When I was a teenager, Charlie Brigman, W4ZKE, of Wadesboro, taught me and two friends the basics of amateur radio.
“All electromagnetic radiation follows Ohm’s Law,” he said. “But since we cannot see electricity, let’s think of it as flowing, water.”
He paused.
“Consider a water tower,” he continued. “How tall do you think a water tower is?”
“About a hundred and thirty feet,” said one of my buddies.
“Yes,” Charlie answered. “Thirteen stories. Why don’t we build tanks on the ground?”
“You pump the water up that far, so gravity can push it down,” my buddy said. “The taller the tank, the higher the pressure. That’s why they build water towers on hills.”
“Exactly,” Charlie smiled. “If the tank is high enough, gravity will force the water throughout a small town.”
“Now imagine a faucet at the base of the tank,” Charlie continued. “Walk over and make sure the knob is closed tight.”
We did so.
“Now take your shoes off,” he smiled. “Stand with your feet under the faucet and turn it on. “
“Yo!” yelled my other buddy.
“What happened?” Charlie asked.
“What that water hit, the toe jam flew!’ he laughed. “I’m turning it off before it drowns me.”
Charlie chuckled, “Indeed.”
Then he paused to clear his throat.
“What happened when you turned the faucet off?”
“The water stopped.”
“Think about what you just did,” he said. “You turned off a million gallons of water with one tiny valve.”
“Now in electricity,” he continued, ”voltage pressure is like gravity. Current flow is like moving water. Resistance is like the faucet valve, which tries to stop the flow.”
“On the wall behind you,” he pointed, “turn that dimmer all the way counter clockwise.”
When one of us complied, the light went out.
“That knob controls a variable resistor,” he said. “In the ‘off’ position, the resistance is so strong, that the current can’t reach the bulb, so the light remains dark. Now turn the knob clockwise just a bit.”
When one of uscomplied, the light began to glow.
“As you lower the resistance,” he continued, “the light glows more.
“Now, turn the resistor all the way clockwise.”
Then the light glowed at its brightest.
“Lowest resistance, brightest glow,” Charlie said.
“Why don’t you just get rid of all the resistance?” one of us asked.
“You can’t do that,” Charlie answered. “At zero resistance you get a short circuit.”
He paused, then added with a smile, “You will always have some resistance. It’s a law.”
Charlie knew his students would face another kind of resistance as they took their test for the novice class amateur license, probably through anxiety, which would hamper the flow of their thoughts as they wrote their answers. He could not stop this resistance, but he could shorten the time they suffered it.
So, the week before the exam, after he finished the lesson, he said. “I’ve decided we’re not going to take the exam next week.”
“Good,” we sighed. “We’re not ready.”
“We’re going to take our novice class amateur radio exam tonight.”
“Tonight?” we gasped. “Right now?”
We paused to catch our breath.
“You got to be kidding.”
“Does this look like I’m kidding?” he smiled, as he handed us sharpened pencils, blank sheets of paper, then the official test sheets.
The gasps diminished as we concentrated on each question, discovering that we retained more than we thought. When we finished, Charlie looked over each test, then looked at us and smiled, “I’ll get these off to the FCC tomorrow. You should have a novice class radio license in the mail within two weeks.”
We did with calls KN4LRH, KN4LRI and KN4LRK.
But Ohm’s law explains not only the mechanics of radio waves, but of all electromagnetic radiation, including human thought. Resistance, such as the natural fear of failure, plus the internal voice of condemnation, can impede good thoughts, and even stop them — but only if we forget that we control the faucet handle, so we can control thought resistance.
Last Friday night, the Anson County Writer’s Club presented “Back Porch Stories” in the fellowship hall of First United Methodist Church. By six o’clock, an hour before the program began, the volunteers had finished setting up: tables and chairs in place, refreshments ready, gifts ready, books on the table, the stage lighted and the mic levels set. But something was not quite right, and for me had not been for a while.
Riding to Wadesboro that afternoon, I tried to pray, but I found myself only calling words.
I was on the tail-end of a week’s worth of resistance, a hacky cough, which abated after the Master said “take your Zyrtec.” Appalachian ear-clog continued all week, with lots of sunless weather. Somehow all this resistance surprised me, for I had forgotten Ohm’s law: there will always be resistance, but it seems stronger when you are trying to do something to help others.
After I got to the hall, the M.C. checked David Napier’s and my sound levels, then asked David to turn up his bass. When I sang “Daddy’s Love took the Fear Away,” no volume control could add the necessary conviction to my anemic voice; the nearly empty hall seemed to suck the sound away.
The valve of resistance was closing: “I hope somebody comes tonight,” someone said; then “Nobody’s coming to this thing,” declared another.
“All this resistance may not come from the evil one,” I said to myself, “but enough does for the good gook to say: ‘Submit yourself to God; ‘Resist the devil and he will flee.’ I need to resist the resistor.”
David and I had been praying for this program for the last two weeks; we wanted it to honor the Lord; I knew others had been praying too. But right now, I was the one fighting the resistance.
I walked along the inside perimeter of the hall, praying silently. After that, I took the elevator to the ground floor, and walked the exterior perimeter of the hall, when a mental image of an empty building came. I said “I resist you” to the thought, then continued praying until I reached the door I started from.
I returned via the stairs. I had not yet overcome the fear that we would have no audience as I returned to the hall, but I became more hopeful when the first two audience members came in, and when they were followed by two or three more, and when a flow of twos and threes from both the back and the front of the room came — until there were 81 persons there.
Just as a tiny flashlight with 10 LEDs will far outshine a single one, each new person entering the hall brought a bit of light, and when all were present, the atmosphere in the room brightened, to become peaceful, welcoming and affirming.
Beginning the program, Brenda told an Irish folktale which showed us how to get over fear of public speaking, and an Appalachian one which reminded us of the pitfalls of hypochondria and lying. As I looked around at the faces of the audience, they smiled in rapt attention.
Santa Cliff told us that right after his dad was killed in a car wreck, the 15-year-old was thrust into an old Santa outfit, and told to cheer up some little kids who loved Christmas as much as his father had. Right then, the Lord said as Cliff became Santa to needy kids, God would meet his needs, an agreement that has continued for 55 years.
In the music portion, I sang freely, and David played the best bass I remember, as we told how my daddy rubbed away the pain of a wasp sting, using only his touch and ashes from a Lucky Strike, which later helped me understand that my heavenly Father loved me even more than my earthly one.
What a change: between six and seven o’clock the atmosphere in that room had been transformed, because all our little lights joined together were enough to overcome the resistance, which might have kept the Lord from bringing us all an evening of flowing joy and great freedom.
After the program, folks stood around and talked for a while — almost as if the Lord Himself was there.
Charlie would have been proud.