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Son of It’s a Gas Gas Gas

October 30, 2012

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Yesterday afternoon, we began smelling gas out front and it seemed to be coming from in front of the house next door, where we had had a major gas leak a couple of weeks ago. Some of the smell also seemed to be coming from the driveways between our houses; there’s a small iron access cover there that may allow gas to escape.

Washington Gas came out in the middle of Hurricane Sandy and determined there was a leak, coming out of the ground itself and from under that cover, but that it wasn’t dangerous because of the wind. They promised to be out today to fix it.

As good as their word, the Washington Gas crew is out front with a big digging machine on a flatbed truck and they’re hard at work to solve the problem.

What it appears to me is that the rain caused the temporary asphalt patch put in by the WSSC sewer-line replacement crew to sag, which may have popped the repaired gas line. So that means the Washington Gas folks will have to dig up the street yet again to put that pesky line in place.

This entire sewer-repair effort has been fraught with interest, as my Granny used to say.

I sure don’t envy those Washington Gas staff’s job today; it’s a cold, wet miserable day to have to dig up a street in search of a gas leak. I’m sure these folks have places they’d rather be, homes or family that may be feeling the aftereffects of Hurricane Sandy, and there’s surely an element of risk in such an undertaking. And, let’s face it; they’re really having to fix a problem someone else created for them.

Yet they are efficient, cheerful, informative and dedicated. Thanks, Washington Gas! Anyone who helps keep my family, neighbors and me from being blown to atoms has my unstinting support and admiration!!!

Inside Hitler’s Bunker

October 30, 2012

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These stills are from a YouTube video. They show my dad in one of Hitler’s underground bunkers. I thought all this time that the bunker my dad had been in (and grabbed some souvenirs in the process) was the Berlin one; the caption on this video says it was the bunker under Hitler’s private home, called the Berghof. The caption also says that Dad was the first American G.I. to enter the bunker. Whether that’s true or not, I can’t say.

Just after the war, my dad was temporarily assigned to the 101st Airborne Division; in the video, you can plainly see the Screaming Eagle embroidered patch on his shoulder. Why he was chosen for this little film, which is in an early version of color, is not known to me. Maybe it was because he was a photogenic person or maybe it was because he was persuasive and talked his way into it. Don’t know; my dad never mentioned any of this stuff to me, other than to say he had grabbed a bunch of junk in Hitler’s bunker after the war. Anything I learned about his wartime experiences was from overhearing his conversations when a couple of other WWII vets visited our home in the mid-1960s.

Anyway, he sent home a roll of about a dozen water colors and a larger oil pastel that Hitler, an artist earlier in his life, had stored in that bunker. I gave away the watercolors to some friends in Naples in the early 1970s and burned the painting in the early 1990s. I reasoned that destroying an artist’s work is the biggest insult one can do him. All the paintings were of street scenes or of buildings; I guess people weren’t important to Adolf Hitler.

So here are some images illustrating one tiny portion of the aftermath of a hideous episode in the history of our world.

War Trophies

October 30, 2012

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I just submitted this photo to Shorpy.com, my favorite web site, and figured I’d post it here, too.

My dad served with the 82nd Airborne in WWII, and sent home an enormous batch of trophies, as seen in this photo taken on the front porch of our family farm after the war. Many of these guns, flags and uniforms were loaned to a museum in Fernandina Beach, Florida, and went astray. We were able to recover a few of them in the early 1970s and the automatic-weapon stamps from the ATF cost us a fortune; I believe it was $500 per gun. You should have seen it when the Naples police chief, my mom, two of my friends and I carried this stash of weapons into the Bank of Naples to store in their safe-deposit vault!

They were all sold or given away long ago, except for a 7.65mm Walther PPK I’ve kept. Dad picked that pistol up in the bunker in Berlin where Adolph Hitler had committed suicide with a pistol of the same make and caliber. Now, that model pistol is much more famous for being the pistol that James Bond keeps under that well-tailored suit jacket of his. [Edit: just learned that the bunker may have been the one under Hitler’s home, not the one in Berlin. No way of knowing for sure.]

My dad even brought back that dog in the photo; her name was Beulah.

Here’s a photo of Dad showing the campaign ribbons and such that he had earned in that war. I guess he was about 21 years old in this photo taken after the war.

My grandmother had an 8″ x 10″ glossy of the following Associated Press photo on the wall in her den. It shows my dad in WWII; she also had the yellowed newspaper clipping which identified him in the photo. Its headline, I remember, was Local Trooper Advances Under Enemy Fire.

On the 82nd Airborne site, it has this caption:

An infantryman from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division goes out on a one-man sortie while covered by a comrade in the background, near Bra, Belgium, on December 24, 1944″

The three-week battle, of which the above photo illustrates one brief moment, was later called the Battle of the Bulge or the Ardennes Offensive; one of the last desperate efforts of Nazi Germany to survive. I think that’s a Thompson submachine gun in one of my dad’s hands; those might be wire cutters in the other.

Pretty grim situation for a kid just out of his teens. No helmet, either. No one likes to wear a helmet on Christmas Eve.

I Like the Way You Walk!

October 25, 2012

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Any kid who read comic books in the 1950s and ’60s– and what kid didn’t?– had to have read a story or two that involved Easter Island statues either being alive or being brought to life to attack mankind. These statues, properly called Moai, were built between the years 1250 and 1500 and they are huge. Hewn from rock quarried on the island, they can be as tall as 33 feet– almost as high as a three-story building– and weigh over 80 tons. There are over 850 of these amazing statues scattered over the island. Some are buried in the earth up to their necks, but their bodies are under the soil, ready to erupt from the earth and smush us whenever they feel so inclined.

These Moai originally sported red stone hats, made of a different stone than the bodies, but that’s something not essential (as if anything could be) to this little post.

But comics with walking Easter Island statues were guaranteed to creep out the bravest kid and, most importantly, get his money out of his pocket and into the cash register!

Here’s a classic example, drawn by Jack Kirby for DC Comics’ House of Mystery, cover date April, 1959:

Here’s another Kirby cover, this time drawn for Marvel/Atlas’ Tales to Astonish, cover date February, 1961:

Here’s a third from either Ron Wilson or Larry Leiber for Marvel’s Chamber of Chills, cover date July, 1974:

And finally, another Kirby example from Marvel’s Tales of Suspense, cover date April, 1962:

Why am I bringing this up? Because I just read a Scientific American article by Nature writer Ewen Callaway which describes how the folks living on Easter Island got these ungainly statues from the rock quarry to the platforms made for them. Evidently, they walked them into place!

Here’s a YouTube video of this being done and you have to admit, it’s rather creepy!

I Can’t Wait For The UPS Truck!

October 15, 2012

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As many of you may already know, I’m not an impulse buyer. All my purchases are well-considered and thoroughly thought out far in advance. Still, there are opportunities that arise, chiefly on eBay, that require a snap decision and a firm commitment to furthering one’s stable of useful and necessary items. Hence the auction below, which I just won:

Just click to enlarge!

Yes, within days, I will have my own Little Blue Thing to fool around with. Sometimes Patty isn’t in 100% alignment on the things I buy, but this purchase is sure to meet with her approval. I can see it now:

“Hey, Patty; the LBT and I are up early and rearing to go! Is there anything around the house that you need smushed this morning?”

“Why, yes, my Darling Husband! Howzabout having your new mechanical friend smush that fat ugly empty thing perched on top of your neck?”

“No problem! Where’s my LBT remote control?”

Well, as you know, there wasn’t really a Little Blue Thing for sale on eBay, at least today. But maybe one day . . .

It’s a Gas Gas Gas!

October 10, 2012

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I’m so proud of my Boston terrier, Murphy. He is truly a wonder dog.

Aaron and Murphy during our excitement.

I was taking a nap this afternoon about 3pm, and, as is the norm, Murphy was sleeping at the foot of my bed. My son, Aaron, who has a cold, was also asleep. Patty was at work.

Suddenly Murphy jumps on my head and starts barking incessantly. He’s never done that before. So I get up, get dressed, opened the bedroom door and was overpowered by the smell of gas. I ran downstairs, thinking that perhaps Aaron had somehow started a fire in the kitchen and the smell was even worse there.

Then it dawned on me: The street repair folks out front must have broken a gas line. I ran out on the front porch and the smell of gas was overwhelming and you could hear it hissing loudly. The crew, except for one staunch fellow and one staunch woman, had hauled ass down the street a ways.

My neighbor next door, Karl, who works nights, walked onto his front porch with a cup of coffee and an unlit cigarette in his mouth. I yelled, “Hey, Karl; I wouldn’t light that if I were you!”

Neighbors Karl and Bill; we’re cracking jokes once safely down the street.

I got Aaron up and leashed Murphy and, joined by Karl, we all went down to the corner; on the way, we saw Buddy, another neighbor, poke his head out of his front door and told him to get out of his house. By now the smell was super strong.

I called 911 and the Hyattville Fire Department showed up very quickly. The Washington Gas folks weren’t as prompt, but they showed up after about 40 minutes and sent a crew down to the hole in the street where gas had been spraying out all this time.

Hyattsville Fire Department pros suit up before walking to the gas leak.

Washington Gas trucks arrive.

Brave young men.

After about 40 more minutes, the gas line was capped and the Washington Gas techs gave us the all clear. One of their techs, a really nice man, brought a sniffer wand into my house to make sure it had aired out after I had turned on all the ceiling fans and opened the windows.

From my front porch.

So all’s well that ends well. My only concern, and I expressed this pointedly to the WSSC contractor’s supervisor, the fire department folks and the folks from Washington Gas, is that somebody should have alerted the residents of the street that there was a problem and that they should (a) not turn on any flame and (b) vacate their homes until everything was safe again and (c) the contractor should have called 911.

And I am so proud of Murphy for knowing something was amiss and waking me up!!!

That white PVC pipe down in the hole is what broke.

Words to live by . . .

7pm Update:

Still at it!

The contractors are still hard at work; now they’re filling the hole where the gas line broke. I guess they’ve got a few more hours of work ahead of them.


I love the colors in this iPhone photo. On your left, about a third of the way from the bottom of the pic, is our friend, Little Blue Thing. That’s his headlight shining.

Buddy, one of our neighbors, walked over to Jefferson Street when the gas was escaping and he said the smell of gas was very evident at that point, well over a block from where it was whooshing out of its pipe. So we were lucky that all turned out well. Karl and the folks across the street, Colleen and Mar, still don’t have their gas restored, but everyone is hard at work trying to restore the service.

Morning After Update:

As the above photo indicates, this morning the contractors have marked the gas lines a lot more obviously than they had previously done. Before, there were just thin yellow lines of paint to show where the high-pressure gas lines were; now there’s big white lettering, too. The importance of good, clear graphics!

The Washington Gas guys told me that those gas lines have a pressure of 50psi, which doesn’t sound like much but can produce a huge volume of gas in the air when the pipe is ruptured, as our event yesterday afternoon proved.

“I Have Got to Get Me One of These!”

October 3, 2012

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You already know what Will Smith movie the header quote came from, so I won’t bother telling you.

The WSSC is tearing up our street again, and the letter they sent to us all promised that, during this project, we’d see “interesting machines.” Patty thought that was a strange thing for them to say, but it has proved to be true.

My neighbors and I– at least the male neighbors– have fallen in love with this little blue thing. We all want one.

It’s about half the size of a car, articulated in the middle, and is radio controlled. When it’s powered up, the round light in front flashes orange and it begins to shudder, like a puppy held tight on a leash:

It isn’t speedy, but it is determined as it moves down the road. It’s shape gives it an R2-D2 quality.

Here it is relentlessly proceeding to the actual holes in the street down our hill:

Here’s the fellow controlling it with a black box about the size of a Lipton’s tea-bag package. He stands pretty far away from this unit, so I couldn’t get them both in the same photo. The controller’s skill is high; we watched him parallel park the thing and it was most impressive.

The technical name for this device, based upon the knobby wide metal wheels, is, I believe, a “smusher.”

FRIDAY MORNING UPDATE:
Here we see Little Blue Thing parked alongside its bigger brother, Somewhat Larger Blue Thing. Go ahead; call them The Blues Brothers.


As happens occasionally even in human families, the smaller brother is the cuter one. The larger one is not unattractive, but its need to have a steering wheel, driver’s seat and roll bar get in the way of its smooth lines. It looks purposeful but not cute.

In addition, the bulging hood on Somewhat Larger Blue Thing, combined with the row of vents at the sides of the hood, give this fellow a more aggressive look. It’s like what happened to the Ford Mustang after it had been out a couple of years.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE:

Our hero, LBT (Little Blue Thing) gets a chance to show its stuff as it takes on the challenge of smushing down the red-clay dirt at the bottom of a deep trench. Notice how the crew lowers LBT down into the trench using some large machine:

Once in the trench, you can sense the LBT’s enthusiasm as it trembles in anticipation before the control-person sends it into action. Clearly in its element, LBT blithely rolls back and forth, smushing with abandon. Even the jaded construction crew smiles with joy and– yes– pride as they watch LBT’s antics:


FRIDAY EVENING UPDATE:

The crew working on this sewer project are splendid; they get in early, work steadily all day and clean up before they leave in the evening; not only sweeping the street but washing down where they’ve worked.

And I can’t say “these guys” are excellent; there are women among the crew. They dress the same as the men, including the green safety vests, so it isn’t immediately obvious that they’re female.

Some of our neighbors were initially rather upset that this work wasn’t done a couple of years ago when our street was totally replaced, but the super job that the WSSC contractors are doing has put most of that feeling to rest. After the crew leaves each day, many of us are outside marveling at the way they’ve approached their task.

So it’s become sort of a social thing but then again this is a close-knit community.

Naples When It Was

September 18, 2012

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Many of us who grew up in Naples, Florida back in the mid- to late-1960s are still in daily contact and we have a lot of laughs. There was something unique about that out-of-the-way spot way down the left side of Florida. It was a strange mix: locals who lived there for the fishing or hunting or because they’d inherited a place jumbled together with the fabulously wealthy. Add in a few drug runners and such for spice.

Through the years, Naples has grown and the average income has risen. In our day, we teens had to make up ways to have fun and we had a blast!

I visited Naples for a high-school reunion a couple of years ago and it was a great week. We resurrected a variant of the high-school bands we had been in and played a few sets at the reunion dinner. During the days, we’d drive around and marvel at how much the town had changed, but also at how much was still recognizable if you knew where to look.

Earlier this year, I finished writing a fun mystery novel set in the Naples of those days, entitled Blood on a Sugar-Sand Beach. It’s on Amazon Kindle if you feel like taking a look.

One day, some astute filmmaker will create a film about that town in that era; it should be something like American Graffiti meets Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, with a bit of M.A.S.H. thrown in to snaz up the dialog. There are a million zany stories and many of them are almost 100% true!

Where are George Lucas and Steven Spielberg when you really need them?!?!?!

What Walks Down Stairs, Alone Or In Pairs, And Makes A Slinkity Sound?

September 17, 2012

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No, the answer is not Steely Dan, but the steely Slinky toy! Invented by an Naval engineer (by accident) at a Philly shipyard in 1943, it has become an icon over the years. Originally sold for a buck, it now goes for $5.95 or so on Amazon.com. The inventor sold 100 million of the things in the first two years after he finally got toy stores to carry them. Here’s a Popular Science article from 1945:

A Slinky consists of 98 coils of high-grade Swedish spring steel and is 2-1/2 inches high. In Viet Nam, the Army used them as emergency antennas for their short-wave radios. They are the official state toy of Pennsylvania, and they are alluded to in a lot of books and movies. My favorite reference, of course, is this one from the second Ghostbusters movie, where Egon describes his strange childhood:

Dr. Ray Stantz: “You mean you never even had a Slinky?”
Dr. Egon Spengler: “We had part of a Slinky. But I straightened it.”

NASA has had fun fiddling with Slinkys in space, where they have strange properties unknown to us on this planet. Because a high-frequency sound wave travels faster than a low-frequency one, a Slinky makes a cool swooshy/boingy sound if you hold it vertically and hit the bottom end with a drumstick; the sound is so unusual that avant-garde composer John Cage used it in a 1959 symphony called Sounds of Venice. And I’ve heard a foley artist used a Slinky to make that laser-blaster sound in Star Wars.

Here’s an ad for the Slinky from a 1953 Abbott and Costello comic book; it appears to have been drawn by the artist who did the Dubble-Bubble chewing-gum ads:

Jim At The Republican Convention (1972)

August 28, 2012

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I promised nothing political on this blog, and I plan to keep that promise, but this is more a funny story than a political one.

In 1972, I was going to college in Boca Raton during the time of the presidential election. Richard Nixon was running for re-election against George McGovern. My assignment for class was to write a paper on the graphics of campaign literature, so my roommate and I drove down to Lauderdale to get some signs and pamphlets at various political headquarters.

At a Republican senator’s HQ, we were picking up some pamphlets when a well-dressed guy came up and said, “Hey; are you college students?” and we said we were art students. Then he asked, “Going to the convention tonight?” He was referring to the Republican National Convention in Miami. We said, “No.”

This friendly guy said, “Tell you what: Get a bunch of your friends together and we’ll send a bus up to Boca and you can attend the convention. We’ll even give you hot dogs and Cokes on the way down, and maybe some beer on the way back!” My friend and I were amazed. We looked pretty scruffy, being art students in those days. I was skinny, wore wire-rim glasses, big sideburns and a pony tail and my friend had an Afro. I said, “I couldn’t dress for it; my suit’s over in Naples.” The friendly man said, “No problem; casual is fine! The more casual the better!” So we agreed to go and spent the afternoon rounding up a dozen or so friends to go on this insane jaunt. We didn’t care much about the election but we thought the convention would be fun to see. The bus came, and away to Miami we went.

At the convention, we were given very good seats on the balcony overlooking the speaker’s podium. The curtains behind the podium blew wide as President Nixon’s helicopter landed, and he came to the podium waving his V signs with both hands. My friends and I were having a great time.

A few minutes into his speech, President Nixon– reading from his notes on the pre-teleprompter lectern– looks up, points to my friends and me, and says something like, “And you long-haired anti-American radicals, who burn flags and don’t support our military . . .” and the whole place just goes nuts!

My friends and I were stunned. We weren’t in the least political but we did have long hair. A bunch of crew-cutted Young Republicans in suits on either side of us began yelling at us and shaking their fists and we felt very uncomfortable.

As the president went on with his speech, we realized we’d been set up!!! We were window dressing; some operative probably had an assignment to get a certain number of seats filled by hippies so the president would have someone to point at.

The photo here is from the Net. Inside the red circle is yours truly, with big sideburns, a ponytail and his best Gant shirt. This photo looks to be from after our moment of infamy, as I appear to be talking to one of the Young Republicans at the time the photo was taken.

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