One day I began to wonder what was in the boxes that I had stashed away out of sight. Some of the boxes had rested where they lay ever since I moved to Lafayette seven years ago. There couldn’t be anything I needed in them. I’d had lots of help packing up the stuff to bring with me. My children packed the things they thought to be of value, either real or sentimental. I dragged out a few items and with help inspected one. Guess what!

Ninety per cent of it was worth the price of scrap pa...(click to continue reading)

Asked to describe the most physically challenging task I ever completed, I thought back over a lifetime to see what I could remember. A few things came to mind but I had a hard time picking the most challenging.

As a Boy Scout working on the life-saving merit badge, I found the toughest requirement was to retrieve a ten-pound rock in a sack from the bottom of an eight-foot deep pool and return it to shore without drowning myself. For a skinny, fourteen year old kid who’d sink to the bot...(click to continue reading)

Graduates of the College of Engineering at the University of Kentucky in 1943 were few indeed. Westinghouse men interviewed graduates and hired me. They directed me to report at the Educational Center in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania in about a week.

I arrived at the Center on schedule wearing my lone suit with pants seat worn thin enough to show the color of my under shorts. It was an exciting day for a young fellow. We were given the lowdown on our location and our purpose in being at the...(click to continue reading)

“I’m tired of playing video games and computer stuff, Grandpa. Did you ever get bored with video games when you were a kid?” said Sonny.

“Believe it or not I was once a kid, but I never got tired of playin’ video games. There were no such things then,” I said.

“Then what did you have to play with?” Sonny asked.

“Not very much,” I said. “I used to be excited when the Sears Roebuck fall and winter catalog came in the mail. I loved to open it to the toy section and plan w...(click to continue reading)

The sounds of an ambulance or fire engine in the distance growing ever louder break the relative quiet of the evening. The wailing scream with its slurring pitch is replaced by a whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop, then back to the scream. The sound, though muffled, invades the house. Outside on the back porch the sound volume is annoyingly higher. Soon the sirens fade in the distance and only the din of normal traffic is heard.

On a summer evening when the heat of the day has waned it is pleasant...(click to continue reading)

“It’s quit rainin’ and the sun’s out again, but look at the sky. There’s a rainbow. Sure is pretty,” I said to Tump, my favorite aunt, “How can there be a rainbow when it’s not rainin’?”

“”Oh, it’s still rainin’ somewhere over yonder. It takes both sunshine and rain to make a rainbow,” Tump said. “By the way, they say there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow”.

“Like a buried treasure?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

“We learned in Sunday School that a rainbow i...(click to continue reading)