[Groop] Book from childhood

[Gary Grossmann]

Hi Folks!

My kids read the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books.  They were fun.

Before some (most?) of you were born, I was laid up all summer after high
school graduation and that's when I was introduced to board games that were
more complex than Chutes & Laddders or Monopoly.  A friend of mine played
APBA Baseball and also a race car game called LeMans.  These are not really
role playing games, but they were the way we played them.

For the baseball game we had team owners and managers who were always
fighting and incompetent umpires and we wrote newspaper articles about the
games. One of the owners was Col. Sanders who owned the Des Moines Chickens
and their stadium was painted like a bucket of KFC.  One year his opening
day promotion was for world famous Greek balloonist, Helio Stratosphere, to
be at "The Bucket" dropping boxes of KFC to the fans. (I had found a picture
of a hot air balloon shaped like a chicken.) The balloon got loose and for
the rest of the season the newpaper would include articles and pictures of
the latest report of Helio's whereabouts as he ultimately circumnavigated
the globe with many adventures.

The race car game, with drivers like Goggles Pizzano and Checkers Boobalini
was much the same plus we added something to the game itself.  You rolled
dice to see you spun out or crashed when trying to take a turn a little
faster than advisable.  So, of course, we added one more dice roll to see if
the driver died.  The mortality rate was pretty high, which resulted in The
Little Old Lady League picketing the race course and hitting team owners
with their ever present umbrellas.

We had lots of fun.

So now you know the answer to the question: Was I nuts before I started
reading Groo or did reading too much Groo cause me to become nuts?

Take care all -Gary G.