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Good Stuff Stories by Tom Poe, 10772 Chestnut Street, Los Alamitos, CA (2025)

05/25/2020

IT’S NOT THE CONTAINER but what’s inside...

Such a good story:

A woman by the name of Mary Bartels had a home directly across the street from the entrance to a hospital clinic. Her family lived on the main floor and rented the upstairs rooms to outpatients at the clinic.
One evening a truly awful-looking old man came to the door asking if there was room for him to stay the night. He was stooped and shriveled, and his face was lopsided from swelling—red and raw. He said he’d been hunting for a room since noon but with no success. “I guess it’s my face,” he said. “I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says it could possibly improve after more treatments.” He indicated he’d be happy to sleep in the rocking chair on the porch. As she talked with him, Mary realized this little old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. Although her rooms were filled, she told him to wait in the chair and she’d find him a place to sleep.
At bedtime Mary’s husband set up a camp cot for the man. When she checked in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and he was out on the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, he asked if he could return the next time he had a treatment. “I won’t put you out a bit,” he promised. “I can sleep fine in a chair.” Mary assured him he was welcome to come again.
In the several years he went for treatments and stayed in Mary’s home, the old man, who was a fisherman by trade, always had gifts of seafood or vegetables from his garden. Other times he sent packages in the mail.
When Mary received these thoughtful gifts, she often thought of a comment her next-door neighbor made after the disfigured, stooped old man had left Mary’s home that first morning. “Did you keep that awful-looking man last night? I turned him away. You can lose customers by putting up such people.”
Mary knew that maybe they had lost customers once or twice, but she thought, “Oh, if only they could have known him, perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear.”
After the man passed away, Mary was visiting with a friend who had a greenhouse. As she looked at her friend’s flowers, she noticed a beautiful golden chrysanthemum but was puzzled that it was growing in a dented, old, rusty bucket. Her friend explained, “I ran short of pots, and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn’t mind starting in this old pail. It’s just for a little while, until I can put it out in the garden.”
Mary smiled as she imagined just such a scene in heaven. “Here’s an especially beautiful one,” God might have said when He came to the soul of the little old man. “He won’t mind starting in this small, misshapen body.” But that was long ago, and in God’s garden how tall this lovely soul must stand!

04/24/2020

REMEMBER OUR FATHERS!

04/27/2019

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1542354192692508/permalink/2231063733821547/

AN INSPIRING STORY OF HER DAD...WRITTEN BY TONI WAGNER

When my father was 10 years old he was cleaning his bicycle with kerosene when his mother called out to him to burn the trash. He caught on fire and began running down the street. Our neighbor, Hub caught him and rolled him in the grass saving his life. He was sent to Long Beach Community Hospital. He had third-degree burns over 1/3 of his body. He laid in bed for a year while they let his arms and legs grow together with scar tissue. One day a doctor from Harbour Hospital was making rounds when he noticed my dad. He was horrified by what he saw and Immediately had my dad transferred to Harbour Hospital.
He started receiving treatment. Extensive skin grafts and the healing began. Soon he was instigating wheelchair races down the hallways. He returned home in a wheelchair and the doctors said most likely he would never walk again. He didn’t believe that and he did walk again. He was a Merchant marine during the 2nd World
War. Went on the become a master carpenter and built
the house I grew up in. Also built a couple of of boats in our
backyard. Later he specialized in door hanging and invented and made special equipment that would allow
him to hang institutional doors by himself in schools and government buildings. He was quick-witted, funny and
told great stories.And I was lucky enough to be his little
buddy. Whenever he said does anyone want to go, I said me. We went to a lot of hardware stores and boat and fishing stores. My favorite was going to the docks to work on the boat.

01/25/2019

DEL DANIELS WRITES...
2019 Short Story #4
High School Pranks

Hi gang,

The year was 1959. Life was good for us seniors at Jordan High School. Especially if you were members of the Jordan High tennis team. They were the first Jordan varsity team to win a league championship in the newly formed Harry J. Moore league.

Dean Burgess and I were doubles partners and we had not loss a match in two years. Dean was also a straight A student and happened to be our class valedictorian. I was not a straight A student. Oh I got an A in any class I shared with Dean. I guess it was just a guy thing.

Tennis class was always 7th period and Dean and I shared a double period social studies class during 5th and 6th periods. Mr Penn, a big man and nice guy, was our teacher. Mr Penn liked Dean and I and had gotten into the habit of giving us the keys to the bungalows so he could arrive leisurely after lunch. We opened it and took our seats usually—but not every time!

We opened the doors about 15 minutes early and let a few friends in. Our big mistake we let in Bob Parnell, class clown. Great guy but trouble in the making.

Bob sat down in the teacher’s big rolling chair and the trouble started. He ended up at the back of our bungalow while a class was in session on the other side of the attached bungalow. Mr Penn approaching, time running out. What to do? What to do?

Three of us grabbed the back of the chair and pushed and ran as hard as we could with Bob bellowing to slow down. Too late! We let him fly. He stuck out his feet. We looked on horrified. Bob’s feet went all the way through the wall and he was trapped with his feet in the class next door.

We tossed the keys to the room to Bob with our own prayers took a seat and buried our noses in a book.

So what was Mr Penn’s reaction? He laughed. Then he added that maybe this will help get us out of these #%£¥ #}%+• bungalow sooner. Thank God some teachers got it!

01/24/2019

KITTY RESCUE BY DEL DANIELS....

My family lived in NLB in the smallest four room house you could imagine in 1945. We lived at 232 E. Coolidge St just a block from Artesia and Long Beach Blvd. Ours was a little green house at the back of a large residential lot. My dad paid a little over $3,000 dollars for it when he was discharged from WWII. But it was a place to raise his family which consisted of his wife and three young sons, of which I was the oldest at four years old.

One of my first fond memories, of which there are many, of my dad was a small incident. Our house sat back on a paved alley. For a couple of nights we had been receiving distress calls from a kitten whom we could not find. Finally the kitten was found sitting on the top of giant telephone pole behind our house. It appeared to be too scared to climb down. After dinner my dad said he was going out but he would be back later.

When he returned, he had gone to Sad Sacks and had managed to borrow some metal cleats that were used by telephone high wire electricians. My dad was going to climb that pole in the alley and rescue that kitten.

There were probably 20-25 people gathered in that alley to watch. I was one of them. I was scared as he started his climb. He carefully began and as he got higher in the air I could feel everyone getting tense.

Anyway, my dad got to the top, the kitten actually jumped on him, and he carefully brought him down. He had the neighbors cheering. And me too!

It may not have been the best of stories but it is the rambling of a mind here in the hospital. It was written on my cell phone which is hard for me. I want you to know that I am coping and have been in the hospital since Dec. 24. Never give up! When you think you can’t go on. Think of that kitten and the unrewarded man who came by and saved him. My dad.

01/24/2019

Great story from Del Daniels...

2019 Short story #3
Are there alligators in the Sacramento Delta?

Hi gang,

I apologize for the amount of posts recently in these great Long Beach groups but the mind of a hospitalized cancer patient twists and turns and wants to yell out at times. I guess this is another one of those times. Bear with me.

The year was about 1970. My bowling team, made up of several NLB folks, had finished our league and we decided to go to San Francisco for the California State Championships. After that about 12 of us we’re going to spend a week together on a houseboat touring the Sacramento Delta. It was late August because we celebrated my birthday on that trip.

Some of those who were on that houseboat you may know. Clarence Roland (Ro) was a great left handed bowler who had lost his right thumb and when you saw him standing ready to bowl it appeared his thumb was already in the ball. It wasn’t. Kind of mystifying.

Frank Kurzi and his pretty wife Janice were there. I played golf with Frank once at Green River and saw him throw a putter for what surely would have been a world record. It went through the woods, past grandma’s house, over the trees and into the middle of the lake. It took some colorful language along with it.

John Hays and his wife were there. Both Jordan High grads they were a fun couple. His wife owned an upscale gift shop in the Lakewood Center Mall. John was the buyer for the store.

Steve Silverman and his pretty wife were there. She was very pretty as well as speaking the most beautiful Spanish.

Finally Richard Burdick and his date Carol Runne were there. Richard was one handsome dude. My sister worked on him once in Dr Merle Anderson’s dental office and called me to say she just worked on the most handsome man she had ever seen. She swooned and then found out he was a fishing partner of mine. Love those minutes.

We were having a great time touring the Sacramento Delta on the boat. We traveled through so many unique bridges and canals and tied up in the small towns built by the Chinese laborers along time ago. At night we would just point the boat into the shore of some slough and the tide would go out and we were beached for the night. Except for two of us. Rich and I, the fishermen. We had our own agenda.

About 10 pm we were on the back of the houseboat. We said our good nights and started putting out our fishing gear with bobbers all around the boat. We had at least a dozen out and we sat back and watched. If I remember correctly we may have shared a drink or two. We were on a cloud. Then things changed.

We glanced down the slough. It was very dark and eerily quiet. But something was out there and we didn’t know what. Scared? Maybe he was a little. I was very scared.

Oh my goodness. I saw it first. It was huge. My best guess was it was 10-12 feet long and it was headed right for us. Rich and I thought that a better position at that time would be on the roof of the houseboat and that my friends is where we ended up.

It looked as if a 10 foot alligator was swimming up to us or perhaps a big grizzly bear. We could not tell in the dark. We were in the pasture lands of the Delta.

A cow had fallen off a piece of land and he was swimming toward the lights of our boat. He swam right through all of our bobbers before bellowing right next to the boat. He woke everybody else up while Rich and I laughed and told everyone it was just a cow and to go back to sleep. If they only knew how fast we climbed on top of that boat. When he was swimming you could only see the top of that cow and his tale at the top of the waterline. And so I say a big Moooo to you. That’s my story and I am sticking to it.

Sent from my iPhone

09/13/2018

Del Daniels fesses up after 70 years...

Hi gang,

It is always hard to admit to past indiscretions but this one happened a very long time ago. Honest! I know some of you will be upset but admitting a wrong doing is supposed to help get past it. So I will try it.

The year was 1947. I was in second grade at Starr King Elementary School in North Long Beach. We lived in a small Spanish stucco house which was located at the back of a big lot and was adjacent to the garage of our neighbor. In fact there was about a three foot walkway between our front porch and their garage which lead to the back alley. The scene has now been set and it is time to recall my crime.

For whatever reason I found myself alone while my mother was probably at the store with my two younger brothers. I always thought of myself that I was a good student and I loved math, science and writing. I know that saying, that the ‘best of intentions sometimes go awry.’ In this case it certainly did for me and one small cat that happened to wander on to our porch. Now I want cat lovers to know that I need not admit to this and you would never know about it but now that I am 77 years old and still recall the events of that day vividly, you should know that I regret my actions now. But I was seven then and I thought at that time it was a science project of sorts. Let me explain.

I was just smart enough to have heard the term ‘cats always land on their feet’ when falling or jumping. I needed to test that for myself. I picked up that small cat, climbed over the porch wall, and readied myself for my experiment. He was a pretty and small cat. I started slowly. I held him upside down in my arms and from about three feet high I dropped him. And sure enough, he landed on his feet. My mind said that shouldn’t happen if I dropped him from two feet. He just won’t have time to turn over. I was wrong. He again landed on his feet. The same happened again from about one foot. Something was amiss. It had to be the speed. I was dropping him too slowly, or so I thought.

I was now wanting to get to the bottom of this. I held that poor kitty upside down by his feet and threw him down from three feet and watched him land on his feet. Yes, I tossed or threw that poor cat down from ever decreasing heights and he always landed on his feet. Finally I tried my hardest and threw him down from only about six inches above the ground. Yep, he landed on his feet. That was my final toss though. The cat made a dash for it and he jumped at my chest and back over the porch wall.

Okay, the cat escaped without harm from my ‘science experiment.’ And what did I learn from it? The expression that cats always land on their feet must be true. And I also thought that maybe someone else had already done my experiment or how would they have known this. I also learned that even small cats have sharp claws and that I needed my mom to come home and put a bandaid on my chest . And finally I guess I thought that this experiment was probably not a good thing to do. Why else would it take me 70 years to come clean? Thanks for listening and for forgiving, I hope!

Good Stuff Stories by Tom Poe

05/25/2020

04/24/2020

04/27/2019

01/25/2019

01/24/2019

01/24/2019

09/13/2018

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