Announcement

**GreyGeek** · May 29, 2018, 11:36 AM

Interesting yarn, Woody!

One of the memories of my early childhood was the trip to the barbershop. Back then, men wouldn't be caught dead getting haircuts in "beauty parlors" and all businesses with a barber pole out front were staffed by men. The most popular haircuts of the day were the flattop and the tapered trim, with or without a DA or a pompadour. The younger kids were testing the "Mohawk", or "Tomahawk". Those haircuts included a razor shave around the hairline. Setting in that chair was the most relaxing and comfortable 20 minutes I ever enjoyed, as often as I went. Nothing has matched since, even up to this day, 65 years later.

Another childhood memory, exciting to me because of my curiosity, was the X-Ray Shot Fitter. My first recollection of going to a shoe store to buy shoes, circa the late 1940's, involved that machine, and that machine was part of the experience almost until I left for college in 1960.

I even got several of these "certificates":

But, at 77, I'm gradually forgetting a lot of my old memories, or remembering events that never really happened.

**woodsmoke** · May 29, 2018, 10:27 PM

LOL NiCE MOVE...but...it does not reference the particular avatar!...lol

and yep, we had THAT MACHINE in the town...and since I was "not quite tall enough" I looked at somebody else's feet and...

it scared me shi$%^@@...even at that age...

My mother had actually purchased for me the "red binding" "World Book" and i sallied myself hence and, since I was actually READING...page after page through it...i skipped to "X-ray"...and was even more scared sh#$%!@@...

but yeah... that was THE THING back in the day...

woodishonoredbythemoveandtitlesmoke

**GreyGeek** · May 30, 2018, 10:08 AM

LOL!

When I was around 6 or 7 my folks got an encyclopedia set, I can't remember the name, but the inside cover bindings had medieval drawings of battle horses slashed in the stomach and spilling their guts everywhere. Gave me nightmares for months.

When my boy was around 2 or 3 years old a World Book Encyclopedia salesman came by and took advantage of me, selling me a complete set with three years of free updates for $Iforgot. I spent more time reading them than he ever did.

**woodsmoke** · May 30, 2018, 10:57 PM

lol
woody

**DoYouKubuntu** · Jun 02, 2018, 02:21 PM

Very interesting story, Woody!

But JUST transitioning from horses to cars in '59? Perhaps things were different elsewhere, but here in Southern California we were well and truly entrenched in car culture long before then! Though I don't remember it personally (wasn't born yet), stories from my family had us in cars from the 1930s, after moving to Los Angeles from 'back east' (New York/New Jersey). I remember the early '60s very well, and getting new cars was a common event.

Anyway, I loved the story!

**woodsmoke** · Jun 05, 2018, 12:31 AM

Lol yep, when the elites call the midwest "flyover country" they aren't much wrong. The congress person who coined the term inherited her passed husbands ranch.

If one has ever seen a "Roy Rogers" film, a "modern person" maybe in the sixties just could not "understand" how it was that Roy was riding Buttermilk(his horse) and had smiley burnett driving the jeep "Lulu Belle"... WELL... DURING THOSE TIMES IN THE MIDWEST and also the "California West" it was no surprise because a LOT of folks that were "older"...fifties and up actually did not have a car, they rode a horse or had a horse drawn wagon. And folks transitioned between one transport to another on a daily basis.

There was a town south of me about ...fourty miles...and we were south of a much larger town by about...thirty miles...DECADES later the priincipal at the school where I taught most of my life told a story about how his dad had a very expensive cadillac... like this:

To travel from the lower town to the upper town they took, as I remember...five...six...? "extra" tires ON WHEELS because of the HORRIBLE roads that destroyed the tires... Instead of "changing a tire" , he got out and SWITCHED it and drove a while until the next one went bad and again an again.

When they got to the upper, MUCH larger town and were at the hotel, he gave all the tires to a "garage" nearby to fix and they went shopping and stayed overnight.

People TODAY...just really have no conception of that "transition" period because it was not recorded on cell phones... there is a little of it in the "old films" but people just kind of think that

All those HIGHWAYS...just magically appeared in one year...no...it took decades...

That is one thing that the "Republicans" who are "all against taxes"...don't understand...and that Obama correctly opined in a very STUPID way...that it takes decades to "wear a road out" and years to "rebuild it'...and it is much better to "maintain" it than to "repair it"...because think of

YOUR FRONT END...on a road that is all "potholes"...yeah people may "save" twenty dollars a year in taxes but spend five hundred every couple of years on fixing the front end of their car...

Now, I, personally was in a family wherein the horse had about "halfway transitioned" to a "hay burner"...but I actually "droved cattle" ...not across the length of a state but across the length of "counties" because the people had figured out that it was less expensive to have ten "farms" of 50 acres each rather than one ranch of 500 acres. They were "all modern" at the time, moving cattle in "horse trailers" but I could actually drove twenty or thirty head at one time and made a LOT of money while the "clint eastwoods" were making chump change "bucking hay" for a half cent a bale.

And...within... the space of time when I was 14 to when i was 20 it all just disappered.

And...good and well done...it was a brutal way to live...the films just don't really relate what had to be done just to do simple things.

My granddad and mother literally built the first house "on a new block" in our town and it had toilet, water, "storm drains" on the eves of the roof, very modern...but just a block from me was a VERY CUTE little "sandstone" covered house with...no toilet, did have running water and "gas" "laid on"... the old man who lived there, I shined his shoes, had inherited the house...and he RAN THE LOCAL BANK... literally sat in a small "morning room" reading the newspaper after getting off work because he had no t.v ...OR...radio...

The whole thing about the "EMP"...people just do not comprehend how they would "all of a sudden" have to live if some third rate country pops one of those things off over us...

MOST of those countries realy are...mostly... what the U,S. ws in the fifties...

so...we could pop one of the EMPs off over them and the folks just yawn...they...are still using outdoor toilets... and their hospitals have cheesecloth tents to keep the flies away from patients in the summer.

woodwaaay too old! smoke lol

**GreyGeek** · Jun 05, 2018, 11:26 AM

In 1962 the US conducted "Starfish Prime", a test of the effects of an EMP pulse. The 1.8MT weapon was detonated at an altitude of 1,300,000 feet above the Pacific, near the Hawaii Islands. It's total effect was supposedly to have caused the failure of 30 strings of lights in the city of Oahu. 30 strings out of 3,000 strings in the city. That's it. And, that is the sum total of the "proof" of the "devastating effects" that an EMP would have if a similar bomb were detonated at 390 miles above Omaha, NE. There were several other detonations in near Earth space over the years, and around 2,500 detonations at or near the Earth's surface since 1945, yet there is not one recorded incident of an EMP destroying anything, including the electronics that were surrounding each blast as they recorded its affects.

EMP proponents often point to the CARRINGTON EFFECT of 1859, when a large CME causes auroras all the way down to central Mexico. There weren't many electrical devices present during that period of time, except the telegraph, and anecdotal stories relate to Saint Elmo's fire and other effects of static electricity. People in the central part of the US claimed that they could read their newspapers because it was as bright as daylight. However, magentometer recordings of the effect established that its magnetic strength was between 800 and 1,000 nT. That's right nanoTeslas. The Earth's magnetic field strength at 0-0 is only 31.869 µT, That's "micro" Tesla. The Earth's magnetic field is stil 32 times stronger than the effects caused by the 1859 CME.

The US Military and power companies long ago took measures against transient magnetic events by creating "Faraday cages" around their electrical devices. Besides, lightening strikes on power lines have caused much more damage than CME's or that lone EMP of 1962. Their effects are usually negated by the triggering of breakers and other current limiting devices. But, if you are really worried then you could wrap your smartphone in tin foil when you are not using it.

PS- Most of you have a Faraday cage in your home. It's called a Microwave, and the cage is what keeps the electromagnetic effects of the Klystron inside, preventing burning your eyes out.

**woodsmoke** · Jun 13, 2018, 12:08 AM

Well

GG

I STAND CORRECTED!!

Back in country we were all warned about this...so...

STOOPID ME!!

I stand corrected!!

woodsheepishsmoke

Announcement

Another story

Another story

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment