HipChips.com Quick Blog

It's too hot for guitar playing!

Joe — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 03:12:15 GMT

So, I've been trying to keep busy with other endeavors...

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There is a tutorial on setting up a reseller plan here:

Sydney Sue

Joe — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 03:26:00 GMT

This is a test recording of a new song. I was having problems recording the Taylor acoustic using the MXL instrument mic, so I decided to go with the old tried and true $20 Nady SP-9 (purchased a decade ago on sale for $10). Maybe the MXL mics would work better in an actual studio. Frankly, I think they are too sensitive for my tastes. Anyhow, you can hear the new song by clicking the "play" button below:

Sweet Hour of Prayer

Joe — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 23:07:00 GMT

This was recorded as a test of a new instrument microphone. I originally learned this song from an old Mel Bay book. Over the years, I have changed how I play it. The result can be heard below:

The Old Rugged Cross (acoustic guitar duet)

Joe — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 03:59:00 GMT

This is an arrangement of "The Old Rugged Cross" from a Mel Bay guitar book my parents gave me many years ago, "Flatpickin' the Gospels" by Steve Kaufman. The song was originally written by Rev. George Bennard.

Note: The first mp3 of this song I uploaded sounded muddy, so this is a cleaner remix.

Enjoy!

They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love (in the style of American Woman), alternate mix

Joe — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 02:11:02 GMT

After listening to the previous version of this song, I thought it needed some more work in the mixing. This version moves the lead guitar track to the center channel and the electric rhythm track to 80% right channel. The acoustic rhythm track remains at 80% left channel. I also added some extra equalization to the electric lead guitar track.

This has been a good exercise for me to learn more about Adobe Audition 3's intricacies. It is a very complex and powerful program, although in many ways it has gone down in intuitiveness since its humble beginnings as CoolEdit. You can think of Adobe Audition as Photoshop for your ears. I guess that was their intention, but I've never really liked Photoshop because of its complexity.

Here is the remixed version:

They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love (in the style of American Woman)

Joe — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 03:37:00 GMT

This is my own arrangement of "They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love," a beautiful song written by the late Peter Scholtes. Many years ago, I got the crazy idea that this song could be done in the style of "American Woman" by The Guess Who. I guess you could call this recording a proof of concept. Please don't be offended if you are a fan of the original (of either song). It was done in the spirit of having fun with musical styles (and it was indeed fun making this recording). Maybe someone more talented will record this song for real in a studio one day. Just remember you heard it here first!

Note: There is a slightly different mix of this song here .

Willow Springs

Joe — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 03:04:00 GMT

Willow Springs was the name of a forage station on the old Santa Fe Trail. For some reason, they decided the town that formed around there should be called Raton, instead. Raton is Spanish for rat.

What does this song have to do with any of this? Nothing. It is just a song idea I had years ago. I had another song idea that I tentatively named Willow Springs. Somehow, this song seemed to be a better fit for that name.

So here it is:

Beatnick Boogie (Remix)

Joe — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 01:11:00 GMT

The hepcats are back! I downloaded Adobe Audition 3 and worked on the mixdown. The previous version was hard-limited, which is not always pleasing to the ears. On this version, I used a multiband compressor plug-in to bring the levels up. A previous compressor plug-in I tried kind of distorted the lower frequencies of the acoustic guitar tracks. The multiband compressor overcomes this by applying separate compression algorithms to the highs, mids and lows. Oh yeah, I also punched up the "flute" track in a few places. And finally, I encoded the file in mp3PRO, which actually made the file smaller while improving the quality.

Click to play the remixed version of Beatnick Boogie:

Beatnik Boogie

Joe — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Okay! The recording bug has bitten me once again! I haven't recorded anything in the last decade - ever since my old mixer blew up. Yeah, I bought another one. There are so many home recording solutions today, it was starting to make my head spin when I when I started looking. My old mixer was a Behringer, but it was strictly analog. I found a new Behringer with a USB interface that was less than $200. It has some decent DSP effects built in, as well. I haven't even installed all the software that came with it and have already made a test recording, which can be heard by clicking the Play button at the end of this post.

Behringer XENYX1204USB

After spending a few hours with it, I am happy. I used my old Adobe Audition software to multi-track two acoustic guitar parts and an EBow part that sounds like a flute. I used my Les Paul plugged directly into the mixer for the EBow track, along with a bit of the mixer's plate reverb effect.

"
The Energy Bow, AKA, EBow

Click to play, "Beatnik Boogie", then click here to check out the remixed version!

Child of God

Joe — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 15:28:00 GMT

I was in a band named Encomium at my church (about a decade ago). This is a demo song we recorded on my computer. Benton originally let me borrow a CD that had an instrumental version of this song that featured a violin part. He wanted me to do the violin part with my guitar using an EBow. We had another song I played EBow on, so I was happy to oblige. The violin part from the instrumental version kind of stepped on the vocals, however, so they recorded the song sans EBow when they cut their first CD. I remixed the demo a few nights ago to reduce EBow levels (and totally remove it in a few sections).

The song features Benton Blount and Haven Street on vocals. Zach Lenz was on keyboard.

Encomium's lineup, circa 2000

Front row, left to right: Tim Little, Haven Street, Benton Blount
Back row: Joe Ellis, Wes Brown, Zach Lenz, Steve Shuffler, Alan Shuffler

Child of God

©Todd Proctor, Sheppard Music

Your life laid down, crucified,
Your arms stretched out and opened wide,
To rescue me, so I could be a Child of God.

From nail pierced hands and thorn pierced brow,
Your blood flows down to me somehow,
It cleanses me, so I could be a Child of God.

Praise to the Lamb that was slain,
Praise to the Father, that gave his son away.
The proof of love, the price of grace,
You traded all to take my place,
And died for me, so I could be a Child of God.

I found a clip of Todd Proctor's version on deeperMUSIC.com . You can hear Todd Proctor's clip here .

Click the Play button or open the media player in the sidebar to listen to Encomium's version of this song:

What's so great about Raton, anyway?

Joe — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:08:00 GMT

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

Joe — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:05:00 GMT

    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...

Joe — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 05:26:00 GMT

    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

Joe — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:13:00 GMT

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

Joe — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 16:30:00 GMT

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!

Joe — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:29:00 GMT

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!

Joe — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:12:00 GMT

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?

Toys from the 60s & 70s

Joe — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 16:39:00 GMT

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!   UPDATE: Well, they have totally RUINED retroland! It looks like they are trying to roll it into facebook. I've updated the links as much as possible to the new pages at retroland. In many cases, I changed the links to youtube commercials (which are cooler, when you get right down to it).

Playing with Fire - Part II

Joe — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:34:00 GMT

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 Phillip 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. Phillip 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. Phillip 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. Phillip 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. Phillip 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 Phillip'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.

View Larger Map

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

Joe — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 23:46:00 GMT

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 Phillip 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.

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Approximate location of the "eternal flame" (evidently no longer present).

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 Phillip 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!