Amazing

  One of the places I loved to go to, when I lived in Fort Worth, was Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington.  It was halfway between Fort Worth and Dallas.  I also loved roller coasters, and I found that I could ride one coaster and sing the first verse of "Amazing Grace" before the first drop.  For some reason, I found that very calming.

 Before moving to Texas, I went to Six Flags there while in college.  They had two things there that I really liked.  One was a tower that you could go up in and see the entire park.  The other was a gondola ride that went across the park.  Since I was a little mischievous back then, I used both things for pranks.

 I was riding the gondola ride and had some pennies in my pocket.  I was about 20 feet above the ground, so I dropped pennies from the gondola on unsuspecting people.  I tried not to hit them on their heads but aimed for right in front of them.  Sometimes I missed and actually hit some people.  I didn't think they knew it was me, but I learned later that some people had reported the Pennies from Heaven.

 I moved onto the tower.  It was much higher than the gondola, and it was a hot day.  How do you cool off the people walking below the tower?  By spitting off of the tower and aiming at people.  It seemed perfectly logical.  I got a few good spits off of the tower, when a security guard came up to me.  He asked me if I had been spitting off of the tower.  I denied it, but they had witnesses.  He then asked if I was the one who was throwing pennies at people off of the gondola.  Of course not, I said.  They had witnesses.  I was asked to leave the park.  I was with some friends, but they didn't care.  

 Fortunately, it was about the time I was to meet up with my friends to leave anyway.  I bet the people I threw pennies near kept the money, and the ones that got spit on got cooled off some.  They never got the chance to thank me.  I was the "Lone Stranger". 

Hut

  When I was a member of Kilbourne Park Baptist Church, we had a great youth group.  Because we were so tight, the church decided to give us a house on the property for us to hang out in.  It had been used for Sunday School classes, but the church didn't need it anymore.  We were very excited to get this one-story house.  It had two large rooms on either side of the house which were separated by a long and wide hallway.  It had wooden floors and sheet rock for the walls.  We needed to do some work to get it the way we wanted it.

 The church provided us with the necessary materials like paint.  They also gave us some adult help on how to paint the walls mostly with rollers.  We had fun painting the walls, as well as ourselves.  We learned the trick of using masking tape for the edges.  There was some disagreement on what colors to paint the walls, but the majority ruled--purple, white, green and pink.  Some of the kids wanted to paint the walls in psychedelic colors, but the church said no.

 As we were preparing the house, we had an idea to knock down the hallway walls and make one big room combining both side rooms and the hall.  We asked for sledgehammers to get this done.  One of the church's members was a contractor.  He had the blueprints for the house.  He came by one day and asked us what we wanted the hammers for.  We told him about our plans, and his mouth dropped open.  He told us that if we were to go through with our plans, the roof would cave in.  Those two walls supported the roof.  We decided that we would just use the rooms as they were and not to knock down any walls.  It was probably a good decision.  

 The church called it "The Youth Hut".  It was our home away from home, until the church took it back and used it for other things.  Eventually, it was torn down and turned into a parking lot.  We had a lot of fun in that house.