These creatures were wonderful. They were one part fanatic, one part genius, a dash of childlike wonderment, and two buckets full of trial-and-error. Those were the days when you could get your picture in the paper for building a crystal set in something smaller and more foolish than the character who had his picture in the paper the day before. My father had his picture in there for building a “set” on a pencil eraser with a hunk of galena in the top and about four thousand turns of No. 35 enameled wire wrapped around it. When they came around to take his picture, he dragged out another one built into a peanut. Yes, a real peanut which brought in WGBS, New York. (You see, I really do remember.) They wanted to photograph that too, but Dad thought it would be a little immodest for him to be in the paper twice. So they took Mother’s picture with it. The following week they ran both pictures, and Dad got two letters from other radio bugs saying his eraser radio wouldn’t work and Mother got two hundred and twenty letters, forwarded from the paper, twenty-six of which contained proposals of marriage.
