I was talking to a friend and asked him he remembered when we had a “Snake Dance” at the Homecoming football game.

We kids all joined hands, made our way to the football field from school, snaking around trees on the tree lawn.

We ended up at Alumni Field, where we had a big fire and a lot of cheers from the cheerleaders.

These days the DHS band leads the parade by our house, and there are floats and cars with the queens that take the place of the Snake Dance of years past.

The other day I read about a man trapped under his big farm tractor when it toppled over on him, and he had to be airlifted to the hospital in Kalamazoo.

This story reminded me of a similar thing that involved myself and my old fishing buddy, Jim Luthringer.

We were out at Cook’s bridge on Dutch Settlement Street, where we fished off the bridge for dogfish in the weeds.

We heard a siren coming from town. It was a sheriff car and he came to a stop when he saw us. He said hop in and help me, as a farmer down the road not too far had been trapped under his farm tractor.

We left with him, leaving our fishing rods propped up on the bridge ledge.

We three were able to get the man under the tractor free.

When we got back to the bridge, our fishing rods were just as we left them.

I wonder if this would have happened in this day the way things have changed.

Also back then, there was no helicopter to take you to the hospital, so we had to wait until the ambulance got there for his trip to Lee Memorial.

When did they come up with a kickstand for a bicycle?

I can remember when you got off to park it there was a bracket hooked onto the back wheel that came down and this lifted the back wheel and held it off the ground.

My, how things changed over the years.

As a kid in one of the Orchard and Wayne Street gangs, we got up early in the morning and started shooting our Zebra firecrackers and lady fingers.

Nothing but a real quiet day, but all hell broke out after darkness.

I thought some of these sounded to be pretty good-sized ones, and went on pretty late.

Besides the fireworks I mentioned, we had torpedoes, snakes, sparklers, bottle rockets, Roman candles and caps.

Is the old millstone still at the Colby house yard?

The Murphy house smoke tree is now in full bloom. I’d like to know how old this tree is. I bet it was there when the old Reshore greenhouse was built and it may have been close to the big, old Reshore home.