THE SEASON FOR NOSTALGIA IS OFFICIALLY OPEN

I THOUGHT IT WAS A CHRISTMAS RUSH, DIDN'T YOU?

I got this in the mail today.  December 1, 2012.  I'm supposed to be happy that the main post-office in this back-water city is going to open for two Sundays to be able to cope with the "Holiday Rush."
I know that I have an exceedingly bad reputation as a guy who hasn't sent Christmas cards for ages.  Despite my horrendous reputation, you have to admit that I do send a lot of Happy Christmas e-mails.  C'mon now, you know that I do.  This year, for many of you, there will be a nice long lead-in to the Christmas Day Holy Day, so you won't want to miss it.  It's going to be religiously prayerful.  I think you'll like it.  If you don't, remember that there is a delete function on your device.
But that's not nostalgia, now is it.  But this is.

Christmas used to be the incarnation of Hell for the USPS.  Where we lived there was always a good chance that there would be snow.  Actually, snow was not that bad because the weather warms up generally when there is snow.  No snow, bbbrrrrrrr!!xx!  Then, of course, there were the millions of Christmas cards of all sizes that had to be hand sorted by address.  For all of you young people who are reading this, no, there were no zip codes back then.  
And there were different rates for different classes of mail.  Just like now. Really.  Forever, man, forever!
1. Mail that was sealed and had a street address followed by "City."  That meant that the mail was staying within the boundaries of the return address.  Got that?  Good.  Cost, $0.015
2. Mail that was not sealed but had the flap tucked into the envelope, and all the same stuff as above ... it stayed in the city.  This mail cost $0.01.
3. Mail that was sealed and was going out of the city. $0.03, first class.
4. Mail that was not sealed but had the flap tucked into the inside of the envelope and was going out of the city.
$0.02, second class
5. Air mail to far away places, like Los Angeles, or God forbid to Montreal or some other place in Quebec...forget it.  Only rich people could do that.  I didn't look it up, but I seem to remember that it was something like $0.05 per 1/2 ounce.  I assure you that I do not exaggerate when I say that people mailed that stuff in the Thanksgiving season by 1st class to save the outrageous cost of the air mail "rip-off."  (By the way, we didn't have the exprression "rip-off" then.  I figured you could handle an anomally or two, now and then.)
So that's the nostalgia about the mail rates.
Now let me drop a few words on you about the mail delivery during the Christmas Season.  I must confess that I don't remember Sunday delivery.  But I do remember this:  
a> Twice a day delivery, at least Monday through Saturday.  This started, I think, on December 1.
b> An army of temporary mail delivery people on just about every single route.  No, there were no little convenient postal jeeps in those days.  You got dropped off, filled your bag and walked...snow or no snow...-10 degrees or +5, it didn't matter.
c> High schoolers of a certain age were recruited to fill the ranks.  I know, my uncles did it in South Hadley and I have a friend, a reader of these lines who did it too.  I don't remember the "detail of the certain age definition."
If anyone of you remembers, please let me know and we'll announce it for the record.
The best for last.
Remember, that for several years as I was growing up there was a War going on, in Europe and in Asia.  There were more houses with missing husbands, children (mostly boys) and all kinds of other friends and or relatives.  Most, I think, were just absent.  Many, too many, were simply GONE.  
Our family, by the grace of God saw all of our members come back in one piece.  
Mailing something to them was the best price of all, FREE.
It was possible to send as many letters and cards that you wanted.  You could even address it "Soldier with the least mail" and it would be taken and some soldier in a forgotten corner of the upheaving world would  get it and cry silently because someone had thought of him.

All good things come to an end.  When the Postal Service flattened all the rates to three cents, my mother and father cut back from about 200+ cards to only the closest and dearest 120+ in a snit of desperation and exasperation.  Maybe one of my siblings can enrich that memory.
================ Those are my thoughts and memories on the first day of the Christmas Season, also known as The First Sunday of Advent.
if you have something to share with the world, now is your chance.  Send it to me.  It's Christmas, remember.  Our thoughts and memories are the best gift that we can unwrap for those who are seeking something precious.  There is nothing more precious than what God has filled us with.  Do it.

PLASTIC -- CHEAP STUFF -- DREAM ON

I opine that there are not too many of you who can remember the transfer of life from the metal and wood age to the plastic age.  Now I can remember certain things coming into my life that caused some discomfort among the older people. I even remember the very first plastic thing that encroached upon the comfort of our home.  Just as anything and everything else around here, it has a story.
We were young.  I was about 6 or 7.  My brother was about 5 or 6.  The first girl was maybe 4 or so.  We had glazed ceramic plates (no bakelite, yet), glazed ceramic cups, just like we do now.  We had oil base paint, linoleum floors with the occasional scatter rug.  Wall-to-wall carpeting was something that rich people had.  We had screened-in porches, a washing machine in the cellar, next to the slop sink.  Clothes were sun dried on a clothes line.  (That's a line I forgot.)  We had a victory garden, a woodburning furnace which, when times got a little bit better, we were able to stoke with coal.  The automobile we had was a Hudson, 1940 Special.  4 doors and 4 tons of metal, real metal, and real rubber.  We ate food that was in season.  We preserved food when it was being harvested so that we could have some things over the Winter. Our drinking glasses, were, of course, glasses.  Made of real glass.  Of course, with the children and all, broken glass was one of the great commodities that was never in short supply around the house. Every time a glass was broken by a child, MJT Dion remembered to inform EFR Dion of the mishap as he arrived from work.  She never forgot.  He never failed to direct a half hearted scolding to the "offender."  Most often, the offender was my younger brother, but he survived.  I did too.
Thursday nights were shopping nights because that's when the stoors in the uptown, High Street area were open until 9:00 PM.  We were sent to bed and the baby sitter would wait for Mother and Father to return.
Imagine our surprise when one Friday morning we awakened and were served our milk in a plastic "glass."  I remember being miffed.  I think the others were too, but I can't talk for them.  The worst part of it were the hellish colors.  Some kind of green, a yellow, a blue and a Gawddawful purple and a garish red.  Man, were they ever ugly.  EFR Dion announced that if he ever saw anyone below the age of 21 using a glass that it would be like the death penalty.  He even ranted about the never ending story of breaking expensive, highly beautiful glasses.  His closing remark was something like, "I've had it.  Now when you want to break a glass, work at it.  I dare you."  That was it.  We had plastic "glasses" for years.
One thing we had that didn't change until I got older and never had to live through the trauma was the introduction of plastic propellers for balsa wood flying models.  Our models were all wood, from nose to tail...except for the rubber band motor, of course.  I spent 5 minutes on Google looking for a picture of a balsa wood model airplane propeller, all to no avail.  So, that's it.  An arrogrant strut down memory lane.  All over the introduction of plastic.
I'm not going to write about this at any length, but I saw the adults around me try to cope with synthetic rubber tires, automatic transmissions, corfam shoes, rayon and nylon stockings instead silk and cotton and some other stuff that was on the table by the time I got old enough to really care.  I wonder what they would say about the four door sedan of our time that weighs all of 1,800 pounds.
Take it easy.  I know I missed a day.  I also know that you don't want to hear the story.  I also know that I was not ill, neither physically nor mentally.  If it turns into a story, then I'll tell it.  

BECAUSE I AM WRITING THIS, I AM NOT DOING THIS (SEE PICTURE)

To those for whom it is Jan. 1, Happy New Year.


To those for whom it is already Jan. 2, Carry On, and many more.


To those whose calendars are still awaiting the new year, don't feel too bad about being reminded twice in a short span of time that you are one year older.
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This is a picture of a simple rubber band motor powered model airplane.  It is constructed from simple plans which serve as the outline for balsa wood strips that form the skeleton of the aircraft.  You can see them clearly through the light tissue paper "skin" of this cleanly built model.
A model of this size could be purchased for $0.25 in the 1940's and early '50's.  Young people such as I was then would build one or two per week, and compare them with what their friends had done.  We would then go out and fly them until they were so thoroughly destroyed that we would beg our parents for another $0.50 for another model, glue and 1/8" rubber band.

THE ZERO -- NOT A SINGLE ONE LEFT -- I HEAR

THE STEARMAN -- STILL A DREAM IN A BOX

In fact, I still have two of them in the box, untouched.  One that I built numerous times in my youth, the famous Mitsubishi "Jap Zero" and one that I have only dreamt about, The Stearman Bi-Plane.  I pray that I will have the time to see these dreams through to reality.
Maybe I should make this a secondary New Year's day resolution...spend some time building model airplanes.  Hhhmmm... Just a thought.


I was about 10 when I built my first "flying model".  A picture of what it should have looked like is right here.

No, mine did not look like this!

The second one was a Stinson Avenger.  My father bought this one for me because it was the first model that he had built as a boy.  He used to tell the story about how well it flew.  He, and I, were hoping that I could duplicate his feat of many years before.  I did not succeed in making the finished product fly on its own.  It was quite a personal defeat for me.  Frankly, I suffered many a defeat in this area.  It wasn't until I had children of my own and taught them how to build "flying models" that we succeeded in building some winners.  But before then I built a "ton" of quasi winners and another, larger "ton" of losers.  Here are the numbers 2, 3, 4 in order.

Stinson Avenger

This one turned out looking a lot better than the P-47 Thunderbolt, but it too did not fly under its own power.  It was good at gliding, which the P-47 was not.  So there was a little progress in my life.

Piper Cub -- Excellent glider

This was a great glider but once again, even though it flew well from a hand launch, I was defeated in the effort to make it leave the ground on its own.  This was actually, as is pictured, the time when I learned to keep the wings separate from the fuselage and secure them with a rubber band, as is shown here.  It was the first "trick of the trade" that I learned.

Messerschmidt -- What a loser

Fokker D8 -- Another disaster

These two German war planes were disasters in two ways.  Although the Fokker D8 looked and performed better than the Messerschmidt, it was not very good, although I made it look good.  Secondly, all my friends really got all over me for not sticking to American war planes.  So, you know what that meant.  No more German for me.  I succeeded in getting praise from my friends for the following efforts, not necessarily in any order from this point on.

Grumman Hellcat, Spitfire, Corsair, P-51Mustang, Douglas Dauntless and once again I went German with the Stuka4 and finally, because the Zero was getting a lot of attention as being better than our American planes, we all went to building Zeros.  I confess that we related to the fact that the Zero was giving our boys huge headaches over the Pacific, they were also giving us children headaches too...As good as they were in reality, we couldn't make them fly any better than any of our models of domestic and British products.  Seriously, this meant something to us.  We could not figure out why these planes could be better than ours in reality and not be better in our own hands.  Think it over.  Maybe there is to this day something of that type of relativity in your own minds.  I know that whenever I hear a politician or talking head say that we have the best of anything in the world, I snicker because I know that it is erroneous to its core.  There might be one or two things, but 95 out of 100, it's wrong.

All during this time we were building the occasional Piper Cub, Aeronca, Curtiss Wright biplane and one guy even tried a Sopwith Camel.  Biplanes were too much of a challenge for us, so we shied away from them.  Note that it was not a time when we went to the hobby store and sought out "easy to fly" designs from engineers who were seeking the solution to the "guaranteed to fly" promise.  We were seeking to replicate the real world in miniature so that we could see it in our own back yards and live it in our own way.  


I grew older and the sport of baseball took my time away from the model airplane table.  I did not lose the desire to build better and better planes.  In fact, as I grew older I became better at the craft and did some pretty nice things with my children when they got to be 8 or 9 years old.  Together we built models that really flew very well.  We've gone beyond that now.  I live with the desire to realize my masterpieces.  There are some decisions that the Voice from the Kitchen and I have to bring to fruition before that.  I wonder if God will give me the time and the health to do it.  I hope he does because these two plans cost me $35.00 each.  In the old days (late 40's) they would have been $1.00.  I know because at that time my last model was a Grumman Hellcat of the same dimensions as these two and it cost me $1.00.  I finished it.  It looked swell, like we used to say, but because I did not have the savvy that I have now, I couldn't make it fly.  I guarantee that if I get a lick at the two I have in the box, they will fly.  Stay tuned.

WE DO NOT THRIVE ON BREAD ALONE

I know that this is true because I live it every day.  In many ways, I live it.  I want to take a light hearted "view" of the comeback that Jesus threw to Satan when they were "proof texting" one another in the desert, early on in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 4, verse 4.  Jesus tells Satan that man thrives on "every word that comes from the mouth of God."  
I'm not contesing that, but God has also given us some pretty nice stuff to admire with our eyes and hearts, as well as His sweet words that feed our ears and hearts.  That's why I took this photo on Thanksgiving day, not too far back in the past.  That's the blue PACIFIC OCEAN on the horizon and that's what we see from our kitchen.

When we turn around from the kitchen, we look through the dining room and out the bay window and see a sweeping panorama of the San Diego River Valley to catch the two levels of heights in the eastern distance.  It is all the more majestic since it is set off nicely by the majestic Norwegian Pine tree on the left.
The "frosting" on this wonderful "cake" is the balmy 65 degree weather that is the average temperature for this part of the world.
When I first came to San Diego to live, I didn't come for the climate.  I came for the comfort of the extended family.  It was a time of search and a time of change, so Massachusetts was not going to fill the bill at the time.  So, San Diego it was.  But now comes the secret of the thought for the day.  All the while I was taking these pictures I was remembering the unsurpassed beauty of a landscape brilliantly bejeweled with snow and ice.  You can't escape it.  I can't escape it.  Every now and again during the "winter" months, I spend some time mooning over the miraculous makeovers that snow gives the face of the land.  This happened to be one of those days when that was the thought that got my attention.