Back on Radio(for an hour), Growing Up in Venice, Florida the last chapter(from 2008)

Miserable cold, rain, falling this morning...the leaves are sticking to the walks, yards, and roadways....fortunately it is scheduled to end before nightfall, and tomorrow and the weekend, my final football weekend, looks cool, but dry.  Tomorrow the drive to Ironton, on the Ohio River, will take me to Columbus to meet with the rest of the Varsity crew...then another 2 1/2 hours down US 23 to the river town of Ironton as that school takes on it's rival from Portsmouth...it will be a late night, into the early hours of Saturday.  Saturday Night I finish things up for my football season with a Youth League Championship double header at Celina Stadium....then the welcome rest for a few weeks, before basketball starts.

Back on the Radio_____

I had not been behind a microphone since 2003, when I planted myself behind the sports mic with "Wulfie" and Dave last night at the Celina Moose Lodge, for their weekly sports show.  After being on radio and cable tv from 1978 through the next 25 years, both full time(for five years) and part time for the last 20...it's pretty much like riding a bike, or drinking a beer...once you learn, you don't easily forget.  I wasn't nervous once the show began, and the hour went flying by...we talked officiating, then the upcoming NFL games and predictions of same, and finally discussed Ohio State and High School games this coming weekend.  I even got asked by the boss, if I was interested in doing some play-by-play basketball this season....with my schedule pretty well full on Friday and Saturday nights, I'm not sure I can pull that off...but the off the cuff offer was appreciated.

In addition to the show, I saw my niece Megan, her husband Cory, and his grandpa Grinny Fox, a longtime baseball legend himself out of Rockford, Ohio.  I talked with them for a half hour or so, mostly sports and umpires.   I also sat down with some old friends from our Racquet Club days back in the late 90s and early 2000s...so I stuck around an extra 90 minutes and caught up on old times with friends I have not seen in some cases in nearly a decade.  A good time to say the least.... 


Growing up in Venice, Florida, a final look back_____

In late 1958, around this time of year, November, if I recall,  we moved from the Venice By-Way to the house on the Corner of School Street and Pineland Avenue in the Edgewood Section of Venice....it would be our last home in Florida, and a house that mom kept until the 1980s....before selling our last link to those great days of my childhood in the 1950s and early 60s.


Here are the final segments from my look back, written in 2008:  {Click Links Below}


http://patsdailyrant.blogspot.com/2008/05/venice-florida-328-school-street.html


And here is the Epilogue....of a life lived long ago:


http://patsdailyrant.blogspot.com/2008/05/growing-in-venice-florida-epilogue.html


So there it is....a life lived 5 decades ago, on the sunny shores of the Gulf of Mexico...no Air Conditioner, 2 TV stations, AM radio, one car, but plenty of dogs, cats, snakes, gators, gopher turtles(tortoises), and other critters, in that life that really doesn't seen that long ago.

back later>>>>

Photos-{top} A sunset at Venice Beach, Florida, taken by me in the waning days of Summer 2000...Back when I started in radio, you need a license to broadcast, and it always helped going to a short term broadcasting school...these days, small market radio really doesn't care about quality...the early days of my broadcasting career were fun, although the moving and the starvation wages were problematical....and me and sister Marty's old cat, sitting on Dad's Chrysler Wagon, in the driveway at 328 School Street, Venice, Florida, around 1960....