Tom Brody (1969)
This is to answer Message #1001 from moderator, Sue Ferreira (Nunes): What was your greatest physical skill while at Pacific? What is it now? My greatest physical skills while at Pacific did not include any athletic skills. No, no, no! I was always in awe of other boys from Pacific who could throw a baseball for a distance of 100 feet or more. My physical skills while at Pacific were oil painting (pretending to be Salvador Dali, pretending to be Pablo Picasso) and doing sketching with pencil and paper. I drew a weekly cartoon for The Current. The December 20, 1968 issue of San Leandro Morning News has a small article about me, with my photograph. The article says: "BRODY'S A BORN ARTIST. Pacific High School's Tom Brody is the witty satirist whose cartoons appear each week on this page as well as in The Current, Pacific's newspaper . . . among his avocations, Brody plays guitar in the Fellowship of the Ring, a combo that performs for local dances, and he enjoys skiiing in addition to his artistic endeavors."
MY PRESENT PHYSICAL SKILLS. This includes clogging (similar to tap dancing and to contra dancing, but performed to bluegrass music), photography, painting, and hiking in forests in the East Bay Hills. Most of my hikes are with my supervisor and prison warden (oops, I mean my "wife"). During the years 1980 to 1984, I was a member of the Kickapoo Cloggers during my time in Madison, Wisconsin. First, I took a year of dance lessons (tap dance, jitterbug, and ballroom) and then joined the group. We performed at bluegrass festivals in Madison, WI, Jefferson County, WI, Delavan, WI, Mount Horeb, WI, Edgerton, WI, Ashland, WI, Rockford, Illinois, and at Kahoko, Missouri. Typically, for the past 20 years, I've taken weekly ten-mile hikes in Redwood Regional Park (Dunn Trail, West Ridge Trail, Stream Trail) and at Chabot Park. On four occasions, I've hiked to the top of Hawkins Peak in Pinnacles National Park (south of San Jose). I had to abandon my family for 4 years, in order to be employed in southern California. During that time, every couple of months I took the 22 mile round trip hike from my apartment in Costa Mesa to: (1) Balboa Island and back; (2) Huntington Beach and back; (3) Orange Circle antique mall and back; (4) Cham Sut Gol Korean restaurant and back; or (5) Disneyland and back. But as mentioned above, I had no athletic abilities while at Pacific, and I still don't. For reasons unknown, I am able to run quickly for only 200 feet, before I come to a grinding halt. However, I have no problem at all keeping up a 4mph walking speed for a distance of 25 miles. Okay, one more physical skill. I still do plenty of painting. I use enamels and a tiny brush, and I paint psychedelic paisley designs and also reproductions of R. Crumb cartoons, e.g., keep on truckin'. All of these paintings are on white-colored compact disc that I've burned in, with compilations of rock'n'roll music. Also, plenty of landscape photography (California coastline, Death Valley, Joshua Tree Nat'l. Park, and waterfalls in Hawaii) with occasional exhibits at local galleries and nature museums.
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