One of the joys of living like vagabonds is the ability to change locations quickly. The weather in western Oregon was turning downright cold and damp. One morning recently I went to get something out of the shop trailer and I perchance looked at my lathe and behold it had taken on a distinct red hue. My tools are rusting away before my eyes; Oh the shame of it. A sheet of 600 grit sandpaper and some oil put things right, but it is time to seek a warmer and dryer climate.

We drove out of the rain at the California State line. We stayed a couple nights in Redding and a couple of nights in Clearlake. Today, Thursday, we arrived in Gilroy California. It was in the 80’s today and nary a cloud in sight.

Number 2 Grandson, Patrick, when he heard we were headed this way asked if he could have our old stereo. We bought this back in the 80’s so it is almost new and state of the art…almost. The speakers are the most impressive. They stand four feet high and have twelve pound magnets. The tuner/amplifier is state of the art. Inputs for everything you can imagine: three video channels, tape deck, cd player, phonograph and even one auxiliary channel for your 8 track. Well at least that one will handle the i-pad. The s-VHS tape deck is state of the art. It will handle stereo high fidelity audio and overdubbing. Five channel sound…never heard of it! Blue Ray? What is that? Hey it had a remote, but we can’t find it.

In the end it formed the perfect segue to another of my Family Legends stories: Back in the dark ages, about 1961 to be specific, I was attending Washington State University. I moved into a cooperative dormitory called Pine Manor. We had 100 members and we lived in a wooden building of two stories decorated in knotty pine. Students paired up, two to a room, two rooms adjoining a single sleeping room with two bunk beds. We hired our own cook and a Dorm Mother. We bussed our own tables, swept the halls and did the light maintenance tasks. We served dinner every evening as a sit down affair. One member was assigned to escort the Dorm Mother to the head table and proper manners were compulsory. We elected a President, Vice President, Sergeant at Arms and Treasurer. Yes, it sounds a lot like a Fraternity but without the overhead; that is no rush week, no plebes, no test files and no Greek letters.

About mid semester we held an election and a new slate of officers took over the positions. One of the first tasks they took up was re-writing the dorm rules. One of the principal rules was the quiet hours. They took the following form:

Hours of quiet shall be as follows:

• 12:01 am to 7:00 am

• 9:00 am to 12:00 noon

• 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm

• 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm

• 10:30 pm to 12:00 midnight

Now don’t get ahead of me! Yes, as you can plainly see there is exactly one minute in the 24 hour day that is unaccounted for. That is the famous noisy minute at exactly midnight to 12:01 am.

Nothing makes the blood quicken in a group of bored engineers-in-training faster than to find a defect to exploit. One of the students came up with a five hundred amp stereo audio amplifier. You can bet it was one of those analog type with the big glowing tubes. No one had speakers to absorb 500 amps but between and among us we strung together all the speakers we had and lined them up in the main upstairs hallway. Someone else contributed a record of drag race cars burning rubber, squealing tires and roaring engines. Oh yes, we called time and set our clocks to the official time. All this on the Q.T. so as not to tip our hand to the new President.

As twelve midnight approached not a sound was to be heard in Pine Manor. Then for exactly one minute dragsters with nitro-fueled engines roared to life. They laid rubber the full length of the hallway. Then all was quiet again.

The next afternoon a new set of quiet hours was posted.