Collections

Everyone needs to collect something.  I don't know why but, as humans, we feel compelled to collect things.  Otherwise, how could a television show called "The Hoarders" survive and even thrive?

I collect several things, including tools and firearms (its a "guy" thing).  But the last few years I've been collecting hourglasses.  The hourglass is the perfect metaphor for life itself and has been used as such by many writers.  the phrase, "sands of time", of course, refers to our life as though it was the sand in an hourglass.

According to Wikipedia, the hourglass was first conceived in about the 8th century AD and was an indispensable part of ocean navigation for hundreds of years as it was used in conjunction with the sextant to determine one's position.  After the development of the mechanical clock, however, the hourglass became a much less popular way to tell time.

So why do I collect them?  Well, there are a couple of reasons.  First, they are generally fairly inexpensive, at least the ones I collect are.  Second, they seem to be pretty rare in flea markets and antique stores so you don't have to spend a lot of money on your collection.  I always, when I enter an antique mall, ask the owners if they have seen any hourglasses.  They almost always reply that, no, they haven't seen any.

In spite of the difficulty in finding hourglasses, I now have a grand total of eleven of them, in all sizes shapes, and materials.  They range in time measurement from three minutes to one hour.  My latest acquisition was given to me yesterday by a dear friend.  She is one of the most thoughtful people I know and she knew that I collected them so she gave me this one.

It's about half way through its 15 minute cycle.  One thing unusual about this hourglass is the color of the sand, almost pitch black.  Joy, thank you very much!

Joy also included a cartoon with it which relates to hourglasses.  Dan Piraro, one of my favorite cartoonists, does a strip called "Bizarro", which is slightly off the wall.  Here is his take on hourglasses:

At any rate, I enjoy collecting hourglasses.  If you happen to find one, think of me.  I'll never forget you!

The Boat Trip

One day in early August, 2003, I returned home and found a message from Foster Harness on the answering machine.  This was a little strange since, though I knew him, I didn’t know him well.

I returned his call and exchanged pleasantries and then he asked if I would be interested in making a boat trip down the Arkansas River.  I instantly replied “Yes!”, since I had thought about doing just that for years.  As it turned out, he had been planning this trip for over a year and had done quite a bit of research on the trip.  He wanted to leave from the park just east of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma on 71^st Street, go through every lock on the Arkansas River and get clear to the Mississippi.

I went to Foster’s house and we sat down and began making plans.  He would take his 25 ft. pontoon boat with a 130 hp Honda outboard and I would take my 19 ft. center console boat with a 125 hp Mercury.  Two of his sons and a friend were going with him and I told him I would find one other person to ride in my boat.  We planned to leave on September 6 and return on September 13 or 14, figuring that it would take eight or nine days to make the round trip.

I starting making plans including testing the boat for fuel consumption, finding a passenger, and making a list of provisions which would be needed.  Although I did not think he would be interested, I called my brother, Gary, and asked if he wanted to go.  Without hesitating, he said, “Count me in”.  During the next couple of weeks, he started helping me with the provisions and planning.

I hadn’t really planned on more than two people in my boat but Gary called one day and told me that he had mentioned the trip to his son-in-law, Bill Schaum, and Bill wanted to go also.  Who was I to say “No”?  Because Bill had a background in retail food, having managed several McDonald’s franchises during the past ten years, he took over the food planning.

We took the boat out and ran it one day over a known course to see what kind of fuel mileage I got.  I ran right at 4 miles per gallon, about normal for a boat of this kind.  I knew it wouldn’t do this good on the trip because it would be loaded to the gunnels with gear but I didn’t know what to expect.  It had a 34 gallon fuel tank, giving me a range of about 120 miles but I wound up taking extra cans totaling 30 gallons anyway.

With about two weeks to go, we had not found anyone else to go with us and we really would like to have had four or five boats on the journey.  Foster and I decided a little publicity wouldn’t hurt so we went down to the local newspaper office and talked them into running a story and picture.  In the story, we stated that we were looking for other people to accompany us.  It didn’t do much good – we didn’t get anyone else to go - but everyone in Mannford knew about the trip.  Meantime, one of Foster’s sons and his friend backed out, leaving just Foster and his son, Mike, on the pontoon boat.

Finally, the appointed day, September 6, came and we met at Bluff Landing Park at 6 am.  Foster’s daughter met us there and saw us off with Krispy Kreme donuts and coffee.  My son, Dan, drove us out there and took the truck home so we would not have to leave it there all week.  At dawn, we idled out of the park in our boats and headed down river!

Our Boat

Foster's Pontoon Boat

For the first couple of hundred feet, the water was full of debris and we had to idle through it.  I wasn’t getting a warm, fuzzy feeling about this.  However, we went through the first lock right at the park, and after getting out of it, we were home free.

Between Tulsa and the Mississippi River, there are seventeen locks and dams on the Navigation Channel and we planned to go through every one of them twice, once going and once returning.  We almost made that goal but more about that later.

The scenery on the trip was beautiful.  We spent most of each day motoring down the channel, looking at the views and trying to stay even with Foster.  His pontoon boat would max out at about 23 to 24 mph, while my boat would start to fall off plane at about that same speed.  Because of this, we couldn’t run down the channel side by side so I would run way ahead of him, and wait until he caught us.  After he had passed us and gone almost out of sight, we would start up again.  Each one of these “cycles” took about 30 minutes.

We quickly learned that the time you make on the river is largely dependent on how you catch the locks.  We had marine radios in the boats so we would radio ahead to each lock when we were about two miles out.  If they had no other activity going on, they would be ready for us when we got there and it would take about 20 minutes to get through the lock.  If there was a barge tow ahead of us, especially if it was a really long one, it could take as long as three hours for us to get our turn.  Pleasure craft, after all, are last in line at the locks.

The first day we made pretty good time and got to near Ozark, Arkansas.  We found a sandy beach and pulled up on it to make camp.  All of our plans about cooking food quickly went out the window and we resorted to the vienna sausage and pork and beans diet.  After this wonderful meal, we went to bed.  The first night I tried to sleep in the bottom of the boat and it was miserable.  The space almost didn’t allow me to roll over, which I like to do.  However, we did survive it and headed off the next morning, Sunday, toward the waiting Mississippi.

We didn’t fare nearly as well on Sunday with the lock situation and only made it as far as Little Rock before night began to close in.  In fact, we did have to wait three hours at one lock on Sunday because of a double length barge tow and then had to wait over an hour at our fueling stop for the fuel attendant to show.  Fuel continued to be a constant concern and we weren’t about to skip any places to buy gasoline.

When we got to Little Rock, we found a little cove just off the main river channel and tied up there.  I had decided that I was not going to spend another night sleeping on the boat, but there was no place on shore to sleep except in the middle of a poison ivy patch.  I opted for the boat again.  Gary said he was not going to sleep there so he took his sleeping bat and went up over the hill.

Once again, the sleep situation was miserable and I felt claustrophobic where I was lying.  Finally morning came and Gary came staggering down the hill.  I asked how his night had gone and he said “just fine but I did get a surprise when I woke up!”  I asked him what the surprise was and he said that when he woke up and looked around, he was sleeping just off the green on the 13^th hole of a golf course!

Monday, the third day, we began to have much better luck with locks and dams than we had the previous day and we began to sense that, with a little luck, we might be able to reach the Mississippi today.  Also, we found a Corps of Engineers Park on the river that had showers and we got to take our first showers of the trip.

We did get a bit of a surprise when we got to the Pendleton Bridge, near Dumas, Arkansas.  The marina where we had planned to fuel up was out of business!  We knew that we didn’t have enough gasoline to get to the Mississippi River, turn around and go clear back to Pine Bluff, where we had last bought fuel.  Fortunately, we talked a fisherman into taking all of our portable cans up to a Convenience Store and filling them up.  This did set us back about 45 minutes, however.

Finally, at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, we pulled out into the Mississippi River at Mile 590.  The current in the Arkansas River Navigation Channel had been about 2 mph; the current in the Mississippi was over 7 mph!  You could sure tell the difference.  We pulled across the Mississippi and got out of the boats just to be able to say we had been there.  Since it was going to be dark in about an hour, we had to head back upstream to a camping site we had selected.

On the way back upstream, Bill spotted a black bear and pointed it out to us.  It had come down to the bank of the river and was just standing there watching us.  As soon as I turned the boat around to go back and get a better view, the bear vanished.

After going through two locks going back upstream it was almost totally dark when we got to the park we had decided on.  Instead of being able to look for a good camping spot, we decided to just tie up at the courtesy dock next to a boat ramp for the night.  I was not going to spend another night on the boat so I took my sleeping bag and made a bed on the dock.

We had not been bothered by mosquitoes up to this point but they were thick this night.  Fortunately, I was able to douse myself in insect repellent and avoid getting bit.  For a while, however, the buzzing of these critters was enough to keep me from sleeping.

Tuesday morning, we got up and prepared to leave.  We had been cautioned to take an extra propeller with us and I found out why this morning.  I was trying to back out of the little cove we were in and hit something underwater.  It messed the prop up good but we got the spare on quickly.

We once again headed upstream, knowing that we were considerably ahead of our original schedule.  Like a bunch of stupid men, however, we approached the whole trip like it was a race!  The next time, I’ll slow down and take my time.

We got back into Little Rock about 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday and decided to have the first decent meal we had had during the trip.  There was a place called “Gator’s” on the river and we went in there, body odor and all.  I swear, this was the best meal I had had in years.  After we ate, we quickly got up to the Little Rock Yacht Club where we bought fuel and started looking for a place to camp.

Tuesday night was the best night of the trip for sleeping.  We found a sand bar off the main channel of the river and threw our sleeping bags out on it.  That sand really felt good.

Wednesday was another good day as far as timing the locks went.  We seemed to get through each one of them almost immediately.  We knew we were making good time and toward the end of the day on Wednesday, we knew that we could get home the next day, arriving back a full two days ahead of plan.  We also knew that the weather had been perfect for five days and was going to change on Thursday.  We had had five days of full sunshine and little wind, something unusual for Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Finally, at about 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, we got through Kerr Lock and Dam near Sallisaw.  Our last fuel stop was at Applegate Marina on Kerr and we knew they would be closed.  We also knew that we couldn’t get all the way home without adding fuel, so we decided to spend the night on Applegate’s dock, get fuel the next morning, and head out.

When we woke the next morning at 6:30, the wind was howling and the sky was gray.  Gary, Bill, and I talked it over and decided that it was not important to us to be able to say that we went all the way back to Tulsa.  We decided that we would call my son, Dan, and have him meet us at Three Rivers Landing in Muskogee.  We told Foster and his son about our plan but they wanted to go ahead and go all the way back to Tulsa.

Since our boat was not going to go all the way back, we knew we had enough fuel to get to Three Rivers so we took off, leaving Foster and Mike to wait on gasoline.  The trip across Kerr was absolutely frightening!  The waves were running three to four feet and that was really too much for our boat.  We were pounded like you wouldn’t believe but it still had not started to rain.

We finally got across Kerr to Gore Landing, just below Webbers Falls Lock and Dam.  We called in to the Lock on the radio but were advised that a barge tow had just gotten there and it was going to be about two hours before we could get through.  By this point, we were all about through boating so we decided to call Dan and have him come on down to Gore City Park and pick us up there.

We pulled over there to wait on Dan and while we were waiting, Bill and I walked up to a small café in Gore.  We got three great big breakfasts to go and took them back to the boat.  Again, this was awfully good eating!

Finally, Dan got there with the boat trailer and we got the boat loaded just as it started to rain.  We headed back toward Tulsa and it began to pour.  We were all glad that we had decided to “chicken out” at Gore.

Later, when we talked to Foster, he told us that the trip across Webbers Falls was just as hair-raising as Kerr had been.  On top of that, he and Mike got drenched in the rain.  Because the visibility was so poor, he got out of the channel at one point and hit a submerged rock.  He knew he had done some damage but he kept going.

He later found out that he had ruined his prop, bent the prop shaft in the motor, and knocked the skag, or bottom fin, off of it.  The total damages amounted to about $1400 but Foster was so happy about the trip that he didn’t even mind it.

When we got back, Gary and I agreed that we had said about everything that we had to say to each other for a while.  After all, we had spent six days in the boat with each other.  We decided that, when we saw each other at Mom’s house or somewhere else, we would just nod at each other.

The trip was one of those events where, when you finish it, your first reaction is that you would never do it again.  Then, about a week later, you start making plans to do it the next year.  Oh well, we’ll wait and see!

[Footnote: Nine months later, Gary passed away of a massive heart attack.  I was so thankful that I had gotten to spend this time on the water with him.  Also, I did make the river trip again, this time with my son, Dan.]

The Demise of Civility

As I get older, I become more convinced that people are not nearly as kind and thoughtful toward others as they used to be.  Perhaps this is just a natural part of getting older but I really don't think so.  I've thought about ways to quantify this but its one of those things that just cannot be measured.

All I can offer is anecdotal evidence but it does seem that everywhere I look, I see people being uncivil toward others.  Yesterday I was watching the PGA golf tournament on television.  The crowds at golf tournaments used to be famous for their  polite demeanor; not any more.  They yell, they taunt the players, and generally act like asses.

Although I haven't been a ham radio operator all that many years, I'm told by old timers that the airwaves are full of language that would not have been there forty years ago.  In fact, I was quite surprised when I got my amateur license at how much "CB" type discourse is out there.  I had always believed that amateur radio was a "genteel" hobby where everyone respected everyone else - not so!

Politics has always been a nasty business.  If you study historical news events, you find outrageous behavior among politicians from the very beginning of time.  However, it seems that our leaders have gotten to the point where they really do hate their opponents and try their best to "demonize" them.  Has this change in political behavior led to a polarization of our society or is it merely a reflection of it?  I really don't know.

What are the reasons for this loss of civility?  Like many other problems we face today, these values are not being taught at home anymore.  Our children are learning today that aggressive behavior is rewarded and those who are pacifistic are stomped on.  Public education occasionally makes a foray into this area (example: the "campaign" against bullying), but this effort ultimately cannot be successful without support from parents.

As I've told many people, I'm at an awkward stage in my life; I can remember being embarrassed when my Dad said the World was going to hell in a hand basket, but I'm now old enough to believe its true!

Bread Making

I don't recall what started it, but a couple of months ago, we got to talking about homemade bread.  It came up in conversations a few times and I started thinking about it.

I've always told Louise that beer is just liquid bread; they both have all the same ingredients (grain, yeast and water).  Beer, of course does have the additional ingredient, hops, but it is just a flavoring as are caraway seeds in rye bread.  This has been my excuse for the consumption of a few bottles of "liquid bread".

The other day, I finally took action.  I was at Whole Foods (or as my son, Dan, calls it, "Whole Paycheck"), and decided to look for rye flour since I had a yearning for rye bread.  Sure enough, there it was on the shelf so I purchased some.

I went home, found a reasonable looking recipe on the internet, and proceeded to make my own rye bread!  Surprisingly, it turned out quite nicely although I did trash the kitchen in the process.  It turned out so good, in fact, that I made another batch the next day and made two smaller loaves instead of one large one.  My neighbor, T.J., was the recipient of one of the two smaller loaves and, unless he was lying to me, really enjoyed it.  Of course, what are you going to say when your neighbor forces a loaf of bread on you?

Yesterday, I decided to try regular old homemade white bread.  Amazingly, it came out great too.  There's nothing to this bread making!  In my usual fashion, I'll probably wind up spending a lot of money on equipment to continue this and then stop as soon as the equipment has been purchased.  Lets see, we need a Kitchen Aid mixer, a bread machine, an outdoor stone oven, what else?

More bread projects will include English muffins, French rolls, and those really hard crusted rolls that taste so good!  I'm glad I don't have to worry about a gluten free diet!

A New Hex Beam

This blog, much like my entire life, has an identity crisis.  It kind of started out as a ham radio blog then became an on-line diary.  Today, however, we are going to go back and talk radio some.

A couple of years ago, I purchased a Mosley three-element tri-bander antenna.  It covers three bands: 20, 15, and 10 meters.  It worked fine until about four months ago when the SWR went to pot on 20 and 15.  Because it still works fine on 10 meters, I was sure that the problem is at a trap but I had not laid the tower down to check it yet.

The other day, after running an OMISS net on 17 meters, I decided I needed to do something so I acquired a 6-band hexagonal beam from KIO in Alabama.  Apparently, the phrase "hex beam" is copyrighted by someone else because KIO is careful to call theirs "hexagonal beams".  Anyway, this beam looks like an upside down umbrella frame.  A friend suggested that if it were mounted lower, she could use it to dry her delicates.  Perhaps the rf energy would help.

A very nice feature of it is that it covers 6 bands without using a tuner: 20, 17, 15, 12, 10, and 6 meters.  It also uses only one feedline which is very nice when you are shelling out big bucks for coax.

The hex beam is basically a two-element beam on all bands where the driven element is in the shape of a "W" and the reflector is in a horseshoe shape around it.  Being a two-element beam, it is not going to have the directional characteristics that a larger antenna would have but, as the old saying goes, you can't have everything.

Yesterday I took the Mosley down and put the hex beam up in its place.  I know that the World is full of anecdotal stories but here is one for this antenna.  There is a gentleman who lives in Florida, Dick, KI4QMB, who has a penchant for running one watt on the OMISS nets.  I'm not a big QRP (or low power) fan but many people are and that diversity is what makes ham radio so much fun.  At any rate, I had NEVER heard Dick on 20 meters, not even a peep, until yesterday with that new hex beam.  Not only could I hear him but we were able to have a QSO!

Now to fgure out what happened to the Mosley and fix it!

Vacation, 2013

I know that this is kind of like breaking out the vacation pictures and forcing everyone to look at them but our just-completed trip was a hoot and I want to tell you about it.

For the past several years, we have gone to Colorado to escape the summer heat but, for several reasons, we decided this year to go to Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  The National Forest Service in Colorado has gotten "stinky" about camping in their campgrounds, to the point of making us decide to go somewhere else.

When we started talking about the U.P, our friends, Mary and Luther, indicated that they would like to go with us.  We decided to leave on July 17.  We got the motorhomes ready and prepared for the trip.  Our first stop was to be Wallace State Park in Missouri and that was the "kickoff" of our trip.

Our next stop was Clear Lake, Iowa.  For "rock and roll" fans, you know that this was the site of Buddy Holly's last concert before his death in a plane crash.  He, Richie Valens, and J.P. Richardson ("The Big Bopper", were killed when their plane left Clear Lake.  A side note is that Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup who were also members of the band but were not on the plane that crashed.  Many years later, we had the pleasure of meeting Tommy Allsup in Mannford; he was a friend of a good friend of ours, Faye Carroll.  We also toured the Winnebago factory in Forest City, Iowa, and got to watch Winnebago motorhomes being made.

Our next stop was Minneapolis where we went to the largest shopping mall in the United States, Mall of America.  Luther and I weren't thrilled with it but Mary and Louise were.  We also paid a visit to the nearby IKEA store which is amazing.

The next stop was Duluth, Minnesota.  Although I had been there on business several times, I had never been impressed with the city.  Being on vacation was different, however.  We found a campground right on the water.  In fact, our motor home was backed up right to the water on the pier.

One of the highlights of our trip was seeing the parade of "tall ships" come through Duluth.  We were close enough to walk from our campground to the channel to see them.  These are mostly replicas of the sailing ships of the 1700's and 1800's.

From Duluth, we went to Grand Marais, Minnesota for a couple of days where we camped in wilderness area.  We took a side trip while there to Thunder Bay, Ontario.  Then we were off to Copper Harbor, Michigan, a peninsula in northern Michigan.  We spent four days there and the scenery was beautiful.

From Copper Harbor, we went to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan for three days.  A highlight of our visit there was a boat tour through the Soo Locks and back through the Canadian side.  Once again, we were parked in an RV park right on the water.

After leaving the Soo, we went to St. Ignace, Michigan.  St. Ignace is a tourist town on the north end of the Mackinac Bridge and is a ferry ride away from Mackinac Island.  Mackinac Island is a famous tourist spot and is known for its lack of gasoline powered vehicles.  Everything on the island is "horse driven".  By the way, "Mackinac" is pronounced "Mackinaw" - I don't know why, it just is.

After we left St. Ignace, we spent a couple of days getting to Elkhart, Indiana.  Luther and Mary's motor home was made in Elkhart and we took a tour of their factory.  We also had some good Amish food to eat there!

After a couple more leisurely days of driving through Illinois and Missouri, we got back home on August 16. All in all, it was a fantastic vacation.  I must admit that Luther and I both did some minor body damage to our motor homes but all that can be fixed!

OK, I promise you I won't do any more of these vacation rambles until the next trip!

Genealogy Revisited

I continue to spend far more time than I should working on genealogy.  Every morning the computer gets turned on (electrically, of course) and Family Tree Maker is loaded.

Someone asked me the other day if I had found anyone famous in our family tree.  About the most famous relative I've found is Senator Lamar Alexander from Tennessee.  I did work on the trail of a link to the 12th President, James Polk, but I finally convinced myself that there was no link there.  There were several Alexanders who were instrumental in the American Revolution but they weren't famous, or at least they aren't well known today.

We haven't discovered anyone famous on Louise's side either.  We did, however, discover that my ham radio friend, Dave, is my wife's fourth cousin through a guy up in the Joplin, Missouri area.  That was a surprise!

What is as fascinating as finding famous people is examining how someone in your family fit into the grand scheme of things 100 or 150 years ago.  For an example, look at the story of my great great grandfather, Greenberry Stephens.

Greenberry was born in 1830 in Benton County, Missouri, the second oldest of a family of six boys and three girls.  His father was a farmer as was Greenberry.  In fact, looking through older censuses, most people did list their occupation as farmers back then.  What a change from today.

In 1861, when the Civil War broke out, Greenberry was 31 years old and, being a good southern man, joined the Confederate Army.  Missouri was split on the allegiances of its citizens; some favored the North but many were Confederates.  At any rate, Greenberry was captured by the North and was sent to an unnamed prison.

Many southern soldiers captured during the war were allowed to sign an oath of allegiance to the United States and then return to their homes.  One thing you did not want to do was sign an oath and then get caught again, which Greenberry did.  He was charged with the crime of "bushwhacking" and convicted.

This time, Greenberry was sent to the Gratiot Street Prison in St. Louis, and then later transferred to Camp Morton in Indianapolis.  We know how poor conditions were in these prisons and, if you were unlucky enough to be in one of them, your chances of surviving were pretty bad.

Greenberry did not survive Camp Morton; he died there on February 26, 1864.  We have found a couple of letters explaining this event - the first is from Greenberry (while he was still at Gratiot Street Prison) to his wife, Nancy,  where he knows that he might not ever see her again.

The second one if from someone in charge at Camp Morton informing Nancy that her husband had died.

While his death was a tragic event for the family, it was an indicator of all of the tragedy of the Civil War and it makes one realize what a horrible period that was.

It is also what makes me get up early in the morning and load Family Tree Maker!