HipChips.com Quick Blog

What's so great about Raton, anyway?

2009-11-21T14:08:00Z

If you have read about my childhood shenanigans on this blog, you have seen me mention Raton, NM. I just ran across this slide show on Flickr that you have to see. There are over a hundred pictures, so sit back and enjoy the views!

Hint: Hover over the slide show and click the square containing arrows in the 4 corners to view it full screen.

Self Employed - Slightly Better Than Unemployed

2009-11-14T15:05:00Z

    A funny thing happened a couple of weeks after I bought the Yaris...my employer announced a major layoff. Within a month, they went out of business altogether. Dang! Oh, well.  I did some quick figuring and discovered that I could survive on unemployment and still keep the car. But it would be tight. I don't live an exorbitant lifestyle, so there wasn't a whole lot I could cut from my budget.

    Luckily, I only wound up drawing one week of unemployment. No, I didn't get another full time job, per se, but I did manage to land a consulting contract. It is a contract to provide manufacturing support, product testing, product quality assurance, product evaluation, system evaluation, device design support, technical training, product failure analysis and other miscellaneous product support for the family of a product that I originally designed for this customer (while employed by my former employer). This should take the better part of a year while the client ramps up production at a contract manufacturer.

    So, contract work is better than no work. And I'm certainly no stranger to working from home. I spent my first 4 or 5 years working from home after getting hired by my last employer. There will be some travel, of course, but the client pays for all of that. The biggest drawbacks to consulting is paying for my own health insurance and having to calculate and pay all the federal and state income taxes myself. The health insurance for myself is bad enough, but I am also covering my two kids, who are full time college students. It's about like making two more house payments each month (relax, I have a cheap house). Still, I am indeed grateful for the work.

    Thinking back, it is almost as if I have been preparing to be a consultant for quite some time now. I started a home business back in 2001 after getting laid off from a corporate job. It provided no real income to speak of - at least not enough for me to make a living. But it got me to set up a home office, purchase accounting and invoicing software, and to start thinking along the lines of working for myself. Heck, I even upgraded my wireless phone earlier this year to a smartphone with Windows Mobile and Office Mobile. Did I need it at the time? No, but it is now proving to be quite a valuable tool for consulting with this client...tracking tasks and reminding me of weekly teleconference meetings. This could turn out to be a good thing!

Just transportation...

2009-08-29T05:26:00Z

    I've now owned exactly two new cars in my life.  My first car was a used Toyota Celica, but the first actual new car I ever bought was a 1979 Toyota Corolla SR5. I bought it at the age of 18 when I was a senior in high school. It was yellow with black louvers on the rear window (remember those?), a 5-speed manual transmission, a black interior and no AC. No power anything. AM-FM radio with no cassette (CDs weren't around in '79).  I drove the dawg out of that little Corolla...for the next 18 years. I kid you not - I was 18 when I bought it and I was 36 when I sold it!

    The next two cars were purchased used. One was a Ford Tempo and the most recent was a '99 Saturn. Both were good cars and I got a lot of use out of them. Yeah, there were repairs that had to be made along the way, but you expect that with used cars. The Saturn started losing oil in recent months. Well, I finally found the oil - in my coolant reservoir! It wasn't just oily-looking coolant - it looked like oil that you would drain out of the oil pan. Great - a blown head gasket. Only it wasn't a head gasket. It was a cracked cylinder head. And a cracked radiator. And, oh yeah, all the hoses needed replacing, as well. I would have been willing to put maybe $1500 into it, but this was going to be $2200+. I told them to take it off the rack and I'd pick it up after work (it still ran great, but I knew it wouldn't keep running for long).

    When I got to the Saturn dealer, they didn't have anything I was interested in - new or used. They had a crappy selection due to all the "cash for clunkers" deals they had been making. The Saturn wouldn't qualify as a clunker since it was still getting about 30 MPG. This was after 5:00 PM and I was determined I'd find a car that day. I had to, since I live in one county and work in the next.  So it was on to the next dealer. I had been looking at new cars on line at work (during lunch, of course) since Saturn had called me with the bad news that morning. I was considering looking at a Kia or a Hyundai.  Toyota was another possibility and was in fact the very next dealer I came to.  They had about 3 Yarises...Yari...to choose from.  One was white (shows dirt), one was black (shows dirt and is way too hot), and one was silver. As you can see from the picture, I opted for the silver one. That is the picture from the dealer's website for the listing of my car.

    I'm not crazy about the looks of a Yaris. Its just a subcompact sedan. But it had the features I've grown accustomed to (keyless entry, electric windows, cruise control, AC), plus some I've never actually had, such as a CD player and an audio jack for mp3 players. The car has a surprisingly smooth ride for such a small vehicle.  Its gas mileage is rated as 29 city, 35 highway. I checked it the other day and got 34 MPG. That is a combination of interstate driving and city driving - with the AC cranked up. I think the Yaris and I will get along just fine.

The Altar Zone

2009-01-09T01:13:00Z

This song is about the troubles in this life and the promise of the one that comes after.

   The Altar Zone
   Copyright (c) 2000
   Joseph R. Ellis

1. If your life has got you down;
     You feel rotten to the bone.

     If you wake up with a frown
     And your heart has turned to stone.

You don't have bear the weight
Of all your misery alone.

There is really no debate -
Just take it to the Altar Zone!

2. He can comfort your distress
And turn your darkness into light.

Your endeavors He will bless,
If you'll only do what's right.

All your fears He will abate.
All your sins He will atone.

There is really no debate -
Just take it to the Altar Zone!

3. If you're shakin' where you stand
And your eyes are filled with tears.

Let Jesus take you by the hand
And lift the burden of your fears.

So when they take you through The Gate
And when your kneelin' at His throne.

They will read your name and state:
"You took it to the Altar Zone!"

Click to play:

Humanis Exterminus

2008-12-25T16:30:00Z

My sisters and I were cleaning out the attic in Dad's home recently and found lots of artifacts from our childhood. In addition to just about every birthday card we ever made for our parents, we also found lots of old school papers (including report cards, yikes!). There was an entire suitcase full of my old school papers - class notes from US History, graded papers from 7th grade & up, and one curious picture mounted on construction paper. It appeared to be a full page picture cut out of a magazine (see below). I'm guessing it was from Omni Magazine, or something similar. I was about to toss it into a trash bag when I ran across a handwritten story. It was obviously a rough draft, since it was full of crossed out words and sentences. There was no title, but I did sign my name at the top right corner. After doing some reading, I realized it perfectly described the scene from the magazine picture! Evidently we were given an assignment of looking through magazines and writing a story about any pictures that caught our eyes. So I made a crude scan of the picture and posted it here, along with the story (re-typed). I'm calling it Humanis Exterminus since I never got around to giving it a title. Man, I had a pretty bleak expectation for humanity back then.

Humanis Exterminus

    Thomas Walker opened his eyes expecting to see the early morning light filtering through the curtains in his bedroom. Instead, he saw a room full of lights that were the color of polished copper. The walls were lined with rows of these lights - thousands of them. There was a large circular object directly in front of him that was suspended from the ceiling. It was concave like a dish. Everything had the color of sunlight reflecting off a brand new penny. Everything except the object on the platform in front of him. It was a glowing pink rod, about a meter in length, that stood perpendicular to the platform. It had an unusual pulsating glow. Walker found himself staring at it for several seconds before he noticed the man gazing at him from the other side of the platform.

    "Who are you? Where am I?" demanded Walker.

    "There is no sound that is even close to my name in your native language so we shall omit that question. I can answer your second question, however. You are in the laboratory of a one-man intergalactic science cruiser. We are at present hovering behind the far side of your planet's natural satellite. Now that I have told you where you are, your next logical question will probably be pertaining to the reason for your presence," said the off-worlder, almost routinely.

    "Of course!" sneered Walker, "Seeing as how I'm not a creature completely lacking in logic."

    "I have been studying the human race for fifty of your planet's solar orbits. At the end of this period I am allowed to examine one specimen in detail."

    "Wait a minute!" yelled Walker, "You're not gonna dissect me to see what makes us tick! If you want medical..."

    "Believe me, I do not resort to such primitive methods," assured the alien with an air of supremacy. "I am simply going to electronically scan your mind to..."

    "You're not going to do anything to..." Walker's attention was drawn to the glowing rod which was beginning to pulsate very rapidly. Almost immediately, he was in a hypnotic trance.

    "There is really no cause for concern," the alien said as he began pushing buttons on the platform. "I'm merely interested in the large portion of your primitive mind that has no apparent use. You humans are the only creatures we have come across that don't utilize their entire brain. In our studies, we have found that different patterns of brain waves stand for different thoughts or feelings. The amazing thing is that these patterns are universal. Therefore, your brain pattern when you experience fear would be roughly the same as my brain pattern. Using this method, I plan to examine the wave patterns from the unused portion of your brain and run them through the computer for analysis. With enough information, the computer will make a logical projection as to the function of this portion of your mind. Then it will provide the necessary electrical stimulus to activate this portion."

    Walker was hearing all of this, but he could neither say nor do anything about it. The large dish-shaped object began buzzing and a high-pitched whine seemed to come from Walker's head.

    "It seems to be highly specialized for one function," the alien said while watching the indicators. "Ahh! It has to do with the reception of external psychic signals. All it needs is an increase in the normal brain electrical activity - just like the amplifying stage of a radio."

    The alien pushed two buttons and adjusted a slide control. Walker gave a sudden jerk in his chair and sat up erect. He was seeing an image in his mind. There were hundreds of rockets and missiles being launched at the same time from points all over the world.   The all carried nuclear warheads.

    "No! Don't let it happen!" he screamed.

    "What do you see? What is it?" the alien asked.

    The rockets remained on their original trajectories and began hitting their targets. One after another, they exploded. There were so many at once they began fusing with the atoms of the Earth itself. This was it! An uncontrollable chain reaction.

    "No!!!" cried Walker. But it wasn't his voice that screamed. It was the voices of millions of innocent people crying out for help when none could be found. Walker fell to the floor in a heap. His heart gave a quick contraction and then went into a muscular spasm that would never release. Before the alien could get to Walker, several alarms went off in the control room. He rushed into the room and took in the situation at a glance. The radiation indicators were going off the scale. He sat down at the controls and maneuvered his cruiser out from behind the moon. The sight he saw filled him with disgust.

    "Those ignorant fool savages!" he exclaimed. But the feeling of disgust was soon overcome with the feeling of sorrow when he realized a tear was trailing down his cheek. "There might have been hope for them," he said as he watched the planet being converted into a nuclear furnace. "No other race had such a potential for extra sensory perception. Walker witnessed the death of mankind in his mind and died from the horrible shock. He might have seen it coming if I could have gotten to him sooner."

    The off-worlder punched the co-ordinates for his home planet into the computer. As he was filling out his final report, a somewhat comforting thought came to him.   The Earth would more than likely become a star - thus giving birth to a new binary star system. Chances are, with a new star, one of the other planets would be in an appropriate position for the spark of life to ignite once again in the solar system.

    "Maybe - in a few million years...who knows?" he said out loud.

Goodbye, Dad. We will miss you so much!

2008-04-29T04:29:00Z

Rev. Fred Ellis
4/12/1926 - 4/23/2008

Reverend Fred V. Ellis, 82, of Hickory, went to be with his Lord on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at the Lutheran Home-Hickory West.

Born on April 12, 1926 in Mitchell County, NC, he was the son of the late Joseph Mack Ellis and Naomi Randolph Ellis. He graduated from Mars-Hill College, Carson-Newman College and the Southeastern Theological Seminary. He was a bombsight mechanic in the United States Army and retired from the textile industry.

Reverend Ellis served as a pastor at Drowning Creek Baptist Church in Hildebran, NC, First Baptist Church in Tungston, NC, Oxford Memorial Baptist Church in Taylorsville, NC, and Ranlo Mission Baptist Church in the Smyre Community in Gaston County, NC.

Mr. and Mrs. Ellis were appointed as Home Missionaries of the Southern Baptist Convention. Reverend Ellis also served as a pastor at El Rito Baptist Church in El Rito, NM, Hatch Baptist Missions in Hatch, NM and Betania Baptist Church in Raton, NM. He served as a prison counselor for the United Christian Prison Ministries in Charlotte, NC. He served as an associate pastor at New Life Assembly of God Church in Conover, where he was one of the first founding members.

In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by his sisters, Helen Ellis Howell, Orpha Ellis Wagner, Azoline Ellis Chapman; his brothers, Roy Ellis, Virgil Ellis, William Ellis, Howard Ellis and Arnold Ellis; and grandson, Bradley Ellis.

He is survived by his wife, Dorothy Winkler Ellis; daughters, Ruth Lail and her husband, Hal of Conover and Becky Metcalf and her husband, Craig of Newton; son, Joseph Ellis of Valdese; sister, Eva Ellis Phillips of Canton; six grandchildren, Jennifer Lail and husband, Aaron Kane-Eames, David Lail, Wayne Metcalf, Brandon Ellis, Kim Ellis and Joe Metcalf; one great-granddaughter, Ashton Metcalf; and many nieces and nephews.

A Service of Remembrance will be held 3:00 p.m., Saturday, April 26, 2008 in the Chapel of Drum Funeral Home in Conover with Pastor Brian K. Smith and Pastor Dean Miller officiating. Interment will follow in Catawba Memorial Park in Hickory.

The family will receive friends Friday evening, April 25, 2008 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Drum Funeral Home in Conover.

Pallbearers honoring Reverend Ellis are David Lail, Wayne Metcalf, Brandon Ellis, Joe Metcalf, Allen Winkler and Brian Winkler.

Memorials may be made to New Life Assembly of God Church, 3501 Section House Rd., Hickory, NC 28601.

The following essay was written several years ago by my sister Ruth. She read it at Dad's funeral service:

For Father's Day, 1992, my pastor gave our church the opportunity to write about our fathers and have it read aloud on Sunday. This is what I wrote. We decided to read it today at this celebration of his life, because it gives a glimpse of the kind of father our dad was and a glimpse of the kind of home life that our parents raised us in.

My Dad

    Let me introduce you to my dad, Fred Ellis. He has a delightful sense of humor, loves to tell jokes and pick on us, and has unending patience. He enjoys sports, reading, and working crossword puzzles. He baptized me, was my pastor for nearly twenty years, and still counsels, advises, and prays for me. As a young girl it amazed me that he always knew a Bible story that matched what I was doing wrong. And sometimes I was a 'surprise' sermon illustration!

    He is the best dad a girl could have. He taught me the things that a child thinks are important—how to ride a bike, how to play ball, and how to drive a standard transmission car. But most of all he taught me to put God first in my life. He taught this not only from the pulpit, but also at home. My dad lives a Christ-like lifestyle. His prayers are filled with beautiful words of praise for the Lord and his life is lived with the attitudes of praise, respect, reverence, and thankfulness that are rightfully due to God.

    I learned from my father to be honest, trustworthy, caring , humble and responsible. He challenges me to strive to do my best. He believes in me and encourages me to use my abilities and talents for the Lord.

My parents always included our family and our home in their ministry. An example of this took place one cold winter afternoon. As my sister and I came in from school, Dad met us with a request. He told us of a needy family that had no heat. He said “Girls, you have a heater in the bathroom that you use when you bathe and dress. Would you be willing to give it to them?” Of course we would! How wonderful to have something we could give in the Lord's name to others. Dad could have made the decision without us. After all — he bought the heater. But this is an example of the way he raised us. We were a part of his ministry team – not just on the sideline.

I love you, Dad.

By Ruth Lail

The following poem was written the night before our dad's funeral by my sister Becky. She read it at Dad's funeral:

Daddy, YOU were the greatest man

That I have ever known!

Your loving kindness would no doubt

Melt a heart of stone!

So tender and compassionate

With all sincerity --

You led so many to the Lord --

And one of them was me!

I'll miss you, dearest Daddy.

You were my closest friend!

No matter what the problem --

On YOU I could depend!

To help me find the answer

Be it night or day --

I knew that God would help me

Miracles happened when YOU prayed!

Your advice to me was priceless

One of the wisest men I knew!

Not just from your education

But from the trials YOU went through!

Your Bible was your road map.

You wore the pages thin!

Your scolding knew no mercy --

But your forgiveness knew no end!

You preached a sermon daily

By the testimony you gave --

A true and faithful servant

From the cradle to the grave!

And though I'll miss your presence --

I know without a doubt

God took you to His bosom

When He called YOU out!

By Rebecca Metcalf

Lost!

2008-03-16T22:12:00Z

Stay in the car, Joe

Yeah, right! How many times did I hear that one as a child? How many times did I ignore that parental order? But I was too adventurous and had absolutely no fear. Before you start thinking my parents were negligent, please remember this happened in the 60s. It was pretty common for a parent to leave kids in the car while they ran in to the local grocery store to pick up a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread. This was in a very small town, also. Dirt road main street small. Even Mayberry had a paved main street. But this somewhere around El Rito, New Mexico. I would have been around 2 or 3 years old. It was winter because I remember I was wearing a coat and my two older sisters were in school. Dad parked the old Rambler station wagon in front of the store and told me to stay in the car. But right across the street was a playground! Swings and a sliding board! I waited forever...at least until my dad was out of sight. Then it was off to the playground. Swinging was kind of boring, though. My legs didn't reach the ground well enough to swing really high and there was nobody to push me. Okay, so I tried the slide. Wow, that metal was kind of cold! Sliding down was fun, but then you had to climb all the way back to the top. Too much work for me! Maybe I could go exploring the neighborhood.

Scary Old Ladies

There was an old house right next to the playground. As I was walking by, an old lady called to me and invited me up to the porch, then inside. There was another old lady inside and the two of them were all oohing and ahhing over the little kid. I don't even remember if they spoke English. After all, this was a Spanish-speaking area. I do remember they wanted me to take my coat off, but I wouldn't do it. This was a stuffy "old lady" house. No toys or games. Nothing here to interest me - I'm outta here! I think I headed back to the car. I don't remember if my dad was back yet or not. If so, I probably got yelled at. It wouldn't be the last time. Yeah, I wasn't really lost this time, but this story isn't over.

Bar Hopping

I'm not sure where this happened. It may have been in Santa Fe. All I know is it was in a bigger city and there was a sidewalk and many businesses to visit. As usual, Dad parked the Rambler and told me to stay in the car. Time to go exploring! I don't remember how long I was gone or where else I went, but I do remember where I wound up - in a bar! I remember going in a door and seeing a bunch of guys sitting at a counter (the bar). They all seemed very amused that I was there, which made me think it was okay to be there. I was probably attracted by the colorful beer signs, but what caught my eye once I got there was a vending machine with candy in it. Someone bought me a pack of M & Ms and handed them to me. Hey, I could learn to like this place! Before I could tear into my pack of M & Ms, I was rudely whisked away by my dad. Poor Dad...he was probably worried sick when he returned to the car to discover I had once again wandered off. Only to find me in a bar! I remember him dragging me back to the Rambler, which was now parked in a different location (he must have been driving around the area looking for me). He opened the back door and smacked my bottom as I climbed into the car. That caused me to drop my M & Ms, and boy did I start crying! Not so much from the spanking, but because I dropped my candy. All I could think about was that we were driving off leaving a perfectly good pack of M & Ms in the parking lot.

San Antonio, Texas

I didn't always wander off from the car. Dad learned he couldn't trust me to stay in the car, so he had pretty much resigned to dragging me into the store with him after the bar incident. It didn't matter, though. Dad always had a one-track mind and he would get lost in bargain shopping or whatever and I would always manage to wander away from him. Usually, this only resulted in him having to go around the store yelling my name until he found me. That was something that caused me much embarrassment as I got older, but at this age, it didn't bother me a bit. I remember getting into a pack of Easter egg dye in one store and trying to eat it. The brightly-colored tablets looked like Sweet Tarts, but they sure didn't taste like them! Dad wasn't happy with his brightly-colored son when he found me.

It was around this time that our family moved to San Antonio while my parents attended language school to improve their Spanish. This was the most traumatic "lost" episode for me. Mainly because I realized I was lost before my dad did. Once again, he drug me into some store and once again I managed to wander away. But when I realized he was nowhere in sight, I started to panic. I left the store and started looking for him outside. We were no longer in a dirt road main street town. This was San Antonio - busy streets with stop lights and constant traffic! I made my way down the sidewalk looking for a friendly face. I spotted a kindly old lady on the corner waiting for the light to change so she could cross the street. I made a whimpering noise and she turned and asked, "Are you lost?" All I could manage was more whimpering. She stayed with me a few minutes. Long enough for my worried-and-angry-as-ever dad to show up and grab me by the arm.

That was the last time I remember getting lost. Oh, Dad usually lost me every week in the grocery store once we hit the cereal isle. I could spend hours scanning all the cereal boxes looking for the perfect "free prize inside" box of sugar-coated Cavity Crunch. But he knew all he had to do was yell my name once he went through the checkout and I'd come running, red-faced and embarrassed at him yelling my name loud enough to be heard across the entire store.

How did our parents survive our childhood?

Email Blogging

2008-03-07T16:41:40Z

Okay, I've been slack in posting to this blog over the last few weeks. Free time is hard to come by right now. This is partly due to a music project we are doing at church. The choir and orchestra are working on a cantata kind of deal and there are guitar parts in it. Some of it is acoustic, and some electric (including a few solo parts). Yikes! So all my spare time has been spent practicing. So far things aren't really gellin' during practice with the orchestra. We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, DomainOfficials.com just announced that we can now post to our QuickBlogs via email, which is how I am attempting to send this post. Perhaps I will be able to add some quickie blog posts using this method...you know, post a thought during lunch hour. Let's hope it works!

Toys from the 60s & 70s

2008-01-26T16:39:00Z

Growing up in the 60s & 70s exposed me to quite a mix of toys and games. We all learned about the latest craze from the same source - TV commercials! Being the child of a minister / missionary, TV was often my only experience with many of the toys and games.  We didn't have a very big budget for toys at Christmas time or on birthdays.  Often the more expensive gifts came from relatives back in North Carolina. But I did get a hands-on experience with some of the toys and games through the other neighborhood kids.

Our generation got to experience some toy ideas that were so bad that they actually prompted lawmakers to create new laws to outlaw them. The infamous Jarts (lawn darts) are probably the best known toy in this category. I actually knew a family that bought a set of Jarts (and even played with them myself). What red-blooded American boy could resist playing with something that could only be described as a giant, lethally heavy dart? Other toys have probably caused more injuries over the years and yet are still available today *cough* *cough* BB guns. Granted, getting your eye shot out isn't the same as having a giant dart pierce your skull, and probably not as likely to kill you. But I'm sure many more kids have been injured by BB guns. Yet they are still available. I guess we can blame the gun lobbyists. I never owned a BB gun myself, yet had plenty of experiences "playing" with them. We discovered that when we ran out of BBs, we could shoot straight pins! We'd just drop a straight pin down the barrel, head first. Then aim and shoot. If we shot a piece of plywood, the pin usually stuck right in! You'd think it would tumble and switch ends and hit head-first. But if you think about it aerodynamically, the head of the pin probably provided enough drag to keep the pin flying point-first. I guess this is a good place for my standard disclaimer:

DON'T TRY SHOOTING STRAIGHT PINS FROM A BB GUN! YOU REALLY WILL SHOOT SOMEONE'S EYE OUT, AND IT COULD VERY EASILY BE YOUR EYE!

Some toys were just dumb. We were so much more naive back then, we'd play with anything. The old electric vibrating football game comes to mind. You line up your little plastic football players on the line of scrimmage, having carefully "programmed" your plays into key players by bending little tabs or something on the players' bases. Then you flipped a switch and an electric vibrating motor would vibrate the dickens out of the metal playing field and all the players would bounce around doing pretty much whatever they wanted. Suddenly you knew how the offensive coordinator must feel when the perfect play is botched. I remember one neighborhood kid got a magnetic Gotham City set one year. It was a big cardboard layout of Gotham City. I think it had cardboard buildings (Wayne Manor, City Hall, Bat cave, etc.). The Batmobile was a little plastic car with a magnet on the bottom. The whole city was raised off the table on legs of some kind. This allowed you to use a magnetic wand (a stick with a magnet attached to one end) to "drive" the Batmobile through the streets of Gotham City. Sounds pretty dumb today, but I thought he was the luckiest kid in the neighborhood. Batman was really big at the time. We're talking about the Adam West / Burt Ward TV series. That was about the time our family finally got our first color TV. Batman really made you appreciate a color TV, what with all the colorful costumes and POW, BOP and ZING pop-up balloons.

Then there were the all time classic toys like Hot Wheels. One year I got the Mongoose & Snake drag race set - complete with dual loop-the-loops. There was a checkered flag at the end of the track that actually indicated which car won the race. Then the coup de grace: drag chutes! The drag chute was a parachute attached to a V-shaped piece of metal. You had to stuff the chutes inside a plastic base, leaving the V-shaped piece of metal stickup up through a trap door. When the car ran over the trap door, it snagged the piece of metal and pulled the drag chute out of its little box. This all happened so quickly, it actually looked like the chute came out of the back of the car, as in the real drag races. Thinking back, maybe that is where we got the idea for our Car Trap!

Other classics include the Slinky, the Frisbee, the Hula Hoop, Big Wheels, Magic 8 Ball, and Play Doh. Some toys were inspired by the space race, such as the Major Matt Mason action figures. The action figures weren't much - the cheap rubber-over-wire-frame kind of deal, but the accessories were "out of this world!"  I was never fortunate enough to own any of the figures or play sets. But I was with my dad one Saturday in a junk store in Colorado (probably in Trinidad). I found a Major Matt Mason space crawler in with the used toys and my dad actually bought it for me. The thing had two X-shaped "pod wheels" on the sides and a little roller wheel in the back that more or less drug as the thing crawled along. It ran on 2 D cell batteries, which fit into tanks behind the driver's cockpit. With a fresh set of batteries, it was unstoppable. If it ran into a wall, it would flip itself and travel back the way it came. The crawler also had a working motorized winch. The crawler was designed to sit atop the 3 story space station, where the winch could be put to use as an elevator for Major Matt and his gang.  Other cool lines of toys included the Secret Sam spy toys. Seems like one of the local kids had the spy briefcase. If you pressed a certain button, a rifle barrel would spring out of one end and a gun stock would spring out of the other end. Total coolness!

Of course, I had dozens of toy guns during my childhood, including cowboy cap pistols that used the paper roll caps, and later, a snub nosed .38 that used the much louder plastic ring caps. Yup, our generation was raised on guns. Funny story: when my son was about kindergarten age, he was constantly asking for toy guns. My wife was adamant that he could not have toy guns. So we bought him something constructive - Legos. What did he do? He built some of the coolest looking rayguns, rifles, and whatnot out of Legos! Then he'd run around the house yelling, "Pie-oh! Pie-oh!" (that is how southerners pronounce the word "pow"). Now he is totally into guns as a 21 year-old. I often wondered if we would have been better off letting him play with toy guns. Maybe he would have gotten it out of his system and be done with them as an adult.

My memories are obviously from a boy's perspective. But I did grow up with two older sisters. I remember they had the ubiquitous Barbie dolls. Back in those days, girls only got one Barbie. Not one for every occasion like they have today. One of my sisters got a Troll doll play set. You remember Trolls, don't you? The little plastic dolls with neon colored Don King styled hair that were so ugly they were cute? My sister's set included a carry case that opened into a troll house. It had tree stump tables and chairs molded right into floor. I remember one stupid board game that was marketed to girls: Mystery Date. Jeeze, I even remember the jingle for it. Probably because me and some of the other boys used to pester some of the neighborhood girls who had the game while they were playing it in their yard. The game was a board with a big plastic front door. There were a bunch of pictures behind the door. Depending on how you turned the doorknob, you'd see a different date. The catch was that one of the pictures was a "Dud" - a slovenly-dressed guy who looked like a beach bum. All the other pictures were of preppy Ken doll types.   I think the game was owned by my friend's sister. He had discovered that you could turn the doorknob to a certain position and get the Dud every time. Part of our taunting included turning the knob to the Dud position so the girl would get the bum date.

Speaking of board games, the big one in our family was Monopoly, another timeless classic. When we were younger, I remember playing Candyland (another game that seems to have been around forever). We later got the Game of Life. We weren't allowed to have playing cards, other than an Old Maid deck. The real playing cards could be used for Poker / gambling, and our dad didn't allow them in the house. Battleship was always a hit, but we never owned it (until I was grown and had kids of my own).

Well, this post has gone on long enough. You may have noticed the many links back to www.retroland.com. The site used to be called YesterdayLand and I spent many hours there reliving my childhood. Check them out - I bet you'll find some long lost memories there, too!

Playing with Fire - Part II

2007-12-28T18:34:00Z

Disclaimer:

DON'T PLAY WITH FIRE. BE CAREFUL WITH ROCKETS - MODEL OR OTHERWISE. 'NUFF SAID.

Since last week's article about fire, I remembered a few other fire-related stories. Hence the title of this week's article: Playing with Fire - Part II.

Paper Balloons

I'm pretty sure Philip was the person who told me about these. They required an open space away from any dry vegetation or anything else that might be flammable. And there shouldn't be any wind at all.

Paper balloons were made from a large sheet of newspaper, such as the piece that was used to form the front and back pages. It needed to be a piece that was close to being square in shape, not one of the rectangular single-page pieces. The idea was to fold all four corners in until you had a semi-balloon shape, then you twisted the corners together to hold the shape. Not easily done, but we managed to do it by starting with diagonal corners (top left and bottom right), twisting them together, then repeating the process with the remaining two corners. Yeah, the result wasn't really very round, but it kinda worked.

What next? We sat the paper balloon on the ground, twisted side down. Then we lit it with our trusty Zippo lighters. The twisted paper made a nice fuse. A successful "launch" occurred if your newspaper managed to hold its shape while burning. The result was a very fragile ball of newspaper ash that slowly lifted off the ground and then quickly broke apart into small glowing ashes (hence the need for no wind and no dry vegetation). That was an ideal launch. But what usually happened was the newspaper unfolded itself while being burned. Then you just had a piece of burning newspaper on the sidewalk. Not very exciting.

As with many of the ideas described on this blog, the paper balloon started in one city with one set of hoodlum friends, and was later perfected in another city with a different set of hoodlum friends. After Charlotte, my family moved to the Newton, NC area. It was there that my hoodlum friend Andy (the poor guy who threw his hot dog across the room after it shocked him) and I perfected the paper balloon. The main changes involved using a stapler to "seal" the edges of the newspaper together so they wouldn't flap open during the "ignition phase" of the launch. Plus we discovered the paper ignited much more uniformly if we lit the balloon in as many of these stapled edges as we could. Needless to say, we went through a LOT of newspapers and staples. And we somehow avoided setting our housing development on fire.

Rocket Man

Once again, this story starts in Charlotte. Philip had a model rocket that we tried to launch at the local elementary school. But he only had one engine and one igniter. But the igniter failed to work. It briefly fizzled, but the solid fuel engine never ignited. For those of you who never messed around with Estes model rockets, the igniter was basically a wire with flammable match-like chemicals deposited in the middle. The wire got hot when you connected it to a battery. The hot wire ignited the match chemicals and (if you were lucky) your rocket engine would ignite from this small flame (the igniter had to be inserted inside the bottom of the solid fuel engine). Well, we weren't lucky and so the launch was aborted. Later that evening, we were still feeling antsy because we hadn't managed to blow anything up all day. Philip got the idea to grind up some of the solid fuel in the rocket engine and see if we could light it with our lighters. Now, Estes rocket engines are just cardboard tubes full of dried, highly explosive chemicals. Philip figured that it would be fun to light it and throw it in the driveway and let it chase us around. He lit it. It chased us. A lot. Then it stopped. Funny thing about Estes rocket engines...I forgot there was a delayed ejection charge that was designed to deploy the rocket's parachute. About the time I got to the still-smoking engine, the ejection charge went off. I never ran so fast in my life. Luckily, the ejection charge only lasted a second or two. Philip almost died laughing at me. I almost died from a heart attack.

Hooked on Rockets

Yeah, I eventually got into model rocketry myself. But not at first. In Newton, our 7th grade science teacher let us purchase and build Estes rocket kits. I didn't participate in that exercise that year, and I couldn't remember why. Now I think it was because of the rocket engine incident in Philip's driveway. But by the 9th grade, I got another chance. Our shop teacher wanted us to learn about assembly line manufacturing, so we got to build a whole bunch of rockets. We each got a rocket to take home and pimp out with spray paint and old model car decals, etc. Mine had a blue metal flake paint job and flame decals on the fins. On launch day, we got to reach into a grab bag to choose our engines. I was lucky enough to get a 'C' engine (the higher the letter, the higher your rocket would go). It was a beautiful flight, but when the ejection charge blew, the shock cord broke. The rocket body came tumbling back to the football field and the nose cone / parachute assembly landed on top of the school. I borrowed a ladder from a construction worker and was able to retrieve the rest of my rocket. The main rocket body wasn't damaged in the fall, although one cardboard fin got a little bent.

Years later, I built several other rocket kits with my son. I even built and launched a rocket I made from the cardboard tube left over from some Christmas wrapping paper. It sounded really cool - the long tube gave it a real bass resonance. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Years before the Christmas wrapping paper tube rocket, I decided it would be cool to make a rocket out of just a rocket engine itself. I glued cardboard fins to the side of an engine, along with a soda straw (used to guide the rocket off the launching rod). I made a crude nose cone out of construction paper.

This was shortly after I was first married. I was in my early twenties. My wife and I lived in an apartment near Startown Road. There was a road and an open field in front of the apartment complex, so that is where I decided to point the snub-nosed rocket. So I set up the launch pad on our front porch launched the rocket. It took off and immediately made a hard right turn and went zooming off right past the house next door to the apartments. Right past the guy's window, evidently. I quickly drug everything back into our apartment and cautiously peered out the window. The old dude that lived in the house came out and was walking around asking everyone if they had seen anyone shooting off bottle rockets. Luckily nobody saw me launch the rocket, so I got away with it. Whew!

Playing with Fire

2007-12-22T23:46:00Z

Disclaimer:

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DO ANY OF THE THINGS DESCRIBED BELOW. DON'T PLAY WITH MATCHES! DON'T PLAY WITH LIGHTERS. DON'T PLAY WITH FIRE AT ALL! OF ALL THE "PRANKS" I TOOK PART IN AS A CHILD, MESSING WITH FIRE WAS THE DUMBEST AND MOST DANGEROUS! I HAVE SCARS FROM SOME OF THESE INCIDENTS - AND I WAS LUCKY. YOU MIGHT NOT BE SO LUCKY.

Fire

Why are so many people fascinated with fire? It almost always starts during childhood. Most kids outgrow it at some point, often after they suffer some kind of painful burns.

When we first moved to Raton, NM, all the houses had incinerators in their backyards. At least that was the case in our neighborhood. That was how you disposed of your garbage. You tossed it into the incinerator and then burned it. The incinerators were constructed of cinderblocks and concrete. There was an opening in top where you tossed in the trash and where the smoke could escape when the trash was burning. There was a sliding metal door on the side facing the alley. Every week or so the city garbage department would come by and open the metal door rake out all the ashes and carry them off. The incinerators made great hiding places for hide-and-seek (assuming they weren't full of garbage - burning or otherwise). We often used them for forts when playing army. The stinky soot didn't seem to bother us, but I'm sure our moms wondered why we often came home covered in soot from head to foot.

I don't remember if my parents assigned this job to me or if I volunteered for it, but I was often the one who had trash burning detail. I spent many hours poking sticks into the burning garbage, making sure it burned evenly. It was a great way to learn how various materials reacted to fire. One of the most interesting materials was plastic. It burned quite vigorously and usually turned into a viscous dripping blob of fire. I once managed to get a big blob to adhere to the end of a stick. Wow, I had myself a torch! I held the torch over my head and started running, pretending to be the Olympic Torch Bearer. Bad idea! The burning blob of plastic dripped right on my hand at the base of my index finger. The plastic quickly solidified, but it burned like it was still on fire. What did I do? What would you do? Your first reaction is to rip the plastic off your hand, of course. Another bad idea! Oh, it came off easily enough. But so did a few layers of skin! I still have a scar at the base of my index finger to this day.

What else did I do? Let's see. I had a chemistry set that included an alcohol lamp. It burned denatured alcohol and was used for experiments such as making smoke powder, rotten-egg smelling stink bombs, and my favorite - the chemical volcano! I don't remember all the ingredients, but I do remember that sulfer was one of them. That one cleared the house! I also remember the smell of the denatured alcohol and the smell of burning hair when I singed my eyelashes off by holding a match over the "empty" can of denatured alcohol. I remember doing some dumb things that could have resulted in disaster, but didn't. Like carrying several ounces of gasoline in a Mason jar in my backpack on a hike. My friends and I hiked to the sandstone formations that were located at the north end of town, and we wanted to cook hotdogs over a campfire. But none of us were boy scouts. So the only surefire way (and I mean that literally) that we knew to start a fire was with gasoline. It's a wonder we didn't set Bartlett Mesa on fire, although we weren't technically quite on Bartlett Mesa.

Older and Wiser in Charlotte?

Once again, this story jumps a few years and across the country to Charlotte, NC. By the time I entered 7th grade, I had a little more sense. But fire was still a part of my life. My buddy Philip and I used to walk a couple of blocks up the road to a 7-11, where we would buy slurpees and such. We used to eye the shiny metal Zippo lighters and we both eventually bought lighters, extra flints and lighter fluid. This was before the advent of disposable plastic butane lighters. If you wanted to light something, it required a Zippo or a match. Funny thing was, neither of us smoked. I don't know why we thought we needed lighters. I guess there was always the chance we'd get our hands on some firecrackers or bottle rockets (and we often did). But maybe it was more likely that we thought we could avoid getting beat up on the bus if we could lend our lighters to the bigger, older kids when they asked for a light. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I remember them smoking on the bus back then. I'm not sure if the school system condoned it, but then we almost never rode an actual school bus. We usually rode a City Coach bus that was chartered by the school system. That meant the driver worked for Charlotte Transit and not the school system. It also meant that our bus was almost always late. We used to freeze waiting for that dang bus during the winter! Which leads us to the our final fire event:

The Eternal Flame of Tranquil Avenue

Our bus stop was at the intersection of Westfield Rd. and Tranquil Ave. As I mentioned before, the bus was almost always late. And we were always freezing by the time it showed up. It was during one of these long, cold waits that we noticed a distinct odor of natural gas. It seemed to be coming from a small manhole cover near the edge of the street. The term "manhole" is not very accurate, since the hole was only about 8 inches wide. There was a small finger-sized opening in the metal cover, which allowed the gas worker to gain access to the gas cutoff valve that was located at the bottom of the hole. This valve apparently had a fairly major leak - big enough to be noticed by anyone standing in the vicinity. Yeah, you already know where this is going. Someone got the bright idea to light the gas leak. Not me (at least I don't think it was me). But someone whipped out their Zippo, flicked it, then brought it over to the finger hole in the manhole cover. I fully expected each house on Tranquil Avenue to explode in sequence in a massive chain reaction. But that didn't happen. Instead, a nice one-foot flame appeared. A nice WARM flame. We all gathered around it with our palms extended like we were standing in front of a fireplace after playing out in the snow too long. Ahhh, the feeling started coming back to our fingers! I must admit as stupid stunts go, this was one of the more pleasant ones. We got some pretty strange stares from the drivers of the passing cars, but we didn't care. When the bus finally showed up, a brief panic set in. How are we going to put out the fire? The answer was simple. Someone just put their foot over the hole for a few seconds and the flame was quickly smothered out!

Of couse, dumb kids have to push the envelope and someone eventually got brave (and stupid) enough to remove the manhole cover and light the gas. There was a big WHOOSH as all the gas ignited at once and then went out. I really thought we'd see some houses go up that time, but nothing happened. They just put the metal cover back on and waited until the leak built up enough gas to light again via the normal finger hole. We continued to enjoy our "eternal flame" hand warmer the rest of that winter. Actually, our family moved before that school year ended. But I talked to Philip a few years later and asked him about the gas leak. He said it finally quit working. I guess the gas company detected the loss and eventually sent a crew out to fix the leak.

As an Adult

These days, there is only one thing that will cause me to mess around with flammables. Yellow-jackets! If you are not from the South, you may not know what these are. They are EVIL insects in the wasp family that have no purpose other than to swarm and attack southerners as we mow our lawns every summer. They actually burrow into the ground and build nests. Then they aggressively protect their subterranean homes. I hate them, partially because I have a bit of a bee alergy. I swell up, but not enough to require an epi-pen. When I find a yellow-jacket hole in my yard, I head straight for the gas can. A couple of good swigs will take care of them. You don't actually have to light the gasoline - the fumes will kill them just fine. But I often like to toss a match over their hole just because there is a good chance the flames will take out a few of the "lucky" ones who were outside the nest before it got gassed. They'll swarm around the hole looking for some way to get back in and sometimes their luck wears off and they'll dip too close to the flames.

What about you? Do you have a fire story? Feel free to post a comment about it!

Podcast: Your Love Is Near

2007-12-22T00:45:00Z

Okay, this has nothing to do with the overall subject of this blog. I noticed this blog supports podcasts, so I uploaded an mp3 from my hard drive. Don't worry, I don't sing on this one .

Mp3.com used to allow anyone to upload their own music. You could even have the songs burned to a CD, which you could sell on your page. They also offered a service where you could pay to have your material copyrighted, so I had the CD copyrighted as a collection of songs.

CD Cover for Daddy Gad &
the Drop D Dabblers,
But I Don't Even LIKE Coffee!

Play track, "Your Love is Near" ©2001 Joseph R. Ellis

About Daddy Gad
The name "Daddy Gad & the Drop D Dabblers" was something I thought up on the fly when mp3.com asked me for the name of the "group." Daddy Gad comes from the popular alternative guitar tuning , DADGAD. Drop D is also a form of tuning (drop the low 'E' string to 'D'). The whole coffee / coffee shop thing is kind of an inside joke. Everyone always commented that my songs sounded like something you'd hear in a coffee shop. That was why my mp3.com page was called "Daddy Gad's Christian Coffee Shop". Never mind the fact that I can't stand to drink the stuff (hence the title).

Technical Info
These songs were all recorded on a plain old Win98 computer using $20 Nady SP-9 microphones (purchased on sale for $10). Audio was fed into a regular sound card using a Behringer MX 602A mixer. Recordings were made using CoolEdit 2000 (now owned by Adobe and repackaged as Adobe Audition). The only instrument used was a cheap Martin (now there's an oxymoron) model DXME, multi-tracked for rhythm & lead parts in most cases. Some CoolEdit chorus effects were added in "post production" on some of the guitar tracks (but not on this song).

The Car Trap

2007-12-20T19:12:00Z

The Car Trap

December 15, 2007

By: Joseph R. Ellis

Once again, let's get the legalities out of the way with our standard disclaimer:

DO NOT ATTEMPT ANY OF THE STUNTS DESCRIBED IN THIS BLOG! THE WORLD IS A MUCH LESS FORGIVING PLACE TODAY - ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO PRANKS INVOLVING PEOPLE'S CARS!

Now on to this week's installment...

The Car Trap

As I mentioned last week, this prank was conceived in Raton, New Mexico. But it wasn't perfected until I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. Like many of history's great inventions (of which this most certainly is not), its discovery was made quite by accident. A bunch of the neighborhood kids had been playing outside. Someone got their hands on a rather large ball of industrial strength yellow string wrapped around a wooden stake. It probably came from a construction site, because it was the kind of string that might be used to layout straight lines for concrete forms. Maybe some curbs were being repaired somewhere. In any case, we started playing around with it by stretching it across the road.

My family lived in a house on the corner of a fairly quiet residential neighborhood, and this took place on the street right beside our house. There wasn't much traffic, but when the occasional car did pass by, we'd have to lower the string to let them pass. Then someone got brave and decided to raise the string right when a pickup truck was driving by. The string snagged on the front bumper and the truck wound up driving off dragging our twine-wrapped wooden stick down the road. Well, we thought that was hilarious! I think one of the other kids chased after the pickup and managed to retrieve our twine a block or so away, after it wrapped around something (or someone) and broke free. You'd have thought we'd just invented a new national pastime. What great promise this new game showed! Imagine being able to trap cars and trucks with nothing more than string! I believe it was here that one of us coined the name, "Car Trap." We decided the prank would be greatly enhanced if we could tie some tin cans and other noisy items to the ends of the string. Kind of an instant "just married" prank. We made a few feeble attempts at this, but as I recall, we really didn't have much luck. You know how it goes...kids have a short attention span and it was getting late. Moms started calling kids to come in to supper. Maybe one vehicle took off with our ball of twine for good, I don't really remember what happened to it. By the next day, the car trap was history. But not for me!

Fast forward a couple of years. My family had moved to Charlotte, NC. Coincidentally, our house was once again located on the corner of a residential intersection. But this time, it was a much busier intersection at the bottom of a hill. There was a flashing red light in one direction, and a flashing yellow light for the road with the traffic coming down the hill. Cars would come flying down the hill, go through the intersection with the flashing yellow light, and proceed up another hill. It was a dangerous intersection, and they later made it into a 4-way stop with flashing red lights in all directions. There were a LOT of wrecks during the couple of years that our family lived there. Our yard was elevated above street level, which proved to be a good thing. It kept more than one car from coming into our living room - they'd crash into the grass bank, instead. I remember one year a car crashed into the yard located diagonally across from our house. Unlike our yard, this one was at street level. The car demolished their chain link fence. Before they could get the fence repaired, another car crashed and landed in the same exact spot a few weeks later. I always wondered if the people tried to collect twice on their homeowner's policy. But I digress.

As you might have gathered, the "car trap" seed had been firmly planted in my mind, and I was determined to give it another shot. This was definitely one of those pranks that required a partner, so I couldn't do anything until I made some more hoodlum friends. Fortunately, that didn't take too long.

Philip lived on the next block and was a year older than me. So we weren't in the same classes in school, but we did ride the same school bus. Before long, we were hanging out together and talking about Star Trek (the original series), Estes model rockets (and fireworks in general), and any mischief we could think of.

Philip proved to be a worthy partner-in-mischief. One of his ideas was to dress up like a couple of ruffians and stand at the corner of my family's yard. This was best done after dark. We'd wait for a car to approach from the flashing red light part of the intersection, since they'd be driving much slower. Then we'd perform a mock "knock down, drag out" fist fight. One of us would pretend to get knocked out and roll down the grass hill in our yard and come to rest at the edge of the road. Some cars would speed up and drive off. Some cars didn't even seem to notice us. But occasionally, one would slow down and stop to see if we were okay. That was our cue to get up and run away laughing. Luckily, cell phones weren't available back then so we didn't have to worry about anyone calling 911 and reporting fake dead kids lying on the side of the road. But we only did that trick a few times. A good prankster has to have an innate sense of when to quit.

A few weeks later, I told Philip about the car trap idea. This intersection was ideal. There were trees in our yard, as well as across the street. Perfect hiding places! We dressed in dark clothes like a couple of ninjas (again, this prank was best performed at night). For twine, we used some nylon kite string - strong enough not to break and thin enough to be hard to see. We collected several soda cans and tied them to both ends of about 30 or 40 feet of the string. I took my position behind a tree in our yard and Philip took his position behind a tree across the street. And we had one more secret weapon - walkie talkies! The Car Trap works best when both participants (the trappers) work together as one to trap their victim (the trappee). Walkie talkies made this possible. We lay in waiting with our kite string slackened across the road. We waited for some poor sucker to come speeding down Hillside Avenue. At the last second, one of us would key the mike on our walkie and say, "NOW!" We both yanked the kite string up to bumper height (and early 70s cars had some pretty substantial bumpers on which to snag). It only took us a couple of attempts to get the timing down pat. It was a beautiful site (and sound):

Instant "Just Married" prank!

Walkie crackles to life..."NOW"...*snag*...kite string jumps out of our hands and forms dual tails of clanking aluminum cans behind the victim's car! The driver always stopped within a few feet of getting snagged. I don't remember ever having a car drive off with our noisy snare. They'd hear a terrible racket and stop their car. They'd get out and scratch their head and remove the string from their bumper, then drive off. Yeah, it was another dumb and dangerous prank. But we did it at night when the traffic was lighter and always selected a lone car so as not to create a traffic accident (that intersection didn't need any help creating accidents). As before, we didn't push our luck. I think we snagged 2 or 3 cars that night and never tried the prank again. There were more pranks, just not that particular one.

So that is the story of the Car Trap. The subject for next time: kids playing with fire!

The Case of the Hot Dog Cooker Suicide Pact

2007-12-20T19:06:00Z

The Case of the Hot Dog Cooker Suicide Pact

December 7, 2007

By: Joseph R. Ellis

Oh, the things my hoodlum friends and I did! It is a wonder we didn't:

Blow ourselves up
Get ourselves maimed
Get ourselves seriously burned
Get arrested or sent off to a juvenile detention center
Get our families sued
All of the above

In this blog, I will recount some of our escapades. But first, some background history. Strike that. First, a disclaimer: THESE ESCAPADES TOOK PLACE DURING A MUCH SIMPLER TIME, WHEN KIDS WERE LEFT ALONE BECAUSE OUR PARENTS DIDN'T HAVE A CLUE. AND PEOPLE WEREN'T NEARLY SO LITIGIOUS. DO NOT ATTEMPT ANY OF THESE ACTS IN THIS DAY AND AGE. PROFESSIONAL DRIVER ON A CLOSED COURSE. DO NOT ATTEMPT.

Okay, now the background history. First of all, I got into plenty of mischief on my own, so I am not trying to blame anything on my "hoodlum friends". Remember bobby pins with the rubber tips? When I was just a little tyke, I wanted to know why nothing happened when I shoved a bobby pin into the electrical outlet. I had two older sisters, okay? Bobby pins were always lying around the house. Upon closer inspection, I noticed the aforementioned rubber tips. So I peeled them off and repeated the experiment. Much better! Huge sparks! Smoke! Soiled underwear (just kidding). Rather than get electrocuted, you may be more likely to suffer a burn as the cheap bobby pin metal is superheated into a few drops of molten alloy. But usually all that happens is you blow a 15 Amp fuse and leave an ugly black smoke stain on the wall. Then your mom yells at you and junk. But I did manage to shock myself hundreds of times during my childhood.

Okay, so it is evident that I needed no help when it came to getting into mischief. But some mischief just requires a partner. Sometimes it requires a whole room full of partners. I was going to describe one of our earlier escapades, The Car Trap. But the background history about the bobby pin experiment reminded me of another electricity-related incident that happened several years later.

Show & Tell: The Hot Dog Cooker

It was the 6th grade. Due to my interest in science and electricity, I checked out a book about "cool science experiments". It may have even been a book by Bob Brown, a kind of "Mr. Wizard" author who never failed to teach me useful things that I could twist into mischief. The hot dog cooker was simplicity in itself. All you needed were two nails, a plank of wood, four bottle caps, four tacks and an old electrical cord. Take the four bottle caps and tack them onto the bottom of the plank of wood, at the four corners. This makes a nice set of feet for the hot dog cooker. Next, you drive the two nails through the bottom of the plank, about the distance apart of a standard hot dog. Don't drive them all the way flush with the bottom...leave enough room to twist the bare wires from the electrical cord around the nail heads, then drive them the rest of the way down to hold the wires in place (one wire is attached to each nail). When you turn it over and set it on its nifty bottle cap feet, you should see two pointy nails sticking out of a board. Where does the hot dog come into the picture? You grab one out of the fridge and impale it across the nails. Oh yeah, be sure the cord isn't plugged in yet. Maybe I should have stated that earlier. My bad. Anyhow, once your hot dog is properly positioned, plug the cord into an outlet and stand back! In just 60 seconds, you will have a cooked hot dog! Sometimes you can even see smoke and sparks coming out of the hot dog where the nails enter the "meat". So unplug the cord and grab the hot dog (warning, it is hot). Funny side story. I told my friend Andy how to make one of these years later, but forgot to tell him to unplug it before grabbing the hot dog. He said the hot dog shocked him and he threw it across the room! Back to the 6th grade story...put the hot dog on a bun and add the condiments of your choice. Notice the pleasant metallic aftertaste - you can't get that at Weiner King!

So what do you do after creating such a useful household appliance? You take it to school for show and tell! I didn't bother bringing an actual hot dog, since it would have smelled up my book bag. I just described how it worked and left the rest up to the other kids' imaginations. Then the teacher left the room (teacher's break?). I think it was common and we knew she would be gone for several minutes, although we usually posted one kid as a lookout.

So now the fun starts. By the 6th grade, boys like to show the girls how tough they are by doing things like, oh I don't know...electrocuting themselves with a homemade hot dog cooker. You know how it goes...the dare...the double dare...the double-hot dog dare. It was so cool as one by one the guys got up the courage to grab both nails and see how long they could stand to run the current up one arm, through the chest cavity and down the other arm. Then, being the budding scientists that we were, we decided to make a human chain. One kid grabs the first nail (which is harmless since it is an incomplete circuit). Then the first kid holds hands with the next kid, who holds hands with the next, and so on and so forth. The last kid grabs the second nail, completing the circuit. We actually kept doing this until we had the whole class involved - girls and boys alike. We made some interesting discoveries. With the whole class daisy chained, the shock was much less, due to the increased resistance. We also discovered that the kids in the middle of the chain didn't feel any shock at all - only the ones grabbing the nails felt it. However, if the chain was broken in the middle while the nails were still being touched, the people who broke the chain felt a mild shock when they released their handholds. Fascinating! And incredibly stupid! I could see the headlines: Teacher returns to find room full of smoldering students in apparent mass human chain hot dog cooker electrocution suicide pact!

How did we ever survive our childhood?

Remember to check back next time for the Car Trap story. This invention started in New Mexico and was later perfected in Charlotte, NC.