homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Battle of Britain + Battle of Britain II Here's what happened (Continued)

Folks,

MG:

It is always good to hear from the Denmark branch. I sincerely thank you for your good wishes. Did I tell you he stepped on an 18 inch nail (blunt end up) that went up through his foot and into a bone? That was what caused the injury to his foot two months and two surgeries ago. The latest word regarding my son is not as encouraging as I had hoped for but there is still a very reasonable hope for his eventual complete recovery. He may never surf again, we know that already and he may have some minor difficulty walking on uneven ground. He just needs to beat this infection.

However the infection has apparently gotten into his bloodstream and that is very serious. They are treating it aggressively with 3 powerful antibiotics now and I am told the prognosis is still very good. His white blood cell count is good, not too high. He had a low grade fever last night but that is gone today. They are keeping an eye on his kidney functions as the drugs are so strong. I just talked to him by phone and he is getting up and around on crutches and seems in very good spirits. His wife will be talking to the doctor and I will know more this afternoon.

Forgive me for posting about this fellows. It may not be considered proper. Yet I have come to know you all fairly well over the years and I think of you as friends, almost like an extended family. Naturally my son's condition is heavy on my mind and I find writing about it lightens the load. Writing has always been therapeutic for me. Enough for now.

My first personal radio was little more than a lot of wire wrapped about a round oatmeal box. My first personal radio produced commercially (this was before transistors were common) arrived in my stocking the Christmas of 1957. That was a simple crystal type radio about as long as my hand with antenna/tuning rod extended and about half as wide. In fact rockets and Sputnik were in the news that year and the device was fashioned more or less in the shape of a rocket. It was an ingenious way of bringing an old design into the "space age" and making it appear new again.

I loved that thing. My teachers...not so much. There was a long, thin, braided cord with an alligator clip attached on the end of it for grounding and another similar wire that was connected to a single ear phone. You have all probably seen something similar. I'd sit near the iron radiator that heated the classroom and clip the radio ground to it. Then I'd listen to a broadcast with one ear and the teacher with the other.

Surprisingly, I somehow managed to continue to get very good marks even when I was caught and the radio was confiscated (Fascists!). I was otherwise a good student and the teacher clearly liked me even though I had what must have been for her a most irritating tendency to argue with her. We had a talk after school. She feared a proliferation of such radios in the class so she had to make an example of me. So she said anyway. She owed me no explanation. I understood.

We all remember those so called "Boom Boxes" the size of small child some bigger kids used to tote about on their shoulders. Well, in my mind at least, bigger isn't always better. I remember when the first transistor radios came on the market. This was well before those Boom Boxes came along. Transistor radios were amazingly tiny devices and so portable. A radio the size of a small walkie taklie was small indeed to us. Today you can get the same music and broadcasts with something the size of a quarter.

Every teenager back then wanted a transistor radio (sometimes it was just called a "transistor" MG) but they seemed very expensive. Not everyone had one or could afford one at first. Local AM radio was our best connection to the music we loved. Before the advent of the transistor radio all radios we knew about were not very portable, not even the "portable" models. I was living with my maternal grandparents at that time and wrote to my dad in Philadelphia (he was a captain in the merchant marines then) that I so desperately needed a transistor radio. I listed all the reasons why in bullet points. In essence, my life depended on it.

To my great delight and no little surprise one neatly wrapped radio about the size and length of my hand and about 2 inches thick arrived by parcel post within a month. I was a very happy fellow. I carried that thing with me everywhere that I went ... but never to school. I was in high school then and I had grown up a bit. I actually cared about not getting into classroom scrapes and earning high marks by then.

I didn't study very much but my marks were fine. An "A" was good enough for me, I wasn't greedy enough to covet the 'plus'. I had gotten into high school with a perfect "B" average. High enough to impress my home room teacher and advisor, God bless her soul wherever she is. She was one of the two best teachers I ever had below college level. I owe that good lady a lot. She was so good, so smart, so helpful and so wise that most of her students lovingly called her "Mama".

Mama was also our drama teacher. I was cast in many plays,(possibly for punishment, either for me or for the audience) some parts I thought I was cast much against type. That is, of course, a good way to learn acting. We all "act" every day from childhood. I'm not sure acting really has to be "learned" just refined.

I never felt "stage fright" and I reveled in being on stage or back stage. This will astound you Dux but I even got good reviews in the local broadsheet. I have ever since loved the theater and I have become quite a movie buff. Mama knew many Broadway stars personally and so it was that when she took her classes on the annual field trip to New York we were all excited and suitably impressed to be allowed to see many of the Broadway stars backstage. They all recognized her on sight and called her by her first name, "Ada". Mama often told us her highest thrill was the day she got into a NY taxi only to have the famous actor Charles Boyer poke his handsome head in the window and ask, in his romantic French accent and ever so politely, if he could share her ride. In shock, she instantly said "yes", of course.

I think teachers here in the US are shamefully underpaid and possibly under appreciated. Maybe it depends on how one describes the word "teacher"? In my mind it takes a very special person to become a 'real' teacher. IMHO just knowing the information is only a minor part of teaching. Someone with a photographic memory cannot necessarily teach well. Someone with an IQ they can't write down without many digits cannot always impart the information to those less intelligent or interested (I had one of those).

No. There has to be actual learning going on for teaching to be taking place. Not everyone with a wall covered with sheepskins can do it well. I know from personal experience that a "good" teacher impacts his or her students for their entire life. Ditto, I'm afraid for poor teachers as well.

OK, OK, I heard that churlish remark. I agree. No one should pay too much attention to my opinion (Dux will verify that) however I am of the opinion that good teachers should be right up there with good physicians and some good pilots both in pay and in prestige. After all, who taught those physicians and pilots?

I now relinquish the soapbox and the remainder of any time I may have left today to any and all comers. Even to those who are short sight.... misinfor.... woefully ignoran....of an entirely different opinion than I am.