Cop Car's Beat

Happy birthday, Bogie!

Tidbits for the week - 2021Mar5

Bluebirds Getting Ready to Nest (2/25/2021):

One of the local male Eastern bluebirds is checking our nesting box while shopping around for places to build two or three nests, in hopes of enticing a female to join him in raising little bluebirds. We've been seeing bluebirds all winter, but now they are actively shopping around. I barely caught him during ingress.

Honey Bees Return (2/28/2021):

In Yellow jackets, galore - Correction - Honey bees, galore, posted on a month ago, I noted the presence of honey bees carrying off pieces of the inner material from corn kernels. IMHO, they should not have been out scavenging so early in the season and must have been desperate for sustenance. They have been absent since then, and that was to have been expected - especially with the really cold weather to which we were treated for a couple of weeks or so since they only come out when the temperatures reach into the 50s F. Well...today, they are back - busily attacking the cracked corn. Poor little girls are having a time. I'm happy that my low-grade bird food is helping them.

I consulted Elder Brother, who used to keep a hive of bees in Santa Fe NM, about the behavior of the bees. He said that I was doing well to keep the feeders replenished for them since they must be desperate. He had never seen bees carry off grain bits.

Old Photo of the week:

This (below) is one of the old photos that I've scanned in the past several days. These are my significant others as they appeared on 4/7/1962. One can tell that the photo was taken on a Saturday morning by the tee shirt, jeans, and facial stubble worn by Hunky Husband. Dudette is nearly three years old in the photo while Bogie is just shy of four days old - freshly home from the hospital.

It's too bad that more of the couch doesn't show. I was really proud of myself for having, in the previous year or two, re-upholstered a used couch and easy chair that we had purchased from Mavis Bishop, secretary in the Vibration & Instrumentation group at Boeing, in which I was working at the time (1960). The husband of one of my aunts was an upholsterer in Kansas City Mo. Since I had no idea where one bought upholstery materials, he was kind enough to sell me what I wanted (black nylon frieze for the couch, red nylon frieze for the chair) and help me figure out the yardage required. The couch (which made out into a double bed) and chair, a limed oak breakfast table (with 1 leaf) and four chairs were ours for $95. That would be about $850 in today's dollars.

Moving along

Wonderful Weather (2/17/2021):

By Tuesday (2/16/2021) morning we had accumulated about five inches of snow since Friday. During the previous night, our outside air temperature (OAT) equaled the -17F OAT that I recall having experienced in Kansas in about 1960. The Current Results: Weather and Science Facts website tells me that, as recently as February 10, 2011, we reached -17F, again. How soon I forgot. The website tells me,

"These records were observed at Eisenhower National Airport and go back to 1954. The lowest temperature measured during that time was -21 degrees Fahrenheit (-29 Celsius) on February 6, 1982."

Lowest Wichita temperatures in recent years

Min °F	Date	Min °C
2	March 05, 2019	-17
-2	January 01, 2018	-19
4	December 31, 2017 +	-16
-10	December 18, 2016	-23
0	January 07, 2015	-18
-5	January 06, 2014	-21
3	February 23, 2013	-16
7	December 29, 2012	-14
-17	February 10, 2011	-27
0	January 09, 2010	-18

Not living in this area during 1981-1989, I missed out on the -21F  OAT in 1982. I was living on the Gulf Coast of Florida's panhandle at that time.

Finally this afternoon, I got around to tackling the snow on our driveway. I do, after all, need to drive to the grocery store tomorrow. (Kudos to WalMart for automatically having rescheduled my pickup from Tuesday to Thursday when their online scheduling system was overwhelmed such that we customers could not reschedule for ourselves. One assumes that everyone with a scheduled Tuesday pickup was pushed back to days expected to be exhibiting better weather/street conditions.)

I never spent more than 11 minutes at a time and only went out thrice. My muscles are not accustomed to that sort of exercise, now, and I hate it when I cripple myself because I'm too stupid to pace myself. I'll do even more shoveling tomorrow morning - after it warms up a bit, but before my appointment at WalMart's little store.

The first photo (below) shows the results of my first two ventures out. That bare concrete is where my car will be required to back and turn to the street (to the right).

Next, I cleared some of the concrete in front of the garage doors that hide Hunky Husband's and my cars.

Emergency Supplies (2/17/2021):

Yesterday afternoon, a tiny package was delivered by FEDEX; but, today, FEDEX brought me a really important, heavy box: 14 pounds of safflower seed and 10 pounds of shelled peanuts for our birds. Yay!

Old Photographs (2/18/2021):

One of the photos that I scanned, today, was of my mother's basketball team. She attended country schools during her grades 1 through 10, then had to transfer to a larger school in a town down the road a piece. Whether she also played basketball in 11th or 12th grade, I'm not sure; but, I also scanned photos of the elder of Mom's two younger sisters with her basketball team from the larger school.

In the photo, below, my mother is holding the ball because they lined up by height and she was the shortest. I remember a few of these players, and the coach, from years later when I lived in that area. In fact, my first year or two were spent in a house whose yard abutted the schoolyard. I suspect that the "uniform" bottoms were bloomers - with elastic at the leg opening which is pushed up on the thigh. At least, our gym uniforms in the 1950s had elasticized legs that pushed up - a bit shorter than the ones shown.

ADDITION of 2/24/2021:

Joared gave me a thought. In seeking a photo that showed the gym clothes that my own generation of girls wore in high school, I had searched my yearbooks from 1954 and 1955. Aha! I have a yearbook from 1956 (with which class I should have been graduated had I not skipped 11th grade). The following image is a scan of a page from the 1956 yearbook which illustrates, nicely, the outfits that we wore in the mid 1950s. Since I attended school with these girls for several years, I know knew nearly all of the girls in the two photos. The girls who were seniors when the photos were taken, and who have survived, will be celebrating their 65th year reunion, this year.

Turkeys Making Tracks (2/19/2021):

Each day, early of a morning, our neighborhood's turkey flock left more tracks through the snow. We could follow the flock's movements after-the-fact, up and down and across our street; but, the most interesting patterns were left in our back yard.

Finally, a "clear" sidewalk (2/19/2021):

Now that we've finally reached an OAT that is above freezing, I deigned to clear the snow from our front walk. A man walking down the street to retrieve his mail from the mailbox cluster asked, "Would you like for me to do that for you?" I thanked him and explained that it was good exercise for me. Really, it's more fun than work since I limit what I do at one time - this stint's being limited to 14 minutes. (Working my way up.)

It is a waste of time to clear the sidewalk: no one uses it. I can't blame them. It is so much shorter to cut across the yard from the street to the front steps.

Money well spent

In my youth (which I consider to extend to a greater age than did it 50 years ago), I transferred schools during my senior year of college. The transfer was from University of Missouri School of Mines & Metallurgy¹ (MSM), basically an engineering school, to University of Wichita² (UW). The strange thing about WU was that, although they had a School of Engineering, as a physics major I matriculated into the School of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Woo hoo! In so doing, I lost most of the hours I had earned in "engineering" courses (10 semester-hours were allowed to transfer), I lost the minor in electrical engineering whose requirements I had completed (no minors allowed outside one's school), a bunch of non-technical (humanities) courses were required to be fulfilled in order to earn a degree in liberal arts & sciences, and a couple of humanities courses that had been accepted as substitutes for over-crowded required basic courses (one in economics, the other in English) at MSM were disallowed and the "required" basic courses were added to my requirements at UW. As I recall, by the time the dust settled, the part of my previous college work that would count toward my degree from WU amounted to but 118 semester hours. Yikes! (Please note that, in order to earn a BS degree at MSM at that time, I had to earn at least 150 semester hours of credited work.

I needed only four physics courses (12 semester hours) to complete my technical requirements for a BS from UW, but I needed to complete four semester hours of physical education (not offered to female students at MSM), introductory courses in public speaking, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and those basic courses in economics and English literature. Actually, I rather enjoyed some of those courses; but, tonight the money I spent taking the required English course - Introduction to American Literature - paid off. I got bragging rights, tonight.

Hunky Husband was watching some old episodes of Law & Order. I walked into the room in time to watch the last couple of minutes of one episode in which a sleazy lawyer was saying (my quote probably isn't exact), "Sometimes a guy has to dare to eat a peach." Ah, yes...from 1962 I recall The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock by T.S. Eliot. [Yes, the same man who wrote, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.] Of course, even though I claimed bragging rights for knowing about the poem, that bit of knowledge has come in useful down through the years. In the copy of the poem, below, I have high lighted the appropriate phrase.

The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

By T.S. Eliot

 

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .                               10 Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.   In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.   The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,                               20 And seeing that it was a soft October night Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.   And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate;                                30 Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions And for a hundred visions and revisions Before the taking of a toast and tea.   In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.   And indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—                               40 [They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"] My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— [They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"] Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.   For I have known them all already, known them all; Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,                       50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.   So how should I presume?   And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?                    60   And how should I presume?   And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!] Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.   And should I then presume?   And how should I begin?         .     .     .     .     . Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets              70 And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . . I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.         .     .     .     .     . And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?                  80 But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet–and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.   And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while,                                             90 To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" If one, settling a pillow by her head,   Should say, "That is not what I meant at all.   That is not it, at all."   And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while,                                           100 After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say:   "That is not it at all,   That is not what I meant, at all."                                          110         .     .     .     .     . No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.   I grow old . . . I grow old . . .                                              120 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.   Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.   I do not think they will sing to me.   I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black.   We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown               130 Till human voices wake us, and we drown.                                                               [1915]

From a Virginia website0

 

¹ Now Missouri University of Science & Technology

² Now Wichita State University

Odds, ends, remembrance

Monday & Tuesday, 12/12/2020 & 12/13/2020 - Photos that had been passed by

Birds

The photo shows some of our collection of frequent visitors to our feeders and heated watering pan.

Yard & Remembrance of Younger Brother

Back-lighting showed off some of the dusting of sparkly snow we had on the morning of the 13th. As I pondered the scene I remembered Younger Brother who would have marked his 79th birthday on the 13th.

Younger Brother, PhD, 1941-2012

Remembrance of a dinner long ago

In the 1960s when Younger Brother and his family were traveling through Kansas on their way back home in California from Rolla MO (where YB was finishing up one or another of his degrees), Hunky Husband and I took YB and his wife Barb to dinner at Lakeshore Club in Wichita. (Please recall/know that, in those days, the only way to have an alcoholic libation with dinner was to belong to a "private club" with a liquor license. There was no such thing as a "public" restaurant where one could enjoy a glass of wine or beer with one's meal. Kansas was a "dry" state.)

As always, YB ordered a plain hamburger - one without sauces or additions of any kind - while the rest of us ordered steak, or lobster, or whatever. YB and I got to kidding around about it and we both got the giggles so badly that HH and Barb threatened to leave us there. Whenever any two of us three siblings got together, there was bound to be much laughter between/among us. I miss those days with YB. I miss YB and Barb, who preceded him in death by 21 years. May they rest in peace.

Monday, 12/21/2020 - Saturnalia happenings

Plumbing

Jeremy showed up to do a little plumbing for us. Once I told him all of our woes, he recommended a new toilet for Hunky Husband's bathroom - one that had a larger gateway between the water tank and the toilet plus having a tank-internal air reservoir to add power to the water stream going into the bowl to flush down the contents. It sounded like such a good idea that I told him that we would go with that. Other than that, I asked him to rebuild the interiors of the other two toilet tanks - one in my bathroom, the other in the guest bathroom. Jeremy will call to arrange installation when the company receives the new toilet.

The first photo, below, shows the interior of one of the tanks before rebuild. The second shows the interior following rebuild. In between, Jeremy was gone for a bit over an hour in order to run into Wichita for parts (at the same supplier that I, myself, use). Exciting. Be still my beating heart!

Astronomy

As everyone knows, the closest conjuncture of Neptune Jupiter and Saturn (as seen from the Earth), expected for the next some-odd-hundreds of years, occurred, today. (Stu blogged about it, nicely.) I had HH run me out to a clear viewing area to observe the spectacle. Like my viewing of Halley's comet in the 1980s, for which I drove (alone) to an area near the Pueblo of Isleta in New Mexico, the idea was much greater than the view. Oh, well. I recall that HH thought I was nuts to rouse Bogie & Dudette from sleep early enough one morning in March, 1970, to view a comet; but, I've tried to view most of the earth-shaking celestial events during my lifetime - well, since I was age 3.5 in 1941, at least.

A favorite songwriter (Tom Lehrer) releases his lyrics to the public domain

Back when the earth was still cooling, I had a friend (Jack Carter) who belonged to a fraternity (Lambda Alfa?) During the summers in the mid 1950s, the fraternity house closed down - except that Jack, who was taking courses in summer school, stayed at the house to provide security. As I was also taking summer school classes, I was invited to hang out with Jack and others of his friends at that house. It was during the first of those hangout sessions that Jack played some Tom Lehrer recordings (33 1/3 rpm vinyl). I immediately developed a taste for Lehrer's satirical music, passing that taste along to Elder Brother (Sigma Nu) and Younger Brother.

On the rare occasions on which we three siblings were together, there was bound to be singing of Lehrer's songs. Alas, Jack died many years ago in a tragic fire and Younger Brother chose to leave us several years ago; but, Elder Brother and I still observe the tradition - much to Hunky Husband's dismay. It isn't that HH isn't a Lehrer fan. He is. It's that he doesn't appreciate Elder Brother's and my fine singing voices. I think HH was spoiled by the fact that his mother and one of his sisters had wonderful voices.

HH's mother, as a young woman, earned money by singing at weddings and such and his sister sang in amateur opera productions in Phoenix, Arizona. I've never heard HH sing, so I cannot attest to his voice. He played clarinet and saxophone in high school, including in a jazz band; but, he tells me that he cannot carry a tune, vocally. On occasion, just to twit him, I sing "Do You Love ME?" from Fiddler on the Roof to him. He invariably answers me "Yes" in his speaking voice.

Back to Tom Lehrer: For your enjoyment, below are mp3 files of three of our sing-along favorites:

The Wild West Is Where I Want To Be

Tom Lehrer-We Will All Go Together When We Go (2)

Tom Lehrer-So Long Mom (A Song For World War III)

To see Tom Lehrer's declaration abdicating rights to royalties from his lyrics, go to Tom Lehrer's website. I won't benefit from Lehrer's action - I've never used his lyrics except for my own enjoyment, plus the fact that I own books of his sheet music. In addition, I write non sequitur-ally, over the years I've bought all of his vinyl and CD recordings that I've been able to find.

I hasten to add that I learned of the news through News for Nerds.

92-Year-Old Songwriter Tom Lehrer Releases All His Lyrics Into the Public Domain (tomlehrersongs.com) 11

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday October 24, 2020 @10:34AM from the national-brotherhood-week dept.

Marketplace reports: Songwriter Tom Lehrer became a star in the 1950s and '60s writing and performing satirical songs that skewered just about everything... Lehrer, 92, announced Tuesday via his website that he's effectively putting everything he ever wrote into the public domain. That means his lyrics and sheet music are available for anyone to use or perform, without having to pay royalties or deal with lawyers... [Most of Lehrer's music "will be added gradually later with further disclaimers," according to Lehrer's web site.]

Lehrer's giving up those royalties. But in exchange, he's trying to give his work a new lease on life, said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia. "Lehrer, in this case, is basically saying, 'Hey everybody, come revisit my material, come do with it what you want,'" he said... That could mean we'll be hearing more of Tom Lehrer's work, said Jennifer Jenkins, who runs the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. "There is empirical research showing that when material enters the public domain, it actually gets used more," she said.
Lehrer's lyrics touched on geeky subjects including nuclear weapons, Wernher von Braun, and one song where he set the names of the chemical elements to a tune by Gilbert and Sullivan.

Wikipedia notes he "largely retired" in the 1970s to become a mathematics teacher at the University of California, Santa Cruz (also teaching the history of musical theatre). In the same decade he also wrote ten songs for The Electric Company, an educational TV show about reading broadcast on America's public television, singing two of the songs himself — L-Y and Silent E.

VE Day

Winston Churchill waving to crowds in Whitehall on 8 May celebrating the end of the war - Wikipedia

Seventy-five years ago buzz bombs stopped falling on English cities, carpet bombing stopped hitting German cities, and most of the various armaments in Europe were silenced. Truthfully, as a second grader, I recall when FDR's death (April 25, 1945) was announced on the intercom system at school, but not the announcement of the cessation of hostilities that occurred not quite two weeks later. Perhaps it was not announced at school. OTOH: I recall the birth of my brother (December 13, 1941), but don't really recall Pearl Harbor. I was too young to understand the enormous consequences.

VE Day preceded the end of our war by a bit over three months. VJ Day didn't come until August 15, 1945 - during my school's summer vacation. Not remembering the event, I can only speculate that I was spending a few weeks at my Grandmother H's farm or with Great-Grandparents S's at the time.

From the National Archives timeline:

May 8, 1945

V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day) Nazi Germany surrenders to the Allies, ending the war in Europe.

 

 

"Hands...washing hands" - Neil Diamond

I'm posting the following embedded video because Hunky Husband likes "Sweet Caroline" - and - because he says I kept asking the band to play "Sweet Caroline" in Alamogordo NM in 1970 while he was on temporary assignment there. Besides: Amy Farah Fowler, PhD, and Howard Wolowitz, Astronaut, like "Sweet Caroline".

Week in Review - 2020Feb22

We had just enough snow a couple of days ago that I was able to enjoy two bowls of ice cream before the sun started melting the snow down. The snow ice cream didn't turn out as well as had the one bowl that I enjoyed the week before; but, poor snow ice cream beats even Häagen-Dazs® in my judgement. It surprised me that this later snow ice cream was NOT the better of the two. The differences were two: this snow was powder snow gathered at 22 degrees Fahrenheit (previous snow was wet, at 32 degrees), and I had to use whole milk (had previously used 1% or 2% fat milk) The photo, below, is from five years ago; but, once you've seen one bowl of snow ice cream, you've seen them all.

This past week I've concentrated on data mining the "diaries" left by my parents. (This is not a short project. During the week I managed to complete data transfer for two years. Of course, I'm still working on Dad and Mom's diaries from the 1930s!) The data are then recorded in my Excel records. I don't know why I do this. When I die no one will look at those Excel files and I can hardly expect to live long enough that the worth of the records is all that great, even to me. (I do refer to those files, on occasion, to see when something occurred or where someone lived at a given time.) I am being reminded/told of stuff that I had forgotten, gotten confused, or never knew. For instance: I asked Elder Brother during his visit a few weeks ago, "Since Mom never had headaches, how was it determined that she was deathly allergic to aspirin?" His answer was that he thought our mother did have headaches and he was unaware of her allergy. Well...I was on firm ground about the allergy. It was on her "Medic Alert" tags and in her records. But, she wrote in her seventies about having bad headaches - sometimes for a few days at a time; so, I was wrong in my "remembering" her telling me that she never had had a headache in her life! Perhaps Mom merely told me that she had never had a migraine. EB agreed that Mom was the only member of our family who did not suffer migraine attacks. Below is a photo of the "diaries" (actually, most of the books are "planners") in one of the boxes - after I had removed a fist full of papers and newspapers.

Below are a couple of photos showing the sorts of notes that my father left in one of the "diaries" (from 1960) that he had used in which to keep miscellaneous notes to himself. On a very few of the pages, Mom had made entries of actual "happenings" of those days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The page on the left is seen to be the legal description of a piece of property - on which stood the house in which Dad's mother lived in a tiny village in southwestern Missouri. The two pages shown in the photo on the right are notes that Dad took while studying the private pilot licensure kit that I had given him for his birthday in the late 1970s or early 1980s (on the left) and a sketch of the platting of the area in which Dad and Mom lived in Kansas City MO. On other pages are notes that Dad took about using my HP-19C, which I got in the same 1970s-1980s time frame. Since the "diary" is dated for 1960, one can see that Dad used that book for note-taking over a goodly number of years.

As I mentioned in a comment, on the 17th the neighbor set metal posts for the back part of his fencing. This morning, he brought in rolls of chain-link fencing to set on the post (photo, below) - which will probably be done, today, since the weather is supposed to be sunny and in the 50s.

 

Most useful hand tools

This (photo, below) is an array of my favorite tools.

In the above photo, my oldest tool is on the left and the tools are arrayed from there in decreasing age order. The small hammer was given to me by my parents when we lived in Tulsa - when I was 4-6 years old. At the same time, my two brothers were gifted with similar hammers and we could distinguish our own by the color of tape on the shank, just below the head of the hammer. Next is a pair of side-cutting pliers that my dad gave me when I left home for college. It was new, at the time (1955), and was accompanied by an assortment of basic hand tools that Dad had scrounged from his own supply. (Dad was a journeyman electrician.) I've always appreciated the thoughtfulness that Dad displayed. I'm sure that each of the tools in the set had been used by the time I finished my freshman year. Bogie now owns the tackle box in which Dad had placed the tools for me. (It's the red box, Bogie.)

The larger hammer, I purchased when I bought a house in late December (Hunky Husband and I had split up in January) 1977 and found myself missing some of the basic hand tools, having for the previous years used HH's or our jointly owned tools that I no longer owned. The well-used, multi-use tool next to it was given me by a tradesman who was either replacing sliding-glass door and windows or vinyl floor covering in HH's house, about a year after I moved back in with HH (1990). I admired the tool and, telling me that he had a newer one in his truck, the tradesman gave it to me. It was nearly as beaten up, then, as now.

The extending mirror, I put together for myself to help me delve into the innards of airplanes (mostly, wings on business jets) in surveying repair or modification sites. That would have been in the early 1990s. I bought a magnet that was on a telescoping handle and replaced the magnet with a mirror from an assembly in which the telescoping handle was too short. It extends to 23". Next to it is a newer version of the old multi-use tool. It and the multi-blade, ratcheting screwdriver next to it are only a few years old. The screwdriver shaft can be positioned as shown, at 90 degrees to the handle, or at 45 degrees to the handle. It replaced a "Screwball" screwdriver (purchased in late 1970s - photo, below) that I had completely worn out 5-10 years previously.

 

I regress: The first, small hammer shown in the first photo is not really the hammer given me by my parents. It is the hammer that they gave one of my brothers. I no longer recall whether it was Elder or Younger Brother's (and Elder Brother swears he never had such a hammer!); but, the story is that I broke a claw off of my brother's hammer and was then required to trade hammers with him.

I regress, again: What got me started on the whole tool thing is that I ran across a video on YouTube illustrating how to use the multi-use tool (which "they" call a "Painter's Tool").

 

 

ADDITION OF 2/6/2020 10:18am - Where tools and tapes are conveniently stashed, upstairs.