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Michigan Regional Meeting, Sept 30, 2017 |
On a beautiful fall day at the Lake Huron shore, eighteen Scalies met at the home of Utz and Shirley Schmidt. True to form, the day was filled with good friends, good food and good conversation – along with some discoveries.
The distance traveled awards went to Bill and Jan Berning coming from Illinois and Joe and Cathy Schaffer from Indiana.
It was great to have first-timers Gregg and Amy Motter, new members from Midland, Michigan, join us. Gregg is retired from Dow Chemical, and both he and Greg Moss concluded they likely met each other 15 or so years ago as part of a Dow project. Inspired by our gathering, Gregg and Amy graciously agreed to host next year's meeting.
With the sizable "scale" of Utz's collection, it's almost assured you will see something new, even if you've already seen it several times. This day was no exception. In fact, part of the fun was finding those hidden gems you didn't remember from past visits.
Jack Mickevich brought the following three unusual price computing scales – yes, it took his pickup truck to move all that hardware! (Click on photos for larger images.)
A new feature, at least for Michigan's gathering, was a brief show-and-tell. To get things rolling Utz demonstrated a Royal Air Force scale for measuring the tension on aircraft cables. The airplane owners in the group informed us the cables were the ones that operated wing parts such as flaps, rudder, etc. This led to stories from Ben Smith of his US Navy service in World War II and Korea which we all enjoyed hearing.
With some relaxing walks on the beach, a visit to Utz's "annex" across the highway with more to see in way of scales, too much food and a lot of "Look here!, What's that?, What do you think?" another interesting and gratifying Michigan Regional Meeting came to an end. See you next year in Midland!
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