For the Cullen Grandchildren

The Boat Lane Bombers were a gang in the sense that Spanky and Our Gang were a gang in the Little Rascals. The Bombers formed when I was in elementary school living on Boat Lane in Levittown, New York on Long Island. Levittown was specifically planned for GIs returning from WWII to give them an inexpensive avenue to home ownership. Every house on Boat Lane had multiple children. The next street over was Bucket Lane. All the kids from these two streets played together. Games such as football, baseball, stick ball, basketball, and more home-made games such as Ringolevio ( like capture the flag), kick the can, hide and seek,buck buck, and freeze tag. Sometimes groups of children from other streets wanted to compete with us. AND that is when we decided to name ourselves the "Boat Lane Bombers". One of the most grueling games between "street gangs" was called "Buck Buck". One gang would line up like a conga line and make a sort of long bridge with the...

It was a cold January of 1993 when I was baptized in Brannon Slough of the San Joaquin River near Concord, CA. Nathan Seable baptized me. However, he neglected to say, "Amen" at the end of the baptismal prayer. So I had to be reimmersed in the murkey water. It was a great feeling to be baptized and have a sense of newness and dedication providing new direction in my life. As the Seable family was giving me a ride home I was in a contemplative mood. I was thinking about what it means to take upon oneself the name of Jesus. As I turned my head and squinted in a Popeye like manner towards the sky I saw a mini rainbow, a floating prism against the blue sky. Like with Noah of the Old Testament, this rainbow symbolized the covenant I had embraced. I didn't mention this sighting to anyone as I was simply enjoying the sense that God knew me and was letting me know that He knew me.