"Bones" - The Original Series

From what I gather, there is a popular television series called "Bones". This crime procedural drama has just concluded its eleventh season and is slated for a twelfth and final season. Having neither television or Netflix and not subscribing to Hulu or any of the other video on demand sites, Wikipedia was consulted and trusted for this information.

Although "Bones" seems to be a very popular series, I must let my millions of blog readers in on a little known fact. It is not an original series...

In the early 70's, for some strange reason, I became interested in bones. Archaeology has always intrigued me and since it really is a short step from Archaeology to Osteology... My "Ologys" may have become somewhat muddled!

This phase of my life was probably a real shock to my Mom...when she started to clean and straighten up my closet... The top shelf was dedicated to my bone and teeth collection! To her credit, she didn't get hysterical and think that a dog with three heads, four ribs and seventy three teeth had died and decayed in her youngest son's closet. She took it in stride and let it remain as long as it didn't stink.

It so happened, that when I was in this chapter of my life, my Dad bought the old Oak Grove schoolhouse. Oak Grove was a one-room schoolhouse that was closed when it was consolidated into the Junction Hill school district. Its location was on Highway 160, right across the road from where my brother Ralph now turns off to go to his house.

The school building had been converted into a house but was in such a state of disrepair that Dad decided to just tear it down. After we had torn it down to the floor, which was setting on rock pillars, things got very interesting.

As we began tearing up the floor and exposing what was beneath, a virtual "animal graveyard" was brought to light! Bones of every shape and size...Skulls, teeth, little mouse bones, big raccoon bones... I collected bones until it was time to quit and go home! Another shelf had to be cleared off and my new collection moved in! My poor Mother....

A real life mystery happened during this "Bony" phase of my childhood. Late one Sunday evening after church, we came driving up to our house at Junction Hill... And right in the middle of the driveway, where we parked the car, was an honest to goodness, bleached out white, teeth still intact, COW SKULL! Glory Be!!

Now... Mom drew the line at the cow skull... No! Not in the house!

It took us an hour or so but we finally unraveled the mystery. It seems that my Uncle Marion and Aunt Janice Riggs had gotten wind of their nephew's budding aspirations to be an Anthropologist...and decided to advance my career! That afternoon, they had been driving around on some property they owned, found the cow skull, knew we would be in church, and placed it right where we would be sure to find it!

To this day, I vividly remember our puzzlement in finding a cow skull in our driveway, the boneyard at the old Oak Grove schoolhouse and my foray into "Bones" (The Original Series!)