Monthly Calendar Report for May, 2012

Camp-train at Six-Targets. (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

—The May 2012 entry of my own calendar is at one of my favorite locations on Allegheny Crossing, McFarland’s Curve, a location I also call “Six-Targets.”
That’s because the old Pennsy signal-bridge has six target-signals on it.
At right are the two mainline tracks (Tracks One and Two), and the work-train is on a controlled siding (Track Three).
Trains can be either way, which is why the signal-bridge has six signals.
I’ve always liked this location — we’re looking south (railroad west).
The signal-bridge renders a frame, and silhouettes the sky.
It’s north (railroad east) of Altoona, and almost level. We’re out of the Alleghenies.

Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.

The trash-train approaches McFarland’s.

Looking east is also good. Trains approach through a long S-curve.
But I’ve yet to have success there. It needs a strong telephoto, perhaps.
“Controlled” means the siding is signaled. It also goes a long way.
Slow eastbound trains diverge to the siding so faster eastbounds can pass. —And still allow westbounds.
My perception is there is a lot of eastbound traffic, particularly coal.
Coal tends to move slower than van-trains and stackers.
Coal-trains westbound are usually empty.
You have to know how to get to McFarland’s Curve.
The street is named in my Google-maps, but it’s more a dirt-track.
But I finally found it myself, and know how to get there.
Off I-99 at the Grazierville exit, a short distance south on the old 220, then turn right (west) just past DeGol Lumber. The dirt-track is along the southern border of the lumber company.
Up the narrow rocky dirt-track, more a road for farm-tractors.
Then there it is, one of the prettiest and most rewarding photo-locations I know.
McFarland’s Curve with its six targets, perhaps my favorite photo-location on Allegheny Crossing (except it’s not in the Alleghenies).
3026 is a GP40-2, pulling a short work-train of silver camp-cars; old boxcars outfitted with bunks and facilities for track-workers.
I got right up close to the controlled-siding to take this picture, thinking the approaching train was eastbound on the middle track.
“Get back, Bob,” cried Phil. “It’s on the controlled-siding.”
(“Phil” is Phil Faudi [“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”], the guy I chase trains with at Allegheny Crossing.)
A stacker is westbound on Track Two.




B-24 Liberator. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The May 2012 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is perhaps the best photograph in the calendar, a picture that makes this old turkey look good.
It’s the B-24 Liberator heavy-bomber.
About that time Consolidated Vultee and Boeing were competing to field the Army Air Corps’ heavy-bomber.
The B-24 is Consolidated Vultee’s entry. (Consolidated Vultee later became Convair.)
Boeing’s entry was the B-17 Flying Fortress, although it was earlier than the B-24.
Both the B-17 and the B-24 demonstrate tilting toward heavy defensive armament, machine-guns galore. The B-17 was nicknamed “the Flying Fortress” by a press-guy.
The B-24 had a machine-gun turret in its nose. The first B-17s didn’t, but machine-guns were soon added, specifically a chin-turret.
Enemy fighter-planes could attack from the front, and were successful. Defense was needed at the front.
Only two B-24s are still flying.
As opposed to 13 B-17s. (I thought there were more!)
It takes a lot to keep up one of these old turkeys flying.
There are four ancient motors to maintain.
Motor-maintenance is extremely costly.




BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM! (Photo by Mike Usenia)

—The May 2012 entry of my AII-Pennsy color calendar is not that good.
It suffers from the color photography available at that time, 1956.
It’s not as sharp as my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar, or my other calendars.
Recent color photography is much better.
It’s digital, and has much more latitude in shadows.
This calendar-picture is probably slide-film, and the shadows are almost completely black.
Now you can get away with shooting into your light-source, for example the sun.
In 1956 shoot a baseball-player wearing a baseball cap, and his eyes were lost in shadow. You had to fill with flash.
Nowadays the eyes would render, and everything would be razor-sharp.
I’ve shot train photographs I wouldn’t have tried years ago, shots with heavy shadow and backlighting.
I’m usually always pleasantly surprised — just shoot and see what happens.
It’s the Mt. Carmel ore-train.
The Mt. Carmel ore-train was one of the final Pennsy assignments for the I1 Decapod (2-10-0).
A trainload of iron-ore would be delivered to Northumberland, PA for delivery up Pennsy’s Mt. Carmel branch to an interchange in Mt. Carmel with Lehigh Valley railroad.
The train was extraordinarily heavy, and the Mt. Carmel branch was essentially uphill.
Two massive I1 Decapods would be coupled in front, and two more would be cut in ahead of the caboose to help push the heavy train up the grade.
The Decs couldn’t push the caboose. They’d probably derail it, or probably break something.
The Dec was Pennsy’s drag-engine. It was developed about 1916.
It was so massive for back then, crews called ‘em “hippos.”
The boiler was gigantic, but the fire-grate was only 70 square feet, which is still pretty large.
You had to be careful, lest a Decapod run out of steam.
The Decs were originally hand-fired; Pennsy’s loathing of appliances. For example, the coal-stoker.
But the Dec had such an appetite, even two firemen couldn’t keep up.
The Dec was the first Pennsy engine with a coal-stoker.
The Dec was not SuperPower, a special design of steam-locomotive to enhance boiler-capacity. A SuperPower engine had a gigantic boiler and a firebox grate of a 100 square feet or more.
It could maintain steam at high speed, where an unSuperPower engine might run out.
Ten driving-wheels also presented a problem.
Heavy side-rod assemblies were needed to crank all those drivers, and they couldn’t be well-balanced.
The driving-wheels of a drag engine had to be small, only 62 inches diameter on a Pennsy Decapod. (I’ve seen down to 55 inches.)
Smallish drivers didn’t allow much counterweighting to offset that heavy rod assembly.
A Dec was good to about 50 mph, and that was if you could stand it.
There was heavy up-and-down hammering as the drivers rotated.
But the Mt. Carmel ore-train was probably getting 25 mph tops.
Diesels might have been better, but the Mt. Carmel ore-train was perfect for Decs.




1970 American Motors AMX (so-called). (Peter Harholdt©.)

—It looks like the photographer of my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar, Peter Harholdt, likes to do side-elevations.
Every entry so far has been a side-elevation except the first, a ’64 Pontiac G-T-O, prettiest of the musclecars.
That was slightly three-quarter, including the front.
Everything since has been side-elevation.
The May entry is side-elevation, a 1970 American Motors Javelin AMX, so-identified.
I not sure that’s right. I don’t see “AMX” badges on it.
And it ain’t the AMX I know, a cobbled two-seater based on a shortened Javelin platform.
John Z. DeLorean (“dee-LORE-eee-in”), head-honcho of Chevrolet years ago, wanted to do that. Shorten a Camaro into a two-seater, and call it a Corvette.
Thankfully he failed. The Corvette continues as the great Chevrolet offering it always was, a standalone two-seater design with little connection to the Chevrolet brand except the storied SmallBlock V8.
So I think what’s pictured is a Javelin, although American Motors may have eventually offered the four-seater as an “AMX” model.
I forget. That’s all years ago.
This car has the 390 cubic-inch motor, which is a lotta motor for a Javelin.
Which is a ponycar, American Motors’ Mustang competitor.
The car is done up in red-white-and-blue paint, which I think looks great.
But I don’t think it’s an AMX, although it could be.
Whatever, it doesn’t look like the two-seater.

The Penske/Donohue Javelin.

Race-driver Mark Donohue (“don-uh-hew”), with entrant Roger Penske (“penn-ski”) began racing Javelins in the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) Trans-Am series in 1971.
I was appalled when they did that; they had come from Camaros.
But there was probably more money in it.
The Penske/Donohue Javelin was American Motors’ Trans-Am entry.
But did it sell any cars? People were more partial to the Camaro and Mustang.
I remember watching Peter Revson race an ARA Javelin at St. Jovite (“sahn-joe-VEET;” as in “sonogram”) racetrack in the Laurentien mountains near Montreal.
That was 1970, before Penske/Donohue.
He had it wound to the moon!
Every lap before entering a hairpin turn.
St. Jovite was a day-trip, but one of the nicest road-racing venues I ever went to.



Tulips for May. (Photo by Mark Shull.)

—What we have here for the May 2012 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees' Photography-Contest calendar is another photograph by Mark Shull, taken at the same location, probably on the same day, as a similar photograph that appeared as the April entry of my 2011 Norfolk Southern Employees' Photography-Contest calendar.

Photo by Mark Shull.

The judges for the Norfolk Southern Employees' Photography-Contest calendar seem to be suckers for flowers in a picture, especially in Spring.
Pretty red tulips adorn the foreground.
And the photographer managed to get everything in focus, train and tulips.
He’s probably using a tiny lens-aperture, a focal-length of perhaps F16 or F32.
Increasing the focal-length — decreasing the aperture opening — gets more in focus.
My father’s old Kodak Hawkeye, my first camera, went down to F64. That’s almost a pinhole.
Pinholes focus just about everything, but don’t let in much light.
The sky in the picture is extraordinary, just as it was in the previous picture.
Strident blue, with not a cloud in sight.
The train is northbound through Landis, NC. Photographer Stull reports he likes Landis.
The train is Atlanta to Pennsylvania.
The train my be traveling the Crescent Corridor, a route that parallels Interstate-81 south out of PA.
It goes all the way to Louisiana.
It’s an old route, previously rudimentary, improved to take trucks off Interstate-81.
The train in intermodal; I see trailer-on-flatcar.
I see three General-Electric Dash-9s, a lot of power.
Intermodal is priority; it has to be kept moving.
The train may even be UPS trailers, very high priority.



A Studebaker motor.

—The May 2012 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a hot-rodded 1932 Ford two-door sedan (Tudor), chopped and channeled.
“Chopped” means sections have been cut out of the vertical side-window pillars so the top can be lowered. —In this case, four inches.
“Channeled” means channels have been fabricated into the body so it can sit lower on the frame-rails. —In this case six inches.
The car also has a four-inch dropped ’34 Ford front beam-axle, to lower the car in front.
“Dropped” means the wheel-ends have been re-bent upward to lower the mounting-point an the car-frame front.
The car has a rare 1955 Studebaker V8, bored to 299 cubic-inches displacement. Instead of the ubiquitous SmallBlock Chevy V8, the love of hot-rodders everywhere.
Overhead-valve V8 motors were very much the coming thing in the early ‘50s.
So even lowly Studebaker developed one.
But I get the impression the car was originally hot-rodded with a Studebaker V8. And the most recent owner decided to stick with it because of its rarity.
The motor is souped up.
Boring it to a larger displacement is part of souping up. Although boring is often part of an engine-overhaul. It cuts away worn cylinder-walls.
The motor also has two backdraft Stromberg two-barrel carburetors on an Edelbrock (“ed-ll-BROCK;” as in “Ed”) manifold.
Hotrod parts.
That’s not extreme. At least it’s driveable. The car is not a trailer-queen.
The car uses a ’90 Camaro Borg-Warner five-speed manual transmission, twisting a ’57 Chevy PosiTraction rear-axle with 4.11 gears.
PosiTraction (“Posi”) is a special design to negate rear wheel-spin. A typical differential applies power to a spinning wheel. PosiTraction negates that. It clutches in the non-spinning wheel, yet is free enough the allow the differential to work around corners.
My old Vega had “Posi,” and was impressive in snow. And that was despite being only rear-wheel-drive. My current cars are All-Wheel-Drive.
4.11 is fairly low. The average rear-axle ratio is in the threes, some even down to 2.73 and lower.
A higher axle-ratio (numerically) renders more dig at the dragstrip. Lower ratios improve economy. The engine revs at a lower rate.
Extremely low rear-axle ratios are into the fives. The idea is to maximize dragstrip acceleration. Rear-axle gearing has to be matched through trial-and-error. The idea is to match engine power-output to not over-rev the quarter-mile, yet maximize dig.
A car geared that low might pop a wheelie, lifting its front-wheels clear off the pavement.
Wheelying a stock sedan with a heavy front-end is impressive. It indicates mind-bending power.
The current owner, Diana Branch, bracket-races this car in the Antique Nationals, a drag-racing series for antique hotrods.
She has won trophies, including top in class in 2008.
Pretty good for a Studebaker motor.



The engineer of two PRSL Baldwin BS-15m road-switchers picks up orders hooped by the new Glassboro towerman.

The May 2012 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is the new towerman at the station in Glassboro, NJ, handing up train-orders to the Camden-to-Millville freight on PRSL.
“PRSL” (Pennsylvania-Reading [‘RED-ing,’ not ‘READ-ing’] Seashore Lines) is an amalgamation of affiliated Pennsylvania and Reading railroad-lines in south Jersey to counter the fact the two railroads had too much parallel track. It was promulgated in 1933. It serviced mainly the Jersey seashore from Philadelphia.
The freight is hauled by two Baldwin BS-15m road-switchers, the locomotives PRSL dieselized with.
The Baldwins are actually PRSL engines. PRSL leased many locomotives from its participants, Pennsy and Reading, although it had a few of its own.
What I remember is ex-Pennsy engines lettered “Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines.”
I remember being very sad when the Baldwins first showed up. PRSL had been a steam-locomotive holdout.
The last steam-locomotive I saw in revenue service was ex-Pennsy, perhaps even Pennsy. It was a Mikado (2-8-2) or Consolidation (2-8-0).
PRSL used Consols for local freight. I have a hard time imagining it was a Mikado, except that’s what I counted, 2-8-2, from high above in a Piper Tri-Pacer flying out of tiny Echelon Airport, now closed.
Echelon became a mall, and that too failed. —Echelon had the Piper franchise (like we were gonna buy a plane).
That was late 1956. Snow was on the ground.
I also remember seeing a rusty Pennsy K4 Pacific (4-6-2) on a racetrack excursion at Garden State Park, a horse racetrack nearby where we lived in south Jersey.
It was the last K4 I ever saw in regular revenue service, and I almost got in trouble.
I almost missed supper.
The K4 fired up and left after the final race, around 4:30 p.m.
I was supposed to be home at 5p.m., but NO WAY was this kid gonna miss this!
I thought it might be my final K4, and it was.
I was 12.
By then the BS-15s were triumphant.
They were even being used in seashore passenger-service in summer, although I once saw tuscan-red (“tuss-kin;” not Tucson, Ariz.) Pennsy E-units on the bypass to Philadelphia.
It was a sight. Glitzy varnish on the humble PRSL.
Once in a while I’d see actual Pennsy diesels on PRSL, lettered “Pennsylvania Railroad.”
Pennsy owned 67 percent of PRSL, Reading 33 percent.
But more often it was these Baldwins, lettered “Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines.”
I wonder if that old line to Millville still exists?
It’s part of West Jersey & Seashore, acquired by Pennsy in 1875.
It went to Atlantic City in a roundabout way, but was soon abandoned to Atlantic City.
The Millville line was a branch.
WJ&S’s line to Atlantic City was Pennsy’s first electrification, third-rail.
That lasted until after WWII, when commuter-coaches made of wood were outlawed.
Pennsy also acquired Camden & Atlantic, a more direct route, via Haddonfield (where I first watched trains), to Atlantic City built earlier.
Philadelphia & Atlantic City Railway was built to compete with Camden & Atlantic.
It was three-foot six-inch narrow-gauge as built.
P&AC was taken over by Reading, rebuilt to standard gauge, and Reading and Pennsy competed to attain Atlantic City at ever-increasing speeds.
The two railroads were side-by-side through the Jersey Pine-Barrens, and trains were going over 100 mph.
West Jersey & Seashore got the time from West Haddonfield to Atlantic City, 53 miles, down to 39 minutes.
That’s a lotta throttle-to-the-roof!
Both railroads were using high-drivered Atlantics (4-4-2); gigantic drivers 84 inches in diameter. (The K4 was 80-inch.)
But Camden & Atlantic wasn’t the freight traffic-generator the West Jersey & Seashore lines were; for example, a freight-train to Millville.
The state of New Jersey built an extensive highway system that put railroad freight-traffic out of business.
Far as I know, Atlantic City has a coal-fired electric generating station nearby.
It still receives its coal by railroad.

The human element

My beloved wife of 44 years is gone, and here I am blogging again.
As I once said to a friend, a fellow railfan like me, I can’t put my pen down.
I’ve always enjoyed doing it, although I didn’t find my voice until 1992, when I began doing a voluntary newsletter for my bus-union.
This was discovering I didn’t have time to edit, a process that usually just destroyed what I wrote.
Just sling it; I called it “slinging words together.”
When I was in high-school 12th grade, my English-teacher said I was excellent at it. I thought him joking.
“But Dr. Zink, it’s just slinging words together.”
“But Hughes, you do that way better than most.”
So that’s what I do. Put pen to paper, and let ‘er rip.
Start slinging words together.
Hardly any editing. Just fixing spelling-errors and unclarities.
Start moving phrases around, and what I wrote gets ruined.
I’ve found I can sling words together pretty good; I can depend on it.
Now that my wife is gone (I’ve yet to assimilate it), I find myself parrying the human element.
I had a stroke almost 19 years ago, and it slightly compromised my speech and comprehension.
I often have to stop people to follow what they’re saying, or repeat, or tell telephone talkers to slow down.
I also have to warn people my speech may lock up (stutter), or become incomprehensible.
My wife covered for me; she did most of my problem-solving.
But now I am on-my-own, and getting by fairly well.
A TV-ad — I think it’s Cisco — trumpets the wonders of “the human element.”
Well, it is significant. It’s what makes our world work.
But I find myself parrying the many hairballs the human element can produce.
Example:
Now that my wife is gone, I find our house full of hospital-equipment we no longer need: a hospital-bed, a ca-mode, an over-bed hospital table, and a walker.
The stuff was delivered by a medical equipment supplier in nearby Canandaigua.
I can’t get them to retrieve it. (Failure to connect over two days.)
Two days ago I happened to be in the same plaza as the supplier, so I went in.
I said I would be driving home via a couple errands, and would be home in perhaps two hours.
So I could be there then to let them retrieve their equipment.
This is where “the human element” comes in.
They concluded I was driving straight home, so they could show up almost immediately.
I wasn’t there when they arrived. I was still in Canandaigua pursuing errands.
I happened to be in that same plaza late afternoon, so I visited the supplier again.
They had erroneously decided I was driving straight home earlier. The human element hadn’t factored in my errands. What I’d said was not fully comprehended.
This is only one example — I could render more.
The human element is significant, but can lead astray.

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. —During my final year, I did a voluntary newsletter for my bus-union.
• “Hughes” is me, Bob Hughes, “BobbaLew.”
• “Canandaigua” (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 14 miles away. —I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.

The last one standing.....

......is me.


January 2, 1944 to April 17, 2012. (Photo by BobbaLew — this is about 40 years ago, but is the person I’ve visualized ever since.)

Here it is. The blog I hoped I’d never have to write, but knew I’d probably have to.
The headline and lede have been in my head for years.
My wife of 44 years has “passed;” hospice-speak for “died.”
We didn’t expect this.
We thought I would go first.
My wife was made of sturdier stock than me.
Her mother, age 96, is still alive and will probably make 100. She’s very spry.
Just about all the women in my wife’s family made it well into their 90s.
January 2, 1944 to April 17, 2012. 68 years and four months.
My wife developed cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, five years ago.
Around-and-around we went, a blizzard of medical appointments.
It was up-and-down, back-and-forth.
Chemo and radiation zapped the cancer, but it always came back.
She almost died last Spring.
Her cancer was causing massive leg-swelling, and constricting kidneys.
Chemo zapped that, but her cancer had become aggressive. It previously had been non-aggressive.
Radiation reduced the cancer, but it returned.
We were running out of treatment options.
Our final option was a hyper-expensive chemo pill, but it so lowered her white blood-cell count she had to stop taking it.
Deterioration set in quickly.
Lucidity went away about a week ago, and I started seeing mind failure.
She signed up for home hospice care, but that quickly became messy.
I had to take over administration of her medications, and some were forgotten. Our house is hectic.
Monday, April 16, 2012, we transferred her to a hospice-house, where she’d receive 24/7 skilled nursing-care.
But we were on the downward slide. —No-one escapes hospice with their life.
When I visited Tuesday afternoon, the day she died, she was utterly zonked, and may not have known I was even in the room. (I had our dog with me.)
She was still breathing, but appeared dead.
I put the dog back in the car, and then waited in her room in case she woke up.
I had been told she would awake.
She never did; I had to leave a note. I was worried about the dog in the car.
She might have died while I was waiting, but I think not.
She was still breathing when I left. I said “so-long,” choked-up of course.
Those were my final words.
Tuesday night the hospice-house called, and said she had passed.
She lasted about 24 hours at the hospice-house; which owes me a refund — it’s a prepaid nursing-facility.
And so it goes. Cancer kills its host, and then gets killed itself.
I spent over 44 years with this lady, and have incredible memories.
I could have done a lot worse.
I held out for my standards; quite a few potential marriage-mates were shoved aside, one really nice.
What mattered is what’s between the ears, and she had it.

Comedy of Errors

Anyone who follows this here blog regularly, if there is anyone at all — and there appears to be at least one out there in vast cyberspace — knows I throw a lotta stuff up here.
Not as much as previously, when I was blogging something most every day, now perhaps only one or two blogs per week.
They also know my wife has cancer.
She probably will not survive. We are now on the hospice road. She has a while, or perhaps only a few weeks — or days.
As such I no longer have time to blog something every day.
Stuff goes unblogged, like the fact my Quicken Essentials is so insane about printing checks.
Everything has to be done just so, and there’s no manual. I’ve had to deduce it by trial-and-error.
So far out of six tries, I’ve successfully printed three checks.
And one of those checks had written and figure amounts a penny different, a strange conundrum I’ve never had happen over many years of using my previous Quicken software.
I blogged about that.
It requires a test-print of every check to see if I should hand-write.
I fixed that erroneous printed check manually; initialing my change.
So far I’ve had to hand-write three checks of six.
You can’t reprint an edited check — or so it seems.
So why not use my old Quicken software?
Long story.
Apple Computer did a so-called “Security-Update” that trashed my ancient Quicken’s check-printing function.
As you can see, that got blogged too.
So what happens is I often blog something while I consume breakfast, and it may not get keyed in for a day or two.
I hand-write my blogs directly in pencil onto a yellow legal-pad for keying in later.
Rarely do I blog directly into my computer, although I have.
Every month I do a Monthly Calendar-Report.
It’s huge; I have seven calendars.
Which may seem ridiculous, but they’re not really calendars.
What they are is wall-art that changes every month.
For the past couple days I’ve been working on my May Calendar-Report.
My first calendar-entry is keyed in, and I keyed in the second calendar last night.
My third and fourth calendar-entries are written, but not keyed in yet.
Yesterday (Friday, April 13, 2012), was a medical appointment at Wilmot Cancer Center (“will-MOTT;” as in “Mott’s applesauce”) at Strong Hospital in Rochester.
Strong Hospital is a 40-50 minute trip, and we hope it’s our last medical appointment at Wilmot.
We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, about 20 miles southeast of Rochester.
Our medical appointments have often involved driving in NASCAR rush-hour.
My wife is weak, and has the be pushed around in a wheelchair.
Wheelchair gotten (Strong has wheelchairs), I shoved stuff into the pouch on the rear of the wheelchair.
I had brought along three magazines, printouts of the first May calendar-entry, and my legal-pad.
The idea was -a) reading-material while we wait, and -b) proof what I had done, and work on my May calendar-report.
As usual, the one-hour medical appointment ballooned into well over three hours.
I never read anything, no magazines. All I did was work on my May calendar report, and field e-mail on my SmartPhone.
First was canceling a treatment blood-test hospice won’t authorize — that was in the Infusion Center.
Next was downstairs to the Breast-Cancer Center for a Palliative-Care appointment.
Then it was back upstairs for our final Wilmot medical appointment. We said our goodbyes — her oncologist was in San Francisco. So all we had was his nurse-practitioner.
Her oncologist was worried his being away looked like he was just walking away.
We don’t see it that way. I told them they did okay.
I then wheeled my wife to the first-floor entrance of the parking-garage, where she’d wait for me in the wheelchair.
I drove around, and my wife got in the car. I inadvertently left my magazines, my printouts, and my legal-pad in the pouch on the rear of the wheelchair.
We drove all the way home, where I discovered my magazines, the printouts, and legal-pad were all missing.
Of course; they were in the back pouch of the wheelchair.
Horror-of-horrors!
Only the first calendar-entry was in this laptop; with the other stuff missing I’d have to rewrite all I had already written.
Plus three magazines were vaporized; not a great tragedy.
I got on the phone and called Strong Hospital.
I got a machine of course.
I had a stroke almost 19 years ago, and as a result phonecalls ain’t easy.
Around-and-around we went.
First “security,” then “lost-and-found.”
“Please hold, your call is important to us; it will be answered in the order it was received.”
I left a message at “lost-and-found.”
Finally I got referred to the information-kiosk in the hospital-lobby.
They were befuddled I was calling them, and tried to refer me somewhere else.
“But this is where I got referred; you may have my missing stuff.”
A girl went out into the parking-garage, the wheelchair was still there, and retrieved my stuff from the back pouch.
“Three magazines, a legal-pad, and two 8&1/2 by 11 printouts?”
Back to Strong Hospital, my stuff would be waiting in the lobby.
Another long trip; and about all I could think was “I guess I could field complete boners on my own,” despite being stroke-addled.

• “Strong Hospital” is a large hospital in the southern part of Rochester.

Monthly Calendar Report for April, 2012

Coal-train 538 climbs eastbound toward the summit, a helper-set on the point. (Another helper-set is on the rear.) (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

—The April 2012 entry of my own calendar is one of the most dramatic photos I snagged last year.
And it's at a location I never thought that much of, what Phil Faudi ("FOW-deee;" as in "wow") calls "High-Bridge" and I call "Five-Tracks."
The original Pennsylvania Railroad alignment is the two tracks at left.
The slightly higher alignment at right, three tracks, is that of the New Portage Railroad, which Pennsy came to own.
Left-to-right are Tracks Four, Three, Two, One, and Main-Eight.
We are shooting from the State Highway 53 bridge, and I've always felt this location wasn't very photogenic.
Although a strong telephoto into the curve at the top would look fine.
Phil had us on an old bridge-abutment to the right of the New Portage alignment the first time we tried here.
To my mind, it didn't work. Anything eastbound was under the highway overpass, and anything westbound on Tracks Three or Four was too far away.
Plus the old signal-tower (at left) distracted.
I've also shot through that signal-tower; it doesn't work.
We had just missed a triple; three trains at once.
Phil was depressed. He said I wasn't driving hard enough, that I had to stop being a hyper-careful ex bus-driver if I wanted to snag trains.
Later I decided more was at play than my having previously driven bus.
It's also that I'm a stroke-survivor, that I have to concentrate extremely hard to not make mistakes. That is, I can't push hard. The mental wherewithal is no longer there. —I drive within my limits.
The New Portage Railroad was new railroad built to bypass an inclined-plane railway over the Allegheny mountains.
Like the inclined-plane railway New Portage was a part of the State of Pennsylvania's Public Works System, a combination canal and rail system to compete with New York State's immensely successful Erie Canal.
The inclined-plane railway was required to cross the Allegheny mountains. There was no way a canal could breach the Alleghenies.
And there had to be inclined-planes because grading at that time was very rudimentary — it wasn't what it is now.
The State Public Works System was ponderously slow.
Canal-packets had to be lifted onto railway flatcars for portage over the Alleghenies.
It was awful with the inclined-plane railway. The trains of packet-loaded flatcars had to be stopped to do the inclined-planes, where they were pulled up the planes by rope-cable winched by stationary steam-engines.
There were 10 inclined-planes. That's 20 change-outs at the ends of each plane, plus taking the packets out of the canal and putting them back in.
The inclined-plane railway went from near Altoona to Johnstown, PA.
22 stops!
The Pennsylvania Railroad, a private effort by Philadelphia capitalists, put the State Public Works System out of business.
Pennsy was a through railroad; no stops except to add helper locomotives to climb the Alleghenies.
The New Portage Railroad was an effort to address the slow operation of the inclined-plane railway.
No inclined planes. Pennsy bought the moribund Public Works System for a song, retired the canal, and added New Portage's tunnel to its Allegheny crossing.
The New Portage tunnel is very near Pennsy's original tunnel, but slightly higher.
To add New Portage Tunnel to Pennsy's Allegheny crossing they had to ramp up to it, the infamous "Slide," 2.36 percent.
That's 2.36 feet up for every 100 feet forward, although trains are usually only operating downhill on it.
The New Portage alignment on the west slope was right next to Pennsy, so Pennsy just added it when they took over.
But those tracks aim at New Portage Tunnel.
Pennsy also rebuilt the New Portage alignment to the east for additional track over the Alleghenies.
538 is climbing the old New Portage alignment up the west slope toward New Portage Tunnel.
At the summit Track One is in New Portage Tunnel, and Tracks Two and Three are in the original Pennsy tunnel, enlarged in 1995 to clear doublestacks and two tracks.
Track Three used to be in another Pennsy tunnel, abandoned when the original tunnel was enlarged.
The New Portage alignment and the original Pennsy tunnel are on opposite sides of a small mountaintop town: Gallitzin ("guh-LIT-zin;" as in "get").
New Portage Tunnel is actually under "Tunnelhill," a tiny village south of and adjacent to Gallitzin.
The eastbound train on Track Three in the distance is stopped to test brakes before entering the old Pennsy tunnel and descending The Hill on Track Two.
The three tracks at right become one to enter New Portage Tunnel.
538 will also do a brake-test before descending "the Slide" on Track One.
The right-most track, "Main-Eight," is a storage-track for coal-trains before descending The Hill toward Altoona.




1969 Cale Yarborough Mercury Cyclone-Spoiler. (Peter Harholdt©.)

—Now, which do I do? My Oxman Hotrod Calendar has a great photograph of a track Model-T roadster, but it has an engine a bit over-the-top.
But the April 2012 entry of my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar has a really great car, a 1969 Cale Yarborough Mercury Cyclone-Spoiler.
The Spoiler wins! I'll do that track-T later.
The Cale Yarborough Cyclone-Spoiler is one of the greatest musclecars of all time.
And I had forgot about it.
It was a special model of the Cyclone-Spoiler made to satisfy NASCAR's 500-car requirement.
Ergo, not many were made.
It had extended front sheet-metal and a bluff grille to make it more aerodynamic — and therefore faster.
And it really looks great being a fastback too.

Cale Yarborough in front of his Wood Brothers Cyclone Spoiler.

Cale (“kale;” as in the vegetable) Yarborough is a famous NASCAR-driver who drove for various teams.
One of those teams was Wood Brothers, who raced Ford products, like the Mercury Cyclone.
Yarborough raced various car-brands over the years, and one of his best rides was Wood Brothers.
The last I remember, he was racing Chevrolets for Junior Johnson
The Cale Yarborough Cyclone-Spoiler was available with either the 351-cubic- inch Ford Cleveland Small-Block, or the immensely powerful 428 cubic-inch NASCAR V8.
This car is the 428 engine.
Perish-the-thought such a car showed up at a traffic-light versus a G-T-O Pontiac.
It would probably cream it!

The front-end of the calendar-car.

The Wood-Brothers Cyclone Spoiler with its bluff front-end. (Who knows if this car still exists?)

About the only car that might beat a 428 Cyclone-Spoiler would be a Hemi ("hem- eee;" not "he-mee").
This calendar-car doesn't have the bluff grille of the NASCAR racer, which is devoid of scoopiness. The bluff grille turns the front of the car into a knife.




Three Pennsy E-44s lead a mixed freight east from Enola yard in May 1965. (Photo by Dave Sweetland)

—The April 2012 entry of my AII-Pennsy color calendar is what replaced the tired P-5 electric locomotives, the E-44 rectifier units.
Rectification won in the end. Rectification is to rectify the overhead alternating-current trolley-wire electricity into direct-current electricity for the traction-motors. The traction-motors could be the same items used in diesel-electric locomotives, which use gigantic diesel-engines to generate direct-current for traction-motors.

Photo by Dave Ingles.

E-2bs south of Washington, DC.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Northbound Penn-Central E-33s approach Wilmington, DE from the south.

The E-44 succeeded where previous Pennsy experimentals failed.
The E-44 is really a development of the earlier General Electric E-33, a rectifier unit.
The E-44 is also General Electric, as the E-33 was for other railroads, Virginian at first, then sold to New Haven. When New Haven was incorporated into Penn-Central, the E-33s became Penn-Central.
The first E-44s were built with ignitron-tube rectification. Later E-44s had silicon diode rectification, and eventually all E-44s were switched to silicon diode rectification, as it was more reliable and simpler.
Some E-44s were even upgraded to 5,000 horsepower.
That was a traction-motor upgrade, how much power the traction-motors could put to railhead.
E-44s were normally 4,400 horsepower.
Even 4,400 horsepower is a lot for a single locomotive, but an E-44 had six traction-motors, and the power available over the wire was incredible.
You weren't limited by the power-output of the on-board diesel engine, or how large it could be.
The E-2b wasn't a rectifier unit. It was alternating current. There were other Pennsy experimentals that were rectifier units.
But they all failed compared to the tired old P-5s (4-6-4).
The P-5s weren't replaced until the E-44.
Amazingly the electrification on this line has probably been de-energized, and the wire removed.
About all that remains are those lineside poles.
Electrification requires heavy maintenance. Electrification is more costly to operate than diesels.
Electrification makes sense only if there is heavy train-frequency, which there's not.
About the only Pennsy electrifications that remain are the New York City to Washington DC line, and Philadelphia to Harrisburg.
Both are now Amtrak; and the New York City to Washington DC line, part of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, has heavy train-frequency, passenger-trains. Philadelphia to Harrisburg may not make economic sense — not enough train-frequency.
Electrification from Philadelphia to Paoli ("pay-OLE-eee), halfway out, makes sense because electric commuter-trains are on that line. Beyond Paoli they aren't. Freight no longer runs that line like when it was Pennsy.
There was a lot of other Pennsy electrification, but all that has been removed. I used to think electrification was forever — the locomotives would wear out, but the wire would stay up.
The wire too wears out. The locomotive's pantographs ("pant-uh-GRAFF") were sliding on the trolley-wire, wearing thin the wire. In which case a wire-train has to come out and replace the wire.



The motor in this beautiful thing is overkill — a waste.

—The April 2012 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a 1927 Model-T tea-cup roadster modified to look like a Model-T for the race-track.
“Tea-cup” because it’s a Model-T, and the two-seater roadster body looks like a cup.

The front-end of the calendar-car.

The rear-end of the calendar-car.

It has the racer-nose (see at left), that of a racecar. It's also the perfect rear-end (bottom-left).
I've seen these tea-cup roadsters with a tiny pickup bed; enough to carry perhaps a 100-pound bag of sand. Totally unfunctional, and therefore ridiculous-looking to my mind.
What I usually see when it's this rear-end is only a top-part. A bottom has been added that matches the roll of the top part, it looks fantastic!
The yellow color is also fabulous.
About the only thing wrong with this car is the engine, a four-cylinder Offenhauser racecar engine ("off-in-HOUZE-er").
Offenhausers ("Offys") were usually installed in Indianapolis 500 racecars, or racecars for that series.
Smaller Offys were also made for installation in smaller racecars. Sprint-cars or midget-racers.
An Offenhauser racecar engine is certainly worth saving.
But it should be in a racecar.
I hardly think an Offy-powered hotrod would be drivable on the street.
What this gorgeous car needs is a SmallBlock Chevy, or the small Ford V8.
This 270 cubic-inch Offy powered an Indianapolis racecar in the 1969 Indy 500.
I can hardly see it idling at some traffic-light.
The engine was later installed in a Sprint racer.
Offys are double-overhead camshaft with the cylinder-head integral with the engine-block. The entire engine, head and block, is a single casting — probably a bear to machine.
You'd have to machine the valve-seats up from the bottom through the cylinder-bores.
The cylinder-head isn't detachable.
The combustion-chambers couldn't possibly leak through a gasketed cylinder-head/engine-block interface. This engine ran a compression-ratio of 16-to-one. —It's been "downgraded" to 11-to-one. (?????????; 11-to-one is pretty high!)
A recent hot-rodded stock motor might go as high as 10- or 12-to-one. In 1969 the average compression-ratio of a stock motor was perhaps seven- or eight-to-one.
Any higher and you blow a gasket at that interface.
It looks nice — the concept is nice.
That Offy is a good fit in a Model-T.
But for proper enjoyment a hotrod needs to be drivable.
What we have here is a trailer-queen.
"Offy engine; COOL!"
That Sprint-car nose makes the car. It looks great, but driving is out of the question.
Plus the car has to be push-started. (And the auto-tranny had to be modified to do that.)
People used to race "Track-Ts."
But not with an actual Offy racecar engine.
More-than-likely it was a hot-rodded Model-T four-banger.
This car was an actual Track-T racer years ago.
Does it even run on gasoline? Indy-racers ran on methanol.



Crew-members take in the breeze as a B-6sb switcher backs across State Route 49 in Millville, NJ in the late '40s.

—This picture is not that good, but it's the world I was born into.
The April 2012 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a Pennsylvania Railroad B-6sb (0-6-0) switcher backing light across a state highway in Millville, NJ on the Pennsylvania-Reading ("RED-ing," not "READ-ing") Seashore Lines.
"Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines" (PRSL) is an amalgamation of Pennsylvania and Reading railroad-lines in south Jersey to counter the fact the two railroads had too much parallel track. It was promulgated in 1933. It serviced mainly the Jersey seashore from Philadelphia.
The tender is slope-back, made that way so the engineer could see backing up.
A yard-switcher didn't need the water-capacity of a road-locomotive. It was never far from a standpipe.
The B-6 0-6-0 is the largest switcher Pennsy used in quantity. They did an 0-8-0, but mostly used old 2-8-0 Consolidations to do yard switching.
This switcher is being used on a local, drilling freightcars into factory sidings. The line to Millville is a remnant or branch of the West Jersey & Seashore to Atlantic City from Camden, NJ, across the river from Philadelphia.
West Jersey & Seashore was eventually merged by Pennsy. The segment to Atlantic City was abandoned. Who knows if this line to Millville still exists?
It probably doesn't, unless Millville has a coal-fired electric generating plant.
Whatever freight remains probably ships by truck. New Jersey built an extensive highway-system that put railroad local-freight out of business.
I saw steam-powered local-freights as a child, but usually a 2-8-0 Consolidation.
Short trains with a coal-car or two in the consist would come out to Haddonfield ("ha-din-field;" as in "hah"), the Revolutionary War town south of the suburb where we lived. They drilled loaded coal-cars into the local coal-dealer, who had an elevated coal-trestle siding.
The hopper-cars would get drained into dump-trucks below between the trestle-legs.
By then, heating with coal was just about done. I remember only one house in our neighborhood heated with coal.
A dump-truck loaded with coal would empty its load into the house basement through a coal-chute.
Our elementary-school, built in 1926, had a coal-chute, but its heating-boilers were converted to fuel-oil.
(That elementary-school has since been torn down, including an addition built in 1952 to accommodate the postwar baby-boom.)
My paternal grandparents’ house in Camden also had a coal-chute, but was heated by fuel-oil.
When I was growing up our house was heated by fuel-oil.
The house we currently live in is natural-gas, forced air.
When I was growing up our fuel-oil furnace heated water piped to radiators.
But it wasn't steam-heat.
it was just hot water; it was also our hot-water source.
Heating with coal was dirty, and it left ashes.
I don't think that coal-dealer lasted the entirety of my childhood.
This switcher is chuffing at 10 mph, the railroad speed-limit in Millville.
It's an image I remember all too well. A B6 switcher with a short cut of cars trundling a transfer from yards in south Camden to north Camden.
And I don't remember any slope-back tenders out to Haddonfield.
And how about that '41 Chevy, one of the most popular used cars of all time?
(The others were the '57 and '64, both Chevrolets.)
My parents had a '41 Chevy, although the first car I remember is a '39 Chevy.
The '41, in excellent shape when we bought it about 1949, replaced the '39 when it broke its timing-chain, giving up the ghost. Pistons hit open valves, severely damaging the engine.
That ’41 went to Arkansas a few times, and overheated once on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
My father removed the thermostat (a bad move), and replaced its gasket with a cutout from a Ritz cracker-box.
The radiator had to be boiled out.
The '41 lasted a while, but was replaced by a '53 in 1954. That was the car I learned to drive in. It was also our first car with turn-signals and an automatic transmission — PowerGlide.
We had both the '39 and '41 at first, a two-car family. Both cars were old turkeys — it was the early ‘50s.
The ’41 fit in our garage, but by the middle ‘50s cars became too large to fit garages.
My memory is of giant rear fins sticking out of a garage, and the garage-door partially closed.
For example, the ’57 Plymouth.



Mixed-freight leaves Enola yard for Knoxville. (Photo by Bruce Kerr.)

—The April 2012 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees' Photography-Contest calendar is a nice picture, but not that interesting. Enola is the yard across from Harrisburg, PA ("ay-NOLE-uh;" as in "hey").
Enola was put in years ago by the Pennsylvania Railroad to yard freight for the northeast and west. Harrisburg became a bottleneck, so freight was routed across the river (the Susquehanna — "suss-kwe-HANN-uh;" as in "and").
This photograph is a manifestation of the old saw between photographers that every photograph needs (likes) a foreground, that a photograph needs something to give the viewer perspective.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Amtrak approaches Newark, DE station at well over 100 mph on the Northeast Corridor.

l've done it myself. Used an underpass to give an image a frame.
I got fevered rage from my blowhard-brother-in-Boston, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, that the photograph was stupid, that I made the mistake of not walking forward to cut out the bridge.
Well, my eye said I could use the bridge as a foreground. The fact I had the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to instruct my macho all-knowing brother about color balance, and setting up photos to avoid telephone-poles coming out of people's heads, was Of-the-Devil.
We used to get this at the Messenger newspaper. Somebody might photograph a basketball-game, and in the picture everyone was running to the right.
Such a photograph had to be on a left page to avoid the players running off the page.
I doubt anyone noticed — our readers weren't art-critics. More important to me was good photography.
We had sports-photographers that could do that.
But if an unnoticed water-tower is in the photograph it can distract from your subject.
The camera will see what your eye doesn't notice.
Eons ago I photographed a '56 Chevy Nomad for a guy.

1956 Chevrolet Nomad.

At that time the Nomad was a specially-styled version of the Chevrolet two-door station wagon.
Before shooting its interior, I centered its steering-wheel.
What a revelation that was.
Yes, an uncentered steering-wheel always looked weird.
So this picture has a foreground, but I don't think it works.
The tree is too dominant, and beyond that the tree is a big dark mass.
I offset that some by lightening the shadows of my scan of this calendar-photo with my Photoshop®.
But the calendar-print doesn't have that. It's a gigantic dark mass. The tree frames the train, but the train is too far away.
The old adage about foreground failed. The tree is too dominant.
I suppose an offset would be standing back and using strong telephoto.



Naval Air Factory N3N Canary. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The April 2012 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is Naval Air Factory N3N Canary biplane trainer ("BYE-plane;" since long ago I was mispronouncing it "BIP-lane")
I'll let my WWII warbirds site describe it:
"The N3N was the last biplane to see service with the United States.
Built by the Naval Air Factory, a Navy-run manufacturing complex, it was produced to replace the Consolidated NY-2s and -3s operated in the 1920s.
The N3N would be the last mass-produced aircraft built by the Naval Air Factory.
The N3N was an equal span, metal and fabric biplane. One version was built with wheels and another as a floatplane with center float and wing mounted stabilizing floats. The prototype, the NAF XNN-1 was flown in August of 1935.
The US Naval Academy kept some N3N floatplanes after the war, but the rest were sold as surplus."
The N3N is powered by a 235-horsepower Wright R-760-2 Whirlwind 7-cylinder radial piston engine.
Yrs Trly has never liked biplanes.
They're hardly the elegant hotrods the Mustang and Spitfire were. They are also nothing compared to a Corsair or even a Hellcat.
Even the lowly Douglas Dauntless comes off better.

Douglas SBD Dauntless.

The Dauntless was a slow turkey, but more attractive than an airplane with two wings.
A biplane could be a forgiving trainer, but a monoplane (one wing) was more attractive, even a P-40 Warhawk.
You don't boom-and-zoom in a biplane.

Whisper-quiet!

Photo by BobbaLew.

Whisper-quiet.

Our supposedly whisper-quiet standby generator was merrily roaring away beneath our bedroom window as we went to bed last night.
It’s not as loud as some of the macho Harleys that blast our 40-mph road at 80-plus if they can crank it.
Their riders loudly blatting defiance at the surrounding countryside.
The crotch-rockets get 100 or so, usually wheelstanding.
A tight curve is north of our house. It’s posted for 15 mph.
A crotch-rocket might do it at 40-50 plus leaned over at a 40-50 degree angle to the pavement.
I can’t do that.
I’m 68 years old. I can’t race.
What I worry about is pebbles in the curve.
I lost it on pebbles once. That was an earlier motorcycle. I dumped it; tore my pants.
After the curve is a long uphill straight past our house, so everyone wicks it up. Pedal-to-the-metal!
Our standby generator kicks on if the electricity fails.
It’s an internal-combustion engine fueled by natural-gas.
It doesn’t power the whole house, but nearly.
It doesn’t push our bedroom or laundry-room or air-conditioning.
Nor does it power our dishwasher, apparently.
But it does push our furnace and water-heater, both of which need electricity.
It also pushes our freezer and refrigerator.
Also our computers and garage-door opener.
That garage-door opener was an absolute necessity.
The garage-door is gigantic, eight-foot high by 17 or more feet wide.
It’s so heavy it takes two to open it manually.
Our builder wanted to install two eight-by-eight garage-doors.
I refused.
I knew an eight-foot wide garage-door wouldn’t clear my Ford E250 Econoline van.
It would clout the outside rearview mirrors.
I’d be changing the van’s oil outside in the snow, just like our old house in Rochester.
Our standby is the same as our neighbor’s.
We got it because we were at war with him.
What matters is cylinder-count. Our standby is a one-liter V-twin.
It also seemed like a good idea.
The electricity fails fairly often out here in the country.
We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western New York, southeast of Rochester.
Usually what takes out the power is thunderstorms or blizzards.
Years ago an ice-storm took out our electricity for almost a week.
No standby then. We were operating on flashlights.
And at that time our furnace needed electricity, but our water-heater didn’t.
We had hot water, but the temperature inside our superinsulated house dropped to 50 degrees.
Our standby pauses 30 seconds before kicking on after a power-failure.
That’s enough time for our DVR to lose its settings, so we have that on backup-battery.
We were calmly watching our recorded news, when suddenly we were plunged into darkness.
Our TV and DVR remained on, on the backup-battery.
30 seconds passed, the standby kicked on, and we had lights again.
That was about 8 p.m.
Our neighbor across-the-street, the one with the first standby, called about 10 p.m.
“I see your lights are on, so ya haven’t gone to bed.”
“They’re being pushed by our ‘whisper-quiet’ standby. And I gotta listen to that thing in bed.”
This is our neighbor’s son. Our original neighbors are both gone. They’re the ones who installed their standby, and were in their 90s.
“Somebody take out a power-pole?” our neighbor asked.
There was no other reason for the electricity-failure, no thunderstorms or torrid weather.
The power-failure also took out our Internet. Apparently the nearby substation is on the same circuit as our house.
But it seemed they too had a backup generator. Last time the electricity failed to our house the Internet didn’t.
And apparently our backup battery is not satisfied with our standby’s output.
It stays on battery-backup when our standby is on.
The TV and DVR eventually failed when the battery ran out, perhaps 20 minutes.
Now I gotta completely set up the DVR again. —It lost all its settings.
Finally about 10:30, lights out, our standby blasting away.
I covered both my ears, and fell asleep, but apparently our electricity returned by 11 p.m.
I was able to operate our dishwasher.

• A “DVR” (digital-video-recorder), like a VCR, records television video on a rewritable DVD disc.
• RE: “Our computers.......” —We each have our own computer, my wife a PC, and me a MAC.
• Our “superinsulated house” has foot-thick exterior walls filled with insulation. There also is a lot of blown insulation above the ceiling.

Into the ozone

—1) I have instituted e-mail billing with our electric utility: National Grid.
They send me an e-mail notification my monthly electric-bill is available for viewing. Give ‘em a break. They avoid postage and printing costs; my paper is used to print the bill.
I instituted this three months ago, and every month since has been an incredible hairball.
The other night I gave up. Viewing the bill was impossible.
We got a “contact-us” e-mail link, and I sent the following e-mail:
“Your e-mail gives me an amount and due-date, so I will authorize a bill-pay from my bank.
But I have yet to view the bill!
I found the ‘view-bill’ link, but it wants me to log in.
Snail-mail billing doesn’t require that.
Logging in bombed, of course; and it wanted me to set up a ‘user-profile.’
WHAT? All I wanna do is pay the bill.
Snail-mail never wanted a user-profile.
I tried setting that up at least four times, and it bombed every time.
E-mail billing takes me way too long.
Spare us the instructions on logging-in, or setting up a user-profile.
Take us back to snail-mail billing.
Paying the snail-mail bill takes me 5-10 minutes; e-mail billing blows about two hours.
I can’t afford that.”
Whaddya wanna bet I get a response telling me how to log-in, and/or set up a user-profile.
Again: “Spare us the instructions on logging-in, or setting up a user-profile.
Take us back to snail-mail billing.”
In other words, I’ve already tried setting up a user-profile, and every time it bombs.
None of this insanity accompanied my snail-mail bill.
—2) Our cleaning-lady was done the other day (Thursday, March 29, 2012), and about to leave.
20 smackaroos, which we didn’t have, so we had to write a check.
“Hand-write the check or your new Quicken?” my wife asked.
“I could try,” I answered.
My wife explained our new Quicken is throwing hairballs.
I fired up my new Quicken. —My old Quicken no longer prints checks. Long story.
“Write check,” I click on the menu-bar.
There’s the “write-check” dialog window.
I entered our cleaning-lady’s name, and the $20.
So far, so good.
But I forgot to enter the date, so the check was on the register at the wrong location with the wrong date (March 29).
So, “edit check.”
I changed the date, but what’s this?
My Social-Security deposit has become 3/29 instead of 3/13 (the date it was posted).
“Oh well, I can fix that later,” I thought.
Another try at editing our cleaning-lady’s check.
This time an uncleared gift-check written last Christmas jumped into the register four times, madly deducting its amount each time.
“I give up,” I shouted. “Hand-write the check!”
I now had to correct my Quicken register; make it agree with reality.
I deleted the extra Christmas checks, and corrected the erroneous transaction-date on my Social-Security electronic-fund-transfer.
Doing so burned up at least an hour of frenzied trial-and-error.
Strange unknowable anomalies were taking over and throwing things into the ozone.
By then our cleaning-lady was long gone with a hand-written check.
This stuff is “user-friendly?” Why does it take a computer techno-maven to do anything?
My old Quicken, and our snail-mail electric-bill, were “user-friendly.”

• “Snail-mail” is of course the U.S. Postal Service.