Kneebockers

Kneebockers is a book about life. It is a name, and yet it is also a spirit within my being. The name was given to me at ten years old by another boy, probably based on what I was wearing at the time. I was a lad from the east, dressed in short pants, suspenders, shirt, sweater, and leather Buster Brown shoes, standing in the front of a two-room schoolhouse in the Wild West of 1946, where blue jeans were the norm. The incident, at the time, seemed to be just a short, quick response made by a group of school kids toward a boy who looked and seemed different. However, the name of Kneebockers stayed with me for a lifetime. I would not realize until years later, as I grew and matured, that the impact of the name on me would become bigger by the day. No one else, other than my father and those few kids, knew that I was Kneebockers. Kneebockers was within me-a spirit, a drive, an identity. A human being who was somewhat different. My father was a major influence on forming a path for Kneebockers. He provided a solid foundation for a young kid of ten and allowed me to mature through my teen years and into adulthood while safely bound to that basic structure. The tales in this book tell a story of the bonds and love between my father, a tough, hardworking ironworker and welder, and me, his easygoing, innocent son. Together we headed west from New York State to Reno, Nevada, in 1946. Wes Blackburn, my father, was my mentor, my rock, and my inspiration in a lifetime of experiencing how to really live and appreciate each and every day. My lessons began when living in and appreciating the vastness of the Nevada desert and the mountains in the West. Two people together who many times never saw another human being for days on end. The deer, coyotes, rabbits, eagles, hawks, and buzzards became our company. It was there that I began to discover who I could be on this earth and what I could learn about the earth. My classroom was nature, and the first topic was history. Prospecting