Home | Over Here
...My advice, then, is to pay more attention to first kisses, starry skies, country roads, city parks, rain, winter mornings, and the incomparable smells of new-mown grass and berries along the way, and less to the broken windows, illnesses, wars, and, yes, even the deaths, that come as unwelcome attachments to this deep and unfathomable business of life...
Ron Pataky recalls the halcyon days of his boyhood.
Ron Pataky recalls the day he and a friend hitched a rie to the Ohio State Fair.
Ron Pataky recalls the joy of acquiring his first motorised transport.
Ron Pataky, continuing his authobiography, tells of Little Kenny's baseballing day to remember.
Ron Pataky admits that his sporting ability was severly limited.
"When I was out on the farm, things were great. But when beckoned thither by the lights of the city, I often felt like a boy who was born for the express purpose of serving as an unfortunate example to others,'' writes Ron Pataky, continuing his life story.
Ron Pataky tells of a perfect cure for a headache.
Ron Pataky tells of an embarrassing situation.
"The vivid memory I have of that day was of people weeping, often uncontrollably, as the caisson bearing the President's body rolled slowly by,'' writes Ron Pataky who witnessed the funeral procession.
...Like many other days in the life of a farm kid, I saw a bird's nest in one of the thick elderberry patches along the fence line.,,
Ron Pataky recalls how he became a collector of birds' eggs.
...Suddenly, for no apparent reason, my brother collapsed, sinking like a bag of wheat to our wooden floor, where he continued to lay without moving for what might have been fifteen minutes, but what seemed like hours. Nothing would wake him!...
Continuing his autobiography, Ron Pataky tells of a night of terror.
Ron Pataky recalls how he fooled a teacher.
...I sent away for a packet of "1000 Used Stamps from Around the World - Guaranteed." The "guarantee" bothered my young brain a bit. Were they guaranteeing them not to be new? Or what then?,,,
Young Ron Pataky decides to enter into the world of big business.
Ron Pataky tells of a time when it was both safe and unsafe to be young.
Continuing his autobiography, Ron Pataky tells how one of the steps at his home came to be badly chipped.
"One of the first things I learned in school was the value that teachers obviously put on daily prayer. You could actually be asked to leave the room if you chose to cut-up during Morning Prayer. Had a boy committed such an offense twice, I rather imagined he might be asked to leave the planet!'' writes Ron Pataky, continuing his autobiography.
Ron Pataky was a radio fan first class when he was a boy.
...I knew, for example, that if I could ever meet Margaret O'Brien, she would be mine. The same might even be true of Joan Leslie...
Ron Pataky tells of writing fan letters.
Ron Pataky tells of a bad attack of stage fright.
"There was one fool who lived across the wide cul-de-sac circle. He was a Marine major, and the sort of man of whom I was thoroughly ashamed even at the age of eight or so,'' writes Ron Pataky continuing his life story.
Continuning his autobiography, Ron Pataky tells of an inspirational lady.
...It was there in Parkfairfax that I had my one and only run-in with the law. And if I had hand-picked my victim from an International Police Agency roster, I could absolutely, positively never have selected more of a dandy of a wrong one. If life had been a giant freeway that day, everyone else, I was convinced, would have been windshields, and I would have been the solitary, utterly doomed bug!...
Ron Pataky continues his exhilirating autobiography.
Ron Pataky tells of high life in a Washington hotel.
"It was in Bethesda, later to be continued in Parkfairfax, Virginia, that Gordie, a few other buddies, and myself, developed our first flirtation with a mother's nightmare. Because there was that special aura of danger about them, I suppose, we began to collect and store Black Widow spiders!'' writes Ron Pataky, continuing his astonishing autobiography.
...They were fast times, even for kids. I checked almost every day, and there was a war going on! Gordon and I bounced from school to school like empty tankers in a level nine sea....
Continuing his autobiography, Ron Pataky recalls moving from city to city with his parents.
...I'll guarantee you this: If you were hearing the damned story for the first time, there is no way in bloody hell you'd believe one shred of it! People just couldn't BE that stupid!...
Ron Pataky tells of the outbreak of World WarTwo.
"Mom, in cahoots with my "teacher," took it upon herself to bake individual cupcakes for every single member of my "class." Plus one for the teacher. Each cupcake had been hand-decorated with red, white, and blue icing, and each "flew" a tiny paper American flag.'' writes Ron Pataky, continuing his autobiography.
...They were generally built far enough away from the house itself to at least temper the blending of wonderful cooking odors with their sneaky (and often abrupt) aftermath scents. Among other things, this meant long and dark treks on winter night...
Ron Pataky continues his redolent autobiography.
Ron Pataky's account of an accident with a sickle is guaranteed to make every reader wince.
Ron Pataky, continuing his autobiography, tells of his grandfather's unsual hands.
"Grown trees lend exclamation points to life when you realize that you are the one who years ago put that original, small twig into the ground!''
Ron Pataky continues his autobiography.
...A bath at day's end was a near to paradise as a normal farmer ever got in this life, even though it lasted but minutes and was followed by a goosebumpy exit in the breeze of even the warmest late afternoon...
Ron Pataky continues his vividly-told life story.
...The truth is that gagging, eye-watering assignments like scraping chicken poop into a manageable puddle were invariably offset by other, more appealing circumstances, arriving daily to touch and warm the heart...
Continuing his autobiography, Ron Pataky tells of life on the family farm.
...Gold Stars in many, many windows brought tears to us all, and it seemed to many at the time that even the flowers of the field wept with us during the worst days. Through it all, however, a redeeming fact of sorts was the awareness that, even then, through all of the world's darkness at the time, kids were always going to be kids...
Continuing his autobiograpy, Ron Pataky recalls wartime days.
..."Come on out," I sweetly invited Cousin Dana. "You can see the pigs a lot better from out here." Putting one small patent-leather foot ahead of the other, she daintily tiptoed onto the board, knowing that Cousin Ronnie would be there to help if she should encounter trouble...
But Cousin Ronnie had other ideas!
Ron Pataky continues his entertaining autobiography.
...Sundays were set apart for the Lord. The two darlings actually had paid the money to import a Lutheran minister "from the old country" to preach in the small rented house they called "church."...
Ron Pataky continues his life story.
...The market is where I learned an essential part of eventually being a truly rare adult male, thus attractive in obvious and distinct ways to distaff counterparts. Exhibit One: I could trim, clean, or otherwise prepare any item of fruit or vegetable known to civilized man...
Ron Pataky continues his entertaining autobiography.
"As noted earlier, winters in the market were normally a bitch. In our particular indoor section, which encompassed perhaps 30 x 45 feet (with a small outdoor sidewalk area), there was a single pot¬bellied stove at the common floor's very center. While its top surface was ideal for roasting Ohio chestnuts, its effect within the broader field of fumarolery left a whole, whole bunch to be desired.''
Ron Pataky continues his autobiography.
Ron Pataky continues his engaging autobiography.
"My formative years were steeped in broccoli, plums, sauerkraut, books, ration books, hickory nuts, hunting, memorial services, girls, and the glories of rutabaga,'' writes Ron Pataky, continuing his autobiography.
“My father's people are Hungarian, although we never wore the fact on our sleeves,’’ writes Ron Pataky, continuing his autobiography.
...As she read this letter, however, we could scarcely miss the fact that she had begun to sob. Very little noise, but sobbing nonetheless. When one of the older kids asked her what was wrong, she smiled through her abundant tears and told us that her husband was finally coming home, in less than two weeks! He’d been gone for almost FOUR YEARS...
Continuing his autobiography, Ron Pataky tells of letters from a war front.
“There was, in the entire field of lower education, absolutely NO curse worse for a boy than being called to stand and go to the blackboard while in the midst of a spell of inexplicable penile swelling! It was like trying to hide a decidedly prominent tent in an otherwise flat meadow, and a guy just knew that every pair of binoculars in the county had his momentary crotch-malady firmly zeroed in,’’ writes Ron Pataky, continuing his autobiography.
“Indeed, it wasn't until junior high that I actually got my first goodnight kiss, a then-respectable half-second job from the tender mouth of Shirley Varchmin, whose lips I don't remember, but whose kiss I will never forgot,’’ writes Ron Pataky, continuing his life story.
...Although her penchant for hugging me tightly was somewhat less than fully appreciated, what absolutely bothered me most was the penetrating piscine odor that inevitably lingered on my being for something like several months following each such intimate contact...
Ron Pataky recalls unwelcomed close encounters with a market stall holder.
...A huge part of my life at the time involved the venerable Third Street Market, which covered a full one-fourth of a downtown city block. Therein stood Pataky's Fruits and Vegetable Market, fronting the Walnut side of Third and Walnut...
Ron Pataky continues his autobiography.
...But, Barbara would’ve never involved herself in an exercise such as rolling dizzily down a hill. Or rolling any other way! Down anything! She and Peggy were the kind of girls who wore sparkling clean, neatly-pressed dresses (under which we guys imagined sparkling clean, only slightly moistened panties)...
Ron Pataky continues his autobiography.
...Mr. Williamson was the kind of guy I imagined ate his meat raw and probably worked off steam by clawing at a bare, rough-hewn wooden post in the evenings. He looked almost absurdly tough, and it was authoritatively spoken by the adults in town that he actually was tough! I thanked the Lord more than once for the fact that he was on our side!...
Continuing his autobiography, Ron Pataky recalls his celebrity-loaded boyhood neighbourhood.
...Grandpa Downing, a small, finely-sculpted, extraordinarily handsome man, labored all of his life at a nearby brickyard. The fourteen kids absolutely doted on their dad. To the days of their individual deaths, most of them had at one time or another mentioned the "wonderfully clean" smell of Grandpa Downing’s sweat! (I just report the facts, folks. I don't explain them)...
Ron Pataky, continuing his autobiography, tells of his family tree.
...Except for the on-again/off-again presence of a young father with a quick and nasty temper, the house was a place of relative comfort and security. When Dad was away from the home, which was a good bit of the time, it was also more or less a place of peace, although Mom was known to raise a broom on occasion for purposes apart from houseflies, ceiling cobwebs, or an occasional errant wasp or bee...
Ron Pataky, continuing his autobiography, recalls his first home.
“Time would pass, of course, as it has a way of doing, and the mysteries of both girls’ breasts and my curious churnings would become, if not completely understood, at least temporarily tolerated,’’ recalls Ron Pataky.
“Something was going on! Precisely what, I couldn't tell, but I did have the sense that it was going to have my full approval and support when I finally would become privy to the full story...’’
Continuing his life story Ron Pataky tells of his discovery of GIRLS.
For some years now Open Writing has been publishing a weekly poem by American humorist Ron Pataky.
Ron’s unique take on the world makes his rhymes instantly and hilariously recognisable. How the Pataky “style’’ evolved will now be revealed in the ensuing weeks and months. Today we begin the serialisation of Ron’s autobiography, Over Here.
