Hi Colin. Welcome to Melba Street. I am intrigued by your offer, but at the moment, too darn busy with selling a house, renovations on another, Mom's probate and A.'s situation living with me. Glad We're friends.

Talking about your father got me thinking about my father. I lost him in 1985. Daughters are close to their fathers. I am no exception. I remember him spending time in the basement a lot. He was an amateur radio operator with a ham shack in the basement. He was a real radio pioneer...involved in radio when radio was the latest thing, like computers are today. I see him grinding a crystal for his crystal set. "What are you doing, Dad?" He explains that the crystal vibrates at different frequencies depending upon how thick it is. He was getting it to vibrate at a certain frequency so He could listen to another ham station. His call letters were W2KZ. I made him a stuffed pig (ham) with his call letters embroidered on its belly. It hung on the ham shack door til the day He died.
Another day, He is filing a piece of metal at his work bench. "What are you doing, Dad?" I forgot what he was doing, but He showed me a trick with the metal filings. He put them on a piece of paper , then moved a magnet back and forth under the paper. The filings moved around. He explained about positive and negative magnetic fields. I could see the lines of force by watching the metal filings move around. A favorite toy was 2 scottie dogs. One was black and the other one was white. They were magnatized. By turning one dog around, the other dog would chase, or repel. I understood magnatism.
On another day, Dad was again at the workbench. He was winding copper wire over a bakelite cylinder. "What are you doing, Dad?" He explained about electrical current makes a magnetic field. He was making an electrical magnet. He explained that anything made of ferris metal put into the opening in the field, would become magnetic. He put his knife blade into the bakelite cylinder while the wires had current. The knife came back magnetized. Great for picking up little nuts and bolts that fall to the floor....and if a magnet begins to lose its power, it can be recharged by putting it into the electrical magnetic field...then good as new. Oh, never put your watch in an electrical magnetic field. You don't want to find out why.
I came into the hamshack and a big movie projector was there. It was surplus from someplace. ...and old movie theatre that had closed down, I think. Dad had purchased it, along with a lot of old movies. He showed me the film with all the images on them, each frame just a little different than the one before. When We look quickly at a stream of film, it seems the images are moving. He showed me a big wheel that rotated in front of the light. It was a solid wheel with a square cut out. Dad explained that the wheel is syncronized with the film. It goes around . The opening allows only one frame of the picture to receive the light, from behind ,to be projected on the screen in front. It goes around again and only the next frame is illuminated. He explained that in this way, We don't see the bars between each image .If the film is feeding slowly, there is a sensation of flickering, caused by the on-off of the solid wheel...like old time silent movies.
Dad is shoveling coal into our furnace. "What are you doing , Dad?" My father takes me into the coal bin. He explains about plant material that is millions of years old. Coal is frozen sunlight. The plants used photosynthesis to grow and reproduce. When they die, if they don't rot, they are packed down and over time, are converted into coal. When We burn the coal, We release the energy of the sun, converting it into heat for our house. He said that sometimes We can find images of the plants on the coal if We look. I stayed in the coal bin for the rest of the day and YES!!! There they were.....images of ferns on the face of coal. How come no one told me how filthy dirty I was when I finally came back upstairs? I had coal dust in my hair, coal dust everywhere. I must have looked like a coal miner.
On another day, Dad is upstairs setting up a slide projector and screen. He was an amateur astronomer. He put a slide into the projector. The picture was black with dots of light all over. Dad explained that when the slide was taken, it was thought the dots were stars. We have better telescopes now that show those dots are really galaxies. WOW! Imagine the countless number of stars that make up one galaxy. Imagine a slice of heaven filled with countless galaxies. I felt my brain expand.
On a sunny day, Dad takes his telescope out to the back yard. He fastens a piece of paper just below the eyepiece. He focuses on the sun. I am warned never to look at the sun. Look only at the image on the paper. I see the surface of the sun on the paper, swarming with motion. I see black spots. Dad charts the sunspots. He sets up the telescope for many days in a row to chart the movement of the sunspots. Science in school is no match for what I am learning at home.
Learning about static electricity wasn't much fun. Dad would shuffle his feet on the wool carpet in our dry house. He would then touch me. Sparks would fly from his fingertip to me. I would get zapped. He thought this was great fun. I didn't. I quickly learned what a "ground" was for.
One weekend, it was really raining. The kids could not go outside and play. We were restless. Dad set up the movie projector, hung a sheet from the ceiling and called all the neighborhood kids in. We watched all those old movies that day. I saw Tom Mix, Hector the Pup on the Steel Pier in New Jersey. I saw Felix the cat, Our Gang, Kay Keiser and His College of Musical Knowledge. I watched Will Rogers do rope tricks. We saw each movie several times over the next few years. Then one day, Dad asked himself why am I keeping all this old stuff around? He sold it. I was so sorry.
When Dad was busy in the ham shack, He didn't want to come upstairs for a phone call. He got a phone and hooked it up himself. He would plug in the jack and make his phone call. When finished, He would unplug the jack, because the phone was illegal. Then one day, a man from the telephone company came to our door. He went downstairs and took Dad's illegal phone. All phones were owned by the phone company in those days. Dad explained they must have traced an electrical surge when He made a call. Spoilsport.
Being a ham operator wasn't Dad's profession. He was a Police officer. He worked in communications...manned the board and did repairs. Dad never socialized with other Police officers outside work. I never found out why. On a warm sunny day, a good day to take a walk, My mother suggested that I walk to Delaware Park where Police Radio was located. I loved to visit my Dad at work. First, there was that huge console with its flashing lights. I never heard him say what I heard in the movies," Calling all cars. Calling all cars. Be on the lookout for....." Mostly He sat around and fooled around with the other guys in the station. I was fascinated by their bottle of water. It burped when I drew water. There weren't any paper cups available, just circles of paper. Dad showed me how to fold them into a cone to hold the water. I drank a lot of water just to see the bottle burp and to hold the paper cone of water.
On the walls, were old black and white photos of auto accidents. The photos came from the Model T Ford era. There were Model Ts standing upright after hitting a telephone pole. There were accident photos of men thrown from the car. Without seat belts, the driver ended up on top of a utlity pole. The more grusome the photos, the more I liked them.
Because the station was located in a park, there were squirrels in trees outside the windows. Dad and the other officers would put peanuts on the windowsill. The squirrels would come and get the peanuts. (And all of this , payed for with tax dollars). Next step was to leave the window open. Squirrel comes inside to get peanuts. Next step was to put peanuts in officer's uniform pocket. Bold squirrel would just right into their pocket and get peanut. I thought this was great fun.