High School
Left-Brain
More Experiments
Because of my ongoing fascination with electricity, I continued playing and experimenting with it.
If a 14 volt model train transformer connected to a 6x9 car speaker made it hum -- Them I wondered how loud that hum would be if I connected it to a 120 volt wall outlet?
And the answer was surprisingly simple: Not loud at all.
After the speaker cone jumps out of its enclosure in a puff of white smoke, dangling its melted voice-coil behind it. (Too bad...that was a good little speaker.)
What about charging a high voltage can capacitor with the same AC power cord I used for the battery experiment years earlier?
The sound of that explosion and the resulting shards of burning paper that filled the air like flickering iridescent fireflies dancing their way to the floor, brought my down thundering down the stairs into the basement shouting, "What the hell's going on down here?"
"Just an experiment." I said. Nothing to see here.
The Revelation
It was around this time that I had another one of those hinge-pin moments in my life.
Before I blew up my treasured 6x9 car speaker, I had done some testing to see how it would work being hooked up to a little transistor radio. The radio was powered by a 9-volt battery and had about a 1" speaker on the inside that I was going to connect the larger speaker to.
At that moment, my dad walked in and looked over my shoulder and said authoritatively, "That little thing will never run that big speaker. It doesn't have enough power."
So I hooked it up and low and behold, it worked. It wasn't a boom box or anything, but sound did come out of it.
And that was all I needed to firmly solidify my conviction, that this was something my father knew little to nothing about and therefore I needed to pursue it with a vengeance.
Right-Brain
The Bands
All throughout Junior and High School, I continued to play trumpet in whatever bands were available at that time.
In Westminster, CO, that included being part of the State Championship Marching Band.
I remember that we had a whole 100 yard football field painted on the mall parking lot across the street from the high school. If you were in marching band, you were required to show up an hour before school started so you could practice the routines in that parking lot.
The Move
Right before my senior year, my folks picked up and moved from Westminster, CO (a suburb of Denver) to Pine River, MN - population 600 something.
I snagged first chair in the high school band on the first day, which set me up nicely for failure in the social strata there. (arrogant new-guy and all)
That year was not something I look back on fondly and by the time I graduated in the summer on 1975, I was so ready to fly the coop.
I remember the day I left home. My 3 brothers and I all shared a single bedroom in our Pine River home. My dad had built a triple bunk bed for the 3 older boys, and poor Philip just got a mattress on the floor. There was one dresser and each of us got a single drawer. (How do you spell "White Trash")
The day I walked out of the house headed for college in St Cloud, there was hardly even a goodbye uttered since they were so excited about who was going to get the top bunk and the biggest dresser drawer! Come on lucky sevens!
I'm not 100% sure, but I think we played this at our graduation ceremony.
I played lead while the dude I had displaced in that chair played the 2nd part and our band director, Mr. Lauve, played the 3rd part. (I wasn't able to record the actual performance with my big-ole Sony reel-to-reel, but was able to capture the rehearsal that afternoon and get this on tape.)