January 2014

January 27, 2014

Hanging Around Science Class

I really SHOULD remember the skinny kid in the corner, but I have a lousy memory for names, particularly when the faces are missing. I know I never saw him down in the cafeteria. I guess he spent all his spare time hanging around in the science lab, probably talking to guys like Jim Stone.

This must have been the biology classroom because it doesn’t have the sinks and things that were in the chemistry lab.

Grading chart

The picture is not quite sharp, so I had a hard time making out the grading chart on the blackboard. Here’s what it looked like, as close as I could figure: E – 99 to 100; E-minus – 95 to 97; S-plus – 92 to 94. It was too fuzzy to see the rest, except that I think 70 would get you in the M range and 30 to 31 would win an I-minus. Anything below 26 was an F. Click on the photo to make it larger. Maybe you have better eyes.

I don’t know if Central still uses the E-S-M-I-F grading scale or if they’ve gone to the more common A-B-C-D-E-F grades.

I DO remember well those flying saucer light fixtures, mainly from looking up at them to avoid eye contact with the teacher who was looking for a student to answer a question.

January 26, 2014

Blown Tire Blues

There I was, sleeping the sleep of the just, all snuggled up in my blankets against the unseasonable Florida cold, while Wife Lila was on her way to church. About six minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off (so I could ignore it, being Sunday and retired on top of that), my cell phone rang.

For a guy who used to be a telecommunications manger, I hate phones in general and cell phones in particular. I swear they have a sensor that makes them ring when I’m napping, in the shower or in the one-seat Steinhoff Reading Library. Oh, yes, I can go a week without getting a call, but let me be on my cell and that will compel the house phone to ring, not wanting to be left out of anything.

So, back to this morning: Wife Lila says she’s in a no-parking zone on the northbound lane of Parker Avenue north of Forest Hill with a blow-out.

I assure her I am on my way

While I’m trying to find garments to cover my body, she calls back to tell me that the sidewall is wrecked and that blowing it up is not an option.

“That’s the way blowouts work,” I said. I assure her I am on my way.

I stop long enough to get a manly tire tool and a heavy hammer in case some gorilla with an impact wrench put the tire on the last time.

I head south on Georgia, turn west on Forest Hill (to be passed by a plain black pickup truck with emergency lights running Code 3), go past Garden, Lake, Parker, I-95 and a myriad of other streets until I get to Congress, and drive north looking for Wife Lila’s green Honda Odyssey van. Three blocks north of where she should be, I pull into a parking lot, pick up my cell phone to find out where she is.

Just as I press SEND, I realize I’ve driven to CONGRESS and Forest Hill, about a mile past Parker. I confess to a brain fart and assure her I’m on my way.

I make a U-turn (unlike Ohio, U-turns are permitted unless prohibited), head back east on Forest Hill Blvd. and turn north on Parker, where she is supposed to be. Six blocks later, I pick up my cell phone to ask her where she is.

“Oh, I’m not on Parker, I’m on Lake.” That’s a block east of Parker. I assure her I’m on my way.

Yep. The tire was definitely flat. Something had done a real number on the sidewall.

Here’s where I made a couple of tactical errors

I bounced the doughnut spare on the ground a couple of times and thought it was in pretty good shape. I should have checked it with a tire gauge, then topped it off with the portable tire pump I bought in Cape last summer. This isn’t exactly the model I have, but they are all about the same at this price point.
She asked if she should pull away from the curb a bit more. I told her I thought I had enough clearance to turn the crank. I discovered after I had the jack started that I didn’t, but I didn’t want to take it out and start over. (I’m buying a REAL jack at my first opportunity. I had forgotten how wienie the Honda jacks are.)

It’s a good thing I brought the manly tire iron

Four of the five hub nuts spun off easily. Gorilla guy put on the fifth one. I had to resort to The Big Hammer to break it loose.

Putting the new tire on was no sweat. It looked a little low, so I was going to use the portable compressor to pump it up, but the power cord was too short. (Should have done it when it was off the car.)

Home was only a few blocks away, so she drove it to where I could get at it with my electric compressor. She’ll go over to Southend Service in the morning to get a new tire. Luckily it was one of the older ones.

Wow, I’m tired just talking about tires. At least it wasn’t raining, sleeting or 102 degrees. [Thanks to Wife Lila for documenting the experience.]

January 25, 2014January 25, 2014

John Perry in Uniform

I literally kicked over a box of photos in the closet this afternoon. Spilling out of it were these two photos of Wife Lila’s brother, John F. Perry. In the first photo, he’s heading off to Boy Scout camp.

Headed for Vietnam

Only a few years later, in 1970, still looking young, he was in his Navy uniform getting ready to ship out for Vietnam.

A family tradition of service

This photo was taken almost exactly 42 years later at a going-away party for his son, Wyatt, who was headed to Marine boot camp.

Laurie Perry Everett – Army
Drew Perry – Marines
Wyatt Perry – Marines
John F. Perry – Navy
Rocky Everett (Laurie’s husband) – Army

January 25, 2014February 18, 2021

First Plane Ride

This tiny scrapbook looks like it captured my first plane ride when I was about four years old. Lake of the Ozarks kept twitching in the back of my mind. Then, I thought “Bagnell Dam,” not knowing for sure if the two phrases were connected.

Wikipedia provided the answer: Bagnell dam impounds the Osage River creating the Lake of the Ozarks. It is 148 feet tall and 2,543 feet long. Construction started in 1929 and was finished in 1931. The Lake of the Ozarks has a surface area of 55,000 acres, over 1,150 miles of shoreline and stretches 92 miles from end to end, making it one of the largest man-made lakes in the world and the largest in the United States at that time.

Dad, the Joiners and me

Troas “Bones” Joiner is on the left. He was the Joiner part of Steinhoff, Kirkwood and Joiner Construction. Bones was a ruddy-faced, good-hearted man who knew his way around a wrench and was artist with a bulldozer. He was a Cat skinner of the first order. His son, Bill, is on the right. I’m sitting on Dad’s lap.

Bagnell Dam a boost during the Depression

The concept of a hydro electric power plant on the Osage River was first introduced by a Kansas City developer as long ago as 1912. Ralph Street managed to put together the funding to construct a dam across the Osage River and began building roads, railroads and support structures necessary to begin construction of a dam that would impound a much smaller lake than what is presently known as Lake of the Ozarks. Sometime in the mid-1920s, Street’s funding dried up and he had to abandon the idea of the first hydroelectric power plant on the Osage River.

Upon Street’s failure to deliver the power plant, Union Electric Power and Light stepped in with an engineering firm from Boston, Massachusetts, and designed and constructed Bagnell Dam in one of the most unlikely spots along the Osage River.

Many thought the $30 million project would be a disaster with the stock market crash of 1929, but it proved to be a boost to many families in the area as well as the hundreds who traveled across the country seeking work.

By today’s standards, all construction was done by hand, and the equipment used in the construction was quite primitive. The construction of Bagnell Dam was completed and Lake of the Ozarks was a full reservoir in fewer than two years.

The first of many plane rides

I don’t have any recollection of my first plane ride. Not only was it a small plane, it was a seaplane on top of that. I think I’ve only flown in a pontoon plane two or three times, once to the Dry Torguas and back (obviously).

I’ve spent hundreds of hours in tiny aircraft and helicopters over the years. I’ve always felt more comfortable in them than in commercial airliners where you are treated like cattle. I have plenty of scary war stories about flying, but there’s something comforting about sitting next to the pilot when he says, “Oops.”

Was the dam builder superstitious?

Here’s an intriguing factoid: Construction of the dam allowed for thirteen floodgates, as the original design called for. However, only twelve floodgates were installed, and the thirteenth spillway opening is walled shut with concrete. The engineers calculated that twelve floodgates provided a large enough margin of safety. It may be apocryphal that Union Electric officials did not want to jinx the dam with the unlucky number 13.