Here is a story I wrote for our club newsletter (The Hertzian Herald, Monroe MI) a few years ago. It was reprinted in the now-defunct 73 magazine a few years later, but they don't own the copyright - I do.

I'd be pleased to have it reprinted or posted by anyone who cares to, provided they credit K8JWR as the author. I think it speaks to the condition of the Hobby today, if you think about it.

Dan Metzger, K8JWR

The guy they called The Old Man? Sure, I knew him. Well, it wasn't actually me - it was my buddy, Al. I think his family knew him from way back. However it was, three or four times during our sophomore and junior years of high school Al called me to say that he had been invited to The Old Man's shack because he "wanted to talk" - and would I like to come along.

The Old Man's shack was a two-car garage, partitioned into operating room, workshop, and storage area in about the proportions of 1-to-2-to-3. His rig consisted of three six-foot relay racks full of what appeared to be home-brew exciters, amplifiers, modulators, and power supplies. The rig was dark and silent, and he never turned it on while we were there. In fact, I never heard him on the air, and later, when I got home and looked up his call in the Call Book, it wasn't there.

His receiver, a Collins 75A-2, was always on, with cw signals mumbling softly in the background. Once, while The Old Man was rummaging in a junk box, I reached for the tuning knob to get the feel of this paragon of receivers, and he put me in my place with a curt, "Please don't monkey with the receiver."

Well, The Old Man had said he wanted to talk, and talk he did - for nearly two hours. He regaled us with stories of how the Radio Inspector had threatened to confiscate his spark transmitter one Friday back in '24 because he was interfering with Great Lakes shipping traffic, and by the next Monday he had his first vacuum tube rig on the air. He told of being an engineer at a local radio station in the '30s and climbing a 200-foot tower in the wintery darkness to make an antenna repair in time for Amos and Andy. We heard how he was in the South Pacific during World War II, training island natives who didn't know a word of English to copy code by rote memory: dot-dash, write an A; dash-dot-dot-dot, write B; and so on. His eyes sparkled as the names of hams and radio men he had known rolled off his tongue by the dozen, and he seemed to expect that we should know these people as well as we knew our classmates in school.

Finally, he wound down and said, "Well, this is boring to you. Now, how would you boys like some radio parts, on the square?"

Al managed to say, "Sure!" but I could only hope that The Old Man read the wide grin that broke out on my face as a "Yes!" That first visit he gave me a power supply for my VFO. (I had just gotten my general.) It used a type 80 rectifier, so it must have been from the early '30s or late '20s. I had ridden my bike over, and it was a real struggle to keep that bulky thing under my left arm while managing the bike with my right.

By the second visit Al was driving, and we made sure the trunk was cleared out before we came. Good thing, too, because that time he gave me an old Hallicrafters AM transmitter; it must have been three feet wide and weighed over a hundred pounds. On other visits we came away with antenna tuners, microphones, transmitting tubes, and 500-watt power transformers.

He mentioned that the transformer secondary was 900 volts rms, and when I asked him what "rms" meant, The Old Man practically exploded: "How can you do anything in radio if you don't know what rms means?" So he sat me right down and explained it to me, and even though I was still a little shaky on the details I told him that I understood it perfectly, Yes Sir!

Well, that's about all. We were supposed to see The Old Man again one Saturday in late May, but Al got a call on Friday that they'd taken him to the hospital, and a few days later we heard that he'd died. What with school and me starting my first job about then, I never did find out what happened to his garage full of stuff and that untouchable 75A-2.

Say, look - I've got to be getting home. The kid across the street is into computers, and I told him that if he'd come over after supper I'd give him my old PC, and a modem and some other junk. It's funny - that kid comes over and gets me talking, and he don't leave for maybe two, three hours. I was telling him about my first computer, an Apple II - and I don't think he'd ever heard the name of Steve Wozniak before. And he didn't know what TTL levels were! Now, how's he going to do anything in computers if he doesn't know what TTL levels are?

While I am not a member of QCWA (I should be though after 31 years of being a ham) I continually read all the postings. Yours in particular brought back memories of my own childhood in Northern New Jersey. Once day I was hiking in the woods in back of my parents house and found this unusual pole in the middle of nowhere. It was about 6 inches round and seemed to be 60 or 80 feet high (I was only about 13 at the time so it was pretty darn high to me). At the top there was a wire. I followed this and came across a house on the next street. In all the wire was pretty darn long. At the end there was another one of the poles with ladder-line leading down to a glass enclosed porch. Being a kid, I went up to the house and knocked on the door. An older German gentleman came to the door and I asked him about the wire. That was the beginning of my interest in Ham Radio. He brought me into his "shack" and there was all this equipment, some of which was about 6 feet high. He had a full Collins line, receiver, transmitter and I remember a floor mounted amplifier which was a Henry.

I spent a number of hours with him listening to stations around the world. Several times he took me into his basement where he had all sorts of electronic equipment. He would always give me something that I liked. At one point he gave me a glass tube that was about 24 inches tall and 4 inches round. I kept it for years but now have no idea where it went. Sure wish I had it today. Unfortunately I don't remember his call or for that matter his name. I'm sure he is long gone.

My second Elmer, and the one who really got me going was Hank Clark, W2IQ (K2DS). Hank lived about 3 miles from my apartment in Totowa, NJ. One day I pulled out an old receiver and was tuning around when I heard some very loud CW. I slowly got all the letters down, went to the local radio store and looked up his address in the callbook. I visited Hank and spent a lot of time with him. He is the one who gave me my Novice test. Hank was into AM and had a BC-610. What a neat unit. He had Collins and TenTec equipment and even loaned me his Omni D when he went on vacation. Hank could carry on a CW conversation with someone while he chatted with me. Unbelievable to me yet today.

I eventually moved away and learned that Hank had moved to Tennessee (near TenTec). I corresponded infrequently and lost contact for quite a few years. Recently I found that he passed away a few years ago in a fall. I've found pictures of him on the internet and was going to change my call to his in memory of the great conversations we had. That call is now the club call to which he belonged. Fitting for a man who gave so much to me and others.

Well, this is the new year and my first reminiscing. Again, your story was great and brought back these memories.

By-the-way, any relation to any Metzger's from the Long Island, New York area?