Chuck the Blogger Guy

No, we are Democrats.

The supreme commander of NATO came back to the United States in order to run for president.
I told my mom General Eisenhower has arrived back in America and will run for President. This was early spring 1952 and I was in the second grade. By the way this was my first awareness of presidential politics.
Because of my pronouncement I was quickly rebuffed because of my parents political preference. Both my mom and dad were Roosevelt democrats. My dad was benefited by a Roosevelt program known as Works Project Administration or the WPA. A program designed and administrated by the Roosevelt administration to put jobless men to work improving the countries infrastructure. Roads, bridges, public buildings, etc.
So running against General Eisenhower was Senator Stephenson from Illinois. My folks voted for Stephenson and Eisenhower won. Stephenson ran once again in 1956 and lost running against Eisenhower. Never mind Eisenhower created the great Interstate highway system. Putting tens of thousands to work.
None the less, learning politics for a second grader was not easy. It still ain’t today.

The wrong size pot.

Back off the road again.
I have returned to our Cohousing community. There is one thing missing from all the places I recently visited while traveling hither and yon. In hotels, restaurants, people’s houses and other toileting venues.
It is my highboy toilet. Yes, a toilet fitted for old people. All the places I visited including my brother’s house had lowboy squatty potties close to the ground. Something like they do in Japan and other Asian countries.
It’s most difficult to sit in a squashed position while doing an old man’s business . Are you following me?
It’s easier to do what I have to do sitting upright like sitting in a chair at a table. Plus it allows me to focus on how the toilet paper rolls outward instead of inward. Outward is the correct way to position the toilet paper.
Whew! It’s hard being octogenarian. One has to always be on the lookout for other people’s Pho paws and poor judgement. Pass the room spray please.

Very important notice.

To whom it had ought to might concern:
I am on holiday near an ocean in southern California and will be back to this blogerator in a week or so. Please stand by. Thanks.
Okie without borders.

How about a buzz cut?

Just sit still Butch!
Sitting atop several Los Angeles telephone directories and yellow pages placed on the seat of a dining room chair with an old sheet tied around my neck was our at home barber shop. The barber was my dad and his hand-squeezed hair clippers would be clicking up and down my neck. Plus my dad had a pair of barber scissors and barber comb.
This was my fate for about 12 or 15 years. A hair cut whether I wanted it or not. “No Okie boy is going to be ragged head in this household.” So my dad cut my hair about every two or three weeks. Even though he didn’t use a bowl as some had suggested getting a haircut, the homemade haircut certainly looked like a bowl cut anyway. He trimmed up the neck all around the back and left just enough on top to oil down and part.
Let me back up a bit here. When I was about five or six years old, I got my dad’s barber scissors and cut off almost all my hair in front and on top. Because of this noticeable appearance my Uncle Bat started calling me Butch. This noticeable appearance lasted for about a month. An almost all bald headed six-year-old trying to make his way through church and school without being noticed. It wasn’t easy.
However, the nickname “Butch” lasted well into my teen years. Later, at about age 14 or 15 I was able to accumulate enough money to get a haircut at a real barber. And at that time I told the barber I wanted a flattop or as some called it a Princeton . Princeton as in the famed aircraft carrier or flattop boat. And once again, looking like a bald-headed person with oily combed swept back sides. The barber told me to maintain the flattop style I needed some Butch wax. A small glass jar of orangy wax and rub it into my hair each morning before going to school. So I went from oily to waxy. It wasn’t easy to be stylish in those days. You know what I mean Butchy boy!

Dress for succcess.s

They were seventh grade boys and girls.
It was fall 1973. I along with another haole(mainland white guy). taught a Sunday School class at a church in Honolulu, Hawaii. The class was made up with many Pacific Islanders. Mostly from Samoa and a few Asians. The boys often came bare foot and just wearing jeans or white pants with a colorful print Hawaiian shirt. Girls wore Muu Muus and sometimes without shoes as well. My fellow teacher and I often wore typical local Sunday morning looking white pants, white shoes, and an Aloha shirt. All very casual. To me shoes or no shoes was just fine. Bring’em on. It was all about what we taught, not how we dressed.
However, there was this one particular Sunday morning when a married couple from the mainland came and wanted to sit in and observe the local kids. This couple was from somewhere in Tennessee and dressed as such. He was a bespectacled man wearing his best pinstriped dark business suit with conservative tie and wearing dark mainland shoes. Looking like he just returned from a corporate bboard meeting. And she with her freshly painted face and bee hive hair-do and Sunday’s best stylish dress.
The reason this fashionable couple came to observe the locals is they had plans to become Missionaries. Missionary’s to be located in Western Samoa.
The following Sundays they came again but were still dressed in their mainland best. He in his dress suit and she with her bee hive hair. I think they came back a time or two more and then flew back to the mainland. It was told to me by others who were familiar with the couple that they were sent to Western Samoa to be missionaries and still insisting on wearing their suits and big hair but could not acclimate to the oppressive heat and humidity, stayed a month or so, and moved back to their Tennessee home.
The whole experience for the Tennessee couple was like dressing up for a downtown New York City party but going to a barn dance. What do we learn from this? What is the old adage? When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Or at least dress like Romans while there.

Follow the bouncing ball.

Watching and watching.
Way back when our youngest daughter-40 was only youngest daughter-3 Sheba(aka spouse) and I took youngest daughter to the science museum in Boston. This was back when Sheba was in grad school at Simmons College 1986.
When you enter the main lobby of the science museum there was a large square glass case that had, for a lack of a better term, three-dimensional kinetic art inside the glass cabinet. A square glass cabinet that stood approximately eight-feet high. Art that with a little metal ball moves up and down and up and down and up and down again and again. Youngest daughter 3 would stand as close as she could with fingers on the glass and watch with rapt attention.
A small steel ball about the size of a golf ball would be released at the top and start it’s convoluted descent to the bottom. Now, I may not have this right but the ball was released on to a spiraling down track to build up momentum and then bump a buzzer switch, then drop down bouncing on to five or six metal plates. Plates tuned like a xylophone and each plate with its own musical note. Ping, pang, pong, and boing. Then the little metal ball would find its way down through a descending maze of slots touching a beeping beeper each stop as it made its way down. On and on it went until it hit bottom and rolled in to a little elevator and rose to the top and started the whole beeping, buzzing, and ponging process all over again and again and again, etc.
And yet, youngest daughter-3 stood there and stood there. After about 30-minutes of watching the little ball descend and make it’s way to the bottom and back up, youngest daughter-3 was still mesmerized and would probably would have watched until the cows came home or the museum closed in the late afternoon. Or whichever came first.
I will have to admit the clinking clanging moving art cabinet was fun to watch. Almost as fun as watching the little three-year-old watcher. Beep, Boink, ping, pang, and bonk.

Look at that little ball go.

Watching and watching.
Way back when our youngest daughter-40 was only youngest daughter-3 Sheba(aka spouse) and I took youngest daughter to the science museum in Boston. This was back when Sheba was in grad school at Simmons College 1986.
When you enter the main lobby of the science museum there was a large square glass case that had, for a lack of a better term, three-dimensional kinetic art inside the glass cabinet. A square glass cabinet that stood approximately eight-feet high. Art that with a little metal ball moves up and down and up and down and up and down again and again. Youngest daughter 3 would stand as close as she could with fingers on the glass and watch with rapt attention.
A small steel ball about the size of a golf ball would be released at the top and start it’s convoluted descent to the bottom. Now, I may not have this right but the ball was released on to a spiraling down track to build up momentum and then bump a buzzer switch, then drop down bouncing on to five or six metal plates. Plates tuned like a xylophone and each plate with its own musical note. Ping, pang, pong, and boing. Then the little metal ball would find its way down through a descending maze of slots touching a beeping beeper each stop as it made its way down. On and on it went until it hit bottom and rolled in to a little elevator and rose to the top and started the whole beeping, buzzing, and ponging process all over again and again and again, etc.
And yet, youngest daughter-3 stood there and stood there. After about 30-minutes of watching the little ball descend and make it’s way to the bottom and back up, youngest daughter-3 was still mesmerized and would probably would have watched until the cows came home or the museum closed in the late afternoon. Or whichever came first.
I will have to admit the clinking clanging moving art cabinet was fun to watch. Almost as fun as watching the little three-year-old watcher. Beep, Boink, ping, pang, and bonk.

From big to little.

From square footage to hand held.
What you missed by being born too late.
What you did miss was huge electronic equipment to do what simple desktop PCs can now do. My very first big job back in 1969 after leaving college was with the Schick Razor Company in Culver City, California. Just around the corner from the famed MGM studios. But anyway my job was to find out what happen to missing merchandise in shipment. But this is not my point.
Just a few steps from my desk was two rooms of approximately a total of 600 square feet with precise climate control. The rooms were divided by glass walls and was visible from my office with large glass windows. A collection of big bulky electronic equipment. Such a sight to see.
In the main computing room were several reel tape readers running back and forth reading the data recorded on each reel. there were approximately four-reel decks in a vertical position on the back wall. Then out on the main floor in large glass covers were three or four multi-layered horizontal disk readers. Then there was one or two CRT monitors and keyboards to enter and control data input. And finally a large metal cabinet which was brand labeled IBM-360.
Then in a separate room with less climate control were four keypunch consols and keypunch operators with a couple of marginally skilled people entering data which came out on an IBM card filled with numerous small rectangle punches. Printed on the keypunch cards was “Do Not fold, spindle, or mutilate. Then the punch cards would be run through a card sorter and reader and then data was printed on vast reams of data print out sheets by a very large printer. All tolled the combined machinery was probably worth a million bucks or so. I think though our company did lease IBM’s computing hardware. Plus then there were two full time computer operators, two keypunch typists, and a high dollar manager/programmer. All of which could easily be done on today’s Dell or Toshiba desktop PC with a HP inkjet printer. However the same perhaps could be done also with your iPhone and a Bluetooth keyboard and printer.
So what did they do with all that bulky mainframe hardware? Did they send it off to one of those compactors like they used to crush old cars to be sent off to be melted down. Or do they send it off to a ‘third-world’ country to modernize their computing? Maybe they will use some of it as a boat anchor. Who knows? But anyway, you missed lots of fun not working with very slow and bulky computing hardware.