Adventures with Johnny
Adventures with
Johnny
(A remembrance of
good times and adventures with Johnny Kytle)
Johnny Kytle and I were best friends in high school and over
several of those school years had many adventures together. We learned scuba diving, sky diving (after I got
out of the Army), rode motorcycles and drove fast cars. It was pretty typical for us “buddies” to share
and do many things together, like join the U.S. Army on the “buddy plan” but as
fate would have it Johnny ended up with a deferment since he had crashed his
motorcycle several years earlier and had knee surgery. We were going to fly helicopters together but
after our physicals at the A.F.E.E.S. induction station I was left alone to do
my enlistment.
Johnny married my first cousin, Debbie whom he met on one of
our many scuba diving adventures in Florida where we would stop by to see my
aunt and cousins in Pensacola when we were in the north Florida area cave and
sinkhole diving.
I wanted to write about our travels together and revisit
some of our adventures, as we’ve both gotten older. I hope this will help Johnny remember the
great fun times we had together as his memory is fading and he wants to hold on
to them as long as he can. Ageing and
the progression of dementia and possible AZ cuts into the things we did together
as he tries to hold onto the memories every day.
Hopefully, this will lift the fog in his mind and push back
time a little longer. It will help him smell
and feel once again the freshness of our youth and innocence in our lives during
that time period in the late 1960’s.
The stories are in no particular chronological order, as
they took place over several years, only written down as I go back remembering
them. I think I will arrange them by the
locations we traveled and what we were doing during our adventures.
My only regret is when I left Alaska last year I was
downsizing my stuff and got rid of the photographs I carried around with me
these last forty years, including those dive trips and sky diving
adventures. I have none now to post with
these recollections. I will use some
photos from the locations I could find on the internet. I wish I still had mine as we had some pretty
neat underwater photos, skydiving pictures, and the places we traveled over
those years.
Over the next week or so I will be posting these adventures
of our travels and I hope you enjoy this slice of our past. It would not be long before my innocence was
lost and my attitudes and thought processes changed forever so this was a great
time in my life.
Johnny, these writings were a labor of love for the
friendship we continued to have through all these years. I hope you will enjoy reading about our
adventures together and hopefully, it stirs up some of the fun and interesting
things from our past!
(I gave Johnny the book tonight during our family Christmas
gathering and it was great to reminisce about our stories together. He reminded me a few things I had forgotten
which were so nice.)
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