Fred
When I was a kid, my mom took a writing class. She was supposed to write something serious, but ended up writing a really goofy story about this squirrel that lived in our back yard named Freddie. This squirrel never collected any nuts, it just raided the bird feeder all winter long for food.
Well, the evening of her class came, and there was no way she was going to be able to read it without cracking up, so I grabbed my tape recorder and began to narrate the story. My older brother Dana provided sound effects, we did it in one take and it was a wrap! Mom took the tape recorder to her class, played it for everybody, and all the old prudes fell off their chairs laughing so hard.
I found a little collar squirrel decoration that I named Freddie, after some time the tape, and Freddie, were forgotten. However, in early 2005, while digging through some old boxes, I stumbled across Freddie, and after some further searching I found the tape! (Watch this space for an MP3 version of it, along with a transcript of the story).
More recently, I'd read something pretty humorous about somebody's Lawn Dwarf that had been stolen, but whomever had taken it was traveling the world with it, taking pictures of it in front of all kinds of exotic places, and sending them back to the owner along with nice little notes. And from that, I pilfered an idea to give Freddie something a little more interesting to do..
If you peruse the pictures in the travel section, you may spot him from time to time..
10/2/2006 - Late breaking news! In perusing old pictures, I stumbled across the above picture. It was taken at 18 Ravenwood Road, probably late 1980 or early 1981. Freddie?
12/25/2007 - At last! The original 'manuscript' and recording have been found! Listen to the original tape, which can be found <here>. I did the narration, older brother Dana provided all of the sound effects.
For the original script:
Last revised: