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Updated: 06 Mar 2006, 16:40 ET
(Created 06 Mar 2006)
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S. Berliner, III's

Personal Apocrypha Page

Consultant in Ultrasonic Processing
"changing materials with high-intensity sound"
Technical and Historical Writer, Oral Historian
Popularizer of Science and Technology
Rail, Auto, Air, Ordnance, and Model Enthusiast
Light-weight Linguist, Lay Minister, and Putative Philosopher

This site has now been visited times since the counter was installed.

This page is a place where I can spin yarns that involve me, personally, and which don't seem to fit on any of the other, more-directed, pages (such as the serious ones listed on the various index pages starting with the Home Page) and the fun pages starting with just that, Fun. Most of my pages have some idiocies, adventures, and other nonsense that has happend to or around me in a long life but those that follow are a few of the choicer ones that come to mind that don't fit elsewhere.

They will be put in approximate descending date order (oldest first, latest last).

CHILDHOOD

One of my earliest vivid recollections was when I was perhaps 1½ years old and my mother, carrying a huge paper bag if something, perhaps groceries, was towing me by the hand across West End Avenue (two lanes in each direction with no median) in Manhattan when, for whatever reason, I decided to sit down on the center line.&mnsp; PLOP! The light changed and we were in the midst of onrushing cars and Mom tried valiantly to coax me to stand and walk. No way, Hose A! I'd gone about as far as I would go! I still remember Mom, in desperation, there being a break in traffic, hauling me bodily on my butt across the remain two lanes, over the curb, and onto the sidewalk!

I couldn't have been more that 2 or 3 when I tired of my huge cast iron hook-and-ladder fire engine, so I brightly figured some other kid might want it, somehow hoisted it up onto the radiator cover, across the window sill, and between the safety grill and the wall and let go. Very generous of me, but there was one problem; we lived on the THIRTEENTH floor! When a very irate NYC cop rang the door bell, after trying the matching apartments on all the intervening twelve floors, my mother figured that if NY's Finest was asking if she had a little boy who had a cast iron fire engine, I most likely no longer had one and so was able to answer quite truthfully, "No". Well, it seems the engine had gone right through a baby's pram and into the concrete sidewalk! Happily, the pram was empty at the time.

I couldn't have been much older when I toddled into my folk's bedroom one morning carrying my morning glass of orange juice (a definite No-No). Mom must have been preoccupied because she didn't notice my infraction nor my generouis and courteous offer to share my "Ahn Juice". Getting no response, I asked the night table, "Ahn Juice?" No reply. "Bed? Ahn Juice?" Same result."Bed? Ahn Juice?" Ditto. Finally, I asked, "Ca'pet? Ahn Juice?" Getting no reply once again, I took matters decisively in hand , decided the carpet damn well would get my juice and poured the whole glass out. Hoo, boy; Mom sure noticed that!

When I was around 4 or 5, I wanted a toy gun. Uh, uh! Not with MY Mom! So, it was understandable that she was upset when I turned up one day with a big cowboy cap pistol in hand. Where did I get it? Oh, Steve gave it to me. Did Steve KNOW he gave it to me? Well -- - - . By the next day, I had a gem of a double-barrelled pirate pistol of my very own (I had it until I was a teen and gave it to a little boy).

PRE-TEEN YEARS

We moved out on Long Island full-time between VJ and VE days and my neighbor had a fabulous Daisy Red Ryder carbine which his father had rebuilt with a much more powerful spring. It was awfully hard to cock but, wow, could it shoot! One day, the dopey kid shot me in the back; happily for me, I was wearing my thick, leather bomber jacket and only felt a sharp whack. After a brief tussle, I wrested the carbine away from him and announced that it was now mine, daring the jerk to tell his Dad how that came to pass - :·). I used to shoot the glass off burned-out flashlight bulbs with it, then trim the filament, and lastly, knock out the stem. Finally came the day when the striker pin or whatever it was called, the small tube on the front of the piston that kicked the BB past the detent spring that kept the BBs from just rolling out of the muzzle, flew out behind the BB! I got a new piston from Daisy, managed somehow to disassemble the gun without losing a finger, but couldn't reassemble it against that monster spring and finally threw the rusted remnants away when I was an adult.

Oh, my gosh! From my Adirondacks pages, here's my little sister trying to shoot her toes off with that very Daisy!

Naturally, it wasn't cocked; I was a GOOD big brother! We're a bit ahead of ourselves, here; by then I was in High School.

TEEN YEARS

One of my best moments in High School was when we had a bad ice storm and Mom insisted on driving me (I usually biked the 1-1/16th miles); we were in her big, hand-me-down '48 {?} Chrysler Windsor coupé and as she pulled up across the street (very wide) and went to stop, she lost it and slid majestically in a sweeping U-ie, ending up facing the other way directly in front of the main entrance, at the curb. I made a dramatic exit from the car to screaming cheers from the kids watching this elegant manœuvre, bowed to all, and Mom drove off nonchalantly as if skidding U-turns were her specialty.

COLLEGE DAYS

I actually took dates to park along the edge of the Charles River in Cambridge, Mass., to watch the Submarine Races! In case you actually don't know the gag, when the young lady would eventually wonder where the subs were, you told her they were under water, of course!

{more to follow}

YOUNG ADULTHOOD

Driving off on our honeymoon in 1956 and heading west over the Taconic Range, we came up against a house being trailered over the pass with brake lights on the rear wall; I grabbed my camera and ripped of a grab shot through the windshiled showing the brake lights on (I think it may be on this site somewhere)! Then, on our way home from Québec, leaving a day early so I wouldn't miss an early Classic Car Club of America meet in northern Westchester!

{more to follow}

SUPPOSED MATURITY

One time when I was newly single again and visiting some Stews in Houston, ca. 1982, we spent a delightful weekend out on the beach in Galveston and then, very, very hungry, drove right on through Houston on Sunday night and out on the Katy Road [on the south side of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) RR tracks] to a famous roadhouse that supposedly had the best chicken-fried steak in the world (meaning in Texas). Arriving late after dodging living and dead 'dillers (armadillos), we found the courtyard-cum-parking lot filled with old cars and were stopped at the gate with the news that they were having a '50s Night and we couldn't come in unless we had something from the '50s! That was easy; I said "ME!" and we were ushered right in. Good steaks, too!

One gem that has only slowed down and then stopped relatively recently was a flood of applications to a college I attended briefly in upstate New York for which I created a web presence Champlain College in Plattsburg(h), (NOT the newer one in Vermont), which ceased to be in Jun 1953! I think two things stemmed the flood; one was that I posted a statement that the school was DEFUNCT and, if you don't know what that means, don't bother applying, and the other may have been a vicious spoof page I posted as Champlane Collage! If you can survive visiting THAT page, try the ludicrosities noted at the end of this page, as well as the fabulous off-site story of that prodigious and prolific early 19th century inventor, Constance Brontë and her equally-amazing family!

Remember Pinhead and Foodini? How about Alexander Botts and the Earthworm Tractor Company? Then, there's my outdated Pooh Page.

If you like doing jig-saw puzzles, you might like this Canadian-themed site: Denionica, where you can do them on-line.

For totally ludicrous railroad, business, and place names, see " BW RR, BUSINESS, and PLACE NAMES" on my Berlinerwerke Saga page, et seq.

Then, there'Z alwayZ the Z-scale (1:220) model RR EnZyclopedic Zictionary, et seq.!

For equally (or more so) incredible railroad equipment and yarns, see my Berlinerwerke Apocrypha page, and for even taller tales see my Berlinerwerke Guest Apocrypha page, and especially my own HO Biffie and its Biffisch car.

If you are air-minded (take that as you choose), you must see the Lion Air site! I'd be Lion if I didn't warn you to keep your tongue in your cheek on this one!

Fans of art must visit the Museum of Depressionist Art and the The Gallery of the Unidentifiable!

If you enjoy creative lunacy, visit the Pseudodictionary!

Cyclops automobili fans; see Cyclops on my Automotive page!