Stop in for a cup of coffee

I'm back...for some reason I've been out of sorts today. And when I saw that Fury and especially that it's a sedan and green, un-cool to most but fine to me, and the price lowered to $3k, it messed with my mind. I do not want another money pit and let's face it, they all are, to varying degrees.

@Old man ray you asked about my Dad...and by the way your Dad sounds really cool too and having been brought up in an orphanage...

Well my Dad was raised in Andover, in western New York, population historically never deviating much from 1800 residents. Families were equally poor and minded their own business. He was known as Sonny, not Rogers, he and his friends scrounged materials for forts and then reused the wood for the next project. Dad's German shepherd Butch was a stray and the unofficial town mascot. Dad made a harness for pulling his sled up the hill, and for pulling lawn mowing equipment that was my Dad's first business. Butch was always eager to make his rounds and met my Dad walking home from school each day.

Frank Graves was a bachelor with a hare lip who repaired radios. His home was packed with electronics, a telescope, gadgets, and my Dad spent hours there. Mr. Graves slipped on the icy front steps and broke his hip, which in 1950 was a death sentence. He sent for my Dad, and said, now it's up to you to repair the radios in the area. That was when Dad was 14. My Grandma was the town clerk, people needing radios fixed came to her, and a parts salesman passed thru weekly. Dad had a brisk business and made enough to pay for college, with a small grant from the Elks.

Getting a degree in Engineering and marrying a teaching graduate (and having been in the ROTC,) he joined the Army as a Captain, but saw greater opportunity in Sarasota with a technology firm. My Mom was expecting her first child (me) and says it felt like paradise there. She helped him build a beautiful 22 ft wooden sailboat in our garage and by the time they were 27 we were sailing in the bay.

Before Man visited the Moon, NASA had to know whether a craft would have a firm surface where it would land. There's a box on the moon with instruments my Dad built, converting data to radio. Dad credits Frank Graves for starting him on that path.