I received an anonymous comment not too long ago from someone who said that they were not only a big fan of my work, but that they had also read both of my books. Therefore, the story you're about to read was written in honor of that particular individual, whoever he or she may be. If that person, and only they know who they are, is reading this, please, send me a feedback letter with your name and email address, and I will write you back; but until then, I pray that God blesses you.
MoogPlayer
P.S. As always this story is pure and total fiction. Oh, and don't forget to vote...Thank you.
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"Oh, my God, I love you so much" she widely smiled, tears pouring down her face, "I'm so glad to see you, but I thought you said you wouldn't be able to make it."
"Are you kidding? I wouldn't have missed this for the world," I grinned, "Besides, I wanted to surprise you."
All of a sudden, I heard a familiar male voice emanating from behind me saying, "I've already warned you once to stay away from her, and now you're gonna pay, motherfucker," and before I had the chance to turn around and defend myself, I heard a gunshot, and then after receiving a hard blow to the back of my head; as well as a loud ringing in my ears, everything began to fade into black...
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Hi, my name is Michael Lee Pennington, Mike to my friends, I stand six feet, four inches tall; and I weigh a solid two hundred and fifty pounds, with dark brown hair, and sky blue eyes. I'm fifty-one years old now, but what you're about to read began right after my twentieth birthday, during my second year in college; but please allow me to give you a little background information before I begin, if that's alright.
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Chapter One
I was born and raised about sixty miles south of Houston, Texas in a little town that you've probably never heard of so, I won't even mention it. My father, John Pennington, was a U.S. Navy fighter pilot, who, at the beginning of this story, had just retired from the Navy two years prior, and was working as a pilot for American Airlines.
My mother, Elaine, commuted back and forth from Clear Lake, Texas where she worked for NASA. She wasn't an astronaut, mind you, but she did work with the engineers who designed and built what later became the Space Shuttle.
Me, I went to college at the University of Houston, majoring in Music, piano and voice to be exact, with a strong English minor. I didn't have dreams of being famous, or anything like that. But I did, however, want to either play music professionally, or teach music to children, specifically piano. But, if those two particular aspirations were never realized, then I wanted to write books, hence the reason I minored in English.
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I was an average kid in school, had some friends that I always hung out with, and because of the study habits that were instilled in me by my parents when I was a child, I never made anything but straight "A's" all throughout my whole time in school, college included.
The first time I got laid was during my sophomore year of high school, which ended in emotional disaster for me; but by the time I reached college, I had a working knowledge of the female anatomy. I also played in a rock and roll band while I was in high school, which gave me many opportunities to meet more than several different girls during those years.
However, I never really had what you could call a steady girlfriend, but still, by the time I reached the U of H campus, I knew how to act around girls and never once ended up looking like an idiot around the girls there, thank God...whew, lol.
I have an older sister; her name is Nikki, and she was eight years old when I was born. But unlike my friends' older sisters, Nikki was very sweet, as well as very gentle and kind to me when I was a little boy. And right after she graduated from high school; she married my brother-in-law, Tommy Wells.
Tommy did three tours in Vietnam, nineteen sixty-seven, nineteen sixty-eight and nineteen sixty-nine. However, because I was born in nineteen sixty, Tommy was the big brother I never had; and when he came home in March of sixty-nine, I turned nine years old a little over a month later.
Tommy was a Green Beret; and he taught me not only how to hunt and fish, but how to basically live off the land and survive, so to speak. He also taught me how to defend myself, and I became extremely good at it. I still remember him telling me that it would come in handy when I got to high school, because of the fact that the upperclassmen, as well as the asshole jocks, always liked to pick on the underclassmen.
He told me that all bullies were dickless dumb asses, and that if I got picked on; make sure that I had an equalizer, like a big stick, or a baseball bat, especially if they were either bigger than me, or if there were more than one of them. But because of what he taught me, I never had the need to use any one of the afore mentioned items. To this day, I still hate bullies, and make it a point to put my foot in their asses whenever I see one picking on someone smaller and/or weaker.
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Mom put me behind a piano when I was five years old, and because Tommy, who was four years older than my sister, Nikki, had been playing guitar for longer than I'd been alive, he and I used to play music together for fun. He not only taught me how to play guitar as a second instrument, but he also taught me a lot of really great songs when I was a kid, and it just so happened that his mother was the lady who taught me to play the piano, which is how he and Nikki met.
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As I got older and became really good on the piano, my father introduced me to electronic musical instruments. He bought for me, during the summer between my seventh and eighth grade years in junior high school, my first synthesizers; a Moog 55 Modular Synthesizer, the same synthesizers that Keith Emerson, of "Emerson, Lake, and Palmer" plays, a Mellotron, and a Mini Moog, D-Model, which is the same synthesizer that Rick Wakeman of "Yes" plays.
To say that I was thrilled would've been an understatement so; out of the deepest respect for my father for purchasing these instruments for me to begin with, I immediately started trying to learn everything there was to know about these instruments so as to be able to master them in the shortest amount of time possible. Plus, it was also out of sheer excitement, too, that I took to them as quickly as I did.
My brother-in-law, Tommy, who was also an electronics genius who understood these new electronic musical instruments, was there to help me in every way possible. He taught me how to use the patch cables, going from one module to the next appropriate module in order create sounds from scratch.
