The name is Dave, and from the humble beginnings of this front window the Kraft paper & soap will someday be stripped away from beneath the stop knobs and/or links (which don't exist yet), and the upbeat tale of this most contented fellow's evolution since the 1950s will unfold.
Well, I wrote that opening 'way back in 1997. Now it is OCTOBER of 2004 and this is an actual update. Yet I kept most of the older info here too as it serves as a memorable one-stop archive of the passing years...and I kinda like how it reads. So yer gonna have to trudge through the whole damn thing, Bucko. Get yerself a mug 'o coffee, a cold beer or a refreshing tumbler of good ol' filtered tap water and settle in for a long read. In a nutshell, I am a backstage technical departmental supervisor, immersed in my 30th year with a world class Shakespearean Repertory Theatre, located in relatively rural southwestern Ontario, Canada. Mid January begins the work cycle on a 9-5 M-F schedule, just like 'real people'. But come late March things start to come up to speed - mid-month we add an extra day to the work week, aka: Saturday. The magical months of April and May for my staff & I (as we bring each of an average 3 shows per for 4 separate stages onboard in 3 buildings) are 6-day +70 hour weeks of 'finorklin' before and after technical dress rehearsals - wedged in between public previews - on top of more tech dresses and final 'k'nudgin' before Opening Week in June. At this point the day off shifts to Mondays. Six months later, the first weeks of November heralds the close of another Festival Season and I go into annual vacation mode for ~9 weeks - to pursue the hobbies and visit friends old & new through roadtrip excursions and...back at home, messin' up the workbench and whatever rooms in the house have floorspace available. This year (1999) I wandered from homebase over to Acme/Traverse City and Grand Rapids MI and back across to Concord NH over 4 weeks unearthing research all about the elusive 1950 Aeolian American PIANOLA, an ingenious post-war 'portable' keytop piano player. Every December I like to imagine that this site will experience serious renovation and expansion. Update: January 2000 and I haven't done a damn thing to this page except indicate that I'm aware of it. Maybe this winter-------Nope, guess not. I was otherwise engaged roaming all over Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana on Dave's FLW Quest locating then getting as close as possible to and photographing EVERY Frank Lloyd Wright domestic and commercial erection still standing. I had the equally rare FLW Cheat booklet with maps to decipher and found them ALL. Being the polite, harmless and respectful Gnome that I am I was honored to be taken through some of these private homes by the owners, when they would watch me out on the street being ever so calm and careful of their privacy. Should you ever be wandering along these routes don't miss out on the many volunteer Aircraft Museums located on decommissioned Air Force Bases, and take the time to visit the astounding Cord-Auburn Museum in Auburn Indiana!!!:-) Huge throbbing newsflash - this December of 1999 I secured ownership of a modest 12 rank pipe organ. It will be hauled home piecemeal over the coming months (which became years) for a well thought out anal erection in an 11' X 12' X 10.5' high room off the livingroom. BTW, double entendres are inevitable, I've heard them all from the curious age of 12, I can wield them better than you can and I embrace them, which is not the same thing as encouraging them, buddy. Shucks & Gee Whiz, had the final cubevan pipe organ move arranged for the 3rd week of November 2000 when the freak early winter snows arrived...and dumped daily loads without relief across SW Ontario crossing over to Buffalo area, which is the usual path of the weather we get originating in Milwaukee WI (the same latitude as Stratford, btw). After two weeks of waiting, re-booking and canceling there was no choice but to give it up and move on to a planned 3 week road trip out to New Brunswick. My moving partner (who had driven from NB to Ontario to help move the organ during his final two weeks of vacation) and I set out across upstate New York, leaving the storms behind - as they seemed to hang up in the Great Lakes region only - and paused a few days in Syracuse NY with another Bear Organist pal in the 4th year of installing an original 30 rank Aeolian Duo-Art, and next, with buds on a 'mountainside' east of Albany. Much refreshed from the hot tubbing and camaraderie, we made a flat out dash via the Interstate past Boston, up through Maine and across the southern shoreline of New Brunswick arriving in Moncton 14 hours later. After a week exploring the Moncton area and Prince Edward Island it was time to set out again on my own for homebase with two weeks to wander. What a hoot! Zig-zagging with a whim of iron back & forth through the New England states. I visited with old and new acquaintances and experienced new geography and stunning landscapes. One day advance web searches at every motel turned up many fascinating SprocketBear-related tourist stops that were a must-see. For Gearhead Bears like myself I highly recommend The Owl's Head Transportation Museum 1 mile east of Rockland, Maine. First time in Boston for 2 days, met up with a wonderful web buddy well worth the horrific downtown Motel Super 8 fleabag flophouse I'd booked. Traveler’s HINT - Its always best to snag cheaper accommodations on the outskirts of any metro area. Them O.T.R. Truck drivers know a thing or two. My favorite choice is Motel 6 which are always right beside the interstates and make for a speedy zip to the Superstore Malls or into the downtown core for all those things a bachelor bear might want to indulge in. If ya have a hankering for an in-room Jacuzzi, try Motel Super 8. Veered back in to New Hampshire for a bit o' retail therapy - no tax - and the drive through Vermont following a log-loaded transport in a light fluffy snowfall was something out of a Classic Hollywood Christmastime movie - achingly beautiful among the twisting miles of pine tree forests, all too soon arriving home down the barely navigable side street at midnight to 4 feet of drifted accumulation between me and my house! But then, the entire town was under Snow Squall Siege. House & Catsitter could not possibly keep it at bay with a mere shovel so...out came the snowblower I'd bought tax-free in New Hampshire, gas was siphoned out of the car and one hour later there was a basic carved path for the car and a tunnel to the door - I do believe it paid for itself that night and the ensuing 3 day storm. Nothing unusual in this - Stratford is the first highest elevation 'hill' west of Lake Michigan and we're snowed in with closed roads to the outside world at least 3 times per winter. 2004 - I still use it, great machine from SEARS. LMAO! Well, I spent the rest of that winter and fall making daytrips to North Tonawanda NY stuffing whatever de-constructed organ bits would fit in the Saturn Sport Wagon - it really was a piecemeal move. Finally, on June 3 2001 three of us persistent Bears (Thanks, Al and Florida Greg) loaded up a cubevan in 2 hours and the whole shootin' match of a throbbing muther is now safely in storage all over the house in Stratford. Another Big Thimnk and minor/major first floor renovations begin! With the further 5 ranks (16 and 8 foot open Zincs and a fine wood 4' string and a 4' Traverse Flute that have serendipitously come my way plus the several I have up in the attic saved from adolescenthood) we're talking 20 straight ranks with bass extensions. That oughta be enough to get started... In August of 2001 I heard tell of an orphaned Duo-Art console up for quick grab! Long story short, the second week of November hitched a 10 foot utility trailer to the Sprocket Rocket and scurried over in to the rural wilds of central New Hampshire and laid my eyes on a magnificent walnut Mission style cased 3 manual Aeolian Duo-Art console from Opus 1565 (if the numbers stamped on all the stop switchblocks & junction boards can be taken as true). Originally a II/14 1925 installation at the Benjamin T. Peck residence in Providence, R.I., it was at a later time Factory modified to a 3 manual with suitable pipe rank expansion. 3 inches were skillfully grafted to the console height to accomodate the third manual and the formerly triangular cheeks were squared up to accomodate the expanded terraced Stop block tiers, lending a more imposing architechural look to the case. Was some adventure bolting the console bottom plates to the trailerbed but once that was done the beast was wrapped & strapped in a lovely forest green tarpulin and pulled to its new home in Stratford. An excellent car, the first generation Saturn SW2. It never faltered negotiating the serpentine backroads & steep hills of Vermont and upstate New York. (I wouldn't touch the new Saturns with a 20 foot...well, you know.) There are pictures of this console and many other things behind the Album HERE link further down the page. For fun away from the workplace, I enjoy a voracious enthusiasm for such things as period nuts & bolts home self-renovation of my humble 1894 cottage (this summer of 2004 I built the Bedroom Balcony Deck), authentic restoration of vintage automatic music making machines (from the smallest cranked table reed organs through player upright and reproducing grand pianos all the way up to self-registering pipe organs), Lionel trains and now that winter is upon us, gazing fondly at the 1963 BMW R60 motorcycle (bravely sold the Beemer to a thrilled Detroit collector 2002, sad but the right thing to do) and piloting the automobile I have long admired - a midnight blue 1995 Saturn SW2 wagon aka: The Sprocket Rocket. 2003 update - So, the 50th birthday is coming up and on the first fine sunny Spring Sunday mid April 2003 (um, it has been known to snow here the first week of May - sorry, springseekers) I'm out doin' the guy thing with a Tim Horton's coffee in gloved hand, lookin' over the new & used cars on the lots around town jest for the pleasure & enjoying the warm sun on a crisp day without any thoughts of trading up. I spot the spitting image model version of a much too expensive automobile I was wistfully drooling over back in 1998 - I even have the brochure tucked away at home, the price is reasonable and the Saturn has amazing trade-in value. Long story short - a week later I'm the proud Papa of a superb top-of-the-line loaded low mileage 1998 SUBARU LEGACY GT wagon in black granite pearl with all around blackout tint. Leather interior with Seat Heaters!!! and power everything and plenty of really nifty buttons within short arm reach. I am aware that I have utterly despoiled myself and couldn't be more pleased with the stumbled upon and astute selection of a practical thinking Canadian engineerbear's perfect transportation device. With a few select engine bay...um...modifications and awfully clever interior add-in accessories including a kickass Kenwood WOOX subwoofer from Crutchfields, stuffed under the passenger seat, this thing plows like a mountain goat through any weathers, gets surprisingly good mpg and goes like spit on a greased griddle. In truth, it the latest incarnation of Dave's Sprocket Rocket II and I'm Elroy Jetson in my own mind. :-) On December 1st 2003, to celebrate a half century of mischief, belief and survival, I ambitiously...fearlessly headed off to drive to the West Coast. What I had envisioned as a 4 week roadtrip became a 6 week Odyssey of Discovery, both personal and public. Stratford to Michigan, around Chicago, up to and across Wisconsin & Minnesota to unrelentingly FLAT Manitoba, continuing down and across N Dakota (Bismarck & Williston) at least the flat is relieved with magnificent crevices and the Roosevelt Park Badlands, utterly awe inspiring Montana to the foothills, a sunny/light snow mountain pass crossing of Idaho to Washington (Tacoma, Seattle) down to Oregon (Portland), on to Northern California as far as San Francisco for Christmas, where it was time to turn left toward Nevada (Reno) across Utah (Salt Lake City between ice storms), Kansas, the merest tip of Colorado (Denver) powerdriving my way resolutely through Indiana & Illinois to Columbus Ohio for New Year's Eve and into the rolling hills & vales of NW rural Pennsylvania for a few day's feet-up R&R&R with good Buddy-for-life, before circling around Niagara Falls NY and finally home, with the biggest smile on my face ever. Imagine - six weeks of excellent adventures made all the more memorable with good friends old and new. Special mentions and PEACE and promises kept always to Al, David, George, Dan, Carl, Bob (!), Steve, Mike and Carl. 2005 UPDATE. This year's winter roadtrip was split in two parts...West and East. I chose to not work the Musical (Guys & Dolls) 2 week extension and was able to leave November 17th. Taking a slightly different route to Winnipeg, Manitoba I headed past Chicago - with a quick detour to TIGERDIRECT.com store in Napierville - over to SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota. A great old city with fascinating history. While videotaping a stroll along their main street sidewalk sculpture displays, I didn't know I was also taping a Federal Court House when I taped a single guy on a 5 story skyladder installing Xmas decorations. This led to a most excellent adventure that could have gone so wrong. :-) I was an hour being interogated by the FBI. Naturally I had all my ID of innocence and it was all cool in the end. Didn't mind at all since the agent was fuckin drop dead handsome, hairy & bald - a dead ringer for Mitch Pellegi of X Files fame. He found my story and me so fascinating that we indulged in an interogation & in depth investigation of another kind in the motel room that night. More stuff that keeps that smile on my face is the companionship of my black cats Hector & Dexter, the hunt for more vintage vacuum cleaners and typewriters to add to the decor, producing unearthly noises on my Theremin (I have shoe-horned Bob Moog's Big Briar Etherwave kit into a circa 1938 RCA A-6 chassis tabletop radio cabinet), playing music rolls in one of 3 restored from the frame up pianos (a 19teens Themodist HOMER by MASON & RISCH upright, the 1927 STECK Duo-Art grand or the new Kawai weighted digital for the 'portable' 1950 Aeolian PIANOLA key-top player 'vorsetzer'), double-pocket button-down plaid cotton/flannel shirts with rolled-up sleeves, Levi 501s (32/32), attempting to post my initials on any pinball machine I encounter, finding just the right tool from my vast selection of toolboxes, taking anything apart and putting it back together correctly, the power and glory of Pipe Organ music & mechanisms in any form, machinery of any kind...and architecture from 1900 to the Chicago & New York World's Fairs of 1933 and 1939. Particularly anything that Frank Lloyd Wright ever caused to be built or imagined. Specifically, domestic and industrial items manufactured under the influence of the North American Arts & Crafts and Streamline Moderne movements. I know what shapes and colors I like around me and it doesn't include curly gurly swirly motifs. Domestically challenged when it comes to home decorating, cooking and cleaning all I can say in my defense is that if power tools are required or applicable (electric can opener, carving knife, blender, mixer, toaster, washer & dryer and of course vacuum, I'm your man...and repairman. As for the traditional Power Tools aka drill, saw, planer, sander, pile driver, jackhammer, bulldozer, road grader, clamshell steam shovel...I do a mean reno that'll knock yer jock off. There are a few albums of pictures stashed HERE occasionally updated. No Luddite when it comes to the Century I live in and recognizing a good & useful tool when I see one I had a first generation Sony DSC-F1 digital still camera and it continues to serve me well for all the purposes you can imagine. WINK. June 15 2001 - The Sony finally packed it in - from the first time it was dropped two years ago I have had it apart almost weekly because of a loose 115 pin micro-connecter (impossible to solder or keep securely socketed with pressure pads), improving and improvising the circuit boards but reality must be faced when the LCD goes to B&W with nasty scan lines and erratic display. Resolution is merely max 640 X 480 - things have much improved in 4 years. Next camera was the astounding Fuji FinePix 40i Zoom. Actual dimensions - 3 3/8" X 2 3/4" X 1 1/8" thick (smaller and thinner than the Canon S300 digital Elph). Max 4 megapixel (FUJI proprietary octagonal pixel elements 'Super CCD'), 2400 X 1600, SmartMedia card storage, shoots full screen mpeg video with audio in 80 second bursts up to card capacity and...also does triple duty as an MP3 audio player with supplied earphones. Superb battery management with NiMH AA's. Yessiree, I do like large things compacted into small packages. 2003 - 3rd digital camera I fell for is the CASIO Exilim EX-Z4U utilizing SD cards. This thing is a monster in a teensy pocket size package. In 1998 I started recording organ recitals - Theater or Classic style, I love 'em all - in MiniDisc format (Aiwa AM-F7)...WOW! The end of cassette tape. CD racks are 80% pipe organ, 15% piano and 5% other. 2004 - the AIWA is going strong and continues to produce supreme live recordings that I can now edit & burn to CD. More 2004 toys are the 3rd laptop, this one an Emachines widescreen 5312. Having admired them greatly and wanting to be eventually proficiently cross platform with a basic entry level Mac, in August of 2004 via eBay I glommed onto a maxed out 1.5 GHz upgraded Apple Mac G4 CUBE (1.5 GB RAM,CDRW & Airport card w 20" Cinema LCD & the coveted Harmon-Kardon iSub) and added that to the home network. How much fun can a growed up kid have? There are no limits, my friend, when you believe...cue Walt Disney and Buckminster Fuller...
Yes, I am a spry & enthusiastic l'il GnomeBear living a simple life - in body and soul and mind - B6 f t- d cd g r+ e negotiable - 5' 6.25", ~145# & fit, dark brown fur, intense or laughing silverblue peepers usually behind owlish specs. Disclaimer - I am not as hyperkineticly Type A as you might imagine; in fact, I'm observably dull and relaxed in my contentment. Mostly I view & interact with the world around me perplexed at the difficulties folks insist on perpetuating. I'm a terrible failure at multi-tasking and prefer one on one groupings to crowds. ps: Although I am not adverse to "enjoying long walks on the beach and quiet times at home lounging about watching the television" be forewarned that there is always some 'engineering' project on the front burner...I would rather find myself and a buddy actively exploring our curiosity & thirst for life's offerings and if at the beach, diligently engaged in micro-engineering a canal in the sand joining our two studiously erected jaw-droppingly magnificent sandcastles. A unrepentant evolving double Pisces with a strong Scorpio/Taurus bent, a Guardian overhead keeping the maps current and a lucky platinum horseshoe up his fundament.;-)
These topics and many more will be explored and expanded upon one of these days. Or you can email & ask. [:{ A casual enough statement, and one much bandied about but stay tuned, constant surfer - I'll be forever rummaging in the bottoms of the aforementioned toolboxes and finding things I forgot to forget. If you're somewhat intrigued, bookmark this site and come on by again every year or so. Now that I've left Yahoo/Geocities to their own evil two-faced shenanigans, updates might be more frequent than merely annually. Thanks to Bruce and Don for being the first to open their computer's garage doors and allowing me to rummage around. Welcome to the shop, Al (now re-located back to and maybe even nestled in Winnipeg Manitoba) - someone who indeed gets what we man luvin' dorknerdgeekbears are all about because he has toolboxes and a garage full of mechanical & musical STUFF to rival mine!
Okay, if you've read this far, as 'they' say, your just reward is almost in sight and I salute your perseverance. Just one more big thing restated so there be no misunderstandin'... Although my enjoyment of gainful
employment revolves around Shakespearean theatre and the associated dramatics, my extra-curricular and domestic tastes are decidedly less so, and of a more earthy nature - I do not respond well to playactin' quotations of the current popular fashion or transparent adopted attitudes, you will not find showbiz art upon my walls, theatre memorabilia in my drawers or Martha Stewart Living on the coffee table. Nor do I recall or croon the lyrics to any showtunes unless they are from the 1900s to the 1940s through the War Years dipping into the 1950s and on a piano roll, wax/amberol cylinder or vertically/horizontally cut 78rpm platters.
That being understood, stick somethin'
in the envelope "Spiritual satisfaction comes not from a search for the answers, but from a love of the questions"
"Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true."
"You are either an honorable man or you are not - honor is a gift a man gives to himself" "Every day of our lives we have the choice to cherish or demean it." Mr Rogers.
and let me know what you think I'd like to read or see from you - to grin, gasp or growl at appreciatively. P.S. I did not select those astoundingly inapplicable link boxes at the top and bottom of this page.
Food For Thought Department:
This page was last updated - April 24 of 2005..its snowing again after a few weeks of 'Spring'!
