David Custis Kimball - blog

History, Humor

This might seem like a Day Ja Vu there at Geek Central near Kendall Square, but before you get all defensive and teary … this is kindof my image of well where nerds were 40 some years ago … ok really 20, but it reminded me.

I was in high school before the laser was invented.  It was Dave Kendall who told me about it … how it was made.  I later learned that one inventor, Charles H. Townes (Nobel Prize 1964) was a theist, who believed that god had shared this knowledge with him … as a gift.

Dave Dunshee was our class genius; he made his own TV from scratch.  I even thought that people shouldn’t be allowed to watch TV unless they could build their own.

You’ve heard the story of Principal Myrtle Rugan, spinster who looked like Margaret Rutherford (Ms. Marple) and her Vice Principal Mr. Bodeski.  I was impeached and without trial, convicted and removed from 8th grade presidency of the student council for having distributed a ‘controlled substance’ and aphrodesiac placebo … vitamin E at a party, where Mad Matt (like a granddaddy to the Pinball Wizard) and Barb Pedian kinda got a base or two on - together … busted me to the school shrink …. and the rest was a hysterical- ectomy.. on my high school future sensitivity. And my girl friend (went to a different school) moved away (her parents didn’t allow her to Gary Engberg’s basement parties, either).  Bummer.

Dave Painter and a group of like minded geeks saw our first nuclear flash in a cloud chamber we constructed with dry ice in his mother’s art studio.

I used to sell a mixture of cow and horse manure (cured for over 2 years) for $10 a trailer load (a small metal thing from Sears) pulled by my 1963 MG Midget … how cool is that?  Steamy!

Chipper Bell and I as preteens blasted a 3 stage rocket from a bunker we dug in the Forest Preserve pasture behind our barn.  The 3rd stage had a mouse in it with a parachute, but the 2nd stage blew up, and the parachute didn’t open … and we never found the 3rd stage. Chipper’s a professor of Neuropsychology in CA, so if you find him, lead him to my blog … he’ll like it.  He’s the co-inventor of our ‘off the grid’ toilet… that was at age 7 or so.  We also stole eggs from the milk truck and threw them at Eccie’s house, ‘cause Eccie burned his garage, buried my brother, and was the general bully of the ‘hood with a trial lawyer dad.

As a preteen, I once threw a cherry bomb into a party of our neighbors when I was attracted to the loud music, drinking, and general bad behavior (I was in a high morality of life phase… no swearing either) … and they were just in high school.  Well the guys saw me and chased me through a woods and over a creek where the trees were generally small … but no farther apart than about 3 feet…. I never touched one tree.  I was one scared ‘bomb throwin’ rabbit’.  I guess that’s why I read ‘Brer Rabbit’ to my kids…. although they like ‘Puppy on the Farm’ better.

Here’s to celebrating all those ‘nerd-based’ experiments, games and adventures … though they all may fail, never, never, never, never …. give up…. (Winston Churchill) or a recent nerdy movie, ‘Martian Child’, and Bobby Coleman (we’re same sign). I never lived in a box, but once made a fort in hay bales where you had to slide 20 feet in a 2x2 passage into darkness… our hay loft… the floors slick from the polishing of the hay.  And I was never abandoned …