What it took was:
- a bow and several arrows with buoys attached
- an outboard motor boat
- clear, shallow water with a white sand bottom -- so you could see the sharks and they were shallow enough to be hit with an arrow.
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Jim Lewis goes into the Army, and my work in WWII After WWII, I venture into fiberglass, Marrying Mike, and my heart problem Getting Dick Newpher to join me at Glastic
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I was asked to preside over the annual Fiberglass trade-group meetings which were sponsored by Owens Corning Glass. I did this for three or four years and I was awarded a fancy trophy which the group gave me for my dedication to this project. I still display this at home, along with other trophies I have garnered over the years. ***Roger was once Chairman of an IEEE convention of some sort, and very proud of it, but I don't have the details.***
Many companies began producing fiberglass products. I initiated the formation of an "Association of fiberglass-plastic companies". We met annually in various parts of the country and after the first year we arranged to have booths where we, and our competitors, could display our products for the benefit of potential customers. One of the attendees, Len Meyers, displayed fiberglass bows and arrows which he had created and was offering for sale. He also knew a fun way to use them: to shoot at sharks from a small outboard boat. I decided to give it a try, so we arranged a vacation to the Florida Keys, Millan came along. That trip was great fun and the following year Bill and I went off to the Florida Keys with my Fiberglas bow and arrows. We rented a small but sturdy outboard motor boat. We looked for sharks and we soon learned that they would sometimes seek food in shallow coastal waters. We figured out how to catch a shark with a bow and arrow. It was very exciting stuff.
My friends Bill Millan and Will O'reilly went with me on a trip via Mexico City to Turniffe Reef in Belize, South America. The plan was to go bow & arrow shark hunting. On the way we stopped in Cosumel and while there we hired a Spanish speaking boat owner to take us shark hunting. "Ya, OK, Five duler." was his response. We paid him and he took us out into the bay. He shut off his engine out there and he and dropped a heavy fishing line baited with a bit of ham." Very quickly he got a bite and he pulled ***note: story not finished***
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Shark hunting with a bow. (1960) Roger did this in various places, at
various times and with various people.
What it took was:
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Success on a different expedition. |
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Roger at 49. |
During the "Bratenahl bachelor boys"-days I got a dog, Bounder. As a puppy he loved to ride on our housekeeper's vacuum cleaner. I would take him along on my out of town business trips. When I called on a customer I would park at the curb on a side road and leave the curbside car door open and the dog free to nose around the area. If he wasn't at the car when I came back I only had to wait a bit for him to show up. I went on a vacation trip into Canada with a canoe, a tent, some fishing gear, and Bounder. He loved to chase horses and other animals. On this camping trip, he made a bad choice, and chased a porcupine. I got pliers out of my tool bag and spent the next hour or so pulling the quills out of Bounder's face. Each quill had to be pulled out with a pair of pliers because the quill had reverse prongs like a fish hook. If I was not careful and it broke off it would stay in the flesh and fester.
When I lived with Anne and the kids, we had a big boxer named Harvey, after the invisible rabbit in the play Harvey. He was a gentle dog, and the whole family loved him. He and Roger Jr. would sometimes wander off together, causing Mike no end of grief.
We had many pets as the kids grew up. Harvey, and usually two cats (one for each child). Harvey finally died. We buried him in the back yard, and Tom planted an oak sprout on his grave. The oak sprout thrived and is a full-fledged tree these days. Harvey was replaced by Dancer, a smallish female boxer, and later by Bunny and Shade, Toby's all-white German Shepherd.
At the South Park house I had a "crabarium" in which I kept hermit crabs. I first got interested with the concept of raising hermit crabs when we saw some during a family vacation to a New Jersey beach. I took some home, and they promptly died. It took me years to learn how to do it, but I finally got all the conditions right, and in my crabarium I had a place where I could keep medium- and large-size Bahamian hermit crabs alive for years at time. They would move around, and periodically change the shell they lived in. If you let them, they would get in the biggest shell they could find, and then hardly move around at all. To keep this from happening, I provided only smaller shells, and took out the bigger ones when their owners moved out. When they were in a too-small shell, the crabs stayed fairly active, and were much more interesting to watch. They were scavangers, and I fed them mostly lettice.
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A big Hermit Crab being tailed by a curious kitten, and watched over by a stuffed Hawaiian blow fish. (1965) |
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Plain Dealer article about Roger's Hermit Crab collection. (1965) |
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Jasmine and Joss see their new home for the first time. (1960) |
During our first years in Solon we had no pets. Then Roger Jr. came to visit us from his home in Salt Lake City. His house in Utah was inundated with cats and he brought us a gift of two male cats. Against Bonnie's wishes, Roger Sr. persuaded his wife to let them stay. These cats did provide company and entertainment. They were young and I trained them to respond to a bell when we wanted them to come to us, indoors or out, and also not to claw at our grass wall paper and to stay off our beds.
Bonnie's mother visited us occasionally. She loved cats. One day when she was visiting us she saw Cinnamon (a different cat) going up very close to a warm fire in our fireplace. Mother screamed. She hadn't realized that there was a screen across the front of the fireplace. Whenever Roger and Bonnie went off on a trip we put the cats in our basement, with a generous food supply and access to a "catrence." On returning from one of these trips Cinnamon wiggled and cried out when we picked her up. Something was very wrong and we took her to a vet. He kept her overnight and the next day he called to say she had died that night. He said she might have caught and eaten a mouse that had eaten the mouse poison which we used in the basement.
A year or two later I decided that we should have a dog. Bonnie said: "OK but the dog must not be too large or too small, must not be a hair shedder, and must not be too noisy. And we must agree to certain house rules beforehand." She spelled out and Roger agreed. He began a search for a suitable dog. A friend had seen an ad for an available dog from someone in Canada. We went to see it. The dog was friendly, attractive, and well trained. We bought it and brought it home, named it "Winsome Lady",
Roger thought Winsome ("Winnie") should have a buddy. He decided on a Giant Schnauzer. This breed is very bright. It is larger than the small standard Schnauzer but still less than 50 lbs. Roger wanted a young puppy so that he could get it properly trained So we went to a dog farm out in the country. They had a new litter of 12 tiny Schnauzer pups, six of each sex, and one became "Magnificent Lady."
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| Magnificent Lady |
We often took Winnie on our motorhome trips. Roger had made a platform which fit on the dashboard in front of the passenger seat for her. From there she could see almost all around. When we stopped at a traffic light or parked at a sidewalk on a busy city street, Winnie would enjoy watching the people walk by, and vice versa.
At home in Solon our Winnie loved to run through nearby woods chasing squirrels. They would tease her by running to a tree, climbing just high enough to be out of her reach and then chirp madly. One day Winnie cornered and caught a ground hog, which she proudly brought to us. Ugh!
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Jim Lewis goes into the Army, and my work in WWII After WWII, I venture into fiberglass, Marrying Mike, and my heart problem Getting Dick Newpher to join me at Glastic
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