[Hallicrafters] Join Halli Saturday Net

[Duane Fischer, W8DBF]

Hi All,

Please join us on Saturday November 17th for the HHI 40 meter
Net. Warm up that wonder that still goes glow in the dark and
drift onto the Net.

The Hallicrafters 40 meter Net runs from 12:30 PM EST until
2:00 PM EST. Or, 1730 - 1900 UTC.

The frequency is 7.280 MHZ LSB +/- for Key Clicks, Mike
Splatter andrumbling lamentations from the Net just below us
and the other Net just above us. Nothing like company, but
two is truly too much and three is a crowded shuttle bus for
the Dayton Ham Fest!

FYI: Remember the Halli W9WZE Special Event to be held on
Saturday December 8th and Sunday December 9th! We are
celebrating William Halligan's 1142th birthday! Said birthday
is actually on December 8, 1898, but we are also celebrating
on Sunday December 9th to give those farther away an
opportunity to participate on 20 meters.

I am retiring as the Sunday NCS, effective immediately, after
this Special Event. I will remain the Saturday NCS, along
with N8AZC, Mike Lopez, for another year. Perhaps more.

We also plan to reactivate the GGN - Global Glow Roundtable
Net on either Wednesday or Thursday evening. Probably on 40
meters. Stay tuned for times and frequencies!

We need a NCS! Interestede? Contact me!

Here is one of several Thanksgiving tales that I have penned
over the past two decades. I hope that you enjoy it! Believe
it or not, it actually contains some authentic historical
facts, as well as some of my infamous fibs twisted courtesy
of the 'Writers License'!




          Thanksgiving 1621: The Way It Really Was!


                                            Duane B. Fischer


     Can we believe the historical accounts about how it
really was on the first Thanksgiving?  The historians of that
era were not the best note takers.  These guys used the point
of a sharpened bird feather dipped in cranberry juice to
write on what ever was handy.  Finding all of the scribbled
accounts of a given event would be like going on an east
coast scavenger hunt to find the missing pieces of a jig saw
puzzle you bought at a yard sale and a tornado distributed
the pieces from New Hampshire to North Carolina!  Besides
these guys were all first cousins to the weather forecasters
and we all know just how accurate they are!  Here are a few
thoughts on how things might really have happened.

     colonial historians would have us believe that the first
Thanksgiving was a warm fun filled cook out in a cozy woods.
Yea, right!  The wind was screeching and howling like a dozen
chain saws ripping their way through a Christmas tree forest.
The snow was falling faster than girls pealing off clothes at
the annual stripper's "Bun Buster" convention.  It was so
cold that the creatures of the woods were wearing ear muffs
and mittens.  This was a crude clearing in a woods friends,
not a scenic pavilion in a National Park!  There were no
heated bathrooms with toilet paper and running water.  You
squatted behind a bush and hoped that the leaf you wiped your
butt with wasn't poison ivy!  The only running water came
from a stream and it was cold enough to give your goose bumps
frost bite!  But at least the ground wasn't littered with
cigarette butts, pull tabs and election year political
flyers!

     You couldn't stop at the local super market and buy an
already prepared Butterball turkey for dinner.  You didn't
just cook dinner then; you first had to find, grow or kill
it!  So the man took his trusty musket, or a hand hewn club
if he was short on balls, and went wild turkey hunting.

     They didn't have down filled hunting coats or thermal
underwear to keep them warm.  In fact, if you even owned
underwear you were considered upper class.  The secret to
hunting then was the patience to sit quietly and motionless
on a log and wait.  And wait.  And wait.  If you were
fortunate, you didn't get hypothermia and freeze into a tasty
dinner treat for the animals!  If you did get lucky and see a
turkey, you had one shot from the old musket to bag the bird.

     Kaboom!  Flames shot out the barrel and the wild gobbler
vanished in a cloud of feathers.  Mean while an acrid cloud
of smoke boiled out of the musket obscuring your vision and
the racket scared off every creature in the woods within
three square miles.  The blast blew you backwards off the log
smack into a briar filled thicket.  Once your ears stopped
ringing like Big Ben was inside your head, and you finally
stopped coughing from the sulphurous black powder fumes, you
slowly got to your feet.  It was time to look for a feather
trail and track down the bird.

     Now you might think it is easy to follow a feather trail
left by a thirty pound turkey.  Wrong!  The wind blew those
feathers away faster than the IRS disqualifies five martini
business lunch deductions.  There you stood with one eye lid
frozen shut from watering in a fifteen degree wind chill and
the other eye bloodshot from the noxious fumes.  Your right
shoulder was bruised from the musket recoil and was throbbing
like your head does on New Years morning after the Time's
Square party.  Your family's Thanksgiving dinner had just
disappeared like the damn French fur trader who got your
thirteen year old niece pregnant.
Besides that, you are getting really nasty abdominal cramps
from the cornmeal grits and bear livers that you had for
breakfast.  You had to take a dump, and like right now!

     You propped your muzzle loader against a tree, pulled
down your leather britches and hung your butt over a brush
pile.  You grunted, groaned and made animal noises as the
cornmeal rushed out of your butt faster than a flash flood
during a Spring thaw!  The sweat poured off your forehead as
a smile of relief spread over your face.  Just as you reached
for some dead leaves to wipe, a sharp pain ripped through the
left cheek of your butt.  You leaped quickly to your feet,
looked behind you and found the turkey.  The ball had only
grazed it, but the fumes from the cornmeal ... Well, it was
dead now!

     Home you went victorious with your turkey draped over
your shoulders like a sack of mail.  Other Pilgrims you
passed gave you the tomahawk chop sign Squanto taught them
and smiled.  You were proud, and rightly so.  After all it
was your first turkey.  The other three years of your married
life had featured Beaver ribs, spaghetti with squirrel sauce
and vegetable soup made with things your youngest daughter
collected on a field trip to the Virginia Colony.  You hadn't
been this happy since you found out that you weren't the
father of your wife's sisters twins!  You had enough choice
turkey feathers to afford to give some quill pens to the poor
this Christmas.  Hopefully somebody would teach them to write
so they could use them.

     You arrived home, plucked the bird and singed him over a
sputtering candle.  While your oldest boys dug up potatoes
and yams, you sharpened up your carving knife and gutted the
turkey.  Your middle daughter grabbed organ parts for the
giblet gravy and kept making little gagging noises while she
muttered "gross" under her breath.  The dog sat there licking
his chops and eyeing the turkey head hopefully.  You gave the
feet to your youngest son to wash up and save for back
scratchers.  Then you stacked up the kindling in the barbecue
pit, pushed in a live glowing coal and fanned the flames with
your hat.  Your youngest daughter carefully stuck in pieces
of wood to make the fire bigger, and complained about her
brothers sneaking into the girls bed and farting under the
quilt.  You ignored her and impaled the bird on the spit by
running your great grandfather's jousting sword through the
neck and out the butt.  You left her there to turn the spit
while you went to get rid of some more of that cornmeal.

     While the food cooked, the boys took turns seeing who
could kick a rotted acorn squash the farthest.  The girls got
jealous and started throwing butternut squash at the boys.
Before long there were more vegetables flying through the air
than you can find in the produce section of your local
supermarket.  Your wife fired a shot from the muzzle loader
into the air announcing dinner was ready.  People started
running from everywhere toward the table like fans at a rock
concert stampeding for the porta johns during intermission!
Plates were passed and you whacked off generous slices of
turkey with your hunting knife for each.  Grace was said and
everyone dug into the steaming bowls of food like starved
hogs at a slop trough!

     You were just finishing off your second helping of
mashed yams when you noticed the group of Indians outside
staring at your dog.  You got up and went to see what they
wanted.  They just stood there in silence and kept staring at
the dog.  Finally one turned to you and asked if you wanted
to trade the dog for ten pounds of cranberries.  You looked
at them, looked at the dog and back at them.  "Sure," you
said, "What the heck.  It's Thanksgiving and I certainly
can't eat the family dog, but I sure can eat cranberries."
The Indians smiled.  "Don't bet your musket flint on that,
pale face!", one chuckled. "They grill up real good. What you
say this one's name was, Rib Eye?"


Original: November 22, 2002


Duane Fischer, W8DBF - WPE8CXO
E-Mail: dfischer at usol.com
Hallicrafters web site: www.w9wze.net
HHRP web site: hhrp.w9wze.net