About Jim & Emmy

It is with deep sorrow that I report that Emmy Humberd, my wonderful travel companion and my beautiful wife of nearly 55 years, passed away on November 15, 2005 from complications of Alzheimer's disease. Her headstone tells the story of her life, it states, "Now the Angels have a Role Model."
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11:12 AM, November 15, 2005

For the next several minutes I kissed My Sweetie all over her face, her eyes, her mouth, and all over. As I lifted my head, I would swear she had a different expression on her face, she took two more breaths, then left for Heaven.

I was no more than 5 or 6 inches from her face, so did not miss a thing. It was as if I had given her permission to leave, and that was her last look of love, especially for me. I am crying as I type, I want to be with her, now!
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We met on a blind date on November 3, 1950, and I had to report to the Army in two weeks (Recalled for the Korean War). Seven months later - minus one day - on June 2, 1951, after we had seen each other maybe 10 to 15 times, we were married. We knew each other for a total of 55 years and 13 days.

One year we celebrated Sweeties 70th birthday at exactly 12345670. That occurred on Jan 2, 2003 at 4:56 both AM and PM - well we slept through the AM version, but we did celebrate the PM version. Each year this century, people make a big deal out of dates like 3-3-03, 4-4-04, 5-5-05, 6-6-06, and especially they call 777 or 7-7-07 their lucky day. But who else do you know who celebrated 12345670!

For every one of the 54 Wedding Anniversaries, we have eaten at a restaurant we have never patronized before. For our 38th, from our table in the Marriott Hotel in Athens we could see the Parthenon at the top of the Acropolis. It was partially covered with scaffolding, and looked as if it could be under construction, under renovation, or perhaps under demolition. We asked our waiter when he last visited the Parthenon. He laughed and said as a school child he was bussed to the Acropolis one day, the one and only time he's been there!

Anniversaries have been celebrated in Athens; Cruise Ships 3; Dallas (2); Ft. Worth; Greimerath, Germany; Las Vegas (4); Los Angeles area (18); Mauna Kea Beach Hotel in Hawaii (the best!!); Lowes Hotel Monte Carlo (the worst!!); Palm Springs area (16); Park Ridge, Ill (Wedding day); Phoenix; San Diego (2); San Francisco; Santa Barbara; Strasbourg.
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Click here To see some of my favorite photos on Google

The photographs on Travel-Tidbits.com are all tourist snapshots, taken from 10 to 35 years ago. The age of the photo, the process of the scan and transfer to the Internet, often caused a slight shift in colors, but the main idea is the composition and the contents of the photo, as amplified by the Photo-Tidbit, the story below. Of course being stored for many years in our garage, in the California Desert, sure didn't help.

It is important to note that while the Travel-Tidbits and Photo-Tidbits include thousands of capitalized nouns - town and city names, buildings, tourist sites, etc. - Emmy and I have visited each and every one mentioned here. I have searched the Internet, via Google, for hundreds and hundreds of those nouns, and have yet to find one that is not listed on the internet somewhere.

About the only thing of interest to us that has changed since our first visit to Europe in 1970, was the removal of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, and the beginning of the restoration of Dresden, Germany.

Jim and Emmy's Tidbits are just that - vignettes, samples, suggestions, incidents, "Why Not Visit" stories - without a hint of the "How To" that is the major topic found in many travel publications.

Comments, complaints, questions, arguments, corrections are all welcome at jimhum@sbcglobal.net

PS. I first got involved in the computer industry in the late 1940s, almost before there were computers. To brag a moment, fifty years ago I worked at least a little with three of the original, huge, hand-built computers, the Whirlwind at MIT, the SWAC at UCLA, and the Johnniac at the RAND Corp. And forty-five years ago, I wrote the computer manuals, created the training course, went to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and trained NASA on the RCA 110A (Saturn Ground Control Computer). I also conducted several training classes on the RCA 4102 (Atlantic Missile Range Computer). These were two of the computers that helped put the men on the moon. Since they all got there and back OK, I figure I did my job just right.

Just in case you care (and even my mother might not want to read all of this), in this Web Site there are about 75 pages of stories of those early computer days, with a hundred links to old computer web sites.

A short version of that story can also be found at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). One day an official of that organization was on CSPAN, and asked for stories about early computer days. I submitted a couple of my stories, they liked them and asked for more. Then they published an extensive portion of my story, and I thank them for that attention to my early days.