When we went to China to teach for a year Mari came home early because her visa was a vacation one. So, I talked one of my students to travel with me by train to the place where China, Mongolia, and Russia met. He had taken “Sky” as his English name. which a quickly turned to “Skylar.” He was a fine young man with whom I had shot some hoops from time to time during the year. The trip took 36 hours, so we had a lot of time on our hands along the way. During the daylight hours Skylar read and slept while I stared out the window at the passing cities, villages, and farmland.
It was fascinating to see how the Chinese peasants had adapted to their natural terrain and the Communist reorganization of the farming communities. Our car was located right next to the dining car, so we had convenient access to meals along the way. The landscape flew bye hour after hour without much change. We went through a few large cities, a few towns, and many small villages. Upon arrival in the city that sat right at the meeting place of these two huge and vastly different countries far away from nearly everything.
We found a room and began to explore what we expected to be something of the exotic city named Manzhuli. Well, we soon realized that all the ancient and/or traditional structures had been replaced with more modern, uninteresting ones. There quite literally nothing of cultural/historical interest left in this small city. WE did find a curiosity store that sold various tourist-type items, maps, and things like pocketknives and binoculars. I bought Skylar a pocketknife and myself a small pair of binoculars made in Russia, which at the time seemed relatively useless.
As it turned out, however, the binoculars are the best ones I have ever had, and I use them all the time. I also bought an exotic Mongolia dress and jacket for Mari. We have as yet to find an appropriate occasion for her to wear it. Skylar and I ate at an ornate Mongolian restaurant, which was interesting and adequate food-wise, but we had to pass on the yak milk. We spent the better part of our two days in Manzhuli playing pool in a small pool hall. I am embarrassed to admit that Skylar won all the games, even though I had grown up playing pool, even billiards, as a kid. We also watched some Chinese basketball on TV, which featured Yao Ming the seven-footer.
All in all, it was a fun and interesting journey, but nothing like I had thought it might have been. On the way home I again spent most of the two days watching farmers spread and retrieve large blankets from over their plastic greenhouses so as to keep their crops warm at night. I am sorry to say that after leaving China I have never heard from Skylar even though I have heard from a few of my former students. I am sorry about this because he was a good friend and showed much promise for his future. In recent years China has undergone even more radical and upsetting changes and I worry about Skylar and my other former students there.

MY TEENAGE YEARS AT THE “SNAKE RANCH”
When Dale my uncle and I were in Junior High School we discovered and made regular visits a pool hall called “Olympic Billiards” but known to all us kids as the “Snake Ranch”. Dale was 16 and was allowed to play pool there, and I too got to play even though I was but 14 because the owner, Mr. Red Crandel, recognized me as the son of Virginia, the woman who used to peddle wrapped sandwiches to his place during the depression.
“The Ranch” was a very special place for a number of reasons. One, we kids could hang out there for hours at end without having to pay a fee of any kind. Of course, when we wanted to shoot pool we had to pay. The place was always filled with thick smoke and low muttering conversation. Most of us kids were not very good at shooting pool, but sometimes a stranger would show up and begin a series of games with a local sharpshooter, called a “shark”. These were very special occasions because the “shark” almost always won by beating the local favorite. Sometimes a good deal of money rode on the outcome of these games.
Several times we actually witnessed an out of town shark “run the table” as many as twenty times without missing. We learned many tricks of the trade from watching them, but none of us kids ever really got very good at the game. Some of the local experts played “Snooker” on a special table which had smaller pockets than the regular tables. Also, there were “Billiard” tables that had no pockets on which players tried to have the white cue ball hit three different cushions before hitting the other two red balls. This was exclusively an experts’ game and we kids loved to stand around and watch the local experts have at it.
Once, when the Junior high Principle tried to get the kids to stop going to “The Ranch” he made a speech in the Assembly and warned us not to spend time down at the “Reptile Farm”. I guess he thought that the words “Snake Ranch” were too Riske’ for young kids to hear. When he said those words the whole auditorium broke out in raucous laughter. I don’t think anyone ever got expelled for visiting the “Snake ranch.”
The thing about my being allowed to frequent “The Ranch” because the owner knew my mother was not a rare occurrence. My mother had eventually become the owner of a popular restaurant in town after twenty years selling hand-wrapped sandwiches and slinging has in other people’s restaurants. She was well-known and highly respected. Thus it was that I could hardly go anywhere in our town of 30,000 without being recognized. Over the ensuing years whenever I returned to town for a visit, people who did not even know me would recognize me as “Virginia’s Boy.”
Often when Dale and I were there the phone would ring and Red, after answering it, would call out “Dale McGinnis” so he could come and talk with his mom about where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to be doing. I really liked to play pool, especially “Stars and Stripes” (solid-colored balls verses striped-balls), but I never ever really got to be any good at it. Although many of the adults played for money, we never did.
The “Ranch” was but one of the hang-outs we kids had growing up. There were only three or four of us who lived right down town and we spent a lot of energy “nicking” things off the counters in dime-stores, sneaking into movie theaters, and opening fire-hydrants in the night. We were never really vandals as such, but we did raise some havoc But nothin’ like our movie favorites, the “Eastside Kids”.