After our divorce Mardelle had left town for a year or so and had moved back. Dorothy and I had been married for a couple of years. Both women worked for the Humane Society bingo games and were well acquainted. In fact they were good friends. Though divorced, there was no animosity between Mardelle and me.

One Saturday we decided to have lunch together. We ended up at the Cracker Barrel where one is obliged to browse through the novelty shop between the front door and the restaurant whi...(click to continue reading)

Through my dinning room window I could see my next-door neighbor’s back door. Little more than a driveway separated the window from Dr. Wright’s house. So far, the Wrights had four children, the youngest, twins about two years old, the others school age. On warm sunny days Jean, the mother, put the twins, Jeff and Jenny out to play in the driveway, just outside the back door. She would spread a blanket or a rug on the pavement and put out some toys for their entertainment. There in the shade of ...(click to continue reading)

“Forty, huh?  Jess you’re really getting to be an old fart,” Jack Rosell said to me one day at work.  It must have been near my birthday.   How else would he have thought to remind me of my age? It wasn’t my birthday that made him think of me as an old fart.  Strange he should think of me that way.  After all, in a couple of years he would be my current age.  Jack and I were pretty good friends and he liked to rib me about most anything he thought of.   

Jack and I had some things in co...(click to continue reading)

At the Dayton, Ohio airport Mardelle and I boarded an airplane bound for Miami to visit our friends, Harold and Marti Kay. We were long time friends with the Kays. Marti was probably Mardelle’s best friend in Lima. Harold had been in the sales department at Westinghouse when layoffs occurred and he got a job with Pan American Airline in Miami. During our flight we were surprised to discover Lima friends, Bill and Fran Frichie as fellow passengers aiming to spend Thanksgiving with their daughter....(click to continue reading)

“R. D., meet Dick Blake and Bill Spaven,” said my boss, “They’re here to show us an idea they have to replace the constant speed drive with electronic circuits.”

We had been kicking around different ideas for replacing the drive for some time without much success, so any new idea was welcome. The constant speed drive served as the power link between the airplane engine and the electric generator, which is the source of the airplane’s electricity. The drive worked fine but it required fr...(click to continue reading)

If someone asked me what I thought my legacy might someday be, I should answer that I had scarcely thought of such a thing. Of course I do wonder why anybody younger than my great grandchildren would have a single thought of me. Even the great grandsons who have seen me will not remember that notable occasion. Probably nobody will have heard of me. It could happen that a granddaughter will show her child a picture of me and say, “That’s your great granddaddy Jessee. You saw him when you were rea...(click to continue reading)