Childhood Temptations. The Devil Made Me Do It Mom.

When our family moved to near St. Louis in the 1960s the city had just built this fine new mall called Northwest Plaza. A trip there was like heaven, all kinds of sights and smells you'd never experienced before. The tool and sporting goods department at Sears, ice cream from Walgreen's soda fountain counter, Orange Juliuses.



On one such trip our moms parked us kids near the escalator to wait on the bench while they looked at washing machines. Right next to the escalator was a huge awesome water fountain, about 50'x50' with water running down from the ceiling on tiny plastic tubes. Everyone tossed coins in the 1 foot deep fountain so it was like looking at a broken open piggy bank to us poor kids.

With visions of a new model and more baseball cards my friend Will and I made a deal with his little brother Mark to get him to go fetch some coins while we watched for our moms or any store employees. This included the usual bribe to my lil sister to keep her quiet.

With a little encouragement Mark hopped over the low rail and was sloshing around pretty good in no time, we were even smart enough to remove his shoes and roll up his pants to evade any questioning later. He must have been up to around 3 or 4 bucks when I heard my mom holler.

Poor Mark didn't even get half way over the rail before his mom snatched his azz right back over to the bench. His mom lit into him right there. Naturally he only held up to questioning for about 2 minutes and we got it later back home.

Needless to say it was a long time until we got asked again if we wanted to go to the Mall.

Got any childhood temptation stories?

Navigating The Legal Morass On The Wild Wild Interwebz

Many of us that own websites or pound out blogs are small companies or sole proprietors who don't have legal representation on staff. I just found this website BlawgIT that does a really good job of explaining the do's and don'ts for conducting business on the Internet for the small potato folks.

Brett Trout is the BlawgIT lawyer who covers subjects like , patents, trademarks, ID theft, social media accountjacking, copyright and more. Brett gets the Internet, writing in a switched on style about topics that website owners and bloggers need to learn about. He's "switch on" as we used to say in the military.

Brett has also written 2 books that are highly regarded for Internet users and business owners. Cyber Law: A Legal Arsenal for Online Business and Internet Laws Affecting Your Company. I just ordered mine for handy reference in the office.

Big Bear Valley Sportsman's Club Shooting Range

Westy and I managed to sneak out for some bowfishing this past weekend at Big Bear Lake in SoCal. When the carp refused to come into the cold shallow water where we stood shaking like dogs passing a peach pit, we headed for the Big Bear Valley Sportsman's Club Shooting Range to reconnoiter.

The range has some history with the likes of John Wayne, Jeff Cooper, Jack Weaver (Weaver Stance fame) and others practicing their shooting when up in the high pines around the lake. We happened to bump into actor Christian Slater and his friends who were looking to rent some guns for some shooting fun. Unfortunately the range doesn't have any guns for rent and we didn't have any to lend them.

So if you're ever headed up to the mountains around Big Bear and want to throw some lead downrange or bust some clay targets there is a nice range just north of the lake at the Stanfield Cutoff. With all the famous folks running around the area you never know who you'll run in to.