Little Pest

 By the summer of the year 1960 I was an inquisitive eleven year old boy who wanted to know everything about everything, as I guess most kids are at that age. I wanted to know how that engine could spin around so fast and make the car go. What makes the wood keep burning till it’s all gone but a little pile of ashes? How does the fan keep going like that all day? What makes the light bulb so bright? Electricity? Where does that come from? Why can’t I see it? What makes the refrigerator get so cold? Every answer I’d get just seemed to generate more questions, one of my brothers, RC, nicknamed me “The Question king”.

 I peppered my poor folks with so many questions, they’d get mad at me and tell me to go away and find somebody else to pester. It seemed I really did want to know about anything and everything.
 But most of all I wanted to know how all those people’s voices and so much music came out of that little box everybody called a radio. And I made it my main mission to find out!
 I asked my teachers at school. One of them told me I could get all the information I needed from the school library. Guess where the Question King wound up spending every minute when not absolutely required to be elsewhere!
 I learned so much from reading all those great books!  I read about how electricity is created and how it’s delivered and used. I learned about cars and engines and how they work. That little library was a gold mine for me!

My Own Radio

 My fascination with the box with voices and music didn’t end just because I read about radio waves and how they are transmitted through the air and received by an antenna attached to an amplifier. Oh, no! I went further and learned how to build my own little crystal radio. A very simple receiver made of some wire coiled around a paper tube with a metal rod (big nail) through the tube to adjust the tuning, and any old earphone for a speaker. This contraption attached to a wire fence gets great reception, even way out where we lived.