Originally published in the June 1984 C&E.
It was on, the fifth of May, that Mrs. Constance Wilhemina (CW) Zedd, of Mena, Ark., blasted into Norman on her Kawasaki 1000, trailing a longwire antenna, a cloud of smoke, and a long line of dazed traffic cops.
Momma, mother of the great Q. R. Zedd, A5A, Oklahoma’s living national monument who is the world’s greatest DXer, made it over from Arkansas in about two hours. She said she had to take it easy because the cool plugs she was running in the newly installed modified Buick engine in her bike tended to create a little QRN at speed, and she was trying to work all states on 30 CW during the drive.
After freshening up at Honor Roll Ranch, Zedd’s modest antenna farm just a hoot and a holler south of Norman, Momma agreed to meet your reporter for an interview at one of her favorite area watering holes, Red’s Tavern.
The riot squad went on standby when Momma strolled into Red’s, wearing an afternoon dress of turquoise taffeta, four-inch heels, and a rhinestone ankle bracelet. Since it was early in the day, she wore her lustrous hair loose on her back, and had no sparkly things in her dark hose. Wrapping crimson-tipped fingers around a strawberry maguerita, Momma launched into a brief recap of her activities since her return months ago from the ill-fated Zedd DXpedition to Vietnam.
“It’s been a quiet time, honey,” she began. “The Vietnam thing was a rough gig, especially when we got caught in the artillery fight and had to break off our QS. with the European 4s. By the time I got back home, I was down to 91 pounds and I had the fever real bad, So I had to take it easy to get back on my feet and not even do much radioing, and there were a lot of days there late last summer when I didn’t even fill up a logbook in a whole week.
“Since the first of the year I’ve felt a lot better and I’ve worked, few hundred thousand on CW, plus of course my talk with W5LFL and those other darling boys on the space shuttle, but I really do feel it’s time I got over here to Norman to see Q. R. and that darling Tondelayo, and brush up on my break dancing.
“Also, since my nephew is graduating from OU, it’s a perfect time to visit. I haven’t seen the darling boy since he opened Clipperton a few years back. My, my! I bet he’s really grown! Of course he always was a handsome, intelligent devil. That comes from my side of the family.”
Momma was interrupted by a cowboy who was just learning break dancing. Momma wheeled around the floor with his a little and then did a few steps on her knees and back before thanking him kindly and wobbling back to the table, where\she finished her drink faster than you can work China with your automatic keyer cranked all the way up.
“This new dancing really makes you thirsty,” Momma allowed. “It reminds me of the time my late husband, Zepp, took me to the Sahara with him. That was back in the days after the war — the big one, you know, with the Kaiser.
“Zepp was such a darling man. You know, the Marconi name would not be known today if it hadn’t been for the efforts of Zepp Zedd. And goodness knows we all appreciate his efforts to perfect the yellow-handle screwdriver.
“Zepp hated hot weather and he wouldn’t have gone to the Sahara except that no one else was capable of mounting a DXpedition there, and even if they had known how to do it, Zepp was the only one with a great enough international reputation to be approved. He helped Hiram Percy Maxim’s father perfect gunpowder, too, don’t you know, or was it poison gas?
“Anyhow, honey, we got into the Sahara on the hottest day in over a century. It was so hot the camels lost their humps. It was so hot, we slept on hot water bottles to cool down. It was If hot, when we first turned our rigs on, we had to wait twenty minutes for them to cool down to operating temperature.
“During the first day and night we worked about 21R, dear Zepp and I did, but it was even hotter the next day and the water boiled out of our oasis and we knew we were in a lot of trouble. We had to hike out of there in the dead of night, just it and the dead camels — work a station, drag the camel a few yards, work another station — you can imagine, but the camels were rented and we had to return them.
“In actuality we might not have made it if it hadn’t been for Zepp’s pet toad, Jess. Zepp had brought Jess along in a Thermos bottle against a water emergency. As we staggered across the desert, really needing water badly, Zepp repeatedly released Jess, knowing how toads love water, and sure enough, on every occasion little green Jess would hop off over the horizon somewhere and locate a buried spring or discarded Coke cup with some leavings in it, or something.
“That toad, saved our lives, thanks to Zepp’s foresight.
“Nevertheless, by the time we got back to Cairo we were worn to a nub, I mean pooped! But Zepp insisted on working a few more of the faithful from the hotel. The heat wave was no better there, though, and finally we had to catch the last boat out, just before that end of the Mediterranean dried up.”
Momma Zedd paused to dry a tear in her eye. “The fact that we have no national holiday to honor the memory of my late husband is a disgrace,” she said finally. “You were too young to know him. More’s the pity, and the greater your loss. But you do know my darling Q. R., and that’s next best. And you’ll soon get to meet my nephew, and that also is bound to be a thrill for you.”
Momma brightened. “At least,” she opined, “you will have known three of the four greatest in the amateur radio world. Counting me, of course.” She winked and hailed the bartender with her empty glass. “Garcon! Let’s have one more here for my baby, and one more for the toad.”