Wimauma Is Kicking Butt

Wimauma was my 1-8 grade school.

Back in the day.

I was there from 1959 to 1967.

Dick Blanton was the first principal to spank me. And the only one. I was throwing carrots in the cafeteria. My dad witnessed the spanking. Mr. Blanton was a nice man.

There was Ms. Vaughn, Ms. Brandon, Ms. Johnson, Mr. Laybold and I don't remember the others at this time.

Mr. Laybold had a daughter. I went to her birthday party and played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Ms. Laybold was a counselor who helped me get into "Upward Bound", a pre-college program for poor kids. I think Richard Pride was the Director in the late '60's.

I went on to East Bay High school. Mr. Lep(p)s was our chemistry teacher and at some point he started a chess club. Somehow, I picked up the game of chess fairly quick. The fact that I checked out books from the Ruskin library and learned about the 3 stages of the game was never known by others. I was lucky enough to be undefeated as the 1st chair player. I almost lost to a real pretty girl at Robinson because I lost control of my intellect. I had set up a sacrifice of a chess piece so that if she captured it I would then be in a position to fork her (a "fork" is a legitimate position in chess where one piece attacks two opponents at the same time, for those of you who are "thinking dirty"). Trying to be the cocky valiant, when she went to take the sacrifice, I told her what I was going to do. She chose another move. My downfall was that soon after I made a bonehead (?) decision and lost my queen, my control of the board and was basically in a compromised position. As chess tournaments are timed and one can win by points, my recourse was to capture her unprotected men and run out the clock. Needless to say, I never mated her. She was the only one that I didn't mate. Oh, the lamentation of metaphors.

Glad to see Wimauma has a chess club.

Two schools move to continue chess champions' momentum - St. Petersburg Times