Missileman by John Clauson

Author:John Clauson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WND Books

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Dad continued to find solace in his garage and in the routine established at home. Among other devices, he created a color-changing, “home built” laser beam during those years, a remarkable feat considering no laser worked before 1961. I walked into the garage one day as he was testing out his latest adaptation; he had toned down the intensity so that the laser now worked as a laser pointer. As he put his hand in front of the light, he said, “Johnny, this technology is going to change everything.” It did. It changed all sorts of medical technologies and weapons technologies. A low-intensity laser could be helpful during meetings and presentations. A strong laser beam could vaporize you.

At the end of dinner, my dad would go back to the garage, to tinker. My mom would be cleaning up. All the kids would go to their respective bedrooms, and my brother would go to the living room, and everybody had to practice their instruments for a minimum of a half hour. Music was a big part of my childhood.

My sister Nedra played the violin. My other sister, Dawn, would have the accordion going. Back in Long Beach, she’d seen a neighbor girl playing one, and thought she might like it because she could carry it with her wherever she went. When we still lived in Long Beach, Dawn was in an accordion band with about forty others, and they even had uniforms.

My brother, Bill, played the piano, like our mom, who was a very good pianist. I played the trumpet, and one of my greatest regrets is that I quit playing and focused on sports. I was number one in the orchestra and band. Even after I quit the school band, I played my trumpet quite often at church.

Because we didn’t have air conditioning, we always had the windows open, so can you imagine the sound coming out of that house? You could literally hear it blocks away.

Dad also continued to showcase his woodworking skills in his spare time. He built my brother a train set that was like a city on a piece of plywood. It even had a mountain on it with a hole in the middle so the train could go through it.

When my dad built it, he and Bill didn’t know where they should store it at first, so my dad figured out a pulley system so that once you finished playing with it, you could pull on a ratcheting handle and a pulley system would raise and hold it up in the ceiling, up in the sky. When you wanted it to come down, you pulled the pin out, rolled the pulley system down, landed it on the sawhorses, and played on the train set. To think about what we were living with there!

Then again, that level of effort wasn’t all that surprising. Dad always gave his all with every project he worked on – for work or at home. Even during the holiday season.

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