





A couple of my blogger buddies had been inspired to reveal their beginnings, which I always find to be interesting. I am not a grognard, I played once in the 70’s and hated it. I didn’t play officially until 1993. When I was a teen, I had enough social problems to deal with without tacking on Dungeons & Dragons.





I’m a country kid, I mean to say that I grew up in the city of Council Bluffs Iowa, but in the early 80’s my folks were able to save up enough money to move out onto a rural route, I spent most of my formative years out there, but until that time I lived across the street from my cousin, who was like a big brother to me. I have been lucky to always live next to woods, and I spent a lot of time out there. Our parents typically kicked us out of the house, and we’d run around the woods until we got hungry.





We had toys, but if you take toys out into the woods, you usually won’t get them back, so we’d play pretend! Star Wars, Robin Hood, super heroes, this became our favorite game. We especially loved finding branches which we’d clean off and have sword fights, or staff battles. We fancied ourselves to be quite good at our sword fighting!





We did other stuff too, this was before central air conditioning was all that available, so the theatre downtown would host a children’s matinee, offering free pop and popcorn while they played those classic sci-fi, adventure, and monster movies from the 50’s and 60’s to get us out of the heat for a little bit, and we loved them! Those pulpy things were expertly written to attract susceptible young minds in the perfect way! Once the movie was over, we’d go back out in the woods and talk about what we’d seen, and sometimes we’d even pretend to be those characters! Especially with the monster movies, what kid didn’t love them? We’d all be the heroes and invisible monsters would chase us all around! There would be casualties here and there, but after a dramatic and heart-wrenching death scene, you’d be right back into the game. Rules? Who needs rules? Sometimes the game required you to stay dead, but the best one’s never did.





There weren’t hundreds of channels to choose from, if a buddy had cable television then he was popular! But, for the most part, everybody watched the same stuff. V, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, and lets not forget the reruns of Batman & Robin, Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Lost in Space! Cartoons only ran on Saturday mornings; most of them were terrible, but there were some shows that were popular, Superfriends, Scooby Doo, Land of the Lost, and such, but our favorite was Dungeons & Dragons! Everybody in my neighborhood watched these programs, and we talked about them! We tried to play D&D, but we weren’t ready for the strict rules, and my cousin was bossy enough without me having to call him Dungeon Master!





That period of time also had MUST SEE movies. Again, this was a shared experience. Everybody went to the theatre, mom and dad needed to get out of the heat too, and there was no VCRs in our part of town, so you either watched it at the movies, or you had some friend tell you every last detail of it. Well, there was MAD Magazine that helped out too, but the big movies, everybody saw. Besides Star Wars, which is a given, there was Flash Gordon, Clash of the Titans, Dragonslayer, and Excalibur. HBO even did a special deal for kids at the time with Excalibur, were they edited out all of the naughty bits. I remember our whole family getting together for this, all of my mom’s brothers and her sister, and all of us kids. We filled up our tiny little living room and watched it, it was a big deal!





Reading was a kin to some mysterious art, once our teacher started to let us into that secret world, I took right too it. I eagerly wanted to learn! My mother was a big fan of true ghost stories, monsters, and ancient secrets, but she wouldn’t read these to me. I was stuck with Sesame Street books and all of that kids crap because she said that those books were too scary, so I had to learn to read! And she was right. Those books were really scary!





I always loved reading after that; my favorite books were those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books! Again, this was a shared experience, once the library got a new one, there was a LONG waiting list to get your hands on a copy. The neighborhood I lived in was really poor, but we had the RIF Program which I was always thankful for and still support. Once a year they would come to our school and fill up the gym with tables and tables of books and you could choose one to have, and we always went after the “Choose Your Own Adventure” titles! I loved my mom’s scary books too, but I had to sneak a lot of them, much like I had to sneak up late at night to watch Creature Feature with Dr. Sanguinary, so horror stuff was kind of like being naughty! I became a story teller from them; my friend’s parents didn’t like them watching that kind of stuff either, so I would tell them all about this secret world and they’d just eat it up!





Once we moved out into the country, my social influences stopped. I love the country! That is where I spent the majority of my youth, and it was a tradeoff. Yes, I was extremely isolated, all social influences outside of my relatives stopped, but I would spend most of my time not spent doing chores out in the woods which were even bigger than my old stomping ground in Council Bluffs, out there I found discovery. I love the outdoors; I had a creek and miles of wilderness to play in. My yard was huge! I played alone most of the time, which really builds up the imagination. I had a couple of friends out there, but none of them were all that interested in fantasy stuff. I suppose that the other kids thought that I was into what they saw as “kids’ stuff” but I really enjoyed it, and I still do!





It was out in the country where I started playing video games, and I loved games like Haunted House, and Adventure! My cousins and I would create a makeshift space ship and play Star Raiders. ATARI games were great, they still required that element of imagination, but you could also actually role play while you were playing them! ATARI games still fascinate me, they could do so much with so little it just boggles the mind! This post uses up more disk space then what they had. Many of the games were really well designed, and better thought out that the stuff that one plays today. The Nintendo was another love affair with me, particularly Legend of Zelda. I really sucked at video games, but I could play me some Zelda, now! What Nintendo lacked in the imagination and role playing department, it made up for in size. Legend of Zelda was a HUGE game, and it rewarded you for exploring. Exploration games: that is what I loved more than anything, but Zelda also offered a challenge, and you couldn’t play it by yourself. While others thought that I enjoyed kids’ stuff, Nintendo wasn’t kids’ stuff. I found lots of secrets but Zelda brought kids together because everybody would find different things. It took a long time to first beat the game. Years later, when I cracked the game I found stuff in there that I had never seen before! It was really a magnificent program and one that I still enjoy playing.





Living in the country, I would read a lot. I didn’t fit in anymore, at school I was a poor country kid who the other country kids couldn’t stand because I talked nonsense to them, so I stayed by myself and I’d read. I discovered the occult and ate it up! Archeology and history was a love of mine, but it was scattered. I had no sense of direction; I just absorbed what I could. I learned way more outside of school than I ever learned in it. I didn’t find like-minded friends until after I graduated, and it was them that got me into D&D.





It wasn’t really all of these things that inspired me, it was my cousin who was my first best friend and brother, it was my uncles who ate that stuff up! It was my mother whose love of things that go bump in the night possessed me. And it was my father, whose love of Westerns and rural history is firmly embedded into my very being as well. It was the woods, infested with monsters and filled with discovery! These things made me what I am. Imagination is such an important part of my growing up, and I kind of feel that the kids of today may have been given the short end of the stick. My favorite toy was a stick! In my hands it was always more than just a simple stick, it was a thing of almost endless possibilities.



