Speedy wrote:
I'm sorry for your loss. Too many, too young.
[quote=eustacetilley]
There was this kid- his father and I sailed a lot together, but the kid was all into climbing. When nothing else would do, he climbed masts. When asked about his girlfriends, he really blushed quite well, and admitted nothing.
He got it in Iraq 1. A roadside accident. He never even made it to his nineteenth birthday. I spent the evening with his father when he got the news, but there was absolutely nothing that I could say.
The Kid... one night we were all anchored out in Horseshoe Bay; I was all for a night sail down to Santa Cruz, but I was wisely told to stuff it.
The next morning, just after the crack of dawn, the kid clambered down the companionway of my old Contest with a climbing magazine in hand, quite waking me up. Yes, look in those drawers over there, you might make something that works.
A couple of hours later he assaulted and conquered what remained of the old Nike Missile Base.
Charles McCabe called Rainier Ale the "Green Death". It certainly contributed to his own demise. But he was very old at the time, just a little older than I am right now.
The Kid? He preferred my Orange Crush. There is always a 12-pack of it aboard to this day, just in case.
Eustace
Thanks very much. Unfortunately, that was the beginning of a string of tragedies and hurt feelings, and I will disclose no further details, not even his name.
To me, he is still that tousle haired fifteen year old rooting through my collection of pulleys and snap shackles, with a half-full downed-in-one-gulp can of Orange Crush in his left hand, while the morning sun peaked in at all my lovely, freshly varnished, Bruynzeel mahogany cabinetry.
Kids.
(I have none of my own.)
A couple of years ago, a kid knocked on my door. He wasn't a kid by nearly three decades, but it was nearly three decades back when he had first knocked on my door. I hobbled to open it way back then, and we got to talking about the state of my roof. I had fallen off my roof, and I was quite willing to let him fix it in exchange for my Fiat X 1/9. Mark was his name, he lived up the street.
A couple of years ago, Mark knocked on my door again. A lot of roofs had passed under his feet since then. He didn't recognize me at first, until I mentioned the Fiat.
The subject of roofing evaporated. Mark had his own business now, and kids of his own, and he then wanted to fill me in on all the details.
This actually happens quite often. A kid that I had once hired will knock on my door, just to check up on me, and to tell me about their life since.
Eventually, Mark was willing to give me a really good roofing deal, but I had other plans. He approved of my other plans.
There was a kid up the street who really liked my Eclipse Convertible. I had grown bored of the Eclipse, and of all the comments about how ridiculous I looked driving it, so a deal was reached. He would fix my roof, make a new garage door, build a new fence, all in exchange for the Eclipse.
The Eclipse was replaced by a Jag XJS Convertible. I now look quite the proper Gentleman Of That Certain Age driving it.
The roof and fence turned out very well, especially since like all the other work done by all the other kids over all these decades, this was primarily a learning experience, with added cash.
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Parents as a rule don't approve of me. About a decade ago, a couple of brothers from up the street were helping me paint my house. The Mother and her Sister showed up unexpectedly to check me out. They found us in the back yard, where we were finally engaged in putting more paint on the house than on ourselves. The Mother was furious, the Aunt was laughing her guts out. Aunts can be like that, especially my very favorite Aunt, who found just about anything that I did when I was a kid a subject for laughing fits.
Mothers... Mothers kept me as far away as possible from their daughters when I was very much younger. Luckily for me, Aunts and Grandmothers tended to adore me, and to help me out when possible, and undetectable.
Which brings me to the Girl Across The Street. Lets just call her Emily, because I'm very fond of Emilies.
I was around 26 when she first tentatively knocked on my door, looking for odd jobs. She was around 12.
Her Mother absolutely detested me on principle. Her Father took an immediate liking to me. He was an Engineer who was into NMR, and when NMR turned into MRI, he got rich, and moved away, taking Emily with him.
I helped him often when his unix system got entirely too unixy. (An AT&T 6300.)
I taught that little stringbean about cutting lawns, and trimming hedges, and pruning roses, and taking care of my cat, whose name was Mycat. She was absolutely awful at everything except Mycat, who took quite a fancy to her.
There was a time when I just muttered din-din at the front door, and Mycat would come bounding out of the little treehouse that Emily's Father had built just for her, and her many books.
When Emily turned 15, she got a boyfriend, and she shyly introduced me to him, and the three of us plotted a little treason because of Mother. We just had to get her favorite Aunt in on it.
(Yes, I was a little bit jealous. But just a little bit, because of Ginger. The slinky Girl of my Catalina stories.)
The family moved away and Leukemia got my little Emily just shy of her 22nd Birthday.
The same thing almost happened to Page, who lived up the street. We went to school together, and when that awful thing happened to her, she just disappeared for a couple of years. Chemo worked for her, and with her Parent's blessing, and a new Porsche, she became quite the Hellcat.
There was no connection between me and Page, much as I may have wished otherwise, but her Father and I got along just Grand, and her Mother... what a terrific Mother, she and my Mom were buds. Page's Mother, when nobody was looking many years later, would leave bags full of zucchinis by my front door in the early morning hours. We were co-conspirators in the Great Zucchini War.
Page's Father worked for LBL, and put a good word in for me when I really needed one.
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I want to repeat Speedy's quote:
"I'm sorry for your loss. Too many, too young."
In these cases, often all that is left is memories.
I just left a few memories parked here.
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Now, next topic: Transmission Line Speakers. Here is a guarantee: Everything that you will read on this subject on the Internet is utter rubbish. Even whatever Math is presented is just awful. (Yes, I'm talking about you, you MathCad Moron.)
In my discussion, soon to be posted, and sooner to be forgotten, I will talk about John Western, a prescient Genius when it came to Audio, and as far as the Internet goes...
He never even existed.
Eustace
