Proof

Last year when my main computer needed to be replaced, the new box came with Windows 7, which I like.  One problem, the Cannon scanner software doesn't communicate with the new system.  I considered upgrading the scanner software, but have decided to move it to my other computer instead, which is still using Windows XP.

Which means it's about time to pack away the old HP scanner, which is slow, noisy, sometimes balky, and not that user friendly.  I'd have jettisoned it long ago, except that:

A.  It still works, and
B.  It has a transparency adapter so I can scan in 35mm negatives and 2" x 2" slides.

All that preamble to tell you that I've started a massive project to scan all my slides.  I'm not very far into the project; I'm up to about 1956.  I had a rather exciting "Aha moment" when I noticed something in this slide, for the first time yesterday; and I've seen it many times over the years.  This is from my first birthday.

On or near November 12, 1954, and appropriate to this blog, this was in Grandma and Poppy's kitchen.  Left to right, my Uncle Bud, me, and my sister Connie (I'm not sure why she's staring at the wallpaper).  Now Cousin Mike, see if you notice anything...interesting about this picture.  I'll give you a few moments...

Hint:  I've mentioned this here before (paragraphs 17 & 18), it's an old family story.

What we have here is photographic proof of waaaaaay back when I started out as a lefty, before my dad trained me out of that, and made me mixed-handed.  Before yesterday, I didn't realize there was any evidence.  It's neat the things I discover when I look through old stuff.

Oh, and another bit of trivia.  The windowpanes slid into the walls, and you'll notice the one on the right side is open.  I'm sure this wasn't too late in the evening, but it was already dark.  And though this was in southern Missouri, November evenings are usually cool there.  But this was 1954, an unusually hot year, or so they tell me.

While I'm in the mood, here's a few more pictures from that evening.

This one was actually taken just before the one at the top.  I don't know if Connie's trying to get my attention or Bud's.  And I don't know if Bud just sampled some of the cake, or if he was prompting me what to do next.  Well, we can see the story, even if we don't know the dialog.  This next image I cropped...seemed to improve it, I think.

I hope you enjoyed those!



  

Happy Father's Day 2012

So, what to do here? I've written years ago some memories of my Dad, a simple link to that old post here shall suffice, if you want to read, or re-read what I wrote. That was focused and personal, fond and happy memories.

Father's day can be many other things though. I'm a father of four great kids, and the three local ones helped me celebrate this evening with vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sauce in waffle bowls. I also had a wonderful conversation with my eldest daughter in California; I always enjoy it when she calls.

There's also the realization of other men, perhaps friends at church, or uncles, cousins, brothers-in-law, and other relatives, and seeing their relationships with their families (I thought of going family-tree-style, and posting photos of several of my male relatives with other family members. I'm thinking I'll still do that, but getting those photos organized will take longer and go later than I want tonight). So there may be a part two to this.

On my way here to post, I happened to notice on my Blogger Dashboard that my Cousin Mike had posted some neat memories and photos of his Dad, my Uncle P. J., on his blog "Central Standard". Mike also posed a question that was raised by one of his friends...

 "If you could spend one day again with your Dad, which day would it be"?

That's a great question, and my first thought was of an afternoon when I was sitting in the radio room (now the computer room), in fact, within a foot of where I'm sitting now. Dad was telling stories of when he was a boy and watched an air show in, I think, Detroit. I don't quite remember all the details, so I might well want to revisit that time and get Dad's stories on my tape recorder. And maybe ask a few more questions.

Or, I might want to go back to a quiet family moment in Poppy's living room, which I've written about here. Not a word was spoken for a while but I was young, we were all in reasonably good health, it was so peaceful, and I had not a care in the world.

Then again...there was the time we had traveled down to the farm to visit Poppy (my Mom's Dad, if you're new here and wish to keep score). On this trip we had brought along some floor tiles as the old linoleum was getting really worn out. I was in my Uncle Bud's room reading comic books for quite a while, so the project was already under way when I walked into the hallway. Dad had started to glue down the new tiles in the living room, which surprised me. I said, "Oh, so you don't scrape up the old linoleum first"? With a straight face Dad replied, "No, we'll just add a new layer every time, and eventually we'll have to scuttle around like this"! He then demonstrated the "scuttle" by hunching his back over and taking a few steps at about half running speed. That was, far and away, the funniest thing I ever saw and heard him do, it totally cracked me up!

Dad's good humor was of the dry sort, delivered unexpectedly. I didn't hear him laugh often. But...there was the one time when I brought my (then) girlfriend home and announced to Mom and Dad that we were engaged. Dad's face just lit up, and that was a laugh of joy. That might be the day I'd re-visit, for a number of good reasons.

Boy, it would sure be hard to pick just one.

Happy Birthday, Mike!

It’s Mike’s birthday again, and boy did that year fly by! I spent some time earlier trying to think of something extra clever to post, but had a bit of writer’s block; other than to say that we got no mail today. So Mike, how did you get your birthday to be a postal holiday?

Anyway, instead of trying to come up with something new, how about something old.

I have good memories of the times my family and I would travel to Poppy’s farm in the Ozarks. Usually we’d stay a week, a few times almost two. Always there would be a day or two when Mike’s family would drive over from Branson. If the weather was good, and it usually was, we’d divide our time inside the house and outside in the yard. We could always come up with something to do, even if it was just to look at comics and crack each other up with jokes.

One year we came up with a club, the Human Bean Club. We tied a rope between two closely spaced trees and put an old blanket across the top, weighted down with a few rocks at the bottom; that was our HBC tent. A flag was hastily made with a sheet of paper, colored with crayons (probably from that box of smoky crayons I'd bought at a dime store in Forsyth that had a fire sale). This was - I think - 1964 or 1965. We agreed that having a club had merit, and eventually play money was made and I think membership cards (I can't prove the latter from the archives though). The HBC club lasted over a year, maybe almost two years.

Sometimes I was invited to Mike's house to spend the night, and the hours would fly by. Paper, pens and pencils were an absolutely necessity, and the "creativity" (silliness) would begin. The cartoons I'd draw would usually involve characters I'd make up with oval shaped bodies, hastily drawn hands and odd eyes, big honkin' tennis shoes and messy hair. The plots usually involved trying to outrun a tornado, or were a setup for some pun or play on words. In later years, I came up with one truly odd attempt to build a storyline combining elements of Star Trek, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hogan's Heroes (hillbillies hiding from the rev'noors in underground tunnels, firing a phaser-like weapon to freeze an approaching tornado). If it was late enough and you were sleep deprived, it almost made sense. Kind of.

Mike had his own character, Fuzz-Man, whose special power was that he could attract lint and expand to giant size. Useful when dealing with his arch-enemies, Captain Endust, and the giant vacuum cleaner. Sometimes Mike would draw an already established super hero, usually Batman. Most of my stuff was just odd humor, but Mike's superhero themes inspired me to come up with Jello-Man. That character had worked in the Jello factory and one day had accidentally fallen into the vat of grape Jello (I had a purple pencil). Now that he was a shape-shifter, Jello-Man could thin himself out and ooze under the door when he accidentally locked himself out of his apartment. And he could also...hmmm...well, what else? I'll get back to you on that one. Someday.

Later and later it would get. We'd try to keep the laughter to a minimum as we passed the cartoons back and forth. We'd always get shushed once or twice from Mike's mom or dad. The stuff they put up with.

Once we got into foreign languages. Mike knew some German, and I had learned some French in class. We'd write the foreign words, then the translation. The sillier the better; things such as "I don't understand the beach", and "When will the potato sing"?

Once in a while we'd get philosophical. I had realized something that had troubled me a bit. At the time, M&Ms came in red, orange, yellow, green and brown. We'd been on a completely different subject, so I sprang it on him.

"Mike, why are there no blue M&M's"? We had a good laugh over that and pondered what we could do. We decided we ought to send the company a telegram:

DEAR M AND MS STOP WHY NO BLUE STOP

I wish we'd followed through and actually sent that, but neither of us quite had the nerve. But as we all know there have been blue (and purple) M&Ms for some years now, so they must have gotten the message somehow.

Once or twice we stayed up late enough that we heard the newspaper hit the front step. Mike would go out and bring it in, and we'd head straight for the comics page.

We had to be among the first in town to read the days comic strips in the Branson Beacon. Got a jump on most everybody else. That felt good. Then we'd finally get a few hours sleep, and pretty much be worthless for the rest of the day.

Mike, I hope you had a great day and made more fun memories!

(I'd like to read a response to this...I know I left stuff out.)

More from the Back Porch

"Bob's post has gotten me to thinking which is good because I've been a useless blob for weeks now."

I doubt that.

"Poppy had a refrigerator on the back porch and I thought, as a youngster, that this was most interesting. There was a refrigerator in the kitchen AND ANOTHER ONE on the back porch. Such luxury!!"

Yes, and I almost mentioned the refrigerator…but I thought the previous post was long enough. That, and I wanted to tie in straight to the fireworks while it was still kind of timely.

What I remember about that fridge…
It was bigger than the one in the kitchen,
I think it ran on Propane,
And on the top of the left side our uncle Buddy had written something in magic marker, in his secret code. The letters had extra lines, slashes or curlicues on them, but it looked something like

VBBS

Bud had showed me his secret code alphabet once, and I sure wish I had drawn a copy (I’ve been interested in alphabets and codes since grade school). Anyway, “VBBS” was his code for LSSI, which stood for “Loyal Southern Sons International”. I don’t know if this was something he and his friends came up with, or if it was all in his head. I do recall us play acting a meeting once, where we were supposed to stand when the national anthem was sung. Bud then stood and started to sing “Dixie”, and I just sat there looking at him. (That’s not our national anthem!)

He kidded me about that, something to the effect of “What do they teach you kids in that school up north?”. That LSSI meeting only happened once, a fun diversion for a summer afternoon. I do remember hearing various members of the family say “The South shall rise again!”.

More than once.

"I don't recall what exactly was kept out there early on…"

I’m not sure, but I suppose whenever he’d get a good buy in bulk quantities, or when he was given more food than the other fridge would hold. Maybe Connie would remember. Or your mom.

And I don’t remember how Poppy came to have that second refrigerator in the first place. Maybe it was given to him.

"...but I do recall some Buckhorn being there later, I suspect to help manage whatever ailment eventually took Poppy's life."

Buckhorn was cheap, and it wasn’t that good a beer. Er, um…so I heard. Yeah, that’s it.

"Bob, I also remember your mom being laid up on a bed on the back porch after an ugly encounter with some sizeable thorns during one of your visits. I don't recall any details except that as, again a young boy, it seemed like she had to stay in bed an awfully long time."

Mike, I had forgotten that, but yeah…sizeable wasn’t the word. I’d never seen thorns more than an inch long until then. She got infected from that, and was in bed some days. It ruined that trip to the farm for her, and I seem to recall we delayed our trip home an extra day or two.

I also slept on that bed during another trip, and I remember it being the tallest bed in the house. You really had to climb up to get on it.

"I do remember the fireworks displays that we had at the farm - it was great fun! It seemed as if the dark would never come."

Truly, the high point of the day.

"I remember watching my dad hold a roman candle out to his side while it discharged and thought that was one of the coolest things ever"

I had forgotten until you mentioned it, but I remember your dad getting into the fireworks show. What a time…not only the fireworks, but lightning bugs and a darker sky with more stars than you could see in the city. And we had the energy of youth without all the cares of adulthood.

"I begged and begged to be allowed to do that and finally he let me...And when it was all done, it wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be. Bob, was the balsa glider actually your first rocket? Do you have Bud to thank for your hobby?"

Well, not really, though I’m not sure now what year we did the bottle rocket powered glider flight. That glider was mainly Bud’s project.

As for model rocketry, I discovered that in 1967 when a classmate of mine told me “There’s these really cool rockets you can buy in the hobby store. You put them together and they really fly”. I found an ad in a magazine, it was either “Boy’s Life” or “Popular Science”, so I sent in for an Estes catalog.

(Do I still have my first Estes catalog? Why, yes!)

My birthday was approaching, so I asked for and got an Astron Alpha. Then later for Christmas, my dad surprised me with a homemade launch system and a tool box I used for my first range box.

Now I could go on and on, The Hobby has given me a great deal of fun over the years. But that would make this a long post indeed, so I’ll save that for another time.

And of course, there’s much more I could say about those days at Poppy’s farm. Great times, but they sure went by fast. So, I’ll post this much now, and compose more later.

So Mike, what’s your favorite memory about Grandma, Poppy, Uncle Bud…their house and the farm?

The Back Porch and Some Fireworks

Bob's post has gotten me to thinking which is good because I've been a useless blob for weeks now.

Poppy had a refrigerator on the back porch and I thought, as a youngster, that this was most interesting. There was a refrigerator in the kitchen AND ANOTHER ONE on the back porch. Such luxury!! I don't recall what exactly was kept out there early on, but I do recall some Buckhorn being there later, I suspect to help manage whatever ailment eventually took Poppy's life.

Bob, I also remember your mom being laid up on a bed on the back porch after an ugly encounter with some sizeable thorns during one of your visits. I don't recall any details except that as, again a young boy, it seemed like she had to stay in bed an awfully long time.

I do remember the fireworks displays that we had at the farm - it was great fun! It seemed as if the dark would never come. I remember watching my dad hold a roman candle out to his side while it discharged and thought that was one of the coolest things ever. I begged and begged to be allowed to do that and finally he let me after much coaching and warning.

And when it was all done, it wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be.

Bob, was the balsa glider actually your first rocket? Do you have Bud to thank for your hobby?

Poppy's Back Porch

Walk with me now a few steps from Poppy’s front porch, through his house. Why? I guess because I’ve been very nostalgic lately. One thing I’ve been thinking about is how clearly I can recall certain sounds in my memory; that’s not a new realization. I can see things “in my mind’s eye” from years ago, but the sounds come to mind more clearly for some reason. Better than my ability to explain here in writing.

Walk through the door into the living room. Wait, there I am in the chair by the south window, Poppy is sitting in his chair by the entrance to the kitchen, and my dad is sitting across from me in the chair in front of the built in bookcase. All three of us are reading, and my dad and Poppy are smoking their pipes. I hear the clink of dishes as mom washes them in the kitchen sink. It’s a July evening, just getting dark and still hot. The tree frogs and whippoorwills are starting to sing, but the only other sound from inside the house is the hum of the oscillating fan. Not a word has been spoken for a while. In fact, I remember that at the time I noticed the quiet, and the peace that came from being with family, in a place I loved, and at an age when I had few worries.

Now if we continue through the kitchen we’ll come to Poppy’s back porch, an interesting place in it’s own right. As for sounds, sometimes you’d hear the tinkle of glass wind chimes near the screen windows. When the water pressure got low, you’d hear a click as the motor for the well pump came on in the pump house, just to the north. But what I remember most was the distinctive rattle of the big, old doorknob and lock on the back door, as someone came in from outside, or went out. Impossible to describe in words, but I’ll never forget it.

Happy 18th of July!

Poppy was born July 18, 1902; if he were still here with us he’d be 106 today. Almost every year we would drive to his place in Taney County to celebrate his birthday. Mike and his family would come over from Branson, there would be good food, and sometimes the cousins and I would act out little plays for Poppy and the other adults in the audience. These were usually spoofs of popular TV shows or commercials.

And usually there would be fireworks. One year when I was young, I didn’t get all my fireworks shot off on the fourth…I think we were rained out. It was explained to me that I could take what I had left over to the farm, and since Poppy lived out in the country we could shoot the works for his birthday.

Then of course one year we didn’t get them all fired on the 18th either. I had brought them in a red cardboard box, with a label I’d made with FIREWORKS written in black Magic Marker. Poppy allowed me to keep the fireworks until the next year; he put the box on a shelf high on the east wall of his back porch. I’m actually kind of amazed that he let me keep the fireworks there when I think back on it. That tradition carried on a few years. I would bring more fireworks down, and we’d shoot both new and old fireworks. Some of them were probably five years old. I remember saying that once, and someone commenting that they probably wouldn’t light. But the old ones worked great…sometimes better than the new ones I’d bought.

Then there was the year that Uncle Buddy and I decided we’d try to make our own fireworks. I had a book, “Magic With Chemistry”, that had a few formulas. So, I brought down my chemistry set, and Buddy had his. Fortunately for us both – for our safety - the authors of the book wisely left out a key step in the process, and everything we made fizzled.

One year though we did try something interesting. I had figured out that I could tape two or three bottle rockets together and carefully twist their fuses together. I made a few of those clustered bottle rockets, which worked pretty well. That got Buddy to thinking. He had a balsa glider he was willing to sacrifice for the cause, the idea being to break the sticks off the bottle rockets and tape them to the wings as jet engines. I don’t recall how many bottle rockets we used, but it was the same number on each wing. Buddy set up a ramp or wood or plywood, at an angle away from our audience. When the time was right, the fuses were lit. The little glider didn’t stay airborn for long, but it did pretty good with a nice arcing flight. Some of the bottle rocket “jet engines” were the kind with a report, so that modified glider’s flight was it’s last.

Well, I wouldn’t do that today, and I don’t recommend it. Fireworks pose enough risk without doing any modifications to them, even something as slight as taping them to a balsa glider.