My big German binoculars have been restored to their former clarity

My WWII E. Leitz 15x60 Campofortit arrived yesterday after being refurbished by Suddarth Optical Repair of Henryetta, Oklahoma and I am astonished at the improvement in clarity and sharpness! They're as optically impressive as the day they were made.

Cory Suddarth learned his craft while in the U.S. Navy and he and his son Eric have been repairing/refurbishing/rescuing binoculars for several years. Eric did the work on my binoculars which were brought back from WWII by my first father-in-law Philip Kroon.

Judging from the serial number, I think they were manufactured in the late 1930s. I am awaiting information from the Ernst Leitz Museum in Germany as to the precise date they were made. The eyepiece cover has a Wehrmacht waffenamt mark, identifying them as being used by the Gerrman military.

My research indicates they were the most powerful binoculars ever produced by Leitz and were in production from 1932 into the 1960s. One source asserts they were the third best binoculars in the world at the time of manufacture, but he didn't bother to identify the first and second-place binos.

In my experience, it takes very steady hands to use binoculars this powerful. Generally, I find 7x50 to be the most practical for hand-held use.

Happy 50th birthday, Steve!

 My son Steve, seen here with his mother Diane in April, 1971, is 50 years old today.

It seems impossible that both of my sons are in their 50s, but me being 75 seems odd too.

When dad was less than half my age

Going through an old scrapbook the other day, I found this photo of my dad in the 1940s - he would have been in his early 30s - on the Carroll County Courthouse square in Delphi.

Kind of startling to see him downtown without a coat and tie.

Using a bore sighter to adjust my Combat Commander's laser grips

When I bought a set of Crimson Trace Laser Grips for my Colt Combat Commander 1911 a few years ago, I adjusted the laser to align with the iron sights.

It seemed to work okay and I was able to put rounds on target as far as the 50-yard length of my neighborhood shooting range, even shooting from the hip.

Even so, when the Amazon Vine Program offered me a laser bore sighter, I jumped on it.

The device comes with two sets of three batteries. You unscrew the back of the .45 caliber-size bore sighter, insert three batteries and screw it back on. This turns on the laser. Insert it into the chamber of your gun and, voila, you can see precisely where the bullet would impact, distance and wind notwithstanding.

I found the Crimson Trace laser was off by about 3-4 inches at 20 feet - not terrible, but not perfect either.

Then came the hard part - finding the original Crimson Trace box containing the tiny Allen wrenches used to adjust the sight. I hunted high and low for about 20 minutes before I finally located it.

It was a simple matter of dialing in the Crimson Trace laser so it was in synch with the bore sighter's red dot.

Now I am reasonably confident that my laser grip is spot-on. Of course, the proof will be in the shooting, but I'm impressed that my original seat-of-the-pants setting was so close to perfect, considering that the iron sights are ever-so-slightly off.

Isle Royale sunrise

My sons, Sean and Steve, were up with the sun for our first day of hiking and camping at Isle Royale National Park in late June, 1976.

Godspeed, Bill Freeman

I was shocked and saddened when Dave Goyer (on the left) told me our high school band compadre Bill Freeman (center) died earlier this week.

Dave said Bill had been in hospice care with colon cancer. Bill was a year behind us in school, graduating in 1964.

Here we are playing a gig at the Purdue University Club 25 Fraternity in the winter of 1962-63. Trumpet players will recognize the spots on our pants as drainage from spit valves.

A serious closet light

 Our house was built in 1903 and has only four tiny bedroom closets. It was an era when people kept their clothes in free-standing wardrobes.

Naturally, none of the closets have lights, so we've had to improvise. Today, I installed a motion-activated light in our office closet, powered by 4 D-cell batteries. It really lights up the space.

Fifty-five years ago today.

 Fifty-five years ago today, I raised my right hand and proclaimed:

"I, John Marshall Flora, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

The scene was the Armed Forces Induction Center on West Washington Street in downtown Indianapolis.

And thus began my 41-day career in the U.S. Air Force.

I consider myself still bound by that oath.

I was given an early discharge because a lost records physical - my physical records from the Induction Center went astray - indicated I had enough allergies to plants and animals that I would be a bad investment for the Air Force.

I was glad to be sent home, but let the record show I volunteered at a time when the Vietnam War was heating up.

1967 flashback

 Back in 1967 when I was trying to explore the hippie counterculture, I had a pair of prism glasses that approximated what an insect sees with its compound eyes. They were fun for brief periods and I even tried driving my 1965 VW beetle with them for a few seconds.

Somehow, they got lost and I found myself thinking about them last week. I did a search on Amazon for "prism glasses" and "kaleidoscope glasses" and found several examples. I settled on these and they were delivered yesterday.

Here's what things look like through them:

Pretty trippy, eh?

I can see for miles. And years.

 Among the treasures my first father-in-law brought home from WWII was a pair of Leitz 15x60 Campofortit binoculars - the biggest, most powerful that E. Leitz of Wetzlar ever made.

I inherited them and they spent the last few decades packed away in closets and boxes. I considered them too valuable and too powerful for day-to-day use and the optics, which were state-of-the-art at the time of their manufacture, have become hazy.

I had the good fortune to discover Suddarth Optical Repair in Henryetta, Okla. a couple of years ago and am in awe of the ability of Cory Suddarth and his son Eric to restore and refurbish old and abused binoculars at what I consider a very reasonable price.

I decided to have my binos restored and, happily, Maria agreed so I packed them carefully, insured them heavily and sent them off to Suddarths' shop.

I'm eager to see how they stack up against my Steiner 7x50 Navigator Pro binos once they're cleaned and restored.

Jack turned 9 on Sept. 1

 This is the image that made us fall in love with Jack nine years ago.

He was born in Carthage, Mo. and Maria found him on the breeder's website. His temporary name was Luke, but he looked more like a Jack to us.

He has been an exceptionally loving boy and a joy to have in our family.

Here's a more recent photo:

Lynda and me

 My Delphi High School classmate and double cousin (both sides of my family tree) Lynda McCain Brooks turned 75 last week, so I drove up to Delphi and took her to lunch.

We had burgers at the famous Sandwich Shop, toured the equally famous Delphi Opera House and cruised all over town revisiting our youth. We've known each other since the third grade.

Lynda became a widow four months ago and seems to be coping alright, but I think I should spend more time with her. Maria agrees.

Subaru!

 Our 2002 Subaru Forester reached the end of its useful life this summer. With more than 260,000 mils on the odometer, I can't blame it for developing a terminally expensive transmission problem.

Happily this came at a time when we were in a position to consider a new-to-us car and since Maria dearly loves Foresters, we went searching for a good used Forester.

We found it at Dreyer & Reinbold Subaru in Greenwood - a 2017 mode with only 15,000 miles on it.

We donated the old Forester to charity and dearly love our new ride.

Steiner binoculars at last!

 I've lusted after Steiner binoculars for years, but always considered them out of my financial league.

Then my wife turned me onto the Amazon Warehouse offerings and I found a pair of Navigator Pro 7x50 binos, "renewed", at a considerable saving. I pulled the trigger and Amazon delivered them Sunday afternoon. They looked, felt and smelled (the rubber armor smells a little like a new tire) like brand new - no hint of previous use or even unpacking.

I've been collecting/accumulating binoculars and monoculars and spotting scopes for year and these binos are easily optically superior to anything else I've ever used. They're a little on the heavy side for everyday use, but the clarity, coupled with the fact that the 7x50 format is the ideal combination of light gathering objective lens and magnification that enables prolonged use without vibration makes them better than anything else I've used.

My only regret is that our house is surrounded by trees. I haven't lived anywhere with a decent view since I sold my lakefront condo in Indianapolis 20 years ago.

Anyhow, I love these things and look forward to traveling with them.

Upping my Ebay game

Getting serious about selling odds and ends on Ebay with my new light tent.

It was a bitch to assemble because the Tinker Toy-style connectors were crazy tight on the structural rods, to the point where I had to pound them to get the fabric over the frame.

And the LEDs are certainly bright enough but they have a bluish cast that has to be corrected in Photoshop.

That said, it makes for impressive product photos.

87 years ago this month

That's my mom center top. I suppose the placement indicates she was class president. I'd forgotten that, if I ever knew it.

Out of the past

It's been 2½ years since we moved back to Indiana from Arkansas, but we still have a lot of stuff still in moving boxes.

I've been unpacking a few at a time as I figure out where to put the contents and discovered my 3rd generation iPod Touch. It has 60 GB of memory and held my entire music collection when I set it aside in favor of my first iPhone - the iPhone 5 - which had a similar capacity. It's been idle since March, 2013. Happily, I still have a pre-Lightning charging cable, so I plugged it in and recharged the battery with little expectations that it still worked.

Damned if it didn't come to life after more than seven years in drawers and boxes!

I've tried a couple of times to resuscitate my first iPod, a 5th generation iPod Classic that Maria and my sons gave me for my birthday in July, 2006, but it doesn't seem to want to wake up.

A horseshoe in the front yard! Who knew?

Our front yard continues to yield up surprises.

I spent an hour Saturday morning digging targets that my Garrett ACE 300 metal detector found before the long-awaited heat and humidity took me out of my comfort zone. I dug a pull tab some scrap metal and a bottle cap before I hit paydirt with a deeply buried yellow bungee cord. I figured that would be hard to top until I dug a solid 71 signal that turned out to be a horseshoe. It was about three feet away from the sidewalk and about 5 inches down. My initial thought was that it was left over from someone's game of horseshoes. But upon closer examination, I noticed there as still a bent-over nail in it, suggesting it fell off of a horse that was standing in front of the house sometime after it was built in 1903.

The original garage was still standing when we bought the place in December, 2000 and its construction suggested it was built to house a horse and buggy. The original occupants undoubtedly got around in a horse-drawn buggy, since automobiles were still in their infancy at the time.

Gazing out across the lawn, it's hard to imagine what else lies beneath the surface. I've had visions of gold and silver jewelry, but so far it's given up a few pennies, some toy cars, and a lot of trash.

I'm still not very good at spotting the targets in the holes I dig because everything is the same brown clay color. I'd be completely helpless without my Garrett pinpointer to guide me to the target once the hole is dug.

I'd be digging this afternoon were it not for the rain - .85 inches of it since midnight. I refuse to dig in mud. I guess that makes me a fair weather metal detectorist.

Hostage situation grumbling

I feel like I'm being held hostage by the pandemic and the weather and neither is getting better fast enough.

Because I'm pushing 75 and therefore in a high risk group for Covid-19, I have severely curtailed my travels away from home. That got even more restrictive last week when our 2002 Subaru Forester's transmission informed me that I would be lucky to get a block from home before it failed completely. The car has more than 250,000 miles on the odometer and isn't worth the estimated $2,500 it would probably cost to fix the transmission. So it sits deep in the driveway while we decide how to best dispose of it - sell it for scrap or donate it to some charity.

For the last several weeks, I've just used it to go to the post office to check our box. It's only about a 1 mile hike round trip, but this is turning out to be the coldest, most persistently crappy spring I can remember and not the kind of weather that makes me want to go for a longish walk.

Which brings me to my other complaint. The weather has been cold, rainy, and windy more days than not which dampens my enthusiasm for metal detecting in our yard. I know there's still lots of targets out there, but I need sunny calm days in the upper 60s and above to feel comfortable poking around with my Garrett ACE 300 metal detector. So I gaze out the window and curse the weather and the lack of encouragement in the forecast.

And today was especially aggravating because our electrical power failed at 1:41 a.m. and wasn't restored until 9:01 a.m., meaning my morning coffee was postponed and Maria and I had to do our early morning routines in the cold and dark.

My new day job.

I got interested in metal detecting earlier this year when I found myself watching hours and hours of metal detecting videos on YouTube.

Towards the end of January, I decided to pull the trigger and ordered a $245 Garrett ACE 300 detector from Amazon.com. It arrived on Feb. 3, but the cold weather hung on for what seemed like several months. In the meantime I continued to accumulate equipment - A hip/thigh pack for finds and gear (free from the Vine program), a pair of cut-resistant gloves for $11.49, a plastic backpacker's toilet trowel for $4.61 - later replaced with a purpose-made serrated digging tool for $8.57, a sand scoop for $7.73, a serrated shovel for $29.99, a Garrett Pro-Pointer pinpointer for $127.45, and most recently a pair of Garrett gloves for $9.95 because the cut-resistant gloves were a touch too big. That's a total investment of $451.67, thus far... And as of today, I have recovered 88 cents in change.

The Corona virus pandemic severely limited my access to detecting sites, which was fine with me because I want to learn as much as I can within the privacy of my own yard. The front yard is getting most of my attention because the back yard was mostly churned up by an abortive garage project in 2007. The house was built in 1903 and there are plenty of targets in the front yard. My first hole yielded a discarded piece of flashing from the replacement windows we had installed in November, 2017.

So far, the most interesting things the yard has given up are a matchbox-size 1940 Mercedes touring car, a tow truck, a small toy gun, some bottle caps and some can slaw (what's left of cans after they get shredded by a mower). The only other location I've searched is the city park diagonally across the street from my house, focusing on the pea gravel surfaced playground area. That's where the sand scoop comes in. Its holes are just right for sifting pea gravel and have yielded up a bunch of small change and a matchbox Mustang. My first foray to the playground was the day my pinpointer arrived, but I didn't think I'd need it. I took it along the next time I detected the playground and quickly realized how wrong I had been - it's a huge help in narrowing down a search.

I posted this photo of my Monday discoveries, noting that a quarter and eight pennies is not enough to quit my day job. Then I realized that metal detecting IS my day job.

Hunkered down

The Coronavirus has come to the U.S. and, like most other folks, I'm more-or-less quarantining myself.

Among other things, it was a good reason to dig out the thermometer I got a year or two ago from the Amazon Vine program. As you can see, my forehead registered 98.0 degrees, just like it has since I put new batteries in the thing.

The governor has advised all restaurants to go to carry-out only and no dining in for the foreseeable future. Consequently, my trip to the Lafayette Sam's Club revealed that the food court is closed and cordoned off. Likewise, all of the tables and chair at Starbucks are stacked in a corner and every order is to go. Suits me. I always get my mocha cappuccino to go anyway.

It's disturbing to find myself in a high-risk group for coronoavirus - 74 years old and a Type 2 diabetic. But I know a lot of other people who are probably more vulnerable than I am. For instance there's my next-door neighbor who has COPD and went to the hospital overnight earlier this week because he had trouble breathing. My list of vulnerable friends includes a woman who is morbidly obese and her heart patient husband, my insulin-dependent mother-in-law, several similarly elderly (!) members of the Indianapolis BMW Motorcycle Club, my ex-wife who is only a year younger than I am, the husband of a cousin who is a profoundly compromised heart patient who has spent months at the Mayo Clinic, probably all of the members of my high school graduating class, and on and on.

I was heartened today to hear reports of a possible cure in the form of an inexpensive malaria drug that is being tested in France. If it works, it could stop this nasty virus dead in its tracks before we find ourselves with a replay of the 1919 influenza pandemic.

In the meantime, I'm staying home as much as possible and checking my temperature several times a day.

They call it the Garrett "carrot"

My Garrett pinpointer arrived this morning and everyone on the metal detecting sites tells me it's a game-changer.

However, I left it at home this afternoon when I went to a nearby park to sift sand around the playground area. I figured the pinpointer wouldn't be necessary. As it turned out, I could have used it to save myself a lot of scooping.

This was my first hunt away from our yard and I'm moderately pleased with the stuff I unearthed in the space of an hour.

I found a little Mustang and 14 cents in change, along with a nail and some other trash. I'm a long way from being able to understand what my metal detector is telling me, but I'm having fun and learning.

Stepping up

Four and a half years is an eternity in iPhone development. We finally retired our well-used iPhone 6 phones and stepped up to two matching iPhone 11s. Let the learning curve begin.

First new phones since Sept. 29, 2015. We keep our vehicles a long time too.

Targets galore in the front yard

My Garrett ACE 300 metal detector arrived today. I assembled it and did a short survey of our front yard, with the sensitivity set for "jewelry."

I got several strong hits, but I'm smart enough to know that I still have much to learn and it's a little early to start seeing dollar signs.

Words from a friend, now long gone

I was cleaning out my email this week and found this - the last email I received from Mouseketeer Doreen Tracey on June 16, 2005, responding to my happy birthday message a couple of months earlier:

Dear John,

Thank you for remembering. I kind of skip over the birthdays the past few years. As well as not going into my in-box to check emails. Too much work. Anyway, things are fine here in my world. Hope all is going well with your family. Will bring you up to speed, once I open my all my emails which is now over a thousand +. Always doreen

Doreen died of pneumonia as a consequence of cancer two years ago this month.

Happy birthday K1200GT, still running like new

My 2003 BMW K1200GT was born/built in Berlin on this date 17 years ago.

The photo was shot at 11:03 a.m., Feb. 22, 2003 at Revard BMW Motorcycles in Indianapolis the first time I sat on the bike and wondered if it could be a worth successor to the 1991 K100RS that carried me more than 160,000 miles.

It was.

I took delivery of the GT with 15 miles on the odometer at 10:04 a.m. on March 8, 2003. There were several inches of snow on the ground, but the roads were clear and I don’t remember being particularly cold on the ride home to Thorntown.

Since then, I’ve ridden it to 10 BMW MOA rallies:

2015 - Billings, MT
2014 - Minneapolis, MN
2012 - Sedalia, MO
2010 - Redmond, OR
2009 - Johnson City, TN
2008 - Gillette, WY
2006 - Essex Junction, VT
2005 - Lima, OH
2004 - Spokane, WA
2003 - Charleston, WV
It carried me to Daytona Beach Bike Week in 2010 and 2013, down the Pacific Coast Highway a couple of times, to Las Vegas and Portland to visit my sons, a few times to visit friends in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, and back to Indianapolis three times for MotoGP.

All this riding and more add up to 79,790 miles on the odometer as it sits in my shed today.

The GT, for those who care about such things, was the K1200RS with color-matched saddlebags and amenities like an electric-powered windscreen, electronic cruise control, and heated seat and handgrips. The model was introduced in 2003 and I had the first one sold by Revard’s.

I added MotoLight caliper-mounted halogen driving lights after a year or so and upgraded them with LED bulbs in 2012. I also added a removable passenger backrest at Maria’s request in 2003, but haven’t used it in years because she’s not keen to ride these days. The Marsee tank bag purchased when I bought the bike finally started falling apart a couple of years ago and I replaced it with a Nelson-Rigg bag with a solar panel in October, 2012.

I also had a Gerbings power cord connected directly to the battery in 2013 after I discovered the accessory circuit didn’t want to run my heated gear and my Garmin Zumo 550 GPS at the same time. That discovery meant I rode to Daytona and back without electric heat, other than seat and grips.

I added a Pirates Lair sidestand footpad in 2003, but it fell/sheared off a few years ago at a Return to Shiloh Rally and I never got around to putting it back on.

Maria bought me an XM Roady satellite radio setup for my birthday in 2004. I used it and later a Roady II until March, 2010 when I bought a used Garmin Zumo 550 GPS with XM radio receiver from BMW friend Charlie Parsons. It was the elegant GPS/XM solution I’d wanted for a long time and satisfied my need to more gadgetry.

So, after a dozen years and a bunch of tweaks, I have the bike set up to suit me. (Oh, I forgot to mention I bought a pair of oversized saddlebags from Revard’s sometime around 2005, which come in handy for long-haul touring.)

I look over the new models whenever I visit a BMW dealership, but other than the high tech safety electronic features like traction control, I don’t see anything that makes me want a new bike.

Remembering a friend

My friend Doreen Tracey died two years ago today of pneumonia, ending a two-year battle with cancer.

We hadn't spoken for a couple of years and I was about to email her when I did a Google search today and learned of her passing.

For those of us lucky enough to have memories of the 1950s, the name “Doreen” has a special significance. Doreen Isabell Tracey was an original cast member of the Mickey Mouse Club.

Doreen spent her entire life in the entertainment industry.

She was born April 13, 1943 to Sid and Bessie Tracey. The Traceys were vaudevillians entertaining the troops in England and Doreen was born in London.

The family returned to the States when she was four and moved to Hollywood, where Sid and vaudeville friend Ben Blue opened a place called Slappy Maxie on Wilshire Boulevard.

In a move that would shape his young daughter's life, Sid also opened the Rainbow Dance Studio.

Growing up as a normal American little girl, Doreen had the advantage of an extended show business “family.” Her “Uncle Ben” Blue was a prominent fixture in her life and she lived with him for a time when her mother was hospitalized with tuberculosis and her father struggled to keep his business afloat. Jimmy Durante seized upon her childhood name of “Do-Do” and delighted in embarrassing her by announcing, “Look who's here – it's Sid's little DoDo bird!”

She was an only child, and her best buddy was her cat, Sylvester.

Doreen was answering the phone at the Rainbow Studios that fateful day when the call came from Lee Travers at Walt Disney Studios in early 1955 announcing the search for talented kids for the pilot of the Mickey Mouse Club.
She sang “Cross Over the Bridge” in a Little Bo-Peep costume for the initial audition in March.

As one of the original Mouseketeers, Doreen remained with the show through its entire run.

After the Mickey Mouse Club ended, Doreen went to John Burroughs High School in Burbank where she fell in love with Robert Washburn. The two eloped to Tijuana and, a short time later, Doreen found herself pregnant with a son, Bradley Allen Washburn. The marriage was short-lived and Doreen soon became a single mother.

During the 1960s, she performed with the Andressi Brothers in Las Vegas and elsewhere and appeared on episodes of My Three Sons, Donna Reed and Day in Court.

She also toured Alaska and Vietnam with the USO. Her recollections of Vietnam landed her a job as a consultant on the film "Apocalypse Now!" where she contributed elements of the surfing-under-fire sequence.

Doreen fell out of grace with Walt Disney Studios in the mid-1970s when she did two nude photo layouts for Gallery magazine.

That's when I first made her acquaintance. About the same time as the first Gallery layout, writer Jerry Bowles published a where-are-they-now book about the Mouseketeers called Forever Hold Your Banner High. A press kit turned up on my desk at The Indianapolis News one day with a mail-back postcard to request phone interviews with Doreen and/or Jerry Bowles. I checked both boxes and, about a week later, found myself chatting with Doreen. We hit it off and have kept in touch ever since.

Since the Gallery flap, Doreen and the studios have been reconciled.

Doreen lived in Simi Valley with her son.

In an email exchange in April, 2013, she related that this has been a particularly stressful period with the passing of fellow Mouseketeer Annette Funicello, friend Jonathan Winters and ballerina Maria Tallchief.

“She practiced with the Ballet Russ de Monte Carlo company, as Mr. Balanchine gave instructions to his troupe. He never spoken above a whisper to his beautiful swans. The rehearsals were at Sid's dance studio. I watched in wonder at her dedication. Although, I never achieved the perfection of Ms. Tallchief, she did inspire this lonely little girl to become a good enough dancer to get by.”