Calendar-dash

So begins my annual mad dash to replace my seven calendars, which don’t really inform me of the date (only one would do for that; and that is what I had long ago) — what they do is give me changing wall-art every month.
I see my most recent issue of Trains Magazine (November 2008) has an ad for the Norfolk Southern Employees Calendar.
That’s one.

I already have my Audio-Visual Designs black & white All-Pennsy Calendar; the one I’ve had for years, and most tentative.
I ordered it last June, and it finally came about a week ago.
I get the feeling Audio-Visual Designs, a shoestring operation, is waiting to send it to me until my check clears.
And doesn’t bounce back for collection.
The first Audio-Visual Designs black & white All-Pennsy Calendars, back in the ‘60s, were photographs by Don Wood; classic photographs of Pennsy steam.
Don Wood is gone, and lately the Audio-Visual Designs black & white All-Pennsy Calendar has taken to publishing other photographers, like Jim Shaughnessy, a classic shot I’ve attached as a blog-link.
Like Wood, Shaughnessy (also gone) was a chronicler of the end of steam locomotion on the railroads, and shot along Pennsy’s now-abandoned Elmira branch in upstate Pennsylvania.
I feel like every order of the Audio-Visual Designs black & white All-Pennsy Calendar may be my last, and is a shot in the dark.
Will I get it or not? Months passed this time. I was all set to write an inquiring letter.
But the calendars (actually two — I get one for 44) arrived first.
I wonder if Audio-Visual Designs will be around next year?

“Ghosts” is my source for the World War II Warbirds Calendar.
As Matt Ried once said: “There’s nuthin’ like the sound of a big honkin’ propeller airplane engine.”
I’m sure he meant internal-combustion reciprocating engines.
And just about everything in WWII is that.
Every American BY LAW should be required to see, and hear, a P51 Mustang fly.
I saw one do aerobatics at the Geneseo Airshow. Over 500 mph in a power-dive. Full-power hammerhead stalls.
The Mustang isn’t the most powerful hot-rod fighter-plane. But it will rattle your bones.
Its water-cooled Packard-Merlin V12 engine is unmuffled, and generates an incredible crackle.
I ordered the calendar online.

Oxman Publishing is better this year — that’s two calendars: hot-rods and sportscars.
Last year the hot-rod calendar was all cars by Chip Foose, and the sportscar calendar was all classic monsters from the ‘30s.
Foose cars are unrealistic; and monsters from the ‘30s ain’t the recent ‘Vette or Jags.
Both got tossed; the Foose calendar was boring, as was the sportscar calendar. If I’d wanted monsters from the ‘30s, I’m sure I could have got a calendar of same.
Thankfully, Oxman has gone back to its old format: classic street-rods and legendary sportscars.
—That is, hot-rods that could be driven on the street, and Ferraris and Lamborghinis instead of Duesenbergs and Bugattis and Hitler Mercedes.
I don’t think anything by Foose could be driven on the street; or if it could, not in the rain.
Better encased in a trailer, for display at a carshow.
What I ended up doing last year was replacing both calendars with -a) an all ‘32 Ford hot-rod calendar, and -b) an all Corvette calendar; both from Motorbooks International.
The ‘Vette calendar was okay, but the ‘32 Ford calendar suffered from having most of its photographs taken at Bonneville Salt Flats; somewhat surreal, and a moonscape.
I tried to order from Oxman online, but their site was empty of what I needed.
So I called their 800 number, and the clerk promptly apologized for their site crashing mightily in flames. —Apparently, I wasn’t the first problem.
They told me their whole site went completely bonkers awhile ago, and they had to hire a new webmaster.
So I had to order over-the-phone.

My Three-Stooges Calendar was stupid enough to not be worth doing again.
All it was was movie outtakes; which don’t work as well as the actual movies.
A photograph has to be posed, of course — and a movie outtake ain’t the same.
The photos published often had a Stooge looking the wrong way.
So I decided maybe another alternative was in order — like perhaps the John Wayne calendar. (I once had an Elvis Presley calendar, and that was pretty good.)
But now I see Motorbooks International has an American Muscle-cars Calendar,
which I think would be better than John Wayne.
I coulda got the Howard Fogg trains calendar, but Fogg is partial to narrow-gauge. I’ve had the Fogg calendar before, and many pictures were Colorado narrow-gauge.
Well okay, if you like narrow-gauge; but I prefer other locations besides the Colorado Rockies.
Which is why I did The Stooges, but that was a mistake too.
American Muscle-cars might be more interesting.
Another attempt to order online, but this time I got some message about a questionable certificate (intimations some lackey might be trying to get my credit-card number).
So I go with their 800 number.

That leaves two calendars: -a) my All-Pennsy Color Calendar, and -b) the Norfolk Southern Employees Calendar.
Who knows if I can get the All-Pennsy Color Calendar; a couple years ago its publisher, CedCo, tanked; and the calendar moved to another publisher. (Although the new publisher was the former CEO of CedCo.)
The All-Pennsy Color Calendar will be a Froogle-search. Usually it advertises in Trains Magazine, but nothing yet.
The Norfolk Southern Employees Calendar is a snail-mail order. From what I can see, no online ordering yet.

RE: “Trains Magazine.....” —I’ve subscribed to “Trains Magazine” since the ‘60s. I am a railfan, and have been since I was a child.

“Norfolk Southern” is Norfolk Southern Railroad.

“Pennsy” is the Pennsylvania Railroad, no longer in existence. It merged with New York Central Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that tanked in about eight years. “Pennsy” was once the largest railroad in the world.

“Elmira” is a small city along the southern border of central New York.

“44” (“Agent-44”) is my brother-from-Delaware’s onliest son Tom. He recently graduated college as a computer-engineer. Like me, he’s also a railfan.

“Matt Ried” was webmaster at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, where I once worked. Like me, he was a fan of propeller airplanes. He has since moved to Denver.

The “Geneseo Airshow” is a an annual get-together of still flyable classic propeller airplanes, primarily WWII warbirds. It’s held at the small Geneseo Airport (a grass-strip) in the nearby college-town of Geneseo, south of Rochester.

A “hammerhead stall” is where the airplane flies straight up, until its propeller won’t climb it any more, at which point the airplane slows enough to “stall” (fall over) into a dive.

“Bonneville Salt-flats,” next to Great Salt Lake in Utah, is a vast open flat area where automotive top-speed runs can be made.

“Howard Fogg” (dead) was a prominent railroad artist.

“Narrow-gauge” is three feet between the rails of a railroad. Standard-gauge is four feet 8&1/2 inches — the common measurement. Narrow-gauge can be built with tighter curvature; so was prevalent in the Rockies. Narrow-gauge is no longer standard practice; it’s only seen in tourist-lines.

“Muscle-cars” are mid-size Detroit sedans with gigantic and immensely-powerful motors — prominent in the ‘70s.

“Froogle” is the Google product search.

“Snail-mail” is U.S. Postal Service, as opposed to e-mail (and ordering online).