I hate to sound like an old fuddie duddie but when you have a life that has spanned black and white TV, transistor radios, color TV, satellites, computers, calculators, the internet, wireless phones, wireless internet, streaming content etc., I think I'm allowed.
But when you consider what has occured during Pops' lifetime, it's even more stunning. He was born in 1921 and has always been a technology buff. All the way from no radio, no TV, the Holocaust, through the war to all the technology that he embraced so completely. I guided him to buying a Mac back in the early 90's and he wholeheartedly dove in at age 70, writing his Autobiography with my mother as his editor. In the beginning of his romance with the Mac, I would receive weekly (sometimes daily!) calls from him soliciting tech support. Pops claims that his confidence with the machine finally took off when I impatiently told him "... just do it! You can't break it! Worst case scenario is that you have to re-boot!"
Cameras, ham (amateur) radio stuff, electronics, you name it. If it was new and interesting, Pops was there. Dad loved new technology and would purchase things and sneak them into the house. When queried, he would claim "oh, this old thing? I've had it forever. I told you about it. Don't you remember?" I think Mom was hep to his jive, but she always played along, expressing bewilderment.
Both of my parents were always so interested in the bigger world beyond Warner Court, as evidenced by our two family expeditions to Europe in 1966 and 1968, transporting a Dodge camping van and a Teepee tent trailer both times on the SS France. Moving to Uganda in 1971. Then Kenya. Then France. Then Australia.
What a gift this was to us as children - to see the world and understand that there were other viewpoints, other circumstances, other lives. What an extraordinary gift we were given by them - the chance to experience life beyond our own comfortable circumstances, to have a view into the reality of the hard and heavy life that most human beings are born into. Compassion and empathy for others not as fortunate as we were became a foundation that our family tried to build on.
One of my favorite stories of his life with Mumsy is the time he purchased an early reel-to-reel tape recorder and planted it on top of the refrigerator to record the evening meal chaos in our family. Mom was apalled at how strident and dictatorial she sounded and when chastised he acted like a naughty little boy, caught in the act.
I am certain that this skulduggery harks back to his life in the CIC in Berlin, after the war. From his Autobiography:
"...I did acquire a moderate reputation by producing a couple of sexually explicit recordings and could well have been considered a forerunner in what now has become a common theme in our entertainment world. One record titillated all and sundry so much that one of the higher ranked officers in the American Berlin Command deigned to listen to my masterpiece and left with an appreciative smile on his face. A second rank Gauleiter was permitted a visit with his wife and they met alone in his cell, because we were hopeful that their conversation would give us some valuable data. I was instructed to listen from the moment they met until her departure an hour later and to record their meeting. We were looking for such information as the whereabouts of other Nazis, who had escaped from previous roundups or what they had done with their stolen money, allegedly hidden in Switzerland.
The visit started off with the usual endearing statements, followed by loud complaints about the food and the harsh treatment by us. Next came long silences and some noises indicating
movements. Again silence followed by sounds of heavy breathing, which became increasingly
intense with occasional grunts. This sounded serious, was he undergoing a heart attack, a stroke? Need I call for the medics? But then higher pitched obviously female outcries came over the wires, rhythmical and increasing in speed. Good Lord, what was happening. A two persons stroke -- a double coronary? Now the orchestration added the repetitive noises of bedsprings, making me the unintended voyeur of Tristan and Isolde's love idyll. The finale, sounding like a Wagnerian orgasmic crescendo, removed any doubts about what I was hearing! I became the most popular member in our group, as everyone listened repeatedly to the disk -- I should have charged for it. But at least I shook the hand of a two star General for the first time (and the last time) in my life!"
One of Pops' interests was amateur radio (ie. non-commercial), aka "ham" radio. When he decided to earn his Novice Class license back in the early 60's he had to pass a 5 word per minute (wpm) Morse code examination and a basic theory exam.
One of the test requirements was to learn Morse code as well as all the "Q" codes:
The Q code is a standardized collection of three-letter message encodings, also known as a brevity code, all of which start with the letter "Q", initially developed for commercial radiotelegraph communication, and later adopted by other radio services, especially amateur radio. Although Q codes were created when radio used Morse code exclusively, they continued to be employed after the introduction of voice transmissions.
I loved watching and listening to Pops practicing for his exam. He would sit in his basement workshop on a squeaking old rolling chair, his hand hovering over the Morse key pad, sometimes vocalizing the different letters:
"...To reflect the sounds of Morse code receivers, the operators began to vocalise a dot as "dit", and a dash as "dah". Dots which are not the final element of a character became vocalised as "di". For example, the letter "c" was then vocalised as "dah-di-dah-dit..."
Amateur radio was a precursor to CB (Citizen Band) radios that became so popular especially for truckers back in the late 60's/70's. Amateur radio was considered by Pops as a higher calling than CB radio as you had to have a license. His call sign was KØFYM and he was so proud of his achievement that he had a vanity license plate made that said "KØFYM" and he had it on all of his cars throughout the years. I used to sit next to him in his musty basement workshop (in ham radio parlance "the shack") listening to him search for signals from around the world on his ham radio that he built himself, out of a kit. To this day, a mildew or solder smell takes me right back to that time.
(not his shack, but you get the idea!) "Hello CQ, hello CQ. This is KØFYM in Topeka KS, Kilo Ø Foxtrot Yankee Mike. King Ø Fine Young Man. Hello CQ, hello CQ."
After qualifying as a ham radio operater, Pops would receive postcards from all around the word, CQ cards that documented one's reach via amateur radio all around the world. It was so exciting to check the mailbox and find another card from a far off place, from Minneapolis to Madagascar.
Ken Doogan was one of his good friends from the ham radio community in Topeka and helped Pops assemble a 50 foot high gain antenna in our backyard, increasing the reach of KØFYM on the world stage of Ham-dom. A warm spring day, a couple of beers and all of us watched in horror as two grown men staggered around the back yard with this towering antenna, laughing their asses off, attempting to drop it on the mounts without tipping it into the swimming pool.
Pops would go to weekly (monthly?) ham radio meetings of the Kaw Valley Radio Club, Inc. which was originaly incorporated as a non-profit corporation June 17, 1953 under the name of Kaw Valley Radio Club, Inc. The name was later changed to Kaw Valley Amateur Radio Club.
All the "hams" would meet up at a restaurant on Topeka Boulevard called the "Squat 'n Gobble." I was as taken by the name of the place as the idea that my father would go out somewhere without my mother. They were consistently together.
In the mid 60's, Pops received a call from someone who asked him if he would be interested in joining an expedition to the North Pole. His qualifications as an MD, a psychiatrist, and a ham radio operator made him an irrestible target for the Plaisted Expedition, which went on to become the first confirmed surface conquest of the North Pole. Citing family obligations he regretfully declined and later greedily devoured articles on the success of the mission, knowing that he nobly chose his family first.
So how did we end up down this rabbit hole? Last week On The Media (NPR) had this article:
Hams Travel to South Sudan
When South Sudan became an independent nation this year, amateur radio enthusiasts (a.k.a. 'hams') were excited. For them, South Sudan was one more far-off place to communicate with. The only problem? Few people in South Sudan knew much about amateur radio. Bob spoke with ham operator Paul Ewing, who travelled to South Sudan to solve that problem.
The adventure lives on...
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