To Tom:
T’Moss, Bug here. I want to relay a couple of things to you that may ring a bell. Long before you and Steve found music in Steve’s garage (20’ from my bedroom window) we enjoyed mayhem and fun. You were fearless at anything and basically anyone. Steve much taller, you much stronger. We, as kids, had BB gun safari’s across the Coral dam, playing sewer tunnel rats from the drive inn drainage crawling to 10th ave and shooting industrial rubber bands from the storm drains at passing cars, climbing Harding’s apple tree and launching apples from a bike tire inner tube slingshot at anything on 10th avenue, tossing eggs from our roof at Halloween tricksters, playing endless hours of Army throughout the hood, winter sledding down North Finkbine hill till we couldn’t climb it any more, camping in snow caves, skateboarding down our drive and 10th ave hill on a block of wood with shoe skates nailed to them till the wheels got flat, making random calls on the phone to strangers and imitating JFK, endless hours of work-ups on 10th between your house and Harding’s in the street with the rest of the Coralville gang, chasing the DDT truck every week to hide in the fog, playing mass team basketball in Shaffer’s drive to their 7’ basket, you drawing crazed cats on paper and hiding them in a biology book then showing them to me in 10th grade Mauseth biology class. I laughed my ass off and got kicked out of class…thanks!, and yes…sampling the dregs of your Dad’s 40 gallon wine barrel till we barfed all the way to my house and ate onions to have a reason to be sick. Stokes, you and Steve made our lives on 10th as we grew up a true adventure. I am proud to say I loved you like a brother. You made us laugh, you lived life and you led your audiences to have many moments of happiness. I will always have your quick wit and Cheshire Cat grin in my mind…wondering…what’s next? Love you Brother! Jim
