One good thing about getting old -- and there aren't many -- is that you can blame a whole lot of things on your age:
Miss your aim at the toilet ...
Forget to pay at the gas pump ...
Tell the cop you're staggering because of "the shakes" ...
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Grandfather Says: What’s The Value of a Song?
Grandfather says he doesn't have much use for a lot of modern stuff, but he likes electronic keyboards.
He has a lovely Steinway grand piano in his living room; a relic of earlier times and people in his life.
But he can't play it.
A ...
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Grandfather Says: Never Underestimate the Utility of a Trebuchet
Grandfather says he built a trebuchet.
They were used in the middle ages to fling smallpox-infected corpses over castle walls.
Grandfather used his to launch model airplanes, although some of his colleagues suggested its utility for such things ...
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Grandfather Says: The Benefits of DIY Housing
Grandfather sees that very few folks build their own houses anymore. But Grandfather says he thinks the increasing concentration of US housing in the hands of wealthy owners, who then effectively control them as rentals, may make some of you ...
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Grandfather Says: The Story of Emile and Mollie
Grandfather fondly remembers Emile and Molly.
Grandfather first came to know Emile when he was Grandfather's supervisor at the US Patent Office.
Emile and his wife Mollie were Jewish; Mollie from Chicago and Emile from Eastern Europe. He had ...
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Grandfather Says: Impressions In Charcoal
Grandfather says nowadays, illustrations in printed publications are mostly done with photo-processors. In the 1940s, they were done by commercial artists.
In his teens, Grandfather studied to become one, at Cass Technical High School in ...
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Grandfather Says: Eulogy for a Friend
Grandfather says he has seen most of his friends buried in recent years. Here is a eulogy that Grandfather delivered for a very dear friend at his memorial service, shortly after the attack on the World Trade Center in NYC:
Wayne Cowder leaves ...
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Grandfather Says: Spelling Bee
Grandfather says he is blessed with a good memory and enough self-assurance that it's not a curse; little things from long ago come to mind.
When he was six years old, Grandfather learned to read by the phonic method: "sound it out."
Well, ...
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Grandfather Says: My First Job as a Newspaper Boy
Grandfather says when he was 13 or so, he got his first job: a newspaper boy for the Detroit Free Press. They distributed newspapers to homes through the 1950s.
Each boy had his own route, about a mile along a street, and his papers were delivered ...
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Grandfather Says: Happiness and Living in the Right Mold
How do you fit your mold?
Grandfather says life can be thought of as a mold, different for each of us, but constraining, whether we like it or not.
The key to happiness, in his opinion, is to live in the right mold.
Grandfather's mold is ...
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Grandfather Says: A Chicken Run for the Henhouse
Grandfather says when he got engaged to be married in 2008, his bride-to-be insisted on bringing her cat and chickens with her. Well, housing the cat required no special arrangement, but the chickens were another matter.
Grandfather says he ...
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Grandfather Says: Memories of a Budding Shipwright
Grandfather has written before about stone and wood -- this one's about water. Specifically, bodies of water and how he's enjoyed them over the years.
Described earlier were Cape Hatteras on the shores of the Atlantic; the Lynn canal between ...
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Grandfather Says: A Trophy for the Natural
When Grandfather was 13 or so, playground baseball/softball -- it just depended who showed up with what kind of ball and bat -- began to invade his young life.
He remembers one of his novice catastrophes: a baseball went right over his glove and ...
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Grandfather Says: Preparing for Hard Times
Grandfather says he thinks there are some tough years ahead.
He says be creative and live better as those years go by.
B F Goodrich & Co. built a specialty rubber plant here, fabricating mostly aircraft and military equipment, about 50 ...
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Grandfather Says: There Is No Escape From the Present
It's highly unfashionable -- if not downright politically incorrect -- to live in the past, but Grandfather doesn't think so.
He believes US civilization reached its zenith in the third quarter of the twentieth century, when the nation was unified ...
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Grandfather Says: Some Thoughts on Building a Life-Long Homestead
Grandfather would like, first off, to do his best to convince young people that they can put their life, fortune and sacred honor into their life-long homestead. It's a state of mind which was the norm as the settlers expanded West in the 19th ...
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Grandfather Says: Remembering Grandfather’s Father
Grandfather says his father has been departed for more than 60 years now (may God rest his soul), but Grandfather well remembers him. He was an honor student in high school and continued that way later, at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in ...
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Grandfather Says: Western Civilization Is Out of Fashion
Western civilization seems unfashionable in most colleges these days. "Diversity" is now the revealed truth.
Anyway, Grandfather trotted out an old college textbook of his, Readings in Western Civilization, Knoles and Snyder, J.B. Lippincott 1951, ...
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Grandfather Says: A Few Words on Our Nation’s Travails
Len has asked me to write about what I see as the prospects for our nation. If I were a believer in "credentials" I would desist, but I'm not. What I am is a man who has lived his life as independently of current fashion as possible and does not care ...
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Grandfather Says: Musings on an Old-Time Liberal Education
An early 19th century liberal education mandated studies in classical literature, now abandoned -- and sometimes scorned -- in most "universities."
Grandfathers Father, Ralph the First, studied for the ministry at the Southern Baptist Theological ...
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