[PVRCNC] N0AX "confession"

[Roberts, Will]

Here's a great piece of N0AX ham prose from the Rate Sheet in case you
missed it:

I Confess...
This is difficult, but I must make a confession. This summer we moved
and 18 years worth of Stuff made its way through various outbuildings,
storage garages, trailers, station wagons, hand carts, grocery bags, and
shoe boxes. During this period that we call "The Great Insanity," it was
not always easy to make the right choice. There were times at which
incarceration seemed attractive. An 8-by-12 cell with three meals a day
and no Stuff can look good at stressful moments. Occasionally the wisest
course seemed to be the casting of Stuff down into the ravines full of
sticker bushes. It would be centuries before anyone noticed. But these
false choices were resisted successfully and I labored on. Moving this
much Stuff does have its benefits. Muscles are toned up and you find out
all of the ways in which it is possible for you to stress your back.
Small injuries, such as cuts from which the blood does not actually gush
and stubbed toes that remain at least partially attached to a foot, can
be ignored if one also happens to be carrying two boxes of books and
some kitchen implements in a finely tuned and balanced stack. The zen of
exhaustion is, well, zen. One discovers that radio parts, carefully
packed, approach the density of collapsed nucleii. So this is what
pulsars are made of - transformers! A batch of aluminum tubing or
antenna parts, tightly secured only moments ago will suddenly shift and
come completely and spontaneously apart on being picked up one-handed.
Larger tubes will tilt forward in such a way that one end will dig
solidly into the dirt and the other into the most tender regions of the
body. But all this is simply the normal lot of one who decides to
abandon one cave in favor of another. Cave dwellers no doubt told the
same stories around the campfires of the Stone Age, although probably
not on the Web. Probably just by text email read by PINE, but I digress.
Who knows what they used in place of Advil? No, my transgressions
exceeded these simple conundra and vexations. They strike to the very
core of what it means to be a ham. Even the most grizzled and
hard-bitten veteran of many moving days will shudder in revulsion as my
story is told. There I was, surrounded by a pile of Stuff stretching
back into yesteryear, not unlike the Dayton dumpsters on Sunday
afternoon. 
In a moment of weakness I...it's hard to say, even now...I...yes, I
broke down and I... I THREW AWAY AN ORIGINAL SHIPPING CARTON!!!! Yes,
with the original plastic bags and even wire ties that kept the cables
all coiled up! The formed styrofoam packing! The warranty expired since
the first Reagan administration! The odd little cardboard boxes that
held parts and pieces! All gone! I even broke the box down flat for the
recycling bin. The crunching haunts me. And not just once, oh no, three
or four or even a dozen times! Little boxes, big boxes - once I started
there was no stopping. Icom, Ten-Tec, Yaesu, Radio Shack, even a
venerable and sacred, if waterstained and rodent-chewed, Heathkit box! I
was mad, simply mad, with the feverish desire to Be Done With It! We all
will have our days of sorrowful behavior...you now see mine. My pile of
Stuff is the smaller for it, but I will never be able to claim the
original shipping boxes in a For Sale ad. I hope it won't damage our
special relationship or cause you to pass up my CQ in disgust My shame
is complete. Let this be a lesson to you as my pile of Stuff is seven
times as big as yours, Jacob...no, wait, that's a different story, one
about the time of year when boxes appear out of the night. Halloween,
perhaps? 73, Ward N0AX 


Will Roberts, P.E.
Progress Energy
Wireless Network Engineering
100 E. Davie Street / TPP 14
Raleigh, NC 27601
(919) 546-2679