My Life: An essay from 1969, in the Palmer Method...or is it Peterson?

You'd never know I'd become a columnist based on the grade....

My Life

My name is Jack Hamilton Ohman. I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. I was born on Sept 1, 1960. When I was born, my Dad was in Graduate School. It was 101 deegrees when I was born. When I was 22 months old, I could count to 10 and knew my ABCs. After we moved from St. Paul, Minnesota, we moved to Marquette, Michigan. We lived there for 6 years. Then after we moved from Marquette, we lived in Alexandria, Virginia for 3 months. Then on June 17, 1968, we moved to Fairfax, Virginia at 5226 Perth ct in Kings Park, Virginia. After that, I learned to shoot a BB gun.

On August2, 1969, I took a vacation to Denver, Colo. After we stayed in Denver, My Mom, My Grandma, My Brother, and my Cousin went to Salt Lake City, Utah. My Dad, my uncle, and myself went to Strawberry, Utah, seventy miles southeast of Salt Lake City, Utah. When we went fishing I caught a 1 1/2 17 inch trout. My Dad said “Who gets the first fish, the biggest, most, longest, heaviest, and last.” “each catch 10 (cent symbol).” Later that day, I caught a 1/2 pound, 17 inch cutthroat trout. after our trip, when nobody except me had caught anything, so I won 60 (cent symbol).

I was on a Little League team last year I was the worst batter, I batted .50

I plan to be a doctor, a millionaire, and a pro coin collector

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Fascinating stuff, right?

I didn’t catch any misspellings, unlike on Substack (I’m blind in my left eye, currently, but hope to get that fixed this year. I have sniper vision in the right eye).

While not insightful at all, I found it pretty typical of my priorities then.

Naturally, I had to repeat the size of the trout, just in case anyone missed my piscatorial prowess. I remember catching that like it was yesterday. We were trolling with my Uncle Hal, and I was using a Helen frog flatfish at sunset. While not a knockout fish by Strawberry Reservoir standards, it seemed huge to me then. We ate it later.

The essay itself is comically repertorial. Dates, locations, participants are all dutifully recorded. In fact, I would call this essay dutiful. Just the facts, ma’am (probably Mr.s Lerch, who lived up to her name—a really unpleasant woman who had invented the word “glare”). She didn’t appreciate free spirits like me. Teachers in 1969 hated free spirits, what with my little drawings in the margins, although this one had none of that drawing nonsense.

Knowing Mrs. Lerch as I did, I suspect she didn’t give us any instruction about precisely how one should frame this essay, so it became an old-school UPI wire service dispatch from a nine year old.

BULLETIN SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH (UPI)—A Virginia boy won a Utah trout fishing bet MORE

Note my baseball career for the Springfield Lions, a hapless Bad News Bears prototype. Coached by a U.S. Army colonel, Mr. Stutz, and a U.S. Army sergeant (he wore a white tee shirt and olive khaki field pants—nice guys, though—we just couldn’t catch a break. I actually batted .050. The next year, on the powerful Springfield Jays, I was the team batting leader. I think I hit about .750, an admirable HOF candidate figure.

The BB gun was a Daisy Remington Fieldmaster .22 replica, and you really could put an eye out with that thing. Daisy would never make something like that now, because it would attract the attention of local law enforcement. I never vandalized anything with it, being a work-hard-and-play-by-the-rules type of child, but I certainly shot at squirrels, which I mercifully missed.

This led to my early incarnation as a gun nut, which I gave up at age 15 or so. Frankly, all the Minnesota kids had shotguns and rifles at that age. I went deer hunting (hated it—too cold), duck hunting (too cold), and grouse hunting (liked it). I liked target shooting at cans and vanilla wafers—no blood. I did continue skeet shooting into my 30s, but gave it up when my dad almost killed me at the gun range in Sherwood, Oregon.

“It just went off, “ the former Army Expert marksman said, while I was clearing mud and PVC pipe fragments off my face. The load landed at my feet near a plastic pipe, which blew up.

“Dad, this is our last shooting trip”.

It was poignant, but necessary.

Childhood self-congratulation: I knew the ABCs and could count to 10 when I was 22 months old.

I don’t know. I guess that’s what the ‘rents said. I have no idea if that’s remarkable or not. I do recall my oldest son being very verbal at that age. I remember one time a well-meaning, earnest mother who likely had children named Genevieve and Sterling leaning over to my son at something called “Indoor Playground”, and saying, in a mom voice, “Do you have a wagon?”

“Actually, it’s a wheelbarrow,” he replied in the manner of a defense attorney.

I also note, with some amusement, my future career plans.

Doctor.

Millionaire.

Pro coin collector.

All worthy goals. When I got to be around 12 or so, I realized that being a doctor wasn’t the same as having the ability to microscopically draw and name internal organs, which was one of my hobbies at the time. Maybe a medical illustrator? The late Tony Auth, the great Philadelphia Inquirer editorial cartoonist, had a degree in medical illustration from UCLA. However, he also peppered his presentations with medical illustration sight gags, like a musculature guy pulling on his skin.

Haha.

I also realized that being a doctor meant being great at organic and inorganic chemistry, which is the first phase of washing out doctors and nurses—that left me feeling a little out of the game.

Millionaire?

Sure. Why not?

Pro coin collector?

Well, having the Quiz Kid mind that I have, memorizing all those Key Dates in the Lincoln cents (1909-S VDB, 1914-D, 1922, 1931-S, and so on), it seemed like a worthy goal. I did collect coins for years, and ran out of money for that endeavor on May 8, 1988, the day my first kid was born.

I can recall wanting to be a doctor, an astronomer (math—out), a U.S. Senator, Governor of Minnesota (the fall-back job), and, finally, a political cartoonist, which I figured was the thing I would do if all else failed.

OK.

What was my grade?

Thanks, Mrs. Lerch.

Honestly, I don’t blame you a bit, now.

Sheesh.

My life.

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Hey YBs!: This will be first of a load of material today. My Chronicle column on Signal and Hegseth will post this afternoon, and likely a cartoon or two, if I’m organized. I’ll hope I get a C, or above. I see a ton of new subscribers flowing in from Ann Telnaes today. My phone has been bouncing all morning. To the new Ann folks, welcome, and I always appreciate all subscribers. Tell your friends, so I can keep watching my phone bounce. Catch you all on Signal later. I have some war plans I need to leak.—J.