Virgil Ronk.   One of my friends from childhood.  We lived in Highland, New York on North Road.   One day he came over to my house and he was eating a sandwich.   I asked what kind of sandwich he had.   He said that it was a ketchup sandwich.   I said that I had never heard of such a thing as a ketchup sandwich.   He said to me to try a bite and offered me his sandwich.   I took a bite and I was amazed at how good it tasted and told him so.   He offered me half of his sandwich and I gladly accepted.   That day I became a big fan of ketchup.  Now I drown french fries, hamburgers, meat loaf and a host of other foods in it.   I have had a saying for many years:  "With enough ketchup I can make anything taste good."   I don't like fish and my wife makes me fish sticks on Fridays.   But I put ketchup on the fish sticks to make them taste good.   Any thing I don't like the taste of, out comes the ketchup bottle.   I mean, why eat something with a taste that I don't like when with some ketchup I will like it.   I don't know if Virgil ever remembers offering me half of his ketchup sandwich but it made a big impact on my life.   And ketchup sandwiches?   It is a favorite snack of mine.   When I want something quick to eat, I just have a ketchup sandwich.   At age 79, I still eat them.   Even recently.   All I can say is "Thank You Virgil".   I have told this story of Virgil and the ketchup sandwich many times to many people and always include his full name, Virgil Ronk.   I hoped that somehow my appreciation of him would get back to him.   Last week I did an internet search just to see how he was doing.   I found out that he had died August 17, 2021.   And he was buried on my birthday of August 25.   I can't get to thank him but I will continue to remember him over the years and his ketchup sandwich.   Lewis Dallas

The Safe

 I have become very nostalgic.   Getting something from the past brings back a flood of pleasant memories.   My daughter sent me an antique cast-iron toy safe for Christmas that is exactly the same as the one that I use to have.

There is a coin slot in the top.

There was a tag on the dial with the combination.   Really.

OMG!   Now you know the combination.   You are sworn to secrecy to never reveal the combination.   LOL!   I dialed the combination, opened the safe and "lo and behold" there was an Amazon gift card.   I was very pleasantly surprised.

I had gotten one of these back in the 60's when I lived in Phoenix, Arizona.   It sat up on the wall.   In this picture you can just barely see it.  

I am on the couch in the right side of the picture and a friend named Chuck is on the left.   I was going to Arizona State University and the weekends were spent on the couch studying with my textbooks and papers spread on the coffee table.    One day a coworker and friend of mine Jim was sitting right where Chuck was sitting in the picture.   Suddenly for some unknown reason the safe fell off of the display frame (poltergeists?  LOL) and landed right on top of Jim's head.   Jim yelled "Ow" because naturally it hurt.   There was no bleeding or anything like that.   Jim was okay.   I had that safe for many, many years and it always reminded me of Jim.   The falling safe had fixed that moment in time for me.   And now when I see this safe, once again I am reminded of Jim, a really super fine individual.  I now have it on a lower shelf so I am safe.

Here is hoping that everyone got lots of overpriced gifts for the Holidays.    Lew

 

AMERICAN BALD EAGLE

I like following a web cam of an American Bald Eagles nest here in Florida.   I find it interesting to watch the little fuzz ball new born chicks as they develop into full grown American Bald Eagles.

 https://dickpritchettrealestate.com/eagle-feed.html

The mother has been named Harriet by the group of Eagle watchers and the father is called M15.   There are two chicks E15 and E16.   Their diet is usually fish along with some animals like squirrels, rabbits, and possum.   Now here is the humorous part, one of the parents captured a squirrel.   Or what they thought was a squirrel.   Turns out it was a plush toy squirrel.

 

Looks real doesn't it.  

 

 

I wasn't 100% sure until I saw it in a later picture.   I can see the stitching on the foot for the toes.

 

You can see a fish at the top of the picture.   They seem to eat mostly fish.   The white fluff in the nest is stuffing from the stuffed squirrel.   I guess that it really fooled the eagle.

 

Try visiting the site.   It is a lot of fun.   Lew

https://dickpritchettrealestate.com/eagle-feed.html

 

 

THE  CHATTERBOX  RESTAURANT

Back in the 70's the Arizona Section of the American Nuclear Society use to hold monthly meetings.   They would have a guest speaker at each of their meetings which dealt mainly with Nuclear Power generation.   I found the meetings really interesting.   I worked for the Arizona Atomic Energy Commission at the time and so had an interest in radiation topics.  

The meetings were held in a restaurant in Casa Grande which is about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson.   If they held the meetings in Phoenix then the members in Tucson might not attend because of the long drive.   If the meetings were held in Tucson then the members in Phoenix might not attend.   So the best compromise was Casa Grande which is halfway between Phoenix and Tucson.  Well, maybe not exactly halfway between Phoenix and Tucson.   A bit closer to Phoenix which was good for me since I lived in Phoenix.  The restaurant that was selected for the meetings was The Chatterbox Restaurant.  

 

It wasn't an especially large restaurant but it did have a meeting room for groups.     But what amazed me was the caliber of the people who attended these meetings:   people from the companies that built nuclear plants to people from the Manhattan Project on the building of the first nuclear reactor and the first atomic bombs.   I was always in awe of who I considered to be the most stellar person at the meetings: Norman Hillberry.  

 

I considered him as living history because of the stories he would tell of the days of (CP1, Chicago Pile 1), the first nuclear reactor.   He was present when Enrico Fermi first started up the CP1 reactor.   Various scientists had various jobs at that moment.   Some pushed the control rod in and out of the pile, some stood on top of the reactor with large flasks of boronated water which would be smashed against the top of the reactor if the reactor started to "run away".   Would I stand on the top of a nuclear reactor with flasks of boronated water to be smashed on the top of the reactor?    Let me think about that one........Okay, I am done thinking.   No!

 

 Norman Hillberry stood at a railing above the squash ball court where the reactor was located with an axe to chop a rope that was holding an additional control rod so that it would drop by gravity into the nuclear pile.   In the picture below he is the scientist bent over at the railing.

 

Here is a qoute of Norman Hillberry telling the story.

"Scram is usually cited as being an acronym for safety control rod axe man; however, the term is probably a backronym. The actual axe man at the first chain-reaction was Norman Hilberry. In a letter to Dr. Raymond Murray (January 21, 1981), Hilberry wrote:

When I showed up on the balcony on that December 2, 1942 afternoon, I was ushered to the balcony rail, handed a well sharpened fireman's axe and told, "if the safety rods fail to operate, cut that manila rope." The safety rods, needless to say, worked, the rope was not cut... I don't believe I have ever felt quite as foolish as I did then. ...I did not get the SCRAM [Safety Control Rod Axe Man] story until many years after the fact. Then one day one of my fellows who had been on Zinn's construction crew called me Mr. Scram. I asked him, "How come?" And then the story."  

Note:   I found the above two quotes on the internet but lost track of the sites where I found them.   My apologies.    Lew
More on Scram in the link below to an earlier blog.

https://lew-cabintalk.blogspot.com/2011/11/scram.html

I would have expected the meetings to be held in a Merriot or Hilton.   But the Chatterbox Restaurant was conveniently located.   But, alas I think that the Chatterbox Restaurant is gone.   I have gone to the site with Google Maps and I couldn't see it.   I wish now that I had gotten pictures of the restaurant both inside and outside.   Now all I have is a recently acquired postcard of the Chatterbox Restaurant.   I wonder if the owner of the restaurant ever knew of the people eating in his restaurant those nights.   Comments always appreciated.   Thanks.   Lew

caterpillar

Mary knows that I like insects, so whenever she sees something unusual she comes and gets me and shows me where it is.   This time it was a caterpillar on the arm of a chair under the camphor tree.

It was definitely interesting with large spots that look like eyes but aren't.   I like trying to identify the insects.   I use the Golden Guides from St. Martin's Press.   They contain the most common insects.

Yep, there it was on page 26, a spicebush swallowtail.

The yellow stripe along the bottom portion of the body and large spots made it easy to identify.

Normally we just leave the insects alone.   But in this case the caterpillar was sharing the chair with Whitey the cat.   Can you see the caterpillar on the arm of the chair?   This cat looks to be living the good life.   Very relaxed.   This cat just eats and eats.   And then sleeps some more.

We named the cat Whitey after Whitey Bulger because the cat was such a tough guy.   The cat just wandered into our yard, ate some of the cat food and decided to stay.   All of the other cats were afraid of him because he didn't back and was ready to defend himself.   Such a tough guy so the name Whitey Bulger seemed appropriate.   It is hard to see but the top of the left ear has been clipped which means that the cat has been either neutered or spayed.   We can't tell whether it is a male or a female.   We have been noticing that the male cats don't fight with him (or her).   So maybe it is a female.   The cat appears to be a stray and not feral.   But we worried about the safety of the caterpillar and so we put it in a safe place (out of sight).   We were afraid that the cat might hurt the caterpillar and so gently picked the caterpillar up and put it in the grass at the base of the camphor tree.

But back to the caterpillar, I have seen these black swallowtails fluttering around our bougainvillea bush.  Butterflies are impossible to get a picture of because they are constantly moving.   The picture below is one from the internet.    I will keep an eye out especially for the spicebush swallowtail butterfly.   Maybe I should have been an entomologist.   LOL.   Lew

 

Fruishi

Fruishi, I have eliminated one more thing from my "Bucket List".   I went to Epcot at Disney World and had a Fruishi from a Kiosk at the Japan pavilion.

So what is a Fruishi?   It is Sushi without the fish and has fruit in place of the fish.   It was delicious.

 And here are the ingredients from the menu.   No wonder it tasted so good.

It is made in the traditional sushi manner.

On your next trip to Epcot at Disney World be sure to have a Fruishi.   Has anyone heard of any place other than Disney that has Fruishi?   Have a great day.    Lew

Mutoscopes

When I was a very young lad I lived in Albany, New York.   It was a very long time ago.   I rode the trolley cars and the milkman.   Yeah, definitely a really long time ago.   There was a park in Albany called Washington Park.

 There was a lake with a large building called "The Boathouse".   You could rent a rowboat and have a relaxing trip on the lake.   No motor boats, just rowboats.

My dad and my brother in one of the rowboats.   My mom took the picture and I would have been sitting next to my mom

 

 The Boathouse was just cavernous inside, much like Grand Central Station.   There was a penny arcade inside the Boathouse.   They had a number of old Mutoscopes.  (I finally got around to the Muroscopes.  LOL!)

 

Remember these?   There was basically a whole bunch of pictures being flipped past a viewer.

 

My brother would provide me with a few pennies so that I could look at the "moving pictures".

So what brings all of these memories up?    I was at Disney World last week and they have a train station and a train that goes completely around the periphery of the Magic Kingdom.   It is a lot of fun to ride.

The interior of the Disney train station is large and spacious.

 

Much to my surprise there were quite a few Mutoscopes just like the ones in the Boathouse in Albany.   Can you see them?

I couldn't resist looking through the viewer and turning the crank.   They were just as I had remembered except they don't cost a penny.   They are free.

The pink mutoscope and the red one are pictures that I took at Disney World last week.

 

There is so much more to see at Disney besides the thrill roller coaster rides.   The Mutoscopes were a delight for me because it was a "blast from the past".    I wonder if the Mutoscopes are still there in the Boarhouse in Washington Park in Albany, New York.   If not, you can always see them at the train station in Disney World and it won't even cost a penny to see them.   Have a great day wherever you may be.