"Busy Since 1942"

A few words about Dad, who would have been 82 today.

Dad was the internet before we had one.  Of course, since we didn't have an internet, no one could check to see if he was right, but I can tell you he never hesitated.  

Me: "Hey Dad, how come some cars use four valves instead of two?"
Dad (without missing a beat): "Better volumetric displacement."

And off we go...

I'm sure he had his limits, but not for any of my subjects.  I wasn't asking him about The Tell-Tale Heart or Nietzsche's thoughts on... anything, but if you asked him why airplanes fly or what "bandwidth" actually means, you were going to get an answer, and it would usually involve him erasing the little chalkboard by the phone that we used for messages and drawing up some diagrams and writing down key terms that would be discussed during the lecture.  The truth is I honestly never stumped him and as a teenager I wondered how I would ever survive with how much I don't know about stuff.  I remember as I got a little older and explored topics more on my own, one evening before bed I wrote "Sample aliasing" on the little chalkboard and the next day, below it was written "Sampling too slowly for frequencies involved."  I had no doubt he knew what it was, but I guess I just wanted him to know that I knew what it was.  Sort of.

He had a pretty good vocabulary as well.  I remember him using the word "recalcitrant" once, probably on me.  Mighta just been talking about crime though.

He could explain to you, in painful detail, how any kind of engine worked.  Electric motor, gas engine, jet turbine, diesel, flat 6, rotary... He could explain how AM, FM, and Shortwave radios worked.  He could explain tube and solid state amplifiers.  It just went on and on.  Only in the last year of his life did I find out he'd wanted to work at NASA, and after getting over the shock of that I thought "Of course."  Unfortunately he came from a background where college wasn't really an option for him.  He was able to get some college through IBM, where he did work on the electron beam microscope, whatever that is.

He raced cars at one point.  He used to hunt bear.  He participated in 3-day (long weekend) HAM radio contests, bouncing radio signals off the moon to talk to people on the other side of the world.  He rode a Harley.  He would listen to Judy Collins and Steppenwolf.  He played drums.  He really loved Mom.  He was always reading a non-fiction book (usually about US wars).  He would come home from work and watch the local news, the nightly news, The McNeil-Lehrer Report, Miami Vice, and Nightline. 

Point is, I think Dad was a pretty smart guy.  The way he seemed to know everything about the world around us was inspirational to me.  He and Mom moved away when I was 20, and I remember thinking "I better git t'work learnin' shit!"

Now I'm slightly older than the current temperature, and I feel like I've made a pretty good dent in it.  I definitely don't know all the stuff he did, but I think I might know a few things he didn't.  Don't quote me on that lest I start to become recalcitrant.  I do feel I've built my own decent base of knowledge to stand on (that doesn't require the internet) but if he were still around, I'd still be sending him questions that he would easily knock out of the park.  Here's to you, Dad.  Raise a glass of Tucher wheat beer, which you know I can't stand no matter how much you tried to convince me.