Uncle Don & the beaver

I was 12 when it happened.  I was raised by my aunt and uncle on a ranch in the Nebraska Sandhills approximately 40 miles north of North Platte.  The nearest water, other than what our windmills pumped out of the ground existed about 10 miles to the east of us.  This area is where the beginning of the South Loup River originates.  To the north of us, about 20 miles, was the Dismal River.  In between there wasn't even a lake or pond of any size that I was aware of.

It was early spring in 1960.  There was snow still on the ground but it was melting fast.  The days were warming up but it was still freezing during the night.  In our front yard, between the house and the barn, the melting snow had left a relatively small puddle of water.

We had an old 54 Ford pickup truck sitting by the barn.  This pickup truck, like most of that era, had a wooden bed.  This particular model also had a wooden tailgate that slipped into groves located at the back of the bed.  For the most part this was not a problem except for what happened one particular night.

It was rather late one night when we got back from a trip that we had taken somewhere.  When we pulled into the yard we saw some type of animal in the middle of the pool of water that was in our front yard.  To our astonishment, what was splashing around in the water was a beaver.  I have seen a lot of different types of animals on and around our ranch but never a beaver.  Where it came from or where it was going I have no idea but there it was.

We all stood around looking at this guy trying to figure out what to do with it.  After a while my uncle located a gunny sack and was able to grab the beaver and he threw it into the back of the pickup truck so that we could take him to water and release him.  The excitement being over we all went into the house and went to bed.

The next morning my uncle and I got up early, as we always do, to complete the morning chores before breakfast.  We walked over to look into the back of the pickup truck and was amazed by what we witnessed.

What do beavers do best?  They chew on wood.

Where did Uncle Don put the beaver?  Into the back of a pickup truck that had a wooded tailgate.

This beaver had chewed a big hole into the tailgate.  Actually, if the beaver had another hour or so to work he would have chewed his way out of the back of the truck.  My uncle was furious.  I was laughing so hard my gut hurt and it seemed that the more I laughed the angrier my uncle got.  The night before we had planned to drive the beaver to the nearest water to release him.  After the damage this animal did to the truck, Uncle Don decided that he needed to recoup the money that he would have to spend to replace the tailgate so instead of releasing the animal, he took it into North Platte and sold him.

He had a new tailgate made for the truck.  Thereafter the truck was called Theodore.

Flying Kites

Just a few days ago I read on Facebook where my granddaughter, a precocious three year old, and her dad were attempting to fly their first kite together.  According to the story as told by her dad, it was a typical Charley Brown kite flying session.  The kite ended up in a tree.


When I was a child there were two types of kites, or at least the only two I knew of.  One was the well known diamond shaped kite and the other was the box kite so named because it resembled a box when assembled and flown.  The box kite was more expensive and harder to fly so most of us kids flew the diamond kite.

We could buy these diamond kites for about a dime and all we would have to add would be string and something for a tail, usually pieces of rags that we would cut up and tie to a string to hang on the tail.  Hours would be spent in a park or out in a field with friends building and flying these kites.  We actually learned to do some maneuvering tricks with them such as dives and loops.

One of our favorite games was to build and fly 'fighter kites'.  It went something like this.  We would take some glass, usually an old pop bottle, and using a hammer or large rock we would break it up into a very fine powder.  We would then put glue on about 10 to 30 feet of the kite string from just a few feet below to where it attached to the kite.  While the glue was still wet we would cover the string with the crushed glass and then set it aside and let it dry.  Once the glue/glass mixture dried, we would tie the clean end on to a stick and wind the string up on that stick.  The other end that had the glue/glass mixture we would attach to the kite.

This is where the fun would begin.  We would all get our 'fighter kites' airborne and then maneuver them in such a way where we could cross strings with another kite.  The idea was to cross the part of the string that had the glue/glass mixture and saw the string back and forth until you cut through the string on your opponents kite.  If you were successful then you would attack another kite.  This would go on until only one kite was left flying.  That person would be the winner.  Or not, because quite often the winner was the kite, as we would often get them so tangled up that both would end up grounded.

 It was a lot of fun.  Although most of us, probably all of us, at some time or other ended up with cuts on our hands and fingers resulting from handling broken glass.  Tweezers and band-aids were a part of our kite flying took kit.

Flying kites can be a lot of fun but it can also be dangerous if one does not use care.  We all remember reading about Ben Franklin who flew a kite in an electrical storm to complete an experiment.  He was lucky he wasn't killed.  In my case, a friend was killed in Chico, CA when his kite got tangled up in a power line.  And in another case a father and his son were flying a kite near Santa Barbara, CA when their kite hit a power line, caught on fire, and started a brush fire that, before it was put out, was responsible for the destruction of over 200 homes.  In another case, where no harm occurred, a kid was flying a kite near a small airport when the string got tangled up in a landing aircraft.

Caution is definitely necessary when flying kites.  But sometimes, even using caution, a little harmless fun can result in getting into trouble as happened to me back in 1968.

In the Navy I was stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Shangri La (CVA-38).  It was during my first cruise in the Mediterranean when several of us decided to build a kite and fly it off the fantail (back of the ship).  So, using newspaper, wood dowels, glue, string, and staples we put together this rather large diamond kite about 10 feet high.  It was a Sunday afternoon and we were in a down period.  By that I mean that there weren't any air operations or any other operations planned on board that day.  Sailors were resting, sunbathing, playing basketball, etc.  We decided to take this time to fly our kite.

The ship was moving along at about 15 knots so it was not hard to get the kite up and flying.  Here we are, sitting on the back of the ship, flying our kite, laughing and having a good old time when the Chief Master At Arms and a few of his sidekicks came trotting back to where we were, confiscated our kite, string, and us.  We were all hauled before the captain who wanted to know what we were doing.  It seems that on another ship in our group, an Admiral saw our kite and called the captain to ask what we were towing behind us.  Anyway, all ended good.  We had our kite confiscated, was told to never do it again, and sent on our way.  Leave it to an old stick in the mud Admiral to spoil our fun.

That was 40 some odd years ago and, I believe, that was the last time that I have flown a kite.  I do remember watching people fly kites along the beach in Southern California. but flying kites were something that my kids were never interested in doing or maybe I just didn't take the time to make them interested.  If that is so; shame on me.

I think, though, that I just might be able to convince my grandchildren to go kite flying.  I  have been told numerous times in my life to go fly a kite.   

So I believe that I will do just that.  I am going to go and get one of those fancy kites and learn to fly it.  Yup, I am going to 'go fly a kite'.
                                         

USS Chosin

I saw on TV where a couple of gentlemen are doing a documentary on the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir.  This battle occurred during the Korean War when a battalion of Marines and solders became surrounded after the Chinese suddenly entered the war.  These Americans had to literally fight their way out of this trap.  When General Oliver P. Smith was asked how it felt to be retreating he responded with this statement;  "Retreat, hell! We're not retreating, we're just advancing in a different direction."


In the early 80's the Navy designed and built a new class of a guided missile cruiser called the AEGIS class ship. This was the first of any Navy ship that was built entirely around a fire control system designed to control the actions of a fleet of ships engaged in battle.  All of the AEGIS cruisers were named after battlefields that Americans fought on throughout their history.  The USS Chosin (CG-65) was named after the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir.  She was also the first in her class to receive the new vertical launch SM-2 missile.  The earlier versions (Ticonderoga Class) would launch their missiles from twin rail launchers whereas the CG-65 class launched their missiles out of launch tubes built into the deck.


When any Navy ship came out of the shipyards either as a new construction or where they went through major changes in an overhaul, a team of people would run them through a series of assignments where all of their systems were tested for proper operation.  Everything had to be working correctly before turning the ship over to the Navy.  I was part of a team of engineers who would test and evaluate the weapon systems on these ships.


One of my assignments involved testing the USS Chosen who was stationed in Pearl Harbor. Testing usually took around four months to complete which meant that I had to live and work in Hawaii during this period.  I know, tough assignment but someone had to do it.  


Some of the tests required that we operate off of the coast of Kauai where we would test the AEGIS fire control capabilities in acquiring and destroying incoming missiles.  These missiles were launched and guided by a Naval facility that operated from Barking Sands Naval Base in Kauai.  Missiles would be fired from this base and programmed to fly toward a ship.  The ship would then attempt to acquire the missile using its fire control systems and shoot it down with the SM-2 missiles that they carried in their tubes.


In order to evaluate how the missiles performed we would track every firing and gather telemetry data for evaluation after the shot.  Interesting enough, with all the modern equipment that this ship carried, the test team often had to be content with using older equipment with which to test operations.  In this particular case a person would have to be outside during missile launches and manually point the telemetry antenna at the missile and track it as it sped toward and intercepted its target.  


This could be a dangerous job as the person is out on deck and totally exposed if the missile should malfunction, which they sometimes did.  Furthermore there was a great deal of noise involved with the firing of these missiles and the exhaust fumes left behind after a launch were quite toxic.  We would wear ear phones to communicate with other members of the team that would cover and protect our ears.  However, in the case of the fumes, we would hold our breath or at least not take in deep breaths and head inside as soon as possible avoiding most the gas that may come our way.  Mostly the amount of gas depended on the wind force and its direction at the time of the firing.


My turn came to operate the telemetry antenna.  We were to have three or four firings that afternoon.  The first two went off without a hitch, however, on the third shot the missile went straight up above the ship and exploded.  Now I have to tell you that standing outside on the deck of a ship and watching a missile blow up above your head is quite a spectacular sight to see.  So I stood there, like a good engineer, describing everything that I saw to the other team members inside in an attempt to gather as much data as possible.  In this case all the information we would receive after the incident would have to be visual.  At this point the real fun began.


This ship had other weapon systems on board as well.  One of these is a gatling gun called the Phalanx, affectionately called R2D2 because of its resemblance to the robot on Star Wars.  This gun was designed to be a last ditch defense for the ship should an incoming missile penetrate the defensive shield around the ship.  In other words, in case our SM-2s did not kill all incoming missiles.  The Phalanx system is radar controlled and when activated is fully automatic.  There is no manual guidance.  This unit fires hundreds of rounds a second so it is pretty impressive when it fires.  There are two of these units on board, one on the starboard side and one on the port side.  I was standing midship just a little aft of these guns.


Now, in all the excitement of watching the exploding missile we all forgot that what goes up will come down, including all the pieces of an exploding missile.  I was talking to the people inside when suddenly the Phalanx gun on the starboard side starting firing.  I looked over at the gun and watched it as it appeared to be randomly firing at one point and then another.  After a few seconds, 30 or so and it seemed like hours at the time, the gun suddenly turned around, quit firing and pointed itself at the deck of the ship.  Needless to say that me, and several sailors nearby, hit the deck trying to find anything to hide behind.  


No one was hurt other than maybe having a few years scared off their lives.  After evaluating the data we determined that the Phalanx did what it was supposed to do -- sort of.  The gun was activated, which is normal during launches.  It was attempting to track the debris that was falling from the destroyed missile, however, in its attempt to try to lock on to each piece it got confused and reset itself and went into its default state meaning that it would shut down, turn and point itself down toward the deck.  Not a good thing to a ship that is depending on it to shoot down a missile just before it hits the ship.


Interestingly it was the failed launching of the SM-2 missile that pointed out to us a defect in the programming of the Phalanx.  We were never able to determine why the SM-2 failed, however, we were able to identify and fix the programming error that caused R2D2 to fail.  The multiple target scenario is now part of the test procedures for testing Phalanx operation.

Why Jesus?

There is an old story about a professor who gave his class a pop quiz.  He wrote on the blackboard the word 'Why?' and asked the class to answer the question.  He got a lot of different answers; some short and some very long.  The answer he was looking for was 'Why Not?'  So, why Jesus?  That is always the question, isn't it?

How does one get to know Jesus?  There are many ways but in my case it was from the teachings that I received from my Grandmother.  I lived a good number of the first ten years of my life with my Grandmother in Northern California.  There are a lot of things that I would like to say about Grandma but I will save that for another time.  For now, suffice it to say that my first memories of church were with my Grandmother, my first Bible, which I still have, was given to me by my Grandmother, my first Bible teachings came from my Grandmother, and it was Grandma who led me to Christ.

I was nine years old when when Grandma set down with me one night and explained the plan of salvation to me.  I had been going to her church, Grace Baptist Church of Chico, CA, off and on for some years  and knew who Jesus was and had a pretty good idea of what was required to make Him part of my life, but it was Grandma who helped me take that final step.  I remember sitting in her living room as she brought out her Bible, read to me several verses, and would then explain to me what they meant and how they would change me.  I accepted Christ that night and was baptized in her church a few months later.

I wish that I could say that I spent the rest of my life following Jesus according to the plan as laid out in God's Word, but I can not.  Eventually I ended back with my mother and a year or so later I went to live with my Aunt and Uncle on a ranch in the Nebraska Sandhills.  Living 40 some miles away from the church that we enjoyed meant that regular attendance was virtually impossible.  But it was when I went to college,  a christian college by the way, that I become so very disillusioned about God and I decided to go off and do my own thing.

During the next 25 years I considered myself an atheist, then a deist, and then an agnostic.  Finally, through a series of events that I can only attribute to the works of God, I came to realize that the God I came to know in my childhood really did exist.  The first big event that occurred was the sudden death of my wife.  And secondly, I made into a hobby a lifelong interest in astronomy.

The loss of my wife left me alone and with a lot of time on my hands.  I countered this by taking some college classes in astronomy, joining an astronomy club, investing a bunch of money into telescopes, cameras, lens, and other related accessories.  I was using astronomy in an effort to understand the heavens, and in that process, found God.  It was not a sudden realization but more of a gradual understanding that it was not possible that the universe I was looking into could have come into existence by accident.  Now, did I drop everything that I was doing and run into church and embrace our Lord Jesus?  Unfortunately, I did not.  God was calling me but I still was not listening.  So He got my attention in a way that I now call 'being smacked in the head by a 2x4'.

And what a smack it was.  When I came to I found that all the things that I held dear to me was gone.  And I mean everything.  I lost my job, my house, my family, my boat, and a whole bunch of 'things' that I thought was important in my life at that time.  All of this took place in California during the late 80's when the California economy took a huge nose dive.  Jobs then, like now, became almost impossible to find.  In effect, for the first time in my adult life, I found myself flat broke and literally did not have a penny to my name nor could I find a way to earn one.  I started working at any job that I could find while still looking to get back into the job market in the profession in which I used to be engaged.  Close to a year later I landed a very good job with a very good organization.  This job became available completely out of the blue.  An engineer from a competitor of a couple of years earlier mentioned my name to his boss and I got called in for an interview.  So what do you call this?  Fate?  Luck?  Being in the right place at the right time?  God?

You can call it anything you want but to me I came to realize and believe that it was a 'God thing' as it occurred at the very lowest point of my life.  Bottom line.  I started going back to church.  I started reading my Bible.  I started talking to God but, most importantly, I started listening to Him.  I gave up trying to run my own life and gave in and surrendered to God and let Him run it.  And you know what?  Over time He restored to me all the things I lost.  I now have a wonderful wife, a nice home, and a job that provides for my needs.  To Him I give all the glory.

Am I perfect?  Not by a long shot but I do know that through the shed blood of Jesus I am forgiven.  And that, for me, answers the 'why Jesus' question.

Proverbs 3:5-6 -- "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths."

Slide rules and calculators

Does anyone else remember the slide rule?  I hate to say it, because it is telling my age, but the slide rule was an important part of my life.  I was given an aluminum slide rule when I was a junior in high school by an uncle when he found out that it was my desire to study electrical engineering in college.

For those of you who are not familiar with a slide rule or what it does, it is a non electronic device used to do certain mathematical functions such as multiplication, division, logarithms, root functions, etc.

A new K&E bamboo slide rule got me my first 'A' in college.  I self taught myself, with the help of a book, how to use the slide rule in high school.  When I got to college one of my classes dealt with learning the slide rule.  The instructor asked if any of us knew how to use the slide rule and a couple of us raised our hands.  He than gave us a short test which I passed.  He told me that there wasn't anything more that he could teach me and excused me from class the rest of the semester.  Unfortunately though, the rest of my classes weren't quite so easy.

The electronic calculator arrived in the late 60's and ended up replacing the slide rule by the early 70's.  The calculator, even though it was more expensive, could make calculations with greater accuracy than what the slide rule could.  One would think that it would be faster but that was not necessarily the case, at least not with the early calculators.  A person who knew how to use a slide rule could be as fast, or faster, than a person using an electronic calculator.  The big difference, however, is that the slide rule was only accurate to only 3, maybe 4 digits whereas the calculator was very accurate up to 8 or 10 digits.  Big advantage.

I bought my first hand held calculator in 1972 and paid around $130 dollars for it.  It was a LED device (red numbers), had 1 memory location, and was capable of the four basic mathematical functions plus it had a square root function.  It was unable, however, to accomplish any scientific functions.  For that I would go back to using the slide rule.

There were scientific calculators available by the early 70's.  One was produced by Texas Instruments and the other by Hewett Packard.  Both cost close to $1000.00.  The Texas Instrument (TI-59) calculator had 960 memory locations and you could program it to calculate many different types of formulas/programs.  These formulas/programs could be saved on little magnetic tape strips about 2 inches long.  This would allow you to load your program back in for future use.  This was probably the best programmable hand held calculator ever built, at least it was for its time.  I bought one of these calculators for less than half price from a friend who had gotten 2 of them as gifts from his family.  I used this calculator for several years as an engineer for Sperry Univac.  Scientific calculators like this can now be bought at about any store for less than $20.00.  With the constant changes in technology, today's computer programs and laptop computers are replacing the hand held calculators.  I expect that it won't be very many years before the hand held calculator will disappear like the slide rule did back in the early to mid seventies.

I still have several hand held calculators which I seldom use because the same functions are so readily available on Windows computers or even on my iPhone.  Actually, these hand held calculators are most likely in dire need of batteries.  I do, however, have tabletop calculators that I use frequently.  And I still have my old slide rule and occasionally I bring it out and play with it, if nothing more than just for the sake of nostalgia.  I have to think my way through things and I do not remember how to use all of its functionality and, although my slide rule ability today is a far cry from when I used it to get through calculus and electronics, I can still do basic calculations on the thing.

The calculator replaced the slide rule.  The PC is replacing calculators.  So now I am wondering?  What is going to replace the PC?

Family Reunions

A few days ago an acquaintance of mine created and posted on Facebook a memorial of photos and music for his recently deceased grandfather.  While watching this I became fascinated with the family pictures that he was using as it started reminding me of my family and the gettogethers that we would have years ago.  They were called family reunions.  Now I am wondering -- what ever became of family reunions?

I grew up on a ranch in the Sandhills country of West Central Nebraska. The nearest city was North Platte 40 miles to the south.  I went to school in a small town of 350 people some 15 miles from the ranch.  The ranch house was positioned about 1 miles south of the nearest road and our nearest neighbor was about 2 miles by road (1 mile cross country).  I tell you this to give you an idea how isolated people were who lived in the Sandhills country.

Most of our family members were scattered all across the state of Nebraska.  We would, on occasion and usually on holidays, get together with some of them who lived close by.  However, the only times that the majority of the family would ever get together would be at weddings (seldom), funerals (more often), and our yearly family reunion.

I always looked forward to each spring when the family would gather in a park located in Kearney, Nebraska.  It was a time of fun, food, and relaxation.  Often it was the only time throughout the whole year that I would get to see some of my cousins, aunts and uncles. Of course it wasn't always all fun as we all had to put up with the embarrassment of having the elders fawn over us and exclaim how much we have grown/changed over the past year.  Although secretly, we all enjoyed the attention, at least a little bit.  However, after the initial introductions we were free for the remainder of the day to do as we wished.  It was always with a great deal of sadness when the day ended and we had to say our goodbyes and head back to our respective homes.  Even yet today I think back and remember these events with great fondness. 

Unfortunately we all grew up and moved on in different directions.  For me, after I graduated from high school, I left to go to college and then joined the Navy.  Others moved on for reasons of their own.  Those of my generation did not stay in state as much as our parents did and it became much more difficult to have these gettogethers.  The elders started to die off and the reunions continued to shrink until a time was reached when they were no more.  It is a shame because our children and grandchildren have lost that family connection I grew up with.  Today I have lost track with almost all of the cousins that I used to play with growing up.  Even though it was only a day or two a year, it was a special time.

As I mentioned, I really miss those times, and I feel that I have been deprived of the opportunity that my elders had of being able, each year, to embarrass my nieces and nephews by telling them how much they have grown and changed.

Watch Repair

Ever have a moment when out of the blue something occurs that triggers a memory from something that happened years ago? When we get older and forget something people call it a 'senior moment.' I wonder what you would call a remembrance from yesteryear? A flash back? A brought forward? The funny thing is that when the event happened years ago it was forgotten. When it was remembered years later it is never forgotten. Fascinating on how our minds work.

As a young man of 8 or 9, I found that I could fix things. I had an ability to figure out how broken things worked and in a lot of cases was able to make necessary repairs to get the item in question to work. For instance, my Grandmother had this old wind up alarm clock that quit working so she gave it to me to play with. So, using a few tools that I had, I took the clock apart. I found that the clock had been wound to tightly causing the main spring to slip out of the groves designed to hold the spring in place. I was able to replace the spring into the proper groves, put it back together and it started ticking. I gave the clock back to my Grandmother who was careful not to wind it too tightly and the clock lasted another several years. There are a few other examples that I could mention however it is not necessary to get to the point of this story.

Someone, I don't remember who, gave to me a stop watch. I thought this watch was pretty neat as I could use it to time different things like how fast my friends could run or how long it would take a car to pass a certain point. It was a toy that I enjoyed playing with until one day it quit working. So, being successful in repairing my Grandmothers clock, I proceeded to tear apart this stopwatch to fix it. What I discovered was that there was a big difference in the size of the parts that was designed for the stopwatch than what I worked with in the alarm clock. As much as I tried I could not figure out how to fix the stopwatch nor was I able to get all the pieces back into their proper places so, like so many other things that outgrow their usefulness, the stopwatch ended up thrown into a drawer never to be seen again.

Twenty some years later I was at a Nascar race at the old Ontario Raceway just outside of Los Angeles, Ca. I was using a stopwatch to time my favorite driver (Richard Petty) as I was cheering for him to work his way back to the front of the field. At some point during the race my stopwatch quit working so standing their watching the race I started to wind up my stopwatch when suddenly my mind flashed back to my childhood and the stopwatch that I used to play with at that time and a sudden realization washed over me as to what was wrong with my earlier stopwatch. I started laughing at my stupidity in not understanding then what the problem was with that watch -- it needed winding.

Interesting as how an adult can do so simple a thing without giving it much thought but for a child it is a thought provoking process designed to teach the mind to work. Also interesting that as an adult we have a tendency to ignore this process in favor of just getting it done thereby losing that ability. As an elder adult of 62 years, I am determined not to let that happen to me. My earthly motto: The day you quit learning is the day you die.