All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Generally Speaking, Think on this...

Earl's (Earl F, Godenschwager) Auto-blog,

an unauthorized look at a persons REAL history

DEDICATION

I realized that, generally, children don’t know much about their parent’s lives. That is, the lives prior to the children. This was not always so. For a thousand or so generations, the lives of the children was the same as their parents, barring natural disasters or local wars. Starting about 150 years ago, this was no longer true. Conditions were changing, at least in the industrial world, such that a new generation would have, or see, a life possibly significantly different than their parent’s. For this reason I am writing this so my children will know, to the best of my ability to tell, what my life was like. I hope this will start a family tradition, so that future generations, my descendants, will see their parent’s lives, written in their parent’s words

I am dedicating this writing to my children, Debra, Eric, Heidi and Karl. May they be proud of their ancestors, and have lives that will make their descendants also proud.

PROLOG

I feel that there have been seven most important events in the history of our country:

1. 1. The Discovery of America
2. 2. The Revolution and founding of our country
3. 3. The Civil War
4. 4. World War I
5. 5. The Great Depression
6. 6. World War II,
7. 7. The Cold War

Note that I have omitted the Korean and Vietnam wars. They were almost identical in scale and ideology, but didn’t have the impact, disregarding the press, of the other events. I have lived during the last three of these major events, and five if the Korean and Vietnam wars are included. And although some Americans have lived through four of these major events, none have survived five. I am saying this to preface this writing with the thought that I have witnessed a significant part of our country’s history.

EDUCATION

I was the first of my family to receive a formal education. That is a pretty big happening. the first in many generations - perhaps hundreds of years. My mother was proud of the fact that one of her ancestors was a member of a marching band in Germany. I knew that I wanted to know a lot more than my father or my uncles who used improper English and were obviously prejudiced about non Germans.

(Note: My father had an uncomplemtary name for every non-German nationality)

I wanted to know mathematics, physics and all else I could learn. As I listened to the Uncles, Aunts and family members when they were at our house and were discussing world events or politics, I realized that sometimes, as a result of my reading, I knew more about those things than my elders. I never entered into the conversations because that was not the place for a child.

I eagerly awaited the algebra class in the ninth grade at Garfield High. I was always concerned about just what algebra was. My siblings had implied that it was a mysterious class. I found it to be the answer to a lot of things that I had wondered about. It also allowed me to solve problems that I wasn’t able to solve before.

(Note: My father always had this problem that he considered insolvable. It was, “If a chicken and one half can lay an egg and one half in a day and one half. How many eggs can a chicken lay in one day?” When I gave him the algebraic solution as well as the logical solution, he didn’t accept either solution, which gave the same answer. He considered the problem impossible to solve)

Ninth Grade Algebra was my first introduction into higher education. I found it to be a very easy subject and wished that it could be taught at a higher level, but still , it was an eye opener into the wonderful world of mathematics. Unfortunately, the level of mathematical instruction at Garfield High went down after that and we had to accept the teachers that were not first rate..

An extreme example of that was our 11th grade advanced algebra class. We knew ahead of time that the class would be taught by Bernice Ashford. We also knew that she would not teach us anything. so we did an extraordinary thing. We agreed that we would each take a subject each day, assign the homework, and discuss it the next day.

(Note: Can you imagine any high school class having the initiative to do this?)

In other words, we conducted the class for the whole year with no teacher. I would say that this worked very well, except we did not get any higher level input. Later, I learned what that could mean.

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA

FIRST MEMORIES

EARLY LIFE

A perfect day in a wonderful life

Sometimes my cousin Ken Eppler and I would start out on what could be called a perfect, idyllic day. If I would were to win the lottery, it would be hard to keep the win in trade for one of the days I remember as one of those wonderful days of my childhood.

Ken lived, at that time, at my Uncle Mart’s house. It was about a half mile away down a dirt road. If it was late Spring , Summer or early Fall, we would be dressed in one piece of clothing, a pair of shorts. That is, we wore no shirt, no shoes, just shorts. Our bodies became tanned and our feet callused to endure the walking through fields and woods.

In late Spring the wild strawberries were abundant. Not so abundant that you did not have to know the location of the secret patches. Ken and I knew them. We would move from one patch to another, gorging ourselves. The different patches had different types of strawberries. Although they were different, all were good.

As the Summer went on, we were able to feast on other fruit. Uncle Mart had two plum trees in his front yard. Ken and I ate as many of them as we could. In later months we could then move to pear and apple trees. We had an apple orchard next to our house. Ken and I spent many hours in those trees, just picking and eating an apple whenever we chose to. We knew every branch of those trees and how to climb them and where to sit in them.

Uncle Mart had a lot of other things for us to eat. He had about an acre of black raspberries and an acre of red raspberries with a row of currants separating them.

Uncle Mart’s Packards:

When I think of Packards, I must think of my Great Uncle Mart. He operated the farm that had been first started by my Great Grandfather Ehlert, (my mothers's family name) The farm was on Ehlert lane, off Granger road. Actually it was closer to McCracken, than Granger.

Uncle Mart was a Packard man. The first car of his that I remember was a 1926 Packard sedan. It was a six. I was about 4-5 years old when my cousin and I played on the farm and got to ride in the Packard, when Uncle Mart delivered his raspberries, strawberries and grapes. A few years later, he bought a new Packard - a 1929 sedan. I couldn't tell the difference between the two. However, I do remember his driving style. Of course, he never went over about 30 mph. I guess the engine never revved over 1500 rpm. It was a great car.

My Mother:

Mother’s Walks
     Neighborhood children nature walk in the woods in the spring to see the spring flowers.
     Apple trees
     The Sand pits
     Ponds
     Uncle Marts
      Plums
      Grapes
      Cherries
      Raspberries
     Wild strawberries
     Ehlerts Pears
     Dinner of Corn & Tomatoes.

My Father:

My father’s education did not go beyond the eighth grade. However, that was not uncommon then. However, that level of education did show in his conversation. His less than correct English always bothered me.

He did have a high level of common sense. That was shown to me when I went to build a dog house. Dad brought home a dog for me - I named him Rusty. I decided to build a dog house. Naturally that meant I would go to the library and get a book on building dog houses. So I did that and started collecting pieces of wood to match the plan of the dog house in the book. I had not completed that collection when Dad came home from work. He said, “What are you doing?” He said that a lot to me. I showed him the plans, which he quickly dismissed. He then proceeded to build a dog house out of the stuff I had gathered, in a very short time. I was amazed. Right then, I was aware that my Dad was pretty smart. He had common sense that I have come to realize is pretty important.

Mantua, Potatoes

   Some of the memories of my Father that are dear to me were our trips to the potato farmer in Mantua, Ohio. Mantua was pronounced ‘Man-tu-way’. I always thought that was an odd way to pronounce it, but many towns in this country have pronunciations that were first made by locals with little education.

   Anyway, I loved that trip to the farm in Mantua. The smell of that barn full of potatoes was wonderful to me. We would fill our car with bags of potatoes and drive home. I wished that we could do it more than once a year. I was a vegetarian then, although I didn’t know the word then.

The Old Mill

My dad would go to the Old Mill occasionally to buy chicken feed and goat feed. I very much enjoyed those trips. That mill is now gone, but now is part of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. At the Mill I would look at the locks on the Ohio-Erie Canal there.

ANIMALS & PETS & GARDENS

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

I was born near the beginning of the Depression, and was known as a ‘Depression Baby’. Of course, as a child I did not know anything about a depression. I did know that we were poor and that our Father did not work much of the time. I did learn, as did all children then, not to ask for much and to not expect much from my parents, except love.

I remember having a tricycle and a pedal powered pickup truck. I really liked them. I would ride them back and forth in our driveway. I would put the tailgate down on the pickup truck and load the tailgate with baskets of fruit to sell just as the fruit peddler did when he came to our neighborhood. I had nothing but empty baskets on my tailgate, but it was great fun. I pretended the baskets were loaded with strawberries and raspberries. Dad had found those toys for for me probably at the dump, and had fixed them for me to use. One day they were gone. Dad had apparently found a place to sell them or trade for something of more value for our family. I just knew they were gone, and I also knew not to ask why. I did really miss my truck. We probably ate a little better dinner with those toys gone.

During the depression, the government allowed families with FHA loans to stop making mortgage principle payments, as long as they would pay the interest. Had that not been put into effect, we would have become homeless.

My parents were of a generation that believed everyone should have life insurance, even the children. This was not necessarily foolish as the funeral expenses for for a child could have been devastating for our family. I remember the AAL (Aid Association for Lutherans) insurance agent coming to our front door periodically, I guess it was once a month. I also remember my mother’s anguish scraping up the few dollars needed to make the payment.. It got to the point that I hated to see that man come to our house, because I knew the effect his premium collecting had on my mother.

My sisters never had a bicycle. My brother did not have a bicycle until he had earned $5 to buy a used one. I inherited it when he became eighteen, was out of high school and got a job. I was only ten at the time and was one of the youngest kids in the area to have a bike, even though it had a broken frame and poor brakes.

But despite the circumstances described above, we were a happy family. I, as the youngest, did not know much about the family finances. My older sisters and brother may have been more affected. Of course, my parents were very much affected. My father even worked on the WPA (Works Project Administration) for some time. This was a federal program that employed out-of-work men on various jobs.

(Note: The San Diego County Administration Building on Harbor Drive was a WPA project.)

I know my father hated accepting such work, but he didn’t have much choice. He and my mother held our family together through the depression, they kept the house, raised us four children and isolated us as much as possible from the travails they underwent during those terrible years.

AAL Insurance

I was watching the movie “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn” and was reminded of one of the depression experiences. In the movie the Life Insurance came to collect the premiums. How I remember those occurrences at our house. The AAL, Aid Association for Lutherans, insurance salesman/collector would come to the house for the premiums. I don’t remember how often, but it was too often for Mother. He would need the premiums for the family. They were very small, by today’s standards, but they were very big for Mother. They were only change, say $0.65, not dollars, but I could tell that Mother was very hard pressed to make those payments. This was before I was in school, as I remember I was the only child home. I was really bothered each time the Insurance man came and asked Mother why I needed insurance. She said these very small life insurance policies were to pay for our funerals. In those days, a family death without insurance would be an insurmountable cost. Also, it had not been too many years since the great influenza epidemic, which had claimed members of our family, I think that influenced my parents thoughts.

Also in the movie “ATGIB” the girl is going to the library and announces to the librarian that she is going to read every book, in alphabetical order. I had that same goal around the age of 10. I went to the library once a week and always checked out three books. I would chose an author, and then read every book he had written. This covered fiction and non-fiction. I didn’t read every library book, but I made a significant try at it. I read best sellers, westerns, Indian stories and everything else. That activity, more than anything else with the possible exception of Latin, gave me a good foundation in English and made me a good speller. Of course, it also vaulted me way past my schoolmates in my knowledge of the world.

THE SEASONS

This chapter is written for my children and descendants who were born and raised in Southern California and never experienced the seasonal changes that I enjoyed as a boy in Northeastern Ohio. It may be hard for those who have never experienced the change of seasons that occur in most of this country, to imagine the effect of seasonal changes. I will document some of those changes as viewed by a young boy.

Winter

We had a coal furnace in the basement. there was nothing automated about this system. Everything that furnished warmth for our house had to be hand fed into that furnace. Each fall, a truck would drive into our driveway with a load of coal. The driver would attach a slide from the truck to our basement window and send a ton, or more of coal, down into our basement. It went into our “Coal Bin”, which was a room in our basement, that had a door near the furnace. At night, before he went to bed, Dad would “bank” the fire in the furnace. That meant he would put some coal on the fire and turn down the damper so that the fire would burn more slowly during the night. My job in the morning was to “restart” the fire. I would open the damper, rake the coals, and get the fire going again. This meant putting in some wood and then adding some coal. I always thought this was a very important job I was doing for my family. It really was, for if the fire did not start, we would have no heat in the house. However, as I think about it, my Dad always checked my work to see that I had done a good job. It was too important a job to be totally entrusted to a boy. Still he made me feel that it was my job and that I was doing something really important for the family. On a cold winter night, sometimes my Dad & I would go down to the basement, open the furnace door, and look at the roaring fire. We knew it was heating the house. It was sort of our ‘fireplace’.

As the baby of the family, I inherited the sleds. I had two of them. When winter came I took one to school and left it there for the winter. At each school noon recess, we took our sleds to the hills. It was just a wonderful time.

My “good” sled stayed at home. As soon as I got home from school, I got that sled and did a “belly flop” in front of our house. This would take me two blocks to the top of the “Big Hill”. Going down the Big Hill would take us about four blocks until the road turned uphill again. Then we would have to walk back to the top of the Big Hill. At 6:00 PM I had to go home for dinner, but right after dinner I headed back to the Big Hill, where all the kids gathered. We stayed there until eight or nine o’clock. This was the schedule every winter night. The Big Hill was a city street, but everyone knew that the local people would not drive it during the winter. For one reason it was too steep and the the was that it belonged to the kids in the winter. It was our playground.

My Sled at School

Ice Skating:

Spring

And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days.

Then Heaven tries the earth, if it be in tune

And over it softly, it’s warm ear lays.

Whether we look, or whether we listen

We hear life murmur, or see it glisten.

Henry Wadsforth Longfellow

For my So Cal descendants there is no way I can describe the wonder of a real Spring. You have to live through the dying of Fall and the long death of Winter to appreciate the glory of Spring. I have lived in San Diego for many more years than in Ohio, but I can never forget the feeling of Spring. The closest thing we have is the greening of the hills in February. But that is not even close, for it is not preceded by a real Fall and a long cold Winter.

Spring is an awakening of the earth and an awareness that life will continue after a cold winter that seemed to stop all growth.

For me, Spring started with the Memorial Day parade in Garfield Heights, up Turney Rd. and ending at our St. John Cemetery. Several kids had their bikes decorated for the event. As a kid, I walked the whole length of the parade, usually staying near the Garfield Heights High School band, for I felt the music was the main reason I was there. The parade ended with the firing of the VFW men over the graves of the soldiers at our cemetery. At that time the most recent war was WWI. I knew that my father and Uncles were in that war and the firing of the rifles gave me a special feeling.

By June the great thing for us young kids was strawberries. There were patches of wild strawberries and we knew were they were. We would spend hours gorging ourselves on strawberries and enjoying every minute. Each patch had a slightly different type of strawberry. We tried to keep the locations secret so the other kids wouldn’t find them. Sometimes my Mom would send me out to pick strawberries for dinner dessert. That wasn’t as much fun as going out in the morning and filling ourselves with wild strawberries. Let me say that I have never had a domestic strawberry that tasted as good as a wild, though only thimble sized, berry.

Summer

It was maybe in the fourth grade that we were asked to name our favorite season and the reason why. I wrote very boldly “Summer”. For a reason I wrote “No School”. It drew some laughs in class, and a scowl from the teacher, but it was a true feeling of mine.

Summer was a really free time for us. We, Ken Eppler, my cousin, and I dressed in only one article of clothing, a pair of shorts. We wore no shoes, shirt, or underwear. Well into summer we were tanned with very tough feet. We lived in the fields and woods near my home. We knew every square foot of the many acres surrounding our house.

Early in summer, the Bohning’s berries ripened. Uncle Mart’s farm was just about 1/4 mile from our house. Kids, from the neighborhood went to Uncle Mart’s farm to pick both black and red raspberries. Ken & I were a little too young to be efficient pickers, so we volunteered to be the go-betweens between the pickers and Uncle Mart. That is, we carried their full baskets from the field to Uncle Mart and returned to them tickets, which could be redeemed at the end of the day for money, and also took empty baskets out to them. We thought we were really doing a great thing, because we were working with the “big kids”. Of course we got no money for this service. The older kids, whom we were helping, did benefit, because they did not have to make the long trek back to Uncle Mart each time they filled a basket of berries. I remember it as a wonderful time. I wish I could live it again. As I recall, my brother and sisters made about $1.00 for a hard morning’s work. Ken & I earned nothing but a good time.

Fall

HOLIDAYS

New Years

Easter

Memorial Day

Fourth of July

Halloween

Thanksgiving

Christmas

BASEBALL

We played baseball. It is not too great a stretch to say that if it was not raining and there was not snow on the ground and the temperature was not freezing, we played baseball. If you were one of the kids that did not play baseball, you did not play much of anything at all. We could play baseball with anywhere from three to 20 kids. We could play it in any field or on a street or on the school playground. We needed no adults, no organizations and practically no equipment. We played a truly equal opportunity game. Boys and girls played together. We never considered playing without the girls. For, if we had, we would have lost several of our players.

300

The games we played when we didn’t have enough players were “300” and “Rounders”. We played “300” when we had only a few players, 3 to 6, or so. In “300” there was a batter who hit the ball out of his hand to the fielders. According to how they caught the ball, they were awarder points as follows:

100 for a fly ball catch

50 for a first bounce

25 for a grounder

If a fielder caught a ball with one hand, no gloves were used, he was awarded double the points. If a fielder accumulated 300 points, he became the batter. You might think that a batter would hit nothing but grounders to stay at bat at long as possible, but this was never the case. It was always more fun to be catching the balls, and trying one handed catches, than hitting them.

Rounders

This was the next level up of baseball, in which we actually had bases, pitchers, fielders and so forth. There would usually be three batters, a pitcher, a catcher if we had enough players, and various fielders. The three batters played against all the other players. They remained batters until an out was made. The batter making the out then went to the outfield and the other players rotated positions with the catcher becoming one of the three batters. This game could be played with a variety of number of players filling in various positions. Sometimes we would have only two batters. It was all very equalizing as everyone got to play every position. Of course, the good batters usually managed to bat the most.

Fields & Streets

We played in the fields by our house as much as we could. The grass was soft and the playing area was unlimited. However, we never did establish a real baseball field there, a field of dreams. I think we could have, but it was some distance from the other kids of the neighborhood. But of course, when it was dark we had to play under the street light on Milo Avenue.

When we played on Milo, it was a different game, with a limited playing field. As I recall, home plate was a sewer cover in the middle of the street. First base was the telephone pole with the street light. Second base was out there somewhere and third was over on the Leniker’s sidewalk. It was a narrow diamond shaped baseball diamond. Since it was so easy to hit foul balls, I think we had a two foul ball rule. That is, two foul balls and you were out. Still we played a lot of baseball there at night. Only stopping when we all had to go home for family curfew. It was not high level baseball, but it was neighborhood stuff at it’s best.

St. John School

A lot of the baseball playing I did was at St. John School, during recesses and lunch hours. As I recall we got a 15 minute recess in the morning and afternoon and an hour lunch period. We played baseball those times. On Monday, we would choose side for teams and play those teams for the whole week. The lower grades, 1 - 4 played on the smaller upper field and the upper grades 5 - 8 played on the lower field. The upper field was not much of a real baseball field, but was OK for that level of play. The Lower field was a pretty decent place to play with a real backstop. That was big stuff to us. I had never played on a field with a backstop before. The infield was OK but the outfield was pretty rough. Right field was quite short with a gulley close by. Our church cemetery was just on the foul side of first base. This was of concern to us, as we all had great reverence for our cemetery. All of us had family members buried there.

It was during this period that we started to get a little more serious about playing baseball. We started to pay more attention to those who could play the more important positions. We now were playing fast pitch softball , and so we were developing pitchers that could pitch well. In the next couple of years we developed a pretty decent team of baseball players.

Up the road from us was the Big Catholic school, St. Therese. St. John was 80 pupils - St. Therese was 400. There had always been rivalry between us, but we had never responded, as we were so small compared to them. One day, I don’t know how it happened, the challenge was thrown. We were to play them in a baseball game. The game was to be at their field, it was much better than ours. They were pretty cocky. They had played other big Catholic schools. We had never played anyone but ourselves. The difference was that we were baseball players, who really played the game.

Well, we whipped them! Even though I played first base throughout the game, I don’t remember the score. But it was decisive enough that they never challenged us again. I am sorry that I don’t remember anything about the game. I don’t remember the score, or what I did or what the big plays were, but I think that we played good baseball and showed them what a team could do. I do remember the tremendous feeling after the game. Actually , most of us knew we were better then them long before the game began.

Church League

The next level of baseball we played in was the Lutheran Church League. We had the basic same team we had in St. John School, while we were there. Of course, it was a higher level of play and we were really pressed to compete in that league. I don’t remember our record, but we did pretty well. I always played first base, the left handed position. I also batted lead off. I was the fastest player on the team and had the advantage to be able to switch hit. So I would be told to go up there lefty with the intention of bunting. If I got two strikes on me, I would switch to righty, which was my natural stance. I knew I had a disadvantage against a good pitcher. I was not a natural good hitter and it is difficult to get a hit in softball against a good pitcher. However, I knew I was the smartest player on my team as well as the other team, and that I was smarter than the umpire.

If a pitch was close, but questionable, and the ump called it a strike, I would say, “Good call”. I felt that then I had the ump in my hip pocket. Any further close pitch that I did not swing at would called a “ball”. As a lead off batter, this was my objective - to get on first. I was very good at getting walks, whether deserved or not. But I was also pretty good at laying down lefty drag bunts and beating them out for a bunt single.

Once I got on first, I was no longer competing against that pitcher or the umpire, but against the infielders of the other team. I could usually do a straight steal to second base. Then I used the carelessness of the infielders to allow me to steal third. This being teenager baseball, the third baseman and shortstop often felt it important to converse with the pitcher. When they did, I ran to third. Even if the shortstop stayed in his position, I only had to beat him to third. It was an easy steal. So with a lead off walk, I would get to third. Good baseball.

SCHOOL

Grade School

High School

Case Undergraduate 1949 - 1953

Freshman Year

In September 1949 I entered Case Institute of Technology and began the four most stressful and difficult years of my life. They were also four of the most important years of my life. I left a high school where everything was either easy or boring and entered a college where everything was challenging and difficult. Sometimes it was very challenging and difficult. I left a high school where I was the top student and entered a world where I was just another student. It was a real awakening. I went from a high school graduate to an engineer.

I was very fortunate to live in Cleveland, Ohio, the location of Case Tech. Case was one of the top Engineering schools in the country, along with MIT and Cal Tech. We could never use the initials CIT nor could Cal Tech, for obvious common Ids. Of the three, Case had the best reputation of an undergraduate school. The other two had the better graduate schools. My choice was to go to Case and live at home, or go to Ohio State, and pay for Room & Board. The cost was about the same. Case was one of the most expensive schools in the country at the time, but if I could live at home and work, I could almost make the tuition. (

Note:Incidentally the tuition at Case then was equivalent to the fees of the most expensive schools in the country, and we were told that our tuition only covered half the real cost. The rest came from endowments.)

I knew it would mean working as many hours per week as I could, all year long, but that is what I did. It was an easy choice. I was going to receive the very best engineering education in the world.

The entry requirements for Case were simply to be one of the top students at your high school, (I don’t remember the GPA requirement), and to have completed all the necessary courses. The required course work would eliminate 95% of the population. One of the required courses I did not take in High School, due to a scheduling quirk was Trigonometry, so I took that at a Cleveland High School summer class in 1949. That made me eligible for entry to Case.

The Freshman class, 600 of us, reported to Case in September 1949 one week before school really started. We took a week long series of tests, not knowing why, since we were already accepted. One of the tests was an aptitude test. The first week of school I was called into the Dean’s office. This was a nervous occasion. He said, “Why are you here?”. I said, “You asked me”. He said, “No, why are you at Case? You should be in a Musical or Art Major program, for it is clear from your aptitude tests that you are a musician or artist.” I said, “I think that I can be a good musician or composer or arranger of musical scores, but I know that I can be a very good engineer. Those questions asked me what I wanted to do, not what I could do. I know that I can be a very good Engineer, but I always wanted to be a musician.” He seemed amused and puzzled, but sent me on my way with good wishes. (It is interesting that when I graduated with a BS, I was offered a job with Bell Labs in Manhattan. This was a very prestigious offer, given to very few graduates. I’m sure that I was the only one from Case to receive such an offer that year. Bell Labs was the plum of engineering offers. They virtually promised a MS degree in three years while employing you. It consisted of a 3 day school/2 day work the first year, then a 2 day/3 day and finally a 1 day 4 day. This was admitted by my professors to be better than any MS degree that I could get in any other school in this country. I envisioned myself living in a garret in Lower Manhattan, where I would be surrounded by artistic people. I was really caught up in that idea. I thought it was an ideal way to combine my engineering and musical talents. Well, I did not take the Bell Labs job, because the job they offered me was not suitable to me. When I told them that, they said that once I got there they would put me into a job that was suitable. With my young years, I did not trust them. That may not have been my best decision. Decisions like this are the kind that have momentous effects on your life. Obviously my children can appreciate the magnitude of this decision.)

The other tests we were taking that week were general competency/IQ tests. It wasn’t until weeks later that it dawned on us that we 600 were segregated according to our test scores. We were divided into groups of about 30 each, and each of us was as close intellectually and could be determined by those tests. We 30 stayed together in every class for the whole Freshman year. By the way, every Freshman had the same subjects, regardless of his major. Sometimes 3 adjacent groups would get together for large lectures or for PE. During the whole Freshman year, we never saw any other than those 90 classmates. The reason for this was twofold. 1). The school felt that competition among equals would bring out the best in the students. If the students perceived themselves as equals, they would compete more. 2). It was expected that the bottom half of the groups would not survive the first year, and the better student classes should not be diluted with those who would not make it.

So half of the Freshman were gone after the first year, and I never got to see any of them. Even the idea of being with your peers was too much for some. We had one in our class, who was as smart as any of us, but apparently he was used to being the top student. When he realized he was just average, in our group, he dropped out. It was sad, for he was still at the 90% level of the Freshman class. I guess he did not know that. We didn’t either at the time. The Case segregation by ability dawned on us slowly. After the Freshman year, we were placed together by disciplines, Physics, EE, ME Etc. When we were merged with students from the lower groups we realized what had occurred during the Freshman year.

Freshman year was still the most interesting year at Case. I vividly remember a few things. One is the difficulty adjusting to the math classes, Calculus and Analytical Geometry. This was the only time I felt I had been given an inferior education at Garfield Heights High. Some of my fellow students definitely had an edge on me. It was a very difficult time.

After a week or so in our Physics class, one day, the professor said, “Everyone get out their slide rules and solve this problem”. No one had a slide rule, or even owned one. He said, “Next class, everyone will have a slide rule and will know how to use it”. On Wednesday we did, and we did. I bought a cheap slide rule which served me OK until someone stole it. That was a favor for it forced me to buy a good one, which I still have.

The two years of Physics we all had to take were probably the most useful courses, but also some of the most difficult. We were being let in on the secrets that were discovered by the worlds most brilliant men. I was very excited by it. However, the Physics tests were very difficult. They always consisted of no more, or no less, than four questions. If you missed one question, you got a 75 or a “C”. Fortunately they gave partial credit. But that might mean you only got partial credit for the other three questions. I would read the problems at the start of the test, to pick out the easy one to answer first, and find there were no easy ones. In my scholastic life of taking tests these were the most difficult tests. These were not questions like 2 + 2 = ?, but rather like “Derive the equation for the area of a circle”. I only put that example in there because I could not think of any of the diabolical questions they asked us. The Area of of a Circle problem is, of course, a simple calculus, not a Physics problem. Incidentally, in order to conserve money, I sold many of my text books the following year. I truly regret selling my Physics books. Many times I have wished I still had them.

Chemistry was the course used to weed out the remaining bottom half of the Freshman class. The Freshman Chemistry midterm and final tests were rumored to be terrifying. The rumors were true. I received a “65” on the mid term test. It was very difficult, and I felt very bad. However, I found that I had one of, if not the, highest scores among the whole freshman class. That got me an “A” in Chemistry. That test eliminated many Freshman students from becoming sophomores.

There were two classes I really had trouble with, English and Drafting. One of the pre-school tests we did during that first week was to determine if we needed remedial English grammar, or could go directly into English Composition classes. I of course went into the composition classes. Every composition I turned in was judged as “A’ work by the professor, but since he couldn’t readily read it, I was given an “F”, with the proviso that if I re-wrote it, he would raise my grade to a “C”. This went on through the whole class and I got a “C” grade for the course. One of only two “Cs” at Case. Following that debacle, Carol & Shirley bought me a used typewriter, which solved that problem. Had I taken the Remedial Grammar English course I would had had an easy “A”.

The other class was Drafting, or Mechanical Drawing. This was as class for which I was totally unsuited. I had a difficult time drawing straight lines, let alone printing. It was the printing that did me in. Just as in the English composition classes I was downgraded for my sloppy handwriting/printing. The class was a four hour class, from 1:00 to 5:00 PM. I had to work many hours after class, re-doing my work just to get the teacher to pass my drawings. He passed them as a courtesy to me. Unlike my English composition work, which was better than the rest of the class, my Mechanical Drawing skills were at the bottom of the class. I got a “C” in that class and vowed I would never sit at a drafting board again. Next September, I transferred to Electrical Engineering. That was a big decision for me, as I had for many years wanted to work in the Automobile Industry and design cars. I felt I was throwing that dream away.

Sophomore Year

One of the courses we had at Case all four years was titled “Western Civilization”. It was to expose Engineering students to a wider variety of social/economic studies. When I was a Sophomore, we had the distinct pleasure of having Bertrand Russell visit our class. Bertrand Russell was a world renowned Philosopher and Socialist. He was one of the really famous people of the time, and he was in our class room! Our class was in awe of him, except for one student, me. He gave a little talk about socialism and when he finished I asked him to give an discrete example where Socialism had worked well. He cited a small railroad in Canada that was losing money until the government took it over and now was serving all the people along the line. I asked him if it was still losing money. He said, “Of course”. I said, “I rest my case”. That little interplay got me an “A” in that course. The other students never said anything. This was the most famous person I have ever come into close contact with. I truly wish I could have said to him, “Let’s go have a couple of beers and talk”. It was one of those possible opportunities that appear for an instant, but never again.

Junior Year

What I remember of my Junior year was that it was another tough year like the Freshman year. We were now totally into our chosen discipline, Electrical Engineering, and were facing some tough subjects. One was Electronics. This was tough because of the professor. He gave us a mid-term that was the hardest test I had at Case. I don’t remember my grade, but it wasn’t good. Neither was anyone else’s. Then he gave us an option. He said that if we took the FCC, Federal Communications Commission, tests, he would count that instead of his final exam. This FCC test is to determine if you can get a Class I, II or III license in a broadcast studio. He said, “If you get a Class I license, you will get an “A” on the final and so forth. We looked at some sample questions for the FCC test and quickly decided that test was much easier than his tests. A bunch of us went to Detroit one weekend, it was the closest place to to take the FCC test, and took the test. It was very easy and most of got Class I licenses and thereby an “A” in the final.

Senior Year

My Attempt For a Scholarship

Early in the Tenth grade I realized that I needed to start saving money for college. There was not going to be any other way for me. I started to work after school at Krogers grocery store. I worked after school from 3:30 - 6:00 Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri and 7:00 - 6:00 on Saturday. The store was closed on Wednesday afternoons and on Sundays. A couple of nights a week I “set pins” at our Prophet’s Hill bowling alley. It belonged to our church. Later I worked at Kopper’s SOHIO

(Note: Standard Oil of Ohio. This was originally J. D. Rockefeller’s oil empire) service station. Later summer jobs included working 3rd shift at a SOHIO gas station in a not too pleasant part of Cleveland (Note: The station was robbed on third shift one month before I started there and also one month after I left.). I also worked at a SOHIO warehouse loading dock, driving liftrucks and wrestling 55 gallon oil drums. It was the most physically demanding job I have ever had. I managed to drop a 55 gallon drum on my left big toe. It has about 50% recovered. In another 45 years, it will be OK.

Going into my Senior year I was somewhat short of the necessary tuition money. I applied for scholarship aid. I was refused, because I had made too much money that year. The money I made was not enough to pay the tuition. I was very mad, for my friend, who didn’t work, and had a significantly lower GPA than me, did get a scholarship. If I didn’t have to work, I could have had a top GPA. He was also in a easier curriculum. Fortunately my sisters, Shirley & Carol gave me the necessary money to make the tuition difference. Otherwise I would have been out of school.

Case Graduate Work

WORLD WAR II

Casualties and Expenditures

In loss of lives, World War II was the costliest war in history. No adequate figures exist, and estimates can be only roughly approximate. Probably between 15 and 20 million military personnel were killed in action.

Among the Axis powers, Germany suffered about 3.5 million battle dead, Japan 1.5 million, and Italy 200,000. Among the Allies the USSR had the heaviest battle casualties, as many as 7.5 million dead. China lost 2.2 million combatants from July 1937. The British lost more than 300,000 dead, the United States 292,000, and France 210,000.

Civilian dead numbered approximately 25 million. The USSR lost more than 10 million, China at least 6 million, France 400,000, the United Kingdom 65,000, and the United States 6,000. On the Axis side, Germany suffered the loss of 500,000 civilians, Japan 600,000, and Italy 145,000. In addition, about 6 million Jews, mostly from eastern Europe, were put to death by the Nazis.

Expenditures for war materials and armaments totaled at least $1.154 trillion. The United States alone spent about $300 billion on its war effort, Germany about $231 billion. Added to these enormous costs incurred by governments was the tremendous material damage done to property of all kinds, any estimate of which would be futile.

The Holocaust

Six million Jews and five million other political prisoners were slaughtered by the Nazis/Germans. This was the most terrible action of humans in the existence of civilization. We, of course have no reason to feel responsible for that action, just as we have no reason to feel guilt about slavery. However, we have/had ancestors/relatives in Germany at the time who might have been involved in that horrible action. I do not believe that the holocaust was carried out exclusively by the SS, and that the general populace did not know what was going on.. It is difficult to imagine Germans agreeing to the slaughtering of Jews in Europe, but there must have been some, or many that supported such a position. This is a difficult thing for me to write, but I want you to know that prejudice can, and has, led to terrible actions. Prejudice is probably the most poisonous thought humans can have.

Stalin, of course, is the world’s biggest killer, killing 20 million of his own people. This doesn’t get reported as much, as it wasn’t directed against one race, and it was over a longer period of time. They were all considered political enemies, and at the time our press considered Stalin a friend.

THE COLD WAR

The Korean War

Deferment, Draft & 4F

Test

Fort Walton Beach

Hot

Stingrays

Santa Rosa Island - 40 miles to Pensacola - 20 miles to Panama City

Stripping Chevy

Porpoise in Choctawhatchee Bay

25 years later

The Cuban Missile Crisis

The Vietnam War

Vietnam 58,000 Americans dead - 12 years.

Korean Was 52,000 Americans dead - 3 years

WWII 292,000 Americans dead - 3.5 years
Pearl Harbor Attack, 2400 Americans dead
D Day, Invasion of Normandy, France 5000 Americans dead - 1 day
Battle of the Bulge, 16,000 Americans dead - 5 weeks
Civil War 300,000 Americans dead - 4 years (or 620,000 dead?)
Battle of Bull Run 5000 Americans dead - 1 day
Battle of Antietam 26,000 Americans dead 1 day
Battle of Gettysburg 30,000 Americans dead - 3 days

My Part in the Cold War

The End of the Cold War

LITTLE LEAGUE

BOBBY SOX

CHALLENGER

TENNISBICYCLING

bike accident

CAR ACCIDENT

WORK EXPERIENCE

Baby Sitting

Prophets Hill Grove

Cemetery

Bowling Alley

Krogers

Kopper’s SOHIO Gas Station

Project Doan Brook

When I was working in Cleveland in the early '50s, we were working with piezoelectric wafers. We were trying to develop an aerial mine. That is, one that could be dropped from a plane, bury itself in the ground and wait for an expensive target to go by. We were using piezoelectric wafers as the sensor. Very small changes in pressure, under ground, would distort the wafers and generate electric signals. One of our main thrusts was to try to characterize the shape of the signal with the target. That is to try to differentiate between trucks, tanks and trains. From the electronic standpoint, the problem was the input impedance. These piezoelectric crystal wafers had an extremely high output impedance. We needed electronics with many megohms, it may have been 100 or more, as my memory is not perfect, input impedance. We even needed special instruments to measure this.

We used Cathode Followers for the input circuitry. This was just before the start of solid state electronics. We did not have a 'clean lab', but had to be very careful of any contamination, which could lower the impedance and short circuit the sensor. We were using special DOD ruggedized electronic tubes.

We would go out to various locations around Cleveland and obtain "signatures" of vehicles. We did this by burying our sensors at the sides of roads and then sit in our van and record the pressure reading readings, "signatures", from various vehicles. Our lab had railroad tracks behind it, so we could obtain train signatures. Unfortunately we were not allowed to run wires across the track right-of-way. We solved that problem by renting three pairs of phone lines. We had Ohio Bell bring three lines down a pole near the tracks, and had them connect those lines to three lines coming into our lab. The lab was just about 100 feet away, but the phone lines had to go back to a phone exchange and then come to the lab. It worked OK, but we realized we needed six signals and we had only six lines, three pair. We drove a stake in the ground at the sensor site and connected a "ground" to it. Then in the lab we connected to a water pipe to complete the ground. Imagine our surprise when we found about 60 volts AC between the two grounds. This was in a space of about 100 feet. We managed to filter out that 60 cps noise and did our measurements on the train signatures.

Following this activity, I went to Eglin AFB to test the ruggedness and effectiveness of our sensors. Eglin is a USAF ordinance testing facility. We put the sensors in the nose of 500 lb. bombs and dropped them at the Eglin bombing ranges. Following each drop, we would unearth the bomb, connect to the sensor wires and ascertain that it was still working. The more interesting aspect of this was trying to find the buried bombs. It turns out that they can follow almost any trajectory underground. They can go left, right, down or up. When going up, they could resurface and fly many feet before impacting a second time. The second impact would leave them laying on the ground. All our drops were low altitude giving low impact angles. I once saw a bomb impact and bounce up and almost hit the wing of the plane. We had reached the lower limit of impact angles. By the way, when a bomb go into the ground, it leaves quite a small entry signature, and is not too evident.

After that, I was sent to Ft. Eustis VA, which is an Army transportation center. There we pushed old trains down a track in the Virginia tide water area by the Chesapeake Bay and blew them up. Actually we buried various amounts of TNT at various distances from the track. When the train went by- BLOOIE! The train may be blown over. If so another train would come and with a big crane, right our test train and we would do it again. My job was the instrumentation. We had various accelerometers on the train and in the ground. We had recorders in a box car that was safely a few cars back.

It was a very interesting job. I got to work on the early research of the product and development and testing. That does not happen in a large company. We established a pilot production line with Kodak in Rochester. I did not get involved in that part. The program was canceled, I think primarily because the electronic components were not rugged enough. Today, with solid state components, it could be done.

Convair

Field Test Support

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Systems Test Lab

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Atlas Guidance

My group was developing guidance software for Atlas Space launches beginning in the mid 1960’s. the term software ...

(Note: The word “Software” was invented by Walter Schwedetsky, Convair’s head of the computer labs at that time. As we had meetings with other companies doing guidance work, we would use the word ‘software’ and they would say, “What is that word and what does it mean?”. After six months or a year or so of meetings, the whole guidance engineering community was using it, and now the world. Schwedetsky made another historical statement. He said, “Mark my words, someday software will cost more than hardware. Everyone, and I mean everyone, laughed at that idea. At that time the hardware costs were 100 to 1000 times more than software. How right he was.)

...did not exist then, we called our product ‘Guidance Equations’. The only use of software at that time was for guidance systems, whether they were were weapon or space systems.

AGARTS

As head of the Atlas Guidance organization, I had a group of young engineers that were very sharp, (I hired most of them.) and they didn’t know of any limitations to what they could do. One of our very great accomplishments was AGARTS, Atlas Guidance Analysis Rapid Targeting System.

Anyway we were developing the guidance software for Atlas/Agena space launches. The Agena was an upper stage made by Lockheed. These launches were putting classified Air Force satellites in orbits for various missions and we were not told of the purpose of the satellites or missions. Of course we had a pretty good idea, but speculation was not a good idea if we wanted to keep our security clearances. I used to attend meetings with the Air Force and the various contractors supporting these programs. The contractors included Lockheed, the satellite manufacturer, TRW, GE and others. At one meeting, an Air Force officer voiced a complaint that it took too long to “Target” a mission after they had defined a need to launch a satellite. To translate that, he meant that once the USAF had a need for a certain kind of satellite in a specific orbit over the USSR, it took too long for the system to get one up there, and the main delay was the “targeting”. Targeting means, developing a detailed trajectory and supplying all the guidance software parameters for the Launch Complex, the Atlas and the Agena to put that satellite into the desired orbit. The targeting for these missions was being done by Lockheed or TRW at that time. When he said that it took too much time, I asked, “How much time does it take?”. He said, “Two weeks”. I boldly said “Two weeks! We can do it in two hours!”. The meeting fell silent. Then there was a general hubbub, some snickering, maybe even some laughter, as in this meeting of USAF brass and very well respected space system guidance engineers, I was, at 30+, the youngest engineer. At that time Convair did not have a reputation as a guidance company. It was known to be a builder of high quality hardware systems.

I was not totally bluffing. We had been working on rapid targeting software. I knew it took 30 minutes of Convair’s mainframe Cyber system to do the basic job. I assumed I could persuade Convair management to give us total priority of the computer system to do this targeting job. To do some checking and overhead, I padded the half-hour to two hours. When the meeting quieted down, I said, “Come down to Convair with a ‘Test Mission’ and let us show you”.

The targeting of a two-missile system is very difficult. Just the trajectory development requires a painstakingly accurate trajectory program. Targeting involves the setting of several guidance parameters in the missiles. Changing one parameter can improve one orbital condition but worsen other orbital conditions. People would target missions by manually “tweaking” guidance parameters, observing the results and then doing more tweaking. Thus the two weeks.

We had developed a General Iteration (GENIT) program in which our computer software would “tweak” the system, one parameter at a time, thus developing partial derivatives of the system. It would then solve a matrix inversion for a ‘least squares’ solution for the best way to obtain that orbit.

(Note: I hope some of my descendants can understand this. Then, again, it may be elementary to future generations.)

Anyway, the scheme worked very well. It was certainly the most advanced targeting software in the country at that time..

Well, the USAF came to Convair with a test mission and we produced a fully targeted mission in well under two hours. They gave us the contract to do the targeting for their classified missions. On the day of a launch, they would send us a classified telegram with the mission parameters. We would notify Convair management and get full priority on the computer. We would develop the trajectory and targeting parameters, put them on tape and a paper printout, get into a car and deliver them to an Air Force jet waiting at Miramar Naval Air Station, 10 miles North. From there they were flown to Vandenberg Air Force Base, (VAFB), the launch site. The launch was made and we were again one step up in the Cold War.

I did not develop AGARTS, the engineers in my group did, but I supervised it’s development, saw it’s value and convinced the USAF that we had a tool that they needed. Had I not spoken up in that guidance meeting, Convair might have continued on with the reputation of being only a company of Tin Benders.

MY PRESIDENTS

Up to this time I have lived under 11 US Presidents. Of those, one has died in office. One has been assassinated. Two have had assassination attempts. One has resigned. I will give my observations of them here.

The election of a president is a special event. He is expected to be a leader of our country, a person that is greater than most of us. He is expected to have a vision of America and a plan to take us there. Fortunately most of my presidents have fulfilled that idea. Some were better than others. Some were failing in various areas. However, they were all true Americans and tried to do the best for our country.

Herbert Hoover - Feb. 1929 - Feb. 1933

I, of course, did not know him as a president since he left office in 1933 when I was 1 1/2 years old. He was our second engineering president, the first being George Washington, Hoover was voted out of the White House because of the Depression. However, the depression was world wide and caused other election anomalies. Adolph Hitler was elected to office for the same reasons as Franklin Roosevelt and took office the same month, Feb. 1933. Hoover did not anticipate the extent of the Great Depression and did not utilize the full forces of the federal government to combat it. This was his undoing. Because of the world wide extent of the depression, it is doubtful that any measures he could have undertaken would have been meaningful. Some of his contributions were the Hoover Dam, which to this day has generated great wealth for the Southwest. He also headed the “Hoover Commission”, which recommended changes to make the government more efficient and the executive branch more accountable to the Congress and the public.

Franklin Roosevelt (FDR)- Feb.1933 - Apr. 1945

Roosevelt, or FDR as he was known, was the dominant president in my early life. He was president from Feb. 1933 to Apr. 1945. He came into office with Socialist ideas, seeking to end the Depression. His method was to increase government spending to get the economy rolling again. He tried to institute the NRA, the National Recovery Act. It was considered Socialist by many Americans and was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, and overturned. FDR was so upset by the Supreme Court decision that he attempted to “pack” the Court. That is he declared he would increase the number of Supreme Court Justices, appointing those with his liberal view, so that the Court would never again rule against him. This was probably the most serious challenge ever to our democracy, for if implemented, it meant that the president was in total control of our country. We would have essentially lost our democracy. Now I certainly believe that FDR had the best intentions. He believed that his policies would save the U.S. However, good intentions do not always yield good results.

(Note:Witness our current Welfare System.)

The depression dragged on until World War II, when heavy government spending, necessary to fight the war, lifted us out of the depression. I believe that FDR probably had the right idea that increased government spending would help us out of the depression. He instituted the Works Project Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). These were ‘ make work’ activities that employed otherwise unemployed men, and often did some useful work. My dad did WPA work for some time. I don’t know how long. Our San Diego County Administration building, on Harbor Drive was a WPA project. These programs didn’t get us out of the Depression, for they were too small. Government spending those days was so small, that increasing it, say 10%, was not very noticeable to the nation’s economy.

Unfortunately, with WWII we became addicted to heavy government spending, and continue to this day. A French philosopher and economist studied our country 200 years ago and made this prediction. “Democracies cannot survive in the long run for the people will vote for more and more government spending until the democratic country is bankrupt”.

With the war, FDR changed to a president whose main goal was winning the war. He was truly the right man at that time. He energized the nation into fighting the war. There was never a time in America when every citizen agreed on the goal of winning the war and fully backed the president.

His international policies were not so great. His agreements with Joseph Stalin were instrumental in setting up the the basics of the Cold War.

Despite his being re-elected four times, not every one liked FDR, in fact he had a significant bloc of Americans against him. In the 1940 election campaign he promised he would never send American troops to fight in European wars. This caused my Mom & Dad to vote for him, Harold would graduate from High School in 1941 and this was the reason for their vote. When he, as many people whispered, led us into WWII and broke his campaign promise, there was a lot of hatred of FDR. I heard a lot of anti FDR talk from my parents when he started drafting young men, including my brother.

It is interesting to note that FDR came into office in Feb. 1933 by election and left in April 1945 by death. Adolph Hitler also came into office in Feb. 1933 by election and left in April 1945 by death. It is also interesting that during their terms in office, these were two men who were in a mighty conflict of gigantic international proportions.

FDR took office 34 days after Hitler and died in office 18 days before Hitler.

Harry S. Truman Apr 1945 - Jan. 1953

I would say he was one of our most honest, down-to-earth presidents. He was unexpectedly thrust into the position of presiding over the end of WWII. His decisions to drop the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are considered by some today as momentous decisions, over which he labored with great difficulty. I personally don’t think he gave it more than 10 minutes thought. And since I know Truman better than anyone else reading this, I can claim I am right. Following our huge losses and the Japanese fanatic fighting in Okinawa, we knew the fight for the Japanese homeland would be dreadful. There was not 1 in 100,000 Americans who would have not made the decision Truman made, and made it very quickly. We were all overjoyed when those bombs fell. The dropping of those bombs saved many lives, Japanese and American. Those bombs claimed no more lives than the firebombs over the German cities of Dresden and Frankfort. American forces were poised in Europe to go the the Pacific for the Japan invasion, my brother among them. Those bombs may have saved his life.

Truman had a much harder decision, when the North Koreans invaded South Korea. He made the tough decision that we would stop them, and thus was the beginning of the Korean war.

Truman was respected by almost all Americans. He was not an intellectual. He was not a wealthy aristocrat as was Roosevelt or later Kennedy, but he was a real American. He had to make some tough decisions, but he made them and never wavered. Unfortunately, his war - the Korean war, which was also ‘my war’ killed 50,000 Americans and some of my classmates.

Dwight Eisenhower Jan.1953- Jan.1961

He was known as ‘Ike’, and was very popular, not just during his presidential campaign, but for a long time during WWII. He was credited with winning the war in Europe in a reasonably short time and thus saving the lives of American soldiers. He was not elected for that reason however. He was elected because he promised that, if elected, he would go to Korea, negotiate with the North Koreans and end the Korean war. He was elected. He went to Korea. He negotiated with the North Koreans and ended the war. We have never had another president with such completely fulfilled campaign promises.

Ike also presided during the mid ‘fifties’, a period of great post American prosperity.

John Kennedy Jan.1961 - 1963

Bay of Pigs Fiasco

Cuban Missile Crisis

   Jupiter IRBMs   Operation Mongoose 200 People Headed by Bobby Kennedy

Assassination Theory

I have had a suspicion for many years that the Jack Kennedy assassination was in was in some way Cuban backed. Now, after watching Ted Koeppel's Nightline Program Monday night, I am even more suspicious.

Apparently the Kennedy administration had Operation Mongoose in operation for some time prior to his death. Following his death, the operation stayed active, but in a more covert way. The head of Operation Mongoose was Bobby Kennedy. Mongoose was a study by over 2000 people to determine ways to get rid of the Castro regime. This was serious stuff! Obviously it was known to Castro. The Bay of Pigs must have reinforced Castro's knowledge that Kennedy was trying to get him out of office.

I feel that the Warren commission uncovered the true facts of the assassination, and that it was Cuban backed. If this result had been made public, we would have had to attack Cuba. This would have brought the Russians into play and possibly started WW III. Therefore the cover-up was initiated by the Warren commission. Even the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, undoubtedly also by the Cubans, did not bring the truth of these matters to light. The consequences of such truth would have been too horrible.

Lyndon Johnson 1963 - Jan.1967

Certainly the most corrupt president we have ever had. He entered politics in Texas as a relatively poor man and left politics as a very rich man. He never earned money in a job outside political office. No other President of my time has made such money from his political career, not Hoover, not Roosevelt (who already had wealth), not Truman, not Eisenhower, not Kennedy (who already had great wealth), not Nixon, not Carter, not Reagan, not Bush and not Clinton.

He was known for two events, the escalation of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Bill.

It is generally agreed that he engineered the Gulf of Tonkin incident to get Congress to vote approval of increased military action in Vietnam. In this incident it was claimed that Vietnam gunboats fired on our Naval vessels. It was ludicrous to believe that the Vietnam Navy, which essentially didn’t exist, could threaten our Navy. Yet this was the big impetus to the thrust of the Vietnam war. A totally phony ploy by President Johnson. He was responsible for the escalation of the Vietnam was and for many American deaths.

He did push through Congress, as only he could with his political clout, the Civil Rights Bill. This was a very real good piece of legislation. Prior to this law, businesses could deny service to blacks by saying that their white customers demanded it. After the Civil Right Laws, these same businesses could say that they had to serve blacks because the law demands it. Thus the onus was off their backs. Everyone knew what they had been doing was wrong, but it took a law to make the citizens accept it.

Richard Nixon Jan.1968 - 197x

Gerald Ford

Certainly our most athletic president. He was an All-American college football player. No other president has come close to that athletic distinction. He was destined to become a lame-duck president after he pardoned Nixon.

Jimmy Carter Jan. 1977 - Jan.1981

Our third engineering president, Carter said he was a Nuclear Engineer, but couldn’t pronounce the word nuclear. From him it was “nukelar”. As an engineer, I deeply resent another engineer not being able to pronounce his own career field. From the first time I heard him say that, I questioned his intelligence and I questioned the Navy’s Annapolis program in graduating such a person who couldn’t pronounce his diploma title. .

Ronald Reagan Jan 1981 - Jan 1989

The Hero of the Cold War

George Bush Jan. 1989 - Jan. 1993

Nothing to say

Bill Clinton Jan 1993 - Jan 1997

Certainly the most embarrassing president of my time. However, presidents have a way of growing into the office. I’m sure that if I were elected president, I would become a better statesman than I am now. Clinton came into office with the idea that the federal government could be run the same as the corrupt, single party system he had left in Arkansas. He brought along along his Arkansas cronies, who now have all left in disgrace, and he is learning about how to govern the country. For our country’s sake I wish him luck. This is a man who came from a corrupt one party state and tried to continue that corruption into our Federal government. He proclaimed that his administration would be the most ethical of any previous one. However, his administration was quite the opposite. His first activity was the corruption of the FBI,... ( Filegate...

(Note: He persuaded” the FBI to turn over to his Administration, personal, private files of 900 top ranking Republicans, for nefarious or blackmailing reasons) )

His next move was the corruption of the Justice Dept.

...( Travelgate ...

(Note: He not only fired the White Office Travel Staff, but got got the Justice Dept to prosecute those people for imagined offenses. The trial took several weeks and cost the accused staff many thousands of dollars, but a verdict of INNOCENT for the whole staff was delivered in only 30 minutes) ).

George W. Bush Jan 2001 - 2005

CARS

Cars have always been an important part of my life. I was always interested in learning about their history, design, and later about driving and maintaining them. Cars were probably the most constant theme in my life for the longest time. For this reason, I am including a portion of this writing to discuss the cars I have owned. They represent a variety of cars. They are not necessarily the cars I would have liked to buy at the time, but they are the cars I could afford at the time. A look at my cars is a partial look at my life.

Cars have improved dramatically during my life and I will discuss some of the improvements here.

The changes to car technology and car design I am discussing are the work of Engineers. Engineers design cars, and other things. Artists style cars. The word design, when talking about cars should not be mixed with style.

The Changes to Cars in my Lifetime.

1. 1. Tires
   My Uncle Fred, (Fred Ehlert, my Mother’s brother) had friends in Buffalo NY. He would drive there a few times a year. I remember when he came to our house after a trip to Buffalo one weekend and remarked that he did not have a single flat tire for the whole round trip. I was about 6 or 7, so that was in 1937 or 1938. Buffalo is about 175 miles from Cleveland. If that sounds amazing, consider that I had a summer job in 1950 at a Standard Oil of Ohio gas station. I worked, by myself, the third shift, from 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM. One of my jobs, besides pumping gas and servicing the cars left for the night, (lube jobs and oil changes) was to fix the flat tires left during the day. There were always a few. How many flat tires does a service station fix in a month these days? Incidentally, I had no power equipment to fix the flats, only a manual bead breaker, tire irons, a hammer and sweat. The smaller stiffer tires of those days were much harder to change than today’s fatter tires, to say nothing of dealing with the tube, for there were no tubeless tires then.
   
   In addition to the reliability improvements in tires, there has been a vast improvement in the handling of cars, much of which is due to tires. Radial tires have probably already saved more lives then airbags ever will. Back in the 1950s, if you wanted radials, you had to buy French Michelins or English Dunlops. I always replaced our family car tires with radials. This was long before radials were available on American cars.
   
2. 2. Seatbelts
   I have always used seatbelts in my cars since they were available. This was before the manufacturer’s included them in our cars. From the time they were first available I purchased belts and installed them in my cars. Of course they were lap belts and not the three point belts we now have, but they were the only belts available. The only safety device better than good seatbelts is a good driver.
   
   
3. 3. Brakes
   The first two cars I owned had mechanical brakes. How I wish that all beginning drivers would learn to drive in cars with such brake systems. Learning to drive that way is learning to look down the road well in advance of any possible emergency. I can see that people of my generation, who did not learn driving with mechanical brakes, have much poorer anticipation of stopping conditions.
   Besides the change to hydraulic brakes, the braking performance has gradually improved over the years. Disc brakes have become standard on the front of cars. Disc brakes have a much less propensity to fade, (that is, to overheat and lose their coefficient of friction) Brakes have gotten bigger, to the point that in many cases braking performance is now limited by tires instead of brakes. Four wheel disc brakes, allow the rear wheels to assume more of the braking job without locking up and losing steering control. In addition Anti-Lock-Brakes, offer a non-rear disc brake vehicle the ability to brake firmly while steering around a potential accident. Unfortunately drivers are not taught to do this.
4. 4. Performance
   

   My 1950 Olds “Super Eighty-Eight Club Coupe”, as it was called in those days was a hot car. In stock condition, it has faster than 95% of all cars then. Today, it would rank around the 30% point.
   
   

5. 5. Handling
   

   This is the biggest change in cars during my lifetime. When I was growing up, the term handling did not exist. No one, but Europeans, knew that cars could be made to “handle”. Today almost every car available handles better than most of the sports cars of the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s.

6. 6. Economy
   The lighter weights achievable by unit construction and front wheel drive, the computer controlled engine management systems, the more aerodynamic body shapes, and radial tires have made increases in fuel economy well beyond what we had, or even dreamed of, 50 years ago.
7. 7. Reliability & Maintenance
   

   This is another benefit from the engineers. Cars are much more reliable than 50 years ago. The cheapest car today is more reliable than the very most expensive car of my youth. Maintenance is only a trifle of what it was. When I worked in a gas station, cars were brought in every 1000 miles for a “lube job” and oil change. Lube jobs don’t exist now. They have been designed out of the cars maintenance cycle. Oil changes are now at less frequent intervals. Tune-ups, once a often experience ritual are now essentially non-existent. Tune-ups were performed at 5000 - 10,000 mile intervals. The reason for this was the ignition system, the “points and plugs”. The non electronic ignition system was subject to wear and failure. The general weakness of the ignition system required the plugs to replaced much more often than today. In addition carburetors could need adjustment, cleaning, or overhaul. Today with the computer controlled ignition and fuel injection systems, the engine doesn’t need servicing, except for oil changes, for 100,000 miles.

   The down side to this today is when the engine doesn’t run right, repairs can be expensive. The ignition and carburetion systems of cars through the 60’s can be maintained and repaired quite cheaply. Today, any work on the ignition/fuel system can be quite expensive.

MY CARS

The following discussions of my cars are written as I viewed cars then, and not necessarily as a comparison to present cars.

1: 1934 Chevy 2Dr: Sep. 1948 - Apr. 1950

My first car. I was 17 and a Senior in High School. At that time cars were very hard to buy. There was a shortage of used cars. Because of WW II, very few cars were built in 1942, and none in 1943, 1944 or 1945. By 1946, when production was re-started, the returning soldiers and all the civilians were wanting new cars. Since not enough new cars were available, used cars, for sale, were also scarce. I persuaded a friend, Roy Scherer, to sell his 1934 Chevy to me. He had been a classmate of mine, although one grade higher, through grade school. I bought the car for $175, knowing it had a slipping clutch. I expected to replace the clutch, but found it was a major deal, not like other cars, so I nursed that clutch the whole time I owned it. It meant I had to drive it rather easily, which probably was a good thing. I was one of only three Seniors at high school that had a car. Although in those days, nobody even thought a student would have a car, so very few knew that I was driving to school.

When I had turned 16, I told my Dad that I was ready to get a driver’s license. He said, “Fine, go get one”. I said, “I need to borrow your car for the driving test. He said “You don’t need to take the test until you have a car”. So one year later I took the test in my Chevy. I remember the day I got it. Rob Roy delivered it on a Thursday. Since I had no driver’s license, I spent Thursday night driving it back and forth in our driveway. The next day, after school, my sister Shirley, who had a license, rode with me so I could take the test.

A first car is usually a memory to cherish and I do have fond memories of the Chevy. However this car was not a really good car. While I had it I made a vow to not ever own another Chevy. I kept that vow for 12 years, until 1961. It was a fairly reliable car. One thing that didn’t work was the gas gauge. I kept a stick in the car that I could stick into the gas tank to see how much gas I had. In those days I couldn’t afford to keep much gas in the tank, even at 25 cents a gallon. I had my first lesson about ignition systems with the Chevy. One night, during a High School dance I invited a few friends for a ride, during intermission. We went a few miles down near the Canal/Cuyahoga river. The car began running very poorly and then died. We hitched a ride back to the school with me suffering not a little embarrassment. The next day my dad had Meinke’s gas station tow the car to the station. The owner fixed it in a few minutes, saying “the points slipped”.

That told me that those points were a rather important part of the car. I knew nothing else about them at that time. So the next day I spent a couple of hours “adjusting” the points. I had no idea what I was doing. I would change the adjustment and then start the car. It would either not start, or start and run poorly or start and run pretty well. I realized that there was more to adjusting points than my hit or miss method. I went to the library, got a Motors Manual, and began my technical education about car ignition systems.

In April 1950, my sister Carol bought a new 1950 Ford 2Dr. She allowed me to trade the Chevy in on her Ford. At the same time my brother Harold bought a 1941 Ford 2Dr and I bought his 1938 Ford 2Dr for $75. It was his second car. I often wished I could have bought my brother’s first car. It was a 1935 Ford Roadster, with a Rumble Seat. That car would be very valuable today. It was just one year away from one of the best looking Fords ever, the 1934. In those days, cars changed every year, although sometime slightly. The 1935 was not as good looking as the 1934, but close.

2: 1938 Ford 2Dr: Aug. 1950 - Feb. 1952

My first fun car. Ford came out with their V8 in 1932. It was called the Model B, replacing the Model A. That sounds logical except that the Model B replaced the Model T. Although those V8 engines were archaic by modern standards, they were the people’s hot rods. My ‘38 Ford was fun to drive, because it was so much quicker than the other low priced cars of the time, Chevy, Plymouth, Dodge, Pontiac, Etc. This car had chrome, fake exhaust headers from the side of the hood to the front fenders. This was the style of the Duisenberg, which was supercharged. For that reason people were always asking if my car was supercharged. It also had a “bullet” shaped radio antenna on the roof. Some police cars had such an antenna. This made it look, to some extent, like a police car. It was a black Ford and all police cars then were Fords. I could drive through the streets of Cleveland and have many cars pull over to let me pass. Fun.

(Note:Just today, March 13, 2001, I was passed by a black 1938 Ford 2Dr. It was a nostalgic moment. I wanted to stop the driver and say that I owned one of them 50 years ago.)

My friend, Elmer Sauer, who lived next door, had inherited a 1938 Buick Special from his dad. We were always arguing about which was the better car. The Buick was better by most standards, as it cost considerably more money. It had an Overhead Valve (OHV) straight eight engine. The Ford was a rather cheap valve-in-head, (flathead) V8 engine. After months of arguing we agreed on a test. Granger Road Hill, which is about the same as Rt.163 climbing North out of Mission Valley, San Diego, was to be the race, (I mean test.) site. The test was simple. We would drive slowly along the flat, toward the stoplight at the bottom of the hill. When the light turned green the “test” was on. As a judge, we had a friend ride along in the Buick. Well, we drove at about 30 mph toward the red light. When the light turned green, I shifted into second, cars were only three speed then, and shot ahead about 200 feet. After shifting into 3rd, and during the climb of the hill we stayed the same 200 feet apart. When I claimed victory, he claimed foul because I shifted. I said that is part of racing, but he as a Buick driver never agreed. This may seem trivial and obvious today to you familiar with 5 speed transmission, but there was a different mentality in those days. People with big cars considered it a attribute of their cars if they never had to shift. Elmer inherited that from his Father, and never thought to shift, or never thought I would shift. I can remember as a child, my Dad talking about cars that could go up Granger Road Hill in “high” gear. The Model T’s had to go up backwards, as they had no fuel pump. If the hill was too steep, the gas tank would be below the engine. The only way to get the fuel to flow to the engine was to back up the hill.

Anyway, my ‘38 Ford was a fun car. It could out accelerate almost all other cars, except other Fords. It was John Dillinger who wrote a letter to Henry Ford thanking him for making such a fast car. By the way, it was the last Ford to have mechanical brakes. I have said many times since, that everyone should learn to drive in a car with mechanical, (read that “poor”), brakes. That gives you a lifetime habit of always looking down the road for potential stopping situations.

3: 1941 Ford Business Cpe: Jan. 1952 - Jan. 1953

One of my mistakes. I bought this car out of a used car lot at night - pretty dumb. The next day I noticed that both the front and rear springs were broken. Fords had two transverse springs. It also had no heater. I replaced the springs right away with two junkyard springs, and made it through the winter with no heater. Other than that, it really was a good running car. It was my first ‘Three-on-a-Tree’ car. That terminology didn’t exist then, and didn’t appear until the mid 60s, when ‘Four-on-the-Floor’ transmissions appeared on American cars. I had always wanted a ‘41 Ford. I thought they were “modern”. Since I paid only $145 for it, it was OK. But it was the shortest period I owned any car, because an opportunity arose to upgrade came soon.

Coupes, in those days, were “Business coupes”. They had little or no back seat, but a very large trunk One could easily fit into the trunk. It was assumed they would be used by salesmen, for their merchandise, not bodies. Today, those old coupes would be called “Two plus Twos”.

4: 1941 Ford 2Dr: Jan. 1953 - Mar. 1954

My first good car. In 1953 my sister Carol bought a new 1953 Ford Victoria Hardtop, a very good car. Harold bought her 1950 Ford and I bought his nice 1941 Tudor Ford for $350. I had that car through graduation from Case and drive it out to, and back from, California, but I was ready for something more befitting a car enthusiast engineer.

5: 1950 Olds 88 Club Cpe: Mar. 1954 - Jul. 1955

The term “Club Coupe” first appeared around this time. I don’t know what the term “club” meant. I guess it was to differentiate from the older “business coupe”. Club Coupe is the same as the definition of Coupe today.

I think of this as my first real car, my first performance car. When I was shopping for it I had a choice, for the same money, $850, of a 1951 Mercury or this 1950 Olds Rocket 88 Coupe. I wanted performance and chose the Olds. It had a modern, at the time, overhead valve 5 liter engine. The Mercury was still a flathead engine. It was the lightest Oldsmobile. There was also no equivalent GM car in the other GM lines, Chevy, Pontiac or Buick. It was the hottest car of 1950. It was unique. The Olds had a Trailing Arm rear suspension, with links angled from the frame down to the rear axle. When under strong acceleration, these trailing arms raised the rear body and pushed the rear wheels down on the pavement. It gave a very aggressive accelerating look. The car would first “sit up” in the rear and then take off. I never regretted the decision over the Mercury, except for a moment during the drive home. I had bought it from a used car dealer on the West side of Cleveland, and had to drive it about 15 miles home. At the bottom of Granger Road hill I decided to see what the car really had. Granger road hill is about the same as Route 163 coming North out of Mission Valley. The car took off pretty well, but when I looked in the rear view mirror, the whole highway was obliterated with smoke. I had the sickening feeling that I had just made a terrible mistake, but I said, “What the hell, if it’s going to blow this is as good time as any”, and held my foot in it. By the time I reached the top of the hill, the smoke had stopped, and it never smoked again. It also never used any oil while I owned it, which was not usual for cars of that era. It had apparently been owned by a person that only puttered around town and never open it up. He probably thought he was buying an Olds similar to the ones he had purchased in the past, which were low powered flathead straight sixes. He didn’t know that this new overhead valve V8 was heralding a new era in American automobiles (It was actually introduced in the 1949 Cadillac and Olds). I succeeded in blowing four years of carbon out of it.

At that time we used to go to the Drag Races in Akron. I would listen to the cars racing there, especially the Oldsmobile, and if I heard an exhaust sound I liked I would ask the owner what mufflers he was using. The best sounding 88’s used Porter mufflers. So I installed Porter mufflers on my Olds. Those Olds had a unique muffler/tailpipe arrangement in that the tail pipes exited near the center of the car. This provided a special sound. With my Porter mufflers, my Olds sounded great. Of course, I needed more power. I installed a Mallory Dual Point ignition system. That was the rage in those days, and rightfully so. The standard ignition systems couldn’t handle the high revving, high compression V8s. By 1954, quad carburetors were available. I had to buy a quad intake manifold and quad carburetor. That didn’t require much money, but an air filter seemed prohibitively expensive. I bought a junkyard Chevy truck filter and cut it to fit. It worked well, and provided a special “moaning sound” when the secondary carburetor barrels opened. The car was now pretty “hot”, but couldn’t beat the 1954 Buick Centuries. I needed some more. Some of those Buicks had manual transmissions. There was a fire in the GM Hydramatic transmission plant in that era, and some GM cars came equipped with “Three on the Tree”. My 88 had the standard automatic Hydramatic. I searched all the junkyards in the Cleveland area for a manual transmission conversion, but with no success.

I then was transferred to work at Eglin Air Force Base and lived in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. As I drove into town, I noticed a junkyard - Pee Gees Parts. I made a note of checking that for my Olds manual transmission parts. This was 1954. I was one year out of school and very proud of being a Case graduate. At the first opportunity, I went into PGs and inquired about Olds transmissions. He said, “You don’t look like the usual Air Force Airmen we get in here”. I said, “No I am an Engineer”. He said, “What school?”. I said, “Case”. He said, “That’s my Alma Mater”. I almost went into shock. This guy running a junkyard in a small Florida town was a Case graduate. He explained that he was in the Class of 1941, got drafted almost immediately and got onto the Army Air Corps, which later became the Air Force. During his tour of duty, he decided that Fort Walton Beach was a nice place to retire and it needed a junkyard. When he retired he started that business. He & I came to be friends. I worked in his yard for “fun” and he loaned me cars when I needed them and had me over for dinner occasionally. I regret that I did not keep in contact with Paul G. Moore after I left Ft Walton Beach. As part of my work with Convair, I traveled to Eglin Air Force Base/Ft.Walton Beach almost 30 years later. The town had greatly changed, and there was no sign of “Pee Gee”s

But more on the Rocket 88. Although my car was the hottest 1950 car, by 1954 the horsepower of other cars had increased. Much of this was due to increased compression ratios. I don’t remember the exact numbers now, but my Olds had a compression ratio of about 8.0, the newer cars had 9.5. I could calculate how much needed to be milled off my heads to increase the compression ration to 9.5. It was about 0.090 inches, or 90 thousandths. This begins one of my best and worst automotive technology experiments. I was living at a motel in Fort Walton Beach. I actually pulled the heads of my Olds while parked outside my motel room. This would seem a rather bold action today. I then took them to a local machine shop for milling. During that time Pee Gee loaned me a 1940 Ford Coupe. A 1940 Ford Coupe today is a very valuable car. When I took the heads to the machine shop and said take .090 off they said “impossible. We only take off .003 to .005 or so to make them true.” I said, “I don’t care what you have done, take .090 off”. I put those heads on and the car was now “really hot”. I had taken the risk and calculated correctly. I now had a car that could compete with the Buick Century on the street. I was lucky because even with the head milling, the valves were not hitting the pistons. There was one other problem. I assumed the hydraulic valve lifters would adjust for the new reduced head dimensions. In fact , they are supposed to do that, but when an engine has run for many thousands of miles, the lifters “get used” to operating in a range. I greatly changed that operating range with the head milling. As a result, anytime I drove the car “hard” the valve lifters would “pump up” and the car would run poorly at low speed. Since I didn’t understand what was happening, my only fix was to wait until the lifters leaked down to their normal position. I could have solved this condition with a simple adjustment of the lifters, but didn’t have the knowledge then. Even so, it was a very hot car. We formed a Car Club at Eglin Air Force Base. One of our events was a Drag Race on one of the remote air strips on the base. One of the officers had a Buick Century and he was expecting to show everyone what a great drag racer it was. The drag race was one car at a time against the clock, as the Air Base regulations would not allow us to race directly against each other. I happened to go before him. When he saw both of my rear tires light off and stay lit for quite awhile, he announced that his Century was not running well that day and declined to participate. I’m sure his car would have beaten mine, but he didn’t want to take the chance of humiliation. Nevertheless, I gained some respect that day on the Air Base.

6: 1954 Austin Healey 100-4: Jul. 1955 - Mar. 1957

During the time I owned the Olds, I became aware that there was more to cars than straight line acceleration. I realized how poorly my Olds turned corners. I was now reading about sports cars and decided to buy one. I had eagerly awaited the new 1953 Corvette. I ran to the dealer and found I could not fit in one. That’s OK, for the 1954 Thunderbird was coming. Again to the dealer with the same problem. Now I was on a mission to find a sports cars I could fit into. However, there were absolutely no sports cars in Northwest Florida and certainly no dealers. On a visit back to Cleveland, I announced to my family that I was going to buy a sports car. The reaction was as expected, “Why don’t you buy a real car? Why don’t you buy a Ford?” At that time, with the exception of my 1934 Chevy, no one in my family had owned anything but Fords. My brother Harold, however had the best advice . He said “If you are ever going to buy a sports car, do it now while you can”.

In 1955, I’m not sure what month, possibly March, we went to the Sports Car Race at Sebring Florida. This is a 12 hour race and the oldest in the country. We drove there in the Buick Century that refused to go against my Olds. The driver, being an officer, got us overnight lodging in the Visiting Officer’s Quarters at McDill AFB. The next day we had a short drive to Sebring. This race is a 12 hour race, and affords plenty of time to look at other things. There was a large tent filled with every make of sports car at the time. I went down the line, testing everyone for size/fit. When I got to the Austin Healey I knew I had found my car. Now I only had to really find one, a used one that is.

A few months later I was transferred to Ft. Eustis VA. I lived in Williamsburg, which is not too far from Washington DC. I spent a weekend in DC looking for a Healey, but with no success. In July I was in Cleveland, over the Fourth. I looked at two Healeys. I will never forget my first ride in one. The owner was driving along a country road, and planning to go around a “country block”. So when he approached this intersection I knew he was going to make a right turn there. When he didn’t, I assumed he had another route planned. When we got to the intersection, well past the time for turning right, he actually did turn right. I didn’t believe a car could do that. I was now sold on sports cars and Austin Healeys. Even though I had read a lot about them, there was no substitute for the real experience of lateral g’s.

I didn’t buy that car, but instead bought one from a man who was about to be married and was willing to trade cars - Olds for Healey. He wanted $2200 for a one year old Healey and we agreed on $600 for my Olds. A good deal for me. I bought a red 1954 Healey on the Fourth of July 1955.

Incidentally the Healey was originally black, but the owner said that all sports cars should be red, so he had it repainted. It was a very professional job as I was never able to find any signs of original black paint. The interesting item is that my other English sports cars, the 1960 Healey and 1958 MGA were also black.

The Healey was a great car, but not by modern standards. It was not even State of the Art then, but nothing was State of the Art except maybe the Mercedes 300SL Gullwing. The Healey was very low. It had an “underslung” frame. The frame went under almost everything, even the rear axle. However, the exhaust system was even below the frame. It was almost impossible to drive the car very aggressively without losing part of the exhaust system. For this reason, most owners, including me, shortened the exhaust system and turned the pipes out on the left side just by the driver’s ear. The car never overheated, but the inhabitants did. The heat coming into the cockpit was sometimes overbearing. The engine was a large four - 2.6 liters. Lots of torque with lots of noise and vibration. Fortunately there was an overdrive transmission which allowed 80 mph cruising at relatively low rpm. It was rumored that the engine was from an English tractor and there was no reason to doubt that. Another idiosyncrasy was the transmission. It was a three speed with overdrive. It actually was a four speed, with first gear locked out as it was too low for the drive train to handle the engine torque. Although the transmission was a “H” three speed, it was a backwards “H”. First was to the right and down. Second was to the left and up, and third was left and down.

Despite these English idiosyncrasies, it was quite fast, handled very well and could cruise all day at relatively high speed. No matter at what speed it was driven, it always got 26 mpg. Although I bought it in Cleveland, I was still living in Williamsburg VA at the time. My first date with Dolly, my future wife, was the same day I bought the Healey, July 4, 1955. I made several trips from Williamsburg to Cleveland in the Healey that summer. It was a one way distance of 500 miles. I drove to Cleveland and back to Williamsburg, between Friday evening and Sunday evening, never missing an hour of work. However, the Healey really flew.

One memorable drive from Williamsburg to Cleveland occurred just prior to Hurricane Diane in 1955. I had been planning to drive to Cleveland that weekend, but the Hurricane was fast approaching the coastline of Virginia, where we were. My friend Lincoln Endelman was also in Virginia and was planning to fly back to Cleveland that Friday night. The weather reports were ominous. The Navy was evacuating all their planes from nearby bases. I told Lincoln that it was not safe to fly. I said he should ride with me to Cleveland in the Healey. It took a little persuasion , but he finally agreed that the Healey was probably safer than a plane. Lincoln was not a car enthusiast, but he was interested in cars, and so was just a little interested in riding in the Healey.

Well, we took off for Cleveland after work Friday night, Lincoln was driving. He was really enjoying the drive, as he had never driven a sports car before. I had a route through Virginia that was mostly two lane County roads. I knew them fairly well and was able to drive them at a good speed. We were motoring briskly through this cornfield with a right turn approaching. I had driven this turn a few times. When Lincoln realized there was a right turn, he just froze. In his experience of driving American cars, he knew that it was impossible to make that right angle turn at the speed we were going. I was calmly sitting there waiting for him to turn right. I suddenly realized he had panicked and was not going to turn. I yelled, “Turn the wheel! Turn the wheel! Turn the wheel!”. I saw that he had no intention of turning, so I grabbed the steering wheel and turned right. We went around the corner with no problem. Lincoln pulled over to the side of the rode and stopped. He was shaking and said, “I was prepared to crash. I knew we had no other choice.” I drove the rest of the way to Cleveland. The only other noteworthy event of that ride was that the rain of the hurricane hit us along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. We had the top down, but stopped under a bridge and put the top up. From then on, Lincoln kept reminding me that if he had flown, he would be in bed now. I said that if he had flown, he might be dead now.

Driving back to Virginia that Sunday night was a different experience. We did not get very much rain in Ohio from the storm, so I was not overly concerned about the weather conditions. As I was driving I could see the stars and thought it was a great night for a 500 mile drive to Virginia. As I drove the two lane roads, I would occasionally splash through puddles and they were rather frequent. My normal speed on those roads was 80 mph. I might have reduced it a bit for that wet night, but I was not prepared for what was to come. I was driving through a shallow valley of a cornfield. I saw some water ahead on the road, but I had been splashing through water all night. I then saw that this “puddle” was longer than all the others. I got off the gas and on the brakes, but I was entering a flooded road. I don’t know at what speed I hit the water, but it was almost like hitting a wall of Jell-O. I couldn’t believe how hard water could be in slowing a car. All of a sudden water was pouring over the windshield, naturally the top was down. It was as if I had plunged into a lake, which was almost true. I slipped the car into neutral and revved the engine to keep it running. When the car stopped - thankfully the engine was still running - I was sitting on the left shoulder of the road, just a few feet from the concrete bridge abutment. Had I floated a couple of more feet to the left, I would have been lost in the ditch. Had I gone a few feet farther down the road, I would have hit the bridge. Water was pouring into the car from around the doors. There was six inches of water in the car. I knew that if I stayed there, the car would drown. I drove slowly, in first gear, out of that cornfield lake. I made it to Williamsburg, cold and wet, but the Healey was OK.

Dolly & I drove the Healey to San Diego in October 1956. I enjoyed the trip and I will say that she never complained.

In San Diego we knew that Deb was coming in March 1957. We decided that we needed a family car. So we ordered a VW. In those days you had to be on a six month waiting list for a Beetle. When five months had gone by, our VW dealer went out of business. We were in a mild panic. Instead of keeping the Healey and buying a used family car, I traded the Healey in for a new Simca..

7: 1947 Plymouth Cpe: Nov. 1955 - Dec. 1956

Winters in Northern Ohio were very hard on cars. I was not going to let my Healey be subjected to the salt environment. Also because of it’s low slung frame, I knew it would not get through very much snow. So I needed a winter car. When I told my dad that I was not going to drive the Healey in the winter, he reacted predictably. “No car is going to stay in my garage that can’t be driven. Why don’t you have a decent car?”. When he calmed down, he did a very good thing for me. He cut the wall out of the shed, that used to be our chicken coup, and we pushed the Healey in there for the winter. When spring came, we got it out, and it was just like having a new car again.

A 1947 Plymouth coupe was advertised at a used car dealer for $50 - just what I needed. I went to look at it. The salesman did not want to start it, for it had a bearing problem. I said, “Start it”. When he did I immediately said “Shut it off”. It had a bad rod bearing. I determined which one, removed that spark plug, and drove it home. Then I bought a used Dodge engine from a junkyard for $60 and swapped engines. It proved to be a good reliable winter car. When I left for California, I gave the title to my dad and said, “Sell if you can sell it”. He sold it to my cousin Ralph Ehlert for $75.

8: 1957 Simca 4Dr: Mar. 1957 - Apr. 1959

This was the car we bought in San Diego when the order for our VW fell through due to the dealer losing his franchise. We traded my beloved Healey for it. We got $1800 for the Healey, while the Simca was $2050. It was our first “family” car. It was a wonderful car, way ahead of its time, but never accepted by the public. It was a conventional, but smaller version of an American car, with a 1300 cc front engine, rear wheel drive arrangement. The transmission was controlled by “Four-on-the-Tree. That is, it was a 4 speed column shift. We were really lucky the VW order fell through as the Simca was a much better car. It was faster, quieter, roomier, had very comfortable seats and handled better than a VW. But liike the VW, it was fun to drive.

We had only one problem with it, and that occurred at the worst time. In December 1957, we started to drive back to Ohio. Driving up to Alpine, it was apparent the car was not running right. I had just filled the tank in San Diego and suspected bad gas. That was grasping at straws. I drained the tank at an Alpine gas station and refilled. The problem was not resolved. It wasn’t until Oklahoma that I saw bubbles in the gas line between the fuel pump and the carburetor, meaning the fuel pump was sucking air. This was due to a leak in the fuel line between the fuel tank and the fuel pump. Unfortunately this meant the engine was running very lean and the valves were burning. We limped on into Cleveland. There I installed an electric fuel pump, which didn’t solve the burned valve problem, but kept it from getting worse. We drove back to San Diego with that condition. Two valves were severely burned and we were driving a four cylinder car on two cylinders. Debbie never complained. The biggest trial was the grade up from the desert in California. That was before the new Interstate. We made it up that hill in first gear. Back in San Diego I replaced two burnt valves and the Simca was perfect again.

In 1959 we were essentially forced to move from our rental on Horton Ave. We needed cash for a down payment to buy a used house. We sold the Simca for $1200. We really did not want to lose that car. It was not to be the first time we would sell a car to make a down payment for a house. We also borrowed $2000 from my sister Shirley to make that down payment.

9: 1942 Mercury 2Dr: Feb. 1958 - Feb. 1960

I bought this car specifically for the purpose of converting it into a dune buggy. This was before VWs were determined to be the best thing for dune buggy conversions. Of course VWs were too new and expensive then to be widely considered for dune buggies. I bought the Mercury for $30. Had to tow it home. But there was nothing really wrong with it. I removed the body and had a junkyard come and pick up the body. I chopped three feet out of the frame, shortening the wheelbase to 75 inches. I picked that number to match my height - very scientific. At the time I was building it in the garage, Debbie would come out there and crawl under the car with me. She always emerged with a greasy and dirty dress, much to the dismay of her mother. After the car was completed, if that could ever be an identified time, we moved to Clairemont - the Mt. Bigelow home. I would tow the dune buggy into the wilds of Clairemont/Kearny mesa, which was just East of Genesee Dr. From there I could take off into the canyons of Clairemont. There were really untraveled canyons then. They were primarily the tributaries of Tecolote canyon. I could drive all the way to the mouth of Tecolote canyon by Morena Dr.

I sometimes feel wrong for turning that 1942 Mercury into a dune buggy. As mentioned earlier, very few 1942 cars were built and not anyone could buy one. A customer had to be a well placed executive in a defense industry, or maybe some ranking politician. I only knew one person who bought, or was allowed to buy a 1942 car. He was Don Lake, a distant relative of mine (I will get that relationship), and an executive of Jack & Heintz Co., which made electric motors and actuators for aircraft. Coincidentally I worked a summer there between my Junior and Senior years at Case. Anyway, some will say that all 1942 cars should be preserved. Well I unpreserved a 1942 Mercury sedan. I sold it for $95, more than three times what I paid for it, but no profit when considering the many hours of work.

10: 1950 Ford 2Dr: May 1958 - Jan. 1960

When we first came to San Diego, we lived at 3119 Horton Ave. It was up the hill from the Convair Pacific Highway plant. I walked to work every day and we needed only one car. In 1958 Convair opened the Kearny Mesa plant and I had to drive to work. So we needed another car. We bought the 1950 Ford for $250. It was physically in good shape, but the engine was a little worn. Still we drove it for a vacation to Yosemite, the only time I have been there. As we were coming down the Grapevine, the engine was sucking oil, waiting for a bit of throttle. At the bottom, as I touched the accelerator, the freeway behind me was obliterated with blue smoke. Other then that, we had no problem with that car, except for a failed generator. It happened North of LA about 200 miles from home. I reckoned that we could make it home on the battery alone. The engine ignition system takes very little electricity. However, this car had an electric overdrive. I knew it took considerably more than the ignition system. We had to stop for gas in LA, so that was the only time we had to use the starter. Before we got to San Diego we had to turn on the headlights. When we got to San Diego, and parked in front of the house, I breathed a sigh of relief. I said, “Let’s see what is left in the battery”. It was totally dead.

I sold that Ford to a worker at Convair, who was new from Michigan. When he saw it, he couldn’t believe a 1950 car could be in that good shape. He bought it on the spot for $215. We certainly got our enjoyment and economical use from it.

11: 1951 Buick Special 4Dr: Oct. 1959 - Feb. 1961

This was a most interesting purchase. We were now living in the Mt. Bigelow house. We received word that Dolly’s brother Jon was having some serious polio relapse problems. She thought he was near dying. She went back to New Matamoras, Ohio to see him. She took along Debbie & Eric, a pretty energetic undertaking, with their ages of 2 1/2 and 1+ years. After she was there for a couple of weeks, she thought she would need to stay there at least two months, through November. I told her she might as well stay through December, I would fly back there for Christmas and we come back to San Diego together I suggested. she look to buy a car so she could get around for three months. I suggested a Chevy, Ford or Plymouth for $100 - $200, one that we could leave there with no regrets. There was not a big car market in New Matamoras, so she bought what she could, a 1951 Buick Special 4Dr for $125. When I flew back there in December, and saw the car, I was appalled. It apparently been driven between two pine trees that were too close together. All four fenders and all four doors were bashed in. It looked terrible, but it ran. We drove it up to Cleveland, and around Ohio, and I said this car can probably make it to California. That would save us much money over plane fare. And so we drove it to San Diego. It had a significant loose front end problem that limited our speed to about 50 mph. This probably allowed us to make it to California, as driving it at 65 would have probably broken something else.

We traded that car for $25 on our first new car, the 1961 Corvair station wagon. When the sales manager at City Chevrolet asked me what I wanted for the Buick I said $25. (It was worth no more than that) He said, “We can get you a lot more than that, maybe even $250”. I said “Great, after you have taken the 15% off the list price of the Corvair, take another $225 off and give me $25 for the Buick”. He said “Why would you do that? It amounts to the same thing.” I said, “It represents $225 less that we pay sales tax on” He said, which I find hard to believe, “No one has ever suggested that before”.

12: 1961 Corvair Sta. Wgn.: Feb. 1961 - Mar. 1969

Our first station wagon and one of our really good family cars. Long before the Corvair was introduced, I, as many others, was enamored with Porsches. I made the statement that if GM or any other American auto company came out with a rear engined, flat six, air cooled, car, I would buy it. This was, and is, the description of the Porsche 911. Well GM did it. I was forced to buy the Corvair to keep my word. It proved to be a very good station wagon for our young family. We drove it back to Ohio twice. The only weakness it had was rear wheel bearings. When loaded with our family and baggage, it experienced two rear wheel bearing failures on our cross country trips. The second time it happened, I decided to limp into San Diego and replace the bearing myself, instead of using a Chevy dealer. The bearing I bought at a Sears store was obviously bigger and stronger than the Chevy bearings, and I knew I would never have to replace that bearing again. I never did.

13: 1959 Fiat 600: May 1961 - Feb. 1962

One of my interesting cars. It was only a 600 cc rear engine car. It looked like a toaster on wheels, but it was fun to drive. It could have been a good car, except it was very loud, almost painful at freeway speed, and it had a propensity to get hot. Still it was really fun to drive. It did get 45 mpg, and I sold it to a neighbor across the street, as he wanted an economy car.

14: 1960 Austin Healey 3000: Aug. 1962 - Oct. 1965

This is one of my best cars. When we had recovered from the financial strain of moving into our Mt. Bigelow house, we “needed” another car. I decided that the “Three Liter Healey”, it was really only 2700 cc, was the perfect addition to our stable. This was a wonderful car for me. For more about this car see “Slaloming” The first day I got it, I removed the top and never put it back until the day I sold it. English cars were supposed to be temperamental and hard to tune, or to keep in tune. When I got the Healey I tuned it, adjusted the SU carburetors, and never had to touch it again. The same is true of the 1958 MGA I owned later. The stories of hard-to-keep-in-tune English sports cars was apparently started by ham-fisted mechanics with no knowledge of engines.

When I took this car for a test ride, I noticed the odometer had a rather high reading for a two year old car. I mentioned that to the owner. He said, “You won’t believe this, but this odometer occasionally adds an additional 10,000 miles”. I said, “Sure”. Still the car was in very good condition for so many miles, so I bought it. Sure enough, every 1000 miles, the odometer added 10,000 miles. I put several hundred thousand miles on that car.

This Healey, which at the time was called “The Big Healey” was a much more refined car than my 1954 100-4 Healey. It did not have the low ground clearance that knocked off mufflers. It did not have the heat in the cockpit. The engine was no longer a “tractor” engine. I don’t know the origin of the 3000 engine, (undoubtedly some British sedan) but it was a smooth six, with lots of torque, capable of revving beyond 6000 rpm. However, it was heavier, and not quite as sharp in handling as the 100-4.

With this Healey I had one of my more interesting shade tree mechanic/engineering experiences. When driving it during a Del Mar race course Driving Training session, I noticed the clutch was slipping. I ordered a Heavy Duty clutch and installed it. I then had a vibration, which was obviously due to the clutch cover plate I had just bought. I was not able to get any satisfaction from the people I bought the clutch from so I decided to fix the problem myself. With the floorboards and transmission removed and the engine/transmission supported on blocks, I revved the engine up to and through the vibration point. I then removed a clutch pressure plate bolt and repeated the process. When I found a bolt that when removed reduced the vibration, I then added washers to the bolt on the opposite side. ‘Voila’, the engine was balanced. I was able to take it to 6200 rpm and it was smooth as glass. Incidentally, at that time, American cars never approached such rpm.

We had to sell the Healey to make the down payment for our Bounty St. house

15: 1960 Renault Dauphine: Oct. 1965 - Aug. 1968

This was one of our good family cars even though it was much maligned by the press. We bought it for $310. It was a direct competitor of the VW Beatle. I felt it was a much better family car. It had four doors, a much larger trunk, was much quieter and rode better. One of the first things we did, (We were braver then), was to take it on a reliability trip to Hearst Castle. It performed flawlessly. It’s only deficiency was the three speed transmission, but since I had grown up with three speed transmissions, it was not a big problem. I drove that car to work for a few years and never regretted buying it. I put a new clutch in it once. I had to remove the engine for that job. Even with having to remove the engine, the clutch replacement was one of the easiest of any I have done.

It did have one problem. The screws holding the top of the carburetor together had a tendency to vibrate loose and allow gasoline to leak out onto the engine. Loctite would have probably solved this problem, but I believe Loctite was not invented at that time.

16: 1958 MGA: Nov. 1967 - Aug. 1969

One of my really good buys. When we had about recovered from the financial strain of buying the Bounty St. house, I started looking for another sports car. I found this 1958 MGA which was hardly drivable. The clutch was shot and there was an obvious problem in the transmission. The owner was asking $250. I offered $175. He said, “That is only $25 over what the junkyard offer me”. I knew I had made the absolutely right offer. I managed to get it home, and spent a few weeks getting it into functional condition. I had never tackled a transmission before, much less an English 4-speed. I spent more than a week just removing the floorboards, (It was the only way to the transmission and clutch). The floorboards were wooden, held in by (rusty) screws. I spent considerable time each evening, removing just one or two screws. When I finally removed the transmission and clutch the scary stuff started. I opened the transmission and realized the front bearing was bad. I was able to replace it. This was not a simple task for someone who has never been in a transmission before. Fortunately, it worked.

While replacing the clutch, a trivial job, I noticed the flywheel had a large flange around the perimeter. I said, “Wow, if I remove that, this car will really accelerate”. I took the flywheel to a machine shop on Morena Blvd and said, “Remove that flange”. They said, “If we do that, you won’t be able to drive the car. It will be to hard to start moving in first gear”. I didn’t know if they were right or not, but I new if I was wrong, I could go to a junkyard and buy another stock MGA flywheel. I also knew that all manufacturers design cars for their worst customers. That is, they design the flywheel with enough angular inertia so that the least competent will not stall the car in first gear. I don’t remember the numbers, but I reduced the weight of the flywheel by a few pounds, and reduced it’s angular momentum by over 50%. I calculated the numbers at the time, but didn’t record them.

(Note: I hope that some of my descendants will have a technical education to be able to understand what I did here.) .

Anyway, when I got everything back together, it was a wonderful car. With the lightened flywheel, the car accelerated very well in first & second gear. By third gear, these benefits are essentially gone. For more about this car see the Slaloming chapter. I sold the MGA for $495, and often wished I had kept it.

When I first started to drive the MGA, I removed the top, and didn’t re-install it until I sold the car. I drove it to work every day, summer or winter, rain or shine. Of course, I was tougher in those days. One day, my Uncle Fred Ehlert was riding in the car. I made a good fast shift. He said, “That’s almost as fast as an automatic.” I said, “What do you mean, ‘Almost’?” It had a very short shift lever action, the best of any of my cars.

17: 1967 Chevy Station Wagon.: Mar. 1969 - Dec. 1984

Our best family car, without a doubt. We needed a bigger station wagon to replace the Corvair wagon. We developed a pretty good shopping plan. I would go through the ads, marking the ones I thought were good buys. Then Dolly would look at those cars during the week. I said that if one of those cars was OK for her, we would look at it together. It seemed like a good plan and it could have worked, but didn’t go exactly as planned. After a few weeks, Dolly had not found a car she would accept. Then, I found in the ads in the paper, what seemed to be a really good buy, a 1967 Chevy station wagon for $2500 at a Chevy dealer. That was 50% of it’s new car price, with just 20,000 miles. I told Dolly to look at it, and if it seemed to be OK, to just buy it. She did. It was in perfect condition. It served us for many years. I overhauled the engine at 215,000 miles, and sold it to a friend for $100 at 260,000 miles. He gave it to his son, and ten years later, I met that son who told me it was a really good car, and served him for several years.

Incidentally, we had this Chevy during the severe gas shortage of the ‘70s. We used the Chevy as a “tank car’. I took the Chevy to the gas station, where I had to wait in long lines for gas, Then I siphoned the gas from the 24 gallon Chevy gas tank to our other cars.

18: 1965 Corvair Corsa: Aug. 1969 - Aug. 1973

Ralph Nader never drove this car. Ralph wrote his book, “Unsafe at Any Speed”, about the Corvair. It was a Tabloid type book, designed to scare people and make money for Nader. Unfortunately it did spell the end of the Corvair, despite the fact that the VW, Porsche and Mercedes Benz had similar “swing axle” rear suspensions. GM completely redesigned the Corvair suspension in 1965, making it the most advanced of any American car, except for the Corvette. Unfortunately, Nader’s book had done it’s damage, and GM did not have the corporate guts to support the Corvair.

(Note: This is typical of GM as evidenced by the Chevy Vega, the Pontiac Tempest, Corvair, and the Pontiac Fiero.)

I had been looking for this car for some time. The Corsa, by the way, was a turbocharged Corvair. Turbochargers were very new in those days. When I found it at Courtesy Chevrolet in Mission Valley for $1025, I bought it. Right away, I told the salesman the car did not have enough power. As a salesman, he, of course, disagreed. I asked him to have a Corvair mechanic drive the car. He did that, and the mechanic agreed the car was lacking in power. I said I would buy the car if they could “make it go”. When I went to pick up the car, it was up on the rack and they were doing a valve job. That didn’t seem to restore the needed power, and the next thing they did was rebuild the turbo charger. By this time they had definitely spent more on the fixes than the profit margin on the car. I decided they had exhibited good faith, and I bought the car. The substantial work they had done to the car had little effect. When I got it home, I realized the throttle linkage was not allowing full throttle. When I adjusted the throttle linkage, the car had good performance, but it never had the great performance I expected.

Still it was a very good handling car. Our Convair Sports Car Club had a practice slalom one day. That is, you could, for free, go around the course as many times as you wanted. I drove the Corsa once early in the morning. I felt the lack of power was really limiting my performance. Yet I had the fastest time of all the “sports cars”. The other cars kept repeating their runs and improving their times. The times will improve as drivers get more familiar with the course and as more rubber is laid down on the course, improving the traction. It wasn’t until the afternoon that a car bettered my time. Everyone asked me to make another run, but I said I was disappointed in the power of my car and didn’t consider it competitive.

I advertised the car for $575 in the San Diego Union one weekend. I got a call early Saturday from someone in LA who said he was driving down and “Please don’t sell it before I get there”. He arrived soon and bought it. I said, “Don’t you want to drive it?”. He said “No”. He had been looking all over Southern California for a Corsa for some time, as I had four years before, and this was the first good one he had found. This is one of the few cars that I sold too cheaply. He would easily have paid twice my price.

19: 1961 Falcon Ranchero: Jan. 1972 - Feb. 1976

The next three cars were really the same car with different bodies. They were all good economical cars if one could maintain (fix) them. They were almost mechanically identical. I became an expert at replacing their clutches. and rebuilding their three speed transmissions. Each of the three needed clutches and had different transmissions problems.

The Ranchero was a decent pickup. It would haul up to three dirt motorcycles at a time, or a team of Little Leaguers.

20: 1965 Falcon 2Dr: Jan. 1974 - Jul. 1977

One of my good buys. The car was advertised at $100. I decided that at that price I would buy it if it looked OK, as I could fix anything mechanical. Seeing it in Sierra Mesa, it looked easily worth $100. I asked the owner if it ran. He started it. I immediately detected a burned exhaust valve. I said “I’ll buy it”. There had been another potential buyer mulling around the car for some time before I got there. I don’t know what he was waiting for, as the car car was easily worth more than $100. I told the owner that I was the first to offer real money, so I got to buy it. This car had the “200 inch” engine. I had learned about this engine and knew that Ford had made a mistake. This was too good an engine for an economy car. It was a “Seven Main Bearing” engine. That is, it had a main bearing between each cylinder/connecting rod. This was unheard of except for expensive engines. Why Ford did this, I don’t know. It was not a high performance engine, but it would last a lifetime. I found another such an engine advertised in the SD Union. I immediately bought it and put it in the Ranchero. It was not only an “unbreakable engine” but it had much more torque and power than the 170.

21: 1965 Mustang: Jul. 1975 - Sept. 1977

I bought this as a special car for Dolly, 200 inch six with three speed manual transmission and power steering. It was a good buy at $375. She didn’t really enjoy driving it and I never knew why. I enjoyed driving it every Sunday morning out to San Diego Country Estates to play tennis. I drove that car out Wildcat Canyon road to the tennis facility, faster than any car on that road. It handled very well, and was really fun to drive.

I don’t remember the details of each of the three (Falcon based) cars, but I do remember that I had to replace all three clutches, and rebuild all three transmissions. I became an expert on these transmissions, and could fix any problem with them. I had to, since they had three different transmission problems. I became so proficient that I could replace a clutch in three hours. That is, three hours from the time I drove the car into the garage until I drove it out with a new clutch.

One of my “used car salesman” techniques was used when I sold the Mustang. The car was in very good shape and ran very well. The customer who wanted to buy it, would come to look at it and then go to look at a 1969 Chevy Nova, which was about the same price. When I noticed some real indecision on his part, I said, “In 5 or 10 years which of the two cars you are considering will be worth more?” He bought the Mustang for $900.

22: 1968 Fairlane Ranchero: Feb. 1976 - Aug. 1980

Not a good car, but for the price, $400, it was a decent buy. I felt we needed another pickup. The Falcon Ranchero was a pretty good truck and I figured the Fairlane Ranchero, being based on a bigger frame would be a better one. Not necessarily so. It was more car than truck. It would not carry the load the smaller Falcon Ranchero would carry. The automatic transmission was bad, the reason for the price, so I searched for a replacement. I found a great buy at a junkyard, which had 1976 Ford which had just come in. I got that transmission for $125. It was essentially new with 6000 miles. Sometimes you get lucky in junkyards. I should reveal that prior to replacing the transmission, I tried to rebuild the old one. I had not ever tried that before, and the results were a failure.

23: 1969 Olds 442: Jun. 1976 - Aug. 1980

My only muscle car. Muscle cars were a phenomenon of the late 60’s. The Big Three realized they could sell cars to a select group if they put their “Big Block” engines in what were then called compact cars. Each company made “small block” and “big block” V8 engines.

(Note: The Small Block Chevy was the 265 - 350 cubic inch. The Big Block was the 396 - etc. Each manufacturer had the same kind of line up. The big block engines have now disappeared, as manufacturers have succeeded in getting more horsepower from the small blocks, while meeting smog requirements. Incidentally, the small block V8s of the mid 50s are still being made today, 40 years later.)

This gave us the Pontiac GTO, the Ford Torino GT, the Plymouth 340 and others. From my studies, I decided that if I was ever going to buy a Muscle Car, it would most likely be an Olds 442, for it was touted as the best handling of them. The name “442” came from “Four barrel carburetor, Four on the Floor, and Two exhausts”. Our 442 did not have “Four on the Floor”, instead it had the heavy duty Turbo Hydramatic transmission. This was one of the best automatics I have owned. It shifted very positively, as it should have for a performance car. This car was the hottest, in straight line performance, I have ever owned.

I hardly ever utilized the performance of this car, but one time stands out. I was heading west on Navajo Avenue, stopped at the stop light at Golfcrest. Next to me was a fairly new Porsche 911. That driver seemed an aggressive one to me, so I thought, “I wonder if he wants to test this 442”? I decided that when the light turned green I would take off briskly to see his intentions. I did, and he took off very fast, so I put my foot into it. He, of course had shot ahead of me at the start, but I caught up to him while still in first gear. The 442 shifted into 2nd while I was next to him and broke the rear tires loose on the shift. When he heard this automatic transmission car break loose under the 1-2 shift he lost all interest, and by this time I was rocketing well past him anyway.

Other than that incident, I drove the 442 fairly sedately, for I didn’t care for the way it handled. It didn’t really want to go around corners, which is one of the most important features in my cars. Despite what the magazines had said about the 442 being the best handling of the Muscle Cars, they were comparing it to American cars of the 60s, and not to real road cars.

24: 1964 Jag XKE Cpe: Mar. 1977 - Mar. 1997

A mistake. Acquired this car when the tenants in our Mt. Bigelow rental were having a hard time making the monthly payments. That is what they said. I think they just were looking for an easy way to get rid of the car. I only drove it from the trailer into my garage. It sat there for 20 years. I told Karl that if he could sell it he would get the money for it. He did get it sold for about $7500.

25: 1978 Datsun PU: Jul. 1979 - Oct. 1982

Another interesting buy. I wanted a pickup truck in the family and Karl was coming of driving age. This one year old Datsun was available for $1500, a very low price, until we saw it. It had been rolled. The fenders were smashed, but more importantly, the cab was caved in with the windows broken. We bought it as a Father/Son project and it worked out well. We straightened the fenders as best we could.. We used the Olive tree in the front yard to hang the cab from, and with a lot of banging, we actually got the cab to be right enough to put front and rear windows in. Karl drove this truck like this, but after awhile we replaced both front fenders and the cab with used parts we bought out of the Thrifty (SD Union Tribune) ads.

26: 1976 Chevy Chevette: Jun. 1980 - Apr. 1982

Another interesting buy. I was now divorced and the only car I had was the 1967 Chevy Station Wagon. I could hardly afford the gas that car required. So, as many times, I searched the ads for a good buy. This Chevette was advertised in Chula Vista. The location is important only because it was near all the Junk yards. The seller was asking $1000. The car had been stolen out of Los Angeles, taken on a joy ride South, driven through canyons, wrecked and then abandoned, where it was partially stripped. It was totaled to a Chula Vista junk yard, from which the present seller had bought it. He was going to put it in working condition, but lost interest. As well as I can remember, it had no rear window, generator, starter, or radiator. The left front A-arm was broken. I bought it for $700 and towed it home on a trailer. I did a tremendous amount of work on the car, and in San Diego junk yards, and had it on the street in just two weeks. The most difficult job was replacing the A-arm. I had not done anything like that before.

The Chevette served as a very reliable car for me. With an automatic transmission, the performance was not particularly noteworthy. However, I removed the Air Pump and the EGR valve and it was a reasonably performing small car.

27: 1977 VW Scirocco: Apr. 1982 - Aug. 1984

This was a car I had wanted since they first came out. The Scirocco was a VW Rabbit with a different body and lowered and stiffer suspension. The Rabbit was the sports car of the compacts, and the Scirocco was a little sportier.

When I bought it, it obviously needed a new clutch. I put one in. That was the first time I had done so on a front wheel drive car. When I had it apart, I had the flywheel “shaved” as in the MGA, with the same positive results. The car felt much peppier. When I traded it in on the 1984 Honda Accord, the Mechanic and Salesman who test drove it, complimented me on how well it ran. I said nothing, but knew that a lot of that was due to the lightened flywheel, and that they had not driven such Rabbits or Sciroccos

My Scirocco had 90,000 miles when I bought it. It used a bit of oil, but I figured that was due to age and mileage. At around 100,000 miles, I got a recall notice for “Valve Guide Seal” replacements. The VW dealer replaced the valve guide seals at no cost to me and the oil consumption stopped.

The Scirocco was every bit the car I expected it to be and I enjoyed all the time I had it.

28: 1979 Toyota PU: Oct. 1982 - Jan. 1983

Another interesting buy. Weren’t they all? At this time Karl was working for Balboa Mercedes on Kearny Mesa. Car leasing was not as big then as it is now, but among Mercedes dealers and owners it was fairly common. So all Mercedes dealers were in the leasing business. Balboa Mercedes had a contract to lease pickup trucks to Cox Cable TV. One day Karl came home and said that a bunch of leased Cox Cable trucks had been turned back in and he could buy them. He said that all the good ones had already been picked up by senior people, but there was still one left. He had driven it and it was OK. We went and looked at it. For the price, we couldn’t pass it up so we bought it. It proved to be a very good truck and gave me the impression that Toyota made good trucks. It became Karl’s truck.

29: Strong>1980 Datsun PU: Dec. 1982 - ?

A little later, he said another load of Cox Cable trucks had been turned in. I agreed that we needed another so we went to Balboa Mercedes and bought a 1980 Datsun PU. As I was driving it home I realized it was a terrible truck. When we got home, Karl was driving my car, I said “How could you recommend this terrible thing’? He said that unlike the previous returned leased trucks, he had not driven any of these. Well, for lack of communication, we had another truck. I gave the truck to Heidi and it served her reasonably well for a few years.

30: 1984 Honda Accord HB: Aug. 1984 - Oct. 1989

One of my very best cars. The Scirocco was on its last legs and I was ready for a better car. I wanted a Honda Prelude (First choice) or a Honda CRX (Second choice). Those two cars had a waiting time of two months, and a dealer sticker addition of $2000 or more. That is you had to wait up to two months and still pay the dealer $2000 more than the sticker price. One dealer suggested that I consider the Accord Hatchback. I drove it and was sold. The most common Hondas were the 4dr sedans and they were very good cars. The hatchbacks came equipped with rear anti-roll bars and slightly stiffer suspensions, making them very good handling cars.

I drove that Honda very hard, with lots of lateral g’s. I felt that I could outrun any car in the mountains with the exception of serious sports cars and serious drivers.

The Honda was “totaled” when I was “rear ended” and very seriously injured. It was still drivable, and I gave it to Debbie.

31: 1987 Sterling 825S 4Dr: Oct. 1989 - Aug. 2000

I bought this car without ever driving it. I was still recovering from the Honda accident. I was wearing a neck brace, I could not move my head and my arms were partially paralyzed. I could not shift a manual transmission and could not steer a car unless it had power steering. I was very familiar with the Sterling from my auto enthusiasts magazines. It is a Honda Acura Legend engine, transmission, structure and running gear, with an English body and interior. It was a European Sports Sedan with Honda reliability. For me that was the perfect combination. When I saw one for sale, and needed a car with power steering and auto transmission, I bought it immediately. It was also at a very low price compared to a used Acura Legend. Although, at the time, I disliked the fact that it was bigger than my Honda Accord, it is the best car I have ever owned. I sold it to my ex-wife Dolly.

32: 1989 Isuzu PU: Nov. 1991 - July 1999

I had been looking for a truck for a couple of years before I bought the Isuzu. I drove almost all makes of used and new trucks. I wanted, as a first choice, a Toyota and second a Ranger. I wanted to find a used truck, but needed power steering, and most of the used trucks in my price range did not have that feature. Also, in certain years, I could not fit into a Ranger, and I drove many of them. I actually put $500 down on a new Ranger optioned to my configuration. When the dealer said the price was actually an $500 more than the quote, I cancelled and got my deposit back.

One day I looked at, and drove three trucks, a Ford Ranger, a Dodge Dakota and an Isuzu. I could not fit in the Ranger, The Dakota was a long wheelbase with V6. It was not good to drive. The engine seemed sluggish, the five speed transmission was unpleasant to shift and the long wheelbase made it feel rather unmaneuverable. Then I drove the Isuzu. It seemed so much fun to drive, compared to the Dakota, I bought it on the spot. It is the “truckiest” of the mini trucks and makes no compromises for comfort. However, it is an honest truck and served me well. I gave it to my son Karl.

33: 1999 Toyota Tacoma: July 1999 - Now

After a long search for a new truck, which included two trips to L.A. trying to find the Toyota I wanted, I started looking at Dodge Dakotas. I almost bought a new one. In fact, I had decided that tomorrow, a Friday, morning I would go to the Dodge dealer I had been dealing with and buy one. That morning I took one last look at the Friday ads. I knew that Bob Baker Toyota had a green model. Their ad that day had all the cheap Tacomas for sale at $10,950. This was a big difference from the Dodge. I bought the Tacoma.

It is a minimal truck and does not have the options of the Dodge, but it carries my bike around very well and will suit me fine.

If I Could Have Them Back Now

This is a hard choice, for I have had many cars that I liked, My first fun car - the ‘ 38 Ford, my first performance car - ‘50 Olds Cpe, my first sports cars - ‘54 or ‘60 Healey, my great handling ‘77 Scirocco, my ‘65 Corvair Corsa, my only Muscle car - ‘69 Olds 442, or my wonderful ‘84 Honda Accord. Of course, this is a nostalgic wish, and practical cars are not high on the list. Several of my early cars, for which I have nostalgic memories, handled very poorly, and I would not be able to accept them today. One of the cars I would like to have today is the Mazda Miata. It is the car that English sports cars should have developed into. The car I would like to have back then is my ‘58 MGA. It was truly fun to drive, it handled very well, and I gathered a few first place slalom trophies with it. (See the chapter on Slalom Driving) It is a car I could enjoy today as an early version of the Miata. (However, the Lotus Elan is much closer to a prototype of the Miata) I would also like to have back my 1954 Healey and my 1960 Healey. I parted with them under duress. The 1954 Healey was traded for the Simca when Debbie was due, as it had no room for a third person, even a baby. The 1960 Healey was sold to obtain part of the down payment on the Bounty St. house. So I choose my MGA as the car I would like to have back, but I would really also like to have back my two Healeys.

Cars I Have Wanted

1. Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing Cpe.

This car was built 1955 - 1957. It was the first post war truly modern car. It was so far ahead of it’s time, that it didn’t sell in great numbers, and production was discontinued. The price in 1955 was $7500, way out of my reach. I said that when the used car prices dropped to $5000, I would buy one, not that I could necessarily come up with $5000 in those days, but it was a dream. At $5000, I would have really made an effort to buy that car. I monitored the prices in the LA Times and in Road & Track magazine. The prices slowly came down to $5500. That was the low. By then production had stopped and the used prices started to climb. The cars are now worth $100,000 - $250,000.

2. Porsche 550 Spyder

This is the car that James Dean was driving when he was killed, but that was not the attraction of the car. I had seen these cars race on various tracks, such as Palm Springs and our local Del Mar and Hourglass Field racetracks. They had no competition. The amazing thing is that they could be driven on the street. I actually contacted an owner who had one for sale near San Francisco. We were planning a trip to SF and made a stop to see the 550. The owner took me for a ride. In all honesty, I was not a serious buyer at the time. Maintenance of that car would have required our total household budget. The price of 550 Spyders are now out of sight.

3. Porsche Speedster

This is one of the cars I really wanted, and had some idea of buying, the previous two were more dreams than reality. The speedster was just a very successful race car, but also was very much a street driven sports car. I followed the prices of used Speedsters very carefully. I answered an ad for a ‘58 at $1100 in Bonita. I drove it, was just a little disappointed in it’s performance, and wanted a lower price. We couldn’t agree on an acceptable price, so I didn’t buy. It is probably the only car, that if I had bought it, I would still have it today. Speedsters now are at $50,000.

RACING EXPERIENCE

Around the time I bought my ‘54 Healey, I became interested in Sports Car Races. In fact, I went to the Sebring, Florida 12 Hour Race in the spring of 1955, before I had my Healey. Two USAF officers, one Airman and I drove 500 miles from Fort Walton Beach Florida to Sebring for the race. We spent one night in the Visiting Officer’s Quarters (VOQ), despite the fact that one of us was a civilian and another an Airman (to you non-military folks, that means he was not an Officer, and therefore not supposed to be in the VOQ). Nevertheless it worked - free lodging, courtesy of the USAF and the American taxpayer.

The Sebring 12 hour race was, at that time, one of the most prestigious sports car races in the world. The top race was the Le Mans 24 hour race. I was excited to be there. A 12 hour race is not something you can watch continuously, so I spent some time in the Infield. There was a large tent housing every sports car available for sale in the US. I had already experienced great disappointment when I realized I couldn’t fit in either a Corvette or a Thunderbird, America’s only sports cars. So I went down the line of cars in this tent, saying I would buy a car if I could find one I could fit in. As I went down the line I found cars I could not fit in. Then I got to the Austin Healey. It fit me like a glove. From then on, I was on a search to buy an Austin Healey. (Which I did later that year.)

Hourglass Field & Del Mar Races

In the late ‘60s we had two Sports Car race courses in San Diego, Hourglass Field and Del Mar. Hourglass field was a WWII Navy training field, that had not been used since the end of the war. It is now the site of Mira Mesa college. The Del Mar course covered the present parking lot. Both courses were about 1.7 miles. They were not active at the same time, but each one had two races a year. I remember watching Steve McQueen racing a Porsche Speedster at Hourglass. The Del Mar races were of a higher level and attracted bigger name drivers.

At the time my group of fifteen or so guidance software engineers included six sports car enthusiasts. I don’t remember how it happened, but we were invited to form a “Flag Team”. A Flag Team works one corner at a race. It’s job is to watch the cars coming around the corner, and in event of trouble, to wave the Yellow flag. That sounds pretty simple, but the job involved more. If a car spun off that corner, we would hold that car, until it was safe to re-enter the race. We also had to put cars that rolled, back on their wheels, while other cars were still racing around us. It was exciting. We had one car totally burn up in front of us, but we got the driver out.

My team had done such a good job at Hourglass Field, that when the Del Mar races started my team was given Turn One. This was an honor, for Turn One was where the action was. Virtually all accidents and spin outs happened in the first turn, which was a fairly sharp turn at the end of the long straightaway. For the years of the Del Mar races, we were the Flag Team. Turn One was the most difficult turn of the course, and after watching thousands of cars going around it, I felt that I really knew that turn.

Del Mar Driver Training Sessions.

After a couple of years of Del Mar races, the Sports Car Club of America, (SCCA), started to hold “Driver Training Sessions”. This is where I really learned to “drive”. Before I merely drove “hard”, after I drove “fast”. If you are a “driver” , you know the difference. These ‘Driver Training Sessions’ were the best training I have experienced. We would navigate the course with a ‘licensed’ SCCA race driver as our co-pilot. He would point out the places where we could improve our lap times. There were three or four of my friends at these training sessions, driving their cars. I was driving my 1960 Three liter Healey. I drew the top Corvette driver in Southern California as my tutor. We all knew him and greatly respected him, as we had seen him race there several times. I took him around the course a few times and knew I was driving very well, especially through the ‘esses’ where his Corvette was dominant. After we pulled into the pit, and as he got out, surrounded by my friends, he said, “There is nothing more that I can teach this driver. He knows this course perfectly.” I was extremely pleased to hear a winning race driver we all respected praise me so, I wish I had a recording of that event. My friends were very impressed.

Slaloms

My slalom racing began one Sunday when Dolly & I, along with Billy Haire (B.J.) and his wife drove to Tecate Mexico, a border town East of San Diego, to watch a friend of ours race. He was “Judge” Penick. I had known him at work for several years. He had a 1954 Austin Healey, same as my first sports car, but his was significantly modified. At the time I had a 1960 Healey. We arrived there a little late, but after watching the cars compete, Judge persuaded me to enter the competition. I knew nothing about this sport, but as all men, I knew I was a good driver, so I entered. What I didn’t know at the time was that this event was the premier annual amateur racing event in San Diego County.

Let me tell you that no amount of driving on public streets, no matter how fast, can prepare you for slalom racing. It is much faster, much more intense than can be anticipated. This event was not really a Slalom, rather it was an Autocross, which is a very fast slalom. It was held at the Tecate Airport. (They don’t have very much air traffic there.) There were two parallel courses. Each driver would get a practice run and a timed, (racing), run on each course. The total racing times for the two courses would be the score. Hitting a pylon, as on all slaloms would be a penalty of two seconds. Two seconds is such a big penalty that it would take you out of contention. The course was a very fast. From a standing start, you immediately entered a “slalom”, that is, a series of sharp lefts and rights. Then there was a long straightaway, up a slight grade, followed by another sharp slalom. There was a sharp “U” turn at the top of the course and you came back to the start repeating the same pattern.

Although I didn’t know any thing about this sport, I knew it was important to be teamed with a fast car. You were not scored against the car on the course with you, but against other cars in your class. So the faster your competition on the course, the better you would probably do. When I went to the “Starter” for a starting position, I was very late, and most assignments had been made. He said, “That’s OK, you can race against my wife in her Alfa”. I must have looked very disappointed, and I was, for I didn’t think she would give me enough competition. He said “What are you driving”. I said “A three liter Healey”. He said, “My wife can beat any three liter Healey”. I had no choice but to accept this pairing. I didn’t know until later that his wife was Nadine Brengel, a nationally ranked SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) champion. And she would be driving her racing Alfa.

When I finally pulled up to the starting line, the Alfa was not there. Instead there was an Austin Healey Sprite. I was very disappointed for a Sprite was not supposed to be a match for a big Healey. Then I was told that this was a racing Sprite. It was trailered to the event, and would blow the doors of my car. Well I figured that was good news, as it was not in my class and it would make me drive faster.

When the flag dropped, I can truthfully say, I had no idea how hard you had to drive to be competitive in a slalom or autocross. That Sprite just shot through the slalom gates, gaining lots of ground on me. I gained some on the uphill straightaway, which was expected. At the upper end slalom he gained more and I finished way behind him. As I crossed the finish line, my friend Billy tried to say something encouraging, but I was embarrassed. However, that was the practice run. As we lined up for the timed run, I made a personal vow that that little car would not beat me, even if I had to run over all the pylons on the course. I now had some feeling as to how hard you had to drive. It was beyond anything I had ever done.

We started the timed run, and I drove faster than I ever believed I could go. I stayed with him through the slalom. On the uphill straight away I pulled ahead, as was expected, I stayed ahead through the upper slalom and the “U” turn. I held him off through the return slalom and then “took off” on the downhill straight away. I had a feeling that I was well ahead of him. I entered the lower slalom, driving my best, when he flashed by me to the finish line. I was mortified, but Billy was jumping up and down with congratulations. I said “Why the excitement?”. He said, “You were so far ahead of him that he didn’t really try to do the lower slalom, but just drove straight for the finish line for a ‘DNF’”, Did Not Finish.. Although he was not in my class, the time I set for that run put me second in class and set me up for a showdown with my friend Judge Penick.

Penick’s first run time was slightly better than mine, so all he had to do in our runoff was beat or tie me. I was happy to run against him in the second run. I knew he was one of the very best sports car drivers in San Diego. I also knew that this course was one of the “fast” courses and was my best chance of beating him. His car, which was similar to my 1954 Healey had been substantially modified. It was as fast, or faster, then my ‘60 Healey and would handle better, but without disc brakes, as mine had, would not brake as well. He knew that he only had to tie with me to win, for his first time was faster than mine.

We took off from the start and I stayed with him as best as I could. His “4 Cyl” Healey had an advantage through the tight slaloms. As we came down the straight away towards the lower slalom, he was substantially ahead of me. I saw his brake lights go on. (He had drum brakes.) I said, “I have disc brakes and I don’t have to brake that early”. He beat me on the practice run, but I knew I had an advantage in braking and planned to use that on the timed run. On the timed run, he again was quite a bit ahead of me as we began the return (downhill) straight. Speeds were high here. I was going about 85 mph downhill. I saw him brake and I knew I could brake much later. I shot past him and braked very hard, to get down to the slow speed needed to negotiate the final slalom. I beat him to the finish line, the only time I ever beat him, but his total, or combined time was better than mine so he was the winner. But my total time of the two runs put me in second place in class. Incidentally Nadine Brengel, in her racing Alfa, wasn’t even close to my time. At the finish line Judge’s brakes were so overheated and faded, he could not stop, and had to run of the course. I would guess that most people reading this are not aware how much brakes (disc brakes) have improved car safety. With the old drum brakes, brake fade could be a real problem.

There was an award ceremony in Tecate after the event, where I was awarded 5th place overall. This was a very fast course and the only cars that beat Judge and I were Corvettes. The sports car group was shocked that a newcomer could rank so high in their premier event. I was now hooked on slaloms.

I slalomed the Healey for some time after that, always coming in second to Judge. The other courses were always tighter and slower so I had almost no chance to beat him, but I was always close. He was a good driver with a fast car. We actually had a drag race once on Kearny Villa Rd, and realized our cars were identical in straight line performance. He beat me in slaloms, with good driving in a slightly shorter, lighter and better handling car.

I sold the Healey to get some money for the down payment of the Bounty St. house, and assumed my slalom days were over. Two years later I made the great buy of the 1958 MGA. It was my drive to work car and I had no thoughts of getting back into slaloms. One evening at a Convair Sports Car Club meeting a few guys begged me to slalom the MGA. I said “No”. I was rusty, having been out of it for about three years. They insisted, saying the guy winning that class was no driver, and they couldn’t stand him winning, even though he had a race prepared MGA.

I relented and entered a slalom and won first place in class. Our class included MGAs, ALFAs and Datsuns. My car had Firestone whitewall tires, not the type of tires thought of as competition ready. During this first slalom I recognized the weakness of the MGA. It would lift the inside rear tire in turns, making it very slow accelerating out of the turns. I decided to use some of my engineering. The solution was to reduce the rear roll stiffness, or increase the front roll stiffness. Either technique would keep more of the inside rear wheel on the ground. The first option is difficult and can give other problems.

(Note:I hope some of my descendants have the technical knowledge to understnd this.)

For the second, I remembered my work in gas stations, greasing cars up on racks. I remembered that Chevys of the 1949 - 51 era had anti-roll bars that were very narrow. I wondered if I could fit one of them on my MGA. I bought one at a junk yard, and, sure enough, I was able to install it on the MGA.

There was no stopping me now in the slaloms. Where car times are normally separated by a few to several hundreths of a second, I was now winning by seconds! People would come up to me and say, “You can’t possibly go that fast on those skinny American whitewalls”. I never told anyone of my secret. I figured an Engineering education and a lifetime of studying about cars should have some benefit.

Eventually those whitewall tires wore out and I had to buy something else. At the same time my friend Judge was replacing his tires. He had been running on Dunlop SPs, which were the premium sports car tires at the time. I bought his worn out Dunlop Sps and had them recapped. Recaps were common then, but since radial tires were rather new then, “Recappers” didn’t know how to recap radial tires. I drove those recaps on the street for about three weeks, until the next slalom. I drove as hard as I could, especially on every freeway ramp. I tried to simulate slalom conditions. Those tires were “Great”. I was beginning to feel sorry for my competition.

My next slalom was begun with extreme confidence. With the first turn I knew I was in great trouble. The car wouldn’t turn. The cornering forces in a slalom are so much greater than anything encountered on the road that I could not test my recapped tires adequately. The rubber was just peeling off my tires. I not only finished last in my class, but last overall!. Since I had just spent money on these tires, I could not afford to get new tires. My slalom days were over.

This was not necessarily such a bad thing. I realized I was spending a lot of time competing in slaloms. It was not just the driving time, which was usually less than five minutes for two runs, but the preparation time. I would have to remove both bumpers, the spare tire and any other unnecessary stuff and get the tires pumped up to 50 psi, which was the single biggest handling improvement you could do to any car. Then I would have to arrive at the race course early to be able to “walk” the course. Most slaloms did not allow “practice” runs. You got two timed runs. Your score was either the sum of the two or the best of the two. Walking the course was very important in learning the course. When you are driving at speed through the cones, if you don’t know the correct “line” ahead of time you will lose. All this time used up a good deal of a Sunday, and I was ready to hang up my slaloming shoes for more time with my family.

DANCING

When we had dances in high school, I was a wall-flower. It was a Polish community and I didn’t know how to polka. Also, our Lutheran church drummed into us that dancing was sinful.

I never considered myself a dancer, but after the divorce I looked for something to get me out of the house. I was playing tennis with three married friends once in awhile, but that was irregular. I started to take ballroom dancing lessons at Patrick Henry High School. It was just a mile away. I didn’t enjoy it too much, but it was something to do. One night after we finished tennis at the Oakwood apartments tennis courts. We wandered towards some music at their Community Center. There was a dance and we were informed it was a dance for single non-smokers. I said, I would be there for the next one. I attended several of their dances. That was the era of Disco, the most vulgar music form ever foisted on the ears of music loving people. I still attended the dances. I rarely danced, but enjoyed talking to new friends. At that time a round of Country Western dancing fever was sweeping San Diego. I decided to learn it. Our Adult High School dancing class switched from Ballroom to Country Western. I started going out to the Country Western bars that were giving lessons. After a few months I was pretty good, or so I thought.

One of my favorite places was Cunningham’s on Miramar road. It had the best band and biggest dance floor. I had been dancing there for a few months when I finally got the nerve to ask a girl for a dance. I had never done that before in my life. The person chosen was a girl half my age, but I had been observing her as a really good dancer. I knew there was no point in dancing with a woman who couldn’t dance well. She acted surprised that I asked her, but didn’t want to embarrass me by refusing. About one quarter of the way around the dance floor she said as if by surprise, “You’re pretty good”. Half way around the floor she actually stopped, looked up at me and said, “You are really good”. That established a sort of reputation at Cunningham's.

There was a woman who danced there regularly. She was a very good dancer. She was also very attractive, but she smoked. She was about my age but only danced with a guy who was much younger, but was clearly the best male dancer there. One night I went there and it was her birthday. The nightclub had arranged the tables in a circle to celebrate her birthday. Her dancing partner was not there. After we sang Happy Birthday to her, the band announced there would be a special dance for her. It was a waltz. She came over and picked me to dance with her. I was very honored. We were the only ones on the floor for the whole dance. She knew that I was, at least, the second best dancer at Cunningham's.

I had a friend at the time that was a real dance-a-holic. that was her main activity. She would take me to dances (ballroom) so that she would have someone to dance with. She was a very good dancer, the best I have ever danced with. She could make her partner look like a expert dancer.

We discovered Country Western dancing. One time we went to a small bar to dance. We did a very good dance and when we finished, the band gave us a standing ovation. I have never seen that before or since. The CRA, Convair Recreation Association, used to have an annual barbecue with Country Western dancing and a live band. I took her to one of them. We danced around the floor and were stopped by people who said we were the best dancers there. Of course we knew that.

Once it was announced, at the Oakwood apartments that the next dance would be a Country Western dance with live music. I dressed for the dance with my usual CW attire, boots, jeans, shirt and hat. There were only a few men dressed accordingly. There were also only a few who knew CW dancing. I was the only one who was dressed and knew the dances. I was the star of the dance. It is embarrassing to say but I was continually in demand as a dancing partner. As I was dancing around the floor, women would leave their dates and come to me on the dance floor and say, “When am I going to get to dance with you?”. Two women actually got into a physical fight near me over who was going to dance with me next. It was a heady experience. I actually had to go outside once in awhile to get relief.

Polka

Teaching

OUR HOUSES

Horton Ave 1.

Horton Ave 2.

Mt. Bigelow Dr.

Bounty St.

Epilog

NOTES:

MIAs

WWII 80,000

Korea 6,000

Vietnam 2,000

Killed

Revolutionary ?

Civil 630,000

   Battle of Gettysburg - 3 days 53.000 dead

WWI ?

WWII ?

Korea ?

Vietnam 58,000 14 yrs.

Vietnam Was Quotes:

    General Curtis LeMay “Let’s bomb them into the Stone Age”

    Stanley Karnow, Vietnam Correspondent “They were already in the Stone Age”

    Berthoud Pass - 11,300 ft.

VEGETARIANISM

I have been a vegetarian all my life, although I only realized it in my mid-life. Throughout my childhood I did not like to eat meat. I suffered through many meals at home with my parents trying to force me to eat the meat. I would gag and get nauseous, but I could not eat it. As a result, I did not get to eat dessert that night. (That was a double blessing. I didn’t eat the meat and I didn’t eat the dessert. Two items I believe were wrong for for me.) Not until my middle age did I realize that I was really a vegetarian. Also by then it was less of a stigma to say so. So I came out of the closet and proclaimed to be a vegetarian. However, I do not like titles as such. I would rather be thought of as one who doesn’t eat meat. I truly feel that I have been healthier in the years since then.

For millions of years, humans did not eat meat. Those who lived in an area that provided protein in the local vegetables, prospered, while those who lived in other regions did not. After humans grew smarter and learned to hunt, they were able to kill animals and obtain protein, even if they were living in an area which did not support protein rich vegetables. Of course, some areas of the earth will never be able to naturally support vegetarians, (Arctic regions).

Examples of meals in cultures that prospered in protein rich meals include meals such as succotash or beans and rice.

My Favorite Meal

   When I was a boy, I looked forward to late summer when I could have one of my favorite meals. My Dad’s corn and tomatoes were ripe and that meant a good meal for me. I would get to pick the corn and tomatoes. I would husk the corn and Mom would boil it. The meal consisted of ears of corn and slices of tomatoes. I thought there was nothing better. I still believe there is no corn better than Ohio corn. In those days we put butter on the corn and salt on the tomatoes. I haven’t used either butter or salt for many years.

My Worst Meal

    Once a year my family would make Blutwurst (Blood Sausage). It was a pretty big event. My mom would spend hours before this day sewing sausage casings of cotton to hold the Blutwurst. My dad would go to the Cleveland Market and buy Blood, (I think it was pig’s blood), animal fat and some grain. I am not sure which grain it was. This was mixed in a big pot and cooked on our basement burner. For me, the smell was horrific. I had to leave the house that day. I thought the whole process was very disgusting. When the work had been done, we had many casings of sausage hanging in our basement. We were not the only family to make blutwurst. Other families made it and we would trade some.

    The worst was not over. Now we had to eat the stuff. I made a feeble attempt to eat some once, under duress, and never tried again. Can you imagine that it had cubes of pure fat in every slice? We had the stuff for breakfast every day until it was gone. We fried slices of it and I had to smell the stuff every morning. I had to sit there and try not to gag, while the family ate it. I essentially didn’t get to eat breakfasts during those weeks.

I believe this was a work in progress, so If you are reading this, you WILL understand, if not, simply take away what you can.

This is a MANS best offering as to how he sees/saw things, you may be able to learn to be a better person thru this

I do not remember which family member set this to me,
I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to more fully know my friend, even though I cannot tell him directly!...

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