The Sunday morning ritual had begun. Saturday night sleep came to an abrupt end when a young child gave voice to his discomfort, demanding attention. Everybody up! Dry diapers! Don’t be too slow with breakfast! We were off to a running start for the day. With the noisy baby quieted we could proceed with our own breakfast and other duties. Of course the process was far simpler when there was only one baby to attend to. By the time there were three it was a bit more difficult. Most of the burden f...(click to continue reading)

We arrived at the Dayton airport after an hour drive down Interstate 75. I was with Jimmy Dell of our sales department to visit a customer to work out final details of an electric power system that we were manufacturing for them. Air travel was fairly new for me although I had been on flights before. But still, takeoff was always a white-knuckle event for me.

I had made numerous trips for Westinghouse, mostly by train. I had ridden trains since early childhood and enjoyed it. It seemed ...(click to continue reading)

Things went smoothly in first grade class for much of the morning of his first day. Miss Flannery executed her lesson plan. A great deal of the spoken word goes unnoticed by young minds. It’s not whether or not potty location and protocol were verbally explained. It is certain however, that no physical show-and-tell was conducted. Ralph Donald was ignorant about what to do when “nature calls” in these strange surroundings. He had been told to mind the teacher. He hoped for an early recess, but t...(click to continue reading)

The mile walk from school seemed a lot shorter than the mile walk to school early in the morning. There were things to see along the road that were not seen by morning light. Could it have been the rush to beat the final toll of school bell that made things invisible? At any rate the walk home was leisurely. Did I say home? I had no home. My parents had moved away and left me with Grandma so that I could walk that mile until I finished third grade.

I was intrigued the day I got home to ...(click to continue reading)

Does anyone like to remember the things he failed at? Not likely. Some failures one can’t forget even if he tries but those are few. Most failures are put in the back of the mind and are forgotten because they are inconsequential. Others are too painful and are put aside in hope of forgetting. A failure I don’t mind sharing is that I was always a lousy history student.

History seemed irrelevant to me. It was about dead people. It was about remembering names, dates and wars. I was like t...(click to continue reading)

About mid-afternoon we arrived home after visiting Mardelle’s daughter and parents in Lexington, Kentucky. It had been a pleasant time and we would have enjoyed staying longer, perhaps revisiting some of the old haunts we had enjoyed in former years.

“It’s good to be home again,” I said, “traveling is always a bit tiring.” Mardelle agreed and went about unpacking our travel stuff. Soon we were back in our regular routine.

We had been back two or three hours when Mardelle compla...(click to continue reading)