Saturday 9: Chattanooga Choo-Choo

Saturday 9: Chattanooga Choo-Choo (1941)



On Saturdays I take a break from the heavy stuff and have some fun…

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1)  Chattanooga is Tennessee's fourth largest city. Have you ever visited Tennessee? If so, where did you go and what did you see?
It was way back when I was knee high to a grasshopper; every summer we used to go on a trip around the eastern U.S. and one year it was the Smokies and the Blue Ridge mountains. When we were in Tennessee we visited Lookout Mountain and road on the Tweetsie Railroad.

Since Glenn Miller's recording of "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" was awarded the first-ever gold record, we're going to devote the next questions to your firsts.

2) What was the first award or accolade you ever won?
Wow, do you know how hard it is to answer questions like that when you are in your late 60s?
Well if my memory severs me, it was sometime in high school when we won the science class project with launching a poor mouse in a model rocket. The mouse was dazed and we were beaming.

3) We know about your blog. But which was the first social media site that you posted to? (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, MySpace ...)
Geocities. And to prove nothing ever goes away on the web, here is a link to it. As you can see my blogging goes back to1999.

4) Where did you go on your first plane ride?
Whoa… that’s ancient history. I think it was a flight to Orando (and no it wasn’t to Disney World, that was only a dream in Walt’s mind) where we visited Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. The were getting ready to launch the first Saturn V rocket.

5) Tell us about your first cell phone.
It was a big clunky phone of a 2002 vintage.
But more interesting is the story behind it. I went to Provincetown MA for a trans conference and I wasn’t out yet, so I didn’t want to tell my parents where I was going for a week (BTW, I leave tomorrow for the same conference). Because, one P’town has a strong GAY connotation  and two I wasn’t out to them so I couldn’t say they I was going to a trans conference. As a result I was worried about the area code for the phone number of the B&B, so a friend who was gave me her cellphone number. I told my parents that the rates for using the motel phone was too high so call her instead. Within a few days of coming home I had my first cell phone.

6) Tell us about your first tattoo: Where is it on your body? Where did you have it done? What does it depict?
I don’t have a tat.

7) How old were you when you had your first piercing?
June 29, 2007 at 1:00 PM
How’s that for an answer?
I know the time because I was laid off from work at 11:00 AM and that was when I transitioned.

8) What had you been drinking the first time you suffered a hangover?
Probably a rum and coke.

9) Was your first ticket for parking or was it a moving violation?
Ah… I remember that!
I was driving down the New York Thruway at 5 in the morning and the sun was just coming up behind, it was a beautiful morning. I going back to college in Rochester and I was the only car on the road. It was just past Syracuse where the turnpike is flat and level with corn fields on both sides of the road, and one lonely tree alongside the road. There was this guy in the middle of the road doing jumping jacks????
As I got closer I saw a wide brim hat and the state police car parked behind the tree.
I got an 18 dollar ticket for doing 85 in a 65 MPH zone.

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