks, but good rocks are hard to find around here. Buildings, however, are plentiful. The Sandusky Library is a nice structure, and he Courthouse would be a bit more ambitious. The Feick Building is my goal someday. I have always wanted to climb the side of the Flippen's store and I may do that first. We have already climbed some buildings, such as the State Theatre and the Goodwill building, but we cheated a bit; we used fire escapes and ladders.

Wednesday, November 30, 1977

I would like to go to Florida in the spring during Easter vacation. We could drive down, stopping for merchandise in Kentucky and Tennessee, and perhaps stop in Plains, Georgia. We would, however, go there in 24 hours. We would maybe stay with Brad's parents in a cabin and drive to Daytona Beach some days. I could run in the warm weather, go swimming and bass fishing and just enjoy myself.

Tuesday, November 29, 1977

The sledding season has now started. Last night we went sledding for the first time at Plum Brook and it was great. It wasn't too cold out, and the snow on the hill was just right. We had no toboggans, but the old red sleds worked good. I enjoy surfing on the red sleds, and made it all the way down once before I fell. My worst accident was when I ran full speed to jump on a red sled and some asshole kicked it out from under me. It was still there while I was in the air, and I expected to land on it. I ended up sliding down the hill on my face and mangling my glasses.

Thursday, November 24, 1977 – Thanksgiving

Today was Thanksgiving and we visited my Aunt and Uncle Peekock in Loonsville. My aunt is a very good cook and my uncle likes to make and drink drinks. We feasted heavily on turkey, duck and goose, and also had the regular extras of stuffing, potatoes, salads and homemade cranberry sauce. Uncle Peekock mixed gallons of Manhattans, Scarlett O'Haras and Brandy Alexanders. My dad and mother only had one drink each and so my uncle had to drink everything. My aunt got drunk on the Kahlua pie and fell asleep. When we were watching football games, that asinine Schlitz commercial came on and my dad started yelling at the TV. My uncle didn't like the commercial either so, in a drunken rage, he kicked the TV set in.

Wednesday, November 23, 1977

I just tried new Billy Beer for the first time. It is made by Falls City Brewery “especially for Billy Carter.” It is pretty good, not the best I've had, but the can looks good. It tastes like what you think beer would taste like. I agree with Billy when he says it tastes like a combination of Falls City and Pabst Blue Ribbon. I believe they took the recipe for Falls City beer and added extra hops for a more pronounced flavor and extra bitterness.

Tuesday, November 22, 1977

I am an expert at fencing. Recently I had trouble while in Fairview Lanes. I was attacked by a countless number of challengers with foils. I pulled mine out and we fought. He was very good and got me once in the shoulder before I ran him through. The next few were easy and I took three at a time. The next was another good one and he got me twice before I had to cheat a bit and throw my foil at him. But now without a weapon I was in trouble. Luckily I found an ax and I quickly cleaved off the heads of the last four knaves.

Monday, November 21, 1977

In some Chicago area food stores they are selling no-name-brand food. They do not have any advertising for these, and the packages are simple and inexpensive. The food meets government regulations, but it is just standard, and not top quality. All of this allows the price of the food to be from 10 to 35 percent lower than that of name brand food. This is a good deal, since you pay for the food and not the advertising.

Sunday, November 20, 1977

There was an article in People about Lynyrd Skynyrd and it interviewed the late Ronnie Van Zant. He had stopped drinking but told about the days when the band was really wild. They all would drink so much before performances, they would puke and couldn't remember the order of the songs. Once Van Zant was so loaded that he puked up a tonsil on stage. In hotel rooms they went wild too. Once they poured Jack Daniels on a TV set until it blew up.

Saturday, November 19, 1977

Billy Carter is a bad mother fucker. He does what he wants, and don't give a shit about no one else. He does everything he can to make money, and he drinks beer all day long. In an article in Newsweek, he showed he was a philosopher. About legalizing marijuana he says, “Marijuana is like Coors beer. If you could buy the damn stuff at a Georgia filling station, you'd decide you wouldn't want it.”

Friday, November 18, 1977

I am glad the issue to ban the leg hold traps that was voted on last Tuesday failed. Banning leg hold traps is just a start that would lead to other things. Before we knew it they would be banning live traps, hunting and even fishing. The argument saying the traps are cruel is not strong. Sure they are cruel, but so are live traps. Trapping is a big industry in Ohio and a tradition, and we should not ban them because we don't want to be cruel to animals. It would be too big of a step at one time.

Thursday, November 17, 1977

Steely Dan's new album, Aja, has the definite Steely Dan sound to it, yet it is different from their other albums. Steely Dan is Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who write all of the songs. Many assorted musicians play on the albums. In the new Aja album, more horns and especially saxophone are used. The songs are generally a bit slower. The overall sound is very clear and perfect. Like usual for Steely Dan it is recorded and performed with quality.

Wednesday, November 16, 1977

Kansas has come out with a new album called “Point of Know Return.” The title track has been played on the radio quite a bit, and it is good but not the best song on the album. All of the songs are good, typical Kansas songs, and this album is as good as or better than their “Leftoverture” album. There are some hard songs on the album, with good dominating guitar and strong keyboards. And there are slow songs with acoustic guitar with clear vocals. All through the album, like Kansas's trademark, is Robby Steinhardt's violin playing that adds to the music quite a bit.

Tuesday, November 15, 1977

Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane have made an album and called it “Rough Mix.” This is a fitting name for the album, not to say it isn't a quality recording or the musicians aren't good, but it has a Bob Dylan like quality about it. The songs are all good and many of them sound like Who songs with different vocals. What is most pleasing to listen to is the excellent guitar playing on the album. There is very much acoustic guitar, that dominates much of the music.

Monday, November 14, 1977

I would like to take many pictures of my senior year in high school of things we do. However, the film is way too expensive for me to afford. To take a Polaroid picture it will run me around 50 cents a picture and Kodak will cost over 25 cents a picture. This is outrageous. I will not be able to afford any pictures at that rate. The film is not what costs much, but the processing does. I think I will come up with money somewhere to take a few pictures, and then blow up the Polaroid and Kodak companies.

Sunday, November 13, 1977

I would like to take a trip to the Ten Thousand Islands, in Florida. These are a group of many very small islands along the southern Gulf Coast of Florida. Though they are near the Everglades, they look more like an area in the Caribbean, with blue waters and high sand dunes and palm trees. Exploring these islands is a very fun activity, and it is very easy to get hopelessly lost. The fishing in this area is excellent, and if you are a shell collector you will find this area unpicked-over by other collectors.

Saturday, November 12, 1977

My future plans are revised. I just read an article in Money magazine and the job prospects in journalism in the 1980s is very dim. So I must change my future plans. I think college will be a waste of my time and money. Instead, I will get a job at New Departure after I graduate, and clean toilets for a living. I will get married to a rich girl with a Porsche. I will get V.D. from a filthy toilet and give it to my wife and she will divorce me. In a fit of rage I will shoot her and spend the rest of my long life (98 years) in the Big House sleeping on my back.

Friday, November 11, 1977

And aspirins, not to mention caffeine. I will drink three cups of coffee a day along with a quart of Coke and three packs of cigarettes. At the age of 65, I will retire with honor after working my way up to assistant feature editor. After getting a divorce with my wife, so now free, I can go on world travels. I will have a nervous breakdown and spend the last five years of my life in failing health at the Erie Inn reading dirty books and embarrassing nurses with my filthy remarks. When I die at age 70, my ex-wife will get all my life savings which I was someday going to by a Porsche with. In Oakland Cemetery, I will have my simple gravestone pissed on regularly by a scroungy old mutt.

Thursday, November 10, 1977

My future is all planned. I will graduate from High School and work all summer at Cedar Point making enough money for part of my first year at Ohio State. I will go there for four years, studying journalism, and working at Cedar Point in the summer. During college I will take loans to get through plus working at the campus Mac's where I will acquire terrible acne. Graduating from college I will come back to wonderful Sandusky, getting a job for the Register, but with bigger plans for the future. I will end up staying there, however, when I get an ugly girl with no common sense pregnant and have to marry her. She will want to stay in Sandusky where her parents live, who she visits regularly and frequently. I will have my college loans paid off by the time I am thirty so I can buy decent clothes for my children, three boys, two retarded, one constantly in trouble with the law. In my high pressure job for the newspaper, I will go bald, get fat, get an ulcer, become an alcoholic, get hooked on Valiums, sleeping pills.

Wednesday, November 9, 1977

In three of my classes today I am having substitute teachers. This is disgusting because I only have six classes. That is in 50% of my classes I have substitute teachers. What would my teachers think if 50% of their students decided not to attend classes? I bet they wouldn't like it too much. And likewise I don't like it too much when 50% of my teachers don't show up. That is because then we have substitutes that don't know what the hell is going on.

Tuesday, November 8, 1977

A high powered quartz light that plugs into a cigarette lighter and a large, distinguished looking car are all that is needed for an evening of fun. You drive your car up to a secluded spot such as Battery Park. When you spot a car sitting alone you drive up towards it and stop facing it. Then the person in the passenger seat hits them with the spot light. There is no telling what the people in the car will do. If it is a couple having sex, you will probably cause them to panic, leading to hilarious results. If it's someone making a drug deal, they may start shooting, so you better get your ass out of there fast.