Here are a few memories out of the 75 pages of Bloomington memories I wrote down, 34 years after we moved.  Maybe they will cause folks to do as I did and write this stuff down. I will TRADE memory books.

My folks sold the family home to the Pizzo family in 1960 and we moved from Sare Road to Baltimore County, Maryland. The high school here was like going to a hospital every day. No school spirit, no Senior-Turnabout Day, no athletic fields or feeling of school pride compared to what I had left. I didn't bring much in my suitcases, but I brought memories by the ton.

The dunkings they used to have under the Sare Road Bridge.  Jan VanWagtendonk and the Indian dancing group he formed when he was a boy scout in Bloomington.  The huge bear in the back of Schmaltz' Sporting Goods Store.

In 1996 I put out a CD of old time 5-string banjo tunes. Many of them I brought with me in my head from the folks I had met who played music along Jackson and Moores Creeks.

Memories of the soap box derby in Bloomington, the "stopping-contest" on South Walnut Street, the blind couple who played cigar-box fiddle and cigar-box mandolin on the square in front of the 5 & 10-cent store. Bobby "Jinglebell Rock" Helms, the guitar teacher at Rone's Music Store,  Granny Hughes, the water-witcher who lived on Moores Creek - I had to try to "feel the water" every time I went to get her to play me a banjo tune. The Mays brothers who had 200 blue bottles stuck on pegs they had hammered into the outside walls of their house. John "Dead Shot" Liell, who shot the tail off a squirrel that a hunter was carrying at 1/4 mile away.

Memories of the old man on Moores Creek who remembered everything that had ever passed in front of his eyes or gone into his ears. I would ask "What was the day like on May 4, 1942?"  And he would re-live breakfast for me, tell me what he wore that day, the weather, the crops, his family on that day.......

Did you ever see Mr. Rone carry full-sized pianos on his back?  Everyone saw it, but not too many folks ever tried to lift a piano.  I have met a half-dozen who remember seeing him carry pianos up to his second story workshop, but I have yet to find a person who knows how he carried them.

Feel free to post any of this on the Bloomington Bulletin Board.  I hope those who stayed in Bloomington can now look back and realize what a great place it was to grow up. 
All the best.......Reed Martin     Class of 1964 (almost)