My sister, Mary, asked me
to post something about Pop and his microscope, so here goes.
Pop had many hobbies.
Among them he liked to study things under the microscope. I must preface here
that his microscope was as basic as it gets just above a magnifying glass. A
mirror reflecting light from the sun or some other external light source is all
his microscope possessed in the way of illumination to view whatever was on the
slide. That being said, it certainly made it a mobile device that could be used
in the house or out on the picnic table.
He taught my sister and me
how to use the microscope and how to prepare slides. He showed us the wonders
and diversity of life along with objects of interest from nature like the
difference between sugar crystals and salt.
One of the things we did
that I found fascinating was to put straw in water in an old mason jar and let
it stand for a few days. He placed a drop of the “matured” water on a glass
slide and placed a slide cover (a thin square of glass) over the drop without a
fixative to spread the drop thin enough to look at what was in it. Inside that
single drop of water life had sprung up in the form of tiny creatures. They
were busy creatures, too. They moved around eating microscopic bits of algae and
such. As days passed we checked on the tiny world of creatures in that jar of
straw water and things were rapidly changing in there. New creatures would
arrive and older ones disappeared. I could only assume new creatures hunted
down the older ones and ate them. After some time had passed watching the
evolution of life in the jar, we found that all the creatures were gone having,
I imagine, reached the end of life in their world with nothing further to eat.
Our parents gave us each a
new microscope one Christmas and I loved that mine had its own little light I
could plug in and see things more clearly. After I left home to go to college
and then out into the world, Pop found ways to use my microscope and the wooden
box it came in to improve his microscope. I don’t know what became of my
microscope, but years later, Pop gave me his (in the wooden box mine had come
in, but transformed to accommodate his microscope.) I still have some of the
slides we made together and some pipettes and other tools left from my days at
Career Academy. Pop’s microscope is one of my favorite treasures. It warms my
heart to have these things that my parents held dear. And I like sharing these
childhood stories with all of you.
