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Michael A. Terrell

Steve Ackman wrote:

In , on Wed, 09 Jun 2010
22:53:31 -0700, Larry Jaques, lid wrote:

Ditto. And when I'd ask Mom or Dad for word definitions, I was
promptly steered to the Websters Hernia Edition dictionary. I later
bought a collegiate paperback dict for my own use, occasionally
spending half an hour at a time reading every word in it. That must
have been 1965 or so, age 11 or 12.

Ages 6-8, I lived in Puerto Rico. Since AFRTS was
the only English station, my parents didn't bother
bringing the TV. They did, however, bring the
Encyclopedia Americana and a now unremembered brand of
your aptly described Hernia dictionary. We lived on
the beach, so every opportunity was spent outdoors, but
rainy days, after dark, etc., the Encyclopedia was pretty
much all there was for entertainment after I'd read the
Forest Fire Mystery a few times. To me, the dictionary
was a reference book to be consulted when needed (though
I did pick pages at random sometimes just to read) while
the Encycopedia was a fascinating and staggering
collection of everything I could possibly want to know.

Oh... there was a Navy building on the beach that
was occupied whenever a tanker was offloading jet fuel.
One of the things it contained was a TV. Exercise in
Primary Problem Solving 101. Turns out there _was_ a
way for scrawny little toe-headed boys to gain illicit
entry, so we did actually get to see TV once in awhile,
but at great effort, and with great fear of being caught.
Getting out took as much time and effort as getting
in, and we never knew when the Navy guys might show
up. I don't think there were even Saturday morning
cartoons. IIRC, AFRTS (almost spells farts! hah!)
didn't come on until noon. Anyway, the novelty soon
wore off, and our television adventures soon dwindled
to rarely, and then to "why bother?"

It gave me a lot larger
vocabulary than most of my friends, which was fun. Using large words
in front of parents was a hoot, too.

Yup.

I recommend purchasing dictionaries as gifts for anyone who
continually asks word meanings, pronunciations, or roots/origins.
Also, for furriners (ESL learners) and curious kids. They're
inexpensive and keep on giving to the recipient.

Or just teach them how to add thefreedictionary.com
and thefreelibrary.com to the search engine function
in their browser.

I was a broadcast Engineer for AFRTS in the early '70s in Alaska.
The radio station was in operation 24/7. The TV station did go on at
noon during the week, but we signed on at 7:00 AM on the weekends. It
took between a half hour to two hours to get everything ready to go on
the air each day. The late sign on during the week was based on most
viewers being on duty, and kids in school. Our Saturday mornings were
cartoons until the newscast at noon.

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.