Family Pics I

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Grandad James A. Green Sr. (1890 - 1973) was President of Mesa Oil & Petroleum, so Dad became a petroleum geologist (videos). Grandad had an office in downtown Wichita on the 14th floor of a big building at Douglas and Broadway and was a member of The Petroleum Club. I still remember the big painting of a mesa behind grandad's desk that today reminds me of Jebel Musa, or Mt. Sinai. We were James A. Green Sr, James A. Green Jr, and James A. Green III. As for more of us, there is still no James A. Green IV, and I see Bank IV in Wichita has changed it's name, although I have worked up some important factor-of-4 theorems available from Greenwood Research. In 2005 I discovered we were all three descended from a James Green married to a Sara Hicks in Tryon County, North Carolina, who fought in the American Revolution (videos) as a private in Captain Robert Porter's company. That is what James A. Green Sr. had on his application for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR video, 4th of July fireworks videos).

Dad took me to Texas with him on petroleum geology expeditions. He liked to read in American history, in addition to geology. I subjected many chemicals and minerals from the WSU chemistry department just three blocks from home to scrutiny in Dad's ultraviolet box (videos, fluorescent minerals video). They sometimes sold glassware and basic chemicals to youngsters from an upstairs dispensary, and maybe I was cleared for this by my parents and the faculty. These were the days when the dogs still ran free and Neighborhood Watch signs were yet to be invented. (Recently, new leash laws saved the postman a bite, and kids got warned about being questioned by police as prowlers after dark, but the Air of Freedom was treasured by many old soldiers.)

Dad read us Aesop's Fables, Classical Fairy Tales, and children's stories. Mom was also very instrumental in helping us learn to read. We lived next door to a professor of chemistry, Dr. Bob Christian, and I had a lively interest in science from an early age. Dad gave me Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif to read, then Uncle John gave me a microscope for Christmas, and I grew Paramecium, ect. Mom & Dad had great textbooks around in chemistry and analytical chemistry, and I learned about valence and how to do chemical reaction equations very early, and built a large chemistry lab in the basement starting with a Gilbert chemistry set. In fact, Dad took Qualitative Chemical Analysis from Dr. Christian at WSU for application to geology, and I still have the textbook.

Dad and Mom were married in the Chapel of the 1st Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas on March 10,1948, over a year before I was born.

Uncle John Mayfield was a WW II radar operator in the Navy, and hobbied extensively with electronics, so I built radios I could check with a scope! Later, John got me a shortwave radio, and I picked up stations as far away as Ecuador. I studied electronic design and accelerator design as a kid, and put together science fair projects on electroluminescence. As I recall, barium chloride fluoresced green when excited with a Ford coil! The basement lab crackled with electricity. Dad also had unusual EE apparatus, including a black light box for inspecting minerals under ultraviolet light. See also Mineral Fluorescence, Ken's Fluorescent Minerals, Fluorescent Minerals with other mineral glow characteristics, and Fluorescent Mineral Museum. However, Dad and John were sure religion would have to be about the problems of salvation and mercy, and that we were merely Christians and American Revolutionaries (with the Big-Bang 4th of July as our main patriotic day) fascinated with science, progress, and representative government. See religion for the folk wisdom of the ancients approach. Also see Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century.