Great White Adventures
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‘’EVERYTHIG THAT COMES FROM MA, COMES THROUGH MA” GREAT WHITE ADVENTURES HOW LONG IS A LIFETIME “One Day More Is One Less” By Bruce Edward Byers (Travis McGee)(John Galt) (Howard Roarke) To my Anya and Oliver I can only begin at what I have been told was my beginning. The date would be July 28, 1951. It seems so long ago but so many events seem like only yesterday. I was born in Evanston, Illinois and remember most all of it until this present day. The first event I remember was trying to escape from my playpen and being trapped between the folding floors under the pad. My mother continues to remind me at her present age of 84 of that event and my many numerous attempts to scale the vertical side bars with my toes. Mom says I tried other means of escape which resulted in failure with exception of one single attempt. On this occasion I was crawling down the main street in traffic going who knows where but with confidence. Apparently what I learned from this infancy was success came through repeated attempts and from success came confidence. I learned to never give up and this carried over in to my future life pursuits. I am writing this book because I have tired of reading so many books and lack anything new and interesting. I am also compelled to write because maybe someday my children might read it and discover what sort of man I was and the life I lived. I can say that it has been a colorful and fantastic experience with plenty of risk taking, danger and turbulence yet there is little that I would have changed. 1 Page 1 In the 1950’s we had no computers and we were fortunate to have a black and white television. I remember having a fascination with bicycles and tricycles. My parents presented me with a photograph of me on what appears to be a modern day big wheel child’s tricycle. The photograph was taken sometime in the year of 1956 and would be the first of my many inventions to follow. Proof of the date was my parents new 1956 Chevrolet parked at the curb behind me on my converted tricycle with the concept that would later lead to the successful Big Wheel tricycle. Unfortunately my parents never applied for the patent and someone years later did. I simply converted my original old designed tricycle with peddles mounted on the front wheel with a frame that curved downward to the step mounted between two wheels on an axle. The seat was mounted on the top of the frame and the step on the back was perhaps intended for a passenger to stand on. I removed the seat and disconnected and reversed or flipped the frame at the coupling of the front fork and handlebars. I then sat on the axle and bottom of the step plate and peddled from there. The seat was no longer necessary. As a family of 6 including mother Margaret and Jack, we moved from Evanston Illinois to Glenview Illinois. I attended first grade at (OLPH) Our Lady of Perpetual Help and was raised in a Catholic tradition. I was a curious child and fascinated with radios, bicycles, lawnmowers, trains, and would rummage through garbage and throwaway parts and pieces to repair or create something. Everyone’s trash was my treasure! I also was fascinated with gardening and created a garden of my own raising corn, beans, parsley, tomato’s and anything else that I could grow. I began work in the first grade as a paperboy and delivered and collected monthly on a route that introduced me to operating a small business. The memories of this time were wonderful. We lived only blocks from the very first McDonalds and it was a family treat, to go have a 15 cent burger and fries at a time where 2 McDonalds advertised, “Thousands Sold”. Page 2 My father was employed by the company Crouse Heins as an electrical engineer and inventor of new and better ways of relays and lighting. My mother was a stay at home mom and it was as it was the 1950’s. Ozzie and Harriet, Bugs Bunny and Bishop Sheen were on the Black and White Television. Our family had grown over the years to follow numbering 10 including mother and father. We were 4 boys and 4 girls and received milk daily delivery of gallons from trucks and cooled the milk by blocks of ice. We would run to these deliveries in the hot summer days for a chunk of ice to suck on when the Good Humor truck was not available. Our next move as a family was major. We left Illinois and relocated to Fresno, California and lived with our aunt Mary. I attended Jefferson School for the 2 nd grade and learned the life of a new kid in town. It was more like having to defend myself as the new kid in town. We stayed only one year in Fresno and moved again to Millbrea California in the San Francisco Bay area. My father worked in the city of San Francisco and commuted daily by train into the city. Our house was on the street Corte Alegre and overlooked the (SFO) San Francisco International Airport. This was significant because it sparked my interest in aviation. When I reflect back on the memory, I see the TWA maintenance hangar which no longer exists. Little then did I know that I would later become a jumbo jet captain with the Airline. Life in California was not very interesting, we moved again to the neighboring community of Burlingame and the highlight was discovering a shark caught on the beach of the bay that sparked my fascination with sharks. The Great White then became the focus of my attention! I was both a Cub then Boy Scout and trained with the National Rifle Association earning a marksmanship award. As a Scout we even went camping inside of the tall Sequoia trees at a park near Burlingame. 3 Page 3 I learned to play the trombone with the 3 rd grade band at Lincoln School and began running the school track because it was there and I wanted to learn to run fast. We moved from 2205 Adaline Drive, Burlingame, California and drove cross country in a Ford wagon with pets to our new home in the city of Red Wing, Minnesota. I believe we traveled Route 66 because the Interstate Highway System was yet to be developed. What was interesting or memorable about the trip was the necessity for Desert Water Bags in the event cars overheated and there were so many miles between service and fuel stops. Berma Shave and Wall Drug signs were part of these memories and the Caverns of Missouri where Jesse James was touted to have stayed. We arrived to Red Wing, Minnesota in the summer of 1963 where my father began work for Meyer Manufacturing and a new 4 bedroom home was being built on the golf course for $30,000. Little did my parents know that in 20 years, the same house would increase in value to half a million dollars. For that matter, who at the time could? The house was not yet complete upon our arrival and we stayed at the Sterling Motel, neighboring the same reform school attended by Bob Dylan. My brother and I would sit on the hillside and see Barns Bluff and the Marina on the Mississippi River and marvel at our new town with a population of 10,000. This number did not include our family of 10. I started the 7 th grade at St. Joseph’s School and this was the year that changed my life and the lives of everyone in the United States of America and direction and lives of all on earth. I was seated in class and looked at the clock approaching 3:20 when it was announced the John F. Kennedy was assassinated. This moment defied my years of starting class with a prayer and the pledge of allegiance to our flag. Since this day I have read volumes on the subject to attempt to reconcile this with what I believed in. 4 Page 4 These years in Minnesota were years of cold and heavy snows. I literally walked miles back and forth to school with snow to my knees! Rarely did schools close for weather! I also took on another paper route with the Minneapolis Star Tribune. As one of a family of 8 children, there were no extras for anyone. This prompted me to work and make money for the bicycles, skis and later motorcycles and cars. I held many jobs while growing up in Red Wing. The newspaper was the first, then came lawn cutting, snow shoveling, grocer y clerk, movie theater projectionist, construction, lumber yard labor, and most important farming. It was the farm that gave me the understanding of hard work that would later lead to my success in every endeavor of my life thereafter. I purchased my first pair of skis in the 7 th grade and practiced every day in night for many years to come that ultimately led to skiing professionally on the World Pro Tour. I skied and raced downhill with the best in the world, Jean Claude Killy to mention only one. I also learned to water-ski on the Mississippi River and later competed in slalom with the best water skiers in the world.