# Parents

          👆   These red titles are links to more detail...
 
My mother built bombers during WWII. My dad flew as a radio operator in the Pacific war. They returned to hide in their tiny Midwestern town and have a family. Their idyll was short lived - when I was two years and nine months old mom was overcome by the tuberculosis we both caught from her father, and she nearly died in the state hospital.

          🧩   This mix of topics probably seems chaotic, but they are all clues...
 
I have records of three positive chest X-rays for TB before I was three. I was tested for brucellosis (bovine tuberculosis), apparently positive since I was then X-rayed again for that.

          🌠   So why should anyone read about my lousy childhood? Where is this going?
 
In third grade I was the male lead in the multi-class operetta, playing a scarecrow in a cabbage patch full of fairies (the female ballerina kind.) Rehearsal prepared me for everything except the reality of it being night, the auditorium totally dark, and the two piercing spotlights, at my eye level back along the side walls, utterly blinding me.

          🌦   So far we're just setting the stage; later there will be theories...
 
But that was also the summer of Sputnik, and my first shortwave radio kit. Hints there was an interesting world somewhere beyond my limited horizons. (Shortwave then was a bit like the internet is now - your choice of news, education, propaganda, and music from all over the world!)