OT: "Old" people stories
- Thread starter AgSurfer
- Start date
my dads best game was probably billiards since he played english so damn well!he would break a rack then tell me where every shot was going and he didnt mss much!
true english and ball position will win you lots of games!you lost me on my DADS room??
thanks again yes I have mentioned it on here before just got back from the DR have little pnuemonia hope my anti biotics will get rid of it!Have a great day pin!!
if you didnt know Murray you would certainly know him if he was in the same place he talked to anyone and everyone just walk up to strangers and introduce himself no matter a bar or the NCAA tourney he just liked to talk!
cool I have lots of relatives there you know the Martins they also wrestled and like to party!
my dad and uncle were really good at 3 things swimming pool and fighting they hung with one guy that was tall and skinny but when it came to fighting he was one tough SOB!
Wasn't very big but his pool room/bowling alley was in Lilly, PA where the Post Office now resides. Bought it in 1958 from Grover Smith and closed for good in the 1980s when he decided to retire.
I spent many a night before I could see over the side of a table sleeping on the back table in the wee hours of the morning while the guys played a game we called Razzle or Pill Pool. Once I could see over the side, I would rack tables and collect the greens fee.
With Razzle the players anteed up a quarter a piece and picked two pills from a bottle with pills numbered 1 through 16. You typically would throw your lowest pill on the table and the order from lowest to highest was the break/shooting order (16 automatically won the break). The second pill you kept and that was the ball that needed to be sunk for you to win the pot. No one knew who had what number except their own. Dad loved it as it was a whole dime a game and often a money ball would be sunk on the break. If they guys were playing Razzle my dad would let them play well into the morning and just pull the shade on the door and lock it.
Man, it was a different world back then.
I don't say much about that war I was there 1 yr but I was in the navy running with carriers and shooting the big guns was glad not to be on the ground I feel for those guys!
and thanks Pennstate1985 for your concern,when they say WAR IS HELL THEY DONT EVEN KNOW TILL YOUR IN ONE!
thanks a lot I have many many positives from all you wrestling fans!I HOPE TO SEE MY 3 GRANDSONS GRAD AND I WLL BE FIGHTING THIS 24/7 TO MAKE OT THERE!JUST SAYING HELLO IS ENOUGH FOR ME!
A team mate lost in the finals to a kid from Oil City with 20 seconds to go in 1984.
Last edited:
When I worked at the Army's military police school at Fort McClellan, Alabama back in the 90s there was an older, hard-core civilian MP instructor with the Andvancd Law Enforcement Training Division (ALETD) who had actual audio footage from the Tet Offensivie that he used to play during training ops. The guy was hard-fricking-core and he wanted to give those trainees the most real flavor of what insanity looks and sounds like when the shit is going down. Don't run into guys like that as much as back in the day...much more kinder, gentler, and sensivite as I was prepping for my retirement. But I guess that's just the changing times.
Tet was hell. There's a poster on here that goes by the name Paleryder. He was in the battle of Hue City during the Tet offensive.
Thankfully, I deployed a year after Tet.
Were you on a carrier? I mentioned before on here that I went to a PA prep school - Mercersburg Academy. One of my classmates was a guy named Jim Stockdale. He always seemed a little edgy, like something was bothering him all the time. I finally asked one of the other guys what was going on with him and he told me that Jim's dad had been shot down over Vietnam and he had not heard anything about him for two years. That was the same Jim Stockdale that was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading the POWs during the war. He's one of my all time heroes. I can't begin to imagine what he went through.
Yes - same guy.
Exactly! And I'll bet that most of the guys here are way more interested in hearing the history of some of the posters on this thread who have served our country as opposed to the narcissistic and anti-social behavior of someone who may or may not be on the Iowa team in the coming seasons.
I love the old guy stories, keep them coming.
no I was on a destroyer the USS HOLLISTER my brother was on a carrier then got transferred to some cake job on some Bahamas island can't recall which one!actually that tin can was pretty cool we had cookouts every sunday the meal was always filet-mignon and they were the thick kind no cheap stuff one thing about the Navy we really ate well!
heres a good story back in the depression my dad and uncle played football for Youngsville only the good players got football cleats they both got them,anyways they came to Erie to play Academy I guess they were a powerhouse back then no one knew Youngsville anyways my uncle was a running back and he put up 6 TD on them it was quite a spectacle!They hadnt been beat like that in a long time I don't know what the final score was!
Here’s an old guy story - my grandfather was stationed at Pearl Harbor (Schofield Barracks, I believe) on December 7th 1941. He was sitting on the shi!!er reading the Sunday paper when a couple of Zeros staffed the barracks.
He went on island hopping through the war as the US pushed back the Japanese in the Pacific.
While we're on this topic, let's not forget former Penn State coach, Bill Koll. He was with the 149th Combat Engineering Battalion that landed with the 2nd wave on Omaha Beach while part of the first wave was still pinned down at the water line. I have no idea what he went through on that day. The Penn State wrestlers said he never talked about it. The 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings is coming up in just a few weeks. I'll try emailing Rob Koll and see if he'll tell us any of the details.
my Uncle was an officer in the Airforce in WW2 he flew these giant planes that only 4 other guys were qualified to fly any ways after the bomb was dropped he was the first to fly over the damage and take photos!
My father in law never talked about his time in the army air corps except to say he was there. My dad never talked about his time in Germany at the end of WW2.
After they were gone we found out that my FIL flew 53 B17 missions in Europe and was awarded 7 air medals, four with v device. My dad helped liberate some of the concentration camps.
If they only could have told of their experiences, I certainly would have like to hear about them.
After they were gone we found out that my FIL flew 53 B17 missions in Europe and was awarded 7 air medals, four with v device. My dad helped liberate some of the concentration camps.
If they only could have told of their experiences, I certainly would have like to hear about them.
Growing up, one of my uncles that lived next door in the old family homestead was a Silver Star recipient. His MOS was Machine Gunner and the tool of his trade was a Browning M1919 .30 caliber machine gun. He was one of the gentlest people you would ever meet and if you didn't know his story you would have never known that he ever had killed anyone. He never talked about the war unless you could get him drunk around a campfire and then maybe he would share.
He told of one story of them coming across 9 Germans trying to keep warm around a fire on a cold winter day and him along with some others in his company killing all of them.
Uncle John ended up in the Army not because he was drafted, but because he hated working in the coal mines so much that he went ahead and enlisted. He got to Europe in Oct 1944 and by Jan 1945 he was wounded while fighting around Metz. The Germans were firing at them with their 88s and at some point, he and his ammo carrier heard an incoming round and dove for a shell hole. John dove in headfirst and took shrapnel in his legs as he couldn't get the entire way into the hole quick enough. His ammo carrier was not so lucky as he dove into the hole feet first and took shrapnel into his upper body and head.
John said the worst part of the experience was being transported out. They had a jeep fitted with three stretchers on each side in the back stacked like bunk beds. These were exposed to open air and the jeeps weren't exactly designed for a luxurious ride. Besides freezing from being exposed to the open air on a January winter day, he said every bump caused terrible pain and he could not wait for the trip to end.
He ended up spending a year at Ft Pickett in VA recovering before being discharged. Upon his discharge he went back to the homestead and lived a very simple life off of his disability check for about 66 years along with some of my other uncles that never married.
He was pretty much everyone's favorite uncle and a would spend hours hitting us pop flies in the field until we all grew up and stopped playing.
He told of one story of them coming across 9 Germans trying to keep warm around a fire on a cold winter day and him along with some others in his company killing all of them.
Uncle John ended up in the Army not because he was drafted, but because he hated working in the coal mines so much that he went ahead and enlisted. He got to Europe in Oct 1944 and by Jan 1945 he was wounded while fighting around Metz. The Germans were firing at them with their 88s and at some point, he and his ammo carrier heard an incoming round and dove for a shell hole. John dove in headfirst and took shrapnel in his legs as he couldn't get the entire way into the hole quick enough. His ammo carrier was not so lucky as he dove into the hole feet first and took shrapnel into his upper body and head.
John said the worst part of the experience was being transported out. They had a jeep fitted with three stretchers on each side in the back stacked like bunk beds. These were exposed to open air and the jeeps weren't exactly designed for a luxurious ride. Besides freezing from being exposed to the open air on a January winter day, he said every bump caused terrible pain and he could not wait for the trip to end.
He ended up spending a year at Ft Pickett in VA recovering before being discharged. Upon his discharge he went back to the homestead and lived a very simple life off of his disability check for about 66 years along with some of my other uncles that never married.
He was pretty much everyone's favorite uncle and a would spend hours hitting us pop flies in the field until we all grew up and stopped playing.
my father was in Korea and manned the machine gun on the B26 (bubble on the bottomish of the plane). He always had neat stuff laying around - ammo cans, rations, radio gear. Once when cleaning out the attic I ran across his citation for having flown 50 missions from the President. Still never spoke much of the war itself. He was signed up for Helicopter flight training (and would have gone to 'Nam' most likely) but my mother told him to get home and help with the kids 
My father in law was a Marine pilot. When my wife was in HS, (long before we ever met) he was the XO of the Marine Air Base in Yuma. Michele said that before they moved to Yuma, he was very heavily involved in gathering intelligence during the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962, but he could never tell her exactly what he did. If any of you guys saw the movie Thirteen Days, there was a scene that showed some US pilots flying low level over Cuba to get detailed photos of the missile sites. I often wonder if he was one of those pilots.
If he flew the recon version of the F101 Voodoo likely.
We just buried my father at Quantico. Impressive service there. He was a member of the Magnificent Bastards. He was so proud to be a Marine but he just wouldn't talk about it. When we had to wake him for whatever he came up swinging. So we had to resort to tossing pillows on him.
Dude, thank you much and love your spirit. No need to say ‘Stay strong’ as no doubt you will.
I don’t have any stories, but I do have something to say. Thanks for sharing the assorted tales, and thanks all around to those who served.
My FIL spent the rest of his life not being able to walk on a sandy beach because it reminded him of his service. When they would vacation at the ocean, he'd sit on the balcony and drink beer the entire stay. Never discussed Nam. He was actually in intelligence before things became so bad he was forced to the front lines. The things we made him do in intelligence. It was unspeakable. I can't imagine what that would be like as a 20 year old. I'm old enough to remember Nam. You guys are to be honored.
Well you have my utmost respect sir. I hope you get to Philly in 2025. I would like to meet you.
