Baseball in the Street
I remember him from the early days of my  youth as my Uncle Bob. There were times, even though he was 20 years older than I, that he would play with my bother Jack and I as if he were much younger. Some of those experiences got him into trouble. Many days after school my brother and I would play pitch and catch in the street in front of our house. Not to be left out, Bob went out and bought himself a leather baseball glove so he could participate in the fun. Of course none of us were really very athletically inclined, but none the less we had fun. One afternoon during one of those three way volleys, Bob went running to catch a pitch that went a little wild. Instead of making the catch as planned, he tripped over the curb, fell and cut himself on the nose. A trip to the Palmerton Hospital Emergency room was required, and resulted in several stitches to close the wound. That didn't stop Bob. The next day he was back out there with us, but a little more cautious about wild pitches.

Swimming
Bob was very enthusiastic about swimming and he passed that on to all of his "children". But that was not always the case. He often related to us how he almost drowned as a child in the creek at Little Gap. It took much courage for him to overcome his fear of water and that bad experience. He really didn't learn to swim until he took swimming lessons at PMPA as an adult, from "Tootsie" Steinmetz. Once he got past that fear of the water, you couldn't keep him away. He visited the PMPA pool every chance he got, even twice a day on weekends. As kids, weekends were special because he would give us a ride up and back to the pool in the car. We played many games of water ball in the pool. We sat on the blanket next to the fence and listened to all of the "adult" talk. I remember Bob would always wear swim fins for his laps because he said his kick was too week. That must have been before he realized that he didn't need to be in a hurry, but should slow down and enjoy the time he was spending in the water. Later after he retired, he would often lament about how long it was before the pool would open during winter or how short a time was left before the pool would close in the fall. He looked forward to the unexpected calls from Larry, the caretaker, who would phone Bob to invite him up for a swim after swimming season was over and before the pool was drained and prepared for winter. Bob would make a bee line to the pool. Everything else took a back seat to that. Bob often remarked about how the "Iron Works" needed to get an indoor pool that would allow one to swim laps. He even sent them some literature he found in a magazine about an indoor set-up that allow a person to swim with his feet tethered to one end of what looked like an over sized bathtub filled with water. "Just the thing", he used to say.

Trains
Bob loved his electric trains, probably as much as my son and I like our hobby of model railroading. He told stories of how his mother, would give him one week to set up and run his trains in the dining room of the house. We aren't talking about a simple oval or 48" circle of track, but instead a layout of switches, crossovers, sidings and track that was bigger than the 9' x 12' carpet on the dining room floor. All the furniture was removed, and that was Bobby's space for a week. He had more track, switches, cars and engines than I had ever seen as a kid. He would get down on the floor and run the trains for hours on end, reliving those days of his youth. He was probably instrumental in getting me interested in electric trains as well. One Christmas season in my early youth, when the rest of the family traveled to West Virginia to spend Christmas with my other Grandparents, I got to spend it at Bob's house with my Grandmother Elliston, Aunt Mame, and Aunt Guga. I didn't realize at the time how special that time was. That was the Christmas that we got our first electric train. I was told that when I came down the stairs on Christmas morning and saw the electric train, my eyes got as big as saucers. This must have been much like an experience that Bob related to us about the Christmas twenty years before that when he got his first electric train.

Fudge Institute
Bob was one who would look for innovative ways to accomplish tasks with as little effort as possible. After he was retired he could be seen cutting the lawn and taking frequent breaks. Some of the neighbors remarked that they thought that Bob had to rest, because his health wouldn't allow him to mow the lawn without those frequent rests. That wasn't the case at all. Bob's reasoning was that the pay was the same, whether he took 30 minutes or two hours. He might as well take his time and enjoy his surroundings while he could. Bob often referred to himself as a graduate of Fudge Institute. The school motto was "If you can't fix it, fudge it." Many a time we would look in wonder and awe at some of Bob's inventions to solve a problem he might have encountered. One might say that they were over-engineered, but to Bob they solved an immediate problem. You might liken it to the methods of Rube Goldberg. One example was how to re-size a tee shirt that had shrunken in the wash. Bob's solution was to hang the wet shirt on the wash line from the hem end with many clothespins, put a hanger into the neck of the shirt, and hang one or more bricks on the hook of the hanger to stretch the tee shirt back to size. It may have seemed silly, but it worked.

My Favorite TV Service Call
During his days as a radio and television repairman, I spent many days with him, helping him make house calls, carrying TV sets in or out of customer's houses, or sitting in his shop marveling at his abilities to troubleshoot and repair TV sets. We had may great times and experiences.
One such service call was a classic which I shall never forget. He had a call to repair a TV in the Kunkletown area. We arrived at the house to be greeted by the customer and lead into the living room were the TV set was located. We turned on the set to diagnose the problem. Once that was done, we proceeded to move the TV out of the corner to remove the back cover, to access the inside to make repairs. One of the hazards of working inside a color TV is that a high voltage charge is stored on the picture tube. For safety reasons the repairman would intentionally ground the picture tube to bleed off and dissipate the charge. Bob was behind the TV and I was out in front of the set. As Bob was reaching into the set to discharge the high voltage, a loud squawk was heard. This startled us both and Bob must have jumped into the air a couple of feet. The last thing either of us expected at the moment Bob had his hand inside the back of the TV was that the customer's parrot, which we had not noticed when we came in, would let out that loud cry.  We laughed about that trip may times. The customer was very apologetic about it and felt bad that it had happened.

Cleanliness
Bob's TV shop was never neat and orderly. Many hours were spent trying to find missing knobs or screws for a TV or radio that may have been lost or covered up somewhere on the workbench. That didn't bother Bob. The set always left the shop with all the necessary items to make it work. If there was a way to do things that you hadn't thought of, Bob would find it. It might not be the most straight forward way of doing it, but it worked none the less. Bob was often heard to say that it was time to run the plow. He never wanted anyone to know that he actually knew how to run the vacuum cleaner. He would remark that "he found out today the vacuum actually made noise, that he discovered that it had an On-Off switch."

Dreaded Sheet Day
Bob often remarked in his weekly posts that "Today was dreaded sheet day." What Bob was referring to was that he had to struggle to change the sheets on his own bed. Bob's sister Mary, had bought Bob some gold satin sheets for his bed many years ago. Over the many years of use, the elastic around the edge deteriorated to the point of being useless. The rest of the sheet was in excellent shape. Bob, not being one to throw anything good away and being a graduate of Fudge Institute, devised a way to keep the sheets from slipping off of the mattress. Bob took an old pair of men's suspenders and placed them under the mattress stretching them so that an end came out at each corner of the bed. He then put the gold satin sheets on the bed and fastened a suspender clip to the sheet at each side to keep the sheet from slipping off the mattress. Of course this was not without a few choice words when things didn't go quite right and a clip would slip off. This lead to his reference of "Dreaded Sheet Day", when it was time to change the sheets on his bed.

Capturing the Mouse
Bob and many of the Elliston family members would spend summer vacations at a cabin on Squam Lake, NH. The cabin was rather simple, with a living room/dining room/ kitchen area in front, three bedrooms behind that and a bathroom at the rear. There was a screened front porch where we ate most meals in the evenings. All of the rooms were partitioned off with walls and doors, but had no ceilings, all except for the bathroom which had a ceiling. When you looked up you could see to underside of the roof and the rafters. Being in the middle of the woods next to the lake it was very quiet and peaceful, especially at night. Many nights you would lay in bed and hear the animals outside the cabin moving around in the leaves on the ground. During the winter, the cabin was uninhabitable, since it had no insulation or central heat. Field mice would find their way into the cabin and set up nesting areas inside. In the spring the owner would bring their cat over and leave it in the cabin for several days to "de-mouse" the place. One year, Tom and Bob went to the lake to spend two weeks vacation. The first week they were there alone. We would arrive a week later to spend some time with them. One night after getting into bed, Bob was just about to fall asleep when something hit his bed and rolled onto the floor. Bob thought that Tom, sleeping in the next room, was throwing things over the wall at him. He lay there awhile longer and was about to fall asleep, when another object hit his bed and rolled onto the floor. Bob was starting to get mad, a yelled to Tom to "Cut that out!" Tom of course, didn't know what Bob was talking about, since he was asleep. The next morning Bob found several acorns on the floor of his room, the objects that had hit his bed and rolled to the floor. After some investigation, it was found that a field mouse had stored away a cache of acorns in the space above the door to Bob's bedroom. The mouse had been running along the rafters above Bob's room at night and must have dropped his acorns onto Bob's bed. The problem now was where was it and how to catch it. The search was now on to find the mouse. Bob discovered a small opening in the door molding above the door to Bob's bedroom. Bob shined his flashlight into the crack. Sure enough a tiny pair of eyes were looking back at him. Eureka, he had found the mouse. Not to be outdone by a mouse, Bob looked for a way to get at the mouse and his storehouse of nuts. Now how do you catch the mouse hiding in the header of a doorway. He thought about it for a while and then Bob resorted to the only thing that could be used in this situation. Fudge Institute to the rescue! Bob's figured that the way to catch the mouse was using the vacuum cleaner. He got the cannister vacuum cleaner, took hose end, put it over the hole, and turned it on. He managed to get most of the nuts that the mouse had stored there, but the mouse was still there clinging on for life. Not to be beaten by the mouse, Bob went out to his truck, the same vehicle he used for his TV service van, and got his toolbox. He brought it into the cabin, opened it up, rummaged through it for a minute and went to the over to doorway to his bedroom with a pair of needle nose pliers. Bob poked the pliers into the hole several times until he finally caught the mouse by the tail. He pulled the mouse out of the hole with the pliers, took it outside of the cabin, and the mouse met an untimely demise as a result of being hit by a broom.
 
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