More tales of tests and accidents in my youth – 5-14-13

Lionel train and hairpin experiment

a) engine had very little pulling power
b) I found the cause of my discovery: a straight pin had fallen across the “hot rail” in the centerr of the rack and one of the ground rails (an outer rail of the three-rail system

Wall plug impromptu experiment

Plugged into a lamp socket a metal chain – sparks plus some crackle and pops were heard in the living room area of our place to the left of our piano where the wall plug was located. Another bright learning experience followed.

Wet lip on an icy chain link fence – blood and a sore lip

Bob and baseball.

Bob misjudging a sharp ground ball ricocheting on the Dana Street cobble stone surface and bouncing directly into his unprotected testicular region with a certain stinging certainty – very painful.

Radio – red painted orange grate housed a standard super heterodyne radio of the period.

Baseball bat cracking a skull at Richardson’s Park.

Baseball game at McPherson’s Park where an energetic batter swung and missed the ball, and was surprised at the hollow sound that emanated from the head of the catcher, who had not anticipated the 180 degree swath of the hitter’s bat. I was playing right field and suddenly I became aware of the crackling sound that a Louisville slugger bat can produce when striking a young boy’s noggin.

Richardson Park Evaporative Cooling Observation

Lying down by the grillwork cover to the sewer system under the park’s network of underground piping that feed the wading pool and the water bubblers was certainly a favorite of mine after a hot, muggy day of playing a game pick-up baseball on one of the green park’s several baseball diamonds. This sewer cover was located near the edge of the tennis courts under a large, deciduous tree with branches stretching out in all directions with a mere 50 feet away from that solid, gray, granite wall along Richardson Road.

Sheldon Caillier tooth experiment

see-saw, fulcrum, lever, simple machine,

WWII souvenir bullet found and used in a test

A neighbor boy put a hammer blow to the percussion cap of his Dad’s favorite World War II bullet to discover that after the loud explosive noise, he now had a hole burrowed through his left hand. Fortunately, being a right-handed by birth, this test left no noticeable change in his writing abilities, but the experience nevertheless made a lasting impression. I still wonder who this lad was.

Nick’s Happy Hour Lakeview Tale

A ten-year-old boy, who was cousin Richard’s Austin Street neighbor went off with friends one weekend summer day to enjoy the calm and relaxation of a sunny day at a lake in Tynnsboro, Massachusetts. Two fresh water lakes – Lakeview and Red Bluff – each located about five miles from his inner-city, block of three-story, gray, clapboard buildings, his own racial, ethnic neighborhood, could easily tempt a vigorous and energetic young boy to launch off onto a bicycle expedition to find refreshments and an afternoon of relief from the city’s clammy, stagnant air in his home grounds, that Moody Street/Austin Street ghetto.

I seldom went to play with my cousins on Austin Street, so I know of this story only through the description that Richard related to me a few days after the tragic event occurred. Apparently, Olivier (not his real name) had been swimming in the cool waters of the lake in the general vicinity of Nick’s Happy Hour, a well- frequented tavern and restaurant equipped with a lazy, wooden wharf extending well into the lake’s shinny surface. Private homes in the area also had rowboats, canoes and wharf entry slots adjoining their terraced grassy backyards facing the waters’ edge. Olivier had been resting near the solid granite wall that acted as a breaker to any serious waves impacting the property’s edge when, without any warning, the wall’s very foundations were loosened thus toppling the massive stonework onto the unsuspecting lad. Three thousand pounds of rubble crushed the vital and energetic Olivier.

Again, I was slowly learning one of life’s central themes:

“Beware, there are hidden forces that can sweep away the moment and change your life and everything you cherish in a split second. Life can be a crapshoot, and you cannot always be ready for consequences.”

In that split instant, Olivier learned about the strength and buoyancy force behind those same waves that had calmed and nourished him many times in summers past. For me, however, Olivier is someone with a foggy presence in the sepia images of my youthful days of discovery. He remains a forgotten mystery, but much else of living is also curiously a surreal picture show.

Other Discovery Minds

Schroediger, Maslow, Pasteur, de Broglie, Einstein, Minkowski, Bruegler, Fermi, German chemists, other French biologists, DNA discoverers, more. Isaac Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Watson and Creek, Mendel.

http://www.2care.org/ – Geramn organization – scientific

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Joe West and the Santa Fe Revue, I’ve Got it All, Original Second St Brewer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbVAz0bC4Tg

Broomdust Caravan ‘Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler’. Dia de Los Muertos. S

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kot1L_-C_I

Los Muertos – Music Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1FuxxHPkcE

Dia de los Muertos Festival/Day of the Dead: MDB presents Mexico Beyon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqi-UHmDCqo

Frogville Recording Studios Tour -10k 2 santa fe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4UhmxW2YF8