Author: Paul W. Konopacki

Back in 1982, I was at a low point in my life.  I had recently dropped out of college.  I drove out to California to find myself (I did not).  I could not find an entry-level job due to an economic recession that hit the United States.  I was renting a room in a bad neighborhood near the St. Paul Cathedral in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Desperate to make a buck, I went to a temp. agency and spent hours in the waiting room in case a spur-of-the-moment temporary job came up (because a permanent laborer was sick or there was an event where they needed additional personnel for the day).  It was rather depressing.  I looked around at the other people there and said to myself I did not belong with this group.  The sad thing was, I was there, so yes, I did!

The first opportunity that came up for me was a dishwasher job at a seafood restaurant.  One of their regular employees couldn’t make it and it was going to be a busy dining night.  I drove to the place and with very little orientation, was put to work.  Dirty dishes seems to come in non-stop for hours.  In the middle of the shift, the other dishwasher, a regular, came up to me with a wine glass in his hand and said with a smile, “Watch this!”  He proceeded to crush it with his bare hand.  Shards of glass flew everywhere causing his hand to start bleeding profusely.  I can’t believe he had done it on purpose!  Was it just stupidity or did he just want to get out of work?  He wrapped his hand in a towel and was rushed to the hospital  I was left to wash the dishes by myself.

Dirty dishes stacked up fast.  I could barely keep up.  I persevered and finished the night without a broken plate.  The owner was so impressed that he asked for me to come back the next night.  And I did.

The second opportunity was for a night-shift job at a potato factory.  They needed two people from the temp. agency, so one other guy drove with me to the plant.  They gave me a white apron and a white hat and put me into a tiny room with no windows.  There was a conveyor belt coming into one wall that would send french fries into a sorting machine.  Then the fries would drop onto another belt and be taken out of the room.  My job was to use a broom-like tool to keep the fries from gumming up the machine.  I was the only one in the room.  There was a camera mounted on a wall so that someone in a control room could see what was going on.  I had no ability to stop the belts or machine, so if I had a problem, I was supposed to wave at the camera and supposedly someone would stop the processing line until the problem was solved.

A few hours into the tedious job, the fries started to stick together.  All of a sudden, they bunched up and started to spill out of the machine and onto the ground.  Within seconds there were more fries on the floor that I would ever eat in a lifetime!  I frantically waved at the camera, but the fries kept coming.  Eventually the conveyor belt stopped and a couple people came in with shovels to take the waste-high pile of fries to a dumpster in the back.

After the shift was over, I went home extremely tired.  My clothes were permeated with french fry oil.  It took a couple of days to get it all off my body.

A few months later I got a break and started an entry-level, white-collar, computer desk job in Detroit, Michigan.  In a way, I look back at those two menial jobs with fondness.  I learned humility.  My attitude was to do the best I could regardless of what the task was.  That attitude has helped me navigate tough times throughout my life.

In 2004, I discovered files on the internet called ‘audio blogs’ (later called ‘podcasts’).  They were usually 30-45 minutes in length and consisted of conversations between people on a wide variety of topics.  The content was much different than traditional radio.  There was no ‘watch’ organization censuring the language and no time-limit restrictions.  Some of the shows I listened to were  “The Daily Source Code” with Adam Curry and The Dawn and Drew Show.

I did not own an mp3 player, so I would burn an hours’ worth of shows to audio CD and listen during my work commute, working out, or when I went to bed.  After awhile it became tedious to burn CDs so I bought an mp3 player.  I refused to buy an Apple iPod because I felt it was way too expensive.  I found a brand called iRiver that was much cheaper and allowed me to record my own stereo audio stream, as well.

iTunes did not support podcasts at that time.  You had to download a free ‘pod catcher’ such as iPodder and Juice.  You would subscribe to podcast RSS feeds from an on-line ‘aggregator’.

My Own Podcast

A year later, it occurred to me that there were no podcasts about geocaching, my favorite hobby.  I decided to create one focusing on geocaching-related activities and geocachers in the St. Louis area.  I did research to determine the bare minimum equipment I would need to create, edit, and publish episodes.  I learned how to edit an XML metadata file (RSS feed) containing episode info and upload it to iTunes,which now provided a place to advertise home-grown podcasts.  Since I was the SLAGA (St. Louis Area Geocachers Association) webmaster, it was easy for me to publish the actual mp3 file episodes on the internet without depending on any other web site or pay any monthly fees.

From 2005 – 2008, I recorded audio from geocaching events and interviewed geocachers outdoors and at my dining room table. I published a new episode every week or so. I tried to keep episodes between 25 – 45 minutes because that seemed to be the sweet spot on podcast episode duration based on presumed consumer attention span and commute time.

During the time I was creating podcasts, a handful of others around the country were creating their own geocaching podcast content. Occasionally I would appear as a guest on those podcasts. There was very little overlap in our content because we were physically distributed around the U.S. and had different ideas as to what we wanted our podcasts to be. I decided I did not want to try to grow a following or a community around my podcasts. One geocaching podcast that started just before I created mine was ‘Podcacher’. Sonny and Sandy continue to make episodes out of the San Diego area and cover geocaching topics world wide.

Episodes 1 – 100

The SLAGA (St. Louis Area Geocachers Association) web site still provides an on-line index to the podcasts. Episode #1 was audio I gathered at an event in St. Charles, Missouri where SLAGA had a booth to explain geocaching to the general public. I recorded on an iRiver mp3 player. The audio was terrible, but it was a start. Later episodes included interviews with local geocachers at my dining room table where I could better control of the ambient noise and lay out the audio equipment ahead of time. But I liked to get audio while outdoors because that is where geocaching takes place! I would attend geocaching events and grab a few people who I knew were prolific in the hobby or had interesting stories to tell. I created a poor-man’s wireless microphone setup so that I could attach a microphone to the interviewee as we walked around the woods.

I created audio podcasts at MOGA events (Midwest Open Geocaching Adventure) – (episodes #20 – #22). In order to help promote the hobby of geocaching, I had discussions with local land managers about rules and regulations of placing geocaches on public land and how the hobby promoted family values and respect for property. In 2006, I took a week-long trip by myself to Arkansas to interview geocachers in that state (episodes #36 – #41). The only full phone interview I ever did was with Eric Colley – writer, director and producer of ‘GPS, The Movie (episode #28). During the summer of 2008, I was nearing three years of production and 100 episodes. I decided to make episode #100 a retrospective of previous episodes. I chose a few people I previously interviewed and called them up on Skype to find out where they were now and what new geocaching adventures they had been on.

I could have titled this post ‘Dodge Ball’, but that is only the lead-in topic.

First, I need to explain that I am not a competitive person when it comes to playing games.  In my younger days, my performance in any type of game was generated by fear of failure.  I still have memories of specific failures that haunt me to this day.  If I happened to end up on a winning side I did not gloat.  I was just glad it was over!

Let me talk about the game of “dodge ball”.  We occasionally played it during gym class at Luck Pubic High School, using ‘school-yard rules’.  There are two teams on opposite sides of a court.  You try to hit a member of the opposite team with a ball.  If you hit them, *they* move off the court.  If they catch the ball instead, *you* move off the court.  You can go back on the court if you are of, by grabbing a loose ball and hitting one of your own players on the court (not an official game rule).  The winning side is when there is  one player left on the court.

For a geek, I had very good reflexes, which gave me a good dodge ball player reputation.  When it came to choosing sides, I was within the first few to get picked.  It was always the awkward, gangly, underdeveloped kids who where were picked last.  They were also the ones who got the most balls thrown at them.

We played with red rubber balls in two different sizes. The games were fairly painless until the introduction of a third size ‘small’ ball.  It could be easily held in one hand and you could really wail it at someone.  You weren’t supposed to aim for the head, but it was inevitable that ball and head would meet many times during a game.  Even though it was a blow-up rubber ball, it could hit the body pretty hard.  During one game I was hit so hard with a small ball that the logo stamped on it branded me on the thigh.  You could see the logo on my leg for days!

This leads me to the main topic of this post.  You may surmise that I named this post because one of those small balls hit me in the face, but you would be incorrect.  As I said before I was pretty nimble, so at the end of many games I was the last one standing.  This pissed off some of the jocks in my class.  How could a geek like me out last the basketball and football players?

During one game, I was the last man standing on my side, but there were three on the other.  They kept trying to hit me, but I evaded the balls.  I could see they were getting agitated.  They were yelling at me.  The gym coach blew the whistle for some reason to temporarily halt the game.   One of the players on the opposite side, Billy R., a football jock, walked up and confront me face-to-face.  He was yelling at me, but I do not recall what he said.  I looked down and noticed his fist clench up.  The next thing I remember, I was getting up off the floor.  I don’t know how how long I was out after he punched me in the eye.  We ended up playing another game before gym period was over.  My payback was I beamed Billy R. in face with one of the small balls!

I had a shiner for the next few days.  One of Billy’s close friends, Alan M., uncharacteristically sat next to me in study hall to admire the black eye.  I think Billy sent him over to get a sense of whether I would eventually retaliate.  I never did.  I don’t think Billy and I ever talked after that.  We didn’t hang with same crowd or take the same classes or have anything in coomon.

So, that’s the story of how I got my first black eye.

Oh, one more thing … the gym coach who blew the whistle to stop the game before Billy threw the punch? Billy’s father, Ed R. …

Back in the early 1970s there was a TV show called ‘Alias Smith And Jones‘.  As described on the internet … “This Western features outlaws Hannibal Heyes (Pete Duel) and “Kid” Curry (Ben Murphy) trying to go straight …”  My friend Jody Videen and I both liked the show.  We each took a characters and played around like we were them.  He was the “Kid” and I was Hannibal.

One summer day about 1972 (we would have been 11 years old) we decided we would be those characters and walk the Soo Line railroad tracks from Luck, Wisconsin to Frederic, Wisconsin.  Distance was seven miles between towns by car.  It would have been something similar by railroad.

We made no particular calculations.  We did not bring snacks or water.  We did not tell our parents what we were doing.  A train went by a couple of times during our journey.  We hid in the farmer’s fields that lined the tracks when we heard the whistle.  Occasionally we would put down a penny on the rail so that the train would run over it and flatten it.

A few hours went by and we had only walked half way to Frederic.  It was getting dark.  We were smart enough to realize we weren’t going to make it to Frederic and back.  Highway 35 was only a few yards from the tracks, so we quickly hitched a ride back to Luck.

I remember that day because it was full of innocence.  We were two mid-western U. S. boys with no care in the world – looking to fill our lives with adventure.  Obviously there was an element of danger and it was probably illegal to walk the tracks and put pennies on the rail.

Today, the tracks are gone.  The railroad bed has been turned into a recreational trail called the Gandy Dancer Trail.  The red line in the image below shows the old Soo Line railroad bed.

In the late 60s and early 70s, my mom, dad, sister, and I would take a week-long driving trip during the school summer vacation.  It was usually the four of us driving the family car to visit relatives or friends of my parents in South Dakota, Michigan, or New Mexico.

In August of 1972, our trip took us to South Dakota where my mom’s aunts and cousins lived in Viborg and Centerville .  I was 11 years old at the time.  We happened to stop at the Sioux Falls fair on our way.  I do not recall everything we did there or how long we stayed, but I do remember there was a moon rock exhibit.

It was the first day of the exhibit and the Konopacki family was first in line.  It just so happened that the local radio news reporter was there to interview the first person to see the exhibit, which was me!  (My mother may have had something to do with that …)  I vaguely remember the moment.  I am sure I didn’t say anything profound.  The reporter probably said, “Are you excited to be the first to see the moon rock exhibit?”  and I probably sheepishly replied, “Yes.”

The focal point of the exhibit was one rock under a glass display case.  It was in a tent with other exhibits about the Apollo 11 mission.  Even though I was interested in science and space at that time, as an 11-year old boy, I did not comprehend the massive effort made by the United States to send a man to the moon and return with a small piece of it.

In 1984, I was starting my professional career in the computer industry.  I was working for my first employer, Logical Design Corporation, in Farmington Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit.  They wanted to send me to a class in Atlanta, Georgia where I would learn how to repair IBM desktop computers.  This would be my first official business trip!

I got on a plane at the Detroit airport and flew to Atlanta.  When it came to renting a car, I ran into a problem.  At this point in my life, I did not own a credit card, which is required to rent a car.  I assumed my employer had taken care of that detail when they booked my flight.  I call my boss, who talked to the lady at the counter and somehow convinced her to use his credit card to cover the car rental.  Tragedy averted!

As I got dressed the morning of the first day of class, I realized I had forgotten to pack a tie.  I felt really silly at the time, but in the end, it really didn’t matter.  No one judged me on my oversight.  (See class photo, below).

This was a two-day class where we sat in a training room in front of computers.  After a lecture, our hands-on tasks began.  After we left the room, the instructors unplugged something or change a configuration on each PC.  We came back in and started troubleshooting.  It was rather fun and I did OK.

After the second day of class was over, we went outside to take a group photo.  (see below).  Just after this photo was taken, a guy who was attending who was also from the Detroit area, asked me if he could borrow $5.  (See Tim Shear, the guy under the yellow arrow).  Apparently he was out of cash and needed it for something.  Even though I really did not know the guy, I saw no reason not to lend it to him.  It was only $5!

Turn the clock forward to January, 1987.  I was looking for another job.  I interviewed with a company called Parameter Driven Software.  It just so happened that the guy I lent the $5 to worked there and he told the hiring manager since I was willing to loan a stranger some money, I must be an honest and trustworthy man.

I got the job.  A few weeks later the guy stopped by my office at PDS and handed me a five dollar bill!

My father was raised Polish Catholic.  My mom was Danish Lutheran.  Her father was a Lutheran minister.  My parents made an agreement that my sister and I would be raised Catholic.

Every Sunday, my dad, sister, and I would drive 7 miles north on Highway 35 to St. Dominic’s Catholic Church in Frederic, Wisconsin.  The service ceremony was just a delay to the stop at Dairy Queen on the way home!  It was a couple of blocks away from the church.  We parked on the west side of the street and had to cross Highway 35 to the other side of the street to get to Dairy Queen.  There were two windows to order from and the lines were usually not very long.  After ordering we would eat our purchases in the car on the way back home.

The standard fare was a chocolate ‘Dilly Bar’.  Imagine a tongue-depressor stuck into a disc-shaped glob of ice cream covered in a crunchy chocolate shell.  Occasionally it was offered in a crunchy strawberry shell – an exciting upgrade to a kid.  On special occasions, my dad would spring for a ‘Buster Bar’ that had more ice cream in it and embedded salty peanuts.

Toward the end of our regular weekly trips to church service, we went from ice cream to the “Mr. Misty” Kiss – plastic cylinder filled with frozen fruit juice that you would push up with a short straw.  For years afterwards, we would create our own push-ups at home in the freezer by saving the old tubes.

My name is Paul and I used to ‘wet the bed’.

This might be a scenario that you have not experienced and may feel uncomfortable reading about.  But it was part of my reality and I wish not to deny it.

I don’t remember exactly when it started – sometime in the early 1970s as a preteen living in Luck, Wisconsin.  At the time I had my own room, where-as previously I shared an adjacent room with my sister.  Sometime in the middle of the night I would wake up after have urinated in the bed.

The person who suffered the most was my mother, who had to come into my room most every night when I cried, “MOMMY!”  She would carry me to the bathroom to clean up and then change the linen.  She put a rubber sheet over the mattress to protect it during this period.

I remember going to a doctor in the neighboring town of Frederic, Wisconsin.  He did what I would say trick me into thinking the problem was solved by ‘snipping’ the end of my penis.  He actually didn’t do anything to physically alter it, but I have a vague memory of the visit and him using a scissors to simulate cutting something at the tip. There were occasional mishaps after the doctor visit, but essentially the problem was solved!

It would seem the underlying problem was psychological – low self-esteem.  Some people would disagree; that underlying cause of bed-wetting can only be a physical problem.   I was too young to know what self-esteem was, so it manifested into a physical problem.  I can honestly say that as an adult I continue to deal with self-esteem issues.  However, I would like to end this story on a positive note.  It was my mother’s love and devotion that helped me get through that period in my life.  Memories of her continue to get me through rough spots in my life.

It should be obvious by the title how this story turns out.

I started geocaching in 2001.  This is a hobby where you take a handheld GPS receiver, enter coordinates of a box usually hidden in the woods, then go find it.  The adventure is in the journey to the geocache rather than what is in the container our how it is hidden.

During the evening of New Years Day, 2003, I was driving home to Eureka, Missouri from a family event in Marthasville, Missouri.  I decided to look for a couple of geocaches along the way. It was cold outside and there were only a couple hours of daylight left.  I decided to find a geocache hidden on a bridge along the KATY trail – not far from Highway 94 near Defiance, Missouri.  There apparently was no place to park near the geocache location and I didn’t want to walk 1.5+ miles round trip in the cold.

I chose to drive onto a farm field dirt road. (At the time I thought it was public land.)  I estimated the route could bring me within 1/4 mile of the geocache and that would be an acceptable distance for me considering the weather and time of day.  I slowly drove my front-wheel drive Pontiac Grand Prix through the field.  At somewhat of dirt road intersection,  I turned left in the general direction of the geocache.  I approached a mud hole that was about 10 feet in circumference with no way around it without driving into the corn field.  It didn’t look like it could be too deep since there were no other standing water in the vicinity.  I figured I would just gun it and splash my way through.

The moment I hit the water, the front of the car sunk to the floorboard!  I tried to rock the transmission back and forth, but the wheels did nothing, but spin. I could barely open the driver’s door without mud pouring into the car.  As I stood in ankle-deep mud, I decided to  get a small shovel out of the trunk.  I went between bailing water and rocking the transmission back and forth.    Nope.  Wasn’t making any progress.  The driver’s side floor was now caked with Missouri River silt as I got in and out trying to get unstuck.  Bear in mind it is below freezing and it is starting to get dark.

My only hope was to find a nearby house and ask for help.  I jogged briskly through the field for 10 minutes until I reached a farm on a hill.  I knocked on the door and quickly told my story – hoping the man had a tractor that could pull me out.  It just so happened he did and his nephew was visiting who could drive it to where I was stuck.  He grabbed a chain, I held onto the back of the tractor and we headed toward my car.

The Grand Prix did not have a solid frame to latch onto near the trunk.  Luckily, after 30 minutes we were able to inch it out of the mud hole.  I thanked the guy, gave him all the cash I had in my wallet (about $20) and headed home, embarrassed.  The frame under the rear bumper was bent from the stress of the pulling from the tractor chain.

A few weeks later, I went back to look for the geocache … and even drove back into the field to park just before the mud hole!  I walked the rest of the way and found the geocache on the old rusty bridge of the KATY Trail that crossed the Missouri River.  See my geocaching.com log notes under the user name of ‘konopapw’, below.

Would you believe this is not the craziest thing I have ever done to find a geocache?!

“Cache is located along the Katy Trail. You should not leave the trail to find this cache, it is within reach of trail. The walk to the cache is flat and level but will be over a mile and half round trip and possibly more depending on where you park. The cache container is a small flat black box containing only a code word, email me the code word when you find the cache.”

In 1967, my family lived on base housing on the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona.  I shared a bedroom with my sister.  At some point in time, I was having nightmares that when I peeked under the bed, there was something in the dark looking back at me with glowing eyes.  I would wake up, yell for my mother, and she would look under the bed to assure me nothing was there.  One night, after a number of these nightmares, I must have finally had enough and yelled at the monster to stop scaring me.  I could tell I had startled it and actually hurt its feelings.  We came to a tacit agreement that I would not bother it if it did not bother me.  After that I never had the monster nightmare again.

In the 1970s, at middle and high school in Luck, Wisconsin, I almost had perfect attendance every year.   But I missed a few hours every now and then because my mother had to take me to orthodontist appointments in Rice Lake, Wisconsin – an hour drive each way.  I was gone for a length of time long enough for me to be considered away from school.

On the drive to the appointment, I would lie down in the backseat of the car and talk with my mom.  On the way back, I would ride in the front seat.  Quite often we stopped for a snack and a root beer float at a diner in Cumberland on the ride back.  I won’t go into the horrors of the orthodontist chair in this post.  (I’d kinda like to forget!)

Note: I think the diner was located at 1305 Elm Street.  Based on what I see on Google Maps as of February, 2018, there is a business called “Auto Value Cumberland” at that location.