Insight: Underrated inventions and revelations

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

If I were to compile a list of prominent inventions introduced throughout my time on earth that have made my life easier, it would certainly be long and extensive.

Instead, for brevity’s sake, I’ve limited my list to just four and detailed some of them below.

My first automobile was a 1956 Chevy that a student and friend of mine had driven across the country from Vermont to New Mexico. Somehow, when he graduated from college, he sold it to me in 1972, and despite some physical defects – such as a rusted rear driver’s side wheel well that eventually fell off forcing me to stuff a towel in the hole to prevent the back of my head getting sprayed when driving through puddles – the car ran great.

Because power steering for automobiles was a relatively new feature in the 1950s, my Chevy was not equipped with that enhancement and at times it required a good deal of strength to turn the steering wheel.

I suppose I was young and didn’t know differently when I drove the 1956 Chevy, but I was about to be astounded when I purchased a new Mercury Capri in 1974. The Capri came with power steering included and the steering wheel turned so easily that I could steer it using just one of my fingers instead of the two-handed grip required for vehicles without that special feature which we all take for granted these days.

Therefore, my first marvelous invention on my list would be automobile power steering.

When I was 13 in 1967, our family received an invitation from one of my mother’s cousins to visit their home to see something incredible. Color television had been around for a while, but my father didn’t want to spend $500 to purchase one. The cousin made us close our eyes and sit on her living room floor. In opening our eyes, she revealed her own version of “color TV,” which was a tri-colored piece of Saran Wrap stretched across a black and white TV screen. One third was blue, another third was yellow, and the other third was red.

At home we had a black and white console set and a black and white portable that could move from room to room, but each time I asked when we would be getting a color model, I was chastised by my parents for not being frugal and wanting to spend money needlessly. I grew up watching classic TV shows such as Bonanza, Batman, Star Trek and Disney’s Wide World of Color in good old black and white. I was thrilled when my father wheeled the portable TV into the dining room to watch a World Series game in 1963 between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers in black and white, although my mother complained about watching television during Sunday dinner.

For Christmas in 1975, my wife and I pooled our money and bought a color portable television set, and I was finally able to watch shows such as The Price is Right, Baretta, The Captain and the Kings mini-series and the Super Bowl between the Dallas Cowboys and the Pittsburgh Steelers in color.

Item #2 on my great invention list would be color television.

Because my father insisted that being head of the household was his duty and his alone, he never taught me simple tasks such as the proper way to carve the Thanksgiving turkey. He had his own set of specialty carving knives and decades of carving experience behind him for that annual chore. By the time I was grown up, married, and living elsewhere, my knowledge of carving was limited at best and highly primitive. Yet, the job of carving the Thanksgiving bird fell upon my shoulders and no matter how hard that I tried, cutting off turkey legs and slicing portions precisely was not something that I mastered quickly.

Then one year when I worked part-time at a furniture and appliance store, I saw a presentation for a handy inexpensive tool that I knew I had to buy. A manufacturer’s rep at the store I worked at demonstrated an electric knife and after buying one for $19.99, my carving worries were soon behind me.

I’d put the electric knife as my third great invention of my lifetime.

During the summer break between my freshman and sophomore year of high school, my parents insisted that I not waste the summer lying around doing nothing. They insisted that I enroll for a summer school class that taught students how to type. I showed up for the first class and found that all the typewriters in the classroom were manual ones from the 1930s and some were in better condition than others. We were assigned seats, and my typewriter had a carriage return key that would stick. To make it work you had to bang on it hard and having learned to type that way, to this very day, I am told that I strike the return and space keys on the keyboard with force.

Lastly, I’d place the Royal electric typewriter that I received as my high school graduation present in 1971 on my list of the greatest inventions of my lifetime. <                 

Andy Young: When does Gatorade go bad?

By Andy Young

Gatorade, the liquid thirst quencher, was invented by scientists at the University of Florida in 1965. It originally came in one variety: green. I didn’t try the stuff until after I had turned 10. Perhaps that was due to its cost at the time, or from a lack of its availability where I lived.

My interest in this skillfully marketed, ubiquitous source of electrolytes was reignited recently when I was gifted with three bottles of it, and from a most unlikely source.

However, in order to effectively protect the privacy of the individuals involved in this real-life tale of intrigue, I’ve opted to use a pair of three-letter pseudonyms.

“Amy” and I went to see a mutual friend (and former colleague) one afternoon last month. “Joe” has been retired for 15 years or so, but he’s still as vital, witty, and caring as he was when the three of us served as English teachers together. He’s universally acknowledged as one of the best educators to ever roam the halls of the high school where I’ve been employed for the past 23 years. He’s also, incredibly, an even better person than he was a teacher; his kindness and generosity of spirit are both palpable.

When we arrived at his home, “Joe” greeted us with hugs, handshakes, and an offer of refreshments. Then he asked a question I had not been anticipating. “Andrew,” he intoned in the same stentorian voice that mesmerized his students and colleagues alike for decades, “do you drink Gatorade?”

Even more unexpected than that odd inquiry was its source. “Joe” has never hidden his aversion to perspiring. He pronounces the word “exercise” with the same level of disgust most people my age reserve for such terms as “racist,” “human trafficker,” or “social media influencer.” Why he had three bottles of Gatorade in his possession is unclear, since someone who detests exercise needs Gatorade like Helen Keller needed binoculars.

Still, when I’m asked an honest question I provide an honest answer, so I responded, “Sure … if it’s free.” “Well then,” he intoned. “I’ve got three bottles you can take home with you.”

Our thoroughly enjoyable visit flew by, but as dinnertime approached and “Amy” and I reluctantly had to depart, “Joe” reminded me not to forget the Gatorade. “Oh,” he added as an afterthought, “it may be a little, ah … old.”

A couple of weeks later, after taking a lengthy bike ride, I downed the contents of the bottle containing orange-flavored (or more accurately, orange-colored) Gatorade. It tasted normal, which is to say not even remotely like oranges. But then, remembering the parting remark “Joe” had made about the libation’s age, I thought I’d check to see if there was an expiration date on the outside of the container.

There was. It read, “Oct 24 21.” Then I checked the other bottles. The one containing what I had just consumed was the youngest of the trio.

Since I’m still very much alive, and it’s apparent I’ve suffered no harmful after-effects from gulping down 32 four-year-old ounces of Gatorade. I’ve yet to sample the lemon lime (expiration date; Sep 30 18) variety yet, nor the kiwi strawberry (expiration date: Aug 07 18), which is an indistinct, indescribable color I have never encountered anywhere in nature. I’m saving those two bottles for a special occasion, like maybe after they’ve turned 10.

There are, as I see it, two takeaways from all this.

One is that it’s safe to drink four-year-old Gatorade. The other: pseudonyms only work if you use a name different from the actual one of the person(s) whose identity you’re trying to protect. <

Insight: Long Lost Secrets

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

I recently listened to a podcast about how to speak with your parents about their past and why it is important to learn about their lives and pass it down to future generations in your family.

A newspaper article from 1924 reveals details
about a violent incident that took place between
Ed Pierce's maternal grandparents that he
never knew about while growing up.
COURTESY PHOTO   

In my case, both of my parents are deceased, but they did tell me a great deal about how they grew up and their experiences during World War II while they were still alive.

I found out quite a bit about my mother just by being a snoop as a child. Once when my parents were shopping on a Friday night, I discovered a bonanza of information I hadn’t previously known by exploring a kitchen cupboard that contained our family’s cups and glasses when I was 8 and in third grade.

Opening the cupboard door to get a glass for a drink of water, I looked up at the top shelf and noticed some papers there. Curiosity got the better of me and I climbed up onto the kitchen counter and was just tall enough to be able to pull the papers down off their lofty shelf.

Sitting on the kitchen counter, I looked through the documents, which were my mother’s divorce papers from her first husband. To that point, I did not know that my mother had been married before, and that she was divorced before meeting and marrying my father. The papers were sent to her by an attorney and the listed reason for the judge to grant the divorce was on the grounds of physical and mental cruelty. And in what was a bombshell revelation to me, the judge had ordered that my mother’s ex-husband was to pay her child support of $10 per month.

I carefully returned the papers to the top shelf where I had found them, climbed down from the kitchen counter and began to process what I had just learned. As it turned out, my older sister was my half-sister, and it now made sense to me as to why her last name was different from mine.

The more I thought about it, the story about how my parents had first met that my father had told me became clearer. While working his way through college to obtain a degree in mechanical engineering, he worked at night as a private detective. He told me he had been assigned by the agency he worked for to investigate a case for my mother. They met, and he asked her to go to a square dance with him. Not long after they got married.

Years later I discovered that the case my father had investigated for my mother involved her ex-husband and his claim that he couldn’t afford child support for several months because he wasn’t working. She hired my father to verify if that was true. My father found out that he was working at night at a manufacturing plant and my mother then reported the details and his employer to the court.

My sister got married when I was 12 and I made the mistake of asking my mother if my sister’s father was coming to the wedding. She wanted to know how I knew that, and I explained how I had discovered her divorce papers years before. As I expected, she got mad and told me to stay out of her personal things.

A conversation I had when I was 16 with my father also revealed a story about him that I didn’t know. It seems when he was a teenager, he and a friend had purchased a pack of cigarettes, and they were caught smoking behind a barn on my grandparents’ farm.

To teach my father a lesson about smoking, my grandfather took him to the barn and proceeded to have him smoke a box of Dutch Masters cigars one by one until the box was empty. The experience made my father sick, and he ended up being admitted to the hospital for nicotine poisoning. After that, he said he never again had any desire to smoke.

Neither my mother nor my father drank alcohol, and I came to understand why they didn’t decades later. I read a newspaper article from 1924 regarding my maternal grandfather getting drunk and then striking my maternal grandmother with a stick breaking her wrist after she threatened him with scissors with my mother watching as it happened.

My father also told me about an embarrassing incident during the Great Depression in which my paternal grandfather was out somewhere drinking when it started to snow. He became drunk, took off all his clothes and went running down the street naked. The police were called, and they soon found him, wrapped him in a blanket and returned him to my grandparents’ front door in front of my grandmother, my father and his siblings.

The incident shamed him so much that my father said that he took a week off from school to avoid being teased by classmates about it. He grew up avoiding alcohol and I can’t ever recall seeing him with a drink in his hand during my lifetime.

No matter what someone’s past experiences might be, they can offer an invaluable glimpse into the person they are now. <

Andy Young: Far more than just a foodie city

By Andy Young

West Virginia, Vermont, Delaware, Wyoming and Maine are the only U.S. states that don’t have a city of at least 100,000 residents within their borders. That bit of trivia makes the naming of Maine’s Portland as (according to tripadvisor.com’s “Travelers’ Choice Awards Best of the Best” America’s 8th-best destination for food even more impressive.

I wasn’t one of those polled by tripadvisor.com, but after checking out their roster of the 10 top-rated restaurants in the Portland area, I can understand why. I’ve only heard of two of the places listed, and have eaten at just one of them, Becky’s Diner. For what it’s worth, if I’m remembering the right place, I’d give Becky four stars.

Being ranked amongst the nation’s top “foodie” cities is no small feat for a community of Portland’s size. Other metropolises in the Top 10 include New York, Boston, and New Orleans. That a place of under 70,000 residents can rank above world-renowned cities like San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia is nothing short of remarkable. Maine’s grandest municipality isn’t even the nation’s largest Portland; in fact, its current population (68,408, at the 2020 census) is closer to that of Portland, Texas (20,383) than it is to Portland, Oregon’s (652,503).

There’s no reason for Maine’s Portland to have a population-related inferiority complex, though. Its number of residents is greater than the combined populations of the Portlands located in Texas, Tennessee (11,486), Connecticut (9384), Indiana (6320), New York (4366), Michigan (3796), North Dakota (578), Pennsylvania (494), and Arkansas (430). No population numbers were available for the unincorporated Portlands in Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri and Kansas.

Sudden thought: am I the only one who’s wondering if Portland, Kansas is a fictitious place invented by some Wikipedia prankster? Sure, Kansas has plenty of land, but where would they put a port?

It’s tough determining exactly where Maine’s largest city’s population stands nationally, although it’s definitely somewhere in the top 1,000. According to Reddit.com, which cites the 2020 census as its source, Portland stands 563rd, 44 people ahead of Franklin, New Jersey, but trailing Palo Alto, California by 164 residents. However, gist@github.com has Portland 524th, 15 souls shy of Bossier City, Louisiana, but 21 more than St. Cloud, Minnesota. Both agree, though, that what people around here see as an urban megalopolis is far less populated than burgs such as Killeen, Texas; Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Avondale, Arizona; Racine, Wisconsin; Billings, Montana; and Layton, Utah, to name just a half-dozen places that can only dream of being considered for some sort of culinary-related award from organizations like tripadvisor.com’s “Travelers’ Choice Awards Best of the Best.”

There’s no need for Portlanders to feel inadequate just because the population of Maine’s largest city is a mere 10.48 percent of Portland, Oregon’s. Our Portland has nearly seven times the population of Portland, Victoria, Australia, which isn’t just that nation’s biggest Portland; it’s the largest one on the entire continent as well! South Africa’s Portland, a neighborhood located in the Mitchell’s Plain area within the city of Cape Town, has fewer than 25,000 residents, and Portland, New Zealand is home to just 483 inhabitants. That’s even fewer than New Portland, Maine, a Somerset County town of 765. And as for the two Portlands in Jamaica and the one in Ireland, well, they’re so minuscule that they don’t even list their populations.

But when it comes to all things culinary in the five American states without a city of over 100,000, Maine’s Portland stands tall. Need proof? Try finding a tripadvsior.com list of the ten best eateries in Charleston, West Virginia; Burlington, Vermont; Wilmington, Delaware; or Cheyenne, Wyoming! <

Insight: A mentor and a friend

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

On the night before Thanksgiving in 1977, I was more than 5,000 miles from home, it was raining all the time, and I didn’t know anyone there. I had just been sent to my first duty assignment in the U.S. Air Force at the age of 23, at a remote location near Frankfurt, Germany.

Daryl Green was a longtime friend
of Ed Pierce and they served
together in the Air Force
in Germany and in Washington,
D.C. during their military careers.
COURTESY PHOTO

It was not what I had hoped for. My unit’s barracks were at Drake Kaserne in a U.S. Army housing building surrounded by a tall stone wall. My third-story room contained a cot, a closet and a window looking out over the stone wall onto a city street below. It was a 7-minute walk to the mess hall for a meal and by the end of my second week there, I was wondering if I had made the right decision in wanting to see if things looked any different on the other side of the world.

For the Thanksgiving holiday, my unit had been given four days off. I wasn’t envisioning having a fun time eating my Thanksgiving dinner alone in the mess hall and without receiving my first paycheck yet, I was unable to afford to use a payphone to call my family back in America.

Then something unexpected happened. Another member of my unit who lived across the hall from me in the barracks invited me to listen to music in his room and that simple gesture renewed my spirit. His name was Sgt. Daryl Green and meeting him turned out to be one of the best things to ever happen to me.

He was originally from Brooklyn and had been in the Air Force for almost four years. He was single and had some of the most expensive stereo equipment I had ever seen. Although I did not share his love for jazz music, I discovered that sitting and listening to his jazz albums in his room was as close to attending a jazz concert as in person.

All his record albums were jazz greats such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane and he introduced me to more contemporary jazz musicians such as the Brecker Brothers, Idris Muhammad and Herbie Hancock.

Even more impressive was Daryl’s turntable. It was a $2,000 Jean Francois Le Tallec linear turntable that electronically sensed the album tracks, and the turntable’s tone arm was self-contained. Each record played on it sounded incredible.

As I got to know Daryl, I found that we both loved college basketball and were both writers. He was working in Aerospace Ground Equipment in Europe, but his next duty assignment was to be the editor of the base newspaper at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. When he was eventually transferred out of our unit, I shook his hand goodbye, thanked him for being my friend, and sensed that it wouldn’t be the last time I would see him.

About 13 months later, I was reassigned to a squadron at The Pentagon in Washington and soon thereafter reconnected with Daryl. He asked if I would write some articles about events at The Pentagon for the newspaper that he was editing called the “Bolling Beam.” Over the next two years, I produced more than 200 articles for Daryl’s newspaper, and we went to a few college basketball games at American University and at the University of Maryland. I was with him when we ate lunch at the first Wendy’s Restaurant to open in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

By August 1981, I was reassigned from The Pentagon to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona to work for the base newspaper there and Daryl learned that he was being transferred in January 1982 to Beale Air Force Base in California. Before leaving Washington, I had dinner with Daryl and his wife Taryn at their home in Maryland and we talked about what it was like to serve as an editor of an Air Force newspaper.

We spoke on the phone almost weekly for four years and he congratulated me when I was promoted to serve as the editor of the Luke Air Force Base newspaper in 1982. He called me several times in New Mexico in 1986 after I had gotten out of the military and was in the process of earning my degree in journalism at the University of New Mexico.

In 2009, Daryl and I became Facebook friends, and he mentioned that he was retired from the military and was seeking a job in Las Vegas, Nevada as a card dealer in a casino. Despite sending him several more messages, I didn’t hear from him again. But earlier this year I noticed that his brother Vinny was on Facebook and sent him a message asking about Daryl.

He told me Daryl had passed away in 2012 at the age of 56 in Maryland and I couldn’t believe it. He had retired as a Master Sergeant from the Air Force and had served in Vietnam and in the Gulf War and was one of the smartest people I have ever known.

It was more than mere coincidence that led Daryl Green to invite me to listen to music with him in 1977, and I will always remember his kindness and guidance in serving as one of my mentors and a great friend.

Andy Young: Exploring current (and future) centennials

By Andy Young

I’ll be umpiring a Little League baseball game this coming Monday evening, which is oddly appropriate, given it’s the exact date that a ballplaying American icon, Yogi Berra, would have turned 100 years old.

Yogi Berra played on 10 teams 
that won the World Series and he
is immortalized in the Major
League Baseball Hall of Fame.
COURTESY PHOTO   

In addition to putting together a remarkable Hall of Fame career that saw him play for more World Series-winning teams (10) than any other player in history, Berra was the embodiment of the American dream. Born Lorenzo Pietro Berra, he grew up in the hill district of St. Louis, the son of Italian immigrants. Quitting school as a teenager, he joined the United States Navy, ultimately becoming a gunner’s mate who survived the Normandy landings on D-Day.

After the war concluded he doggedly pursued a baseball career despite possessing a 5-foot-7-inch, 185-pound frame that looked anything but athletic. Neither of the then-existing major league teams in his hometown, the Cardinals or the Browns, saw fit to offer him an acceptable contract, so he ended up signing with the New York Yankees, and subsequently spent all but the final four contests of his 2,120-game career wearing the black-and-white pinstripes of the perennially powerful Bronx Bombers.

By nearly anyone’s definition Berra’s life was an extraordinary one. He had a beautiful family, achieved unquestioned success in his chosen field, and attained material wealth through a combination of endorsement deals and wise investments. His adopted New Jersey hometown is the site of the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center, which is adjacent to Montclair State University’s home baseball field, Yogi Berra Stadium. He also appeared on a US postage stamp.

Unfortunately like every other individual granted that particular tribute, he had to die first in order to qualify for it.

Casual noticers of Yogi Berra’s would-have-been 100th birthday may think that starting an 11th decade of life isn’t that unusual; after all, accomplished people like Jimmy Carter, George Burns, Bob Hope, Henry Kissinger, Grandma Moses, Kirk Douglas, and Olivia de Havilland all reached that particular milestone.

And while a significant number of well-known folks who were, like Yogi, born in 1925 (or MCMXXV, in the land of his ancestors), didn’t make the century mark (Paul Newman, B.B. King, Barbara Bush, Johnny Carson, Angela Lansbury, Malcolm X, Margaret Thatcher, Rock Hudson, Medgar Evers, Robert F. Kennedy, Sammy Davis, Jr., William F. Buckley, Jr., and Laura Ashley, to name just a baker’s dozen), at this writing there are still a few noted 1925 natives hanging around, like Dick Van Dyke, June Lockhart, and, uh … Jiro Ono, the retired sushi chef who owns a restaurant in Tokyo, Japan. (Thank you, Wikipedia.)

According to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank and trusted public opinion polling organization based in Washington D.C., people aged 100 years or older currently make up .03 percent of America’s population. More detailed statistics reveal that while there are currently around 101,000 people of triple-digit age in the United States, that number will increase to upwards of 422,000 by the year 2054.

The folks at Pew also report that America currently houses more centenarians than any other nation, but the number of individuals who’ve lived beyond the century mark is actually higher per capita in Japan and Italy than it is here. Projections suggest that by 2050 China will lead the world in centenarians, followed, in order, by Japan, the United States, Italy, and India.

Statistics such as these are fascinating, but are they accurate? After all, the Pew Research Center wasn’t founded until 1990. Why would anyone trust findings regarding longevity from a callow organization that’s only 35 percent of the way to reaching the century mark itself? <

Tim Nangle: Helping towns enforce laws and protect our lakes

By Senator Tim Nangle

Sebago Lake provides clean drinking water to over 200,000 people in southern Maine. It’s one of the cleanest lakes in the country, and one of the few sources in the nation that requires no filtration before it’s delivered to the tap. But Sebago is more than just a water supply. It’s a defining feature of our region, supporting local businesses, drawing in visitors and offering year-round recreation for thousands of Mainers.

State Senator Tim Nangle

Sebago isn’t the only important body of water in Maine. Across our state, lakes, rivers and streams serve as environmental, economic and cultural lifelines for their communities. From fishing and boating to wildlife conservation, these waters touch every part of Maine life. They’re invaluable. But at the same time, they’re vulnerable.

That’s why we have shoreland zoning laws that protect our waters from overdevelopment, erosion and pollution. These laws are critical to maintaining water quality and preserving public access, but they only work if they’re enforced. And too often, towns are left without the resources to enforce them effectively.

Last year, I sponsored a bill to strengthen Maine’s shoreland zoning enforcement laws, and I was proud to see it signed into law with bipartisan support. That legislation, LD 2101, gave towns the authority to deny or revoke building permits for properties that violate shoreland zoning rules – something they couldn’t do before, even when violations were blatant.

These were meaningful changes, and they’ve already helped shift the balance back in favor of towns trying to uphold the law and protect our shared natural resources.

However, one major challenge remains: legal costs.

Although shoreland zoning laws are established at the state level, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection has delegated enforcement responsibility to local cities and towns. Municipalities are left to carry out this work on their own and at their own expense.

Pursuing a shoreland zoning violation through the court system can cost a town hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some towns, particularly smaller ones, simply can’t afford that risk. Meanwhile, wealthy violators can drag out the process, betting the town will back down to avoid the expense.

That’s why I’m introducing a new bill this session to create a revolving legal assistance fund specifically for shoreland zoning enforcement. Here’s how it would work: If a town needs help covering legal costs to pursue a violator, it could apply to the fund for assistance. If the town wins the case, it repays the fund using the court-awarded legal fees and costs from the violator. This keeps the fund self-sustaining and ensures that help is available for the next municipality that needs it. The fund would also be non-lapsing, meaning any unspent money stays available from year to year.

This proposal builds on the momentum we created with LD 2101. It’s a practical, targeted way to support local enforcement of zoning laws and ensure no community is left powerless when someone breaks the rules.

We passed LD 2101 to empower municipalities to uphold the rules. Now it’s time to make sure they can afford to do it.

The bill is LD 1904, “An Act to Establish the Municipal Shoreline Protection Fund.” The public hearing has not been scheduled yet, but I’ll share updates as it moves through the legislative process.

For the latest, follow me on Facebook at facebook.com/SenatorTimNangle, sign up for my e-newsletter at mainesenate.org, or contact me directly at Tim.Nangle@legislature.maine.gov. You can also call the Senate Majority Office at 207-287-1515.

The opinions in this column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of The Windham Eagle newspaper ownership or its staff. <