Brothers: Alan

It is time to introduce you to my brothers, starting with the oldest, Alan. Alan was a freckled faced kid with dark red hair. Since Alan was eight years older than me, he circulated in a different world than mine, but to my delight, he often brought me into his world. At home, I remember him best for the games in either made up or taught us to play. Many entertaining hours were spent playing Canasta, Pit, Hearts, and poker (we played for buttons or pennies). We also played board games like Monopoly, Clue, or Chutes and Ladders.
He also made up games for us to play. In the summer we were engineers, building a series of dams in the back yard and connecting them with artificial rivers made from the gutter water. We also played "Prospector" one of Alan's unique games. He gathered up a bunch of gravel and colored the bottoms with crayon, with different colors representing different metals. Black and Gray iron and aluminum, plentiful and cheap. Copper, silver and gold were more valuable with the number of rocks representative of their value. Only a few gold rocks were scattered, and finding one was a real thrill. To make the game more realistic, Alan bought candy (with his own money) that we could buy with our rocks. Now THAT is a brother.
Alan was resourceful, and started his career as an avian biologist early, collecting eggs and making nesting records of any birds in our area. He also started working in his early teenage years and was so good at it that before long he was managing a local fast food drive in called the "Pink Bunny". Some of the money earned was used to buy a car, and we had many adventures in that vehicle which will be mentioned in more detail as this blog proceeds.
While Alan listened to the pop music of the day, he also had a love for classical music. I will never forget hearing him cry when he fell asleep and missed hearing a rebroadcast of the annual Messiah production by the SLC Oratorio Society.
Alan was a great brother, and while he could tease as well as the others, he treated me OK. I never felt body or limb threatened when I was around Alan.