Wayne Logsdon:  

I was born at Cooper Hospital in Camden NJ and was less than two feet tall, but I did have hair then!. My Mother recalled to me much later that the hallways were packed with women on gurneys waiting to deliver. She got a shot to delay the delivery a few hours until our turn came around. My birthday of June 21 was more or less ordained by the fact that my Father couldn't get back from WWII until October 1945, as is the case with many of you. I started my formal Education in kintergarten, in Lenola School #5. I clearly remember, on the first day, screaming my eyes out as my Mother was backing out of the door. However, my tears subsided when I saw all of the toys! Fast forward to the first day of 2nd grade. By then I knew all the in's and out's of school, but then a new kid walks in.....Charley Gallagher! I helped show him the ropes and we have been friends ever since. Charley and I lived about 3 blocks apart and I would go to his house to see his trains and later to drive the go-carts his father made for him. Great fun! Now we still live close, about a mile apart, in Collingswood. Last year, when I was taking care of my Aunt at Moorestown Estates nursing home I bumped into our 2nd grade teacher, who was there as a volunteer! Small world. I've always liked scientific and technical things. Growing up in Lenola, I never met an Astronomer or a Paleontologist, and figuring I was not PhD material, I looked for something less difficult. Much later, with age, I posited that PhD's are often paid a pittance compared to all the work and time they spend getting that degree. While at Moorestown High, mid 11th grade, I also worked part time at the Acme on Chester Avenue for three years. It was a high paying union job, considering that the minimum wage at the time was one dollar an hour, cigarettes were 35 cents a pack, and I was making almost 3 dollars an hour and working about 30 hours a week! I took the Acme job because it was much more lucrative than the 50 cents an hour after school gas station job I had (illegally), which was more lucrative than my paper route, which was more lucrative than cutting grass and shoveling snow, and my measly allowance Two weeks after graduation I started attendance at Electronics Training Center, in Pennsauken (18 months). During that time I went to the FCC in Philadelphia to take the FCC licenses tests. I passed the third class license, which on air broadcasters have to have; then passed the 2nd class license needed to work on low power radios like police equipment, and finally passed the 1st class license needed to work on high power transmitters and other equipment used for radio and TV broadcasting. Previous to that, at age 11 and 12, I got three Amateur Radio licenses Each license required more proficiency in electronics and Morse Code speed, than the previous. The third had to be taken at the FCC in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, when I was still at the Acme I met another guy who was also working there and also going to college on the Main Line. He also was in a Fraternity and they had open beer parties with bands once a month to make money for the Fraternity, and they didn't care what age we were. When I finally had enough money to get a car in the Spring of 1964 my buddy and I and our dates would drive up there and have a blast each month. The guy who made this happen stayed with Acme after college and became a store manager at various locations. I was offered full time work too but declined. I wanted to get into electronics, and I did so as soon as I finished Electronics Training Center in late 1965. Four of us from Electronics Trainging Center went up route 1 to Metuchen NJ and got jobs in a huge building testing new color TVs. After work we would go over the bridge to Staten Island to a little bar where the drinking age was 18, when you had to be 21 in Jersey. Funny thing was, my job was aligning the TVs to get the colors right. I've always had a small color blind problem, especially with shades of blue and purple, and some dark reds and browns; and I was setting up the colors for people's new color TVs! The down side of the job was when I got these vacuum tube TVs off of the assembly line they had no cases on them, and they got plugged in, so most days I could expect to get shocked a time or two! Not fun, as evidenced by my expletives a millisecond later.. The four of us shared two motel rooms and usually would go back home on the weekends. After four weeks I realized that after paying the motel rent, food bill, gas, etc, I was broke. So I then quit that job, moved back home and got a job at Burroughs in Paoli, PA in their calibration lab...Expand for more