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.)

Ice

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Morrison Springs - Ponce de Leon, Florida

Image
Morrison Springs Ponce de Leon, Florida County road 181 Morrison Springs was one of our favorite dive spots on many of our Florida trips but it also had the most danger to it.  One of Northwest Florida’s best-kept secrets was known to more Georgia and Alabama folks than Floridians.  And they weren’t talking.  It had to do with the jewel of a Panhandle spring, a turquoise pool surrounded by stately cypress trees whose aerial roots stand taller than a man. Below the surface, clear, 68-degree water wells up from a spring cave source over 90 feet deep. Morrison Springs is just far enough off the beaten path in this sunny pine and cypress country to be special for any diver lucky enough to find and dive the site. The shallow pool reflects the overhead blue sky and if the water is clear and the bottom clean of silt, it resembles a giant sapphire.  Unlike some springs with a deep, black hole source, this one takes visitors gradually into its shallows from a gol...
Read more

Are Showing Your Nipples Appropriate Work Attire?

Image
Let me first say that personally, I have no problem with it at all. This has been kind of a weird week here in the north land with the first of many winter snowfalls’s to come and the landscape once again beautifully covered in the white stuff. It looks like the kids will have to put their Halloween costume on over a snowsuit again this year as the cold snowy stuff is here again. That is not what I wanted to write about tonight but was necessary to set up what I did want to write about. “Frosty nipples” are quite common here during most of the year and when things cool down on the cusp of winter probably more so. Work attire with tight shirts or low cut blouses that ‘make a statement’ during colder weather could be taken several ways by co-workers or visitors to your place of business. While you may not always be taken seriously by others in the office and some may have trouble looking you in the face, I say it's a freedom of rights issue. If you want to show o...
Read more

Biscuits and Whores

Image
Some of the best things about life I learned from Lonesome Dove. Great movie, excellent characters, and tells a story about how to live life. Augustus McCrae “It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living.   I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.” I'm just tryin' to keep everything in balance, Woodrow. You do more work than you got to, so it's my obligation to do less. “Yesterday’s gone and we can’t get it back.” “I'm sure partial to the evening,' Augustus said. 'The evening and the morning.   If we just didn't have to have the rest of the dern day I'd be a lot happier.” Hat Creek Cattle Company Well we don't rent pigs and I figure it's better to say it right out front because a man that does like to rent pigs is . . . he's hard to stop. Biscuits “I never knew you to get excited about anything except biscuits maybe . . . and whores!”    Captain Woodrow Call to Augustus McCrae in Lonesome Dove. Whores L...
Read more