i've participated in a few forums from time to time. most of them have threads where new people expose themselves. but i'm actually more of a voyeur, to tell the truth.
what exactly is this place? who are you people?
i'm very interested in noticing that it appears NOT to be a place for people with axes to grind, and tedious points to make about how other people have no sense about what really matters. or at least they're not interminably active, if they're here.
no flames? no feuds? no years-long discussions about why-you-are-wrong-again?
what are your common denominators? or am i missing subtle, deep, and hidden undercurrents?
if i'm not being too forward for being curious. i've got nothing to hide about myself, but i've known myself for so long i get bored listening to what i have to say.
This is the taco palace. We are tacoers. Did you bring your share?
Hi Billy
This forum started in June 2006. Tom62 is the longest serving active member with JoeActor less than a month behind him. I found my way here in March 2010.
Thousands of people have come and gone since HAF started, that's the nature of the beast. We're generally a peaceful lot and one could say that this is a bar or pub with a bunch of locals who enjoy each others company.
What are you having?
Regards
Chris
Hello and welcome to HAF,
billy rubin. Grinding axes is OK here, but the grinder will generally only get a few to play the game. It seems to me that most of the really serious campaigners have chosen to devote their energies to other venues (primarily Facebook), leaving discussion boards like this. Young firebrands mostly don't even bother with discussion boards, perhaps because they think that places like this don't provide a large enough audience. HAF was never a huge place to begin with and since the rules of the site discourage flame wars, those who enjoy them didn't get a foothold.
I hope that you enjoy your time reading and posting here. :)
:spagwelcome:
well, all this is interesting.
personally i have mostly ground all my axes to nubs by this time. i'm interested in learning things anz spend my physical life trying to perfect new skillz. by the time i die i might be worth something.
i drive a brine truck in the american oil fields some 12 hours a day, so my customary social contacts tend to be electronic. except for twice a year, when i spend an intense 8 or 9 days racing a very old motorcycle to speeds it was not designed for. blew it up at 131 mph this past july, in fact, and its not back together yet.
aside from that, i live in appalachia with the wife and the teenaged kids, plus catz, dogs, turkeyz, goats, a donkey. and local wildlife. the coyotez sing every night.
i tend to be a cement head about things, and sometimes become quite overbearing without realizing it. let me know if im being an asshole.
Quote from: billy rubin on October 13, 2019, 12:14:56 PM
well, all this is interesting.
personally i have mostly ground all my axes to nubs by this time. i'm interested in learning things anz spend my physical life trying to perfect new skillz. by the time i die i might be worth something.
i drive a brine truck in the american oil fields some 12 hours a day, so my customary social contacts tend to be electronic. except for twice a year, when i spend an intense 8 or 9 days racing a very old motorcycle to speeds it was not designed for. blew it up at 131 mph this past july, in fact, and its not back together yet.
aside from that, i live in appalachia with the wife and the teenaged kids, plus catz, dogs, turkeyz, goats, a donkey. and local wildlife. the coyotez sing every night.
i tend to be a cement head about things, and sometimes become quite overbearing without realizing it. let me know if im being an asshole.
Only if you get to be a really bad arsehole :D
Sup billy rubin. :wave hi:
BR your description of yourself is Intriguing. As a generality, people who live in Appalachia are not often interested in consorting with atheist types. Matter of fact we don't hammer out the atheism bit much at all. If you are a "cement head" you are not coming across in that way.
There are some motorcycle guys on the forum, including me. I was once a professional road racer.....Laconia, Daytona, etc ... Al that is in the distant past. I would still love to ride but I fear the little old ladies and jackass teen age drivers who are not mindful that left turns in front of an oncoming bike is not cool. The race track is a safer place than the damned city streets.
Tell us more about your racing and also tell us more about what a brine truck does.
professional? that's genuinely rare. if i had my life to do over again i would be torn between field parasitology and trying to master the isle of man. neither likely, unfortunately, but the skills involved in mastering a road race circuit fascinate me. i'm building a machine now out of spare parts to take to track days around here where i live and see what i can do with it.
right now i run a naked 1965 triumph bonneville, 650cc, in land speed racing. top speed only, no concessions to anything other than a straight line. just a frame, a motor, and a place to sit:
(https://i.imgur.com/vDS8gZCl.jpg)
the only places in america where you can do it are in the california dry lakes, bonneville, or the eastern B-52 bases. there are a few scattered runways in colorado or texas where you have a bit of room. i race in loring, maine, where there is an old SAC base with a 12,000 foot runway. my machine uses a production frame, a production engine (pretty heavily modified), and gasoline. no nitromethane, no nitrous oxide, no fairings. at 135.259 mph, it's currently the fastest triumph bonneville in the world.
next autumn we're taking it to the bonneville salt flats. if i can squeeze 140 mph out of it, it will be the fastest british twin running gasoline that has ever been. so i have a goal.
but road racing is vastly more complicated, a rider's game, whereas LSR is a tuner's. you're going to have to talk about that.
as for appalachia, i'm not a native, although that gets complicated. just prior to this,i was a commercial beekeeper in california, and moved the operation to ohio only to see my bees all die.
so at the moment i drive a brine truck to pay the bills. one like this, but not this one:
(https://media.graytvinc.com/images/810*455/brinetruckaccident.jpg)
in any porous rock layer, the spaces will be filled with natural gas, oil, or most commonly, salt water, heavy stuff, with a specific gravity of around 1.1 or even 1.2. after a well is completed, the natural pressure of the gas (around 4800 psi around here) will push the fluids to the surface. the separators at the well pad divert the gas to pipelines, and the oil and salt water to tank batteries. the oil can be sold, but the brine is a waste product.
so i drive a straight truck called a water bottle to the well pads and load up some 80 barrels of salt water at a time, and take it somewhere else. the somewhere else is either a frac pad, where the water is recycled back down into the same formation it came out of, as part of the process of completing the well, or it goes to an injection well.
the injection wells are either older dry wells being used to channel the salt water back underground using a pre-existing hole, or they're new wells drill specifically into a porous formation for disposal.
i typically drive 350 to 450 miles per day, and make two or sometimes three trips between source and destination. long repetitive days, but i spend most of the time in my head anyway.
and you're right about appalachia. the coal fields are a different world.
did i mention i cant be concise?
Concise is overrated. :grin:
Quote from: billy rubin on October 14, 2019, 12:04:49 AM
... one like this, but not this one:
(https://media.graytvinc.com/images/810*455/brinetruckaccident.jpg)
Good to know :lol:
Quote from: Recusant on October 14, 2019, 12:29:12 AM
Concise is overrated. :grin:
:this:
A forum is no place to be concise. It is known.
That's fascinating, billy rubin. I love to hear about the lives of our members.
Very interesting insight into what the brine is used for. I had no idea. And I don't recall Icarus saying he was professional road racer either, but that's quite possibly my memory not doing its job right any more.
racing professionally at any level is notches above what i do. my operation is mostly comparable to taking a pile of hundred dollar bills and setting it on fire.
there's another use for produced water and thats spraying it on the highways in the winter to melt ice. i dont know how common that is anymore.
for me, being super clean is a job requirement. any spill more than a fluid ounce--28 mls-- officially requirez reportz and paperwork. bigger spills can cost me my job. my truck has a camera on the back to watch what i do.
ive lived in and out of the oil fields all my life, and its vastly cleaner and zafer than it used to be.
Welcome to the board. I've spent some time around tuners, dirt drags, and hot trucks. Even done a bit of diagnostic work when things break and my meager equipment speeds up the job. But, I'm not a racer. Know a few from Langley. If you want to see hundred dollar bills go up in smoke hang around some circle track guys. It's really fun when it turns into a demolition derby.
BR that's a cool scoot. When I was in college I had a family that needed sustenance. I was a Triumph dealer and a student at the same time. I also sold NSU and BMWs and of course did a lot of mechanical work. Needless to say that my motorcycle exploits interfered with my grade point average.
I was going to be an aeronautical engineer but I had some problems with the department head professor. He was a retired Naval hot shot pilot who firmly believed that any research or development that did not concern at least transonic velocities were a waste of resources. I, on the other hand, wanted to use the wind tunnel to work on aerodynamic stuff to make motorcycles capable of higher speeds. I was also dead serious about working out some aero features for big ass long haul trucks so that the engines did not work so hard and the result would amount to significant fuel savings. That did not fly well with my Prof. After a little while I said Fuck it and transferred my attention to mechanical engineering.
My racing career had come to an end because I had a wife and two children who needed a live father. Truth to tell I was a smart rider. Too smart in fact. During a race I would fall into a thinking category that assessed risk from the behavior and/or decisions of other riders. That sort of thought process does not make a frequent winner. I was a front runner but an infrequent podium guy. At the time my ride of choice was an AJS 500 single that had some factory backing. A few years later I built several race bikes for other nut case riders. I was also a nut case because all that stuff was the focus of much of my attention.
I had a reasonably successful career as a design engineer that focused mainly on The prestressed concrete industry. That was a helluva departure from my Bike racing passion. Concrete structures such the Illinois state prison, the LBJ library, the Pan Am building or the Lake Maracaibo bridge, or the Chesapeake bay bridge do not go very fast.
My bosses at the manufacturing steel fabrication firm that I worked for were tyrants who failed to appreciate a guy who several times saved them a lot of grief and made them a lot of money.. Once again I said Fuck it and decided to go another direction. Whooda thunk it? I started a small time sewing business that catered to the boating crowd. That worked out well and I had grown to a sizable employer who was making a a fair amount of money. That worked well until the early nineteen eighties when the Taiwan and Hong Kong factions began to eat my lunch. .....so much for the sewing business....never garments but mostly canvas and leather or vinyl goods.
I sold my factory, the equipment and everything that had anything to do with the sewing industry. I am now 54 years old and have no job or immediate prospect for the future. But there was screen printing in the horizon. Not tee shirts but printed circuit boards and that sort of thing. .....I had not forgotten motorcycles and I had some time to mess with them. Not as a rider but as a builder and tuner.
I started a small manufacturing business that catered to the screen printing industry. In the end I had a small manufacturing business the made precision measuring instruments that were essential to the trade.
Wouldn't you know it I was still a motorcycle guy. Cut to the chase here, I built many race engines and had a state of the art flow bench and cylinder head equipment that eventually gained some attention. Somehow I got involved with the three quarter midget race car guys who used bike engines for their race cars. After that there was circle track engine work. Alll the while I was making measuring tools in my little factory.
Some guy with more money than me came along about four years ago. He wanted to buy my manufacturing business. I gave him a foolishly modest price, he said OK and that was the end of my career. Another guy wanted to buy my flow benches and head tooling stuff. OK he did buy it....cheaply I might add. What the hell I am 89 years old, I still like bikes, and have no place to go. It is a little bit late to start a new business...or resume racing bikes..... so I sleep til noon and write a whole damned mini biography on HAF.
Meanwhile I entertain myself and a few others by designing small go fast sail boats and building some of them in my garage. Yes , I do have some credentials for that pursuit. ............whew! Now you know about my convoluted careers. I advise all my readers to avoid taking your eye off the ball as I have done so frequently.
Quote from: jumbojak on October 14, 2019, 03:37:39 PM
Welcome to the board. I've spent some time around tuners, dirt drags, and hot trucks. Even done a bit of diagnostic work when things break and my meager equipment speeds up the job. But, I'm not a racer. Know a few from Langley. If you want to see hundred dollar bills go up in smoke hang around some circle track guys. It's really fun when it turns into a demolition derby.
around here the hot thing is 800 horsepower mud trucks, some in bogs and some in drags. i have a pet machinist i get to do honing and lathe work for me, and he always has a selection of oddities in progress. trucks, boats, antique tractors, motorcycles, it never stops.
for me the tuning is the fascinating part, although getting to ride the result is a reward all by itself.
Quote from: Icarus on October 15, 2019, 01:05:34 AM
Meanwhile I entertain myself and a few others by designing small go fast sail boats and building some of them in my garage. Yes , I do have some credentials for that pursuit. ............whew! Now you know about my convoluted careers. I advise all my readers to avoid taking your eye off the ball as I have done so frequently.
shoot. i dunno about setting the motorcyles aside. this is a picture of rosie on his 1971 supecharged triumph. he was 84 when i took this picture, and i think he's 86 or 87 now. i've never seen this machine go faster than 155 or so, though, because he's always breaking it.
(https://i.imgur.com/SETDxTgl.png)
and to be honest, i dunno about taking your eye off the ball. the people who focus on being responsible, and consistent, and following through to the bitter end on their first choices seem to me to have ended up with somewhat narrower lives. deep, but not broad, so to speak.
i come from oklahoma, where my grandfather drove a wagon into indian territory when he was ten years old and married a chickasaw. my other grandfather comes out of the cherokees by some convoluted path. oil was big in oklahoma, and so i went with the family on the grand tour of the oil fields of the world as i was growing up. my first job at the age of sixteen was as a roustabout on a drill ship off the coast of borneo. sine then i've worked in academics in evolutionary ecology and crustacean paleontology, petroleum geology, and computer and automotive tech writing. spent ten years as a commercial beekeeper, worked as a cowboy, retail sales clerk, long haul truck driver, and now back in the oil fields driving rock buckets, water bottles, sand boxes, transports, and tankers.
i've been more or less rich, more or less poor, lived in high-zoot houses and live in a different one today with no indoor toilet. i'm spending all my money puting the five kids through school, and what's left goes into the racing.
so i have great empathy with broad, rich lives that don't seem to accumulate much in the way of security but make up for it with a wealth of living.
and lots of empathy for the AJS/matchless, i remember the older thumpers from when i was a kid, seeing them parked outside the opium dens in kuala lumpur. if i had a time machine i'd go back and fill up a few shipping containers with them.
Quote from: billy rubin on October 15, 2019, 02:48:39 AM
Quote from: Icarus on October 15, 2019, 01:05:34 AM
Meanwhile I entertain myself and a few others by designing small go fast sail boats and building some of them in my garage. Yes , I do have some credentials for that pursuit. ............whew! Now you know about my convoluted careers. I advise all my readers to avoid taking your eye off the ball as I have done so frequently.
and to be honest, i dunno about taking your eye off the ball. the people who focus on being responsible, and consistent, and following through to the bitter end on their first choices seem to me to have ended up with somewhat narrower lives. deep, but not broad, so to speak.
Icarus and Billy, I'm the newbie and was reading Billy's intro post ... found this interchange rivetingly interesting. Wow, you have both led fascinating lives. And I so deeply agree with valuing broad rather than in-depth life experience; whenever it loses the intrigue, I move on! Thank you for sharing.
Quote from: Dede on February 17, 2020, 06:43:03 PM
Quote from: billy rubin on October 15, 2019, 02:48:39 AM
Quote from: Icarus on October 15, 2019, 01:05:34 AM
Meanwhile I entertain myself and a few others by designing small go fast sail boats and building some of them in my garage. Yes , I do have some credentials for that pursuit. ............whew! Now you know about my convoluted careers. I advise all my readers to avoid taking your eye off the ball as I have done so frequently.
and to be honest, i dunno about taking your eye off the ball. the people who focus on being responsible, and consistent, and following through to the bitter end on their first choices seem to me to have ended up with somewhat narrower lives. deep, but not broad, so to speak.
Icarus and Billy, I'm the newbie and was reading Billy's intro post ... found this interchange rivetingly interesting. Wow, you have both led fascinating lives. And I so deeply agree with valuing broad rather than in-depth life experience; whenever it loses the intrigue, I move on! Thank you for sharing.
Icarus lived on Hawaii and witnessed the Japanese attack when he was 11. Very few people can say that.
Wow! thank you for sharing that about Icarus experiencing the Japanese attack on Hawaii ... so is he our Venerable Sage-In-Chief, being sort of the oldest? (I'm 75). Or is that considered a disrespectful question (if so I apologize).
Quote from: Dede on February 17, 2020, 10:18:23 PM
... Venerable Sage-In-Chief...
Well, certainly doesn't refer to
me !! ;D
Quote from: Dede on February 17, 2020, 10:18:23 PM
Wow! thank you for sharing that about Icarus experiencing the Japanese attack on Hawaii ... so is he our Venerable Sage-In-Chief, being sort of the oldest? (I'm 75). Or is that considered a disrespectful question (if so I apologize).
He is our old sage. But not the oldest member. There is a member called old sage but I can't remember how old he is. :)
Quote from: Tank on February 17, 2020, 07:03:08 PM
Icarus lived on Hawaii and witnessed the Japanese attack when he was 11. Very few people can say that.
are you shitting me.
icarus, is that true?
Quote from: billy rubin on February 17, 2020, 11:04:30 PM
Quote from: Tank on February 17, 2020, 07:03:08 PM
Icarus lived on Hawaii and witnessed the Japanese attack when he was 11. Very few people can say that.
are you shitting me.
icarus, is that true?
I hope it's true or my memory is truly shot!
Quote from: Tank on February 18, 2020, 08:13:05 AM
Quote from: billy rubin on February 17, 2020, 11:04:30 PM
Quote from: Tank on February 17, 2020, 07:03:08 PM
Icarus lived on Hawaii and witnessed the Japanese attack when he was 11. Very few people can say that.
are you shitting me.
icarus, is that true?
I hope it's true or my memory is truly shot!
If your memory's shot then so is mine, I recall him saying that! ;D
My memory is shot too, guys. In fact I have a serious case of CRS (Can't Remember Shit). To my claimed credit I am aware of my dwindling capacity. Truth to tell there are some things that I had rather not remember. Memory is a problem for old guys and girls because reality was not actually as we might choose to recall. Some shrewd wag identified the problem with the observation: 'The older I get, the better I was.
Quote from: Icarus on February 19, 2020, 12:08:16 AM
My memory is shot too, guys. In fact I have a serious case of CRS (Can't Remember Shit). To my claimed credit I am aware of my dwindling capacity. Truth to tell there are some things that I had rather not remember. Memory is a problem for old guys and girls because reality was not actually as we might choose to recall. Some shrewd wag identified the problem with the observation: 'The older I get, the better I was.
That quote has both fantasy and reality features. I measured my physical performance against the early Air Force aerobics book written by some AF Major. I was in the top performance group. I was the 1st or 2nd best physically fit man in my company in US Navy boot camp. I was able to dead-lift a small block Chevy short block (~325 Lbs) into a pick up bed,
by myself. A lot of people have warm memories about their youth and fantasize about how well they did. I know that I did these things,
but I am completely incapable of performing them now. What a difference 30 years makes! I've also failed at many things. I guess I'm an atheist because I have trouble with fantasizing. Well, except for some women that I'd like to...well, anyway, I never claimed that I did them, except in my dreams. :P
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on February 18, 2020, 10:11:31 PMIf your memory's shot then so is mine, I recall him saying that! ;D
Well then apparently my memory
is defective, because I don't recall that precise detail. What I do recall is that he said that he was deeply aware of the US being attacked, with vivid memories of that period in his life, not that he was on Hawaii. :shrug:
even remembering the time personally is interesting
the earliest public event i can personally recall was the telstar communications satellite, launched in 1962 when i was five years old
i remember standing on the porch of my house in kansas watching it pass overhead at night
Quote from: Recusant on February 19, 2020, 03:03:32 AM
Quote from: xSilverPhinx on February 18, 2020, 10:11:31 PMIf your memory's shot then so is mine, I recall him saying that! ;D
Well then apparently my memory is defective, because I don't recall that precise detail. What I do recall is that he said that he was deeply aware of the US being attacked, with vivid memories of that period in his life, not that he was on Hawaii. :shrug:
Now I'm not so sure. :notsure: Could be the case. I guess we won't know until Icarus retells us. ;D
Quote from: billy rubin on February 19, 2020, 03:21:35 AM
even remembering the time personally is interesting
the earliest public event i can personally recall was the telstar communications satellite, launched in 1962 when i was five years old
i remember standing on the porch of my house in kansas watching it pass overhead at night
I remember this one too! In 1962 I was in my senior year in high school, and my family were underway by train on our annual holiday (vacation). If I remember correctly, it took two nights and a day to trek across S.Africa from the near-southern end where we were living, to the far-north lowveld, malaria-infested citrus plantation where my father's brother lived and worked. So, here is this vast, vast expanse of nothingness as the train lumbers across the Great Karoo, on a vast plateau with almost zero light pollution ... Imagine how wonderfully bright the stars were (I don't remember whether there was a full moon or that, probably not or we would not have seen so well this tiny little dot of light. The newspaper would announce daily the time and trajectory of the satellite (Oooohh, for the time this was MAGIC!) It's a wonder the train didn't fall over :-) because everybody was hanging out the windows on the side where the satellite could be spotted. It did feel like magic. Do you remember Laika the first dog in space? I felt so sorry for her, all alone up there :-(
I thought Mags was the oldest here? :notsure:
Quote from: Papasito Bruno on February 20, 2020, 06:53:58 PM
I thought Mags was the oldest here? :notsure:
It was nice knowing you.
Quote from: Tank on February 20, 2020, 06:55:12 PM
Quote from: Papasito Bruno on February 20, 2020, 06:53:58 PM
I thought Mags was the oldest here? :notsure:
It was nice knowing you.
She doesn't scare me,...well maybe a little bit, but she wouldn't cast a spell on her old buddy Bruno. :zombie:
Quote from: Papasito Bruno on February 20, 2020, 07:02:33 PM
Quote from: Tank on February 20, 2020, 06:55:12 PM
Quote from: Papasito Bruno on February 20, 2020, 06:53:58 PM
I thought Mags was the oldest here? :notsure:
It was nice knowing you.
She doesn't scare me,...well maybe a little bit, but she wouldn't cast a spell on her old buddy Bruno. :zombie:
(https://media.giphy.com/media/3o9bJX4O9ShW1L32eY/giphy.gif)
Quote from: Dede on February 20, 2020, 04:36:38 PM
Do you remember Laika the first dog in space? I felt so sorry for her, all alone up there :-(
no, but i do remember ham. he came back.
when my wife and i got married, we were picking up a load of bees by starlight out in the middle of the old yparraguirre cattle ranch. eighteen thousand acres of grassland with no electricity for ten or twenty miles in any direction. no houses, no traffic, no farms, no lights of any kind.
got the bees tied down and looked up, and it was the perseids.
Quote from: billy rubin on February 20, 2020, 07:49:46 PM
Quote from: Dede on February 20, 2020, 04:36:38 PM
Do you remember Laika the first dog in space? I felt so sorry for her, all alone up there :-(
no, but i do remember ham. he came back.
when my wife and i got married, we were picking up a load of bees by starlight out in the middle of the old yparraguirre cattle ranch. eighteen thousand acres of grassland with no electricity for ten or twenty miles in any direction. no houses, no traffic, no farms, no lights of any kind.
got the bees tied down and looked up, and it was the perseids.
WOWIE ... awesome.
To set the record straight: No I was not in Hawaii on December 7th. I was a kid who lived in Tampa Florida at that time. What I do remember, vividly, was the depth of the emotional crush that instantly became a national resolve. There are things so much engraved in ones long term memory that those things are not modified by the passing of time, or an atrophying brain.
For starters there was national rationing. Meat was rationed and each family was issued food stamps that were required in order to buy a limited quantity of meat. Gasoline and heating oil was also limited and there were gas stamps that one had to redeem at the gas station in order to buy part of a tank of fuel. Lucky Strike cigarettes were popular. Their package came in a dark green color. Green dye was a needed material for the war effort....think camouflage colors on war machines like tanks and planes. The cigarette manufacturer changed their packages to pure white. My father worked in a shipyard, we had frequent air raid drills in school and frequent required "blackouts" at night. Air raid sirens signaled the need to blackout, automobile lights had the top half of the headlight permanently blocked out. Most of all there were no skeptics about the need for unity and cooperation for the benefit of the war effort. That was a time of American patriotism and resolve that we may never ever see again.
Too damned bad that we are now so divisive, unappreciative, and stupid. Too many of our American Bubbas would shoot us in a fit of rage for rationing his beef steak and potatoes.
I have vivid memories of what we would now describe as insufferable hardships. I suspect that Tank, Siz, Essie Mae, et al might be acquainted with some older Brit citizens who have been through the 1940s hell that was indescribably worse than mine. We never were bombed, England was. Here is a sincere salute to those indomitable Brits who fought back valiantly, no matter what.
Quote from: Icarus on February 21, 2020, 11:48:19 PM
To set the record straight: No I was not in Hawaii on December 7th. I was a kid who lived in Tampa Florida at that time. What I do remember, vividly, was the depth of the emotional crush that instantly became a national resolve. There are things so much engraved in ones long term memory that those things are not modified by the passing of time, or an atrophying brain.
For starters there was national rationing. Meat was rationed and each family was issued food stamps that were required in order to buy a limited quantity of meat. Gasoline and heating oil was also limited and there were gas stamps that one had to redeem at the gas station in order to buy part of a tank of fuel. Lucky Strike cigarettes were popular. Their package came in a dark green color. Green dye was a needed material for the war effort....think camouflage colors on war machines like tanks and planes. The cigarette manufacturer changed their packages to pure white. My father worked in a shipyard, we had frequent air raid drills in school and frequent required "blackouts" at night. Air raid sirens signaled the need to blackout, automobile lights had the top half of the headlight permanently blocked out. Most of all there were no skeptics about the need for unity and cooperation for the benefit of the war effort. That was a time of American patriotism and resolve that we may never ever see again.
Too damned bad that we are now so divisive, unappreciative, and stupid. Too many of our American Bubbas would shoot us in a fit of rage for rationing his beef steak and potatoes.
I have vivid memories of what we would now describe as insufferable hardships. I suspect that Tank, Siz, Essie Mae, et al might be acquainted with some older Brit citizens who have been through the 1940s hell that was indescribably worse than mine. We never were bombed, England was. Here is a sincere salute to those indomitable Brits who fought back valiantly, no matter what.
Thank you for putting that straight. One other clarification please, how old were you then?
11.5 years old. Conscious of the seriousness of the event and its aftermath. For example I, along with thousands of other kids, sought out empty cigarette packages. The interior of the packages were typically laminated with tin foil. We peeled the foil from the paper and made balls of foil that were eventually converted to a useful alloy for the war effort. No one was compensated for that kind of effort. That was part of the deal, our freedom and maybe even our survival was the deal that everyone seemed to understand.
Once again I salute the resolve and courage of the Brits whose efforts did not necessarily include kids with tin foil. They made Spitfires and Mosquito Bombers partly of plywood, we made tanks and munitions and "liberty ships" of concrete. ...
It is near 10 Pm as I write this. I went to the kitchen to get some Ice from the refrigerator for my wee dram o' scotch. I puhsed a button and ice cubes came spilling into my glass, as usual. Somehow, that reminded me of the ice wagons of the early forties. Many were horse drawn wagons that carried 300 pound blocks of ice. The "Iceman' would use his ice picks to chop the blocks into smaller blocks that cost 5 cents or larger ones at 8 cents. The chunks of ice were carried into the houses and stores that had "ice boxes" not refrigerators. The kids, in summer, would run after the ice wagons to get the small chips of ice that broke from the chopping process. Yep, I am on a nostalgia kick. Please forgive me for that.
Quote from: Icarus on February 23, 2020, 02:55:46 AM
11.5 years old. Conscious of the seriousness of the event and its aftermath. For example I, along with thousands of other kids, sought out empty cigarette packages. The interior of the packages were typically laminated with tin foil. We peeled the foil from the paper and made balls of foil that were eventually converted to a useful alloy for the war effort. No one was compensated for that kind of effort. That was part of the deal, our freedom and maybe even our survival was the deal that everyone seemed to understand.
Once again I salute the resolve and courage of the Brits whose efforts did not necessarily include kids with tin foil. They made Spitfires and Mosquito Bombers partly of plywood, we made tanks and munitions and "liberty ships" of concrete. ...
It is near 10 Pm as I write this. I went to the kitchen to get some Ice from the refrigerator for my wee dram o' scotch. I puhsed a button and ice cubes came spilling into my glass, as usual. Somehow, that reminded me of the ice wagons of the early forties. Many were horse drawn wagons that carried 300 pound blocks of ice. The "Iceman' would use his ice picks to chop the blocks into smaller blocks that cost 5 cents or larger ones at 8 cents. The chunks of ice were carried into the houses and stores that had "ice boxes" not refrigerators. The kids, in summer, would run after the ice wagons to get the small chips of ice that broke from the chopping process. Yep, I am on a nostalgia kick. Please forgive me for that.
I salute you, Icarus. :spock:
Quote from: Icarus on February 23, 2020, 02:55:46 AM
11.5 years old. Conscious of the seriousness of the event and its aftermath. For example I, along with thousands of other kids, sought out empty cigarette packages. The interior of the packages were typically laminated with tin foil. We peeled the foil from the paper and made balls of foil that were eventually converted to a useful alloy for the war effort. No one was compensated for that kind of effort. That was part of the deal, our freedom and maybe even our survival was the deal that everyone seemed to understand.
Once again I salute the resolve and courage of the Brits whose efforts did not necessarily include kids with tin foil. They made Spitfires and Mosquito Bombers partly of plywood, we made tanks and munitions and "liberty ships" of concrete. ...
It is near 10 Pm as I write this. I went to the kitchen to get some Ice from the refrigerator for my wee dram o' scotch. I puhsed a button and ice cubes came spilling into my glass, as usual. Somehow, that reminded me of the ice wagons of the early forties. Many were horse drawn wagons that carried 300 pound blocks of ice. The "Iceman' would use his ice picks to chop the blocks into smaller blocks that cost 5 cents or larger ones at 8 cents. The chunks of ice were carried into the houses and stores that had "ice boxes" not refrigerators. The kids, in summer, would run after the ice wagons to get the small chips of ice that broke from the chopping process. Yep, I am on a nostalgia kick. Please forgive me for that.
We don't need to forgive you! Tell us anything and everything you want.
Quote from: Icarus on February 21, 2020, 11:48:19 PM
To set the record straight: No I was not in Hawaii on December 7th. I was a kid who lived in Tampa Florida at that time. What I do remember, vividly, was the depth of the emotional crush that instantly became a national resolve. There are things so much engraved in ones long term memory that those things are not modified by the passing of time, or an atrophying brain.
For starters there was national rationing. Meat was rationed and each family was issued food stamps that were required in order to buy a limited quantity of meat. Gasoline and heating oil was also limited and there were gas stamps that one had to redeem at the gas station in order to buy part of a tank of fuel. Lucky Strike cigarettes were popular. Their package came in a dark green color. Green dye was a needed material for the war effort....think camouflage colors on war machines like tanks and planes. The cigarette manufacturer changed their packages to pure white. My father worked in a shipyard, we had frequent air raid drills in school and frequent required "blackouts" at night. Air raid sirens signaled the need to blackout, automobile lights had the top half of the headlight permanently blocked out. Most of all there were no skeptics about the need for unity and cooperation for the benefit of the war effort. That was a time of American patriotism and resolve that we may never ever see again.
Too damned bad that we are now so divisive, unappreciative, and stupid. Too many of our American Bubbas would shoot us in a fit of rage for rationing his beef steak and potatoes.
I have vivid memories of what we would now describe as insufferable hardships. I suspect that Tank, Siz, Essie Mae, et al might be acquainted with some older Brit citizens who have been through the 1940s hell that was indescribably worse than mine. We never were bombed, England was. Here is a sincere salute to those indomitable Brits who fought back valiantly, no matter what.
:thumbsup:
Sorry but you are not allowed to view spoiler contents.
lol
(https://i.imgur.com/5JiVrmwl.png)