A Science Guy’s Almanac #24. Duncan Yo-yos and Yo-yo Masters

A Science Guy’s Almanac #24. Year 2. May 16, 2016

Duncan Yo-yos and Yo-yo Masters

The Wienermobile was the highlight of the events in our neighborhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The second place event was the visit of the Duncan Yo-yo Masters at the drug store at the end of our street. I’ve recently discovered that the official title for those people was “Yo-yo Demonstrator.” I like Yo-yo Master better, so I’m sticking with it.

An Aside

My family moved to Spring Valley in 1957. From then, until 1971, when I married Leanne Stagner, I lived at 4166 Citradora Drive in Spring Valley, California. Citradora begins at Campo Road and ends about ½ mile North-ish at Camino Paz.

When I was growing up, a drug store/doctor’s office was on the East side of Citradora and a gas station was on the West side of Citradora where it met Campo. Doctors Webster and Contasti were the owner/occupants of the doctor’s office end of that building. I spent many Saturday mornings there following Friday night football game injuries. I spent many other hours in that doctor’s office, too. When I stopped going to Dr. Webster because he wasn’t on the health insurance plan I had, he showed me two file folders. It took a pair of folders, each over 2-inches thick to hold my records.

The drug store, Valley Pharmacy by name, end of the building wouldn’t have the same sign on its roof today as it did back then. The word DRUGS, stood tall and proud in four-foot-tall letters.

Ah, the innocence of that time…

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I don’t know how often the Yo-yo Masters visited the Valley Pharmacy. I do remember what they did.

 Unless we had money to buy a yo-yo or brought one with us, they gave us all a yo-yo to practice with. This was a masterful marketing ploy. I suspect that Valley Pharmacy sold more yo-yos the weeks of those visits than all the weeks the rest of the year combined.

The masters began by showing everyone how to make the yo-yo go down and back up. That’s sounds like a dumb thing for them to show, but I’ve learned that it’s harder for some people than others to do.

You need to know that real yo-yo strings are really one big loop that’s been twisted into a single strand. Hold that thought.

Once we were all yo-yoing, they worked on what I called the waterfall technique. That began by holding the yo-yo in your hand with the palm down. Next, you rotated your wrist and tossed the yo-yo off the ends of your fingers. You cradled the yo-yo as it returned to your hand as it returned up to it. Without stopping the movement of the yo-yo, you rotated your wrist and tossed the yo-yo. Poetry in motion.

• The first trick the masters tried to teach us was the sleeper. After waterfalling your yo-yo, if you jerked your hand upward at the moment the yo-yo was motionless at the bottom of its downward flight, you might get it to spin without rewinding the string. That’s possible because the string is really a big loop. Remember that thought you were holding? I was a quasi-master of putting my yo-yo to sleep. In other words, I could get the yo-yo to sleep about half the times I tried. 
• The next trick up the difficulty ladder was walking the dog. For this trick, after the yo-yo was asleep, you lowered it gently to the ground. When the spinning yo-yo made contact with the ground, it would creep forward, much like a dog on a leash. I was a non-master of that trick. In fact, I never recall a time when I got my yo-yo dog to walk more than an inch before it climbed back up into the palm of my hand.
• Other trick demonstrations followed. I watched while some of my friends did feats of wonder as they copied the Yo-yo Masters. I resurrected some bad memories for this blog post by searching for yo-yo tricks. This link https://yoyotricks.com/yoyo-tricks/ starts with videos of the basics and goes insane by the end of the Basics video.

You might recall that I told you that Valley Pharmacy sold many yo-yos during and immediately following the Yo-yo Masters’ visit. The cheapest yo-yo you could buy back then was made of wood. I don’t remember if it was a Duncan, but it probably was. The coveted yo-yo of choice was not a wooden yo-yo. It was the colorful, plastic Duncan Imperial.

I did have one of those. So, at least I looked like a good yo-yoer.

Next Almanac post: Catheters, Pus, and Buttermilk: Three terms you don’t want in the same sentence!

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Prompt #1714 Between the Shadow-times updated

Periodically, I write to a daily prompt found at thewritingreader.com. This is one of those. I hope it brightens your day as much as the experience brightened Gwendolyn Mathers'.

I invite your comments at: http://www.thewritingreader.com/blog/2016/05/03/prompt-1714-falls-the-shadow/ 

Gwendolyn Mathers let her body slide down the tiled wall of her oversized shower. Warm water cascaded over her body from the rain showerhead her husband had insisted be a part of the nearly twenty square-foot enclosure.

She stared, unseeing, at the array of side shower jets that wrapped around her at varying heights. Those, too, had been essential parts of the luxury shower system advertised as “a relaxing, refreshing refuge for couples.”

What it had become was a reminder of happier times.

She knew she wasn’t depressed. I am exhausted. I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.

The ping of the timer she’d set rallied her mental energy. She stood, pressed the button on the foaming soap dispenser, and lathered up. She knew that she’d taken too long to still wash and condition her hair.

She sighed.

Removing the hand-held showerhead from its mooring, she rinsed her body. One turn of the master water valve stemmed the flow of hot liquid. She pushed the all-glass shower door open with her hip and stepped out onto the memory foam bathmat. After drying her body and partially drying her hair, she wound her shoulder-length hair into around her head and wrapped a towel around it.

“You’ve got the sultry middle-east look down this morning,” she told her reflection in the mirror. Even though she knew there was no one else in the house, she pulled a short cotton robe on before she opened the door to the bedroom.

After dressing and drying her hair, she headed to the stairs. A clear line of darkness split the staircase in half midway between the top landing and the bottom step.

Funny, she thought, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before. I didn’t think there was enough sun in this stairwell to cast a shadow this time of the morning.

She took a deep breath and stepped off the landing.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

As her foot contacted the seventh step, she realized she’d been subconsciously counting the steps. She looked down. Brilliant sunlight bathed her foot in glorious gold hues.

“It’s dazzling!” She said aloud.

Embarrassed by her vocalization, she took the next two steps as fast as she could.

Something compelled her to stop.

What’s going on here? I feel… Why I feel better! Better than in a long time.

She looked down. The line between sunlight and shadow now cut her mid-thigh. She turned and looked back up the stairs.

I don’t get this? It’s pitch black up there. 

She shivered.

She pranced down the remaining steps. By the time she reached the hardwood that covered the entire first floor of her home, she was humming.

The phone rang.

She skipped to the kitchen counter and snatched her smartphone from its charging cradle.

“This is Gwen!”

“Mrs. Mathers?”

“None other.”

“Um, of course. This is Nurse Doring.”

“Ah, yes. You’re one of Hank’s nurses. How are you?”

“Um, why, I-I’m fine,” the nurse stammered. What’s up with Gwendolyn? She’s never this perky.

“And, Hank?”

“That’s what I called about.”

“Okay. I’m ready for your news.”

“You’ll want to come down as quickly as you can,” Nurse Doring instructed. “Your husband’s shown signs of emerging from the coma. Very promising signs.”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you! I’ll be right there!”

Gwen snatched up her car keys with one hand and punched the garage door opener with the other. She shoved a coffee pod into the machine, slapped the lid closed, stuck her insulated mug under the spout, and started the brew cycle.

She hummed as she pulled two granola bars from their box in the pantry. By the time she pushed open the door to the garage with her hip, she was ready to take on the world.

She never could explain why she turned and look back at the staircase. But when she did, she saw that the sun illuminated the entire length.

That’s not possible. There’s no way the sun moved that far in that short of time.

Without a second thought, she let the door close behind her. It didn’t matter if the shadows returned.

I’m spending today, which is going to be a fantastic day, thank you very much, between the shadow-times.

A Science Guy’s Almanac #23. Year 2. Wienerwhistles

A Science Guy’s Almanac #23. Year 2. April 18, 2016

Wienerwhistles 

Last week, I featured the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile and the coveted whistles its occupants passed out to us kids. I think the corporate rule was “one Wienerwhistle per kid,” because getting two of them was an uncommon occurrence. Sometimes, if the crowd was big enough, and the Wienermobile stayed for two days, you might score one on each day.

For those of you youngsters reading this, I’m talking late 1950s-early 1960s here. Our TV antenna might manage 4 stations—ABC, CBS, NBC, and an independent English station in Mexico. But, we only got all four on the same day when all the stars were aligned. So, the Wienermobile was a big deal.

The design of the whistle is simple.

1. Start with an outside of a round-ended closed cylinder.
2. Drill a hole in each end of the cylinder.
3. Drill a hole about one-third of the way down the length of the cylinder.
4. Cut a wedge-shaped opening closer to the other end than the previous hole, but make sure it is open in the same direction as the previous hole.
5. While neither example shows all the holes, all four are present in every Wienerwhistles.

Once you got your Wienerwhistle, you had to play it. Over. And over. And over. Much to the dismay of adults in your household.

To play the Wienerwhistle,

1. Hold the end of the whistle closest to the wedge-shaped opening between your lips with the wedge-shaped opening facing up.
2. Blow into the hole on between your lips. A sound will emerge.
3. Cover the end hole with a finger.
4. Repeat Step #2. A different sound will emerge.
5. Remove your finger from the end hole and use it to cover the hole facing up.
6. Repeat Step #2. Yet another different sound will emerge.
7. Finally, keep one finger covering the hole facing up and use another finger go cover the hole in the end.
8. Repeat Step #2. Violà! A fourth sound will emerge.

You now know the potential of the instrument.

Notice I used the term sound and not note for the compression waves generated by your moving breath. That’s because I don’t know if they are notes. I’ve never heard anything like music played on one. Mostly what the Wienerwhistle produces are annoying sounds. Remember the previous sentence.

In most houses, the life span of a Wienerwhistle was less than 24-hours. No matter how clever you were at hiding your whistle, sometime during the first night whistle spent in your house, something like what follows would occur. I’m using Dad as the designated parent because I’m pretty sure that’s the way it was in my house when wienerwhistles were concerned.

Typical Sequence of Events the Night After Receiving a Wienerwhistle

1. Hide your whistle in your underwear drawer before going to bed.
2. Wrap it in a sock or a pair of tighty-whities.
3. Push it all the way to the back of the drawer.
4. Cover the hidden whistle with other underwear.

After he’s sure you’ve gone to sleep,

1. Dad will enter your room.
2. With the stealth that a cat-burgler would envy, he will search your entire room: closets, drawers, boxes, baseball card stashes, comic book racks. If it has a place to hide something, he’ll search it.
3. He will find the source of the annoying sounds—your Wienerwhistle.
4. He will take his prize out into the hallway or living room.
5. He will drop in on the carpet.
6. He will smash the Wienerwhistle to smithereens with his shoe-covered foot.
7. He will go to bed.

In the morning, when you wake up and can’t find your Wienerwhistle, 

You will ask your parents,

“Have you seen my Wienerwhistle?”

Dad will answer,

“No. But I felt it when I stepped on the thing in my bare feet last night. I think I broke. I warned you to keep it off the floor.”

You know you have no chance of winning an argument about what really happened. So, you go to your friends and see if they were any more successful than you were at hiding their whistle(s).

Chances are all they can offer you is a handful of broken plastic pieces and a tube of airplane glue.

PS. I was going to record me playing my Wienerwhistle and link it as an MP3 file. But, my wife says she hasn’t seen it in a long time.

Next Almanac post: Duncan Yo-yos and the Yo-yo Masters

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