What Don't I Know?

   When someone asks me what I like to do for fun,  it would be easy just to say that I love to read, go sailing or do woodwork but I also think that sounds relatively uninteresting. It would be much more fun to hear about some of the other than normal things people like to do like hunting tarantula with a black light and scissors ( I had a friend who actually did this). So, I started thinking about things that I do which may be unusual. One thing that leaps to mind is that I am never bored if left alone with my own mind. It often has entertained me for hours. I am not sure whether this is unusual or not since I have no idea how other peoples' minds work.  As a child, I was quite surprised at the things I did within my mind. I began to wonder if these things were normal. Can eveybody do this, or is it just me? I did not know how to answer this question so I just kept the subject to myself.
   I have always been blessed with a very active and inventive mind. This certainly helped in my career as an engineer. I also have a memory which is more than just partially photographic. These, I believe, are the main ingredients in what I describe below. 

   I have always loved music, all music from all but the top extremes of opera to all but the extremities of modern popular music. In between is much of opera, classical music, military music, show music,old time and modern jazz to rock and roll and all the constantly changing spectrum of the modern scene in music.
  I cannot read music, nor play an instrument, I certainly cannot sing and I know nothing about the technicalities of music. Yet, since a child, I have known the names and the appearance of and the sounds made by all the individual instruments of the symphony orchestra. Ever since early schooldays, I constantly had music running through my head. During my early teen years, I developed an intense interest in show music both from the Broadway and London stage and the big Hollywood musicals of those days. I read up on the lives of Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers and others. I listened intently to the orchestrations of their music by the big bands and orchestras of the day. When I was not actually listening to music, these orchestrations used to run through my head and I began to find myself mentally changing some of them and then running them back through my mind. I started designing new orchestrations in my mind.
  I discovered about this time that I could mentally track multiple instruments at the same time and I could "hear" them individually. I could also track multiple melodies and variations on them. I might design an arrangement wherein the strings would play the main melody while the brass were playing some variation  on that melody and all this was loud and clear within my mind. Then, I might go in and make changes until I was happy with the result.
  These tricks I was playing within my mind were what had worried me about the normality of what I was going on inside my head. I began to wonder whether the things that I did in my mind were perfectly normal and maybe everybody could do them or was there something wrong with me and was I stretching something to bursting point. It could well be that any brain can do this but most people just do not choose to do it unless they have some specific interest in mind. This whole subject really worried me for a long time.
  As an aid to what I was doing, I began to carry an orchestra around in my head. Different arrangements required different sounds. For a particular arrangement, I might need to add another woodwind or maybe a couple of violas so, over a period of time, the orchestra grew to 74 pieces. I knew how many of each instrument there were and where all the sections of the orchestra were seated for a concert. When I was alone in the house, I used to stand and conduct the orchestra while it played my latest arrangement. One day, I think I must have been  about nine or ten, I was doing just this when my mother walked into the room, I had not heard her come back from the shops. She asked what I thought I was doing, so I told her and, since I was obviously entering a losing streak, I told her about how I could orchestrate music in my head.  My mother was apparently quite an accomplished musician although I had never heard her play. But, I must admit, her response that day totally deflated me. She said I was talking utter nonsense as I knew nothing about music. End of discussion! She had a very definitive way of ending a conversation.
   I took this very badly and began to have thoughts about the fact that I might be going crazy. I stopped even thinking about music for quite some time. But, it eventually crept back in. A few years after this, I told my best friend about the way my mind worked. He also had a passionate interest in show music and modern jazz and, in our college days, we spent many hours together listening to the likes of Stan Kenton and Shorty Rogers. He said that he certainly could not do what I had described and had never heard of it before, but he found it very interesting. I have never discussed this with anyone else, until now.

   When I started to work for a living, this whole scenario began to be phased out, probably because my mind was too busy. But, in my head, the music is still there and, sometimes, such as when I am driving alone for a long period, I may think up a new arrangement.
   I sometimes wonder what I don't know about this. Do other people do this? Can other people do this? Is it important? Is it stupid? Does anybody care? Am I crazy?? I don't know and I'm not sure I really want to know now. But, one thing I do know is that this capability gave me many hours of pleasure in my younger years.

   Another thing my mind likes to do is design things. This, of course, should be inherent in an engineer and I was  much less worried about the normality of things in this context. I have always particularly liked designing houses. I did the original design on the house my sister and her family lived in while the children were growing up. My design was given to an architect who rehashed the whole thing but the basic floorplan remained essentially the same. There were also three or four features that I thought were innovative and these were incorporated into the house. The architect later told me that he had also included some of them in later designs.
   I find that, if I am sitting in somebody's house and not much is going on, I may start to redesign parts of the house in my mind. Of course, I never mention this as most people don't want their house redesigned.
   I have, however, spent many hours sitting in the family room of my daughter's house while she and my wife were at Costco or somewhere. Over the months and years, I have developed a complete detailed redesign of one section of their house. For example, the downstairs bedroom becomes a suite with its own bathroom and walk-in closet. The family room is lengthened and windows are added to look out onto the side yard. Double glass doors then lead out of the family room into a new lobby from which the bedroom suite is accessed, rather than from the hall as it is now. This access also has a double door feature such that the bathroom may be entered from the lobby or the suite depending on whether the suite is in use. The  lobby also gives access to the new deck which wraps around the house to the existing rear deck. The whole thing is in my mind as a package.
   As I have said above, I have a photographic memory in many respects. This design package also exists in my memory as a series of sketches of all the new elements, furnished and painted, not just in white, but as I imagine them. If only I could stick a USB cable in my ear and download it all to a printer, I'd have it made. Incidentally, I have never discussed this design with the family so it might come as a shock to them if and when they read this.

   Of course, some of the same questions apply here as with the music. Do other people do this? Can other people..............Does any of it matter? Once again, I don't know. Maybe I would like to know. Maybe,........... but then........
  Regardless, this is the way my mind works and, personally, I like it. I think I'll keep it.
  
  

Gazpacho

I first went to Spain in 1951 and, on that first visit, I discovered gazpacho, the most delicious cold soup to eat on a hot day. Joy and I also honeymooned in Spain and, while there, we learned how to make gazpacho, and we have been making it for the last 48 years.  
  The Spanish often add gelatin to gazpacho and I prefer it that way. When the gelatin is set, you break the soup up with a fork before serving. We learned this simpler recipe fairly recently and the taste is not that much different from the original. If you are allergic to clams, there is a product made by V8 which is all vegetable. It comes in the same size jars.
   INGREDIENTS
1 64 oz jar of Clamato Tomato Cocktail
1 Red Pepper cored, seeded and diced
1 Yellow Pepper cored, seeded and diced
1 Orange Pepper cored, seede and diced
2 Apples peeled, cored and diced
4 Medium Tomatoes diced
1 English Cucumber peeled and diced
1/4 Canteloupe peeled and diced
1 Large Onion diced
Juice of 3 Lemons
1/2 Tsp Worcestershire Sauce
1/4 Tsp Ground Ginger
1 Tsp Salt
Black Pepper to taste
White Pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS
   You need a jar large enough that the Clamato fills it to no more than three quarters. Add to the bowl the whole jar of Clamato. Add all the ingredients, stirring well as you go. Adjust the taste. Put it in the refrigerator. That's it folks!!

   
  

BANG!

  Recently, I was giving some thought to doing a blog on what I found it fun to do. Somewhere along the line, my mind got sidetracked into thinking about fun things I used to like to do in school or college days.
  One thing that imediately came to mind was something that started when I was at high school  and continued, with varying levels of activity, until my last year in college. My high school was Haileybury College in England, an expensive boys boarding school. One of the subjects new to  me at Haileybury was chemistry. In this class, I developed an interest in explosives, not in a destructive frame of mind but to investigate the means to  create, for instance, an exploding toilet seat.
  So, I needed an impact explosive. Such an explosive was potassium iodide, an easy to make, relatively stable yet powerful explosive. When I first made this, I mixed the chemicals in a jar in the lab and sneaked the jar out of the lab in my pocket. Back in the common room, I put the mixture through a filter paper and was left with about two teaspoons of wet brown powder. When this dried, it would be my explosive. Other boys in the common room watched with interest but one classics student, Tubby H, jeered "That won't explode, it looks like a pile of s..t." So, I put the filter paper  with the little pile on the floor and invited him to step on it. Of course, I did not know if it would explode or not when it was this wet. Tubby continued to jeer, so I again told him to step on it if he really believed nothing would happen. Now, of course, he had to. So he did. What followed was a very much bigger explosion than I had ever expected and it echoed around the school quadrangle through the open windows. The lower half of Tubby disappeared in a cloud of reddish-brown smoke. His foot was propelled upward by the blast so fast that his knee almost hit his chin. He was left standing on one leg, red faced and looking a little like a constipated flamingo. "Well" I said " that was a success." I don't think Tubby agreed with me. 
  Now that I knew I could make the explosive, I could think about the exploding toilet seat but, it had to be worthy of Monty Python's Flying Circus.....a lofty ambition. One of the good things about potassium iodide was that you could paint it on something while it was still wet and, when it dried, that object was then covered in an impact explosive.
  One Sunday in the summer, my mother had invited some people to tea. Before they arrived, I painted the bump feet under the seat of the downstairs toilet with a thick coat of the wet brown paste and put the seat down very carefully.
  We were all seated in the living room enjoying our tea and then Mae, a somewhat ample lady, excused herself and left the room, closing the door behind her. At this point, I went behind the couch and pretended to look for something in the bookcase. I knew I would not be able to keep a straight face if we heard the explosion. A minute or so later, there was a double Bang-bang as she obviously squatted assymetrically. Nobody said a word, maybe they did not hear while they were all talking. When Mae came back into the room, she didn't say a word either.  Well, you wouldn't would you?  She looked visibly  shaken and probably did not say anything for an hour or more. Chalk up another success. 
  I found many other uses for potassium iodide. One was painting a thin film on the underside of the bases of wine glasses, after the table was set. Then, as each person took a drink and put his wine glass down again, there was a sharp crack. Very good conversation starter..."static electricity, its been very dry today." Also at school, it was fun to simply scatter drops of the wet powder everywhere, on tables, on desks, on the floor,etc. This produces a whole cacophony of cracks and pops whatever you do. Painting door handles was another favorite, but that can get moderately painful.
  One explosive device I made I called a land mine. This idea was based on the large cylindrical devices that German bombers used to drop in rural areas of England during WW2. I made it from a thin metal can about five inches in diameter and ten inches high. These were sold during the war containing dried milk. They had very tight fitting lids with a twist on feature. I drilled a hole in the base and fitted a model airplane sparkplug in it. A battery, an ignition switch and a coil of wire completed the kit. To arm the device, I put just a few or up to a handful of crystals of calcium carbide in the can and just a little water. Then, I screwed the lid on tight. The can now became full of acetylene gas and was armed.
  Next door to my parents lived Mrs S, her son, one dog and about eighty rabbits. The son was a maniac around guns. The fruit and vegetables we grew were constantly full of lead pellets or small bullets. So, they owed us. Mrs S had a stud bunny, I believed she called him Basil. One day, while Mrs S was out, my cousin and I went into the next door property and buried a powerful land mine under the straw by the edge of Basil's pen. Then we trailed the wire back to our fence. Basil seemed to like his new hump and proceeded to lie on it. When Mrs S came home, we could see her at the kitchen sink looking out of the window. That is when I pressed the switch. There was a loud woomf and Basil took his first flying lesson. Mrs S looked horrified as she observed Basil's inability to remain airborne. We rapidly reeled in the wire and can and left the area. At this point, I felt very sorry for Basil, but I went back to check on him a while later and he was running around, apparently fine.
  The land mine was a partial success but nowhere near as much fun as potassium iodide.
  There are  many more stories on this subject but I'll leave it there for another day. Then, maybe I'll tell you how we kept the residents of a sleepy English village awake for most of a night by mysterious loud explosions going off every fifteen minutes. When we thought we had got all the fun out of it, we decided to quit and go to bed. But, we couldn't sleep, those bloody bangs kept going for another four hours.
 

My First Parachute Jump

  I was, I believe, ten years old and we were three years into World War 2. My father worked for the Ministry of Aircraft Production in Millbank, London. He went to work each day by bus and then train and he dressed in the proper manner in a dark suit, with optional but minimal pinstripe, white shirt, dark tie, black shoes and a Bowler hat. On days when rain was a possibility, most days, he carried what I think was called a businessman's umbrella. This was indeed a magnificent device. It had a considerably larger diameter than a regular umbrella and had a beautifully carved wooden handle and a long stainless steel shaft coming out of the handle. This was the shaft of the intricate folding framework of the umbrella. On the end of the shaft was a fairly sharp steel point, about 4 or 5 inches long. Thus, it could become a  weapon.
  As I said, we were three years into the war so, in the previous two years, I had watched the Spitfires and Messerschmidts dog fighting overhead and had listened to the rattle of the machine guns and several times had seen pilots descending by parachute. I remember thinking, at the time, what a wonderful sense of freedom that must feel, floating down to the ground. Then, I thought of Dad's umbrella or, Pop's parachute. What a great idea! Looking back on this now, I am ashamed of myself. I knew how to calculate the area within a circle but, I guess I wasn't too good on relativity. At that time, I thought... well, the umbrella is not as big as a parachute but I am not as big as a pilot so, I'll give it a go.
  My bedroom was above the kitchen and the house has very high ceilings so, my window should be high enough above the ground for the umbrella, oops...parachute, to work properly. One day when rain was not forecast and mother had gone to the store, I got out the umbrella, carefully opened it up to check it was in good working order and closed  it again. Perfect.
  I climbed on the window sill, opened the window, opened my parachute, raised it high above my head, took a deep breath, and jumped.........
  As far as I can remember, after what seemed like an eternally long half second, the ground stopped coming up. Then, I put it in perpective and realized that I had stopped going down. So, I looked around. I was sitting on the ground in a sort of loosely assembled heap. My hands were still on the ends of my arms. My legs looked like they would be sort of straight if I could stretch them out. And, nothing hurt except my bum. The parachute looked relatively undamaged (but, remember, I said I wasn't that much good on relativity in those days).
  Then,I turned and looked toward the house and I noticed the damage. Two of my fathers tomato plants were demolished. I know he probably had forty eight more but, these two were the important ones. I needed a plan before he came home. In the meantime, I worked for about an hour in the garage and had the umbrella looking almost as good as new.
  When my father came home, this time by train and then bus, he came in and followed his usual ritual. After kissing my mother, he went upstairs, changed  into something more comfortable, had a wash and came back downstairs. If all was well with the world, I would then hear the chink of glasses as he would pour out a gin and French for himself and a gin and Italian for mother. Tonight, all  was well...so far.  But, it was dark outside. So, I thought I would be OK until Saturday morning.
  When my father came home the next evening, the ritual was going fine but then, no chinking. Instead "Tony, come here right now. Your father needs to talk to you". To cut a long story short, I tried to say that I had seen a fox chasing a rabbit the day before on the terrace. But, that story was less succesful than the parachute.
  Strangely enough, that was also my last parachute jump. And I have never mentioned this to a soul....until now.
 

Lawns

  Englishmen certainly love their lawns. Each small fenced in green swath throughout the English countryside seems to be a statement to the world by the owner that he belongs. Quite what to is less certain.
  When an Englishman buys or builds a house in the UK, his first job is not to see where his kids will go to school or to buy new bedroom furniture. No, he plants a lawn. He then nurtures it through rain, wind and frost until it reaches its full verdant fruition. Then, and only then, he is ready to show it to the world. So, he tells his wife to invite relatives, friends and neighbors on Sunday afternoon to come and drink tea and see the lawn. Imagine the feelings of the invited, waiting anxiously for the weekend so they can come and drink tea and watch the grass grow. Unbearable exhilaration.
  My parents had a nice lawn at the back of the house. They called it the tennis court despite the fact that, in the sixty years leading up to the last time I was at that house, not a single ball had been hit over the net. The probable  reason was that they had never put a net on it. However, for many years, all the uncles ,aunts, grandparents, cousins, etc used to play endless needle matches of croquet on this lawn. These often went on until after dark.
  My mother did not invite people to drink tea and see the lawn.You see, my father did not lay the lawn himself, so the lawn did not count.  My mother did invite people to tea on Sundays. But, this was to drink tea and eat raspberries and cream. You could sit on the lawn to drink your tea and eat your raspberries, but you were not supposed to actually look at the grass because, as I say, it didn't count.
  As a slight digression, mother went out of her way to supply the neighborhood with raspberries. As far as I can remember, she had planted more than twenty rows of them with about twenty plants in each row. So, this was something of an overkill. Raspberries have always been my very favorite fruit so, I was not about to complain.
She also had 600 show roses, complete overkill, but she won all kinds of ribbons and silver cups and even had a rose named after her.
  As a further digression, all of our garden was formally landscaped except for about a quarter acre in one corner which was covered in rough but nice grass with trees on it. It had been suggested that she plant some assorted species of daffodil in random circles all over the grass and cut the grass short between the circles. So, she marked out the circles and hand planted 3000 (yes, three Thousand) daffodils in them. The current owners of the house have made the landscaping in this area more formal including a new section of gravel driveway leading to a second entrance. But, they never could work out why all these bloody daffodils keep coming up, including in the driveway.
  Now, where was I? ...Oh, yes.....lawns.
  My Uncle Arthur had a really beautiful lawn. Shortly after World War 2, he built a wonderful house on 2 or 3 acres of land and he put virtually the whole area down to grass with flower beds and shrubs around the perimeter. So, he had about 2 acres of the most beautiful, completely flat lawn. Next to him on the east side,the neighbor had built a similar size house and also surrounded it with a beautiful, level lawn. A few years later the guy  who bought the land on the other side also built a fabulous house and surrounded it with an incredible lawn and perfectly manicured shrubbery. This latter gentleman was indeed proud of his verdant creation.
  About the worst enemy to any Englishmen is the mole. This is a small animal, about the size of a mouse and covered in a shiny black fur coat and it's almost completely blind. They live by eating earthworms and they live underground. If  you see a mole above ground,  he will not run away presumably because he can't see where to run. So, he just hunkers down till the danger passes. Of course, he doesn't have to hunker very far as his legs are only about half an inch long. Underground, they dig tunnels very fast and, every few feet, they push the excavated dirt upwards through the surface to form a mound about 12 inches in diameter and 6  to 8 inches tall. A row of these molehills can thus ruin the look of an Englishman's  gem.
  Uncle Arthur  had moles in his lawn and he got rid of them in the usual way. That is, he bought some calcium carbide, sometimes called Miner's Lamp, dropped a few crystals down the hole under the molehill, followed by a cup of water, and then trod some dirt in the hole. The acetylene gas released by the crystals then wafted through the tunnels and killed all the mole colony. Easy!
  The lawn of the gentleman next door also was attacked by moles.  The calcium carbide method was not satisfactory to him for some reason. He bought 5 gallons of kerosene, put a funnel in the nearest molehill, and poured all the kerosene down the hole. About 20 minutes later, he was dissatisfied  with the lack of activity, although we do not know what he had expected to happen. So, he lit a match and threw it in the funnel, whereupon there was the most horrendous explosion and it seemed like the whole 2 acre green carpet took to the air. It rained dirt for hundreds of yards around. When the dust settled, what had been his lawn was now criss-crossed with a latticework of little trenches about 3 inches wide and 6 inches deep. He was not pleased! To add insult to injury, he didn't even have the dirt to fill in the trenches. He had donated that to the neighborhood.
  Apparently, it took Uncle Arthur hours to stop laughing!
  By the way, I forgot to tell you, the English tend to name their houses rather than give them numbers. Uncle Arthur named his.....You've got it!..."The Lawns".
  So, now you have a little background on Englishmen and their lawns. Personally, I am not really into lawns. Hedges are more fun.