My calendar for January 2019

“BAMP-BAMP-BA-BAMP!”(Photo by BobbaLew.)


—“04T, east on Two, 242; CLEAR!”
That was on my railroad-radio scanner.
“He’s not even to Altoona yet.” It was about 8:45 a.m.
I was in my motel room in Hollidaysburg, PA south of Altoona, glomming my egg-sausage McMuffin.
“04T” is Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian, “Two” is Track Two, “242” is the milepost signal location (from Philadelphia), and “CLEAR” is the signal aspect.
Every time a train’s engineer passes a trackside signal, he must call out the signal aspect on railroad-radio. My brother and I know where those signals are, except I was alone this time.
“He’s still gotta stop in Altoona. I might be able to beat him farther east.”
I quickly glommed the rest of my McMuffin, then threw everything in my car. Camera, tripod, etc. It was bitter cold, about five degrees.
I zoomed toward I-99, which goes up the same valley as the railroad.
He’s gotta stop in Altoona, then Tyrone. I might be able to beat him to Plummers. He would be into the sun eastbound, and the sun was out.
Tyrone is where the old Pennsylvania Railroad turned east toward Harrisburg. The railroad is now Norfolk Southern, and Amtrak runs on it. Amtrak’s Pennsylvanian is the only passenger-train left on this storied cross-state railroad. It’s state sponsored, and there used to be hundreds. The Pennsylvanian runs both eastbound and westbound.
Bombing toward Tyrone at 70 mph; “04T, east on Two, 227; CLEAR!” That’s Fostoria; I’m even with him.
“04T, east on Two, 225; CLEAR!” That’s McFarlin’s; still even.
Off I-99 at Tyrone, east on 453 toward Plummers Crossing. It looks like I might beat him.
“04T, pulling into Tyrone station for the station-stop.”
I’m about a mile east of Tyrone, and hear a single horn-blast = stopped.
His Tyrone station-stop is at most three minutes; I hear two short horn-blasts: “04T, east on Two, leaving Tyrone station.”
By now I’m out of my car, running around back into position. I hear the locomotive throttling up. Camera on; check!
There he is. I’m gonna get that sucker!
The January 2019 entry of MY calendar is Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian charging Plummers Crossing.

The moving finger having writ moves on

The other night I keyed a long e-mail to an old friend who began driving bus shortly after me — May of 1977.
We became friends despite him being hyper-religious, although more loving than my judgmental father.
He was one of many bus-drivers trying to convert me. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Bible-thumping Baptists, Latter-Day-Saints, and in his case evangelical Catholic.
He ran the gamut during our employ. He was evangelical Protestant when we began, but returned to the Catholicism of his childhood.
I drove transit bus 16&1/2 years, and it ended with my stroke over 25 years ago. Bus-driving was supposed to be temporary. I was unable to find employ as a writer. I stayed with it because it paid fairly well.
After 16&1/2 years I was tiring of it. I test-drove every experimental, and mastered articulated (hinged, bendable) buses. Transit management assigned me the experimentals because they wanted my wordy evaluations — the writer-jones.
Our clientele was the trigger. I picked rural runs where passengers weren’t so difficult. I also did “school-work,” taking teenagers to a technical high-school on the western edge of Rochester.
My passengers loved me because I was a bleeding-heart liberal. I rode bus myself when younger.
When I went on vacation I told my passengers to be at their stops five minutes earlier, since I started five minutes late. I got downtown on time.
I also knew all the secret time-saving detours in case expressways clogged. I learned how to skirt traffic-jams, and if a passenger wasn’t at their stop I looked for him/her.
If some slum-kid was running after me, I broke all the rules and stopped. I wasn’t stickin’ it to that kid.
Bleeding-heart liberal or not, there were always passengers hot to mug me. I was looking at 14 more years. My stroke ended my bus-driving. That stroke was caused by an undiagnosed heart-defect, later repaired with open-heart surgery — I have “the zipper.”
I recovered well enough from my stroke to be employed by a newspaper — a paragraph factory. I wasn’t exactly writing, but I did some at first. It was more editing, and generating copy to fill the newspaper.
I call it “the BEST job I ever had.” I consider it a phase in recovery from my difficult childhood. The initial phase was college, Houghton College (“HO-tin;” as in “hoe,” not “how” or “who”), the first religious institution to value and solicit my opinions instead of automatically categorizing me a threat.
The second phase was my wife, the first girl who actually liked me. I was convinced at an early age no girl would ever like me.
My wife died almost seven years ago. I was devastated for a while. She was the best friend I ever had. My bereavement counselor suggests my wife filled a gigantic void = someone actually liking me instead of badmouthing me as did my parents, etc.
Now I seem to be moving on to the next phase = actually liking myself. But 70 years late, in my humble opinion. Part of that is my childhood, but part was because I was married to a girl who actually liked me. I could hide. My social-graces are minimal.
With my wife gone, I’m on-my-own, and I experience incredible success. Start the conversation myself. If that bombs, it ain’t my fault. 10 years ago I hardly spoke to anyone — no one would wanna talk to me.
My friend bewailed not attending the Transit retirees Christmas banquet. I did, of course. I force myself to attend these functions per bereavement counselor advice.
I made many friends at Transit, despite feeling out-of-it. I loathe losing ‘em. But my friend needed to know I am no longer the wuss who drove bus. I also am no longer the dude I was while married = able to avoid social contact.
Successes are piling up. Start the conversation yourself. Let ‘em talk, and they gush all over me. Often they wanna hear what I say.
70 years late I’m discovering this, and bus-driving recedes into the filmy past.

• “The moving finger having writ moves on...” is a misquote from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on...”
• “Transit” equals Regional Transit Service, the public transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY, where I drove bus for 16&1/2 years (1977-1993). My stroke October 26th, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.

“Here I am again.....”

“Here I am again,” I said to my credit-card contact.
“It seems I can’t go a billing-cycle without you guys getting ripped off.”
My credit-card bank eats the ripoffs. It’s only nickel-and-dime stuff: $31.43, $29.01; total $95.80. Years ago it was over $1,000. Last time it was nickel-and-dime too.
“What do I hafta do?” I asked. I have the awful temerity, unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to proof my credit-card statement. Three unauthorized charges; two maybe two billing-cycles ago.
“This will be credit-card number-five,” I said. “The last two were only months apart.” This time the unauthorized charges were all Amazon. Last time they were Google-Play.
And every time I change credit-cards I gotta notify Paypal, EZ-Pass, etc, lest the crew-cuts pound my door.
Is this the new normal? Cheese-it pays off porn-stars, et al; but it doesn’t matter, as long as he drains the swamp of them evil Democrats. —Like hello, and then refills the swamp with his short-term lackeys?
A friend awaits the Rapture. “But first Armageddon,” I say; “which may already be here.”
If one of his lackeys blows him in, that lackey gets tweeted “a loser” at 3 a.m. from the Great White Throne.
No wonder Melania sleeps alone.

“Don’t listen to him”

“I watched you get outta that cushy chair,” said a friend at the Canandaigua YMCA swimming-pool where I do aquatic balance-training.
“It took a couple tries, but eventually you got up no hands. My friend lifeguards that pool.
“I didn’t know anyone was watching,” I thought to myself. Beyond 90° at the knees is difficult, but I attempt it at home because usually I can do it if balanced properly.
A lady she was with remarked how much progress I’ve made. “When you first came here you could hardly walk.”
“But I wish I could do better,” I said.
“Don’t listen to him,” my friend said. “He knows he’s doing better.”
It’s true; I’ve noticed various small epiphanies. I can safely walk railroad rock-ballast chasing trains in Altoona, PA.
A couple weekends ago I attended a model-train show with an ex bus-driver, retired like me. How things have changed. A previous show I was fagging out after an hour or so. This time it was my friend. I felt I could go farther, but we quit after about an hour.
I’m also able to descend steep stairs without falling. In fact, I hardly fall at all.
Months ago I told my lifeguard friend how someone suggested I get a cane. “No canes for this kid!” I snapped. “I should be able to walk without a cane.”
She liked that. Ornery as Hell! “I don’t like this getting old,” I said. “Yer young only once, but can be immature all yer life.”
As far as I can see my balance has worsened. But I usually catch tipsiness. When I do fall it’s from not paying attention. I also walk a lunging Irish-Setter in a nearby park where rocks and tree-roots await.
“Most people give up,” the lady said.
“Not this kid!” I exclaimed.

• I do aquatic balance training in the Canandaigua YMCA’s swimming-pool, two hours per week — plus a third hour on my own.
• RE: “Chasing trains.....” —Altoona, PA is the eastern side of Allegheny Mountain, where the Pennsylvania Railroad crossed that mountain toward Pittsburgh. Pennsy is now Norfolk Southern, and my younger brother and I are railfans. We visit Altoona frequently to photograph trains, and that segment of the railroad is very busy. We take along our railroad-radio scanners to know where trains are. Every time a train passes a trackside signal its engineer has to call out the signal aspect on railroad-radio. We know where those signals are, so can conclude whether we have time to get ahead of that train (“chase”) to photograph it.
• 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. My heart-defect caused stroke October 26th, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability, and that defect was repaired. I recovered well enough to return to work at a newspaper; I retired from that 13 years ago.

****-****-****

For the past couple weeks Yr Fthfl Srvnt has been carrying on a Facebook exchange with a long-lost cousin in NC.
This cousin is one of five “extraordinaries,” although I’m beginning to think only five is not enough.
Her father would be in their kitchen pounding the table with a pot, attempting to bring order into a giant family pow-wow. My cousin and I would be in her living room quietly discussing philosophy amidst the maelstrom of yelling.
“I wanna marry someone like my cousin ****!” I’d say. And amazingly I did. My wife was one of the “extraordinaries,” and now she’s gone, a victim of cancer.
Fond memories, of course. Her younger brother, last of my uncle’s children, and I were lobbing water-balloons into passing cars from the attic of their house in Lansdowne (PA).
We landed one in the back seat of a top-down Buick convertible. It’s angry owner stopped to pound the front-door of my uncle’s house. My uncle sent him packing. That uncle was first-born, also an all-knowing, knower-of-all-things. That Buick owner was no match for my uncle.
Years have passed since that pow-wow, which was in the early ‘60s. I was probably a high-school junior or senior — I began college in late 1962.
As a result of that pow-wow, one of an aunt’s two children was placed in our family. That aunt was committed to an insane-asylum after her husband bled to death in an at-home accident.
Placement was because my mother started crying amidst this pow-wow. That gathering was also where another aunt challenged the knower-of-all-things about his coat-hangers.
“Hey ****,” she asked; “how come all yer coat-hangers face the same way?”
“In case of fire,” he bellowed.
“Yer makin’ it awful easy for burglars,” my aunt snapped.
How can I forget this stuff!
Amidst the bedlam my cousin and I were calmly discussing Kierkegaard, Hegel, and Sartre.
“I wanna marry someone like my cousin ****,” I’d say. And I did, despite my torturous childhood.
I was convinced at an early age no woman would have anything to do with me; that I was rebellious and of-the-Devil. That was my hyper-religious parents and Hilda Q. Walton, my next-door neighbor and Sunday-School superintendent, also hyper-religious.

• My brother is also an all-knowing, knower-of-all-things. A wonderful opportunity to point out his blunders. Assertiveness and volume don’t make him right. We have a good time photographing trains. “Hey Jack; where we goin’?” “Main Street bridge in Gallitzin.” “We are not!” I shout. “Are too; Main Street bridge next to Tunnel Inn.” “WRONG-O, dude. Tunnel Inn is at 720 Jackson Street. Yer headed for Jackson Street bridge.”

Fight it!

“Fight it!” says my bereavement counselor.
“Every time you start feeling guilty because you like some lady-friend enjoying your company, step aside and remind yourself “that’s Hilda!”
As you all know Yr Fthfl Srvnt is a graduate of the Hilda Q. Walton School of Gender Relations. Hilda was my next-door neighbor and Sunday-School Superintendent when I was a child. She convinced me all men, including me, were disgusting and evil. I was about 5 or 6.
“No girl will ever like you!”
Her husband, a hot-shot RCA engineer, was probably playing around.
My Bible-beating parents were enthusiastic accomplices. I was already rebellious and of-the-Devil because I couldn’t worship my father as worthy of Jesus’ right hand. My mother mellowed as I got older, but not my father.
My bereavement counselor is supposedly helping me through the death of my wife. But we spend a lot of time discussing my childhood.
That counselor made an excellent observation: “Your wife filled a gigantic void. She liked you. Now that she’s gone you grieve that as well as her death.”
Just recently I returned to my childhood home in south Jersey. It was extremely depressing. In 1992 I made a similar trip by motorcycle. It too was extremely depressing. I cried in a diner — recalling I never had loving parents.
My siblings will dispute that, claiming I’m rebellious of course. I’m also the first-born.
A constant-reader will question dredging up my childhood again. But my counselor observed “Your wife liked you, and that offset your horrible childhood. You don’t have that any more.”
I guess I’m “fighting it.” I’m having more success with ladies than I ever expected, even the pretty ones.
Faire Hilda is spinning in her grave: 14,000 rpm, enough to power south FL.
But she and my parents marked me for life; you don’t flip-flop such a childhood.

• “Q” stands for Quincy, Hilda’s maiden-name.
• RCA is Radio Corporation of America, defunct.

So be it!

Yr Fthfl Srvnt is pulling the plug.
It’s somewhat the fault of my lady-friend, but mainly me, compliments of Hilda Q. Walton.
Depressing as Hell!
Hilda is founder of the Hilda Q. Walton School of Gender Relations. Together with my Bible-beating parents, Hilda convinced me all men, including me, were despicable. I was about 5.
My parents heartily agreed. I was already rebellious and of-the-Devil because I couldn’t worship my father. Hilda’s husband, a hotshot engineer for RCA, was probably frogging around.
Together with my parents Faire Hilda helped found the church our family attended.
“No pretty girl will ever wanna meet you!”
I also was happily married 44&1/2 years to a girl who claimed she liked me. It seemed she did. Add that to Hilda’s input, and I been cut off from females about 70 years.
This “lady-friend” is one of the few I befriended after my wife died. A few months ago she wanted to meet my new dog. She has a dog herself, so suggested we walk our dogs at a nearby park.
So began three consecutive weekends walking our dogs at that park. As far as I know she’s married — it sounds like she is — but no sign of her husband ever.
That had me worried. My hairdresser suggested she was lonely. “I don’t think so,” I said. To me, this lady is class.
I decided maybe I should be more forthcoming = a mistake! With Hilda every male/female relationship has evil connotation. Merely enjoying one’s company was suspect. Throw in my being cut off from females since childhood, and I’m likely to blow it.
This lady and I have a professional relationship. So I have her phone-number, and it happens to be her personal iPhone.
So began a torrent of texts, many “forthcoming,” many which I regret, but texts can’t be retracted.
I don’t have phone-numbers of other ladies I befriended. Which is fortunate, since it keeps me from being “forthcoming.”
One lady was a pleasant surprise. She said hello to me out of the clear blue sky, so I set about cranking enough nerve to say hello back. Not easy for a Hilda grad.
I’m glad I did. Our friendship blossomed despite my numerous faux pas — all a result of being cut off from females so long.
And fortunately I don’t have her phone-number, so can’t goof up like I did with this other lady.
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on...” quoting the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
Tragic! And I blame Faire Hilda more than anything.
A constant-reader will criticize my dredging up Hilda again — by doing so I return to negative perception of my childhood.
I’m fighting Hilda and my parents, and am surprised at the success I’ve had. Then too the person I am now is no longer who I was earlier.
With luck this lady never knew this was going on — I hope she doesn’t.

• Hilda Q. Walton was my next-door neighbor and Sunday-School Superintendent when I was a child. “Q” stands for Quincy, her maiden-name.
• RCA is Radio Corporation of America, defunct.

Eye exam

“Hi; my name is ******. I’ll be doing your pre-check before the doctor sees you.”
It was the usual procedure at Canandaigua Eye-Care Center. A tech performs various pre-checks before the ophthalmologist appears: eyeball pressure, glasses prescriptions, vision tests, etc.
“Please state your full name and birthday.
“Robert J. Hughes, H-U-G-H-E-S.” I spell it because it’s often misspelled without the “E.”
“February 5th, 1944; which is eons ago,” I said.
“No it’s not,” she said, following her usual conversation with aging crackpots.
“It is too,” I said. “Born in the wrong century, and as we all know the 20th century was just a fabrication by Hollywood and Walter Cronkite. We never went to no Moon!”
She laughed tentatively, but didn’t call Security.
After nearly 75 years on this planet I found the best way to parry boiler-plate is make fun of it. Make people laugh, even if it’s only me. Sometimes people take offense though no fence was offered.
“Excuse me while I get an instrument,” the tech said. She was gonna test my internal eye-pressure.
“When you said that I thought you might return with a trombone or a piano.”
She laughed again, then tested my eyeball pressure. Still no Security.
“Now I will dilate your pupils.”
“Memories of elementary-school,” I said; “where I was a pupil.”
Poor girl; dealing with an aging crackpot. Still no white coats. “The doctor will see you shortly.”
“Any questions?” the ophthalmologist asked after completing the exam. I’m supposed to say “no,” but “what are cataracts?” I’m beginning to get cataracts. “Anything like Niagara Cataract?”
Discussion followed.
Poor guy; I had to explain, plus I wasn’t releasing him for his donut-break.
“North of Niagara Falls, Niagara River flows through Niagara Cataract. Are eye-cataracts similar?”
“No. An eye-cataract is not the same as a river cataract.” Yada-yada-yada-yada. The ophthalmologist wasn’t familiar with Niagara Cataract.
“With an eye-cataract your eye-lens clouds.” Mine are inconsequential, only beginning.
When the cloudiness gets bad enough, surgery switches out the lenses you were born with to implants.”
“Are they plastic?” I asked.
“Sorta......”
“So what’s Lasik?” I asked.
“That’s different. Cataract surgery implants an artificial lens. Lasik only reshapes your original lens with laser surgery.”
“An older gentleman I know says he had Lasik. But it sounded like cataract surgery to me. Sorry I bothered you, but I needed to know what is going on.
“That’s it, Mr. Hughes. Your eyes are in excellent condition for someone your age.”
Next was setting up my next annual appointment. “Which weekday do you want?” asked a receptionist probably older than me.
“How about Friday December 6th, 2019?”
“That’s one day before ‘a date which will live in infamy,’” I said.
December 7th, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
“You get it, of course,” I said. “Many younger pups don’t.”
“A date which will live in infamy” is President Franklin D. Roosevelt before Congress the day after the attack.
My knee-replacement was done three years ago, also on “a date which will live in infamy.”

Order-out-of-Chaos!

I balance my checking-account fairly often; once or twice a week.
I do online banking. That account better balance; I worked at a bank long ago.
25 years ago I had a stroke, but apparently sufficient marbles are left to balance my bank-account. Bank employ was 50+ years ago.
My account has always balanced. I compare my computer balance to my online balance, adding uncharges to my computer balance. They better equal, or the bank will hear about it.
My online balance was exactly $100 less than my computer balance. That sounds like an unposted ATM transaction. It also happens two recent $100 charity donations had just cleared. I also have an online auto-deduction to my classical-music radio-station: $50 per month. $50 in the wrong column would throw me off $100.
I found this shortage four nights ago, but couldn’t down-and-dirty until two nights ago.
I screenshot three pages of my bank’s online account record, plus three more of my computer record. Trying to dance between two computer displays can’t be done.
I printed the screenshots, then circled all the $100 entries, plus the $50 auto-charges. Them $100 ATM-charges better be in my computer records. I hafta enter ‘em manually.
“I think I see it,” I whispered.
One ATM cash-dispersement wasn’t in my computer records.
Four days ago I worried I’d get a hairball — like maybe the bank screwed up. I gotta call and explain when my speech is already messy?
And imagine the bank having to parry some ignorant Limbaugh wannabee claiming rip-off?
I gotta get past that?
With my wife gone — she died over six years ago — I no longer can farm out to her.
I hafta explain I had a stroke, and may hafta have my contact repeat, or repeat myself. It’s called aphasia (that’s a link readers) = difficulty getting words out. In my case it’s slight, but it can be so bad the stroke-victim can’t speak.
If I tell my contact in advance I get tolerance. If I don’t I get anger.
It was my mistake, as it usually is. All I need to do is enter that non-entered ATM charge.
But I had to print everything to paper to search down-and-dirty. Born in the wrong century!
I find myself assessing time lost per error. Some time ago I let $10 go. $100 is worth an hour lost, but finding it took only a few minutes.

• The “classical-music radio-station” is WXXI-FM, a public-radio station out of Rochester (NY).
• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993 from an undiagnosed heart-defect since repaired. It slightly compromised my speech. (Difficulty finding and putting words together.)
• “Screenshot” is to take a computer photograph of what’s on yer screen. With MAC it’s by ⌘-shift-3-or-4 (⌘ is Apple’s command-key; apparently Windows has a similar “screenshot” function). 3 is the entire screen; 4 is a segment you define. The “screenshot” gets saved to yer desktop as a .png, and can be printed.

My calendar for December 2018

‘Railer. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—The December 2018 entry of MY calendar is out-of-date = 2015. That’s because RoadRailer is defunct. The concept was to make highway trailers also railroad-worthy, then couple together long strings to be pulled by a railroad locomotive.
This works because highway trailers easily fit railroading’s metric. But compared to railroad cars, highway trailers are fragile. The only railroad thing left is the railroad trucks/wheels. The heavy construction of railroad equipment is gone.
Highway trailers can’t be slammed in a railroad-yard. They can’t be switched or humped. They can’t even be pushed. All you can do is pull ‘em.
A long concrete pad is needed to assemble RoadRailer. Highway trailers won’t stand by themselves. The railroad wheels are only on the rear of the trailer. The front rests on the railroad wheels on the rear of the trailer ahead.
A highway trailer has to be positioned by truck before railroad wheels can be attached. RoadRailer requires a separate facility. It isn’t established railroading. To switch to ‘Railer, massive investment is needed. Typical railroad practice ends.
Railroading is also excellent moving heavy bulk loads; like coal or crude-oil or grain. The railroad has to be built to accommodate that — ‘Railer is a feather.
RoadRailer continued as long as the wheels, etc, weren’t due for replacement. The highway trailers also needed additional equipment to fit the railroad wheels. —No one was willing to invest.
It was easier for the railroads to continue “Trailer-on-Flatcar” (TOFC). We see a lot of that. Plus trailers without highway wheels mounted on “spine-cars;” just enough framing to be a railroad car.
In each case the locomotives are also pulling the weight of the railroad equipment; although it’s light.
With Trailer-on-Flatcar the trailer is ready-to-rubber as soon as it hits the ground. It already has highway wheels. Highway wheels were already on RoadRailer, inches above the track. But ‘Railer isn’t railroad equipment, and has to be taken apart.
Railroads began double-stacking container bodies, the equivalent of trailer-bodies without wheels. Such containers are used in trans-ocean shipping; 40 feet. Larger than 40 feet are “domestic” — not trans-ocean — as long as 53 feet. “Domestic” is “intermodal;” doublestacked on railroads, then “rubbered” to their final destination on highway spine equipment.
This train is westbound into Portage PA. It’s coming off the bypass Pennsy built in 1898 to take out torturous curves toward Allegheny Mountain.