Butchy the Chicken Whisperer chap 10.

Take them off or leave them on.

It’s really interesting when I take off my glasses I look just like Gene Autry. You know the singing

Cowboy. But some say I sometimes look like Mr. McGoo. But with my glasses off I have a tendency to walk in to closed doors or step in dog peeyuck. But when I put my glasses back on, Waalaa I’m the Chicken Whisperer once again. Just like that. Some others have said with my glasses off I look like Clark Kent without glasses. Just a glassesless newspaper reporter for the Daily Planet. Most unextraordinary. But I seldom wear a business suit with a reporter’s fedora with press pass tucked in the hat band. Never mind looking like Superman. In the meantime, I’ve been practicing the song, ‘Back in the saddle again.’ Getting my hopes up.

However, as mentioned before, my best friend Donnie from Milwaukee and me have a collections agency. We collect pop bottles redeemable at Joe Millers market on Olympic boulevard. We collect, we redeemed for cash, and then buy comic book and candy. Plus we will go around to houses collecting newspapers and rags. We’ll do that until Donnie’s Radio Flyer red wagon is so full we can hardly pull it to the recycle place down on Ferguson Avenue. Then off to Joe Millers for our Saturday morning comic book and candy transaction. Life doesn’t get any better than that.

Never the less, no thought was ever given to just saving the money for some future big purchase. A purchase like a Mr. Potatohead or a cap gun and holster. But our Saturday routine and redemption went on none the less. Until one day.

One day at school a person from the Bank of America came and introduced we kids to ‘Bank Day.’ Yes, actually sending money to the bank via a paper pouch with bank pass book in it. The idea was to put money i.e., fifty cents or a dollar in the pouch one day of the week, give to our teacher, and it would be sent to the bank for deposit. Early the next week we would get the pouch back with a bank deposit stamped in the pass book and duly registered as being in our own bank account. All the while drawing a measly four and a quarter percent interest. Which meant for every dollar we accumulate in our bank account we get four and a quarter cents. Never understood the quarter of a penny. How did they do that? My mom and dad got four and three-quarter percent. Not much but better than my measly four and a quarter percent. Banks seem to be so stingy.

(In retrospect, I would take four and a quarter percent right away. Compared to the 0.05 percent we are now making. Making is certainly an over statement these days. Banks absolutely suck.)