Captain’s Log --- Star Date 07142009Location – West Omaha KOA Park, Gretna, Nebraska
Trip Miles – 3111.0
Diesel Price -- $2.41 per gallon; loaded 31.1 gallons
Report from Engineering – Trailer brake controller giving 5.H signal … don’t have the remotest clue what that means! Better have it checked, Captain!
Weather – Sunny; hot and humid! Daytime high of 95F! Sweat weather!
Things are getting strange here! I keep calling Edna (our navigation unit) “Sweetie” or “Darlin’” after she helps guide me through unfamiliar territory! The Commodore keeps looking at me with grave concern! I am afraid I’m morphing into a Borg – half-man, half-machine!
Butch Murray is a close friend I have known since I was five years old. He lives in Omaha and has worked at Father Flanagan’s Boys Town for 47 years…he knows every blade of grass in this beautiful place and has worked for every director except Father Flanagan himself! In a neat 900-square-foot house with one bathroom, Butch and his wife Marie raised five daughters and two sons. I was best man at Butch’s and Marie’s wedding here in ’63. Sadly, Marie passed away in 2003. Barbara and I had a memorable two-day visit with Butch and his brother Tim, who was visiting from San Jose, California. Fine dudes, these, and very congenial company indeed!
We all toured the immense Strategic Air & Space Museum over in Ashland, a few miles west of here. This wondrous facility displays an eerie SR-71 spy plane in the lobby and a vast collection of U.S. Air Force strategic aircraft, including a B-52 and the gigantic B-36 intercontinental bomber of the 1950’s. I reflected, with Butch and Tim, that these awesome machines were not designed with computers. Computers didn’t exist in anywhere near the form they do today! They were designed by teams of smart, creative engineers using slide rules. The Commodore walked ahead of us, taking lots of pictures.
Barbara and I had another cherished illusion SHATTERED! Any map will show that Council Bluffs, Iowa, lies just across the Missouri River from Omaha. You can even walk there by way of a sassy new suspension foot bridge. Now ain’t that COOL? Regarding Iowa as an utterly unsullied bastion of American righteousness, we were SHOCKED to see enormous CASINOS in the DOWNTOWN area! Holy KA-TOOTS! Sin has come to I-O-Way! We joined Butch and five of his descendants at the Horseshoe for dinner. It was a big, warm, generous family gathering! The slot machines ate us alive with no mercy. Tim fared much better… he won 172 bucks in Council-tucky, as he refers to this city!
Father Edward Flanagan, an immigrant from Ireland, founded Boy’s Town in 1917 as home for homeless boys who were literally sleeping in packing crates on the streets of Omaha. This very humble beginning started an inspiring facility that today serves boys and girls, some homeless and many who have suffered severe abuse. The art work by the students is awe-inspiring! Boy’s Town is in fact a separate city, containing world-class medical facilities and gorgeous buildings. Father Flanagan passed away in 1948; his tomb lies in the Catholic Chapel in Boy’s Town. Butch, a master tour guide here, gave us the Grand Tour!
Downtown Omaha is a neat place. Yes, Californians, there IS life east of the Colorado River! There is the lovely Heartland Park here and a lively Old Town full of shops and art galleries. On a park bench in Heartland Park, Barbara cell-chatted with our daughter Susan in Los Angeles. I gazed at the water and the bright summer sky. How glorious it all is!
Tomorrow, we venture deep into the Galaxy of Iowa.
Affectionately,
Captain Baldy
So how much did it cost Tim to "win" $172.00?
ReplyDeleteTransistors started showing up in avionics equipment in the form of simple logic circuits during the early 1950's. Digital computers just after that ... it all happened so quickly it seemed. At the time I was a bench technician repairing tactical radars for the Navy F-8 Crusader.