I was recently given the article on my Great-Aunt Helen’s death, something that was a bit of a mystery as so many who were there have long-since passed away. Such a simple thing to have taken her from us, she was too young. Grandma Rydberg and Helen were very close.
My Great-Uncle Hank was a ball-turret gunner on a B-29 in the Pacific Theater. Shot down and captured, he spent time in a Japanese prison in Rangoon. What he must have gone through between when these photos were taken, we can only speculate as from what I can remember, he didn’t talk much about what happened, and I don’t blame him. Grandpa Windholz went through his own war on the other side of the planet, and he didn’t talk much about that either.
I recommend reading extensively about this war as there is no shortage of great books about it, and it is in no way a chore to do so. To understand what ball-turret gunners had to experience… it was already a nightmare to be up in those planes, much less in a glass ball underneath while being shot at by men trained and committed to killing you. And he was captured by men from a militaristic culture where you just weren’t a prisoner, you were less than human because you were captured and didn’t die in battle.
We would be better off with fewer streaming services and more time spent reading about things like this as it is the least we can do, living in such luxury and safety in comparison with what these guys experienced.
I like sailing battleships, always have. I also like LEGO. But I don’t collect LEGO, for several reasons, primarily because they cost a lot and I don’t have space… I can’t do everything. But I still very much like LEGO. There was a point in 1996 where I almost bought this big LEGO ship, and I was so very close to doing so, but I didn’t. That might have been what would have brought me into being an active LEGO fan, and not a passive one.
I am aware that there have been a few ships released overall, I don’t know how many exactly, but they are out there. A new one coming out, the “Armada Galleon Esperanza” looks to be one I would really like to get!
This video sold me on it! However, I am between jobs, and have a lot of things going on, so a treat like this really isn’t important. But, a few years down the road… who knows? Just a neat thing to have.
My history with LEGO is documented in the below six photos. I only ever had four sets of LEGOs, one of them was pretty small. But we make everything out of them!
The sailing ship in two of the photos above, was entered in a contest at Villa Italia Mall. The rules stated that you could not use any non-LEGO items in your creation, but the winner was a guy who made a huge Mile High Stadium, topped off with a… non-LEGO horse at the top! He got the free trip to Waco, Texas. My little ship was a genius build for me at the time, and I was pretty disappointed that this cheater won! In retrospect, there were a lot of great builds there.
The “Voyager” spaceship was given to me by my Aunt Ida, and it pretty much blew my mind as the pieces and concept were far different from the LEGOs that I had available to me.
I still have all of these LEGOs in storage, and like my Star Wars collection, they are priceless to me. Material possessions I shouldn’t be so attached to, but I am. Too many good times.
This was my favorite cap when I was a kid. “Rydberg Construction” was the company of my Dad’s cousin, but I thought it was cool because it was a construction company owned by someone in the family, and to a kid, that is a big deal.
I was walking home after a piano lesson, and this older kid on a BMX bike came up behind me and just took it off of my head. I’ll never forget the way he slapped it onto his head with one hand, like it was not a big deal, and lazily rode off as I ran after him, unable to keep up.
So, I get home, and as luck would have it, my big brother and his big friend were there and I was crying. They took off in my brother’s cool Camaro to find this BMX jerk. That’s what good big brothers and their friends do.
Unfortunately, they never found the guy. I suspect that years later I rode the same bus with him as this happened in the same area as the Drake Jr. High bus stop, and there were a lot of jerks on that bus, too. Or, perhaps the world is simply full of jerks.
Anyway. I got the bright idea to recreate the logo, which only took a few minutes, and when I find employment (I’m between jobs right now, http://randyrydberg.com) I’ll be ready-to-go to have a new cap made. Maybe more than one in case someone else gets the bright idea to steal it again.
I did get a new “Jedi” cap for Christmas later that year though, which I still have. There’s a famous photo of George Lucas wearing the same hat, which makes me quite fashionable.
As it turns out, the original logo had two different fonts, but I just went with the secondary font for the entire thing.
I hadn’t seen this one before, probably around 1920 or so.
Maybe 1941 or so. One of my favorite famliy photos of all time!
Photos were taken by Aunt Ida sometime in the 1940s.
