All free, all the time
since 1984

The Freeware Hall Of Fame (sm)

Original Publications
Newspapers - Magazines - Web

Rey & Johnny Carson
"Carson's Greatest Interview"
(Click on pic to read the story behind "Carson's Greatest Interview")

 

Distinctive, original, offbeat FreeHOF creations

 

  Yellow button Light Sweet Crud - Rey Barry's Mensa think tank

  Yellow button America's Cherished Myths - and the truths behind them - You'll be surprised

  Yellow button One of the most popular acronym definition pages in cyberspace, an award winner

  Yellow button 21 Clues to the Blues How to tell real from faux?

  Yellow button The Investor's Guide to CNBC Tips and Traps

  Yellow button The first and the best insider guide to eBay ever published

  Yellow button Charlottesville, Virginia's, legendary Gaslight Restaurant

  Yellow button The Gaslight's legendary Charlottesville, Virginia

  Yellow button Backpacking Through Hell - remembering a father

  Yellow button And a New England sea coast saga like no other

Yellow buttonClick here for an index to most of our HTML pages

 

They include a page all about the great Goggo Motorscooter with uncommon details to help the collector and restorer, plus plenty of pictures.

Goggo roller

There's an article recounting for an alumni magazine
The Day Joe Kidd Ran My Pants Up The Flagpole

One of our neighbors, Anna Anderson, was widely believed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, daughter of Czar Nicholas II. She was world-famous for this, since conventional history said the Czar and his family were wiped out in 1917. Jack Manahan, an eccentric genealogist she married late in life, believed she was genuine.

So did some of the people who shared personal memories with the actual Anastasia they knew as a child, and that was amazing. Anna Anderson knew things only the real Anastasia could know.

We wrote first-hand, personal stories about Anna and Jack for the Manahan's hometown newspaper. There's never been anything quite like
Anna Anderson's upside down Cinderella story We explain why the DNA tests were unreliable and don't end the controversy. There is still ample grounds to believe this woman, or wonder how a Polish peasant could know the private memories of a princess whose body was never found.

Anna Anderson Manahan

Jack Manahan


What do you know about the South? Would you agree that for a post-war 100 years the South was dominated by badly schooled gentry and barely schooled rednecks sharing a secret pride they were betrayed by god? That and other commentary can be found on our hometown tribute to Charlottesville, Virginia. We're often ranked the No. 1 place in the country to live. On that page you'll learn the good and the bad, no punches pulled.


In 1970 my wife and I had a unique wedding - you can read about it at the Rotunda of the Univ. of Virginia. It's the only wedding ever held in this remarkable building designed by Thomas Jefferson and now a National Historic Landmark.

Uva Rotunda with searchlights


The ongoing influence of Jefferson makes FreeHOF's home town unique. Under TJ's watchful eye was one of the great saloon society restaurants of the 60s, so quaint it's where Bob Dylan and Joan Baez came to sing for free. Read about John Tuck's world-renowned, irreplaceable Gaslight


One of the pages on this site is a stock market column mostly about eBay, the on-line auction site. We began studying eBay as an e-commerce business model long before it went public. (The column was important then; it's not now.)

We've held 1000+ auctions on eBay, plus a substantial number on Amazon. For a close-up of what eBay is and how it really works, and how to avoid being cheated, see our inside eBay tutorial.

Do you invest in the stock market? If so, you likely know about cable channel CNBC. If your cable carries it, CNBC can help you reap rewards. We tested it for years, watching it all day, every day. We charted it over the long haul looking at action and reaction. Here's a CNBC analysis of how to make money from the channel.


FreeHOF also has a ONE LINE BLOG. Worldly wisdom in one line. Some became famous. Sue Collins's "Evangelists do more than lay people" began as a tagline blog, then became a FHOF bumper sticker picked as Bumper Sticker of the Year by Dallas Magazine. Push here for our One Line Blog.


Americans of 225 years ago elected George Washington, "the man who could not tell a lie." We elected Bill Clinton, "the man who did not inhale." Are today's Americans anything like the people who founded this country?

Not at all, so FreeHOF modernized the Bill of Rights - the 1st ten Amendments to the US Constitution - to reflect the changes time wrought.

We expected to see it scorned since it mocked both conservatives and liberals. It came as a surprise to see it treated with reverence and called a "Must read" in some places. Maybe the Preamble struck a chord:

"We exchanged a birthright of justice for a magic bullet, and replaced the Pioneer Spirit with the Pioneer Stereo. We're not like the people who founded this country ..."

Do you think this New Bill of Rights describes us better?


The calendar followed by Christianity crossed the year 2000 recently and Americans partied. That calendar is the only one most of us know. Because of that, we have a very flawed perspective on history.

While we celebrated the year 2000, the Chinese were celebrating the year 4695. The Jews also go back more than twice as far as Christians. Our 2000 was their 5759. Their society was 3700 years old before Christianity existed.

Maybe in another 3500 years a new religious leader will come along and his followers will again wind the clock back to zero.

Have a glance at the calendars of the Chinese, the Jews, and the Masons. The yardsticks other people use, and civilization itself, passed the year 2000 eons ago.


If you like to play trivia games we have two: the easy CLUE1 and the fiendishly hard CLUE2. Someone unknown wrote CLUE1. We added the clues and later wrote CLUE2. Too hard? Bam bam poppa that's a two-bam dad.


About Jazz

In 1947 my brother brought home a 10" George Shearing LP. Jazz dominated my life from that day on. That included being an habitue at the original "Birdland" most of its life, usually backstage by the cash register outside the kitchen listening to owner Oscar Goodstein share wonderful anecdotes, or reading his fascinating 10-page letters from Charlie Mingus, an amazing writer and philosopher.

I grew up with Benny Goodman and Ray McKinley as neighbors. One summer I was the lifeguard at Goodman's club. When he came to the pool I played his LPs on the PA system. He was OK about that. Ray's baby sitter gave me access to his remarkable record library. Bud Powell was a drinking companion in Paris for a week. Count Basie needed someone to drive him around the French Riviera one afternoon, and I had a car. At a fund-raiser to create a jazz hall of fame, I danced with the legendary Maxine Sullivan. So many memories.

As a jazz DJ in a university town in the South I came to know many performers of the 50s. Those were jim crow days and I was the contact to local restaurants and motels willing to break the color line. Restauranteur Buddy Glover was happy to feed Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross and other jazz greats who came to play.

So it's with pleasure that we carry this link to Tom Morgan's jazz page, a great web site. Tom is one of the foremost authorities on early jazz, and he shares it well. If you have any interest in jazz roots, that's where to find them.

In 1963 there was a famous jazz concert in Jackie Robinson's backyard in Stamford, CT. It was the beginning of what became the annual Jackie Robinson Jazz Festival. There was a secret recording of that concert few knew about. Ken Burns bought the 8 tapes from me for use in his documentary about Robinson, and the music was used in the film. Here's the story.


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The name Freeware Hall of Fame is Service Marked by webmaster Rey Barry, rey at cstone.net All rights reserved
Page last updated Feb. 5, 2020

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