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Everybody else has boasted of their feats of strength so here goes.

I played football in the 7th, 8th, and 9th grade but I got a concussion from a fullback and that was it. I also played trumpet and quickly realized that the band went to every game the team did and we rode with the cheerleaders, to boot. It took hours to ride home at night....

I got married at 18 and was 6 feet tall and weighed 140 lbs. I worked the mines a couple of summers in college but dropped out and got a job at the factory my uncles worked in. Early on I ran a Warner Swayze big turret lathe and spent months machining castings that weighed 75 lbs. I didn’t consider it a big deal but I had spent months picking them up off the pallet, chucking them up, turning it over, etc. Every seven minutes for eight hours a day.

One weekend my cousin invites us to a keg party up in Greely. This was about 1974. We go to this thing and here I am with shoulder length hair and most of the guys were actually wearing cowboy hats and boots. I was moderately aware all these guys were arm wrestling and carrying on but “that just wasn’t my scene”. I was in the kitchen with my cousin, his wife, and my wife and a few others when this guy comes in and insists I arm wrestle him. I told him to go away. He insisted saying, “I have beat everyone here (at least thirty guys) but you and I am going to beat everyone here!”. So I told him I would wrestle him on the condition that he would subsequently leave us alone”.

So we square up and I can’t believe all of a sudden everyone is watching. I remember thinking this would not last long and then everybody would leave, perhaps even bearing this clod on their shoulders and I just didn’t care. Trust me, no one was more shocked than I that I just slammed his arm into the table. The look on his face was priceless but honest to God I did not know how strong I had become but I had put on 40 lbs of muscle in a year. I just always considered myself a “lover, not a fighter”. Afterward that dude treated me like I was his long lost brother and he was shaking my hand and all happy to meet me and even said he didn’t think a hippy would ever kick his butt at arm wrestling but I sure had. I reminded him of his promise to leave us alone and he did. To this day I scarcely believe that had happened.

great story!

Machining castings weighing 75 pounds? You were strong to begin with.

After doing that for a while you were a beast.

Must have been great times on the bus :)

I remember the band guys telling me how insane the parties and bus rides were.

It’s like a secreter society of guys ho figured out how to score easily!