Me and the Planet Mars

                                                  

On Saturday mornings in 1946, I would be sitting in the Ritz Movie Theater in Tuscaloosa watching as the hero of the “Serial” was saving the Earth from Martians who came to the Earth in  a rocket ship and allied themselves with earth’s criminal elements.  Surely this was far-fetched, but I knew that I would return week after week until I had seen every episode .  I could not put out of my young mind the thoughts that there were other worlds out there waiting to be explored; maybe with creatures either like us or strangely different.

*****************

In 1950 I was exploring the planet Mars as a warrior beside John Carter.  Suddenly a sharp tug on my arm brought me back to the din of the other 37 people on the school bus and my best friend, Maurice, saying “Why are you always reading those funny books?”   

Well, it was not a Funny-Book, it was a hard bound copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Dejah Thoris, A Princess  of Mars;  so my logical reaction was, “It’s not funny!”  

I tried to return to my alternate world but Maurice grabbed the book from my hands and began to read out-loud a vivid description of the Martian landscape and the beautiful warrior-princess, Dejah Thoris.  This elicited loud laughs and giggles from the other boys and girls on the bus and I became known for a while as the “Boy from Mars”.   

****************

On Thursday nights in 1951, I could be found sitting in our large over-stuffed maroon chair with my right arm wrapped around our new white-plastic radio while grasping the antenna coil on the back.  I listened to the radio in this strange position because that was the only way that I could receive the Birmingham station that carried the program entitled “DIMENSION - X”.  This program broadcast dramatizations of Science Fiction stories by various authors, including Ray Bradbury and his MARTIAN CHRONICLES.  I would sit there, my eyes often closed, oblivious to the world around me,  exploring the planet Mars with the rocket men from Earth or joining the fatalistic Martians' resistance to those invaders for the sky.

Copyright 2012© Willie E. Weaver 

You are welcome to post comments to My Blog.

An Airplane Crash

In January of 1942, my dad and I were about to leave the house to go to Papa Weaver’s country store in Peterson, Alabama when an announcement on the radio caused him to stop and listen.  I did not understand all the words from the radio but as a five year-old, I did comprehend that an airplane had crashed in Brookwood, Alabama.  This seemed to be the reason for the ambulance, with siren wailing, that had sped eastward past our house several minutes ago.  

    

As we drove to the store in silence, I remembered my toy airplane and remembered hearing airplanes fly over our house and anxiously scanning the sky to catch a glimpse of them.  I had been told that these small roaring and flying things are actually larger than my Dad’s  large coal truck and had men driving them in the air much like a truck being driven on the road.  The thought of flying like a bird above the trees and looking down on everything below often stirred my imagination, but the thought of falling out of the sky to crash on the ground sent chills down my spine.

As we got out of the car at Papa Weaver’s store, we heard the siren of the returning ambulance.  We stood and watched as it sped by taking the injured fliers to Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa.  I knew about that hospital because I had spent some time there with pneumonia last winter.  At the store, we learned that the airplane had crashed just behind my aunt’s house in Brookwood.  My Dad decided to go take a look at the crashed airplane.  As we drove the six miles to Brookwood, I again daydreamed about flying, but occasionally shuttered as I thought about crashing.

We parked in the driveway of my aunt’s house and Daddy told me to stay there while he went to look at the crashed airplane.  I was not very happy about staying but I went inside to find my cousin, who was the same age as me.   My aunt stayed on the porch talking to the people going back and forth to the crash site.  When I found my cousin, he was also unhappy about not being allowed to see the crashed airplane.  We decided to slip out the back door and sneak through the woods to see the crash.  

 When we got there, we saw dozens of people.  Some were just standing around talking, others were poking through the wreckage and taking pieces of the airplane for souvenirs.  We tried to get through the crowd to get souvenirs also but Daddy spotted us and had us come stay with him until he was ready to leave.

The next morning we heard on the radio that only one  of the men in the airplane had survived the crash.  So, that day, I learned that flying is not always safe, but I remained intrigued with flying.  Once, while looking at the full moon with my sister,  Mother explained that the moon was another world much like the earth.  She also told us the myth of the Man-In-The Moon.  This got me to thinking that maybe some day I could get on an airplane and visit that other world. 

Copyright 2012© Willie E. Weaver 

You are welcome to post comments to My Blog. 

Encounter With A Washing Machine Wringer

Even after all these years of association with the space program I am still amazed at the progress of technology during my life time, especially the progression from tube type electronics to micro-circuitry that has made such great changes in our ability to communicate and handle data.  I have observed that every new technology development comes with fears that it may be misused or present some sort of hazard to the populous.  

My first encounter with new technology and its danger came when our family acquired a wringer washing machine about the time I was just starting to walk.  The washing machine precipitated an incident that physically scarred me for life.  That incident is in my memory only because of its repeated telling by my mother and grandmother.  Apparently, the trauma of the event completely erased it from my conscious memory. 

   

Every Monday Mama Weaver would come over to our house to help Mother with the wash.  In our washroom was a wringer washing machine and two #3 galvanized wash tubs sitting on a bench beside it.  When the clothes had been sufficiently sloshed about and agitated in the machine, they would be taken out  of the washer and put through the wringer and dropped into a tub of clean water for  the first rinse; then the wringer head would be swung around to the other tub and the clothes would be put through the wringer into the  other tub for the second rinse.  Lastly, the clothes would be put through the wringer one last time and into a basket for carrying outside where they would be hung on the clothes lines to dry.  

Occasionally, as the garments were fed into the wringer, one of them would fail to drop into the tub and continue around one of the wringer rollers.  It only took a couple of extra turns for the thickness to build up and cause the safety mechanism to pop the two rollers apart and stop the wringing action.  After some tugging and prying the tangled garment would be removed, the mechanism reengaged and the wringing of clothes resumed.

One wash day I played and watched as the ladies did the wash.  My sister, Nancy, was helping by guiding the clothes into the rinse tubs.  However, no one was watching the little boy when he reached up to examine the pretty pink rubber rollers.  My screams and the “clunk” of the rollers popping apart quickly got their attention.  My left arm was stuck between the rollers up to the elbow as I hung suspended five inches off the floor.  For a moment everyone else joined me in screaming.  As Mother held me, somehow Mama Weaver  managed to extract my now red and swollen arm from the wringer.

Wash day came to a halt as the priority became to get me to the doctor for they were sure that my arm was crushed.  They wrapped my arm in one of the freshly washed towels from the basket and since Mama Weaver did not drive she held me in her arms as we sped the nine miles to the doctor’s office in Tuscaloosa.  My cries soon subsided to an occasional sob or whimper but Nancy cried most of the way about her little brother’s broken arm.

After an examination, the doctor assured them that my arm was not crushed but it was badly bruised and I had a deep wound on the underside  of my forearm where all the the layers of skin had been scraped away by the turning action of the rubber roller.  The healing process took a long time and many bandage changes and left me with a permanent scar about half the width of my arm. 
Copyright 2012© Willie E. Weaver  

An interesting follow-up to my Wringer Washing Machine Incident: 
Sixty-seven years after the original incident, I attended a meeting where our denominational president was speaking. He told about as a young man he worked in a factory making wringer washing machines. After the meeting I got the chance to speak with him. We exchanged names and greetings and then without saying another word, I rolled up my sleeve and showed him my scar. His immediate response was, " How old were you when the wringer grabbed you?"
Copyright 2016© Willie E. Weaver

You are welcome to post comments to My Blog.

An Airplane in the Tree

It was December of 1939 and for some time I had been fascinated by a tree containing  bright lights and tinsel that had somehow grown in the living room of our log house.  My sister told me that it is our “Christmas Tree” and that someone called “Sandy Claws” will put presents for us under it when Christmas comes.

I heard my daddy say “That boy sure likes that Christmas tree, doesn’t he?”    He picked me up and held me near the tree as he said “Hey boy, you won’t have to wait until morning for every thing.  Reach in there and get that Airplane.”  Sure enough, sitting in the branches of the tree amid the lights and tinsel was a cross shaped rubber toy . 

I reached out and took it in my hands.  He called it an airplane, but that did not mean anything to me, so I just held it and  chewed on it.  

After a bit, he said, “Come here boy, let me show you how to fly that airplane.”  He took it from me, and holding it high, moved around the room making a humming sound.  

I did not understand why, but now I knew how to play with an airplane.
Copyright 2012© Willie E. Weaver

You are welcome to post comments to My Blog.

The Log House

 I was born in Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  My parents had hoped that I would be the 1937 New Year’s baby but I was four days late.  They carried me home to our log house located in a rural setting nine miles east of Tuscaloosa near the small town of Peterson.  Now that structure was not a log cabin, but a log house and by all accounts one of the most modern houses in the area.  This is not an Abe Lincoln tale.  The house initially consisted of two bedrooms, a living  room, two fireplaces, kitchen, bathroom, a dirt floored basement for storage of canned fruits and vegetables, and a large front porch overlooking the Tuscaloosa-to-Birmingham highway across a large landscaped lawn.  

Before my memory, the kitchen was converted to a dining room and a larger kitchen, a washroom and a screened-in back porch were added.  That porch had large windows on two sides that were hinged to swing up and attach to hooks on the ceiling so that the breezes could blow through or  be lowered when the weather was too cool or too wet.  My Dad called it his “Sleeping Porch” and it was his preferred sleeping place.  The sleeping porch had beds for all of us and as long as the temperature permitted that was where we slept.  Without air conditioning it was great for the hot summer nights but really became quite chilly in the fall before my Dad decided it was time to move back to the regular bedrooms.

Our community was in the coal mining area of northeast Tuscaloosa County and my Dad was in the coal business.  For a while he operated a small coal mine but he had no patience or skill for managing a large work force and conflicts with the coal-miners union led him to give up on the mining operation.  He then turned to selling and delivering coal.  He supplied coal to a coal yard operated by my grandfather on University Boulevard near the current site of the Paul W. Bryant Museum.  He also had contracts to supply coal to the Partlow and Bryce Mental hospitals and to several businesses and school systems.

A contract with the Hale County school system took his trucks regularly to Greensboro, Alabama where he purchased pine logs.  Each returning truck would bring back a load of logs.  Those logs provided the basic material for the construction of a house for an uncle, my grandfather’s country store in Peterson, and our house.  Although we moved from our log home when I was five and my sister was almost eight, I have many memories connected with it.  My sister and I always longed to return to that house and down through the years, each time we would pass by it, we would say or think, “There’s our log house.”

Copyright 2012© Willie E. Weaver 

You are welcome to post comments to My Blog.