Think and Do - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Think and Do

School has started under Covid restrictions, a far cry from when I first started school in 1954. Back then there was no preschool or kindergarten. One just entered first grade cold turkey. Our class had 42 students under the tutelage of Miss Marie Quinlin, who happened to also have been my Dad’s first grade teacher. I’ve written about her in this previous blog-post.

She and most other elementary school teachers at the time used a series of books to teach reading called Think and Do. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about the series:

"Dick and Jane are the two main characters created by Zerna Sharp for a series of basic readers written by William S. Gray to teach children to read. The characters first appeared in the Elson-Gray Readers in 1930 and continued in a subsequent series of books through the final version in 1965. These readers were used in classrooms in the United States and in other English-speaking countries for nearly four decades, reaching the height of their popularity in the 1950s, when 80 percent of first-grade students in the United States used them. Although the Dick and Jane series of primers continued to be sold until 1973 and remained in use in some classrooms throughout the 1970s, they were replaced with other reading texts by the 1980s and gradually disappeared from school curricula. The Dick and Jane series were known for their simple narrative text and watercolor illustrations. Despite the criticisms of the stereotypical content that depicted white, middle-class Americans and the look-say method of teaching reading on which these readers are based, the characters of "Dick," "Jane," and their younger sister, "Sally," became household words. The Dick and Jane primers have also become icons of mid-century American culture and collectors' items."

Each daily reading lesson focused on just 5 new words, with lots of repetition on each, as the words of the day were put in stories about Dick and Jane, younger sister Sally, pets Spot and Puff and Sally’s Teddy bear, Tim.

The average English speaking person’s vocabulary is 20,000 words, so if you do the math, learning 5 new words a day makes sense:

5 words per day x 250 school days per year x 16 school years = 20,000 words!

The basic premise of the reading series was to help you think, then do, in that order. The message was very subtle but it must have sunk in for me, as my engineering training took the concept to another level via a Plan, Do, Check, Act process to solve problems.

Over the years I most enjoyed the Do portion of the process, where ideas could be tested to see if they work. The jargon at the time was Build ‘em and Bust ‘em. Today, many problems are addressed by computer modeling to supplement or replace building a prototype then testing it. Plus now artificial intelligence capabilities have improved to the extent that the entire PDCA process can be done virtually, allowing many engineers (and others) to successfully work remotely. The pandemic really accentuated this approach.

Virtual education has also become prevalent during this pandemic; but the effectiveness is still uncertain. No doubt it will improve, but the short term impact cannot be positive. I have several nieces who are dedicated teachers. Here’s hoping they stay safe and inspire their students like Miss Quinlan did for me.

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Million Dollar Combine - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Million Dollar Combine

Recently one of the Twitter accounts I follow is from a Ft. Loramie farmer who posted a photo of a new harvester priced at $1.2 million! It was recently introduced by John Deere and is called the Model X9. The farmer imagined what his local banker's reaction would be if he requested a million dollar loan to buy the combine! Let alone his banker, how about his wife?

The specs for this monster are impressive: 830 cubic inch fuel injected engine generating 690 HP, 330 gallon fuel tank, 460 bushel grain bin and a 45’ header that can harvest 100 tons of grain per day! Watch this video to see this huge combine in action.

And look at the comfortable cab in the X9 - nicer than my car!

Although John Deere didn’t invent the harvester, it sure has been mastered by the company. But Deere did invent the steel plow in 1837.

Here’s Deere's latest autonomous tiller.

Cyrus McCormack invented the first harvester in 1831.

Dad owned McCormack combines during his entire farming career spanning 1937-2001. His first was just like this one, a Model 62 that he used for custom combining. In other words, he would subcontract his services to area farmers who didn’t have a combine.

Later he had a model 42 like the one shown in this video.

And here’s a photo of him with his last combine a Model 74 when it was pulled out of the barn for the last time, after having been sold to Ken Luthman in Russia for restoration.

It’s really amazing how dramatic the transformation in farm equipment has evolved over the decades. As Tim the Toolman Taylor would say, “Aaeeuuhh”!

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Norden Bombsight - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Norden Bombsight

After watching a movie on TV one evening last week, I was surfing the channels and ran across a World War II documentary on the History Channel. The segment was about the tactics used to bomb German industrial sites from 1940-45. To avoid detection and loss of planes, the British chose to fly at night, but the bomb drops mostly missed their desired targets due to the lack of visibility and accurate targeting techniques. So they then went to a tactic called carpet bombing over industrial cities, which worked, but quickly depleted their limited bomb supply and mercilessly killed many civilians.

On the other hand, the American air force decided to bomb during the day, so they could take advantage of a new invention added to all the long range bombers called the Norden bombsight. I hadn’t heard that term for years, but recalled instantly after hearing the name during the History Channel segment when I first became aware of this mechanism as a kid visiting my uncle Hank in Dayton. Hank was an Air Force pilot during the war whom I had written about in this previous blogpost. He had a box of Air Force paraphernalia that we would play with, including goggles, gas masks, K ration cans, etc. One of the items was a lens from a Norden bombsight, which meant nothing to me at the time. But fast forward years later when I first moved to Dayton after high school, uncle Hank invited me to tour the Wright-Patterson Air Force Museum.

Seeing the planes while listening to his stories about each proved to be very interesting. One exhibit was a Norden bombsight that he explained in detail, which as a budding engineer intrigued me. Similarly, the History Channel segment also described how the Norden bombsight worked, which brought back these long lost memories from my child and young adulthood.

The Norden bombsight was said to be so accurate, it could land a bomb in a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet! For sure an exaggeration, but a Japanese prisoner of war naval officer provided the following story to somewhat validate the claim:

"At 1:27 while everyone on board was searching the sky for the B-17s that could be heard but not seen, six 300-pound bombs suddenly burst at split second intervals on the deck of the battleship, and it was at least 30 seconds later before someone spotted the B-17 at 12,000 feet.”

The bombsight was said to be the most complicated mechanical device ever created up to that point. It was somewhat automated, but still took a skilled operator to tweak the dials once a target was locked in. The device included a computer, which was mechanical, not electrical, to calculate the precise point where the bombs were to be dropped, based on factors such as air speed, altitude, weather conditions, wind speed, etc. It took many hours of training by the operator, who was precariously positioned within the glass enclosed nose of the plane.

Norden Bombsight Mounted in the Nose of a B17 Bomber

The Norden bombsight was invented by Carl Norden, a Dutch engineer educated in Switzerland who emigrated to the US in 1903. The Nazi’s stole the bombsight plans; however, their mechanism fortunately never worked as effectively for them as it did for the Americans. Check out this hilarious Hogan’s Heroes spoof about stealing the Norden bombsight plans.

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County Fair - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

County Fair

Since this year’s Shelby County Fair was unfortunately cancelled due to the virus, here’s an update on one of my first blog posts on the fair from August, 2015. I’m amazed how small the fair looks in the aerial photo compared to my memory as a kid!

It’s late summer and County Fair season. So many memories come to mind about the fairs while growing up, from the rides, cotton candy, livestock displays and midway games. Although I never won anything like a stuffed animal for a girl, it was fun and exciting to give it a go, especially when I was rewarded with a kiss behind the livestock barn for trying (no, they weren’t carnies!).

Many of my friends showed their livestock at the fair, so we literally stayed on the grounds for the entire week, sleeping on straw bales for a couple hours a night after a raucous day at the fair.

The Deloye’s always had the winning Holsteins, the Pleiman’s the best Ayrshires and the Joslin’s the top beef cattle and sheep. Here are some excerpts from the archives of the Sidney Daily News highlighting some of their accomplishments:

And during the ’63 fair, I distinctly recall walking from the fairgrounds downtown to the theater to see the movie Cleopatra staring Elizabeth Taylor! Memorable indeed for this budding teenager!

The rides at the fair were the best; in fact, a Guinness Book of Records for riding a ferris wheel was set during the 1964 fair.

A 15 year old kid named Chuck Rogers from Botkins rode the ferris wheel for 25 straight hours. Then low and behold, the very next week, a 16 year old Sidney girl named Patty Jones reset the record riding 40 hours at the Auglaise County Fair. No, I didn’t remember those names but did recall the event. Google helped me find the details from a Tuscaloosa newspaper article, as the story went “viral” in it’s day! And as shown in the photo below, there’s a museum in Hamtramck, Michigan that just might have a part of that old record-setting ferris wheel displayed.

Mom & Dad would always work at the Farm Bureau tent at the fair, as they were members of that organization dedicated to improving agricultural methods.

The neighbors surrounding our farm were all member of the same Farm Bureau Council, and several times a year, they would get together as couples to share farming best practices for an hour or so, then resort to playing cards for the rest of the night. The host couple would always pick up a jug of beer for the evening, plus they’d enjoy some sandwiches before the evening was over.

My brother and I had the bedroom right above the living room where the cards were played. With our bedroom heated indirectly through a vent on the living room ceiling (obviously not much heat made it to our room), we could readily hear every conversation going on below as if we were right in the room. At times, we could hardly contain our laughter to keep the grown-ups below from hearing us.

With the demise of the fair this year, my sister (pictured above with her daughter) couldn't show her prize-winning flowers like documented in this 2019 blogpost. But no doubt the flowers from her garden are going to good use in beautiful bouquets for family, friends and neighbors. She’s a blue ribbon winner in my book, Shelby County fair or not.

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