I got back to John Bryan State Park and checked in by about 5:00 PM. It was easy enough to find the site, not nearly as private as my previous night’s had been. That turned out to be a good thing.
As I pulled out my tarp, table, and water jug, I observed my nearest neighbor at work with his single burner camp stove and a good-sized, beautifully seasoned cast iron skillet. This turned out to be Ed Liddle, KE8ANU. I struck up a conversation with Ed over the similarity of our single burner stoves and their tendency to burn the whiskers off our faces. In a few moments, as we spoke, Ed was proving my point. He was grilling sausages. Some furious pumping got the flame back down.
At a certain point in my rambling chat with Ed, in which we tackled the obvious questions about our radio interest and progress along the ARRL heirarchy, (Ed’s got his General), he broke off abruptly and went wandering up the hill to interact with David. OK, so in terms of age, I’m the oldest (64) and I’d put Ed in about his mid-forties. He’s a big man, and his beard has some grey. Pretty sure the grey wasn’t sausage gravy, but the light was never good until the next morning. David (or Dave) was the youngster in the bunch, early 30s, or maybe late 20s. Dave is in good shape, buff even, and slight of build. A bantamweight. Just for the hell of it, I’ve lapsed into Dave’s way of speaking. I’m sure I’ll be drifting in and out of it, as I wax on in search of the flavor of the thing.
With this pair of fellows, I spent a very enjoyable evening.
Ed, post prandial, set about putting up a dipole antenna. First, he emerged from his SUV with a fishing rod. His line terminated in a swivel line and a sinker. He tossed the sinker surprisingly high up into a tree. The sinker worked its way down through the leafy branches with some finessing of the line. I took a step forward to help… But Ed was back at the SUV’s hatch door and brought forth a big spool of bright orange rope. Nylon twine, of some heft. This he tied to the lanyard, pocketing the sinker. He asked me if I knew how to tie a knot. I affirmed. The knot he was tying was a Boy Scout masterpiece that I could not name, but was overkill. It was not a bowline. It emerged later that Ed is indeed a scoutmaster. So up went the twine. To the end of the twine, I tied one end of the dipole, making a couple of half hitches, showing off my knot tying. Not to be totally outdone. Up it went, Ed swiftly cranking the reel on the rod, the dipole dangling its ladder line center point and its R-239 connector. Now emerged an one hundred foot spool of coax, grey in color, and quite flexible. And a second tree was similarly fished, threaded with rope, and the dipole was now completely pulled aloft. The rope, disposable, was cut and tied off with a pair of fancy snips. I myself did the snipping of the rope on the second tree. I pocketed the snips. From the SUV now emerged a rack with a pair of radios, an MFJ automatic antenna tuner, and a patch panel for the antennae, one labeled HF and one labeled VHF. Ed was going to be working HF, as only a General Class Licensee can really do. The VHF bands were all a-chirp with traffic from the ‘vention.
Meanwhile, David, up the hill was struggling to ignite his wet wood into a fire. He hopped into a red car and drove off in search of… lighter fluid and beer, it turned out. There was an interlude with chairs, beer, and talk. David accused me of looking like Hal Holbrook. A Mark Twain thread was initiated.
Interlude over. Radio time was proffered, but I demurred. I have the idea that I should begin with my own tribe at the Twin Cities Amateur Radio Club. I did not see any of them at the ‘vention, though I know many of them were there.
David was having trouble getting his fire going. It wasn’t so warm yet that a fire was a crazy idea. His wood was still wet from the storms. His boy scout juice was not really doing the job. I gave him 4 my monster fire starter sticks. I think they’re made of wax and nitro glycerin. (Not really, but whatever’s in ’em makes starting a fire with wet wood and no kindling pretty much a snap.) I was now on my second of David’s beers, so I felt like I should do something to contribute to the party.
Down the hill, with a mic to his face, Ed was deep in contacts on HF.
I stuck with David, and we covered a multitude of topics beside what had turned into a nice fire. Topics included: more on Twain, more on my past history, more on his past history. Women. My wife; his woman trouble. (He seems to have one too many. One of ’em lives in Iran. One of ’em was planning to show up later.) At long last, about four beers in, and a hit of vodka later, we steered out onto the rocky road of religion. He’s got one, and I… though I was raised in the fold, have gone wildly astray. Happy in the wilderness, I counseled that in my humble opinion, morality is a fluid thing. I’m not the one with more than one woman on the hook, after all. These are the works of our days, by the temple in the moonlight, wa-de-doo-dah. Dah-dit-Dah. (‘K, KD9NDJ is off to bed.)
The second night at John Bryan passed as the first one hadn’t, restfully, blissfully and dryly. In the morning, Ed was up, his gear stowed, his omelet on the single burner. Not to be outdone, I fired up my single burner, employed Ed’s trick to get it burning properly without flaming up too much, and I warmed some old coffee in a cheesy old frying pan from a decimated old cook kit. Breakfast of champions. And very soon, I had my table and water jug brushed off and stowed, my stove had cooled and went in the fire kit, the trash went in a trash bag, and the tarp got shaken out and put away. No sign of David. Still sleeping it off. No sign of woman there either. His single red car was the only vehicle on the site. Women know. They just do.
I exchanged info with Ed. As we were concluding the exchange of email addresses, a fellow from the Hamvention wandered up from a site below. He said he had been a vendor, so until recently, he hadn’t had a chance to ‘shop ’till he dropped.’ He had finally gotten that chance, and rarin’ to go, he went all in, shopping. He dropped almost instantly. We laughed, but I was not quite sure what he meant.
I got in the truck and went back to the Hamvention. I shopped until I dropped. I dropped all the money I felt I could afford; maybe about a hundred buck beyond that. I focused on the flea markets, and the vendors I’d scoped out the previous day. I took what I’d learned the night before form Ed and attempted, on the fly, to distill it into a shopping guide. I covered as much ground as I could.
The theme of the 2019 Hamvention, as a noted in my 1st post on the topic, was ‘mentoring.’ “Mentoring the next generation,” is the slogan as it appears on the patch I pocketed just inside the gates on day one. If my father was the previous generation, then yes, I’m next. If we are securing the love of radio for the future generations, I think we’re in good shape there too… My exam session had a gaggle of college aged aspirants to Technician Class licenses. There was plenty of mentoring going on, and in a money changing hands for goods manner, there was some stake in the lesson. I’m hoping, by the time the next Hamvention rolls around, that I will have been sufficiently Elmered to be actually on the air. Since I’ve been back, I’ve been close. But so far, no cigar.