Mike Ross: Co-Creator of Billy O. Crop
Sunday, August 29th, 2010
Those with razor sharp memories might recall my mention of “Billy O. Crop” in a long-ago posting detailing entries in my 1980 diary. Others actually have lives. Either way, the references to this made-up character came right smack in the middle of my second grade year, where my friend Lee Ballinger and I would pretend to be fictional characters Billy O. Crop and Fred R. Floyd, and ‘act out’ what would amount to the childish equivalent of a two-reel comedy…without the cameras. But the genesis of Billy O. Crop didn’t come from Lee. It came with another great friend from my second grade class named Mike Ross. Read the rest of this entry »
I spent a good amount of time for at least three consecutive summers at Discovery House daycare center. The little house located on Woodman Drive in Kettering was an ideal spot to hang out, and although I always seemed to have balked at having to go there, I have absolutely nothing but pleasant memories of it. Mom had gone back to work in October of 1978, so I believe that my first time that Denise and I attended was Spring Break of 1979. Then we returned again for the Summer, going there on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays while Mom was at work at Connelly & Co. 
Since we had just moved into our new Beavercreek home on Winterset Drive, and in the midst of decorating the house and erecting a new two-car garage, we didn’t do much extensive vacationing during the Summer of 1978. In fact, for the first trip that we took, we didn’t even leave the state. We headed north east to Youngstown, Ohio for the annual convention of the HET (Hudson Essex Terraplane) club – offically known as the 19th Annual Central National Meet. This national meet was held in a hotel district that included a Holiday Inn, a Days Inn, and a Motel 6. Dad is fairly certain that we stayed in the Holiday Inn, where the central headquarters was located. The dates of the convention were July 26-30, but we probably didn’t stay for all of the days. 
Denise was a bit luckier than I was. I received my first 
It doesn’t appear that we did much in the late Spring of 1978 after we had moved into our new house on Winterset Drive on April 8 – a date which corresponded exactly to Denise’s second birthday. Naturally, Mom and Dad were spending a good deal of this time getting our belongings unpacked and the house put together. We didn’t completely gloss over Denise’s birthday though. The 8th was a Saturday, so I’m not sure when we held the gathering of family but it may have been on the 9th, in conjunction with the family assistance we were getting from Grandma, Bev, Diana, and Darlene. I was very proud of the gift that I got for her: a 45 RPM record of Boogie Shoes by KC and the Sunshine Band, a song that she responed to on the radio. I was disappointed that she didn’t respond more enthusiastically.