The summer term of 1943 at the University of Kentucky was almost over. It had been a tough term. Courses had been compressed so that course material had to be covered in half the normal time. My main course met at 7:00 am, for two hours daily. That was particularly hard for me because it was not my nature to get up early in those days. I managed to struggle through it with a passing grade and graduate, but I had to go back and learn what I had missed, later on in my career. It was customary for ...(click to continue reading)

The people in Industrial Relations at Westinghouse gave me the usual policy blurb for new hires, no doubt as a reminder, for I had heard the blurb on my first trip here. They were very good in helping a young single guy to find a place to live. Getting off the Elm Street bus I found the address given me. It was a fine looking old brick house with a full front porch, a much better place than I had ever lived. A kind grandmotherly-looking lady greeted me at the door.

“Good morning, my nam...(click to continue reading)

“We’ve done pretty well this morning,” Dick said as he put his folder back into his file cabinet, “I suggest we knock off for lunch now and come back and finish up after we eat. Does anyone have a preference where we go?”

“It’s your town, so you pick the place,” George said.

“Good, I know a place near here where you don’t have to settle for burgers and fries or the blue plate special.”
 It was a short drive to Dick’s chosen place for lunch. It looked like an ordinary place; not...(click to continue reading)

Money seemed to disappear when I was in second or third grade. Nobody I knew had any. People talked about having money before the Great Depression; so what happened to it? I didn’t have any idea, having had no experience with it. All I knew was that my daddy worked for it and that his job was eliminated and he moved the family across the mountain to Kentucky and left me with my grandparents so that I could finish third grade.

My introduction to money was by Grandma who out of the goodne...(click to continue reading)

“What you see is what you get,” is an old saying I heard somewhere. I don’t know where it came from or exactly what it means. Maybe it’s an old horse trader’s saying, meaning “let the buyer beware.” Maybe it’s another way of saying “seeing is believing.” From my personal experience I can say it ain't necessarily so.

Several years ago on a clear, starry, October night I looked up through the bare branches of a tree at a particular star and saw nearby a small constellation of seven or eig...(click to continue reading)

As a happy 24-year-old I was thinking of finding a bride and starting a family. I had a job and though I had no money, the job would provide. World War II was over; I no longer had to fear the draft as an obstacle. Plenty available young women shared my ambitions, not directed at me, but they were out there. It was the normal and accepted way of life. No better way has been devised in thousands of years to rear children for future generations than through the commitment of a man and a woman in m...(click to continue reading)