Carliosities
Photographic memory
There are people who have such eidetic ability so as
to visually totally recall a picture or a printed page.
I met Rea Davenport, who had such a memory. She worked
providing information that when given an error code - she could
read the text from her head identifying the problems associated
with a code as errors occurred. She related that often in
school she would be accused of cheating, because on tests
she could, in her mind, look up the answer or quote/paraphrase
the most polished author's words. Later, I saw a jig
saw puzzle champion - she could pick up pieces with both hands
and then put them in right away. Her rate must have been close
to a piece every two seconds. My own photographic memory is of
a different nature - it is like a negative - it needs developing.
Chessplayer and his giant rabbit.
Received a call from some guy who liked to play chess.
I invite him to the house. He is a college student from Arkansas
making a route through Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming,
Nebraska and so on during the summer, earning tuition money
by taking pictures. He has a trailor filled with props for
pictures. The next morning, Liz and I visit his portable
establishment and he takes some pictures. Hopefully the picture
of me on the rabbit is well hidden.
You say a lemon as big as your head?
The Ponderosa lemon is believed to be a cross between a
citron and a lemon. They are gigantic - sometimes as large
or larger than a grown man' s head. A single lemon is more
than enough for a pitcher of lemonade, but they are not as
strong as regular lemons and they do have more white peel.
We had Ponderosa lemons in Sunnyvale CA.
Bad boy, bad soup day.
The class was eastern Religions and the day's topic was eastern
religious mantras and particularly
short repetitious
invocations.
I loose control and say: Umm, Umm, Ummm, that what Campbell's soup
is. Umm
Umm Good".
Do you know what a Texas asp is?
People are not reluctant to show the asp tracks on their
bodies unless they are in a delicate area. Every asp victim
I know has vivid memories of paralysis, extreme pain and belief
they were going to die. At work they had closed the enclosed
arbor areas and posted signs: Closed due to falling asps. I
tell Maria about the asps. The very next day she is doing some
garden chores with her hand and wrist resting on a rock.
Wondering why the rock is so needle sharp she finds an asp
on the rock. She has been stung! The aps has black hair like
extensions on its body every one/eighth inch
or so. Contact is
'stinging' and that makes the tracks. Ask her about the suffering
she endured and thoughts that she was dying. The asp is the stinging
larva of the flannel moth and sting symptoms include severe pain,
rapid swelling, shock-like syndromes, convulsions and so on.
Best treatment is immediate anti-histamines, an ice pack, a
baking soda poultice and a doctors care as needed.
More info on stinging caterpillars
When the loudspeaker blasts your name
Up in Cheyenne Mountain, I heard the chilling message: "Carl
Freeman, would you please go home ; your daughter is missing."
I hurried out the tunnel and drove down the mountain slope and
home into the Broadmoor area of Colorado Springs. Fortunately
by the time I got home my daughter had been found in good spirits
and health. My wife had left the back yard gate slightly open,
and Elizabeth had wandered out, gone down the big hill, and was
playing in the creek. The sheriff or police had found her. Another
announcement came over the public address speakers while my son
and I are attending an air show. It was for me to report to work.
I took Chris into work and found that payroll was not being
processed. I may have been paid some overtime but the day at
the air show was ruined.
Me as Texas dingbat with a harem girl
No pictures exist of these people clothed in that garb.
It was Halloween and the final two costume contestants were
up for the first place prize. I had on a variety of odd things
including halo-graphic skull pictures, Don't mess with Texas
bumper stickers, a strange black gown, odd hands and bones, and
was being called the Texas dingbat; the young lady was dressed in
attire appropriate for a harem. Fortunately for me the announcer,
stated that originality and other aspects rather than beauty
and so on should be the decision for selection. Despite a
solid group of young male drinkers I did win the first place
prize money that night.
This imposing figure is over 6 ft tall
An excited wife.
We were in the park admiring the ducks and geese.
Maria is around some bushes on the other side, when she starts
jumping up and down and screaming. I rush to her thinking she
has been attacked by a goose - but no, she had been standing in a
fires ants nest while watching the nesting goose. These fire
ants are pernicious critters that have painful stings that are
always infectious.
Fireants information
Jesus did not have it so good.
In Seattle I saw a man lugging a cross around. It was a big
cross such as Jesus may have had to struggle with - but it was
mounted on wheels. I did not ask him about salvation.
Smelly limburger saves the day
My cousin Bob and I go see a movie in Oakland, Ca. Don't
remember what the movie was but did take a jar of limburger
cheese in to eat during the show. Had just ate more than
half when I dropped it and the jar rolled all the way down
to the front row (clank - clank - clank). Someone must have
got a "stinky" surprise. Anyway, Bob and I leave at the part
where we came in. Bob finds his billfold missing, but fortunately
people had cleared the area around the limburger eating event,
so that Bob recovered his wallet without loss.
Do rocks grow in a rock garden?
Maria liked to make rock gardens. Some were very nice as the
pictures only partially reveal. The
gardens are usually elevated
with beds of sand, unusal or colorful rocks, and special types of
ground cover plants. Liz would often accompany me when I went
searching for 'good' rocks. There
was the aligator rock, rocks with
big holes in them and the boot
rock depicted below. This was natural and
its exquisite shape makes it highly desirable.
In the area there are thundereggs - large oval rocks with yellow
crystals (calcium carbonate). Once I
was found one too big to lift
into my 'wagon'. I hailed a motorcyclist who helped.
During
the effort I felt action in my back - like pulling tree roots
out of the ground. No later sypmtoms or anything. This was a smaller
one - maybe 300 or more pounds. We eventually got it in and I cracked
it make smaller segments with exposed crytals.
Coffee guessing and stolen nuts
My mother finds me cracking and eating nuts out in the back yard.
"Where did you get these?" she asks. I return the remainder of them
to Mr. Stewart of Stewart's grocery. It hard for me to shop there
for awile. Later when I am nine years old, there is a big display
of coffee cans in Stewart's grocery store and a prize to be given
to the closest guess. I add it up in my head, make my guess, make
a guess one higher for Ray, and one lower for Donnie. My guess
was right on. The prize was bathroom scales.
I put Hex on lady and teach her to flex
During our courtship I tried to impress Maria by making a
hexaflexagon.
It would be my first one - probably seen
how to do in Scientific
American the prior year. The flexagon
turned out OK - the one I made
flexed. I was going to
provide instructions but a search on
flexagons showed several
examples. The click models on the net may
be good graphics
but lack the tactile feedback and invovlement from
an actual
constucted in hands version.
Flexagon how to instructions
A new kind of sub
This was an invention which I was quite proud for a while.
You can
make a model by drawing an wide oval and putting a K
in it. That is
a KSUB - invented at a time that nuclear submarines were being
launched and
computer programming subroutines were being developed.
The KSUB invention is an mnenomic
device that was a model of the steps
necessary to sell an idea or explain a concept.
KSUB is known - shown - understood - believed in that order. First
The explainer must know the
topic, in order to properly show the
individual or group. Only after she has been shown how it works,
will
she start to understand the topic, and only afters she understands,
will she believe. The saying
by Clarence Day: "A man convinced
against his will is of the same opinion." applies to fools and
'smart' people too.
A fishy special interest group.
IEEE and ACM (I have had memberships) have SIGs or special
interest groups. I still have my SIGFISH button. It represents
the trip to an Indian salmon feast on an island out in Puget
Sound. The hot smoked salmon was verry good.
Cancelled in flight.
Moving to Colorado, I reported in. " I'm Carl Freeman, here
to work on the Jupiter project". The surprise (to me) response
was: "Oh! The Jupiter project was cancelled yesterday."
Paid twice for a trip.
I and another employee were transferred to California with
moving expenses. The other gentlemen, if I may stretch the term,
had a different deal. Another firm also paid his moving expenses.
He reported in, got his expenses approved and paid, and handed
in a letter of resignation. At least for this company it was the
beginning of contracts requiring continued employment after moves.
Victimized early in the morning.
In Willow Grove PA I would come early in the morning to the
Computer Division headquarters. The union had gone on strike
against Philco. I drove in and later learned my tires had many,
many nails in them. The nails were the kind with big flat heads
so the real nail stands straight up. I never did understand how
people could work for a company one day and the next day express
all kinds of hatred for the company and salaried employees.
Stats a Stat Professor raved about.
My GMAT (Graduate Management Aptitude Test) quantitative
score was 49. The 99 percentile is 46. A score of 48 is
idenified as 99+ percentile. Professor Sam
Houston pointed
out that the percentiles are based on tests of an elite group,
i.e., college grads
that are planning to go to
post graduate school. But the real test of a conversion from scores
into
bucks was a failure. I did work with an Indian
immigrant who had marvelous mental calculation
powers.
For instance given a 16 digit number to multiply by another
16 digit number, he could
provide the answer before I could
do the first line on paper. His calculating abilities seemed
to be
limited to numbers and he was not extraordinary in other things.
Overweight and sagging .
The home built for Dr. Fry had a large long basement.
We bought the house from the Fry's. My wife and I had
shelves put all along the sides of the
basement. Then some
shelves sagged because of encyclopedias or other books, a
complaint was
made to the carpenter. His response: " You
meant to put books on those shelves - Nobody has that
many
books".
Books cause an emergency!
After moving to Texas, we finally bought a small patio
home (enclosed with a brick wall and the
neighbors' brick
on one side). We had too many books (probably down to about
100 cartons), so
I advertised an emergency book sale. After
selling 1000's of books I sold the leftovers from the sale
along with maps
to a young man thereby fulfilling his wish to become a
book dealer.
I let Donnie be snake bitten!
We live up on the top of the hill at Bradley. That is where I played out
in the rut water (once) in the middle of the street. One day my mother is
out chasing a snake with some neighbor ladies. They have hoes, I would imagine.
Mother has told me to stay on the porch - I don�t think I understood
what it was all about. Anyhow, Donnie may have gone out in the yard.
He is bitten by a spreading adder. Mrs. Marshall sacrifices a chicken to
draw the poison out. After things settle down I receive abundant
punishment. Early on I learned of the �5� poisonous types of snakes in
the US of A and imagined the spreading adder is either non-poisonous
or a local name for some kind of rattler or copperhead.
Snakes as identified in Indiana
This is a quote from what the folks in Indiana say about the eastern
hognose snake:
This snake is commonly called the puff adder, spreading adder, or blow
viper. When it's disturbed, it "hoods" its neck, inflates its body,
hisses loudly, and strikes. If this fails to discourage a predator,
it can roll over and play dead with its mouth open and its
tongue
hanging out. It can even drip a little blood from its mouth and release
a foul smell. It will become limp and remain "dead" when picked up, but
it will roll over again if placed right side up. In captivity, however,
it loses its willingness to display these protective techniques. Hognose
snakes rarely bite people. These snakes are active in the daytime
and burrow deep into loose earth in the cold winter months.
Picture of spreading adder faking death
Picture of spreading adder
Boston road tricks
Boston and it's state have some strange road phenomena.
First off, the right hand rule of making
right hand turns
to the starting point is completely revoked( overpasses,
one waw streets,
blocked roads and so on).
Double or triple parking on the intersections is a common practice.
State law is that the first car in the intersection has
the right of way (freeways included). The practical
version
of this is the oldest car has the right of way. Deep down
town is another place where it
may be cheaper to park illegally
than in a parking lot. I sold my car before
moving to Boston
because I was under 25, male, and single and public
transportation appeared decent. Well, the MTA
went
on strike and that February the high temperature
was 15 degrees and there was about a foot
of snow on the
ground all month. It was really miserable getting around.
Fishy Boston stories
Don't try to classify fish named scrod. It used to mean
the fresh catch of the day, but now
probably means the fish
we had on hand. At the fresh lobster shop on Highway 1, I
once saw a
lobster whose left claw was much larger than the
rest of him. At a sea food house in Cambridge where
they
seat people at long tables and bench in the order they are
lined up, a female teacher gave me
her lobster after she
had her fill on other things. As a boy I had read in Ford Times
about the
restaurant Pier 19 (the number may not be right)
and the specialty meal servered in a bucket. I go
there and they
still serve the corn and clams and lobster in a bucket that
I had read about many
years before.
I gain knowledge of the tree of life at the Casbah
In the downtown area of Boston there is a 'night club'
with the name of Casbah that features near
east music
and may have even have a belly dancer. The music seems
repetitious or certainly the
Arabic lyrics being sung.
I talk to the singer and ask what are you singing?
His answer was
"This is the Tree of Life - that what I sing
over and over. It's the only Arabic I know."
Which state is right?
There used to be many 'blue' laws which prohibited or
restricted activities on Sundays. Texas has
the strange law
that a car dealership can be opened only on a Saturday or a
Sunday but not both
days. The question I was asking about was
a matter of. seating on Sundays. In Maine a customer
can set (and drink) at the bar, but not at the
tables while in Massachusetts the customer can set at
the
tables (and drink) but not at the bar. Maybe I have this
reversed. It is very confusing for
drinkers.
He skipped right out of school.
Technically he may not be a High School graduate, but now
I believe he is a professor at U Cal-
Santa Cruz. I thought
of him as Versatile Vogler as he could do just about
anything except crawl
through a small hole. Tommy Vogler
received a scholarship to Chicago University and skipped
the 11th and 12th grades. He would have been in our graduating
class. I met his lovely mother and
knew his uncle, Avery Milstead,
the Jr. High science teacher.
His own curiosity killed this young man.
Bridey Murphy was a movie (story?) about reincarnation or former
lives. Don Swink was unduly
effected by this possibility,
and to find the answer took a shotgun to himself.
He would have
been in our graduating class.
Did you know the ocean is under a ship at high seas?
I was aboard a ship that the ocean came in due to a keel
plate being loosened after a seaman had
been told to clean
some holds. He was looking for another compartment but
instead finds the sea.
Water flooded engine rooms and fire
rooms, and upon the mess deck before the necessary
compartments
were sealed. This event immediately impacted the careers
in the chain of
command up to the gun boss (Gunnery
Officer) and caused two or so months of dry dock for repairs.
Its gonna hit and did it ever.
The carrier had been in San Francisco shipyards having
the newest Radome antenna installed on
the main mast. We
were scheduled to test the new radar and communication
systems. No planes,
ammunition or other long term essentials were
aboard. we went out at high tide. Sailors not
essential to the operations were in the flight deck standing
at parade-rest. Usually it appears the ship
will collide
against the bridge. As we approached the San Francisco-Oakland
Bay Bridge the
cry's "it gonna hit" sounded louder
and more frequently. The radome crumpled ending
that test
crurise. I was sure that would be the end of the
Captain's career, but I saw him as an Admiral in the
Gulf
War. The navigator, brought aboard to guide us out,
received a large share of the blame.
We did spend more time
in San Francisco. The picture below is the ship after passing
under the
Golden gate Bridge. It missed by a lot.
Duds can make or break a man>
I was never a fancy or fashion dresser but tried to meet
general standards. I was once approached
and asked if I
could get Mr. J to dress better. I won't tell how I
handled it. Mr. J was my boss.
We take food to Joe underground.
Josef Pfauntsch (hope the spelling is Ok) invites me and
guests to see his new digs. I make a big pot of fried rice, (a
favorite of Christopher and Elizabeth) and take Elizabeth
and her friend along. Joe is unusal and gifted. He was a
helicopter pilot in the army. He built his new house under a
hill so heating or cooling was close to nothing. Three
sides of this 3 story house was completely into the hill.
It was engineered so as to best receive the winter sun.
I had seen big berms before, but nothing like this.
And the sun did not set
For about a month I worked at the BMEWS site in Greenland.
The sun did not set during that period. It just circled
above the horizon, never getting very high.
My work shift
often ended at 2AM, and horseshoes was a good game before
going to bed. There was Dundas
village with its Eskimo type
people. Any fraternization was forbidden. The white man had
given
them permanent housing, but had not dealt with their
prior practices, such as relocating when the site
became too
gamey.
The end of the world
One fellow had been there at Thule (which means the end of
the world - the farthest point) for two years. He had not
been back to the states for over 3 years. Returning from
work, I woke him as requested for his return trip. He in
turn woke me three times to thank me for
waking him. He was
very grateful that he would not miss the plane. At this place
I saw bigger poker games than among the "winners" at sea.
Possibly a purple nose.
Somehow I learned my working buddy, Dwight Lintz, was
color blind. He had a small shop where he worked on TV's.
He relates how once he was setting colors on a TV for
a customer who also had some color blindness. Between the
two of them they got some astrocious colors according to the
customer's wife.
Breakfast watermelon in Harlem
After spending the day in Manhattan (chess clubs and Greenwich
Village) I was returning to 'upstate' New York. My brakes
failed as I was making a u-turn, with the result that I
broke my headlights. I was in Harlem at the time. I slept
in the car. In the morning I was
awakened by the sounds of
business. I had parked in front of a watermelon stand.
The watermelon was delicious.
He stopped being a man.
One morning Jim came into my office and said I would like you to
read this. I took the letter and at first thought it was a joke.
Shame on me. The letter from his doctor stated that Jim was in
the process of changing from a male to a female and on a certain
date in the near future Jim would be wearing feminine attire,
and would like to be known as Janet. Surgery would be performed
at a later date. Jim was a transsexual and had been a transvestite
(cross dresser) at home. He related his inspiration had been Ozma
of Oz who started out as a boy but was changed into a girl.
Jim
was a balding exomorph, over 6 feet tall. On the appointed day
Janet came in dressed with a see-through blouse, a high skirt, high
heels, and greeted me in a very high pitch vioce, "Hel-lo, Carl." Janet was
never really accepted by most of the people who knew Jim. Janet
hopefully had a better fate and relationships after she moved to
a different part of the country.
Music choices
The old cliche, I amy not know much about music but I know what I don't
like, and that is 'loud'. In Boston I went in to this night
club/beer
place. They had three over amplified bands going on at the same time.
You could set in front of one and be directly blasted or set
between bands and be deafened by two different bits of music.
I compare this very poorly against the three rotating bands at Munich beer
halls during Octoberfest. The music and beer is much better in Munchen.
A non-gambling man loses a bet
We were visiting Uncle Dodge in Binger. Dodge shows my dad a wooden
figure puzzle. My dad bets Dodge that I can assemble it in less than
5 minutes. Dodge takes the bet and wins the bet. I have not seen a
puzzle like this before and take more than 5 minutes to put it
together. Another bet I lost for someone was in a computer class.
The bet was I could solve the rug problem before the class period
ended. Well, I either was paying to much attention to the instructor
or actually lacked the brain power to solve it on the spot. The
problem is presented briefly on the first page.
Armadillos and prehistoric fish invade Oklahoma
Ray, mother, Elizabeth and her friend and me were revisiting the town
where I attended first grade. Buildings and things sure look
smaller now. Anyway we are walking up the creek I sometimes played
in. Liz and her friend are behind us in a thicket. Liz lets out
a scream - Ray and I rush back. Liz is eyeball to eyeball with
an armadillo. It just holds its ground for several seconds, then
slowly moves off. I was not aware that they came as far north
as the Chickasaw area. Further up the creek, under lips of the bank,
I had seen what at 6 years old I thought were prehistoric
fish.
Now I think they must have been gar.
Fire makers at work.
Smoke was coming from the seating and shelf area of the wooden
deck outside our house. Quick action put the fire out and revealed
the culprit. A large translucent glass grape cluster had focused the
sun's rays into small spots causing the wood to go on fire. The grapes
are gone now - I would have to ask Maria if she simply threw them away.
Another more disastrous fire resulted when Maria left
the
french fry cooker on the burning stove element. She braved the fire
and brought the pot outside, but smoke damage was incurred throughout
the house. My dad brought a wonderful firemaker home from the
Slyvania plant. It was scrap due to a crack. This apparatus was a
two foot oval of groves in glass. When oriented to the sun, it would
produce a focal area about the size of a nickle that was capable
of burning though small branches almost immediately. It was probably
disposed of after my father's death.
I moved mountains for Maria
They were reclaiming parts of people yards to widen the road.
Maria saw the big trucks full of dirt and asked for some. We
received two truck loads forming two massive mountains of dirt.
Unfortunately the quality of the dirt was not up to Maria's
specification and therefore I was
volunteered to reposition the dirt.
Every evening I would fill the wheel barrow twenty to
thirty
times and move dirt from the mountain to the slope in back of the
house. That summer I lost considerable weight. The dirt was used to
level off a large area amidst the trees and made into a cabbage
patch. How the cabbage moths knew cabbage was in this wooded
area I do not know.
Out of gas equals out of college
The morning of a scheduled activity at Shawnee High School I was out
of gasoline and with permission of the vehicle's owner siphoned
gasoline. I really got sick and was unable to attend the Going
To College Quiz sponsored by Tulsa University. I am still curious
as to the type and exact questions asked.
Copenhagen Drys Up
Much of Denmark is composed mostly of islands and has abundant
canals. I saw the workers drinking their beer on the job. In the
US of A the workers do not do it so conspiculously. While there
Tuborg Beer goes on strike. Within two days beer is almost impossible
to find. My companion and I try to eat authentic Danish food -
once we have smogasbrod, the open face sandwiches - cheese, ham,
fish. I am thinking he has spoiled his pants and Pete may be
thinking the same thing about me - it was the cheese. Another
time at a local pub had the beef and red cabbage. The red cabbage
didn't like being in my stomach so it left.
Coffee guessing and stolen nuts
My mother finds me cracking and eating nuts out in the back yard.
"Where did you get these?" she asks. I return the remainder of them
to Mr. Stewart of Stewart's grocery. It hard for me to shop there
for awile. Later when I am nine years old, there is a big display
of coffee cans in Stewart's grocery store and a prize to be given
to the closest guess. I calculate it up in my head, make my guess, make
a guess one higher for Ray, and one lower for Donnie. Maybe Oklahoma
adults don't know how
to add and multiply. My guess
was right on.
The prize was bathroom scales.
A bullet to my head
Nowadays you hear of guns being left unattended and so on. Even
bullets
can be dangerous. Our family was at Grandma Freeman's and her friend
was visiting my mother with two small daughters. I was trained to not
play with matches but knew how to use them. Mother had me burning
the trash in a large metal barrel - my age was 7 or 8. I knew bullets
were used in guns, and not much more about them. In granddad's shop I
knew where a bullet was. I got it, threw it in the fire (probably
to impress the girls), then I and the two little girls stood and watched
the trash burn. The bulletexploded with a loud noise, the shell came out
striking next to my eye, and I started bleeding profusely. They rushed me
to the Dr. in Lindsay as there were no doctors in Bradley. No permanent
damage was incurred. I could have killed a little girl with no malicious
thought whatever. The girl's mother did not visit again and never
again any bullets into the fire.
Relaxing Among the Hoodoos
Several times we have driven to Calhan Colorado and went south to
view and
relax in the hoodoos. These are also known as the
Painted
Pots mines. These particular hoodoos were formed by water
shed and
erosion exposing multilcolored hard dirt and rock. They were at that time
on Freeman (no relation) owned land. Other hoodoos are the Pinnacles
National Monunent where Chris and I went through a cave formed from
fallen debris. The family saw the Devil's kitchen in Whyoming which
has a greater variety of shapes than the other places mentioned.
Famous Fisherman's First Fish
The flood's had came. Grandma freeman had moved their better
possessions
into the bed room which was a foot or so higher than
the rest
of the house and the shop. The Washita was out of its
bank by
more than a mile. Finally the water receded. I was walking in the
fields across the road when I saw a fish that had been stranded. I scooped
it up in a bucket, cleaned it with a knife, cookedit , and ate it
outside. This is one of the few fish the famous fisherman has caught
- at the age of six or seven.
The Principal Takes The Janitor's Draw
I scour Shawnee for chess players - the Father at St. Bendict's,
monks
(really brothers) at St. Gregories and any one else thought to be good.
Surprisingly, principal A. W. Brokaw brings in a very nice playing
set and asks if I would like to play. We play; he is losing; the bell
rings; he plays; he does not resign; he states I should go to class.
This is what at chess clubs is known as a janitor's draw; play must be
discontinued due to closing, or the janitor takes over, and so on.
The Lost Years And Early School Years
Can not say anything about the lost years, because I do not remember
anything at all. Mother has said that I was toilet trained when I
entered the hospital at about 1 year old, but 4 to 5 years later when
I came out I needed to be retrained. Ray says I was sick when I went
in - my right leg was stunted - probably polio. My earliest memories
are from when I was close to six years old. I became known as 'point
and grunt' as that is what I did if I saw something I wanted. Only
Ray could understand me. He taught me the states, their capitals and
shapes of the larger states (with a wooden jigsaw puzzle) while I was
in the first grade in Bradley Oklahoma. My reading skills developed
probably as quickly as my speaking skills. I understood 'a', 'e' and
the other vowels and pronounced them in words as they are sounded in
the alphabet. An example is dog with a long o rather than as dawg.
I had lived attended Robert E. Lee school for the 2nd and 3rd grades
where I was the only child relegated to the musical instrument of
blocks. In the fourth grade they had me take special instructions with
deaf or others speech handicapped children. I knew hearing was not a
problem for me. During grades 1 through 6 I wore leg braces and a thick
sole on my right shoe.
You Too Can learn The Words To This Song
Taking a break from college algebra at university of New Mexico, one of
the students was ooshing about the new beat music. We go out to his car
to check the new music out - on goes the radio and out comes this song
of which I can still remember the words. The name of the song was 'Dig'
and the words were just 'Dig' over and over again. Lester was really
embarrassed.
Tornadoes Threaten NASA's Mission Control Center
As a system engineer, one assignment was to perform risk analysis
for the hardware and software systems of the newly developed Mission
Control Center at Johnson Space Center(JSC). One of the risks for
consideration was tornado threat. JSC is in southern Harris county.
Prior risk analysis had identified Harris County as having the 2nd
highest number of tornadoes of any county in the US of A. Many are
spawned from hurricanes and Harris is a large county. I have seen
results from 2 different tornadoes within a mile of our home near NASA
Johnson Space Cenetre. Fortunately they are usually small
and
short-lived causing only localized damage. After some research it
becomes
known to me that Weld County in Colorado leads for the number
of
tornadoes on average per year. Greeley is the County Seat and home of
the University of Northern Colorado where I received an MBA and took
other courses. It is north of Denver and just east of the Rockies.
The best view of a tornado I ever had was one above the Denver Airport.
The air control station was closed down as this big green sausage
looking cloud was slowly rotating above the airport. It did not set down
but three or four others did, one causing extensive damage close to the
college Elizabeth was attending. Colorado has 'dry' tornadoes as well
as 'dust devils ' - the small ground cyclones that pick dust and debris -
often seen after the fields have been plowed.
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Copyright 2000 Carl Freeman All rights reserved.
