Hot Diggity's Carolina Story telling thread.

That Woman

The North Carolina DMV made me surrender my old license plate so they could recycle it.

That reminded me of my collection of old plates that I hauled around in the trunk of my '72 Pontiac Gran Prix. The car was named Seldom Seen, since I spent so much time overseas.

I was home on leave and had a temporary tag on the back window. Since the fuel filler was under the license plate it was unsightly with no plate mounted in the holder. I put an expired 1979 Michigan plate on the car since it was black and matched the paint.

We drove all over the place and nobody noticed the tag at all... until we were coming back through U.S. customs from Ontario. This is usually a quick process, and with the light traffic I was surprised it was taking so long. I had been playing the border crossing game for years. I always gave honest answers. Some were simple yes or no, like,

Q. Do you have any Irish (pronounced "Arsh") potatoes?

Others were more fun.

Q. Do you have any bottles?

A. (Holding up a 2 liter Mountain Dew bottle) Just this one.

The trunk may have been full of Dorans beer and Northern Ale, but they were cans.

They were clearly more interested in imported liquor than in my trips to the Provincial Beer Store. They'd even ask occasionally if we had any liquor. No was honest enough. Just a few sleeves of beer. I didn't even get any beer this trip.

Finally the guard comes up and asks me to step out of the car. It's snowing, and I'm dressed for a North Carolina winter day, so it's chilling. He walks me to the back of the car and asks if that is my license plate on the car. "Sure is..." was an honest answer. To which he informed me that it doesn't match the registration for this car.

That wasn't the question. He'd asked if it was my plate, and it certainly was. I then explained that I had selected it from my pile of plates because it was the same color as the car.

I'm just trying to get across the border, so when he asks if he can see my other plates I open them he trunk and hand them to him. Michigan and North Carolina plates from all my cars going back to the mid 1970's.

He has to run every one of them. All belong to me, so he eventually comes back and starts explaining how I just can't pick out a plate based on color. I let him finish, and step up to the back window and brush the snow off so he can see the Michigan temporary tag, complete with instructions on it stating exactly where on the inside of the rear glass it was to be stuck with its' two adhesive strips.

He was frustrated, but again he hadn't asked about the current tag or asked for the registration.

We were almost ready to go when he asked "So where did you meet that woman with you?"

"Oh, That Woman? I just picked her up this morning."

He didn't like that answer either and made her get out in the cold too. He separated us, but I could see her glaring at me. She satisfied the officer that all was well, and he gave me back my pile of license plates and let us be on our way.

When I got back in the car she demanded to know what I had told him about her. Apparently my calling her "That Woman" had given him the impression that she was a stranger that I had just picked up that morning and was transporting across the border. I got an ear full about that as we drove away. I had in fact picked her up at her parents house that morning before we went for a drive.

That Woman probably still thinks of that day. Could be why she thinks of me and smiles when she sees a chipper shredder grinding up trees. She waited patiently for me to get my Global wandering finished before we got married a very long time ago. To me she'll always be That Woman.

 

I saw a CJ3A the other day and it made me think of a time Dad and I had gone fishing. On the trip out no matter where we were going he always produced a pack of Chuckles candies for us to share. He usually only wanted the licorice one. On the way to the lake he almost always got me with some Dad joke or something. One morning he said "Strange." Knowing my father, I'd never get an answer unless I asked, so I said "What's strange?"
"The name on the mailbox back there."
"What was strange about it?"
"Nothing. That was the name on the mailbox... Strange."

We were coming home from fishing with the boat trailer on the back of the CJ5. Dad pulled over just a little too far to let a car pass on a narrow dirt road. (which describes most of the roads around us in South Eastern Michigan) He put the Jeep and trailer over the verge, as the Norwegian's called it. The combination of the trailer, the grade and the mud had us in a fix. We were just about ready to take the shoe leather express home when a CJ2A with a mechanical winch came over the hill. He puled his old Jeep up against a giant oak tree, ran his winch cable out and had us back up on the gravel in no time at all. I was impressed with the mechanical winch and always remembered how he had anchored his vehicle and made sure that none of us was in line with the winch cable as he was pulling. We thanked our fellow Jeep driver and made it home in time to wash the CJ5 and the boat trailer off before supper.

 

I had a strange dream over the weekend. Could've been from the hard lemonade, or the heat or lack of sleep. I dreamed that I heard footsteps upstairs. That would be in the attic. There's no room for me to stand up straight, not a lot of area to walk on safely, and this time of year it's like an oven up there. That sure sounded like footsteps. Like they had found the light bulb and screwed it in, so they could walk at a reasonable pace. If they were more than four feet tall they wouldn't be able to walk more than the few steps I'd heard before they ran out plywood floor and had to balance along single 2x4 rafter beams. There was no access to most of the house from the attic due to the roof line, so wherever they went I could follow silently from below.
The only way they could get the drop on me, pun intended, would be to fall through the ceiling, or try to crawl down through the attic access that was hidden under layers of insulation. It was too far from the single light up there to find, even if they had a clue where to look.. So I heard them pacing back and forth. Just one intruder.

Then I remembered where the attic plywood decking ended. A pull-down ladder led from the garage to the attic. I Quietly opened the garage door and tried to see what was going on out there without turning on the light. As my eyes adjusted I realized there was no light coming down the pull-down stairs... because they were UP! There was light coming from a leg sized hole in the ceiling drywall just beyond the end of the attic floor. Maybe only one was still pacing. There could be a second with an injured leg. Maybe they thought I kept the good stuff in the attic and were digging through the boxes and didn't want anyone else to join them. I'm sure they were disappointed with the lamp shades and Christmas decorations they found up in the attic.

If they were trying to hide from me by pulling up the ladder they were sure doing a poor job of it. They had managed to get the folding ladder pulled up from up there, so I reasoned that they'd be able to reopen it. My ladder was against the wall, and it would easily wedge the folding stairs closed against anything pushing down from above, but it would be noisy getting it in position and they might burst down the stairs if they heard me banging around. As far as I could tell they were unaware that I had come home. Would they panic and fall through the floor if I made some noise? It had to be HOT up there. How long could they survive up there in the July heat?

They didn't seem much of a threat. Nobody would have much fight left after falling through a ceiling onto mostly really terrible places to fall onto. If they lowered the stairs they'd be facing either a locked garage door or the muzzle of a gun. I didn't want to shoot anyone in the house, certainly not in the attic, so I wasn't going to try to confront them. Could just leave them up there until they stopped moving, but then I'd still have a clean-up, and a body to explain, unless I just waited to report a bad odor. That still meant cleaning. Far worse cleaning. Possums and buzzards wouldn't even be able to get in to help. Even in the intense heat of the attic they'd still leak through the ceiling. They needed to go.

There was little of value in the garage, probably less than the attic, and with no lights they would just stumble around and knock stuff over anyway. What if I turned on the outside lights, opened the outside garage door that they'd come in through, and locked the inside garage door? Doing all those things would sound like someone coming home and they might just leave. See the light and like a trapped animal, run toward it.
Maybe I should sit outside in a lawn chair and confront them when they come out. Maybe just get a good look at them and watch where they go.

I fell asleep thinking about the consequences of doing that, and about hardening the whole area where they'd gotten in so they couldn't come back, or just calling the police to report somebody in my attic.

Then I woke up. I wanted to sleep, but not until after I'd looked in the garage to be sure the pull down ladder was still down and the garage door was still locked. It wasn't until then I was sure it'd been a dream.

I'm still considering my options on what would be the best course of action, both for today and during a scenario were there are no police to call. I'm also looking at how I can make access to the attic more difficult, less desirable, and if somebody does get up there who shouldn't be, maybe more entertaining to listen to from inside the house.

 

A friends gas floor lamp with the pump mounted on the lamp have me thinking about adding a cigar ash tray with a pipe holder to one of my gas floor lamps. Turn it into a "smoking lamp" although just for illumination, without the traditional exposed flame for lighting tobacco pipes and cigars. Or maybe it could serve both purposes, illumination and cigar lighting. Lots of design possibilities.

​

The traditional smoking lamp.​

Would be a tribute to First Lieutenant William D Hawkins. The Hawkins Room at The Basic School or "The Hawk" as it was known by those who hadn't read the dedication plaque, is apparently a Starbucks and snack bar now. It was a quiet, cozy bar on the first deck of the barracks when I lived there. It was lined from floor to ceiling with memorabilia of the Marines that had been there before. I was usually the first Warrant Officer to enter the bar in the evening, ring the bell and announce that the smoking lamp was lit. (A Naval tradition that dates back to square rigged sailing ships) The lamp was in the back or an alcove and gave me a comfortable private space to study. I was always there studying until the bar closed, when I would ring the bell again and announce that the smoking lamp is out. So much had changed at Quantico in the fifteen years between my first and last duty there I fear that over the past three decades The Hawkins Room, as I remember it, like so many Marine Corps traditions, has been lost to history.

William D. Hawkins - Wikipedia




Black and Tan became a favorite of mine while at The Basic School and always brings back memories of the final "Twenty Mile Force March" during our training. I had torn up a foot on the endurance course, and when we reached the one mile halt to adjust our gear I was absolutely amazed at how the Corpsman had taped my foot and totally eliminated the pain. I was ready for the nineteen remaining miles, but wasn't entirely disappointed when we rounded a bend onto a landing zone less than a mile away and saw many kegs of Black and Tan and tables piled high with pizza boxes. It was to be a day of feasting and camaraderie, and we enjoyed every precious second.

 

I love your lamps ,,reminds me of my grandparents home , never seen the tall lamps,, and I love hearing your stories from the Corps ,, the multi tour guys stories always seemed more ,,,, historical,,, I can't really think of the best words at the moment...
I was a short timer ,, rotated to 2/10 to finish out a couple of months before EAS ,, there was a bunch of short timers there at this time ,, we were in the squad bays ,, I never had one of the 2 or 3 man rooms,,anyway,, 1 Cpl. got up 1 morning,, , heading to the head ,, he yelled out ,, 15 days and a wake up MFERS ,,, a Sgt grabbed the guy ,, said , hey man ,, we got new guys in here ,, don't give them a bad attitude,, they've still got a while to go ,,, evidently ,, the 1st shirt heard all this ,,, a few seconds later ,, the 1st shirt walks out into the squad bay ,, and yells ,, 21 days and a wake up MFER'S ,, ya got to love the Corps ,, Welcome to the Suck ,, as much as it sucked at times ,,, I wouldn't change it for nothing,, if I had to do it over again,, I'd stay in for 20+ ,, but ,, some folks are slower learners than others ...

 

The Tale of the Tail

When you're an only child and you're raised with cats and dogs from the time you're born you probably notice that you're the only one without a tail. When other humans talk about tails, you listen intently, even when you're too young to understand. That's how Number One Son got the idea that he was going to grow a tail. We may have helped a bit, but we didn't even know at first and it developed over years and years.

Somewhere in a conversation he heard that "Mommy had broken her tail bone when she was a little girl." No telling how many years this bothered him before he asked Grandma about it...and she confirmed it.

Then there was Gene, the son of a friend of the family. Every time Number One Son's name was mentioned, Gene would ask "Is he the boy with the long tail?" Being a military town, we didn't see boys with long hair, so once again, the poor kid is thinking some people have tails.

From there, I can't be sure if it was one of those "Go ask your father" things or if we both heard it at the same time, but the question came up. "Mom, how come you have a tail and I don't?" Again, I'm not sure who said it first, or if we took the question seriously, but being the terrible parents we are we both agreed that his tail should be growing in within a few years.

When obvious questions came up, like "How come Dad doesn't have a tail?" we explained that I had my tail cut off when I joined the military. It was standard operating procedure, like a haircut.

In 2001 the movie Shallow Hal came out, and there was a male character (Jason Alexander) who had a tail...that wagged. This was the final bit of evidence that people could grow tails. It really bothered the boy. It was perfectly timed to coincide with talk in school about the "changes" that all the students his age would soon be seeing in their bodies. Growing a tail was now part of THIS process, and even the teachers knew.

Finally one day it all came out. Over dinner one night, obviously very upset, he said "I don't want to grow a tail." His mother told him "Sweetheart, you're not going to grow a tail." Then we heard the counter-argument. "But Dad said you had a tail, and you broke it...and Grandma told me...and Gene knows a boy with a long tail...and you said... and I saw this man on the TV..."

We were rolling laughing at this point, which didn't help the situation at all. It took the better part of an hour to sort it all out. What had started as a childhood curiosity had become a cruel joke that we never realized went so deep.

He still hasn't grown a tail... but he's still young.

 

The only thing Southern about this story is that I was on the Southern end of Okinawa, Japan...

Reminds me of the the three cylinder Daihatsu I had in Okinawa. Head was too eroded to fix, so I just put it back together. It did fine on three of the four cylinders, so I just drove it like that until the inspection expired.

I had a pretty good side hustle going, deregistering and scrapping GI's cars when they were ready to leave the island. I had great fun with all those cars.
Driving them all the way to work with tires squealing against the curb, driving front wheel drive cars up concrete stairs at the seawall, or just driving along the seawall with two tires on the road and the car at 45 degrees on the seawall. When we took two at a time to scrap them we would always crash them into each other at stop signs or traffic lights. Do this a few times and then get behind someone else! My favorite pair were a Honda Civic and a Toyota Crown. I had driven the Honda repeatedly into the Toyota's passenger side until it was about 50% caved in. The Honda had the (RHD) clutch pedal bent all the way into the middle of the car, so you had to know where it was. The front passenger floor had been ripped open and this scooped so much mud in while we were beating it up off road that the back seat was full of mud.

Cowboy, my junkyard contact said something like "Sunny Beach!" when he saw the condition of the cars up close. I still got 40,000 yen for the pair. Half a months rent. After they were scrapped I'd turn in the plates and get a refund on any remaining road tax. It was a sweet deal for every body. Marines got to drive their own car to the airport, and just leave the keys in it, and I picked it up and took care of all the paperwork to dispose of the cars. I scrapped or sold about thirty cars in three years.

I really hate doing engine work, even if somebody is paying me. That's definitely one I can do, that I won't.

 

I'm posting this as a personal reminder of stories I seem to have missed. Just the titles for now.

Would you like some fresh vegetables? (This one will be fun.)

Moving Day Yard Sale

Ooooh that smell!

Deluxe Porta-potty (Did I post this one already?)

Oh my goodness. I just did a thorough review of this thread and none of these stories are present.

That means I have some work to do, but the memories are so sweet that it's no work at all. It does make my sides hurt, laughing the whole time I'm trying to tell these stories

 

Tonight I sketched a "better" mermaid

I had made a mermaid cookie cutter years ago, and was surprised to learn later that, since I work with stainless steel, the cookie cutter that I'd originally created from a fond memory could be altered, twisted, and deformed in wicked ways. My vision of a mermaid that I'd created from my time as a sailing instructor had been stretched into a much more satisfying (for the cookie consumer) chubby cherub of a mermaid.

Tonight I further altered my original inspiration to have a "larger tail." Okay, I put a whale tail on her, but only below the knee.

The finished cookie cutter (I'll post when done) is still close to the original. I may have added a bit more top to balance the bottom, but until she's stretched to make a chubby "Moon Pie, Mint Julep Mermaid" cookie, my vision of a mermaid remains intact.

 

Manhattan

Just a quick note on the family cocktail.

I make them with:
2 ounces bourbon
1-1.5 ounces Sweet Vermouth
four shakes of bitters
one maraschino cherry and a little juice
with three ice cubes.

The family routinely had gigantic bottles of Cutty Sark on tilting rigs and half gallons of Jack Daniels, so I can't be sure of the preferred ingredients. I use Crow 86.

Not a bad beverage.

 

Moving Day Yard Sale

The home next to ours sat vacant for almost five years after it was built. The gutters fell off, the septic tank floated up out of the back yard and nobody was buying, although the price kept steadily rising. It got so bad that I had to mow a checkerboard patter in the lawn to get the realtor to notice that the yard needed work. They finally dropped the price back to the original asking price and the house sold. We had fantastic neighbors for about a year, until they got orders to embassy duty. They decided to rent the home. We had a series of renters who were good, bad, and creepy.

On a nice summer day, the latest family, who had been good neighbors, got orders overseas. We had said our goodbyes, and saw the moving van drive away, followed by the family car. A scene we had seen hundreds of times in the neighborhood, and had done ourselves.

Not thirty minutes after the moving van had left, I hear a commotion in the yard and have a peek outside. Neighbor on the other side of the rental house had taken a look inside, and since the door was open, walked right in. There was still furniture, clothes, all sorts of kitchen stuff, just left in the house.

So being good neighbors, the lady of the house on the other side and her mother hatch a plan. It's a nice day, lets have a yard sale!

So they put signs out by the road and move all the furniture, clothes and kitchen items out onto the front lawn. It was quite a sight.

They had a whole living room set up in the yard and were lounging on the comfy sofa and chairs when the moving van and family car came back from the storage unit across town for a second load.

 

Ooooh That Smell!

So ya'll know I had renters next door. Well, over the years, seems like every time I went overseas, a new row of homes would pop up behind me or across the street. The house almost directly across the street was nice and quiet, with only a slightly creepy young Marine officer who always seemed to be peeking out of his windows when I went outside. I was already retired, and had a mustache like a walrus, so he probably thought I needed watching.

Somewhere along the line the house sold to an enlisted couple, and when the Marine got out of the Marine Corps they had a rough time making ends meet. Strange things went on there. Two pony size Great Danes lived in the house. A pallet of sod arrived and just sat in the yard until it became a grassy lump. I heard grass was growing in one of the back bedrooms. Eventually the couple vanished. The house sat abandoned for a couple years. When crew from Michigan arrived to try to flip the house they told me it'd be easier to just burn it down and start over. But they saved it. It rented quickly and I ended up with a gaggle of adult children across the street. Noisy cars coming and going at all hours of the night, nasty skunk smell of marijuana always drifting across the street. Obnoxious rap music at loud speaker levels. But the worst part was the skate boarding. They couldn't just roll quietly up and down the driveway. They got an old Ford truck hood and would ride up and down the sheet metal, making a noise that sounded just like a car crash on the road, and they'd do it at all hours of the day and night. I had spoken to several individuals, and things would improve for a short time, then it would start again.

One night they were out stinking up the neighborhood with the skunk weed, and were being especially obnoxious with the noise...
and I noticed the wind shift. Very subtle. There was now a steady slow breeze blowing directly in their front door. It was payback time!

I had a burn barrel made from an old washing machine drum a safe distance in front of my truck, and I quickly lit it up with dry newspaper and junk mail. I was completely out of sight of these obnoxious adult children. Growing up in Detroit in the 1960's where burning was frowned upon, I could burn trash with a hot smokeless fire that, on a windless night, was undetectable. (By the mid 1970's a gallon of gasoline was cheaper than movie tickets and burning abandoned houses and watching fire trucks was cheap entertainment.)

But it wasn't windless. There was that steady breeze blowing right in their front door. While the initial start of the fire may have been unnoticed, the next item on the burn list created a rancid odor that hit you in the nose like a punch. Cat urine soaked newspaper. I put it on heavy, so it almost choked out the fire, and everyone down wind. It still wasn't making any visible smoke. If you've never experienced it, it is in the top ten most disgusting smells imaginable. I continued burning cat litter, drain oil, and other horrible smelling stuff until I ran out of stuff to burn, and then capped the perforated drum with a barrel lid, so it could smolder all night. Funny, they had all retreated into the house within minutes. Within days they moved out.

 

Broken bolts

There have been plenty of those, eh? Latest one was that broken steel valve stem in a 110 year-old brass hollow-wire lamp that I somehow managed to clear-drill after three hours trying to extract it. (I got the top five threads out.) I saved that one.

Reminded me of one of the toughest broken bolts I ever had. I used to have connections in the air-frames shop at Cherry Point. These guys would cut and weld aluminum soda cans back together for fun. They loved fabrication jobs for "training," and built lots of race car parts for me, so I had developed a good relationship with them.

The most amazing save that they did, and they did several of these, was to remove a broken bolt in the cam ring of a Roosa-Master diesel injection pump. These bolts were in a rotating hardened steel ring, inside a cast aluminum housing, and the only access was through a small threaded hole in the housing and a hole in the hardened cam ring, opposite the bolt. Best of all, being old Marine Corps engineer equipment, the entire pump was obsolete, and no parts were available.

I would drop these things off, explain the problem, and by the time I'd gone to the PX to buy these guys a case of beer, they had the broken bolt out. It was a beautiful sight. They'd weld a rod to the end of the broken bolt, through the little holes in the housing and rotating cam, and just spin the broken threads out. I traded several cases of beer for pieces of steel rod with our broken bolts on the end. Not a pit in the aluminum, a speck of slag or an arc burn anywhere.

There's expertise out there that'll blow your mind.

 

Deluxe Porta-potty

This story has to go back twenty years at least. They were building a new Toys-R-Us store across the street from my shop, and we had been greatly entertained for more than a year when they had tried to survey the property.

First thru got a multi-wheeled All Terrain Vehicle stuck. They tried to recover it with a tracked vehicle, got it stuck, and finally had to pay Popeye, an enormous wrecker to winch these stuck vehicles out. Even at that time, it cost $1000 for Popeye to start the engine, and the cost went up exponentially from there. There were scars in the road for more than twenty years from the wheel chocks that Popeye used when winching the two sunken vehicles out.

Years of pile driving and filling commenced before the building finally started to go up. It was interesting to watch. They'd cast a wall in concrete on the ground, then raise it into place with a crane. It was moving right along, until it wasn't.

At some point construction just seemed to stall.
It was like everybody was on vacation. The only activity was the appearance of a wooden shed that popped up overnight along the wall facing my shop. There had been a door in the outside wall that was now inside the shop, so I figured they had built a tool shed and were working inside.

Nobody was working over there that we could see. Nobody coming or going. Strangely, there was a trailer tongue sticking out of the far end of the shed.

Then there was the smell. Raw sewage, wafting right into my open bay door. I called the County and reported this smell, thinking maybe a sewer line had broken, or the one standard Porta-potty that was on site was leaking.

The County inspectors arrive while I'm at work, so I get to see it all play out. The Porta-potty is full to overflowing. But now they've turned their attention on the obvious trailer under the "shed."

Not a worker in sight. The inspectors pulled a piece of plywood off the shed wall and found a stolen deluxe concert venue rest room facility trailer built under the shed. I remember them walking around shaking their heads in disbelief.

Apparently the "illegal alien" crew had stopped doing any actual work after they'd built the shed over the Deluxe Luxury toilet trailer that had been stolen in Raleigh. They were just collecting their weekly pay, milking the job, and partying in the new building before they were found out.

Within a couple weeks the building was completed by a real construction crew and the new Toys-R-Us opened in time for us to watch car after car get stuck in the grass around the store when parking was overflowing on Black-Friday.

I'll always be proud of my community service back then.

 

Too Much.

I've been hunting this silly ceramic lamp vase since 2015. Made by Montgomery Wards in 1937/38 I suspect most were thrown in the trash. It is, after all, a completely useless vase, for anything but a center draft mantle lamp.
I've never seen one of these in anything but pictures, but I found one tonight.



I remember asking Dad what he'd paid for stationary engines and tractors. His answer was always the same. "Too much."

I wish I could've been around to see him make a deal. He openly did not like people, any people, but his eBay sales had highly detailed descriptions, history, research, and fantastic pictures. Talking to him face to face could be exhausting. He wouldn't say a word until he had the entire statement complete in his mind, with punctuation, and more often than not, the long awaited response would be a grunt. He'd get up, walk around a machine, hands behind his back, then wander off and get one tool. He'd make one adjustment and say "Start it." And it'd be fixed, every time. The explanation was usually deeper than "Ain't got no gas in it." and I'd have to wait until he'd written a technical paper detailing the specifics of the repair.

I inherited lots of Dad's traits, and have duplicated his "Start it" performance hundreds of times at work, but I was a teacher, a story teller, and I'd learned to strike up conversations with strangers as a survival strategy.

I mixed the classic family cocktail tonight, and toasted Dad. I can only imagine how his mind calculated value, estimated wear, compared tolerances and spun through encyclopedic memory for details while making a deal. It was as efficient as the computers that he'd been working on since they were as big as busses.

I'd like to be able to tell my kids that I paid "Eight bucks" for every lantern and lamp, but I think Dad's answer was a better one for future generations that will have to deal with our stuff.

"Too much."

But worth every penny to me.

 

Good one. Lots of wisdom in that too much. Bought more than one thing for too much in reality, but for peanuts in my own mind. Metal lathe comes to mind. Paid too much for it, spent too much for the tooling for it. Never made a dime with it and still get a lot of fun out of playing with it.
Thank you for sharing.

 

I always heard that " value" is what the owner sees it for ,,, something like that ,,, but that value isn't always monetary ,,,

 

Mom's Power Stair Chair

Mom had one just like that. She had trouble making it go because there was a delay between the button press and the beginning of up or down movement. She just wouldn't hold the button long enough.

I convinced her that it was voice activated. She had to press the button and yell "Jeronimo!!!" to make the chair go downstairs and "Up, Up and Away!!!" to make it go up. She kept her finger on the button long enough most of the time. When we were testing it I told her she wasn't saying it loud enough. Once she started yelling the "commands" while holding the button down, it worked fine.