Saturday, February 24, 2024

Take The Time

 Today's weird word is "take."

The word take means to reach out and grab something, pulling it towards you - such as to take a book. This does not apply to the word "cake" however, for when someone or something "takes the cake," it means an unexpected turn of events, not necessarily appreciated.

The word "overtake" means to move from behind to in front of someone else, usually in a race of some sort. But it could mean to be overwhelmed and shocked, such as when "overtaken by grief." To undertake means to begin a huge project or set off  a long journey, but don't call someone who does so an undertaker. That means something entirely different.

Take is a very useful word. For instance, you can take a call, take a bribe, take a tumble, and my personal favorite, take five, which means to chill out for five (or ten) minutes. The concept of taking made it into the fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution by outlawing the taking possession of or controlling the use of private property without just compensation. 

So let's take a moment to appreciate the word take and all of its meanings. It complicated, but worth the effort to take it all in. 


Tuesday, December 26, 2023

Up In The Air in an Autogyro

Back in the 1960's, my dad and I would drive out Morrison Road in Gentilly east of New Orleans and sometimes we would see several gyrocopters taking off and landing on the old highway that was parallel to the new road. The gyrocopters looked like large tricycles with propellers attached to them in the back and overhead, but when they took off, they gained altitude quickly and headed into the sky. That was more than 50 years ago.

 When the chance came to fly in a new streamlined autogyro, I grabbed my camera and headed for Hammond Airport. Stephen Rastanis has a couple of autogryos based over there at the Autogyro of Louisiana facility, and he teaches folks how to fly them.

 The basics are pretty simple. In a fixed wing aircraft, a propeller pushes the airplane forward and air rushes over the wing and lift is created. In a helicopter, a motor turns the rotors around, and lift is created and the copter can go straight up.



 In an autogyro, however, lift is created by the helicopter-like rotors going around, but the rotors are not powered. Instead, there is a propeller that pushes the aircraft forward and lift is generated by the rotors being pushed forward through the air. There is no power applied to the rotors while the autogyro is in flight.

 This creates remarkably stable air flight. The autogyro cannot stall, and if the engine suddenly quits for some reason, the aircraft starts slowing down, and the rotors gradually lower the craft to the ground. A good autogyro pilot doesn't require much space to land in. Any amount of crosswind actually provides more lift to the rotors, so landing is even gentler. 

We took off on the runway, using less than half of it before being zoomed away far above the treetops. The autogyro, when fully fueled, can run for four hours at speeds up to 100 mph. It is quite maneuverable, capable of sharp turns, steep dives, or, in a good wind, just sitting still in mid-air. 

 While autogyros are very popular in Europe, they haven't caught on bigtime in the States yet, even though they have been featured in James Bond movies and (I am told) the Little Orphan Annie movie. 

 They call them "the motorcycle of the sky" and that descriptive phrase fits well, since it’s an open-air cockpit and one gets to wear a helmet (with headphones and microphone.)

 Once you are strapped into the seat and the engine revs up, it's not scary or breath-taking, just a unique way to get up high enough to see some distance, check out the landscape, rivers, houses, and stores, and fly in a way for which there is no comparison. 

 

Hammond High School from the air


Wal-Mart Distribution Center


Campground on the interstate south of Robert

Hammond Airport

 

 

 

 

Friday, December 1, 2023

Countdown Clock

 Several years ago Hudson's Bargain Center had a countdown clock for sale, a big digital read-out clock that counted down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds. I knew it would come in handy and bought one. I've used it several times for big events and deadlines, and I've loaned it to friends for their big day countdowns: things like retirement, graduation, weddings, etc. 

In between uses I set it for a countdown a few years from now and let it run in my house. It has medium bright red digital numbers so it makes a good night light. Well, that and it makes a good conversation piece. 

"What's that?"

"Oh, that's my countdown clock."

"What's it counting down?"

"Nothing important..."

"But it's got 708 days, 14 hours, 32 minutes and 29 seconds on it..."

"Yes, it does."

"What happens in 708 days and 14 hours?"

"We'll just have to wait and see."

I'm thinking of resetting it for 345 days, 11 hours, 6 minutes and nine seconds. That means the countdown will end sooner. We won't have to wait as long to see what happens.


Monday, November 27, 2023

The Remarkable Mr. DeWald

 Sometimes when I'm doing research for a blog article, I get sidetracked on a rabbit trail that leads down an entirely different path. The Tammany Family blog post about Aviation in St. Tammany was one of those projects that led to something else.

That something else was actually one of the main characters in St. Tammany Airways, the company that started in 1928 and contributed to major advances in airmail delivery across the South. The operations manager for St. Tammany Airways, beginning in 1927, was William DeWald.When I began looking into the aviation career of DeWald, both before he joined St. Tammany Airways and after he left the company, I came upon an individual who was highly-esteemed in early aviation. 

So here is an outline of events that chronicle his life and accomplishments. Although there seemed to be some confusion about what his middle initial was, a description of his life and career was easy to follow. In 1912 and 1913, he was racing cars. He began flying in 1916, but in 1918 DeWald was sent to Camp Lee, VA, after being drafted into World War I.

In 1920, after the war, we find him flying for the government airmail service,"the pilot of the first airmail plane to land at Ak-Sar-Ben field in Omaha." 



Click on the images to make them larger. 



The establishment of air mail service between Omaha and Chicago was a big accomplishment, and he was a part of it. 



He apparently was willing to take risks in making sure the airmail got to its destination in time. 


The lack of enough pilots for the fledging airmail service resulted in some pilots being overworked, in addition to the lack of enough planes to go around. 


DeWald did take enough time off, however, to get married in 1920.



Moving the mail on schedule resulted in many mishaps, downed airplanes among them, but DeWald took it upon himself to drop badly-needed spare parts by parachute to those in need. 


Articles appeared in several newspapers telling of the parts dropped by parachute.


Another high-risk innovation was flying after sunset. When the schedule fell behind, DeWald was ready to take off at dusk and land at night, a risky maneuver at that point in aviation. 


Again, newspaper articles told of his daring flight. 


He also took part in activities held by the Aero Club, a group of pilots in the newly-established government airmail service.

DeWald almost became legendary as an early airmail pilot.


In 1921, he was working for Huff-Daland Co.


He was also instrumental in providing a cross-country flight for fresh vegetables, from farms in New Jersey to restaurants on Long Island and in Masssachusetts. That was ground-breaking, air transport for farm goods.



He was even linked to the Admiral Byrd flight over the North Pole in 1926.


In August of 1927, newspapers nationwide reported that he had gone missing during a seaplane flight from Norfolk, VA, to New Orleans.  


After 24 hours of concern, he was found safe east of Pensacola. His fuel had run out, he said.



The inaugural flight of privately-contracted airmail routes for St. Tammany Airways began in 1928, with DeWald serving as operations manager.


DeWald became well-known as he flew around the Southern states promoting aviation and the building of airports. 





As St. Tammany Airways grew, he became their spokesman.



But he continued to pilot aircraft on key airmail routes.


He attended aviation conferences and gave speeches.


In 1929 he was working with the Fokker Aircraft Corporation.





In many articles and photographs, DeWald became the face of progress in aviation. 





See also:

https://postalmuseum.si.edu/dewald-william-n


According to an aviation memorabilia vendor on E-Bay (who was selling early Airmailed envelopes), "William N. DeWald was a test pilot for the first flight of the world's largest single engine aircraft. The envelope shown below is a "flown First Flight cover" signed by DeWald and bearing the C.A.M. 29 FIRST FLIGHT stamp, canceled in Houston, Texas Jan 13, 1929 and backstamped twice, Springfield, Ill, Jan 24, 1929.



"William DeWald was born in 1893, served as an engineer and was head of the experimental department at Stutz (an early racing car builder). He was a Reserve Military Aviator, trained at Miami, and served with the United States (1917-19).

"DeWald was appointed a U. S. Air Mail Service pilot on April 9, 1920, and assigned at College Park MD, followed by appointments to Cleveland OH and Omaha NE. He resigned in August of 1920, and flew official air mail on the Omaha-Chicago route before actual service began.

"He flew air mail for St. Tammany & Gulf Coast Airways, Inc. in 1928, followed by a job for Southern Air Transport in 1929. He was on the first flight of the Fairchild Model 95 XC-31 USAAC cargo aircraft, the first purpose-designed military cargo aircraft and then the world’s largest single engine aircraft, at Hagerstown Airport MD, in 11934.

Flying Early Airmail Routes Was Dangerous Work

"The U. S. Air Mail Service was formed as a branch of the Post Office Department under the Second Assistant Postmaster General in 1918 and flew air mail until it was disbanded in 1927. There weren't very many pilots involved and the lives of many of them were cut short! 

"In the later twenties, the movement of air mail was placed in the hands of contractors. There were two distinct groups of airmail aviators and flew under distinctly different circumstances."

The seller, AviationBookseller.Com, then asks "What makes the pilots of the U.S. Air Mail Service so interesting, more than ninety years after the service was disbanded?"

"The answer lies in the kind of men they were, in their acceptance of significant risk in every undertaking, and their single-minded focus on a career in aviation. These men were to the children of the twenties what astronauts were to us in the sixties, railroad engineers were to the children of the nineteenth century and explorers were to still earlier generations. Their lives simply reeked of adventure! 

"When pilots signed up for the Air Mail Service they were required to agree to fly fixed routes in literally any kind of weather. And to do it in antiquated open-cockpit planes with only the most basic of instrumentation, which most knew from their Great War flying to be dangerous under the best of circumstances.  Yet applications far, far outnumbered the available jobs and the pilots, day after day, accepted their flight schedules and did everything in their power to deliver the mail to the next air mail field on a fixed schedule. 

"By the time air mail flying was placed in the hands of contractors and Contract Air Mail pilots were licensed by the Post Office Department, things had changed dramatically for pilots. Aircraft were purpose-built for air mail, radio had been introduced, weather was much better understood, pilots were carefully selected and trained and the risks of flying were better understood by the executives managing the air mail routes."


Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Edgar Cayce Groups

 In the early 1970's, back when various groups were exploring various new ways to explore spirituality, there were a lot of new ways to do so. Remember Transcendental Meditation? One of the movements that I found out about was the Edgar Cayce Study Groups which were taking place in the area. 

Edgar Cayce was a quite a sensation in his time, known for his ability to go into a deep trance and come up with all sorts of information about all sorts of mystical mysteries, as well as make medical suggestions on how specific individuals could get well and feel better. He was "the sleeping prophet," and he talked a lot about re-incarnation.

Here's an article I wrote in 1972.


Click on the image to make it larger. 

So did people take the teachings of Edgar Cayce seriously? Yep, and his Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) is still in operation, archiving his many hundreds of hours and hundreds of notebooks on what he said while he was "sleeping." 

See also:





Sunday, June 18, 2023

Happy Father's Day

 There are, within my brain, several memories permanently etched regarding my father and stepfather. This is their day, so I am going to re-visit some of those memories.

There is the memory of the go-kart my father built for me. It was made of two-by-fours, had four wheels, a seat, and a rope tied to the front axle with which to steer it. We would take to it to the Mississippi River levee and ride down the slope of the levee.

He eventually decided it needed a motor, so he mounted a five horsepower motor to the rear deck and installed a V-belt to drive one of the rear wheels. It actually worked, and we spent many a fun hours driving it back and forth, up and down the levee. 

A few years later he bought me a go-kart that was more professionally made (from Sears, I think) with a welded metal tube frame (painted orange) and powered by another five horsepower engine. This one came with real brakes. That was a plus, not that I actually used the brakes that often. 

My dad was a sign painter, so there were always cans of paint around, as well as his collection of paint brushes of every size, and sign boards waiting to be sketched out and lettered. He also worked for a chemical plant as a piping draftsman for a while, in addition to his nighttime and weekend occupation of selling hot tamales. Come to think of it, he was always working, doing something.

Other memories I have with my dad is the Saturdays we would go visit my grandfather. His name was Joe and he lived in the lower ninth ward. His house was flooded during Hurricane Betsy. I don't remember much about my grandfather, other than his wife would always give me a Coke float when I visited.

My stepfather Tex was quite a character. He ran a service station when my mother met him, but he eventually ran a landscape nursery. He loved dogs, got along great with people, and almost ran for the city council of Waveland one time. My mother talked him out of it. I learned a lot from Tex, and I appreciate his efforts to make our lives better.

So to both my fathers, Happy Fathers Day. The world is a better place because of you, and I think I became a better person as well. 

Saturday, June 3, 2023

An Array of Abacuses

 My dad collected manually-operated adding machines. His drafting work often called upon him to add up numbers, so he had at hand a hand-cranked adding machine with dozens of buttons, also one of those plastic turn wheel adding machines that you had to use a stylus to turn the wheels, and he also had three (or more)  abacuses (the plural of abacus), those featuring sliding beads that a skilled manipulator could use to add up totals very quickly. 

In fact, that is what my dad used when adding up orders and sales tax for his hot tamale sales business. Here is a picture of three of his abacuses. 


Click on the image to make it larger.

He also had a selection of slide rules of various sizes, even a circular one. Those came in handy for multiplication and other more complex mathematical calculations. His day job was a piping run draftsman for a chemical plant in Ama, La., so he did a lot of measuring and computations comparing plans for piping runs to actual as-built piping runs between processing units in the plant. 

All these were prior to the coming of electronic calculators, both the desk models and handheld kinds. I remember the first handheld calculators, they cost several hundred dollars. The "scientific calculators" cost even more. Now they give them away as souvenirs at trade conventions. 


Slide rules