Mothers are a hardy breed. After going through the discomfort and pain of bearing their young they then have to nourish and care for the babies until they can care for themselves. Of course some mothers are irresponsible, in which case the rule does not apply. In many species the sire of the offspring merely plants his seed and is absent until the next mating season; not so with responsible homosapiens. Some say that only the mother has birth pains. I say fathers also have birth pains. Consider ...(click to continue reading)

“Even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then.” Quoted by my boss B.O. Austin and I’m sure many others before him.

The quotation applied to me on many occasions when B.O. assigned me a job that I knew absolutely nothing about or where to start looking for answer. Nevertheless I usually rooted around until I found an answer somewhere. I’ll try to tell of the biggest and juiciest acorn this hog found. It happened years after B.O. retired.

Joe Urish was working on a d-c to a-c pow...(click to continue reading)

She was supposed to look after me in my old age, but she didn’t stick with me until I got really old. Dorothy, like my first wife, Mary, died of cancer. Now here I was in 2003 alone again and worse, going blind a little every day with ARMD (age related macular degeneration). I’d considered looking into an assisted living place, but without outside help I’d be stuck there without even groceries. All my children offered to take me in, but only Catherine seemed to really want me to live with her.
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Winters in northwestern Ohio are less terrible than some folks claim. Yes, some days are cold and dreary, others sunny and colder, sometimes chilling the thermometer to less than zero. There are usually three or four snowfalls that seldom exceed six inches in depth so that one must shovel it out of the way, or that blesses parents with the presence of their children at home because the school bus doesn’t run. Of course the children don’t mind: a day off from school, a chance to play in the snow....(click to continue reading)

“Martha Barnhart invited us to their house Saturday night to play Bridge,” Mary told me when I got home. “There’ll be two other couples, enough for two tables.”

“Sounds OK to me, we enjoy the game.” I said.

The Barnharts, parents of two daughters, were a friendly couple that we had known for a good while. Scott was a tall, good-looking mechanical engineer at my work place. We were never close associates, so this seemed an opportunity to get better acquainted. They lived a block...(click to continue reading)

Jim Harp reported for football practice along with several other freshmen. It was an exciting day for most of the boys. There was hope of making the team in a year or two and they were willing to practice with the bigger boys to learn the skills necessary to play the game. I’m sure that Jim had the same hopes and ambition. But there was one difference in Jim that that set him apart in the minds of football fans and others. He was the younger brother of Red Harp the team’s star quarterback of the...(click to continue reading)