I was sitting on the porch one afternoon several months back. Perhaps I had been practicing guitar. One of my favorite poems is "The Touch of the Master's Hand" by Myra Brooks Welch. The story goes that she returned home after hearing an inspiring speaker, sat at her typewriter, and composed the poem. She claimed the words just came to her as if from God. I thought that would be quite an experience. Back to my story, that is about what happened to me. The words just came with little thought on my part. I am not a poet in fact after I experienced a stroke the therapist challenged me to compose a song. I struggled for at least a week and finally had some words that rhymed but that was about all you could say for the composition. Anyway, I know my limitations when it comes to writing. I had to immediately leave the porch and write down the words before I forgot them. This is the result:

    The raven glides on midnight wing, their tips turned toward the sun.

    His raucous call reminds us all that day is now begun.

    The hummingbird with bill down-curved, draws nectar from the flower.

     He flits along the whole day long until the twilight hour.

    While we, unfeathered humans, have a different point of view.

    We seek superiority and claim to know what's true.

    But over and above us all, God sees our feeble quest.

    His gentle hand, His eternal plan, determines what is best.

No, it isn't Robert Frost material. Whatever the source, I was the tool that limited the work. The truth is that is far beyond my capability.

Ralph Robbins Scrapbook

Examples of pages from Alfred Ralph Robbins Scouting/Fishing Scrapbook.

Monkey Mountain

It seems a common finding that military veterans are reluctant to speak of their wartime service and especially combat, except when reminiscing with other vets about their battle stories. With older veterans dying off and their stories and war histories dying with them there has been a recent effort to get these stories recorded and preserved.
One of my grandsons interviewed me several years ago but the results never went any further.
This story as best as I can recall is true. The setting is a military camp called Money Mountain near Danang in Vietnam. I was serving with the Air Force rescue forces as a ground radio operator.
This story doesn't involve military combat and could probably merit a "G" rating except for the violence you will read about shortly.
Bordering the camp at the base of the mountain and almost to the beach in the Bay of Danang grows a huge tree maybe 40 feet tall but more like 50 feet across. Except for one week in the Spring it gets little notice. The birds nest there but they are quiet neighbors. During that one week, hundreds of monkeys invade the tree. I don't know what kind of tree it is but it produces some kind of fruit or food that the monkeys love. Day and night they play, fight and scream at one another from the branches. It is a jumble of jealous, vindictive juveniles all determined to satisfy their own appetite with the best and biggest morsels that always seem to belong to someone else.
I can't imagine how the tree can bear the weight of the monkeys at the very time it is already burdened heavy with fruit. It does though and when the week is over, the monkeys are gone. The tree is again forgotten as it prepares for next year's onslaught. Little can be learned from the monkey's frantic, haphazard chaos; perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from the tree. The selfish will come and go. Those who are unselfish and sharing grow strong and bring joy if only for a brief moment.
While we are on the subject of monkeys, one day at the mess hall as we were in line for dinner, another soldier came past with a monkey on a leash. He stopped and talked with us because everyone wanted to play with the monkey. He explained that they are a lot of work with little benefit. They need constant care, are very demanding, often mean and not very clean. Another day someone came by with a pet sparrow. The bird would fly free but always come back for food or to rest on his benefactors hand or shoulder.

The Park

The Park

As a very young boy, I was fortunate to live immediately across the street for a park. It wasn't much of a park; mostly a field of weeds with a softball diamond in the middle and a small playground in the southeast corner. The playground consisted of swings, teeter-totter and a slide. A couple years later a surplus two-story military barracks was trucked in and assembled near the park entrance on Main street. It was termed a recreation center but other than being a place to register for youth recreation programs like little league, it was more a craft house for kids during the summer when school was out.

Pete Harmon was the most prominent patron. He wasn't one of the ball players who used the diamond in the evenings but organized and funded the special events like the bonfire on Halloween and fireworks on the 4th and 24th of July. Pete Harmon owned the restaurant on the corner of State and 39th South. It was called the "Do-Drop-Inn" and was a place to get a burger and fries, Coke or a cup of coffee. He was the same who teamed up with Col. Sanders and the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.

Back to the park. About the time the barracks was moved in, the park was named Harmony Park and the county began mowing the weeds. I think the name Harmony was a tribute to the support Pete had provided. For me, it was a shortcut to the grocery store and a field to practice my golf drive. We practiced archery but my favorite pastime was watching the control-line model airplane pilots fly on the softball diamond. I would watch in a near-hypnotic trance and wish I could fly like they did.

There was a corner of the field that was vacant so the county began hauling in fill dirt and built up the ground level even with Main street. Next they built a fire station on the fill. The neighborhood kids played on the mounds of fill dirt before they leveled it out and built the fire station. Years later we learned that the fill dirt came from tailings from the Vitro Uranium processing. It ruined playing hide and seek at night because we glowed but seriously, they discussed closing the fire station to protect the health of the firemen but I don't know if they did or if they decided the radon didn't pose a significant problem.

Two Pines on a Hillside Grove

While searching for some continuing education certificates I came upon a poem I had looked for while preparing a sunday school lesson. It is like "Touch of the Master's Hand" where the old violin's worth is shortchanged. The title and author are unknown at least to me.
   Two pines were born on a hillside grove,
   One protected, grew straight and tall.
   It bore no time or weather marks.
   Its figure was slim and virginal.

   The second showed clearly that time had passed,
   For it stood where the winds stormed by.
   Its arms knew the torturous weight of snow.
   Its face knew the sting of the sleet filled sky.

   The first tree so youthfully beautiful,
   Was a picture the world could all see.
   But the artist who climbed to the hillside grove
   Always painted the other tree.
                                  Author Unknown

RC Airplanes

As a boy I watched as model airplane enthusiasts would fly their radio-controlled or control-line planes at the ball diamond near my home. Like the youth at the park where I now fly, I wished I could make a model do my bidding. As I've said many times, I would have sold my soul for a chance to ride in a real plane. My chance came after I graduated from high school. It was a commercial flight and was everything I dreamed it would be. As we flew over the Atlantic that morning the sun crested above the clouds and it still lingers in my mind as one of the most amazing and beautiful experiences of my life. It was a very different feeling years later when I was able to accompany my dad as he flew a small plane. Except for the noise it was like floating above the earth. I now fly remote-controlled electric powered models and enjoy it thoroughly. Each of my planes has very different flying characteristics, The Slo-V slowly floats around but is prone to stalling. The Tiger Moth is a little faster and more agile. The 'Divinity', a combat wing, is much faster and I find myself over controlling as it is also much more sensitive to control inputs. Sometimes I become so caught up in the remote flying that I almost feel like I'm part of the plane cruising higher and higher.

RC Groups

Fast Food

Sitting in the family room gazing out the patio window I see a swarm of damsel flies. I have nothing better to do so I watch in wonder at the speed and agility of these insect aerobats. As I watch their aerial dance, I see that they are not alone. There are small midge-like bugs flying among the swarm. Then a disembodied pair of wings flutter to the ground. A few seconds later another pair fall. Before long the number of small midges has fallen sharply. I concentrate my observation to discover what is going on. Then a damsel fly darts up from below and behind a midge and another pair of wings flutters free. The dragonflies, as we always called them, are making a meal of the midges. When there was no more 'meal-on-the-fly', the damsel flies flew off in search of better hunting grounds.

If we could design aircraft to mimic the speed and agility of these savage insects there would surely be no adversary in the skies to rival our air power. Such a feat would take a new way of thinking. Or put in the words of one of my favorite poems "The Calf Path": "A moral lesson this might teach were I ordained or called to preach, for men are prone to go it blind along the calf paths of the mind and toil away from sun to sun to do what other men have done. But I am not ordained or called to preach."

A greater moral lesson, to my thinking, is whether it is more probable to believe that life came about by chance from some primordial ocean soup without any intelligent organizing power or that there is a being with the intelligence and power to organize life into a myriad of creatures of such variety with amazing abilities, not the least of which is the ability to reproduce. But I am not ordained or called to preach