About

After graduate school, I followed the pipeline to Washington DC and to NASA working as a rocket scientist for the government. I say working for the government because I was officially working for NASA but had many assignments working for the CIA also known as the “Company”. This included developing several high technology instruments and performing nuclear bomb in space radiation analysis. I left the government and started a high-tech electronics instrument business which is still running today some fifty years later. I share some of the experiences I had during running the business and also some of the experiences have had with a second business I formed after I sold the first business. These experiences hopefully will range from being deadly serous to completely hilarious. So, with that Laura’s help she add interest, humor, spice and thank her very much for her help.

I am an Iowa boy. Born and bred. Fourth generation of a Czech immigrant. Born October 9 1937 which makes me a prewar child. I remember World War II and the celebration downtown at the end of the war. Iowa is a big state as most people know and one of the most important agriculture states in the country. Lots of corn, lots of pork and beef. “Iowa Feed” was and still is a factual statement about Iowans. Growing up we couldn’t get enough of either corn or potatoes: baked potatoes, fried potatoes, mashed potatoes, potato soup, potato and corn chowder, corn on the cob, mashed corn, boiled corn, roasted corn, pickled corn . . . Lots of pigs too. In Iowa every square inch of that pig got used and eaten. Pig’s feet, pigs tongue, pig stomach, the butt, the shoulder, the hocks, every bit, every process, fried, baked, roasted, ground, whatever it took. In Iowa our family ate “High on the Hog”. The best meat on the pig is literally the highest meat on the critter. Iowa’s best kept secret is the pork tenderloin sandwich. They are a hundred times better than hamburger sandwiches. We ate our fill of pork tenderloin sandwiches. The recipe is simple you take a 1-inch-thick cut of pork tender loin place it on a butcher block and whack it the flat side of a meat cleaver until it is ½ inch thick where it becomes a 6- inch round patty then dip it in batter and French fry it until golden brown. Put it on a jumbo hamburger bun with mustard.

As a side note we were in Washington DC we stopped at a fast-food restaurant for a sandwich. We walked in the manager recommended; we try this new chicken called Cornel Sanders Kentucky fried chicken. We did and by chance Colonel Sanders was promoting his new chicken recipe. Colonel Sanders came out of the kitchen over to our table and asked how we liked the chicken because it was something new, he was promoting. I said the chicken was OK but if he really wants something great, he should permute the tenderloin sandwich. At this point he looked up stepped back a step and said can you imagine the cost of food for that sandwich. Later when he was back in the kitchen, we overheard him say “They are from Iowa and not used to having to pick at their food”

Iowa is for farmers; The radio would give you the Hog belly market prices at 5AM every morning on the radio. I had no idea of what a hog belly was, but I knew the price every morning. My family was not of the farming type, but I spent time on the farm. My uncle Fred was a farmer and a tough proud Czech man. My most formative years as a child were spent on his farm every summer. Great experiences. Cleaning out stalls that housed the pigs, cows, horses, chickens. Gathering eggs. Grinding corn for the cows, feeding the chickens. Feeding the pigs. The pigs loved being in the mud. Feeding the cows, horses, chickens, pigs. As a small child I recognized that the farm was basically a food factory. The farm imported three things fuel for the John Deere tractor, blocks of salt for the cows and oil for the lamps.. The farm exported milk, feed corn, beef cattle, hogs, eggs, chickens, vegetables, and Aunt Della’s baked goods. We had no lights because this was before rural electrification. But we did have good roads from the Iowa “Farm to Market” county road program. On the farm we always had a big breakfast and after cows came home and put in the barn, we had a big dinner. In the late afternoon, before dinner, Aunt Della and I would go to the chicken coop, grab a chicken and she swing the chicken around her head to make it dizzy, after the swing, it would just lay motionless. She would grab it auld starch it necks out on the chopping block and using an ax would chop he head off. The headless critter would jump up without its head and run around the yard bumping into things bleeding until the blood was gone. So goes the saying “Running around like a chicken with its head chopped off”. Then she would pluck the feathers and cook the bird for dinner. They bird was always tough but that’s a fresh natural chicken. My uncle’s family only spoke Czech on the farm, so I learned the language, or I didn’t get what I needed, like a glass of water, food, clean clothes. So I learned quickly. But I’m getting ahead of myself. My own family, my parents and I, are one-hundred percent Czech, like Uncle Fred’s family.