Originally in the December 1984 C&E.
Christmas came a little early this year to Honor Roll Ranch, home of the world-renowned DXer and all-around wonderful person, Q.R. Zedd, A5A.
Zedd, holder of the world’s only 1×1 callsign and the first man to win the coveted Worked All Stations award on 440MHz, decided to have some of his pals in early because he was scheduled to bop off to Houston’s Space Flight Center at mid-month to get a few bugs out of the space shuttle’s communications systems and show authorities a new robot arm he designed which will replace the Canadian arm presently in use. Zedd’s arm is made from old Coors cans, works a lot better than the Canadian model used heretofore on the shuttle, and costs nothing if you write off the cans to thirst.
Tinsel and mistletoe garlanded all the towers and antennas at Honor Roll, just a hoot and a holler south of Norman, when the festivities began at mid-month.
Everybody who was anybody was there.
Zedd’s momma, Mrs. Constance Wilhemina Zedd, blasted over on her new four-cylinder Honda, trailing a zepp antenna and dazed highway patrolmen in her wake. She reported working 212 countries on the way over from her home near Mena, Ark., using a straight key strapped to her handlebars and an old Kenwood 820 “that I messed with a little to boost the power.”
Zedd’s constant companion, Tondelayo Schwartz, was on hand, of course, having just won the 10-meter contest while updating her 10-10 logbook to include everybody who ever belonged.
Bill Buckeye, famed Ohio Dxer, was there. So was Bill Blast, of the renowned Blast Off DX Net. Andy Taco, New Mexico newcomer to the DX world, flew in, and so did a number of other dignitaries. The President wanted to come, but the Secret Service warned him that’all the rf might break his hearing aid.
It was a grand, festive occasion. Everyone had a fine time whetting the proverbial whistle and square dancing and all, and the gift exchange started at 5 p.m.
Tondelayo, wearing a lavender jump suit like the one once used by an actress in a 007 movie, passed out the gifts. Bill Buckeye gave everybody present an autographed picture of Woody Hayes. Taco gave pieces of a balloon that never got off the ground in the great Albuquerque balloon race. Blast distributed engraved tips on how to get onto the list when his net is working. N5MS gave the great one a model Cessna airplane. Zedd gave WA5RPP a new pencil. Tondelayo gave W5OU a booklet entitled “How To Get a Bond Election Passed.” Your reporter, honored to be there, was given a vacuum tube once used in Zedd’s No. 1 linear, I plan to take it home as soon as I can rent a truck big enough to transport it.
The most touching moments came when Zedd, his momma, and Tondelayo exchanged gifts.
Zedd gave his momma a lifetime subscription to Ms Magazine. He gave Tondelayo a beautiful engagement ring with a germanium crystal in it, telling her she could work the world with it.
Tondelayo gave momma a copy of her recently published memoirs, and to Zedd went a photo album of herself.
Momma had dragged in a couple of huge packages. Tondelayo’s turned out to be one of each from the current Fredricks catalogue. Tension and suspense mounted as Zedd tore open his box, scattering Santa stickers in all directions.
“Wow,” quoth Zedd as the contents were revealed. “Jiminey!
Momma had given her son an Epson QX-10 computer.
Readers may not fully appreciate the significance of this moment.
In all his illustrious career, Zedd had never meddled much with computers. Oh, he designed the IBM PC, but he never got into them for his personal use. And it is quite likely that he had never even looked at the Epson before.
Zedd pulled the machine out of the box, plugged it in, tossed the instruction booklet into the pile of trash to be burned, whanged a couple of diskettes into the dual drives, and — oblivious to us all — immediately began hammering on the keys while glaring at the screen with total intensity.
Two or three hours later, even through dinner, he stayed at it.
By nightfall, he had strung some cable out to the root cellar, where he happened to have an old mainframe in storage. Muttering something about booboo algebra and relational databases, he retired to his lab for a little while and came back in a cloud of smoke (resin core solder) with a new board he had just whomped up. Opening the lid, he installed the board, hit a couple of keys, and pat down in front of the machine again, chuckling to himself.
It was a grim moment amid the holiday glitter. Even momma was grim. For this, she saw now — too late — could be bad. We had all seen good hams go crazy when they discovered computers. Some of them didn’t even have rigs any more. They filled page after page in the C&E with stuff the rest of us didn’t understand.
Had the bug bitten Zedd?
As we filed silently out of Honor Roll at dusk, Bill Buckeye was heard to exc1010, “God bless us, every one.”
We needed it. We who had for so long idolized the great man were deeply worried.