The barcode engine

#1111, the barcode engine. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—The August 2020 entry of MY calendar is Norfolk Southern locomotive number 1111, the barcode engine.
#1111 is an SD70ACe, called the “the barcode engine” by railfans because its number resembles a barcode.
The picture was taken by my brother in April of 2016, and the train is stopped at the Rose crew-change point north of Altoona in Juniata. The train is eastbound on Track One of the yard-side express tracks. As the railroad approaches Altoona, it splits into express and drag tracks.
Altoona had yard tracks galore, and still does somewhat.
Altoona is just east of Allegheny Mountain, where helper-locomotives were added to attack the mountain. Heavy trains still get helpers.
My brother has photographed #1111 many times. It’s in the railroad’s road-power pool.
The train has three locomotives, and the second is an old EMD SD40-2, (I think = hard to tell).
The train, what I see of it, appears to be mixed-manifest, although that train-number, 67X, may indicate otherwise.
My brother keeps track of every train-number, which we got when the engineer called out a signal on railroad-radio — which we’d monitor with our scanners.
With in-the-cab signaling train-engineers no longer call out signal-aspects.
My brother also has crib-sheets indicating departure and destination. If it were 27N, we’d know it was all auto-racks from Wilmington DE.
67X might not be mixed-manifest. But it looks mixed to me.
Often trains run right through the crew-change area, but 67X needed a crew change.
Norfolk Southern has 20 road-locomotives in paint-schemes of railroads out of which NS was formed. They’re called the Heritage-Units.
The barcode engine isn’t a Heritage-Unit, or anything special (there are others), but railfans adopted it.

The Beast

The Beast. (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)

—My very first car was the 1958 Triumph TR-3 roadster pictured above, an early fish-mouth.
Later TR-3s had a wider grille-opening.
It wasn’t much of a car: no heat, and very minimal weather protection.
It had a roadster-top which clipped to the windshield and body-cowl. It also had “side-curtains” inserted into receiving-sockets in the doors. They had sliding plexiglass window-sheets. (Click the link readers.)
If it rained you got wet, and if it was cold, you froze.
I remember coming down the hill into Blossburg (PA). It was snowing and I had the top off.
On the shoulder my sister and I put the top up. We were returning to my college in western New York.
Williamsport (PA) seemed to be where it changed from not too bad to frigid. Blossburg is north of Williamsport.
I also remember the windshield-wipers stalling in the snow, and me leaning out the side to see where we were going.
Fortunately that was before we installed the side-curtains.
The car was an old drag-racer, and came with drag-slicks on the rear. Slicks were impossible on wet pavement, but I had the two original Pirelli Cinturatos that came on the rear. I swapped ‘em on, and that made the car tractable.
I later found out the car wasn’t legal; it was registered for only towing — like to a drag-strip.
I drove it at least three months before I realized this. In college I was out of the state where it was registered (DE).
As purchased it was open exhaust (no muffler) = extremely loud. The previous owners lettered “Pizzazz” on the front fenders. My father called it “Pizzazz.” (I sprayed that out with model-car paint, same thing with the two black racing stripes.)
My mother was horrified. My brother was thrilled when I brought it home. That thing was so loud It was waking our entire neighborhood.
It also was insanely powerful. It had been tuned for drag-racing, and could lay rubber even in second gear (four-on-the-floor).
It was so strong a college-friend called it “a beast.” He had a 383 four-speed Plymouth two-door, and before that a Chrysler 300F (I think).
Rudimentary as it was, I used “The Beast” for dates. But mainly “let's go for a ride in ‘The Beast’.”
Even at college I never drove it much.
I also attended a US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, where me and another friend convinced staggering drunks it was one of the race-cars.
The car crippled in the rural outback returning to my college. The tiny Bakelite finger for the points in the distributor broke.
I got it running with pieces of popsicle-sticks being equivalent to the Bakelite finger. It crippled again when the starter-motor jammed the flywheel ring-gear.
My sister’s boyfriend, her first husband, pushed me all the way back to my college with his brand-new ’65 Tempest convertible. We pushed it with a two-by-eight tied to the rear-bumpers. (First of four husbands.)
Doing that required him driving all the way up from DE to western New York, where my car was crippled.
I was later able to remove the starter-motor, but it was burned out. From then on I’d lasso guys to give me a push. I even got so I could push-start it myself; get it rolling, then hop in and slam it into second-gear. But I usually parked it on downhills.
I remember dating a really pretty girl once. We walked all the way to the downhill where I had it parked, so I could start it without her having to push.
She told me I should be dating the girl I ended up marrying. “You told him that!” My wife-to-be was aghast — she was extremely shy.
The only year in college I had “The Beast” was my senior year. That was also the year I discovered my wife-to-be. I guess she’d been after me since we were freshman, but I never knew. She was extremely shy.
We began hanging together, and one night we were supposed to attend a college music concert, but that fell through.
We decided to take “The Beast” for a ride instead. I lost control on gravel, and the car flipped, ending upside-down on its hood and trunk.
Neither of us was hurt, although I was slightly injured. We managed to wriggle out on-our-own before friends arrived.
And neither of us was paralyzed. Part of that was a TR-3’s cutaway doors. An MGA mighta broke my neck.
You’d think this would be enough to scare off my wife-to-be. But it wasn’t.
Her mother, a real pill, had already picked out a husband for my future wife. She loathed the guy = “a creep!” she always shouted.
He dated her once, scaring the wits outta her demonstrating the 100 mph capability of his ’57 Chevy.
“The Beast” wasn’t damaged much. I’d had the top off, so all that was destroyed was the windshield. I also found out later the rollover broke a steering tie-rod to the left-front wheel, so it had no input.
All it did was follow the lead of the right-front, which still steered.
College finished I packed quite a bit into it, and motored home to northern DE.
My father bought me a used Corvair, which I was to pay for, but couldn’t. “The Beast” got parked next to my famblee home, with hopes I’d return to it some day.
I didn’t. My parents quickly sold it without my permission after I left and moved to Rochester (NY). The one with the title was me, but who cares? 75 smackaroos for groceries!
This fulfilled my mother’s greatest wish.
“God is my copilot!” she’d trumpet.
“So I guess you’re the pilot,” I’d say.
“Don’t get smart,” she’d bellow, glaring at me.

• My college was Houghton College in western New York, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I never regretted it, although I graduated a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college, and was the first religious institution to not consider me rebellious and of-the-Devil = a threat.
• A motor has a toothed ring-gear on the outside edge of its flywheel, which is how a starter-motor spins the motor.
• Remember my parents were hyper-religious super-zealots, and I was “rebellious.” (Rebellion for Patrick Henry.)

HTML wars

—“Thank goodness I know a little HTML,” I said to myself.
This blog-site made changes to its interface only partially announced.
I fired it up the other day to test segments of a giant blog I’m writing about my brother and I chasing and photographing trains in Altoona (PA).
I clicked “compose,” then pasted in my word-processor document (my blog), then I hit “publish.”
It showed me their new interface.
“You can still use our ‘legacy interface’ (their prior interface), but that ends August 24th.”
I found the new interface’s “View,” but no longer were my paragraph-returns being read. Everything was meshed into one gigantic blob of text.
Try “Legacy interface.”
Same blob.
Blogger didn't say it was no longer reading my paragraph returns. Text I intended to bold or italicize wasn't being bolded or italicized.
Engage guile-and-cunning!
I have HTML tags in my word-processor documents that Blogger previously read. I guess my published blogs are HTML documents.
I need those paragraph-drops. I changed all my paragraph-returns to the “<br>” HTML-tag.
That got my paragraph-drops. (“<br>” gets a one-line paragraph drop.“<p>” gets a two-line drop.)
Previously I used “<span style=“font-weight:bold>” and “</span>” to embolden and to end-bold text.
Previously I used “<span style=“font-weight:italic >” to begin-italicize, and </span> to end-italicize.
So what if I try “<b>” to begin bolded, and “</b>” to end it. And “<i>” to begin italic.; plus “</b>” or “</i>” to end either.
“Try it and see what happens!”
It worked! (“Toy not with the master!”)
Hours of horsing around! (Blew almost the entire day!)
Would anyone else my age do this? (Age-76.)
Not rocket-science!
I can imagine another widower friend of mine throwing up his hands in despair.
I also noticed another hairball when I made a mistake and deleted my “Beast” blog.
I have yet to see a way of adding a picture with his new interface.
The legacy interface would do it; so now I guess I can add a picture up until August 24.
Thank you blogger! No doubt yer calling this an improvement — NOT!
What sense does it make to blog “The Beast,” when I can’t picture “The Beast” after August 24th?
And after August 24th I no longer can post all the train-pictures my brother and I took down in Altoona.
Like what’s the point? (All to continue doing 200 mph in your Lamborghinis!)
All the more reason to set up my own website.
I’ve always wanted to.

• “HTML” is Hyper-Text Markup Language, a background instruction system made invisible by surrounding carets (“<” and “>”). I use it to embolden, underline and italicize text, although it can do other things.
• My wife died eight years ago, which makes me a widower.

The mighty abyss

—The other night Yrs Trly was watching one of his train-videos of railroads attacking Cajon Pass (“Ka-HONE;” not Cajun) in southern California.
I disconnected my Cable TV because I was paying too much to hear Trump’s latest 3 AM Tweet® from the Great-White-Throne in the White House. (The national news was the only TV I was watching.)
Cajon gets the railroads out of the LA-basin up to the Mojave desert. There also is an interstate (I-15), and it’s also where Route-66 went through.
“Visible above the train,” the announcer said; “is the interchange between Interstate-15 and Highway 138. Plans are afoot to improve that interchange, if it can be done before California slides into the mighty abyss.”
“Ya don’t say!” I laughed.
I have friends who live near Los Angeles, and I keep telling them I wanna visit before LA slides into the Pacific.
“Sodom and Gomorrah,” I tell ‘em. Sodom is San Francisco, and Gomorrah is Los Angeles: both dens-of-iniquity fraught with evil!
If I do visit — not much time left — I’m hoping we can drive up to the overlook over Hollywood-Bowl along Mulholland Drive.
I been there twice, and getting to it is no longer easy since the interchange to Mulholland Drive from I-5 has been “improved.”
Last visit I had to drive I-5 all the way to the next town, just to get turned around so I could get back to Mulholland Drive.
But the view from that overlook is fantastic. Miles away is the Los Angeles skyline = skyscrapers.
And everywhere lights. No wonder the Colorado River is nearly empty when it drains into the Pacific.
Visible from that overlook is our future. Cars everywhere slowly plodding LA’s clogged freeways, except for giant “Escapades” cruising 100 mph on glittering spider-alloys. All await the abyss.
I remember driving down into Hollywood, a feeble attempt to visit where one of my friends worked. Bumper-to-bumper at 1-2 mph in the dark. Even if you hit others at 1-2 mph you’re not gonna do much damage.
My friend had something to do with SpongeBob, and I did find the outlet.
No matter, our future is frightening. And I nearly got clobbered merging back onto I-10.
My wife was still alive then, riding shotgun. I scared her to death, since I also am a stroke-survivor. We almost got shoved into a guardrail.
“WOW!” I said to myself. “That Pentrex® train-video announcer is really hip — or maybe his audio producers are hip.”
I been hearing that boilerplate about California sliding into the Pacific for eons.

• Over 26 years ago (October 26, 1993) I had a heart-defect caused stroke, and that defect has long since been repaired. I recovered fairly well. Over eight years ago my beloved wife died.

Pick on ‘em

—“Will you please take those stickers off your hand!”
I said that to pretty *****, my pharmacist at a nearby supermarket.
She was processing one of my prescriptions.
She giggled, then chirped about the stickers reminding her to do something.
***** isn’t gorgeous, but she is pretty. A tiny waif, probably not over 100 pounds.
Beautiful waist-length brunette tresses, and she wears it full-length.
She’s married, and has two children (I think). How anyone so tiny and skinny carried ‘em to term I can’t figure.
I’ve met her husband too — he’s normal.
I met ***** years ago. She was working at a big-box nationwide pharmaceutical chain. Licensed as a pharmacist, but only a minion.
I called her “angry-*****” at that time. Once she was assigned to give me a tetanus-shot. “Uh-oh…… Gotta be on my best behavior; it’s ‘angry-*****’.”
My supermarket set up an in-store pharmacy. I walked in, and there she was.
“Wait a minute!” I said. “What are you doing here?”
She’d come across the street. “Wanna join me?”
“Angry-*****” is now “pleasant-*****.” Much happier, and she is head-honcho.
I quickly realized angry-***** was actually up-the-wall *****.
***** is not an easy-smiler, but I did get a giggle.
“Someone’s been out in the sun,” I said to her earlier. Her arms and face were bronzed.
That didn’t go very far, but my sticker comment did.
Pick on ‘em; they love it! Picking on them is attention; especially from an aging geezer no longer hot-to-trot.
***** was wearing a mask, but her eyes told me she was smiling.
A pretty lady smiling at me makes me melt.
I have other lady-friends, some smilers, and some not.
My lifeguard-friend at Canandaigua’s YMCA swimming pool is not an easy-smiler.
Once she told me she used Gmail and Google Chrome®.
“The Dark-Side, eh?” I remarked.
Smirk! The slightest wisp of a smile.
That lifeguard is 64 years old, but doesn’t look it. Not gorgeous either, but stately and statuesque.
And I love getting that smirk.
Another time she dipped her foot into the swimming-pool.
“Wait a minute!” I shouted. “You can't do that! Over the three years I been coming here, never once have I seen a lifeguard get wet.”
SMIRK! I was picking on her, and she loved it.
Most times I don’t say much to pretty *****. But she likes my picking on her.
This was only my first try, but it seemed she enjoyed it.
Giggle — chirp!

• I did aquatic balance training in the Canandaigua YMCA’s swimming-pool, two one-hour classes per week — plus a third hour on my own. Thanks to COVID-19, I haven’t been able to do it for months. (Canandaigua’s YMCA is closed.)
• Anything Google is “Dark-Side.” And NO WAY are they driving my car!

Expect anything

—“Boy-oh-boy, am I glad I drove bus,” I yelled to a lady who pulled right out in front of me. “Signal on, I had the right-of-way, and you had a stop-sign.
But apparently that was enough for you to pull right out in front of me, prompting me to slam on my brakes.”
During my Transit bus-driving class, they told us to expect anything.
Just north of my house is an old intersection of the road from Honeoye Falls with Pittsford-West Bloomfield Road, plus Baker Road to the east. (A four-road cross-intersection.)
That road from Honeoye Falls comes from the west, and Pittsford-West Bloomfield is north-south. I live along that north-south road.
That road from Honeoye Falls became State Route 65 and the segment of Pittsford-West Bloomfield I live on also became 65.
So my address is State Route 65.
In other words State Route 65 turns 90° south at that intersection. The intersection was re-graded to make the 90° turn more gradual, and stop-signs were in added on Baker Road and Pittsford-West Bloomfield.
So that 90° turn is continuous, and has the right-of-way.
I always signal that turn so those at the stop-signs know I intend to use the right-of-way.
Not this lady. The fact I signaled my intent was reason for her to disregard.
She waited a bit, then drove right in front of me, completely oblivious = “boy am I glad I drove bus!”
EXPECT ANYTHING!
Bus-driving required intense concentration: 100%.
Here I come, 40 mph down a four-lane, next to a supermarket parking-lot. Nine tons of hurtling steel, 25-30 souls entrusting me to get ‘em home safely.
Granny aims her white LeSabre out the parking-lot exit. She’s got Emma riding shotgun with her.
“Oh look Dora,” Emma shouts. “A bus, a bus! Pull-out, pull-out! Floor it!”
And I gotta stop nine tons of hurtling steel on a dime without tossing my passengers out of their seats.
“Just hit the Buick,” my bosses would say. “Your passengers are more important.”
Do that and “You’re fired!” “We told you to expect anything.”
Now, 26 years later, my brother wonders why my following-distances are so much greater than required.
“I’m still driving bus,” I say. “I wanna be able to stop without tossing my passengers.”
“You coulda pulled out,” he’d say.
“NOPE! One thing I learned driving bus was to not scare the four-wheelers.
Sure, I had plenty of time to merge, but that four-wheeler might think otherwise, and involve me in an accident.”
“His fault,” my brother would shout.
“Except we all suffer,” I’d say. “My car gets crippled, accident-reports need to be filled out; weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Better to wait 30 seconds.”
At Transit (RTS) you’d get fired even if you were off your bus, and it was involved in an accident while safely parked. (Like granny slid her LeSabre into your bus.)
At Transit a driver pulled in, then parked his bus next to the garage, but running (normal procedure: it might not start for the wash-guys). He set the brake, kicked it outta gear, then left for supper at home.
Except the gearshift didn’t actually take it out-of-gear, and the air-brakes leaked away.
His bus idled off on-its-own and took out a wall.
Management had to blame someone, so they fingered the at-home driver. Called him up, and called him in.
“How could you work for such idiots?” people ask.
“100% concentration,” I say. “Naps to counter burn-out.”
Pretty good wage-rate, plus bennies. Management declared it outrageous.
“Anyone can drive bus,” they complained.
Loose cannons got fired. (And willy-nilly.)

• 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 over 26 years ago. 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 almost 15 years ago.

Bill-pay follies

—For some time Yrs Trly has been using online bill-pay. Gas, electric, cellphone, Internet, water; all online.
But not the online bill-pay of the provider.
I don’t trust it. I’ve heard horror stories.
I use my bank’s online bill-pay service. That is, I set up the bill-pay.
The bank then transfers money electronically to the payee.
NO WAY is that provider charging my bank-account. The one who authorized a bill-pay is ME, not the provider.
I suppose I could “tell” my provider to charge my account — that’s “authorizing” them.
I lobbed the bank into the mix. Just one more way of keeping that payee from going bonkers. (Horror stories.)
I use the bank’s bill-pay to pay my credit-card. No auto bill-pay for this kid!
My credit-card statement arrived the other day — I still do paper.
The other night I would set up my bank to pay my credit-card bill.
Various hairballs have been encountered, one being I can no longer do it from this laptop. Both my laptop browsers, Firefox 78.0.2 and Safari 13.1.1, won’t open my bank’s bill-pay.
But my iPhone will. So I been setting up bill-pays with my iPhone. Logging into my bank is by facial recognition = nice.
Recently my bank “upgraded” its online banking — for which reason my two browsers no longer work.
My bank suggests I switch to Google Chrome®. No Dark-Side for this kid! And they ain’t drivin’ my car either!
So, set up paying my credit-card bill through my iPhone.
Perhaps the old geezer was befuddled, but things seem to have changed.
Hoops galore! So far at least an hour has gone past trying to pay this credit-card bill. This is progress?
After a lotta horsing around, it looked like I had set up my credit-card bill-pay. But I wasn’t sure; and I couldn’t see a way of being sure.
Plus it looked like the bill-pay was set up for the next day, which would bounce.
All kinds of insanity was being hurled at me, which no doubt a millennial could make sense of.
I know, I was born in the wrong century.
I could imagine someone my age throwing up his hands and telling his daughter “just go to the bank and pay the bill!”
Same thing with everything else: “write a check and mail it.”
Us geezers are wrong century = do it “old-school.”
Apparently I successfully set up my second bill-pay, but I wasn’t sure of that either.
So call my bank, but it’s 7:30 p.m., so of course the bank is closed.
And when you call the bank, you get a machine that gives you an option for every key on your phone; and there are 12 keys.
That machine rattled-on at least 10 minutes. I tried the “O” key, and got nothing.
Back to the speech. That machine was gonna finish wasting 10 minutes no matter what.
(Give the dude a mic, and he won’t shaddup!)
Maybe this is how millennials spend their time = listening to a long speech, or the “Boom-Chicka Boom-Chicka Boom-Chicka” generated by “please hold.” “We value your call. Your wait-time will be 36 hours. Please continue holding.”
I learned to do something else, or eat or something, during a “please hold.” (I saw a manager do that at the Mighty-Mezz.)
So, go to bed. Call the bank the next morning.
Indeed I had set up two payments to my credit-card bill, one for the very next day which woulda bounced.
I asked the girl — a rare bird, since she could speak fluent English, and was able to make sense of her computer screen — to delete my next day payment, yet allow my correct payment to continue.
I then asked her if she could set up my gas bill-pay, since I had no idea what would happen if I tried to do that; and I didn’t wanna hafta call ‘em back.
Follies parried! At least two hours wasted trying to online pay that bill.
Online bill-pay saves postage, check writing, and driving all over creation. Five dollars worth of gas just to pay a bill.

• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired almost 15 years ago. BEST job I ever had. I was employed there almost 10 years — over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern. (I had a heart-defect caused stroke October 26th, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well. That defect was repaired.)

NOPE!

—I’ve yet to get anywhere explaining “disconnect-from-reality” with anyone.
So far it’s happened to me twice. First was after my stroke, and second was after my wife died.
In each case I was left wondering if I was in the real world.
I’d say it took ten years to regain my sense of reality after my stroke.
“Is this really happening? Is this reality?”
2-3 years after my stroke, my wife and I took a motor-trip to south Jersey and northern DE. I hadn’t been cleared-to-drive yet, so my wife drove. An uncle lived in south Jersey, and a brother in northern DE.
I’m a railfan, so my brother took me to Claymont’s railroad-station where Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor goes through on its way to Philadelphia. It’s the old Pennsylvania Railroad line between New York City and Washington DC.
All-of-a-sudden here came an Amtrak speedster, 100 mph, express through Claymont.
WHAM-SLAM! Just like old times!
Nothing like a 100-mph train to get your attention!
The Northeast Corridor is electrified. The locomotives are electric, and get their power from overhead wire.
A “pantograph” is atop the locomotive to follow the wire. It bounces, and giant arcs fly between the pantograph and the wire.
Yes, I was indeed in the real world. Same world I knew as a teenager, where giant arcs flew between the wire and a pantograph atop a speeding GG-1 locomotive.
Prior to Claymont “is this for real?”
Even after Claymont, reconnection-with-reality took many more years.
My wife’s death was equally traumatic, probably more so.
It was devastating: she was the BEST friend I ever had, and after my childhood, I sure needed one.
When she died my connection with reality disappeared. All I did was go through-the-motions for years.
I attended my 50-year high-school reunion 3-4 months later.
“Back-to-reality,” I thought.
NOPE! Still off-in-the-ozone when I returned.
Bouts of continued crying and sorrow.
I began attending a grief-share here at home. Lots of tears among others who didn’t think that weird.
“Condolences,” a retired bus-driver said to me. That made me angry. I’d heard “condolences” so many times I was sick of it.
(Give the dude a break = those not bereaved have no idea!)
The years rolled by. Lawnmower stuck multiple times, flat tires, camera-failure during a faraway railfan trip; things for which my wife woulda been my cheering section.
I traded our two cars for a 2012 SUV I still have.
Scarlett, the rescue Irish-Setter my wife and I got, lived five more years, then started getting seizures.
I had to put her down. Now that my fog has partly lifted, I realize what a complete mess she entertained.
We hiked a lot, me and Scarlett. The only remaining memory of my beloved wife. Walkies filled time, which crept by ever-so-slowly.
I just got done mowing lawn. The section I mowed, probably over an acre,  took maybe two hours. It seems it took way longer years ago.
Now as I put supper together, or do laundry, doing so seems more real.
One of the leaders at that grief-share, who I continue to be friends with, commented she’d never tell a griever “getting over it” might take ten or more years.
I remember being told two years.
NOPE!

• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993 from an undiagnosed heart-defect since repaired. I pretty much recovered. Just tiny detriments; I can pass for never having had a stroke.
• My wife of 44&1/2 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I still miss her. BEST friend I ever had, and after my childhood I needed one. She actually liked me.
• My lawnmower is huge, a big zero-turn that I ride. It weighs about 800 pounds. I mow about three acres, but not all at once.

Go figure

—Yrs Trly gives up blogging the super-zealots, and my readership plummets?
Perhaps there’s an audience eager to consider the posturings of the infamous Hilda Q. Walton and my hyper-religious parents.
For me, Hilda and my parents are history. They’re probably all dead.
Blogging Hilda etc. is also history.
Some readers decry my UNDERLINED, ALL-CAPS, SUPER-BOLD ranting that “no pretty female will hang out with/talk to/be interested in/smile at .…..you.”
I befriended so many pretty ladies I realize Faire Hilda and my parents were wrong.
Finding that out 70 years late is depressing. I missed so many.
Finding that out is also joyous.
Some readers told me they tired of my Hilda Q. Walton blogs. Guilty-as-charged! Too much celebratin’ my triumph over Hilda, etc.
When I was a teenager a church-deacon told me I was “degraded.” So I founded “Degraded-Youth-of-America” (DYA) to counter “Youth-for-Christ” (YFC), which I was forced to join.
Zealots were appalled; happy to declare me DISGUSTING. (There’s that all-caps, bold-face again…..)
I wasn't the least bit chagrined. I already knew I was disgusting.
To make a little boy question his very being is similarly disgusting.
Self-loathing continues, but I’ve gained too many lady-friends.
“I can’t imagine a person so awful,” a reader tells me. “You need to get over it.”
Of the thousands I’ve met during my 76 years, only two seem to understand — three if you include my bereavement-counselor.
She sees it. “Eye-Contact. When we started you couldn’t do that.”

• As a result of my wife dying eight years ago, I see a bereavement-counselor once a month. Mostly we talk about my childhood.

Parking-lot wars

—When I started at the Mighty-Mezz, perhaps two years after my stroke, we were in the “old-building,” which had a single parking-lot west of the building.
I started as an unpaid intern, and wasn’t cleared-to-drive yet, so was being commuted by cab. I.e. I wasn’t using that parking lot.
In early ’96 that newspaper hired me; tremendous moxie on their part. They were hiring a stroke-survivor with a partly destroyed brain.
Perhaps two or three years after they hired me, the Messenger decided to expand and modernize their old-building.
That would be the “new-building,” which quickly became an albatross as the newspaper-biz collapsed. Addition was made to the north and west faces of the old-building, some of it two stories. The old-building was only one floor.
The old newsroom, which comprised a lot of the old-building, remained but was vastly modernized.
When I started, actual production of the newspaper took place in the old newsroom. But in the new building actual production of the newspaper was set off by itself.
A lot changed with computerization of newspaper production. I started in “paste-up;” long galleys of newspaper text were pasted to cardboard page-dummies.
Those page-dummies were photographed with a large camera to make negatives with which printing-plates could be produced.
The Messenger had its own press, and it was state-of-the-art. We went through a press upgrade during my employ, that being a new press. Both presses were huge installations over a story high.
One of my 3 AM Sunday-morning perks, after putting together the Sunday paper, was to yell “STOP THE PRESSES!” I noticed an error, so the first 20-25 printings were trash.
“If Bob Hope dies, it’s ‘STOP THE PRESSES!’” a friend told me. He was a page-editor during my employ.
Another pearl-of-wisdom he gave me was “if it bleeds it leads!”
The Mighty Mezz was the BEST job I ever had. The Messenger paid little, but was fun. Every day the entire newsroom erupted with nerf-balls and Fuzzy-Toys hurled at the office-TV because “Teletubbies” had come on.
I drove transit bus 16&1/2 years, but my stroke ended it. A stroke-rehabber wanted to get my job back driving bus, but I wasn’t interested.
“You’ll make much more money driving bus,” he told me.
“Yeah, but it wouldn’t be fun,” I countered.
With the new building a second parking lot was added, but it was east of the facility. Our press-guys started parking there, along with a few others = the so-called “riffraff” on our staff — the smokers.
I continued to use the original west parking-lot.
We now had two staff parking-lots, plus a third parking area out front for visitors.
I renamed the parking-lots the “riffraff lot,” and the “elitist lot.” And Yrs Trly used the elitist lot.

Priorities man!

—As a result of COVID-19, some of the priorities my wife and I observed were compromised.
My wife died over eight years ago, but I still do the recycling my wife and I did.
Cans, glass, cardboard, plastic. I keep paper bags for each, plus newsprint and magazines. Although I have little newsprint since I gave up the newspaper years ago.
And I have a hunch my recyclables aren’t being recycled. The market for recyclables has gone away, so who knows what happens beyond my blue-box.
My biggest change was paper, especially toilet-paper. My wife and I used toilet-paper made from recycled paper, and I continued doing that after my wife died.
With COVID-19, toilet-paper became scarce. I had to take what I could get. Suddenly toilet-paper made from recycled paper became unavailable. Yet another tree fell in the forest.
Same thing with facial-tissues, although that goes back well before COVID-19. Facial-tissues made from recycled paper became unavailable, so we were forced to switch.
I also had to give up paper-towels made from recycled paper. And not that “quicker-picker-upper” lady. ZAP! = no more paper-towels made from recycled paper.
And during COVID-19, paper-towels became scarce.
I no longer recycle my garbage. (More rot for the landfill!)
My mulch-tender is gone. Our mulch-pile atrophied, and is now overgrown with weeds.
I never had time for that, and the one who did is gone.
Our garden is fallow, returned to the grass it was before. We grew tomatoes, peppers, green beans, beets, etc.
We grew a zucchini so big we called it the “Graf Zeppelin.” I took it to the Mighty Mezz, where the editorial-staff used it as a club against recalcitrant reporters.
Tending that stuff takes time, which I no longer have.

• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired almost 15 years ago. BEST job I ever had. I was employed there almost 10 years — over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern. (I had a heart-defect caused stroke October 26th, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well. That defect was repaired.)

Ya don’t tell a Hughes they can’t do something

(Screenshot by BobbaLew.)

—“Got it!” I exclaimed. “It’s on there.” (Above.)
On July 4th, Yr Fthfl Srvnt posted the first stanza of “America-the-Beautiful” on his Facebook, plus the FB of my anti-Trump group.
I put the first paragraphs of the Declaration-of-Independence on this blog years ago.
But I felt “America-the-Beautiful” was more pertinent to our troubled times.
“America-the-Beautiful” began as a poem by Katherine Lee Bates atop Pikes Peak in 1893.
I been there myself; 1987 with my wife now gone. “Purple-mountain majesties” to the west, “amber waves of grain” to the east, 14,115 feet above sea level.
I sang the song at the top of my lungs in the mountain-top parking lot. 8.5 MPG, up and down in “lo” range. 460 cubic inches, the biggest car-V8 Ford offered at that time.
Drive that road and you don’t make mistakes. No guard rails, and it was dirt back then. Thousand-foot drop-offs awaited.
Someone I don’t know commented; he/she (?) on the anti-Trump FB group to which we both belong.
So I added a response that “America-the-Beautiful” should be our national anthem.
Plus the fact my flag is only three-by-five feet doesn’t make me less patriotic than those with flags the size of a football field.
So: add picture of my flag.
Easier said than done.
My new laptop doesn’t see my image-files yet, and calling Apple is “please hold.”
But my old laptop could add a picture.
Okay; done it before. Any picture atop a blog was processed/added with my old laptop.
So “edit,” but with my new laptop, or else my iPhone.
But laptop edits have to be off Facebook, for which reason I copy/paste from a word-processor.
Hit that laptop “return” key by mistake to begin a new paragraph, and off your post goes, errors and all. (Garbage for all to see.)
My word processor, Apple’s “Pages,” which allows paragraph returns, also allows dictation, which circumvents the frustration of sloppy keyboarding — a stroke-effect.
My iPhone does “voice-recognition” too.
Text-edit complete, adding my flag-pic was next.
But remember my new laptop doesn’t see my pictures yet, so fire up old laptop.
I can fiddle Facebook with either.
Next is find that flag image-file, which I also use as my Facebook profile-pic.
The original is no longer in my machines; it’s probably packed away on a CD. But there is that Facebook profile-pic, the flag picture I want. It could be downloaded.
Engage guile-and-cunning.
Downloading is right-click with Windoze®, control-click with Mac OS-X.
Got it: I saved that download to my desktop, renaming it “Old-Glory” from FB’s file-name of 89 bazilyun numbers.
Okay, down-and-dirty-time.
That Facebook profile-picture is small, and probably only 72 ppi. But it looked okay to me.
Next was “editing” my flag-pic to my textual post.
Facebook is a world apart; I can fiddle my Facebook with both computers, and also my iPhone. It doesn’t know which, just that I’m fiddling it.
“Add-picture” from my old laptop, where my flag pic was downloaded.
I hit the return button, and there it is! (Above.)
“Toy not with a master!” I shouted.
No Apple instruction, everything learned by “try-it-and-see-what-happens.” And 26 years ago I had a stroke that partially destroyed my brain.
My speech is messy, my balance is gone, and my keyboarding’s erratic.
But apparently enough marbles remain to figger this stuff out on my own.
Plus, nobody tells a Hughes they can’t do something.

• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993 from an undiagnosed heart-defect since repaired. I pretty much recovered. Just tiny detriments; I can pass for never having had a stroke. It slightly compromised my speech. (Difficulty finding and putting words together.)
• “Windoze®” = Windows. (Mac users claim Windows-for-PC is inferior.)
• “Ppi” is pixels-per-inch. Computer screen-resolution is 72 ppi. Printer-resolution is 300 ppi. Enlarge a 72 ppi image-file, and it pixelates = jaggies. I would not be enlarging my downloaded flag-pic.

The dreaded FB algorithm

—Yrs Trly has only 53 Facebook “friends.” (And I probably could “defriend” a few.)
Not the 89 bazilyun of some of my FB “friends;” nor even hundreds.
I don’t consider my number of “friends” indicates my viability.
The fact I even have a Facebook at all is due to a fast-one by SuckerBird and his cronies. They were playing the marginal computer-savvy of someone in his 60s.
Now I’m 76, and Facebook seems no longer what it was 11-12 years ago.
What happened to one's “wall,” for example? And Facebook likes to change its computer-interface unannounced = “Now what?”
Despite intrusion of FB’s secret algorithm to limit communication with my various “friends,” I have a few with whom I communicate quite a bit.
—The one with whom I communicate most is my aquacise-instructor. Which also is strange, considering she also resulted from another Facebook fast-one.
Facebook surreptitiously trolled my iPhone contacts immediately after I got “Facebook for iPhone.” (Thank you Mark!)
I had her phone number in there from her business card, so Facebook suggested her as a “friend.”
“What?” I exclaimed. “She’s not mutual with anyone!”
Ignorantly I sent her a “friend” request, and for whatever reason she responded positively.
Now Facebook notifies me of anything she posted, “liked,” whatever. We’re worlds apart, but communicate quite a bit.
I have other FB “friends” with whom I communicate.
—One is the first girl I dated. We attended the same high-school, and now she’s married, retired, and lives in Washington-state.
I get notifications regarding her too.
—Another is a cousin in NC. She also is married and retired, but she’s fun to talk to, since we have similar politics.
—Another is a girl who attended the same college as me. She lives in Philadelphia, and also is married and retired.
Those last two searched me out, as did that girl in Washington-state. Same schools, relatives, whatever.
We talk and talk and talk some more, often via Facebook “Messenger.”
I don't think I get notifications for everything they post, plus I think my aquacise-instructor limits some of her posts. But I do get quite a bit = it seems they “follow” me somewhat.
That is, whatever I post shows up in their “feeds;” I don’t “limit,” since I don’t post much anyway.
And quite often I “share” or copy/paste whatever they posted so it will be on my page.
(This doesn’t seem to be Facebook as it existed 11-12 years ago. Now it's my Facebook, and the only one who posts to it is ME. Anyone else I delete.)
“Shares” and copy/pastes are especially true of my aquacise-instructor, who like me seems a “bleeding-heart liberal,” although I’m sure she wouldn’t like me calling her that.
“Bleeding-heart liberal” is my tub-thumping CONSERVATIVE sister, deceased almost nine years ago.
That aquacise-instructor is apolitical. I’m somewhat that myself: “Hey Ron, let’s not talk politics; I wanna remain friends.”
Yet my other three female friends have a walloping good time bewailing “The Donald.”
—I also have one more female “friend” about 40, who lives near LA and is married.
But she has her Facebook set up so I can’t post to it. But I do get notifications of when she’s posted to that new FB “story” thingy.
We worked together at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper; and she’s pretty much the reason why I blog stuff.
Like me, she also is rather wacko. She also badmouths The Donald.
(It seems The Donald is anti anyone with a college education. “Where would I be if not for the uneducated?”)
—I also have numerous male FB friends, and the dreaded algorithm notifies me when they posted anything.
But only a couple. 10-15 “friends” is enough.

“Suspenders”

David Gaunt’s 1956 Pontiac Star Chief convertible. (Photo by Dan Lyons.)

—The July 2020 entry in my Tide-mark “Cars of the Fab ‘50s” calendar is a 1956 Pontiac Star Chief convertible.
In 1956 Yrs Trly was twelve years old. ’55 through ’56 cars are great to look at; not the turkeys of the early ‘50s, and not the over-styled glitz-wagons of the late ‘50s.
Our family moved from South Jersey to northern DE in late 1957, shortly after the new 1958 models came out. I remember a friend and I visiting a Buick dealer west of Haddonfield (NJ) shortly before we moved.
The dealer had the new 1958 Buicks on his lot, but they were under wraps because Buick hadn’t introduced yet.
The ’58 Buick had a chromed waffle-iron grill. “Are they kidding?” I exclaimed. “It looks awful!”
Acres of chrome and fluted chrome. A gigantic barge!
Chevy was over-styled too. I liked the new Impala, a cruiser based on GM’s larger wheelbase.
But compared to the grille-insert of a ’57 Chevy, the grille-insert of a ’58 was cheese.
There were lotsa things wrong with the styling of a ’57 Chevy, but fortunately four headlights wasn’t one of them.
And the basic ’58 Chevys were too big. (Bloated.) ’55 through ’57 were the right size.
Ford also switched to style-wagons. Canted fins set atop taillights made to look like jet exhausts.
And all Chryslers from 1957 on had “the Forward-Look,” way too much finning. I remember the fins and trunk of a Plymouth hanging out the garage of a house in our South Jersey suburb.
Cars of the early ‘70s also looked good. But by 1970 I was grown and married.
In high-school (’59-’62) cars of the mid-‘50s became supreme. Stylish, but not over-styled.
And perhaps best was the ’56 Pontiac, although the ’55 Olds looked great too. (I blogged it.)
Bunkie Knudsen (“NUDE-sin,” I think — I couldn’t get a pronunciation) had taken over Pontiac in an attempt to break free of the brand’s stodgy reputation.
Pontiac had a new overhead valve V-8 motor. It wasn’t Chevy’s vaunted SmallBlock, but Pontiac’s V-8 put their ancient flat-head motors out to pasture.
Suddenly Pontiac was no longer grandpop’s car.
I remember a cousin, older than me, having a ’56 Pontiac similar to this car, although his was a hardtop.
He was a navigator for Strategic-Air-Command’s air-to-air refueling planes. “What’ll it be, Regular or Ethyl?” 10-20,000 feet above the ground.
He came to visit our family once, and there in our driveway was his fabulous Pontiac.
For years I was smitten by Chevrolet’s “Hot-Ones,” ‘55 through ’57, but this Pontiac looks better — or maybe the ’55 Olds.
Which I’d prefer is a tossup, and current cars don’t look this good anymore.
This Pontiac also has “suspenders:” two narrow fluted chrome strips across its hood. Those “suspenders” were Pontiac’s last application of its chrome hood-trim: a wide single strip of fluted trim.
Getting away from that chrome trim-strip would release Pontiac from its “grandpop’s” car image. But that chrome trim-strip didn’t go easily. It was narrowed quite a bit, and doubled. And no longer was it center-hood.
1957 was the first Pontiac without the trim-strip.
Choosing between a ’55 Bel Air convertible, and this ’56 Star Chief, I’d take the Pontiac – and not the ’57 Pontiac, which didn't work.

• “Haddonfield” (“ha-din-feeld”) was an old Revolutionary-War town in south Jersey near where I lived as a child.
• The Chevrolet “SmallBlock” V8 was introduced at 265 cubic-inches displacement in the 1955 model-year. It continued production for eons, first to 283 cubic inches, then 327, then 350. Other displacements were also manufactured. The SmallBlock is still manufactured, though much updated. The “SmallBlock” was revolutionary in its time.
• “Regular or Ethyl?” is gas-station lingo from the ‘50s and ‘60s. “Regular” was low grade, and “Ethyl” was high-test, having tetraethyl-lead to make it more resistant to engine-knock. A gas-station pump-jockey would come out when you pulled in, then ask the driver, still inside his car, “What’ll it be, Regular or Ethyl?” —Now that driver pumps his own gas, and tetraethyl-lead has been banned.

On *****

It's apparent my continuous talking about Hilda Q. Walton is driving people crazy! Guilty-as-charged. This will be my last.
It's just that finding out 70+ years late that Hilda and my parents were WRONG is so surprising and amazing I talk about it too much. I can talk to pretty girls! Spin on Hilda baby!

—For 16&1/2 years Yr Fthfl Srvnt drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the provider of transit bus service in Rochester (NY) and environs.
It was supposed to be temporary until I found employ as a writer: public relations, etc. But it paid well and was pleasant to start, mainly learning to drive large vehicles.
My stroke 26+ years ago ended it, but I was tiring of it.
My final run, which had me pulling out at 5:05 AM, had me getting up at 3 AM, and going to bed by 8:30 the night before.
The biggest problem was our clientele, which had me picking country runs.
City runs could get you mugged, or even shot. One of our drivers was run over by her bus and killed.
During those 16&1/2 years I made many friends, and most were bus drivers.
But a few weren’t. One was ***** ****, head of what that time was called “Human Relations.” Now it’s called “People Department” — I stifle a giggle.
Back then “Human Relations” was on the first-floor of the Administration Building — we called it “the Crystal Palace.”
Now the first-floor looks like a prison entrance. It’s set up to keep the public at bay.
I remember ***** telling me about some angry drunk staggering in to threaten all-and-sundry.
To her that was terrifying, but “*****, those are the people we parry every day!”
I remember some passenger incensed Motor-Vehicle took his license away for drunk driving . He had to use the bus — GASP!
Finally, I got mad. “People like you are the ones that kill motorcyclists, and I’m a motorcyclist.”
For whatever reason that shut him up — no pity from this kid!
Yesterday's wake-up dream was about ***** ****, who of course I hadn’t seen in 26-27 years.
I attended a Transit retiree function, I think it was a Christmas-luncheon, and ***** **** was there.
“Are you ***** ****?” I asked.
“Yes,” she smiled.
It was the same smile my aquacise-instructor rendered years ago, that I blew all outta proportion.
“NO PRETTY LADY WILL SMILE AT YOU!” the notorious Hilda Q. Walton, my hyper-religious Sunday-school superintendent neighbor, who convinced me all males, including me at age 5, were scum.
Had my parents come to my defense, Hilda woulda crashed in flames. But they heartily agreed. To them I was “rebellious” for being unable to worship my holier-than-thou father.
A wonderful thing to tell a five-year-old little boy = marked-for-life.
I also had a coach advising me to be more forthcoming.
“Don’t listen to ******,” my bereavement-counselor told me. “You’ll make many more lady friends just being yourself.”
And I have, but sadly that aquacise-instructor was the first pretty lady to smile at me in my entire life. (70 years late.)
I’ve experienced many more pretty-lady smiles since, some way more extraordinary than that aquacise-instructor, whose smile seems kinda sad.
So there’s ***** smiling at me, and the worst thing a pretty lady can do is smile at me — it indicates she enjoys my company. (Utterly impossible to Hilda.)
***** isn’t gorgeous, but she also isn’t gross = thunder-thighs, insanely fat, a slovenly Harley-Mama.
**** was her last name years ago, although I think she married and changed to her husband’s last-name, or **** was her husband’s last-name and they divorced.
Whatever, she was smiling at me; which makes her “cute.” Same with my aquacise-instructor.
I’ve since learned to not be so smitten by a female smile.
And also that Hilda and my parents were WRONG!

• I always say Hilda and my parents spin in their graves, 14,000 RPM, about what a recent crotch-rocket motorcycle might get; enough to power FL south of Orlando.
• 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 almost 15 years ago.
• As a result of my wife dying eight years ago, I see a bereavement-counselor once a month.