Yo...Ed ...and how is everything up in Yankee Land?  

Yes, I was the Radio Weatherman over Stamford WSTC for several years I guess - way back when.  Broadcast from the old Stamford Museum and Nature Center out on High Ridge Road (you may have been there - once known as the Henry Bendell (sp?) Estate - he was famous dude who had a big women's fashion store on Fifth Avenue or somesuch...).  

We had all our instruments there and I had to get out there at crack of dawn every day and take readings and reset the max.min thermometers, psychrometers, etc. (I was a whizz with the sling psychrometer if you know what that is, and never broke one (yet!).  Still have my old all-mercury unit in storage somewhere - collector's relic now...).  We had a remote pickup tie to downtown studio and you had to learn to work the radio equipment all same time while making the forecast - was pretty tricky.  Mostly balancing potentiometers on rows of dials as I recall.  We were only supposed to have three minutes but downtown Announcer was guy named Bill Coderre (I believe long since deceased...but he went on to notable career in radio NYC, etc.) and he and I got to yakking it up and wisecracking so that the show began to stretch out to ten minutes and longer every morning and the Station Manager was going nuts that we were "giving away" so much free air time! LOL!  But folks loved it!  

The Museum (in those days) was pretty loose-goose affair run by the late Ernie Luhde and had an animal Farm for kids among other attractions and the talking Mynah Bird used to wander into my broadcast booth and hop on my shoulder and I would work his squawks into the act - and we had peacocks that would stray in, too and bawl real loud on air - and it was a riot! LOL!  (I even researched same and found old English saying: "When the peacock loudly bawls, then we shall have both rain and squalls" - and explained how there was scientific truth in this as air usually denser before storms, etc. etc.  I started a thing called "Clothesline Report" in which I would give housewives a probable forecast for chances of a good backyard drying day (no one had automatic dryers back then...).  Naturally, I would "bust" a few now and then, and it would come on a real downpour!  One night when I got home, this lady phoned me up real irate and yelled in my ear:  "How would YOU like to come over here and sleep in my husband's wet pajamas!!!  LOL.  

I had another scam I worked out:  folks would throw big backyard parties, receptions, bar-mitzvahs and what not on weekends in their backyards and at country club you see - and they would take out "storm insurance" against liklihood of there being a storm that day.  Well, the insurance companies won't write protection for such event unless there is a "bona fide weather observer" attendant throughout the doings.  So I nosed the word around and every Saturday afternoon I would be found mingling with the upperset  - whom I charged maybe $25 or $30 to attend their party (I don't remember exactly - but that would have been good money back then!) and had all the free drinks and eats a hungry weatherman can ingest!  LOL  

Actually, it was a lot of work really and I had to study a lot.  My meteorology mostly self-taught.  But I hung in and got to know more advanced guys elsewhere and visited Hartford and other stations and "learned the ropes."  I met a number of prominent meteorologists in my time, including a few of the Norwegians who used to dominate meteorological sciences.  (Norway, you see, is completely at mercy of western winds off Atlantic and owns no territories or fleets (way back earlier) to supply forecast data from the west (weather at this latitude moves largely in from West) and so they became pre-eminent in synoptic and ground-based  forecasts - this is all matter of record if you study history of forecasting, etc.).  In fact, during WWII you may remember, the Germans were so aggravated with inability to know weather brewing west of Norway (vital to their U-boat ops) that they set up secret base in Greenland which we later attacked and fought regular battle there - little known to many folks, etc. etc.)  

Anyhow, my proudest accomplishment was when I was selected by the U.S. Power Squadrons to teach their "Marine Meteorology" course to their members (you likely know them - big pleasure boat group).  The course was given every week down at the old Stamford Yacht Club.  Man! - I was just about one lesson ahead of my students in the textbook - but I managed to stay out front...just! LOL!  Funny thing I recall from those days:  my first wife, Jean (whom I think you maybe met?) was pregnant with our first child, and so I told the class of the situation, and that I might unexpectedly have to leave some night in the middle of the lecture if I got a certain call.  Well, there was this guy back in the classroom who allowed to all, as when that call came, he, too would be leaving posthaste.  This really puzzled me.  But some of the class got "in on it" you see - and they teased me several weeks with this: you see the guy was Dr. Jack Farrell, my wife's obstetrician, but I did not know it at the time!  LOL!  Had a lot of fun with that one!  Later, Jack and Elsie (his wife) and Jean and I became great friends and pal-ed around in NYC, Florida in winters, etc.  Both he and Elsie deceased now...  (And Jean).  

As to the "Tex" Powell moniker, since you knew me later in life - I came by it honestly! LOL!  You know I grew up in Texas, and when my family moved back to CT, everyone would roar with laughter at my accent and so they just naturally all nicknamed me Tex.  And that is name I was known by for many years there.

And there was a celebrated early days Weatherman (national) named "Tex" Antoine back then (you may remember).  So the PR types with WSTC insisted that I, too, was to go back to being a "Tex" again, too - so we could cash-in on all the razzle-dazzle, etc. and that's how it came to be "Tex" Powell and the Weather!  

But actually, by the time I was drafted into the Army, I had lost my drawl and many mannerisms and expressions, too and mostly my "cohort" was all Yankees from New England now, so everyone from Army days on assumed I was a Yankee - and thus no one from those days "knows" me as Tex at all...  LOL!  But now and then someone will show up from the remote past and jar me with a "Hi, Tex!" greeting...  (Has not Mighty Solomon in His Wisdom, not said, "One man in his life, lives many lives!").  

I carried on my weather hobby interests for many years till all this moving around etc. made it impossible to set up effective instrument shelters, keep records, etc.  I was actually at one time a "Cooperative Observer" for the old defunct USWB (now NASA has all the weather functions I guess).  I was empowered to break into phone conversations, etc. with "Priority One" phone calls if I spotted a tornado or other imminent weather disaster, etc.  Kept records in a big government logbook - but I have no idea anymore if this program of volunteers is still around or what.  

Well, I will conclude this overly-long ramble with one of my favorite aphorisms I used to sign off with at WSTC.  It is called the "Forecaster's Lament," and it goes like this....  

"As I sit among life's embers...this is my last regret When I was right - they never remembered, When I was wrong, they would never FORGET!"  

bernie (aka "Tex")