Resurrection

The Old Man has a resurrection story for you today. No, not that resurrection, but one of a non-Divine old-timer that I had thought long since dead. Followers of my blog will recall several references to an old radio. Let's be more specific, here. We'll call him Philco 89, maybe Phil for short. He was born in 1933. When he was just a young thing, my dad gave him to my mother on the first Christmas they were married.

Phil provided many hours of entertainment to my folks. They heard the news of the world delivered by Lowell Thomas, Walter Winchell, and of course, Edward R. Murrow. They listened to "Make Believe Ballroom" from the Hotel Roosevelt and probably dreamed of someday traveling there. I don't know this for a fact, but it's a good bet they heard the news of Pearl Harbor from Phil.

Several years down the road, Phil was replaced by a newer radio. Time to upgrade, I suppose, and old Phil found his way down into the basement. He perched on a shelf near the washing machine. Mom would listen to what Phil had to say while doing her laundry and ironing chores. I recall (yeah, by this time I had made the scene) sitting with Dad and listening to The Shadow, Gunsmoke, or Inner Sanctum while he cranked the ice cream freezer. Phil didn't get to say much then. He spoke or sang only occasionally.

Flip many pages on the calendar. Phil rarely had anything to say now. Television had relegated him to obscurity. Dad was gone, I was all grown up, and Mom didn't spend a lot of time in the basement. One day during a visit, I asked Mom if I could take Phil back home with me. A spur of the moment bit of spontaneity, I guess.

Phil sat on an old trunk in our den for a while, seemingly content to be a curiosity for visitors. I woke him up once in a while, but never for very long. One day, Phil went silent. He could only make a guttural growling noise with a few pops and snaps thrown in for good measure.

We moved away from Virginia in 1991. Phil came with us, of course, but upon his arrival was exiled to the attic over my workshop where he remained until a couple of weeks ago.

Enter Bruce. Simply by happenstance, I discovered that Bruce was a collector/restorer of antique radios. Bruce loves radios. He eats, sleeps, and breathes radios. His collection is magnificent. Bruce came by his passion honestly. His father was an apparent genius when it came to electronics. He can regale you with stories of how his father taught him valuable lessons about the idiosyncrasies of what to my untrained eye, are simply containers of electronic spaghetti.

I took Phil over to Bruce's shop and he did an evaluation. Among other issues, it seems that some squirrels had been around nibbling and leaving bits of acorn behind. Phil's cabinet finish was pretty much gone, and there were a number of missing bits of veneer. Bruce operated and removed Phil's innards, and I brought his "skin" home to my shop.

I gave Phil a cosmetic makeover while Bruce performed the necessary surgery and stitching on his inner workings. I got a call from Bruce advising me that Phil was back, so I went over with Phil's newly buffed and polished "look" and Bruce remarried the parts.

What a thrill when we waited for the tubes to warm up to their trademark red glow, and once again after almost 25 years, Phil sang in that marvelous bass voice of his. I said to Bruce, "Wow! You've done wonders for the old radio." Bruce replied simply, "No, I rescued another one."

Late that night, I sat in the kitchen in semi-darkness, watching the tubes glow and running the dial up and down to see what I could find. I heard WCBS in New York, some station in St. Louis, and a ton of others from heaven only knows where. In that lateness, a part of me half expected to hear Edward R. Murrow say, "This is London". I know all of those old timers must be in there somewhere.

Tagged Is Me

The Old Man got tagged this morning. Seems I have to go to the 6th folder on my computer, choose the 6th picture in that folder. Well, OKeyDokey.

As many of you know from a previous posting, my dad gave this radio to my mom the first Christmas they were married. It's been languishing in my attic for many years. I recently drug it out and set it on my workbench.

My next regular posting will detail what I believe is a very interesting story about her.

Stay tuned.

" Creative Problem-Solving"....Not A New Concept

The Old Man comes from a long line of creative problem solvers. I learned at an early age that there were always simpler and common-sense solutions to most situations. There wasn't much high-tech stuff around Bedford. If we wanted to see something on TV, we went over town and looked through the window of the furniture or appliance store. Frozen foods were a novelty.....my family grew and canned our own produce.


Folks still plowed their gardens with mules, and houses were built one nail at a time. School had "recess", and most "social problems" were confined to a section of the county where Saturday nights brought out vile stuff imbibed from mason jars. Results were usually unfavorable.


As children of the Great Depression, my parents knew the importance of a non-wastefulness lifestyle. Mom would sit and darn socks for Dad and me for hours on end. I don't remember getting new ones until my foot started growing. Well into her '80s, she would sew and mend on her own clothing until it seemed that all the original cloth had been replaced by new thread and stitches.


When it came to solving a problem, or figuring out a simple way to do something, my dad was a "grand master". I recall once when he and I were going fishing, someone had told him that grasshoppers made excellent bait. For several days, he stewed and mulled over how to capture enough for an ample supply . Sitting at the kitchen table, he'd chew on the stem of his pipe, and occasionally mutter to himself. One fine Saturday morning, I noticed traffic slowing down as it passed our house. I went out on the back porch and there was Dad in the area behind our house known as "the back lot", walking back and forth with a minnow seine. Now, if you don't happen to know what a minnow seine is, picture a rectangular fine net with a stick on either end. The idea was to walk through the water and capture bait minnows. So here was Dad, out in a dry-land field seining his heart out. Remember, this is the father of the kid who used to sit up in the Mimosa tree and hum.


He had the last laugh, though. We had enough grasshoppers to take us through a whole day of fishing. Rooted in his love of fishing were other "creative" solutions. To make a fish scaler, he took a strip of wood about 10 inches long and nailed a couple of soft drink bottle caps to one side, jagged side facing. It worked like a charm and could scale a perch in nothing flat. The scaler doubled as a paint-stirring stick. Gripping the bottle-cap end wasn't the most comfortable thing to do, but it worked. I still have that scaler. I wouldn't dare use it...it's one of my connections to something precious to me. I may have it bronzed.


I leave you with a last bit of creativity. We see babies now being carried into restaurants in some really plush and interesting carriers. They are multi-function. They transport, convert into strollers, entertain, and allow baby to snooze in some degree of comfort. I jokingly refer to them as "baby buckets". Perhaps now you will understand why.

It's A Wonder

The Old Man is lucky to be here. It's a wonder I survived my youth. BB guns, sling shots, dirt clods, and arrows shot high into the air just to see where they would fall, could all entertain the Park Street Battalion for hours on end. Sometimes we would attempt the organized civility of sports, or the cerebral exercise of marathon Monopoly tournaments, but more often than not, we were engaged in some form of risky behavior.

Helmets were items worn by soldiers and football players.....never by a kid on a bike. Not only did we eschew helmets, we rode with no shoes and no shirts. While rocketing down Baltimore Avenue hill, we would let go of the handlebars and ride, steering "au naturale" by leaning a bit left or right.

We crawled through drainage pipes and culverts, climbed to 30-40 feet in trees on limbs that were never meant to support a squirrel, much less a kid, and roamed around town after dark with no thought of fear. We camped out in fields and in the woods.

Mom carved up chicken on the sideboard beside the sink, gave it a quick wipe and cut up the potatoes for salad. Meals were left on the table, covered with a cloth, after Sunday lunch and seldom re-heated for supper. We were never ill from any of this....perhaps we were lucky or I like to think that maybe it's been the passage of time that has created an evolution of bad stuff and disagreeable substances. Restaurant workers didn't wear hair nets or plastic gloves and the butchers used the same butcher block cutting surface for all their meat prep. There was sawdust on the floor of the butcher area to absorb spilled blood and prevent butcher "accidents".

We ate rabbit if Dad had a good day in the field, and during the summer we ate enough perch and bluegills from farm ponds and the County Park lake it seemed we would begin to grow scales.

If a huge flock of starlings became a bother when they decided to "park" themselves in one of our trees, Dad would simply take his shotgun and fire off a blast up into the tree. It wasn't illegal then. The starlings would scatter and peace and tranquility would return to Park St. I heard a quote on television recently that summed up most of the time on our street. "It was so quiet, you could hear a mouse peeing on cotton in China".

I recapture a little bit of that experience with my genuine Daisy Red Ryder BB gun these days when the squirrels launch an assault on my bird feeders.

I suppose a simpler time called for simpler solutions, but that delicious quiet visits me from time to time. It's rare, but when it comes, it's a treasure.

Oh, by the way......The Old Man is the second from the right.

It Ain't Margaritaville This Time

The Old Man is going on a little trip. It's not my normal run to the coast, but rather an errand of some degree of mercy. Gotta go up north where they will probably talk funny.

Since the Iwo Jima series, I've taken a few days to lick my literary wounds, but during the hiatus, I've managed to jot down a whole new stack of blog subjects. When I return, I'll get right to it.

I'm actually going to the Eastern Shore of Maryland. To get there, I will have to go perilously close to Washington D. C. I plan to sneak by quickly so none of the silliness there can attach itself to me. Wish me travel mercies.

Back in a week.

Looks A Little Pale

The Old Man finally got his wish. We had a decent snow....the best one (according to the weather guessers) in about 5 years. It started about 7:30 last night after a day of heavy rain, and continued until early morning.

Seems that Washington, DC is getting hammered along about now. Wouldn't it be a good thing if we could perceive the same degree of purity inside the buildings that heavy snow brings to the outside of them?

Nothing heavy, this post. Just a chance to share a little beauty with you.

Oh, by the way; thanks to all who commented on my Iwo Jima series. Look for a similar series in June as we honor those brave souls who encountered The Longest Day.

Black Sands of Hell (Part 3)

The Old Man concludes. For 4 days, the bloody fighting continued day and night. In an effort to discourage "sneak" attacks during nighttime combat, both sides kept the skies alight with flares, strobing the landscape with ghastly flashes of the reality of death.

The Fourth Division was tasked with the capture of the southern end of Iwo Jima including Mount Suribachi in order to neutralize the withering Japanese fire power. The Fifth Division's mission was to capture the two airfields to the North and West. As the Marines made their way toward their objectives, they began to get a better grasp of the Japanese style of combat. All other combatants in modern times have honored the red crosses worn by field medics in an attempt to bring some degree of civility to war. They are "off limits". The Japanese, however, saw things differently. Contrary to convention, medics were targeted first, the red crosses a bulls eye; after all, if a medic dies, many more other soldiers will die from lack of treatment.


The third veteran of the campaign that I have known is T. W. That's how he was known to friends. T.W. recounts how he was wounded in the battle for Guam, and back in action on Iwo. He recounts a story of how he and 3 other Marines were assisting a wounded comrade back to an aid station. They jumped in a shell crater to rest for a moment. While taking their "break", one of the men asked if T. W. would change sides with him. T. W. agreed since it would give both of their arms a rest from carrying the litter. When they came out of the crater, the one who had taken T. W. 's place took a bullet in the arm. When the war ended and T. W. came home, he felt a call into the Ministry and served as a pastor for most of the rest of his life. He was a gentle and humble soul who exhibited no indication of his witness to barbarity.

The taking of Mount Suribachi extracted a heavy toll in life and misery. American casualties totaled 5,372, of which 385 were killed.

On the morning of February 23, four Marines made it to the top of Suribachi. When they looked down into the extinct volcano's crater, they saw a battery of machine guns and stacks of ammunition, but not a living soul. They scrambled back down to their unit and told their commanding officer what they had seen. He immediately sent another 6 man patrol back up with a small American flag and instructions to "put this up".

At the top, these Marines found a 20 foot length of iron pipe and lashed the flag to it. Even though it was small, when word spread, cheers erupted all over the island. The ships anchored just off shore began to blow their foghorns and ring the ship's bells. The Japanese were not amused.

About two hours later, around 10:30 AM, 6 more Marines made their way to the top with a larger flag to replace the initial one. This flag-raising has served as the defining moment of pride and patriotism for 64 years and will, I believe, always provide an emotional boost to all generations.

Of these 6 flag raisers, three would be dead within a month. In the photo, Texas born Harlon Block is at the bottom of the pole inserting it into the ground. He was killed by a mortar shell on March 1st. Harlon was 21 years old. Two men behind and just barely visible are Mike Strank who also died on March 1st, and Rene Gagnon who was one of the three brought back to the States to participate in a bond drive. The second man up in the foreground is John "Doc" Bradley, a Corpsman who was another of the three who survived, and whose son, James Bradley, wrote the book "Flags of Our Fathers". After Bradley is Franklin Sousley, killed on March 21st. The last man is Ira Hayes, the third of the survivors who participated in the bond tour.

While the famous photograph would be perceived by many for years to come as a climactic event, the fight for control of Iwo Jima would continue on for many weeks. The last organized resistance ended on March 16th, nearly a full month after the invasion. The last Japanese gasp came on March 26th when 4 Japanese officers led 196 trapped men out of a cave and attempted to attack Airfield #2.

The toll in human life in the battle for Iwo Jima is astounding. 20,000 Japanese troops were killed and nearly 7000 Marines paid the supreme price for our freedom.

Admiral Chester Nimitz, in his official communication announcing the capture of Iwo Jima included a phrase that has become the point of clarity on the campaign. He said, "Uncommon valor was a common virtue".

On one of the "Lest They Be Forgotten" programs referred to in an earlier post, the ending again brought tears to my eyes. The camera moved from one of these men's face to the next, and as the camera focused on them, each gave a crisp salute. Even though they could not see me, I quietly stood from my chair and returned each with gratitude and pride. Thank you, my heroes, from the core of my being.

God Bless America