My father's hobby and passion was amateur radio and all things electronic. He was a member of Radio Pioneers. That was back in the days of crystal sets. He had a ham station before He met his wife...my mother. There was also a ham set in the car. He exchanged QSL cards with other operators to prove that he had talked to them. They lived all over the world. I gave those cards to my grandson and the cards, unappreciated, disappeared.

As I stated, his interests broadened to all things electronic. He got a "deal" on a full size motion picture projector and boxes of movies. I don't know where they came from. Dad set up the projector in his ham shack...a room in the basement. A hole was cut out in one wall, making the ham shack a projectionist's booth. Dad called me into that little room and showed me how the film was wound on sprockets. He showed me the film up close. I could see that there were tiny changes in the picture from one frame to the next. Dad explained if you looked at them fast, you got the illusion of moving pictures. He showed me the big wheel in front of the liens, which turned, blocking the light except for when the hole in the wheel was passing by the lens. This blocked the showing of the lines between each frame yet allowing the picture within the frame to be illuminated. It had to be calibrated exactly, or you would see the picture flicker.

One rainy day, my parents called in all the kids in the neighborhood to come to our cellar. Dad had hung a sheet from the ceiling. We spent the day watching old movies. I saw Tom Mix, Kay Keiser and his college of musical knowledge, Felix the Cat, Hector the Dog at the steel pier in New Jersey. I saw Will Rogers roping and dancing while on a horse. I also saw a 7 reel western that consisted on a cowboy riding his horse into the sunset....and the next day, riding back into town. I never got the plot for that one.

Those movies were fascinating. I will never forget them...or the experience shared with my parents and the neighborhood kids one rainy day The movies sat round for a few years. Then my Dad got tired of them. He probably got tired of the projector sitting in the middle of his ham shack. So He sold them.