"Bigger is not always better"

Kasey wanted to hear some stories about her grandfather....This is for you Kasey...

I have to give you some background first....these are things you never heard of and will never see...I was living in Astoria and your Pop lived about 6 blocks away...my father bought our first TV ever...It was a Philco and it had an 8 inch screen...which was the normal size for the time ( circa 1948)...

Some genius invented something to place in front of the screen to make the picture bigger...hence the name of the object was "An Enlarger"..It worked fairly well, the picture was a bit fuzzy, but come to think of it, it was never really clear to begin with....

As with everything we own, TV's improved, screens got larger and clearer, my father bought a new TV about 1950...with a huge screen, I think it was about 12 inches or so....therefore the Enlarger was not needed and it was sent to be stored in my bedroom closet. The house we lived in was a Brownstone, with 3 floors...it was a beautiful house but of course I did not know that at the time....it had a dumb waiter..( you may have to look that up)...a library with floor to ceiling sliding french doors...embossed tin ceilings in the basement with a kitchen...the food could be sent up to the dining room via the dumb waiter..etc...but I digress.....

So..one warm summer day I was in my room on the 3rd floor...and was moving some stuff out of my closet, I was pulling the enlarger out and it tipped over and fell....it weighed about 50 lbs, it was about 18" wide 15" high and 10" deep..it was like a large magnifying glass on a rod in a big heavy metal base....anyway, when it fell, it cracked and guess what....it was filled with an oily substance...that is what made it heavy and that is what made it enlarge what ever it was put in front of it....

Well, now the fun starts....as I was on the 3rd floor, when it broke all the oil ran out and down 3 floors to the basement....the stairs were covered with it, the halls ways...etc....I was going nuts, how do I clean this up..I called Pop and he come right over....lucky for me no one was home....I got rags, newspapers and what ever else I could find to sop up the oil....we took our shoes off and started to wipe up the mess....Pop was doing the stairs I was working on the hallway..then he called to me and said...hey, the color is coming off the stairs....they were covered with linoleum and we learned our first chemistry lesson, linoleum was made with an oil base product and when the oil from the enlarger mixed with it, it took the pattern right off....we worked for over 4 hours wiping, mopping, washing and I knew when my mother got home I was going to get killed....it destroyed all the linoleum in the house...also leaving a greasy residue on everything...

....Pop kept saying..boy are you gonna get it..and laughed...trust me I was not laughing at all....I was 11 year old and I knew I would not see 12....Pop wanted to go home when we were done but I asked him to stay until my mother got home...I figured she would not kill me in front of a witness...I must say she took it very well....but she said now you call your father and tell him what happened....she dialed and as soon as I heard his voice I started to cry, well it worked...he said as long as no one was hurt....but when poor Pop got home, he got in trouble, your great greatmother was very mad because all his clothes and him were a little oily to say the least....by the way, I don't know if I ever thanked him...so, Thanks Mike....