Dad's Stories

Betting by Emmette W. Neel

A word of advice: Never use the expression, “I'll bet you"....in Geiger. If you do, and it is still like it used to be, someone will pull out his billfold and ask you how much you want to bet. I never knew anyone who was a big time gambler, or lost the farm, but I never knew anyone who could resist a small wager. They would bet on anything, anytime.

One of my earliest memories is of Roscoes. They are what are now known as slot machines or one arm bandits. In the twenties they were everywhere in Alabama...just about every general store and filling station had one. They were always of the nickel variety. I can remember asking Daddy for a nickel to “play the Roscoe.” Sometimes I would get two cherries and win a few nickels but I would always keep playing until I ran out of nickles. Lemons were usually my lot. Were Roscoes legal? Well, they weren't legal or illegal. There was no law one way or another. We were a far freer people in those days.

No one in Geiger offered to treat a friend to, say, a Coca Cola. It was always “I'll match you for a “dope”. (Coca Colas were always called “dopes”. Probably still are.) They would then each flip a coin to decide who paid for the “dope.” A group would “odd man out” or pitch pennies for a crack.

People would, at the drop of a hat, match for a quarter, half dollar or, for really high stakes, a dollar. One could find some sort a game like checkers or dominoes going on in nearly every store. There was always a small wager on the outcome of the game. One of the most amusing of these games was one they played in Mr. Roe Aust's store. Two gum drops were placed on the counter and bets were made as to which gum drop a fly would light on first. Many a quarter was won or lost on the whim of a fly.

There was an almost continuous black-jack game going on at Roy Norwood's place. One could go by, play a few hands, and leave....winner or loser. The game that was played for the highest stakes was the crap game they played on meeting nights at Timilitchee. I used to go there as Daddy's guest. I would invest five dollars each night I went, but I always lost. Daddy got in big trouble there one night. He invested five dollars, and the dice were very good to him, and when he quit he had won over 400 dollars. Daddy did not tell Mama, however, for next to drinking, Mama thought shooting craps was the worse thing one could do. A few days after, though, Clarence Boyd saw Mama in the Yellow Front Store and asked her how much Daddy gave her from his winnings. He said, “Ol' Em really took us to the cleaners!” Big mouth! He had let the cat out of the bag, and as I said, Daddy was in big trouble.

Don't forget! If you're ever in Geiger don't say, “I bet”...or you may have to put up or shut up.

Fox Hunting by Emmette W. Neel

Whenever one thinks of foxhunting, visions of people all dressed in red, riding horseback and following the hounds with shouts of “tally ho” come to mind. But I must tell you that is not exactly how it's done in west Alabama.

When I was about twelve years old my dad took me with him on a fox hunt. There were about a half dozen fox hunters and about twice as many dogs. We drove out on the road between Geiger and Gainsville (sic) just before dark and positioned ourselves on a lime rock knoll. The first order of business was to build a fire and get the coffee going. As soon as it became dark the dogs were turned loose and they began running away in a bunch, mostly in one direction. The hunters immediately settled down to some serious coffee drinking and story telling. Talk was about how this hunter came to own this dog and how good a fox dog he is. Another hunter, of course, has a a better dog and then another has a still better one, and the conversation really gets lively. It's all good-natured and there are no fist fights. After some time has passed, what we came for begins. There is a great chorus of barking dogs. They have found the trail of a fox. You can tell by the barking that the dogs are on the move and pretty soon they must be getting close to the fox as the pitch changes. The hunters know each dog by his voice and there are shouts of something like: “That's ole Blue, listen at 'im, he's way out in the lead.” They talk about the “music”, which is the sound of the dogs as they chase the fox. Now the object of the foxhunt is not to catch a fox. In fact, whenever the dogs actually do catch the fox the hunt is considered a complete failure. But that seldom happens.

This goes on throughout the night. Then at the first light of dawn the hunters begin blowing on their horns and then, one at a time, the tired dogs begin arriving. By daylight most of them are back but there are still two or three still missing. The hunters are concerned for the dogs and we all wait while the owners do some more horn blowing and calling. Finally they are all back and we can go home to a big breakfast. I remember that mine never tasted so good.

This was my one and only time to go foxhunting, but I will always be glad that Daddy took me along. That was about fifty five years ago and I still remember --- Gosh, I'd like to go foxhunting tonight.

The French Mechanic by Emmette W. Neel

Daddy told me about a Frenchman, who came to Geiger, and opened an automobile repair garage. He told me his name, but I have forgotten exactly what it was. It was something that sounded to me like Doro, but I am sure that those of you who know French spelling, can come up with something like Deureaux. Anyway, Mr. Doro was very good at fixing cars, and was always busy, even though the number of cars in and around Geiger in the 1910's, was certainly not very great.

It seems that on one occasion someone brought a car to Mr. Doro's garage with a leaking gas tank. Mr. Doro removed the tank from the car, placed it upside down on the floor of the garage, sat down astride it, and proceeded to solder the hole with a blow torch. The explosion propelled the tank upwards to the rafters, with Mr. Doro as a passenger. All who were present thought it was the end of Mr. Doro, but when Mr. Doro and what was left of the gas tank returned to earth; Mr. Doro, by some miracle, was none the worse for the experience. The gas tank, however, did not fair so well....it had come apart at the seams, and Mr. Doro had no desire to make any further repairs to it.

Georgia Time by Emmette W. Neel

The earth turns on its axis once a day from west to east. Man has arbitrarily divided the day into twenty-four hours and the circle into 360 degrees. Therefore, the earth turns fifteen degrees in one hour. When, by a sun-dial, it is say, noon at one place, it is not yet noon at a place to the west, and is after noon at a place to the east. Before 1873 each locality observed its own local time. For example: Birmingham time was about four minutes ahead of Tuscaloosa time and Atlanta time was about ten minutes ahead of Birmingham time. In 1873, at the instigation of the railroads, the United States was divided into four time zones. Later that same year, this use of time zones was extended to the whole earth. The twenty-four zones of the world are centered on the meridians of longitude every fifteen degrees, beginning with the prime meridian which is the meridian of Greenwich, England. Eastern Times is the local time of the 75th Meridian west of Greenwich, Central the 90th, Mountain the 105th, and Pacific the 120th. Each zone extends 7 ½ degrees either side of the standard meridian.

A glance at a time zone map, however, will show that the actual zones seldom follow the designated meridians The actual boundaries zig and zag to follow various political and economic areas. One of the zigs is the state of Georgia. The geographical boundary between Central and Eastern Time is the 82 ½ W meridian which is just west of Augusta. Three-fourths of Georgia lies geographically in the Central Time Zone, while one-fourth lies in the Eastern zone. The people of Georgia have, however, chose to place the entire state in the Eastern zone. Why? Who knows? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that New York is properly in the Eastern zone and “The Empire State of the South” should, of course, follow suit. It makes no difference that the 75th meridian goes right through the center of New York, but that the latitude of Georgia is some 400 miles out in the Atlantic. Whatever the reason, it is nobody's business but Georgia's what time they observe. So why this essay? Read on.

Now when one goes from one time zone to another the logical thing to do is to set one's watch to the time of the zone one is in; then one is in sync with the inhabitants of the place and there is no confusion as to the time of any event. Most people of the world do this as a matter of course. Do the people of Georgia do it this way? Of course not! They wouldn't be caught dead using any other time but “Georgia Time.” (Georgians never refer to their time as Eastern Standard Time; it is simply “Georgia Time”); Georgians are aware that some people, who just don't know any better, use a time other than “Georgia Time”; but when they travel to these backward places they just take their time zone along with them; and the natives will just have to operate on “Georgia Time” while the Georgian is present.

A young lady in Birmingham sent her aunt and uncle in Atlanta an engraved invitation to her wedding. These people showed up an hour and a half early and decided they must be at the wrong church; but after checking and finding they were at the right place, then decided that maybe the wedding had been called off. Someone else came early and assured them that there would indeed be a wedding...in about an hour. They later told the bride that since they lived in Atlanta and she had invited them, that they never gave it a thought that the time on the invitation was “Alabama Time.”

I worked for a company that operated in all the south-eastern states but whose headquarters were in Atlanta. The Atlanta employees day began at 8 am and so did the day of every one else...for Alabama employees it was 7 am. An official of this company would come from the Atlanta office to Birmingham, and along about ten in the morning would look at his watch and say, “Let's go to lunch now and beat the crowd”; then when we got to the restaurant he would be horrified to see people eating breakfast at “lunch-time.”

One of my co-workers retired after working for the company for about forty years. He was given a party to which all his friends in the company were invited. Can you believe the Birmingham office received no less than a dozen calls asking whether the time of the party was Alabama or Georgia time...and the party was to be in Birmingham! Do I have to tell you where those calls came from? Not long ago I overheard an amusing conversation on the Citizens Band Radio. A motorist was on I-20 in Birmingham and broke on channel 19 for a “10-36” (That means: Will someone give me the time?) A truck driver obliged and gave him the time to which he replied, “That must be Alabama Time.” I won't shock you by quoting the truck driver's reply verbatim, but translated in polite language it was something like this: First he commented on the motorist's intelligence, then his ancestry, then suggested that if he didn't know what state he was in, then perhaps he should park his car...permanently! I'd like to bet on what state's license plates were on that car.

Like I said, I don't care what time they use in Georgia and when I go there I will set my watch to that time. I just wish Georgians would do likewise when they are in Alabama, but it will never happen...”Georgia Time” is for Georgians, wherever they are. One thing is for sure, Georgians will never suffer jet-lag.

Lake Number One by Emmette W. Neel

Sumter Farm & Stock Company has quite a few very nice man-made lakes on its property. The oldest of these lakes is the one referred to by Sumter Farm as Lake Number One. It is far older than the other lakes and was built before Sumter farm came into being. The owners of Sumter Farm are mainly of one family, namely the Hutchersons of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The owners of Sumter Farm are very particular about whom they allow to fish in their lakes. Generally, they only allow the elite of the company to fish in most of them, but sometimes they allow favored employees of the company to fish in Lake Number One or Lake Number Two. One not connected with the company can consider himself lucky if he can get a permit to fish any lake, but if he receives a permit it will, in all probability, be for Lake Number One.

In the days shortly after Geiger became a town, a group of men formed a hunting and fishing club. They each put up a certain amount of money to buy land from Pinson & Geiger Land Corporation on which they would build a lake for fishing and also on which to hunt. I do not know the particulars as to why they never got a deed to the land. Maybe they didn't have enough money. At any rate, they built the dam for the lake and bored an artesian (sic) well to feed it. (I haven't been there in forty years, but the well was still flowing then).

Now, after the lake filled and was stocked with fish, something happened. Pinson & Geiger Land Corporation went bankrupt. The land on which the lake was built as part of the collateral Pinson & Geiger had used to obtain loans from the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York. The land was sold to the people who later formed Sumter Farm & Stock Company. So Sumter Farm had its first lake, and it spent not one cent of its own money to build it.

Perhaps this is why, on rare occasions, Sumter Farm will condescend to allow an ordinary citizen of Geiger to fish in Lake Number One.

Latin Class by Emmette W. Neel

This is a story Mama told me. Had anyone else told me this I would probably have just considered it a joke somebody made up. But Mama said it really happened....so this is a true story.

It was in a Latin Class Mama was in in Carrollton High School. The class was conjugating verbs, and the teacher called on Prude to conjugate a certain verb, giving him the verb in English. He had no idea what the Latin word for this was, so under his breath, he asked his classmate. Frank, what it was. Frank also had no idea what it was and mumbled, “Damn if I know.” Prude then got to his feet, leaned back with his chest out, and in a confident voice said, “Damfino, Damfina, Damfinera.”

(That may not sound correct to you students of Latin. It is just that I remember Mama saying it that way. I don't know...I never studied Latin.)

The Long Fly Ball by Emmette W. Neel

It was a summer Sunday afternoon, and a baseball game was being played on the diamond where the Geiger City Hall now stands. One of the spectators, a guy called Shep, had over-indulged in alcoholic beverages, and to say the least was a bout three sheets in the wind. He was making a complete nuisance of himself, as well as delaying the ball game, by insisting that they let him bat. Each time it was time for a player to bat Shep would grab a bat and stagger up to the plate. They would drag him away and the rightful batter would take his place at the plate. This went on for some time until someone said, “Let him bat!” The pitcher was all for it, and said, “Let me have him.” So they let him bat.

Shep took his stand at the plate, the pitcher gave him one with every thing he had, and Shep took a mighty swing. There was a loud crack as ball and bat met, and the ball followed a long, high parabolic path to left field. It was a beautiful sight, and it seemed as if the ball would never come down. It sailed on toward the house that Edwin Britton lives in now and almost went over it. It hit the roof just inches from the peak and bounced over.

Everyone agreed it was the longest a ball had ever been hit in Geiger. If the house had not been in the way and had been officially measured, it may have been a world record.

Later someone asked Shep how he had managed to even see the ball in the shape he had been in and he laughed and said, “I saw three of them coming and swung at the middle one.”

(As usual, I made up the name “Shep.” I wish I knew his actual name, as I think this guy deserves to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.)

The Well Under Highway 17 by Emmette W. Neel

I hesitate to relate this story for fear I will be considered a smart-alec (sic) as I once was; as you shall see. When I was about 10 years old, James Norwood gave me an old 7th or 8th grade science book. This was the most fascinating book I had ever seen, and at the expense of my regular studies, I was constantly studying this book. Water pumps especially interested me. They almost became an obsession and I came to know exactly how they worked.

Now in the earliest days of Geiger, there was a well bored in the exact center of the intersection of 4th Avenue and 3rd Street. This is the main intersection of downtown Geiger. There was a small pavilion erected over this well, and it was somewhat of a gathering place. It had a concrete floor and low concrete walls. On the East side was a large concrete water trough for watering mules and horses. One could sit on the walls and converse with one's friends, trade pocket knives, pitch pennies for the crack, play checkers, or whatever.

This pavilion and well was a Geiger landmark. It stood there in the middle of the intersection until Highway 17 was constructed in 1939 and 1940. The highway through Geiger was to use 4th Avenue as the right of way. No one wanted the pavilion torn down, but everybody was so excited about a paved highway coming through Geiger that no one objected; after all, you couldn't have a well pavilion in the middle of a state highway.

So the pavilion was torn down. The plans called for the well casing to be cut off below ground and the well capped.

Now at that time, Clarence Boyd owned the the building that was called the “Gulf Tavern” on the Southeast corner of the intersection, and also an automobile repair garage next door. He had the idea that after the casing of the well was cut off, and before it was capped, he would place a pipe in the well and run it over to his property, where he could install a pump, and he could continue to use the well. The Highway Engineers agreed to this.

So a big hole was dug around the well casing, and Mr. Boyd had a ditch dug from the well to his property across the street. I was present to see this well done, and when the well casing was cut off and Mr. Boyd proceeded to place his pipe in the well, I realized that he intended to put in only one pipe. I knew that when the well was capped, it would be sealed against the pressure of the atmosphere and no pump would work...the atmosphere had to press on the water. No on mere child should question the wisdom of adults, or so I had been taught. I was hesitant to say anything, but I hated the thought of one going to all that trouble to save the well, and his efforts fail because I didn't speak up. So finally I went up to Mr. Boyd and said, “Mr Clarence, your pump won't work unless you put in another pipe for air.” He just looked at me and waved me off and said, “Run along, son, I know what I'm doing.” So I said no more; a boy of fifteen just didn't argue with his elders.

The pipe (one pipe) was installed. The well was capped with cement. The highway was built over the well. Mr. Clarence installed his pump...and he never got one drop of water from the well. He then decided that maybe he should have put in that second pipe, but it was too late...the highway had been paved and the Highway Engineers wouldn't even listen to his plea to let him dig it up.

When Mr. Clarence looked at me before waving me off, I could read his mind. He didn't say it but I know he thought, “Smart-alec (sic) kid!” I never told him, “I told you so”, of course, but I thought it, and I'm sure he read my mind.

When you drive through Geiger on Alabama 17, remember, that directly under the center line stripe, there is a perfectly good 3rd sand well, but no one can use it. And sometimes when I drive through there I can still see that little pavilion in the middle of the road, looking just as it did when I was a boy.

Three Locks by Emmette W. Neel

I want to say, at the beginning, that the names of the people involved in this story are probably not correct. I was not paying attention to the names when Daddy told me this story, as I had never known them. I am using names that I remember hearing Daddy speak of, however.

Two young men, both bachelors, formed a partnership and opened a men's clothing store in the newly created town of Geiger. A more unlikely partnership could hardly be imagined. Ross was the very personification of propriety. He didn't drink, gamble, or carouse. He was completely honest and trustworthy. Marshall, on the other hand, was one of those happy go lucky young men who wanted to live it up, and do it all.

Although business was fairly good, they were not exactly overrun with customers; so they decided that each would keep the store open on alternate days. This proved satisfactory...for awhile.

Marshall, being the type of fellow he was, and Geiger not having all the places of entertainment he sought; would, after closing the store on his day of duty, empty the cash register of the day's receipts, and head for Mississippi.

Ross, being the type he was, put up with this for awhile; pleading with Marshall to mend his ways and gently reminding him that taking money from the cash register was not exactly good for the business. Marshall, however, was not one to let little things like that interfere with his pleasure.

Ross finally got fed up enough to call it quits, and decided to dissolve the partnership. So on Marshall's day off, while he was in Mississippi, Ross bought a lock and placed it on the door of the store along with the regular lock.

The next morning Marshall, still not quite recovered from the previous night's activities, came to open the store. As he walked up to the door he spied the two locks, took a step backward, and stared at the locks with one eye closed. He said aloud “There's two locks on that door and I've only got one key.” But Marshall knew exactly how to remedy that situation. He went to the hardware store, bought a lock of his own, and placed it on the door. Now there were three locks on the door, and each partner only had keys for two of them.

I understand that this is how things stood for quite some time, until they finally got together and liquidated the business.

Letter to The Editor by Emmette W. Neel

April 28, 1988

To the Editor

Birmingham News

I have noticed that in recent years the word “pleaded”, rather than “pled,” has become standard usage as the past tense of “plead”. This is correct as the dictionaries give either as acceptable, but to one who is of the old school and conjugated it for nearly sixty years as “plead, pled, pled,” pleaded sounds to my ears about like finger-nails scraping a blackboard.

I know languages change, as everything else, but please lets not do to all irregular verbs what we've done to this one or we may soon be reading a news item something like this:

“After the prisoner pleaded guilty he seed his chance to escape and fleed the courtoom, runned into the street and getted away in a car he stealed. He drived it too fast, losed control and hitted a tree. As he goed through the windshield he cutted himself so badly he bleeded to death at the scene.”

I know this letter will not change anything but after I writed it I feeled much better, goed to bed and sleeped like a baby.

I could go on and tell you what I eated for breakfast, but maybe I've maked my point.

E. W. Neel

Birmingham, AL 35235

Note: The Birmingham News published this on 6 May 1988.

Dear Colin by Gene Neel

Harry E.  Neel

1701 Celia Court

Montgomery, AL 36106

 June 6, 2001

Dear Jimmy,

Enclosed is a letter to Colin that I have written upon your request to tell him something about his Pop.  I apologize for not writing it sooner.

Jim, I'm not too good at writing personal letters after writing hundreds of business letters during my work career, so feel free to edit it if you would like to.  There might be some things that you and Lynn had rather not be in there, so strike through them if so.  Just don't change the true meaning of the letter because it was written from the heart and I meant what I told him in all sincerity.

Love to you and Lynn,

Gene

June 6, 2001

Dear Colin,

Sometime back, your dad asked me to write you and tell you some things about your grandfather Neel, or your "Pop." Little Em, as he was known, was the oldest of five children born to Emmette C. (Em) Neel and Myrtle Williams Neel.  I was next, then Myrtle Ruth (Sook), then Tommy, then Martha Ann.

If I were a writer I could probably write a book about Little Em, but I will just give you a brief summation of what kind of person he was, my feelings about him, and our relationship.

To start with, I want to tell you that he was one of the most intelligent people I have ever known.  I loved him dearly as I did all of my family.  He was truly a unique and wonderful person.  Oh yes, we had a few spats and fights as many brothers do.  But when they were over, that was it, and we were friends again.  It seems that we almost always ended in a fight when we were sawing firewood with an old crosscut saw.  He would accuse me of riding the saw and we would wind up having a wood chip throwing fight.  We were also known to have had a few cow chip fights.

When we were kids, we had a Delco generator to produce electric power for our house, since Alabama Power Company had not yet run power lines to Geiger.  The generator was housed in what we called the Delco house.  I don't remember the exact year, but I believe Little Em was around 12 years old when he built a transmitter and we could broadcast from the Delco house and pick it up on our radio in the house.  He was always a highly technical thinker and had a scientific mind; a very intelligent person.  I, on the other hand, had trouble screwing in a light bulb.

Back during those days, Little Em had also built a boat that we took to one of Mr.  Geiger Pinson's ponds and paddled around.  He could do almost anything.

Little Em also invented a game that he called "Hustle Ball." He wrote the rules and designed and laid out the court.  He, Malcolm, Jr., Phil, Sammy Nick (our first cousins) Sook, and I enjoyed many hours of playing the game. We also had a boys-only club called the "Bitmore Club." This name was given it by a family friend, Mrs.  Jewel Norwood, because she said we "didn't bit more care than nothing!" Little Em was one of the principal organizers of the club.  We dug a hole in the ground, probably 6' x 6' x 3' deep, with a trench leading to it from the edge of the road.  We covered it with timbers, tin, or some such materials, and then put dirt over that.  This we called the cave with the covered trench being the tunnel to it.  The cave is where we had our members only, no girls allowed, secret meetings.

Our family loved baseball and there was one thing that I could probably do better than Little Em and that was throw a ball.  He didn't have a very good throwing arm, but he was a very good hitter.  He wasn't a power hitter, but he could spray line drives all over the field.  I hit with more power than he did, but not with his consistency.  During the summer, we had a 2-team league we called the Neel League.  Little Em, Malcolm, Jr., and John (another cousin) were the Southerners and Phil, Sammy Nick, Sook, and I were the Pigs.  The name Pigs came from Phil and me playing in a mud hole pretending we were pigs when were about 4 and 5 years old.  When Phil and John's cousins on Aunt Ruby's side came for a visit, they also played in the Neel League. 

We had a 1940 Ford pickup truck and Little Em had gotten his driver's license.  Many times when he was driving, some cousins, friends, Sook, Tommy, and I would be riding in the back of the truck.  If a cap blew off or for some other reason we needed to stop, we would knock on the top of the truck cab and Little Em would stop to see what the trouble was.  On one particular occasion, several of us were riding in the back of the truck when all of a sudden I banged real hard on the top of the cab.  He immediately stopped, jumped out, and asked what the trouble was.  I told him I just wanted to let him know we were all still back there.  Needless to say, he let me have a few choice words then pulled off without further incident.  Everyone except Little Em had a good laugh about this one and I was very fortunate not to have been put out and made to walk the rest of the way home.

When Little Em was around 16 or 17, he and Malcolm, Jr. invented a secret language.  Generally, in most cases, each letter of the alphabet stood for another letter and the words were actually pronounceable.  Sammy Nick and I countered with our own secret language, merely spelling and trying to pronounce words backward.  Needless to say, this couldn't be done very well,l and on our first sentence in front of them, they had ours solved.  Sammy Nick and I could never figure theirs out and therefore did not know what they were saying.  After Sammy Nick and Malcolm, Jr. went back to home to Atlanta, Little Em gave me their code.  I wish I still had it.

When I was about 13 and Little Em about 16, he and a friend and fellow student at Geiger School, J.  T.  Watt, formed a six-man football team for us Junior High bunch.  He designed the plays and he and J. T. coached us.  We had a pretty good team too.

As time went on, we got away from most of the competitiveness of our younger years, and we had great respect, love, and admiration for each other as we did for our parents, brother, sisters, and all of our loved ones.

Little Em served in the Army Air Corps during World War II and I served in the Navy.  As seems only natural for him, he had a fine career in Communications Technology after teaching high school science and math for a few years.  I had a career in the civil engineering and land surveying fields.

He and I both married wonderful girls.  He, of course, married Juanita Lee, your "Mimi "who lived in Geiger.  I married Bettie Potts from East Flat Frock, North Carolina whom I met while serving in the Navy at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC.  Your dad, Jim, was as you know, the oldest of 3 fine boys that were born to your Pop and Mimi and your uncles John and Don, being the others.  Bettie and I had 2 fine boys, Buster and Bobby.  We have a wonderful granddaughter, Keri Neel Larsen.  She and her husband Ryan have 2 children, Cody and Hailey, and live in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Colin, Little Em was truly a wonderful brother and friend to me and I still miss him very much.  As I stated before, he was very intelligent and an analytical thinker.  I recall on one occasion, after he had retired and battled cancer for several years, he called me one day and asked me what I knew about spherical trigonometry.  I told him little or nothing.

 He was in the process of trying to layout a sundial.  I couldn't help him but I knew he would eventually figure it out for himself.  He was a brilliant problem solver.  Sure enough, he did solve that problem and I, like you, have seen the finished product.

Along with his technical, scientific, analytical mind, Little Em also had a keen sense of humor.  Throughout his life, he greatly enjoyed the comics or funny papers as we called them as kids.  I particularly remember the kicks he got out of the Katzenjammer Kids, Calvin and Hobbs, and many others.

Always know, as you grow and expand your own horizons, you had a great grandfather, a grandfather that never quit learning or expanding his horizons and a man full of life who loved first his God, second his family, third his country, fourth his friends and fifth, his world around him.  And he never took any of them for granted.  He did many things to make this world a better place to live and used his intelligence to create and conquer.

I'm sorry you were never able to meet him and know him personally.  But remember, in whatever you do, there will always be a part of him with you.  He's certainly still a great part of my life, your Dad's life, and a part of many others who had the privilege of knowing him.  He would have loved you so very much and would have taken great joy in watching you grow up.  I hope these and other memories you hear about him will help you know him in some small, yet unique way and that you will always be proud to be his grandson.

With love, your great uncle,

Gene