Honey vs. Vinegar

A while ago, I was pulled over for nothing more than having the bad judgement to cut off a cop.  See, I was stopped at an intersection.  I had a stop sign.  The perpendicular traffic did not.  I swear I looked both ways and saw no cars.  Unfortunately, there was a bend in the road several yards to my left and, as I stepped on the accelerator and drove out into the intersection, a police cruiser suddenly came around that bend, headed right for my broadside.  His lights and siren were both off but, in hindsight, he must have been moving pretty quickly.

I floored it, in order to get out of his way as quickly as possible, while the officer behind the wheel of the cruiser simultaneously floored his brake pedal and turned on his bull horn.

Now, some of you may sympathize with me.  Some of you may be thinking "he must have been coming around that curve pretty darned fast!  Clearly, this was not your fault, Halmanator!"  Some of you might even have suggested as much to the police officer if you had been in my place, making protests along the lines of "I looked and saw no-one coming!  How fast were you driving, anyway?  You must have been speeding along at a pretty good clip!  I could understand it if you were responding to some kind of emergency dispatch but your lights and siren were both off!  Now, I'm willing to keep this little incident between us, but don't let it happen again ... pig!"

But that's not what I said.  I pulled over once I'd cleared the intersection, rolled down my window, and waited.  Within a few seconds, the cruiser drove up and stopped behind me.  The cop stepped out of his cruiser and sidled up to my driver's door.  Before he could say a word, I gave him my most sheepish smile and said "Well, that was definitely my bad!"

He regarded me silently for a moment and said "Yes it was."  Then he asked for my license and registration, which I promptly produced.  He went back to his cruiser for a few moments, presumably to check my history and look for any outstanding warrants, then came back, handed me back my license and registration and said "I know that curve is pretty close to the intersection but, next time, look more carefully" and, with that, he left.  No ticket.  No fine.  All in all, I'd gotten off easy.

My point here is that, had I been more combative or even belligerent, both my wallet and my demerit point collection would likely have wound up considerably lighter.  My apologetic, if not friendly attitude, probably helped a lot.

A more serious example:  In her book, Completely MAD (A History of the Comic Book and Magazine, author Maria Reidelbach talks about the history of MAD cartoonist Max Brandel, before he joined the magazine:

"A native of Austria, he had just begun a career as a cartoonist when the war broke out; during the Russian occupation of Poland he and his wife were captured by the Germans.  He was imprisoned in concentration camps, where he escaped death by amusing the Russians and the Gestapo with his caricatures of them."

Even in the midst of one of the most hellish institutions in history, Brandel was able to soften the hearts of men who thought nothing of sending whole families to their deaths by simply being likeable and making them laugh.

Then there's my dad.  During his battle with leukemia, he spent a fair bit of time in the hospital, not surprisingly.  The nursing staff always seemed particularly fond of him, again because he was simply a nice guy.  He accepted his sickness and the discomforts that arose from it gracefully, with few complaints, and he was always congenial with the nursing staff, smiling and chatting with them and occasionally expressing his appreciation for the care that they gave him.  When he died, several of them showed up at the funeral home visitations to pay their last respects.

Never underestimate the power of niceness and likeability.

To All The Cars I've Loved Before

I think it fair to say that, in general, men are much more emotionally attached to their cars than women are.  This brings to mind a verse from the lyrics of Shania Twain's song, "That don't Impress Me Much"...

You're one of those guys who likes to shine his machine
You make me take off my shoes before you let me get in
I can't believe you kiss your car good night
C'mon baby tell me-you must be jokin', right!

Clearly, women just don't understand the male attachment to motorized transportation.  I suppose this might serve as evidence that women are much more practical than men ... if you dismiss the stereotypical female who can't seem to stop shopping for shoes, even though she already owns a hundred pair for every conceivable occasion, including (but not limited to) solar eclipses that occur precisely at the vernal equinox.

But I digress (as usual).  There's no denying that cars tend to be more important to men than they are to women.  The cars we drive become part of who we are.  To some extent, people judge us by our cars, and this includes women.  Momma always said there's an awful lot you could tell about a person by their car. Where they're going. Where they've been. I haven't actually owned all that many cars for a guy of my age.  I'll be fifty next month (but don't let it get around) and I've owned exactly five cars since I learned to drive at sixteen, and only two of those were purchased new.   I bet if I think about it real hard I could remember my first car (this is where the picture gets all wavy and blurry and we fade to the flashback scene).

Of course I can remember my first car.  A guy's first car is like a woman's first love.  We never forget them.  No matter how many cars come afterward, that first one always holds a special place in our hearts.  Mine was a 1974 Dodge Dart, although I didn't become its owner until 1980.  Before that, it was the family car and belonged to my dad, who handed it down to me when he finally bought a new car; a 1980 Chevy Malibu (dad always had a flair for picking cool, "babe magnet" cars like that). 

Since the Dart was a hand-me-down from dad, it was the four-door family sedan variant; somewhat boxy and nondescript in appearance.  Naturally, I would have preferred something a little sportier, like a Porsche Carrera or, failing that, at least the two-door Dart Swinger variant, but I was not one of these spoiled teens who gets to be choosy about his first ride.  I had to take what I could get. 

Ironically, Chrysler re-introduced a new Dodge Dart this year after having put the model on ice for several decades.  The new Dart is much sportier than its predecessor, being based on Europe's Alfa Romeo Giulietta design.  Why couldn't my Dart look like that?

Still, I grew to love that car.  It wasn't flashy, but it was a tank!  It had to be in order to suffer the neglect with which I treated it, yet still keep rolling.  I had to run it without oil twice before I finally managed to kill it!  After the first time, it just made loud, rattling noises whenever it ran but, like a faithful dog that licks the hand of the master who just beat it, it forgave me and continued to serve me faithfully.  Besides, the rattle was useful in its way.  I still had the car during my first year of college, where I befriended a blind classmate who declared that mine was the only car that he could recognize whenever I rolled into the school parking lot in the morning.

That car and I went everywhere together.  It would take me on scenic suburban cruises on Sunday mornings when I was supposed to be in church.  It got me out of several speeding tickets.

Policeman:  I clocked you at sixty-five.
Me: That's impossible officer.  This car can't do over fifty.
Policeman (looking that Dart over):  My mistake, son.  Move along.

I could tell a million stories, but I'll limit myself to the time that I decided to drive the car down a narrow, gravel lane that ran through an area that was otherwise overgrown with brambles and high grass.  The lane was just barely wide enough to fit the car, which was precisely the reason why I chose to drive down it; just to see whether it would fit.  Unfortunately, the lane turned out to be more of a bike path and, as such, I encountered a couple of cyclists coming at me in the other direction before reaching the far end.  What with the narrowness of the lane and the fact that it was overgrown on both sides, I could hardly turn around and, my Dart being the bigger, heavier vehicle, it was the cyclists that finally had to leave the path and relinquish the right of way to me. 

The skull grinning out at them from the top of my dashboard may have helped to intimidate them as well.  You see, I had made a ceramic skull in my high school art class (I called it Yorick) and, not having any better uses for it, I decided that it would make a nice dashboard ornament for my car.

After I finally managed to drive the Dodge Dart into the proverbial ground, there came a car-free period as I was still a college student with a part-time job who apparently couldn't even afford oil for his old car, much less a new one.  As such, I didn't get my next car until after I had finished school, landed my first "real" job and had, in fact, been working at it for over a year.  On the other hand, my next car was my first new car, and it was another Dodge; a 1984 Dodge Omni.

Although it was purchased new, I didn't exactly pick the Omni myself.  My dad sort of picked it for me.  See, I had never purchased a car before, having only ever owned the hand-me-down Dart and I didn't really understand standard financing practices, what things to look for in a vehicle and possible pitfalls to avoid, so my dad took it upon himself to help me find something practical and in my price range.  As it turned out, "help me find" turned into more of a "choose for me" situation, but I never resented it.  He had my best interests at heart and, I must admit, the Omni was a pretty good fit for me at the time.

Like the Dart, the Omni was a fairly nondescript car (another example of dad's keen eye for style), but it had the advantage of being bright red and therefore just a touch sportier in appearance.  Still, I couldn't help feeling just a bit emasculated when I opened up the newspaper one day to see a car dealership advertising the Omni and pushing it as "The ideal second car for the lady of the house". 

I bought the Omni about a week before my first date with my wife who, unlike the Omni, is still with me to this day. I correctly surmised that any girl willing to be seen in that car might not be overly choosy about potential romantic partners.

As I was somewhat older and my wild oats had been well sewn (and had, fortunately, not borne too much evil fruit) the Omni and I didn't have near as many misadventures as did the Dart and I.  Being a four-door hatchback it was, once again, very much a family vehicle and proved a faithful, if somewhat sickly, work horse over the eight years that I owned it. 

It must have been one of those notorious "Friday" vehicles (you know, a vehicle that came off the assembly line on a Friday, when the factory workers' minds were already more on their weekend than on the task of assembling an automobile) because it seemed that things were constantly breaking and/or falling off that car.  Usually, it was little things like a dash light going out or a side-view mirror seizing up.  It went through more headlamps than Bugs Bunny went through carrots, which turned out to be a symptom of a larger problem with the voltage regulator. 

I'll never forget the day when, driving home from work, I noticed all the cars behind me leaving a large, respectful distance between themselves and me.  I discovered the reason for this when I parked in my driveway and got out of the car, to find my rear bumper literally hanging by a thread!  Of course I had heard the noise it made dragging along the road behind me, but the Omni always sounded like that, so I thought nothing of it.

The Omni was the car in which I had my one and only collision that was serious enough to leave the car in an undrivable state.  In fact, my insurance adjustor reported that it was a coin toss as to whether or not to simply write the car off, but it must have came up "heads" because the insurance company ended up paying for repairs.  Needless to say, the car only became even wheezier and more finicky after that.

In a way, it was the car's tendency to have weird things go wrong with it that caused the accident in the first place.  You see, it had rained the night before and water had somehow gotten into the car even though all the windows were up.  In retrospect, I can only speculate that it somehow leaked in through the open dashboard air vents.  Unfortunately, I hadn't noticed the water when I first got into the car, as it had pooled mostly on the floor of the front passenger side, and there was no-one in the car with me to complain about wet feet.  As I approached an intersection, I suddenly heard a strange sloshing sound, which finally alerted me to the puddle on the passenger side floor.  That distracted me enough that I didn't notice that the light at the intersection had changed to red and... well, it got ugly after that.

Unlike the Dart, which was towed away by a scrap dealer, I actually managed to trade the Omni in to a dealer for a surprising $1,500 discount on my next vehicle; which was a 1992 Chevrolet Lumina minivan (also purchased new).  By then, I was a family man with one child confined to a wheelchair, so I needed a minivan, but I was getting tired of driving these mild-mannered, unassuming family vehicles all the time, so I at least chose a minivan with a little style to it.  I loved the aerodynamic, wedge-shaped appearance of the Lumina.

Ironically, it was this same aerodynamic, wedge-shaped appearance that apparently put a lot of other potential buyers off.  People used to worry that it would be difficult to park because the slope of the front end made it impossible to see where the nose ended from the driver's seat.  While this was true, it was never a problem for me.  I recall reading a review of the vehicle which declared that "...the large, sloping windshield was meant to whisper 'panorama' but, instead, screams 'parking nightmare'!"

Equally ironically, while I chose a minivan partially because of my disabled son, a sales rep for a company that converted vehicles for handicapped access later told me that he would not have recommended the Lumina because the shape and size of the sliding side door made it impossible to install an electric wheelchair lift.  While this was, again, true I didn't want one anyway.  I had purchased a couple of simple telescopic metal ramps which I placed up against the side entrance and along which I simply pushed the wheelchair.  Actually, truth be told, I often dispensed with even the ramps and simply lifted the wheelchair into and out of the minivan manually.  My son's small, light build made this possible but, should any ladies reading this feel impressed at my apparent herculean strength, please feel free to swoon.

I might mention, in passing, that the Lumina is the other car which was involved in a collision, but that was more of a "fender bender" and I was able to drive away from that situation.

While I owned the minivan, I also came into possession of a Ford Tempo.  I say "came into possession of" as opposed to "bought" because I inherited it from one of my wife's uncles after he passed away.  As such, I wasn't even sure of its exact model year (circa 1993).  This was the only time at which our family owned more than one vehicle (my wife doesn't drive).  I drove the Tempo when I didn't need the minivan (mainly to and from work) because it used less gas.

Much as I hate to denigrate the Ford Motor Company or, at least, its products, the Tempo was the least impressive of all the vehicles that I owned.  To this day, I'm not certain whether my wife's deceased uncle had bequeathed it to me because I had incurred his favor or his wrath.  It didn't exhibit the weird component failures that the Omni did, but the body and the underside literally corroded away around me.  I only had it for about 3 years.  I bought the Lumina before getting the Tempo and I still had the Lumina for another four years after I finally sold the Tempo for $200 which I used to buy a pair of bookcase speakers, which I considered to be a trade up. 

Of all the cars pictured here, the Tempo is the only one that isn't the actual car that I owned (although it is the exact same colour and style).  That's because I have no pictures of my Tempo; not a one.  It wasn't a car that we "did" things in as a family (we used the Lumina for that).  It was just something that took me to work and back and, truth be told, in my heart of hearts, I never really adopted it as my own.  You might say that the Tempo was the bastard child that I never loved.  In that regard, it stands in stark contrast to my PT Cruiser.

When Chrysler introduced the PT Cruiser in 2000, I was smitten!  I so wanted one of those.  It was just something about the retro styling that attracted me. 

I'm apparently not alone in this.  Just Google 'PT Cruiser' and you'll find all kinds of PT fan boy sites full of examples of customized and embellished PT's.  I haven't known many cars to have such an apparent cult following as the PT Cruiser has.  There are even two songs about the car that I'm aware of; one by the Beach Boys (or, at least, a good sound-alike group) and one by Sha Na Na).  They seem to sell well too, because you see them all over.  It baffles me why Chrysler decided to stop building them.

Sadly, I had to admire the PT from afar for several years as my budget wouldn't allow the purchase of a new vehicle and they were impractical for wheelchair transportation in any case.  But my son passed away in 2005 and the thirteen-year-old Lumina was showing its age.  It was time for a new vehicle and I no longer really needed a minivan, so I consoled myself by at least buying the car which had so attracted my wandering eye those past few years.

Unlike the Omni and the Lumina, the PT Cruiser was not a new car, but it was almost new.  I bought it used from a Chrysler dealership.  It was a year old (the 2004 model year) and had 28,000 kilometers on it.  I had considered getting a new one but this one was the right colour (red is my favorite), it was several thousand dollars cheaper than a new one and it was in "like new" condition so, again, practicality trumped idealism and I settled for the used one.

I still own it to this day, and it's still going strong.  I don't mistreat it like I did my Dart and, unlike the Omni, things on it don't break or fall off every other week.  It seems that Chrysler and I have matured together.  Like all my other vehicles, it's not overly showy.  It isn't the turbo GT model (although I often wish that it were) so its acceleration and speed are somewhat underwhelming.  In the words of a review that I once read about the car, "It does what its name says it does best".  It doesn't have heated seats or individual climate control or even ABS for that matter (which even my Lumina had).  It's just your basic four-door family sedan with a bit of retro styling.  It does have a surprising amount of cargo room for its size.  It actually compares well with smaller minivans.

Like many guys, I do have a certain emotional attachment to my cars (except for the Ford).  It has a lot to do with the memories they evoke, both good and bad.  I think it also fair to say that, like pets, cars have a way of reflecting their owners' personalities.  In their way, the two cars that I chose for myself certainly reflect mine.  So here's a tip of my proverbial hat to all the cars I've loved before.  Thanks for the memories.

UPDATE: May, 2020

After almost 15 years, it's finally time to retire my beloved PT Cruiser.  Sadly, the old girl is costing me more and more with each visit to my mechanic so, like a faithful but sickly old dog, it's time to put her out to pasture.

I've just purchased my 6th vehicle; a 2019 Hyundai Kona SUV.  This, like most of my previous vehicles, is pre-owned, although it has under 1,200 km on its odometer, which makes it practically new.

I had always sworn that I would never be an SUV owner because I consider them to be pretentious, overly-large gas guzzlers in general.  The Kona, at least, is small as SUVs go.  In fact, it's classified as a "sub-compact SUV", which to me sounds like a term something akin to "jumbo shrimp", only kind of the opposite.

At the time of this writing, I haven't even taken possession of the car yet, although I obviously did take it for a test drive.  For now, I'll say that the ride was smooth and quiet, and the on-board gadgetry was impressive.

I will also add this note:  Remember the ad that I saw for the Dodge Omni, which touted it as "The ideal second car for the lady of the house?"  Well, I got to wondering where the Kona got its name, and came up with the following after a little Google research:

"The name of Hyundai’s soon-to-be released model was also intended to capture the attention of female drivers by reminding them of Kona coffee, one of the world’s top three coffee beans grown in Kona (Hawaii), according to Hyundai Motors."

"Intended to capture the attention of female drivers?"  Again??? And the color, "tangerine comet pearl", doesn't sound exactly butch either!  Why don't I just hand in my "man card" right now?

The Great Programmer

In his blog, Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert, for those of you who have been holed up in a cave) has, on occasion, mused that we may be nothing more than an elaborate hologram or computer program created and run by some higher being. In one example he cites having had a vision, earlier in life, about becoming famous which, in a very real sense, he did. He postulates that he may, in fact, be nothing more than a holographic self-portrait of the higher being that actually created him.

I like Adams, but many of his theories evoke a decided "yeah, right!" from me. This one certainly did. Until I started watching nature shows.

Ever since I got a wide-screen, high-definition TV, I've really gotten into the BBC Earth documentaries such as "Planet Earth" and, most recently, "Life" (the version narrated by David Attenborough, not Opra Winfrey, thank-you-very-much!)

If you'll bear with my going off on a tangent for a moment, I can't resist noting that my dad, who enjoyed all kinds of nature shows, would have loved these documentaries, especially on high-definition display technology. It's a shame he didn't live to enjoy them.

Getting back on topic, these nature documentaries have reminded me of something for which I have no rational explanation, nor has anybody else as far as I know. More incredibly, extending Adams' theory that humans are nothing more than computer programs to include the animal world as well would provide as credible an explanation for this phenomenon as any other. The phenomenon? In a word, instinct.

"The Pocket Oxford Dictionary" (which happens to be the only dictionary that I have handy while writing this) defines instinct as the "Innate propensity, esp. in lower animals, to seemingly rational acts; innate impulse or behaviour; intuition". In other words, it's that "magical" gift that animals have for knowing what to do and how to do it, without actually having to learn it. All cats wash themselves regularly. Momma cat doesn't have to teach them this. It's an instinct.

That was a simple example. The Monarch butterfly provides us with a much more incredible one. Each fall, great swarms of Monarch butterflies fly from southern Canada, across the North American continent, over 3,100 miles, to converge in a small town in Michoagan, Mexico, where they mate. In the spring, their offspring migrates northward, back to Canada. Since the lifespan of a Monarch butterfly is only a few months, none of them ever make the trip more than once. Each makes a one-way trip, then spawns and dies. So how does each new generation know exactly where to go, or how to get there?

The male garibaldi (no relation to Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian political activist), an orange, tropical fish that looks like a goldfish, prepares a nest, entices the female to lay her eggs in it, and then fertilizes them and chases her off, since she's likely to eat the eggs if given the chance. How does the male know this? And why isn't he tempted to eat the eggs?

We call it instinct, but I can't help noticing that instinctive behavior of this sort is very similar to the behavior of a computer program that's been hard-coded to perform a given function. The computer isn't taught by other computers. It doesn't take it upon itself to search Google for instructions on how to open a window or play a video or send and receive e-mails. Some programmer has given it those instructions and, as a result, it simply knows. Electronic instinct.

Maybe Scott Adams' idea isn't so far-fetched after all. Maybe there is a Great Programmer, and the reality that we perceive is just His program, executing its routines. On a darker note, as I observe the world and I witness the on-going unrest in the middle east, the increasing economic disparity between the wealthy few and the proletariat masses, and man-made ecological disasters such as last summer's BP oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, I can't help but muse as to whether we share more in common with software bugs and computer viruses than we do with useful programs.

Happy Birthday!

I created this blog on October 17th of last year. That means that, today, The Halmanator is officially one year old. I make this announcement with a certain amount of self-satisfied pride. Blogging has become something of a fad in our day and I'm certain that there have been many would-be bloggers who have jumped on the "blogwagon" only to post maybe four or five times and then lose interest and either delete their blogs or, worse still, allow their blogs to stagnate, existing in a perpetual on-line limbo, neither developing further nor being granted the dignity of removal from public ridicule. I had said, in my inaugural post, that I had thought long and hard before starting this blog. I wasn't going to do it unless I was committed to sticking with it. A year later, I have 57 posts worth of credibility under my belt.

My regular readership is small, but I'm nonetheless gratified that I do have regular readers. I take this to mean that my on-line musings have been interesting or entertaining enough to entice at least a handful of readers (all of them, admittedly, personal friends) to keep coming back to find out what's been on The Halmanator's mind lately. These people (and you know who you are) provide much of the inspiration that has motivated me to keep coming back. I appreciate your continued patronage, much as I pity your apparent lack of more interesting ways of passing the time. (I kid, of course).

Now that a year has passed and I've amassed a respectable collection of posts, I'd like to invite your comments telling me which were your favorite and least favorite posts over the past year. My goal remains to entertain and to stimulate, and it helps to know what interests my readers. Appeals for comments in the past have met with very limited response. That's okay. I understand. Perhaps you're shy, so allow me to start the ball rolling. I've spent some time re-reading myself over the past week, as it were. (I sometimes suspect that I'm my own biggest fan). Here are some of my personal favorite posts.

Although B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets wasn't technically my inaugural post, it was my first "real" post. One of the questions with which I wrestled whilst deciding whether or not to create a blog was what I would write about. Would there be a theme? Would it be serious or light-hearted? A soap-box upon which to rant? Then, one day, I was driving to work and "Bennie and the Jets" started playing on the radio. As I began musing on the silliness of the fact that I didn't know the words to such a well-known classic and, indeed, still couldn't make them out, even now that I was paying attention, I decided that this was the sort of thing that I would be most inclined to blog about. Some of my favorite posts are the completely whimsical ones that come totally out of left field.

My Starlost post garnered more verbal comments than any other. I was surprised at the number of people who said "Oh yeah! I remember that show! I'd almost completely forgotten about it!" One of them discovered that every episode was to be found on YouTube and, I believe, proceeded to watch most of them online. If any of the producers of the Starlost DVD collection are reading this, please send your contact information to halmanator@gmail.com and I'll send you the address to which you can mail the commission cheque for the increased sales revenue for which I'm undoubtedly responsible.

I still get a kick out of my Blog of Note post, even though it failed to get this blog recognized as a Blog of Note (lousy Blogger critics!) The Dr. Hook song whose lyrics it parodies is such a light-hearted, fun song to begin with. When I was a kid, I used to enjoy the Mad magazine articles that would parody the lyrics to popular songs. Besides, you think it was easy to come up with lyrics that both rhymed and sort of paralleled the original song lyrics? Let me tell you, that took some time and thought! I still chuckle as I sit here in my attic and sing my lyrics aloud to myself. I kill me! (...and everyone who hears me sing.)

Lots of people seemed to enjoy The Relish Tray. That was a true story. I told it to my family over dinner one evening and, when I saw the laughter that it elicited, I decided it might make an entertaining post. Self-deprecating humor was always one of my specialties.

Posts such as Toy Story, The U/C Airplane Follies, Tony and the CKMS / HBC / HUH post, bring a sentimental smile whenever I read them because they are personal reminiscences, so I realize that my reaction is hardly an objective one.

Well, that's enough self back-patting for one post. I'll close by assuring my five fans that I intend to keep blogging for the year to come and beyond, or at least until I run out of stuff to write about, which isn't very likely. Thanks for "being back".

Tony

I've talked about everyone in my immediate family on this blog, except for my dad. Today being Fathers' Day, I think it's time to correct that omission.

Anton Halma ("Tony" to those who knew him well) was born in Yugoslavia in 1938 to a very large, very poor family. He grew up with eight siblings, and had seven others that died during their infancy and yet two more that were stillborn. The eight that he grew up with included just one brother and seven sisters. Having grown up with only a sister myself, and having now a family in which I am the only male member, I can testify that this fact, in itself, qualifies him for sainthood.

When the second world war engulfed Europe, Tony's family was forced to leave Yugoslavia. They immigrated to Austria, gypsy-style, in a horse-drawn wagon when he was just six years old.

The fact that he came from a family with neither money nor social standing always bothered Tony, not because of a desire for wealth but because the way in which he and his family were perceived by the surrounding community was important to him. If I learned only one thing from my father, it's that one cannot disassociate oneself from one's family. He always believed strongly that a person is judged largely by his or her family and, conversely, a person's actions reflect on his or her family. Because of this, he determined at an early age to rise above his modest pedigree.

This meant getting an education, even though his parents, being simple farming folk, didn't see the value in doing so. His father and mother felt that their childrens' time was better spent helping with the farming chores rather than learning "useless" facts at school.

It also meant staying mindful of his appearance and ensuring that his clothes were always clean and presentable. Again, because his family was so large and of such meagre means, his siblings' clothing was often stained, worn and even torn. Tony was fussier. Sometimes, after his mother washed his clothes, the shirt collars would come out somewhat rumpled. When they did, he would throw the shirts back into the laundry and insist that she do them again.

This is not to say that he didn't have a mischievous or even rebellious side. Many years later, he became a maintenance mechanic for a local manufacturing business. During the 1980's recession, the company fell on hard times. As always happens during such periods, the workers became somewhat jittery and rumors abounded. One day, just to exacerbate the situation, Tony and one of his workmates installed a little black box with a blinking red light just over the doorway in the company cafeteria. It did absolutely nothing but several of the workers predictably assumed that it was a closed-circuit camera which management was using to spy on its workforce. The whole thing mushroomed into a major incident before management had the offending black box removed. Needless to say, they never did learn who installed it. I learned this story from my mother, long after the fact. My father lead by example, and was not one to boast to his children about getting away with a silly prank that might have cost him his job, had he been caught.

Tony first met my mother on a ship when he was 17 years old and she was 14. She was on a school field trip with her classmates, and he was in his apprenticeship and traveling on work-related business. Mom and her classmates had strict instructions from their teacher not to fraternize with any strange boys but mom apparently ignored those instructions. She's still much like that today.

After that meeting, they didn't see each other again for five years, as she lived in Vienna and he in Styria and the two were a good six-hour train ride apart. He was apparently taken with her enough, however, that they continued to write each other for a while thereafter, although the letters became fewer and farther between as time passed. Still, five years later, he decided to visit her in Vienna. She had given him her address during their first meeting but the street name was long and not easily remembered (Antonjägergasse or something like that) but Tony remembered it. Fortunately, she had not moved in the meantime. The rest, as they say, is history.

A few years after he married my mother, Tony decided that he wanted a better future than Austria seemed to offer, so he began making plans to move to North America. Like many Europeans, he first considered the United States of America, but Canada's immigration policies proved friendlier and he wound up in Ontario. He came alone at first, and was followed shortly thereafter by his best friend, Adolf ("Adi") Malley. He left my mother and my sister and me behind in Austria because he didn't want to uproot his family until he was reasonably certain that things would work out.

He arrived in Toronto, destined for Kitchener but spent two days at the Toronto bus station because, since he didn't speak any English, he couldn't figure out at which platform he could find the bus to Kitchener. After two days, he finally bumped into someone who spoke his language and was able to point him in the right direction. Upon arriving in Kitchener, he almost didn't want to get off the bus because the first business he saw was called "Waterloo Trust", so he thought that he was in Waterloo. Someone had to reassure him that he was in the right town. Once in Kitchener, he stayed with some friends who already lived there until he could find a job and live independently.

This single aspect of my father's life has always been the most amazing to me. It must have taken an incredible amount of courage to leave his family and set out for a distant country where he had few contacts, no immediate prospects and couldn't even speak the language. Yet he did it, and succeeded. He and Adi found work, bought a two-story house together and then sent for their respective families. My family occupied the main floor of that house and the Malleys lived on the upper floor for five years after arriving in Canada, until the Malleys had finally saved up enough money to sell back their half of the property to dad and buy their own home.

Shortly after settling in Canada, Tony tried to start his own display sign business. He purchased stacks of bristleboard, both black and white, and pre-printed letters with adhesive backing. Any graphics that were needed he drew or painted by hand and, although he was no Rembrandt, he had a reasonable amount of artistic talent. Unfortunately, the sign business never quite took off and, several years later, I found myself with access to a large surplus of unused bristleboard, which I happily used for making models and posters and such.

Originally, my mother and father had not planned to stay in Canada indefinitely. They had thought to build their fortunes for five years and then return to Austria. After five years, however, Canada suddenly felt more like home than Austria did. They also hadn't considered my sister and me, who were in school by that time and had already become acclimatized to the Canadian way of life and had established our own friendships. They decided that it would be fair to us to uproot us and take us back to Austria which, by this time, was an alien culture to us.

In childhood, I never felt quite the same bond with my father as I did with my mother. Dad's parenting style was more or less "hands off". He was the breadwinner who went away to work every day and kept us fed, clothed and sheltered. He left the care and raising of my sister and me largely to my mother.

That included discipline. Mom would spank us when we misbehaved but she also stressed that no-one except for her had any right to hit us, by which she meant other adults, such as school teachers, some of who were not above resorting to corporal punishment from time to time in those days. Dad hardly ever spanked us but mom still laughs when she recalls one of the rare occasions when I misbehaved enough that he did give me a smack on my behind. I immediately looked at my mother and asked "Is he allowed to do that?"

Just as he neared retirement, dad developed medical problems which forced him to take long term disability leave. In fact, he never returned to work. It was discovered that leukemia was the underlying cause of many of his medical symptoms. He was treated by an Oncologist and was in and out of hospital over a period of 1½ years before finally succumbing to the disease in October of 2003. He was 65 years old, having just recently officially retired earlier that year. One of my biggest regrets is that dad didn't have more time to enjoy his retirement years in reasonably good health. He spent his life working and never quite got to enjoy a well-earned rest during his twilight years.

The greatest testament to the kind of person dad was can be found in the way that the hospital nursing staff regarded him. He was well-liked by all of them. One of the nurses even came to his visitation at the funeral home to pay her last respects. I'm certain that hospital nurses see plenty of their patients pass away in any given year and they can't possibly have the time to attend many visitations or funerals. Dad must have made a significant impression on this particular nurse that she took the time to do so. He certainly had his rough edges, but he was a basically good man, and other people instinctively saw this in him.

As for myself, I'm very different from my father in many ways. He was mechanically adept and a handyman. I, not so much. He enjoyed outdoor recreation such as hunting and fishing. I prefer indoor pastimes and am a fan of science fiction and fantasy, neither of which ever interested dad. You would never have caught him blogging, even if he had been computer literate or known how to type. He tried to teach himself once retired, but never met with much success. Yet, for all our differences, there are many times when I do feel his influence on my thoughts, attitudes and beliefs. To quote William Shakespeare, "He was a man, take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again."

Happy Fathers' Day, Tony, wherever you are.

The U/C Airplane Follies

My profile, as well as some of my previous posts, tell you that I'm an aviation enthusiast. I love flying, and I love airplanes. I prefer airplanes to helicopters. Admittedly, helicopters seem much more versatile than airplanes, but there's a certain aesthetic beauty to an airplane, its clean, streamlined contours and the way that its wings are outstretched to embrace the sky. Helicopters, by comparison, tend to look like bulbous, squat, ungainly beasts; noisy, flying egg-beaters. If Don Quixote had ever seen one, he would surely have jousted it full-tilt.

Sadly, I'm not a pilot but I compensate for this by filling every empty nook and cranny of my life with airplanes. I surround myself with airplane pictures and airplane calendars. My computer's desktop wallpaper and screen saver often feature photographs of airplanes. I spend a fair bit of time flying Microsoft's Flight Simulator on my home PC. I've taken a couple of introductory flights in small Cessnas over my home town and, for the past few years, I've gone soaring in gliders at least once each summer. In both cases, I've taken the controls for brief periods. In the winter, I wear a small bush plane pin on the lapel of my jacket. I also collect toy airplanes, and airplane models and miniatures. Some of those toys and miniatures have flown.

When I was about 13 years old, my dad bought me a U/C Cox P-40 Warhawk. U/C is an acronym for "U-Control", meaning a miniature flying airplane that's tethered to the flyer by a pair of strings. On the flyer's end, the strings are attached to opposite ends of a small control handle that the flyer holds in his hand. On the airplane's end, the strings are attached to opposite ends of a moving lever, called a bellcrank. By pivoting the wrist of the hand holding the control handle with the strings attached, the flyer moves the bellcrank which, in turn, moves the airplane's elevators up and down, causing the airplane to either climb or descend. There is no lateral control since the airplane, being tethered to the flyer, simply flies around him in a wide circle.

Seems simple enough, right? If all you have to worry about is climbing and descending, how hard can it be? Well, let's just say, if you saw me trying to fly this thing, or any U/C airplane, for that matter, you'd probably agree that it's a good thing I'm only a wannabe pilot.

I recall the first time that I attempted to fly the P-40. Dad and I went to a nearby schoolyard. It was summer, and school was out, so there was plenty of space, or so it seemed. The first lesson I learned that day about U/C flying is that it's a very good idea to pace out a complete circle around the spot at which the flyer intends to stand and ensure that there are no obstacles or obstructions inside that circle.

Dad took the airplane and walked away from me with it until the control lines became taut. He then fueled up the little .049 "Super Bee" gas engine that powered the craft, attached a battery to power the glow-plug, wound back the propeller on its starter spring and let it snap back. After a couple of false starts, the little motor sprang to life. I extended the arm holding the control handle in anticipation, and gave dad the "thumbs-up". He released the airplane, and it trundled away from him, quickly gaining speed. The tail lifted from the ground and then, just as she was getting light on her wheels, they (the wheels) caught the edge of a lawn that had rudely planted itself right in my flight path.

Well, okay, thinking back on it, I'm pretty sure that the lawn was in the flight path before we ever started the engine. This is why it's so important to check for obstructions inside the flight circle. It's not enough to have a clear, flat space for the airplane to taxi along at its starting position. That clear, flat space has to continue all the way around the circumference of the flight path. In my case, it did not.

Do you know what happens when a fast-moving airplane hits an immovable obstruction with its wheel struts? Pretty much the same thing that happens when a fast-moving person hits an immovable obstruction with his shins. The wheels (or shins) stop dead, but the body that either is attached to wants to keep going. Damn you Isaac Newton! My P-40 nosed unceremoniously into the dirt, and one of the wheel struts snapped. The little propeller managed to mow a three-inch diameter of the school's lawn before sputtering to a halt. Thus was my maiden U/C flight pre-emptively aborted.

I can't suppress a rueful smile when I think about how the scene would have looked to any of our neighbors that might have glanced out their windows at the time. First, they'd have seen dad and me, proudly strutting toward the schoolyard, carrying a shiny replica of a P-40 Warhawk and then, about 15 minutes later, they'd have seen the two of us, walking the other way, somewhat more slowly, me cradling my broken aircraft and wearing a decidedly dejected frown.

I was never able to fly the P-40 again after that. Although the engine still ran and the airplane itself was still more or less airworthy (despite a nasty crack along the nose and canopy), the broken wheel strut turned out to be an impassable barrier to flight. It proved impossible to glue that spindly piece of plastic back together with enough structural integrity to support the airplane through a successful takeoff, much less a jarring landing.

Having destroyed a relatively cheap toy that was made from rugged plastic and ready to fly the moment it came out of its box, I did what seemed the only sensible thing, which was to purchase a considerably more costly flying model airplane kit made from fragile, brittle balsa wood, which would take many hours of painstakingly careful assembly before I could even attempt to crash- er, that is, fly it.

Mind you, this wasn't until years later when I was in high school (it took me that long to get over the trauma). This time, it was a German JU87 Stuka dive bomber kit designed by the Paul K. Guillow company. Coincidentally, it could be configured as a U/C model and could be powered by the same Cox .049 Super Bee engine that had powered my old P-40 and, even more coincidentally, I still had it (the motor), although the P-40 itself was long gone by then. I hadn't considered, at the time, that mounting the power plant which had belonged to my ill-fated first flyable aircraft on this new model might be inviting disaster. Perhaps the motor was cursed! Perhaps it was still possessed by the ghost of the old P-40 (a natural enemy of the JU87 to begin with, being an American airplane) and was just waiting for its chance to visit the kind of destruction that its previous host had suffered on some new and unsuspecting airframe. In hindsight, that certainly appears to be the case.

The Stuka was built alongside my best friend, Mart, who had himself purchased a model of a de Havilland Mosquito, also from the Guillow's company. Mart was, if possible, even more foolhardy than I, having chosen a two-place aircraft. Do you know what it's like trying to start two .049 Super Bee engines anything like simultaneously? These engines tend to behave like finicky lawnmower engines. Whether or not they decide to start, when turned, depends on a number of variables including the ambient air temperature, the alignment of the planets and how nicely you talk to them. One engine would start and the other would fail. Then, after several more unsuccessful attempts, the second engine would finally fire, just as the first engine sputtered out, having exhausted its minuscule fuel supply. It was an exercise in frustration, to say the least.

Mart and I spent months assembling our respective models, carefully cutting the frames and formers, painstakingly running the stringers along the wings and fuselage, connecting the bellcrank and control rods to the elevators and, finally, covering the finished skeletal structures with a delicate tissue paper skin that was then painted and strengthened with a layer of fuel-proof "dope". I wasn't content to simply build my model as per the instructions, either. Oh no! I had to add a number of my own, personal "enhancements", such as building small, box-like compartments with forward-facing grilles under each wing. My idea was to fill these compartments with talcum powder. When the airplane picked up speed, the air flowing through the grilles would blow the talcum powder out the back, simulating a stream of white "smoke" trailing behind the airplane. This gives you some idea of my overconfidence in my own abilities at the time.

For the finishing touch, I added a custom bit of paint work to my finished model. Remembering how certain pilots during the war liked to name their mounts, I painted the name "ZERSTÖRER" (German for "DESTROYER") along the nose of my aircraft.

Given all the painstaking work that we had put into our models, Mart and I didn't rush to fly them. We waited patiently for the perfect day; sunny, dry, calm and windless. When that day finally came, we again made our way to a local schoolyard; not the same one where my P-40 had made its ill-fated maiden flight, mind you. No, this time, we went to a school closer to my old neighborhood, in an older section of town, densely populated by mostly Portuguese immigrants.

Although it was again summertime and the school was again closed, Mart and I couldn't evade the notice of a number local Portuguese teenagers as we made our way to the schoolyard. When they saw the two of us, carrying our airplanes, glow fuel, batteries and crying towels (just in case), they became naturally curious and followed us. As we prepared for our flights in the schoolyard, the somewhat rowdy Portuguese kids (whom Mart later affectionately referred to as the "Julios") watched with interest from the sidelines as they shouted taunts and encouraged us with their sincere hopes that we might entertain them with some truly impressive scenes of destruction.

I went first. Having learned my lesson from the P-40 debacle, I ensured this time that my airplane had full clearance and that there were no obstructions anywhere along its flight path. Having satisfied myself of this, I once again took the control lines while Mart fueled the plane and started the engine. He released it. The aircraft rolled along, picking up speed. The tail lifted from the ground and, this time, it TOOK TO THE AIR... a little too suddenly.

Perhaps it was over anxiousness on my part, still smarting from the memory of my P-40's demise, to get those wheels off the ground. Perhaps it was simple impatience to see the fruits of my labors airborne. Whatever the reason, I had tugged on the "up" line a little too eagerly, and my Stuka leaped into the sky in a steep climb.

Alarmed by this sudden rapid gain in altitude, I over-compensated and jerked on the "down" line, immediately putting the Stuka into a steep dive toward the schoolyard's asphalt. This immediately elicited a cacophony of excited whoops and cheers from the Julios, who prepared themselves for a splendid crash.

Horrified, I jerked the "up" line, again overcompensating, causing my Stuka to pull out of its dive scant inches from terra firma and again begin a steep climb, accompanied by a sullen chorus of "Awwww's" from the Julios, which sounded not unlike the disappointed exclamation that one hears from crowds of spectators watching a professional golf tournament after the golf pro narrowly misses sinking a long putt.

Overcompensating once again, I put the Stuka back into a dive, which changed the Julios dejected "Awww's" back into hoots and cheers. It went on like that for several more minutes with my Stuka executing an undulating series of parabolas worthy of NASA's infamous "Vomit Comet", accompanied by alternating cheers and "Awww's" from the Julios.

Then, at the apex of its last steep climb, my Stuka did something completely unexpected. It winged over and came directly at me! As this maneuver brought it inside the radius of its flight path, my control lines went slack and I lost all control of the aircraft. At that point, I did what seemed the only sensible thing. I dropped the control handle and, covering my head with my hands, I ran for my very life as the Julios exploded into a gleeful chorus of cheers.

Since I had my back to the Stuka, I did not see it when it smacked into the asphalt at the very spot that I had only recently occupied. I only heard the sickening crunch of splintering balsa wood a split second before the motor was, again, ominously silenced.

The body of my P-40 had only suffered a single crack after its jarring introduction to the ground. My fragile balsa-and-tissue Stuka was not so forgiving. The entire nose section was completely shattered, with serious damage to the wings and other sections of the aircraft. As I gathered up the debris in an attempt to salvage whatever parts that might be useful in my future attempt to rebuild the airplane's shattered nose, I came across a small scrap of doped tissue paper, with a few fragments of balsa stringers still stuck to its back, on which was inscribed a single, poignant, word ... "ZERSTÖRER". I understood, at that moment, how The Third Reich must have felt in 1945.

(Click to enlarge)