Donald Duck Citrus products. Though they are fast fading from the shelves these days, we’ve pretty much all seen them in the grocery dairy cooler and the frozen foods section. Probably the oldest running commercially applied Disney logo.

The Florida Citrus Canners Cooperative used it for many years though the product is now getting hard to find and the association has dumped the duck logo for a more modern packaging layout.

The City of Lake Wales in central Florida - established in 1917 - was home to one of the major D. Duck production facilities and for a long while, the juice plant was the big-time mainstay in the local economy. So a cartoon-happy grateful community put Unca Donald’s smiling countenance 60 feet in the air on the municipal water tower.

Florida being way flat (back to that in a moment), you could see the hi-rise logo waving "hello" with his juice in hand from almost any approach.

Now, Florida is essentially flat but Lake Wales has one of the state's geographical high points at a dizzying 312 ft. above sea level. There is a pretty nice view of the "Bok Tower" from the "summit".

It is actually a central high ridge, properly named the "Lake Wales Ridge" , averaging slightly over 300 ft. and running through Lake County. A string of two million year old sand islands that ran down the center of what is now the peninsula.

When I first saw the duck tower, it was pretty shiny & new looking. I guess they repainted it often. From several directions when driving into town you could see the smiling animated movie star proudly declaring the area as happily dependent on the citrus business and especially proud of the flagship product - Donald Duck Orange Juice. Ta da Pilgrim!

The real actual in-hand beverage product itself received mixed reviews.

Though advertised as "fresh" (ok, it wasn’t stale), the sup was made from concentrate and not "fresh squeezed" as the commercial pitch did not explicitly state but certainly implied.

One time, the Citrus Canners Cooperative was even sued by Tropicana (who did have a fresh squeezed product) in order to clarify the public declarations. This may have been the beginning of the end for the DD brand.

I’ve drunk gallons of the Duck no problem. Not bad. It can have that bitterness that "from concentrate" fruit beverages sometimes acquire during processing and in Florida, the land of real fresh oranges happily hanging from trees and swinging in the ocean breeze, the taste did not begin to equal the live fruit. C’mon.

Nothing surpassed the experience of picking a fresh orange in the grove & eating/drinking it hot from the blasting daytime sun. Like Tarzan guzzling an antelope, the warm juice going down was a unique event. Yeah, we kids were swiping fruit from the grower but the theft was negligible and to further rationalize, the critters like raccoons, possums and deer ate way more than we did.

The citrus grove closest to my house was mostly tangerines and they came ripe during the Holiday season near the end of the year. Weirdly, they were guarded by a half dozen Peacocks. These big stealthy birds delighted in sneaking up on raiders and in unison letting out the most hideous loud frightening whoops you ever heard.

Certainly loud enough to summon dogs or grove keepers with salt shotguns. I found out about the birds the hard way. We never ventured past that point. Never got salted. Those particular tangerine trees were safe from our grubby mitts.

Most of the Donald Duck juice sales were out of state and them folks in Michigan & Minnesota - Maine & Montana had no idea about the flavor of tree hanging fresh citrus and so the concentrate was close enough to be recognized.

National distribution, good advertising, a great Disney logo and a passable product made the stuff part of Americana for many years.

I was 17 years old and living in Vero Beach Fl. Not a better east coast town anywhere, it was a great place to grow up.

I was there from 9th grade on to HS graduation and beyond. I did my "formative years" in good old Vero.

We had the Indian River - a tidal straight and part of the famous "inland waterway" - a navigable water path protected from the open sea that ran the length of east coast FL.

One of the fondest memories I have of the Indian River was silently sailing on a Hobie-Cat (mini catamaran). I learned the wind always blows in two directions.

We had fantastic beaches with unique old structures like the "Driftwood Inn" (yep, a motel on the ocean made of driftwood) and Jake’s Ocean Grill (down the block north on Ocean Drive, also of driftwood - by Waldo - the same uniquely insane famous local architect).

I spent plenty of time on Vero’s beaches. There were 3 main ones north to south.

1st North Beach - featuring the Sea Burger Restaurant and a lovely shady grove of tall hissy sounding Australian Pines back off the dune line.

"Australian" Pines were common in citrus Florida. Brought from Australia to Florida during the 1890s. They grew fast and were widely planted to form windbreaks around canals, groves, agricultural fields, etc.

They've gotten a bit out of hand since the 1890s and are now subject to control. But back then there was always a cool breeze there and many concrete picnic tables set up next to public grills mounted on short metal poles.

Idyllic.

You could go up from the blazing sun & blue water to the shady cool of the pines and back as often as you liked.

The next beach about a mile south, the central beach, was named "Jaycee Beach". Years later, my children called it "Kid’s Toys Beach" because they had a playground with equipment.

A 4 flap-seater swing set (you could swing high & see the ocean), a teeter-totter, a manual merry go round, a giant round concrete fish you could sit inside, a couple of those colorful resin molded animals, with seats and handles, mounted on a single bendy car spring and last, a polished cement dolphin that was good for lounging upon and looking at clouds.

Neat place for young‘uns & grups - the playground was on a grassy fire-anty field just west of the water - between the boardwalk and Ocean Drive.

Last, about three miles more down the road, was South Beach. Not so developed for the public in those days but possibly the best beach. The dirt road approach gave pretty easy access and there were facilities (bath & shower).

This was our favorite place for ocean fun and girl watching. The ladies seemed to prefer the relative privacy at South Beach. BFF Chuck and I would go to swim and/or observe the pulchritude. Regretfully we were a few years early for thongs but the bikinis of our day were fantastic. Ahhh youth.

The town of Vero Beach was mostly idyllic peacefulness & quietude though the Dodgers baseball team made their winter quarters there (after the bums moved to LA) and years later the New Orleans Saints football team joined the ball batters.

We also had Barnum & Baily’s Circus come through town at least once a year on their southern winter circuit.

Once, several years after the bulk of this story happened, my new spouse and I went over to the "Dodger Town" section of Vero to watch the circus set up.

We intended to gawk but gawkers were quickly drafted with the offer of free tickets. (They’re not free if you work for them but who can pass up the Toby Tyler opportunity? I’m still talking about the experience 40 years later!).

My own circus job was pure grunt labor. I joined a very colorful bunch of actual "Roustabouts". Totally tough guys, cussing international dudes with varying accents and some outrageous appearances - I would have been terrified to encounter the same bunch on the street or even worse - in a bar, but these guys accepted me as an equal laborer and even gave advice on how to do the job easier. Cool. I was a 20-something circus dude.

Our primary chore was taking stacked folding chairs from a truck and setting them up on bleachers. My darling new wife had a way more better job - she worked with elephants!

The bleachers, we men were loading chairs onto, came from a bigger truck which had hydraulics to set the bundles of heavy frames on the ground. Then, a hired helper would be given a chain with a hook on the business end and a veteran pachyderm on the other.

Our laborer (my dear) would duck-waddle in, under the folded bleacher stands and attach the hook on a particular rail up front. Then the handler would ask the elephant to back up slowly and soon - Pop! Bang! Clunk! Whack! The bleachers would unfold into proper portable seating stands - that’s when us dudes would file in and setup row after row of folding chairs.

It was honest and exhausting labor, we had big fun with our jobs and hung out with the circus folk afterwards like we belonged and when we came to the show later that night, all the circus people we worked with waved and said Hi! Which made us big time heroes with our accompanying "purchased ticket" friends.

We even followed the Barnum & Bailey show to Fort Pierce, the next town south, the night after and had just as much fun again.

I was a new musician. Still working on it today. I guess I was born that way but didn’t discover it until my teens. I fell into the company of two other fatherless boys. They were extremely talented musically. I was not gifted like either of them but I loved it and in retrospect that overarching invisible "guiding hand" was somehow involved.

Doug was a brilliant guitarist and could play big band arrangements the first time he heard them. I was always amazed at his perception - beyond my comprehension. Chuck could play anything he laid his hands on but in those days he specialized on percussion. To this day - the best drummer I ever worked with.

Physically he was also the most dexterous soul I ever met! I was at his house one Christmas Moring. The year that "Etch-a-Sketch" came out. We all took turns checking it out. With my tongue sticking out of the left side of my mouth, I right-angled a continuous line into looking like a house with a fire hydrant in front. It took a bit of concentration for sure.

When it was Chuck’s turn, he took both knobs in hand and in one smooth operation, signed his name in cursive! This too is way beyond my imagination and certainly my capabilities.

The three of us played popular R&R music (with occasional Zappa tunes) here and there, at the Youth Center near the High School, parties, etc.

Two of us would often go to the next unincorporated town north of Vero - Gifford - to hear Wednesday night services at a local church (they rocked the place - I had never heard the real thing before) we were two white boys in a black church and treated no differently than if we were local. The musical services were truly uplifting.

Through conversations and connections we two eventually joined a different band. The Tiny York Orchestra had originated in Jacksonville FL and at one time even had Ray Charles as a member (snatched up from the Deaf & Blind School in St. Augustine). Tiny, his wife, sons & daughters moved from Jacksonville to Gifford during my teen years.

The band had many off & on musicians. The core membership was Tiny York on Tenor sax, his son Vincent also on tenor, son Tony who played trumpet & Hammond organ (simultaneously), Chuck (my BFF) on drums and myself on guitar or bass (if we didn’t have a bassist).

We played in clubs & bars up and down the Treasure & Space Coasts of eastern Florida in the late 60’s early 70’s. The band was primarily an instrumental group with vocalists the second half of the show.

Our instrumental sets were made up of contemporary "Soul" hits like "Sissy Strut" & "The Tighten Up" and old standards that Tiny would throw in like "Moonlight in Vermont" & "I’m in the Mood for Love". The latter tunes "belonged" to my parent’s generation so it was kind of neat to get to play them.

Generally, after our first two sets and then intermission, we would bring out "Reddy & Freddy", our vocalists. Both great guys and an excellent vocal team, they would burst out from behind a curtain or out of a closet or backroom or even a bathroom after the intro to our first song in the vocal set played.

They fast-walked out, arms spread wide, grinning and singing the classic duet "Let it Be Me" - "God Bless the Daaaaaay I found you!!" killer harmonies.

Freddy had a row of gold teeth up front so we billed him as the "Man with the Million Dollar Smile". Reddy was just plain handsome and so didn’t need a moniker.

It was a popular, fun show and we had no trouble getting booked as often as we could play. The Tiki Room on US1 in South Melbourne was a favorite venue and the place would often fill up with a mixed crowd of locals and Space Coast employees, military or sub-contracted NASA folk like Martin & Boeing. "Cool folk" and "nerds" dancing with each other & having a blast to our music. Not a bad time for a kid musician (me).

We had no exclusive "agent". Jobs came in or were suggested and then followed up. Tiny was frugal and didn’t pay anyone he didn’t have to - like booking agents. We relied on reputation and people who knew other people.

One of our non-agent benefactors was a man named Grady Orso (like the bear). I overheard he was married to ‘The Voodoo Lady" who was a local healer (she put spider webs on wounds - it works) and who had a serious reputation for other spooky stuff. I’m sure Grady was terrified of her - that kind of guy.

Well, one time way back when, Grady got us a job at the Deep Blue Sea room in Lake Wales. I had never been there before. We packed our equipment up into a U-Haul trailer, hooked it to the ’66 Cadillac and drove the long flat many miles down route 60.

It was a straight hot boring ride and we got there late in the afternoon just in time to set-up for the evening’s gig. At the front door while unloading, Chuck and I spotted the Donald Duck water tower peeking out over the line of orange trees across the street and cheerfully elbowed each other & pointed.

We were acting just like cool grown-up musicians, accepted by the locals and ready to do our thing. We were actually pretty good players, even at that age, and the band performed well together.

The front door to the club was a real honest-to-God louvered swinging door - just like in the cowboy movies. Right inside the front doors and to the left as you walk in, was a giant Wurlitzer juke box. A music vending machine. This was the model that had all of the title listings up front and you just pushed one button to hear your song (after coins inserted).

First, you choose and push the right button. Then the robot would wake up, the curved ring that selected the record rose up to allow the stashed, big-hole 45 rpm disks to file quickly by underneath until the preferred song was "found".

The file-by stopped and the chosen tune was top & centered. The robot arm turned sideways up and then dipped down to chose your disk & removed it from the collection.

Then the arm turned sideways flat, hovered slightly and lowered the disk onto the already spinning turntable. Out from an unnoticed shadow comes the other robot arm - the phono needle.

Slowly floating down, groove contact is made and the miracle of loud recorded music begins. I’m pretty sure they still make these fascinating vending machines.

Selling sound. Kind of like what we were doing.

The Deep Blue Sea was a two story wooden building with a second floor balcony on the street side above the swinging doors. Inside, the ground floor (almost nobody in Florida had a basement - they filled with water every time it rained hard) was a long rectangle @ 75 x 100 ft.

The tables & seating were arranged 3 steps above the dance floor. So, there was a squarish place to dance then 3 steps up you had @ 15 ft. wide area with tables & chairs surrounding the floor on 3 sides. There were 3 exits off the floor up the steps in the middle of each side.

The open front end of the dance floor was level with the swinging door entry. The Juke Box was just inside left of the front door as you come in. Right beyond that the 3 steps up floor started and the left corner of the upper floor was the stage area where we set up our stuff.

The drums & Hammond (organ) took up most of the footprint, so once we got them setup, the rest of us packed in around them. There was rarely sufficient stage room anywhere we played.

Setup was done. It was a few hours before we were scheduled to play. Chuck and I were under-aged and technically not allowed to even be in the bar, much less working there but we were told that as employees of the band that it was OK.

OK.

After setup I looked around for a bathroom. The serving bar was at the back end of the room opposite long ways from the stage and the front door. An obvious dark door shaped place to the left was probably the bathrooms. I had a need and so went to that side of the bar, opened a door and found myself - outside??

There was a "walkway" of half rotted wet planks; some laying in puddles, in front of me and having seen "Alice in Wonderland" I knew enough to follow the apparent path. It wound around the end of the building I had just left, turned two more right turns and there I was at an outhouse!

Jeez! My first. Not too hard to figure out and I didn’t get molested by weirdos or dogs. The paper was on a stick, stuck in a crack in the wall, and no need to flush, just get the hell out of there ASAP (shooey!).

Back on the wet wooden path to the Deep Blue Sea Room proper where Vince, our other sax player, was shooting a game of pool at the only table on the dance floor with a few of the Mexican proprietors.

The pool table was a professional heavy slate job but on wheels so they could get it off the dance floor when necessary. Vince was doing OK at his game. The hermanos were beginning to look frustrated.

There was a flat floor room on the right side adjacent to the dance floor and a set of stairs leading up one flight to wherever. Tiny, our boss, said it was time to change out of our work clothes (for lugging, plugging & other equipment setup) and into our zoot suits for stage.

They weren’t really zoot, he just called them that. Our stage garb was not uniform but it was "presentable & clean".

Our moms would have approved of our appearance though certainly not the place we were in (I guarantee no parent or guardian ever knew where we were or what Chuck and I were doing - anonymity was one of the benefits of being fatherless.)

Chuck and I grabbed our paper bags (filled with clean stage clothes) out of the Caddy and headed up the stairs. It was late in the afternoon and way Florida hot (no air conditioning in this place for sure, I think they had just recently managed to hijack electricity).

We trudged up the long flight to the second floor. We were guided to a room at the far end of the hall by one of the Hermanos. (They were all dressed in identically colored wide horizontally striped serapes and big knives on their belts - kind of a uniform.)

These Mexicans obviously ran the place for the blacks. I’m not racially bigoted, that’s the way I saw it. That’s the way it was. Apologies tendered if need be.

All the doors on both sides of the upper hallway were closed. On our quick walk down the hall, Chuck mischievously tapped on all the doors as we walked by. Our "dressing room" was at the far end of the hall. When we got to it, Chuck and I turned around almost without thinking, to see if his prank had any results.

There, back down the hall, the third door of 5 on the right opened and an attractive young black woman dressed in a T-shirt came out and looked curiously up and down the hall. We looked at each other with some confusion and amusement - not yet perceiving the obvious and went into our room to change.

It was a clean enough room, like I said at the far right end of the upstairs hall. There was a window, a bed, a closet and a small half-bathroom, a dresser and a radio/record player. A box of record albums was next to the player.

All the titles were in Spanish (ok, not yet too other world for us young teens) and we could not comprehend them. Then we noticed the album cover photographs had mostly undressed people on them and where their eyes would be, the photo was covered up with small black rectangles as if you put the bottom cardboard off a candy bar over the eyes to conceal identity. What???

Then, in relative slow motion, Chuck and I began to put the clues together - the strangeness of a black labor community being served by the armed Mexican brotherhood, the upper floor rooms, the semi-nude girl answering the pranked door knock, the other language obscene (?) music (at least the art).

WHOA! DUH??!! We were working in a Brothel!! DUH!!

We slowly turned and looked hard at each other. Suddenly, wordlessly aware that we were in the wrong place. This situation suddenly becomes a dangerous adult world and we are no longer adventuring cool white teen musicians.

We both look at each other and then out the second story window and see across the street and above the trees - the Donald Duck himself. Only now, instead of smiling beneficially at his community of happy workers, he is grinning malevolently at us and laughing. We are trapped in the sleaziest possible den of grown-ups and the Duck is mightily amused.

What are we going to do? We’re gonna play the job, what else? I guess we could have abandoned our equipment & instruments, stuck out our thumbs and hitched a ride home but that was only on paper. No way could we abandon our band even if secretly quietly terrified - the show must go on.

We’ve all been there one time or another - its part of the package - growing up.

We come down the stairs considerably more sober than we went up. Crossed the dance floor on the way to the stage to check our setups. As we passed the pool table, I came close to Vincent who, like I said, was winning his game of pool against 2 of the badder looking Serape Brothers. I whispered in his ear, "This is a whore house; these guys will kill you if you win."

As I walked past I heard Vince’s ball "whack!" scratch into a corner pocket and then the sound of Hispanic victory. Smart Vincent.

We began our first set and during those 45 minutes the place totally Friday night filled up. I’m guessing the joint was very popular or the only place to go - period. I never saw a cop but every other type you could imagine. Straight couples, gay couples (another first for our hero) old, young, some dressed to the 9s, others in cover-all’s. All of them having a good time and dancing their collective butts off.

OK, as long as we’re playing, it is not too frightening. They seem to like us and the two white boys were a novelty - and - they didn’t sound bad at all. The music was good and the set went well. Almost a good enough feeling to push the scariness to the back of our minds. We’re starting to feel OK.

Yes, honky white boys in the band was a novelty and yes, they played OK. I was a normal dark haired proto hippie. I had John Lennon rimless glasses and a Beatle cut - not too long in those days but radical enough to be identified as both cool and a musician by my peers.

BFF Chuck had very long blond, almost white hair and he was tall and thin. (we tried to get him to dress as Twiggy one time but he wouldn’t go for it - it would have worked) His appearance was almost alien compared with our hosts & their guests.

One very large happy woman had taken quite a shine to our boy Chuck. He was in her lap and she was both petting and protecting him at her table during the first break.

We were too young to legally drink - heck! we were too young to even be in that place but the law was often bent for music. There was some clause or codicil that allowed us to be employees of the band and thereby get around the ban.

She was buying us beers; nobody was saying anything about it so we thought all was cool. The break went on and all comments were positive re the music.

Our vocalists were not on board that evening so we had 3 more sets of instrumentals to go. The dance floor was emptying its people up to the drinking floor and one guy kind of stumbled up the third step in front of Chuck and his large female admirer.

The man tripped up a bit on the last step and C reached out to aid him. (We found out later the man was big momma’s Ex and he was more than a bit upset by her current preference in men).

Next portion Rated X for language and violence.

As Chuck reached out to catch the stumbling man, he said something like "Hang on Bro, I gotcha." The man stopped still on the third step, looked totally shocked and then wide eyed and inches from Chuck’s face he gets loud - almost screaming,

"GET YOUR MOTHER FUCKIN HANDS OFF ME YOU HONKY WEIRD MOTHER FUCKER! I’M A BAD ASS! I JUST GOT OUT OF RAIFORD (state prison), I HAVE A PIECE! AND I’M GONNA BLOW YOUR SHIT AWAY!! (He pulls a revolver with a 10 inch barrel slowly out of his right pocket and waves the end of the gun at Chuck's nose.)

We are frozen solid. Immobilized with amazement and total terror.

This is way unexpected and way worse than we thought it could possibly be and I guess we’re going to die young and here and now. They’d never find our bodies. Our mother’s & siblings would wonder forever whatever happened to us. Our instruments would end up in a pawn shop and that’s that for us in this life.

The large woman who had been "admiring" Chuck was insulted. She wasn’t going to take this crap from her X and she wasn’t going to turn loose of her pet either.

I guess we really were protected because when our BadAss had almost finished his loud belligerent tirade, she stood up in his face, gently moved Chuck to the side with her huge left arm and as she turned back she said "You can’t talk like that to my boy!!" And gave this guy a full frontal right fist roundhouse haymaker square to his face.

He kind of swallowed his last word and went flying backwards towards the dance floor. She whacked him really hard. Like in the cartoons and comics, you could almost see the WHAP! Batman star between her fist and his face and exactly like the cartoons we did see the bottoms of his shoes mid-air as he went over backwards and landed on his butt on the dance floor legs spread and looking even meaner.

All the Hermanos were on the alert by now and they ganged up and hustled this guy out the door and properly chastised him further. We didn’t see him for a while. Meantime Chuck the terrified had no decent place to hide so he went to the stage, crawled into his 22 inch kick drum and refused to play. I didn’t blame him.

Made aware of the incident, Tiny came by to comfort us, and slyly showed us the .38 revolver in his boot and said "Don’t you worry, he does anything to you and I’ll get him good." What a comfort.

We (the rest of the band) kept asking dancers and passers by. "Hey Bro, can you play drums?" The first volunteer stunk but the next one was good and we continued until he got tired and by then Chuck was back on the job albeit watching the door and ready to flee in a second.

The offender eventually was allowed back in on his promise to not make any more trouble. This did not satisfy us but things were stable and we had the Mexican Brotherhood on our side and watching this guy like hawks so we finished the 3rd set and began the 4th final set of what had become, to this day, the longest music job I can remember.

Chuck was against the back wall on his drum throne then, in front of him, was the line of musicians and in front of the players, a waist-high wooden rail separating the band stand from the dance floor.

About halfway through the last set and during some of our best and most well-known tunes, the perp came up to the rail all smiling and apologetic and he motioned for Chuck to come on up so they could be buddies.

When Chuck got close enough, the perpetrator grabbed Chuck’s tie and began to fiendishly pull him into range. The happy friendly smile was gone and the steaming crazy look of revenge was on the surface. Insanity continues in old Lake Wales.

Luckily, Chuck’s tie was one of those silly single colored blue knitted things and when pulled - it stretched like a bicycle inner tube. Chuck pulled all the way back to the wall and the bad guy could not pull him close enough to reel in and harm him before the entire Serape clan was on him again and dragged him, cursing and kicking, out the front swinging doors.

This time he didn’t come back.

We finished the set and the night alive. Chuck & I were still in shock and though it really happened we still couldn’t believe we had been through all that.

We tore down and packed up. Breaking down the drums into packable equipment, cymbals in a round leather zipper bag, all the hardware folded or telescoped into its smallest permutation, and all the drums in their black cardboard cases.

I took down my amplifier and packed my instruments away. The horn players did the same.

Tiny came by and congratulated us all for a good job and for surviving in the face of potential disaster. It wasn’t the first incident for all the rest of them but yes for us boys. We were now baptized by fire.

The Deep Blue Sea Room was 90% empty. Most of the characters in that play had gone home or to the next crazy place on their schedule. A few couples drifted out in each other’s arms. A hired hand was picking up miscellaneous trash & sweeping dusty piles around the dance floor.

We were piling our amplifiers, drums & instrument cases outside the trailer in preparation for a careful and studied packing job. It was kind of art and kind of a miracle to fit all our stuff into the space allowed. Chuck and I were lifting a PA speaker together when we heard a loud BANG!! (Like a gunshot!).

Yowp!! This immediately froze us both solid with memory and dread. We looked in panic mode to all corners, expecting to see our mortal enemy, pistols flaming, set on his revenge no matter what the cost.

The entire panic package from the bar passed through both of us and again we were doomed. Then we heard laughter - not pistol fire. We looked up at the source of the joy. It was a kid @ 10years old. At this point in life many years later, I guess he was a child of one of the workers.

He had set off a Cherry Bomb and tossed it from the balcony down near the laboring musicians. I don’t know if the boy was aware of the old hassle inside but his bomb could not have been more frightening and he could not have been more amused. I’m thinking it was the spirit of DD hustling us out of there ASAP!

We got all of our equipment carefully packed into the U-Haul trailer. Somehow, during the show, we had lost the Cadillac and the tow-home vehicle was now a Mustang fastback. The final insult on that job was the ride home. There was no room for all of us - jeez!.

I had to ride 100 miles lying, across the laps of three guys in the back seat. Very uncomfortable and bumpy. Once my three supporters decided to torment me even further by tickling me when I couldn’t defend.

Forced tickle is the favorite kid torture. Ironically the victim is laughing, so a kid lawyer could possibly say there is no discomfort on the part of the receiver and therefore no crime. But any physical act forced on another is rude at least.

I gave the primary perp a hard elbow to the ribs (might have cracked one). That made them stop the torment though I was told for the next 80 miles how bad a sport I was.

Big Love to All