The Snowy Owl
By: Stan Jordan
The other day John Molitor came in to the office and we had quite a confab.
John is a rural letter carrier out of Payne, up toward the Indiana State Line, and he told me he saw a snowy owl sitting on a telephone pole. I was glad that he spotted the owl. That was over in the area of CR 11 and CR 124. This is the first news about the snowy owl that we have received for a while, but we think there is an owl nest in that area because when one is seen, it’s around that area.
John also told me about some eagles he has seen while delivering the mail a couple of miles each side of SR 500 where it meets the Indiana Line.
I just now got an email from Joe Alexander stating that he had seen a snowy owl at the crossing of SR 49 and CR 114. He said it was about noon on December 18th. Many thanks to both of you gentlemen.
In our bird book, Birds of North America from National Geographic, it has six pages of owls but it does not carry the snowy owl, I guess it is considered a Canadian bird.
Mrs. Dunakin, one of our bird watchers, has told me that the snowy owls come south in winter for a better food supply and they are considered a northern bird.
See ya!
I don’t know beans about beans
By: Stan Jordan
Now you might not like this column, but I want to write it anyhow. I and the lowly soup bean. From what I read, what I like to eat is called a white bean or I just say a soup bean.
In my life time and travels and experiences, the lowly soup bean was a staple staple.
In the military we had soup beans a lot of times, but I always liked them. I know in the navy they also had beans a lot, but they were always tasty.
Now the soup bean can be doctored up in a number of ways: corn bread, greens, boiled cabbage, cauliflower, sauerkraut, sausage and potatoes. Some folks used raw onions or ramps. Beans were considered the main course. Sometimes beans are cooked with a piece of ham or ham bone, or chopped ham.
On the cattle drives in the old west, bean soup was the main dish most of the time, sometimes for all three meals. It was an easy food to store or handle.
In the Appalachian area, soup beans were the main staple for many years. Yes, in the 30’s and 40’s lots of people lived on the lowly soup bean.
Butter beans are Lima beans, brought to a boil, thick like butter, but when they are fresh they are called Lima beans.
Black eyed peas are not a soup bean, they are a dish of their own.
See ya!
I heard from Ben
By: Stan Jordan
Ben called me the other day from his mausoleum on channel OI812. He is very upset about these bosses and CEOs mistreating lady employees. The ladies are just now coming out with the truth after maybe 10 – 30 years and Ben is on the ladies side. Let me tell you about our conversation.
Ben said, “Stan, I’ve been through all of that groping, bumping, making advances, that whole bit. I know those ladies are telling the truth. I know a few things because I’ve seen a few things.”
“I know girls all over this east coast and most of Europe. Men are the same all over. Pinch a butt, grope, leer, look over and even stare a little. Yes, I guess it would make a lady uneasy, but men enjoy doing that and I’m sure they are telling the truth.”
“Women now have entered the working world of the men. As I understand they can now vote and have civil rights like men do, except, I guess they are not paid as much as a man at the same job.”
Ben said when he was pinching bottoms it wasn’t as much fun as it is now. Girls had on a number of skirts and long johns and that’s all you could feel or maybe a whale bone girdle
Ben said, “Of all the towns, I have rambled around, there’s more pretty girls than one.”
The Woof Woof Problem
By: Stan Jordan
The following piece of High Brow English literature was taken from a 1935 issue of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang.
The doggies had a meetings
They came from near and far
Some came by automobile
And others came by car.
Each doggie passed the doorway
Each doggie signed the book
Each doggie took off his woof woof
And hung it on the woof woof hook.
Before they were settled
Each mother, son and sire
Some dirty yellow cur
Began to holler “FIRE!”
They all rushed out
In a bunch
They didn’t have time to look
Each grabbed a woof woof
Off the woof woof hook.
They got their woof woof all mixed up
And made them awful sore
To have to wear a woof woof home
They never wore before.
And that’s the reason why,
As you walk down the street
And that is the reason why, sir
When doggies chance to meet
Doggies will leave a big fat juicy bone
To take a sniff of another dog
In hopes he will find his own.
The Pentagon and I
By: Stan Jordan
And More on the Construction of the Pentagon
Contracts totaling $31,100,000 were finalized with McShain and the other contractors on September 11, and ground was broken for the Pentagon the same day. Among the design requirements, Somervell required the structural design to accommodate floor loads of up to 150 pounds per square foot, which was done in case the building became a records storage facility at some time after the end of the current war. A minimal amount of steel was used as it was in short supply during World War II. Instead, the Pentagon was built as a reinforced concrete structure, using 680,000 tons of sand dredged from the Potomac River, and a lagoon was created beneath the Pentagon’s river entrance. To minimize steel usage, concrete ramps were built rather than installing elevators. Indiana limestone was used for the building’s façade.
Architectural and structural design work for the Pentagon proceeded simultaneously with construction, with initial drawings provided in early October 1941, and most of the design work completed by June 1, 1942. At times the construction work got ahead of the design, with different materials used than specified in the plans. Pressure to speed up design and construction intensified after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, with Somervell demanding that 1,000,000 sq ft (9.3 ha) of space at the Pentagon be available for occupation by April 1, 1943. David J. Witmer replaced Bergstrom as chief architect on April 11 after Bergstorm resigned due to charges, unrelated to the Pentagon project, of improper conduct while he was president of the American Institute of Architects. Construction was completed January 15, 1943.
The construction of the Pentagon was done during a time when parts of the U.S. were under legally-mandated racial segregation. This had structural consequences to the design of the building. Under the supervision of Colonel Leslie Groves, the decision to have separate eating and lavatory accommodations for white persons and black persons was made and carried out. The dining areas for black persons were put in the basement and on each floor there were double toilet facilities separated by gender and race. These measures of segregation were said to have been done in compliance with the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia’s racial laws. The Pentagon as a result has twice the number of toilet facilities needed for a building of its size.
U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941, to end discrimination in the national defense industry on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin. When the President visited the Pentagon before its dedication, he questioned Groves regarding the number of washrooms and ordered him to remove the ‘Whites Only’ signs. Until 1965 the Pentagon was the only building in Virginia where segregation laws were not enforced.
The soil conditions of the Pentagon site, located on the Potomac River floodplain, presented challenges to engineers, as did the varying elevations across the site, which ranged from 10 to 40 feet (3.0–12.2 m) above sea level. Two retaining walls were built to compensate for the elevation variations, and cast-in-place (Franki) piles were used to deal with the soil conditions. Construction of the Pentagon was completed in approximately 16 months at a total cost of $83 million. The building is 77 feet (23 m) tall, and each of the five sides of the building is 921 feet (281 m) long.
Because of the pressing needs of the war, people started working in the Pentagon before it was completed. The Pentagon was built one wing at a time, and after the first wing was finished, employees started to move into that wing while construction was continuing on the other wings.
