The New and Improved Stradivarius

The "Messiah" violin

I'm just kidding. No one has every improved on making a better violin than Antonio Stradivarius. However, some things take longer than others and, let's face it, it's only been 300 years since Mr. Stradivarius made his first fiddle.

However, the "NEW" part of the title of this post is almost true.  There is one Stradivarius that is like new.  It's known as the Messiah. And it is in brand new condition, i.e., it has  never been played. Stradivarius never sold this violin. He kept in his studio until he died as if to leave one of his masterpieces forever unused for posterity to study.

What made his violins so special? Was it the wood? It was from the same trees of Cremona that the other instrument craftsmen there used. Was it the workmanship? The varnish? No one knows for sure. Whatever it was that made his violins so special remains a secret that he took to his grave.

Stradivarius made about a thousand violins in his lifetime and over 600 have survived. Some of their names sound like the names of cigars. There's the Lady Blunt (owned by Lady Ann Blunt grand daughter of Lord Byron, the Firebird (so named because of the red color of the varnish) the Benny (owned by Jack Benny) and the Red Mendelssohn (the inspiration for the 1998 film THE RED VIOLIN).

The average Stradivarius violin is worth several million dollars. The Messiah is priceless.
After Stradivari, most of its owners also refused to part with it until their death. And over the past two centuries, it has rarely been played, meaning it is in uniquely superb condition, with little signs of the wear-and-tear that inevitably come from putting a delicate wooden instrument through its paces every day.When the Messiah was bequeathed to the Ashmolean museum in England last century it came with the caveat that it should never, ever be played again: it was to hang, majestic but silent, in its glass box for eternity.

Incidentally, if you have an old violin in your attic, peer into one of the "F" holes (on either side of where the strings cross the "bridge") of the instrument and look for a label like this:

But don't celebrate too soon. Experts estimate that there were at least a million phony labels like this stuck on the inside of cheap fiddles. They add that the chances of the existence today of any unknown Stradivarius violins is very slim.  -Ed

Memory

Ed with sister Kathryn

I've always heard that we can't remember events from our childhood before the age of 3.
But I never believed it because my earliest memory is before that. I think I was maybe two and a half or so.

I was sitting on the steps of our home on East 5th Street  staring blankly at nothing, when
it suddenly dawned on me that I was a person. I had legs and arms and...

That's it. My earliest memory.

The awareness that dawned on me that day may very well been obvious to all the other kids my age,  and maybe I was slow to catch on, but nevertheless, I remember the event.

The experts don't say that kids that young can't remember things, they agree that they can. However, as children grow older, they say they lose the ability to retain those memories. They back up this theory with a lot of mumbo jumbo about the not yet fully developed hippocampus and the amygdala in the brain that are involved in memory storage.

My second earliest memory was when I must have been 3 years old, because I was talking.  There was a kid my age who lived across the street named Burt who I'd see playing in his front yard a lot. Neither one of us of course was allowed to cross that fairly busy street, but one day I decided to reach out and say something to Burt.

"Hey Burt," I hollered.

He looked up at me and replied,

"I'm going to kill you."

I could feel the hippocampus and amygdala in my brain standing at attention and sending a quick memo to little Eddie Myers to "stay on your side of the street!"

-Ed

All together now...right, left, right, left

Albert Einstein

 I'm glad to see that others are beginning to recognize something that this website alluded to  recently: the brains of older adults are slower, because they have so much information stored in them.

It's very much like a computer's hard drive; the fuller it is, the slower it is.

The science is settled. 

So, I don't want to hear any more slurs directed toward us chronologically gifted.

Now, admittedly, I do check the "Early signs that you are you losing your mind" tests that I see on the Internet from time to time, and so far, so good. 

For example, Rhyming things is one of them. I don't do that.

And I'm certainly not schizophrenic. Both of us agree on that.

But there is one that worries me; laughing at weird and inappropriate times.

I do that a lot!

Although, I think the "weird and inappropriate" part of that is very subjective.

Often, I'm the only one laughing, but that doesn't mean it's inappropriate.........if it is truly funny.

Last year, several of my friends convinced me to sign up for a physical therapy class to help with some back pain I was having.  They told me how much they had benefited from such a program. I normally shy away from anything involving a "group." But I was assured that I would receive individual attention. And, although there were a lot of people in the room, each was doing different exercises.

Well, I felt so foolish doing the exercises that I couldn't stop laughing. I was shaking this foot one way, then the other the opposite way, then hugging a big ball while making circles with my leg one way and my left arm another...I got to laughing so hard, the others in the class got to laughing at me....and well, the management couldn't have been happier when I told them that I had decided not to return for any more therapy.

Before leaving the building, I paused and watched another class of about 20 senior citizens doing group therapy each throwing a ball from one hand to the other...in perfect unison on a cue from the therapist leader...calling out, "Left, Right, left, right.."

Now don't get me wrong. I wasn't laughing at these people. What they were doing is strengthening little used muscles and improving others for support and relief of pain or whatever. And they know damn well they wouldn't be doing such exercises unless they had paid money for others to make them. But, whatever the reason,  I don't believe I've ever heard anyone say that this sort of therapy didn't help them. 

But doggone it, seeing it for the first time just struck me as hilarious.

The day I went to exercise 
The sights I saw did mesmerize 
And enveloped me with laughter
Some say it reached the rafter
 Although I said goodbye to therapy,
They kept my hard earned currency
So the story's final paragraph
Is they had the last darn laugh

Uh oh..........-Ed

This...is London

Edward R. Murrow

 I heard Charles Kuralt explaining to someone one time why he spoke the way he did...with such precise articulation.  He said it was from a lot of years of imitating his hero, Edward R. Murrow.

Yep, all of us kids who dreamed of "being on the radio" someday, did our damnest to imitate Mr. Murrow. Even a well known young reporter named Walter Cronkite came under the influence of the Murrow style of speaking.

And Why not? Murrow was hands down the most successful newscaster in radio history.  The Murrow voice and style of speaking was what every program director in America wanted for his station in the 40's and 50's.  That's why Charles Crutchfield, General Manager of WBT in Charlotte didn't hire David Brinkley in the early 50s. He didn't have that "radio voice." 

Philco Transitone 1939

Down here in the Bat Cave just waiting for that evil "WE HAUL JUNK" truck is the very radio over
which I listened to Ed Murrow's broadcasts.  I was only about 6 years old when he began his war time reports, but the memory of his words, "This is London...." still bring chills up my spine.

My Daddy bought this little Philco table model at Stanley's Drug Store in 1939 and paid $9 for it.
It still works.

But, as the late night TV pitchman says, "...there's more!"

Altec 670B mic

Next to the little Philco, is the microphone Ed Murrow used for many of his broadcasts heard over my radio!

Ed Bliss and Lee Shephard

It's kind of a long story, but basically, in 1958 Ed Bliss, Murrow's writer (Bliss wrote the "hard news" part of the evening  radio newscast, but Murrow wrote the "commentary.") and the other CBS executives weren't pleased with the sound of the microphone the Washington studio (CBS/WTOP) was using, so they contracted with an engineer named Lamar Allison, a friend of mine, who owned a top of the line recording studio to rent his newest and most expensive mic whenever Murrow broadcast his show from Washington. I did a number of recordings at Lamar's studio and offered to buy that particular mic every time I got together with Lamar, but he wouldn't part with it.  However, many years later, as his health was failing, he instructed his brother to give me the microphone.

Rest in Peace, Lamar.

Ed Bliss on CBS EVENING NEWS

By the way, you all have seen Ed Bliss, except you didn't know it.  He was the bald headed guy who
from time to time walked onto the CBS EVENING NEWS set with Walter Cronkite to hand him late breaking news updates and bulletins. He became almost as recognizable as Cronkite, except no one knew who he was.  After Murrow retired, Bliss became Cronkite's writer.

I've read that during WW2, one of, if not THE most prized possession of the American GI was his Zippo cigarette lighter. I believe it. Everybody smoked back then. But it's hard to imagine anyone being more addicted to cigarettes than Murrow.  Ed Bliss told me that the great man's

Murrow leaving White House for last time

response when anyone brought up the subject of a possible relationship of cancer and smoking was, "By the time I get cancer from these things, they will have found a cure for it."

 That's one time he was wrong.

But he wasn't wrong very often:

" During the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.
For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally.   
 -Edward R. Murrow

Ed Murrow was 57 years old when he died.

UFOs

Crashed B-17 pieces

I wouldn't be surprised if that's what the crew on the "WE HAUL JUNK" truck will label most of the "treasures" they transfer from the Ed Myers lower level recording studio/office/museum and power nap Palace to the Fairfax County Landfill.

For example the contents of this box does look as if it might be pieces...well ...of anything...from an old rusty tractor  to a Martian spacecraft.  But what it actually contains is two strips of metal from a US Army B-17 that was shot down by the Germans in 1944.

However, this is one treasure I'm going to make sure is preserved, and not allowed to go to the Grim Trucker. 

50 cal shell from B-17

A friend of mine and I stumbled upon an audio tape made by an American B-17 crewman who was one of two men who survived a crash over enemy territory near Belgium. Albert Macuch was his name, and he made an audio tape for his grand kid's school project describing his ordeal in detail some 50 years after the event. His daughter found it tucked away in a drawer after Macuch passed away, but was unable to play it.  She asked my friend if he would listen to it and let her know what was on it.

Not only did he listen to it, he brought it over to my home recording studio and with a little bit of editing and lots of sound effects, we tuned the tape into a radio drama.

Thanks to the internet and a lot of luck we made contact with a man in Belgium, William Liket (hopefully I spelled his name right} who lived near where Macuch's plane crashed and was kind enough to send us a picture of the downed plane as well as a few pieces of the wreckage. He also sent me an original watercolor painting of the event by a local artist named Liket Pieter.

Macuch's crashed B-17

The only two survivors of the crash were Albert Macuch, who was the tail gunner, and the pilot, Frank Schick. Macuch was the most badly injured and was unable to move. Schick was able to walk, so he went searching for help.  Unfortunately, he was captured by the Germans whereas Macuch was later rescued by Belgium partisans.

Next time you have 25 minutes to kill, you might want to take a listen to THE ALBERT MACUCH STORY.

The only reward my friend and I received was the pleasure of producing a very good story

Painting by Liket Pieter

that honors a few of our many heroes; those men and women who fought and won our freedom in WW2.
It was also gratifying to know that we spread the word of their heroics to a few more people.

We received a nice note from Albert Macuch's daughter Helen;

"My father's story has been passed along to many states, and throughout Europe. Now his story along with his picture is on display at the Remember 39-45 Museum in Belgium. Many thanks to you for producing his story, and I will always have my Father's voice to listen to. God Bless." Helen And this one from his nephew:
Albert Macuch "This story is by and about my Uncle Al, he passed away shortly after taping this. Most of us in the family never heard this whole story. It was too difficult for him to talk about." E.D. Olver We also got a nice note from Frank Schick III, the pilot's son:

This was recounted by my mother Lucile.

'When Frank's plane was shot down, he was initially declared KIA. His family in Chicago

Macuch (standing 2nd from  L) Schick knelling 2nd from L)

received a telegram from the War Dept. declaring that he was considered KIA. Due to a misspelling of his surname, Shick vs Schick, no one ever corrected his status from KIA to POW. Upon his release from the POW camp
at the end of the war, Frank was originally weighed in stones so that his loss of weight wouldn't appear
too severe. When he was discharged from the Army, he let himself into his house using a key that he kept attached to his dog tags and stood there. His mother couldn't believe her eyes'

Frank J. Schick III

-Ed

Are We Having Fun Yet?

 Yeah, it's been a ball!

The stories that I've posted here were written orginally for my very first website, CHS54.net. I started it for my Charlotte NC high school class of 1954.
 It goes back to at least 2004 which was shortly after personal "blogs" first began to appear.

This is my latest posting for my Geezer friends of 1954:

I love telling stories, especially to my old high school friends.

It's my way of "staying connected" although I haven't lived in Charlotte since 1961 and missed sharing our young mature years "up the career ladder" (as well as an occasional mis-step or two) and watching our families grow.

Jerry Gaudet 1954

But this website wouldn't have been possible without that very special...one in a thousand...incredibly talented Jerry Gaudet!
His brilliant organizational skills have kept this class together.

Also, the stars were aligned just right....and the Internet came along....and before we knew it, we had a "home room" in the sky!

Now I realize that CHS54 is mostly full of MY stories and observations. However, I didn't intend it that way. I post any and every story sent to me by our classmates.

But I get very few.

That's perfectly understandable. Most people don't like to "write." They did that in English class for 12 or so years AND THAT"S ENOUGH!

I don't blame you.  But I like telling stories and having done it just about all my life...I'm going to keep doing it. Even though there will continue to be some real "clunkers" in here....I need to keep posting, otherwise you folks will stop coming to the site and it will die.  So it's necessary to keep it "fresh."  (Anyway, that's what they teach in website school.)

Also, I'm determined to keep the site POSITIVE, although it's getting harder and harder.

For example as you complete filling out your income tax.....

Try to ignore the fact that the US STATE Department lost over $6 Billion because of the improper filing of contracts during the past 6 years, during the tenure of former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.

But think of it this way, "What difference now does it make."


Also, think of how much SAFER we'll all be now that more government agencies are authorized to carry GUNS:

The EPA at work

• The U.S. Department of Education
• The Bureau of Land Management (200 uniformed law enforcement rangers and 70 special agents)
• The U.S. Department of the Interior
• The U.S. Postal Inspection Service (with an armed uniformed division of 1.000)
• The National Park Service (made up of NPS protection park rangers and U.S. Park Police officers that operate independently)
• The Environmental Protection Agency (200 special agents)
• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (224 special agents)
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Time Magazine 1977

That’s right, NOAA — the folks who forecast the weather, monitor the atmosphere and keep tabs on the oceans and waterways — has its own law enforcement division. It has a budget of $65 million and consists of 191 employees, including 96 special agents and 28 enforcement officers who carry weapon

Hint...you better start believing in GLOBAL WARMING, or else!

Sleep well tonight.

-Ed

Nothing Is So Good That...

...the government can't screw it up!"

Not being content with destroying the world's best health care system and everything else they touch,

they have inadvertently destroyed APRIL FOOLS DAY.

Is there anything that you can say about what our government is doing ...that is so absurd, over the top, and ridiculous......that no one would believe........

and then you could surprise them and shout....APRIL FOOL!

I can't, can you?


For Example:  True or "APRIL FOOL?"



The State Department is planning to spend $400,000 to purchase a fiberglass statue of a white camel for a new U.S. embassy being built in Pakistan, BuzzFeed first reported Monday, citing contracting records.
The sculpture, by artist John Baldessari, is of a life-size albino camel staring upward at the eye of a huge needle.

TRUE

-Ed

M-I-C-K-E-Y

I was told that a friend of mine fell for one of those phony phone calls pretending to be from one of her grandchildren....asking, of course, for money.

Now, she is $6,000 poorer.

PLEASE BE CAREFUL!

We are particular vulnerable because of WHEN and HOW we were raised.  We are not programed to be suspicious of our fellow humans.  It's not natural for us.

As I look back on it, I think one of the shortcomings of our upbringing was......

not that we spent too much time in Sunday School.......BUT.....we should have spent a little more time in  DEVIL SCHOOL...learning a little about the "Flip" side of humanity.

However, maybe just about everybody but me instinctively picked this up on their own.
 ...

I recently retired. I thought it might take some getting used to...you know...sitting around doing nothing.

Nope, I'm sure I will eventually take  to it like a duck to water, a pig to mud.......whatever. I was born for this kind of life!

However, that hasn't happened yet. I think I already have a new career;  one that I don't want: WORKING FOR THE
GOVERNMENT!

Since I no longer had health insurance from my employer, I signed up for Medicare.
Most of you probably went through that exercise a number of years ago.  I was told how simple it is
to sign up via the Internet...."Just takes 5 minutes," they told me,.

I knew that was too good to be true.

I sat down at my computer....signed on.....and the first question I was asked was, WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

I typed in my name...and the website replied,

WRONG!

...and told me to visit my Social Security office on the other side of Alexandria, VA and wait 6 hours to speak to a Medicare specialist in person.

Well, it got worse from there.

But to make a long story short, I finally got signed up and received my Medicare Card and promptly
took it to Kinkos and got it laminated, so it wouldn't get shredded  from taking it out and in of my wallet hundred of times over the coming years.

All was well, until last week...when all of the bills that I had charged on my pretty red, white and blue Medicare card began bouncing back to me..............saying Medicare refused to pay....

I started back through the Government minefield and was eventually told,

"Yes, you signed up.....and we sent you the card....BUT we DIDN'T know you wanted to use it!

You mean, you want us to be your insurance provider!"

Now, they phrased that in their unique bureaucratic lingo, but that was the message.

It's like if you were to buy a new car........and the dealer shows up at your house a week later...and takes it back, saying, "Well, you didn't tell us you wanted to DRIVE it!"

Your Government at work.

-Ed

Our Turn

For years now, every two weeks some group in this country is OFFENDED by something or other that we ordinary Americans have been doing as part of our normal lives that suddenly OFFEND them.

One of these days, we're going to snap back and tell these bullies to 'Go to Hell."

But, until then, it appears that we're just going to continue to "roll over."

But meanwhile, I want to suggest that chronologically gifted people like me have a little fun and "take our turn" at being offended.

Read on:

A friend of mine was telling me about the night he thought he was having a heart attack...and his wife called for an ambulance.

By the time the medics arrived, the pain had stopped and he felt totally normal.

He informed the responders of this, but they insisted he be taken to the hospital anyway. They said it was a county rule.

He complained bitterly, because he felt that it was a false alarm.

Long story short, by the time he got back home, two new stents had been planted in his heart.

He probably needed them, but he'll never be convinced of that. He's still angry about it.

But according to him....the hospital added insult to injury when he read the official record of that evening's event; it stated that...."On the evening of...such and such....the ambulance brought in an ELDERLY man suffering chest pains..."

"Imagine that," he told me........(he was 78 at the time) "calling me ELDERLY!"

Yeah. I'm with him!  I don't want anyone calling me ELDERLY...although that's what I am.

I don't want anyone calling me a SENIOR CITIZEN either, unless they're going to give me a discount.

I did a little research on the subject and discovered that a lot of people are undecided about how to refer to us:

Harry Moody, 67, director of academic affairs for AARP, says 

"What’s going on is we have a problem with the subject itself. Everyone wants to live longer, but no one wants to be old.

Personally, I tend to use the term “older people” because it’s the least problematic. Everyone is older than someone else."

Jane Glen Haas, 74, nationally syndicated newspaper columnist:

Don’t call anyone “elderly.” I associate that with people with physical disabilities who need constant care.

“Senior citizens” is a term coined in the late 1930s for people who needed a place to go, senior centers, to have a good lunch. To me, it implies somewhat impoverished older people, not the way people want to think of themselves.

“Aging” — to me that sounds like I’m declining.

I guess “older people” is best. I suppose if you had to call me something, I’d prefer that it be “writer” or “an older writer.”

Judith Graham, writing for Time Magazine says,

"Now the Aging Services of California, has put together a stylebook to guide media professionals through the minefield of politically correct and politically incorrect ways of identifying and portraying the elderly.

Lesson one. “Elderly” is a word the two organizations would prefer we eliminate. In the glossary of the new stylebook, “Media Takes: On Aging,’’ the authors state their case against “elderly” as follows.

Use this word carefully and sparingly. The term is appropriate only in generic phrases that do not refer to specific individuals, such as concern for the elderly, a home for the elderly, etc. In other words, describing a person as elderly is bad form, although the generalized category “elderly” might not be offensive. (Suggested substitutions include “older adult” or simply “man’’ or “woman” with the age inserted, if relevant.)

Also to be avoided are “senior citizen” (we don’t refer to people under age 50 as “junior citizens,” the guide notes) and “golden years” (euphemisms are probably not the best way to go, we learn). “Feisty,” “spry,” “feeble,” “eccentric,” “senile” and “grandmotherly” are also unwelcome terms, patronizing and demeaning, as is calling someone “80 years young.”

The guide is ambivalent on use of the word “home” as a replacement for “skilled nursing facility.” On the one hand, it can be both anachronistic and condescending to harken back to “old folks’ homes,” which is one of the reasons Aging Services of California changed its name from the California Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. But elsewhere the guide notes (see paragraph four above) that “these facilities are indeed people’s homes,” often permanently. Thus, the people who live there should be called “residents” rather than “patients.”

 She goes on to mention other words that the guide  says should be avoided are:

 “biddy,” “codger,” “coot,” “crone,” “fogy,” “fossil,” “geezer,” “hag,” “old fart,” “old goat,” “prune,” “senile old fool” and “vegetable.”

Who would have thought.

-Ed

I'll Never Forget Old What's His Name

 Almost everything has a downside. Take, for example, our 60th High School reunion scheduled for May 9th.

What?

A downside to getting together with our old friends from high school and reliving those days when we were all young and beautiful...and smart as Hell?

Yep.

Remembering the names of all those unforgettable friends !

54 Class Officers Max Evans on right

Say for example, you are talking to one of your best and most memorable friends you haven't seen in 60 years.....and as the two of you start laughing about some obscure happening in history class in 1952...you suddenly realize that you can't think of his name!

I know what I'm talking about. The last time we had a reunion, Max Evans and I were in the middle of some such deep remembrance and I interrupted the conversation to introduce Max to my wife Linda.

Max Robinson

It dawned on me days later that I had introduced him as "Max Robinson."

(Max Robinson was the first black man to anchor an evening TV network news program. A fellow I
had worked with in the early 60's.)

Max Evans was not only a President of the Class and a star on the Football team...and I botched his name!  He was too nice to correct me.

I can't wait to see him in a couple of months and apologize.

Who knows what other names I mangled or forgot completely.

(Answer: All those whose names I screwed up.)

THE SOLUTION

Here's a trick that might work:

Whenever you walk up to one of our long ago classmates, pronounce YOUR name first.

"Hi... Ed Myers..."

and the response will usually be, "Hi... Max Evans....how are you, Ed....."

That way he is now certain of YOUR name......and YOU know HIS name......

Great solution, right?

Well, most of the time.  But one time when I did that, the conversation went like this:

Me: "Hi... Ed Myers.......
 
Response:   "That's not my name....you've confused me with someone else..."

I never did learn his name. And he never learned mine.

Like I said, almost everything has a downside.

-Ed

On the Road One Day in 1955

Little did I realize that my very first day at the University of North Carolina would be the most memorable of the entire four years I spent there. The friend who rode up with me to Chapel Hill that morning in April of 1955 insisted that I meet, and have coffee with him and a buddy he had arranged to meet at a place called Danziegers Old World Restaurant.

His friend turned out not to be a typical college student and the coffee was different from any I had ever seen; there was a blob of whipped cream floating on top. I later learned it was called
Viennese Coffee.

The friend was Charles Kuralt.

I knew who he was, of course, because of his summer job as a fill in announcer on WBT. (What an accomplishment that was for a teenager. Many older and more experienced men would have given almost anything to have been hired by that powerhouse of a radio station, including David Brinkley (who was working for the Associated Press in Charlotte at that time and was turned down by WBT "because he didn't have a radio voice.")

A picture of Kuralt at the Daily Tar Heel desk that I took in April of 1955

At the time we met, Kuralt was editor of THE DAILY TAR HEEL the student newspaper at Carolina,
and said "yes" when I asked if he would consider me for a reporter's job on the paper.  It was a non-paying job (only the Editor was a paid position) and as I found out later he had a heck of a time getting people to work as reporters.  During the time I worked there, I don't believe we ever had more than 3 or 4 staff members.

 The only job I know of that  Kuralt wanted, and didn't get, was President of the 1951
Student Council at Central High School.  Slug Claiborne won that election.

Looking through my sister Kathryn's 1951 Snips and Cuts it appears to me that as talented as Kuralt was, he apparently wasn't involved in very many high school activities that year.  He wasn't on the Rambler staff or the yearbook staff nor did he make the honor society.

Sory Guthery 1951

Perhaps the reason can be found in a mention he got in the "Class Prophecy" written that year by Jim Nance:

Charlie's one high school job that I found for his senior year was "Class Historian"

 The next time he ran for election for something was his junior year at the University of North Carolina. In his autobiography, A LIFE ON THE ROAD he writes,

 "I had been studying history and working at The Daily Tarheel, the student newspaper. I printed up some posters and ran for editor on a pro integration platform (the state's schools were still segregated then, including the University.) On election day, I beat the sports editor for the job by a handful of votes.

The first thing I did was call my old high school girlfriend, Sory Guthery on the telephone. She was in school at Greensboro, down the road.

"I won?" I said.
"Great," she said.
"The job pays thirty dollars a week," I said.
"So?"
"So that's enough to live on.  Let's get married!"

We were married in Charlotte in August in a big church wedding. She was twenty, and I was almost twenty myself.

We moved into a cabin, a former tenant House, beside a cornfield a few miles out of Chapel Hill on the road to Raleigh.  Our senior year I remember as pure joy. I wrote my editorials in the afternoons and at night Sory stood over the composing stone with me to watch the editorial page take shape, always with two or three sleepy members of the newspaper staff.."

I'm proud to say that on many occasions I was one of those sleepy staff members.

"The newspaper took up so much of my time, I started dropping courses. By the time the Spring quarter arrived, I had dropped them all. I was editor of the student newspaper... but nobody in the administration building seemed to notice...I was no longer a student.  Graduation proceeded without me. I didn't care. I had found my career."

I took over the lease of that rustic cabin after the Kuralts left and returned to Charlotte.  He continued his journalism with the Charlotte News, at $50 a week. She went to work for a bank for $51 a week.

 Alfred Lord Tennyson said, "I am a part of all that I have met." 

I'm not sure exactly what Tennyson meant by that, but unfortunately none of  Kuralt's massive talent magically rubbed off on me; but I sure as Hell enjoyed knowing ...perhaps the greatest storyteller Television ever had... and feel richer because of it.

And shamelessly brag about it every chance I get.

Pardon me while I have a cup of coffee...with whipped cream on top.

-Ed

Rip Van Ed

As I mentioned last week, Verizon updated my old telephone service and Internet service and "threw in" Cable TV for free.

Well, I figured that Cable had finally come down to "my price," so I said, what the heck...go ahead and put it in.

The joke was on Verizon. They just assumed that at some point over the past 30 or 40 years that the basic cable lines had been installed in my house and all their installer would have to do was "turn" their box on. Nope, they had to bore holes in the walls and actually start from scratch.

So far, we've watched it twice. I watched 6 minutes of the Super Bowl but had to turn it off after a
couple of fast paced commercials  and local station promos, all at 500% Visual Overload...at BAM, BAM, BAM speed...made me so dizzy I had to lie down.

Linda watched one of those British shows on PBS for about an hour, well, actually, the TV was ON that channel for an hour, but I noticed that she had fallen asleep at some point, so I really don't know how long she actually watched.

But, I'm not giving up. I'm confident that as I scroll through those one thousand (Heck, maybe it's 2,000 channels) I'm eventually going to find some shows that I like.

But in my heart, I know that TV can be addictive and that is NOT what low information Americans who are in charge of electing our "leaders" need.

And I haven't even mentioned the 68% of Americans who are addicted to Video Games.

• The average game player is 35 years old and has been playing games for 12 years.

• The average age of the most frequent game purchaser is 39 years old.

• Forty percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (34 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (18 percent).

• In 2009, 25 percent of Americans over the age of 50 play video games, an increase from nine percent in 1999

God Bless America.

Soon.

-Ed

Jeanne Robinson

Jeanne Robertson

"Hats off" to Bob Ellis, who sent me an internet link to a very funny performance by Southern story storyteller Jeanne Robertson.

You probably know who she is but for someone like me who has lived a Televisionless existence for many years, she's brand new to me. I understand that she was "Miss North Carolina" in the 60's and has been a nationally famous performer for quite some time.

  Ellouise tells me that she was once in Reverend Don Nance's congregation. At any rate, if you haven't seen this video clip, you'll get as big kick and probably become a big fan, like me, of Jeane Robertson. ("Left Brain" is her husband.)

Don't go Rafting without a Baptist in the boat