[4940]

Ditto for me seruzawa. When I was being born my father was in the midst of a 13 month stay in an iron lung, with polio, at Kaiser Permantente hospital in LA. We were broke and the March of Dimes charity paid for his stay. The MOD certainly knew how to manage funds better than Uncle Sam. BTW my dad, while forever after being a wheel chair bound paraplegic,went to a vocational school, became a gunsmith, went to night school, graduated high school 1 year after me, went back to night school, got an engineering degree, designed weapons and ammo feed systems for tanks, helicopters, and jet aircraft for divisions of Ford Motor company, Aero Jet General, General Dynamics, General Motors, and many others. By the time he retired he held thirteen patents for various weapons applications, including telescopic ammunition for better mass centralization in high speed feed systems for large caliber machine cannons. He made lots of money and paid HUGE taxes, as well as paying off the charities that helped him when he was down. Perhaps that's one of the reasons it galls my so bad when I see these people that have handicapped plates on their cars that get out and beat me into the supermarket!

Did I mention that I was proud of him? Van

 

[4940]

Yes he occasionally brought his work home. My favorite story was back in the late 60's when he was working for Areonutronics ( a division of Philco, Ford), he was pulled over in his red 59 El Camino with a XM140 (an experimental 30mm electric powered machine cannon) by the CHP for hauling goods without a commercial license plate (remember those?). He called the Captain of the CHP and got the ticket dismissed by claiming what he was hauling was a gun, which was sporting equipment, and therefore it was exempted from the commercial statute! To give you a glimpse of where I get my irreverence for government bureaucracy, When the Captain told my dad to mail in the ticket so that he could clear up any paperwork necessary in removing the charge, my dad's immediate response was " Do you mean every time that I’m harassed by the Highway Patrol it's going to cost me 10 cents for postage?" The Captain was so shocked that he just told dad he would handle it, and, not to worry about it!