Laughing at my younger self

Heard a song today that triggered a memory......

I knew for a long time I was going to be a coal miner. I used to go underground with my Dad when I was young, because being a Mine Foreman, he had to go on weekends to "Make the mines" which means going around, taking gas readings and generally making sure there were no problems. Yes, it was illegal as hell, but..... *shrug*
Since Dad was a Mine Foreman, I was pretty much guaranteed a job, but they couldn't hire me till I was 18. The day I turned 18, I was a coal miner. I started work that day. The company I worked for had a vacation time that was set. They just shut the whole place down and everyone went on vacation. Last week of June, first week of July.

I was almost 20 at that point, had some money saved up and it was a paid vacation, so I decided "I''ve never seen the ocean, so I'm going to see the ocean".
A 20 year old from Kentucky with some money in his pocket aimed for what was closest... Virginia Beach. Got in my old used truck and took off.

I get there and rent a hotel room. Nothing special, I just wanted a place that was clean and a place to sleep and take a shower. One day I was at the beach and saw a beautiful young lady, so I , after getting my courage up, went to talk to her.
Her name was Janice.
We hit it off from the start. We would go to lunch, dinner, see a movie and just hang out together. She was not a gold digger. She sometimes insisted on paying for meals or movies. After a few days, she started talking about how she wanted out of there. She wanted to go some place different, see different things. At first, I kept my mouth shut. I mean I was young, but not completely stupid.

8 days in and I said "Come back with me . I have a good job, steady income and we get along great"
I got a stunned look. "Really ? "
"Yes really."

I wasn't in love, but I'll admit, I was enamored.
She left that night , agreeing to be back at 8:00 AM so we could leave. Never saw her again.
I came home with some fond memories and sand in my boots.

I would love to hear her side of it.

Maybe just fate...

a reply to: whyamIhere


I think she had one of those "holy crap he took me serious" kinda things and ran. She talked about it, but when the time came to actually do it, had second thoughts.

a reply to: DAVID64

Brave man, when i was a kid i used to have recurring nightmares of being crushed in a mine.

It's making me uncomfortable at even the thought of going anywhere near one.

I'll bet Janice wonders sometimes what could have been.

Don't get me started on the stupid things I did and thought when I was young.

Then I see my kids and grandkids doing the same thing and they think I am rude and to old to understand the new generation. Not much has changed, at that age sex and desire to be accepted is a constant challenge. The kids and grandkids have no clue as to the mistakes I made, they knew me as a successful businessman who worked all the time. They do not want to hear my stories of how I screwed up because they believe I was always on top of things. HaHa. maybe they need to talk to my old friends from back in the seventies and early eighties. It was the seventies for gods sake, being young then was kind of fun unless they were super religious.

I talked to my uncles how it was when they were kids, things were not that different than when I was a kid or when my kids were kids.

Just because I had a high IQ does not mean I did not do a lot of dumb things.

a reply to: DAVID64

She left that night , agreeing to be back at 8:00 AM so we could leave. Never saw her again.

I'm curious, did you leave at 8:00 a.m. or did you stick around awhile to see if she would show up late?

originally posted by: Grenade
a reply to: DAVID64

Brave man, when i was a kid i used to have recurring nightmares of being crushed in a mine.

Man, does that bring back a bad memory...

I used to go spelunking with friends when I was going to boarding school in TN (Suwanee Academy)...

One weekend we found this amazing cave, almost by accident... but the entrance to it... whoah, gives me the willies still, just thinking about it. I'm not usually scared of things like this, but... anyway...

The entrance was not like your usual cave entrance. The entrance was at the bottom of a huge chunk of granite about 80 feet tall. It was about 1-1.5ft high, and about 25ft wide. You had to crawl on your belly for about 5 feet, to get to the actual cave inside. We explored this cave maybe 4 or 5 times, but on the last one I went on, I got stuck over halfway in. Panic started setting in. It was... terrifying is the only word I can come up with. It felt like hours before I was able to calm myself down enough to start using my head, exhaling as much as possible, and wiggling until I could get free and finally make it into the cave. We explored for a few hours like usual, all the while I was dreading having to do that again to get out. I got out without getting stuck again, but again - it was just terrifying. Needless to say, I never explored that cave again.

Then, the other cave we used to explore had a hug hole for an entrance underneath the roots of a huge tree that had fallen over (in a storm I guess). We explored that one maybe 5 or 10 times (don't remember, it was a long time ago), until one day we went there, and the entrance was caved in. We all just sat down and got wasted, contemplating the fact we could have been inside when it caved in.

I haven't been spelunking since.

a reply to: tanstaafl

I went into quite a few questionable caves when I was younger, and most of the time without telling anyone else about our plans ahead of time.. So stupid.

originally posted by: BrokenCircles
a reply to: tanstaafl

I went into quite a few questionable caves when I was younger, and most of the time without telling anyone else about our plans ahead of time.. So stupid.

Yeah, we never told anyone either... we would just have been some kids gone missing mysteriously...

a reply to: tanstaafl

Anxiety attack incoming. I’d rather have my body covered in tarantulas than go there.

originally posted by: Grenade
a reply to: tanstaafl

Anxiety attack incoming. I’d rather have my body covered in tarantulas than go there.

Yeah, it was bad, but I see I mistyped how far we had to crawl on our bellies...

It was more like 15 or more feet... definitely 2.5-4 times as long as how tall I was...

But... I'm not sure I agree... spiders is my one other real, super unnatural panic type fear. Arachnophobia is one of my favorite horror movies for that reason, even though its not really that good of a movie in general.