Birth of the Blue Missile

-
I'm really enjoying the stories. Even motorheads need entertainment! Keep the storu going exactly as it is...perhaps start another thread (as previously mentioned) on your build. You have a knack for weaving a tale; more, please!
 
Dude, this is your thread, do what you want with it. We're all just along for the ride!

Brings back a lot of memories from the seventies. Kind of like watching the movie Dazed and Confused. When you wrote earlier about your buddy throwing his "lid" out the window, I almost spit coffee all over my monitor. Haven't heard that term in years! Was it a "four finger lid"?!?! Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Good work, keep it up.
 
Here's part seven, This speaks to my inventive side, and as you will get to experience on the new build.

Also I am going over to the general discussion to post pictures of my guitars then/now in a thread called guitars anyone, I think
Andrew

PART SEVEN​
I was not going to talk about this item but at Larry’s insistence I will.

But first a little more background is in order.
When I was ten or eleven, my father spent a lot of time at a textile plant in Stafford Springs Conn. Owned by Burlington industries. He was one of their head textile designers and his specialty was paisleys. Chances are if you were wearing them in the sixties they were his. I hung out at the chemistry lab. One of the chemists had a very large book on how to make fireworks of all kinds. From this book I even learned how to hand roll and fabricate rocket engines and make ‘sky rockets’.
One day while helping them process some samples, I had some bleaching agent desolved in some boiling water. While transferring it to another container I spilled about a cup of it on the floor. In the lab there were no towels or even kitty litter, this was the early sixties, they used blotter paper to soak up messes. So I threw a couple of pieces of blotter paper down on the spill and sort of forgot about it. Later I went back to it and it looked good as new, so I threw it back on the stack. There were a couple of guys from DuPont in the plant trying to sell the idea of using a new cellose/paper fabric they had developed to make tweed suits. The lab did wear tests and wash /bleed tests and the sort. After one of the wash/bleed tests they were drying a sample in sort of a big fabric press with a heated plate top and bottom like the old fashioned presses you see at the drycleaners. When you dried the fabric you would take and put it between two pieces of blotter paper throw it on and close the press to dry the sample. Well I guess their number was up. They grabbed my two pieces of blotter paper and put the wet sample between them and threw the whole affair on to the press and closed it. It seems that as long as there was water to evaporate off everything was cool. But as soon as it all dried out the blotter paper exploded with a flash coming out from between the top and the bottom of the press and blew a horizontal piece of the guys suit away. When he opened the press there was nothing left to see. Of course every one looked at me, I explained to Mary, the assistant director of the lab, and to the guys from DuPont exactly what had happened. They looked at her, and then at me and said “well OK it looks like you just invented a new type of explosive!” and were on their way.
After that I got involved with model rocketry (why build motors when you can buy them) and never really lost my love of watching things go zipping by. Bringing us back to the main story.

Now back to Larry’s item:
After that trip I got a hankering for something James Bondish on the car. So I installed an under the hood rocket launcher. He recently described it this way in one of his latest E-mails:… (don’t forget about your ¾” copper pipe, alligator clip, guitar string, Estes rocket sidewinder missile contraption L.W.)

It was really a one inch copper tube a couple of feet long with a ninety-degree elbow just slid on the end so it was removable. The exhaust part of the elbow was pointing towards the inner fender wall and the ignition wires were run through the back of the elbow going to the igniter in the motor. The back of the tube was clamped down to the top of the inner fender. The front of the tube was sitting in the 1” round hole on the passengers side of the radiator support that clears the hood when you pulled the inside hood release. The hood would pop open and the secondary hood latch would engage the spring would hold it up and the flight path would be clear of the hood. You could then arm and launch the rocket electrically from the console ashtray. I really never used it for an ashtray anyway.The rockets did use Estes engines, the nosecone and body were about six inches long, with three sticks (like a bottle rocket) for fins. Unlike my final Physics project at the academy, which was a 1.75” shoulder mounted collapsible rocket launcher with an exploding warhead; the one for the car did not have a warhead.


OK…….So as not to, leave you hanging for too long.
For my final Physics grade I thought this might be fun.
The one at the academy was made out of two sections of chromed metal vacuum cleaner tubes (you know the type for the old Electrolux vacuums that would slide into each other to extend the hose and that had little slits on the large receiving end of each tube). It had a hand carved wooden affair, hose clamped to the front of the back tube, that served as the front handle and that contained a momentarily switched trigger. There were two large square six-volt batteries (3”x3”x6”long) hooked in series, clamped to either side of and at the very rear end of the back tube, that would sit on your shoulder. It also had a ten-X scope attached to the front tube, that I borrowed from another cadet Earnest, who was my partner in crime. We bore sighted the scope on a telephone tower about three miles away so it was accurate enough to hit something say a hundred yards away. The rocket was powered by the largest Estes motor available at the time, and had hinged fins that centered it in the tube and then folded out and back after it left the tube. I will not describe the warhead but suffice to say it blew a branch off the tree it hit fifty yards away. This occurred when I fired it for my final Physics grade, with half of the academy in attendance. OK, really, I got an ‘A’ in Physics and the project was built with the complete approval of my Physics professor, you know this was a military academy after all. But after the demonstration, the weapon was immeadtly confiscated by the ranking military official Major William Buckley. My room was then torn apart by the staff and all construction materials were confiscated. I was then later asked to report to the Major’s office. When I got there the Major told me what a good job I had done and I noticed it hanging on the wall over his desk. He was nice enough to give us back the scope. And as far as I know for as long as he was in command there it remained over his desk. Who says science isn’t fun!!!

more later
 
Brian;
I don't know if it was a three or four finger lid. All I can tell you is that if Larry had had his window open he probobly could have caught it, because it right by us. We were doing sixty on 836 at the 163rd street exchange.
Andrew
 
See
I told Larry this was not something I should mention.The lack of responces regarding this issue is as I expected.
But the look of everyones faces, the night we pulled to the top of a hill in Atlanta and launched one, was worth the effort.

Now back to what you guys want to read about
Andrew

PART EIGHT​

Since the bulk of the story is about road trips there is one from the university of Miami days that bears repeating. When I showed up for registration I was assigned a room on the fifth floor of one of the dorms. My roommate was a guy named Joe. His father was in the jewelry business, mostly diamonds, and Joe would get the family business someday. This put him in the position of looking at school as more of a chance to make some money, rather than get an education. He was in the commodities business if you know what I mean. There was another character named Henry. I met Henry one morning while waking up. He was there sitting in a chair at the foot of my bed with a small aluminum baking pan, with his stash in it, rolling a joint. I asked him who he was and all he did was smile, light it and hand it to me. Later I found out he was a former student who wandered the dorm turning people on. He became a regular in our room.The parties were always small but they were frequent. One party of note occurred after Christmas break. I had made a bong out of a three-foot long piece of bamboo about three inches in diameter, with a bowl that would hold an ounce. It sat in the corner of the room looking at for quite a while before Joe decided it needed to be broken in. One evening he shut the door and said lets fire it up. We put some water in it and he filled the bowl. We tried to light it but the water pressure kept blowing what was in the bowl out all over the floor. Now there were six of us in the room, and the room was about fourty square feet. He said to hell with that, and emptied the water out of it and proceeded to ‘shotgun’ the entire thing into the room after he got it lit. One of the guys that was there had his girlfriend with him. She was a ‘born again Christian’ and had never done any drugs, she could barely walk out of the room with help. A little while later in the year Henry, I, and Joe and his girlfriend decided to take a road trip in her white fastback mustang. They all wanted to go to Disneyland in Orlando. It was fairly new and it sounded like a great Idea. We set the trip for up the morning Henry arrived and said he had some special treats for the road. We got our stuff together and met Lisa in front of the dorm and we took off for Disney. Henry then pulled out some ‘blotter’, which he and Joe took. Lisa and I refrained, she was driving and that was not in my repertoire. One thing you should know about Joe was that he had a black belt in Karate, was about five foot six, and could be a bit feisty. The trip went fine until we got to Disney; by that time Joe and Henry were feeling no pain, OK they were tripping their brains out. We paid to get in and started to explore the park. At that time Epcot had not been finished yet so it wasn’t open, only the ‘Magic Kingdom’ was. There were quite a few people wandering about that also included the larger than life characters in costume. All was fine until later in the afternoon ‘Goofy’ came up to us and started to try to have some fun. We told him or her to leave us alone. Joe was especially not wanting to be harassed. Well Goofy picked up on this and focused in on Joe. Well Joe finally had enough of this and proceeded to plant a ‘roundhouse’ kick on the side of Goofy’s sending him half way across the park. It was at that time we decided to go back home.

Organ grinder to monkeys---still hungry?
 
blue missile said:
See
I told Larry this was not something I should mention.The lack of responces regarding this issue is as I expected.
But the look of everyones faces, the night we pulled to the top of a hill in Atlanta and launched one, was worth the effort.

Now back to what you guys want to read about
Andrew

Just because nobody comments does not mean we are not interested.


Organ grinder to monkeys---still hungry?
Click to expand...

Fire up the grill, boss!
 
Captin
you asked a question, here's where it really starts to get interesting
Andrew

Because of the next sequence of events, let me digress here for a moment. You will need this to make sense of it:

When I was born I was given up for adoption by my natural mother and adopted by a reformed Jewish family in Roslyn, Long Island, New York. As I was growing up we rarely attended temple except for the high holy days. My father Stanley, however, did want me to get Bar-Mitzvaed, which is the Jewish ceremony celebrating the age of accountability, or “becoming a man”. The Catholics call it Conformation. When he gave me the books used in Hebrew school, which were the Torah, Hof-Torah (the book of the prophets) and the Hebrew language Texts, he told me “I don’t know all that is in these, but believe what ever you read in them.” While we were studying in the book of Isaiah, we came to the scripture that foretells of the coming Messiah (Isaiah 7:14), where it says; “Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign; Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” I raised my hand and said “Rabbi, didn’t that already happen? What about Jesus? (I had heard about Him from our backdoor neighbor, Victor Knapp who was a Catholic). The Rabbi replied to me, “We don’t discuss Him here.” It was at that time, that I knew something wasn’t right; he acted as if he was hiding something or was not telling the truth. So the seeds of salvation were sown but didn’t get watered for many years.

Now back to the story:
One day during the summer of ’74, after doing mushrooms and getting well adjusted we were sitting at TK’s kitchen table. The mushrooms had basically worn off and we got to discussing spiritual things. TK asked if I had ever heard about Jesus. I told him that I had heard of Jesus, but I knew nothing much more about Him or the Bible. TK then told me the good news that Jesus was sent as the Messiah, told me to go buy a King James Bible, and read about all that He had done, for myself. I took his advice, starting in Genesis and read until I got to Isaiah 7:14. It was then that I realized that I was still in the old testament. All of the old feelings from Hebrew school came flooding back and all of a sudden it all made sense.
I got on the phone and called TK in tears and told him that I believed that Jesus WAS the Messiah and he said that because I had been willing to confess Him publicly from my heart that I was now saved. He said that I should skip to the New Testament and read about all that Jesus did for me, which I did.
It was during this time of discovering the good news that I was at a movie theater with Larry and Bob. We were sitting in the first row of the balcony looking over and leaning on the rail. All of a sudden I heard a voice say to me “I will send you into the wilderness to be tested like my son” I did not hear it with my natural ears but it sounded so real that I answered out loud, “God, I don’t want to be like Jesus!”, at which point Larry and Bob turned to me and asked, what’s the matter? I asked them if they had heard what I had heard, which of course they had not.


Having forgotten all about that incident, later on that year I found my way to what was called a ‘Friday night Break’. The best way to describe it is, it was a tailgate party for CB users, Lots of food and lots of beer, and lots of neat cars. There were about fifty people at these gatherings.

There were a lot of characters among the group. One of note was “Shaker” (his handle) He had a 1960s delivery van that looked like today’s SUVs. I’m not sure what make; it had rounded corners to the top and dual door at the back, with regular driver/passenger doors at the front. It had a 1/8th wave solid metal antenna on the roof, half a dozen car batteries bolted to the floor on the inside. It also had twin alternators to charge the batteries and power the 1000watt linear amplifier he used to boost the power of his CB. He regularly talked ‘Skip’ to California and could light up entire storefronts and florescent signage by the street when he key’d up the mic. They called him shaker because when he keyd up, your radio and anything near it would shake because of the volume he broadcasted at. He had to be careful where he parked so as not to give away his position because the FCC was regularly looking for him. Yes, in those days the FCC had mobile triangulating rigs and were forever trying to bust amp runners.

There was also a guy who shall remain nameless that worked for the ‘Company’, who had a regular looking radio in the dash of his truck, and a strange short antenna on his roof. Remember this was the mid seventy’s. One day he said you want to see something? With TJ (You’ll meet him in a moment) looking on grinning and from ear to ear, he got into his truck and turned on the radio. Nothing special just AM garbage. He then said do you see that microwave tower? Listen to this. He then pushed two of the buttons at once and dialed in the tower. We were then listening to a telephone conversation where a couple of ladies were talking about a recipe of some sort! He moved the dial a little and we were listening to another conversation. I looked at him and said nothing; he then punched a single button and put the radio back on the AM band. And you thought ‘Q’ didn’t exist and big brother really wasn’t listening!

My research and modify gene kicked in about that time and I was not satisfied with the measly four watts allowed by law. I didn’t want to run a linear but there still had to be a better way. I did some research on how antennas work and what makes them efficient. Base style antennas called ground planes are among the most efficient and use the electrical ground part of their design to bounce the signal off of. There are also what we called beaming affairs or a set of ‘beams’ based on the same concept but with three vertical parts that favored one side with the ground plane being more efficient on that side than the other two. You would rotate the entire antenna remotely from your base location electrically (in many cases your Bar co Lounger) to favor the direction you wanted to transmit in. So I took that concept and designed a mobile set of ‘beams’ using two ¼ wave fiberglass whips and the trunk-mounted center antenna. I lengthened the trunk-mounted antenna’s stainless steel part above the load and wrapped the whips with lead foil tape from their base to an elevation just above the top of the trunk antenna. This had the effect of forcing the signal to the tips and not transmitting back into the center antenna, which would have created a problem called a high standing wave ratio (high SWRs). When I was done everyone I talked to swore I was running a linear of twenty watts or so. That was the way the Duster was set up from then on.

more later guys
 
Captin:
Evil---NO, MAD maybe.
You know hot rodding used to be about trying different things and pushing the envelope. Not just bolting a few things on and going.
I for one am willing to fail, Especially if it means taking a chance of tasting sucess.I can not tell you how many times I have been told that something will not work, and have tasted sucess in that thing anyway.Especially in the field of mechanical engineering.

Thank you all for the encouragement regarding this post.
Heres the next bit:


PART TEN​
After attending quite a few of these Friday night Breaks and getting involved with the C.B. radio crowd I got a job at a radio repair shop called “T.Js”. TJ was short for the owner, Jim Shaw’s C.B. radio “handle” “Tennessee Jim”. Jim was a citified mountain man from northern Tennessee who did a lot more drinking whiskey than selling radios, which he left up to us. He had a habit of giving people nicknames and the one he gave me was “Jew boy”. He was taking a vacation and going back to Tennessee so all of his CB buddies in Miami planned to give him a going away party (as if they really needed a reason to party)


The week prior to the party I decided I should be baptized as instructed by the scriptures. TK, his girlfriend and one of her friends and I went to Hollywood Beach at sunrise. I will say that this was the kind of a ceremony you could only pull off in those days. The two girls were wearing the skimpiest of bikinis and were as hot as they get. When the sun was an orange ball just coming out of the water and the ocean was like glass, they proceeded to baptize me in the ocean while reading Mark 16:16 and Acts 2:38. It was a few days later, that in spite of all that I was doing that was not of God, that God convicted me of, and told me to stop doing just one thing, premarital sex! This was not good news to the woman I had just become involved with. The day before the party I broke the news to her, which ended our relationship. Little did I know how valuable that decision was going to be.

As the party went on Jim got so drunk that he actually stumbled into the front area behind the counter and pointed to a clock on the wall. He said I bet you think I’m too drunk to hit that thing on the wall,. And proceeded to take out a pistol from his belt and put a shot right through the center of the clock. Well his aim was good but we all gathered around him and took the gun away telling him that he had had enough. He went out into his car and slept it off until morning. Early that next morning it became obvious he had gotten so drunk the night before, that he was still unable to drive. That being the case, he told me I was going to drive him to Tennessee and he would pay me for the time off, to which I agreed.

He then told me to disassemble the back seat of the station wagon and pack his hunting rifles into it, so that if we were stopped, there would be no questions by the cops. This should have been a red flag, but it was not. I popped off the seat bench and unbolted the back and carefully slid all the weapons into seat back being supported by the springs. I reassembled the whole affair and we got ready to leave. We drove all day to arrive at his mom’s farm just after dark, he then told me that we were going hunting in the morning. After dinner he took me out into the local area looking for some of his friends, who he said would know where to find some real moonshine. Praise God we didn’t find any. We then bunked down on the front porch for the night. The next morning we awoke to my first real country breakfast of ham, bacon, eggs, fried okra, biscuits and gravy. Boy could his mom cook! We then proceeded to pack up and go to his hunting cabin, which was 2 hours further northwest of the farm.

Upon arriving at the camp I told Jim that I didn’t hunt except with a camera. He then told me there was no choice in the matter. Being out in the middle of the Tennessee woods, I decided that I would go along with the plan rather than start a confrontation. I graduated from a military academy so I knew well how to handle a gun. His buddies arrived with Fred, the guide, and we all went out into the woods so Fred could show us our stands for the next mornings hunt. That night we ate and hung out by the campfire where I found out we were on the edge of a government game preserve we would be hunting in. This meant I was in the company of real poachers. They also laughed about the mysterious disappearance of a game warden, who by the occasional smell of something dead they claimed they couldn’t find,was probably buried in a shallow grave nearby—which also meant one or all of them were murderers! At that point I knew they were not about to let me pass on going hunting, so I prayed that I would not have to kill anything the next day.

More later
Andrew
 
Very interesting Andrew. I am mostly impressed with the fact that you can remember, it seems , most details. I only wish I could also remember the many adventures of my youth in total instead of just the nasty highlights. Your writings have caused me to recall some details from those days that maybe should stay forgotten....
Carry on my friend.
 
OK get out your banjo here it comes----

PART ELEVEN​

At sunrise the next morning we ate and got our weapons. I was handed a police 12-guage riot gun (shotgun) loaded with rifled slugs (one single chunk of lead instead of small shot), and was told that all I had to do was point it at the bear and shoot. It was sure to kill, no problems. I was quite dismayed that we were hunting bear! The thought occurred to me that if it were only wounded, we could become the hunted! Not being the accomplished woodsman, I went to where I was sure Fred told me to sit, and I waited. About an hour later I heard some crashing in the bushes in the next small valley, about ten yards away. About an hour after that I heard T.J. whistling for everybody to gather and go back to camp. When we all got together they asked me where I had been. I then proceeded to show them where I had been sitting against the base of a tree. Fred said that I had been in the wrong place and showed me where I was supposed to have been. They then told me, while they laughed, that they had sent the bear my way. If I had been sitting where Fred had told me to sit, the bear would have run right into me!

We then went back to the farm for some supplies and to do some target shooting. When it came time to be my turn, we all discovered to everyone’s horror, that the safety on the shotgun was broken and that even when the safety was switched off, the gun still wouldn’t fire! This meant that if I had met the bear, I would have had to beat him to death with the gun! God had delivered me out of the jaws of death, Praise God! It was then decided that when we returned to camp I should stay in camp and cook for the guys instead of going hunting, Praise God. We then picked up some more food and ammo and returned to camp. They had constructed a rather impressive cabin out of cinder block, with bunk beds and a wood burning stove, so staying another night didn’t seem like it would be so bad. I then found out that the moonshine would be coming to camp with one of Jim’s friends who was bringing his dogs for tomorrow’s hunt. This gave me a very unsettled feeling.

All throughout this time Jim never stopped calling me “Jew Boy” and some of his friends started to do likewise. This was getting old. The other friends and the moonshine arrived after dinner, which consisted of stew made of locally grown potatoes and a squirrel. Fred had shot the squirrel in mid air jumping from tree to tree. Everyone was getting drunk and there was still a lot of the original three gallons of shine left. I personally have no physical tolerance for alcohol because it simply puts me to sleep. So I had a capful, which was remarkably smooth, using it as a sleeping aid, and retired to the cabin to sleep in one of the bunk beds.



The next morning when I arose Fred was already up, and TJ’s cousin John who had been up all night, was still drinking. Of the original three gallons of shine, there was the better part of one left, which he was attempting to finish. The main group went hunting, leaving me alone with TJ’s cousin, whom they deemed too drunk to hunt. Most of the men had brought their own weapons, so the original cash of guns we brought from Miami was still in camp. While John was sitting quietly in a folding chair drinking, I set about cleaning camp and started to chop wood for the fire. The cleared area of the camp was about forty feet square with the cabin being in one corner. John was sitting next to the cabin and I was in the diagonally opposite corner of the camp chopping wood.

All of a sudden he spoke up saying “Hey Jew Boy, where ya from?” I answered “America”. He responded “No, where in America?” I chose to use our new home, knowing the kind of response New York would get, and said “Miami”. At this there was no response. Then all of a sudden he started firing a high powered rifle at the ground very near my feet. He then said “Hey Jew Boy, where ya parents from?” I answered “America”, and left it at that. I could see where he was going with this. All through this time I was watching the gallon jug of moonshine being consumed. He continued to fire at the ground near me, and it was all I could do to control the anger; fear was not even part of the picture. Must have been God! I then moved to just in front of the cabin and started to chop a three inch thick pine tree I felled earlier into one foot lengths, getting angrier as I went.


There must be a cliff around here somewhere................
Andrew
 
This sure is one entertaining life story. Keep it up, please.
 
AhHa, a cliff hanger. This went from hiliarous, to wtf. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. If you snagged your bosses car, and got outa dodge, the next scene would be something akin to texas chainsaw. continue sir novelist!
 
Ok, Andrew, this has gone from interesting to "hanging on the edge of my seat". Don't even THINK about stopping now!
 
Well Captin,
here's what you have been waiting for. Not the end of the story but the reason I walk in a confident knowing that Dad has it covered.


PART TWELVE​

At this point, he had used the rifle ammo up and switched to the 12-guage, which had since been fixed. He sent rifled slugs whizzing past me through the laurel bushes. At this point I was so angry that I was cutting through the tree with single strokes, sending some pieces clear over the cabin. After I finished cutting the tree into pieces, I gathered them up and was bringing them to where the fire was, again catty corner from the cabin. At this point he asked me “Hey Jew Boy, where are your grandparents from?” My response was again “America”. A few more shots and he asked, “Hey Jew Boy, where are your great grandparents from”. My response was “Europe”. They had come over from Germany long before things went bad over there. Now he’s got about a quarter of the gallon of shine left and he’s run out of rifled slugs. So he switches to birdshot and asks, “Where in Europe?” I responded with reluctance, “Germany”. His response was very quick, “So what we have here is a commie Jew! I think I’ll kill me a commie Jew before lunch.”

At this time I knew that he was serious and things were taking a turn for the worse. My back was turned to him and without turning I replied, “ Why don’t you let me cook you lunch first?” There was a pause and then he replied, “No, I think I’ll get it over with.” In a voice that had changed noticeably. When I turned around and looked at him, all of the shine was gone and he had the shotgun leveled right at me. His countenance had also changed, and it was apparent that I was now dealing with something more than just a drunk mountain man. I knew inside of me I Was dealing with the devil himself, and he really was going to pull the trigger. The first thing that went through my mind was that all he had in the gun was birdshot, and at that distance, even a number of rounds would not be instantly fatal. So I took the ax and held it right under the head, in a non-threatening manner, and slowly walked across the camp up to him until the shotgun was against my chest.

I then said to him, “If you’re going to kill me, kill me, but I have no intention of bleeding to death in the Tennessee mountains.” I have to say in retrospect there was a great peace within me and I was quite sure that I was going to get to meet Jesus that day! For I had obeyed God and had a clear heart and conscience. With fire in his eyes he replied, “What happens if I do?” To which I replied, “I go to heaven and you clean up the mess.” He then said, “How do you know?” With what I’m sure was a smile on my face I replied, “I just got baptized, and I haven’t been laid yet!”

Now what happened next was a shock to me, having never seen the power of God at work. The power of God knocked him backwards, still in the chair, still holding the gun with his finger on the trigger, and without the gun going off. When he hit the ground he dropped the shotgun and at this point he started to weep uncontrollably. Within less than a minute, the others broke through the bushes coming towards camp with Fred yelling, “What’s the hell’s going on here? It sounded like World War III! There must not be a living thing within miles of here!” I still hadn’t moved and was just beginning to understand what had just happened. I told TJ what had occurred and he took John, and put him in the station wagon and said he was going to take him back to the farm.

Fed then said that seeing as I had shown some interest in seeing the woods and learning about Fred’s other occupation, which was picking wild ginseng, he would show me around. Since there was plenty of daylight left, this sounded pretty good to me, so off we went. Now Fred only carried a 22cal. Rifle for what he called “protection” He said if we met a bear it would only sting enough to make the bear think about not attacking us. He was a very good shot, proving this by having picked off last night’s squirrel in mid air jumping from tree to tree. Fred was about two paces behind me as we went down the trail, when all of a sudden he said, “FREEZE!” I thought, Oh no here we go again. I froze and Fred took his rifle and put it about two feet in front of me and fired it against the ground, making almost no sound at all.

He then took his rifle and lifted the four foot copperhead snake he had just killed and draped it over the bush by the trail saying “This will let others know they are in the area.” If I had taken the next step I would have been bitten by the snake. Praise God for delivering me from death three times in two days! I will say at that point God had my attention. We then had a great time exploring the woods the rest of the day. That night we all went back to the farm to stay the night. The next morning when I awoke, there was John sitting on the porch with TJ’s mom. He said that he had been crying for about twenty four hours, and that he really was going to kill me back at camp. He said he was never going to drink and use guns again and that he was really sorry. I accepted his apology, and forgave him in the name of Jesus, life goes on.

Let me say something here, for all you religious folks that just had their world shattered. I didn’t speak the bible at the devil I spoke what God had spoken to me, no matter how colorful; there is supernatural power in confidently speaking the words with authority God has given you. But remember this, they only have power if they are your words coming from inside of you. Once God’s words become your words nothing can stand against you.

And yes the story continues...
Andrew
 
you got balls man. if i was gettin shot at i woulda ran. like wildfire. and when he dropped the gun i woulda taught him to never shoot at things again. gotta be careful who your around
 
I really didn't think yall would have much to say about these developments.
here is a sort of response to the mad scientist inquirey that I will actually insert earlier in the saga than her, but here is where I thought about it.

ADDED CHUNK​
One of the readers has questioned my scientific background and whether or not I was an evil scientist. And since there are a lot of concert stories here I think it is appropriate to include a concert/science flashback from a time well before the duster. This should show that the mad scientist gene is one that shows up early.

The year is 1968, the location is rural Massachusetts.
When I was fifteen I was in the last year of attending summer camp. All of the parents in the area I grew up in, Long Island, sent their kids off to summer camp for a couple of months, so they could go traveling say to Europe.
Well I was not the athletic type, but tended to hang out at the science bunk or you could find me swimming or fishing. I did complete the seven mile swim to state road and back, I guess that’s athletic.

We always had fun at the science bunk pushing the envelope by testing what we could get away with. The science counselor was a young chemistry teacher from the Pittsfield area. One day he asked us what we might want to do over the next week or so. He planned our activities out and then had them approved by the camps vice director. I responded to the question with “hey lets make some liquor” He said that while it was well within his abilities he wasn’t going touch that request unless I could talk Bob into it. I went right then and found Bob who was the vice director, and told him we wanted to make some liquor in the science bunk, was it OK? He looked at me and said I don’t think you’ll be able to, but Ok. Under one condition, you have to let me taste it before any of the campers, for safety’s sake. I said that would be acceptable and that we also needed say some apricot juice to make it out of. He said he would tell the kitchen staff to let us have whatever we needed.

I went back and told the science counselor who said he would go by the Corning plant and get a bunch of ‘seconds’ glassware they gave away to teachers for free. They just threw the ‘seconds’ into the dumpster for crushing and recycling anyway. He also said he just happened to have a fractionating tower he built when he was in college. This would help.
He came back with four or five large one gallon glass containers and some brewers yeast. We built water valves for the tops; we had spent a lot of time blowing and bending glass tubing for various projects, and put up about five gallons of apricot juice to ferment. Three or four days later we took all of the juice and ran it through the still.

The still consisted of a large 2 liter Erlenmeyer flask as the base and at its top connected by a stopper, was the fractionating tower which fed a very large Liebeg condenser being cooled by running water. The tower had a thermometer stuck through the stopper at its top to monitor the temp so as to get the highest alcohol content possible. When we were done we had about a half a gallon of approximately 195 proof alcohol. We tested it by weighing on a triple beam a set amount in a watch glass, then burning off the alcohol, and weighing what was left. He explained to us that you could not drink alcohol that pure it would make your toung expand and could cut off your air supply. In order to make something we could drink we filtered the rest of the apricot juice through activated charcoal and layers of filter paper. What came out was a clear golden fluid that tasted like apricots. We then combined it with the grain alcohol to make about 90 proof apricot brandy. In order to split it up equally we had collected washed out empty ketchup bottles. We put up about twenty of them. I also took some and half filled a large test tube about one inch in diameter and eight inches long, and stuck a cork in it.

I then took the ‘sample’ to Bob who was directing the rehearsing of the senior play in the theater. I walked up on the stage and handed him the sample and told him we were done. He looked at me with a smile, and looked at it and said “Well let’s give it a try”. At which time he pulled the cork and downed the whole tube in one motion. His face turned a very pleasing shade of bright red, He obviously could not breath for a moment and when he caught his breath he asked me with a very shocked look on his face and only a whisper of a voice “How much of this did you make?” I told him we had twenty ketchup bottles mostly filled and we were going to take it to the concert a few days later. He was a man of his word and said well ok and walked off.

The day of the concert we returned from a group fishing trip to Glouster where we were fishing for cod. We had left the day before and had gotten up very early to get to the boat. It was a half day trip and by 10:00 we had caught nothing. The captain said he wanted to try one more spot a hole he knew about. He had one of those fish finders with a paper printout and when he got over the hole it looked like a solid mass of fish. He thought it might be on the fritz but we all dropped our lines. After a few minutes most of us thought we were hung on the bottom. One of the mates came over to me and tried to lift the pole and said it was just a large fish, cod always felt like dead weight. A couple of guys brought their fish in before me and they were in the fifty to sixty pound range, so was mine. The counselor arranged for an extra hour and at the end of our time we had caught twelve hundred pounds of cod.

So now we are back at camp just in time to get cleaned up and leave. We cleaned up, got our supplies and left for the Tangelwood pops festival on the camp bus. The reason I mentioned the fishing trip is that Doug the fishing counselor was going to go to the concert as well, but the kitchen staff made him clean all of the fish which had followed us back to camp in a large pickup truck. As we left we all waved to him, as he was waist deep in very large fish on the porch of the kitchen. Boy what a concert he missed.

For you see the concert was the event of the year in that neck of the woods. It was BB King, Janis Joplin, The Association, Iron butterfly, And Joshua’s light show from the Fillmore East. The refreshments were more than enough to keep us well adjusted to the point that when we returned at midnight the guys were literally swinging from the cabin rafters. I have two memories from the concert first the fact that Iron Butterfly’s ‘In A Gadda Da Vida’ was the last song and went on for a wonderfully long time, And Janis’s appearance. You see we were drinking, but her appearance blew us all away. First Big Brother and the Holding Company did a set of their own stuff which was pretty good. During their set there was a single stool behind a mike on a stand at the very front of the stage. On the stool was what looked like a bottle of Southern Comfort sitting on it. Now they were far enough back on the stage that they didn’t knock it off. When they called for, and introduced Janis, she walked onto the stage right up to the stool. She said hello to the crowd and then proceeded to down the entire bottle in one fell swoop, and went right into ‘Me and Bobby Mc Gee’. As I said we were blown away, we didn’t think that was humanly possible! So even then it was cool to be the mad scientist.

more later
Andrew
 
Well Captain the only explosions that were part of that story were the way our heads felt the next day.

PART THIRTEEN​
Back to the Duster:
The next road trip was to New York to visit my brother Bill with a stop in Atlanta to visit one of my roommates from the academy Ted Neugent. His real name was Terrance but we just called him Ted. No he is not the guitar player, but the IRS did send him the other Ted Neugent’s tax bill one year! Ted was a gas to hang with and well worth visiting, lots of very loud Southern Rock and partying. It was the Fourth of July weekend 1976 the bicentennial.

A small Ted flashback:
During the summer of my final year in the Academy ’72 I had a chance to go to a concert with Ted. Since he lived near the academy in suburban Atlanta and his father could come pick us up, we got weekend passes to go to a concert at a venue called Lake Spivey just outside of Atlanta in Jonesborough. It would be a midday affair starting around eleven, and we took Ted’s 54 Chevy to the event. (I know it’s not a mopar but it’s still a good story) Once we got near the place the traffic became bumper to bumper. Ted was not a patient driver, and he had a fairly well built small block under the hood. So he would let the car in front of us get three or four spaces ahead and then he would smoke his tires, take off for a second, and then slam on the brakes just barely missing the car in front of us. After doing this a half a dozen times the people in front of us just got out of the way. I figure they were just plain scared of him, I certainly would have been. We then got to the event in more than enough time. We pitched our blanket on the grass and started to socialize with the other people there. While we were well adjusted, there were folks barely still attached to the planet, forget about reality. There was one guy who was tripping his brains out carrying his three or four old son on his shoulders. It got to the point that others there actually intervened and took the kid off his shoulders and sat the kid back on what they thought was his blanket. Needless to say it was quite a zoo.

We were there to see Chicago, with Ritchie Havens opening up. Ritchie and his band did their set for about an hour, and then the roadies did the teardown and set up. Because it was a beautiful day everything was done at a mellow pace. The guys from Chicago then came on stage and did their sound check. They went off stage for a few minutes and then came back on. With everybody plugged in the guitar player stepped up to the mic and greeted the audience. After his greeting he went and did some sort of a power chord to start the first song. During that chord there was a fairly large explosion behind the stage with an accompanying small mushroom cloud becoming visible after a few seconds. We all thought COOL. Well… not so much. The stage went silent what lights were on, went black and everyone left the stage. After a few minutes the guitar player came back on stage with a bullhorn, he proceeded to explain to all that the explosion was the main transformer for the venue blowing up. He then said that they were going to stick around and would not leave until they had played their full concert. He said that Georgia power and light was flying another transformer in by helicopter but it would take a few hours. He asked everybody to stick around and enjoy the beautiful day. This was around 1:00 in the afternoon. A little while after that Ritchie came back on stage with his acoustic guitar, a stool, and a single mic and proceeded to say “well I’ve done this before” and did an acoustic set by himself. Of course he did an extended version of ‘Freedom’. I assume they found a small generator for the amp he was using. That particular part was really great. In my opinion he was much better with just his guitar than he was with his band. Around 3:00 a helicopter with a transformer hanging from it swooped in overhead and placed the transformer behind the stage. By 3:30 or 4:00 the transformer had been replaced. After that Chicago did their entire catalog of tunes until well after dark. What a concert. Afterwards we returned to Ted’s’ place and then back to the academy the next day.

More of that road trip next installment
Andrew
 
This aught to at least bring back some memories of the times:

PART FOURTEEN​
Back to the road trip:
We made it to Atlanta at about mid night and I was sort of lost. I had gotten us to the general area of his development but I was having trouble finding his street from the directions he gave me. I pulled up over a small hill and there was a cop just parked in the middle of the road. So I pulled up to him and showed him the directions and asked him for help finding the street. He said well its right over there but in the mean time pull over and get out of the car. I did and got out of the car and closed the door behind me. Glen who was traveling with me got out of the other side and closed the door behind him. The cop asked me for my license and registration, and then asked what I was doing there at that time of night. I told him we were visiting a friend from school and that we had driven all day from Miami to get here. I told Him who we were visiting and gave him the address. In the mean time his partner was looking through the windows with his flashlight. He came back and talked to his partner and I was told that they were going to arrest me for having controlled substances in the car. He then said he was going to do an inventory search of the car. I was not asked for permission.

To put the record straight we were perfectly straight and very tired. He then started to go through the car and this was of great concern to me. When he slid the console ashtray open looking for debris, it was filled with switches and indicator lights. Yes… there was a rocket in the tube. It was not armed but if he fiddled with the switches he could arm and launch it with the hood closed. All I asked him to do is don’t play with the switches. He asked why? I told him you could start a fire. Since he was looking for drugs he backed off. You see his thinking was any car from Miami had to have drugs in it. He then had me open the trunk and searched my luggage. He found my stash of pipes I had made, and that I was bringing to show Ted. They also found the beanbag we had been throwing around the cabin containing about a pound of seeds, Ted wanted to plant a field. When asked I just said it was a beanbag. About that time his partner shows up with a seconal that he had found, obviously someone had dropped it and it had rolled under the seat. It wasn’t mine, if I did such things I just went to sleep; there was no getting high about it. That fact had become sort of a running joke among my friends, the same with drinking.

When the first cop saw the pill, he said up until this we were going to let you go. But the possession of this is a felony and we now have to book you. I told him that everything other than the pill was mine and my passenger had nothing to do with it. So he didn’t impound the car and he let Glen drive the car to Ted’s house where he told Ted what had happened. I was escorted to the Decaulb county jail and booked. This was becoming a very scary deal. Until then and since then I have never had a run-in with the law. It didn’t get any better. (now I’m going to quote here so please understand these are not my words) The booking sergeant after taking my prints and photos then told me a very typical southern drawl “Don’t worry boy I won’t put you in with no niggers or faggots.” OH MY GOD! Please keep in mind this is Fourth of July weekend I’m not going to be able to call anyone or certainly get to any funds until Monday!

They put me in a cell with Plexiglas instead of bars at the front and with ten other guys. There was also a partial Plexiglas wall between the cells, so you could see from cell to cell as well. In the cell next to us were a bunch of Black Muslims and one very young white kid. Within the first couple of hours the next morning I noticed that while the white kid was sweeping the floor, the Muslims ganged up on him after exchanging some words. They proceeded to jump him and started beating the crap out of him. While others in my cell noticed, no one did anything about it.The kid then took the broomstick and stuck it half way through one of them actually impaling him. At that point everyone in my cell went to the front glass and started to beat on it in unison until it had almost come out of its frame. When the guards showed up to see what the racket was we pointed them to what was going on in the next cell. They immeadtly took the white kid out of the cell and stuck him in with us. They took the impaled prisoner to the infirmary, he was really hurt. This kid was fairly beat up but had managed to hold his own. I asked him what he was in for, he said taking a joy ride in a car. He might have been all of sixteen. That evening for dinner we had sandwiches and a very quaint square of cake with red white and blue frosting and little American flags stuck in them. Oh yeah this was a Fourth I was going to remember.

Again these were my days of not using my brain.
Kids dont do this at home, I'm what you call an expert.
Andrew
 
I want to say if you are ever in Atlanta look Barry up on the internet and go hear him play. When you do, say hello for me.

PART FIFTEEN​

While in jail I read one book ‘Papillion’, which was strangely appropriate for the location, and played a two day long game of ‘Risk’ with a few of the other prisoners. One of whom was Leon Russell’s base player Ebo Walker. He was in for drug possession, but he was reasonably sure it would come to nothing because the ‘narcs’ that busted him continually beat him up all the way down in the elevator. You would say so what. Unfortunately for them, this was the glass elevator at the Atlanta Hyatt and there were all sorts of witnesses on every floor. There was also a guy who was a professor with some sort of a master’s degree in for missing alimony payments. This was quite a diverse collection of people. Once Monday came around and the banks opened, I called back home and explained to my parents what had happened and had them wire the money for my bail. Since I had money in my bank account, and they still had access to it they used my money, so it was not as big a deal.

After I got out, I contacted NORMAL’s Atlanta office and hired an attorney. When I got to his office and met him he was a fully bearded, pipe smoking, plaid suit wearing child of the sixties. For the record I don’t think he was smoking tobacco in his pipe. He pulled the arrest report and told me that in his opinion it would come to nothing because it was an unlawful search and seizure. The cop had sited that they had found a marijuana seed on my seat by looking through the window with a flashlight. Because it was in plain site it constituted just cause. My lawyer told me to gather a sample of as many seeds that looked like pot seeds and put them in Baggies with labels folded in half. I was also to include some real seeds in a bag as well. I did as I was told, and when the trial came around, which was only a week later I found out why.

While we were In Atlanta hanging out waiting for the trial we went to visit a friend that Larry and I used to play music with, Barry Richman. Larry is an accomplished drummer who, when John Bonham was doing it, also figured out how to roll his base peddle. When I say that I played, I was playing Latin percussion things, nothing to really speak of. We did do a bunch of Santana but Barry loved Zeppelin and Hendrix. To date I have never heard any other guitarist play with such a range of talent and such abilities.

A quick Barry tale:
While he was still living in South Florida some time in 74, I had a chance to take him to a club I had been jamming at. I would bring my harps and the band would let me sit in and play. This was at a club called Art Stocks Playpen in Lauderdale. The club had three or four stages all in different rooms with the appropriate bar in front of the stage. There was a closed circuit television system in every room that would let you see what was going on in all of the other rooms at once.
So I brought Barry there with his guitar to meet the band. Let me describe the band. It was a two-piece band with a guitar player that also played the keyboard, which had a bunch of tunes he had programmed in it. There was also a drummer who would play the drums with one hand and play the trumpet with the other. Actually he was quite amazing.

When we arrived they anxiously said hey are you gonna come up and jam. I said no. I have something better and introduced them to Barry. They said cool come on up. They asked what kind of music does he play? I jokingly asked if they knew any Hendrix? With out skipping a beat they broke into Voodoo Child and Barry was off. He did things I had never seen him do before, like play the guitar behind his back and with his teeth. I can’t explain to you how expertly he ripped them a musical new one. These amazing sights and amazing sounds went on for twenty minutes or so. Before he had a chance to quit the manager of the club approached me and asked “Is he with you?” I said “Yes, why?” He said “Could you ask him to stop playing?” I asked “Why” in a very puzzled fashion? He said “Since he has been playing we’ve not sold a single drink in the entire club!” Remember the closed circuit TV? Well it was a short night for Barry, we left and went back to Miami.

Back to the road trip next time
Andrew
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top