My mother’s, mother’s brother was Ivend Shephard. He was a tall, burly man with square shoulders, dark hair, piercing black eyes and a mustache that a walrus would be proud of. We knew him as Uncle Ivan.
One of my earliest memories as a child is of being at Uncle Ivan’s house just outside of Elkhorn, Wisconsin. I recall sitting on his leg as we played the piano. Well, he played the piano while I just held on. I remember he smelled of musk and played with great vigor. I also seem to remember that he liked me. I certainly liked him.
Uncle Ivan was an inventor. One of his inventions was Dense Wood. He had a process for hardening wood that was perfect for knife handles and such. The family myth says that he was robbed of the formula by a partner who sold the process to a manufacturer. In any case, there were several dense wood samples lying around when I was a kid and Ivan was never regarded as wealthy.
One of Ivan’s oddest inventions became known as the Exponential Horn. Ivan was a musician. He played several instruments – not all at the same time – and he played in several local bands and orchestras. He was determined to invent a horn that played bass notes better than the Sousaphone or the Tuba. His calculations and designs quickly showed that the horn would be too big and heavy to be held, so he began building it into and around a chair which he appropriated from his mother, my great grandmother.
The great horn began to take shape. It was so bulky that it was moved to the front porch of their house which was on a hill overlooking a shallow valley about three miles outside of Elkhorn. They would often sit on that porch in the evening, drinking adult beverages and watching the twinkling lights of Elkhorn. The horn/chair contraption was difficult to get into, according to my mother. One had to be something of a contortionist to get seated. The horn had a Rube Goldberg collection of brass tubing in all manner of bends and coils. It had several valves and it ended in a modified Sousaphone horn. By all accounts it was pretty damn ugly.
One day the horn was finished. Ivan checked all of the solder joints, worked the valves, fitted the mouthpiece and crawled into the horn. One or two family members were called upon to witness the first notes. Uncle Ivan worked the valves again, took a deep breath, pressed his lips to the mouthpiece and blew. Then he blew again.
Nothing!
Not a peep, or even a pfffffft.
Just nothing.
Great grandma asked Ivan what he wanted for lunch and went back into the house. Ivan was perturbed. He clambered out of the chair/horn, checked all of his coiled brass tubing, checked for blockages, and reseated himself. He blew into the horn again. And again there was nothing. No sound at all. So Ivan crawled out of the horn again, went into the house and had his lunch.
Two days later Uncle Ivan was working in his shop around the back of the property when someone from the house came to get him. The local sheriff was visiting. Ivan walked around the house and found the officer of the law standing on the steps leading up to the porch. He was staring at the Exponential Horn.
Ivan said hello, the sheriff said hello and they sat down to a glass of fresh iced tea. The sheriff inquired as to the apparatus on the porch and Ivan explained his horn project. The sheriff nodded. Ivan offered to demonstrate the total lack of sound produced by the prodigious beast but the sheriff was quick to decline. He then went on to explain that two days prior, at or about the time that Ivan was doing his initial testing of the horn, every pane of window glass within five miles of the Shephard home had shattered. The damage zone was vaguely in the shape of a cone, with the point of said cone emanating from at the Shepard’s porch. Since no one had heard an explosion, in fact no one had heard anything at all, it was a mystery that several hundred homeowners wanted the sheriff to investigate. At this point the sheriff looked pointedly at the fully intact windows of the Shephard home.
Apparently an uncomfortable silence ensued.
The upshot, according to family legend, was that though no one could prove that the Exponential Horn was the culprit, Ivan ended up paying for a substantial number of replacement window panes. At the sheriff’s request, Uncle Ivan disassembled the horn and ceased his horn oriented experiments. I’ve been told that Great Grandma never did get her chair back.