Shinning Like Gold In Concert Band (Part 5 of 8)

Mr. Crawford encouraged us from time to time to bring records into the band room for him to play for everyone. We were playing the beginning section of Thus Spake Zarathustra (the sunrise theme in the movie 2001.) This was the coolest science fiction movie ever until Star Wars came out the next year. So it was very significant that we were playing it. My parents had the record of the original orchestra version of it and I asked Mr. Crawford if I could bring the record in for us all to listen too. He agreed and I brought it to school. It only took a minute to play but it was good for us all to hear what we were shooting for. The timpani part on that song was very important. By this time I became, almost exclusively, the timpani player in our band. I was feeling like the drums weren't musical enough. Despite my Dad telling me how important the drums were to the overall effect of the band, I was starting to wish that I had taken a different instrument. This feeling was manifested a few years later by me taking up the string bass. But for ninth grade, I became primarily timpani player.
These drums needed to be tuned to the proper notes. In junior high we had a set of two. I used a pitch pipe to make sure the drum was tuned to the right note. I had to over come my shyness in playing the timpani. I had to play them very forcefully.

Shinning Like Gold In Concert Band (Part 4 of 8)

Except for the percussion section where we were all playing different percussion instruments, the brass and the woodwinds all challenged each other for positions in the band. The best clarinet player was the first chair. If the second or third chair person felt he or she was better, they challenged the first chair person. This was done by telling Mr. Crawford and he usually selected a section of a piece we were working on as the challenge music. Then a few days later they had a run off of the piece. If Mr. Crawford determined the person challenging had done a better job, then that person became the new first chair. It was that way for the lower chairs. Tenth chair trumpet could challenge fifth chair trumpet if he wanted to. Challenging happened all the time. Mr. Crawford felt it was good to keep people on their toes. Usually a challenge was right before class began or right after.
One of the girls I really liked in the Concert Band was a flute player named Charmian. I had tried for some time to get her to like me, but she never did. Then I got an idea. Somehow (in my warped thinking) I thought it would really impress her if I challenged her for her position as fifteenth chair in the flute section. First I had to learn to play the flute. This was no easy task, but everything snapped into place for me to accomplish it. Vera had a flute so I used that. After she taught me how to play it, I borrowed Vera's oboe music and learned to play the beginning of a piece we were working on in Band called Toccata for Band. The Oboe part was just like the flute part for that section. When I was ready I went to Mr. Crawford and asked if I could challenge a flute player. He looked at me and sort of rolled his eyes as if he were saying, "Kid, you're struggling on the drums. Why don't you spend your time working on your own instrument!" But he agreed. What was even more amazing, Charmian agreed to the challenge as well.
It was a few days until the challenge and I really practiced hard. I worked on it over and over. Other band members knew about the challenge as well. A drummer was going to challenge a flute player for her position! The day finally came. I brought Vera's flute to school with me. Some kids looked at me cross-eyed and asked me why I had a flute case. I went nervously to my classes. Then it was time for band. I took the flute out of my locker and walked to class. I knew I had to remain calm so I wouldn't shake while I was playing. I got to the band room. After all that effort, Charmian was conveniently sick that day. That was it for me. It had been so nerve racking for me that I didn't push the issue anymore. I never touched the flute after that. My little sister, Lisa, started playing it the next year anyway.

Shinning Like Gold In Concert Band (Part 3 of 8)

The next year, ninth grade, was Concert Band. We had all worked so hard to be there and now we had finally done it. My sister Vera, who as a seventh grader was one of the first seventh graders to tryout and make it into the predominately ninth grader Concert Band. She played the oboe and she also had excellent musical ability. She had such an important role, too. Never before had I a school class with Vera in it. It was quite a novelty to have her in the same band as me. It was quite prestigious for her to be a seventh grader, too. We were all excited to begin the school year.

Shinning Like Gold In Concert Band (Part 2 of 8)

The next year, we were in the Cadet Band. This combined the brass and percussion with the woodwinds. The class got a whole lot more interesting because the woodwinds meant one thing. Girls. There were lots of girls who played flute, clarinet, and saxophone. As I mentioned there weren't any girls on brass or percussion. Some of the girls I was in love with from time to time. And it was hard to have Mr. Crawford yell at the percussion section (which he did a lot because we made many mistakes) and know that the special someone was right there listening to him yell at you. It was especially hard because most of the time the girl that I liked didn't particularly like me. So making a major mistake on the drums and having everyone know about it didn't make my case any easier.
One of the duties of the Cadet Band was to play at school games. We also played at Pep rallies and assemblies before games. We were also to beat the drums as the cheerleaders lead us in various cheers. I hated this duty and could never get into it. But playing at games was okay. We played the school song and other songs like the Themes from Hogans Heros and Hawaii Five-O which both had very interesting snare drum parts. We played for the boys and girls volleyball teams as well as the boys basketball team.
Mr. Crawford was also in charge of the Stage Band and it was always nice to hear them play. Even years later I find myself singing McCarther Park which was one of their best tunes. And I think of the Bonneville Junior High School Stage Band which was where I first heard that song.

Shinning Like Gold In Concert Band (Part 1 of 8)

I had played the drums in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Now in junior high I had started out in the brass and percussion band in seventh grade. I was in the class with four other drummers and a teacher's aid who was a ninth grade drummer. Mr. Crawford was our teacher and he quickly let us know that the percussion players were to go to a practice room every day and work on rudiments. What happens when you get six boys into a practice room to work on rudiments? They screw off! We goofed off the whole time. When we were asked to show what we had worked on all those weeks, and then had nothing to show for it, Mr. Crawford was not pleased. We developed some great friendships though. I was involved with every one of the drummers in some capacity or another throughout junior high and high school. While we practiced the drums (such as a set of twenty-four drum rudiments, including rolls and the double paradiddle) the trumpet players, trombone players, and baritone players worked on things that were just as tedious to them. However they had Mr. Crawford to keep them on task. All this boring attention to detail payed off in later years as we went on to some of the finest bands and orchestras in the State of Utah. But in seventh grade I had a hard time to see the need for it.
One thing that we did in that class was to learn the circle of fifths. This was to play all thirteen major key scales. The brass instruments did this as well as we, the percussion players. We used the bells, or as it's called in the marching band, the glockenspiel. I practiced the scales at home on the piano. These took us several weeks to learn. When the day came to pass them off, Mr. Crawford had each of us in turn pass off all thirteen scales one at a time. We all sat there and listened to each other pass them off. And then it was my turn. I took the mallet in my hand and began taping out the C Major Scale, then the G Major and so on around the circle of fifths. In minutes I was done and then I could relax. Everyone in the class passed them off. A tribute to the music teaching of Mr. Ray Crawford.

Bat Poop! (Part 6 of 6)

A truck met us at the end of a day's river excursions and brought our sleeping bags and packs each night. The food was also fixed and ready for us when we pulled into where we were going to stop for the night. Breakfast and dinner were always hearty. Lunch was usually as many sandwiches as we could eat.
Dad and I were badly sunburned. I wore a hat but the tops of my ears developed blisters on them. Our faces were badly burned as well. We finally arrived at our destination. The end of the river trip. We rode the truck back to the base camp and then we were soon on the road back home. I was exhausted and I’m sure Dad was too, but he had to drive the van home, as well.
As we arrived home, I didn’t realize it then, but the end of an era had come for me. My wonderful scouting years were over. But other phases of my life were in full swing. And what a great life it was indeed!

Coming Tomorrow: Shinning Like Gold In Concert Band

Bat Poop! (Part 5 of 6)

We started out on our journey. We had a lot of boys and their leaders. We stopped at a store on the way and got some cheese curd. It was sure good. We traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We slept that first night in a large army tent without a floor.
The next morning we were taken by truck up to the Snake River where we were to begin. The first day there were too many rapids so we floated down the river in rubber rafts. But the next day we were in canoes. Dad and I were in a canoe together. All those years ago I had memorized how to steer a canoe from the descriptions Dad had given when he came home from Explorer river trips. I applied that know-how now. Apparently, the years had caused Dad to forget how to do it, but after a while we got the hang of it. Our guide was a really strong nineteen-year-old man named Darcy Hunt. He had been a football player in high school. In the day, as we went down the river we often encountered rapids. Sometimes Dad and I made it through them, but other times the canoe tipped over and we fell out and into the very cold water. Darcy came a long in his canoe and pulled it up out of the water, dumped the water out of it and helped Dad and I climb back in. He did all this while floating down the river himself and guiding his own canoe. At night around the camp fire Darcy would serenade us with his singing and his guitar. We were all impressed with him.
It was beautiful going down the Snake River and seeing the Tetons in the distance. Everywhere we went was very primitive. Once a moose crossed the river just before we passed by. We watched him scurry up the mountain side as he realized there were people near-by.

Bat Poop! (Part 4 of 6)

The summer after I turned 16 was marked by a river trip on the Snake River in Wyoming. We had to raise the funds for this trip. We had to brainstorm for fund raiser ideas. I suggested we sell boy scout cookies, but somehow the group decided on a more lucrative project. We dug out and poured cement driveways. One was at my house, making our driveway twice as wide. Another, was scheduled on the same night as the Junior Prom at the high school. The leaders felt a bit abandoned when every guy left in the middle of the pour to go get ready for the date. Somehow we ended up with plenty of money to pay for the Snake River trip. Dad himself was going on this trip with me. He had been an explorer leader years ago and had come home from explorer river trips with a real canoe paddle and with lots of stories. As a small boy, I was very excited that someday in the distant future I would be able to go with him. That time had now arrived!
This was to be my last scout-related camp, at least while I was still scout age. It almost seemed poetic. Two events I dreamed of doing with my Dad when I was little, scout camps and river trips. My first scout camp ever had been an over-nighter with Dad there. Now I finished out with a river trip with Dad.

Bat Poop! (Part 3 of 6)

Another day on the trip we were in another canyon with the boat. Some of us boys climbed the canyon walls to a ledge about twenty feet above the water. With daring abandon we jumped off the cliffs and splashed into the deep water below. Soon we found out that it was even more fun to push great big boulders off the cliff and watch them crash into the water.
This fascination with rolling boulders off high places was manifest on another day. All of us boys went on a hike to a mountain peak that overlooked our camp. Our leader for that hike was K.C. Sullivan, a junior assistant leader. We went almost straight up the north slope of the mountainside through brush and over rocks. In an hour we were up on top. We looked straight down the cliff on the east face of the peak that we had seen every day from our camp. A sheer drop-off of hundreds of feet stared us in the faces. Again, with the reckless abandon of youth we soon found large boulders, two feet to three feet in diameter and rolled them off the top of the peak. We watched as the boulder dropped and there was silence for a few moments and then we could hear a muffled crash far below and then watched as the boulder continued rolling further down the mountain, leaving a path of destruction in its wake.
Our junior leader, K.C. Sullivan, was a swimmer. He wanted to see if he could swim across Flaming Gorge Reservoir, and he did. He was also a baseball player. Half way through our camp, he had to be dropped off at the marina so he could leave and go try out for a semi-professional baseball team. I remember him walking backwards slowly and watched us as we pulled away in the boat. A while later K.C. went on an LDS mission to England.
All in all, we went to Hide Out for two separate years. Each year we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. And I think the leaders were thrilled to be there, as well.

Bat Poop! (Part 2 of 6)

Later, we took Grant’s boat up a narrow canyon where the red, rock walls of the canyon rose high above the water. It was very echoey there. The walls were all streaked white and black and it was probably water that caused those stains. We theorized what might have caused those streaks. Someone speculated that maybe bats had defecated on the walls. That was it! Jarl Jacobsen, the first counselor in the bishopric, decided to test that word out on the acoustical properties of the canyon. He yelled at the top of his lungs, “BAT POOP!” It echoed up and down the canyon. He yelled again, this time in the highest voice he could muster, “BAT POOP!” And then again in a funny wobbling voice, Jarl yelled, “BAATT PPOOOOOOPPPP.”
We all got into the act. We counted, “One, two, three, BAT POOP!” And the echoes seemed to go on forever.

Bat Poop! (Part 1 of 6)

At age fourteen, I graduated from the regular Boy Scouts into the Venture Scouts, although it was referred to as the Teachers Quorum, since we usually didn’t do much scouting. Most of us were Eagle Scouts anyway. For our summer camp, we were tired of cooking bacon and eggs for breakfast so we planned to have cold cereal every single day. My orange pup tent served as the supply tent for all that cereal, such a Capt’n Crunch, Sugar Pops, Sugar Smacks, and Sugar Frosted Flakes. One of the funnest parts of getting ready for the trip was going to Jack’s store and buying the food. I went up to camp a day early with a few leaders to get the site reserved and set up. It was called Hideout and was at Flaming Gorge Reservoir. We had to load all our gear into boats and take it in that way. One of the leaders was Grant Huffaker. He was temporarily marshaled into service, mostly because he had a boat. We sure appreciated having him a long. He was a good friend to all of us boys.
In the morning after we arrived at Hideout, one of the leaders made pancakes. (Since the rest of the boys hadn’t arrived yet, we didn’t tap into the stash of cereal.) The leader got the batter too thin and the pancakes turned out more like crepe Suzette's. We, however, called them, crap Suzette's. The rest of the boys and leaders arrived later that day. They all came on Doctor Hunter’s big boat. One of the first orders of the day was to get everybody up on water skis. Yes, even I got up on them twice.

Radio and Electronics (Part 12 of 12)

Our licenses came in the mail a few weeks later. Dad was WA7EEZ and mine was upgraded to WA7BVH. But my life was changing. My new license allowed me to talk on amateur frequencies above 6 meters. I didn’t have any equipment for that. So I had to use Morse Code still on the lower frequencies for which I had equipment. But I had no desire to use Morse Code. I suppose I could have saved my money and bought a hand-held 2 meter unit, which was becoming very popular, but I wanted to use the old, vintage, tube-type equipment. If I had lived in the 1950s which were the heyday for amateur radio, it might have been different. However I had other interests, music, girls, running, girls, and other interests like writing and did I mention, girls?
And to tell you the truth, you just can’t get a girl to be very excited about subjects like Single Sideband For The Radio Amateur.

Coming Tomorrow: Bat Poop!

Radio and Electronics (Part 11 of 12)

We took a short break and then the examiner passed out the radio theory portion of the test. This I felt much more confident on. Dad was one of the first to be done, but I wasn’t far behind him. When the time limit was up, the examiner collected the tests and used a key to count how many mistakes were made. The same process we had gone through for the Morse Code test was now repeated for the electronics theory test. We sat silently while the FCC official again used his red pen to count and mark mistakes. Again we chuckled as he found each mistake. It felt more like laughing as the guns of a firing squad you were standing in front of all mis-fired. It tuned out that Dad passed the code and the theory portion of the test. He was able to get the Advanced class license. I passed the general theory portion, but not the 13 word per minute code portion. For my effort I was awarded the Technician class license.
After the examination, Dad said he was planning to go fix the Brigham City Translator station and asked if I wanted to come along. He was supposed to take me back to school, but I had a splitting headache and I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate anyway.

Radio and Electronics (Part 10 of 12)

In the spring of 1977 the time came to take the General Class license test. Dad had not been a licensed amateur radio operator for almost ten years and he decided it was time to renew his license, so he went with me. It was at the National Guard Armory near the University of Utah. When we arrived there were many other amateurs waiting outside the Armory. Finally the official from the FCC arrived. He was a small, balding man in his fifties. He wore round wire rimmed glasses. He had on a white shirt and tie and looked very stern. I was terrified! He had two black, foot lockers with him. He said not a word but entered the examination room, and the rest of us followed him. We took our seats. Some of the people, who were all grown men, except me, had calculators for use on the test for figuring out electronics formulas. Dad and I had no calculator but we would use scratch paper instead. The FCC official un packed everything from the foot lockers. The test papers he stacked neatly on the front table which he would use as his desk. He took out an audio oscillator and a loud speaker. He connected his telegraph key. He took out lots of number two pencils and placed them neatly on the desk as well. Only when he was all ready did he speak. “Welcome to the FCC licence examination for the Salt Lake City area. We will do the International Morse Code element of the test first.” He passed out blank paper and pencils to each of us. Then using the telegraph key he tapped out our test. I tried my best but I knew I hadn’t passed at 13 words per minute. The examiner collected each paper and then proceeded to score each one. There were fifty people in the room and we all sat quietly as he looked at each paper. He had a big red pen. He held this as he counted each letter on each test. We all sat quietly as his hand bounced along. When he came to an error, he stopped momentarily and marked it with red. Each of us held our breath. And then we would relax momentarily as he went on. At the next mistake you could feel the tension in the room increase once again. Pretty soon, all we could do was chuckle each time he stopped to mark a mistake, but there was really nothing funny about it. We knew each mistake was bringing someone (or us!) closer to having their hopes axed. It seemed like hours that we all sat in silence waiting for the examiner to finish. When he finally did, he called each of us by name to come to the front and send a message in code.

Radio and Electronics (Part 9 of 12)

I mentioned my oscilloscope. When I was in eighth grade Dad bribed me to get good grades in school and to read the entire Book of Mormon, and if I did, I’d get a Heathkit Oscilloscope. I did all he asked and he ordered the kit. It came in the mail one day in a big box. I assembled it and built the electronic circuit boards and then Dad debugged it and got it working. I also made a color organ for the fancy display of FM-100 in it’s very futuristic setting of the radio station. And I helped Dad as often as possible when he went to translator stations throughout Utah. I even put together a new fangled circular polarized antenna for use at the FM translator station in Huntsville, Utah.

(A picture of Christopher and I behind the color organ. Windows Media Player does the same fancy light shows now days, as a color organ did back then.)

Radio and Electronics (Part 8 of 12)

Well as the science fair drew near, I decided to do my project on light wave communication and fiber optics. Dad designed a transmitter and receiver that took an audio signal and converted it to a beam of light which was then transmitted through a length of fiber optic cable and then to be received and decoded back into sound. Dad drew out a schematic diagram for the transmitter and receiver. I built all the equipment for this project and even made three matching red, white, and blue metal boxes to contain everything. Dad and I stayed up all night the night before the science fair, making it work. And it did! I won honorable mention and could have won first place, except my oscilloscope, which I also built myself, looked too professional.

Radio and Electronics (Part 7 of 12)

In ninth grade I didn’t have science in school and so I wasn’t required to do a science fair project. But I wanted to do one any way. The science fair was in the spring so I had all year to plan. I originally wanted to do a demonstration of amateur radio's slow scan television. This process took eight seconds for an image to form on a very tiny television screen. My Dad tried to discourage me from this since the equipment was very expensive, hard to assemble, and neither I, nor he, had ever seen a demonstration of SSTV. Dad tried to get me to do my project on satellite communication. He suggested I talk to people at Brigham Young University and barrow equipment from them. I was going to an engineering conference at BYU on a Saturday in the fall of 1976 and one of my mini classes was on Microwave Communication. Of course I was too shy to even ask them anything so that never materialized. Three years later though Dad had me assemble a satellite dish which was used as a test for what came to be the LDS Church’s satellite network. On a side note, I went to the BYU conference and also attended a mini class in the Harvey Fletcher Building, which is named in honor of the inventor of FM radio. That class showed us an actual computer that was being built from a kit. There was another mini class on computer aided design and manufacturing which was barely in its infancy. They bosted that the computer they had for that was very small. It was contained in two huge electronics racks. And though it wasn’t the room sized computers of an earlier age, it was still much bigger than the computer Dad had programmed in our basement in the1960s. We then had to walk a block away to the shop to see that same computer control a jig saw to cut out a block letter “Y” from Styrofoam. On another side note, although I was in ninth grade at the time, my future wife Rhonda had just moved from Indiana to the BYU campus as a college freshman. Who knows but that I might have walked by her, oblivious to the fact that we would get married someday.

Radio and Electronics (Part 6 of 12)

But I didn’t necessarily like this Morse Code stuff. It seems I had a mental block that I couldn’t get my speed up to where I could receive code at a rate of 13 words per minute. As soon as I did, I would upgrade my licence to the General Class and be able to talk on the radio with my own voice! How I longed to do that. I practiced that too for a long time (with the power to the transmitter turned off.) I said, “CQ forty, CQ forty meters this is WA7BVH, Whisky Alpha Seven, Bravo Victor Hotel.” And then I’d practice having conversations over the radio. In the midst of my longing I took some other diversions.
One was the annual science fair at my Junior High. In seventh grade it was on radio. I had just about every radio imaginable there from crystal sets to the receiver out of the B-29 aircraft. I had constructed and ingenious array out of wood which not only served to act as my display case, but also held the antenna together. I had a load speaker which played the radio conversations from far off places. I thought my project would win and eventually go on to the national science fair. But the only thing I got for all my effort was my transistor radio was stolen from my display table while I was at lunch.
In eighth grade I did a smaller project called “The Principles of Heterodyning.” On this project I had a microphone that people could talk into and then their voice was electronically mixed with a constant audio signal. This mixing caused the output of their voice to be either higher or lower depending on which frequency was used. I thought up the idea, Dad designed the simple circuitry to do this, I built it, and Dad debugged it and got it working. I made a poster for the project and had a great big title, “PRINCIPALS OF HETERODYNING.” I spelled heterodyning right, but not the word, principles. That year we also had a history fair. I did my project on the history of the telegraph. I used a battery, a relay, and my telegraph key to show how it worked.

Radio and Electronics (Part 5 of 12)

One afternoon I was in my room in the basement. It was about time to go upstairs and check on the mail. My three-year-old brother Christopher came to my room and brought me an envelope. It was from the FCC! I picked Christopher up and kissed him on the cheek. I tore open the envelope and their was my license! And my call letters were on the license, WN7BVH.
I was nervous. I waited for Dad to get home before I made my first call on the radio. I wanted him to share in this moment. I had decided long ago that I would use the forty meter band on my first time on the radio. I started sending CQ, (da dit da dit dad da dit dah) which is the signal meaning, “Is any body out there listening?” In Morse Code and using abbreviations I said, “CQ, CQ this is WN7BVH, ok.” I repeated this over and over. After doing this for some time another operator finally heard me and answered back, maybe out of sympathy. We exchanged RST which stands for readability, signal strength, and tone quality. We also told our QRM which is the abbreviation for location. Then we signed off. And I recorded all the information faithfully in my station log book. Then I looked the operator up in the call book and sent him my post card (which I had printed myself) called a QSO card. This was to confirm our radio conversation. He also sent me one and I planned to line the walls of my “ham shack” with them. (My amateur radio shak. I had the same feeling that Billy in the book Where The Red Fern Grows might have had with his hunting. I wanted to get up early in the morning like 2:00 am and work the ionosphere and talk with people in far away lands. (That was like hunting late at night for racoons.) And I wanted to put up my QSO cards on the wall. (That was like Billy in the story and putting racoon hides up on the smokehouse door.) Everything to me was amateur radio.

Radio and Electronics (Part 4 of 12)

I also practiced the Morse Code. Dad could help me a bit here, but it was mostly up to me. I bought code tapes and records which had practice sessions on them. I also practiced by taking down Morse Code directly off the radio. I found it much easier to send Morse Code than to receive it. I could send at 13 words per minute which was the requirement for the General Class license, but I knew I would be hard pressed to receive at the 5 words per minute required by the Novice Class license. The time soon came for me to take the tests. For the Novice Class license I could do this with a licensed radio amateur. I asked Alan Kidd, who lived right down the street from me. My Dad had actually known him as a missionary in Denmark back in the 1950s. I passed the radio theory with flying colors. But the Morse Code was what I was really worried about. I was nervous. So nervous in fact that I didn’t do very well at all. Alan could sense my nervousness and he had me take the code portion again. This time I just barely passed. But I had passed!
Then began a long process of waiting. I was thirteen and it was the summer. Each day went by slowly. I checked the mail every day. Nothing. I had heard reports about how the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission was back-longed by all the CB Radio license requests. The Citizens Band Radio craze was in full swing and it seemed everyone had a CB Radio antenna on their car or a base station antenna on their house. The FCC was trying to process a million CB applications a month and they just couldn’t keep up. Forget that amateur radio applications represented so much more effort on the part of the applicant. The FCC finally decided to forgo the requirement that CB users even have a license. There was so much disregard for the rules anyway. But none of this helped my situation. I just wanted my license to come so I could get on the air. I kept practicing Morse Code. I would practice having radio conversations with people in code. I’d use my Dad’s call letters from his most recent license, W7CWG. I would practice tuning up my transmitter (with a dummy load antenna) and adjusting my receiver. Practicing and waiting.

Radio and Electronics (Part 3 of 12)

Everything to me was radio. I arranged for our boy scout troop to get the radio merit badge. And another boy and I organized our troop’s display at the Scout Expo that year. It was a demonstration of radio, powered by a portable generator and using a huge array for an antenna. I drew electronic schematics in my school classes and at home. I always was reading some electronics book or another. At school I practiced the Morse Code by tapping my teeth together as I translated words off the bulletin board into code. Once in my seventh grade English class I was drawing a very detailed schematic diagram. Unfortunately, my teacher, Miss Anderson didn’t appreciate that and she confiscated all my drawings until after class. Another time in my reading class I asked my teacher, Mrs. Waller, if I could do a book report on Single Sideband For The Radio Amateur. She looked on my book, (which had very cool oscilloscope test patterns on the cover) with disdain and said haughtily, “Absolutely not! You must read a novel to get credit. You shouldn’t be wasting you time with those books anyway.” I was upset at that. Here I was reading a college-textbook-level instructional manual and she wanted me reading only those seventh grade-level novels.
I also set up my radio station. It was all equipment that my Dad had used years earlier. The receiver was a big black metal unit that came out of a B-29 in World War II. Dad had altered the power supply so it could be plugged into the wall for power. I had it hooked up so I could listen to it with the speaker or with earphones. The transmitter I would use when I got my license was a rather light weight box called a DX-20. It had an output of only 25 watts which was the maximum power that a person with the Novice license could use to transmit. I had another huge unit which was another transmitter called a DX-100. I think it was named after how heavy it was, because it must have weighed at least 100 pounds. When I moved it over to my radio station table, I had to place it on a chair and carefully scoot it across the room, it was too heavy for me to just carry. I couldn’t use it right away because it was too powerful There were other items like an external grid dip meter, a frequency generator, and a variable frequency audio oscillator, the dummy load antenna, a commercial short wave radio, and the oscilloscope, all proudly displayed on a triangle shaped table built into the wall in a corner of my room. My bedroom used to be called the radio room, and later, the computer room, but due to the need to use more basement rooms as bedrooms, I had moved in when I was twelve and made most of it my bedroom, plus electronics work bench area, as well as radio room once again. A few years later I added a 300 watt transceiver to this collection, which my parents gave me for my 15th birthday. This constituted my “Ham Shack” as radio amateurs affectionately call their radio stations. Of course I called it my “Amateur Radio Shack.”

Radio and Electronics (Part 2 of 12)

The first thing he taught me was Ohm’s Law. It’s quite simple, really. After we had practiced it a few times, Dad said, “That’s all you need to know to be an electrical engineer.” And then he added, “Plus four year of college.” Many years later I went uptown to Dad’s office. I was in the next room while he was interviewing a young man for an engineering assistant job. The young man was still in college and Dad asked him, “What is Ohm’s Law?” The young man fumbled for the words and then admitted, “That’s something that I remember hearing in one of my electronics classes, but I can’t recall the details, right now.” After the interview, Dad returned to the room I was in, just shaking his head and rolling his eyes.
The next thing he taught me was the development of the radio receiver in the 1920s. He finally showed me the superheterodyne which is still the basis for any radio today. Then he explained single side band which was the life-blood, almost, for radio amateurs. It was a great thing for my Dad to explain electronics principles to me. He was extremely busy and his time was very limited, but when he spoke to me it was as if I were tuned into a direct channel of electronics knowledge. It was later said of Dad, “He was a true expert in a field that has very few true experts.” His love became my love and electronics was the neatest thing I could study.

Radio and Electronics (Part 1 of 12)

I guess it was inevitable. My father was an electronics wiz kid in the 1950s and as an adult, a highly sought-after electrical engineer. It was only a matter of time when he would teach me some of his knowledge. From my infancy I grew up with tall antennas on the roof of my house, radio equipment all over the place, and computers in our home in the 1960s. By the time I was eight years old I knew how to solder wires and electronics components together, Dad had ordered me a Heathkit Electronics Project 35, and I knew how to hook up the oscilloscope to see the wave form of audio output. So it was only natural that at age twelve, Dad introduced me to amateur radio. I never liked the nick name of “ham” radio and I went out of my way to make sure I never said it in that manner. I always said “Amateur Radio.”
Dad started things off by giving me an old copy of the Licence Manual and told me to study it. There was a new licence called the Novice, which required a basic electronics theory test and a Morse Code test at five words per minute. So I started to study the Morse Code and electronics. I was sort of cocky with the electronics part and decided to take the General Class sample test right from the beginning. I thought I’d know all the answers since I had grown up with it. There was more to it than that. I got a few of the answers right, but there were so many terms and definitions that I didn’t know. Principles like amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, single side band, and heterodyning. And mathematical formulas galore. I was humbled. And the best place to turn was to the fount of all electronics knowledge itself, as I saw it, my Dad.

If I Drop The Soap It Will Be A Good Day (Part 4 of 4)

One morning I accidentally slept in. I was awakened by my Mom. "Billy,” she said as she shook me awake, “ Brother Steele is here to take you to the early morning devotional!" I jumped out of bed and in two minutes I had taken a shower, (dropped the soap), brushed my teeth, got dressed, and readied my stuff for the day at school. Brother Steele took me and some other kids over earlier so we could cook breakfast for the 300 to 400 high school seminary students and ninth grade seminary students who were coming to the early morning devotional. Later that morning at the devotional, I saw JoDee, who was a senior in high school and a member of the district seminary council. I was also madly in love with her. She told me that morning that I acted more mature (in ninth grade, mind you) than most high school seniors she knew. At another seminary activity, exclusively for the people on seminary councils in our district, which was a few weeks later, we played a game where the girls had to catch the boys and if they did, we got married (for a few hours.) JoDee caught me and Brother Masters, the head of the district seminary council, performed the pretend marriage right on the spot. I even dated JoDee once later on.
All that from dropping the soap one morning!

(This is a picture of JoDee on her wedding announcement (of her real wedding!) and she ended up marrying the president of the district seminary council, who she waited for while he was on his mission.)

Coming Tomorrow: Radio And Electronics

If I Drop The Soap It Will Be A Good Day (Part 3 of 4)

I got to the point of dropping the soap – on purpose – so I could have a good day. As I look back on it now, I realize that this was just a mental device I subconsciously used it to let me know that I was in charge of my destiny. I could control how things went in each day. Dropping the soap was just a coincidence. I used it to be optimistic about my day. When I dropped it, I would say to myself, "It's going to be a great day!"
One day I dropped the soap and I said to myself, "I was planning to talk to Patty today. I'll bet it will be a great conversation." It was!
Another day I dropped the soap and exclaimed, "All right, I'm going to do really well in the cross county race today!" I did!
Still another morning I dropped the soap and I thought, “I’m sure I will sing well in Mixed Chorus today.” That day the notes from my bass voice were especially low and resonant!

If I Drop The Soap It Will Be A Good Day (Part 2 of 4)

Over the summer, though, I started running, both on my own and with my sister, Vera. Since I was all sweaty after running and working out, I needed to take lots of showers. I got better at holding onto the soap, but due to its slippery nature, I often dropped it anyway. The sickening thud soon became an expected reality of life. I still tried not to let it bother me. I also took a summer sports workshop with Vera and it was amazing, I started to change from a klutz in sports to a person with athletic prowess. Of course I showered every day after this two-hour sports clinic and this gave me even greater confidence.
Just before I entered ninth grade, Mom figured out how to cut my hair so I could part my hair in the middle and feather my bangs. This was the rage of mid-1970s hairstyles. This hair style required that I wash my hair every day, dry it, and then feather the bangs and apply gobs of hair spray to keep the bangs feathered all day.
Ninth grade turned out to be the best school year I had so far. It started off with me being on the Seminary Council, the Mixed Chorus, and the Cross County Team. Suddenly I wasn't a geek anymore. I was a popular hunk! And I made a startling discovery. If I dropped the soap in the shower in the morning, somehow, the day was even better for me! Yes, that was my proven scientific fact! Through some weird cosmic omen, dropping the soap signaled to all the forces at work in my life at that time, that they should create a good daily experience for me.

If I Drop The Soap It Will Be A Good Day (Part 1 of 4)

I guess I'm a little superstitious, although it took me a while to formulate this idea in my mind. It started out as an occurrence, but I didn't know the full impact of it. Then it became a full theory, and finally, an actual tried and true scientific principle!
The first time it happened was while I was in eighth grade. My Mom's uncle, Howard Cain, was contracted to build a shower in our basement. One shower in the house with two parents and seven children was not enough. My parents knew this very well. So in the spring of 1976, Uncle Howard built us an extra closet upstairs and also a three quarter bathroom in our basement. My Dad used to be the one to build things such as rooms in our basement, but he rarely had time anymore. He was so busy with Church activities, work, and being a good father, that it was easier to pay someone else to do the carpentry work.
So we had a new shower in the basement. It was a fiberglass enclosure built on a hard plastic base which was a good three or four inches from the floor. In the corner of this shower was a pre-formed rack where one could store such important items as scrubbers, shampoo, and of course, soap. One thing about it though, even with Howard's good construction skills, it wasn't as solidly built as our shower attached to the tub, upstairs. There were no tiled walls or porcelain soap holder. When you grabbed the soap from the pre-formed fiberglass soap holder, you immediately had the feeling of insecurity. You bobbled the soap and it fell. And when it fell, the heavy soap made a sickening “thud” on the hard plastic floor of the shower.
I tried not to pay much attention to this bad omen of the day. But after several times of this happening, it cast a gray cloud over me. Subsequently, I finished out eighth grade with low self esteem and I felt I was unpopular.

Quesodillas (Part 3 of 3)

We worked hard to make a whole bunch of tortillas and then Israel asked, "Do you have some cheese?"
Of course we did. We were still wondering what it was for, though. Mom got the cheese out of the refrigerator and Margarita instructed her to grate it. Mom did so, obediently. Then Margarita placed a cooked tortilla on the frying pan. She sprinkled some cheese on the tortilla and placed another tortilla on top. When the cheese was melted she picked both tortillas off the griddle with her fingers and dropped them on a cutting board. She quickly sliced this Mexican cheese "sandwich" and begged us to try it. It was so good. Israel proudly said, "We call it, quesodilla."
Well, as you can imagine, from then on quesodillas were a permanent fixture in our home. We had them many, many times. They were good for snacks or for meals. We liked to have them plain or with salsa. Either way, they were great!
Corn tortillas, a tortilla press, a hot griddle, cheese, and Margarita and Israel changed our lives with their friendship and their quesodillas.

Coming Tomorrow: The title story – If I Drop The Soap It Will Be A Good Day

Quesodillas (Part 2 of 3)

The evening finally arrived when they came over to show us how corn tortillas were made. They called ahead of time to make sure we had plenty of cheese on hand. "Cheese?" we wondered, "What would that be for?" We didn't think we would be making tacos. Why in the world would we need cheese to make corn tortillas?
When Margarita and Israel arrived we all went straight to the kitchen. Mom and Margarita made a big bowl of dough. It was a simple recipe, just corn flour and water. Then we all made little balls about the size of a plum. Margarita showed us how to place this in the center of the press and then flatten it out to the shape of a tortilla.
While we had been watching the dough-making process, Dad and Israel had been heating up the frying pan. By the time the first tortillas were pressed, the pan was hot. Margarita dropped the first tortilla on the pan. It sizzled and popped as it came in contact with the hot pan. Little bumps started to form on the surface of the tortilla as it cooked.
My mom started to get a spatula out of the drawer so Margarita could turn the tortilla over. Then Margarita surprised us as she picked the tortilla from off the hot griddle with her bare fingers! "This is how we do it in Mexico," she said.
The tortilla had been turned over for only a few seconds when it started to puff up. "Oh oh. It's a good thing I'm already married." Margarita said.
"Why?" my mom asked.
"Because," Margarita explained, "if it puffs up like that, it means you won't get married."
Us kids looked at each other worriedly.
But Margarita went on, "Don't worry, it happened to me many times when I was growing up and Israel still wanted to marry me."
We all laughed. Then it was time to sample the tortilla. It was good. So warm, so soft, and so fresh!

Quesodillas (Part 1 of 3)

Dad's going to Ecuador was what started the whole thing. It was just a business trip, but after that he was intent on learning Spanish. He went to classes at night, got books on learning Spanish and started listening to tapes. Then one day he met Margarita, a lady from Mexico. She was working at KSL, where he worked. In time, Dad met her husband. And soon we all met them.
Margarita and Israel became good friends of ours and we did many things with them. Since they were from Mexico and were new to the Salt Lake area we took them all over the city. We took them on hikes, to Bingham Cooper mine, to the Great Salt Lake, and to Temple Square.
But the funnest times we spent with them and probably the most long-lasting memories for us started when they showed us how to make corn tortillas.
It was already about ten years since I had eaten my first taco. That was a food that had come up from Mexico and was gradually taking hold on us in Utah. We were used to having tacos in a hard corn shell. Occasionally we had soft corn tortillas and even flour tortillas, but we never knew what awaited us with freshly made corn tortillas.
The first thing we had to do was get a tortilla press. This consisted of two round flat pieces of metal which mashed a ball of corn flour dough into a flat tortilla. There was a special handle which caused the top of the press to smash down on the bottom part.
The next thing was a big bag of corn flour. This was not the same thing as corn meal. Corn meal is hard and crackly. Corn flour is softer and is essential for making corn tortillas. Margarita and Israel explained this to us as we were getting everything ready to do it all Mexican style.

(Attached is a picture of Israel, but for some reason I could't find one of Margarita. The lady who taught us how to make such a staple as the quesodilla, and we don't have a picture of her!)

Old Brown of Bryce Canyon (Part 8 of 8)

When it was time for dinner, Mom and Dad asked us about what kinds of things we did with Old Brown. They seemed charmed that we could turn an old fallen tree with all its bark missing and all the branches broken off into a horse that gave us so much fun.
That night we hiked over to an amphitheater where a forest ranger gave us a slide show of the history of Bryce Canyon, as well as a look at some of the harder to reach areas of the Park. When we returned to our tent. It was very dark and we soon went to bed, making sure that we said our prayers first.
In the morning, Mom made pancakes for breakfast. Each child was assigned to help with at least one meal. It was my turn this time and I got to help make the hot chocolate. As I stirred the pot of chocolate that was over the Coleman stove, Dad was shaving. Christopher, Lisa, and Julie put shaving cream on their faces and scraped it off.
While we ate breakfast, Dad urged us, "You’d better eat really well, because right after this we are going to go on a hike on the Navajo Loop Trail."
Sure enough, as soon as the breakfast dishes were done, we said goodbye to Old Brown and piled in the station wagon and drove the short distance to the Navajo Loop trail-head.
This was very interesting since the trail started at the canyon rim and went down from there. We quickly descended down the switch backs and got to a place with benches. The walls of the canyon rose hundreds of feet above us and were so close together that it was more like we were in a tunnel. We then hiked along the canyon floor for a while. We had seen so many of the attractions of Bryce Canyon from up high. It was neat to be able to go down in them for once. Then we rose back up as we hiked the trail that led us back to the canyon rim.
All too soon, the days passed and it was time to go back home. Almost tearfully, my sisters and I said goodbye to Old Brown. The years have caused that old fallen tree to disappear entirely. But in my mind’s eye, I can still see my brothers and sisters and my parents riding on Old Brown through all eternity and enjoying every moment!

Coming Tomorrow: Quesodillas