A Work Progressing

I was thinking about my parents recently. I was thinking about the depth of our relationships, and the trials and tribulations of growing up in their household. Make no mistake, it was their household. It wasn’t as if it was declared every morning, but it was implied frequently.

I had a great childhood, a few bits of drama here and there. And my experience was quite different than my brothers, as they were seven and seventeen years older. That makes a difference, but we were different people as well, and buttons that were pushed were different. I can only state what I felt by the relationship, based upon the events of my life.

From my father I think I got intense focus, a love of reading, independence, a love for the outdoors…he introduced me to archery, sailing, camping, many things that remained most of my life. We didn’t talk much about deeper things. He never tried, and when I did, he just nodded, and blinked. I think he was uncomfortable.

My mother was the perfect example of motherly love, always supportive, always quick with a smile, hug, kiss. She was independent as well, and had a variety of interests, good with her hands, loved pets, plants, and the care of the same.

The point is that the core of my being was shaped by these people, like it or not. Yes, certain teachers had an impact, a favorite relative or two, my brothers for example. Also, the books that I read, they had a final shaping.

And later on my marriage had shaping and polish! For me, my family had much more impact on the person that I am. I realize that this is not true for many people. But is it usually true? Or are we mostly raised by ourselves, and perhaps wolves?

I think this might be a question worthy to ponder for most people, because it can have a huge impact on cascading influences. Is there generational impact? A popular thought is that each generation is slightly better than the previous one. I think this is skewed by increased technology. If you believe this principle, then going back dozens of generations would reveal that we had the practice of eating our children, and that would have ended the line.

Some genealogists have talked about cycles, or waves. Some have postulated that we are pretty much fixed to our DNA, and we have been the same, plus or minus, for eons.

I don’t know about the long term effects, but I’m fairly certain that my short term effects are cascading. In other words, what I feel is what my parents felt about their parents. I did not know any of my grandparents as an adult, and only one was alive when I was very young, but the possibility is that a pattern was fairly consistent for at least three generations. What about the next three generations? And the next three generations after that?

There is no proof, I haven’t found a detailed written document that wrote about this concept. I know their names, dates of birth, and places of birth, but I don’t know how they thought. History can be accurate about some facts, less so on meaning and content.

The point of this thread is that I feel something unique when I discover a brand new great grandfather, or pair of great grandparents. It’s the factual unbroken line of DNA, close or far. The possibility that my 30th great grandfather thought pretty the same as I do now. I find that important, particularly if there are stories written about that individual.

So that partly explains my passion about genealogy. The next reason is not as clear, or even reasonable. I got the sense that they have been forgotten. I know this because they have been forgotten! Their children didn’t forget, and maybe even their grandchildren, but eventually their descendants became completely unaware that they have lived. Well, I suppose we all know they must be back there somewhere, but not as individuals. When I look through the various lines, I pause my finger on the names, and I try to pronounce them aloud. After generations of silence, I speak their names. They are once again remembered.

I haven’t written about my great great grandparents for a while. I would like to tell about the common stories told around their dinner table, but no one recorded them, so they ate lost to history. I know that some of them lived in challenging times, in challenging places. But without recorded history it’s just a good guess. So I suppose I will have to settle for those ancestors that actually made the history books, or a combination of history books and Wikipedia.

So let me tell you about my 52nd great grandfather. Kind of an interesting guy, lots written about him from widely different sources, so you can parse together a certain truth. There have even been a few movies! My 52nd great grandmother has also found history kindly, and portrayed by an accomplished actor. She even gets a great quote to remember her by… “Come back with your shield, or on it!”.

Yes, my 52nd great grandfather is none other than Leonidas, King of Sparta.

Well, why not! He had kids, and his kids had kids. Someone gets to be related eventually.

I don’t think we get to know the Queen’s name in the movie, but apparently it was Gorgo, and they had one son, his name was Pleistarchus, not a name that rolls off your tongue. By the way, he grew up to be no slouch himself. He was very active in Greek politics and wars, and found himself on the winning side due to his skills.

Eventually he met a young lady from the island of Thera, the famous one that blew-up in pre-history. Removed from the mainland they were on the edge of civilization for centuries. They eventually embraced the Roman culture, even while Alexander was making his run for history. For the most part they stay rooted on Thera and kept their family records like good Roman citizens.

I’ve alway said that genealogy can really be trusted if you can get into royal records. They were fanatics about accurate family history and employed court scribes to write it all down. The other fanatic group was the Romans. So if you are lucky to find a lowly count or Duke, then ride the information until some barbarian royalty marries into a Roman family, then you have decades of records. In this case a Greek family that embraced the practice of Roman culture.

So Pleistarchus’s son lived on Thera and took a Greek/Roman name, Aulus Plotius Leonides. Kind of a nod to his grandfather.

The big improvement is when they married into the House of Burgundy around 1000. Everybody wanted to marry into the Burgundian’s, the Mauvoisins, the Bethencourts, the Bracquemont, the Grainvilles, the Meluns, and the Hammersteins.

They apparently stayed on the island for about seven generations, then moved to Rome itself for a couple of generations, finally they moved to the edges of the Roman Empire in France. They became a minor royal family in Brittany for seven of eight generations, and began moving up in power and wealth, though talent and marriages.

The Hammersteins are important because it was a family going in the wrong direction, not richer and more powerful, but poorer and not “land owners”. Sometime in the 1400s there was a great movement to trim the royal families. There were too many of them, seeking privileges without the ability to pay taxes. The wiser families married into the richer commoners. Ha! Some of my German peasants married ex-royalty… So I get to claim a micro connection to Leonidas!

Do I trust the information? The Roman and European lines have been checked and triple checked for generations. The poor German fathers have had records digitized by Ancestry.com and that is vastly improved from a few years ago when the data was barely on microfilm. I still don’t know where my grandfather died, he left and just disappeared, so nothing is absolutely known, just a pretty good guess for recent history, but better when it got written down.

So, back to Leonidas, what do we know? Well, he appears to be a badass. He led a core group of personally chosen Spartans, he gathered 300 men for the battle. Not necessarily the best fighters, but older and courageous. He made it attractive for other men from other cities to join him at Thermopylae, “the Hot Gates”. At the start of the battle he had maybe 5 or 6 thousand Greeks, fighting against 200 to 300 thousand Persians. The battlefield was narrow so very few men fought at one time. The Greeks created mounds of dead Persians. He delayed the Persian army for maybe a week, giving the main Greek army time to organize. He didn’t come back from the battle, not even on his shield. It is written that the survivors tried to bring his body back, but the Persians wouldn’t allow it, and then mutilated Leonidas. His head was put on a stake, and his body was crucified at the battle site.

In 1955 a statue was erected at Thermopylae with the words: “ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ” (“Come and take them”). This was Leonidas’ answer to the Persian demand to drop your weapons. Yep, badass, was my 52nd great grandfather.

Leonidas, King of Sparta

First, as an instructor, I would always remind the class, “There are no silly questions, there are just questions.”

I just watched a rented Google movie, “Emily, @ the Edge of Chaos”. It was a remarkable movie, perhaps touching at the edges of the most important parts of the known universe. How’s that for a recommendation? It introduced me to Emily Levine.

And quite appropriately, as this is the source of the title for this rant. I’m sorry to say that if this movie is the first you have known about Emily Levine, then you will be sad to know that within a few short years, she died of cancer. There is a hint of her lack of the fear of death in this movie, and in a TedTalk video, she announced her Stage Four prognosis, which came to the conclusion within a year.

So, the question still is, how much do dead people know? The answer is blunt, and perhaps obvious. How much did they know when they were alive? The secondary qualifier is, what was the measuring technology of his/her life?

Did they live in a small tribal community that was mostly preliterate, primarily oral? In that case, the dead person’s knowledge lasted as long as the collective survivor’s memory. The accuracy of that knowledge is highly subjective.

Did the dead person write things down, or did someone with personal knowledge write things down for them? In that case the knowledge is passed through the decades, as long as the transmission medium survives, or is copied for another cycle. The accuracy is again subjective, but can be more accurate with multiple copies to use as comparison.

What about Emily Levine’s knowledge? We have her books, blogs, and videos. And we have her film. The knowledge is fixed, her death stops any new knowledge that can be fixed to her life. But knowledge that is based upon ideas that she proposed… well! , that might fall in the joint ownership category. The Great Shared Knowledge of the universe. That place is filled with the knowledge of dead people. Unfortunately all of it is dependent upon some sort of successful storage medium. I do not mistrust oral history as a medium, although there is a difference depending upon decades. Older appears to be more accurate than newer. And of course copies can be edited. Video and film can also be modified but it is much more difficult. Talk to any professional editor of film and you will find out that context can still be changed dramatically.

Emily Levine died, she reminded us that we shall also die. How can we live with death? Because life is death, Emily said this. I think she was/is right. I few years ago I had a significant heart attack. I learned a few things. I did not have pain in my right arm. It turns out that women do not generally have a right arm pain either.

I had a golf ball knot in my back, like a pulled muscle. Good to know, I could sit or sleep wrong, or I could be having a heart attack. I could clean the garage, and later feel muscle tension, or I could be hours from major heart failure. I love the dilemma.

It does generate some thought to some sort of existence after death. On a spiritual level I’m pretty good, on a worldly level I ponder how it works out. I’m not famous, nor am I widely published. I have some parts of my existence saved in the digital world, and less recorded on canvas or paper. How much will be seen or read? Will there be knowledge shared? Will someone, at sometime, find anything important in my participation of “shared knowledge”?

I’m not even sure that I will know about it, even if my existence changes in the future. Clearly I’m investing in the possibility that I might contribute, less clearly that it matters. I will say this, I’m very glad that Emily Levine took the time to save bits of herself on a medium that I could access. I an better for it.

According to the biblical story, Pharoah had a dream that no one could interpret for him. His chief cupbearer then remembered that Joseph had interpreted a dream for him when he was in prison two years earlier. So, Joseph was “brought from the dungeon” and shaved and changed his clothes. He then came before Pharoah and told him that his dream meant there would be seven years of abundance in the land of Egypt followed by seven years of famine. Joseph recommended that “a discerning and wise man” be put in charge and that food should be collected in the good years and stored for use during the famine. This seemed like a good idea to Pharaoh and Joseph ended up with the job (Genesis 41).

Okay, so let us look at the actual verses. I’m using the Hebrew translation as it is probably closer to the original.

1 It happened at the end of two full years, that Pharoah dreamed: and behold, he stood by the river. 2 Behold, there came up out of the river seven cattle, sleek and fat, and they fed in the marsh grass. 3 Behold, seven other cattle came up after them out of the river, ugly and thin, and stood by the other cattle on the brink of the river. 4 The ugly and thin cattle ate up the seven sleek and fat cattle. So Paroh awoke. 5 He slept and dreamed a second time: and behold, seven heads of grain came up on one stalk, healthy and good. 6 Behold, seven heads of grain, thin and blasted with the east wind, sprung up after them. 7 The thin heads of grain swallowed up the seven healthy and full ears. Pharoah awoke, and behold, it was a dream.

I want to pay particular attention to the central premise of the verses, and it isn’t about cows of ears of corn. “a dream that no one could interpret for him”. What? Let us be perfectly clear, the government of Pharoah was extremely well organized, with thousands of specialized jobs. All kinds of job, people watching the calendar, teams of people for each god (and they had hundreds of gods}, cupbearers (wine tasters), chefs, secretaries, poet laureates, musicians, I could go on and on, the point being is that Pharoah had well paid “dream interpreters” whose job it was to tell Pharoah the meaning of the dreams that he had.

Now, I do believe that sometimes God creeps in and gives a dream that is more of a prophecy, and maybe it doesn’t come from Pharoah’s subconscious. Given that this can be true, would God go through all that trouble to make it a total mystery that no one can interpret?

Let’s look at the two separate dreams using common logic. Both use a common number 7. Seven cows, seven ears of corn, both are food items. In fact, the lean cows eat the fat cows, and the lean ears of corn eat the fat corn. I’m not sure that follows logic, but you can get the idea that we are left with hungry cows, and hungry corn. Even if they had just eaten their friends.

So, what does the seven mean. The common choices are seven days, seven weeks, seven months, or seven years. Growing cycles for planted food is usually marked in years to get the full seasonal impact. Even cattle are measured in years in order to accommodate the birth cycles.

So logic tells us there will be seven good years for food, and then seven bad years of famine. Joseph tells Pharoah to prepare for the coming famine by forming a storage facility, and most importantly to convince the people to put work twice as hard, once for the normal good times, then once again the store for the bad times.

That really wasn’t that hard. If God gave the Pharoah that dream, he made it very easy to work it out. If Pharoah made up that dream it was that hard either. Using logic it is obvious that the most intense dream a Pharoah could have is one that would negatively impact his people. Realistically, the Pharoah would never suffer a famine.

So the real question is why did the “dream interpreters” say they couldn’t figure it out. Indeed, why did Pharoah say to himself, “I can’t understand this. Let’s listen to the cupbearer (who will probably get poisoned soon), and let him bring that slave up from the dungeon, in order to see what he says.

Someone has to take the blame for the plan. Certainly if it doesn’t work, but more importantly if it does work. Convincing people in the midst of prosperity to work twice as hard will not make anyone popular. The Pharoah wanted no part of this, he punted. And the Dream Interpreters also saw the dilemma, so they agreed, get the slave from the dungeon to enforce the plan. And until the famine hit, the people probably griped a great deal.

This is part plan of an overall plan to take all of the miracles out of the Bible. I know this is popular for some people. This was never in the “miracle bag”, but it has been glossed over without looking at why everyone feigned ignorance, when the answer was obvious. To me, this is evidence that the Bible relates events that were true!

I’m a believer in three. Two times, well that’s not quite the same as three. It you are driving down the road and you see a parked yellow Volkswagen with a flat tire, you might notice it. If another mile goes by and you see another Volkswagen with a flat tire, you may grip the wheel a little tighter, but you still drive on.

If another mile goes by, and another Volkswagen is stopped with a flat tire, I will do more than just notice. I will stop my car and check to see if my tires are okay. I’m a believer in threes.

So today, my pastor called me to see if I could find the time to come to the church and pray for an hour or so, in preparation for the coming Easter. I had already said that I thought it was a good idea. So I told him I could do a Mondays from 9-10. He said that would be great, and he said he would send me a guide.

My first thought is that i’m pretty sure I know where the church is… I’ve been going there for more than thirty years.

Ten minutes later im checking Facebook and see a message from I friend that tells me about their upcoming birthday on Sunday, and that they are now old enough not to care about anybody’s ideas or bucket list suggestions. My first thought was to be helpful as I can.

My suggestion was to not have birthdays anymore because while it is nice to have one day where people are nice to you, and there might be presents, and maybe a celebratory dinner. Look at the cost! You are older, and you will just keep getting older. I thought I was addressing the problem logically.

The finally there is the Jeep, the third thing of my trilogy. My daughter had borrowed my Jeep for about a month while she was in the area. I wasn’t using it and she is very familiar with the weight and size of the vehicle. Being the person she is, she returned it cleaned up, oil changed and filled with gas. But she couldn’t fix one of the problems she noticed. According to her the fabric top had shrunk and now the top was letting the wind whistle through the cabin and soon the rain would follow.

I went outside to verify, and I could immediately see what she meant. Either the top had shrunk, or the Jeep had gotten fat, and a little muffin top was showing. I had to make a choice. Shrunk or Fat?

I’ve had the vehicle for more than ten years, what would cause it to do either thing in the last month?

My solution was obvious, I bought a brand new fabric top. If it fit perfectly then the Jeep didn’t get fat, the roof shrunk. If it didn’t fit, then the Jeep somehow expanded in the last month when I wasn’t driving it.

I brought the fabric top and tried to replace the old one. It didn’t fit. I thought about returning it and getting one size larger. I got it through Amazon, so I could return it like the pants I mistakenly purchased.

The problem was that I didn’t use the handout that came with the replacement top. So I read that, and watched a few YouTube tutorials. In the afternoon I backed up to the point of removing 32 screws for the header. It took three hours and I actually had the roof on all the way to the back. Unfortunately there were several inches right next to the windschield that would let wind and rain come flooding in. Apparently the Jeep was fat.

I slept on it. There was someone wrong with my logic. In the morning I again went backwards removing 32 screws, laying the roof upside down on the hood, tightening the screws and folding the fabric the header. This time, three hours later, the rooftop was tightly stretched, and it fit perfectly. The Jeep was not fat. It’s a good thing because tomorrow it is expected to rain.

It took the third instance to point out the fallacy of my logic. Perhaps birthdays don’t create age, it just marks the time.

Perhaps there won’t be someone in a raccoon cap and buckskins that will guide me to the church.

A warning… the power of three is for all of you!

I’ve tried organizing some of my work. I haven’t removed anything that is already here, but most of the latest stuff needed a home, so I created a new blog, with a new address.

Www.Divinesarah.art.blog

If you are interested in seeing the artwork I’ve done for the “Sarah” musical project then go to this new blog… I don’t know how to make it active, so copy/paste or type.

I have a daughter that will soon undergo a little brain surgery. What am I saying?!? How little can brain surgery be???

I mean, she was walking by a local health care facility, so she walked in to inquire about a possible elective brain surgery. After all, she had a few weeks open in her calendar.

Obviously that didn’t happen, and the complex formula of “cost analysis” is not the point here. She, and the doctors, agree that this “little brain surgery” is important.

So two things come to mind right away. One, we live in remarkable times. Developments in medicine are remarkable. Things unheard of just a few years ago are now commonplace with great success. But that reality is slow in our collective minds. A “little brain surgery” is more accurate than we know.

Two. Still, for those of us that fear root canals, this is a big deal.

It does take faith, confidence, and tons of bravery. I remember as a child watching TVs Ben Casey, neuro-surgeon. I remember the end of the introduction, when the older doctor draws the chalk symbol of infinity. It was so graphic and mysterious.

We challenge the small definition of infinity when we are brave. There is a longer view, not only for the immediate success, but the longer success of adding knowledge for future success.

Sure, I worry. Sure, I cover in prayer. But I applaud in the selfless commitment to the future. I love you Nikki.

The are a few family legends, most of them about our family characters. Some of them are about our family characters that are not alive and never had been.

I’m speaking of our brown Chevy van. I can’t remember the year, but it had that 350hp engine that ran forever. It was an automatic, but somehow the lug that put it in reverse had sheared off, so technically it was Park, Neutral and Drive only.

I drove it to work daily, the kids called it the “kidnap van” because it had no windows in back. On one rainy Halloween night, I had all the kids in the back, driving very slow in the street with the sliding door wide open. There were no seats in the back, just some side benches. The kids just jumped out at every stop to beg for candy, and then jumped back in the van. They still talk about that Halloween.

It was brown, a very soft brown, a very “oxidized” soft brown, kind of mottled in parts. I once drove to a vendor friend of mine, and we spoke for a few minutes in the parking lot while he leaned on the van. The next day he called me and asked why I had poisoned him. He developed a very bad rash where his skin had contact with the van.

So now I had two issues, I never drove into a spot that required me to use reverse to get out, and I tried not to park where someone would touch the paint.

Actually, I did keep a large screwdriver in the glove compartment. When I absolutely needed reverse, I would put it in neutral, set the emergency brake, them pop the hood. With the hood up I could use the screwdriver to pry the transmission into reverse. It would take a minute to overpower the emergency brake so I had time to shut the hood and get into the drivers seat. Most times… eventually it was moving while I was swinging my but into the seat. Fortunately I still used the reverse to get out of the position, the van was too heavy to push. My best trick was to use gravity to back myself out of danger.

It had character, that brown van. It ran forever, but the rest of the vehicle just fell apart. I gave it to my son and he tried to clean it up, but too much was wrong, so for safety sake we got rid of it. It’s engine is probably still running.

It joins the list of other vehicle characters, like the Jeep Wagoneer that never backfired unless we were in a underpass. This was where the sound was magnified. There were dozens of Vietnam veterans that had hit the sidewalk with PTSD. I waved an apology but it was hard for them to see me from the ground.

I have a friend that I have known for 67 years. We been close, and we have drifted. In some of the most important parts of our lives we never spoke. We had families that never met, yet now we still meet periodically and have coffee.

We lived next door to each other from 1st grade through 10th grade. Volatile years, filled with close companionship and banishment. We were radically different, Jack was athletic, I was not. I had official Army gear from my brother, Jack did not. We were both interested in blowing things up.

We had heard a rumor that wooden kitchen matches could be a source of pyrotechnics. Sitting on my garage floor, we made a pile of matchheads as we clipped off the striking heads of two full boxes. The rumor suggested that we fill the space between two bottle caps.

We went scrounging the local mom&pop stores. There were three of them with bottle openers nailed to the outside walls. There were folks that even then collected various beer and soda bottle caps. In a short time we had collected a bag full. Screw caps did not yet exist, they were all the crimped kind, with a thin cork disk lightly glued to the inside to help seal. Out process was to remove the cork.

Taking two bottle caps we carefully scooped into the mountain of matchheads, lightly twisting until the space was completely filled. The rumor did not specify how the caps were secured together. We had tape, lots of types of tape.

We had Scotch tape, we had masking tape, we had electrical tape, and we had plumber’s tape. We didn’t know which was best so we made a half-dozen of each type.

We loaded our pockets with our taped experiments, not considering that any one of them could explode and set fire to our pants. Safety was rarely considered.

We got to the junior high school playground, a vast area of asphalt covering almost a square block. The rumor had it that all you needed to do was throw the bottle caps. When they landed the caps would bend and compress the matchheads. The matchheads would rub one another and combust. The entire collection of matchheads would light in an instant. What happened next was not known, but we would find out.

It turns out that the tape and type of tape was important. Too much tape would cushion the blow and the matchheads would not light. Too little tape would cause the caps to separate and scatter unlit matchheads on the asphalt.

The perfect tape wrap caused a fiery explosion! The paper based masking tape blew apart, and there was a fiery, smoky cloud filled with flaming matchheads, scattering in a circle about ten feet wide. Marvelous!

The cloth or plastic tape did not separate, but the gasses inside the bottle caps had to escape, so the caps went spinning away with a shriek, and lots of smoke.

It was a great success, with the two of us throwing a half dozen at the same time. It looked, and sounded like a WWII battlefield, with smoke, shrapnel, and flames.

That Friday we made dozens of the little bombs, in order to chuck them at the opposing crowds at our weekly football games. I think we threw two, them ran away in terror.

On July 4th we had fireworks, but for us it was little black snakes, and sparklers. The grownups had wisely banned bottle-rockets. Sparklers were approved, we could light them, wave them, stick them in the grass, and toss them lightly in the air. They lasted about a minute.

Back in the garage we hit them with hammers, and broke them off of their metal wires. Soon we had a pile of sparkler chunks, and we ground that into a fine dust. We knew that bottle caps would not set it on fire. We suspected that it would burn a lot faster as ground sparkler dust. We would find a small container and jam a sparkler in as a fuse.

We found several empty CO2 green containers. We drilled out the bottoms and filled the containers with dust and a regular sparkler jammed in opening. We could light the sparkler, stick it in the ground, and wait for the explosion. We never thought about the shrapnel.

The sparkler lit the dust, the dust burned super quick and sent the CO2 cartridge high in the air with a trail of sparkler smoke. It may have gone 500 to 600 feet in the air. It landed on the neighbors roof across the street. We tested several more, until it landed in our own yard.

We thought that if we could place it in a tube, like a bazooka, then we could aim it. And if we could fill a larger CO2 cylinder we could perhaps aim it to the junior high school asphalt yard, a few blocks away. Jack offered to be the bazooka man.

Before we fired the bigger container we thought to test it one more time. We propped it up in a garbage can but it leaned over, and it hard to light the sparkler fuse. So we nailed the tube to a 2×4 placed it acrossed the can. The tube pointed straight up. We lit the fused a stepped a few feet back, feeling that the metal garbage can provided some shrapnel protection. At the last second we additional ducked behind the corner of the backyard shed.

Seconds later there was a huge explosion and lots of smoke. When the smoke cleared we checked out the garbage can. It looked like a giant colander, peppered with hundreds of tiny holes, with larger ones here and there. We looked at the fence right next to our hiding spot an found a twistedbazook piece of metal with sharp spikes firmly embedded in the fence.

Jack was planning o hold that tube next to his head as he aimed the “bazooka”.

Somehow we survived, later I went hitchhiking around the country, Jack went to college. We both went into the Army. Jack was an MP and I was a technician. Later, I became a graphic designer, and Jack joined the Oakland police force. We both survived.

Now years later, we drink coffee and talk about our dangerous times. Not about our careers, not about our “Wartime” experience. We talk about making homemade gunpowder and sparkler dust rockets.

We also talk about watching our volcano with binoculars, waiting with several buckets of water to put out the fires. It turns out that Mt. Tamalpais is not a volcano.

When Jack retired he took up a hobby of flying ultralights. Not satisfied he bought plans to build his own airplane. It took almost two years. On the day of the first test flight, he took it on to the runway and went to the field gas pump to fill the tank, and then take off. Something happened, a spark occurred. The flames engulfed the plane and everything was consumed, but Jack was safe.

To compensate, Jack brought a Shelby Cobra sports car and refurbished it. It was beautiful. So beautiful, that he bought another in kit form and built from the ground up another Shelby. Now he was has two. Neither one has burned to the ground

Happy birthday, my friend.

I’ve lost a very dear friend and member of my family. I first met Joanne Townsend sometime in late 1962. I’m not sure how long it took for my brother to introduce her to the family.

He had met her on 23rd street, in Richmond, nearly in front of Richmond Union High School. Those were the days when young adults “cruised the main”, in order to see, and be seen, even during the late afternoon.

Joanne was with a girl-friend in her pristine black Ford Fairlane, called “a two door hardtop convertible”, not the one that stored the hard-top in the trunk, but something similar. It was a busy time on 23rd street, lots of stopping and going.

My brother Eddie (I called him Cork), was also on 23rd Street, but for different reasons. He was helping a friend drive a racing motorcycle from somewhere in the South Bay, all the way to San Pablo. He was nearly home, only a few blocks away. It was only a remarkable trip because the motorcycle had no brakes. It was a racing machine. If you wanted to slow down, you just down-shifted. Why have the extra weight of brakes?

So naturally, there was an accident, but Cork didn’t crash into a delivery truck, or a beat-up clunker driven by an underage ditty-bopper. He was behind a beautiful blonde in a black Ford Fairlane. And she suddenly stopped.

Joanne would say later that she briefly saw him in the mirror before impact, and then he disappeared. She thought that perhaps he slid under the car, but then after a second she heard a crunch on the roof, then silence. After some moments passed she saw a person roll off the roof, onto the right fender, then land in the street. Certain that he was dead, she did not immediately open the door. Her friend was crying!

Finally Joanne rolled down her window, and he asked if everyone was all right. They nodded, and they asked if he was all right. He didn’t know it at the time but his wrist was fractured. He was still in the Army, so he would have some explaining to do when he came back from leave, Then he asked for her number, told her he would pay next week, and ran off, leaving her in shock in the middle of the street. I think she would have called him, “Gink!”

He had to make right the dent in her rear bumper. He left so quickly because didn’t want the police or insurance to be involved. I suspect it was issues with the motorcycle’s registration, or the lack of it. It was only for racing, not riding on the street. The Ford was so badly damaged, the bumper and trunk had a big “V” dent, as if hit by a ship.

So that’s how they met, and within weeks of contacting her for the repairs, they were dating. It took Joanne’s father several years to trust Cork entirely. He was a crusty character in any case.

It wasn’t long before they were married, and Cork still had a few months left in the Army. Joanne and I bonded quite a bit, while she waited for Cork to become a civilian. Later, I babysat their baby boy Robert John (Bob) in their rented house on Burbeck Street. Strange house, everything painted the same grey color.

Later on, when Bob was in school, my mom and Joanne started a business, a second hand store on 23rd Street. I went down to help out. Most of the time Joanne and I would play cards, games, and just laugh a lot. Eventually, I graduated from high school and started my independent life. Joanne was always there to support me when I circled back “home”. My parents had moved to Tacoma, WA, but Cork and Joanne maintained a local residence when I had none, and all the while that I was in the military.

We even shared the duplex for a time when I got out.

It’s true that we didn’t see each other as often as I would have liked. My life spun wildly for some time. But we did not drift apart. As I settled with my family, we always had Uncle Cork and Aunt Joanne in our lives, and our children become close to both of them.

Joanne had so many gifts, as a great wife, homemaker, mother. We will share stories about her for years. But there is one thing I would like to share now. She was known far and wide, as the “Knowledge”. In London, it is said that you can’t be a taxi-cab driver without the “Knowledge”. In the Bay Area, you can’t make money finding treasures in garage sales or thrift stores without the “Knowledge”.

Venders and garage sale pros were in awe of Joanne’s abilities. Some would even give up if Joanne had beat them to a sale. They knew there would be nothing of value after she had gone through the items. Second hand store employees all knew her by name, and asked her opinion on suspicious items: “Was this a fake or knock-off?”. If it wasn’t a fake, then she would have already had it in her cart, ha!

Joanne would often bring the employees small jewelry gifts, or donuts, and they would save items for her that they thought she would like.

For the last five year’s, Parkinson’s has taken a deep toll on Joanne’s health, despite her courageous patience and perseverance, and it has brought out Cork’s ability to be a caretaker. An entire book can be written on the inventions that he came up with in order to make her life better. He never rested, or waivered

As Cork said, “… she grew weaker, and I grew stronger.”
That was her gift, and she shared it with everyone. I loved her so much as did our entire family.