The famous yacht, M/V Acania in the Bahamas, in the 60's.
Built for the actress Constance Bennett in 1929,
the ship is shown here collecting missile launch-phase ionospheric data.
 "Yes the echo is coming from the mummy chamber and there is something moving there." |
 ""Deliver the camel to Dave Johnson at the Sheraton. I think you can get it on the service elevator." |
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Our adventures in Egypt are too numerous to elaborate upon here, and there is always a risk of conflicting accounts from the eye-witnesses who were there, so I'll jump over those years for now except to mention the fair Samia and Charles (Chuck) Kenworthy. Samia took us on fellucca rides on the Nile and mournfully hoped someone of us would marry her, but we took note of how gorgeous, slender young ladies in Egypt somehow got to be big boned and large in bulk after the age of 30. Bill Beatty came over to study the Sphinx and the iron mines in the desert as well as researching the lost gold mines of the pharaohs. His one wooden leg (he lost a leg in a threshing machine accident at age 8), did not stop him from climbing to the top of the Great Pyramid. (Incidentally this practice is strictly forbidden in Egypt and impossible except for those who understand Bakkshish well). Chuck Kenworthy went with us to Egypt in 1974 and hired the BBC (out of his own pocket) to make a wonderful one hour documentary of our work. The film was widely seen on BBC TV and to this day is an excellent documentary on Egypt, in spite of the disappointing results of the radar work that year. Kenworthy (CAK) paid the lab $300 to have me spend a day with him in his office in Encino when we got back from Egypt and he briefed me on all the great missing treasures around the world he wanted us to find for him. After all, as Mrs. Walter Rector once told Bill Beatty and me when we visited the worked out mines at Silver City, New Mexico south of the Caballos, "If you boys wtih your fancy equipment can find the lost bridal chamber with the hidden gold, I'll see to it that none of you ever has to work another day of his life. We know it's hear somewhere." My close friendship with Chuck continues to this day and I must say all his efforts have paid off handsomely for him as he does sometimes find treasures and has two well-selling books on the market about Spanish mining practices in the New World.
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The Old Prospector, was the founder of the Three Fingers Press and curator of the Armagosa Memorial Library. He was surely one of last of the true Renaissance men. Show here in his office, he has a bruise on his head probably from a recent mine collapse, or perhaps a slope failure on his office desk which was always stacked 5 feet deep with important unfinished business. He began work for SRI back in the '40s I think in the the old Poulter explosives lab, worked elsewhere until about 1972 when DAJ brought him back on board to explore old mines and to help Chuck Kenworthy and LTD find buried treasure around the world. He knew the mines of the old west like the palm of his hand, and his tall tales of buried gold and lost mines were based on having been there. |
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Well. much more followed. My story has barely begun. Vickers went on to built a great number of grand cart radars and airborne radars and soon was world famous, though not yet having receivedhis long-deserved Nobel Prize. Vickers did much definitive ice-radar work in Alaska--flying a radar along the Alaska Pipe line in a low flying helicopter (Vickers delegated some of this work to Mr. Ambers until it was clear Ambers all too often forgot to turn on the tape recorders). Yes, John Wayne took us to Catalina Island to search for a Spanish Manila Galleon and Kenworthy sued the Glomar Explorer for recovery his ship surreptiously, he said, using their giant underwater grappling hook. Commodore Doldrums left the lab in 1987 along with Bob Leonard (RSL) and a host of us old timers.
Mr. Rubberband still moves in high government circles. But, the Golden Years at SRI were over. No will will ever believe this true story, except those who were there, and I was surely the luckiest one of all! Now that I have been through all these wild initiatory experiences I guess I need to decide what to do with my life! This was the best possible way to get started living real life and there could have been no more wonderful a collection of delightful men and women who were my traveling companions on what turned out to be an incredible 30-year adventure. God bless you all!
Addenda:
1. John B. Lomax adds the following minor correction regarding the SRI buildings: "The Dibble Army Hospital did in fact serve as a hospital during and at the end of WWII. I visited a cousin of mine there in 1946. At that time it was still full of patients who were wounded/maimed on Guadacanal. As nearly as I can remember, all the buildings, that I walked through to get to his bed, were pretty much filled with patients." Thank you John! April 30, 1998.
Bulletin!! November 4, 1998. Ray L. Rubberband and his charming wife Mildew have announced plans to move to Boise, Idaho where Ray plans to start a new Radical Forest Rangers and Boy Scouts Advanced Study Group (RFR-BSASG)! Transportation for the Leadabrandy family has been arranged aboard the Mini-Nautilus I which will be piloted by Commodore Lumbar P. Doldrums. The sub is pictured below during recent tets in the Carson Sink, Nevada.
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Send all complaints and address all libel suits to Ray. L. Leadabrand: Ledebrand @ aol.com). First Edition, January 3, 1998. Changes, June 3, 2002.
