The Mickey D. Special

            I guess I’ll never be known as a gourmet, but I do enjoy eating different sorts of foods.  I also am partial to regular meat and potatoes meals, I really like liver and onions, but especially when I am somewhere new and looking at an unfamiliar menu, I try to find something ‘different’ to order for lunch.  Most of the time when my selection arrives at the table I am pleased with what I have asked for; occasionally the food has a new taste that really tickles my palate.  Sometimes it does not.  When this occurs, even though it is not a gastronomic delight, my self-made rule is since I am going to have to pay for it, that I will eat it anyway.

            At many Korean restaurants they serve a dish called Bugogie.  This is not what it sounds like, but rather a small earthenware bowl filled with rice and various other ingredients baked and served piping hot with an egg cracked on top just before it is brought to the table.  The egg sizzles and cooks while you are stirring it all together.  It’s quite good.  There are a number of different styles of Bugogie, but on the occasion I am remembering I ordered Sea Food Bugogie.  I was thinking about sea food such as shrimp, crabs, and scallops, and that it would taste good with fried rice.  My sisters, sitting across the table from me asked me if I was sure that was what I wanted.  Surprised at their question, I answered yes.  When my Bugogie arrived and I removed the lid I was surprised to see other types of seafood than what I have been expecting including slices of squid and what appeared to be the arms of a small octopus which looked exactly like what you would expect the arm of a small octopus to resemble.  I carefully ate around all the parts which did not look appealing.  I finally tried a bite of the octopus and found it very chewy and not too tasty.  This was not one of my best lunches.

            Then there was the time I ordered Gnocchi.  I saw where my daughter-in-law wrote that she had the best Gnocchi in Southern California at a restaurant near Los Angeles.  I was unfamiliar with Gnocchi, but during a visit there while dining at a restaurant called Olive Garden I saw Gnocchi Soup on the menu and decided to order it.  The Gnocchi turned out to be something like a dumpling, and was very good.  I enjoyed it.

            Last Saturday my two sisters and my nephew and I drove out to Elk City in western Oklahoma to visit the place where my Mother’s family homesteaded property in early days in the Oklahoma Territory.  We spent time at the library copying some of our ancestor’s obituaries and visited my great grandfather’s gravesite.  We then began looking for a place to eat lunch.  After rejecting Pizza Hut and Sonic we finally found a Mexican style restaurant which all agreed would be satisfactory.  At the table I began looking at the menu, saw all the familiar Mexican style dishes:  Burritos, enchiladas, tacos, tamales.  I looked at them and then looked for something ‘different’ which I found.  It was called the Mickey D. Special, and consisted of grilled jalapenos, grilled onions, and sliced avocado.  Now that looked ‘different’, and without giving it a great deal of thought that is what I ordered when the waitress returned, and that is what she delivered to my place at the table.  There was no meat, no rice, no refried beans; just grilled jalapeno peppers, grilled onions, and half a sliced avocado.  Hmmm, I thought; maybe I have made a mistake, especially when my nephew was delivered a plate containing rice and refried beans, and eventually some sizzling Fajitas.  Resigned to my fate I dug in and began.  Luckily the jalapenos had most of the fire cooked out of them, the onions were sweet and tasty, and the avocado sort of topped everything off.  It was not my very best culinary experience.  My nephew eventually shared some of his Fajitas which helped to ease the hunger pangs.  On the way back to Oklahoma City I told the old joke about eating ice cream after consuming jalapenos, but everyone thought I was serious, and I had to tell them I was just kidding.  So far the Mickey D. Special has not disagreed with me, but I am not straying far from home.

Some Thoughts about Time and God difficult for us humans to understand. For example we are taught as I understand it that God exists outside of what we know as space-time, i.e., God is not confined by what we accept as physical laws. We believe, because we are Christians, that God created the Heavens and the Earth, we believe that God has the ability to enter space-time when he wishes, and that at different times God has chosen to step into our world to perform various acts, the most important of which from our point of view was the time he was born into a human body and lived a short blameless life on the earth and was executed horribly; all in order to provide a way for we humans to be saved from our many sins and enter a new life with Him when our earthly existence is complete. If you accept this concept unquestioned, you need not read further. If it is difficult to understand you might try reading on. The following thoughts are paraphrased from a book entitled Time Travel by Paul Nahin in a chapter called Block Universe containing some words from a 1928 New York stage play Berkeley Square. Suppose you are in a boat sailing down a winding stream. You watch the banks as they pass by you. You went by a grove of maple trees upstream, but you can’t see them now, so you saw them in the Past didn’t you. You’re watching a field of clover now; it’s before your eyes in the Present. There may be wonderful things around the bend ahead of you, but you can’t see them now, so you don’t know yet because they are in the future. The stream is the arrow of time and the boat is your life. You can remember the past always, but as the stream flows onward the past grows dimmer and dimmer; until finally only the very important, the very unusual events are remembered. The pleasures and displeasures of the present are your daily experiences. You cannot see the future. Certainly you can guess what will probably occur; you can plan for your future and if correctly done so, you can expect your plan to probably develop; but you can never know with certainty what will occur even in the next moment. Are you ready for this? Now, remember you are in the boat. You can remember the Past, see the Present, but not know the Future, but I’m up in the sky above you in a hot air balloon, or maybe a magic carpet! I’m looking down on it all. I can see all at once the trees you saw upstream in your past, the field of clover you are looking at now, and what is waiting for you around the bend in your future. I can simultaneously see your past, present, and future. They are all one to the man up above. So, who is in the balloon? God is up there looking down. I don’t mean to be sacrilegious, but simply to use these words to try to explain a concept that I think lots of folks have difficulty understanding. John 1:1. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. (NIV). If my hot air balloon runs out of air, or perhaps my magic carpet gets low on magic, and I float down and land in the boat with you, say howdy, and sit on the other seat as we float along I would just as you be able to remember the past, see the present, but differently from you I would remember what is around the bend in the future, e.g., that there are big rocks on both sides of the stream. I could tell you to steer or paddle to the narrow lane in the center to avoid them. Then again, if somehow I acquire some air for my balloon or some magic for my carpet, I could just float back up above you, maybe even so high that you would not be able to see me, but all the while I would be observing you, and at any moment could lower down and ride with you in the boat if I choose to.

Some Thoughts about Time and God

The Shadow by my finger cast divides the Future from the Past:
Before it, sleeps the unborn hour, in darkness, and beyond thy power:
Behind its unreturning line, the vanished hour, no longer thine:
One hour alone is in thy hands, the now on which the shadow stands.
The Sundial at Wells College by Henry Van Dyke
Some theological concepts are very difficult for us humans to understand. For example we are taught as I understand it that God exists outside of what we know as space-time, i.e., God is not confined by what we accept as physical laws. We believe, because we are Christians, that God created the Heavens and the Earth, we believe that God has the ability to enter space-time when he wishes, and that at different times God has chosen to step into our world to perform various acts, the most important of which from our point of view was the time he was born into a human body and lived a short blameless life on the earth and was executed horribly; all in order to provide a way for we humans to be saved from our many sins and enter a new life with Him when our earthly existence is complete. If you accept this concept unquestioned, you need not read further. If it is difficult to understand you might try reading on. The following thoughts are paraphrased from a book entitled Time Travel by Paul Nahin in a chapter called Block Universe containing some words from a 1928 New York stage play Berkeley Square.
Suppose you are in a boat sailing down a winding stream. You watch the banks as they pass by you. You went by a grove of maple trees upstream, but you can’t see them now, so you saw them in the Past didn’t you. You’re watching a field of clover now; it’s before your eyes in the Present. There may be wonderful things around the bend ahead of you, but you can’t see them now, so you don’t know yet because they are in the future.
The stream is the arrow of time and the boat is your life. You can remember the past always, but as the stream flows onward the past grows dimmer and dimmer; until finally only the very important, the very unusual events are remembered. The pleasures and displeasures of the present are your daily experiences. You cannot see the future. Certainly you can guess what will probably occur; you can plan for your future and if correctly done so, you can expect your plan to probably develop; but you can never know with certainty what will occur even in the next moment.
Are you ready for this? Now, remember you are in the boat. You can remember the Past, see the Present, but not know the Future, but I’m up in the sky above you in a hot air balloon, or maybe a magic carpet! I’m looking down on it all. I can see all at once the trees you saw upstream in your past, the field of clover you are looking at now, and what is waiting for you around the bend in your future. I can simultaneously see your past, present, and future. They are all one to the man up above.
So, who is in the balloon? God is up there looking down. I don’t mean to be sacrilegious, but simply to use these words to try to explain a concept that I think lots of folks have difficulty understanding. John 1:1. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. (NIV).
If my hot air balloon runs out of air, or perhaps my magic carpet gets low on magic, and I float down and land in the boat with you, say howdy, and sit on the other seat as we float along I would just as you be able to remember the past, see the present, but differently from you I would remember what is around the bend in the future, e.g., that there are big rocks on both sides of the stream. I could tell you to steer or paddle to the narrow lane in the center to avoid them. Then again, if somehow I acquire some air for my balloon or some magic for my carpet, I could just float back up above you, maybe even so high that you would not be able to see me, but all the while I would be observing you, and at any moment could lower down and ride with you in the boat if I choose to.

Christian Ethics

            While serving on active duty in the United States Air Force in the mid 1970s, I received an assignment to be stationed at Rhein-Main Air Base near Frankfurt, Germany.  While waiting for an apartment on base, I, and my family, lived temporarily in an apartment in a little town a few miles South of Frankfurt named Grafenhausen.  Grafenhausen is a small German village in the District of Darmstadt.  It is just an ordinary small German town and its only claim to fame that I am aware of is that it is 750 years old.  We resided on the one main street, paved with cobblestones, which wound its way East and West through the town, at an address called #12 Wixhauserstrasse.  We had many interesting and fun experiences living there.

            One of the fun things which I enjoyed was drinking beer, and Grafenhausen had several establishments where beer could be purchased.  The place I usually gravitated to was named the Gasthof Lindenhof, a very ordinary German Gasthaus which served Heidelberger Schlossquel—a really good bier.  The sign outside this gasthaus had a picture of a linden tree.  Underneath was the proprietor’s name:  Gg. Schmidt.  Inside were the standard gasthaus fixtures:  wooden tables, wooden chairs, and a bar where the bier was drawn.  One of the tables was reserved for regulars.  It had a sign on it saying:  Stammtisch.  Another reserved table near it had a sign saying in German:  Table reserved for hunters, fishermen, and other liars.

            On my first visit, being a stranger in town, I entered the room, saw a number of people sitting at the stammtisch, understood it was reserved for regular patrons, so sat by myself at another table and ordered a bier.  It was not long before the friendly men sitting at the stammtisch noticed me and invited me to come sit with them.  I spoke rudimentary German, most of the men spoke some English, so we had good times together.

            After a few visits I realized the barkeep was the Gg. Schmidt listed on the sign, and that his name translated to English as George Smith.  One night I was introduced to his Father, an 80 year old man, who was also named George Smith.  I especially enjoyed trying to communicate with this old gentleman.  In talking with him I found that he had served as a soldier in the German Army in the First World War; that he served in the infantry in France.  I asked him what that was like, and he told me it was terrible.  Then he told me something which was especially interesting:  He said, “Charlie, Every Sunday there in Frankreich (one German word for France) mothers and wives would go to church and pray that their sons and husbands would be safe, and that their armies would prevail.  Here in Deutschland every Sunday mothers and wives would go to church and pray that their sons and husbands would be safe, and that their armies would overcome.”  “Charlie”, He said, pointing upward with his index finger  “It was the same God”.

Flying

copied from Wikipedia

I had my first flight in an airplane at Miami, Oklahoma.  I was 16 years old at the time.  One of the men who attended the Methodist Church in Commerce OK possessed license as a private pilot.  Through my Father, I suppose, he learned I was intensely interested in airplanes and promised to take me up.  Now, every time I rode with my parents to Miami I would pester them to let me off at the airport and pick me up on the way home, which they usually would do.  I saw many wonderful things.  I watched as the radial engine on an old PT-19 Stearman biplane was started by hand cranking using the propeller.  After warm up it rolled a few feet and took off nearly straight up.  One day I saw a floatplane in the hangar, which had no wheels.  I watched as the pilot started the engine ran it at high RPM and screeched slowly on steel runners over to the damp grass and took off.  I saw my first jet-an F80 Fighter fly aerobatics (it couldn't land there because the runway was too short) over the airport.  When the great day of my flight finally arrived, my Father's friend and I drove over to the airport in his pickup truck.  He parked and we casually walked up to the office where he rented a Piper Cub.  Now I was hoping for a Taylorcraft airplane where you sit side by side rather than a cub where you sat in front of the pilot, but, I thought, beggars can't be choosers.  We walked over to the airplane parked there in the hangar and I started to get in when he told me, "No.  Let me take it around a few times.  Then I'll come back and get you".  I watched, very disappointed, as he started the engine, taxied out, and took off.  Around the pattern he flew and approached to land.  Through lack of practice he over controlled and bounced up and down on the runway.  Bang!  I could hear the airplane hit the ground.  The engine would roar as he opened the throttle.  Bang and roar again!  I was astonished.  What have I let myself in for, I wondered?  The first time around he never did get it on the ground.  The man who had rented the airplane to us heard the noise and came out to watch.  The same thing happened on the second landing.  "I can stop that", he said, and ran to get in his car and drive out to the runway, but by then my 'pilot' was gone again.  Was I glad he didn't take me right with him?  You bet your boots I was.  On the third approach the landing was smooth.  My pilot taxied in, picked me up, and off we went for my first flight.  He taxied out and took off to the north and we flew over my home in Commerce OK and returned.  It's funny, but I remember little of the flight, other than thinking there's only a piece of canvas painted with dope holding me up in the air.  I do remember the sinking feeling when he pulled the throttle back for the landing and the ground rushing up; but I had no fear the landing would be rough.  What a wonderful thing to do for a boy-to take him on his first flight.  I later in my life traveled many thousands of miles in the air, but no flight was ever as fabulous as that first flight in a yellow J3 Piper Cub.

Car Trouble

          As I was driving home from work my cell phone rang.  When I answered it was my wife, Ann.  She sounded sort of tense and frustrated.  Worriedly I asked her what was wrong.  She told me, “Sally’s car broke again, and she is driving home from taking Matthew to the Doctor, and she is lost in Oklahoma City”.  I asked, “Where is she”.  Ann then told me she was somewhere in Oklahoma City and didn’t know how to get home.  She asked, “Would you please call her”.

          With some effort, I was driving in traffic; I managed to call Sally on her cell phone.  I asked her what is wrong with your car.  She explained that it “won’t shift again”.  To digress a moment and explain.  Sally has had a really bad time with her car.  Twice now one of the computer sensors has become defective.  When this happens the car will not shift out of low gear and it costs a considerable sum of money to get it repaired.  I think the first time the defective part was called the Speed In/Out sensor, and I can’t remember the name of the failed part the second time.  The only way to get the car home or to the shop is to drive it about 25 MPH in low gear.  She has had so much trouble with the car that she was not surprised that it was ‘broke’ again, just sad and depressed about it, and was driving home from Northwest Oklahoma City at very low speed staying on the slower streets.

          I asked her where she was and why she was lost.  She told me that she was at 15^th and South Robinson, but that she thought she could find her way home.  I told her to drive carefully, and that we should take her car to the shop and have it repaired.

          I drove on home.  A few minutes later she called home and said she had found her way to Santa Fe Avenue.

          As there was not much I could do about the situation, I sat down in my chair to begin my afternoon nap.  I thought, though, that I should say a prayer that the Lord would help Sally with her car.  I asked the Holy Spirit to actually fix whatever was wrong with it.  Almost immediately I received the answer, “I already have”.

          After another short period Sally called again.  This time she said, “The car is OK now.  Should I come on home, or just go back to work”?  I told her to go on back to work,

          About 4:30 Sally came in from work.  I asked her how her car was driving now.  She told her Mother and me, “I found out what was wrong with the car”.  “What was it”, I asked.  With a red face she explained that she had discovered that she had the car in low gear, and that there was nothing wrong with it.  She had just assumed that it had broken again.

          My assumption is that the Holy Spirit, in answer to my prayer, had caused Sally to glance down and see that the transmission lever was in the wrong selection.

So what we need is some intercession.  We need Sally’s Guardian Angel to pay much closer attention, and to jog her memory when she gets into these kinds of situations.  Do you suppose maybe Sally has a blonde guardian Angel?  I wonder if we could get an exchange; perhaps an Angel who is more car smart.

Oh my Gosh, What Have I Done

This true story is rather technical, but I needed to explain some of the electronic systems in order to get to the funny part; so please bear with me.  The year was 1963-4.  I was a just married young Staff Sergeant in the US Air Force when I received what was then called an unaccompanied duty assignment to remote Alaska.  The unit to which I was assigned was the 714^th AC & W Squadron at Cold Bay, Alaska.  This organization had more than one mission.  Primary duty was to operate a chain of Distant Early Warning (DEW) radar stations which stretched about 700 miles along the chain of Aleutian Islands from King Salmon Air Force Station to Nikolski Air Station on Umnak Island.  The secondary mission was to extend the Alaskan Communications System through a wideband system called Forward Propagation Tropospheric Scatterwave (FPTS) from Anchorage all the way west to Shemya Island 2000 miles southwest of Anchorage.  Our stations were at Port Moller, Port Heiden, Cold Bay, Cape Sarichef, Driftwood Bay, and Nikolski.  This bleak black & white photograph is of the station at Nikolski.

Another mission was to provide long distance telephone service to persons living in the Aleut Indian villages along the chain.  The FPTS Radio System transmitted and received a communication system called Western Electric K & L Carrier, a Frequency Division Multiplexed system which through the miracle of electronic technology allowed a large number of separate communication channels to operate simultaneously.  Another mission was to provide Air Traffic Control (ATC)  Communications using VHF and UHF Radio equipment to aircraft enroute to the short gravel runways at each of these stations.  These stations were minimum manned—at Nikolski the number of assigned people was about 32; the personnel complement consisted of electronic technicians, radar operators, cooks, power production technicians, vehicle mechanics, and civil engineering specialists.  The Commanding Officer was usually a Captain.  The facility was designed so that most of the time it was not necessary to leave the building, and even the 2 or 3 vehicles were stored inside in the garage.  I cannot remember going down the mountain more than 2 or 3 times during the entire year.  The Aleut Indian villagers from below visited the station only once that I can recall while I was there.

All this equipment required electrical power to operate; and because the technology at the time had not yet advanced beyond vacuum tubes, the electrical load was high.  The power was provided by 5 large diesel generators in the power plant.  Normally only two of these generators were required in order to carry the electrical load, but in order to equalize the wear and tear on the engines and to perform maintenance, the power production technician would occasionally switch from one to another.  Now this switchover had to be carefully accomplished in order to ensure the two generators were in phase just before the switchover was performed.  This was accomplished by using a phase meter connected between the generators.  This meter read in degrees from 0 to 359 marked in 1 degree increments.  The switch was thrown at the moment when the meter read 355 degrees, which allowing for a few seconds of switch time resulted in the actual change occurring at 360 or 0 degrees.  I watched once as this was done.  It was a little scary in a noisy power plant wearing noise reduction headsets to listen while relays and switches slammed open or shut as the switch occurred.  This, however, was not my normal job.

My job was as an electronic technician in what was called Lateral Comm, the room containing the FPTS Radio Equipment, the Carrier System, a complete small dial telephone system, and the ATC Communications Radio Equipment.  Although my Air Force Specialty was ATC Communications Radio Technician, I had prior experience both with Scatterwave Radio in the US Army and with L Carrier equipment working for A.T. & T.  This was an advantage for me, and I quickly became the ‘go-to’ guy if the other technicians had a problem.  I learned the station well and began performing preventive maintenance routines which had been ignored in the past due to lack of knowledge of how to operate the equipment and perform maintenance.  After a few months of this duty I knew the job well, and I may have become overconfident.

It might surprise you to learn that almost all electronic equipment, even today, actually operates not on the 60 cycle AC Power supplied to it, but on DC.  The AC Power (in this case, from the Power Plant in the building) is immediately converted to DC Voltage and distributed throughout the circuitry to provide the necessary operating potentials.  For the K & L Carrier equipment and all the rest of the telephone central office at the station 130 Volt Power was supplied from a large bank of batteries—I think there were more than 100 of them connected in series.  The electrolyte was contained in clear glass containers with open tops.  The negative and positive electrodes were suspended in the electrolyte.  An approximate dimension of one battery was perhaps 12 X 12 inches square and 18 inches in depth.  They were mounted in racks.  These batteries supplied power to the Carrier System, and in turn they were ‘trickle charged’ by several racks of Mercury Vapor Rectifiers which were supplied AC Power from the Power Plant.  So the power chain was from the diesel electric generator to the mercury vapor rectifiers to the battery bank to the electronic equipment.  Preventive maintenance of the power chain included testing the electrolyte in each battery with an instrument called a hydrometer and recording the results, and testing the mercury vapor rectifiers to ensure they were performing properly.  This was the one facet of Lateral Communications which I was the least certain about.  Considering the amount of electrical power available from that large number of batteries I was usually pretty careful in that part of the station.

On the day I am remembering, however, the maintenance routine I was performing required me to remove a control vacuum tube from an operating mercury vapor rectifier, and to measure how long it took for the now defective equipment to switch off and transfer the DC load to a spare.  So, following the maintenance instruction I went to the rack containing the rectifier, made very sure I was doing exactly what was instructed, pulled the control tube, and began timing the changeover.  I was standing there with the control tube in one hand and the maintenance instruction in the other when to my astonishment everything seemed to go wrong at once:  The rectifier alarmed, the station minor alarm began ringing and major alarm began sounding: bong, bong, bong, and suddenly the overhead lights began flickering dim to bright to dim over and over again.  Some fellows who chanced to be watching from outside the room said I got so excited I ran around in a big circle about 3 times trying to plug the control tube in my hand back into the rectifier.  I was in an absolute panic; thought somehow I had made a mistake, possibly ruined the batteries, and caused an outage which might get me thrown off the DEW Line and court martialed.  To others it may have been funny, but I was frantic.  After what seemed like forever I plugged the control tube back in, and shortly afterward the overhead lights returned to normal.  I silenced the alarms, made sure all the systems were back in proper operating order, answered calls from other stations, and began trying to figure out what I had done wrong.

Within a few minutes I discovered that It wasn’t my fault.  What had happened was that at the exact same time as I pulled out the control tube, the power plant operator was switching diesel generators, and somehow had made an error using the phase meter causing two generators to be operating unsynchronized resulting in extreme power fluctuations.  Whew!  I was relieved.

I never did go back and complete that preventive maintenance routine.