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HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SC. - I hate to admit it, but I have fallen prey to what everyone has always warned me about. I have been busier in my short retirement than I ever was when I was working. I told Sue the other day that I thought I needed to go back to work so I could get some rest.Rather than doing that, we're off for our annual vacation at the Disney Vacation Club in Hilton Head, SC. Please include your class year with your e-mails.
Last week I bored many of you with a very lengthy article about what I learned about interacting with people during the time I spent as a disc jockey. You might wonder why I went into the detail I did – especially on a subject which does not seem to have any connection at all to the memories of Lee High School. I have a reason and am now ready to tell you why.First I ask you to try to remember how I worked hard as a disc jockey to please people at the dances and parties by playing for them the songs they liked to listen and dance to. Now I need for you to substitute the concept of the publication of each week’s Traveller for the dance events or parties I described for which I was disc jockey. Now take it just one step farther and replace the concept of the music I played back then with the stories I write today and it might start making a little sense.Each week, all of you are invited to attend a dance which I host and I am the one who supplies and plays the music you hear. Often my stories are restricted by what is in my memories, just as my music was restricted to the songs I had in my collection. At the dances, many of you will dance to the music, and many more would rather just sit in the darkness and just listen to the music. That doesn’t mean that you don’t like the music that is being played, but you may just not like to participate or dance. Some folks can’t fast dance (and shouldn’t even try) so they wait until the slow songs are played before they participate. Others like the pace of the fast music, but don’t like the intimacy of dancing to the slow songs. There is no wrong or right to any of these ideas, but very few of you feel the same about every song that is played every week. And no one wants to hear the same song played week after week. Most love some level of a combination of songs.If you accept this comparison, then you will see that it takes a varied collection of music, played in a varied order to allow each person to get something they enjoy out of the dance. The participants are the ones that usually make requests. Even so, some participants are the ones that like to listen to the music but not dance. Others request songs to dance to, but may only like fast ones. Others go to a dance and come home sweaty from the fast dances and cuddled up to a partner picked up during the slow dances. Some rare times, some of you will walk up to the disc jockey and thank him for playing a requested song that has a particular memory associated with it. Others are often surprised when the melody of a song they had almost forgotten about fills the night air. That’s the way it has always been done.During the last couple of weeks I have played some songs that some people wanted to hear, and others disliked. It was never expected that everyone would have the same reaction to the same stories, just like people don’t have the same reaction to the same songs. But my job as the disc jockey/editor is to try to please as many people as I can and to try to work out enough variation in the materials offered to do that. I cannot just cater to the listeners and ignore the dancers. I can’t just play disco music and ignore the rock-and-roll or country music fans. I can try to play/write some favorite tunes/stories and hope that most of you will at least put up with what the others want to hear/read until I get back to something you like. Like a disc jockey who has a room full of people but gets no requests for songs, I am very, very often an editor with no input from any of my readers as to the subject matter that people want to read or share their memories about in the Traveller. During those times, I have to pick my own music/stories or the dance/paper will slowly die from lack of interest. I never know who will show up at the dance, but I must be prepared to entertain a crowd even if no one does. If there is only one person who participates, then if I offer a dance open to the public, I should be willing to accept my role to one or to 100. Just as I said last week, I loved the disc jockey gigs. I love doing the Traveller each week. If it was not fun for me or something I enjoyed, then why have I done it each week without a miss since 9/11? That’s over 400 issues that I have created at no cost to the readers. I do it because I have a calling to do it. I want each of you to feel welcome, and each of you to get what you expect to get out of your visit with me each week. I do take requests. I do take submissions. If you want the dance to be more fun, then please don’t just sit there and expect me to read your mind about what you want me to do. Just like the disc jockey job, I need requests and feedback to know if you’re having a good time. If not, then either I need to improve what I am doing or hang it up, or you might have to find another way to spend your Saturday nights instead of going to the dance. I hope that is not the case, because I enjoy this gig tremendously and would hate to give it up. 
(Editor's Note: This week I am starting a new series designed to help some of your Baby Boomers understand some of the new technology of today. The idea came to me one day to develop a presentation for the adults at my church who may have been left behind in the language used in the new generation's technology language. I hope some of you get something from it, and will send me some ideas of things you might like me to explain. The first one is something that we hear almost daily in the news.)
It didn’t take more than three billion nanoseconds for me to recognize that this week’s Mystery Photo showed a catalog from the Edmunds Scientific Corporation, an outfit that flourished primarily in the 1960s, when the country seemed full of budding scientists and engineers.Nowadays we would call the catalog a science geek’s wishbook; it offered all sorts of fascinating scientific materials and gadgets (prisms and super magnets, to name just two of the simpler items) at affordable prices. Magazines such as Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, and Popular Electronics encouraged a teen’s interest in technology and its applications. Carrying that enthusiasm further, the catalog provided easy access to a mail-order warehouse for assembling junior scientific projects of your own. (Isn’t that how Tom Swift started?) Of course, a lot of the gear ended up in the back of a closet or out in the garage. But it was fun and educational while it lasted.I can’t recall how a catalog ended up at my house (perhaps through my older brother, who was studying mechanical engineering at Auburn or through an advertisement in one of the aforementioned magazines), but I pored over quite a few of the catalogs with real interest.I never purchased any gizmos from Edmunds (though the big prisms were tempting), but I do remember that my younger brother, Gunter (Lee ’68), and I ordered some small clear plastic rods from them. At the time he and I were crazy about building model cars, the hot rods, funny cars, and dragsters manufactured by AMT, Revell, and Monogram. We used the rods as frame members and roll bars for some of our personal creations. Gunter, who went on to get a degree in industrial design, entered one of his customs (based on a ’40 Ford Coupe) in a model car contest at a Heart of Huntsville hobby shop. He won two trophies: Best Custom and Best Paint, I believe. He works for a company that makes NASCAR products now.
