Cop Car's Beat

Happy New Year!

New Year's Day, 1958 - Hunky Husband & Cop Car's original wedding at CC's parent's home - attendees were immediate family members, only.

Photo by Haney, Kansas City MO

Wayback to 6/19/1992

My photo scanning efforts keep taking me back into the past. One of the sets of photos that I scanned, this morning, reminded me of an event on 6/19/1992: a huge hailstorm. The following entry is from Wikipedia.

19 June 1992

Wichita, Kansas, USA

Two batches of severe thunderstorms, occurring within 6 hours of each other, dumped hailstones up to 4.5 in (11 cm) in diameter across Sedgwick, including the city of Wichita, and surrounding counties in south-central Kansas. Over 10,000 homes were damaged. The hail left wheat fields in a near total loss. Estimated property damage totaled $500 million with crop damage at $100 million. The thunderstorm episode ranks as one of the worst ever to hit Kansas.[7]

Back Story

In early 1990, our son-in-law, WichiDude, contacted me to let me know that Cessna Aircraft (for whom I had worked 1975-1981) was hiring engineers. At the time, although Hunky Husband and I had remarried in 1988, I was still living in Albuquerque, NM (working in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA) while HH was in his 32nd year with Boeing. By late March, I was making the long drive from San Francisco to Albuquerque, pausing a bit in Albuquerque to process out of my job there, and making the long drive from Albuquerque to Derby, KS. I put in my (2nd) first day of work at Cessna on 4/9/1990. Well and good. HH and I were once again stuffed together into the house in the that we had had built in 1968 - which he still owned and had continuously occupied since that time.

Life is not that simple. Came May, 1991, Boeing sent HH to work in Philadelphia, PA. Fine lot of good it had done me, moving back to Kansas! The hailstorm hit while HH was working in Philadelphia.

Although I normally worked on the west side of Wichita, on the day of the storm I was working on the east side. Thus, my brand new 1992 Ford Taurus SHO car did not take the brunt of the hailstorm as did tens of thousands of cars that day. [The SHO required only the replacement of a small strip of weather stripping on one window - a $100 charge.] For years following the hailstorm, cars drove around our area of the country looking as though they had been systematically beaten with a ball pean hammer.

When I drove home from work a few hours after the storm it was a different matter. The streets, sidewalks, and yards of Derby looked as though they had received a few inches of green snow. The hail had shredded and beaten the leaves to a pulp, mixing them in with the ice of the hail. Some of the streets had been plowed and most of the ice had melted by the time I drove home. Below are more photos of our yard from that day.

In the photo, below, my tire tracks were made after the kind, younger couple who lived across the street (their house is shown in the photo) helped me clear the tangle of limbs that had blocked the drive.  (That kind gesture rather injured my feelings since I was a mere 54 years old at the time and felt perfectly capable of clearing the mess, myself. Rest assured, however, that I accepted their help graciously. Now, 29 years later, I would jump for joy at their help.)

The grass was surely green, but the photo (below) does not show it. The green on the ground in the photo is shredded leaves from our big, old trees. Note that our creek, running between our green yard and the house in the background, is high enough for the water to be seen. I take it that the lawn mower belonged to, and was in the yard of, our nextdoor neighbor. Our mower was in our shed.

Many of the trees along the banks of the creek lost limbs. The creek was overflowing, not only from the amount of water that resulted from hail melt, but also from the clogging of the waterway produced by downed limbs and trees and other debris from the storm.

I'll wind up the post by embedding a video shot during one of the storms that day. The video runs about five minutes, but only gets informative at about 50 seconds in. It appears to me that the videographer was fortunate in missing the brunt of the storm. (Street/highway signs make it easier to follow his path - if one is familiar with Wichita.)

"This video is part of the Tornadoes Kick Media stock video collection from Tony Laubach. To license this footage, please contact Tony Laubach at the email below or through YouTube or Facebook."

 

NOTES:

1. At the beginning of the day, all of the trees around our neighborhood were fully leafed out. It was the stripping action of the hail that bared the trees behind our house in the top photo.
2. In the same photo, to the right of the driveway and above the sidewalk one may see a patch of bare dirt. That is where I had a large maple tree removed just a few weeks before the hailstorm. It had suffered major damage in a windstorm.

Ah, yes, the good old days

Since nothing exciting is going on around here - still - I share a photo that I found online. (I don't recall what I was looking for or where I found the photo). It reminds me of the "Good Old Days" when everything, so many people claim, was perfect - except - we were engaged in World War II, we had no indoor plumbing, and I had already lost two siblings, one of whom could possibly have been saved with penicillin. A friend from our small town had been shot down in China, suffering a broken back in parachuting and unable to communicate with the Chinese peasants who came to his aid.

"What" I hear you ask, "...does Fred Emery [the parachutist] have to do with an early-day telephone switchboard?" Well...Fred's mother, Nettie Emery, was "our" switchboard operator. On rare occasion, if I behaved myself, Nettie allowed me to "help" her at the switchboard in her parlor. Ah, yes, the good old days!

ADDITION of 12/20/2021

1954 August or September - Missouri Air National Guard Summer Camp Communications Center - Casper, Wyoming

Equipment from back-to-front: Field Switchboard (hidden), Commercial Switchboard (staffed by Hunky Husband), and Teletype

It isn't apparent to me what the fourth airman, the only one with his airman's stripe showing, is doing. HH had written the date and place on the back of the photo, along with identifying the four airmen. I believe this to have been HH's first deployment for training in the Air National Guard as he would probably not yet have reached the age of 18 when the photo was taken, his birthday being in early September. (His parents would have had to sign a waiver for him to have joined at age 17.) HH no longer recalls much about most of his Air Guard service of 11 or 12 years.

Penny pinching through sewing

There are some things that I learned to do as a child because we were, in a word, poor! In addition, things were rationed as part of the WWII war effort when I was ages three to seven, making it prudent/necessary for us to "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without". One of the things that I learned to do was to re-make clothing (usually to fit a different person, physically and to their liking) and/or to repair it. This became such an ingrained habit that, though I dislike sewing, I still do it. I was wandering down memory lane in this vein because of a comment string in which Bogie and I engaged on her blog about jeans, wearing jeans out, and the fashion that people have been following of buying pre-torn/shredded jeans at outrageous prices.

1940s

In this photo of me and my brothers from 1943, I am wearing a fetching creation made from sacks in which our flour had come. Although my mother did not sew (Dad's mom taught me how in about 1943-1946), she always found a woman who was clever with a needle to make my dresses and gym suits. Nearly all of my dresses were made from flour sack or feed sack materials until I entered 8th grade, at which time Mom bought me three store-bought dresses.

The above photo was taken at the time my parents bought their first home, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Behind us kids you can see our brand new home with a truck parked in the driveway. That was the truck in which Elder Brother (EB), our parents, and I had lived through the winter as Dad worked as an electrician in construction at various Army Air bases throughout Texas. Younger Brother (YB) was too young to travel with us and stayed with our maternal grandparents on their farm in southwestern Missouri. EB attended 1st grade in at least five schools in Texas before enrolling in a Tulsa school. But I digress.

In addition to wearing feed sack dresses, I took custody of EB's outgrown overalls - which I hated. 

One saving trick in which most of us females, young and old, indulged was adding a ruffle of (usually, cotton) lace to the bottoms of our skirts, making it appear that our petticoats were peaking from beneath our skirts. We got another year's wear from a dress or skirt, that way - more than one year for adult women.

I still use a pillowcase that the late Expert Seamstress made out of a flour sack for my mother, using fabric from Mom's collection, in 1993. I gave the rest of Mom's collection to a friend for use in quilts some years later.

1950s

I was fortunate that one of my mother's five aunts had a daughter a few years older than me. When we visited them in Arkansas in about 1951, the daughter gifted me with some of her outgrown dresses - and my first pair of heels (which gave me a corn that dogged me until I retired in 2004!) These hand-me-downs, I really liked and I felt so stylish when wearing them. Unfortunately, as far as I know, no photos of me were taken wearing any of those clothes.

During the 1950s, my own sewing spanned from making my own school clothes to making baby clothes for Dudette (born 1959). At one point, I used the same chiffon fabric three times in making myself "formal" gowns to wear to dances in 1955 (age 17), 1956 (nearly age 18), and 1958 (age 20). I have no photo of the original dress - a one-shouldered style that I made to wear to a dance at my old high school's winter dance when I was "home for the holidays" in 1955. I do remember that my date was still a junior in high school, but we had been friends for years and ours was a date of convenience. A few months later, I tore that dress apart and used left-over fabric to make a full-skirted, strapless dress for a college dance.

In the winter of 1958, I tore the above dress apart to make the final iteration for that fabric into a halter-style dress to wear to the Military Ball. I had talked dance-shy Hunky Husband into attending and had even made a trip to St Louis to pick up his Air Guard uniform. That was a ball to remember!

We lived in the downstairs apartment of a two-apartment "house" (that would, today, be condemned). It included zero insulation and water pipes that readily froze in winter temperatures. The morning of the dance, we arose to a temperature of 8 degrees Fahrenheit. We couldn't draw fresh water nor could we flush the commode. This at a time when I was still experiencing "morning sickness" during my pregnancy with Dudette. It was dreadful! 

I don't recall how in the world we managed to clean up for the dance; but, I suspect that we walked to the campus and used the facilities in the camera club's darkroom. The darkroom was in the basement with, and across the hall from, the amateur radio club's "shack". At best, I found no way of washing my hair. In the photos, taken in the "shack", one can see that I was not at my prime. Expert Seamstress had helped me do the beading on the midriff of the dress.

We had a great time at the dance. HH was so nervous that he burned a hole in my skirt with his cigarette. To follow up on that act, he promptly spilled his soda on the dress. In later years, we did a fair amount of dancing - but only when he was fortified with libation! (One exception HH made: He would dance with our daughters in our living room during their school days.) That dress found its final assignment as a dress (repaired, of course) worn by the daughter of our babysitter after we moved to Derby KS.

ADDITION of 11/8/2021 - A real seamstress

In her younger years, HH's sister Helen intended to become a fashion designer. She had the talents for it; but, life intervened. She became a professional chef and business owner instead of a fashion designer. At any rate, below are two of the ball gowns that Helen designed, made, and wore when she was 18 and 19.

Answer to the small puzzle

The image in A small puzzle was a part of a page scanned from Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, Volume 4; F.E. Compton & Company, Chicago IL, Printed in 1923. Below is a different cropping of that scan, providing the answer. (The article from which it comes is about inventions.)

Below is a scan (both sides) of the receipt given my grandfather when he bought the set of encyclopedias.

As children, my brothers and I browsed through Grandmother's encyclopedias, frequently. For the past 20+ years, they have been at my fingertips when seated in my reading chair. After all, much of what I look up has not changed since 1923. BTW: The purchase of the encyclopedias predated electrification of their house by about 10 years. Grandfather died in 1933 and I believe that Dad wired that house (and the wash house) shortly thereafter.

More on typewriters

Royal Portable Typewriters for English Language Typing

Joared wrote in a comment to Roberta X made me do it of the keyboard layout of her Royal portable typewriter. I encouraged her to send me a photo of the machine and will post it if Joared has the time/energy/inclination to send one (or more). Until then, I am posting (below) a touch-typing guide that I found online, within an owner's manual. The manual is for a Royal Quiet Deluxe from 1952 which model did not include a separate key for "1" as does Joared's machine. (For those too young to know or to have used such a quaint machine, typists typed a lower case "l" in place of a "1" - which isn't too bad when using a font with serifs such as "l". I'm not sure whether Joared's machine includes that key because it is one year newer than the model addressed in the manual, or whether she bought a more expensive machine.

 

Typewriters for German Language Typing

Thanks to Stu for providing links to a couple of interesting German language typing websites. The photo, below, was found at Stu's link to his own website Eunoia, which posting has comments that include mine that predate some of the information in my own postings on typewriters.

Another view of a similar typewriter keyboard is found at Dreamtime (stock photos).

Note the QWERTZ layout as Stu wrote about in his comment. (I note a difference in the "upper case" ß since, in the photo (above) it seems to be a colon rather than a question mark.)

Here in Germany, we have a bigger alphabet,
the standard is QWERTZUIOP and the Y is bottom left.
U Umlaut is to the right of P
To the right of L we have O Umlaut then A Umlaut
SZ which looks like a Beta is below the question mark.

During the Nazi era there were also separate keys for the SS and for the swastika.

BTW: To access "cut copy and paste" German alphabet letters such as the eszett (ss), ß, I used the GYPU website.

IBM Executive Typewriters for English Language Typing

Other than the Smith Corona portable, about which I wrote in the previously linked posting, the only typewriter that I owned was purchased (used) from a shop in Albuquerque NM during the mid-1980s. It, an IBM Executive (photo of a machine similar to mine, above), made really gorgeous copy! The look of the finished page was enhanced by the proportionate spacing of the letters ("i" took one space while "W" took five spaces, as I recall), by the sans serif font (illustrated in the image, below), and by the machine's using a carbon ribbon (photo below the font image) rather than an inked ribbon. 

I really liked that machine; but, when I moved back to Kansas, knowing that it would be difficult to squeeze my household goods into Hunky Husband's already fully-furnished house, I gave the IBM Executive to Elder Brother and his wife who, at the time, lived in Santa Fe NM. He may/probably does still have it.

Roberta X made me do it

I mentioned in the next previous post, More of this and that - early October, that unlike my new computer keyboard which forces use of the left index finger to input a "6/^", I had been accustomed to using my right index finger for that key. I asked what was "standard" touch-typing for that key. In her comment, Roberta X (RX, henceforth), wrote that her '1942 U. S. Navy touch-typing chart shows finger choice for the "6" key (only!) as "optional" for left or right index finger.'

RX rightly reminds me that, over the many years since Elder Brother and I bought our portable typewriter (in 1951 or maybe 1952, I'm not really sure), the upper case numeral keys have changed. On the 1950s keyboard, the upper case "6" (I have to re-input each of the 6s because my fingers aren't paying attention!) was an underline, "_".

Although I was unable to find the graphic that RX referenced, I did succeed in finding two touch-typing charts (images, below) put out by Smith Corona, the company that made EB's and my portable typewriter. I'm pretty sure that a similar chart was included with the typewriter, explaining my habitual use of my right index finger for the "6" key (yes, I hit the 7 key, AGAIN!)

 

Below is an image of a manual portable typewriter quite similar to EB's and my typewriter - down to the case. [Alert: The rest of this paragraph should be viewed as "not necessarily so". Please see ADDITION at the end of the posting. CC] The only real difference I see is that the label on our typewriter was "SCM" followed by the company name in script. I don't recall whether the company name was Smith Corona or Smith Corona Monroe. I can find photos of "SCM" logos online, but I can find no mention of the company's having gone by Smith Corona Monroe, so I suspect the label included the former of the two.

Thanks, RX!

ADDITION of a few hours later: SCM

So much for my memory. It is like scrambled eggs. Perhaps I would have made more headway in my SCM "research" had I not remembered (incorrectly) that the "M" stood for Monroe - one of the Smith brothers. The "M" was for Marchant. I found History of Smith Corona Corp. which provides the following information about SCM.

Smith & Corona became known as Smith-Corona in 1946 and in 1953 was renamed Smith-Corona Inc. During the postwar years, the company worked to meet the challenge of the newest technology, the electric typewriter, which began to dominate the market in 1948. In 1955, Smith-Corona introduced an electric typewriter for the office. The result of a decade of research, the new machine featured a scientifically sloped keyboard fitted to natural finger movements, more controls in the keyboard area than any other electric typewriter, and automatic repeat actions on all keys. Continuing to branch out into other areas, Smith-Corona merged with Marchant Calculators in September 1958; the resulting company, Smith-Corona Marchant Inc. (SCM), became world renowned as an aggressive and diversified corporation.

....

....In 1985 Smith Corona was incorporated as a wholly owned subsidiary of SCM Corp., and the following year, the London-based conglomerate, Hanson PLC, acquired SMC Corp. ....

She has done it again!

In 2012, I posted a brag on my sister-in-law, Helen's, new cookbook - European Tarts –  Divinely Doable Desserts with Little or No Baking at Cop Car's Beat: Bragging on family (typepad.com). Since that time, in addition to her work as pastry chef at an upscale restaurant in St Louis MO (more than enough work for one of our generation), Helen has been working on a cookbook of cookies. That book turned into two cookbooks: one for American cookies, the other for European. The American-style book is schedule for publication the 1st of October; but, having an "in" with the author, Hunky Husband and I received an advance copy 10 days ago.

Ta da (that's a fanfare) or, better yet, Fanfare for the Common Man for brass & percussion (from Symphony No. 3): 

Helen is nothing if not gracious, loving, and kind (and bubbly!), demonstrating those qualities once again by crediting me with having started her off in developing one of her cookie recipes by sharing a recipe that I used. Truth to tell, I have absolutely no remembrance (or record) of the recipe or, indeed, of any similar recipe that I may have used when our children were small; but, Helen's memory is much better than mine. I'll take her word for it and thank her for the publicity.

BTW: Helen and I have always had an agreement that I, completely lacking the domestic gene, won't try to act like a chef if she won't try to design airplanes. One further note on Helen's facility with European cooking: she carries on the tradition of a long line of wonderful cooks, her mother having, as a teen-ager, come to the USA from the former Yugoslavia.

P.S. I should not fail to, explicitly, include the link to Helen's blog: Pastries Like a Pro.

Happy 85th, Hunky Husband

 

Happy birthday, Dudette!