Thunder Dog by Michael Hingson Read Free Book Online

cowboy, ending up in Washington State. He finally realized he didn’t want to chase cattle the rest of his life, so in his midtwenties he enlisted in the army. He served in the Third Infantry Division, which deployed to North Africa, Italy, Sicily, and Southern France during World War II. He was part of the Signal Corps, a branch of the service responsible for all military information and communications systems. Some of the Signal Regiment’s accomplishments during World War II included developing radar and FM radio for military use. The Signal Corps also developed the first FM backpack radio, allowing front-line troops to communicate reliably and static free, thanks to frequency modulation circuits. His military training in electronics would come in very handy back in the United States.
    While serving overseas, my dad became friends with a man named Sam Keith. Sam’s wife, Ruthie, wrote letters to her husband and often included pictures of friends and family. One day, George happened to see a photograph of Ruthie’s sister, Sarah. She was a slight woman, blonde and pretty. He was smitten and asked Sam if it would be okay for him to write to Sarah. Sam agreed, and a wartime romance flourished in a flurry of red-and-blue–striped Air Mail envelopes.
    Sarah Stone was not your average girl. A street-smart and independent woman, she originally hailed from New York City. She was a high school graduate, she loved to read, and she earned a beautician’s license and supported herself at a time when not many women did. She had lived and worked in both New York and California, finally ending up in Chicago. Sarah and George hit it off, and when the war was over, George went straight to Chicago and married Sarah in November 1945. These two strong and independent people fell in love and were happily married for nearly four decades, thanks to Uncle Sam, both the country and the man.
    My parents set up house in an apartment on the south side of Chicago. My aunt Ruth and uncle Sam, my dad’s wartime buddy, lived in a nearby apartment. Next door to Ruth and Sam lived my mom’s brother, Abe, and his wife, Shirley. We were a tight family. We still are.
    Dad and Uncle Abe pioneered a television repair business together back when TVs were rare and expensive. Because people invested $200 to $300 in their television sets back then ($1,500 to $3,000 in today’s dollars), they were willing to spend money to keep them working. It wasn’t a bad way to make a living.
    My brother, Ellery, was born in 1948. Two years later, I was born on February 24, 1950, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Cook County, Chicago. I was two months early and weighed just two pounds, thirteen ounces. My mother always said I was rushing it, in a big hurry to get into the world.
    The day I was born, Chicago was buried under a tremendous snowstorm, so my mom gifted me with a special, commemorative name: Michael Blizzard Hingson.
    A blizzard usually means heavy snow and high winds, but the word can also refer to whiteout conditions. Snow and ice reflect incoming light, and objects, landmarks, and shadows are no longer discernible. Land and sky blend, and the horizon disappears into a white nothingness. True whiteouts can render a person temporarily blind. Unfortunately, my blindness would not be temporary.
    When I was born, my uncle Abe and aunt Shirley braved the storm and visited the hospital when I was just two days old. “The storm was bad,” my aunt told me. “You couldn’t see anything in front of you.”
    Babies were kept behind glass in those days. “The nurse picked you up and held you so we could see,” Aunt Shirley said. “You were very, very small. You looked like a little chicken with a large head. They kept you in the incubator so your lungs could develop, and you were in the hospital for two to three months.
    “When you came home,” she continued, “the family thought maybe you had a cataract because one eye looked a little glassy. I went with Sarah to