What Gave You A Love For Reading Books If You Have?

[Mrs.Cicero]

5 minutes ago, Walt Longmire said:

I don't remember color coded reading. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, I just don't remember it. We had a speed reading machine. It could be set up a lot of different ways. We had tests. I made it higher than anyone else in the class except for one other guy, but when it came time for the comprehension test, I beat him. Also I took typing. On MANUAL machines. I could do 95 words a minute on those ancient machines. I asked the teacher if I could practice for a few days on one of the electrics since I was certain I could break 100. (we had 2 electric typewriters in the class and only the girls were allowed to use them) Teacher said no because it was unlikely I was going to need typing skills like the girls would. 

Ha.  At least I learned to type on an electric typewriter in high school.  So I'm not THAT old! ?

[janice6]

2 hours ago, Walt Longmire said:

I don't remember color coded reading. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, I just don't remember it. We had a speed reading machine. It could be set up a lot of different ways. We had tests. I made it higher than anyone else in the class except for one other guy, but when it came time for the comprehension test, I beat him. Also I took typing. On MANUAL machines. I could do 95 words a minute on those ancient machines. I asked the teacher if I could practice for a few days on one of the electrics since I was certain I could break 100. (we had 2 electric typewriters in the class and only the girls were allowed to use them) Teacher said no because it was unlikely I was going to need typing skills like the girls would. 

Since I had been a Ham operator from my early days, I saw typing as simply a fast means of copying code.  So I took typing in high school.  I did fine.

Then I went into the Navy as a Radio Operator, and all code was copied on a typewriter then transposed onto formal message forms.

However, the Navy destroyed some of my typing skills, since the Radio Operator's typewriters had only upper case letters!

[tadbart]

3 hours ago, Mrs.Cicero said:

When they say math is like a language, they just mean math is like grammar.  The only explanation for mathematical functions that ever made any sense to me was the day somebody told me a function was just a mathematical "if-then clause".  That analogy would have made the Finite Mathematical Models textbook a hell of a lot easier for me to understand.  After that explanation, I realized languages like Polish with its cases and inflectional endings were algebraic, but English was geometric.  That's the point at which my fellow language majors who hated math told me to shut up and have another whiskey.  I don't like my math adulterated with Greek letters.  Except pi.  I like pi.  I don't like my whiskey adulterated either.  Except with honey when I'm sick.  Like now.  I'm going to have another.

Lol! Not a fan of conjugation in the past or future tenses in Spanish. And quite frankly, I'm not smart enough to learn Greek, Cyrillic, or the cat puke languages. Now, we can DEFINITELY agree about the whiskey! Cheers, and feel better!

[tadbart]

4 hours ago, Walt Longmire said:

I don't remember color coded reading. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, I just don't remember it. We had a speed reading machine. It could be set up a lot of different ways. We had tests. I made it higher than anyone else in the class except for one other guy, but when it came time for the comprehension test, I beat him. Also I took typing. On MANUAL machines. I could do 95 words a minute on those ancient machines. I asked the teacher if I could practice for a few days on one of the electrics since I was certain I could break 100. (we had 2 electric typewriters in the class and only the girls were allowed to use them) Teacher said no because it was unlikely I was going to need typing skills like the girls would. 

Yeah, well, how many of them girls can drive a Kenworth? You can type AND operate heavy equipment. Not to mention provide a freezer full of meat every year.

The heck with the teacher, and that electric typewriter!

[Walt Longmire]

4 hours ago, janice6 said:

Since I had been a Ham operator from my early days, I saw typing as simply a fast means of copying code.  So I took typing in high school.  I did fine.

Then I went into the Navy as a Radio Operator, and all code was copied on a typewriter then transposed onto formal message forms.

However, the Navy destroyed some of my typing skills, since the Radio Operator's typewriters had only upper case letters!

The summer I was 17 I was a dispatcher for a Wa. state DNR forest fire fighting district. All the radio talk was logged by hand in a book. No shorthand. Used 10 code, 2 code, and another I have forgotten now. Radio call signs of 2 of my 3 radios. KCU802 and KF9695. 10-7 for the night.

[Historian]

12 hours ago, janice6 said:

Since I had been a Ham operator from my early days, I saw typing as simply a fast means of copying code.  So I took typing in high school.  I did fine.

Then I went into the Navy as a Radio Operator, and all code was copied on a typewriter then transposed onto formal message forms.

However, the Navy destroyed some of my typing skills, since the Radio Operator's typewriters had only upper case letters!

 

7 hours ago, Walt Longmire said:

The summer I was 17 I was a dispatcher for a Wa. state DNR forest fire fighting district. All the radio talk was logged by hand in a book. No shorthand. Used 10 code, 2 code, and another I have forgotten now. Radio call signs of 2 of my 3 radios. KCU802 and KF9695. 10-7 for the night.

Those types of forms destroyed my lovely cursive writing by replacing it with block letters.   A victim of government employment.

 

[Walt Longmire]

11 hours ago, Walt Longmire said:

The summer I was 17 I was a dispatcher for a Wa. state DNR forest fire fighting district. All the radio talk was logged by hand in a book. No shorthand. Used 10 code, 2 code, and another I have forgotten now. Radio call signs of 2 of my 3 radios. KCU802 and KF9695. 10-7 for the night.

They wanted someone in the office in the evenings until 9:30pm so I was picked to come in early afternoon. First thing was taking readings from our weather station. Temp, humidity, wind direction and speed, cloud cover, dew point, fuel moisture stick weighed, etc. Do the math on the weather observations and come up with a burning index. Then contact our lookout towers for an update, and weather reports. Call my weather reports in up the chain. Later would get a forecast back that I had to relay to others. Had some time in the later part of the afternoon so I would go out in the shop and sharpen tools and other tasks. At 5 the secretary/receptionist left and the office was all mine. Answered phones, dealt with any members of the public that stopped in, monitored the radios. Had a couple over flights by pilots looking for smoke/fires. They checked in on the radio when the entered our air space and again when they left. One of the pilots was female, and sometimes we chatted a little more than we were supposed to. Occasionally we would have a fire and all hell would break loose. Secretary would usually return to help out. I would call out our crew, and either call out our sub district, or put them on standby. Call any loggers working in the area. Radios would be going non-stop. Phone ringing, people coming and going. The area we covered included where our family logging operation was working at so sometimes my contact list included my dad.  I was also part of the Helitac crew. The first one in the state. Lots of times I ended up on these fires and didn't get back to camp for days at a time. I always kept a carton or 2 of smokes at our barracks, and if I had a chance before heading out on a fire, I'd grab them. Made good money selling to guys who ran out. The Honor Camp fellows (criminals, basically chain gang without the chains) could be difficult but I always got paid. They were older than us. Fun times for a youth of 16 or 17. 

My past here is a part of how I got the nickname "Smoke" all those years ago. It was given to my by our all Indian rigging crew when I was logging with my dad a couple years after the DNR gig.

[DrB]

Came across this today.  It was one of my Father's boyhood books and passed on to me when I was a young boy.  No date when was published that I can find.

Tonight I will be mixing up a drink, reading this and going on a boyhood adventure again...  Simple things in life......

Dave

 

[janice6]

2 hours ago, DrB said:

Came across this today.  It was one of my Father's boyhood books and passed on to me when I was a young boy.  No date when was published that I can find.

Tonight I will be mixing up a drink, reading this and going on a boyhood adventure again...  Simple things in life......

Dave

 

The earliest fiction book I remember reading was called, "The Red Planet Mars", or just, The Red planet".  Otherwise I spent most of my early reading looking stuff up.

[railfancwb]

I don't remember color coded reading. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, I just don't remember it. We had a speed reading machine. It could be set up a lot of different ways. We had tests. I made it higher than anyone else in the class except for one other guy, but when it came time for the comprehension test, I beat him. Also I took typing. On MANUAL machines. I could do 95 words a minute on those ancient machines. I asked the teacher if I could practice for a few days on one of the electrics since I was certain I could break 100. (we had 2 electric typewriters in the class and only the girls were allowed to use them) Teacher said no because it was unlikely I was going to need typing skills like the girls would. 

You might not have been able to break 100 on an electric machine. Their maximum speed was limited by the motor/gear/lever cycle.

Back in the B&W 30 minute program era of TV there were several quiz programs. What’s My Line and I’ve Got a Secret were a couple. One or both periodically had speed typists record setters. Think they were all male and I know all used mechanical typewriters.


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[DrB]

On 12/28/2019 at 7:32 PM, Mrs.Cicero said:

Ha.  At least I learned to type on an electric typewriter in high school.  So I'm not THAT old! ?

We had Manual typewriters that I learned on in high school.  I am that old...

Mrs. Bruning taught the class..  I still remember the first day typing... FFF space JJJ space.... repeat three times with a carriage return.

Dave..

[tous]

On 12/28/2019 at 6:32 PM, Mrs.Cicero said:

Ha.  At least I learned to type on an electric typewriter in high school.  So I'm not THAT old! ?

We had stone tablets and chisels.

[DrB]

20 minutes ago, DrB said:

We had Manual typewriters that I learned on in high school.  I am that old...

Mrs. Bruning taught the class..  I still remember the first day typing... FFF space JJJ space.... repeat three times with a carriage return.

Dave..

Oh I forgot... Our typewriters were Remington's so I thought I was signing up for a rifle class when I read the course outline.  I was wrong...

[janice6]

3 hours ago, tous said:

We had stone tablets and chisels.

But the chisels were also stone.  That was a loooooooooong time ago!

[Walt Longmire]

I'm not sure what was older. Mrs Garber, or the machines.

[janice6]

On 12/28/2019 at 4:08 PM, Mrs.Cicero said:

ROFL.  I am now an old geezer?  My mother was a teacher.  We had the entire SRA crate in the basement.  I read them all one summer.  I wonder whatever happened to that?

Must have been after me.  I never heard o this technique.

[janice6]

On 12/22/2019 at 5:07 PM, DrB said:

The Tesla Coil we had was over 8 ft. tall on the small winding tower. Don't know how  many miles of enameled Magnetic Wire it had in the tower.    The bottom with the heavy coiled wire was probably over 4 feet.  Thing was huge and would dim the lights in that portion of the building when we fired it up.  

Was in Mr. Bitters Lab.  He could of passed as Einstein.  Small man white hair and always wore the same suits.  Told us he had 7 or so identical so he could always have one or two at the dry cleaners and still have one to wear.  Made choosing clothes easy in the morning.  Yes, he had the messy white hair also.

We got to play with some of the things he built.  I still remember the fluorescent lights glowing in waves in the hallways when we fired it up.  Strange things happened to radio waves as well.

Sad he died before we could learn more from him...

Dave..

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of Fluorescent tubes.  I used to have a 40 Watt tube simply attached to the wall in the garage.  When I went to work in the morning I would hit the key on the 180 Watt VHF transmitter in the truck, and if the light lit, I knew the radios were working.

I kept an 8 Watt Fluorescent tube with my tools.  I could simply hold it near a spark plug, and if it lit each time the plug was suppose to fire, I knew that plug was ok.  With a bad plug or wire the lamp wouldn't light.  It saved me a lot of time troubleshooting.

[Historian]

On 12/31/2019 at 6:08 PM, DrB said:

Came across this today.  It was one of my Father's boyhood books and passed on to me when I was a young boy.  No date when was published that I can find.

Tonight I will be mixing up a drink, reading this and going on a boyhood adventure again...  Simple things in life......

Dave

 

 

Unless it was strangely a second printing:

Publisher: M. A. Donohue & Co.; First Edition edition (1923)

[DrB]

Anybody here like me go to "Project Gutenberg" and look around for the books there?  Cool place...

Dave..

[norton]

On ‎12‎/‎20‎/‎2019 at 8:46 PM, tous said:

Like you, I inhaled every Hardy Boys book I could get my hands on, along with Tom Swift.

I even read my sister's Nancy Drew books.

As I grew, so did my reading.  I went to White Fang and other Jack London adventures to C.S. Forrester and then -- I found science fiction.

I still read, on average, two fiction books a week.

My shelves look like a used book store.

 

 

When I was in grade school I was reading a Nancy Drew Mystery.  A little geeky girl in my class saw me and said "I read Nancy Drew too".  I was appalled and immediately switched to the Hardy Boys.  My parents would buy me the books, iirc they were $1 each in hardback.  I had quite a collection of them.  I moved on to other books and eventually read only non fiction. 

Particularly enjoy books on U.S. History, true crime books.  Just finished a book about Jody Arias.  Am now working on "The Greatest Fury", a history of the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. 

[tous]

It is interesting that Franklin Dixon and Carolyn Keene didn't exist.

They were the catch-all pseudonym of several authors that churned out the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew books.

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by tous

[railfancwb]

It is interesting that Franklin Dixon and Carolyn Keene didn't exist.
They were the catch-all pseudonym of several authors that churned out the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew books.
 

I read an autobiography by one of the Franklin Dixon players. Interesting.


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[Walt Longmire]

My s.i.l. is an author of a pile of books. She writes for Harlequin Heartfelt series. Not the smutty romance series. I told her if she wanted to write one for the romance series, I could help her with the smutty parts.

[janice6]

4 hours ago, Walt Longmire said:

My s.i.l. is an author of a pile of books. She writes for Harlequin Heartfelt series. Not the smutty romance series. I told her if she wanted to write one for the romance series, I could help her with the smutty parts.

Smut is a male specialty!

[railfancwb]

I read an autobiography by one of the Franklin Dixon players. Interesting.


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Looked it up. The most expensive of several copies noted. Mid/upper two digits more realistic prices.



He wrote the first twenty or so Hardy Boys titles.

My son read the copies I had from the 1940s while growing up, then bought modern printings for his children. He said the modern printings were extremely simplified.


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