Delmar DustPan

I am a little late on this one. On October 6th 1946 the Delmar VFW was instituted in the auditorium of the Delmar Delaware school. It had 75 members at that time. It has grown and is not only a great social institution in Delmar it also has been very very generous in supporting Delmar organizations. I know from my daughters being in the High School Band and playing softball, the Delmar VFW could always be counted on for a donation. Since by it very name it is made up of Veteran of Foreign Wars it is an organization that I would like to see stop having new members but I guess the United States will always be involved in a Foreign war somewhere, right or wrong, so the VFW should live forever.

As anyone in Delmar can tell you Linda's Railroad Cafe is the place to go to catch up on the town gossip. It is also a good place to eat. The food is pretty much dinner fare, but the prices at times are unbelievable. Nothing on the Lunch menu is over $5.00. Their cheese steak sub at $3.50 is particularly good. A sampling of the evening menu;
Fried Chicken $6.25
Ham, Crab Cake, 2 pcs of Fried Chicken $7.50
Roast Beef $5.95
Butterfly shrimp $6.25
Seafood Platter $9.95
They usually have about 14 items on the dinner menu, including Muskrat in season, however Linda's is only open for Dinner on Thursday and Fridays.

The spearmint is blooming. The photo isn't the best but the flowers are blue.

A portion of the Black Walnuts that have fallen this year. For the past month the walnut tree has been a dangerous spot to walk under. At any minute one of these nuts could drop from 20 foot in the air on to your head. I have noticed the dog takes the long way around the tree. Some of these nuts will be taken by the squirrels. Squirrels are the village idiots of the animal kingdom, they bury the nuts and then forget to come back and get them. Come spring I will have about twenty trees growing in my yard from the buried nuts. I do give squirrels credit however as any animals with jaws strong enough to crack a Black Walnut is not an animal to be messed with.

I will crack a small number of these for the meat, as Black walnut has a distinct taste and a little goes a long way.

Trucks loaded with corn lined up at the grain mill north of Delmar.

The Johnson Victrola Museum, Dover Delaware

In the 1950's I use to come to Delmar to go to Benny Well's Auction. At that time Victrolas and those old cabinet size radio sets went for 25 to 50 cents a piece. I purchased a Victor Talking Machine Company Victrola for twenty five cents that I still have today. They threw in about 50 records with the machine. As I recall out of those 50 records there were about 4 that were Ku Klux Klan records, so they reflected the popularity of the Klan on the Eastern Shore and The United States in the 1920's. At that time I was impressed by the wood craft that went into those old units. But the Radio sets was what I was interested in as they had short wave frequencies and you really could tune in the world. I spent many hours listening to far away places that I still have nevered visited. As a true Eastern shoreman I have been as far north as Phila and as far south as Norfolk.

As with any hobby, shortwave radio listening has a form of scorecard or bragging rights. It takes the form of QSL cards which are postcard size cards that you receive when you write a radio station that you heard their broadcast. The more you have of them or if you heard those rare hard to hear stations put you higher up on the scale of shortwave radio listening. Well the one station you could pick up anywhere was Radio Moscow. The drawback to their QSL card was they put you on a mailing list and sent you Russian magazines, etc. At that time we were involved in a "Cold War" and whenever the material would arrive from Russia the Post Office would not deliver it to our Rural Route mailbox but would put a card in our mailbox to come to the post office and sign a form that stated you did want to receive the magazine. My parents had shit fits when this occurred. They were sure the FBI would knock in our door and arrest us all as spies. I am sure some where in the FBI archives there is a file on me that is right along side the bombers of the twin towers. It came as no great surprise to me when it was revealed the government was listening in on private phone conversations.

Today I stopped by the Johnson Victrola Museum in Dover. Now this museum must have a limited appeal to the populace at large. It is however a very good museum. They have many Victrolas, a large number of records and different versions of Nipper the RCA dog. I think I was the only person touring it. Like I said it must have a limited appeal. Tom was a volunteer tour guide and he took me thru and explained everything and cranked up whatever Victrola I wanted to hear. He was a great guide. They have at the museum a craftsman who maintain the Victrolas. He must be one of the few people who have a full time job doing this type of work. I would recommend this museum to anyone. Oh! The "Put a sock in it" phrase came as a way to regulate the volume control on the oldest model Victrolas - they simply put a rolled up sock in the Voice Horn and it reduced the volume.

Today would have been Election Day in Delmar had anyone decided to run against the current elected officials. No one did, so there is no election. It is indeed a sad day and a reflection on Delmar and the United States as no one seem to feel it is their duty to run for public office. There is that attitude of let the other person do it. The Mayor and two councilpeople positions were up for election and no one filed, except the people who already held the office, for any of the positions. I have always felt it was a matter of civic duty to run for an election office. I have also felt that once you ran for the same office a second time than you became a politician and not a citizen doing their duty. It is the reason I ran for councilperson and Mayor back in the 1980's but did not run for reelection.

Opus Dei (Work of God) was founded October 2, 1928 by a Catholic Priest, Josemaria Escriva. They have about 87,000 members of which 3,000 are in the United States. Their mission is to help people turn their work and daily activies to grow closer to God, for serving others, and for improving society. Their website is; Opus Dei

Now frankly, I had never heard of them or if I had heard of them paid no attention to them until Dan Brown's book "The DaVinci Code" came out.

Nurnberg Court House

On October 1, 1946, after nearly 10 months of trials 12 high-ranking Nazis were sentenced to death by the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg.
Ten of them were sentenced to death by hanging — Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Alfred Rosenberg, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Keitel, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart. Martin Bormann and Hermann Göring escaped hanging by committing suicide.

In addition to those 12, three were sentenced to life imprisonment: Rudolf Hess, Walther Funk, and Erich Raeder. Four were sentenced to lesser terms of imprisonment: Karl Dönitz, Baldur von Schirach, Albert Speer, and Konstantin von Neurath. Three of the defendants were acquitted: Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen, and Hans Fritzsche.



Hjalmar Horace Greenley Schacht on the left and his lawyer Albert Schwamberger. Photo from Stars and Stripes

Of interest to me was Doctor Hjalmar Horace Greenley Schacht, who was a brillant banker in the 1920's and worked with Hitler for a while. He was acquited at Nurnberg in 1946 but was retried in 1947 and served a year or so in a work camp. As we know after World War I Germany had hyperinflation. It's currency was worthless. Hjalmer Schacht stepped in and managed to stop the inflation. He was so well known for this act that there was poem circulated that went something like this;

"Who could make the mark stable
Only Doctor Schacht was able."

In 1953 he started up his own bank in Dusseldorf called Schacht and Company. He died on June 4, 1970. He was described as an arrogant man.

An article on him in Businessweek can be seen here; Schacht