Monthly Calendar-Report for January 2013

Eastbound mixed-freight on Track One charges CP-W. (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

— The January 2013 entry of my own calendar is from my first trip to Allegheny-Crossing since my wife died.
It was probably too early. It was in June of last year, and my wife died in April.
When everything started going wrong, I was in no condition to cope.
The biggest problem was my camera failing.
When it did, I got extremely depressed. I was 250 miles from repair, looking at the need for repair.
I already had a lawnmower back home that was throwing me hairballs.
I had to farm out repair of that.
And trying to explain what was wrong with my camera with speech slightly compromised by my long-ago stroke, plus the distraction and sorrow of my wife dying, made it difficult to cope.
My thought was to do things to distract from my wife dying.
I attended a wedding in northern Delaware, and made this trip to Allegheny-Crossing.
Nothing worked. The sorrow was too powerful.
I had no confidence at all — I still don’t have much.
Back then I’d say I was about 10 percent of what I was. Now I’m perhaps 40-50 percent — which is still a long way from 100 percent.
When everything started going wrong down in Altoona, it was if my entire world crashed mightily in flames.
First my own camera died.
We borrowed the camera of my bed-and-breakfast proprietor, which was the same brand as mine, and similar to mine.
It too seemed to fail.
Then it started raining, hard.
The whole point of these sojourns to Altoona is to take train-pictures.
It seemed everything was crashing in flames.
But I did get a few pictures before my camera failed, and this is one.
It’s train 10G, a mixed-freight, charging toward us eastbound on Track One at CP-W (checkpoint W) just north (railroad east) of South Fork.
CP-W is where there used to be a flyover into South Fork.
A secondary comes into the main from the east at South Fork. It switches onto the main up at CP-W, north of South Fork.
The flyover, now gone, was over the west and eastbound tracks, so a train going into South Fork could avoid blocking the main.
Pennsy did this; they could afford to — plus they couldn’t afford to block the massive flow of traffic, especially eastbound. Flyovers galore to avoid blocking the mainline.
Like the flyover at CP-W, most are long-gone.
All that remains are stone abutments almost hidden in shrubbery.
I used a strong telephoto to avoid sky. The picture was already in my head. The dark greenery is in the background, and sunlight illuminates the locomotive-nose.
My failed camera, a Nikon D100, now probably over 10 years old, has since been replaced. I still have it. I never repaired it.
I upgraded to a new Nikon D7000 camera-body; it uses the same lenses as the D100.
I wanted to upgrade, and now I had an excuse. Plus the D7000 camera-body didn’t cost that much.

P-51 Mustang. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—Another Mustang! The WWII warbird everyone venerates.
It happens to be gorgeous and a hotrod.

Photo by Philip Makanna©.

Last month’s Ghosts photograph.

Last month’s Ghosts photograph, December 2012, was also a Mustang, but not in American colors. It’s Royal New Zealand Air Force; okay, but not as gorgeous as American colors.
I particularly note the cockpit canopy of this calendar Mustang.
It’s not that of the earliest Mustangs, nor is it the full bubble canopy of the later Mustangs.
It’s an arrangement I’ve never noticed before. Somewhat a bubble canopy, but not entirely.
I prefer the full bubble canopy as on the New Zealand Mustang.
But no matter; as always, Mustang shines through. It’s a gorgeous airplane, la creme de la creme.
The Mustang’s a tail-dragger. Its long nose blocks forward vision when taxiing.
You have to yaw side-to-side to see where you’re going.

Dashing through the snow. (Photo by Chris Dalton.)

—None of this month’s calendar-pictures are extraordinary, except perhaps the Mustang, and that of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar, a shot of a Norfolk Southern freight in the snow on the old Norfolk & Western main through West Virginia.
It’s a rule I quickly learned for my own calendar. January, February and December should be snow-pictures, although I’m out of good snow-pictures.
But that’s what we have here.
I have quite a few snow-pictures, but not many good enough to be calendar-pictures.

Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.

My 2012 Christmas-card image.

I was talking to someone the other day. She had just received my Christmas-card, a snow-picture (at left) from a previous calendar.
“You take really great pictures,” she told me.
“Sometimes yes,” I said. “Although I just shoot and see what I get.”
What I have is the eye to recognize a good picture.
I exercise the composition to snag a good photograph. I can visualize if my composition will work, although often it doesn’t.
Most of the time I just shoot and see what I get.
After which my eye tells me if I got a good one.
There are compositional rules I apply, but they don’t supersede “just shoot, and see what I get.”
My own calendar-picture is an example of using composition.
I had already visualized what I’d get if I used strong telephoto to cut out the sky.
The darkened greenery becomes the background, with the locomotive-nose strongly illuminated by sunlight.
It worked fairly well.
The old Norfolk & Western main had to be heavily fiddled to accommodate doublestacks.
It had many tunnels, and doublestacks require lots of vertical clearance, more than those tunnels could provide.
But Norfolk Southern, probably in concert with state authorities, took on the project, the so-called “Heartland Project.”
Fiddling the line to clear doublestacks, notching tunnel-linings, etc. Often the floor of a tunnel is lowered.
I’ve seen this myself.
The old New York Central line through Rochester does a dip under a pedestrian overpass.
Apparently the bridge couldn’t be removed, but doublestacked van containers would have hit.
So the tracks were lowered.
It’s a drop in elevation of a few feet, and very gradual. Perhaps over a mile.
The railroads, with various state authorities, have spent a lot to get railroad-lines up to doublestack standards.
Tunnels had to be enlarged on the old Pennsylvania Railroad.
The tunnel at the summit of the Alleghenies had to be entirely rebuilt — enlargement.
It was the same tunnel-bore as originally built; first two tracks, then down to one, and now back up to two with enlargement.
All because Philadelphia didn’t wanna lose out on trade that would ship doublestack.
(The original tunnel-bore wouldn’t clear doublestacks.)
Which was why the original Pennsylvania Railroad was built in the first place. To negate gravitation of 19th-century ocean-trade to New York City and it’s Erie Canal.
The State of Pennsylvania built a canal-system to compete with the Erie, but it was cumbersome and slow. It had the Alleghenies problem, which couldn’t be canaled.
A portage railroad was built over the Alleghenies, but that required transloading canal-packets to railroad cars, a slow process. (It wasn’t through.)
Plus the original portage railroad had grading difficulty. It couldn’t be a through continuous railroad; grading was so rudimentary at that time the portage railroad had to include inclined-planes, inoperable by railroad-trains, so steep they had to be winched up with ropes.
Plus the state system couldn’t operate in winter when the canals froze.
So private Philadelphia capitalists founded the Pennsylvania Railroad, mainly because the state system was so difficult.
—They also were taking advantage of new technology not available 30 years earlier.
Locomotive #9739 is a General-Electric Dash 9-40CW. “C” meaning three-axle trucks (six driven wheels), “W” meaning wide-nose as opposed to narrow-nose, and “40” meaning 4,000 horsepower.
The Dash 9-40CW is a special application for Norfolk Southern, downrating the standard Dash 9-44CW from 4,400 horsepower to 4,000.
The idea is to reduce stress on the diesel-engine so it lasts longer.
Although 9739 is one of a series of locomotives that can generate 4,400 horsepower when called for.
The old Norfolk & Western was coal-oriented. It shipped rivers of coal from the Pocahontas coal-region to ocean ports in Norfolk, VA.
But now the line has been configured to move doublestacks. I’m sure it’s still transporting lots of coal, but it’s also moving inbound imports in doublestacked van-containers.
The old Pennsy is doing the same thing. Traffic used to be essentially eastbound, but now it’s westbound too. (The old Pennsy is now Norfolk Southern.)

Not bad for a ’33 Ford.

—The January 2013 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a 1933 Ford roadster.
It looks nice despite not being a ’32 or ’34, the Fords hot-rodders always gravitated toward. (I prefer the ’32.)
The ’33 Ford was always a backwater car. It looks much like the ’34, but not as attractive. The ’34 had a grill-surround that looked better.
Beyond that this car is ersatz. It’s assembled from non-stock parts. The body and frame are not factory. It’s almost what you have to do today to build a new hotrod.
The factory stuff is all taken, unless you stumble across something in a barn — good luck with that; that barn was already emptied.
I’m kind of amazed the reproducers would even field ’33 parts. ’33 Fords never attracted.
Yet we have a nice car here; except it makes the mistake of stripping off the fenders. Without fenders the grill becomes too dominant.
But at least it’s not a fiberglass body. How many flimsy fiberglass reproductions were never finished, or tossed.
Being a kit hotrod, it can have modern components.
It has a modern injected Ford V8, and disc-brakes.
But it’s still an antique; open and frightening.
I saw a ’34 Ford sedan once at a car-show. The owner bragged about it having no safety-equipment, yet he felt safer at 85 mph in that bucket-of-bolts than a safety-equipped modern car.
NOT THIS KID!

That caboose is gonna boom-and-zoom! (Photo by Mel Swansick.)

—The January 2013 entry of my All-Pennsy color calendar is three GG1 (“Jee-Jee-ONE;” I only say that because a friend was mispronouncing it “Jee-Jee-Eye”) motors being transferred light in a power-move from Jersey City, possibly to Philadelphia.
Anyone who has followed this blog knows I think Pennsy’s GG1 electric is the greatest locomotive of all time.
Not only were they gorgeous, they lasted forever, almost 20 years longer than average.
These GG1s are being transferred light (unloaded) in a power-move.
As was common back then, a caboose is tied to their tail.
Soon these GG1s will be approaching or hitting 100 mph. Jersey City south has a lotta straight track where trains could boom-and-zoom.
We have here the single-stripe paint scheme that replaced the earlier five-stripe “cat-whisker” paint-scheme pioneered by industrial-designer Raymond Loewy.

Photo by Tom Hughes (my nephew).

The five-stripe “cat-whisker” scheme.

A Penn-Central GG1.

Photo by Joe Szarmach.

A stripeless Amtrak GG1 rusting away at Leatherstocking Railway Museum, Cooperstown Junction, NY. (There were striped Amtrak GG1s, silver with a red stripe; the stripe followed the Loewy lines.)

People poo-poo the single-stripe scheme, but I think it still looked fine. It was following Loewy’s lines.
When that stripe was ended in later repaints under Penn-Central, the GG1s were painted black with no stripe. —Which looked horrible.




















Z16. (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)

—The January 2013 entry of my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar is a car I’m not familiar with, a 1965 Z16 Chevelle.
Z16 as in Z-28. Z16 being the option-number. Z28 was the option-number for the package that became the Camaro Trans-Am racer. Car & Driver magazine convinced Chevrolet to just call it the Z-28.
The Z16 was Chevrolet’s first attempt to counter the phenomenal success of the Pontiac G-T-O; a Chevelle with the motor of a full-size Chevrolet.
It had the Chevrolet Big-Block, 396 cubic inches, 375 horsepower. The Big-Block is Chevrolet’s truck-engine. Chevrolet had an earlier truck-engine, the 348, hogged out in 1961 to 409 cubic-inches.
I don’t think the 409 cubic-inch displacement was ever used in trucks.
As the ‘60s advanced, Chevrolet decided to produce a better truck-engine, the Big-Block.
Like the 348 (and 409) the Big-Block was hot-rodded and installed in cars for drag-racing and track-racing.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Not my brother’s car, but similar (same color). —A 1971 454 SS Chevelle.

The Big-Block was enlarged for later years, up to 454 stock cubic-inches displacement. My brother-in-Boston has a 1971 454 Chevelle SS. (Like at left —I drove it once; it was almost terrifying.)
The biggest problem with the Z16 was getting its lightly-loaded rear tires, its driven tires, to hook up.
The SmallBlock Chevelle made more sense, but it wasn’t the killer Big-Block.
It was the same formula as Pontiac’s G-T-O, the motor from a full-size car in a smaller intermediate sedan. That is, the G-T-O was the full-size 389 cubic-inch motor in the Tempest intermediate sedan.
And that 389 was hot-rodded, as is Chevrolet’s 396 at 375 horsepower.
Only 201 Z16s were built.
All were coupe hardtops like pictured; one convertible Z16.
Chevrolet’s Big-Block intermediates didn’t get really rolling until later, and by then everyone was cashing in on the G-T-O concept, even Buick and Oldsmobile.
And the G-T-O concept didn’t do that well as a sportscar, as it pretended to be.
Except for American highways; straight-line performance.
Throw a curvy rural byway at it, and a BMW 2002 could beat it.
Give it the open highway, and it would be all over that 2002.
By 1965 I was no longer interested in Detroit cars, not even the Pontiac G-T-O.
My sister’s first husband had a Tempest convertible, but it wasn’t a G-T-O. It’s motor was only the 326 cubic-inch V8. I was continually bad-mouthing him for not buying a G-T-O.

“Salude-salude!” (Photo courtesy: Mitch Dakelman Collection©.)

—It’s like my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar has taken a hit.
Audio-Visual Designs lost its long-time printer, so there almost wasn’t a calendar.
The calendar is similar, same size, same format. But previously the calendar-pages were hung from a coiled wire. Now it’s just bound and stapled.
Pages have to be torn off. It used to be they could just be flipped.
The Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar faltered some time ago.
It used to be the December entry was always color. It hasn’t been for years. This is no great loss. There was a shortage of color Pennsy photography from the ‘50s. The color-picture was often stupid.
The January 2013 entry is a Pennsy M-1 4-8-2 getting a salute from a yard-worker in Enola Yard (“aye-NOLE-uh;” as in “hey”).

An initial T-1 experimental.

Pennsy never had a 4-8-4, although the T-1 was sort of a 4-8-4 at 4-4-4-4.
The drivers were on a solid frame like a 4-8-4. But it was duplex; four cylinders instead of just two.
But the T-1 wasn’t a freight-engine. Plus with such a long driver-wheelbase, it had difficulty negotiating curved track. It wasn’t articulated.
Fast-freight fell to the 4-8-2 Mountains, which did well at it.
The M-1 was big and powerful. With its combustion-chamber it could keep up with steam-demand.
The M-1 Mountain was Pennsy’s first application of the combustion-chamber. The massive 2-10-0 Decapod didn’t have one.
The M-1 shone on Pennsy’s Middle Division, the long uphill climb from Harrisburg to Altoona and the Allegheny Mountains, which need additional locomotives = helpers.
Although the Middle Division wasn’t steep. It was gradual and long. The M-1s did well on it.
The M-1 depicted will probably soon be assigned to pull a fast-freight west on the Middle Division to Altoona. For years Enola was the marshaling-yard where freight west from Philadelphia and the east coast was yarded to continue west.
Enola, across the Susquehanna (“suss-kwee-HAH-nuh”) River from Harrisburg, replaced yarding in Harrisburg, which became too congested.
Although the sunlight tells me this M-1 probably just came east from Altoona with a fast-freight into Enola.

1943 painting by Dean Cornwall.

In WWII propaganda Uncle Sam was shown muscling up for the war-effort. Pennsy’s M-1 Mountain was shown passing a trainload of tanks, roaring steel-factories staining the sky in the background.
Both Pittsburgh and Johnstown on Pennsy were steel-towns.
Too bad this calendar-picture isn’t color. That keystone number-plate on the smokebox-front is red.

THUD!

Every once-in-a-while I get a telephone-call from someone wanting to speak to my wife Linda.
I got one of these the other day — probably Thursday, December 27th, 2012.
“This is CVS Caremark,” the girl bubbled. “I need to speak to Linda Hughes.”
“Well, you won’t find here here any more,” I said. “She died some time ago.”
THUD!
“Oh, I’m deeply sorry. I’m sorry I called.”
It’s a response I’ve heard hundreds of times.
Telephone-training apparently doesn’t cover what to say if a client died.
CVS Caremark was my wife’s prescription coverage. It claimed to be as good as Medicare Part-D, but wasn’t.
“I need to know the date of her death so I can get her out of our records.”
“Will that actually happen?” I asked. “Seems I tried earlier, yet here you are calling me.”
“Yes, and I’m deeply sorry I called. That I reminded you of it.”
I wasn’t getting pre-programmed responses.
The script doesn’t cover death of a client.
Funny, reporting my wife died seems to always hit the caller in the solar plexus.
All-of-a-sudden real responses, instead of coached or from a prompt-sheet.

“Getting a life”

Dr. Shirley A. Mullen.

I’ve never been able to warm up to Shirley Mullen, the current president of my alma-mater, Houghton College (“HO-tin;” not “how” or “who”) in western New York.
Mullen succeeded Daniel Chamberlain, who more-or-less succeeded Steve Paine, who was college-president when I was at Houghton.
Chamberlain didn’t actually succeed Paine. That was Wilbur Dayton, but he only lasted a few years.
Paine was a class act, sort of a jerk, but juggling an incredible balancing-act of a strident fundamentalist Board of Trustees versus the needs of the college.

Dr. Steven W. Paine.

Houghton is a religious college, and could be ridiculous.
When I was there, television was of-the-Devil. We weren’t even allowed to view President Kennedy’s funeral-parade after he was assassinated.
It was almost as if Kennedy got what he deserved.
The Board of Trustees wanted to continue requiring chapel attendance, which made it impossible for Houghton to participate in the Nation-Defense Student-Loan program.
Yet Paine saw the value of NDSL, so negated requiring chapel attendance.
I hope I have this right. I know chapel attendance wasn’t required, and I don’t think NDSL could fund religious institutions that required chapel attendance.
Without NDSL Houghton might have foundered.
My college-degree is compliments of the Nation-Defense Student-Loan program.
Nearby is Lima Christian (“LYE-muh;” not “LEE-muh”), and it looks like what Houghton could have become.
Little-used buildings gone fallow. It looks like it could have become a college.

Dr. Daniel Chamberlain.

I never felt serious about Chamberlain. He was a joke! For the college’s 100th birthday in 1983 he jumped out of a large imitation cake.
Paine would have never done that.
So now we have Shirley Mullen, a 1976 graduate of Houghton.
I can imagine Paine spinning in his grave.
She’s not Paine, but not as questionable as Chamberlain, and not quickly crashing like Wilbur Dayton.
And she said something that rang a bell with me.
“The culture tells us that education is about getting a job. At Houghton education is about getting a life.” (My underlining.)
Granted, she went on to praise the value of a Christian education, but “getting a life” is why I value my time at Houghton.
I’ve never regretted attending Houghton. It was the first time adult authority-figures valued me. At Houghton I was no longer of-the-Devil.
It was the professors. They weren’t elitist. They valued my input.
They wanted me in their classes for that.....
For once my opinions weren’t automatically badmouthed as rebellious or of-the-Devil.
My opinions were no longer perceived as a threat to social order; I had a point.
And so it’s been ever since I graduated.
Houghton left its mark; it gave me “a life.”
I’ve met any number of Houghton-grads since graduating myself, and they all seem to have the same values: caring about things, a legacy of Houghton professors not being elitists, and caring about us.
My Houghton degree counted for little. It never landed me a supreme job.
But I graduated Houghton with “a life.”

Holed up

Out my porch-door. (The snow at right as atop a railing; visible in the rear is the opening to my dog-house.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)

A massive snowstorm blew through our area last night (Wednesday, December 26th, 2012) dumping at least 16 inches.
I am essentially snowed in; first time since my wife died. She died eight months ago in April.
I’m not too worried, although I seemed to be a while ago.
But it seemed a grief-effect.
Now that I’m snowed in, I’m not too worried.
It seems about the same as when there were two of us, a fairly massive storm, but manageable.
I have a large snowblower, and I’ll have to blow my driveway out before I can drive anywhere.
Once out, the roads look reasonable.
I happened to gas up both cars yesterday before the storm.
And I also happened to buy the groceries I’d need until Saturday, and I’d like to think I’ll be out by then.
I’ll have to shovel out doors and gates first. Everything is snowed in.
But my garage-door opens vertically. Once open I can get out to shovel.
And I don’t see any problem in what little shoveling I’d have to do. I work out at the YMCA. My only limit to shoveling is cold.
After that, the wondrous merits of the internal-combustion engine.
But again, my limit is always cold.
My driveway has always been two snowblower sessions. I get cold, and have to stop. Plus snow often blows back over me.
Plus the snow-berm at the end of my driveway thrown up by the highway plows may be unblowable.
In which case I’d call in the heavy weaponry, the guy that plows out my aging neighbor’s driveway with a 4x4 pickup.
During the early ‘90s we had a giant blizzard that piled up a 12-foot snow-berm at the end of my driveway. We shoveled that — no snowblower then — but I was younger, plus there were two of us.
Now I am alone, but I feel alone every morning, massive snowstorm or not.

• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. Like me she was 68. I miss her dearly.

“All days are tough”

Yesterday morning (Tuesday, December 25th, 2012, Christmas-Day) I took my dog to nearby Boughton Park (“BOW-tin;” as in “wow,” not “boh” or “boo”).
The dog loves it. Smells galore, and lots of deer-pucky to eat. It’s a gigantic wooded park.
Every morning I get harassed by my dog wanting me to take her to Boughton Park.
I have to leash her there, lest she get lost chasing a deer — it’s happened.
Our walk is about four miles, and during it we came upon “Bailey,” a rescue-mutt owned by a park regular.
The lady who owns Bailey knows my circumstances, that my wife died over eight months ago.
Yet my dog and Bailey don’t see eye-to-eye. Encounter Bailey, and I have to get past without a Mexican standoff.
This happens with every dog I meet. My dog is not that unfriendly, but can be.
I don’t think she’s ever bit, but she snaps.
For whatever reason she always snaps at Bailey, and that’s despite his deer-in-the-headlights look.
I don’t want my dog terrorizing Bailey.
“This is your first Christmas without your wife,” Bailey’s owner said.
SNAP! “Let’s go you monster!” I had to keep going.
Returning down the path I encountered Bailey again coming back up the path.
Knowing the possibility of another Mexican standoff, Bailey’s owner took him off to the side.
As I passed, “There’s one thing you should know,” I said to her.
“Christmas won’t be that tough. All days are tough.”

• My current dog is “Scarlett” (two “Ts,” as in Scarlett O’Hara), a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s seven, and is my sixth Irish-Setter, a high-energy dog. (A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. abusive or a puppy-mill. [Scarlett was from a failed backyard breeder.] By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up. —Scarlett isn't bad. She’s my fourth rescue.)
• Boughton Park is a fairly-large town park in East Bloomfield where I walk my dog. I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.

Finally

Houghton College (“HO-tin;” not “who” or “how”), my alma mater, where I met my beloved wife 46 long years ago, has finally published an obituary in its magazine of her sad passing.
My wife of 44 years died April 17th of this year, after a five-year battle with cancer.
It was up-and-down. Sometimes it seemed like she was in remission, but the cancer always came back. It was cancer of the lymph-nodes, although she also developed breast-cancer treating the lymphoma. Lymphoma-treatment lowers your immune-system.
Which is why we couldn’t do trials. Only a single cancer qualifies.
We tried various chemos. Only one worked, and it was the most toxic.
We had to stop using it for fear of causing heart-damage.
With that the lymphoma killed her.
I think the college’s magazine publishes every six months. Which means there was probably a Spring-Summer issue in June.
Since she was an alumni, I apprised them almost immediately, yet there was no obituary in the June issue.
A friend rightly suggested they weren’t a newspaper, like where I once worked, beholden to that day’s events.
“Give ‘em time,” he said. “It’ll probably be in the next issue.”
My wife, like me, was Class of ’66.
Apparently she chased me the whole time I was at Houghton, but I didn’t become aware of it until my Senior year.
After graduating we stayed in contact, and I moved up to Rochester (NY) to be near her.
We eventually married, although both of us feared the decision; she beforehand, me afterward.

Photo by BobbaLew.

My beloved wife Linda (this is over 40 years ago, but the image of her always in my head).

I used to tell her I coulda done a lot worse — that I got an exceptionally good one. She wasn’t smashingly attractive, but attractive enough; that is, not ugly or gross.
Nineteen years ago I had a stroke, which debilitated me. She sprang into action, taking care of me.
I have since pretty much recovered.
When our roles reversed with her cancer, I sprang into action myself. —I couldn’t help it. I was extremely lucky, and wanted to keep her around.
I remember looking at a cancer-scan on a computer monitor. It was fearsome. It looked like she was on fire.
Cancer seems to always win, killing its host, and thereby killing itself.
I still cry most every day.
I suppose I’m no longer devastated like I was last June, but the college-magazine obituary got me crying.

• “Hospeace House” is a hospice, Naples a small village about 20-25 miles south of where I live.
• They spelled Thompson wrong; it’s “Thomson,” no “p.”
• “Houghton College” in western New York is from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I graduated a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college.

Laughing and crying at the same time

“In case of erection lasting more than four hours, seek medical-help immediately.”
That always gets me laughing and crying.
That’s a disclaimer for a Cialis® TV ad.
My beloved wife died over eight months ago.
That disclaimer always cracked us up.
It reminded me of a disclaimer I proposed for various drug ads.
“One minor side-effect is death. In case of death, consult your physician immediately.”
A friend suggested adding the following: “If death lasts longer than four hours, get medical help.”
My wife and I always had a good laugh over that Cialis disclaimer.
“Any water in them bathtubs?” I’d say.
We suggested what it should say is: “In case of erection lasting more than four hours, let’s party!”
Another ad that gets me crying is “Brought to you by University of Rochester Medical-Center. To listen to stories of hope, visit uofrmedicalcenter.com.”
“Yeah,” I always shout. “We used UofR Medical Center, and my wife didn’t make it.”

• I live near Rochester (NY), wherein is the University of Rochester.

Ben and Fat-Jerry kaput!

The Ben and Fat-Jerry franchise in nearby Pittsford is kaput!
Ben and Fat-Jerry is Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream. It’s a nickname a coworker at the Canandaigua Messenger newspaper, where I once worked, made for Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream.
The Ben and Jerry franchise in Pittsford is where I purchased the finest chocolate ice-cream in the entire known universe.
I couldn’t get it anywhere else.
Some other chocolate ice-creams come close, but Ben and Fat Jerry is best.
I remember trying various premium chocolate ice-creams.
I don’t eat ice-cream often; perhaps once a week. And then only half a pint at a time.
Ben and Fat Jerry sells all kind of special flavors.
Stuff laced with macadamia nuts, or coffee, or lettuce-leaves (garbage).
They even sell a “chocolate therapy.” It has chocolate pudding in it.
But just plain chocolate is rare; almost impossible to find.
Quite often a store will have plain vanilla, but plain chocolate I never see.
I’d call the Pittsford franchise first. They’d order, but not always get it.
If they had it I’d drive up (a half-hour), and walk out with six pints, 24 smackaroos, $4 per pint.
The poor guy probably couldn’t make the rent.
He was in business six years.
Pittsford village is not exactly high-traffic. Usually I was the only one in his store.
Sometimes I’d see mothers buying ice-cream cones for their children.
That’s not a smashingly big profit.
One mother per half-hour; maybe three cones per mother, a few pennies profit.
He might have done better in a mall.
Of course, maybe I have this wrong. After all, he was open six years.
But I always felt like I was his biggest customer. But even with me he wasn’t making much profit.
So now what?
I only ate ice-cream to offset some spicy entree, chili or pizza or something.
But I preferred Ben and Fat-Jerry. It was best.
I’ll continue to occasionally eat ice-cream, but it’ll be a fall-back, the store premium chocolate or perhaps Häagen-Dazs.
Unless I can find another outlet for Ben and Fat-Jerry, the finest chocolate ice-cream in the entire known universe.
I said that once to the Pittsford franchise proprietor, and he smiled.

• “Pittsford” is a ritzy suburb east of Rochester (NY); it’s on the Erie Canal.

My time is more valuable than that

Yesterday (Wednesday, December 19th, 2012) was supposed to be an annual Christmas-luncheon for the dreaded RTS Alumni.
The so-called “Alumni” are the union retirees of Regional Transit Service in Rochester, NY.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS — “Transit”), a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs.
While a bus-driver there I belonged to the Rochester Division of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), Local 282. (ATU is nationwide.)
The Alumni was a reaction to the fact Transit upper-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 (disability retirement); and the “Alumni” didn’t exist then.
The Alumni is a special club — you have to join.
It’s an Amalgamated Transit Union functionary. It isn’t just a social club.
It has bylaws, officers, and an Executive Board.
In many ways it’s just like our union-local, except it entertains issues of interest to retirees; like Medicare, healthcare, and diabetes and Alzheimer’s.
“Dreaded” because all my siblings are flagrantly anti-union, like the proper way for hourlies to parry the massive management juggernaut is one employee at a time; in which case that single employee gets trampled because he’s not presenting a united front with power equal to management.
The proletariate’s attempt to exact a living wage from bloated management fat-cats is what’s wrong with this country.
It was announced the luncheon would be served from 11 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.
Up at 6 a.m. so I can eat breakfast, walk my dog, then take the dog to doggie-daycare in nearby Canandaigua.
Yet still allow the hour it might take to get from Canandaigua to the restaurant on the other side of Rochester.
I got there at 11:01 despite stopping for a bathroom-break on the N.Y. State Thruway. I had to use the Thruway to get from Canandaigua to Rochester.
Plus getting to the restaurant required juking all around.
It’s not located near an expressway-exit. The Thruway doesn’t go through Rochester, but interchanges with expressways that do.
At the restaurant old Transit coworkers were standing around.
The restaurant declared they would start serving at 1 p.m.
“WHA-A-A-A.......”
Apparently the start-time had been changed without notification.
Not the restaurant, Alumni officials.
I’m supposed to stand around two hours twiddling my thumbs?
NOT THIS KID!
Sorry, but if the restaurant begins serving at 1 p.m., my doggie-daycare is turning into an extended stay, plus I had a surfeit of errands I planned to do after 1:30.
They compromised and said they would try to start serving at 12:30.
They had to do something. About 20 of us were standing around blocking the restaurant.
I decided to split. I couldn’t even afford an hour-and-a-half.
My time is more valuable than that.
An Alumni official was profusely sorry and apologized.
Sorry, I gotta leave! My time is more valuable than an hour-and-a-half wasted.
So they lost me, and I’m out my $5 pre-reservation.
But they gotta do better.
Change the time of an event, and they have to notify me.
I may be retired, but I’m scheduled to the hilt.
I can’t just blow that time when time is so precious.

• “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 east. —I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.

It got me crying

My cleaning-lady came yesterday (Tuesday, December 18th, 2012).
She came while I was working out at the YMCA in nearby Canandaigua.
When I do that I leave the garage people-door unlocked, and I once showed her where the secret spare key to my house is.
I trust her. She’s decent.
She left a Christmas-card.
It got me crying.
I called her when I got home in case she was passing by and wanted to get paid.
I reported her card got me crying, so she said she was sorry.
“You don’t need to be sorry,” I told her. “It happens all the time.
I’m not used to all these people caring about my welfare.”
(My wife died eight months ago.)
A few weeks ago another lady came, who lost her husband in a tragic accident, and gave me a homemade sweetbread.
That got me crying too.
She felt badly, but I told her not to.
I was raised by people who told me I was an of-the-Devil scumbag, stupid and reprehensible. So I was unaccustomed to people caring about my wellbeing.
“Me and one of my past clients were talking about you,” my cleaning-lady said.
“That you’re doing extremely well. You cook for yourself, and pursue your daily routine as if nothing happened. Linda would be so proud of you.”
—Linda is my deceased wife.
“Yeah,” I thought. “But she’s no longer here.”

• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center,” usually three days per week, about two-three hours per visit. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east 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 east. —I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.)
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. Like me she was 68. I miss her dearly.

Siri

(Pronounced “SEAR-eee,” I think; rhymes with “theory.”)
It looked like this was gonna be a celebratory, gee-whilikers blog about the wondrous joys of “Siri,” but I’m not so sure any more.
“Siri” is a voice-recognition personal assistant on my new iPhone5, a female voice programmed to talk naturally.

The iPhone5.

The store that upgraded my phone didn’t tell me about “Siri” at all. It was my hairdresser, a gee-whiz techno-junkie.
He fired up “Siri” on my iPhone.
Well, okay. Next day I’m in the PortaJohn at nearby Boughton Park, and I need to call my pharmacy to see if a prescription can be picked up.
I fire up Siri.
“Call Rite-Aid” (my pharmacy), I command.
It does so. Gee-whiz!
Later, back home: “Call Cleaning-Lady.
It does so. This is really great!
Okay, awesome challenge: “Get my MyCast weather-radar.”
“What is the name of your first child?”
Uh-oh......... Crashed mightily in flames.
I get local weather from some site that ain’t MyCast, or even weather-radar. All it is is projected high and low temperatures, and probability of precipitation.
Okay, “Get MyCast.”
“What is the name of your first child?”
Forget Siri; use the web-browser.
Well, maybe it will do telephone commands.
I’m at my GriefShare, and “Annie” is there with her cellphone.
“Here; watch this,” I say to Annie.
“Call Annie,” I command. Annie is in my contacts.
Didn’t work. It comes up with some undecipherable, and suggests I make a new contact.
I went to the restroom, and while walking back: “call Annie.”
It worked this time. Her cellphone vibrated.
I return to Annie, and “call Annie” again.
Didn’t work. Another undecipherable.
The next day, back home: “e-mail,” I say.
“Who do you want to send to?”
How about “get my e-mail.”
“Wow. You have over 25 e-mails.”
Which is what it always says, although I never actually see 25 e-mails.
I get the five or six in my inbox, plus my empty “trash” and “sent” folders.
I empty those folders most every day, and I frequently trash e-mails from my inbox — I try to keep it manageable.
Yet every time I engage Siri to get my e-mail “I found over 25 e-mails.”
Where?
Was she programmed to be a staggering drunk?
Some wonder of technology Siri is.
“Call Cleaning-Lady” and see if I get a valid hit.
If not, and often I don’t, I make Siri cool it, and fall back to an old-fashioned contact search.
A personal-assistant with a mind of her own, her own agenda. And it often conflicts with me.
Was Siri programmed by Rush Limbaugh?

• “Boughton Park” (“BOW-tin;” as in “wow”) is where I walk my dog.
• I attend a GriefShare because my wife died almost eight months ago. Annie’s husband died a year ago.

’55 Oldsmobile

A ’55 Olds. (Photo by Richard Lentinello.)

The February 2013 issue of my Hemmings Classic Car magazine arrived the other day, probably Wednesday December 12th, 2012.
On its cover is a picture of a 1955 Oldsmobile, what I think is the prettiest manifestation of the ‘50s styling genre.
It heralds a feature of the “Top 10 Oldsmobiles of the ‘50s.”
I try to avoid doing scans of magazine pictures, instead doing screenshots of Google-images.
Scans of magazine pictures are always marginal.
Magazine pictures were usually printed four-color dot-matrix that can reproduce in the scan. I can filter that out with a Photoshop “noise” injection, but if the picture was small enough I get “moiré” (“mware;” as in “are”) I can’t filter out. “Moiré” can ruin a picture, especially if it’s a picture-wide pattern.
I also get text or pictures bleeding through white areas in my picture; text or pictures bleeding through from the flip side of the page.
Beyond that there’s a fair likelihood the magazine picture won’t lay flat on my scanner. So I get variation in image-focus across the picture, and cloudiness.
Screenshots do none of this, and are also a way around a copyrighted picture I can’t download.
Screenshots are always screen-resolution, 72 pixels-per-inch, which is very low. But if the image I screenshot was big enough, I’m usually reducing it in size, not enlarging it.
A basic rule of image manipulation is to downsize not upsize.
Upsize a small screenshot and you might get “jaggies.”
But I couldn’t find a Google-Image of a ’55 Oldsmobile the colors in this magazine, the best colors: pearl-white over turquoise-green.
The “Top 10” article lists other Olds models throughout the ‘50s, but to me the ’55 is the standout, even better-looking than the ’55 Chevy.
The two-tone styling is overdone, but it’s done right.
And the headlight nacelles are perfect, the best-looking of that styling genre.
The ’54 was this body, but not these lines, which are perfect.
The ’56 isn’t even pictured.
Earlier Oldsmobiles, ’51 to ’53, are turkeys, and later Oldsmobiles get uglier by the year.
Worst is the ’59 Oldsmobile, which at that time I considered the ugliest car ever.
A friend disputes this. He claims the ugliest car ever was the Pontiac Aztek, and I agree.
But the ’59 Oldsmobile is a joke, obviously designed by a committee.
Styling elements thought to be necessary are included, but they fight each other. Where was the single guiding hand? (Where was Pininfarina?)
But for 1955, Olds was fabulous. After 1955 the car began to look bloated and overweight.
And now Oldsmobile is gone, along with Pontiac. A victim of GM brand rationalization because of the bankruptcy.

• “Jaggies” occur when pixels are so enlarged they become discernible squares; what were previously smooth edges become small horizontals and verticals. They become “jagged.”

Tiger-Tracks IV

The other day (Sunday, December 9th, 2012) I attended the Tiger-Tracks model-train show my fourth time.
The Tiger-Tracks model-train show is at Rochester Institute of Technology.
My first time was five years ago. I attended with Art Dana (“DAY-nuh”), the retired transit bus-driver with fairly severe Parkinson’s Disease.
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 environs. Which is where Art was also a bus-driver. —My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired from RTS on medical-disability.
I’m not much into model-trains — I prefer the real thing — but Dana was a model-train buff.
Dana has since died, but he had a small layout of HO track in his basement.
It was very rudimentary, and about all he did was run his model-trains on it. It was just a circle of track; two parallel circles actually.
His table was about five feet by nine, a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood with extensions.
I remember an extensive S-gauge layout with scenery when he lived in Rochester.
Now he was living as an invalid with his sister in a Rochester suburb.
It was kind of sad. I don’t know what happened to that S-gauge layout.
By then Dana was on the downhill slide. That HO layout in his basement was a last hurrah.
Dana wanted to go to Tiger-Tracks, and asked if I would take him. —He also thought I might be interested.
I agreed.
Dana came away with a set of maybe five-or-six 1920s Santa Fe passenger-cars, dark olive-green, almost black.
He had a Santa Fe steam-engine he planned to pull them with.
The Santa Fe passenger-cars were nice, plastic and well-modeled.
HO model-train equipment can look pretty good.
It’s a shame his Santa Fe steam-engine was not as attractive.
It was a generic steam-engine actually based on the Santa Fe 4-8-4.
But I also remember he had a Union Pacific steamer based on the same model. It wasn’t a Union Pacific 800-series. It was the Santa Fe 4-8-4 with Union Pacific lettering.
Beyond that the side-rods on his Santa Fe steamer were all wonky.
I doubt he ever ran it. One driver-set was 180 degrees out of phase. Its side-rod aimed up when the others were down.
Maybe it would run, but if so the rods weren’t right.
My second time at Tiger-Tracks was two years later, this time with Gary Colvin (“COAL-vin”), another retired transit bus-driver.
By now Dana was gone, but Tiger-Tracks was so impressive I invited Colvin.

My GG1 model. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Visit number-two was when I got my GG1 (“Jee-Jee-ONE;” I only say that because Dana was mispronouncing it “Jee-Jee-Eye”) model (above).
Anyone who reads this here blog knows by now I consider the GG1 the greatest railroad-locomotive of all time.
I had seen GG1 models my first visit with Dana, but didn’t buy one.
I brought along $100 with Colvin, hoping to buy a GG1 model.
I had a feeler out searching for a GG1 model, my mower-man, who is also a model-train buff.
He called around, but was unable to find what I wanted, the GG1s I saw at the first show. (They probably were from outta state; Tiger-Tracks attracts out-of-state vendors.)
My mower-man found a GG1 model, but its proportions were wrong.
It was shortened quite a bit to make it operable on a model-railroad, which has curvature much tighter than real.
I passed. By then I had already purchased the model pictured, which was the wrong color, but the correct proportions.
I would have preferred a GG1 model in Brunswick Green with the single-stripe scheme I saw so much as a teenager, although I was willing to have my mower-man repaint to the single-stripe scheme on Brunswick Green.
Which was what he was willing to do with what he obtained, but that model was not scale.
(I’ve seen worse, for example a GG1 body on EMD E-unit trucks.)
We saw a few GG1 models at Tiger-Tracks, both O-gauge and N-gauge.
O was gigantic, and N was too small.
We did find an HO GG1 model, but it was Amtrak colors, silver with a red stripe.
No way would I want an Amtrak GG1, and it also was not that good.
The one I bought was the wrong color, and the cat-whisker scheme, but very well done.
I caved when the seller offered it for $30.
That’s the only thing I’ve ever bought at Tiger-Tracks. That and a picture-book.
Gary’s been to that show three times now, and he always buys something.
Usually I just walk around with Gary, semi-interested, but I haven’t bought anything since that GG1.
I went to another model-train show last Winter. But it was depressing compared to Tiger-Tracks.
Tiger-Tracks is in a fabulous venue; lots of open space.
There are layouts galore, including a live-steam exhibition. With this the models are actually steam-engines. Instead of electric-motors, the engines have tiny fires that boil water into steam.
The fires might be fueled by alcohol, but I’ve seen pulverized coal.
Model-railroaders are obsessed with realism. Model steam-locomotives often have smoke drifting out the stack.
Accompanied by the putrid stench of burning wax. Compare this to the fragrant aroma of a real steam-engine burning coal.
The model steam-engines also emit sound, a recording of the chuff-chuff.
But often the chuff-chuff is out-of-phase with the drivers. A typical two-cylinder steam-locomotive chuffs four beats per driver rotation. The recording is usually too slow or too fast.
Another problem with model-railroads is unrealistic operation. Once-in-a-while you see a model-train moving slowly, as slowly as a real train.
And pulling 25-30 cars, as opposed to only four-to-six. (A real train might be over 100 cars.)
I remember seeing a PCC streetcar tearing pointlessly around a tiny loop at 89 bazilyun miles-per-hour.
A friend and I did the math once. His Athearn (“ah-THURN;” as in “as”) Budd RDC, a great-looking model, was doing 250 scale mph, and stopping from that speed in about 100 scale feet.
Do that in the real world, or even close, and your passengers end up on the floor, slid into a squalling heap at a bulkhead.
But my mower-man says he never does well at Tiger-Tracks. He sets up as a vendor, but doesn’t sell much.
Tiger-Tracks is a gigantic show of model-railroad equipment for sale, much of it very interesting.
But I’m told nothing much sells.
And a lot of it was from broken up model railroads of passed-away buffs. Boxes of junk and dusty detritus — lots of twisted wires.
What Tiger-Tracks really is is a conglomeration of layouts for Grandpop and the grandchildren. “Here look Johnny; look at the smoke, hear the whistle.”
And adults who have never grown up.
A lot of what’s for sale is antique Lionel equipment — a throwback for boomers.
My mower-man sells some of that, but is into everything.

• I had a stroke nineteen years ago from which I pretty much recovered.
• “O,” “S,” “HO,” and “N” gauges compared: O is largest, near 1:45.2, S is a bit smaller at 1:64, “HO” (half-O) is 1:87.1, and “N” is smallest at 1:148 to 1:160 (depending on the manufacturer or country). Lionel used three-rail O-gauge for its toy-trains, although the railroad equipment was at a smaller scale; and American Flyer (toy-trains) used two-rail S-gauge. The smaller scales (HO and N) can look pretty good, although track curvature can’t be as wide as it is in reality. I saw a model of world-famous Horseshoe Curve in Pennsylvania once, and it was obviously a model, as properly modeled Horseshoe Curve would have taken an entire cellar. —There are scales even larger and smaller than O and N.
• “The cat-whisker scheme” of five gold pin-stripes is the original paint-scheme developed by Raymond Loewy.
• “PCC” stands for Presidents’ Conference Committee, an attempt by trolley and streetcar lines to modernize trolley-cars.
• “RDC” stands for Rail-diesel-car, a diesel-powered self-propelled passenger-car manufactured by Budd Company of Philadelphia.

ATM follies

Yesterday (Friday, December 7th, 2012; a date that will live in infamy) I decided I needed cash.
Not desperately, but I was in nearby Honeoye Falls (“HONE-eee-oy;” rhymes with “boy”), and they have a branch of the bank I deal with.
That branch has an ATM (automatic-teller-machine).
Going there yesterday meant I didn’t need the bank later. I didn’t need cash desperately.
Face-to-face with the ATM from my car, “Insert card in slot.” ZOOP! Card returned.
Now, “Enter password code.”
Bip-Bip-Bip-Bip!
“Do you want a receipt?” I keyed “Yes.”
“Select option.”
I inadvertently brushed “pay-bill,” when I also hit “cash-withdrawal.”
Uh-ohhh! Hellfire and damnation. I’m trapped.
“Bill-pay” began.
Is there a “cancel?” Of course not.
The ATM proceeded.
Is there any way to cancel this at all?
I hit the “clear” button. the bill-pay amount was still zero.
“Invalid amount!” it screamed.
I entered an amount, hoping I could cancel that.
$20.
“Have bill handy. Signal when ready.”
Oh for heaven sake!
I gave up and drove away, leaving the infernal machine hanging.
Funny, the sun came up this morning. No angry calls from the bank.
I had not inadvertently caused Armageddon.
I try again today at a different branch.
I wonder what happens this time? —Be careful lest you commit an unpardonable sin.

• “Honeoye Falls” is the nearest village to the west to where I live in western New York, a rural village about five miles away. —I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester (NY).

Goosey-loosey

Yesterday (Monday, December 3rd, 2012) was my every-six-months consideration and inspection of my prostate-gland, which is fairly enlarged.
The appointment was at Urology Associates of Rochester (NY), where good old Crystal, MPAS, RPA-C, pokes her well-lubricated finger up my butt to ascertain if any lumps are on my prostate. Such lumps could be cancerous.
That’s “prostate,” people; not “prostrate.” I caught that mistake at the Messenger newspaper, and my brother-in-Boston, a macho Harley-dude, loudly insists it’s “prostrate.”
Crystal and I also discuss the results of a PSA blood-test. “PSA” is Prostate-Specific-Antigen, which goes up with prostate-cancer.
My PSA goes up and down slightly, but it’s never been a red flag.
Although two prostate biopsies have been done.
So Crystal walked in. “How ya doin’?” she bubbled.
The dreaded question I always have difficulty with as a bereaved person.
“Well okay I guess,” I said.
“Why? What’s all that about?” she asked.
“Well, my wife died,” I answered.
She frowned, as if to say “I forgot.”
“Still eating right, sleeping properly, taking care of yourself?”
“Yes,” I answered; “but I live in a mad, mad, mad, mad world.”
In-and-out in about five minutes. Rectal exam completed it was “Get outta here. See you in six months.”
I worry about these health-assessments.
What if follow-up is required?
The last biopsy was an outpatient hospital procedure. It involved anesthesia, and my wife had to drive me home.
My wife is gone now.
Crystal and I discussed this, that a prostate biopsy didn’t have to be a hospital procedure, and could be done with local anesthetic that didn’t impede driving.
We also discussed my dog-problem, and she told me they would arrange for my dog if I had to be taken out of my house.
As it was I had to leave my dog alone in my house to make this appointment.

• The “Messenger” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired almost seven years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern [I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well]). (“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 in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.)
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. Like me she was 68. I miss her dearly.

Stirrups

Yesterday (Saturday, December 1st, 2012) my friend Karin (“CAR-in;”as in “car,” not “Karen”) sewed stirrups in my long-underwear.
Karin attended Houghton College the same time as me. She became friends with my wife. She was the class behind my wife and I, which makes her Class of ’67. —My wife and I were Class of ’66.
I really appreciate this!
Unstirruped long-underwear aren’t as bad as they were in the past, but they do creep up your leg.
My wife used to sew stirrups in my long-underwear.
But now she’s gone, so Karin did it.
Karin is a native of the Bronx in New York City.
As such she’s loudly opinionated and vocal.
I appreciate that, and so did my wife.
An attraction to snide remarks, which my wife loved.
Karin is always making snide observations.
After college she moved to Rochester (NY), got married, divorced, and her ex-husband died.
She now lives alone, but owns two horses and a cat.
For whatever reason she befriended me after my wife died.
I featured her in a blog about her horse-ownership.
We also attended a horse-and-carriage competition I’d always wanted to take my wife to, but never did.
The stirrups are usually 1&1/2-inch elastic sewn into the leg-bottoms. Karin could only get 1&1/4-inch.
She would sew this yesterday, but I noted I would be unable to personally deliver the unstirruped long-underwear and the stirruped sample.
That’s because I work out at the YMCA in Canandaigua on Saturdays.
So I decided to leave everything in my garage, with my garage people-door unlocked.
When I got home from the YMCA, everything was gone. She had apparently gotten it.
I called her later to see if she was around. She was in Lima (as in “lima-bean;” not “LEEE-muh”) visiting a friend, and a trip to Lima can pass my house.
The long-underwear, with stirrups, was later returned.
“I would have sewed the stirrups outside, but they’re inside because that’s how it was on your sample, and I don’t wanna break the rules,” she declared.
Rules are made to be broken. I learned that years ago during my short employ after college with a bank.
Bank regulations were to be disregarded, especially if you were profit-motivated.
I was let go from that bank because I wasn’t a viper.

• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. Like me she was 68. I miss her dearly.

Monthly Calendar-Report for December 2012

I made it!
Despite the death of my beloved wife of over 44 years almost eight months ago, I managed to keep doing these calendar-reports.
Things are messy.
There has been lawn to mow, leaves to mulch, and soon there will be snow to throw.
Plus there’s working-out at the YMCA.
There also has been a dog to walk, plus the 89 bazilyun other responsibilities my wife pursued, like laundry, cooking, and making the bed.
Plus there’s the usual surfeit of errands, many of which I have to take the dog along.
(Although I’m no longer carting my wife to medical appointments.)
But here I am doing this December calendar-report.
I worried about the seasons changing, but here we are.
This worrying seemed to be a grief-effect, although eight months is still fairly recent.

Train 20V eastbound splits the 258.9 signals on Track One approaching Portage. (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

—“Norfolk Southern milepost 258.9, Track One, no defects.”
So reports my railroad radio scanner tuned to 160.8, Norfolk Southern’s operating frequency on this division.
This photograph was taken February 13, 2010.
We (I and my wife, who was still alive then) had travelled to Altoona to chase trains with Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”).
It was an easy trip. It had snowed, but roads were clear, and the snow-berm thrown up by the plows was no more than two or three feet.
But up in the Alleghenies it had snowed much worse. In Gallitzin (“guh-LIT-zin;” as in “gull”), location of our bed-and-breakfast, the snow-pack was three to four feet deep!
Paths had been carved into streets to allow auto-passage.
The main drag was closed to allow massive front-end loaders and dump-trucks to remove snow.
Mike Kraynyak (“crane-eee-YAK”), proprietor of our bed-and-breakfast, was trying to blow out his tiny parking-lot with only a snowblower.
The snow was a foot-or-two deeper than the maw of his snowblower.
A friend was shoveling snow off the steps to his upstairs deck. That snow was almost two feet deep!
We went down to Horseshoe Curve, but it was completely inaccessible.
Its parking-lot was blocked by a six-to-eight foot snow-berm thrown up by plows.
I found myself sinking hip-deep as I tried to cross that snow-berm.
I gave up. It would be the first of many trips to Altoona since without visiting world-famous Horseshoe Curve.
“Are you sure you wanna do this?” I asked Faudi.
“Sure,” he said. “I know lotsa places we can still photograph trains. Grade-crossings for example.
We have fabulous Winter conditions.”
And so it was. This picture approaching Portage is one of those fabulous snags.
258.9 is the location of defect-detectors.
Trackside devices monitor passing trains for defects: dragging equipment, hot wheels, etc.
If no defects are found, “no defects” is broadcast on Norfolk Southern’s radio-frequency for train-crews to hear.
If a defect is found, it’s reported or its location is reported, and the train must stop.
Those defect-detectors are about five to eight miles apart.
Over the years I think I’ve only heard one defect reported. And that’s over hundreds of transmissions.
Those defect-detectors, which I know the locations of, tell me if a train is coming.
They also tell Faudi. But a train-engineer also must call out the signal-aspects as he/she passes. Faudi knows those signal locations.
The snow and cold were causing problems. Ice-sickles had formed in tunnels where water was leaking. Equipment had to be moved in to break off the ice-sickles.
This was probably our best chase with Faudi. The weather was difficult, but I got some of my best photographs.

The screaming chicken! (Peter Harholdt©.)

—The December 2012 entry of my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar is the best one they have.
They also used it as a cover-shot.
It’s a 1973 Pontiac Firebird Super-Duty Trans-Am.
To my mind this Firebird is the best-looking car-design to ever exit Detroit.

Z-28 Camaro with the Endura bumper.

I used to think the similar year Z-28 Camaro with the Endura bumper was the best design. It’s close, but it falters by using the Ferrari grill.
The Firebird is not the Ferrari grill. It’s original, and its front-end design is better for the lines of the car, which are fabulous.
About the only superiority of the Camaro over this FireBird is the taillights. The round taillights of a Camaro look better.
Firebird uses a single taillight that follows and fills the rear cove. It doesn’t look as good as the Camaro.
And the Firebird doesn’t need that screaming-chicken, a strident graphic added to Trans-Am Firebirds.
The stripes applied to a Camaro’s hood looked better. My Vega GT had one of those stripes. It looked great. —I think the Camaro was double stripes. (My Vega was single-stripe.)
Extraordinary about a Super-Duty Trans-Am is that rear-facing hood-scoop mounted to the carburetor. It’s aimed at a high-pressure area in front of the windshield. That hood-scoop was lettered “SD-455.”
Wrong about this car is its size; the Camaro and Firebird looked great, but were too big.
They were smaller cars — pony-cars — but they were Detroit sedans.
Four seats!
Their doors were gigantic and heavy.
And great as it looks, this car is “Super-Duty.”
That means it has a gigantic hot-rodded 455 cubic-inch motor, a heavy boat-anchor of an engine.
Such a car would likely cream anything in a straight line, and probably win the stoplight drags.
But I’d hate to toss it into a corner.
That giant cast-iron engine throws off the car’s balance.
The car would want to keep going straight ahead.
Correct that with throttle, and you end up spinning off the road.
Unless you’re Mario Andretti.
A BMW 2002 could beat that Super-Duty Trans-Am on a curvy rural road.
Its engine is only two liters. 455 cubic-inches is well over seven liters (7.4561141).
But given a choice between this Trans-Am and a BMW 2002, I’d take the Trans-Am.
It’s a gorgeous car.

A train-load of bulldozers is about to leave Enola Yard. (Photo by John Molesevich.)

—The December 2012 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a Norfolk Southern freight-train of bulldozers about to leave Enola yard (“aye-NOLE-uh;” as in “hay”) across from Harrisburg. PA.
Enola yard was built to cure the bottleneck Harrisburg was becoming.
The original Pennsy was Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, but so much traffic was moving over Pennsy both terminals started clogging.
Gobs of traffic was being fed into Pittsburgh, and then moving through Harrisburg.
With electrification, engine-change was also needed at Harrisburg to continue east or west —non-electric to electric, or reverse.
Facilities in Harrisburg could not be expanded. Space was limited. Enola was Pennsy’s solution. Cross the Susquehanna (“SUSS-kew-HAN-nuh; as in “and”) at some point other than Rockville Bridge, change power in Enola, and then continue.
Now that power-change is no longer needed. Much of Pennsy’s electrification is de-energized. All that remains wired is the old Pennsy main from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, and now that’s Amtrak. The electrified lines that fed Enola are now diesel.
I thought that wire was forever.
But overhead wire is costly to maintain.
Diesels are not as appropriate as electrification, but the added cost of maintaining, plus time lost to power-changes, makes dieselization more attractive.

Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.

The train at left is Norfolk Southern’s Executive Business Train, but at right is 36A with a solid section of tractors.

The train is bulldozers. I’ve seen trains solidly loaded with large tractors.
Tractors, and bulldozers, fit trailer-on-flatcar railroad equipment.
Used to be standard width for highway was eight feet, 96 inches.
But then it was raised to 102 inches. We had buses at Transit 102 inches wide.
Now tractors and bulldozers often exceed 102 inches, in which case it gets trailered on the highway as “oversize load.”
This is not that serious a problem to the railroads.
A large ‘dozer or tractor doesn’t get into the width problem.
A load has to be really wide to not clear opposing traffic; at least on the old Pennsy lines which are quite wide between track-centers.
I remember noting this on the old Baltimore & Ohio West End. It has double-track, but narrower than Pennsy.
On B&O’s West End a fairly wide load might close opposing traffic, but not Pennsy. On Pennsy the load had to be really wide.
So ‘dozers and tractors amount to a lot of traffic. I’ve seen trains of solid tractors.
And the train pictured is solid ‘dozers.
It’s interesting this train requires only one locomotive. It’s probably short and light enough.
Previously this train might have rated two units. Except now a single unit might put out as much power as the two earlier units.
#9946 is a General-Electric Dash 9-40CW; “40” meaning 4,000 horsepower (a special Norfolk Southern order, not the usual 4,400 horsepower, the GE Dash 9-44CW, although NS ordered 1,090 units), “C” meaning six axles (“B” equals four axles, “C” equals six), and “W” meaning wide cab (as opposed to narrow-cab hood-units, which I’ve seen).

Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.

This loco is a narrow-cab hood.

I also find it interesting an idler-car is ahead of the ‘dozers behind the locomotive, the Top-Gon coal gondola, probably empty.
Railroads often do this, an idler for safety to protect the locomotive and its crew in case of a crash. One sees this on unit-trains of hazardous materials, for example the ethanol-train, which is solid tank-cars loaded with ethanol.

P-51D Mustang. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—Mustang!
Can there be a WWII warbirds calendar without a Mustang? The gorgeous hotrod fighter-plane everyone worships.
The December 2012 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a P-51 Mustang.
The Mustang was propeller aviation’s apogee at that time. A fast and powerful hotrod of an airplane, that was also highly maneuverable and had long range.
It solved a problem of the Army Air Corps’ long-range bomber-runs from England over Germany.
Earlier fighter-planes didn’t have the range. The bombers were on-their-own over Germany, sitting ducks for Hitler’s Messerschmitts.
The P-51 was not only a better fighter-plane than the Messerschmitt, it also had longer range.
A P-51 could accompany an entire bombing-run. The bombers were no longer sitting ducks.
As I usually do every month, I’ll let my WWII warbirds site weigh in:
“One of the most effective, famous and beautiful fighter aircraft of WWII, the P-51 was designed to fulfill a British requirement dated April 1940.
Because of the rapidly-mounting clouds of war in Europe, the UK asked North American Aircraft to design and build a new fighter in only 120 days.
The NA-73X prototype was produced in record time, but did not fly until October 26th, 1940.
The first Royal Air-Force production models, designated Mustang Mk Is, underwent rigorous testing and evaluation, and it was found that the 1,100-horsepower Allison engine was well suited for low-altitude tactical reconnaissance, but the engine’s power decreased dramatically above an altitude of 12,000 feet, making it a poor choice for air-to-air combat or interception roles.
At the same time, the US Army Air Corps ordered a small number for tactical reconnaissance evaluation as the F-6A.
After the Royal Air Force found the aircraft’s performance lacking, they tested a new engine, the 12-cylinder Rolls-Royce Merlin. This gave much-improved performance, and led to the US Army Air Corps fitting two airframes with 1,430-horsepower Packard-built Merlin V-1650 engines. These aircraft were re-designated XP-51B. Practically overnight, the aircraft’s potential began to emerge.
Since the Royal Air Force had good success with the Mustang in a ground attack role, the US Army Air Corps bought 500 aircraft fitted with dive brakes and underwing weapons pylons.
The first Merlin-engine versions appeared in 1943 with the P-51B, of which 1,988 were built in Inglewood, California, and the P-51C, of which 1,750 were built in Dallas, Texas. Both new versions had strengthened fuselages and four wing-mounted 12.7-mm machine guns.”

La creme-de-la-creme. (Photo by Buck Wyndham.)

Years ago I saw a P-51 do aerobatics, hammerhead stalls and loops and power-dives.
I think it was “Old Crow.”
I was in awe.
That’s goin’ to my grave!
Ever American, by law, should be required to witness a P-51 doing aerobatics.
And hear the crackle of its unmuffled Packard-Merlin V12 engine.
(It’s interesting Packard got even more power out of that engine than Rolls-Royce, the Merlin’s original developer.)
It’s on the sound-file.
When I was a child my father used to take me to a park where enthusiasts flew tethered model-airplanes.
The model-airplanes had tiny nitro-methane engines, and flew in circles around their operator, tethered to the control-strings which operated the rear horizontal-stabilizer.
They were fairly fast, and crashed fairly often. A balsa-wood model-airplane would be utterly destroyed if it crashed. —Reduced to splinters.
I wanted one. They were exciting to watch.
So as a Christmas-present my father got me one.
It was plastic and fairly heavy.
It used a tiny .049 engine (I think that’s .049 of a cubic-inch).
It was modeled after the P-51 Mustang, although its proportions were wrong.
Its wings were quite large, at least a foot-and-a-half wide, and its fuselage was quite long; about a foot.
Everything was much larger than a scale P-51.
But it was heavy plastic.
A properly scaled P-51 model would have to be balsa to be light enough to fly.
With doped-paper wing-covering.
To fly with everything made out of heavy plastic it had to be scaled up.
I never flew it. I didn’t have the nerve.
I started it a few times (you had to flip its propeller with your finger), and gazed at it plenty.
I even painted it — a mistake. It was originally red plastic.
It did fly once. A teenaged enthusiast flew it for me. He started it, took it off, then landed it. With many circles between takeoff and landing.
These models usually landed on a “dead-stick;” that is, the engine had died out-of-fuel (that is the propeller was “dead,” not rotating).
It was gorgeous to look at, and rightly so.
It was modeled after the P-51 Mustang.
I notice the calendar-Mustang has markings of New Zealand’s Royal Air-Force.
It’s not as good-looking as the Wyndham picture, which has American markings, and looks great.

Alco RS-3 at Renovo, PA. (Photo by Fred Scott.)

—The December 2012 entry of my All-Pennsy color calendar is a Pennsy RS-3 switching hopper-cars at Renovo (“re-NO-voh;” as in “no”), PA.
This photograph was taken October 20th, 1966 — the year I graduated college.
The trees up on the mountainside are past peak in Fall foliage, and a little snow is between the ties.
I’ve been though Renovo, back during the ‘70s and early ‘80s when I was using a very rural route to get down to Altoona and Horseshoe Curve.
My thought was that route was quicker, since it was more direct. It probably wasn’t, since it used narrow curvy byways through steep ravines.
I probably averaged about 35 mph.
The route I use now is not as direct, but most of it is four-lane expressway — I average about 55 mph.
A trip to Altoona takes five hours. Back then it was about six/seven hours. There wasn’t the option of four-lane expressway. It was six/seven hours no matter which way you took.
Renovo is in the Allegheny mountains. It’s in a wide spot between two creeks that feed into the west branch of the Susquehanna (“suss-kwee-HAN-uh;” as in “and”) River.
Pennsy’s line to Buffalo went through Renovo, although it branched north toward Buffalo at Emporium west of Renovo.
Renovo was fairly important. Pennsy’s lines to northwestern PA fed into Renovo. From there a fairly heavy main went down the Susquehanna toward Harrisburg.
The Alco RS-3 was the most successful of the early Alco road-switchers.
“Alco” is American Locomotive Company of Schenectady, NY.
For years, American Locomotive Company was a primary manufacturer of railroad steam locomotives. (It was originally a merger of many steam locomotive manufacturers.)
With the changeover by railroads to diesel-locomotives, American Locomotive Company brought out a line of diesel-electric railroad locomotives much like the railroads were changing to, and changed its name to “Alco.”
Alco tanked a while ago; they never competed as well as EMD.
The RS-3 was third in a series of road-switchers introduced in 1941 as the RS-1.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Tioga Central’s RS-1 (ex Washington Terminal).

An EMD cab-unit (a restored Great Northern F7).

The RS-2 and RS-3 look very much alike.
The road-switcher concept was very attractive to railroads, a diesel-locomotive that could be very easily operated in either direction.
EMD’s early diesels were cab-units (as at left), hard to back up due to poor visibility from the cab.
The road-switcher narrowed the motor-enclosure with walkways outside the engine-hood, like a switcher, allowing ease of vision.
Yet a small hood was ahead of the engine-cab to protect the crew.
Although at first many railroads operated their road-switchers long-hood forward.
Short-hood forward after the manufacturers started cutting down the short hood to permit vision over that hood.

An EMD GP30 (note shortened front hood in front of cab).

The road-switcher concept flowered.
Even EMD got into the road-switcher concept with its GP7, essentially an F7 cab-unit as a road-switcher.
EMD sold a lotta GP series (“Geeps”). Cab-units went out of manufacture. The road-switcher became preeminent.
Alco did fairly well for a while. Their locomotives were fairly reliable.
Alcos were also less fuel-hungry than EMD. But they were all turbocharged (exhaust-gasses used to spin a supercharger), a gizmo that could fail. Early EMDs weren’t turbocharged.
If an Alco was gushing black smoke, which occurred fairly often, that indicated a turbocharger problem, like the turbo was not spinning up as fast as the fuel input.
Or suppose the turbo never got to full revs. Yet fuel-input was as if the turbo was a full revs. Continuous black smoke; the motor was running rich. Turbos weren’t as reliable then as they are now.
Pennsy had a lotta Alcos.
But of course Pennsy had a lotta non-EMD diesels. They dieselized late, and needed so many EMD couldn’t supply.
But their Alcos weren’t side-lined as quickly as Baldwins, for example.
In fact, Pennsy continued to buy Alcos when newer models were debuted, for example, the Century-series.

Photo by BobbaLew.

This Century-630 is actually Penn-Central, used uphill as a pusher on Pennsy’s Horseshoe Curve. (Six axles, 3,000 horsepower.)

So here we have an RS-3 shunting cars in Renovo’s yard.
Railroading like this has become non-existent. The money is in moving huge trainloads of product from area to area (like east coast to midwest), unit coal-trains or ethanol, or long trains of double-stacked freight-containers that can be trailered.
The unit coal-trains usually run from mine to power-plant.
I wonder if Renovo still exists?
It probably does, but I doubt it’s what’s in this calendar-picture.
Locomotives like the RS-3 were designed for railroading of the past, what’s depicted in the picture.
Even in multiple, the RS-3 couldn’t move long trains of freight like the current General Electric Dash-9s.



Homely but fast.

—The December 2012 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is an excellent photograph of a very homely car, the HenryJ.
The HenryJ was an offering of Kaiser Automotive, which never made it.
Kaiser was a postwar attempt at breaking the stranglehold of the Big Three on the automotive market: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.
It was an effort by Henry J. Kaiser, who succeeded in the WWII war-effort. He was a builder of Liberty-Ships, mass-produced ocean-shipping. He also founded Kaiser Steel.
Homely but attractive to drag-racers because the HenryJ was small and light.
A drag-racer would get a small car and modify it for drag-racing; standing-start to finish over a flat quarter-mile paved drag-strip.
He’d get a Willys coupe, various Austin or Fiat models, or a HenryJ.
Then he’d wrench in a powerful hot-rodded V8 motor, and a rear-axle that could take the power output.
The front suspension was often switched to a drag-racing beam-axle.
The drag-racing was called “gas-class;” heavily modified cars with gasoline-burning engines (as opposed to “fuel;” usually some explosive nitro-methane mix).

An Austin Bantam roadster converted into a drag-racer.

“Gassers” were unstreetable. They were at first, usually Chevy or Ford products stripped and heavily modified for “gasser” drag-racing.
But as “gas-class” become more competitive, racers began using smaller, lighter cars like the HenryJ. (The HenryJ was also more aerodynamic.)
And so one of these HenryJ gassers makes the Oxman Hotrod Calendar. Homely, but a drag-racing icon.
I also have a picture of a “Bad News” Willys coupe gasser. The Willys is more attractive to look at, but the racer himself, Vic Young, preferred his HenryJ.
It could win!

Fireman’s view of the “Sunshine Special.” (Photo courtesy: Mitch Dakelman Collection©.)

—The December 2012 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a shot taken by the locomotive fireman of the Fairbanks-Morse H10-44 switcher at right.
The switcher is in Dunreith, Indiana, and the Pennsy K-4 Pacific (4-6-2) is blasting through with “The Sunshine Special.” It’s the winter of ’48-’49. The railroad is Pennsy’s line to St. Louis.
“The Sunshine Special” was a train to Texas.
It was inaugurated in 1915, giving premier service to Texas from St. Louis via Little Rock, Arkansas.
It used Missouri Pacific to get to Texas.
It ran over Pennsy from New York City to St. Louis, and then turned south on Missouri Pacific toward Texas.
It was the flagship of Missouri Pacific’s passenger service until relegated to a secondary role by “The Texas Eagle.”
I doubt Pennsy’s line to St. Louis any longer exists (although it may).
I think the main railroad to St. Louis from the east is the old New York Central St. Louis line.
Years ago railroads from the east had competing lines to major midwest terminals like Chicago and St. Louis.
Rationalization has taken place. Now there are no longer multiple railroads from the east, just two: CSX and Norfolk Southern.
I don’t even know if Norfolk Southern accesses St. Louis, but I imagine it does. It’s probably doing it on the old Nickel Plate line.
The old Pennsy line, one of the competing multiple railroads, is probably gone.
This photo is not very dramatic.
But it is a Pennsy K-4 Pacific, and it looks like it’s doing track-speed, perhaps 60 mph.
Boomin’-and-zoomin.’ What the K-4 was great at, and looked good.
What started me railfaning was K-4s boomin’-and-zoomin’ on PRSL (Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines in south Jersey [“Redding;” not “reading”]).

---

As in previous years, I use this December calendar-report to display various pictures not displayed earlier, and not in the calendars themselves.

At Plummers. (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

Although the cover-picture of my own calendar is displayed as a small picture in my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar report above.
It was taken a few years ago.
My wife and I had driven to Altoona in February hoping to find winter conditions similar to what’s depicted in the first calendar-picture.
But it was warm. The snow had almost entirely melted.
My railfan nephew from northern Delaware had also come out. Together we all piled into my CR-V and headed north to Tyrone (“tie-ROAN;” as in “own”).
Just east of Tyrone is Plummers Crossing, where this picture was taken.
My nephew got geodesic coordinates for Plummers on his iPhone so he could find it again. With me, the location is in my head.
Tyrone is where the railroad turns east toward Harrisburg. Tyrone is in a notch in the mountains where the Juniata (“june-eee-AT-uh”) River also turns east. The railroad is following the Juniata.
Plummers Crossing is in the notch.
We set up and waited for a train.
An eastbound was coming, and this is it.
What’s remarkable here is the lead unit is not a wide-cab Dash-9.
It’s the hood-unit version thereof.
The small hood in front of the cab is narrow — pretty much the same width as the engine-hood.
I decided to use this picture as my cover-shot. I’ve used my Horseshoe Curve shot a couple years already.
A small amount of snow is still on the ground.


(Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

My Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar has a fabulous picture on its cover not in the calendar itself.
It’s a Chance-Vought Corsair F4U Navy fighter-plane right in your face!
And this is the four-bladed prop, the best of the Corsairs!
Imagine flying a Japanese Zero , and seeing this right behind you. You are dead meat, baby!
Years ago, when I was 7, as a Cub-Scout, I visited Willow-Grove Naval Air Station north of Philadelphia.
Corsairs were practicing tail-hook landings on the runway, except it was a runway, not a heaving aircraft-carrier deck.
A dashing fighter-jockey with aviator-sunglasses strode out, mounted his parked Corsair, and started cranking it.
Giant orange flames cascaded along the fuselage as the big engine lit.
“Won’t it catch fire?” I asked worriedly.
“Of course not,” our guide laughed.
Soon the Corsair was flying over us, rattling the barracks with the roar of its mighty radial engine.



Finally my Oxman Hotrod Calendar has added a tribute to the ’40-’41 Willys coupes, a car even better-looking than the ’40 Ford coupe, which is stunningly attractive.
That’s because the Willys is a three-window coupe. The Ford is five-window.

A 1939 Ford five-window coupe.

(A five-window has an added small window behind the door-post.)
The Willys has only a one-piece flat windshield. The Ford is two flat panes.
As such, The Willys looks very spare. Its body-styling is only the barest minimum.
Yet the Willys looks like the Ford coupe. It has the same gorgeous lines.
One gets the feeling the Ford could look as good, but it’s a five-window with a two-piece windshield.
Featured are four cars, primary being the fabulous Stone-Woods-Cook drag-racer.
But it’s an ersatz Willys, a Willys wannabee, modeled after the original Stone-Woods-Cook drag-racer, an actual Willys.
The Stone-Woods-Cook Willys is a fiberglass reproduction of a Willys coupe, fitted to a dragster chassis. It would never work on the street; it doesn’t have a radiator.
Sadly, I never saw the Stone-Woods-Cook Willys race, and it was supposed to be phenomenal.
But it’s not a streetable hotrod, and two of the other cars seem lowered too much.
So much they dare not attempt a driveway.
Yet given a choice between the ‘39-‘40 Ford coupe and the Willys coupe, I’d prefer the Willys.
It’s the spare appearance.
A very desirable hotrod, fitted with a souped SmallBlock Chevy and four-speed.