7/14/07

Today, Saturday, July 14, 2007, is Bastille Day, and celebrates the storming of Bastille Prison, July 14, 1789, the beginning of the French Revolution.
The French Revolution was partly inspired by the American Revolution, since it followed it.
The same sort of ideas were swirling around France as were used to justify the American Revolution; namely, the rights to individual freedom and the pursuit of happiness.
The French were dealing with a despotic monarchy, as were the Americans, although on the other side of the planet, and separated by an ocean.
But the French Revolution descended into madness — heavy use of the guillotine.
France has always gone its own way, including against the Dubya Administration when we invaded Iraq. Rather than kowtow to invading Brazil for the Pearl Harbor attacks, they disputed the so-called divine wisdom of Dubya.
—Thereby prompting utterly predictable blustering from Limberger and his lackeys.
“We saved their butt when the Nazis overran Europe, and what do we get.....?”
Freedom Toast and Freedom Fries.
Funny; still looks like French-Toast when my wife orders it.
Maybe they could dip it in red-white-and-blue food-color, although I think they’re also the colors of the French Tricolor.

—At least two local motor-festivals have gone by-the-by this weekend:

The Keed.

BDah-BDah-BDah-BDah.....

-1) is the John Deere Tractor Festival, organized by the local Two-Cylinder Club.
It’s a celebration of all things Johnny-Popper — BDah-BDah-BDah-BDah.
Eric Milner’s father, a powerful Vice-President at DuPont, had one at his Chadds Ford estate, also a farm.
He’d start it by heaving the massive flywheel, and stall it by leaning into that same flywheel.
It probably had electric-start, but that was kaput.
Sandy Hill had one too.
Apparently quite a few have been saved.
They get repainted and gussied up, and look a lot better than they looked in actual farm-service.
Once in a while you see a rusty old critter. A nearby truck-farm has one, abandoned in the weeds.
There’s a “For-Sale” sign on it, of course.
Rusty as it is, it will probably get restored. It’s only surface-rust.
But the motor’s probably frozen, and the fuel-line gunked.

The Keed.

Counter-rotating props.

-2) is the Geneseo Air-Show.
Geneseo air-strip is a small grass-strip, but they harbor a bunch of WWII warbird geeks, that hold an air-show every year.
They have (or had) a B-17 and also a PBY, and also a Curtiss P-40 fighter-plane.
For some time they’ve held a warbird airshow every year.
I’ve been a few times — I remember standing under the wing of a DC-3 to get out of a thundershower, and watching once as a P-51 Mustang did aerobatics.
The last airshow I attended, a P-38 Lightning flew in — it was my excuse for going. Very few P-38s are left, and this one was trash, but it was an operable P-38. I rode in on the mighty Kow, and was in awe as it circled to land. Counter-rotating props; I remember that.
See one airshow and you’ve seen them all — rather boring; especially the surfeit of B-25s and Texans.
The next one I go to will have a Lockheed Constellation — the most beautiful airplane of all time. A DC-4 was at Geneseo, but so what!
And every American, BY LAW, should be required to see, and hear, a P-51 fly.

“Limberger” is Rush Limbaugh. I call him that because I think he stinks.

“Eric Milner” was my age; and in my high-school age Sunday-School class.

“Sandy Hill” is a Christian summer boys-camp I worked at 1959-1961; I also was a camper there 1954-on.

“Geneseo” is a nearby local town in western New York. It has a state college.

A “PBY” is a twin-engine amphibious airplane used in reconnaissance during WWII. The one Geneseo had probably would have sunk.

“The mighty Kow” was my previous motorcycle, a 1996 Kawasaki ZX6R.

“Counter-rotating props” are propellers that rotate in opposite directions. A P38 has counter-rotating props; i.e. the right (starboard) motor rotates one way, and the left (port) motor rotates the other way. By doing this the airplane is not effected by motor-rotation: the motor-rotations cancel.