Embedded Files
A silly list, but what the heck?
When I was about 15 years old, Bob Mathias, winner of the decathlon at both the 1948 and 1952 Olympics, came to Stanford and demonstrated the shot put for a bunch of us kids during the Stanford summer sports program we were attending.
While a student at Andover, Boston University competed against us in Track and Field. On B.U.'s team was John Thomas, the first person to clear 7 feet in the high jump. He waited until the other jumpers were finished, then moved the bar up about six inches and cleared it, still wearing his warmup sweats.
In 1959, while on vacation with my family in Mexico City, I spotted Brigitte Bardot in the hotel lobby, browsing through the magazine stand. Len and Bruce were upstairs playing cards, haha.
I was in the stands at Stanford Stadium when Don Bragg set the world outdoor pole vaulting record of 15 feet 9¼ inches at the Olympic Trials in July 1960 - and this was before fiberglass poles were invented. After clearing the height, he hoisted his girl friend on his shoulder, and ran with her shouting his famous Tarzan cry.
I met Lord Mountbatten during his visit to Malaysia in 1963.
In the 1964 Olympic games Dick Roth won the gold medal for his first-place finish in the men's 400-meter individual medley, setting a new world record of 4:45.4 in the event final. Shortly before the individual medley final, Roth suffered an appendicitis, but refused an immediate operation. He insisted the surgeons delay to allow him to swim in the final, and won the gold medal as a result. Dick Roth, Greg Buckingham and I were all members of the Menlo Country Club swim team (somehow I was not selected for the U.S. Olympic team...)
I shook hands with President Johnson when he visited Malaysia for one day, October 30, 1966.
In 1966–67 Greg Buckingham set world and American records in both the 200 and 400-meter individual medley. His younger brother Lindsey was guitarist for Fleetwood Mac. We were boyhood friends of the Buckinghams.
I attended the 1969 visit to the American Embassy in Kuala Lumpur by the first American astronauts to land on the moon. They gave a small moon rock to Malaysia. Someone at the reception for them asked how they managed to go to the bathroom during their voyage. They laughed, saying "Someone always asks that question". I don't remember their answer...
Caren and I double-dated with Bill Gates and Ann Winblad (this was before he was married, of course). I co-authored a book on Object Oriented Programming with Ann. Bill had an arrangement with her that he and Ann could keep one vacation tradition alive from their dating years. Every spring, as they had done for over a decade, Gates would spend a long weekend with Ann at her beach cottage on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where they would ride dune buggies, hang-glide, walk on the beach, and share their thoughts about the world and themselves.
While at H.P. GrenobIe I attended the 1972 Nobel Prize ceremonies in Stockholm, where family friend Ken Arrow won the Nobel Prize in Economics. I was mistaken by several attendees as the son of Heinrich Böll, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (it must have been my long hair).
In 1978 I had a personal audience with the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, India.
I sat next to Bill Hewlett at a luncheon when he visited H.P. Grenoble in 1973. He showed me a prototype for the next H.P. 65 pocket calculator, which stored programs on magnetic strips.
Tod Spieker, a fellow member of the Menlo Country Club, set multiple long-course records in 1998 and would repeat with five short-course world marks in the 50-54 age group. He was chosen as the 1999 Masters Swimmer of the year.
I jogged with California Senator Alan Cranston, the only American sued by Hitler. (He was the brother of my landlady Eleanor Fowle, who rented her guest cottage to Ron Moore and me for $25 a month while we were Stanford students).
While returning from the South Pacific aboard Rhapsodie, my crew and I had a private audience with one of the three kings of the island nation of Wallis and Futuna.
At the beginning of my Pacific Crest Trail hike, I met Billy Goat (that's his trail name), who had hiked 150 days per year every year for the past three decades, clocking a total of over 32,000 miles. He had recently hiked the Israel National Trail, and encouraged me to hike it (which I later did).
I went to school with and became close friends with Larry Tesler, a computer scientist who worked in the field of human-computer interaction. He invented the Copy and Paste function, and promoted the idea of modeless software (his license plate was "NOMODES").
Joe Eichler was a family friend and frequent house guest. He was one of the influential advocates of bringing modern architecture from custom residences and large corporate buildings to general public availability. We lived in three successive Eichler homes in the 50's. Between 1949 and 1966, Joseph Eichler's company, Eichler Homes, built over 11,000 homes in the Bay Area. Even better, he found summer construction jobs my brother Len and me (we mainly cleaned us Eichler sites).
I am a friend of John Mashey, a storied computer scientist and entrepreneur. Most importantly, his license plate is "UNIX", the operating system he helped develop.
I was the principle developer of pfs:Write, an easy-to-use word processor that was ranked #1 by Software Digest three years in a row, beating out Microsoft Word, among others. It was also the first word processor to incorporate a spelling checker.
I programmed the HP Math Drill and Practice for elementary school students, and helped install it in locations throughout California and elsewhere. It was one of the first computer-aided math programs, and required no intervention by teachers.
At Andover I was the first recipient of the Bernard Joseph Award for best Senior math student.
I have no way to verify this, but fellow PCT hikers claimed I was the oldest to complete the PCT in 2014.
My father, Don Edwards, was a Congressman from California for 32 years. He was involved in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Edwards was a member of the House Judiciary Committee during the investigation of the Watergate scandal. Edwards opposed the U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War, the invasion of Panama, and the Persian Gulf War. He was one of eight members of the Judiciary Committee to vote for all five articles of impeachment drafted against President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. He earned the titles "the conscience of Congress" and "the Congressman from the Constitution". The San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge is named after him.
My stepfather, John Merryman, is credited with creating the field of “Art and the law,” and was the leading American expert in civil law. He was also a great father to my brothers and me.
My guide for a training program I took on Mt. Rainier was Jim Whittaker, the first American to climb Mt. Everest. His training partner was a Sherpa who was the first person to climb Mt. Everest twice.
I have taken Spanish language classes five times. I still can't speak Spanish worth a damn.
John and Len, with no prior experience, won the curling contest during our 1960 family vacation in Zermatt, Switzerland.
I became a sannyasin (follower) of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh while at his ashram in Pune, India, in 1979. When I sat before him at my investiture, I had the strange sensation of falling into his eyes. I no longer am a follower, but I still have a mala (necklace) with his photo, and a carved wooden container with a few strands of his hair. And I still wonder from time to time about that strange sensation.
Len claims his greatest travel regret was my losing the pictures of leeches on our bodies during our Borneo hike.
Returning from a summer at Aunt Patty's, I stopped at Whitney Portal and climbed Mt. Whitney (22 miles round trip, 6,131 feet elevation climb), then continued home to the Bay Area, all in one day.
For a certain period of time, nephew Erik Edwards was in charge of managing the money of Google cofounder Sergei Brin (roughly $100 billion). I reminded Erik that I was his favorite Uncle, but nothing came of it...
Club Med once advertised that all expenses were included in their vacations; so I went to Club Med in Tahiti with literally no money on me - and indeed, I never had to pay for anything. (This motivated my good friend Irv Brenner to vacation there - but he brought some money).
I have never been beaten at a burping contest - including length, strength, and variety. Want to try me?
I lost my two front teeth falling off a roof. They were replaced with a retainer. I could then amaze and mystify children by using my tongue to slowly lower the retainer and its attached teeth.
Brother Len, while on a summer vacation in Seattle, sat on the bottom of an escalator in a department store, which grabbed his butt and pants and held on, leaving him bloody, pants-less, and embarrassed in the middle of the ladies section. He had to lie face down in the back of our station wagon for the trip back home.
I have walked the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail (except for the last 100 miles), and the Israel National Trail, for a total of 6,270 miles.
I have lived and traveled overseas about 10 years. By 2019 I had traveled in over 100 countries.
I did the AJ Hackett Nevis Bungy (134m) while in Queenstown - the highest Bungy jump in New Zealand. I was offered the option to have my bungee cord adjusted so that I could touch the Nevis River at the end of the drop, but I declined the offer.
While Scuba diving in Papua New Guinea, Dana found a beautiful little blue sea creature which he held in his hand for me to admire. We later discovered it was a blue-ringed octopus, with a venomous bite that can kill you in 30 minutes.
Leonard and Bruce used to play a board game called All-Star Baseball. They would divide up the players into teams, and play entire series, keeping track of the games on paper. Later, when they were no longer both living at our parents' house, they would write to each other, and reminisce over the games they had played.
I collected butterflies while in Elementary School. My collection was not extensive: skippers, monarchs, swallowtails, and morning glories.
I once found a box of dynamite caps and a large container of black powder in an abandoned house in Menlo Park, not far from where I lived. I built a box with batteries and wires to connect to the caps, and would construct bombs consisting of a test tube full of black powder, surrounded by several dynamite caps taped to it. I had great fun blowing things up until one explosion sent shrapnel into my arm. John Merryman drove me to the hospital, which had been alerted that a dynamite cap victim was on the way. When we got to the operating room, the doctor seemed disappointed that I only received minor flesh wounds.
On a dare one evening I ingested some belladonna (deadly nightshade) - bad idea. I soon began having visions, one in particular of some martians welding in a neighborhood garage down the street. I knocked on the front door to alert the occupants of what was going on in their garage. Unfortunately the occupants called the police instead, and I was escorted to the Palo Alto police station. While I was being booked I saw another Martian, sitting close by. Funny, when I pointed this out to the booking officer, she just ignored me.
When Caren was sailing with crew to San Francisco from Hawaii, Rhapsodie was dismasted. Fortunately no one was hurt, and they were close enough to San Francisco to motor in the rest of the way.
While caddying at the Menlo Country Club, one of the golfers got so mad he threw a golf club over the fence and onto the adjacent Woodside Road. A passing car screeched to a halt, and the driver jumped out, picked up the club, and drove off.
I took dance lessons to prepare myself for the upcoming Peninsula Debutante season (thanks to my mother, I was invited to every one of the deb parties. My job was to make sure no deb was left sitting alone). The dance lessons culminated in a dance contest, which my partner and I won. Our prize was an evening at San Francisco's Palace Hotel, fox-trotting to the music of the Dell Courtney orchestra.
I once saw a woman with bound feet on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. It was banned in China in 1912.
My parents "adopted" an Italian boy from Naples, Salvatore Amatrudi, and would send his family money and presents - including a frisbee. Bruce and I visited him while heading south to Greece. The family had prepared a lovely meal for us, the main course of which was served... on the frisbee!
In New Zealand I scuba dived to the Rainbow Warrior, which the French had sunk in 1985 (in 1987 they were ordered to pay Greenpeace $8.1 million).
Len and I have played the "Got You Last" game since childhood - and we still do. (By the way, don't listen to Len - I am definitely the winner in this epic battle, despite his feeble efforts to get me last with his "Got You Last" ray and cries of "Boo Boo La Loo").
Fellow PC Volunteer Mark Lind could spit a precise stream more than 20 feet, directly from the back of his open mouth.
Caren is certified to captain vessels of up to 100 tons.
When one of us boys would beat John at Hearts, we would gleefully dance around the table.
I met Bill Bailey ("Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home?") at his bar, The Coconut Grove, in Singapore.
Caren and I watched the stage show at Aggie Grey's Hotel in Apia. Mrs. Grey herself waved to us from her upstairs bedroom when we left. She is believed to be the only woman innkeeper ever honored with a postage stamp and is known to have been one of the several island businesswomen who inspired the composite character of Bloody Mary in the Broadway musical and movie adapted from James A. Michener's ''Tales of the South Pacific.''
Dave Almquist, Barbara Nottingham and I stayed at Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Because we were Peace Corps Volunteers, who were much in favor thanks to the recent formation of the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers, modeled after the Peace Corps, we stayed for free!
During my six months in Stanford In Germany, we visited East Germany, entering at the only permitted access point through the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie. We attended a performance of Berthold Brecht's play, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, starring his wife, Helene Weigel.
Robert Frost came to Andover for a day, and recited some of his poems during a school assembly.
B.F. Skinner came to Andover, demonstrated how he trained his pigeons, and tested how we measure size.
For my 22nd birthday my folks gave me two presents: a meal at Le Pyramide, at the time considered the finest restaurant in France, and an evening at Le Crazy Horse Saloon in Paris, the best strip show in town.
Bruce, Che, Len and I ate at the Central in Lima, Peru, at that time ranked the world's best restaurant.
I spent some time in Paris with my parents some time ago. Unfortunately, John was sick with hepatitis, so I was mom's escort for the entire time. We drove around in her new Volvo P1800, so new that we were stopped by a gendarme just so he could check it (and my mother) out. One evening we went to La Grenouille ("the Frog") a crazy restaurant. We had to climb over our table to get to our seats. Instead of menus, we were handed binoculars to view the menu posted on the wall (the binos didn't work). When the waiter took our orders, he wrote nothing down; when our meals arrived, they were identical, and not what we ordered, but - surprise!- frogs legs. Desserts: an eclair and two scoops of ice cream arranged like - guess what? - for mom, and two scoops of pink ice cream with a cherry on top of each, looking like - guess again - for me. When mom tried to explain I was her son, the waiter and other guests just rolled their eyes. When we left, our waiter presented us with a small bronze depicting two frogs mounted - and gave mom a big goose (she told me later that she was happy she was wearing a girdle).
Nicole's older sister once took me to a Paris restaurant that only served cheeses - 600 or so. Each course consisted of a huge plate displaying about fifty cheeses of a particular type, and there were six courses. Burp.
Years ago I flew across country with the bottles of a Gilbert Chemistry Set on my person. I think that would not be allowed today.
My father was probably the most liberal member in the House of Representatives. His sister Patty was a member of the far-right John Birch Society. They were raised together, and both attended Stanford University. Go figure.
My good friend Pancho Huddle and his wife Pom survived a plane crash off the Comoros islands caused by Ethiopian terrorists. 125 of the 175 passengers and crew on board, including the three hijackers, died. Pancho and Pom survived because they requested first class seats at the last minute in the front, where most of the survivors were seated.
My Aunt Patty was a Christian Scientist. Rumor has it that she only saw a doctor only once: to have a skin blemish removed from her face.
I won the underwater swim for distance at the Menlo Country Club. Unfortunately, I fainted under water, and had to be rescued by our swim coach, who pulled dove in, hauled me out, and was experienced enough to pry open my mouth and pull out my tongue, which I had swallowed.
I ate a lot of durians, "The King of Fruits", while in Malaysia. I found them delicious, but they have a very strong smell, which can linger for days. In fact, the the fruit is banned for transportation in countries like Thailand, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong: 'No Durians' signs are plastered all across airports and hotels in these countries. The Malays believe they are an aphrodisiac: A Malay pantun says "durian jatuh sarung naik", which means "the durian falls and the sarong comes up". A common saying is that a durian has eyes, and can see where it is falling, because the fruit allegedly never falls during daylight hours when people may be hurt. However, people have died from durian falling on their heads, especially young children. The most sought after (and expensive) durians are those swallowed and expelled by a wild elephants.
Aunt Patty was a member of the very right wing John Birch Society. I attended a meeting with her when the speaker explained that Sputnik was as Russian hoax.
While parked for the night in an African game park, I was awakened by violent moving of my VW microbus. An elephant was repeatedly ramming the front, threatening to overturn my vehicle. Solution: turn on the headlights. Scared the big fella away.
I purchased a VW microbus soon after arriving in Nairobi with Nicole, Ken, Vickie, Scott and Bardie. On our very first outing, four of us parked for the night in a campsite in Nairobi National Park. Ken and Vickie slept in the tent, while Nicole and I slept in the van. The next morning I called out to our campers to get ready for some game viewing. They stuck their heads out of the tent and cautiously enquired: "Have they gone yet?" and pointed to the lion tracks all around their tent. It seems 3 lions, which we had see earlier the previous afternoon, had come visiting during the night. They had stayed for several hours, circling the tent, staring inside through the open front, tussling with each other, rolling up against the tent sides. Ken and Vickie were suitable frightened, and huddled together in the center of the tent. They eventually fell asleep fell asleep, clutching the tent pole for support. This night of terror dissolved their interest in Africa, and they decided to cut their trip short, and return to the U.S. as soon as possible.
One of the saddest events in my African travels occurred in Zambia, where Nicole and I had been invited to accompany sone Rhodesian settlers who were hunting animals, which the local assistants would butcher, smoke, pickle, and hang up to dry as "biltong" (jerky). One evening they hung an impala in a tree, and we hunkered down in a blind nearby. Soon we heard sounds coming from the tree: a predator had discovered the bait. Our hosts fired a shotgun at the tree, heard a thump when the shot animal fell to the ground, and we got the hell out. Returning the next morning we discovered what caused the thump: a baby leopard. We felt terrible. And for the next week or so we could hear, every evening, the coughs of its mother as she circled our campsite.
Perhaps the most exciting event in my African travels was when our camp in Zambia was attacked by a lion (!) Late one night one of the local villagers who was sleeping by the fire got up to pee; as he was getting ready he looked ahead and noticed a lion in the bush a few yards away. It leaped at him, he leaped backwards over the fire, and woke up the others. They clustered on the opposite side of the fire from the lion, who began to stalk them by walking around the fire. They ran en masse to the tent where we and the settlers were, screaming "Bwana! Bwana! Simba!". Unfortunately one of the villagers, an older man, tripped and fell, and the lion jumped on him. The settlers rushed out with their guns and started yelling at the lion. It raised its head to look up at them, and they were able to shoot it. We pulled the old man from underneath the lion; surprisingly, he only had superficial bite marks. When we examined the lion, we saw why he hadn't been more injured: the lion was missing many of his front teeth, and was unable to bring down normal prey.
November 16, 2023, as Irv Brenner and I were crossing University Avenue, the main street of Palo Alto. we witnessed our first ever real-life attempted robbery. In the street, no more than 30 yards from us, a car screeched to a halt, and three people, wearing black clothing and masks, jumped out, ran to a store front nearby, and started banging on the front window with hammers. The window didn't break after about fifteen seconds of banging, so they quit trying, raced back to the car, and took off. Pretty exciting stuff.
Once in the early seventies, while driving home from work at H.P., I stopped to pick up a hitchhiker dressed in formal British attire, complete with briefcase and rolled-up umbrella. He explained he was on his way to San Francisco to be interviewed for having successfully walked across Death Valley in the summer, wearing the same formaI outfit. I asked him if he had done anything else of note. He told me his favorite exploit was to go around the world, from London and back, spending no more than five English pounds, a contest sponsored by a British newspaper. Then I remembered an article I had read in a local Malaysian paper a few years back, when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Kuala Lumpur. It said that a British citizen had been caught trying to stow aboard an ocean liner in Singapore, but that the ship's captain, once he heard that the fellow was competing in a contest to go around the world on five pounds, decided to give him free passage. "Was that you?" I asked. "Yes. I made it all the way around the world for five pounds. My technique was to approach a young lady and explain what I was attempting to do. I carried in my briefcase newspaper articles about my adventure as evidence. And I was rarely turned down, from a meal, a shared room, or even a cabin aboard a ship."
While in Malaysia I would occasionally read in the local newspaper of a villager "running amok". One of the few Malay words that has crept into English usage, it means an episode of sudden mass assault against people, usually by a single male individual. When a person runs amok he may run around and try to kill anyone he encounters, including members of his own family. "Latah" (the sudden yelling of vulgar or obscene words) is the female equivalent of amok.
In Kenya we met up with a Disney crew filming "Mzee Simba" (Mr. Lion), starring the largest lion in captivity, and a beautiful animal. I don't believe the film was ever released. Side note: we met Susan Backlinie, the girl who got munched at the beginning of the movie "Jaws"; she was the girl friend of the lion's trainer. Second Side note. Years later, when we lived in Carmel Highlands for awhile, I was walking on the trail above Monastery Beach, when I spotted a tiger (!) running along the beach. And its trainer, I discovered a short while later, turned out to be the same animal trainer I had met in Africa...He was filming with his tame tiger an Esso advertisement that became famous, especially in Malaysia, with the catchy phrase "Put a tiger in your tank" ("Isikan harimau dalam tangku Tuan").
During our South Pacific voyage, Rachael was certified to Scuba dive at the age of 11.
I studied for and passed the HAM Operator License Exam, but in fact I never had to use my new Morse code skill on our voyage (in fact, the Morse code requirement was eliminated in 1991 - it turns out I never needed to learn it).
Many years ago I entered a cross country ski race in the Tahoe Donner area. It was a big deal race, with top contestants from all the nordic countries. When the race began, everybody took off, and I was alone for the first half of the race. Then everybody showed up, coming from behind, and passed me by. I had been lapped. But I soldiered on, finally completing the full course just before the officials began to dismantle the finish line. All the other competitors had long since left. Never mind: a reporter decided to interview me, and when he discovered Congressman Don Edwards was my father, he took my photo, which appeared in the newspaper the following day. At least they didn't publish my time (it was more than twice as long as the winner's).
In 2013 I entered the Pacific Grove Triathlon. With zero training, and a long stop waiting for a bathroom to free up during the race, I still managed to place fifth in my age group.
When I was about 10 years old and spending our family's annual vacation at my grandparents, I found a rifle my grandfather had stored in his library. I took it back to my room, pointed it out the window, and pulled the trigger. Boom! It was loaded! It wasn't too much later that my grandfather and a policeman came into my room, took the rifle away from me, and asked if I had fired it. It turns out that my one shot had gone through the kitchen window of his next door neighbor, where she was preparing dinner. No harm though: I missed her. I was gently reprimanded, and I suspect my grandfather was told by the policeman not to leave his rifle loaded and unlocked.
Those were the days: I got a slide rule for my 13th birthday: a Log Log Duplex Decitrig.
My mother met Charles Lindbergh.
I won the underwater swim for distance at the Menlo Country Club - but fainted underwater during the swim, swallowed my tongue, and was rescued by my swim coach (who said it happens occasionally by the Stanford Men's water polo team members).
While an employee at the Computer Division of Hewlett-Packard in Cupertino, my co-workers and I heard a rumor that the Advanced Products Division next door was working on a pet project of Bill Hewlett's: a "shirt pocket sized computer". We all scoffed at the idea, deeming it impossible. "Oh, well" we said, "It's Bill's company - he can do what he likes". Then out came the HP 35 - the world's first pocket calculator. HP sold 100,000 the first year (1972) at $395 (that's about $2800 today). It had no competition until Texas Instrument's SR-50 came out two years later.
Shirley Temple was a member of the Menlo Country Club. I would see her occasionally at its swimming pool.
I had the opportunity to meet Wallace Stegner at at Mrs. Fowle's home in Los Altos Hills, when Ron Moore and I rented her guest cottage.
My mother told me that when I was a young boy living in San Francisco, riding with her on a cable car, I said to a sailor riding across from us: "You look like a nice sailor. Would you like to come home and sleep with mommy and me?"
When mom came back from the hospital with Bruce, and Len and I saw him for the first time, we asked if he was a boy or a girl. Mom answered "A boy." We asked "Are you sure?" She was sure, she answered. Relieved, we responded: "Thank goodness. A girl would have spoiled our family."
Mom had an article of clothing I loved: a full-length leopard skin coat. She got rid of it eventually when the animal rights movement made her feel guilty.
During my elementary school years, we would have "Duck and Cover" exercises, when we would hide under our desks to protect ourselves from an atomic bomb attack by the Russians.
When I was a high school student at Andover, we would have "Mixers" twice a year with the adjacent Abbot Academy for Women next door. We boys would line up in one side of the gymnasium, the girls on the other, and then get paired off as our initial evening dance partners. While waiting in line, we would count down on the girls' line, to see who we would be paired with, and then shuffle our positions to match up with a more desirable partner.
While on the train from Tanzania to Zambia, the train hit and killed an elephant on the tracks.
On a small island in Lake Nakuru I spent one day birdwatching, and identified over 100 species. (Lake Nakuru has over 500 species).
My father booked me in one of the two rooms of the Watergate Hotel, where in 1972 two members of the Watergate burglar team trained their binoculars on the sixth floor of the Watergate office building, where the cohorts broke in (and my father had his apartment).
At one point in my early adult life I took a course in parachute jumping. I jumped a total of three times with a static line, and three times in free fall, and then decided that was enough.
I have a habit, since elementary school days, of mentally spelling words by silently typing them with my teeth (please ask for a demo!).
I have discovered two words, "enchantment" and "antisocials", each eleven characters long, that share a particular property. Can you guess what it is? And another word, "typewriter", has a different property. Any guesses?
My favorite numerical sequence: 8, 5, 4, 9, 1, 7, 6 ... What are the next three numbers?
When I entered Andover I was given a reading list of 100 books, and told to read all of them by the time I graduated. And I did.
The Summer before I entered Andover, I took a typing course at the local high school. Smartest course I ever took. Not only did my typing skills help me at Andover, I was able to make good money typing the papers of Stanford students: 25 cents a page, a nickel a page for carbons.
And speaking of typing: during a period in the seventies when there were a number of scandals involving Congressmen and their assistants, my father joked that some of his fellow Congressmen would brag that their assistants could "type like a mink".
Another from my father: "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."
Do I still have the travel bug? You bet! Here's a partial list of the places I still want to visit: Iceland, Canadian Maritime provinces, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Antarctica, Ireland, North Ireland, Scotland, Laos, Sri Lanka, Southern India, Irian Jaya, Romania, Bulgaria, Mongolia, North Korea.
In 1973 Nicole and I hiked to the Nordkapp (North Cape): at 71 degrees North Latitude, above the arctic circle, it is the northernmost point on the European mainland.
As a young girl in Lexington Nana climbed the fence of Man o' War's paddock and jumped on his back for a short ride before a stableman chased her off.
While in Papua New Guinea we attended the anniversary of the Battle of Milne Bay, the first major battle of the war in the Pacific in which Allied troops decisively defeated Japanese land forces.
Don Edwards, as the amateur partner, once won the Bing Crosby Pro-Am Tournament in Pebble Beach.
Colca Canyon in Peru, which I hiked down in October of 2016, is, after the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon in Tibet, the second deepest canyon in the world, more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.
I once was the co-owner, along with Irv Brenner, of Old Uncle Gaylord's Ice Cream Store in Palo Alto.
John and Nana's dog Benji, like all Basenjis, never barked. Instead, when John played the piano he would sit under it and make yodel-like sounds.
After 3 years in Malaysia, with the only communication home via air letters, I managed to finagle a free long distance phone call from a buddy at the Malaysian Telecom Department (long distance phone calls were otherwise very expensive). When my mom answered, I said "Hi Mom - this is Sam." Her first words were "Who's paying for this call?"
While sailing in the South Pacific, we visited the graves of Robert Louis Stevenson, who is buried near the summit of Mt Vaea, in Samoa, and Paul Gauguin on Hiva Oa in French Polynesia.
Len Edwards and Erik Edwards together set the record at Gold Lake for the number of consecutive frisbee catches (well over 100) between the beach and the float.
In 1943, the year of my birth, the population of the earth was about 3 billion people. Now (2024), the population is over 8 billion.
While in France John and Nana purchased a Volvo P1800, a new and very stylish sports car. When I visited them in Paris, we were once stopped by a policeman: he wanted a closer look at the car (and maybe at Nana too).
People Magazine once published an article on Don Edwards and Edie Wilkie (they had not yet married).
One time I stayed in the room that the "White House Plumbers" used when they broke into the National Democratic Committee Headquarters in June of 1972. It was a much sought after room, but my father used his influence to reserve it for me.
When I traveled in Africa and the East, I would mail my undeveloped film in mailers to the Kodak lab in Palo Alto, who would develop the films into slides, and send them on to my friend Irv Brenner. Irv would check the slides to verify that my camera was still working. This system worked perfectly, with one drawback: I saw none of my photographs until I returned to California after three years.
In all my travels I have experienced very few dangerous incidents: an elephant butted my van while I was sleeping; a lion attacked our campsite (but not me) in Zambia; a hippo chased my canoe (but didn't catch us) in the Okavango Delta; leeches attached themselves to Len and me in Borneo; Nicole had the soles of her feet chewed off by a rat in Madagascar while she slept; I caught dengue fever in Sumatra; and probably the worst: I contracted hepatitis from dirty water in Kashmir, which caused me to cut short my overland trip home from Malaysia. In all my travels I have never had a dangerous encounter with another person.
At one point during my visit with Len in Borneo, we found ourselves, along with several other Peace Corps volunteers, in a bar in Kuching (the capital of Sarawak). Len spent a long time dancing and nuzzling an attractive local, until someone pointed out to him that his dance partner was in fact a man. Shocked, he demanded that we tell no one of this incident. Fat chance.
The longest snake in the world, a reticulated python, was found with in Borneo: it was 10 meters long and weighed 250 kg.
In 1962 I traveled from Florence to Greece and Turkey with Jim Haas, staying in cheap hotels, often sharing the same bed. Years later, back in California, I ran across Jim at a Gay Pride function in San Francisco. It was only then that I discovered Jim was gay.
At HP Cupertino, near my desk, was a row of assembly line workers creating memory devices by threading tiny magnetic donuts with wires.
On the way up Mt Kilimanjaro we met a guy carrying a hand glider - he wanted to be the first to conquer Kilimanjaro. We read in the papers a week later that the authorities had given up their search for him...
When Bruce announced he was getting married, I bought a plane ticket for Colombia in order to attend the wedding. A few days before the wedding, I got a phone call from Bruce: Don't come! The wedding is off (or at least delayed)! There was a problem with Bruce not being a Catholic. So I canceled my flight reservation. Len, however, flew on anyway, the wedding was reinstated, and he was able to attend.
In 1977, on the Chinese-built train from Kenya to Zambia, we were delayed slightly when the train ran into an elephant on the tracks.
Jeff Buckingham and I used to try to find the longest words that could be typed using one hand, or alternate hands, or on the keys on one row only. Here are some of the words we came up with: antisocials, enchantment, stewardesses, typewriter.
While a Senior at Andover, I and several others were given the "Weenie" prize for perfect attendance, and were rightfully jeered as we received our awards.
When I was about 20 years old, just for the hell of it I entered an international cross-country ski race held annually at Soda Springs, a race that attracts the best skiers from all over. I was left behind at the start by all the other contestants, and saw no one until some time later the leaders passed me from behind: they were already on their second, and final lap. I eventually completed lap two, just as they the officials were closing down the finish line. I got a big cheer, and an interview from a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News. Next day's issue had as article on the race, with my picture!
I took my children to see a Lindsey Buckingham concert once, without telling them I had notified Lindsey that we would be in the audience. When the concert was over, an usher approached us, and invited us backstage for a visit. The kids sat quietly and said very little while Lindsay and I chatted. Afterwards, when we had left, they turned to me and asked "Do you know any other famous people?"
While living in Carmel, I was jogging along the trail above the beach from our home in Carmel Meadows when I spotted a tiger running along the beach. It's trainer turned out to be Monty, the same guy Nicole and I had met in Kenya where he was doing a film for Disney starring "Giant", his lion. He was filming a series of ads by Esso on the theme "Put a Tiger in your Tank"."
In 1966, while staying with Barbara Nottingham and David Almquist in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, I traveled to the base of Mt Fuji by train and bus, climbed it, and returned in time for dinner.
During a visit to my father in Washington D.C., I stayed in room 419 - the "Scandal Room" - in the Howard Johnson Motel, the room from where former FBI agent Alfred C Baldwin and four others broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Office Building across the street. This break in and its aftermath ultimately brought down the Nixon Presidency.
On my first trip to Europe, I gave out Kennedy half dollars as gifts.
At Andover each morning at chapel we had to sit at the same place so that the master we were in attendance. If not, we would get a demerit.
The highest I ever climbed was the summit of Mt. Chachchani (19,872 ft), in Peru. It just beats out Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,341).
I have seen 5 Presidents (and shook hands with one): Richard Nixon (during a whistle stop tour in the Bay Area), John Kennedy (At the Cow Palace, Nov 2, 1960, when he proposed "a peace corps of talented men and women"), Lyndon Johnson (greeted him at the airport when he visited Malaysia for one day, Oct 30, 1966), Bill Clinton (attended his inauguration, Jan 20, 1993), Barack Obama (saw him at a rally, 2008).
Google Sites
Report abuse