Each morning I start the day with a bowl of cereal, a cup of green tea and a morning write. I jot down notes about the previous day and a quick plan of the day. Today, my notes included the design for a new computerized indexing system. Tomorrow it will be something different.
As I was writing today I realized some things just don’t change.
In 1972 the Navy sent me to a time management class in San Francisco. The instructor showed us his note keeping system. He promised the class if we used this system consistently, we would save lots of time and be better managers. When I returned to the Shipyard the following Monday, I started using his system.
I used government supplied “green books”. These were 8 inch by 11 inch hard-bound books about ¾ an inch thick. I recorded my first note in 1972 and continued using the system until my retirement from DoD on December 31, 1998.
During those 26 years, I recorded my thoughts, daily observations and most importantly a note that recorded the date, time , subject and summary of every meeting I had during the day. I filed every completed notebook in xerox boxes used to hold the reams of paper used by our xerox machines. When I changed jobs at DoD, all these boxes moved with me to my new office.
In 1998 when I retired from DoD, one of my last acts was to have all of the 20+ cases of greenbooks loaded into a dumpster. I did keep the last three years for future reference.
The instructor was right. The system had saved me hours of time, allowed me to answer questions that I was asked about meetings that I had held 3+ years earlier and helped me plan future projects. I do think the system made me a better manager.
When I moved to the private sector I continued using a modified version of the system used at DoD.
Today, I sat in the kitchen using another slightly modified version of the system used in 1972. I have been out of the business world for 20 year but I still function the same way. Old habits do die hard.
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I had a great childhood. I had every boy’s dream. I lived alone in my own apartment at age thirteen.
My parents, twin sister and I lived at 902 East Burleson for all of my life up until I left for college. For 12 years Carol and I shared a bedroom. As we got older my parents thought it was not proper for my sister and I to share the room. However there was one small problem – we lived in a two bedroom house. The question was “What do we do with Ronnie?” I was too old to room with my sister but too young to join the Army. My parents had a problem – me.
My dad was alway a problem solver. As usual he found a solution to this problem. Actually he found the solution to two problems. The house did not have a garage and dad really wanted one for parking the car and his work tow truck.
Dad decided to think big. Why build a two bay garage? Why not three bays? One for the car, one for the tow truck and one for Ronnie.
I loved this solution. What made it so great was that the garage was built as a separate building from the house and the bay nearest the house was for the car, the next one for the tow truck and at the end bay was my room.
My room was “rustic”. A concrete slab floor and raw wood walls and ceiling. What made it perfect is that my dad built a workbench into the back wall and ran a gas line with a connection for my bunsen burner.
The room had no running water or a bathroom but that was no problem. There was a vacant lot behind the house with tall grass. My canteen solved the water problem.
This room doubled as my bedroom and science lab. My friend Danny McKay and I constantly ran experiments. We tried to boil everything using the bunsen burner. This included trying to boil the mercury that we had taken from Mr. Ross’ science storage room at the Junior High School. ( I am assuming that there is a statute of limitation on stealing mercury – if not Danny did it.)
Fortunately our mercury evaporation experiment failed and we are both living today. Who would have ever thought mercury was poisonous?
On October 4, 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. The 187 pound, basketball sized object became a “superstar” overnight . It became the talk of the town and the nation. The United States entered the space race as did Danny and I.
We decided that we should build a weather balloon that could be detected by the radar at Barksdale Air Force Base.
Our resources were limited. We had half a dozen used plastic bags from clothes taken to the cleaners, a roll of masking tape from my dad’s body shop, a roll of copper wire I used on electrical projects, and a roll of aluminum foil from mom’s kitchen. We also had an infinite supply of natural gas from the rubber hose connected to my bunsen burner.
The plastic bags from the cleaners were not in good shape. We used masking tape to seal holes and copper wire to close the ends of the bags.
We used the rubber hose and our wind power to blow air into the bags so we could check for leaks. Finally we declared the pre-flight test complete and we were ready for launch.
On launch day we assembled the four bags that had held air. We cut strips of aluminum foil about 2 inches wide and four feet long. We use wire to connect them together.
At NASA, the rocket fueling phase is the most dangerous part of any mission. The same is true when filling cleaning bags with natural gas using a rubber hose.
Our problem was that about as much gas leaked into my bedroom as got into the cleaning bags. Actually, a post launch analysis revealed that about nine units of the natural gas went into the room for every one unit that got in the plastic bags.
We did know that it was not good to breathe natural gas but the gas connection was in the back of the room – about 20 feet from the door of the room. So a person would fill his lungs with air, run to the back of the room and start filling a plastic bag. The other person stood outside the door filling his lungs with air. On a signal the person outside the room would run to the back of the room and relieve the person filling the bags. That person would run out of the room to get air. This process continued until the four bags had enough natural gas to allow them to float.
We took the four bags outside, tied them together with wire and attached the aluminum foil to the craft. Without delay we launched.
At about 4:30pm we watched as the four bag craft lifted into the sky. Sun reflected off the foil as the craft ascended. We watched until we could no longer see the bags. We declared the mission a success. Since a breeze took the bags East, we were sure it would be detected by Air force radar.
The next day the Marshall News Messenger carried a story about a Sputnik Observation group spotting Sputnik just after 5pm the previous day. We were sure that they had spotted our craft, not Sputnik.
Years later I realized the group had not seen our craft. However it was more likely they saw our cleaning bags than a basketball sized object flying through space.
Footnote:
Neither Danny nor I went to work for NASA but another Marshall boy, Paul Kelley, did after receiving his math degree from the University of Texas. I did visit Paul while he was living in Houston. So I almost made it to NASA.
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This week the midway came to Downtown Marshall. On Wednesday I was in downtown shooting and I ran into David Hill the owner of Sunshine Midway which operates out of Gilmer Texas. Now I have the inside story on Mr. Hill’s business.
David said that the story begins with an intense but friendly competition between him and his next door neighbor over who could have the best Christmas light display. Finally, the neighbors decided it had become too much and the competition ended.
Needing a project to fill the void, Mr. Hill decided to buy a 1941 carousel that was built in New York. With that, Sunshine Midway was born. That was 24 years ago. Today the company has 29 rides and entertainment platforms.
Only a small portion of the rides are set up in Marshall but there are plenty to keep your children happy.
Mr. Hill said the midway business is hard work but from our conversation it is clear that this is a labor of love for David. He is particularly excited that his grandson is now working with him.
The company starts the season in April each year and its season finishes in November. They are on the road in a different town almost every weekend during the season. The area covered includes cities in Texas and Arkansas.
Mr. Hill noted that over 15 midway companies have gone out of business since the start of the pandemic. This has created an increased demand for the remaining companies. David said that his telephone now rings off the hook. He is booking all the dates that he can handle and is turning down work.
It was a pleasure to meet David. I love to talk to people who are passionate about their work. At 74 years, Mr. Hill has not lost that love of the business and enjoys going to work each day.
This weekend will be a great time to bring the kids out for a lot of fun in Downtown Marshall.
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National Domestic Violence Awareness & Prevention Month
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By Ron Munden
The theme for this year is: #Every1KnowsSome1. The mission is to highlight how common domestic violence is and that it is more than physical violence.
Did you know?
*The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are victims of physical violence by a partner every year.
*Every 9 seconds, a woman in the U.S. is beaten or assaulted by a current or ex-significant other.
*1 in 4 men are victims of some form of physical violence by an intimate partner.
*Here’s another shocking statistic: the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2012 is 6,488. The number of women who were murdered by current or ex-male partners during that same time frame is 11,766, according to the Huffington Post. That’s almost double the number of people who were killed fighting in the war.
People who are in an abusive relationship will stay with their partner for a number of reasons:
*Their self-esteem is totally destroyed, and they are made to feel they will never be able to find another person to be with. The cycle of abuse, meaning the ‘honeymoon phase’ that follows physical and mental abuse, makes them believe their partner really is sorry and does love them.
*It’s dangerous to leave. Women are 70 times more likely to be killed in the weeks after leaving their abusive partner than at any other time in the relationship, according to the Domestic Violence Intervention program.
*Statistics suggest that almost 5 percent of male homicide victims each year are killed by an intimate partner.
*They feel personally responsible for their partner, or their own behavior. They are made to feel like everything that goes wrong is their fault.
*They share a life. Marriages, children, homes, pets, and finances are a big reason victims of abuse feel they can’t leave.
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