Bob Davidson
Jan -- Burger Chef smile.
David -- fun to see the book: when my dad lived in an apartment in Dallas from January to May of 1965, while the rest of the family stayed in Jackson until our house sold, he gained about 30 pounds. He was used to cooking for a family of six but was living alone and ate what he cooked. We moved at the end of school, but he was still fat.
His response was to research exercize plans -- the Canadian Air Force one was considered the best at the time. He started on it -- eventually he worked up through phases until he was spending an hour a day at it, including timed running around the neighborhood. He got me doing it with him, as well as our dalmation. He lost the weight and got into the best shape he'd been in since leaving the army.
I don't know if I mentioned our next door neighbor, the comptroller of Collins Radio. He attached a fence to our backyard fence and Dad, on advice from a lawyer friend, made him put in his own corner posts so he couldn't claim part of our yard by adverse possession. That made him hate Dad and our family. He was a large man who carried a lot of his excess weight in his rear end. In the fall of 1965, Dad started running around the neighborhood. That was before the jogging craze. Our neighbor started razzing us when we went running, along the lines of: "Hey Davidson, going out for the track team, ha, ha, ha?"
At first we ignored him, then I started inviting him to join us. When Dad and I talked about it, I said something about maybe we could help him melt some of the lard off his ass. That led to our family nickname for him -- "Lardass." My baby sister actually addressed him on at least one occasion as ''Mr. Lardass."
Dad kept running for the rest of his life. He joined that Aerobics center on Preston Road in the 70s and worked out there for years.
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