End-of-year begathon

Today is December 31st, 2014; New Year’s Eve.
It seems like I’m getting deluged with end-of-year solicitations to empty my wallet.
The public-radio classical-music station out of Rochester (NY) I listen to, Fresh Air Fund, the Salvation-Army, my college. The e-mail in my iPhone was swamped.
Yesterday I got a phonecall from a local library I occasionally support. They were soliciting an end-of-year gift.
Save money on your taxes. —Yes or no, my wallet is being emptied.
I don’t remember getting deluged last year.
I’m retired, and do better with the standard deduction.
Before retirement I did better gifting charities.
What I perceive is I’m being snowed. I gift once and am perceived a loose wallet.
I load my shredder with hundreds of mailed gift solicitations.
I trash a slew of e-mails.
Jimmy Carter, Planned Parenthood, Cancer Society, American Lung Association, Oxfam America, Doctors-Without-Borders.
I dialed back to supporting only local charities.
So now the national charities wail they miss my support.
Supporting charities is no longer a tax-deduction if I’m retired.
I can gift, but that’s all it is, and I’m not a bottomless pit.
Not long ago I got a solicitation for $10,000.
Are they kidding?
They ain’t gettin’ no $10,000!

Monthly Calendar-Report for January 2015

Coal-Extra approaches Gallitzin in the snow. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—(“guh-LIT-zin;” as in “get.”)
In January of last year my brother and I went to the Altoona area, ostensibly to photograph trains in snow.
It was awful, frigidly cold and windy.
What I recall is my brother shivering in a hoody.
I was wearing a hoody myself, under a down jacket. I was also wearing my long-underwear.
It was about 15 degrees. We’d stand atop a bridge, backs to the frigid wind, often as long as 45 minutes.
And to manipulate a camera you have to have gloves off. Wait with gloves on, but when a train shows, gloves off.
Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”) was guiding us from his house. Phil used to lead me around chasing trains — he called ‘em “tours.” But he can’t any more; his beloved wife has Multiple Sclerosis, and he doesn’t like to leave her alone, in case she falls, and she has.
What he does is monitor his railroad-radio scanner in his house, and call my cellphone.
Phil can only monitor the Altoona side of The Hill. We were on the other side, but I have a scanner of my own.
Phil told us a westbound was starting up The Hill on Track Three, and we’d soon see it.
So we drove to Gallitzin, it snowing heavily.
When we got there, an eastbound coal-extra showed up on Track Two. It would obstruct our view of the westbound, and it did. (Track Three is outside Two.)
The January 2015 entry of my own calendar is my brother’s picture of that eastbound coal-extra.
The train is shrouded in snow.
Pictures like this make standing in the cold worth it.




Southbound stacker over the frozen Potomac. (Photo by Michael Breen.)

—Well, a toss-up.
Makanna’s Corsair or the Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar?
I’m more a railfan than an airplane fan, much as the Corsair is one of the most venerable propeller airplanes ever.
The January 2015 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a fantastic shot by Michael Breen. It’s a southbound Norfolk Southern stacker on the Crescent Corridor’s giant bridge over the frozen Potomac River at sunrise headed for Memphis.
This is a fabulous snag. I get ‘em occasionally myself.
Sunlight is glinting off trees encased in ice.
And the train is backlit, so it’s a silhouette.
Norfolk Southern’s Crescent Corridor is a recent and costly upgrade of existing railroads NS got when Conrail was sold and broken up in 1999.
Plus other railroads Norfolk Southern already owned.
It competes with Interstate-81 to the south, a route choked with trucks.
I guess the Crescent Corridor was partially funded by Federal tax-money to mitigate traffic on I-81.
The Crescent Corridor takes truck-traffic off I-81, which is what we see here, a long train of truck-containers.

(The locomotives are on the back-end of the train — it’s going away.) (Photo by Bobbalew with Phil Faudi.)

I have another picture I took once of a double-stack at South Fork on Allegheny Crossing. Hundreds of containers were visible; put all those trucks on an Interstate and it becomes a parking-lot.
I notice piers from another bridge still standing in the river. Probably a railroad-bridge, maybe even this railroad.
And they seem to have greater span than the bridge in use.
Railroad-bridges are not forever. Earlier bridges could not support increasing train-weights.

The Letchworth high-bridge. (Photo by Bobbalew.)

The bridge over Letchworth Gorge in western NY has become a bottleneck.
It’s so old and rickety trains can’t cross it faster than 10 mph.
Supposedly if a train went into emergency crossing the bridge it would take the bridge down.
I walked this bridge while in college, and about 30 years ago. And it had railings, and a walkway beside the track. You could even walk it with a train on it.
Not any more. But that could be the railroad concerned about pedestrian safety.
But the bridge is unsafe, and will be replaced.
Apparently the old bridge will be left standing — as a tourist walkway — and the new bridge built next to it.
The current bridge is supposedly bridge number-two, and replaced a wooden trestle that burned. The current bridge was erected in 1883.
The line is Erie Railroad’s old line to Buffalo, although now it’s Norfolk Southern’s line from Buffalo toward north Jersey.

Erie-Lackawanna freight on the Fillmore trestle. (Photo by Bobbalew.)

Erie also built a bypass to avoid steep grades near Alfred (NY).
That bypass included two long trestles: one east of Fillmore (NY), and the second across the Genesee (“jen-uh-SEE”) valley near Oramel (NY)
When that bypass was abandoned both trestles were removed.
All that remain are the concrete footings.








The most recognizable shape in aviation. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—Here it is! The most recognizable shape in aviation: the inverted gull-wing Chance-Vought Corsair.
The January 2015 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a Chance-Vought Corsair.
Look at the size of that propeller! It’s gigantic, 14 feet in diameter.
That propeller is why the Corsair has that iinverted gull-wing. Chance-Vought didn’t wanna decrease the size of that propeller. It was needed to attain the speed a Corsair was capable of.
The inverted gull-wing would raise the airplane relative to its landing-gear.

The November 2014 Ghosts calendar-entry. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

Makanna ran a picture of another Corsair two months ago.
On that picture you can see it’s a four-bladed propeller. All of the Corsairs I’ve seen are the three-bladed propeller.
I have yet to see a Corsair with the four-bladed propeller.
In the calendar-picture the propeller is so blurred I can’t tell.
Three-bladed propellers were an earlier, less powerful, version of the Corsair.
The four-bladed propeller was the incredible Pratt & Whitney R-2800 radial engine, 18 cylinders in two rows of nine, 2,800 cubic-inches of displacement, 2,300 horsepower.
I’ll let my WWII warbirds site weigh in:
“Development of the Corsair began in 1938, when the U.S. Navy issued a request for a new single-seat carrier-based fighter.
The Chance-Vought company won the contract with their unique, gull-winged airframe pulled by the largest engine then available, the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp at 2,000 horsepower.
The wing design was necessitated by the tall landing gear which was, in turn, necessitated by the huge propeller required to propel the plane at the desired high speeds.
The prototype of the Corsair first flew on May 29th, 1940, but due to design revisions, the first production F4U-1 Corsair was not delivered until July 31st, 1942.
Further landing gear and cockpit modifications resulted in a new variant, the F4U-1A, which was the first version approved for carrier duty.”
The January 2015 Corsair is an FG-1D manufactured by Goodyear.
Goodyear was manufacturing warplanes for the war-effort.
The second Corsair is an F4U-5N manufactured by Chance-Vought.
Japanese fighter-jockeys called the Corsair “Whistling Death.” Apparently they emitted a whistling sound.
American fighter-pilots loved the Corsair. It was a hotrod airplane.




Years ago Long Island Railroad was Pennsy. It’s a Long-Island H-10 Consolidation, but actually a Pennsy design. (Photo by Robert F. Collins©.)

—The January 2015 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a Long-Island H-10 Consolidation (2-8-0) pulling a 28-car freight-train eastbound on Long Island Railroad.
The train is rounding a sweeping curve on Long Island’s main toward Ronkonkoma and Greenport (Long Island).
In 1900 Pennsy bought controlling-interest in Long Island to gain access to Manhattan and New York City commerce markets.
This is much like what I saw as a child pulling freight.
A Pennsy Consolidation pulling perhaps 20 cars, except it was Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines (“REDD-ing;” not “REED-ing”), not Long Island.
“Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines” 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 south Jersey seashore from Philadelphia.
Most PRSL freights were locals; I don’t think I ever saw a long freight-train, solid coal for example.
The train would stop out along the line to shift cars onto an industrial siding, or pick up cars.
In Haddonfield (“Ha-din-feeld”), where I first watched trains, a freight-train might stop to shift a loaded coal-hopper into a local coal yard.
Haddonfield was an old Revolutionary-War town in south Jersey near where I lived as a child.
The hopper might get shoved up onto a trestle for unloading into coal-trucks below.
Short freight-trains like this no longer exist, or at least not as much as they once did.
I’ve seen local-freights on CSX, but this kind of freight was pretty much taken over by trucks.
That coal-yard in Haddonfield is long-gone. I think it was processing coal to heat houses, and houses no longer heat with coal.
And of course Long Island Railroad no longer exists as a standalone independent business enterprise. Pennsy sold its shares to the state of New York in 1966.
So now it’s a state entity, part of the “Metropolitan Transportation Authority,” helping to move commuters into, and out of, New York City.




Oh, well........ (Photo by Scott Williamson.)

—The January 2015 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is not especially inspiring.
I find myself not feeling it’s a hotrod, although of course it is. It’s based on a ’29 Ford Roadster.
It’s that two-piece windshield. I know hot-rodders were doing this; witness the popular Duvall windshield.

Duvall two-piece windshield.

But to me, a hotrod is very basic, they have the flat one-piece windshield of Fords of that era.
The racetrack nose, which this car has, was fairly popular. It looks okay, but not as good as the ’32 Ford radiator-surround.
I’ve seen good-looking hotrods with the racetrack nose, but I wouldn’t buy one.
To me a hotrod is what’s pictured below, a chopped ’32 Ford three-window coupe.


What I prefer. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

I saw this car at a car-show. I should have asked its owner what he’d need to part with it.
The only thing wrong with this car is its color. Red is okay, but if it were yellow I would have flipped.




1970 Javelin Trans-Am. (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)

—The January 2015 entry in my Motorbooks Musclecar calendar is a 1970 AMC (American Motors) Javelin Trans-Am.
Actually this car looks pretty good — an excellent manifestation of the ponycar idiom.

A ’70 Camaro with the Endura bumpers.

A Pontiac Trans-Am. (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)

But not as good as the 1970 Camaro with the Endura bumpers — one of the best-looking cars of all time.
Even better is the 1970 Firebird. The same body, but with a non-Ferrari front-end.
This body suffered as time advanced. The gumint was requiring 5 mph bumpers, massive steel planks that ruined the looks.
Pontiac also festooned the Firebird with tons of plastic body-cladding; stuff that was supposed to improve aerodynamics, but looked ridiculous.
The 1970 Javelin Trans-Am is the first Javelin raced by Mark Donohue in the SCCA (Sports-Car Club of America) Trans-Am series.
For 1971 American Motors introduced a new Javelin. It looked fat and dorky.
The fact Donohue had success with it was supposed to make the Javelin more attractive.
But I preferred the Bud Moore Mustangs. They also seemed faster.
I think I said earlier the 2015 Motorbooks Musclecar calendar was no longer Harholdt. But this picture is, as are all the others.
But it doesn’t look like Harholdt’s previous work.
Harholdt is playing with light to reflect off the car’s shiny surfaces.
He also has the cars on a reflective floor.
A 1970 Javelin Trans-Am looks pretty good on its own.
Just a standard Harholdt portrait, like before.
What we have here seems overdone.



Eastbound doubleheaded Mountains on mixed-freight toward Enola. (Photo by Fred Kern.)

—Another Fred Kern photo.
The January 2015 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is two Pennsy Mountains (4-8-2) headed southeast past Marysville toward the huge yard in Enola (PA) (“aye-NOLE-uh;” as in “hey”).
Enola yard is the yard built by Pennsy in 1905 to offset the fact Harrisburg was becoming a bottleneck.
The original Pennsy is Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, but so much freight was being moved over the line Harrisburg became cramped.
Harrisburg also didn’t have much room for expansion. Enola is across the river from Harrisburg, and could feed alternate freight-lines east.
Enola was also the end of Pennsy freight electrification. Lines east and south of Enola were electrified, but since have been de-energized.
Electrification is the best way to railroad, but entails huge expense to maintain the wire.
Pennsy did a lot of electrification, but all that remain are New York City/Washington DC (what became Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, and the Philadelphia-Harrisburg line.
Both lines are Amtrak. Norfolk Southern has trackage-rights on some of the Northeast Corridor, but uses diesels.
Pennsy’s main stem across PA, its Middle-Division from Enola to Altoona, was the final stomping-ground for the 4-8-2 Mountain steamers.
It’s a river-grade, only slight, but uphill the whole way.
The Mountains were extremely well-suited. They could hold a constant 40-50 mph, even 60.
A lot of freight moved over the Middle-Division, and Mountains were pulling it.
So here we see two doubleheaded Mountains at the end of a run from Altoona approaching Enola.
So there’s Fred out there shooting color-slides.
Regrettably photography back then (1954) wasn’t what it is now. The locomotives are almost lost in an overwrought background of orange and red.
I try to imagine taking this picture with my digital Nikon D7000.
For one thing I’d go down trackside so the locomotives had sky as background. Not that mishmash of track and freightcars.
Even then, it’s on the wrong track. I wouldn’t wanna cross the two tracks at right of the train; they look like active railroad.
I dickered this scan a little with my Photoshop: change the color-balance to offset the bluishness of the mountains in the distance.
I also lightened shadows, to supposedly make the locomotives more apparent.
But there wasn’t much I could do with this picture; dicker too much and it looked unnatural.
Photography still ain’t perfect, but it’s much better than it was in 1954.

---

—Last, but not least.....
I include a calendar I didn’t order.


’68 Impala SS.

It was given me by my friend Jim LePore (“luh-POOR”). Jim, like me, lost his wife of many years, and I met him at a church grief-share meant to deal with bereavement.
He’d lost his wife about a year after I’d lost mine, and seemed very distraught. Distraught as I still am, I thought I could help him.
So now we share dinner every Wednesday night at a restaurant in Canandaigua — he lives in Canandaigua.
Now it’s like our roles have reversed. He seems to have gotten over it, but I haven’t yet. Who knows how devastated he still is; one never knows what goes on in the background.
But I feel like the one needing help is me.
Be that as it may, Jim, like me, is a car-guy.
So he got me this calendar.
It purports to be a musclecar calendar, but I don’t feel it is, that is, not entirely.
It was apparently put together by a GM car-dealer, and it’s all GM cars. Not a single Ford or Chrysler product — not even a Mustang.
The January 2015 entry of this calendar is a full-size 1968 Impala SS convertible, the kind of car this car-guy avoided like the plague.
The first thing I said was “what motor?” —Hoping it was a Big-Block. But there’s no indication what motor it is.
Apparently “SS” was just a trim-option for the full-size Impala.
To me, “SS” connotes a hot-rodded Big-Block with four-speed floorshift.
But who knows what this car is? It may be local; I see a NY tag.
It isn’t something I’d want.
But I appreciate the calendar — it’s on a cabinet. As always, it’s the thought that counts.
And some of the cars look pretty good.
I wonder if they’re local?

E-Z Pass

Easy my foot!
What a struggle!
I have gotten an E-Z Pass.
For those not knowing, an E-Z Pass is a thingy you put on your car’s windshield, which a reader reads at toll-gates on toll roads, and then charges you.
I don’t drive toll-roads often, but do occasionally.
I also noticed few drivers in PA use E-Z Pass.
As a result there are often gigantic traffic-jams at toll-barriers. Which I could skirt if I had E-Z Pass.
Getting an E-Z Pass was simple. My local supermarket had ‘em.
So I bought an E-Z Pass; 25 buckaroos.
No charge for the E-Z Pass; the $25 is a credit to your account.
But “Please register before using at www.E-ZPassNY.com/register.”
Okay, fire up this here laptop.
Crank web-address into Internet browser.
SLAM! I got hit with same allegedly E-Z Pass site offering credit-checks and arrest-records.
Uhm........; I tried again.
This time I got the official NY E-Z Pass site, chock full of links, but none to register.
I consider myself fairly proficient on this ‘pyooter, but if I don’t see a “register” link, I’m helpless.
I don’t have time to pore all over a site trying to find a “register/activate” link, so I called their 800-number.
I got a machine offering NINE (count ‘em: nine) menu-options (must be gumint).
Plus it wanted my account-number, which I didn’t have yet.
Thankfully, there was an “0” option: “Please hold for the next available human.”
Then, “Please hold while I transfer your call.....”
UH-OHHH...... —Prepare to be cut off and start over.
“You will also need your plate-number, credit-card, plus the numbers on your E-Z Pass unit.”
I started staggering around to get all this stuff, but suddenly “How may I help you?”
“I have everything but my plate-number, but you answered more quickly than I expected.”
The girl then wanted an account-number. “I don’t have one yet, or don’t think I do. I have no idea what is happening. I don’t think I have an account until this thing is registered.”
The girl snapped something at me.
“Slow down,” I said. “Yer talking to a stroke-survivor. You talk at the speed-of-light and I can’t follow.”
Now I got the exasperation of trying to be comprehendible to a stroke-survivor. I usually don’t get it, people are usually understanding, but I occasionally get it. —Like I’m delaying their donut-break.
Which is why I don’t like making phonecalls.
I gave her my plate-number, plus the multiple numbers on my E-Z Pass unit, front and back.
I guess the E-Z Pass reader in a toll-plaza is a radio receiver, and my unit transmits.
So why all the numbers? Jobs?
Then I gave her my credit-card number; my E-Z Pass account would be replenished by my credit-card.
That took two attempts; she blew the first try.
Finally she gave me my E-Z Pass account-number, yet another number to write down.
She then hung up, and I was able to attach my E-Z Pass thingy to my car’s windshield.
Supposedly my E-Z Pass slightly reduces toll-charges; we’ll see if it does.
What I’m more interested in is saving time, like 25 minutes in a toll-barrier jam.

• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, and it slightly compromised my speech. (Difficulty finding and putting words together.) I pretty much recovered

Christmas comes, Christmas goes

Quite justifiably, bereavement-groups make a big deal of Christmas, and also Thanksgiving.
Both are celebrations of family, and if bereaved one is missing.
But my wife and I (my wife is now gone) never made much of either.
My wife would roast a turkey for Thanksgiving, but we didn’t have family nearby, so all we let share it was our dog.
Same with Christmas; no children, so we didn’t have much reason to put up a tree.
We did at first.
We also exchanged presents at first, but stopped after it became apparent we both reflected dismay with presents received.
Many of the conifers in my yard are old Christmas-trees. When we moved out here to West Bloomfield, we started buying live trees.
They were usually small, but not too long ago we had to cut down our first tree — it had gotten over 40 feet tall, and was crowding out others.
I think we did one tree after my stroke, but after that we stopped. They were too much trouble.
The last live tree was planted by my wife. I wasn’t much help — I was too messed up after my stroke. That tree now is almost 40 feet tall.
To my mind, my stroke was what skonked the Christmas-trees.
We continued putting up outside Christmas decorations, plus electric candles inside our windows.
My wife was putting up the outside lights, which stopped with her death.
I managed to get the inside candles up the first year after she died.
But the last two seasons I haven’t.
I may get them up next year. Right now they’re behind a mountain of trash in my basement — too hard to access.
If I get the trash tossed, I may be able to try again.
So Christmas isn’t much any more, and wasn’t much before my wife died.
I seem to be ending on a down note.
People tell me “I know it’s tough not having your wife for the holidays.”
But it really isn’t any different than any other day.
I miss my wife no matter what day it is.
A bereavement-group to which I once belonged held a “hope for the holidays.” I went a few years ago, but didn’t this year.

• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.
• I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester. Adjacent is the rural town of East Bloomfield, and the village of Bloomfield is within it.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I pretty much recovered.

GPS

Yrs Trly is looking at a long auto-trip to south Jersey this weekend, about seven hours.
South Jersey is where I’m from originally. The intent is to visit some cousins, and probably my only remaining aunt, who is their mother. She’s 84; I myself am 70.
At my age, I don’t look forward to this trip.
I never can get on-the-road until about 10:15; just taking my dog to her boarder is about an hour there-and-back.
This means I won’t get to my destination until after dark, and it’s an unknown destination.
For that reason I was interested in the GPS on my iPhone. GPS can pinpoint the exact location of my destination, and it’s a house off a rural road.
There is pipeline piping just before the driveway, but if it’s dark I probably won’t see it.
Supposedly GPS would pinpoint the exact location.
A lady-friend I eat dinner with does GPS on her iPhone. She would show me how.
“Okay,” I said; “The supposed reason for this dinner was to show me how to GPS with my iPhone.”
“Simple,” she said. She took out her iPhone and started stroking it.
“Wait a minute!” I screamed, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
We played musical chairs so I could sit next to her.
Swipe — swipe — swipe — swipe! Punctuated by occasional “yadda-yadda.”
“How do you get to that screen?”
“You just play with it,” she said.
The old waazoo: try this and see what happens.
I poked around, and ascertained a curved arrow took me to a location-menu I had already made, including my own house, plus the house in south Jersey.
Plus the “16th Street Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA,” plus “8 inches in my driveway.” Why they’re in there I’ll never know, and I don’t know yet how to get them out.
I stabbed around some more. The iPhone would GPS me to my house, or the house in south Jersey, from my current location, the restaurant.
It would speak directions at me, and display maps on its screen while I proceeded.
“Okay, but what matters is it’s gotta pinpoint the exact location of that house in south Jersey,” I said.
“It does that,” she said.
“I’ve never been there before, and usually the GPS is in my head.”
Back-and-forth we went, me yelling, and my friend stroking.
But it was okay; she wasn’t useless.
What she ended up being was like my wife, deceased a while ago.
(This lady is also bereaved; her husband died.)
She, and my wife, would get me poking around; try this and see what happens.
I tried poking around a few days ago, but got fouled up. I need someone around to ask questions, or in my wife’s case hold my hand.
So now I guess I essentially have it figured out, but I needed that lady to hold my hand.
Then too, the iPhone GPS gives me a route I prefer to not use. For example, it directs me to an Interstate I don’t use because it dog-legs.
If I had it on as I started this trip, I’d drive it crazy recalculating.

• I eat dinner every Wednesday night with a group of other bereaved; although in this case it was Monday, because Wednesday-night would be Christmas-Eve, and the restaurant would be closed.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.

Christmas-Party

The other day, Wednesday, December 17th, 2014, I attended the annual Alumni Christmas-party.
The so-called “Alumni” are the union retirees (Local 282, the Rochester local of the nationwide Amalgamated Transit Union) of Regional Transit Service in Rochester, NY. For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS), the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY and environs.
The Alumni was a reaction to the fact Transit management oldsters ran roughshod over union oldsters — a continuation of the bad vibes at Transit: management versus union.
Transit had a club for long-time employees, and I was in it. It was called the “15/25-year Club;” I guess at first the “25-year Club.” But they lowered the employment requirement, and renamed it “15/25-year Club.” The employment requirement was lowered even more; I joined at 10 years.
My employ there ended in 1993 with my stroke; and the “Alumni” didn’t exist then. The Alumni is a special club — you have to join.
The Alumni is also an official branch of Local 282 of the Amalgamated Transit Union.
Driving bus was supposed to be a temporary job until I could find more suitable employ.
But it ended up being a career, 16&1/2 years.
It ended with my stroke October 26th, 1993. I was retired on disability, but recovered fairly well.
Everything works; I can pass for never having had a stroke.
My stroke was sort-of a blessing: I was tiring of driving bus, and wondered how I’d last 14 more years.
When I graduated college in 1966, I had no idea what to do with my life.
I wouldn’t be drafted into the Vietnam war-effort; I was 4-F. I developed a duodenal ulcer in college.
After I graduated I returned home to northern DE, the same madness left behind while in college.
For four years I had been on-my-own, free of parental meddling.
Returning was exasperating.
I also returned to the same employer I had during summers while in college. They liked having me around, but it was awful.
We were sandblasting the inside of a giant oil-tank.
And doing it from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. to avoid baking in the tank.
Sand from the sandblasters would mix with tar, then had to be removed.
That is, shovel up the tarry sand, then heave it outside through a manhole.
A few weeks after we began, a union-steward demanded I join the painter-union.
I refused; I hadn’t earned my college-degree for this.
Beyond that, I was tired of living at home. My father was unpredictable and almost insane. My mother was concerned, but couldn’t do anything. My father was head-of-the-household, a cantankerous zealot.
So I finally decided to move out on my own. I would go to Rochester (NY) to be near my eventual wife.
She was attending library-school at Geneseo state college (“jen-uh-SEE-oh”). She had graduated college in the same class as me; and library-school was also a shot-in-the-dark.
I wound up in a tiny sleeping-room in Rochester; my life wasn’t much, but at last I was free of madness.
But my money was running out.
So I went to a downtown clothing-store looking for Christmas workers.
No doubt this is what my father was hoping for: re-enactment of the Biblical prodigal-son story.
(And what does the fatted calf think?)
But no way could I return to madness. —Thereby saving the fatted calf.
I was thereafter branded as “rebellious.”
I was hired, and began working in their tailor-shop; minimum-wage, which at that time was $1.60 per hour. I had earned way more during my summer employ with the painters, maybe $3 or more per hour.
This lasted almost a year, and I befriended some tailors whose son was a rising star at a large bank next door.
They suggested I apply, and picked out suits for me.
I was hired by the bank as a “chief-clerk trainee” at $100 per week. My wife-to-be had also begun work at the same bank as a teller.
I lasted about three years, during which time I married. The “chief-clerk” position was withering away as branches became more dependent on a downtown “central-proof” department.
I ended up as a chief-clerk at a busy suburban branch, but it was awful because the branch-manager was a jerk who liked to override me.
If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have protested; an Assistant Branch-Manager did.
“You say you want me to manage, but when I do you override me, in which case gimme a transfer!”
With the chief-clerk position withering away, I was directed toward front-desk duty. Meet the public and sales, for which I was poorly suited.
Finally the bank offered me a transfer to auditing, more-or-less a prison-sentence. It was in a dungeon.
I refused, so was therefore cut loose. Fired, whatever; I don’t know. The bank was mad I wasn’t a viper, hot to rip off customers.
The branch staff held a going-away party for me; another good one lost by the branch-manager.
The restaurant-staff congratulated me on my promotion, to which I said “Yeah, promoted out the door.”
By then I had become interested in photography, so the branch-manager tried to line me up with one of his customers: an aerial-survey company using photography.
That went nowhere, so I began a seven-year sojourn trying to figure out who I was, and where I fit in the employment world.
I got more interested in car-racing photography, and tried to freelance. I sold some photos to national magazines.
I also started writing sportscar racing coverage for a small weekly newspaper in Rochester.
I never made any money at it. It was more a tax-dodge depreciating my camera equipment.
Meanwhile my wife and I moved out of our first apartment into our second, and then bought our first house, based on my wife’s income.
My wife had also changed jobs to Lawyer’s Cooperative Publishing , which became her 33-year career. (Lawyer’s is now part of Thomson-West.) She started as a proofer, then supervised the Library, and eventually became a computer-programmer.
Our first house was next to a girl who drove bus for Regional Transit.
I had already spent a few months interviewing at public-relations firms based on my writing at that weekly newspaper.
But it was going nowhere, so I decided to try bus-driving.
And so began the reason I’m a Transit retiree; 16&1/2 years of driving bus, where it was pleasant to safely maneuver large vehicles, but our clientele was rancorous and cantankerous.
My income was pretty good at first, more than my wife. We had a cost-of-living escalator in our contract, which kept me ahead of my wife.
But that was taken out, and eventually my wife passed me.
I also began doing a voluntary union newsletter on my computer. It blew a lot of time, but I enjoyed it.
Management loathed it, but couldn’t fire me. I was a stellar employee.
Furthermore, if they had fired me, the local politicians who read my newsletter, and funded Transit, might hold their feet to the fire.
My stroke ended my job driving bus, and I didn’t return, as well as I recovered, and much as my stroke-rehab wanted.
I found employ at a local newspaper, which didn’t pay as well, but was much more my style.
But I continue to attend Transit-retiree gigs, like this Christmas-party.
I’m sort of out-of-it, but I made friends at Transit. And we have so many stories to share.
It was a difficult job, but could be pleasant. What I enjoyed most was pulling out; after that I was pretty-much on-my-own.

• My wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.
• RE: “sandblasting......”— Compressed-air blasts sand and air through a hose at the surface to be sandblasted. Like sandpaper, scale and old paint is removed. Sandblasting is usually performed before painting, sometimes down to bare metal.

Online-ordering follies

The other night (probably Saturday, December 13th, 2014) I ordered some dog-treats online.
They wanted a log-in, so since I use this site often, I provided an account and password long ago. It saves time because an account fills in my info automatically, sometimes even my payment method. —I try to use PayPal.
Their site is a bit difficult to process, but since I’ve done it often, I know what to expect.
I already searched the product from their home-page, and “added-to-cart.”
Now I wanted to order.
To do so, first I gotta log in.
Log-in takes me back to their home-page. From that I can order from “view-cart.”
From “view-cart” I clicked “order,” and that fires up my address and pay thingy, already filled in.
We jumped back-and-forth all over their site, but I successfully ordered. I usually ask “who designed this thing?”
I then print my order, and e-mails from them and PayPal.
The store then sends me an e-mail when they ship. I don’t print that, just keep it until I get my stuff.
It will be shipped UPS, so UPS sends me an e-mail.
They want me to set up an account? Are they kidding? I gotta set up an account just to track a shipment?
PASS! They just wanna sell my account-info to the targeted-marketing firms. After which I get inundated with “dirty-old-man” junk. Scotch your credit debt, get your online doctorate, refinance your mortgage so you can buy that Corvette you always wanted.
I gotta set up an account just to track a shipment?
Forget-it UPS. I ain’t desperate!

Tiger-Tracks again

“These things are becoming a tradition,” said Gary Colvin (“COAL-vin”), like me a retired bus-driver from Regional Transit Service (RTS).
We attended the “Tiger-Tracks” model-train show yesterday (Saturday, December 13th, 2014) at Rochester Institute of Technology. I guess the tiger is its mascot; the show is put on by RIT’s model-railroad club.
It’s a massive show, the best I’ve been to, but I’ve only been to one other.
It’s held in RIT’s field-house, site of basketball and ice-hockey games.
Vendors bring lots of stuff to sell, and model-railroad clubs set up working model-railroads.
Gary is working on his own model-railroad. I can’t get interested; what I prefer is the real thing.
Model-railroads are always a compromise. Curvature is way tighter than reality. It has to be to fit.
To model a real railroad feature, like Horseshoe Curve, you’d need an entire basement, or maybe an airport-hanger.
Model trains also operate unrealistically. A passenger-train on a model-railroad would continuously throw passengers to the floor.
Curves are way tighter than reality, and model-trains negotiate them at improbable speeds.
There also is starting and stopping. A real train starts and stops at a crawl. Model trains suddenly lurch into motion, or lurch to a stop.
A friend and I once measured the scale speed of a passenger-train. It got up to 250 mph, and stopped from that speed in about 100 scale feet.
There also are the trains themselves. Real trains might have 100 or more cars, and be over a mile long. Such trains might get by with only two or three diesel-locomotive units.
With model trains you’re doing good if you can get one locomotive to pull 20 cars. —And don’t ask it to climb a grade, and grades on model-railroads are usually way steeper than reality; in which case a big hand drops from the sky to help the train up the grade.
Model trains have gotten much more realistic than years ago when I last fooled with them as a teenager. That was the time of 250-mph passenger-trains that stopped on a dime.
Trains start and stop more realistically, but still more quickly than reality.
I also saw trains at this show of more than 20 cars. When I was fooling around with them, a single locomotive might max out at seven cars.
There also is individual train-control.
Years ago you varied the current in the track to vary train-speed, plus you could only run one train at a time on a single track.
Put two trains on that track, and both would start and stop at the same time, and if one was faster than the other, it would catch up with the other train, and bunt it in the caboose.
Now the track is fully energized, and the locomotives run by computer-controller. Individual locomotives are signaled to take the current needed to operate as desired. —Which means you can run two trains individually on the same track.
This is much more like reality. In the real world the track isn’t energized. Multiple trains run individually on the same track, although a dispatcher keeps them from smashing into each other.
So model-trains are much more realistic, although still far from reality.
I watched a steam locomotive with synchronized “chuff-chuff” sound. It actually synchronized with side-rod motion, just like a real steam-engine.
The steam-locomotives also emit puffs of smoke from their stacks, but it smells like burnt wax, not coal. And it’s not as dense as what one sees in reality.
Back-and-forth we went, down one aisle then up another, picking through the effluvia.
We are both rather lame, me with a bad knee, and Colvin using a cane. We hobble slowly. I don’t think we covered as much as previous shows.
Gary bought a few small bitsa, plus a tool. He shows me the bitsa, and I have no idea what I’m looking at.

The greatest railroad locomotive ever built! (Photo by Bobbalew.)

I came away from this show a few years ago with the HO GG-1 model pictured.
35 buckaroos; not bad for a working HO model of the greatest railroad locomotive EVER.
It’s not exactly what I wanted. It’s Tuscan (“TUSS-kin;” not “Tucson, Ariz.”) red instead a Brunswick-green, the color I always saw.
And it’s the original gold “cat-whisker” scheme of five gold pinstripes, not the yellow single stripe I usually saw (the second paint-scheme).
I have since bought another HO GG-1, Brunswick-green with the single yellow stripe. But the number-fonts aren’t the same as the letters, and they should be.
At least the proportions are right on both engines. I’ve seen shortened HO GG-1 models made to negotiate tight curvature. I’ve even seen the GG-1 body on E-unit trucks. (Criminy!)
Colvin’s brother-in-law was with us, and seemed fairly impressed. It’s a big show, with a lot of what I call “junk.” Crates of dusty bitsa, and gigantic old Lionel collections.
But I don’t know as it’s junk, if you’re interested in model-railroading.
Chasing the real thing is a five-hour drive for me, but usually it’s productive.
I’m talking about Altoona, PA, where the old Pennsylvania Railroad crossed Allegheny Mountain.
It’s now Norfolk Southern, but still quite busy. Busy enough to cause problems; trains use the same track, and there isn’t much.
There are two railroads that serve the east-coast megalopolis, CSX across New York, and Norfolk Southern across PA. Both move a lot of freight, and now freight from east-coast ports is moving inland.
Be that as it may, model-railroading exists in a dreamworld: lots of track, way more than reality. The world outside a model-railroad seems minuscule; the modelers are more interested in running trains.
I noticed many of those in attendance were old geezers like Gary and me. Still in love with the dreamworld engendered by model trains.
The guy who daycares my dog wondered why I attended this show when I prefer the real thing. “Because I like hanging around with Gary,” I said.

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke October 26th, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.

ZOOP!

For the past couple months my iPhone wanted me to upgrade its operating-system to iO8.0.2.
I’ve always let it upgrade, but this time it wouldn’t.
A Smartphone, which my iPhone is, is a miniature computer, so it has an operating-system.
My iPhone is a “5;” I got it about a year-and-half ago as part of a cellphone upgrade to which I was entitled.
For Smart-phones I started with a Motorola Droid-X. It was okay, but it made unwanted “pocket-calls,” and liked to hang.
“Pocket-calls” are unwanted phonecalls made by having the Smartphone in your back pocket, where a bump or sitting could initiate a call.
The Droid-X also liked to make calls on its own while charging on my nightstand; that is, not in my pocket.
It also liked to freeze. The only way to unfreeze it was remove the battery.
My brother in northern DE has an iPhone, I think a “4.”
So do his wife and only son.
He suggested I switch “because the iPhone always works,” and doesn’t make pocket-calls.
So I switched, and that was after my wife died. She’d be amazed I’ve gotten so I can drive it.
Of course, I ain’t doin’ much; nowhere near what that iPhone could do.
But I have my grocery-lists on it, and keep my appointments in its calendar-app.
I also access my Internet weather-site while down in Altoona chasing trains. It can tell me if a deluge is coming.
I’ve also used it as a camera.
Since I got it, there have been at least two operating-system upgrades, maybe three.
One put a security log-in on it. Made sense. Although a friend was mad you had to log in before you could text.
Although with me it wasn’t that much an impediment, since I don’t text much.
A recent upgrade seemed buggy. Once my e-mail turned into a bog-slow mess (my iPhone also gets my e-mail, as did my Droid-X).
And often the touch-screen has froze, usually in my calendar app.
The other day I tried to call my niece’s husband, and it just hung. I never could call him, despite two or three attempts, but he called me, and I got that.
So I figured the new operating-system might fix those bugs, but I couldn’t install it.
I took my iPhone to an Apple guru, but he ended up the same as me.
I then took it to the ‘pyooter-store that set me up, but they couldn’t install it either.
“Fire up iTunes on your computer, and have your computer upgrade it,” they told me. “You’ll be told a system upgrade is available.
Doing it with your computer is way faster than Verizon’s cellphone-towers.” (My cellphone is Verizon.)
Well, I don’t know exactly what is going on, but my iPhone always wanted wi-fi to upgrade. That’s not Verizon’s cell-towers, that’s my wi-fi router.
So I fired up iTunes on this laptop, and plugged in my iPhone. An iPhone operating-system upgrade was available.
All kinds of mysterious and unknowable hoops were displayed about deactivating and restoring your iPhone.
Lost, as usual; I’m not a techie.
But apparently it upgraded.
Now I get to deal with the fallout.
My iPhone has “Siri” (“seer-eee”) and voice-recognition, which save time. And they’re pretty good, unlike my car (which is Microsoft).
They save time compared to fat-fingers on a tiny virtual keyboard.
“Do you wanna dictate?” That is, have Apple monitor whatever I said.
WHAAA.....?
“Cancel;” engage voice-recognition again.
Back to the same “dictate” screen.
For crying out loud, Apple; you’re not giving me a yes-or-no option.
Why in the world would I want Apple to monitor my voice-recognition?
Okay, what are they gonna get? “Broccoli, carrots, Alumni breakfast luncheon.”
Congratulations, Apple, you get junk like this for gumint minions to pore through. “Broccoli and carrots” indicate my terrorist inclinations.
Then the other afternoon I had to call my kennel to reserve dog-boarding. Usually it’s just a Siri command: “Call Ranchanna.”
But this time Siri was lost. “I don’t see ‘Ranch-era’ in your contacts; should I look it up on the Internet instead?”
I tried again: “Call Ranchanna.”
“I don’t see ‘Ranch-era’ in your contacts; should I look it up on the Internet instead?”
Guess I gotta call ‘em from my contact-list.
I fired up my contact-list.
“No contacts.”
Uh-ohhhh..... Looks like that system upgrade lunched my contact-list.
Now what?
I had to revert to the 1950s; look up “Ranchanna” in the white-pages, and call from that.
“Revolutionary and magical.”
How, pray tell, can I get my contact-list back?
Guess I gotta visit the Apple-store.
I remembered Verizon was saving my contacts to “Backup Assistant” in the sky.
I set that up long ago after my first contacts loss.
Now every time I add a contact, Verizon backs it up. It’s auto-magic.
So all I gotta do is download my contact-list from Verizon, and I’m back in business.
There were other reasons to visit the Apple-store. I wasn’t sure I had actually upgraded my phone, and there were other issues.
So I figured I’d visit the Apple-store today (Wednesday, December 10th, 2014).
But yesterday I was doing grocery-shopping in the vicinity of the ‘pyooter-store that sold me the phone.
I figured they got my contact-list from Verizon’s “Backup Assistant.”
Actually they used a machine to take my contact-list off my Droid-X and put it on my iPhone.
That is, they hadn’t used Backup-Assistant, but could.
So now I have my contact-list back.
“You’re saving me a trip to the Apple-store,” I commented.
“Oh, don’t do that! For service you gotta get an appointment, and what they really wanna do is sell you an iPhone-6.”
“I don’t want no iPhone-6 until I’m due for an upgrade,” I said.
So I’m glad I went to my ‘pyooter-store. I guess I’m back in the 21st century.

• The “Motorola Droid-X” operated on Google’s “Android” operating platform. It was made by Motorola.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.
• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• “Siri” is a voice-recognition personal assistant programmed into the iPhone, an iPhone specialty. I can command it to do all kinds of things.
• A “virtual keyboard” is a keyboard displayed onto the screen. It operates by screen-touch much like a typewriter keyboard.
• The so-called “Alumni” are the union retirees (Local 282, the Rochester local of the nationwide Amalgamated Transit Union) of Regional Transit Service in Rochester, NY. (For 16&1/2 years [1977-1993] I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service [RTS], the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY.) The Alumni was a reaction to the fact Transit management retirees ran roughshod over union retirees — a continuation of the bad vibes at Transit: management versus union. Transit had a club for long-time employees, and I was in it. It was called the “15/25-year Club;” I guess at first the “25-year Club.” But they lowered the employment requirement, and renamed it “15/25-year Club.” The employment requirement was lowered even more; I joined at 10 years. My employ there ended in 1993 with my stroke; and the “Alumni” didn’t exist then. The Alumni is a special club — you have to join.
• “Revolutionary and magical” is what Apple CEO Steve Jobs (now deceased) called the iPhone when it debuted in 2007.
• An “other issue” is the “Find-my-phone” thingy has been turned off.

“A date that will live in infamy”

“I can still see that oily black pillar of smoke TOWERING above that ship!”

Today, Sunday December 7th, 2014, is the 73rd anniversary of December 7th, 1941, “A date that will live in infamy.”
Those were the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt following Japan’s attack on the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor, the Hawaiian Islands.
It’s also the final day of Medicare open-enrollment, which means I finally stop having my mailbox stuffed by insurance companies entreating me to sign up for a Medicare-Advantage plan.
—What seemed to occur after the election passed.
To me, the Pearl Harbor attack is more important.
It seems like people are forgetting; that WWII is receding into the filmy past.
After all, most on this planet were born well after WWII.
Almost 20 years ago, as I began employ at the Mighty Mezz, I detailed how my parents survived the Depression.
“What’s the Depression?” I was asked.
I think my friend knew what the Depression was, but the Depression was becoming forgotten.
“I can still see that oily black pillar of smoke TOWERING above that ship!”
That’s what I always say to anyone buying a Japanese car.
Someone suggested I try a Mitsubishi car.
“Mitsubishi,” I screamed. “Weren’t they the manufacturers of the Japanese Zero?”
I’ve even owned Jap cars myself. They seem more reliable than a Chevrolet.
A while ago I had a Volkswagen Rabbit.
I showed up for Christmas at the home of a Battle of Britain survivor.
She screamed when she opened her garage-door. “How can you buy a German car after what they did to London?”
A friend told me his mechanic refused to work on Japanese trucks.
He survived Iwo Jima.
WWII veterans are fading fast.
My uncle, my father’s brother, survived the Allied invasion on Anzio in Italy.
He died a few years ago.
He’s buried at Arlington, among thousands of WWII veterans.
And now it’s like WWII didn’t happen.
Now everything is quickly fading: the Pearl Harbor attack, the D-Day invasion, triumph in the Pacific, everything but the Atomic Bombs, which our use of is being called into question.
They killed thousands, but saved thousands more. We didn’t have to invade Japan, where thousands would have died.
What matters now is the price of gasoline, and Reality TV. J-Lo’s latest beau, and who will win the Super-Bowl.
After the Rabbit came a couple Hondas and a Toyota. Now I have a Ford, but it’s essentially a Mazda.
I was once accused of being a “Boomer;” a drain on fat-cats.
But I’m not Post-War Baby-Boom. I’m a war-baby; we were still at war on February 5th, 1944.

• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired about nine 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.)

Boy-Scout ruminations

When I was 10 or 11, or whenever you were supposed to transition from Cub-Scouts.....
My father wanted me to join a local Boy-Scout troop established in our church.
My father was hyper-religious. That church was pretty much his doing.
It was Troop 140, an offshoot of our local Boy-Scout troop, #114.
It seemed to be a pack of rebellious ne’er-do-wells, disenchanted with 114 because it was such a do-gooder troop, kind of like Kiwanis or the local Lions Club.
140 had two rebels that were particularly evil, Charley Post and “Applegate.” I don’t remember Applegate’s first name, but it may have been “Tommy.”
Posty and Applegate left 114 because 140 had a Scoutmaster who was also evil. He let them get away with most anything.
I was in dreadful fear of Posty and Applegate. They were threatening me with initiation (gasp) on a camping-trip.
140 held camping-trips in the south-Jersey Pine-Barrens, and I didn’t go, fearing Posty and Applegate.
Initiation was to remove all one’s clothes, then submerge them in a creek or bog. I would be left stark-naked in the Pine-Barrens in the frigid cold.
Is it any wonder I didn’t go?
Much later 140 went along on another foray into the south-Jersey Pine-Barrens to sleep over in a log hunting-lodge.
Much as I didn’t wanna go, my father signed me up.
I hoped the presence of other Boy-Scout troops might temper Posty and Applegate.
Things went fairly well. I was instrumental in stocking our snow-fort with ammo for a giant snowball fight.
Posty thereby declared me initiated. He noted this while defecating pants-down in a bog.
So now I wonder if Posty and Applegate are still alive.
Both probably served in ‘Nam.
I didn’t, because I was “4-F.”
Both were slightly older than me, perhaps three years. Applegate was less fearsome.
My membership with Troop 140 didn’t go past 1957, when our family moved to northern DE. We thereby left my father’s church behind; but he was mad anyway, because they hired a replacement pastor without his approval while we were still there.

• RE: “4-F........” —The gumint had various classifications of suitability for the military-draft in effect back then. “4-F” was totally unsuited for military service, usually for health-reasons. In my case it was a duodenal-ulcer I developed in college. College-attendance was also a reason for draft-deferment; but after college, ‘Nam for you, baby!

“Them are 200 mph tires!”

To which I could have said: “And where, pray tell, do you expect to do 200 mph?”
This was my niece’s husband, who I try to not give a hard time.
After all, he’s the same guy I gave a hard time to after he bragged his Ford V6 motor was 32-valve.
Last Sunday (November 30th, 2014) I ate out in Rochester (NY) with my niece, her husband and their daughter, and my niece’s mother, with whom they all live.
Her mother is my wife’s brother’s first wife. He’s now on wife number-four, and she’ll probably be his last. My wife’s brother has been slammed this way and that.
A 32-valve V6 is impossible. A V6 with four valves per cylinder is 24 valves. Five valves per cylinder would total 30 valves. —I haven’t seen any, but Yamaha made five valves per cylinder. It was an inline-four motorcycle-engine: 20 valves.
32 valves are only V8s; eight times four valves per cylinder equals 32.
My niece’s husband was so sure of himself, he increased his volume.
But I wasn’t swayed. A 32-valve V6 is too many valves.
My next question could have been how does one get a two-ton four-door sedan to do 200 mph?
It’s motor is strong, but 200 mph? 150 maybe.
Niece’s husband was mad because their GPS led them onto a dirt road going to New York City.
That trip left him with slight damage to one of his $1500 20-inch alloy wheels. Damage my niece and I couldn’t see, but her husband saw it.
He was gonna call in his auto-insurance: Geico.
So I didn’t say anything about the 200-mph tires.
What I did instead was scratch my head over how a GPS could lead you into the boonies.
Going to New York City; for crying out loud!
“I don’t trust ‘em,” I implied. “This kid has to know how he’s going before he starts.”
“But for an unknown location,” my niece said; “GPS is required.”
“In which case I do some research first, and print out Google-maps,” I said. “Google even has ‘street-views;’ that’s better than being led onto a dirt road.”
Years ago, in high-school and college, I used to lust after maximum automotive performance. Ferrari or Lotus for me!
But after well over 50 years of driving in 15 cars, I have fallen back to just wanting the thing to start and run reliably — my paternal grandmother’s values.
Most trips are pillar-to-post. 200 mph is Bonneville Salt Flats.

• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.
• The “Bonneville Salt Flats” are a huge expanse of empty and level desert in northwestern Utah. It has a race-track on it used for speed-trials. The area is big enough and flat enough for record ground-speeds; even higher than the sound-barrier. The area was once part of an inland sea; all that remain are Great Salt Lake, and the salt-flats.

Santy chronicles

Me at age-six with the REAL Santy. (I’m probably asking for a Lionel train.)

As royally messed-up as I am, my wife, who of course is now gone, told me the reason she chased and eventually married me is because of the way I thunk.
For example, I’d walk in our house, after working out at the YMCA, and say: “I have news. Of all the many places on this vast planet Santa Claus could visit, he’s gonna visit our town, tiny West Bloomfield.”
That’s because I had just passed a sign at the Legion-hall up the street that said Santa would visit.
Yrs Trly always had a difficult time with the Santa story.
I believed in Santa, but there were Santas everywhere; multiple Santas on street-corners.
“But they’re not the REAL Santa Claus,” my mother would say. “The REAL Santa is at Gimbels Department-store in Philadelphia.” He’d come in Philadelphia’s Thanksgiving-Day parade on a hook-and-ladder, which got raised to Gimbels’ eighth-floor, then Santa climbed up to enter Gimbels through a window.
Those street-corner Santas were ersatz.
Gimbels, of course, is gone. It liquidated in 1987.
I’m sure there were other real Santas in Philadelphia. I bet Strawbridge & Clothier had one. As did Wanamaker’s and Lit Brothers.
But Gimbels is where my family shopped. Strawbridge’s and Wanamaker’s were upper-crust — perceived as pricy = of-the-Devil.
Plus it was Gimbels’ Thanksgiving-Day parade.
My father worked for additional income at a nearby Sears, and they too had a Santa. But he wasn’t the REAL Santa.
If I’d sat on his lap, I’d tell him the REAL Santa was at Gimbels.
At age-six our family visited Gimbels; to see the REAL Santa Claus, and have our picture taken.
That’s the picture above, and I see I look very ernest.
I have another picture of Santa with my sister, since deceased, but she looks very bored.
Wiggling all over, but at least not crying. Many of the toddlers were crying. “Why am I on the lap of this total stranger? Mommy!”
Santa would visit our town in south Jersey.
But it wasn’t the REAL Santa. It was Charley Philpot (“fill-pot”), chief of the Volunteer Fire-Department.
He’d ride around our town atop our American-LaFrance fire-truck.
Little children would yank his costume beard, and Charley would angrily tell them to stop.
I wasn’t fooled. The REAL Santa was at Gimbels.
My parents revealed the secret when I was seven.
No longer would my sister and I sneak downstairs on Christmas-Eve hoping to see Santa.
My mother always left out a bottle of Pepsi and an orange for Santa.
Next morning they would be gone, proving Santa had been to our house.
“How does Santa get in if we don’t have a fireplace? If he came down our chimney he’d end up in our oil-burner.”

• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly. My sister Betty died of cancer in December of 2011.
• A “hook-and-ladder” is a type of fire-truck, specific to carrying ladders. Often hook-and-ladders are truck and steerable trailer. The hook-and-ladder Santa rode in the Thanksgiving-Day parade was a truck-and-trailer. A hook-and-ladder usually had a long mounted ladder that could be raised and extended, and pivoted. Cities (like Philadelphia) had long hook-and-ladders in case of fires in tall buildings. I think the American-LaFrance fire-truck behind the link is a hook-and-ladder, but it’s not truck-and-trailer.

No 89-bazilyun “friends”

The other day I happened to fire up my Facebook, which I hardly ever look at.
Six people I didn’t know were staring at me in Facebook “friend” invitations atop my page.
I was so flummoxed I wrote the following “status-update.”
(Facebook calls ‘em “status-updates.”)
“I see SIX (count ‘em, six) people I’m supposed to Facebook friend.
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? I don’t know a single one.
FB is claiming they are friends of people I’ve ‘friended.’
47 “friends” is enough. I don’t want thousands.
My aunt has only one friend, my brother who set her up.
Another guy I graduated college with has no FB ‘friends’ at all. He refuses to join Facebook.
I’d dive myself, but what-the-Hell?”
Apparently these status-updates go out to whatever Facebook “friends” I have.
One, a cousin down near Washington DC, responded as follows:
“It's best to keep the ‘friend list’ to relatives, or those friends from work, school, or your neighborhood that you actually know, or to additional people with whom you share a clear and unequivocal interest that may have developed ‘virtually’ (that is, from an on-line ‘community’). ‘Friends of Friends (and their friends and their friends)’ could lead to what Carl Sagan spoke of: ‘billions and billions.’ Billions of what? Names? Faces? Cat videos? That may be Zuckerberg's ultimate goal. Not mine.”
Apparently the friend-invites are “friends” of people I’ve “friended.” One looked like someone from Transit, and I’m “friends” with a few Transit retirees.
I know none of the others, like they may be “friends” with people who happen to be my “friends.”
Like I should be “friends” with someone I don’t know, just because they are “friends” with people I do know.
I don’t know what Facebook thinks, but one’s self-worth is not a function of how many Facebook “friends” one has.
I know some who have thousands of “friends;” not this kid.
My 84-year-old aunt has only one friend, my brother who set her up.
I’ve always been put off by Facebook; I put up with it.
Sickening ads that were obviously targeted, and once it froze my computer — it hasn’t recently.
Plus it’s always rolling out a new user-interface — I gotta spend hours trying the figger it out.
It also can be ridiculous. 89-bazilyun “congrats.”
I hardly look at it because it’s usually turgidly boring.
I’d shut down my Facebook, if I could see a way.
My sister died about three years ago, yet her Facebook rumbles on. My wife died two-and-a-half years ago, yet still has a Facebook. My friend Dan Gnagy died, but still has a Facebook.
What’s wrong with e-mail? Well, it can’t crunch a cat-video like Facebook can. It’s 20th century.
I keep my Facebook because many of my REAL friends use Facebook to communicate.

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