LV Steinhoff Archives

January 1, 2015January 1, 2015

Resolutions and Sunrises

This illustration I did for The Southeast Missourian in 1966 shows how Wife Lila and I usually welcome in the New Year.

Follow this link to see more photos of Terri and Roy Murdoch, children of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Murdoch, and to read about their dad.

I’m not sure I ever heard Chuck Murdoch called “Charles.” He was just “Chuck,” one of my favorite sports editors. He didn’t take himself or his job too seriously, but he loved covering kid sports and did everything he could to get as many names in the paper as he could.

When did you quit smoking?

I recall the year that Dad quit smoking cold turkey on New Year’s Eve. We all noticed that he had gotten crankier than usual, but he didn’t tell us for a couple of weeks that he had tossed all his cigarettes in the fireplace at the stroke of midnight. He didn’t want to say anything until he was sure he could do it.

I’ve been binge-watching the TV series Mad Men, which is about an advertising agency in New York in the 1960s. I thought I was going to choke to death during the first few episodes because there wasn’t a scene that didn’t have people filling the air with smoke. When I thought back on it, that’s just the way it was in those days, particularly in the newsroom.

(The photo department became non-smoking as soon as I became director of photography. I claimed it was for technical and safety reasons, but the truth was that I hated smelling the smoke.)

Plenty of readers shared their smoking experiences.

Sunrise on the beach

In a moment of insanity on the first day of 2011, I consented to go to the Lake Worth beach to watch the sun come up. Now, don’t get me wrong. I HAVE seen the sun come up before, but it’s almost always been because I stayed up all night the night before.

Anyway, it was a beautiful dawn and I don’t regret going.

Once.

Click on the link so you can see how nice it was (and keep from having to go yourself).

Start the year off right

While you are making your New Year’s resolutions, make a note that you will click on the big red Click Here button at the top of the page (or right here) whenever you order something from Amazon.

I get a tiny percentage of the price, and it doesn’t cost you a penny.

How about that? Here’s a resolution that doesn’t cause you to sweat, doesn’t cost you any money and doesn’t change your eating or drinking habits. You can’t beat that with a stick.

December 21, 2014January 7, 2015

The Dreaded Word Problem

$Math book$ Let’s get this out of the way first: I was a lousy math student. I could, with some tutoring from Friend Shari and Dad, grasp the concepts, but I was too interested in debate and photography to waste time (from my perspective) doing the homework.

Geometry was even a bigger bore: I mean, why bother “proving” stuff that had already been “proven.” Come on, let’s plow some new ground here.

We had soft-cover books

$Math book 2$ We folks in the Class of ’65 had “proof” books of the Concepts of Modern Mathematics. They books were printed on regular 8-1/2 x 11″ paper and had a pink heavyweight paper front and back with some kind of black tape binding, if I recall correctly.

By the time Wife Lila’s Class of ’66 got there, the book was a real hardback with Grace Williams’ name on the flyleaf as an author.

Misses Williams and Rixman were good teachers and extraordinarily patient with the likes of me. I mentioned to Shari one day not long ago that I was sure they gave me a higher grade in their classes than I deserved.

Her theory was that if they thought a student had the potential to accomplish something if they ever pulled their act together, they’d cut them some slack rather than give them a low grade that might torpedo their chances to go on to college. I’m not sure I was THAT pitiful, but I appreciate them giving me the benefit of the doubt.

Wife Lila was more diligent

$Math book 5$ My pink-covered books are lost in a box somewhere in my storage shed, but Lila’s are out on a shelf in plain sight. You can tell from her notes that she took the class seriously. (And, seriously enough that she bought the books at the end of the year.) You can click on the images to make them larger, by the way.

This is a management problem

$Math book 3$ The problem read, “Mary and Jane complete a typing task together in 3 hours. If Mary types for 2 hours and Jane 4-1/2 hours, they complete the same task. In how many hours could Jane complete the task working alone?”

Well, this sounds more like a management problem than a math problem.

Is Mary a Chatty Cathy who distracts Jane from her typing duties, which would mean that Jane would be faster alone.
Is Jane a supervisor, who is helping Mary learn the job, so she has to do the work of two?
If Jane is that slow, shouldn’t we fire her and hire another Mary?
What if Jane is the only one in the office who knows how to make good coffee or clear the jam in the copier, and she’s constantly interrupted?

Don’t even get me started on all the unlisted variables in the touring group problem at the bottom of the page.

Who cares how high the tree was?

$Math book 4$ Problem 8 says “During a storm a tree is broken and falls with its tip touching the ground 24 feet from its base. If the top part makes an angle of 30 degrees with the ground, what was the original height of the tree?”

Who CARES how tall the tree was originally? It ain’t never gonna be that tall again.
If I’m going to climb up the trunk to determine the exact angle, why don’t I just measure the stump, then say, “Hey, Joe, catch the end of the tape and tell me how far it is to the tip of the tree.” Height of stump plus the distance from the stump to the tip of the tree equals the original height.
Of course, you’re going to take a productivity hit for the time you take to answer Joe’s question, “Hey, boss, why’d you do that?”
While I’m up there measuring the height of the stump, I might as well drag along a chainsaw to whack off the widowmaker.
If I do that, I don’t even have to throw the tape to Joe: I can just say, “Joe, cut those pieces up into four-foot lengths, then let me know how many there are.” See, simple math, I get the truck loaded and I don’t have to explain anything to Joe.

Maybe THAT’S why Misses Rixman and Williams held out hope for me: they saw me as a budding practical mathematician, not a theoretical one.

Or, more likely, they didn’t want me to repeat their course.

June 27, 2014

Sarah and the Mileage Log

I’ve written before about how Dad was the consummate record keeper who would produce handmade pocket journals where he would jot down notes of the day’s happenings and document every penny he spent.

I got an email from Son Matt asking if I had a blank mileage log book because Wife Sarah had filled her’s up. I usually keep a couple in the bottom of my sock drawer for such an emergency. When she came by to pick it up, I expressed some degree of surprise because right after they got married, Matt tried to get her to keep car records, but she resisted.

Finally, she admitted, they bought her a new car and she gave up. “Steinhoff me,” she told Matt. She wasn’t sure if this her third or fourth book in 14 years.

Click on the photos to make them larger.

Dad rubbed off on me

I’m not sure at what age I started keeping a mileage and expense log in my car, but I know I was doing it by the time I moved to Athens, Ohio. I definitely was doing it by the time we moved to Gastonia, N.C.

Gastonia Gazette reporter Joel Groves must have been sucking air for a story in the doldrums right after the holidays because he interviewed me for a piece on driving expenses. I notice in the photo that I not only kept records like Dad, but I was beginning to emulate his hairstyle. That’s a serious comb-over starting to happen. I didn’t realize until just now that my part had slipped to just above my ear.

Sure would like those prices today

The story pointed out that I used my car for business, so I had to keep careful records for tax time. When the story was published on Jan. 9, 1972, I was driving about 30,000 miles a year, most of it chasing photos. Here are some of my expenses:

New wiper blades and a headlight – $9.10.
Quart of oil – 85 cents per quart (40 cents if bought by the case)
Generator – $39.61
Typical maintenance – oil filter, $2.95; four spark plugs, $5.40; points, $2.90; air filter, $2.85; new belt, $3.10; labor, $18.
Four radial tires – $150
Two snow tires and two tire rims for them (for ease in swapping tires) – $95.83 plus $32.40.
Fuel – $998.90 (24 mpg with AC, 28 without AC)
All told, including car payment, insurance, tag and expenses, I spent about $249.24 a month on my car.

June 14, 2014

Family at Kentucky Lake

I was looking for some appropriate Father’s Day photos when I ran across these shots taken at Kentucky Lake. My green Datsun has 1974 Florida tags, so this must have been the summer of 1973. I bought that car in Gastonia, N.C., just a few days before I left for Florida in January of that year. Brother David, whose driver’s license was so fresh the ink hadn’t dried, was drafted to drive it while I piloted a U-Haul holding all our possessions.

The dealership agreed to have someone man the service department on a Saturday to do the initial 600-mile service, so David and I went out to put as many break-in miles as we could. He was a little uncertain about driving a manual transmission, so I told him, “Just get it in high gear and don’t worry about shifting until we need gas.”

Wife Lila buzzed along in her yellow VW Bug herding us like wayward cattle. She did great until we hit West Palm Beach where she turned right off the turnpike instead of left toward civilization. I managed to honk her down before we all ended up as alligator bait.

A trailer for togetherness

The first trailer Dad and Mother had on the lake was tiny. I don’t know how we managed to stuff six of us in there. We must have had to synchronize turning over.

Trying not to smile

Dad had this funny way he’d stick his tongue out when he was trying not to smile. He’s obviously pulling somebody’s leg, probably Wife Lila’s.

He couldn’t hold it forever

Eventually, the smile would bubble over. Mother’s still trying to maintain her composure, though.

A happy couple

We had a lot of happy hours on that lake.

Dad died there of a massive heart attack while he was building a sandbox for Grandson Matthew in 1977. I’m sorry he was taken from us so early, but I’m glad it was there and not in some hospital surrounded by beeping machines.