Monthly Calendar Report for January, 2009

(It’s beginning to look like I should fly this without footnotes, it already being the end of the month.)

A new year; new calendars.
Although I don’t have one yet, my All-Pennsy Color Calendar, and it looks like I may not get it.
I tried to get it a while ago from its original publisher, Tide-mark Publications, and it was out-of-stock.
I also tried Froogling it, and ran into various out-of-stocks.
Amazon.com has a calendar marketer who is out-of-stock.
I was reduced to bidding on eBay, where I could get it at about 36% of its usual price.
But so far no calendar.

My Stooges calendar is history.
Their movies are great, but a single frame cut out of a movie just doesn’t work.
Only one character may look right.
As I said all last year, this doesn’t matter in a movie.
The other characters may look right in different frames.
But often only one character looks right in a single movie-frame.
As such, the Stooges calendar was frustrating.
Missing was the fabulous movie action.
Single stand-alone movie frames don’t work.

1969 ZL1 Camaro®.

I replaced it with a musclecar calendar from Motorbooks.
Musclecars are the fantastic cars marketed by Detroit in the late ‘60s to middle ‘70s.
The original format was laid down by the Pontiac GTO in the 1964 model-year.
Souped-up mega-horsepower full-size car engines in the lighter-weight mid-sized car-bodies.
My younger brother-in-Boston has one; a 1971 454 SS Chevelle.
He took me for a ride in it once, and let me drive it.
I was in awe.
“People used to race these things!” I thought.
Quaking and shaking and vibrating all over.
That Big-Block was probably putting out at least 350 horsepower — probably more — and gobs of torque.
Every piston thrust shook the ground, and it was idling at over 1,000 rpm.
Like my old Ducati motorcycle, it had no choke.
Ya started it by pumping gallons of gasoline into the intake tracts with the accelerator-pumps.
And then ya let it warm up so it would run.
A choke is only an impediment to intake-air, which you’re trying to maximize.
It only had a single “Demon” four-barrel, but it was HUGE: 750 cubic feet per minute (which isn’t that big, but quite a bit bigger than stock — and will run).
The whole intake paraphernalia wasn’t stock — it was a drag-strip modification, for running in the so-called “modified-street” class.
I.e. it was somewhat streetable, but only barely.
I almost stalled it backing out of a driveway.
It sure wasn’t as pleasant to drive as the cars we now have.
My Muscle-Car calendar has a 1969 ZL1 Camaro (pictured).
It’s not very appealing as a photograph, but it’s a special car, the aluminum Big-Block motor for the Can-Am, in a Camaro.
The aluminum Big-Block weighed about 500 pounds, the normal cast-iron Big-Block over 700.
It was a special application for drag-racing, putting that lighter-weight motor in a stock Camaro.
A drag-racer was harassing Chevrolet for such a car, and knew Vince Piggins (“PIG-ins”), the performance head-honcho at Chevrolet.
A ZL1 cost incredibly; Chevrolet was tacking its development costs (over $4,000) onto each car manufactured, and only 69 were built.
But it’s 427 cubic inches, and put out over 500 horsepower.
The ZL1 was the ultimate drag-racing Camaro.
Of interest to me is that aircraft tailfin that is also in the picture. It appears to be a Beechcraft T-34 trainer.
Some time ago I rode my motorcycle out to see my old friend Charlie Gardiner (“GARD-ner”) in Massachusetts, whom I had graduated with in 1966 from Houghton College.
Another friend was visiting him at that time, and had flown up in a T-34 he owned.
The T-34’s long bubble canopy is visible through the Camaro, as is the three-bladed propeller atop the car’s hood.
Charlie drove us out to the nearby airport, where the guy’s T-34 was parked.
He fired it up and took off back to north Jersey.
The T-34 is based on the fabulous Beechcraft Bonanza, the ultimate private airplane immediately after WWII.
But without the trademark V tail (although the Bonanza is essentially still made, but without the V tail).
The T-34 was such a great airplane, the military was considering mounting machine-guns, but they never did.

Pennsy 4-8-2 M1b Mountain #6729 westbound on the storied four-track Pennsy main through Duncannon, PA adjacent to the Susquehanna River, north of Harrisburg. (Photo by Don Wood© [deceased].)

The January 2009 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs B&W All-Pennsy Calendar is not that special, but I run it high because it’s a Don Wood photograph.
The Audio-Visual Designs B&W All-Pennsy Calendar goes clear back to 1966, the year I graduated college.
My first was 1967 or 1968, and I’ve had it every year since, although apparently it wasn’t published in 1997 and ‘98.
For years it was all Don Wood photographs.
Don Wood was a photographer in north Jersey who chronicled mainly the end of Pennsy steam locomotives.
But he limited his coverage mainly to north Jersey and Pennsylvania.
He wandered all over Pennsy’s lines, but mainly the lines that still used steam.
Pennsy’s famed Middle Division, the mainline from Harrisburg to Altoona, was still using their fabulous M1b Mountain 4-8-2 steam locomotives for freight-trains.
As was the New York & Long Branch commuter line Pennsy ran jointly with Central of New Jersey.
It was a non-electrified commuter line serving the Pennsy main into New York City, and they were still running the Pennsy K4 Pacific 4-6-2 in passenger service.
Pennsy also operated its huge 2-10-0 Decapod steam engines on its Mt. Carmel branch in central PA lugging heavy ore trains up to interchange with Lehigh Valley Railroad.
So there was Wood trackside with his Graphlex 4x5 Speed-Graphic press camera.
The founder of Audio-Visual designs was Carl Sturner, a railfan in upstate New York, and the B&W All-Pennsy Calendar came out of his friendship with Don Wood. (Sturner is now gone, as is Wood, and Audio-Visual Designs has a new owner.)
I can still remember some of the photographs; they were very dramatic.
Best was a shot of the Mt. Carmel ore train in winter, its two lead Deks on the front blasting a giant column of steam and coal-smoke into the frigid sky.
Another was an M1b Mountain rounding the curve on the Middle Division under the Route 22 highway bridge into Huntingdon, PA.
A third was a pan-shot of good old K4 #612 at speed on the New York & Long Branch.
#612 was the only remaining K4 with the front-end throttle modification, as evidenced by a rectangular box atop the cylindrical smokebox.
612 was an exceptional engine, serving many years on the NY&LB.
And then there was the massive coaling facility over the mainline at Denholm, PA; halfway up the Middle Division.
Pennsy steam engines stopped there to coal up, take on water, and service the engines. —It had 12 tracks, and overhead coal delivery.
Wood took photographs there.
About late 1969 I began taking photography courses at Rochester Institute of Technology, and they had equipment for mounting and matting photographs.
Essentially equipment for glued tissue on the back of a photograph, which activated when heated.
It looked nice, so I decided to matte some of the Audio-Visual Designs B&W All-Pennsy Calendar prints for mounting in our apartment.
Some of the greatest photographs Wood ever took graced our apartment; e.g. that Mt. Carmel ore train picture.
In 1970 or ‘71 I attempted to trace the old Pennsy Middle Division from Altoona to Harrisburg, hoping to hit some of the fabulous Don Wood photo locations.
By then the railroad was Penn-Central.
But it was awful. It was raining, and the Middle Division went places the roads didn’t go.
The railroad might be down along the Juniata (“june-ee-AT-uh”) River, and the highway far up the valley hillside.
Worst of all was our experience around Spruce Creek tunnels, the only other tunnels on Pennsy beside the summit of the Alleghenies — one for each direction.
Approaching from the west, the highway paralleled the railroad at first, but then diverged to the south.
The railroad, of course, continued east.
The Spruce Creek tunnels tunnel a narrow ridge the Juniata River hooks around.
But the highway crossed the ridge to the south, far from the railroad.
We managed to find our way back to the railroad at Barre (“bear-EEE”), the eastern approach to the tunnels.
But we had driven all over the state.
The only way to trace the Middle Division is with topo-maps and a Jeep.
Wood’s Huntingdon hangout was especially depressing.
The Route 22 overpass was much different.
Development had extended out east of the overpass.
It was no longer the bucolic rural landscape of the Wood photograph, shot in the ‘50s.
This Wood Duncannon picture is not as dramatic as other Duncannon pictures he took, and that Audio-Visual Designs published.
But it’s the only Wood picture in this calendar.
I guess they don’t want to, or can’t, duplicate earlier work they published.

Tiger-Shark Curtiss P40E “KittyHawk.” (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

The January 2009 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar has a P40 KittyHawk fighter-plane done up in the infamous Tiger-Shark scheme.
It also has Chinese markings, since the Tiger-Shark squadrons were Chinese.
The Tiger-Shark squadrons were one of the first responses to the Japanese in WWII, a response to the Sino-Japanese War. It was actually the American Volunteer Group, mercenaries allied with China.
It was led by Claire Lee Chennault, and trained in Burma. It protected the Burma Road, the only open road into China for war matériel.
The P40 ain’t the fabulous P51 Mustang, but it’s a pretty good airplane.
It was what was available at that time — the P51 came later.
It only has the Allison V12 motor, not the stupendous Merlin of the later Mustangs.
But it’s water-cooled, requiring that giant radiator scoop.
That scoop right below the propeller spinner begged for the shark’s-teeth paint — an idea cribbed from the Germans.
The Tiger-Shark teeth have made it onto innumerable military aircraft since — even a lowly Piper-Cub trainer (what an embarrassment) — but look best on the P40.

1932 Ford roadster hot-rod owned by George Prajin.

Ho-Hum!
Another 1932 Ford hot-rod (in my Oxman hot-rod calendar).
And a roadster, although I prefer the three-window coupe.
But at least it looks realistic.
Last year the Oxman hot-rod calendar (which this is) featured all cars built by hot-rod customizer Chuck Foose (“FOOS”), which hex-KYOOZE me don’t look very realistic.
It even had a customized ‘54 Chevy, for crying out loud.
Foose seems more interested in appearance than functionality. Hood-seams might get closed off, so how do ya access the motor?
The car might be so low it scraped the pavement.
Of course, the car pictured isn’t very functional.
It has the first Hemi motor, which I’m sure weighs a lot more than what was there originally.
Plus that Hemi has Hilborn (“HILL-born”) fuel-injection; more a racing application.
Such a car would never be able to manage a clogged traffic jam.
It wouldn’t idle.
Hilborn fuel-injection can’t be configured for street applications; it’s wide-open throttle.
Better would have been a four-barrel carburetor; but Hilborn injection trumpets look butch.
As I said to my niece’s husband, the chain-saw turkey carver, “a trailer-queen.”

Eastbound Norfolk Southern freight near Louisville, OH. (Photo by William Gantz.)

The January 2009 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees calendar is an eastbound Norfolk Southern freight-train on the storied old Pennsy Fort Wayne Division across Ohio.
My first thought was it looked a lot like a spot on the west slope in Pennsylvania up toward Gallitzin tunnels at the summit of the Alleghenies.
The train is headed toward Conway Yard near Pittsburgh, but it’s eastbound. On the west slope it would be westbound.
Last August me and a railfan tour-guide chased trains all over the west slope, and this looks like a section between Portage and Summerville.
But it ain’t — manifestation that scenery east of Chicago looks all the same.
Ya don’t begin to see a change in scenery until ya hit Kansas.

1938 Alfa-Romeo 8C 2900 B Touring Spyder.

The January 2009 entry of my Oxman sportscar calendar is a 1938 Alfa-Romeo 8C 2900 B Touring Spyder.
As such it’s only passable; guilty of why I tossed my Oxman sportscar calendar last year.
Last year’s Oxman “Legendary Sportscars” calendar was mostly classics from the early ‘30s; the dreaded Hitler Mercedes and even a Duesenberg.
Hardly anything I would call a legendary sportscar; like a Ferrari or XK-E.
I ended up tossing it, and replacing it with an All-Corvette calendar from Motorbooks.
But as my friend Tim Belknap says, Corvettes look more like shampoo-bottles than sportscars.
But better than a Hitler Mercedes.
The 2009 “Legendary Sportscars” calendar has four cars from the late ‘30s, but at least they look better than a fatuous Hitler Mercedes.
The 8C 2900B is significant primarily because it incorporated race-bred technology, especially its 180-horsepower supercharged double overhead-cam straight-eight engine.
It made the car capable of 120 mph.
The body, by Touring, was special in that it incorporated numerous aircraft construction features, that made it extraordinarily light in weight.
Of interest to me is those rear fender-skirts, which I’m sure are removable (they better be), and incorporate farm-gate grating.
I’m sure they don’t make the car faster, and not only that, they look weird.
Beyond that, it’s a ‘30s car.
Next month is a 289 AC Cobra; more like it.

ADDENDUM

Mixed train on the Norfolk & Western Abingdon Branch in Virginia — southbound toward N. Carolina. (Photo by O. Winston Link.)

I gave up on the All-Pennsy Color Calendar; got the O. Winston Link “Steam and Steel” Calendar instead.
O. Winston Link was a Brooklyn photographer that documented the end of steam-locomotive railroad operations on the Norfolk & Western Railroad.
Norfolk & Western was the last major railroad to dieselize, mainly because its primary traffic was coal, what steam-locomotives burn as fuel.
N&W developed its own steam-locomotives, and tried to maximize steam-locomotive technology to out-compete the diesel locomotive.
They were fairly successful, but diesel technology was more appropriate to railroad operations than steam-locomotives.
Even N&W had to switch, but they stuck with steam until 1960.
A diesel-electric locomotive had great tractive-force at low speed; e.g; dragging a heavy train, or climbing hills. More so than a steam-engine.
Where steam excelled was at high speed — but most railroad operations required low-speed dragging.
Furthermore, a steam-engine required coal-tipples and water-tanks along the route: a steam-engine needed water to generate steam. -a) That water could freeze, and -b) the train had to stop to take on water.
A diesel only needed fuel; and it was liquid instead of solid; like coal.
Switch to diesel and you could dispense with all the lineside steam-engine maintenance facilities — like cleaning the fire-grate on a steam-locomotive (i.e. removing clinkers — unburnable rock in the coal).
Furthermore, steam-engines required frequent heavy maintenance; e.g. boiler repairs and inspection. This required added facilities — which diesels didn’t need.
You could also operate diesel-locomotives without a fireman — although the railroad unions held fast to that requirement even in diesels.
You could also operate diesel-locomotives in multiple. Ya can’t do that with steam — or couldn’t at first. (Maybe ya could now.)
Each steam-locomotive was a separate unit requiring a full crew.
Diesel-locomotive units can be MU-ed; the crew in the lead unit operates all the diesels in a lash-up.
Sometimes as many as six or eight units might be MU-ed; yet only the crew in the lead unit is operating them all.
Multiple steam-locomotives meant multiple crews.
Link apparently wrote Norfolk & Western management, and sent samples, proposing he chronicle the end of steam operations on the railroad. Management, to their everlasting credit, went along.
Link’s other angle was mainly nighttime photography, which is where his craft surfaces.
His photographs aren’t that extraordinary, but many were taken at night, requiring mastery of the art of synchronizing shutter-opening with the bloom a flashbulbs.
Ya can’t just open the shutter and fire the flashbulbs at the same instant. The shutter has to be delayed until full flashbulb bloom, which is a few fractions of a second after the flashbulbs are fired.
Plus each nighttime photo shoot had to be set up; plus you’re photographing a large image; a steam-locomotive ain’t your grandson.
89 bazilyun flashbulbs were needed; all wired elegantly to the power-source. They all had to fire together, to stop a speeding locomotive in the dark; and be enough to render a satisfying image.
The train pictured is a “mixed,” meaning part freight, part passenger.
Railroads often did this on little-used lines, to provide so-called “accommodation” passenger-service, as required by their original charters.
The Abingdon Branch was probably originally a different railroad, thereafter got by Norfolk & Western.
Many such railroads were built in the middle 1800s, often with business charters granted by the state requiring regular passenger service.
As autos and highways replaced trains, and as demand for railroad passenger service decreased, a railroad would provide a so-called “accommodation” to fulfill its original charter.
The charter had become a legal requirement even when N&W got control of the railroad.
Sometimes, as in this case, the accommodation was provided by a mixed train.
The railroad was providing regularly scheduled freight service anyway, so passenger coaches were attached.
It’s also worth noting this train seems to have two engines, separated by freight-cars.
And they’re still steam-engines — it’s 1956.

“I was a reprehensible sinner!”

I’m in the Mens Locker-Room at the vaunted Canandaigua YMCA.
“I did my work-out here the other day, and then went home to another work-out: shoveling snow,” said some guy to Jim, one of the few people I know at the Canandaigua YMCA.
Jim, like me, is a runner — probably in his 40s or even 50s.
“But I like snow,” the guy said.
“Yeah, so do I,” I said. “I’ve done more cross-country skiing this year than I did in the past five previous years combined.”
“Houghton, eh?” the guy said looking at me.
I was wearing the dark maroon Houghton tee-shirt I bought at the Houghton bookstore, when we all visited there two summers ago.
“Yep,” I said; “Class of ‘66.”
“I’m from Fillmore,” the guy said.
“Which is right up the road; Route 19,” I responded.
“Almost went to Houghton, but they didn’t have intercollegiate sports,” he said.
“Nor when I was there,” I said. “First intercollegiate sports event was a cross-country foot-race in 1967. That was a year after I graduated.”
The guy was slightly older than me.
“Back then ya weren’t allowed to go to movies, or attend dances......”
“And sleeveless dresses were forbidden, as were shorts,” I added.
“Yep,” he chuckled; “shorts were of-the-devil.”
“I was there in 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated, and were it not for my house-owner, we couldn’t watch all the news on the TV. TV was of-the-devil. There were no TVs on campus. Didja hear all that, Jim?”
Jim looked at me strangely and grimaced.
“Yet look at the place now,” the guy said. “It’s a beautiful campus. And it sure has changed.”
“Yep; I’ve never regretted going there, and that’s despite their graduating me without their approval,” I said. “I was a reprehensible sinner. Worse yet, I was a mocker!”

I work out at the Canandaigua YMCA evercise-gym.

“Houghton” is Houghton College in western New York, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. Houghton is a religious liberal-arts college.

RE: “When we all visited there two summers ago........” —“All” is most members of my family.

State “Route 19” is the main north-south drag through Houghton.

“The Best Snowblower Money Can Buy”

Billy, the onliest child of our recently deceased 94 year old nosy neighbor, has been living alone in their house across the street.
He got a new snowblower, a John Deere. And yesterday morning (Thursday, January 29, 2009) he blew out his driveway after our recent snowstorm.
He bought his new blower because he was impressed with my so-called “Jap crap,” “the best snowblower money can buy.”
“That snowblower of yours throws snow 40 feet!” he said. “Wheredja buy it?”
So he bought his John Deere, promised by the salesman it would throw snow 40 feet.
Blowing out his driveway it threw snow about 10 feet.
So he came over yesterday afternoon, as I was putting away my so-called “Jap Crap,” after blasting a two-foot snowdrift 40 feet across our lawn.
I don’t think his blower is as big as mine, but it’s close.
“That new blower is only throwing snow about 10 feet,” he wailed.
“Well,” I thought to myself; “ya didn’t buy the best snowblower money can buy.”
Just lash that Bobbie-pin machine to your GeezerGlide, Boobie; and we’ll go at it: mano-a-mano.

My all-knowing, blowhard brother-from-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, refers to my snowblower, made by Honda, as “Jap crap.”

RE: “The best snowblower money can buy......” —A few years ago I went to a small-engine dealer to buy a snowblower attachment for a lawn-tractor. The salesman counseled against it, saying the snowblower I already owned was “the best snowblower money can buy.” (I keep lobbing that at my loudmouthed brother-from-Boston, who loudly claims my snowblower is inferior to his.)

RE: “Just lash that Bobbie-pin machine to your GeezerGlide, Boobie; and we’ll go at it: mano-a-mano......” —My blowhard brother-from-Boston (“Boobie”) noisily claims his Ariens snowblower is vastly superior to mine, and his blower needed minor repairs, which he did with “Bobbie-pins.” “GeezerGlide” is what I call all Harley Davidson ElectraGlide cruiser-bikes. My brother-from-Boston has a very laid back Harley Davidson cruiser-bike, and, like many Harley Davidson riders, is over 50 (51). So I call it his GeezerGlide. He also badmouths me as the oldest — he’s 13 years younger.

“The ‘Old Directions Jones’........

.......still works pretty well,” I say as our CR-V appears among the 89 bazilyun cars parked in the Strong Hospital Parking Garage.
We had driven into Strong Memorial Hospital yesterday morning (Tuesday, January 27, 2009), not for a medical emergency, but in pursuit of the Shingles Study Linda is participating in.
Linda was a candidate for trial of a Shingles vaccine, her immunity reduced by anti-cancer chemo.
Once a month she gets either the vaccine or a placebo, then has to keep a log of her daily temperature, reactions, etc; a so-called “report-card.”
So appointment concluded we navigate out into the vast parking-garage; at least six tilted floors with 89 bazilyun salt-laden cars.
Each tilted floor is a ramp to the next floor, and the tilted floors meet at the center, where an exit cut-through shortcut is made.
The floors are color-coded, and identified as to which floor is which.
We’re parked on the second floor, the half that ramps up to the third floor.
But each floor also has a down ramp, which you navigate to get out.
Our CR-V is parked on the down ramp.
“Wait a minute,” I think to myself. “We’re on the up ramp. Ya can’t access the cut-through from here. Ya gotta be on the adjacent down-ramp.”
Navigate between salt-laden parked cars to adjacent down-ramp.
“Yep, there’s the cut-through,” I say to myself.
And there’s that illegally-parked Nissan partially blocking the cut-through exit; the one with the Dubya sticker.
We pass the illegally-parked Nissan and thread the cut-through.
There it is; “The ‘Old Directions Jones’ still works pretty well,” I say.

“Old Directions Jones” is my sense of direction.

Our “CR-V” is our 2003 Honda CR-V SUV.

“Strong Memorial Hospital” is a large hospital in Rochester, NY. —About 20 miles from where we live.

“Shingles” is the disease.

“Linda” is my wife of 41+ years. She had lymphatic cancer. It was treatable with chemo-therapy — she survived.

“Dubya-sticker” is a Bush-Cheney 2004 bumper-sticker. All insane traffic-moves (like illegal parking) seem to involve Bush-supporters. They seem to think they have the right.

“Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Diamonds”

Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Diamonds (Screenshot by the mighty MAC.)

This here rig seems to have two sleep-functions and a screen-saver.
—1) One sleep-function, the monitor, I can’t control. It seems to be set at five minutes, and is integral to the monitor. (Although I could override it [earlier] with a ‘pyooter-monitor sleep — which is currently set at eight minutes.)
I.e. if nothing new goes to it for five minutes, the monitor goes to sleep: a blank (black) screen.
—2) The other sleep-function is the ‘pyooter itself. I can set that; and it’s currently set at eight minutes. The rig goes to sleep if nothing happens for eight minutes — the hard-drive stops spinning.
What happened in the past is the monitor went to sleep well before the ‘pyooter.
Walk away more than five minutes, and the monitor went to sleep. Apparently what was going on was sufficient to keep the rig awake another three minutes; but nothing changing on the display slept the monitor.
If eight minutes passed with no apps on it, just OS-X, the rig went to sleep; a possible hairball because it might not wake back up.
Gnagy, the ‘pyooter-guru at the mighty Mezz, told me this was endemic to OS-X machines.
Ho-hum; just reboot (about 30 seconds), in which case I get a message about a screwed-up ‘pyooter clock until it gets its time-signal from Boulder.
OS-X also has a screen-saver (pictured) which I call “Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Diamonds,” an old Beatles song.br>“Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Diamonds” is one of many OS-X screen-savers, but I think their best one.
Don’t know as screen-savers are needed any more.
Monitors nowadays can withstand a constant image without burning it into the screen phosphors.
I’m not even sure current flat-screen monitor technology uses phosphors.
“Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Diamonds” was set to kick in at 15 minutes, so I hardly ever saw it.
The monitor would go to sleep before it kicked in, so I only saw it if the monitor had been getting a continuous (“refreshing”) feed.
Thereby not going to sleep.
I have since reset “Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Diamonds” to kick in at three minutes, which is before the monitor goes to sleep.
And now the monitor no longer goes to sleep, since “Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Diamonds” is a continuous (“refreshing”) feed.
Or is it?
I don’t know.........
Mysteries are taking place that don’t effect me personally, so I don’t care.

RE: “Mighty MAC.....” —All my siblings use Windows PCs, but I use an Apple MacIntosh, so am therefore reprehensible and stupid.

“Rig” is my computer system. “‘Pyooter” is computer. “Apps” is computer software applications.

“OS-X” is Apple’s current personal-computer operating software (OS-10). There were earlier operating systems, e.g. 8.5, 8.6 and 9.2, and I used the last two for some time; first 8.6 and then 9.2. But I switched to OS-X a few years ago.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over three years ago. Best job I ever had. Their head of Information-Technology (“‘pyooter-guru”) is Dan Gnagy (“NAG-eee”).

RE: “Gets its time-signal from Boulder......” —My computer gets a signal of the exact time from the atomic clock at Boulder, CO. Cellphones do this too. The time-signal is beamed to a satellite, and they get it from that (although indirectly).

Earlier cathode-ray monitors (essentially the same as TV displays) used “phosphors” on the display screen to light up when the cathode-ray hit. Those phosphors could stay lit beyond when the cathode-ray hit — burn in. A “ghost-image” could remain.

A “continuous (‘refreshing’) feed” is one that continuosly updates — “refreshes.” As opposed to a constant signal of the same feed.

“I voted for Dubya!”

Downtown Honeoye Falls. (Google-Maps and the mighty MAC.)

We are headed toward Honeoye Falls Veterinary (Monday, January 26, 2009) on the other side of Honeoye Falls.
We are headed there with Scarlett (see below: “Paperless”) as a follow-up to our adventures yesterday.
“No way are them guys at Honeoye Falls Veterinary gonna let them guys at Veterinary Associates of Rochester skonk them,” my wife says.
We are headed west (see map) on Ontario St. (Route 65) toward the center of town.
We turn left on East St. toward the center of town.
A short distance thereafter, after crossing Honeoye Creek, we encounter the traffic-light at the center of town.
At that intersection Route 65 turns right onto N. Main St. (which becomes Clover St.), and left is onto the main drag through town.
Straight through goes to Monroe St., the street the vet is on (but not in the village, and therefore not on the map).
The light is green as we approach the intersection, and an opposing car is intending to turn left.
Suddenly the opposing car cuts right in front of me, turning left, and requiring me to slam on my brakes.
Sick or not the dog slides akimbo into the folded-up back seats of our Bathtub.
The car is a salt-laden black VW Rabbit, driven by Johnny Punk-Rocker, day-glo purple mohawk haircut, and long cigarette dangling limply out of his lips.
“Bring it on, baby,” I heard him scream out his rolled-down window, as he disappeared down the street.
He had the window down so he could give me the finger.

There was a Christian fish on his rear hatch.

“Dubya” is George W. Bush, our previous president; proclaimed by my siblings as “the greatest president of all time.”

“Honeoye Falls,” NY, is the nearest small village to the west near where we live, about five miles away.

“Scarlett” is our current dog; a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s three-plus, and is our sixth Irish-Setter.

My wife of 41+ years is “Linda;” like me a mocker.

The “Bathtub” is our 2005 Toyota Sienna van; called that because it’s white and like sitting in a bathtub.

RE: “There was a Christian fish on his rear hatch........” —All my siblings are tub-thumping born-again Christians.

Paperless

Yesterday (Sunday, January 25, 2009) our poor dog got sick.
Diagnosed with “gastroenteritis” — us peons call it an upset stomach.
The dog started throwing up as soon as we got up; and soon the throwup was reddish.
Naturally this occurred on Sunday, as all medical emergencies do; meaning our regular vet was closed.
It meant a trip to far-away Veterinary Associates of Rochester, the only place that does emergency Sunday veterinary care.
I don’t like going there, because I feel like it was the place I lost Killian.
He’d got severely dehydrated from the anti-cancer chemo, and couldn’t get up in our backyard.
It occurred a Sunday morning of course, so we had to take him to Veterinary Associates of Rochester.
They rehydrated him intravenously and were set to return him to us a couple days later.
But he had developed open sores inside his hind legs, as if the chemo had burned through his veins.
The chemo had also made him somewhat incontinent, and they were afraid of him infecting the sores with pee.
Back inside; back into a hospitalization kennel, where he can be monitored.
It doesn’t take long.
A few days in new digs, and he starts befriending what few human contacts he has, and forgets about me.
A week later I was authorized to visit, and he seemed to hardly recognize me.
What an inglorious end to a wacko hunter who had always been thumping his tail at me.
He was fitted with a catheter to keep from wetting himself.
Hospitalization dragged on-and-on; we couldn’t get him out.
They finally released him, but by then it was late.
It was all downhill from there.
He’d still thump his tail at me, but was too weak to do much of anything.
The chemo had vaporized my wife’s cancer, but not Killian.
We re-established contact, but I feel like I lost him at Veterinary Associates of Rochester — like I had abandoned him there.
So I kinda loathe going to Veterinary Associates of Rochester, but we had no choice.
The poor dog may have been vomiting blood.
We managed to escape with our dog; no hospitalization.
Two-hundred smackaroos to check out; we were left with a sheaf of discharge instructions, and told their office was “paperless.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, pointing at the large wall filled with thousands of medical-information folders for every pet they had ever treated.
I was tempted to go get my camera (which I always carry with me in case I drive upon an accident); photograph their so-called “paperless” wall — the 89 bazilyun paper medical-information folders for every pet they ever treated.

Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s three-plus, and is our sixth Irish-Setter.

“Killian” was our previous Irish-Setter. He contracted lymphomic cancer, didn’t respond to chemo-therapy for it, and eventually we had to put him to sleep (that was almost a year ago). He was very much an enthisiastic hunter.

My wife of 41+ years is “Linda.” She also had lymphatic cancer, but before the dog. It was treatable with chemo-therapy — she survived.

GG1 Correction

#4896. (This the only GG1 I ever went through, at Washington Union Terminal in 1966. This is also the only pik I got of 4896, although I saw it many times. (This is at Wilmington Shops about 1970.) —I have this pik as my monitor wallpaper for my ‘pyooter. (Photo by the so-called “old guy” with the Spotmatic.)

Constant readers of this here blog, assuming there are actually any at all, will know I consider the Pennsylvania Railroad’s mighty GG1 electric locomotive to be the greatest railroad locomotive of all time.
I choke up every time I write that, because I was lucky enough to have experienced hundreds, and it seemed like every time I did they were doing 90-100 mph.
The GG1 was incredibly powerful, ran a long time, and received styling input from industrial designer Raymond Loewy, which made it look fabulous.
Loewy made a few minor styling fillips to the GG1, and convinced the railroad to use a welded steel shell.
They were gonna use a shell of small steel panels riveted together, which looked awful by comparison.

Loewy with the first GG1, #4840, at Wilmington Shops along the Pennsy electrified main to Washington, in Wilmington, DE in 1935. (Photo from the Raymond Loewy collection.)

Loewy was an expatriate Frenchman, who became a major factor in American industrial design. A lot of designs are his: e.g. the U.S. Postal Service moniker, the Lucky Strikes cigarette moniker, many Studebaker cars, and the Coca-Cola moniker.
He designed trashcans for Pennsylvania Station in New York City, and went on to consult the railroad; designing the appearance of various Pennsy streamlined steam-locomotives.
Pennsy knew they had an impressive design with the GG1, so they brought in Loewy.
He looked at their original experimental prototype, Old Rivets (#4800; at that time #4899), and went to work.
Loewy’s GG1 was a styling success. Not only was it a great locomotive; it looked the part.

The all-time classic shot of a GG1 blasting southbound around Elizabeth Curve in Elizabeth, NJ. (The train is probably doing 75-80 mph, and Wood is panning.) (Photo by Don Wood.)

I’ve been rereading my March 1964 Trains Magazine, my all-time favorite issue. It has a giant 17-page treatment of the GG1, trumpeting its incredible success.
I’m probably reading it harder than I ever did before.
1964 was my sophomore year at college, and I’ve also learned quite a few things since then.
So my first read in 1964 was quite cursory. There were a whole lotta things I had no idea what it was talking about.
Over the years I got the misconception the GG1 was secondary to the R1 4-8-4 electric; the GG1 a mere trial balloon.
This is a misconception.
Pennsy had road-tested New Haven’s EP-3a 4-6-6-4 box-cab electric locomotive, and found it pretty good.
So they built a 4-6-6-4 GG1 experimental for road-test, and found it exceptional.
They were sure they had an excellent design, but there were Pennsy men allied to massive power outputs through few drive-axles — a principle found in many Pennsy steam locomotives, and found on their O1 (4-4-4) and P5a (4-6-4) electrics.
Pennsy had been maximizing the 4-4-2 Atlantic wheel-arrangement, when other railroads were developing Pacifics (4-6-2).

Southbound through B&P junction in Baltimore. (Photo by Herbert Harwood, Jr.)

Pennsy wanted to maximize power output out of fewer driving-wheels; so the R1 4-8-4 was built too, essentially a P5a 4-6-4 extended to 4-8-4.
But they also knew they had a fabulous design in the GG1.
The R1 offered stiff competition, but was no match for the GG1 in tracking.
This is side-impacts on the track; the locomotive nosing side-to-side.
The GG1 tracked much better. It was much less abusive to the rail at speed, and therefore safer.

You better know what you’re doing this close. That thing is probably doing 90 mph! (Photo by Don Ball.)

So the GG1 was not a mere trial-balloon.

“‘Pyooter” is computer.

RE: “‘Old guy’ with the SpotMatic.......” —My macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston, who is 13 years younger than me, calls me “the old guy” as a put-down (I also am the oldest). The “Spotmatic” is my old Pentax Spotmatic 35mm film camera I used about 40 years, since replaced by a Nikon D100 digital camera.

Pennsylvania Railroad did maintenance of the GG1 at “Wilmington Shops” in Wilmington, DE. (The shops still exist; although as Amtrak.) —Pennsylvania Railroad no longer in exists. It merged with New York Central Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that tanked in about eight years. It (“Pennsy”) was once the largest railroad in the world. —“Amtrak” is a government corporation promulgated in 1970 to take over rail passenger service. It mainly runs passenger trains over the independent railroads with its own equipment, but it it also owns and operates its own railroads; e.g. the old Pennsy electrified line from New York City to Washington D.C., the so-called “Northeast Corridor;” although the Corridor has been extended to Boston over the old New York, New Haven & Hartford line.

“Pennsylvania Station” was the Pennsylvania Railroad’s passenger station in New York City. It’s been since torn down (and replaced by a new “Madison Square Garden”), but the underground trackage still exists, which means the station still exists. —Pennsy was the only railroad west of the Hudson to actually access Manhattan Island; New York Central railroad accessing from the north. Pennsy did it with tunnels (“tubes”) under the Hudson. Other railroads used ferry-service.

A “4-4-2 Atlantic” is a small steam-engine. They came use about the turn-of-the-century (or even before), a development of the 4-4-0 “American” in standard use at that time. By adding that extra trailing wheel (one wheel per side: the “2”), the firebox could extend farther back and allow a bigger steam-boiler. The 4-6-2 Pacific was even larger, having six driving-wheels instead of only four. (But Pennsy was loathe to use that extra drive-axle, when they could get equal performance out of four drivers.)

Facebook FlagOut crashes mightily in flames

Regrettably, it appears the illustrious and venerable Facebook FlagOut has crashed mightily in flames.
This is sad, because I’m sure it would have absolved the Delawareans from time required to administer this here site, surely a hairball.
We’re told the Facebook FlagOut was just an experiment, although as I recall:
—1) There was a heavy tub-thumping drive to get us all to switch to Facebook;
—2) We were told we were missing lots by not driving Facebook, and;
—3) The Delawareans were trying the shift administration of this here MyFamblee site to me.

Some of us joined Facebook, and some of us didn’t.
Me inadvertently by responding to a friend invite.
To me, Facebook was inferior to MyFamblee for a number of reasons:
—A) There was no “What’s New.”
Fire up a discussion-thread, and ya get get every comment ever made as if “unread.” The only way to know if anything was new was -1) know how many posts had been made to a discussion, and if anything new had been added; and -2) read all the posts from top down, to see if anything was new.
—B) Facebook seemed to have a character limit. I had to divide a response to Bill’s kitchen-drain freezing into two posts.
—C) What there was was one-sided and frivolous. Every nose-pick and belch was noted, and ya had to weed through ‘em all to see if there was anything worth commenting on.

-Beyond that, Facebook only flew HTML in a “Note” post; not on their FlagOut — although Facebook’s FlagOut flew a blog-link.
Plus any additions to their FlagOut page didn’t appear in your home-page; since FlagOut was secret. Ya had to open the FlagOut page to see if anything had been added.
Altogether, too much trouble, compared to MyFamblee.
And now I look at my Facebook FlagOut, and it seems to be dead-in-the-water. Nothing has been added in over a week. Seems the only one adding to a discussion-thread, was me.
I had to fly something on this here Famblee-site to get Bill to respond to my P-factor question.
Nevertheless, I will probably keep checking my Facebook, since it has posts from Marcy and Mahooch and Wheeler and the webmaster.
Plus the following message appeared in my inbox.
“Mole-dyoobie forever!”
“Holy crap,” I said to myself. That’s Lynne Huntsberger Killheffer, one of the few people I could make laugh. Most people are too serious, but Huntsberger wasn’t.
Huntsberger has a Facebook.
Continuing: “I’ll try to be as short as possible (although I tend to foam on a bit).
‘Holy crap,’ as in ‘I’ve heard from one of the few people I could make laugh.’
I’m married to one — I hope you are......
STORY-TIME
A few years ago, before retiring, I was working at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, and had a girl named Marcy working in an adjacent cubicle who I could make laugh.
I was old enough to be her grandfather.
‘Marcy,’ I said; ‘you’re gonna get married sooner-or later. Whatever ya do, make sure ya marry someone that can make ya laugh.
Do that, and you’re in it for the long haul.’
She did. (Lives near Boston.)”
And on-and-on it goes.
“Yo Bunnie:
I still have photographs of that time you-and-I tore up Milner’s hayloft (near Chadds Ford); so all we hafta do is figure out this ‘friend’ bit so I can fly ‘em.
I also have that ‘dippy-doo’ paper-airplane ya gave me in my ‘Azurian.’ I don’t throw anything out.
Sincerely, Moose.”
Royally screwed up (still am.......), but irresistible despite that. Although she was a laugher (laughers find me irresistible).

I should explain:

“Bunnie” was her nickname, “Moose” (as in Bullwinkle) mine.

“Mole-dyoobie” was a comment we were always making, to make each other laugh.

Every time I passed her house on Shipley, I’d “Bamp-Bamp-ba-Bamp-Bamp! BAMP-BAMP” with the Blue Bomb.

There was always the daily struggle at Brandywine as to who took her home; me or Jim Bowling. Bowling took her skiing, but I could make her laugh. If had had any notion at that time that the infamous Walton dictum about the reprehensibleness of men was hooey, a lot of things woulda been different. I coulda slam-dunked Huntsberger. —Bowling is now bald.

The “Azurian” was Brandywine’s yearbook.

Additional footnotes:

“FlagOut” is our family’s web-site, named that because I had a mentally-retarded kid-brother (Down Syndrome) who lived at home, and loudly insisted the flag be flown every day. “Flag-Out! Sun comes up, the flag goes up! Sun goes down, the flag comes down.” I fly the flag partly in his honor. (He died at 14 in 1968.) —We’ve had a family website for some time at MyFamily.com (“MyFamblee.com”), with my younger brother Bill and his wife (“the Delawareans;” they live in northern Delaware) as administrators. They tried to set up a similar family web-site on Facebook. —“This here site” is the MyFamily.com site.

“P-factor” is uncentered propeller thrust in an airplane. My brother-in-Delaware used to be a pilot.

“Marcy” is my number-one Ne’er-do-Well — she was the first I was e-mailing stuff to. Marcy and I worked in adjacent cubicles at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired. A picture of her is in this blog at Conclave of Ne’er-do-Wells. Marcy married Bryan Mahoney (“Mahooch” — ex-reporter from the Messenger newspaper), and together they live near Boston. (The “Ne’er-do-Wells” are an e-mail list of everyone I e-mail my stuff to.)

“Wheeler” is L. David Wheeler, an editor at the Messenger newspaper, and also a Houghton grad (‘91). “The webmaster” is Matt Ried (“Reed”), now in Denver, who was webmaster at the Messenger when I was there. —All are “Ne’er-do-Wells.” (“Houghton” is Houghton College in western New York, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I didn’t graduate with their approval. Houghton is a religious liberal-arts college.)

“Lynne Huntsberger” was a former girlfriend from when I was in high-school in northern Delaware.

Huntsberger lived on “Shipley” Road near us (when I lived in northern Delaware).

The “Blue Bomb” was the car I learned to drive in, our family’s 1953 Chevrolet Two-Ten two-door sedan with automatic transmission. By then (1961) it was in bad shape, and was our second car. It was such a turkey we called it the “Blue Bomb,” since it was navy-blue.

“Brandywine” is Brandywine High School, north of Wilmington, DE; from where I graduated in 1962.

Hilda “Walton” was our next-door-neighbor in Erlton, New Jersey, where I grew up as a child until age 13. Mrs. Walton was also Sunday-School Superintendent, and warned us all that girls abhored boys, since boys were so reprehensible. (“Erlton” [‘EARL-tin’] is a small suburb of Philadelphia in south Jersey. Erlton was founded in the ‘30s, named after its developer, whose name was Earl. Erlton was north of Haddonfield, an old Revolutionary town.)

“For just once, can’t you guys negotiate something for us eastsiders?

Yet another regular quarterly meeting of the dreaded 282-Alumni recedes into the filmy past (yesterday, Wednesday, January 21, 2009).
The so-called “Alumni” are the union retirees (Local 282, the Rochester local of the nationwide Amalgamated Transit Union) of Regional Transit Service in Rochester, N.Y. (For 16&1/2 years [1977-1993] I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service [RTS], the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY.) The Alumni was a reaction to the fact Transit management retirees ran roughshod over union retirees — a continuation of the bad vibes at Transit: management versus union. Transit had a club for long-time employees, and I was in it. It was called the “15/25-year Club;” I guess at first the “25-year Club.” But they lowered the employment requirement, and renamed it “15/25-year Club.” The employment requirement was lowered even more; I joined at 10 years. My employ there ended in 1993 with my stroke; and the “Alumni” didn’t exist then. The Alumni is a special club — you have to join.
Old man Abe Jacobson was there, another no-good lazy do-nothing layabout like me, who drove bus 37 years.
Jacobson was still driving when I started, but retired soon thereafter.
I’d see him occasionally walking Monroe Ave. when I drove that line.
He always waved.
“Still walking, Abe?” someone asked.
“Yep; every day,” Abe said. “But in winter it’s inside the Mall; I can’t walk outside when it’s like this.” (Snow-covered icy sidewalks.)
Poor guy can hardly hear.
“Well, how old are you?” his wife asked.
“65,” someone said.
“Well I’m 83,” his wife said.
“I don’t know why he sits like that...... He’s always sitting on one cheek,” she said.
Abe was at the other end of our table, jawing with the union-prez.
“But he’s a good person,” she said.
I didn’t mention that to Abe when he came back to sit across from me.
“Why do we always have these breakfast meetings?” Abe asked. “I just ate a big breakfast.
“Yeah, so did I,” I said.
The guy who was supposed to give the presentation, the local District-Attorney, wasn’t there. He had been called outta town.
All about senior scams.
Our recently deceased 94 year old nosy neighbor was pretty good about that.
“If it’s too good to be true, it is!” he’d say.
One time Hairman, a Grand Dragon in the local Masons, came out to give him an award.
94 year old nosy neighbor wouldn’t let him in the door.
He had to leave the award in Vern’s mailbox, same place I used to deposit purple leaves from Vern’s red maple.
New Q-Dental fee schedules were passed out.
“The whole reason for this club is to maximize and explain benefits for union-retirees,” the union-prez said.
I guess he’s also on the pension committee.
“By the way,” I told him; “your advice to call that Christy girl at Transit at 8 a.m. was right. My wife actually got her. Christy must be on break from then on.
Long-story-short, my wife was covered by both Blue Cross and Preferred Care. She was only supposed to be Preferred Care.
So Transit was paying for duplicate healthcare insurances, when they were only supposed to be paying one.”
“Well I don’t care if they screwed up, as long as she’s covered,” the union-prez said. “That’s not your fault!”
It ain’t always gumint that screws up. Duplicate healthcare insurance. Transit management is trying to model the private sector.
Supposedly our dental coverage has been improved.
Two factors apply:
—1) The dental insurance coverage provided by Transit for retirees, which is piddling.....
—2) The difference we pay, which has been discounted down with Q-Dental per Alumni negotiation.
“So a cleaning at Q-Dental only costs you $31,” the Alumni vice-president said. “Total Q-Dental charge to you is $41, of which Transit’s insurance only pays $10. You’ll pay more than $31 at a non Q-Dental dentist.”
“Wait a minute!” somebody said. “They just billed me over $100.”
“Sounds like ya had more than a cleaning,” the Alumni vice-president observed.
“Q-Dental straightens these things out,” the union-prez added. “Ya gotta tell us. Call us up!”
(“We value your call. Please leave message.”)
“We’re also negotiating a new vision-care package for union-retirees,” the union-prez said.
“They make glasses here in Rochester, and we’ve been through their factory.
Rochester Optical. Lyell and Mt. Read.”
(Lyell and Mt. Read is west of the Genesee River.)
“For just once,” my friend Gary Colvin (“COAL-vin”) bellowed; “can’t you guys negotiate something for us eastsiders?
I’m driving in from North Rose, and Hughsey here from West Bloomfield.”
North Rose is 25-30 miles east of Rochester; me about 20 miles south.
“We keep getting older,” I added. “We can’t keep driving all over creation.”

RE: “Dreaded.......” —All my siblings are anti-union.

I had a stroke October 26, 1993.

RE: “No-good lazy do-nothing layabout......” —My all-knowing, blowhard brother-from-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, insists all bus-drivers are “no-good lazy do-nothing layabouts.”

“Monroe Ave.” is a main thoroughfare southeast out of Rochester, a bus-route.

“Our recently deceased 94 year old nosy neighbor” is Lavern Habecker (“HAH-becker”), across the street from us. He died a few months ago. Vern and I were always kidding each other. He was always watching us from out his window.

“Hairman” is my hair-dresser. I’ve gone to him at least 16-17 years. (My macho, loudmouthed brother-from-Boston noisily excoriates my hair. I shouldn’t be patronizing Hairman; like my brother I should be having my hair trimmed by HairCrafters at $5 a pop, or use my John Deere riding-mower.)

“Christy” at Transit was a Human-Resources “Generalist.” —We’d call and leave messages to call back. Never any call-backs. She hardly knew what we were calling about.

“Preferred Care” is a local Rochester-area healthcare insurance, much like Blue Cross.

“Gary Colvin,” like me, was another Transit bus-driver.

End of an error

“We really should watch the inauguration,” my wife said Monday night (January 19, 2009). “It’s history.”
“Well, I want to work out at the YMCA tomorrow,” I said.
“Well you will,” she said. “They’ll have it on every plasma-baby.”
Sure enough. When I walked into the Canandaigua YMCA exercise-gym, the inauguration was on every plasma-baby.
Even the Weather-Channel. “27° here in Washington, and the sun trying to peak out.”
One-by-one former presidents waddled in — not a single one wearing a hat.
George Herbert Walker’s gotta be in his 80s, and here he is hatless in 20° weather. So’s his wife Barbara.
People on The Mall were wearing hats.
Yet here comes Jimmeh Kah-duh not wearing a hat.
To appear like a national leader, ya gotta go hatless.
Even Charles Gibson of ABC News wasn’t wearing a hat.
The only hat was Aretha Franklin, but thankfully the wind wasn’t blowing.
If it had been, she woulda lost her hat.
From my arm-bicycle I watched Chief Justice Roberts of the almighty Supremes administer the oath-of-office to Obama-lama-ding-dong on the plasma-baby tuned to CNN, but it was silent. The plasma-babies are closed-captioned.
“Is anyone else watching?” I thought to myself. Everyone was madly pumping away on the cardio-machines, seemingly oblivious to the history being made.
Obama began his inauguration speech.
Finished with the arm-bicycle, I moved to the stretching-area to do my leg-lifts.
“Is he sworn in yet?” some guy asked.
“Yes he is,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “Good riddance! Send that bum back to Texas.”
“Are ya ready?” I said.
“January 20, 2009. End of an error.”
Deadpan silence for a minute.
“Oh, I get it,” he said. “You said ‘error,’ didn’t you...... That’s pretty good.”
“Yep,” I said. “Take that home and run it by your wife.”
“What they should do,” he added; “is try them clowns for war crimes.
Although I suppose we should just forget it,” he said. “Doing that would tear this country apart.”
“Yepp-errrrr.....” I said. “Just like pardoning Nixon.”
“‘Nixon?’ Who’s Nixon?” he asked.
“Well, I’m almost 65, and was around during the Watergate scandal,” I said.
“Pardoning Nixon seemed disgusting at the time, but it was probably the smartest thing Ford ever did.”
“Who’s Ford?” the guy asked. “Ain’t that some car manufacturer?”
“The guy that succeeded Nixon,” I said; “when Nixon resigned the presidency.”
“I think we have an Orator-in-Chief,” my wife observed when I arrived home. “A word-man.
I haven’t heard a speech like that in years.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Complete sentences and predicates agreeing with subjects.
The only ones that ‘don’t care’ about such things are the blowhards who can’t do it.”
“What I liked best was his saying our enemies have won if we sacrifice all our ideals in the name of safety,” my wife said.
My friend Gary Coleman, a man-of-color, keeps telling me “I thought I’d never see it. A man-of-color elected president.”
“Now all we have to do is hope the poor guy doesn’t get assassinated,” I say.
“There are enough hot-head honkies around who will loudly claim it’s the Lord’s will.
Kennedy was an idealist too.”
Depart Cheney stage-right in a wheelchair.

“Plasma-babies” are what my loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston calls all high-definition wide/flat-screen TVs. Other technologies beside plasma are available, but he calls them all “plasma-babies.” —The Canandaigua YMCA has high-definition wide/flat-screen TVs on the walls of their exercise-gym, but they’re closed-captioned.

“George Herbert Walker” is George H.W. Bush, our 41st president.

“Jimmeh Kah-duh” is Jimmy Carter, our 39th president. (He was from The South, and preferred that pronunciation.)

An “arm-bicycle” is a cardio exercise machine that only cranks your arms.

The “almighty Supremes” are the Supreme Court.

“Obama-lama-ding-dong” is of course Barrack Obama.

The “Watergate scandal” is where president Nixon authorized agents to break into Democratic headquarters in Watergate Plaza. It happened during the first Nixon administration; 1972.

My wife of 41+ years is “Linda.”

“The blowhards” refers to my all-knowing brother-from-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say. He loudly asserts that kerreck grammar “doesn’t matter.”

For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY. A fellow employee was “Gary Coleman.”

All my siblings are tub-thumping born-again Christians, so Obama is therefore “the anti-Christ.”

Reflections on “The Beast”

“The Beast.” (Photo by the so-called “old guy” long ago at college in 1965.)

The other night (Saturday or Sunday, January 17 or 18, 2009) the national TV news did a report on the new presidential limo, a car affectionately called “The Beast.”
I had a car called “The Beast” (pictured). It was a 1958 fish-mouth Triumph TR3.
It was my first car, and it was an old drag-racer.
It came with an open exhaust, so made an incredible racket.
I got Midas to plumb a muffler into its straight two-inch exhaust pipe, which I called “the organ pipe.”
I also slash-cut the end, bologna style.
There was confusion about the license-plate. It was a “trailed-car” plate, the plate it needed to get towed to drag-races.
I thought it was a legitimate car-plate.
I drove it a long time with that “TC” plate, but in New York; it was a Delaware plate.
It was incredibly strong, and therefore fun.
I creamed a 383 four-speed Plymouth with it once.
A hot-rodding friend at college was impressed, and he had a Chrysler 300 with a 413.
The Beast was a monster, and went like stink.
But I eventually rolled it, breaking off the windshield, and also a steering tie-rod.
Drove it all the way home from college that way, western N.Y. to Wilmington, DE, about 360 miles.
Only the right-front wheel steered; the left-front would follow.
Not much damage from the rollover, and I survived. TRs liked to flip; they were known as coffins.
The fact I’m not paralyzed is cut-away doors.
The new presidential limo is all armor-plate and thick bullet-proof glass.
Unreported is what motor it uses — I’m thinking Big-Block.
It would take that much to drag all that weight around at a good clip; e.g. escaping shoulder-fired missiles.
“The Beast” is a Cadillac, making me wonder if the Cadillac moniker is now “the mark of the beast.”

RE: “Old guy............” —My macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston, who is 13 years younger than me, calls me “the old guy” as a put-down. I also am the oldest.

“College” was Houghton College in western New York, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I didn’t graduate with their approval. Houghton is a religious liberal-arts college.

“Drag-racing” is side-by-side standing-start to finish over a straight and level quarter-mile.

I called it “the organ pipe” because I like pipe-organs (Houghton had a really great one), and it looked like an organ-pipe. It also made a great sound.

A “383 four-speed Plymouth” is a Plymouth sport-coupe with a 383 cubic-inch V8 engine and a four-speed floor-shifted standard transmission — fairly strong.

A “Chrysler 300 with a 413” is Chrysler’s fabulous 300-series muscle-car; which had the 413 cubic-inch “wedge” engine by then. The first Chrysler 300s had 392 cubic-inch Hemis (“HEM-eee”), and were extremely strong. (The Hemi was so named because it had hemispherical combustion chambers, making it breath better at high speeds.) —My friend’s car wasn’t a Hemi; by then the Hemi was no longer produced. His was about 1961-‘63. The last Hemi 300 was in the 1958 model-year. (The “Wedge” was more normal [not a Hemi, and therefore less expensive to manufacture]. More like the average Detroit V8, yet large in size, and very powerful. His car had two separate four-barrel carburetors on long ram manifolds at each engine-side. [A long ram manifold would force more intake-air/fuel into the engine by air-wave reflection.])

“Cut-away doors” are car-doors cut away down to elbow height.

The Chevrolet “Big-Block” V8 was introduced in the 1965 model-year at 396 cubic-inches. It was made in various displacements: 402, 427 and 454 cubic inches. It’s still made as a truck-motor, but not installed in cars any more; although you can get it as a crate-motor, for self-installation.

“Mark of the beast” is a Biblical term, referring to the end times; when sinners gleefully carry the “mark of the beast” on their foreheads.

O. Winston Link Show

Hotshot eastbound at Iaeger Drive-in. (Photo by O. Winston Link.)

Yesterday afternoon (Sunday, January 18, 2009) I took my friend Art Dana to George Eastman House to see the O. Winston Link show of train photographs.
Constant readers of this here blog, if there are actually any at all, will recognize Art as the retired Transit bus-driver with fairly severe Parkinson’s Disease.
Art and I drove Transit bus many years, and my approach to the job was essentially gleaned from him: go-with-the-flow.
Art and I have almost identical interests: cars and trains and airplanes. Particularly harnessing massive power outputs from combustion engines; engines that burn fossil fuel.
The George Eastman House is the mansion of George Eastman in Rochester.
Eastman is the founder of Kodak, who made photography accessible to common folk.
His mansion has been made into a museum of photography, although doing so required considerable building and expansion.
Eastman’s mansion is therefore kind of secondary, although they still give mansion tours. (We did that long ago.)
Eastman’s mansion was all there was for years; the expansion is kind of recent.
Eastman House also has a massive collection of old movies, archived; and it built a theater to show them.
Old movies and photographs deteriorate, so a lot of what George Eastman House does is restoration.
O. Winston Link is probably the premier railfan photographer from the late ‘50s.
He chronicled the end of steam-locomotive operations on the Norfolk & Western (“N&W”) Railroad.
N&W was the final holdout for steam locomotion; primarily because steam-locomotives burned coal, and N&W mainly shipped coal.
Norfolk & Western was a beast of a railroad. It crossed three mountain ranges, and twisted and turned and climbed all over.
But it served the fabulous and prolific Pocahontas coal region.
To do so it had to thread the hollers of the Appalachian mountains. Tunnels galore were required.
It was shipping rivers of coal from the Pocahontas coal region to ocean tidewater at its Lamberts Point transloading facility in Norfolk, VA.
N&W developed its own steam locomotives, and built them themselves in Roanoke.
They kind of like had to — its line required special designs.
They ended up designing and building some of the greatest steam-locomotives of all time; e.g. -1) the mighty “J” 4-8-4, and the “A” 2-6-6-4 articulated, that could cruise efficiently at high speed.
Years ago I rode behind “J” #611 at 70-75 mph.
Years later it derailed its train, and was thereafter limited to 45 mph. (The railroads were no longer built to safely transport a “J,” and the “J” was capable of 100 mph.
It used roller-bearings even in its side-rods.
#611 has since been retired.
We also rode behind “A” #1218.
There are four things I remember:
—A) It was so heavy they couldn’t take siding. Opposing freights had to take siding themselves, so the “A” could stay on the main.
—B) The front driver-set often slipped on its own. The two driver-sets weren’t carrying equal weight, so the front driver-set would start spinning. It only had one throttle, so the only way to catch a front slip, was to shut everything down.
—C) No lineside water-tanks any more, so the only way to water the poor sucker (and a steam-engine requires water to make steam), was from a fire-hydrant. We had to back 89 bazilyun miles on the Conrail main to access a fire-hydrant (single), and then a simple firehouse pumper-truck pumped the water from the hydrant to the two tenders. Took three hours.
—D) Then the poor thing ran outta coal. Diesels had to rescue us. Excursion ended at 3 a.m.
#1218 is also retired.
Yet N&W was very successful with the “A.” It was very efficient, and could go like the dickens.
Link apparently wrote Norfolk & Western management, and sent some sample pictures. He wanted to chronicle the end of steam-locomotive operations on the railroad.
Management, bless ‘em, was interested. They went along with Link’s proposition, mainly to take photographs at night, requiring 89 bazilyun flashbulbs and related wiring.

At the Hawksbill Creek swimming hole, Lemay, VA. (That’s a 2-8-8-2 “Y” on the bridge pulling a coal-drag.) (Photo by O. Winston Link.)

The lead pik is the classic O. Winston Link image: “Eastbound hotshot at Iaeger Drive-in;” “A” #1242 is on the point.
That’s Link’s ‘52 Buick convertible in the foreground, and the couple snuggling therein were friends of Link, and eventually married.
This image was very trying, and what he ended up doing what could have been easily done with Photoshop®, but Photoshop wasn’t around then.
The flash was so bright it washed out the movie-screen, so Link took a picture of that at first.
It was a Korean War movie, so that’s an F86.
Then he took the flash-image, which obliterates the movie-screen — the one with the passing train.
To get the final print he had to expose first the flash-image with the screen section blocked; and then just the movie-screen image, with the flash-image part blocked.
Everything had to be in perfect registration — his earliest tries failed.
When he finally got everything right, he took a picture of his final print, and that’s what the final print (this picture) is made from.
What you see is a Photoshopped scan of a magazine print — okay, but not the actual photograph. Detail and shading get lost, and you have to “despeckle” the scan, to offset the dot-matrix of a magazine print.
Art and I looked at this photograph, and I immediately began naming all the identifiable cars therein. Link’s ‘52 Buick, a ‘55 Dodge station-wagon, a ‘55 or ‘56 Pontiac, a ‘56 Chevy Two-Ten four-door, and a ‘53 or ‘54 Dodge or Plymouth at the left.
“Keep going,” some lady said.
“That’s another ‘52 Buick, and I see a ‘53 or ‘54 Pontiac. Beyond that, everything else is too obscured,” I said.
“I’m old enough to have been around when all this stuff was extant. Hey Art; that may be a Shoebox Ford Custom next to Link’s Buick!”
“Not only was Link a great photographer,” Art said; “he also had excellent taste in cars.”

Sometimes the electricity (to the adjacent pump) fails. (That’s Link’s ‘52 Buick, and the gas is “Amoco.”) (Photo by O. Winston Link.)

Of interest to me were the Link photos in some lady’s living-room.
They had their house right next to the railroad, so Link took a photo in the living-room; dog and child resting before the crackling fireplace; and right outside the living-room window was a HUGE Norfolk & Western steam-engine.
“I don’t know about you, Art,” I said; “but I could never live in a house like that. I’d be up all night watching trains.”
The show wasn’t that great. About one-fourth of the images were like I’ve flown, yet the others were all railroad employees; the fireman, the engineers, the dispatchers, the shop-men, the mechanics; i.e. the common-folk that actually run the railroad.
As such it was kind of boring.

STORY-TIME........
Art may be slightly worse; although perhaps not — I noticed things that may have been pertinent earlier that I didn’t notice then.
-1) He had difficulty with zippers — shaky hands.
“I wouldn’t put this curse on anyone,” he said.
-2) I also noticed his Toyota Camry was in the same place in the driveway it was last summer; only difference being the layer of snow on top. —Poor Art may not have driven it for some time. It’s a brand-new car, and languishes undriven.
-3) I noticed the decrepit ‘60 T-bird, that occupied the second slot in the garage adjacent to his custom ‘49 Shoebox, is gone.
“There’s a story about that, Hughsey,” he said. “It wasn’t my car. It belonged to Johnny” (his sister’s live-in boyfriend). “Johnny bought it, planning to restore it.
It sat untended for months, so my sister began fishing for having it removed.
Johnny’s response was ‘nothing doing.’
So finally my sister said ‘either that thing goes, or ya both go;’ so now it’s gone. Some guy will list it on ‘Craig’s List’ for sale. It’s not our problem any more.”
So now his sister’s Hyundai occupies the space the T-bird once held.
After returning from the show, I was taken into the cellar, where Art is constructing two tables for -a) a model railroad layout, and -b) his model racecars.
“Haven’t told my sister yet,” he said.
Well good luck, Art. It’s probably her house, and here a guy with Parkinson’s is planning to build two model layouts.
The model railroad layout would be 4X16, and the racecars would be 4X8.
“You sure are one tough cookie, Hughsey,” he said, probably because I recovered from a stroke.
“Well, so are you, Art,” I said. “As I’ve said hundreds of times, ‘I think the reason is because we drove bus.’”
“Yep,” Art said. “Survive that job, and ya can survive anything. I don’t know how I did it that long!”

“Iaeger” (capital I-a-e-g-e-r; “ee-YAY-grrr;” I think) is a small town in West Virginia.

“Transit” equals Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY, where I drove transit-bus for 16&1/2 years (1977-1993). My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.

“We” is myself and my wife of 41+ years, “Linda.”

The “Pocahontas coal region” is a large area of Virginia and West Virginia and Kentucky underlaid with a massive coal-seam.

“Roanoke,” VA.

An “articulated” steam-locomotive has one driver-set hinged to the other, so the locomotive can bend through sharp turns (e.g. crossover switches). One driver-set (the rear) is attached to the boiler, but the other (front) is hinged, so it can angle off-center. (“Crossover switches” are switches between adjacent tracks that permit a train to “cross over” from one track to the other.)

The driving-wheels of a steam-locomotive are all connected by “drive-rods.” The piston is only driving the second or third driver-set. The others are driven by the connecting-rods (“drive-rods”). They all swing up-and-down as the drivers rotate. The “rods” are usually forged steel. “Roller-bearings in its side-rods” is roller-bearings at the horizontal drive-pins in the wheels. Usually it was just “plain” bearings lubricated by grease. Roller-bearings were often also installed where the drive-axles contacted the locomotive frame. Usually they were “plain” greased bearings, but roller-bearings rotated easier, allowing the locomotive to generate more pulling power.

“Take siding” is what usually happens when two opposing trains, or faster and slower trains in the same direction, approach each other on a single track. The inferior train is diverted to a side-track, to allow the other train to pass.

The “main” is the primary track of the railroad. There are single-track mains, and two or more tracks. Multiple track mains have more capacity. —Inferior trains get diverted to another track, or side-track, so a superior train can pass.

“Conrail” is a government amalgamation of east-coast railroads that went bankrupt pretty much at the same time as Penn-Central, a merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central. Conrail included other bankrupt east-coast railroads, like Erie-Lackawanna and Lehigh Valley; but eventually went private as it became more successful. Conrail has since been broken up, sold to CSX Transportation Industries (railroad) and Norfolk Southern railroad. CSX got mainly the old New York Central routes, and NS got the old Pennsylvania Railroad routes. The section of Conrail we were on was ex New York Central. Norfolk Southern had a parallel route (ex Nickel Plate) adjacent to the Conrail line, and we had to use Conrail to -a) turn around, and -b) back up to a fire hydrant. There was another route we could have used, but it was too tight curvature for the “A.” (“Nickel Plate” is the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad, called the “Nickel Plate” long ago by a New York Central executive because it was so competitive. The railroad eventually renamed itself the “Nickel Plate.” Norfolk & Western Railroad bought the Nickel Plate years ago, and N&W has since merged with Southern Railway, to become Norfolk Southern. Nickel Plate never actually attained New York city; it stopped at Buffalo.)

1949-‘51 Fords were known as “Shoeboxes” among hot-rodders. That was because of their squarish styling.

Art’s “model racecars” are raced on a slot-car track.

Garage water-pipes drained

We drained the water-pipes in our garage last night (yesterday, Friday, January 16, 2009).
So they wouldn’t freeze.
The garage temperature had dropped below 40°.
Didn’t have to drain them last year, because it never got that cold.
Two water circuits serve the garage; hot and cold each.
One serves the garage sink, and the other serves the tiny garage bathroom (a sink and a toilet), the bathroom that was added in case Linda’s aunt had a bathroom emergency after the long trip up here from Campbell (“CAMP-bell;” not the soup).
As such it was called the “Ethelyn’s bathroom,” Ethelyn being her aunt’s name.
Ethelyn is now gone, so the bathroom now serves us — and the Bluster-Boy in case he needs it after consuming 25 gallons of ‘Dew from the motorized ‘Dew dispenser in the rear Tour-pak on his GeezerGlide.
We saw him hooking it up at Tunnel Inn in Gallitzin last July.
Couldn’t spare 30 seconds to do something sensible, like put on a motorcycle helmet. But could spend two minutes hooking his iPod to his GeezerGlide’s faring speakers, and two minutes more hooking up his ‘Dew dispenser hose to his bellowing mouth.
We hardly use that garage bathroom at all; maybe once every four months. Sometimes the urge to widdle is fairly strong, plus I wanna flush that there toilet occasionally.
So I use that bathroom instead of one in the house. Linda too.
Plus it’s always there for the Bluster-Boy before parking his GeezerGlide in my garage with great flourish. (I hafta move a car out into possible rain so he can do that — oh, the humanity.)
I’d rather drain the pipes than have them freeze.
Plus there’s always the possibility of a cold-snap while we’re away.
Last February we made a trip to the great land of the shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower; there it was in the 60s.
But we returned to our CR-V with about a two-foot snow-drift over the rear window; apparently a blizzard had blown through Rochester.
But it never got cold enough to drain the garage pipes — with the garage-door closed it will maintain a temperature near 40°.
But a continuous cold-snap has recently occurred, and it likely will continue. Below zero nighttime temps will lower the garage temperature.
So we decided to drain ‘em; plus another trip to the great land of the shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower is coming up next month.
We don’t like draining the pipes; it means no water in the garage.
But I’d rather not have frozen-water damage.
Shortly after my stroke, we had the Bluster-Boy do it — thought I might not be able at that time.
It requires hand-dexterity, and working off a step-ladder; all of which seemed compromised at that time.
But the following year I was able to do it myself.
And at that time the Bluster-Boy wasn’t the macho blowhard he is now.

“We” is myself and my wife of 41+ years, “Linda.”

Our garage is attached.

“Ethelyn” is my wife’s aunt; her mother’s older sister. She lived in Campbell toward the end. She died a few years ago at age 98. (“Campbell” is the small rural town near where my wife grew up; also went to school. It’s about 60 miles from our house.)

The “Bluster-Boy” is my all-knowing, blowhard brother-from-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say. —He’s heavily into the macho Harley schtick. (Last July he joined me at Tunnel Inn, a bed-and-breakfast I stay at when visiting Horseshoe Curve. [Horseshoe Curve, west of Altoona, Pennsylvania, is by far the BEST railfan spot I have ever been to. Horseshoe Curve is a national historic site. It was a trick used by the Pennsylvania Railroad to get over the Allegheny mountains without steep grades. Horseshoe Curve was opened in 1854, and is still in use. (I am a railfan, and have been since I was a child.)] My brother rode there on his Harley-Davidson ElectraGlide.)

“‘Dew” is Mountain-Dew soda; which my brother thinks is fantastic, and guzzles in great quantity.

“GeezerGlide” is what I call all Harley Davidson ElectraGlide cruiser-bikes. My loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston has a very laid back Harley Davidson cruiser-bike, and, like many Harley Davidson riders, is over 50 (51). So I call it his GeezerGlide.

“Motorized ‘Dew dispenser in the rear Tour-pak” is of course made up.

RE: “Urge to widdle.....” —I am loudly accused of having a “prostrate” (prostate) problem by my badmouthing brother.

“Oh, the humanity” is something my brother always says, unaware of its connection to the Hindenburg disaster.

“Shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower” is where my wife’s soon to be 93-year-old mother lives, in a retirement community in “the shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower” in De Land, Florida.

The “CR-V” is our 2003 Honda CR-V SUV.

I had a stroke October 26, 1993.

Obama-lama-ding-dong

President-elect Obama, the Devil incarnate, successor to the so-called “greatest president that ever was” (“Shuckins; I don’t know what his beef was. Ain’t it a shame the economy tanked on my watch?”), will take the train from Philadelphia to Washington D.C. for his inauguration.
Supposedly reprising a similar train-ride president-elect Lincoln took.

There are many differences, of course:
—1) For one thing, at that time many of the railroads that become the Northeast Corridor didn’t exist.
The railroad south out of Philadelphia was Pennsy precursor Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore. (You can still find PW&B initials on the Port Deposit station.)
In Baltimore, passengers had to transload to the Baltimore & Ohio. Although by then, through cars to Washington D.C. were horsed through city streets to the B&O.
And at that time, the original PW&B out of Philadelphia was probably the line hard by the Delaware River, a line that flooded occasionally, so that line was later replaced.
PW&B rebuilt the line further inland, which became the Pennsy and later the Corridor. —The original line was sold to Reading (“RED-ing,” not “REED-ing”) and became their Chester branch.
—2) The greatest difference is that Mr. Lincoln had to make his train-ride in secret.
He had to ride a night-train to be invisible.
Secessionist sentiment was strong in Baltimore, and there was threat of assassination.
PW&B management counseled against his riding through Baltimore to the B&O in an open carriage.
—3) Then too, train-travel was the primary means of transit over distance.
So of course Lincoln took the train.
Obama could have taken I-95 or a jet.

I worry about assassination of Obama too.
There certainly are enough hot-headed honkies around.
I have this fear we’re looking at a Biden presidency.

My siblings are all tub-thumping Conservative Christians, and therefore REPUBLICANS, and consider Barack Obama to be “the Devil incarnate.” Current president George W. Bush is “the greatest president ever.”

“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. —Pennsy had a mainline from New York City to Washington D.C. which they electrified, and it became Amtrak’s “Northeast Corridor;” although the Corridor has been extended to Boston over the old New York, New Haven & Hartford line. (“Amtrak” is a government corporation promulgated in 1970 to take over nationwide rail passenger service. It mainly runs passenger trains over the independent railroads with its own equipment, but it it also owns and operates its own railroads; e.g. the old Pennsy electrified line from New York City to Washington D.C., the so-called “Northeast Corridor.”)

“Port Deposit,” MD is a small town on the northern bank of the Susquehanna River, not far from where it empties into Chesapeake Bay. The railroad runs through it onto a bridge over the river.

Pennsy (precursor PB&W) did not originally run through Baltimore to Washington D.C. —That Pennsy line was built later, with heavy resistance from Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, which originally was the only main railroad from the north serving Washington.

The “Delaware River” is Pennsylvania’s eastern border, and used to flood. But not any more — flood control.

No Union-Meeting

Yet another union-meeting date drifts into the filmy past.
But no union meeting.

—1) This was apparently because of a day-long election yesterday (Thursday, January 15, 2009) for an RTS Drivers’-Rep, now that previous Drivers’-Rep Craig Fien (“FEEN”) was fired for insubordination — whatever.
Fien had to resign his Drivers’-Rep position because he was running out of money without an income, and had to switch to a job driving truck.
Probably pays about the same, and at least there the cargo isn’t threatening to shoot ya.
Same highway madness, but there the cargo is more compliant.
Transit management, in its infinite wisdom, decided Craig was insubordinate, or ornery enough and thorn-in-the-side enough to be fired.
Yet despite his departure, the union is arbitrating his case.
It’s the old waazoo: management’s inclination to in every case blame its bus-drivers.
So Craig stands up to some passenger who was giving him the business, and wants her removed from his bus. He requests police assistance, feeling physically threatened, and as usual Transit -a) wants to shove the whole matter aside, and use only its own Road-Supervisors to handle the altercation; and -b) wants Craig to just buckle and take the miscreant home.
Craig’s refusal to do so is called “insubordination,” and he gets fired.
Score one for management; they found an excuse to remove a thorn-in-their-side. He was an ornery Drivers’-Rep, and also excellent. Held Management’s feet to the fire.
So an election was held to elect a new Drivers’-Rep to replace Craig.
As a Retiree, I am not privy to stuff like this.
I don’t frequent our old Drivers’ Room every day or see the union’s tiny bulletin board therein.
Meetings have been canceled before, and I knew nothing of it. Just drove up and found a notice on the hall door.
Driving there takes almost an hour.

—2) The drive up
A few still have there Christmas lights lit.
No more glittering strip like last drive up where an entire street was lit up like Broadway.
But I passed a few places that still had their Christmas lights lit. Colored wreaths and Christmas trees.
Years ago our Webster Post-paper ran a photograph of town workers finally removing the Christmas lights from light-poles in June.
My brother Bill weighed in.
“What are they doing that for?” he asked. “They’ll just have to put them back up in six months.”
Look carefully and you can find people that never take their Christmas lights down, but they usually don’t light ‘em.
But there is a house along 5&20 in Bloomfield that keeps electric Christmas candles lit all year in its windows.

For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (“RTS;” “Transit”), the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY. My stroke October 26, 1993 (inducing disability-retirement) ended that. While there I belonged to the local division (“Local 282”) of the nationwide Amalgamated Transit Union. Our local holds a regular business meeting the third Thursday of each month, but last night there was no meeting. —Our union had two elected “Drivers’-Reps” (representative); idea being to implement our contract and advocate for a bus-driver called before management.

RE: “The union is arbitrating......” —What our union is mainly doing nowadays is arbitrating disputes, although Transit management can also initiate an arbitration. The facts of a case are presented to an impartial and noninvolved arbitrator, and he decides the case. The parties involved (Transit and the Union) are to accept his decision; although Transit has been known to refuse, and had to be dragged to court. (They once even refused a court decision.)

Transit used “Road-Supervisors” to check on bus-drivers, and intervene when needed. They were kinda like “transit-police;” but not actually police.

The bus-drivers were assigned work in a “Drivers’ Room;” which had a small union bulletin board off a hallway. As a Retiree, I no longer hit the Drivers’ Room.

Our union meets in an off-property “hall.”

The “Webster Post-paper” was one of the nine Post Publications suburban weekly newspapers purchased by the Messenger Newspaper when the head-honcho of Post Publications retired and sold. It served the small town of Webster, a suburb east of Rochester. (The Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper is from where I retired over three years ago. Best job I ever had.)

“My brother Bill” is my younger brother in northern Delaware.

“5&20” is the main east-west road through our area; State Route 5 and U.S. Route 20, both on the same road. 5&20 is just south of where we live, which is in the rural Town of West Bloomfield, NY. Adjacent is the Town of East Bloomfield, and the small village of “Bloomfield” is within it. I traverse “5&20” to get to nearby Canandaigua.

“What’s it doing?”

Last night (Thursday, January 15, 2009), since there was no union-meeting (see post above), we were able to do what we do most nights, which is drive our separate ‘pyooters until bedtime; 10:15 or so.
Me doing bookkeeping or possibly finishing a blog-post, processing e-mail, and lobbing steaming piles at Facebook and MyFamblee.com.
Linda pretty much the same, although she may also surf quilting and dog-training sites, or continue her ongoing computer Scrabble games with her brother’s fourth wife, the person who only seemed imaginary at first.
But we met her a while ago, and she’s really a very nice person, despite Linda’s mother’s stridently bewailing the relative surfeit of makeup.
Like my sister and Tom, this may be the last, and best, marriage partner. Like Elz, Linda’s brother has been married four times.
I sure hope Linda’s brother can accept that. He’s not getting any younger. —He’s older than us.
But ‘pyooter-driving ain’t what happened.
Linda is having a sore back, so was resting in our bedroom on our bed with our dog.
But her ‘pyooter, a Windoze PC, was still on.
Rather than roust her up just to shut it off, with great fear and trepidation I set about to shut it off myself.
Of course, it ain’t like my so-called “silly MAC.”
But I’ve certainly shut down enough PCs, like at the mighty Mezz, and libraries all over this nation.
I treaded gingerly into the room where her ‘pyooter is, and it was displaying the infamous Windoze XP sleep screen.
My MAC doesn’t do that, since it has a monitor with its own independent sleep. —Usually it sleeps (blank screen) before the MAC, although if not, I get the MAC’s “Lucy-in-the-Sky-With-Diamonds” sleep.
So I woke up her rig just like I wake up my MAC: hit an arrow-key.
Hmmmmmmnnnnnn.......
Not the Windoze interface I usually see. Apparently XP doesn’t have the left-bottom-corner start menu — why do they call it “start” if what you’re doing is stopping it?
All I get is a blank baby-blue screen with a tiny red “shut off Linda’s computer” button.
I hit that, and get another tiny red “shut off Linda’s computer” button.
I hit that, and get a warning screen about “other users are logged in to this here computer. Are you sure? Any work they were doing should be saved lest it be lost forever until the end of time.”
Linda waddles in.
“Well, I was just trying to shut it off,” I said; “but now I got that!”
“Just hit it,” she says. “I’m the onliest user.”
So I hit it, and get a totally blank baby-blue screen.
Minutes pass.
“NOW WHAT?” I ask. “My MAC never takes that long.”
“Well, it’s a Windows PC,” she says.
“What’s it doing?” I ask. “Calculating the value of Pi?”

RE: “No union-meeting.......” —For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY. While there I belonged to the local division (“Local 282”) of the nationwide Amalgamated Transit Union. Our local holds a regular business meeting the third Thursday of each month, but last night there was no meeting due to an election.

RE: “Steaming piles at Facebook and MyFamblee.com.....” —Our family has family web-sites on both Facebook and at MyFamily.com. Anything I post is considered to be a “steaming pile.”

“Linda” is my wife of 41 years.

RE: “The person who only seemed imaginary.....” —For years the existence of Linda’s brother’s fourth wife was debatable, since we never met her or spoke to her.

RE: “Stridently bewailing the relative surfeit of makeup.....” —Linda’s mother thinks any makeup at all is “silly;” and is happy to pass judgment, especially if it involves badmouthing Linda’s brother.

“Elz” is my sister Betty (Elizabeth). She’s second after me, 63 (I’m the oldest at 64). She lives in Fort Lauderdale, FL, and is married to a guy named Tom.

Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s three-plus, and is our sixth Irish-Setter.

“‘Pyooter” is computer. A “Windoze PC” is a Microsoft Windows “Personal-Computer” (“PC”), the usual standard personal computer most people use. RE: “Silly MAC......” —All my siblings use Windows PCs, but I use an Apple MacIntosh, so am therefore reprehensible and stupid. My macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston refers to it as a “silly MAC.” The scuttlebutt among Apple MAC users is that “Windoze PCs” are inferior.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over three years ago. Best job I ever had. —Most libraries nationwide have Windows PCs with the “Internet-Explorer” Internet browser; so I can fiddle nationwide via the Internet; I don’t need my computer to do so.

“XP” is a recent iteration of the Microsoft Windows computer operating-system.

RE: “‘Lucy-in-the-Sky-With-Diamonds’ sleep......” —Is the computer-sleep display an Apple Macintosh with OS-X throws up. My monitor has a sleep independent of my computer, but all it is is the display going blank. (“OS-X” is the current Apple computer operating system.)

“Probably designed by an engineer”

The remaining spool of floss. (Photo by the so-called “old guy” with the dreaded and utterly reprehensible Nikon D100 with flash.)

Six months ago,when I first patronized QDental, I was warned of impending periodontal disease, and that I should floss my teeth every day.
“Except the floss I use breaks and disintegrates every time I use it,” I said.
“Have you tried Glide®?” they asked.
Okay, buy Glide dental floss. Comes spooled in a small plastic container; about 500 feet.
Works pretty good — thank ya, QDental — so far I’ve used it almost every night before brushing my teeth and going to bed.
Except at the end, when the dispenser becomes unmanageable and the floss won’t dispense. It locks up solid and refuses to disgorge, even with pliers.
Get tools; take apart dispenser and throw out everything but the spool. Use scissors to cut floss.
Last night new dispenser; no problems expected — back to flossing ease.
Except the floss refuses to dispense.
Get tools; take apart entire dispenser and toss everything but the spool (pictured). Use scissors to cut floss.
“For cryin’ out loud!” I say. “The mere act of dispensing dental floss turns into a three-hour project!”
“Musta been designed by an engineer,” Linda says.

RE: “‘Old guy’ with the dreaded and utterly reprehensible Nikon D100.......” —My macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston, who is 13 years younger than me, calls me “the old guy” as a put-down (I also am the oldest). I also am loudly excoriated by all my siblings for preferring a professional camera (like the Nikon D100) instead of a point-and-shoot. This is because I long ago sold photos to nationally published magazines.

“Linda” is my wife of 41 years.

My loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston was trained as an engineer, and noisily claims superiority. I majored in History, so am therefore vastly inferior. —Engineers are supposedly superior beings.

For Peg, to counter Frama-lama-ding-dong

At the vaunted Canandaigua YMCA: (First time in a week [Monday, January 12, 2009] — Linda worked every day last week, so I stayed home with the dog; since the YMCA, etc. takes about five+ hours.)

—1) The following conversation ensues.........
I’m on the arm-bicycle, and a young bloated tart is on an elliptical two positions away.
Young Studley walks up and gets himself in her face.
“I see ya have a new beau,” he says.
“Yes, I do,” tart chirps.
“Is this guy permanent?” he asks.
“Never in a million years!” she says.
“Well, it can only get worse, or better,” he says.
“Doncha mean worse?” she says.
“Well, time to go home, and fix lunch for ‘the wife.’”
(Get that everyone? “The wife.”)
I don’t get it, people.
41 years and I don’t consider her “the wife.”
—Nor would have I married some overly made-up floozie!

—2) “Circuit-man” is there......... (Tremble.)
The YMCA has about 20 Cybex so-called “strength-training” machines.
They are arrayed in a “circuit;” that is, one machine after another.
There are no circuit numbers, like there were on the old Nautilus circuit, but you’re supposed to follow the circuit.
Except most times the machines are occupied, so ya use one that isn’t.
(We used to do that with the Nautilus machines.)
The end result is jumping all over, machine-to-machine — so much for the circuit.
Well, this old geezer is there I call “circuit-man.” He does maybe 10 reps (a minute) on a single machine, and then harasses the guy on the next machine, who’s doing maybe 100 reps (10 minutes).
“I’m doing the circuit!” he bellows. “Are you?”
Like step aside! Hup-hup!
“Well,” I said; “I’d do the circuit but I had to do it in reverse. Someone was on the first machine, so I used another.”
Sorry, Boobie; but I ain’t gettin’ off. Ya can’t use that circuit-jazz on me, not when the real issue is that you’re only doing a minute per machine.
I made him jump over me — he used the next machine, which I had began on, so wasn’t advancing to.
And off he went, a minute per machine.
Soon he was behind me on about the sixth machine past me in order, and some poor schmuck was using it.
“Are ya doing the circuit?” he bellowed.
Poor schmuck got off: “no problem.”
That’s what I did the first time, but no longer.
(A Dubya-button was on “Circuit-Man’s” shorts.)

“Peg” is my baby sister Peggy. She’s 17 years younger than me, and the last sibling. She lives in Lynchburg, Va. with her husband Paul Broda and three sons. (The oldest is in college.) —She works at Frama-Tome (which I call Frama-lama-ding-dong), which has an Internet filter that won’t allow access to a site linked to our family-site. (She’s fiddling our family-site on her [the company’s] computer; although on her lunch-hour.)

I work out at the Canandaigua YMCA. (The YMCA is about four hours; attach other errands, and it becomes five+.)

“Linda” is my wife of 41 years. Like me she’s retired, but she works part-time at the West Bloomfield post-office.

Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s three-plus, and is our sixth Irish-Setter.

An “arm-bicycle” is essentially an exercise machine for cycling your arms. An “elliptical” is a machine that mainly cycles your legs, but not a treadmill. (It can include arm-cranks.)

“Nautilus” was another manufacturer of exercise machines, but the YMCA replaced all its Nautilus machines with Cybex when it upgraded its exercise-gym.

“Dubya” is George W. Bush, our current president; proclaimed by my siblings as “the greatest president of all time.” —I perceive Dubya-supporters as rather pushy.