Southern Living, 8th Grade Addendum

I must reserve the right to exercise my selective memory. Namely, I remembered something I forgot about my 8th grade year. In the 8th grade, I began to discover my DNA rooted LOVE for ELECTRONICS and all things electric. If you will remember, on the back of every comic book was an ad. Mostly to sell seeds, magazines, miracle salve or what have you. But one that caught my eye was an ad from The American Basic Science Club. Now the premise/promise of this was that every month you would send them $2.00 American and they would send you a kit of parts that would eventually end up as a working radio receiver! I BIT, hook, line and sinker. Every month I would cut grass, deliver papers or WHATEVER it took to come up with two bucks!
Well, as I remember the first month, they sent me a cheap compass, some hook-up wire, a magnet and instructions on how to wind the wire around the compass and pass the magnet thru the wire, to demonstrate a rudimentary generator! HOOKED, I was. I learned the basics of electrical generation, went to the library and checked out what books I could find on the subject and spent many happy hours playing with my compass and magnet!
Well, the next month, I got a cardboard chassis with a masonite top, some terminal strips, and more hookup wire, along with a soldering iron. Instructions attempted to teach me how to solder. I remember sitting at a table and using the soldering iron to melt and drip solder onto the wires.
My Mama came along and said to me,"You aren't doing that right!"
In my youthful wisdom, I looked at my Mama and said,"Just WHAT do you know about soldering?"
She said,"Move your butt over, and I'll SHOW you what I know about it!"
So, I did, she sat down and made one of the prettiest solder connections you ever saw!
In a more subdued voice, I asked, respectfully,"How'd you know how to do that?"
Well, as it turned out, in Greenwood, you remember where that is, after WW2, my Mama worked at a place there called Supreme Electronics. Later to be bought out by Hicok. Anyhow, my Mama's job was to solder wires onto tube sockets when they would come down the assembly line. Every once in a while, one of the sockets would be put in wrong. Mama went back up the line to see who the idiot was putting in the tube sockets wrong, and met my Daddy! Well, one thing led to another, and in July of 1947, along came lil old ME!
I have often thought about the fact that my Mama and Daddy were both working in electronics, got married and moved to other occupations, gave birth to me, who had had a torrid love affair with electronics ever since! Weird!
Anyhow, I continued with the American Basic Science Club all the way thru the 8th into the 9th grades. My radio DID work, first rattle outta the box, and if anybody ever got their money's worth out of the back of a comic book ad, I did!
Now, back to the 9th grade, I just wanted you to know how I fell in love with the electron!