Hawk Bait 1

Greetings, All – What strangely benign weather we have had hereabouts considering that it is December and we are slap up against 2012.  The blizzards of last year are not forgotten.  In fact, right at this moment, they may be laying plans for a comeback for all I know.  Since I was a farmer for a while when I was a youth, it is not in my nature to count chickens, not only before they hatch, but before they are in my pot, not some fox’s.

On a personal note, my dear, departed brother and I, when we were little kids, used to lie in bed considering various earth-shaking propositions.  One that we liked a lot was to compute our respective ages in the year 2000.  Back in the Thirties, as they later said in China, that was “a great leap forward.”  Well, here I am, more than three score and ten years on.  I am happy to report that both of us passed the millennial milestone upright as did our sister.  We missed our little brother who did not make it.

One of our readers, after checking out the exploits of Wayne Keith, the wood-to-speed inventor and mechanic I told you about, shifted a bit out of gear, but staying on the topic of “energy,” asked how we kept warm on chilly to downright cold days in South Florida.  Before you start laughing, I will remind you that one frosty night in 1940, fortunate people left their lawn irrigation systems on to find a magnificent forest of icicles, some as long as three or four feet, hanging from palm fronds the next morning.  Everyone was out in street oohing and ahing since we had only seen ice after hail storms or when blocks were delivered to our iceboxes, carried by strong men holding large tongs.

Clearly, we needed a source of heat in our “CBS” (concrete block and stucco) houses.  That was usually supplied by a fire place.  My brother and I collected wood from deadfalls during fine weather and split and stacked it in the garage.  My Dad built a fire on cold mornings, then awakened us.  Still in our pajamas, we ran into the living room and dressed before the roaring fire that consumed quantities of fat Dade County pine.  Unheated school houses were closed at temperatures below fifty degrees Farenheit.

One more related energy matter, then I’ll let you go.  On our roof, there was a wooden frame about the size of a couple of doors set end to end.  Supported by a metal frame, one long side was just above the roof and the other raised to create about a thirty-degree angle with the roof line.  Coils of copper pipe were mounted on black tar paper laid out on the upper surface.  It was covered by glass panes containing reinforcing “chicken wire.”

Water from the public supply passed through the pipes of the “Solar System” then into a tank in a closet near the kitchen.  The tank was equipped with a small kerosene heater that Dad lighted a few times a year to counter a siege of inclement weather.  The system was fairly reliable. Not bad technology for pushing a century ago!

Best wishes, Billy