{"id":1020,"date":"2010-12-19T07:18:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T11:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=1020"},"modified":"2010-12-19T07:18:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-19T11:18:00","slug":"friends-for-life-terrorize-the-old-hood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=1020","title":{"rendered":"Friends for Life Terrorize the Old ‘Hood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night, for the 38th year in a row, 14 of my friends from Junior High School and I, along with spouses, children, and grandchildren, went Christmas Caroling in the neighborhood where we grew up.  It was a blast!<\/span><\/p>\n

While we sing off key, our spirit was enthusiastic and our joy was fantastic.  I got a huge “high” from doing this — for so long, so many years: so much fun.<\/span>
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We did not go as far as we did 38 years ago.  But we saw some of our former neighbors, including a woman who babysat for me and my family when we were kids.  She is 92 now, and still lives on her own in the same old house I remember.<\/span><\/p>\n

After getting a bit hoarse and not tolerating the cold as well as we once did (though I remember complaining about the cold back in 1972), we went to the house that one of the members of our group lives in now — and still in the same old neighborhood — right next door to the house in which I grew up.  My friend had bought the house from his parents, and has raised his family there.  How nice.<\/span>
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We laughed, told wild stories, and even pulled taffy while eating too much.  What great fun.  I regret that my partner wasn’t with me, but he hates crowds.  I got home way too late, and woke early to write and post this message while seeing my partner off for a drive to pick up his mother who lives 200 miles away.  She will spend Christmas with us when he brings her back in the middle of the coming week.<\/span><\/p>\n

BTW, I wore a pair of thick leather jeans with a flannel shirt and a leather bomber jacket, black Wesco harness boots and leather gloves — it was cold!  And before you ask, no one said a thing about the leather.  They all know me, and know that I wear leather regularly.  It was waaaay too cold to ride my Harley, plus the streets were a bit icy from the remnants of a spit of snow we got a couple days ago, so I drove my truck over there, and was glad I had a pair of “snow tires” on my feet (the Vibram lug soles) when I walked outside on the snow & ice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Following is a YouTube video of a song that is my “signature tune” — that my friends turn to me to sing the  verse while they chime in (in very bad Italian) during the chorus.  The tune is Tu scendi dalle stelle<\/i> which means You Come Down From The Stars<\/i>.  It is an old Italian folk song, sung at Christmas.  I remember singing it with my family while we were decorating our tree, baking cookies, and especially while visiting Nonna (Grandma).<\/span><\/p>\n

Life is short:  Buon Natale!<\/span>
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Last night, for the 38th year in a row, 14 of my friends from Junior High School and I, along with spouses, children, and grandchildren, went Christmas Caroling in the neighborhood where we grew up.  It was a blast! While … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-friends","category-home-life"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}