Terry Mosher 3

TERRY MOSHER

 

 

My first memory is me standing with my back to the door leading out to the wrap around porch. Actually, there were two doors to the porch. Another one departed through the front living room; this one through the dinning room that was never used as a dinning room.

Mom, or mama, was buttoning up my heavy coat, and I had thick rubber boots that were over my shoes that hid thick winter socks. I had mittens on, a scarf wrapped around my throat and an ugly chin-strapped hat sitting on my head.

I was about four and then was led out the door and to bitter cold. Snow about a foot thick coated the side lawn and everything else in sight. It was a white snowy winterland – and freezing cold. Maybe it touched zero that day in southwest New YorkState. I’m not sure.  It might have been even colder, minus 20 or some other godforsaken minus temperature. Didn’t matter. No matter how well my mama had bundled me up, I remember just being as cold as I had ever been. It took just a few minutes of slowly walking on ice-crusted snow, occasionally falling through, to open that side door again and brace myself against our old hot-water radiators.

I tell you, it took some time to get heated up from those radiators. I used to sit on them. But you could only do that for sort bursts of time or less get burned.

A year later I was bundled up less cumbersome. It was September and school was starting. It was a first for me. I would wind up in Kindergarten at the old MasonicTemple building on Temple Street in Portville, N.Y.

It took some doing, however. My sister Minerva, the oldest and only girl among five Mosher children, was 16 years old and a senior at PortvilleCentralSchool. My memory of that day is getting off the bus in front of old PCS with Minerva and her trying to steer me to Temple Street a block away. I was trying to go back in the direction from which the bus came, back to home. We had a small game of tug-of-war going with me crying “no-no.”

Finally, Minerva fashioned a bright plan. She offered me a penny if I would go with her. I stopped crying and took the penny. It’s the first money I earned. It was hard work, but somebody had to do it.

I didn’t stop rebelling, however. That first kindergarten day I refused to follow directions and was sit in timeout on the piano bench away from the rest of the class, all eager beavers to please the new authority figure in their lives.

As I sat there I realized it would be stupid to not play the piano. That’s what pianos are for. So I did. Pretty badly, I might say, but I did. And the new authority figure did not like that at all. So I wound in a far corner where there were no pianos, just dust collecting.

It seems to me that my first day at Kindergarten pretty much set the tone for the rest of my life. I’ve been rebelling against the norm ever since. When people now ask me as they leave to stay out of trouble, I say, “What for? That’s no fun.”

I did not become a trouble-maker. I became a person who questioned, at least in my mind, decisions made by others to decide for myself it they were correct. In short, I’m not a follower. I’m not a guy who will jump on the first bandwagon. I will not paint my face Seahawk colors, and I’ll let the Seahawks decide if they deserve my support not some talking sports head on radio or TV or some raving idiot on Twitter or on a blog. I’ll figure it out, not somebody else.

And I’m more than just a sports guy, although that being a sportswriter for nearly 45 years is what I have done as a profession. I am just as interested in politics, world affairs, the economy, movies and live theater, and books as I am sports.

I will continue this discussion. I’m getting a little tired and need to rest my tired mind. I am determined to wander from those humble beginnings through my life, omitting little, so my extended family can find it someday if they really want to know what this old  dog was about.

Be well pal

Be careful out there.

Have a great day.

You are loved.