The Early Years

 
Life was simple when I was young. We learned from our parents, teachers and the school of hard knocks. We learned to either fight or to take it! We walked or rode our bicycles to school and played outside. On Saturdays we went to the movies. They were double-feature movies with animated cartoons and News Reels that let us actually see the news that we heard on the radio or read in our Weekly Reader news letter at school. Sundays were for dressing up and going to church.

I was born in Mt. Adams, Cincinnati, Ohio in 1940. The streets were cobblestone and the milk truck was a horse and wagon. The Mount Adams Incline connected downtown Cincinnati with this hilltop community of working-class blue-collar people. Cincinnati had five inclines but the Mt. Adams Incline, completed in 1872, was the longest running incline and it is definitely the most well-known. A ride on the incline cost 5¢ round-trip. As a small child I was petrified if we had to ride a street car on one of the inclines.

By the time I was age 3, I had a baby sister, Donna Sue, and a baby brother, Jimmy. We lived on Winneste Avenue in Winton Terrace, a public housing project that opened in 1940. After the end of WW2 Winton Terrace had expanded to become Winton Hills. At age 6 I started first grade at St. Bernard Catholic school in the neighboring community of Winton Place. It was a 20 minute walk to school or 5 minutes by bicycle but we often took a shortcut along the "cinder path" through the woods known as Winton Commons.

My mother made our breakfast each morning and packed our school lunch, usually a bologna or peanut butter and jelly sandwich but always a piece of fruit amd a thermos of milk. After my First Communion and Confirmation I became an Alter Boy at St. Bernard church. After church on Sunday my dad would often make breakfast of toast, bacon, oatmeal and eggs to give my mom a break. Another fond memory I have of Winton Terrace is waking up on a summer morning to the sound of the lawnmowers in the Winneste Avenue courtyard to the smell of fresh-cut grass.

By age 13 we moved to an apartment on Hamilton Avenue between Northside and College Hill. I started seventh grade at St. Boniface school in Northside and became an Alter Boy at St. Boniface Church. The school, the church, and the rectory were magnificent stone buildings. I have traveled through Europe, the Baltic countries, and Russia and St. Boniface is still one of the most memorable churches I have ever experienced.

I was overwhelmed by its grandeur and beauty. The majesty of its vaulted ceiling and mosaic pillars and arches. The sanctuary was located under a golden dome surrounded by great mosaic images and the alter was enclosed within a marble shrine. Even today St. Boniface is known for its magnificent stained glass windows, its beautiful mosaic Stations of the Cross, and its marble statues. I can never forget the majestic organ in the choir loft above the church's entrance or the thundering sound when organist Mr, Dagger added the rermote organ pipes located in the church's two vestibules.

By the 8th grade my parents bought a grocery store at the corner of Chase and Chambers Streets in Northside. J&R Foods sold fresh vegetables and meats and my dad was the butcher. Even at that early age I began helping my parents in our busy store delivering groceries, stocking shelves, marking canned goods, cleaning fruit and vegetable bins, and defrosting the ice cream freezer.

The real challenge came when my father was diagnosed with throat cancer. He suffered very much as a result of surgery and radiation treatments that left him disfigured and he became severely depressed. By age 16 my mother and father had separated.

Our store was open from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M. so I quit school to help in the store. The first time the meat delivery guy hung a side of beef in our cooler, he taught me how to "break it down" into quarters right on the hook. With each delivery he made, he taught me a little more about the cuts of meat. With his help and the pictures of cuts of meat in my mother's Betty Crocker Cookbook, I learned to slice a round steak, cut and cleaver pork chops, and tie up a rump roast as good as any local butcher.

My mother was a strong lady and an astute business woman. While my sister and brother were in school, I was learning about cash flow, markup, profit and loss and customer relations. I was managing inventories and watching delivery men so we weren't cheated on the count. My mother and I spent idle time playing Scrabble® and we would compete on who could take the biggest grocery order over the phone and fill it from memory.

My brother and sister worked in the store after school but waiting on customers was usually my job. My brother and I both delivered groceries towing a wagon behind our bicycles. My mother cooked dinner in an electric skillet that we kept in an area behind the meat cooler at the back of the store. Some meals and desserts were made from our fresh foods that might otherwise spoil and we often had to eat between customers.

There were "corner grocery stores" on every corner for two blocks in every direction from our store. We were the only store that sold fresh meats and vegitables but competition was still keen. Then, a new sheriff came to town; a trend in grocery shopping called a Supermarket. This big store ran ads that tricked our customers into believing their pre-packaged goods and self-service were a better deal than our fresh foods and personal service.

One day a regular customer complained about our 69¢ a pound price for bologna. The elderly customer thought the supermarket sold bologna for 59¢ a pound. But the supermarket's ad said, in tiny print, "11 oz pkg." The shoppers who bought one of those supermarket packages of bologna actually paid 86¢ a pound for their bologna. I was only about 17 but I learned a good lesson in marketing and decided we also had to play the supermarket game.

We had 24 cans of cherry pie filling priced at 29¢ a can that were not selling. It was February so I repriced our entire stock at three-for-a-dollar and constructed a display with an attractive sign reading "Bake a Cherry Pie for Washington's Birthday". My mother was appalled at the 13¢ price increase at a time when a loaf of bread cost 18¢ but we sold every can of that cherry pie filling.

Although our store was a full-time job, I was determined to finish high school and even had aspirations of going to college. I began taking classes at West Night High School located in the Hughes High School building. At night school there are no breaks, lunch periods or study halls. There are no friday night ball games and no proms. I took a city bus to and from school Monday through Friday and I did my homework evey night while watching Jack Parr on late night television.

However, West Night High School was a great education. My physics teacher was an MIT graduate teaching high school at night to reduce the cost of his tuition. Occassionaly, for those who wanted to stay after class, and I always did, he taught physics above and beyond the high school level. One night he explained the physics of the Big Bang Theory. This theory would not be generally accepted for another 30 years.

My chemistry teacher was an organic chemist at Proctor & Gamble working on making gasoline out of oranges and corn. One night, instead of our usual boring experiments, he decided to show us how to change the organic structure of orange juice into gasoline. His opinion was that converting crops into gasoline was much too expensive to ever be practical. He was right. But today we add ethanol to our gasoline increasing its price per gallon. Today, many reports claim ethanol is a bad idea.

I didn't get paid working at our store xo I began doing odd jobs for the neighbors to earn some money. I often worked for two elderly sisters who were neighbors. I cut their grass, washed their car and shoveled coal when it was delivered. During the winter I would "bank the fire" in their furnace so they would have heat in the morning. Peg Walker taught me how to clean and how to hang wallpaper, a skill I carried on into adulthood.

However, doing odd jobs was not paying. I wanted radio equipment, I wanted to date, and I wanted a car. I wanted a salary but that request turned into a big argument between me and my mother. Still, I set out to find a "paying job." Although it was August and I would not be 18 until September, I was hired as a "Page" in the Shelving Department of the downtown branch of the Cincinnati Public Library.

The store continued to demand more and more time and profits were slim. My grandfather Brown, who apparently had some money in the store, convinced my mother that we should "remodel" the store to be more like a supermarket. The move disrupted our business and did not turn out to be like a supermarket. We lost customers and money. My mother was working too hard trying to keep the store profitable so we decided it was time to sell the business and move on.

My mother took a job in the Catalog Department at the Cincinnati library where I was working. But selling the store meant we had to give up our apartment above the store. We moved to a lovely two floor apartment in the same neighborhood but, sadly, we couldn't keep our dog, Teddy. I cried for weeks when my mother told us she had put him down. He was only about eight years old so I truly hope there is a rainbow bridge so I can tell our sweet little dog Teddy how sorry I am for his short life.

I was the oldest but my sister, brother and I were all just one year apart. When they graduated from high school, my sister found a job as a secretary and my brother went to work cutting meat in a supermarket. With everyone in the family working, all of our money went into a family fund and we rented a little house on Chambers Street. The tracks are gone now but the train ran right next to our house.

I was determined that I was not going to my 1960 high school graduation on the bus at this adult age, so I went to a dealership, bought a 1957 Chevrolet and drove it home. That weekend I practiced parallel parking with a friend in a nearby cul-de-sac and then I went to get my license. The ranger had me drive around the block and stop in front of an ice cream truck crowded with kids. He bought two ice cream cones and we headed back to the station. That day I got my driver's license.

My mother hadn't driven since before WWII but because I had to drive her to work, she bought a black & white, stick-shift, Nash Metropolitan convertible. I learned to drive a stick-shift driving that car but she wasn't happy shifting gears and traded it in for a new Chevy Two.

Meanwhile, my brother bought a 1950's Ford and my sister began dating. I enrolled in Engineering at the University of Cincinnati and, for awhile, life was normal. My brother and I double dated usually taking both cars. It was the days of drive-in movies, miniature golf, Rock & Roll, and car hops on roller skates.

My pay at the library was low compared to the Union wages my brother earned at the supermarket so when a job opened in the library's printing department, I applied. However, because I had not yet finished high school the library would not accept my application. My mother convinced me the library was no place for a career and I left the library and went to work for the supermarket.

I was uncomfortable cutting meat inside a cooler so they put me in charge of their "Deli" I worked 40 hours Thursday thru Sunday but the Deli was like having our store back again. I kept a fresh and appetizing meat case and always had a tempting display of "home baked" pies. On my first 4th of July weekend my boss felt I had ordered too much potato salad. When I sold all of it but a fresh batch left over for the meat case the next morning, he fired me! My brother said thay hired two people to replace me.

With no job and the Army draft threatening me, I enlisted in the Air Force. I felt it would be a great opportunity to get the electronics training I wanted and the G.I. Bill would help pay for the college education I wanted. However, on my first leave home after my Air Force training in Biloxi, Mississippi, everything of mine was gone.

I had nno more car, no more ham radio equipment, no more Hi-Fi, no more 45 rpm records, no more girlfriends, and no more "buddies." My Mother was dating. My sister was engaged and my brother was married. When I left Cincinnati for my assignment in Plattsburgh, NY, I was so angry that it was many years before I returned.

 
While I was a sophomore at Sacred Heart Seminary I joined the amateur radio club and studied electronics after my regular classes. Having an "A" in mathmatics was a requirement to join the club and I was very good at geometry, my sophomore math. I had struggled with freshman algebra but learning to manipulate Ohm's Law (I=E/R) in my electronic classes actually taught me what I had been missing in algebra.

At age 15 I could send and receive Morse Code at 5 wpm and I passed the written FCC Amatuer Radio exam to earn my Novice class license KN8ARV (the N was for Novice). Ham radio was a thrill even if it was communicating in "dots and dashes." It was fun making friends with strangers in Colorado, Utah, California, Florida and many other states from the seminary radio station on Beechmont Avenue in Cincinnati.

After leaving school, I earned my General Class license and I wanted my own radio equipment. I bought a used Hallicrafters SX-99 receiver and built a 35 watt, CW (continuous wave) transmitter from a Heathkit. The kit came with a cabinet, a chasis, knobs, tubes, a bag of parts and a schematic diagram. I could only operate in Morse Code with a CW transmitter so I bought a semi-automatic Vibroplex telegraph key commomly called a "bug." It made sending code lightening fast by automatically making the "dots."

I was a very active ham radio operator and could soon send and receive Morse code at 15 wpm. We talked in a language of "Q" signals and abbreviations. When we made a QSO (a contact), we exchanged QSL (confirmation of contact) postcards. I still have 45 QSL cards that I saved from contacts I made with other ham radio operators between 1956 and 1958. The QSL cards confirmed the date and time of the contact, the operating frequency (megacycles) and the signal strength (RST). The RST reporting system for CW signals is three numbers representing Readability (R), Strength (S), and the Tone (T).

A "log book" had to be maintained for all of our on-air activity. A popular QSL card copied the log book that we were required to keep. The QSL card I received from station K0DUA in Colorado was one of those cards. The first line on his card shows a typical logbook entry. The A1 emmission type means Morse code and we were on-the-air for 24 minutes. His message reads Thanks nice chat, Rich. Hope to bcnu (be seeing you) Glad to be your first Colorado, 73, Eric. "Best Regards" was abbreviated with the number 73 (2 dashes, 3 dots, 3 dots, 2 dashes).

Some QSL cards showed the equipment the operator used, RCVR (receiver), XMTR (Transmitter), and ANT (Antenna) like the card I received from station KN4IDA in Winter Haven, FL Some Hams designed their own cards like station K5BJH in Chickasha, OK. The QSL cards I bought were also among the most common. I liked this card because it gave a complete record of the contact, the equipment that I used and it showed my station's location as MY QTH on a map of the USA.

I was 19 years old before I could afford to replace my 35-watt CW transmitter with a 200-watt CW/AM Viking Valiant transmitter. I bought a microphone and built a Heathkit Q Multiplier to improve the reception on my receiver. For an antenna I needed something inconspicuous so I converted an old UHF bow-tie TV antenna that I found at an electronics salvage store into a 10-meter ham band antenna. It was bidirectional so I created a mounting bracket out of a flange that would let me rotate the antenna by hand. I contacted many new locations in CW and AM with that transmitter and antenna. One of my DX (long sistance) contacts was a guy in France who was transmitting from his car, a Renault.

My car and ham radio were my pride and joy. I installed a Gonset G76 transceiver, in the car so I could operate my ham radio station while on the go. I remained somewhat active in ham radio through my years in the Air Force by building a 110 volt power supply for my G76 transceiver. It was the only ham equipment I had left after my mother sold everything else.

Like my mother, my wife highly objected to an antenna on the roof so I erected a vertical ground plane antenna in our back yard. The day lightning struck the antenna was the last day I actually operated while we lived in New York. Of course the antenna was properly lightening protected so there was no damage but my wife insisted I take it down. While I was in the Air Force I could operate using my K8ARV call sign anywhere I lived. However, at the end of my enlistment and after moving to Pennsylvania I had to get a new call sign.

Broadcast stations generally use call signs in the international series. In the United States, the first letter generally is K for stations west of the Mississippi River and W for those east of the Mississippi River. However, in Amateur Radio they ran out of "Ws" and I got the letters K8ARV. We used "phonetics" when transmitting in voice anf I used "K8 American Radio Voice." A friend in Cincinnati was W8BDT and used the phonetics "W8 Big Dumb Tom." His name was Tom.

When I got a new call sign living in Pennsylvania, I got W2FDS. I was thrilled to have a "W" call sign but I sruggled to find appropriate phonetics for FDS. After my friend Charlie Holbrick suggested "Feminine Deorderant Spray" I never could come up with clever phonetics and using Feminine Deorderant Spray was out of the question.

My wife strongly objected to a "ham band" antenna on our roof so, eventually, I was not active at all. When my W2FDS license expired, I did not bother to renew it. I held on to the Gonset G76 until I sold my Philadelphia property in August 2015. Sadly, it went out with the trash.

 
In August 1958, a month before my 18th birthday, I was hired as a "Page" at the main branch of the Cincinnati Public Library. The job only paid 90 cents per hour but the library was a wonderland of information and artifacts, ideal for a young inquisitive mind like mine.

In a library each item is given a label which uniquely determines its location by subject. This is the Dewey Decimal System. It allows new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. They are then sub grouped by the author's surname. Shakespeare is so important that he is the only author to have his own Dewey Decimal Number. His works and their criticism all live under the number 822.33.

The longer the Dewey Decimal number, the more specific the subject. If you were interested in all kinds of sports, you would look in catalog number 790, but if you were interested in ball games, you'd look in 796.3 and if you were interested in golf, you'd look in 796.352.

The Cincinnati library used the Dewey Decimal System in conjunction with the Cutter Classification on the labels. The Cutter system allows books to be arranged in an alphanumeric sequence even when there is no author or the author or title does not contain a word by which the book should be properly arranged. Adding a Cutter Code to the book made it quick to show in what order the book should be shelved.

And, the Cincinnati library went one step further. It divided the ten Dewey Decimal Classifications, 000 through 900, into Departments. Using departments made it very easy for a patron to simply go to the department and browse the topics and authors without having to consult the catalog. In the Air Force I borrowed this idea and changed the Biloxi Air Force Base library from its numerical filing system into departments to help foreign military personnel find what they were looking for in the library. It was very successful and I received a lot of praise.

Different departments were on different floors but there was also a Browsing Room on the first floor. It was like a library within a library where you could find the most popular books on all subjects. Also on the first-floor were the Philosophy & Religion department and the History & Literature department. The second floor had the Reference Books, Business & Industry, and Language & Science departments. The third floor had the Art & Music department with 33 rpm records, an elegant Rare Books Room, a large movie theater, and the catalog department that maintained the catalog cards in the library's massive catalog files.

In addition to the three floors that were open to the public, there were four floors called stack levels that were not open to the public. The stack levels contained the overflow of millions of volumns as well as oversize books (quarto, folio and elephant folio), magazines, periodicals, newspapers, films and records. When a patron requested any item that was located on a stack level, a Page assigned to that stack level would find it and send it to the main floor via a dumbwaiter.

The two stack levels below the first-floor served the first floor departments and the two stack levels between the second floor and the third floor served those departments. The Shelving department, Map department, Films and Recordings department and the Printing department were also located on stack levels.

When books were returned to the library they were sent to the Shelving Department via a conveyor belt and a slide. Library "Pages" were responsible for separating them by floor, by department, by catalog number and placing them on trucks to be reshelved on the main floors and in the stack levels.

Pinochle was a popular game every lunch hour in the boiler room. The games were fast and furious and were played mostly by the pages and the boiler-room guys. I learned to play Pinochle and became very good at it. We played "a penney a point and a nickel a set" except on paydays. Payday stakes were a nickel a point and a dime a set.

One day while shelving books in the Art & Music Department, I spied a book titled How to not be cheated at Pinochle. I read that book and what I learned was How to cheat at Pinochle. I learned how to switch suites to trump; use a Spade to trump when Clubs are trump or a Heart to trump when Diamonds are trump. And I learned to use a Jack of Hearts with the Queen of Spades instead of a Jack of Diamonds to meld a "Pinochle."

I loved working at the library and it wasn't long before I was promoted to Shelving Department Supervisor. On paydays I always spent a dollar to buy a new 45 RPM record. I also liked buying clothes or an interesting belt. My white shirts were done at Sam Yee's Laundry in Northside. The cost was 10¢ a shirt. Sam always gave me a box of Chinese tea every Christmas.

There were many interesting stories of the people I hired and worked with during my years at the library. One day I interviewed a young man from Kentucky who asked if I would fill out the application for him because he was "not good at reading and writing." He appeared to be a sincere and honest young man so I obliged to be polite. When I got to the question of "Hobbies and Interests" on the application, he seriously answered "cars and women." He wasn't hired but not because of that answer.

Then there was Charlie Bull. Charlie worked at the post office and part-time at the library. He had as much hair growing out of hus ears and nose as he had on his head. Another older gentleman I worked with had been a tax collector in Burma (now Myanmar). He traveled from village to village by canoe to collect the government's taxes. He lived in a tent and hunted and fished for his food because he was not popular or welcome among the villagers. As a government worker, though, he had to flee Burma when the Japanese invaded the island during WWII.

Most memorable of all, though, is Fredrich Kotva. Fred had been a fighter pilot in the Luftwaffe during WWII. After the war he defected to Hungary but during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 he fled the country and immigrated to the U.S.A. When Fred was hired at the library he lived at the Friars Club, a Catholic refuge for immigrants. During his employment at the library Fred became a millionaire. The story of his success is so interesting, inspiring and memorable to me that it is worth telling.

While we were getting to know Fred, he told us that he spoke seven languages fluently and had bought a reel-to-reel tape recorder to correct his English accent by listening to himself on the recorder. On another occasion he told us that he bought a movie projector. Not an 8mm home movie projector but a 35mm movie projector like the ones used in movie theaters. He explained that before the war he was a movie producer and director in Germany. Still, what on earth could he possibly want with such a projector?

Meanwhile, Fred had opened a machine shop where he invented and manufactured a film splicing device. He applied for and received a U.S. patent on his device. As an artist, he earned money to start the machine shop by painting record album covers. We also learned that Fred had an electronic engineering degree from Germany and was hired by the clear-channel radio station WLW to get their new state-of-the-art broadcast equipment on the air.

At the library Fred was eventually assigned to the Films & Recording Department. Films were often returned to the library broken or damaged and they had to be repaired before being rented again. Fred's job involved operating a machine that was used to review, splice and fix returned films. One day I noticed Fred shelving films on stack level D while the "machine" was running by itself; rewinding, splicing and reeling the films all by itself. I had no idea how it was working but it was doing just that!

When Fred announced that he was leaving the library there was a big send-off celebration for him. I had never seen this happen with any other employee. But we soon found why the celebration. The library management announced that Fred held four U.S. patents and he was giving two of his patents to the library. One patent was for his splicing device but the two he was giving the library were the patent for the machine in the Films & Recordings Department on stack level D and the other was for a device that controlled the the 35mm movie projectors in the library's movie theater. The projectors would automatically switch from one projector to another at the end of a reel of film without a projectionist on duty.

Fred's fourth patent he had sold to Bell & Howell. I never knew for sure, but years later I had a hunch that Fred's patent might have been for Super 8 Movie Film. After Super 8 became popular, I remembered Fred talking about film sizes and explaining the differences between the 8mm film used in home movie cameras and the 35mm film used by the movie industry. I never found out what became of Fred but he had become a millionaire and, while I knew him, was often seen blowing a kiss as he exclaimed "I love America. Truly the land of opportunity."

 
Music always had a big influence on my life even though I could never sing or play an instrument. However, at an early age I did discover that I could play a radio. When the radio stations didn't play what I wanted to hear, I had my 78 rpm records. These records were made of bakelite, a brittle material, so they could crack or break esily. I took precious care of our 78s.

I was very young when I would play records on our Victrola. My mother's favorite records were the Ink Spots and mine were the Andrew Sisters. One night when I was babysitting my younger brother and sister, I decided to set a nightclub atmosphere by putting T-shirts over the lamps in our living room. Well, it set the mood alright but it also set the shirts on fire. Luckily, there was no damage except to the shirts but I learned a valuable lesson about incandescent lamps and circulating air.

I have very fond memories of our family singing around my grandmother Tyrrell's upright player piano. The piano roll was a roll of stiff paper perforated with holes and the holes dictated the notes the piano would play. Grandmother had a large selection of piano rolls which she kept organized in a large piano roll cabinet. And we all knew the words to many songs like My Blue Heaven, Near You, Don't Fence Me In, If You Knew Susie, Me and My Shadow and many more old favorites.

My dad was a very good singer and he often sang Peg of My Heart to my mother who went by Peggy. Unfortunately, my voice could never reproduce the sounds I heard in my head, The nuns at school often told me to just move my lips because when I sang I "threw everyone else off key."

Around the age of ten, my parents sent my sister and I for tap dance lessons. I saw myself dancing like "Jose Greco" although I didn't know he danced Flamenco and not Tap. The dance lessons didn't last long, either because we moved or because I was the only boy in the class. I don't remeember but what I learned was the foundation for dancing Lindy Hop and Jitterbug in my teens, Limbo in my 20's, Disco in my 40's, and Ballroom in my 60's.

While we owned the grocery store on Chase Street, I worked for Mae and Peg Walker. Among the many "antiques" these elderly sisters owned was a Regina Music Box. It played 15 1/2 inch metal disks. An arm locked the disc down so the tabs on the disk could pluck the teeth on a comb to produce the musical notes. I've never heard such a full, rich sound as it produced.

After getting a job at the Cincinnati library, my first purchase was a portable Zenith Cobra-matic Hi-Fi. With my knowledge of electronics as a ham radio operator, I knew that High Fidelity was accomplished by using two 50C5 electron tubes arranged in what was known as a "push-pull amplifier." Hi-Fi was the latest in sound innovation and we had 45 RPM records with the music of Elvis Presley, Big Bopper, Buddy Holly, and the Righteous Brothers. This music has lasted for 70 years.

I often brought my records and Hi-Fi to our house parties. Everyone always liked my choice of music and the most popular record was "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" by The Drifters. Another favorite was Conway Twitty but someone liked him so much they stole It's Only Make Believe and Mona Lisa. His records were hard to find I could never replace them. Especially after he switched to country music.

But joining the military ended my journey in music for a couple of decades. Basic training was so intense that I couldn’t remember a lot about my record collection and when I came home on my first leave in the Air Force, my records andd Hi-Fi were gone. Then came marriage, children, college, and careers.