Progress in technology

My only purpose in writing this blog is to remind you of the debt we all owe to the developers of brake linings. A very significant development although too often taken for granted.

We were enjoying a Sunday drive in our new whippit when the brakes starting smoking. So, what to do? Stupid question. Stop the car and put out the fire. With what? Another dumb question. Try urine. It works to perfection....with one slight problem. Hot urine smells bad. How bad? Bad enough to make you want to vomit. Would you like to argue about that? Good!

Get a pot, add urine, apply heat and inhale deeply. Just be careful where you throw-up. Someone will have to clean up your smelly mess.

Vacationing in the land of the Midnight Sun

You will need some equipment for your enterprise. A rowboat with a 50HP motor, and a 30-06 rifle. Use wire traps to catch Dolly Varden. Their tails are worth 5 cents each. A rifle is necessary to shoot seal. There is a 25$ bounty on seal. The beaches are cluttered with logs. The lumber mill in Juneau will give you an idea as to the value of the logs. One thing the INSIDE Passage has in abunbance is fern. It is quite likely that there are buyers for fern in Seattle's Farmer's Market.

Depression Stew

A depression such as the one that gripped the world in the '30's is unlikely to happen again soon.
In the unlikely event that I have miscalculated, I must reveal my secret invention before it is irretrievably lost.

You have to be pretty hungry to eat this concoction, but at least it will keep you alive if your situation is desperate. For want of a better title let's call it depression stew.

You will need a two-quart pot. Your local friendly butcher will give you a bone. There won't be any meat on the bone, but it will have marrow, and it is the marrow that will flavor your stew.

Pick a few young, tender dandelion leaves and some sorrell, if you can find it. Add to this any vegetables you can find left over in the garden. You may want to borrow your son's Boy Scout book.....it will contain a wealth of suggestions from nature's bounty. Surprisingly enough some of these wild food are even tasty.

I am tempted to add one additional ingredient to the stew even at the risk of receiving a nasty letter from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Add the breast meat from a dozen sparrows. You may be tempted to invite a group of friends over for dinner. Try to keep your mouth shut or you may be forced to cultivate a new group of friends. You see, not all people like sparrow stew even though they may never have tried it.

Wine for Swine

One of the privileges in growing up in an Italian immigrant community is your introduction to Vino.

Back in fourth grade in California in the depression years I grew up near the Italian families in Sutter Creek.

Each evening, several families would meet in someone's backyard with a gallon of Vino. I was not part of the group yet they made me feel welcome and shared their wine with me. Of course, at my tender age I was limited to a very small glass. But then even the adults were responsible with their drinking. Never once in the years I spent in Sutter Creek did I see a drunk Italian.

The locals did not buy their wine, they made it themselves.
After they had stamped out the juice, the mash was piled on the ground as garbage.
The mash fermented in the hot sun. Pigs gorged on the mash until they were drunk as skunks. They would then find some shade and sleep it off. Did they learn anything from their experience? Not really. When they woke up, they headed back to the pile of mash and did it again.




As the old saying goes - (from 'The Famous Pig Song')

You can tell a man that boozes, by the company that he chooses.
Then the pigs got up and slowly walked away.

Wars are never won - even the winner loses

Another tale of talent from the class of Roosevelt High in the 1930s

There was one student in our class who was ugly as sin. He was short and beneath most students' notice. He occupied space - he had no friends. If anyone even knew his name, he was simply "George."

Until one day at one of the regular student assemblies we had to showcase student talent.
I was sitting in the bleachers way up in the corner. George came out on stage. He was so short he had to fiddle with the microphone and barely could get it down to his level. There was no orchestra or band to back him up. He was out there alone.

All of a sudden the most beautiful Tenor singing voice rang out - filling the auditorium with a sound so pure we thought it was part of a Celestial Choir singing down from heaven.

He first sang Una furtiva lagrima - and everyone sat in stunned and appreciative silence until he was finished.

We gave him a standing ovation. So he sang another song.

'Sometimes I feel like a motherless child'

I was able to hide my tears being so high up in the bleachers. I had been orphaned at the age of 7. I had lost both mother and father. I'm sure he had no idea that was my favorite song. I don't know why he picked it.

From that moment on he had a thousand friends. Everyone knew him. Everyone made him feel important, greeting him with smiles in the hallways. George with the Golden Voice.

High school students are a tough audience. We recognized his ability and honored him for it. He reached us through his music.

The next we heard about George, he was Killed In Action (KIA) during World War II.

I wonder if he had gone onto the battlefield singing, if the Germans could have known how rare his gift was, would the soldier who shot him still have pulled the trigger?

A little guy like George with a voice that could make the walls tremble and a high school student cry. I have heard all the greatest Tenors and his voice was equal to any I've heard.

There have been times when I wondered if he had sisters or brothers or other relatives. Did they know how much he touched us before he died? I wish I could tell them how beautiful he was despite his outward appearance.

Some men talk about how war made them important - as heroes, or officers or leaders of men.

Wars take such a heavy toll - taking away men before they have had their chance to make a difference. Men who could have changed the world with the rest of their lives - as inventors or scientists.

When we add up the cost of winning, how can we actually say we won anything?

Tiny - big man, bigger heart

Another story of Roosevelt High School, Class of 1940

During the spring days when the sun was out, a fellow student nicknamed "Tiny" who would bring his bass violin (a cello today?) out to the porch of the school and play for us.
Everyone would bring their lunch outside and cluster around to listen - he was so talented.

And he would spin that instrument around so fast - and pluck a string on every turn. Magical even as a soloist.

It was truly amazing that someone so young could master a difficult instrument like that.

But our Head Coach 'Tiger' Bill Harroldson saw this large, 300 pound student and had visions of a football championship team led by such a lineman. So he rushed down to the University of Washington to gather up enough equipment and uniform pieces that would fit such a large individual.

And he put Tiny in that football outfit and expected him to join the team. But Tiny refused to even try the sport where he would be required to sit on his fellow students and possibly hurt them in any way.

Tiny was motivated by the power of music - by the chance of making people feel good through that alone. He wanted to make people happy through music. His heart was bigger than his body.
Upon graduation from high school, the Seattle Symphony immediately signed him to a contract.

I wish I had the chance to have saved up some money and seen him play at the Seattle Symphony... to see and hear him play on his kind of team.

The only team that Tiny would be happy to play for was an orchestra.

Outrunning a speeding bullet

I was 8 years old at the time and the country was still gripped in a world-wide depression. In casting about for someone to blame, we picked President Hoover. NO ONE has yet explained to me how one individual could cause a world-wide depression.

But at the time, food was a concern for everyone.

Across the street from the house where I was living (where I got spinal meningitis from my homemade swimming pool - but that's another story), was a beautiful orange tree orchard.

One day, I went through the fence and started picking oranges right off the tree.

After a bit, I saw the farmer come out on his porch with a gun.

I was already running for the fence in a flash. Before I got there, I distinctly heard a shot ring out. In my mind, I ran faster to get ahead of that bullet and was under the fence and long gone before the bullet could catch up.

Couple weeks later I had the nerve to go back. This time I knocked on the farmer's door.

He could have said no... but he didn't. He filled up a bag full of the oranges from the ground, ones he could spare because he couldn't sell them. The ones I had tried to take were those from the tree - the only ones he could sell.

Off I went with a bag full of lovely oranges.

This was a lesson I never forgot. Knock on the door and ask.

I have great admiration for the farmers that made it through those tough days, yet still found a way to give a bag full of oranges to a starving 8 year old.