Portuguese Bend, Abalone Cove, Palos Verdes Peninsula, California As the bus left the Point Vicente Lighthouse I made plans to check out both Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Mysterious Island again from the Walteria Library. Also, I wanted to learn how the Fresnel lens was made. Mrs. Shoulder’s brows wrinkled but she said…
Category: Coming of Age
Flashback—1959 | The Unforgettable Point Vicente Lighthouse
Portuguese Bend, Palos Verdes Peninsula, California The yellow-orange school bus labored up Hawthorne Boulevard to the top of Palos Verdes. Near the very top the bus driver changed gears and for a brief period the bus remained motionless as the engine struggled to obey the transmission’s command. <feature photo of the Point Vicente Lighthouse The…
Flashback—1959 | The Farmer’s Market Field Trip
Looking back I think the elementary class field trip to the Farmer’s Market was another small but important step of my coming of age in the world outside Torrance, California… 1959—The Farmer’s Market, Los Angeles, California The bus driver let out the Walteria Elementary school fifth grade class in the parking lot on the corner…
Flashback—1959 | The Fifth Grade Class Field Trip
While I was fever ridden in bed at my American Consulate General Karachi apartment oddly enough I dreamt of my childhood, beginning with a field trip our fifth grade class had made to the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles… 1959: Walteria Elementary School—Torrance, California Field trips were the neatest things that could happen in…
Flashback | 1959—The Year Began with a One-Eyed Dog
While I was fever ridden in bed at my American Consulate General Karachi apartment oddly enough I dreamt of my childhood. In particular 1959 featured many events, some which could be described as trivial, but nevertheless would affect me for the rest of my life… <feature photo of George Reeves (Superman) and his beloved one-eyed…
A Christmas Memory | The Magi’s Coins
<feature photo of O. Henry by online-literature.com Excerpt from The Gift of the Magi, a short story by O. Henry: ONE DOLLAR AND EIGHTY-SEVEN CENTS. That was all. She [Della] had put it aside, one cent and then another and then another, in her careful buying of meat and other food. Della counted it three…
Three Black Kings | The Greatest, The Conquering Lion, and The Genius
During the 1960’s and ‘70’s decades three famous black men helped me make difficult life decisions. Getting help from a trio of black men may sound odd coming from a middle class Caucasian guy. I grew up in a white family transplanted from Missouri to Southern California via short detours to Detroit and San Antonio….
The Pioneering Age of Radio & Security (Part Two)
Terrorism at 1972 Olympic XX Games On September 5th people worldwide enjoyed the 1972 Olympic XX Games on television until terror struck. Members of the group known as Black September stormed the living quarters of the Israel athletes in Munich. They kidnapped and killed eleven Israeli Olympic athletes and one German policeman. The Israel-Palestine conflict…
The Cuban Missile Crisis | We All Hid Under Our Desks
In the previous message, The Pioneering Age of Radio & Security (Part One), the author alluded to the “Red Scare” and the Cuban missile crisis. Here is the author’s memory of a day in October 1962… <feature photo by ccecoldwar1.weebly.com I sat at my desk eating lunch at elementary school on Wednesday, October 24, 1962. My…
The Pioneering Age of Radio & Security (Part One)
photos by protostack.com From Tubes to Transistors Prior to the mid 1950’s vacuum tubes lit up the insides of TV’s, stereos, radios, and telecommunications gear. The large tubes emitted a lot of heat. They were fragile, consumed a large amount of electricity and were susceptible to vibrations when used in bulky two-way radios installed in…
High School Graduation Interrupted By “Six-Day Arab-Israeli War”
Flashback | June 5, 1967 The beginning of the “Six-Day War” between the Israelis and the Arabs would have a profound effect on my life. But, on that day I wasn’t even aware of the situation in the Middle East. I had one thing on my mind—to graduate from high school and enjoy our Disneyland…
Coming of Age | Atomic Bombs and Pepsodent Toothpaste
History is a great teacher. Recent media rumbles of a return to the Cold War era with Russia took me back to my beginnings… Setting the Table After WWII After WWII and up until the early 1960’s, the U.S. experienced a “coming of age.” Like a kid in one of Norman Rockwell paintings who suddenly…
Foreign Service Messages 