Francis Bacon Stuffs a Chicken

By training I am a physicist and a science historian. I found out late in my grad career that I just do not like writing long papers. Fortunately I found a community college that needed somebody with a varied past (checkered?). Anyway, the joy of the job is I get to tell stories in class.

Sir Francis Bacon was a renaissance lawyer, historian, and natural philosopher (I guess I should get a law degree). He is an important figure in the development of the experimental method. When Isaac Newton talked about standing on the shoulders of giants Francis Bacon was clearly one of the giants.

In March of 1626 Bacon went to market to get a chicken. It had snowed in London that day and there was a nice blanket of snow on the ground. Bacon had his driver take him to the market in his carriage. He was in bedclothes with a blanket (fur?). At the market vendors brought their wares to his window and he chose, among other things, a chicken. On the way home he was looking at the snow and wondered about the effect of freezing on meat decay.

He orders his driver to stop the carriage, jumps out, and stuffs the chicken with snow. Unfortunately, since he was ill dressed for the task, he caught a cold. The cold eventually becomes bronchitis and on April 9, 1626 Bacon passes away at the age of 65.

As a side note, in 1601 Lord Essex and cohorts hatched a plain to kidnap Queen Elizabeth. The plot is uncovered and Bacon successfully prosecutes Lord Essex for his part in the plot.

I owe my life to a censor

By the way, these stories are as they were told at my parents 50th wedding aniversary (they have now been married 58 years).

When my dad was at Los ALamos all of his mail (both incoming and outgoing) was censored. Everybody's mail address was a PO Box in Santa Fe (1663?). The method of censorship was cutting the offending words or lines out, so some letters looked like swiss cheese.

My dad had two girlfriends at the time and was corresponding with both. Every week or so he sent each a letter. One day he got his two most recent letters back from the censor with a note asking if he had put the right letters in the right envelopes. He hadn't. So he switched the letters and sent them along. We are all pretty much convinced that if mom knew he had a second girlfriend she would have dropped him in a second.

So here is a libertarian thanks to a goverment censor.

Some serve who never fought

My father served in the US Navy in World War II but never saw combat. Never the less his story is rather interesting. He did his undergraduate work (before the war) at the University of Colorado and as a senior he worked for an engineering professor on an early proto-type radar. That made him one of few people on the planet that understood radar. After graduating he went to work for Westinghouse in Boston.

When the war started he was exempt from the draft as he was in a critical industry. In late 1943 an army officer showed up at his door and told him that his exempt status was being dropped and in addition in 2 months his number WAS going to be drawn in the draft lottery. Wouldn't my dad rather be an officer in the service of his choice?

Dad joined the navy. He spent the next several months in boot and then in officer training. I always thought it funny that the training included spending 8 weeks learning to sail a small sailboat and ettiquete. Here the war is at its peak and dad is catching wind in the Chesapeake. But I guess I should thank the navy for the times in the Carribean and South Pacific.

He finally was sent back to Boston to continue work on the radar and to await orders. In late 1944 he got his orders to go to Chicago and then catch a specific train to San Diego. He thought he was going to be a radar officer on aPB4Y (long range 4 engine recon float plane) that was being fit there.

When he got to Chicago he showed his orders to a WAC officer and she took him to his train. The scene was the usual, guys on the train saying good bye out the windows to parents, wives and girlfriends. The WAC took my dad to a car the was a bit different then the others. All the windows were closed and the windows were painted black. When he boarded the train he was assigned a seat and was told not to talk to anybody else. There was over a dozens guys in the car all looking at each other wondering what was going on. My dad and his companions road this way for about 36 hours when the train slowed to a stop. A sargeant came into the car and pointed about 6 people, including my dad, and told them to get off the train. So my dad and his companions found himself literally in the middle of nowhere at 1 AM. All that was there was a boarded up building and a train platform. As they stood there the train left. About two hours later they spotted something with blackout lights approaching them in the distance. It was a bus with blackened windows and a thick black curtain between the diver and passengers.

They got on the bus and after two hours they were deposited at the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He recognized it as the Hotel starred in dozens of nickel westerns in the thirties. The next day they where told to cross the plaza go up Palace road to a doorway. They went threw the door and were escorted to the bus in waiting at the back door. Three dusty hours later my dad was working on the Manhattan project in Los Alamos.

First post

This will be an infrequently used blog. I have many things I would like to talk about, but frankly I have never enjoyed writing.