A thought from an old guy while having my morning coffee...When an old man dies, it is a whole library which burns.
(P.S...If you like an entry, feel free to leave a comment at the end of the article. If you don't like the entry, well, have a nice day.)
Yesterday was a good day in the radio hobby. I took my Extra Class test and passed it. The Extra Class license is the highest one a Ham operator can get and gives the operator quite a bit of growth room in terms of radio frequencies. Basically I now have a broader group of frequencies on which I can talk, look for other hams, and continue my efforts to "talk" to someone in every state. This also opens up the international search as the areas where the internationals often talk with us Yanks are less crowded at these new frequencies. So far, I have talked to a ham in Bulgaria and one in Romania, but now I'm gonna see what's out there. Also, I have also talked to a guy on an island off the coast of Maine, but I guess there are some who probably wouldn't consider that area as a foreign country.
I was a bit disappointed last night, however, as I fired up the rig when I got home from the club meeting thinking I would hear lots of Extra Class guys on the new frequencies. Ran through the dial a few times and switched to several bands, but nobody was on the air. Then I remembered, most of the Extra Class guys are pretty old. It was about 2230 hrs. Most of those guys have been in bed for 3 or 4 hours by now!!
Well, I'm looking forward to cruising the airwaves a bit more now. This is a pretty cool winter escape and it's good to talk to people in other areas.
Travels, whether mental or physical, are fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.(Mark Twain)
Hooah
One sidebar -- at the meeting last night, we were reviewing some communications from ham guys who went to Haiti last week to serve as emergency communications guys until they got their cell towers functional again. It seems that the one group was going around the country side looking for people and they were attacked by bandits who shot at them and tried to get their money and any other goods they could get to sell later. No one in the group was hurt, and they didn't lose anything to the bandits, but it certainly screwed up their efforts at helping people. I guess you have to be there to understand the situation.
We had an absolutely great Christmas this year. Doug, Danika and Quinn came here from New York as well as Randy and Margaret (Danika's folks) from North Carolina. The little guy is such a joy and certainly didn't disappoint us in the "smiles" category. Of course we got lots of pictures and thoroughly documented that wonderful morning. It was really funny watching him open his gifts -- sometimes the wrapping or the box got more attention than the contents. I seem to remember that with his daddy. He also liked playing with the manger, making the light (a.k.a star) come on while playing "Away in a manger..." several hundred times. He liked playing with the figures, and could say "Baby Jesus" by the time he left.
Oh, yeah, one other thing that was really neat, was this one picture that got snapped. Pam said it looked just like one of his dad when he was a baby. She hunted it down and found it in Doug's baby book. Quinn is 17 months, and Doug was 2 1/2 years old when this picture was taken. What do you think?
Pretty remarkable, huh. I guess this is one of those "the acorn didn't fall too far from the tree" things. If that's the case in other things too, Little Quinn will do alright in life.
The definition of a grandfather -- a fellow who has replaced the currency in his wallet with snapshots of his kids and grandkids, and hasn't lost a thing.
Getting ready to ring in the New Year the other night, a funny story from my deployment to Germany during Desert Storm popped into my mind. My combat support MP company was sent to Germany to provide backfill for VII Corps. Well, we got there in early December, and spent that month getting settled into our responsibilities, getting our German drivers' licenses, becoming familiar with the German roads through the mountains, and becoming acquainted with the locals and military dependents.
Some of the guys were invited to the homes of the dependents and/or locals for a Christmas dinner and some great cooking. This was really great, and certainly made the guys feel a bit better for having to be gone at this time of year. Some of them were still a bit upset at being sent to Germany as a backfill unit, as opposed to being sent to Saudi Arabia to be in the war effort there. But as I kept telling them, everyone has to be somewhere so here we are. All in all, I think they felt that they contributed quite a bit when it was all said and done. I know our higher-ups thought so.
Anyway, it seems that on that New Years eve, my senior NCOs and platoon leaders decided since all of our troops were taken care of, we needed some time off so they planned for a few hours that night to be spent at a local gasthaus in the town of Pirmasens. Everything had been extremely quiet for the past week so I thought this might be a good reward for them (and me too). It wasn't a very long walk to the town, down the side of a big hill (small mountain to us). It was just beginning to snow again; the lights of the town twinkled and the sound of the church bells in town singled it was time for church before the arrival of the new year. It was very peaceful, very serene.
We went in the gasthaus, had a few drinks, met some of the locals and played some pool. I didn't know much German, but we all had fun playing pool, winning some, losing some. It was getting close to midnight, and the bar tender asked us if we wanted a last drink...his treat. I thought that a bit odd, but what the heck. Then about 5 minutes before midnight, all of the locals left the place and the owner came out from behind the bar with a shot gun. I thought we were all in big trouble now. What had we done to tick him/them off? How were we gonna get out of this mess. Well, midnight hit, and all manner of gunfire starting going off in the streets. None of our guys moved for a while. Then the owner came back in and asked us if we wanted to go out and shoot..."to welcome in the new year." It seems that this is a very old tradition celebrated in Germany at new years. Well, we tried not to look too stupid!! I think he caught on to our "rookiness" and laughed a bit and offered us another drink -- on him, of course.
He told us that whatever wasn't drunk that night would be sold to the new owner who was going to take over operation of this establishment tomorrow. By the way, the new owner was going to turn it from a gasthaus into a "bar" (which, as I understand from his side of the story, means a house of ill-repute.).
Well, we took our leave and headed back to the post. That small hill seemed like a very large mountain going back, and the light, pretty snowfall had turned into a heavy, wet, blowing snow (which, by the way, hung around until later in the month).
I still think back to that time on new years eve and wonder what all those guys are doing, and how they are getting along in life.
Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man. (Benjamin Franklin)
