Radio Waves From Outer Space

The Old Man has a long history with radio. I even spent several years as a disc jockey back in the heyday of AM radio, before FM became the powerhouse it is. We were on 24 hours a day playing the top hits........we rocked the Roanoke Valley with the Shirelles, The Four Tops, Elvis, and all the rest of those folks who made rock-n-roll fun. But my involvement goes way deeper than that.

When I was a boy, we put together Crystal Radios. They came in kits and consisted of some fine copper wire which you wound around a cardboard core, a little round crystal of some sort of rock, and a few miscellaneous parts like headphones, a bit of wire like a cat's whisker and some basic instructions. When it comes to electronics, I'm pretty much as clueless as Elmer Fudd on the space shuttle. Somehow, when you moved the little cat's whisker wire around on the crystal while moving a whisbidget along the copper wire coil, if you got really lucky, you'd pick up a radio station in your headphones. I would lay in my bed late at night trying to find some voice from the ether.

As I grew, a man who lived a couple of doors up the street worked for our local radio station. He took me on as a project and attempted to teach me about ohms, cycles, resistance, and watts. Elmer Fudd, remember? He did help me build my next generation radio. A little short wave set that could pick up lots of "squeaks and squawks" along with Morse code and some Mexican fellow who I think was preaching; either that or he was advocating another attack on the Alamo. This thing had for an antenna (we called them aerials) a wire stretching from my window to a huge cherry tree that stood in our yard 30 or 40 feet from the house. There was a gadget called a "lightning arrester" attached to the wire. I could never figure out how a bolt of lightning that could destroy a 100 foot tall oak tree would somehow be intimidated by a few pieces of porcelain. Elmer Fudd, remember?

Let's dig a bit deeper. The first Christmas they were married, my father gave my mother a radio. It was in the style of the day called a "cathedral top". I didn't make my grand entrance until about 7 years later. Some of my earliest memories are of us sitting around listening on that radio to Lowell Thomas, Edward R Murrow, and a host of others bring the news of the day. And the programs........The Shadow, Straight Arrow, Sky King, Lum & Abner, Jack Benny, and Inner Sanctum with it's "creaking door". I still listen to those programs; only now they come to me from outer space courtesy of XM Satellite Radio. I still have trouble coming to grips with the technology. Elmer Fudd, remember?

Take a look at this picture. There's the radio with Miss Alma by her side. I now have that old cathedral top and it still plays. I can turn the switch, wait for the tubes to warm up and hear those rich tones speaking to me. Would that I could do the same with Miss Alma.

The Arch Nemesis

The Old Man has had, and continues to have some good friends. Many of these are from childhood. Now, I know that along the way, I have accumulated an enemy or two, but I hope the score adds up to an overwhelming preponderance of the positives. There was one, however.......

He was a couple of years older than me, and in 10 year old culture, that might as well have been a century. He was a regular tormentor of the Park Street Battalion. I follow a comic strip in our daily paper called "Curtis". For those unfamiliar, he's a little kid who from time to time runs into a couple of characters named "Derrik" and "Onion". They generally pop out from behind a fence or an alley and make Curtis' life miserable. I understand Curtis. We had our own Derrik and Onion rolled into one.

One day NemesisBoy ambushed me as I was walking home from school by myself. After some rib jabs and shoves, he produced a length of rope from his bike saddlebags. By this time, I was a couple of minutes shy of having my pants grow significantly lumpy and aromatic.

He proceeded to tie me to a tree. Not just any tree, mind you, but a very prominent maple tree that was on the main drag through our part of town, Longwood Ave. Thoughts swarmed through my mind, but chief among them was, "I'm gonna kill this asshole". That's a pretty severe one for a 10 year old. Of course I said nothing and he rode off on his bike cackling like the witch in the Wizard of Oz. Then the fun began.

People I knew were riding by in their cars...returning from work, shopping, or errands. Many of these were the same people who had wondered why that little Jackson boy was sitting up in that tree "humming" while playing airplane, and I'm quite sure they had thoughts like, "He's at it again....now he's gone and tied himself to a tree". Some of them waved, including my dad. All the while, I attempted to ply the skills I had honed during those Saturday Western matinees. Cisco and Pancho, Hopalong Cassidy, or The Durango Kid always managed to extricate themselves easily. For some reason, my efforts weren't working. Their ease of escape was probably related to that 6-shooter the good guys could fire 213 times without reloading.

Dad finally came back as the afternoon drew to a close and he realized that I just might need a bit of help. He got me untied and I managed between sobs to tell him the story. He gave me a piece of advice. "I could go have a talk with his dad, but that probably wouldn't change anything. As a matter of fact, it would probably make it worse. You're just going to figure out how to handle this yourself." "Oh, gee, thanks, Dad" I thought.

Turn the page a couple of months to summer. We were at a church picnic and this jerk was surreptitiously picking on me when he thought no one was looking. I caught the look in my dad's eye and the tumblers in my brain fell into place. In front of God and everybody else I got all over this dude like white on rice. I slapped, kicked, punched, and bit. He was howling and crying and it all was over in the blink of an eye, before anyone could break us up. Truth be told, I'm pretty sure my dad was intentionally slow to mosey over. As we rode home in the car, I expected a tongue-lashing, but rather, all he said was, "I think your problems are over, son."

Like all those other times in my life, he was right. I never had a moments trouble and neither did some of the other members of the Battalion.

That tree is gone now, having served it's purpose. But the memory lingers, the lesson lingers, and the memory of the look in Dad's eyes when he pulled me off Nemesisboy will stay with me forever. After all, you never forget how pride looks.

A Yankee Doodle Dandy

The Old Man has probably seen every John Wayne war movie ever made. My friends and I have fought along side the Duke at Iwo Jima, Bataan, and all the other places around the Pacific. We've been Flying Leathernecks and Flying Tigers.
We would see one of the Saturday movies, and then come home and Park Street became the battlefield du jour.

Of course, like the Duke, we were a well equipped army. In the years after World War II, "Army/Navy" stores proliferated. They sold (and in most cases still do) surplus equipment. One of the greatest treats I could have was to be allowed to visit the store. All of us in the Park Street Battalion had helmet liners, web belts, canteens, and combat boots. Never mind that the helmet liners made us all look like infantile bobble-heads, and the web belts had to be overlapped and tied, or that the combat boots were usually 3 sizes too big, we were ready to stand with the man and destroy the evil devotees of the Rising Sun.

Weapons consisted of (most important) the Daisy Air Rifle. These bad-boys made a very convincing noise when a BB ricocheted off a helmet liner. We did observe our own version of the Geneva Convention however; you could never aim at a face. Of course, it never occurred to us that the helmet liner was perilously close to the face. This was followed by our rubber bayonets, and our grenades. Grenades were the hardest to come by. We used the "cones" that are left after a magnolia tree blooms. They even looked the part. Sometimes, we'd discover a new foundation had been dug for a house. The red Virginia clay clods made perfect grenades, and would explode realistically when they hit a helmet liner. When this happened, the battle was usually pretty much over and would end with one ticked-off bobble-head chasing another.

Now as any true John Wayne fan will tell you, all the soldiers smoked. For added realism, we would save up our candy cigarettes from our trip to the movies and lay around out in the back yards and on the back lots, "smoking" when there was a lull in the action.

One day, we achieved Nirvana. One of our army, (and for the life of me, I can't remember which one) came into possession of an actual training hand grenade. It had no possibility of exploding, but it did have all the mechanical parts. You could cock it and re-set the safety lever or "spoon", and put the pin in. When you pulled the pin and threw the grenade, the spoon would fly off and give you such realistic action it almost made you cry.
Now we had seen the Duke grab that grenade, pull the pin with his teeth while firing his sub-machine gun. Movies lie. Francis the Talking Mule couldn't pull a grenade pin with his teeth.

I don't still have that helmet liner or those combat boots. But that web belt is still in service. I carry a tool pouch on it now. It still functions after all these years with one exception; it no longer overlaps.

For Sale......Cheap

The Old Man has leaves for sale. If you know of anyone who needs some, please let me know.....I have more than I can possibly use.

The ocean calls, so more posts when I return.

Laugh much and hug those you love.

Mah Friends, If I'm Elected.........

The Old Man is pretty tired of politics about now. I've been hearing this or that for over two years. Relax, no soap box, as promised. I just think it's a good opportunity to talk about how Election Day was...."way back when".

First of all, folks ran for President beginning in earnest on Labor Day. Parties held their conventions and the candidates began showing up in September. When we finally got TV, news was limited to one 15 minute broadcast every evening. There was no 24 hour anything except night and day. We did not get the opportunity to examine every follicle of a candidate, or every faux paux ever committed. Candidates' personal screw-ups we never heard about. Folks relied on newspapers and other limited media for an explanation of political platforms and positions. Party divisions were very much like they are today; Democrats were perceived as the friends of the working class, and Republicans stood for business. A person's career choice and position heavily colored his or her orientation. Left wing or right wing merely identified where a hunter shot a goose. Given this environment, Presidential candidates could get every promise for "a chicken in every pot" and other magical solutions out there easily before the November election date.

When the big day arrived, qualified voters went into a booth and marked their ballots. No machines, no levers, no touch screens, and no chads, hanging or otherwise. To be qualified, a voter had to prove literacy. You had to be able to read and write. Somewhere along the way, we've lost that. I'm still not sure why it could be deemed unconstitutional or discriminatory to require a person to be able to read in order to understand enough about the issues to be a cognizant and informed voter.

There was, however, what was called a Poll Tax. It was a nominal figure.....I think I remember my dad mentioning $1.50. That went away as well, and for, I believe, good reason. Our country should not make a citizen pay for the right to vote. At least one change was for the better.

There was no early voting. You stood in line on Election Day and waited your turn. Liquor stores were closed.....a holdover from the early days where political entities would "lather up voters" in bars and alley-ways and then attempt to sway their vote.

After the polls closed, the town gathered in front of the court house where results were announced over a PA system as they were counted and as they were received from state headquarters by telephone. Later, when televisions began making their appearance, we gathered in front of the furniture store window to watch election returns come through the "snow"of an early black & white set with a 13 inch screen. The picture would distort occasionally and someone would always say, "Must be an airplane going over" or "It's coming in pretty good tonight".

We've come a long way with many changes in how we handle this most fundamental tenet of Democracy. But we are still privileged to live in the greatest country on earth, and if I thought it would have an impact, I'd have voted for Lee Greenwood.

I'm the Old Man and I approved this message.

And Now Ladies & Gentlemen, Presenting MoFo The Albino Monkey

The Old Man has always been blessed with a somewhat wicked sense of humor. On some occasions, the perfect foil comes into my life and a high degree of comedic foolishness seems to take on a life of its own. You know how it is.......there just seems to be a compatibility that when mined, takes any pursuit to a higher level. Whether in business, marriage, or any other enterprise, the output is multiplied exponentially. The same natural law applies even in foolishness. Such was the case with Larry and me.

Now this account has nothing to do with my childhood or with Bedford. Larry entered my life as a full blown adult. (At least in years) Larry and his family moved into a house a couple of doors down from us. Over the months we got to know each other and discovered we shared an almost identical sense of humor. We were comedically joined at the hip. He seemed to know where my lunacy was heading and fed off of it, and fed into it instinctively. My golf buddy, Jay, and I have that now. Let off the leash, we can travel some funny roads.

As time developed, Larry and I would begin around July laying plans for our Halloween Hijinks.

One year I was a werewolf and Larry The Sheriff had captured me. We'd go from door to door and Larry would say he was "out catching weirdos and is this one yours?" Another year, we smeared ourselves with glow-in-the-dark paint and attempted to collect money for those who had lost their jobs as a result of nuclear reactor accidents. Our makeup was extensive....both of us had extra eyes, etc. Our line was "We've been working around this stuff for years and it hasn't affected us at all."

But far and away, our goofy apex was the year we took our act on the road as Guiseppe Lopez (me) and MoFo The Albino Monkey (Larry). I would go to the door and say in an overdone, fake Italian accent, "Hello..My namea isa Guiseppe Lopez-a and for-a a small-a donation-a, I will have MoFo the Albino Monkey perform-a for-a you-a." All the while, MoFo was in the back of my van banging around on the sides and shaking the van. I'd go and let him out, tied to the end of a huge rope and he would come haltingly up the sidewalk. Carrying a beverage and holding a teddy bear he would have me light his cigar and then he would do a couple of Elvis moves.

I would then tip my hat and thank the people and lead MoFo back to the van and off we'd go. Now the really funny part of this our adoring public did not see. Larry stuttered, but like Country Star Mel Tillis, he celebrated and used that to endear himself to all. In transit between performances, we had a conversation like this. "JJJJJJack." "Yeah Larry." "IIIIIIf wwwe hhhave a wwwwreck, dddddon't llllet ttthem cccall a vvvvet to wwwwork on me."

So there you have it. The saga of MoFo the Albino Monkey. Larry is fine; I saw him during the holiday season last year. We hadn't seen each other for over 15 years, but it was if no time had passed. The only thing missing was Halloween.

Halloween Part 2

The Old Man is fixing to mess with your head. Jules' Halloween post has generated the need for a little break from the overall theme of true history. I'm going to take a short detour into the realm of fantasy.

Jules referred to my "dripping candle wax" on my face and said she wished she had a picture of that. Look what surfaced.

My comments on that same post referred to Julie's Planet of the Apes makeup. Lookee....

See part II of the Halloween story for the straight scoop on MoFo The Albino Monkey, coming soon to screen near you.