It was good to learn that he is doing fine and keeping busy. He has not participated much since the changeover to RPLS. Old dogs and new tricks don't mesh well, as I am fully aware due to my seniority. We can expect to hear from him in the near future, I think. The current format is so different from the last that those of us who can remember when Perry Como was a major singing attraction are slow to pickup on how to do and what to do. I had offered Paden a request to be connected, but, he never saw the request. When he discovered I was trying to call him up directly, he tried to send a private message to me, but, was unaware of the need to ask to be connected and receive a positive respone before being able to do so.
We finally both ended up on a phone at the same time and had a jolly good visit about a wide variety of topics. He was pleased to learn that Richard from Tasmania had joined in once again. Maybe Richard can get Paden to get that hip replacement he has needed.
A few years back when I was silent for nearly a week Paden called me directly to make sure which side of the sod I was spending my time. Fortunately, I was, and still am, on the top side. His call definitely cheered me up.
Windows 1 rocks.
It was late Winter or early Spring of 1965 when I accompanied my parents and older sister to a business school she was wanting to enter upon high school graduation. This was a business school that focused on training future secretaries, stenographers, telephone operators and similar areas of employment for young women. There I saw something as strange as the back side of the moon. They had typewriters that had a "ball" that struck the paper instead of any one of about 50 keys doing so individually. There was no need to reach up at the end of each line of type to return the carriage as it didn't move, but, the ball did. WOW!
In the early 1970's I witnessed the operation of what would become known later as a video game. This was a display provided as one exhibit (by the Electrical Engineering Department) during a university-wide open house to recruit future students. The display was on a small screen, with a short vertical line on one side of the screen and an identical one on the opposite side. A small pixelated dot would travel across the screen. If the operator raised or lowered the vertical line correctly, the dot would strike it and bounce back toward the opposite side. If the dot missed the line, a score was recorded for the operator of the other vertical line. WOW!
Automobiles
No seat belts and the windshield wipers were vacuum-powered
No radio but a starter button on the floor to push to crank over the motor
No air conditioning but normally two keys....one for the ignition and one to unlock the doors and trun
No catalytic converter but a spare rim/tire that was the same as the ones on the ground
No child restraint except a parent's arm but an exterior sunshade extending forward from the roof
No butt warming seats but REAL bumpers that extended a foot or more to the front and to the rear of the car body
No cruise control but fender skirts, curb feelers and ash trays conveniently located for all to use
Not exactly the same, and I’m sure I am a couple of years your junior but I can relate to the vehicles you described by my earlier military vehicle experience;
M151 Jeep had floor button starter. One had to step on the clutch pedal and shift your foot a bit to the left to reach/step on the starter button. Windshield wipers were worthless, and it was easier to just lean out and see around a trashed windshield.
The Gama Goats were even more primitive and a certain death-trap if you were ever to roll one. Riding in the back of the Gama-Goat was miserable, and the front seats had no doors, you had to slip into them feet first, that being difficult at best even when I was skinny young-un.
My dad told this story of traveling in the family Model T: If you had to go to the bathroom you would just lift one of the wooden floor boards and make your deposit through the opening. They tied a rag around the drive shaft for an automatic wiper.
My mother told the story of how she taught the nextdoor neighbor how to drive an automobile. This was about 1944 and the fellow had married in 1903, so he was no young fellow. He had never driven a vehicle that wasn't horse or mule-powered.
Only two out of my four grandparents ever drove a motorized vehicle. One had become a widow and needed to work at a job too far away for walking. My mother taught her to drive. Grandma was about 60 at the time. On the other hand, Granddad Cow had been one of the first in the neighborhood to purchase a tractor for farming and one of the first to own a pickup truck. I don't believe he ever owned a car.
Some of the participants here were over 21 before they saw their first handheld calculator. It could add, subtract, multiply and divide. Nothing else. It cost about the same as 100 gallons of gasoline.
I think that if there was anyone on this board who I would like to have lunch with, it would be Paden.
Me too! And I had the opportunity and missed out, dammit. In 2015 I went to my 40th high school reunion in Lawton Oklahoma after a 40 year's absence from Oklahoma. I contacted Paden and hoped to meet for lunch up on our way to the OKC airport on our return trip. Delays and schedule changes on my part nixed that opportunity and the 4 days we spent back in Lawton convinced me that I don't ever need to visit that town again in this life-time, so I won't be back. I also missed an opportunity to meet the late Michael Porter in Lawton as he was out of town the weekend of my reunion. Deral Paulk had quit the Oklahoma scene and was in Kentucky by then so I batted 0.000 on the dream of meeting all my favorite Oklahoma surveyors during my triumphant return to the land of my high school education.
