Well, Christmas is thankfully over with.

Aww, Perry Como and all the others probably groped a few stage hands back in the day. You just never heard about it back then.
 
A large part of why I didn't enjoy Chrismus this year is 'cause Sandy Claws STILL didn't bring me a 50' Rohn antenna tower a distribution amp, & a rotatorator. Trust me, the way this locality is laid out, I could pick up FM stations from Marietta, Georgia to at least Roanoke, Virginia. I've done it before. The mountains here can REALLY bring signals in, or keep 'em out, & I ain't really talking skip, tropo ducting or any of that. Nor have I ever really fooled w/trying to see how far EAST & WEST I could DX- Most of the time, the FM dial is literally SOLID from one end to another. Angel Modulation ? Hmmmpf. The 1st nite I had my 1st R-390A, I stuck a 5' length of wire in the antenna terminal & had WHAS, 840 Louisville booming in like it was a local FM station.
 
Al least a nice rotatorator would have been a thoughtful gift. I used to really enjoy FM on the Ham bands. We used the repeaters sometimes, but my friends and I had our secret simplex frequencies (legal of course). I really got a kick out of talking with my friend in Minneapolis from my station in California on 10m FM, full quieting. This was during the peak solar cycle.
 
I sold off my R-390As and parts several years ago in a herd thinning, also a National RAO-6. Still have a BC-1004-C Hammarlund Super Pro and a BC-348M but not active these days, mostly using a GE Superadio B and a Sony ICF-5450B for AM DX. Unfortunately, my former fave AM nighttime KMOX let it's last good program with John Grayson's America Overnight go, leaving WGN as one of the last in-range AM nighttimers of interest. Occasionally, WWL has a couple hours of wierdness to counter Coast to Coast, which isn't what it was. Neither is short wave, internet webcast has supplanted the usual popular suspects, leaving the owners of the supersets largely all dressed up with nowhere to go, with some niche and other oddities for radio band fishing.
Not like back when I had a Trans-Oceanic in the barracks in the 1970s, things have changed.
 
I kinda thought the "John Titor " business was a wee bit "OUT THERE", even for Art Bell...Wil we have time travel ? I'd say "Likely, in some form or another", but I think it'll be a long time off". I'm thinking transporting inanimate objects might happen a lot sooner, Live stuff will take a lot more talk.
 
Indeed, but still one of the better straight-faced tall tales I've heard. I didn't find Mel's hole all that compelling, and the backwards speech guy that gave him so much grief later was full of it from the get-go, a yawner for me. Still, Art was where it was happening on the radio after the dinner dishes were done and put up back when.
BTW, Beyond Reality on WWL 870 is the alternative to CtC, 2300-0100 CST weeknights.
 
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Those rotatorators are kinda rare. You can hardly even find them on the webbernet. Here's one, but the taters are kinda underneath the rotato part rather than on it.

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Well, we have a couple of bottomless ponds around here that supposedly were where bodies of soldiers, horses, arms, artillery, etc were dumped into following a terrific War of Yankee aggression battle in Nov 1863. Said pond dried up in the late 1970s, as far as I know , nobody ever searched around that pond & found anything "Interesting".........My next door neighbor used to own the land it was on, but they've been dead for ages, I have no idea who owns it now. "Aunt" Grayce & "Uncle" Arthur never would let me go out there & check things out. They said it was dangerous & I needed to stay away.
 
There was a huge antebellum mansion on the property that I can JUST remember from my "Tadpole" days. It was VERY ritzy-or HAD been, at one time, but had been abandoned since the mid/late 1950s. The family who owned it then were Aunt Grayce's people, their last name was Burem, & they were some kin to the presiden Martin Van Burem. In fact, the name of the road & actually that whole area is known as "Burem", to this day. Aunt Grayce was a golfaholic who easily could have gone pro if she'd wanted to. Arthur had a bridge building business, a lot of the interstate overpass type bridges from the fifties & sixties were/are his. Grayce went with him a lot, she'd played quite a few of the courses all over the South. My dad played w/grayce several times, but didn't like to often, 'cause she was an excellent player, & tended to play "For Keeps". Only a few of the men around town would tangle w/her, 'cause she was THAT good & there was a pretty decent chance she'd whip them..She kept a big jar of cookies on her kitchen cabinet that I raided every now & then... She & Arthur had a son, who was killed in '65 in his '64 Corvette.
 
Sandy G said:
There was a huge antebellum mansion on the property that I can JUST remember from my "Tadpole" days. It was VERY ritzy-or HAD been, at one time, but had been abandoned since the mid/late 1950s. The family who owned it then were Aunt Grayce's people, their last name was Burem, & they were some kin to the presiden Martin Van Burem. In fact, the name of the road & actually that whole area is known as "Burem", to this day. Aunt Grayce was a golfaholic who easily could have gone pro if she'd wanted to. Arthur had a bridge building business, a lot of the interstate overpass type bridges from the fifties & sixties were/are his. Grayce went with him a lot, she'd played quite a few of the courses all over the South. My dad played w/grayce several times, but didn't like to often, 'cause she was an excellent player, & tended to play "For Keeps". Only a few of the men around town would tangle w/her, 'cause she was THAT good & there was a pretty decent chance she'd whip them..She kept a big jar of cookies on her kitchen cabinet that I raided every now & then... She & Arthur had a son, who was killed in '65 in his '64 Corvette.
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We had one of those here on the main drag in Jax, 2 story 4x4 brick with the two chimneys. John Greenleaf (iirc) brought down from New England to run the local cash cow cotton mill bought, then swapped houses with a banker to move In to it and bought up a lot of the land around the town, especially anything with water under it and leased wells to the city until falling out with them. Local legend has it that his son, home on leave from WW-2 out driving his Packard had a crash and was killed. Greenleaf had the Packard repaired and stuck it in a garage where it remained until the property was sold and parceled, along with several other various vintage vehicles and a small aircraft about ten years ago. He quit maintaining the place years before he died and it declined into that ruined grandeur that it seems every southern town of any size had at least one prominent example. The Packard had deteriorated in the collapsed garage to the point that it was only good for random parts, it's grandeur also gone to the winds with the mansion.
 
I've seen pictures of it taken B4 it went to rack & ruin.Massive, sweeping staircases, ornate plaster casts in the ceiling, it must have been something to behold. Aunt Grayce never talked much about her family, but you could tell they were "Faded Aristocracy" Arthur, junior & my uncle were buds-He & my unclewent on vacations w/each others' families.
 
I once took a peek into the Greenleaf mansion before the arson fire, stuff piled everywhere the floors hadn't collapsed into the cellar, and up the staircase to the upper story. The billiard room particularly pathetic with the wainscotting paneling and cue racks on the wall and the furnishings with the table in the flooded cellar with the collapsed floor.
The last occupant lived in it, moving from one cluttered room to another until the power was cut and she moved to a vacation trailer parked behind it and continuing to pile bagged trash in the yard. She was land poor, rentals around town not maintained and fallling into ruins themselves, not providing income to pay property taxes, she occasionally sold a parcel somewhere in town to restore some living money. After the trash and vehicle cluttered main property with the ruins was sold, she bought a house down the road and trash bags started piling up around it. Odd sort, she was.
 
Right time, wrong place. We're right near the northern border w/Virginia Chattamaboogie changed hands between Tenessee & Jawja constantly, even into the 20th century. But by then, it was mainly over all the tax receipts accrued. Its the 3rd or 4th largest city in the state& a big nugget for whoever controls it.
 
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