Radio Daze

My father liked to tell the story about his father-in-law, Jacob Czerniak, who came to our house to help him install an antenna for our new American Bosch radio. This was in the 1930’s. In those early days of radio, a long antenna was necessary for good reception because the signals were weak. The antenna wire was strung from the radio in the dining room, out the window, up the outside wall and then out to a mast at the end of our house. From there, the wire was strung across the back yard to another mast mounted on the garage roof. Whereupon my grandfather asked: Where does it go from here? He could not understand that the antenna wire simply ended in mid air.

(My grandfather’s puzzlement is not unlike a question I have in trying to understand how people can be walking about with a cell phone to their ear and the signal “knows” where they are; they could be in Seattle or Philadelphia. Another puzzle is seeing multiple people in a relatively small area on separate calls. Are we being irradiated with telephone signals all the time, wherever we are?)

The American Bosch radio was like a piece of furniture, an elegant cabinet standing on its own legs. I was fascinated by the complexity of the “innards” of the radio, as they could easily be seen from the back by sliding out the chassis to see all the glowing vacuum tubes and other electronic parts. The tube filaments were easily visible because the radio tubes were the size of a cucumber. As best I can recall, that radio looked something like this:

This is the radio that the family used to listen to President Roosevelt’s fireside chats. Despite its age, its sound remained good for an AM radio, and the family kept this radio as long as I can remember, at least up until the time I left home for graduate school in 1954.

My own direct involvement with radio began with building a crystal set radio. Before radios were developed that had built-in amplifiers and speaker systems as in our Bosch radio, some adventuresome people had crystal set radios. A crystal set radio is a “passive” radio in the sense that there is no amplification of the signal. For this reason, ear phones are necessary to hear whatever signal is picked up by the antenna. A mineral called galena (lead sulfide), a forerunner of today’s semiconductors, has the property of responding to the faint currents brought in by the antenna. When a “sensitive” spot on the surface of the crystal is touched by a conductive probe, the signal is strong enough to be heard on the ear phones. The probe consists of a straight, stiff wire, mounted on a pivot so that the wire tip can be moved about the surface of the crystal to find a sensitive spot. Hence, crystal set radios were often referred to a “cat whisker’s receivers.”

All that is needed to create a crystal set radio (other than the crystal) are ear phones, an antenna and a winding of copper wire around a cylinder such as a discarded toilet paper core. For those so inclined, this is a sketch of the radio.

My next venture into radio construction did not occur until I was in graduate school, and my room mates and I decided that we needed an FM radio in our dining room where we spent most of our time together. I managed to make a very simple radio from some parts I found in the lab from a circuit design sketched out by one of the instrument makers in the chemistry department.

By the time Bette and I were married in 1959, long playing records, turning at 33 1/3 rpm, had become well established, and with the “extended play” feature, a single disc was capable of holding a complete symphony, albeit on two sides. This was a boom to the classical music recording industry. LP’s soon totally replaced the 78 and 45 rpm records for all types of music. Further, the fidelity of the recordings had increased so that the old record players built to the standards of the 78 rpm records where considered inadequate. However, high quality record turn tables and amplification systems had not yet been marketed at reasonable prices. Consequently, shortly after our marriage, we bought a Heath high fidelity “hifi” kit (Heathkit Mark IV). It took a couple of weeks to assemble a preamplifier and amplifier on a card table in the living room of our rented apartment. Tucked away in our hi-fi cabinet we still have about 166 of those old LP records waiting to be converted to the latest technology.

But the thirst for better and better fidelity was launched. Our next venture in this direction was the purchase of an Ampex reel-to-reel recorder/player. The reels were 7 inches in diameter and had 4 tracks playing at 7 ½ inches per second. Again a complete symphony can be captured on a reel. But in the era of the late 1970’s and 1980’s technology was developing very fast, and the reel-to-reel technology did not catch on widely. We ended up having only about 35 reels of music, and the obsolete recorder/player is still mounted in our hi-fi cabinet.

In the early 1980’s Sony introduced the “Walkman” portable stereo cassette player in the United States. Of course, everyone had to have one. The first introductions in the States were expensive and our children were still young. But it just so happened that Bette and I were going on a vacation in Japan and we thought that we could get a good buy there. After gathering courage to use the Tokyo subway system, we managed to find the Akihabara district in central Tokyo, famous for its many electronics shops. We bought three Walkman that were guarantied to play in the US. They did, but, perhaps because these were early technology models, they were soon superseded by more light weight and reliable models.

We completely missed the 8-track cassette mini-boom. This boom was probably short lived because it was developed under the impetus of the Ford Motor Company to be used in automobiles. Use outside of automobiles did not become widely popular.

Soon analogue technology was replaced by digital technology and there was a mass movement to CD recordings. Compact, stand-alone CD players quickly became available and our home acquired a “quality player” for serious music listening as well as CD units as part of boom boxes and radio/CD combination players in various rooms.

However, that was not the end of the pursuit. MP3 technology came on the scene via computers and soon we were able to hear high quality music from devices no larger that a cigarette lighter or a thin stack of playing cards. These latter devices also can show photos and short video clips.

And finally, even radio has gone digital. We now have an HD (high definition) FM radio, probably the first of many as we will one day be urged to replace all our radios with this latest technology.

What’s next?

A related link (mentions 78 rpm records):
Fantasia, Toscanini, and Music in the Air

Fantasia, Toscanini, and Music in the Air

As I watch our grandson, Bilalay, grow up, I have been thinking about how different my own early childhood was, and wondering about how my various experiences as a youngster may have influenced my later life. I have already commented on how the simple act of traveling to and from my dad’s fishing places on Lake Erie may have influenced my interest in science and, in particular, chemistry. [See blog: Fishing, Epilogue Part 2, May 11, 2009] Here I speculate about some possible sources of my pleasure in classical music. It remains to be seen how Bilalay is being influenced by growing up in the digital age
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Although opera music wafted through our home every Saturday afternoon emanating from a radio mounted atop the refrigerator in the kitchen, I believe my first formal exposure to classical music probably was seeing Walt Disney’s animated film Fantasia.
I clearly remember being taken to see Fantasia by my sister Natalie in one of the fancy theaters in downtown Buffalo,. I was ten years old and Natalie joined the Women’s Army Corps later in the year (1942). I can still see Leopold Stokowski stride to the podium, not knowing what to expect, but quickly being transported into the world of cartoon animation a few moments after the music began. Even to this day, I have strong visual images of the Mickey Mouse character donning the wizard’s hat and cape, and commanding the broom to carry water, resulting in a flood because he did not know the magic words that would stop the broom; all of this was to the music of Paul Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice. I can still picture grazing deer being frightened by an approaching storm as suggested by a thunderous passage in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony (#6). I have a clear image of the fearsome birds flying about in the Night on Bald Mountain (Modest Mussorgsky).

While Fantasia was widely applauded as a landmark in animation in which the craft of animation was applied to the interpretation of music, there were some who called it kitsch. These critics felt that music is an abstract art form and that any intrepreation was simply one person’s vision of the meaning of the music, if music has any visual meaning at all. In any event, as a youngster, it seemed that the visual scenes were entirely appropriate to the accompanying music. As it turned out, as an adult, I have the ability to enjoy music on its own without the necessity of creating a mental image to accomany it.
(How has the brain stored these memories for 67 years?)

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After WW II in 1948, there were less than a half million black and white television sets in the US, and half of those were in the New York City area. Despite such a meager audience, NBC was courageous enough to broadcast a classical music program featuring the renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini who at the time was 81 years old. Or, perhaps, it was merely to give an innovative forum to the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

My friend’s parents had a washing machine repair business a few blocks from our home in Buffalo. With the coming of the “television age,” they decided to carry television sets as part of their retail business. When a Toscanini program was scheduled, my friend Paul would invite me to come to the store after hours. The one television in the window was turned around so that it could be viewed in the darkened store.

In those early days, TV was literally a vast waste land meaning that the few programs that were broadcast were in prime time only. For much of the day only a test pattern was broadcast so that TV owners could adjust their sets and television stores could display the reception quality on their various TV brands. Nothing was automatic as it is now: There were several controls at the front of the TV to adjust focus, brightness, and contrast; to adjust the height and width to make a more perfectly round test pattern; and to adjust for vertical and horizontal hold to prevent “rolling” or “tearing” of the picture. Unfortunately, these controls were not independent in the sense that making an adjustment of one parameter would often result in the required readjustment of another parameter.

After much set adjustment and with great anticipation, the Toscanini program came on and what Paul and I saw was almost a silhouette of a white haired figure, who with obvious stern intensity, brought forth music of great beauty. Perhaps it was not the music itself but the mesmerization of the new experience of seeing and hearing musicians in real time playing from a distant location – tele-vision, that made it so memorable.

The National Broadcasting Company eventually broadcast ten Toscanini concerts from 1948 to 1954 at which point the network disbanded the NBC Symphony Orchestra. I don’t recall how many of these I saw at my friend’s store or on my parent’s TV that they purchased sometime in the early 1950s.

In graduate school, I started a collection of thirty-three and a third rpm long-play records. I was constantly reminded of my Toscanini experience a few years earlier when I saw his black and white image appearing on the dust jackets of recordings of those historic broadcasts.

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There were perhaps other influences, equally subtle: While doing my homework on the kitchen table, I would hear my mother listening to the Voice of Firestone and the Bell Telephone Hour, both featuring light classical music once a week on the radio. She was particularly fond of Eleanor Steber, an American operatic soprano who often sang on these programs. She also enjoyed it when the Ed Sullivan Show on television featured a singer like Kate Smith.

I recall that my sister Arline bought a 78 rpm vinyl record of Chopin’s Polonaise. I was often called upon to quickly run to the phonograph to turn the record over to play the other side. Because of the short recording capacity of 78s, only about roughly half of the 7 minute Polonaise could be recorded on one side. Since the Polonaise has a certain momentum to it, no doubt something was lost in the transition. Nevertheless, given the state of the art at the time, this record was played over and over again with no concern about the loss of musical continuity.

By any measure, our family would not be considered classical music devotees. Nevertheless, as I look back on those years, there apparently was enough of this type of music in the air that I gravitated toward it as an adult.

Psycho-Economic-Babble

On the Sunday talk shows (February 7, 2010), we heard a lot of psycho-economic-babble about why the unemployment rate remains high. Many of the explanations came from the mouths of supposedly knowledgeable commentators. Complex explanations were offered which ranged all the way from the huge size of the national debt to fears about the cost of the proposed health care legislation and to concerns about possible taxes on business.


Actually the explanation is much more elementary: The personal savings rate increased to over four percent in 2009 from the three percent range or less in 2008. Presumably the higher-than-previous savings rate has persisted into 2010. That is a one-third decrease in purchasing power that has been removed from the economy. While decreasing the national debt, giving tax cuts to business, or removing the uncertainty about health care costs may influence the unemployment rate in the long run, none of these factors will directly and immediately increase the spending for goods and services which is the ultimate driver of the economy. Hiring will readily begin as soon as businesses have orders on their books to fill regardless of the psycho-economic cloud overhead. People will start buying goods and services at a more brisk rate once they feel that their future will be more secure, and that won’t happen until they see that they and more of their neighbors have jobs again. This is what makes the problem a vicious circle.

Rug Making

My mother made a large number of braided rugs which were scattered about my parent’s home, our relatives’ homes, and our own home in Huntsville and in Jenkintown.

Braided rugs have a long history dating back to the Colonial era. Braided rugs were also referred to as “rag rugs” for obvious reasons. The popularity of the “arts and crafts” movement in the 1890-1910 period stimulated a renewed interest in this craft. Braided rugs were popular around the woolen mills of the Northeast in the early 1900s, utilizing the cast-offs of the local textile industry.

I don’t know what prompted my mother to take up the craft of rug making but it might have been suggested by a good supply of starting material. Mom’s rug making was made possible by the fact that my Aunt Gertrude worked for many years as a seamstress at a mattress manufacturer (Serta, I think). Aunt Gertrude would bring remnants of mattress cover fabric to my Mom. Mattress fabric is very tough material and creates rugs that are practically indestructible.

The first step in braided rug making is to prepare the strands that will be braided. Mom would cut the remnant fabric into strips about 2 inches wide. These strips are folded in two steps to make braiding strands. The first step is to fold each strip edge in to the center of the strip. Then, the strip is folded on its center. In this way, the fabric edges, which are prone to unravel, are incased within the folds. The bi-folded strand is then ironed to make the folds stable. The remnant strands are sewn together to make one continuous length. Three such strands are needed before braiding can begin.

Braiding of the strands is the next step. The strands often were not made from the same remnant material. Hence, there is the opportunity to select combinations of three remnant sources to create rugs with different color designs. Here the judicious selection of contrasting or complimentary colors ultimately determines the aesthetics of the rug. All three strands of fabric could be the same color, or two the same, or none the same. However, the selection of the color choice of the strands was often primarily determined on what was available from Aunt Gertrude at the time.

To start braiding, Mom would tie the three selected strands and secure them under a heavy rock* on the table, and proceed to braid in the conventional manner. As the braid became long enough to approach her body, she would lift the rock and secure a finished section under the rock. She would proceed in this manner until it was judged that the braid length was sufficient to complete a rug. This braiding process often took many days, and depending on other activities, might be spread out over a month’s time.

Finally, having enough material for one rug, the assembly process begins. The braids are snaked together and secured by heavy butcher’s twine using a strong, flat crocheting needle that weaves the twine between the loops of the braids. The twine becomes virtually invisible. The length of the first straight braid ultimately determines the size and shape of the rug, in this case an oval rug. If a circular rug is desired, there is no first straight braid; the braids start making a circle from the very beginning.

We had one braided rug in Jenkintown which eventually was relegated to the basement and then to the garage. But, alas, when the garage was converted into an artist studio the light orange braided rug, still sturdy and strong but now quite soiled and water stained, it had to be discarded after some 40 years of ‘rugged’ service.

* This is a very special rock: This was a dark grey rock I picked up on the shore of Lake Erie because of its near perfectly round shape, about the size of a grape fruit, and because it contained a cream colored vein in a delicate bird’s foot design.

Fishing

I don’t know the year but I was old enough to remember Dad saying that he was going to buy a fishing pole and that we would go fishing. Could it be that the idea of fishing would bring in a nutritious source of food to the Depression era dinner table, or was it that Dad just decided that fishing would be a good sport? As it evolved, fishing became a regular part of our family’s life, not only as a sport but as a frequent supply of food for the table.

Aside from some occasional forays to various fishing spots all around western New York state and adjacent Canada, including Buffalo’s own Delaware Park Lake, there were a few places that became regular favorites. The most favored was Sturgeon Point on Lake Erie south of Buffalo. Another was Port Colborne, Canada, at the southern terminus of the Welland Canal on Lake Erie. A third place was Port Maitland, Canada, at the mouth of the Grand River where it empties into Lake Erie. Fishing expeditions taking longer than a day included a vacation on a small lake near Kingston, Ontario and a few days on the Georgian Bay off of Lake Huron.

Sturgeon Point
In those days, the interstate system was not in place so that to go to Sturgeon Point, about 25 miles from our east Buffalo home, required driving through south Buffalo, through the southern suburb of Lackawanna, and then into the countryside along Lake Erie shore. As a youngster, the trip to the fishing grounds was always filled with fascination and anticipation of catching fish. The route through south Buffalo went through the industrial area consisting of all sorts of manufacturing plants but particularly of chemical companies such as Allied Chemical and National Aniline. In the days before there was much attention to pollution control, the air was always heavy with nauseous odors. Steaming discharges flowed out of pipes from the plants into the Buffalo River, a serpentine stream crossed several times in route, which eventually emptied into the Niagara River. To this youngster, rather than off-putting, these experiences were a source of curiosity and wonderment.

Approaching the shores of Lake Erie as it necks down to become the Niagara River, there was a line-up of gigantic grain elevators that would be filled with the harvest of cereal products from the bountiful Midwest. Next came the massive industrial behemoths of the Iron Age, the blast furnaces of Lackawanna Steel and Bethlehem Steel. Interspersed among the black belching smoke stacks, there were massive piles of coal brought in by train from the Pennsylvania coal fields, and gigantic piles of iron ore brought in by lake freighters from the Lake Superior iron ore mines. Finally there were stretches of slag piles, the waste product of steel making, some of it still glowing orange hot, just dumped by special rail cars coming from the blast furnace buildings.

If we were coming home from fishing at dusk or at night (night fishing is another story), one could get a better view of the red glowing furnaces, spewing out sparks, steam and smoke. At the time, these seemed like some chaotic inferno, symbols of the throbbing energy of the Industrial Age. Now, with images of the space age in our minds, they might be described more like the blast-off fury of a space rocket.

But now the space age is passé. In the 21st century, with the Lackawanna steel industry shuttered, their structures have been demolished and replaced by brown fields. The area has been turned into a wind farm, the turbine towers as tall as the smoke stacks they replaced, taking advantage of the breezes that are constantly blowing off Lake Erie.

At Sturgeon Point, a small fleet of rental row boats was sheltered by an inverted L-shaped sea wall. Early on, Dad and my Uncle Joe, who often accompanied us, would row a boat out into the lake to a spot where they believed the fish to be. Many boats seemed to agree that this was a good spot because there developed a small community of boats dotted around the same general area. There would be an exchange of chatter among the boats about how well fishing was going today: “How are they biting?” – “What bait are you using?” When the catch was slow or non-existent, there became a certain restlessness among the community of boats. One by one, they would wander a few hundred yards to the left or right, or head out farther into the lake.

Later on Dad purchased an outboard motor that would be attached to the stern of the rented boat. This was a two horsepower (HP) Johnson Marine outboard motor. In a few seasons this was judged to be too slow so Dad upgraded to a 5 HP Johnson outboard. Today, as a casual observer, I have never seen a Johnson outboard, or for that matter an Evinrude which was a good competitor of Johnson in those days. Today the outboard motor market is totally dominated by Yamaha.

Dad constructed a sort of saw horse stand that supported the outboard motor when not in use, especially through the winter season. As the summer fishing season approached, it needed to be serviced and tested to make sure it would start easily. This was done by attaching the motor to a wine barrel that my family had used to make wine years previously. I was instructed to clean out the barrel of accumulated leaves, and to fill it with water in preparation for testing the motor on the week end.

Port Colborne, Ontario
The Welland canal cuts through the Niagara escarpment, thus allowing shipping on the inner Great Lakes to bypass Niagara Falls and to join Lake Ontario. Eventually, the Saint Lawrence Seaway opened up lake shipping all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. The actual fishing location at Port Colborne was on a dock on one of the many side channels near the canal that served as transfer points for lake shipping. The particular dock from which we were accustomed to fish was adjacent to a grain elevator. The surrounding area was rather dismal so this was the least favorite of mine. However, this seemed to be a place where the probability of a good catch was high. I wondered why this was so: It was explained that the water was very deep near the dock to accommodate large lake freighters. Secondly, during the unloading of grain from the holds of the ship, there inevitably was a loss of some grain, blown by the wind, into the surrounding water. Consequently, there were always fish in the vicinity anticipating the largess of a good feeding not unlike tropical fish anticipating the sprinkling of food from above in a home aquarium. Hopefully, the fish would be satisfied with our bait in the absence of a freighter unloading.

Port Maitland

Port Maitland, near Dunnville, Ontario and about fifty miles from home, featured a long concrete pier with a lighthouse at the end. The pier sheltered the estuary of the Grand River as it empties into Lake Erie. On the left side looking toward the lighthouse is the Grand River, while on the right is the sandy beach of the Lake. For a youngster, these features made Part Maitland a fun place. The pier provides an excellent fishing experience on either the river side or the lake side. The lighthouse at the end and the pile of large limestone rocks at the end of the pier provided lots of possibilities for clambering about down to the water’s edge for someone whose fishing attention span was not as great as an adult’s. The beach on the lake side also offered opportunity for playing in the sand as well as for swimming.

Why is such a place such a good fishing spot?: Just as at Port Colborne, fish come out of the lake to hover near the estuary in anticipation of food being washed down the river from the interior. Indeed, a greater proportion of fish caught here were often the larger species than the pan fishes more often caught in the lake itself.

Kingston, Ontario
Virtually all our fishing trips to the places mentioned above would be called day trips. There were a couple of exceptions that I remember: In 1939 my parents and my Aunt Gertrude and Uncle Joe rented a cabin on a lake in Canada The place was always referred to as “Kingston” but Kingston, Ontario is on Lake Ontario, and I specifically recall a cabin on a small lake. It must have been that Kingston was the nearest city and the lake was somewhat inland from Kingston proper.

My Dad and Uncle Joe would get up early to fish and by noon would return to the cabin with a large catch. Our family album had several photographs of various combinations of my Mother, Father, Aunt Gertrude, Uncle Joe and me standing by the cabin, showing off strings of freshly caught fish. We ate fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

In the afternoon, I was permitted to use the boat on my own to row about the lake. This is where I learned my seamanship.

Fishes caught

Yellow Perch	Great Northern Pike	Sheephead

We caught a wide variety of fish in the 1930s and 1940s. But by the 1950s the species mix began to change and catches were less certain and diminished in size. The most common fishes caught in Lake Erie were yellow perch and rock bass. More prized because of their larger size were blue pike and the less common yellow pike (also know as walleye pike or pickerel). The most prized of all was the great northern pike. Another large fish was sheepshead (also known as fresh water drum) of great interest to me not only because this fish is a strong fighter but because of a bony disc about the size of a dime located in its head. In season, small mouth bass were also common. Less common were bull heads (related to cat fish), but a delight to catch because of their sweet meat.

Epilogue Part 1
These stories are recorded here to tell how important fishing was in the life of my father and my family as told through the eyes of a youngster. As mentioned above, fishing in the waters around Buffalo was reasonably successful with a wide variety of fish being caught. However, starting in the 1950s, more and more frequently we would come home empty handed. By the late 1960s Dad just about gave up on fishing. The lake had become polluted. For reasons unknown the lamprey population exploded in the late 1940s and 1950s and this decimated the local fish population. This was a great disappointment to Dad.

Epilogue Part 2
Without any proof, I would like to speculate that the experience of a youngster sitting in a boat with only your father and possibly also with your uncle, essentially isolated from the distractions present on land must have had some developmental effect. Sometimes, after prolonged silence watching the gentile rolling of the waves, occasionally interrupted by a dialogue about how the world works, or when the catching is good and there became a competition about who could catch the most fish, or when the catching was not good and there was finally a realization that we would go home empty handed, -- all this must have an effect on an impressionable youth.

The repeated trips through the industrial area of Buffalo to the fishing grounds must have had an effect too. The fascination of what was must be going on inside those stinking buildings, the sense of power exuding from those monstrous steel plants created a desire for participation that I now attribute to my eventual career in science. It is that same process, but in another context, that prompted Barack Obama to comment “that such moments accumulate and embed themselves in a child’s character becoming a part of their soul.” * My Dad could have made a different choice of sport in the 1930’s and perhaps the outcome on my life option points might have been the same or different. There is no way to tell. But in any event I am totally content with the way things turned out.

* Barack Obama, Audacity of Hope Vantage Books, N.Y., 2006, p. 413.

Readers of this blog may also be interested in other fishing related posts:

• Fishing: Ice Fishing
• Fishing: Casting
• Fishing: Night Crawlers
• Fishing: Sinkers
  
  

Fishing: Ice Fishing

In the Buffalo, New York area, the fishing season is limited to the months between late Spring and early Fall with one exception – mid Winter. When Lake Erie freezes over to a depth of more than a foot, ice fishing becomes possible. My Dad, while not as devoted to ice fishing as to fishing from a boat or pier, was an occasional participant. Ice fishing is physically more challenging than regular fishing because of the necessity of carrying much more equipment than is needed for regular fishing over a sometimes irregular surface. To solve this problem, Dad constructed an ice fishing sled. It consisted essentially of a large, rectangular wooden box mounted on runners with a handle at the back for someone to help push while the lead person pulled the sled. The box held all the fishing tackle and bait, plus a variety of equipment necessary for ice fishing. For example, it was necessary to have a heavy ice pick to create a hole in the ice, an ice scoop to clear out the hole of ice debris, a small charcoal grill and charcoal, several tall, wooden poles that would be implanted around the ice hole to support a heavy canvas screen to create a cozy shelter against prevailing winds and, not to forget, Thermoses of coffee and maybe some hot soup.

Fishing: Casting

In ice fishing, casting rods are not needed because the fish lines are dropped straight down through the hole in the ice. That contrasts to fishing off a pier or from the side of a river bank. In these cases, it is necessary to cast the bait or fish lure some distance. Even in fishing from a boat, casting is often useful. A lure is cast from the boat and is slowly reeled in to simulate the movement of a bug or injured fish. Some fish lures have a small, curved disc at the front where the lure is attached to the line that causes the lure to cycle up and down in a sinusoidal fashion as it is reeled in. The hope is that this will attract the attention of a fish below. This technique is used in an attempt to catch larger species of fish which tend to be more aggressive. Hence, good casting technique is an advantage to placing the lure a good distance from the fisherman, or to place the lure in a specific spot of water that should be particularly attractive to fish such as proximity to rocks, or sheltered by overhanging trees, or a variety of other situations.

To hone these casting skills, my Dad would take me to the nearby National Guard Armory where on a Sunday morning the facility would be opened to the local Isaak Walton Fishing Club to practice casting, both rod casting and fly casting. Large circles were marked off on the floor, perhaps fifty feet in diameter. In the center, were placed colored rings resembling hula hoops which were not yet invented in those days. Casting trainees stood behind the line and attempted to cast a dummy lure into a selected color ring. Volunteer experts circulated around the ring, giving instruction on the proper coordination of arm, elbow, wrist and the timely release of the thumb from the reel to place the lure into the specific colored ring, not unlike the instruction given to golfers. My Dad became quite good at precision rod casting, and was admired by fishermen who observed his expertise. However, in contrast to good technique in golfing which usually results in better scores, precision casting does not necessarily translate into bigger catches.