CAPTAIN BOWES LANDING ON ZWICKLAND

Captain Joseph Bowes of the Mossyrock Airlines has initiated commercial flights to the Zwickland Airport. As you can see, Captain Bowes was delighted with his excellent landing.

Captain Bowes flew from the airport at the Crossroads Country Ranch Airport to the Zwickland Airport in a record setting 1 hour 10 minutes. Of coarse the initial flight would be a record setting flight as there have been no other flights to compare the his flying time with.


Regular commercial flights to Zwickland will commence as soon as the Zwickland Airport personnel can determine how to get Captain Bowes’s aircraft into the air. It seems the Zwickland Airport runway is too short for a proper takeoff.


Press release by MELVIN ZWICK The editor of the Zwickland Islander Newspaper

GRANDSONS IN AFGHANISTAN OR IRAQ

Two of our Grandsons are in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Colby is on an air craft carrier.

Anthony is on a ship but going ashore most of the time. He is a combat medic.

Anthony was born back East. This is his first visit to our home. He took to me like we were old long lost friends. I had to be careful because he wanted to chew my sneakers.

This is Anthony somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq. He is a combat medic. He no longer chews on my sneakers.

ELECTRICITY LESSON

Hi Kyle,

A simple lesson in electricity brought to you by the great MELVIN ZWICK.


In order to be shocked one must make a good electrical connection between the electrical source and the ground. If one is wearing shoes the connection to the ground may not be there as the soles of the shoes act as isolators.


However if the ground is wet things might be a little different. If the electrical potential is great enough the electricity will jump the soles into the ground. That would not happen with normal house voltage but with lightening the electricity will jump the soles.
Now the lesson:


Electricity consists of two things.


Voltage and the current. The voltage is like the water pressure in a hose. The higher the pressure the greater chance it will break the hose. The higher the voltage the greater chance it will jump around an insulating thing like the sole of the shoe.


The current is like the flow of the water in the hose. The flow of current is what can kill one. Low current is not dangerous.


I am sure you have seen the spark between your finger and the door handle when you rub your feet on the carpet. This is static electricity. It is very high in voltage (power) but extremely low in current (flow). The voltage is great enough to jump across the soles of you shoes and jump the air gap between your finger and the door handle but the current is so low all you get is a slight shock.


If one is bare foot standing in wet ground the connection to ground is very good. Even small electrical potential will carry through the body into the feet then into the ground.


Electricity is measured in voltage. A normal battery might only have 1.5 volts. You can taste the voltage in a flashlight battery if you put the battery on you tongue. Do not put higher voltage on your tongue.


House voltage is 120 volts and can be pretty high in current. This is enough to kill you if your body makes a good contact to house voltage through your heart into ground. The electricity has to travel through you heart to kill you. The connection can be through you heart from one hand to the other hand. It is the current that kill a person. The low current in the static electricity in the shock you get from rubbing you feet on the carpet has no current. However if that amount of voltage had a high current (the amount of electricity that will flow) it could kill you.


You will get a very big shock if you touch ground and the house voltage through one hand only. For instance touching a live wire with one finger and ground with the other finger.


The electricity that supplies houses form the main source can be 440 volts or more. The voltage in the main lines from the generating station can be in the thousands of volts.


A fellow here was trying to get a cat down from a power pole. He touched the thousand volt line and a ground. The voltage knocked him down 30 feet to the ground. He died.


NEVER STAND IN WET GROUND WHEN YOU ARE FOOLING WITH A POWER CORD. IT IS NOT WISE TO STAND BAREFOOT AND TURN A LIGHT SWITCH ON OR OFF.


Well enough of the electricity lesson. Kyle it seems so simple when I explain it but I had a difficult time understanding it when in college. You can study electricity for years in college in things like computers to the transmission from the power plant to the lights in your house.
If you have any questions let me know.


And now another story from the great MELVIN ZWICK.


When Grandpa was at a cement plant in Hagerstown, Maryland he was about to test a circuit on a control panel he had designed. He was sitting on the floor underneath the shelf of the control panel and about to put a test probe on a wire in the panel. Now Grandpa did not like electricity and even though the voltage and the current on the wire was very low he was a little hesitant to touch the wire. At the same time Grandpa touched the wire the operators started the grinding mill in the next room. The grinding mill is a massive piece of equipment which shook the whole room when it started. At the sound of the mill starting Grandpa jumped up, hit his head on the shelf of the control panel and looked around the room like a deer looks at the headlights of the car that is about to hit it.


Everyone laughed at poor old Grandpa. After the laughing stopped Grandpa’s boss told the following story:


There was a young actor in New York who wanted very much to be on stage in a major theater production. He had tried for many years to reach his goal. He finally got a very small speaking part in a Civil War play. He was to be standing in a dance hall in a confederate uniform when there was a noise in the background. He was supposed to say, “Hark is that cannon fire I hear?” He practiced those words until he could say them in his sleep.
He was on stage opening night with all sorts of confidence. It was time for his part. Some one fired off a cannon back stage. He was so shocked by the sound he jumped around and said, “What the heck was that?”


From that time on Grandpa was known as the “What the heck was that guy?”


And so ends the “What the heck was that” story.

Grandpa

ONE SHOCKED DOG

ONE SHOCKED DOG

I received a post about a Kansas farm wife who called the local phone company to report her telephone failed to ring when her friends called - and that on the few occasions, when it did ring, her dog always moaned right before the phone rang.


It turned out that the dog was connected to the phone line with a metal leash. When a call came in the line would shock the dog which caused him howl and to wet which made a solid connection for the phone so it could ring.


This post about the dog being grounded to the phone line reminded me of something that happened to my little dog, Mike, when I was stationed in Ft Hood, Texas.


The housing in Kaleen, the city next to the Fort, was terrible. My wife and I finally had to buy a mobile home. Thats right. We were trailer trash for a while.


Now on with the story.


It had been raining during the night. In the morning I let our dog, Mike, out through the front door of the trailer. A very short time later I heard a yipe from my pouch. He was at the door shivering when I opened it an instant later. I looked around and could find nothing that might have caused him to yipe and shiver so I let him in and consoled him. There were no scratch marks on him so his actions were left a mystery.

The next morning it was still wet from rain when I let him out. This time I watched him as he left the door. He promptly went to the metal front jack of the mobile home and heisted his leg and let a out a squirt on it. He jumped about a foot in the air with a loud yipe as his water hit the jack. He was in my arms, shivering, in the next instant.

It seems the people who set up our mobile home did not properly ground our trailer. Poor Mike was making an electrical connection between our ungrounded trailer and the wet ground.


Mike never heisted his leg on the trailer jack again.


A little about Mike the dog.

Mike as a miniature Doberman who stood about 9 inches if he was on his tip toes. He would never chase a cat. There were several feral cats around out home when we moved to Phoenix.

The only way I could get Mike to do his doggy thing and chase the cats away was to throw him at them. He found it fun to chase after them for a very short time. Then he lost interest.

One time Mike was in the front yard chewing on a bone. He had his rump in the air and was on his front elbows as he nibbled on that savory bone.

One of the stray cats decided he was a standing target and ran at him. Mike just moved his rump out of the swing of the cat as the cat ran by. This went on for a couple of times until the cat gave up. Mike never missed one chew on his bone and never got popped by the cat.


We visited a lake near our home in Kaleen right after we got Mike. We were splashing in the water but Mike would have nothing to do with the Lake. I decided that Mike needed to get introduced to water so I picked him up and threw him in to the lake where the water came up to his belly. He just froze there like a bronze statue in the pose he had when he hit the water. all our calling did not get him to move. I finally picked him up and put him on the bank. He immediately ran back into the water.

One of his amazing tricks was to fetch the exact stone I would throw into the water. He would dive for it and always came up with the exact stone.

Grandpa