BobbaLew

The wars begin

2012-02-03T10:25:00.001-08:00

The other day (Monday, January 30, 2012), while working out at the YMCA in nearby Canandaigua, I noticed a TV-ad for Norfolk Southern Railroad.

It was probably on CNN, since I was on an exercise-machine aimed at the plasma-baby tuned to CNN.
There’s no sound. It’s closed-captioned.
For some time all the railroad TV-ads I’ve seen have been CSX, the incredible advantage of moving freight over railroads as opposed to trucks.
It’s true. Railroading is much more efficient than trucking.
Since a steel wheel is progressing a steel rail, there’s little rolling-resistance compared to a rubber tire on pavement.
Plus since the trains are following a railroad-track, far more can be entrained behind the pulling-unit without sideways crabbing.
A train might have 100 cars or more behind the pulling-unit, whereas a truck is limited to only one or at the most two trailers.
Trucking has tried to go to three trailers, but highway-departments resist. Since the trailers aren’t following a track, they can crab sideways so much they threaten passing drivers; i.e. they’re dangerous.
Plus a truck needs a driver for every truck. A railroad-train might have a crew of two or three, but they’re pulling 200 or more trailer containers.
Norfolk Southern is mainly a coal-road — that is, it’s biased toward coal.
And hauling coal by railroad literally skonks hauling coal by truck. A railroad coal-car might carry 120 tons of coal. A truck won’t come close! Plus a single train might have 100 or more of those coal-cars.
I’m sure CSX also hauls coal, but not like Norfolk Southern.
Norfolk Southern includes the old Norfolk & Western, which served the Pocahontas Coal-Region in West Virginia and Kentucky.
It also operates the old Pennsylvania Railroad lines, very much a coal-road, serving mines throughout Pennsylvania, which had many.
Apparently Norfolk Southern is now moving almost as many trailer-containers as CSX, perhaps more.
Corridors have been set up on Norfolk Southern railroad lines to take some of the pressure off of parallel Interstates.
Government aid is used to help the railroad improve those corridors.
The trailer-containers get moved in trains instead of trucks.
Railroading was extraordinarily successful when first instituted in the 1800s, a technological leap that made the Industrial Revolution possible.
Canals were also a quantum leap forward, but couldn’t be operated in Winter.
Nevertheless, New York City is the dominant east-coast port because of the Erie Canal.
Railroading made development of this nation’s interior possible.
Railroading used to be point-to-point.
A loaded boxcar might be picked up at a factory railroad-siding, then delivered to its final destination, perhaps another railroad-siding.
That’s not how it works now.
Railroad-siding pickup was labor-intensive and costly, plus there had to be a factory railroad siding.
The pickup also obstructed railroad-freight forwarding from one major city to another.
Railroads used to have many branches to serve those factory sidings.
Now railroads are biased toward moving great quantities of freight from city to city, mainline railroading. Those old railroad branches are now feeder shortlines, independent.
A truck might be used to pick up a single trailer-container at a factory, for delivery to the railroad.
The container would get loaded with many others headed toward the same destination, for example, a city.
Ship-containers are often loaded directly onto trains.
Near the city that container might get off-loaded from train back to truck for final delivery.
For example, containers for New York City actually get railroaded to north Jersey, then transferred back to truck for final delivery into the city.
Railroading into a city proper is near impossible.
It’s too congested.
So for some time CSX has been trumpeting the great efficiency of moving freight via the railroads.
Trains of double-stacked containers parallel expressways free of congestion and trucks.
But now Norfolk Southern is doing it.
Giant trains of double-stacked containers march out of verdant woods on a right-of-way perhaps 50 feet wide.
In bright sunshine, under a cloudless sky.
Compare 50 feet with an expressway right-of-way over 200 feet wide.
And that train may have 200 or more containers.
A highway-truck has at the most two, usually only one.
Railroading utterly skonks trucking. And for years it was only CSX showing us that.
Norfolk Southern has joined the fray.

Monthly Calendar Report for February, 2012

2012-01-31T14:56:00.001-08:00

Amtrak’s eastbound “Pennsylvanian” on Track Two at Lilly, PA. (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

―I guess I’ll make my own calendar-picture number-one for February 2012, even though I’m not happy with it.
It’s best, but only because the others are so middling.
In fact, all my boughten calendars have middling pictures this year, and that’s throughout the year, not just this month. Nothing is extraordinary.

Peter Harholdt©.

The only musclecar I’d want, a ’64 G-T-O.

Photo by John Dziobko, Jr.

The most beautiful diesel-locomotive of all.

About the only photo that is any good is the ’64 G-T-O I ran last month, and it wasn’t that dramatic a picture.
It got by on the fact it was a ’64 G-T-O, the best of the musclecars, the one I’d want.
My Alco PA picture wasn’t bad either.
In fact, one entry in my hotrod calendar is a customized ’51 Buick.
Ugh! What would anyone ever see in such a car?
Okay, I saw enough dumb customs while growing up, e.g. a nosed-and-decked 1952 Chevrolet two-door sedan, and a dark-green ’50 Pontiac convertible.
That guy, whose name was George, two classes ahead of me in high-school, used to sit atop the front seatback top-down, and steer with his feet!
Simple formula: buy a cheap used-car as high-school transportation, then do a little el-cheapo customization — e.g. nosing and decking.
“Nosing and decking” are to remove both the hood and trunk ornaments, and then fill in the mounting holes and repaint. “Nosing and decking” were very much the in thing to do; usually about the extent of customization.
“Nosing and decking” were fairly easy, especially if there were flush mounting-holes. A ’56 Chevy was near impossible, since its hood-ornament was mounted on a quarter-inch emboss.
This picture was taken in February of last year.
We had gone down to Altoona in hopes of repeating the previous February (2010) when the snow was fabulous.
But the snow was almost gone. It had snowed previously, but temperatures rose to almost 50 degrees.
The snow just melted away.
You see a little snow-cover still extant, but the roadbed is almost bare.
In fact, the only snow is on the access-road, where a fourth track used to be. The tracks are bare.
The tracks here are numbered One, Two, and Three, left-to-right. Three is westbound, One is eastbound, and Two can be either way.
My nephew Tom, from northern Delaware, also a railfan like me, had come out to accompany Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”) and I on our train-chase.
I’ve written up Phil so many times to do it again would be boring.
If you need clarification, click this link, and go toward the end of the post.
That explains Phil.
I would be driving with Phil navigating, and Tom in the back seat.
My wife was along, but was having a hard time due to her cancer, and would stay behind at first.
We stayed at Station Inn in Cresson, PA (“KRESS-in”), a bed-and-breakfast for railfans.
It’s not Tunnel Inn in nearby Gallitzin (“guh-LIT-zin;” as in “get”), where we usually stay.
Station Inn is quite rudimentary, but Tunnel Inn wasn’t open at that time.
We had the “Pennsy” suite, which had an extra room for Tom.
Breakfast at Station Inn is pretty good.
Hired help cook breakfast in a kitchen, and you eat together with other patrons at a common-table.
In the so-called “Common Room.”
Tunnel Inn, by comparison, is just muffins and coffee delivered to each suite in a small basket.
It’s not as good as Station Inn, but compared to Station Inn the suites at Tunnel Inn are far better.
Both front the railroad, the so-called “47 miles of the most historic railroad in the United States,” Norfolk Southern’s Pittsburgh Division through and over the Alleghenies, the old Pennsy mainline.
Pennsy is long-gone, and now Norfolk Southern owns and operates the old Pennsy, ever since Norfolk Southern got the old Pennsy lines in 1999 when Conrail was broken up and sold.
Conrail was a successor to Pennsy when Penn-Central failed.
It started as a government operation, but eventually privatized as it became successful.
Conrail succeeded a bunch of northeast rail-carriers that failed about the same time as Penn-Central, a merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad and arch-rival New York Central.
And operations on the Norfolk Southern Pittsburgh Division are much like the old Pennsy. Helper locomotives get added to help the trains climb The Hill. The western-slope is not as steep as the eastern slope up from Altoona, but helpers often still get added.
Station Inn is the old Callan House hotel in Cresson. Trains would take vacationers out of Pittsburgh up to Cresson, where they stayed at Callan House.
Tunnel Inn doesn’t have all the tracks, just those at the old Pennsy tunnels.
Station Inn views all the tracks, but they’re across the street. At Tunnel Inn they’re right at your feet.
Sleeping at Tunnel Inn is fairly easy; it’s a heavy substantial brick building.
It’s the old Gallitzin town offices and library, built by Pennsy in 1905.
Trains shake the building slightly as they rumble by.
Tunnel Inn is the top of the grade, so trains are still pulling uphill as they pass.
About all that wakes you is eastbounds on Track Two, which stop at the top of The Hill to do a brake-test before descending.
Track One (also eastbound) is on the other side of town, out of sight and hearing.
The eastbounds whistle off as they restart to descend The Hill down toward Altoona.
At Station Inn the railroad is far away, 75-100 yards across the street.
You can tell a train is passing, especially eastbound, which is uphill; but they’re not that noticeable.
Phil showed up at Station Inn during breakfast, and off we went down to South Fork, just me, Tom and Phil.
South Fork is where the railroad turns west to follow the Conemaugh (kone-uh-MAW;” as is “own”) river down to Johnstown.
The Johnstown Flood, May 31, 1889, started when a dam ruptured above South Fork. 2,209 died.
Trains were coming, and we photographed them in South Fork, then we drove back north toward Cresson, railroad-east.
Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian was coming, so we stopped at the overpass in Lilly.
That’s this picture; the train is climbing the western slope on Track Two.
(It’s passing a westbound stacker on Three.)
Back at Cresson my wife felt well enough to come along, so off we all went, north to Tyrone (“Tie-RONE;” as in “own”) to Plummers Crossing just east of Tyrone.
By then it started to cloud over, and the landscape was pretty much snowless.
It was warm enough to open my down jacket.

Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.

My cover-photo.

Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.

Holy mackerel!

The photo at left was taken at this location during that trip.
It’s the cover of my calendar.
What’s bad about this Amtrak picture is the low February sun.
I’ve done much better at this location in later months, but no snow.
The picture below left was my first “tour” with Phil, August 4, 2008. We snagged a “double;” two trains at once. —First “double” I ever saw!

(Nothing extraordinary from now on.)

1969 Yenko 427 Camaro. (Peter Harholdt©.)

—Here it is, the most desirable Camaro of all, the one everyone wants.

One of the prettiest styling-jobs ever.

Except yrs trly. I think the ’70&1/2 Rally-Sport, first year of the second-generation Camaros, is one of the best styling jobs of all time.
General Motors stylists pulled out all the stops. Practicality was cast to the wind!
The only problem is that it’s rather large (and has large doors).
My Motorbooks Musclecars calendar features a 1969 Camaro — the model-year everyone wants.
And this is a special Camaro; very rare.
It has the 427 cubic-inch Big-Block engine; the result of a COPO #9561 order, the Central Office Production Order system being a way for Chevrolet to produce cars for special-order, for example, taxicabs, police-cars, and el-cheapo strippers for light government duty (meter-readers, etc.).
Various hot-rodders, namely Don Yenko, saw the COPO system as a way to get Chevrolet to build maximum hotrods, like the Camaro with a Big-Block motor.
Seems a while ago I ran another rare Camaro with a Big-Block motor, but the engine was aluminum.
The Yenko Camaros were the cast-iron Big-Block, inordinately heavy.
About all a Yenko Camaro was good for is straight-line acceleration.
Bend it into a corner and you’re into the trees.
An aluminum Big-Block might weigh about the same as a Small-Block. A Camaro with Big-Block performance that might handle as well as a Small-Block Camaro, which could handle pretty well.
COPO 9561 Camaros are extremely rare.
Only 1,015 were built.
The car was a sleeper.
There were no markings.
The hubcaps are the cheapest available, mere pie-plates.
About the only giveaways are the hood and spoilers.
And the Polyglas Wide-Oval tires.
Line up against one at a traffic-light, and you wonder “What’s in that thing?”
This photo is not that impressive.
But it IS a Yenko Camaro, and a ’69.
The ‘69s were the last of the first-generation Camaros, not that good-looking to me.
The ’69 was slightly different-looking, but had the same roof as earlier.
The whole car had to be improved.
A really great-looking Mustang was coming, the 1970, a true fastback.

Pennsy’s first electric locomotive. (Dave Sweetland Collection)

—The February 2012 entry of my All-Pennsy color calendar is a single Pennsylvania Railroad DD1 electric locomotive, actually two semi-permanently coupled D units, 4-4-0, #s 4780 and 4781 (later Penn-Central numbers).
4780 and 4781 were the only remaining DD1; and are the only unscrapped DD1, retained at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, although renumbered as 3936/3937, their original Pennsy numbers.

A D16.

A Long Island Rail Road G5 (Long Island was once owned by Pennsy, so it’s a Pennsy G5).

“D” was Pennsy’s 4-4-0 classification; for example the D16. (1223 at left is a D16, and still exists at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.)
The GG1 is two 4-6-0s on a single underframe. The “G” is Pennsy’s 4-6-0 classification, for example the G5 (#35 is a G5).
Electrification was needed to operate the Hudson River Tubes (tunnels) to New York City.
The DD1 was developed as power for that.
A big electric motor is up inside the body.
An eccentric is at each end of the power-shaft.
It rotates a large rod connected to the wheel side-rods.
So the motor turns at the same rate as the drive-wheels, which are 72 inches diameter. (A Pennsy M-class 4-8-2 has 72-inch drive-wheels. A K4 Pacific [4-6-2] is 80-inch.)
A DD1 operates on direct-current third-rail electrification. Pennsy switched later to overhead alternating-current trolley-wire.
As far as I know, the DD1 was never converted to overhead alternating-current trolley-wire. It was always third-rail direct-current.
Long Island Rail Road had some third-rail electrification, so the DD1s gravitated to it. (Long Island Rail Road was once owned by Pennsy.)
The DD1 pictured has been renumbered into Penn-Central numbers, and was never scrapped.
It was retained for low-priority work-trains.
There once were 33, and they delivered classy Pennsy passenger-trains into New York City.
Long ago the line from Washington DC to Newark was still steam — it wasn’t fully electrified until the middle ‘30s.
Steam engines would pull passenger-trains to Manhattan Transfer in Newark, and then be switched out for a DD1.
The engine is in Sunnyside Yard on Long Island.
Locomotives for New York City-to-Washington DC were often stored and worked on/prepared in Sunnyside Yard, which is accessed directly from Penn Station in Manhattan.

Hurricane. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The February 2012 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a really great photograph of a rather plain airplane.

Spit.

The Hawker Hurricane is not the gorgeous hotrod the Supermarine Spitfire was.
But the judgment is the Hawker Hurricane won the Battle of Britain, that it turned back Hitler’s Luftwaffe.
Hurricanes would swarm like bees.
They put up an intimidating defense.
I’ll let my WWII warbirds site tell it:
“August 1940 brought what has become the Hurricane's shining moment in history: The Battle of Britain. RAF Hurricanes accounted for more enemy aircraft kills than all other defenses combined, including all aircraft and ground defenses.”
The engine is only a 1,280 horsepower V12 Merlin, not what it was in the Spitfire, 1,478 horsepower, 1,695 in the Mustang.
This photograph is the best in the calendar, although a photograph of a B-24 Liberator bomber is almost as good.
Continuing:
“In 1933, Hawker’s chief designer, Sydney Camm, decided to design an aircraft which would fulfill a British Air Ministry specification calling for a new monoplane fighter.
His prototype, powered by a 990 horsepower Rolls Royce Merlin ‘C’ engine, first flew on November 6, 1935, and quickly surpassed expectations and performance estimates.
Official trials began three months later, and in June 1936, Hawker received an initial order for 600 aircraft from the Royal Air Force.
The first aircraft had fabric wings. To power the new aircraft (now officially designated the “Hurricane,”) the RAF ordered the new 1,030 horsepower Merlin II engine.”
But the Hawker Hurricane is not a dramatic airplane.
The empennage, the tail of the airplane, is fabric-covered. In fact, it’s fabric behind the cockpit, a very old way of doing things.
This was an advantage. Bullets would pass right through. A Hurricane could sustain incredible damage, yet return to base.
But the Merlin is water-cooled. The cooling-system had to remain undamaged to sustain flight; that is, not overheat the engine.
But it’s the airplane that won the Battle of Britain, and turned back Hitler’s Luftwaffe.

(Downhill from here.)

A Pennsy K4 Pacific (4-6-2) leads Train #6 (the Allegheny) on Panhandle Bridge approaching Pittsburgh. (Photo by John Bowman, Jr.©)

—The February 2012 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is not much, but it’s historical.
A Pennsy K4 Pacific (4-6-2) leads Train #6, “The Allegheny,” around a curve on Panhandle Bridge towards Pittsburgh.
The K4 is a Lines-West locomotive, meaning it was used on Pennsy lines west of Pittsburgh.
As such it has its sand-dome ahead of the bell. (Lines-West K4s were built that way.)
The tracks and facilities at ground-level are Pittsburgh & Lake Erie (railroad).
The K4 was extraordinary for a Pacific.
Most Pacifics were much lighter, smaller boiler and smaller firebox.
A grate-area of 70 square feet is quite large.
But even then the K4 was not the largest Pacific employed by Pennsy.
That would be the K5, still a 70 square-foot grate, but the boiler of a massive Pennsy Decapod (2-10-0). The Decapod was also only 70 square feet.
Only two K5s were built; crews didn’t like ‘em. They could run fast, but were slippery on startup.
Of interest to me is the Fort Pitt beer billboard’s huge clock saying about 25 after noon.
Fort Pitt beer is defunct, the picture is probably late ‘40s.
Also visible in the background is the Mt. Washington Incline, a funicular (”foo-NICK-yew-ler”) railroad. Kind of like an elevator, except the cars get winched up the tracks.
There are many funiculars in PA to climb mountains.
One was built in Johnstown after the Johnstown Flood.
The bridge also looks familiar, like it might be the one used in the movie “Unstoppable.” There it was called “Stanton Curve,” in the alleged town of “Stanton.”
The curve is posted for 15 mph, yet the runaway train negotiated it at near 70 mph. Tipped onto its outside wheels, clearly impossible, and without pulling out the rail. —And without derailing and crashing in flames into an oil tank-farm below.
Only one side of the bridge remains active; no tracks on the foot of the wye, but the bridge is still up.
A ridiculous movie; it shoulda been named “Unbelievable!”

Vicky!

—The February 2012 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a hot-rodded 1934 Ford Victoria two-door sedan.
The Victoria is a special-model two-door sedan.
It was all-steel, instead of a fabric insert in the top.
As far as I know the Victoria became a part of Ford offerings in the 1920s as a Model-T variant, and lasted until Ford cars became all-steel.

Stock 1932 Ford Victoria

Hot-rodded 1934 Ford two-door sedan (note fabric top insert).

Stamping an all-steel car was difficult at first.
An all-steel top had to be stamped as a separate roof-panel.
Ford sedans didn’t have separate roof-panels at first.
Perhaps the side-stamping curved up into the roof, or a large opening was left in the roof for a fabric insert.
The Vicky had a distinctive shape.
The roof was shorter than a typical two-door sedan with the fabric insert.
As such, it had a bustle-back at first. The typical two-door sedan didn’t.
The rear seat of a typical two-door sedan was over the rear-axle at first, which car-design moved away from, as such a design supposedly rode rough.
(Although my 1979 Ford E250 van was that way, and seemed fine.)
Interior seating was more cramped in a Vicky than the typical sedan.
Vickys are much desired.
This car is extensively hot-rodded.
It has a fully-independent Jaguar XK-E rear-suspension with inboard disc brakes. Very hip in the ‘60s in sportscar circles.
But I wonder if it can stand the torque output of the motor, a much-modified 350 Chevy SmallBlock with Weber carburetors.
Although with that much carburetion I wonder if it runs.......
My friend Art Dana (“day-nuh”), the recently-deceased retired bus-driver from Regional Transit, tried triple two-barrels on his ’56 Pontiac-powered Model-A hotrod.
It wouldn’t run right. All it did was backfire through the carburetors.
Triple-deuces look great. But he had to switch back to a single four-barrel.
Four Webers look great too, but sound like too much for a streetable SmallBlock.
Four Webers on a SmallBlock can be made to work in full-on racing applications.
The Jaguar independent rear-suspension is fairly strong, but it’s not the Corvette independent rear-suspension, which was crude but very strong.
What it sounds like is this car was built to satisfy the show-crowd.
Gee-whiz! Jag rear-end and four Webers.
A trailer-queen.
It doesn’t fulfill the Dana rule, which is “the bitch has gotta run!”
It’s an attractive hotrod, but not as attractive as a 1932 Victoria.

Hot-rodded 1932 Ford Victoria.

But even the ’32 Vicky looks like an old car. Cool, but antique.
Better-looking as hotrods are the ’32 roadster or three-window coupe, really great-looking cars, for which we can thank Edsel Ford.

Auto-racks depart Bellevue, OH. (Photo by Jermaine Ashby.)

―The February 2012 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is the weakest in the calendar.
It’s just a single General-Electric Dash 9-40CW pulling a string of auto-racks out of Bellevue, Ohio.
Norfolk Southern Dash 9s are only 4,000 horsepower. A normal Dash 9 is 4,400 horsepower, Dash 9-44CW.
Norfolk Southern thought 4,400 horsepower too risky.
I can’t make sense of the light-sources.
The moon in the mist seems pretty strong, perhaps full.
If that brightening sky in the background is sunrise or sunset, to be that full the moon has to be behind the photographer.
So perhaps the brightening sky is actually Bellevue, or Bellevue yard.
Bellevue is a storied railroad town.
It was a junction of numerous railroads, where the old New York Central crossed Nickel Plate. —Wheeling & Lake Erie also was there, it’s line to Pittsburgh.
I think it was also the center of Nickel Plate operations, or at least A center.
Norfolk Southern operates the old Nickel Plate line to Buffalo, NY.
That goes way back to Norfolk Southern predecessor Norfolk & Western getting the Nickel Plate in 1964.
Norfolk Southern is a merger of the old Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway in 1982.
One diesel-locomotive for a train might not seem like much, but a string of auto-racks is light.
Of interest to me is that old passenger diesel barely visible to the right.
It looks like an old Penn-Central E-unit.
It’s at Sea Island Passenger Services for restoration.
This picture would have looked better in daylight.
That streetlight at right is what made it possible.
The calendar probably chose it because the photographer pulled it off.

Welcome to Mayberry

2012-01-29T12:55:00.000-08:00

The other day (Thursday, January 26, 2012) we visited a lawyer in the nearby village of Honeoye Falls (“hone-eee-OYE;” as in “boy”).
The idea was for us old folks to get our affairs in order.
Following will be reflections of our visit:
We walked in and sat.
No one was there; not even a receptionist.
—1) Welcome to Mayberry.
It looked like the Sheriff’s office in the Andy Griffith Show.
“I’d like an explanation of his filing system,” my wife said.
Stuff was heaped in disorderly piles.
A folder of some sort was stuffed with detritus that emanated every which way.
Dark filing-cabinets were off to the side. Each had the word “Bingo” scrawled in black magic-marker onto the small paper insert in the file-name frame.
—2) The lawyer strode in from outside.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“We had a 2 p.m. appointment,” my wife said.
“You did?” the lawyer said. “I didn’t know that.”
Funny; he made the appointment.
—3) Into the inner sanctum, the actual lawyer office behind the reception area.
Be careful where you step. Don’t trip, and don’t knock anything over.
We’re talking about four things: -a) a will, -b) living wills, -c) healthcare proxies, and -d) power-of-attorneys.
The will-bit is only if we both die at the same time.
The house and our IRAs are set up to go to the surviving spouse.
Same with healthcare proxies.
Of maximum import is what happens to our dog should be both expire at the same time; for example, our airliner augurs into the Everglades.
The likelihood of that happening is slim, but should it, back to rescue goes our dog.

Photo by Linda Hughes.
(Linda Hughes is my wife.)

Our dog.

Our dog is a rescue-dog from Ohio Irish-Setter Rescue.
A backyard breeder had given up.
Our dog was only three at that time, but had already had two litters of puppies.
(Now she’s approaching seven.)
I doubt there’s much demand for Irish-Setter puppies. You don’t see many Irish-Setters.
An Irish-Setter can be hyper; ours is.
Our dog learned the joy of hunting — we also had her spayed.
At least 10 rabbits have met their demise in her jaws, plus innumerable mice and moles. Once she got four chipmunks in a single strike.
I have to avoid the ponds at nearby Boughton Park (“BOW-tin;” as in “wow,” not “oh” or “who”). She’s snagged frogs, and can drag me into the pond.
—4) “I’ll send you a letter. It’ll just be fill-in-the-blanks, and then we can do a will” — that is, assemble a will from his saved computer forms.
“I’ll bill you after it’s done, maybe $150.
Everything is online now; those lawbooks out front are just for show.”
My wife used to work for Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Company in Rochester, a publisher of law-books.
“I remember how much trouble we went through getting our company to online anything.
They wanted to keep printing law materials.
I remember accompanying a salesman on a call to a law office.
The lawyer didn’t want a law-book set; it would just collect dust.
But the salesman wasn’t listening.
‘You want these books,’ the salesman kept saying.”
“And things are much easier now that we have word-processing,” the lawyer said.
“Used to be if anything changed, that was a complete start-over retype.
Now you just change the file.”
“Yeah,” I added; “I had a stroke, so my keyboarding got sloppy.
Word-processors had spellcheck. It flagged all my mistypes. It was like finding my old self again.”
The lawyer then detailed how no one seems to be concerned about misspelling anymore.
“Did you spellcheck this?” he’d ask his receptionist.
“Yes.”
“No you didn’t! This word is misspelled.”
Does anyone from the Facebook generation care?
“We’re fighting a losing battle,” I observed.
“Yet if something is misspelled it can reverse the intent of a document,” the lawyer said.
—5) “Did you know Joseph?” I asked; “the hairdresser down the street.”
“Joseph Cotteleer,” the lawyer said; “one of my clients.”
“Does he still have that ’67 Corvette?” I asked.

Joseph’s ’67 Corvette.

“Nope, he had to sell it,” he said. “Probably for a loss too.
Seems he went sorta crazy after his wife died. Now he’s back in Thailand with his new bride.
And his old house here in Honeoye Falls is still on the market.”
“That Corvette was part craziness,” I observed; “but a really nice car.”
“Nothing I’d sneeze at, although I prefer the ’63 Split-Window coupe.”
“Four-on-the-floor too,” I commented.”
“All the right stuff,” he added. “Not fuel-injection, but good enough.”
“I considered making an offer, but didn’t. What would I do with a ’67 Corvette? Where do I put my dog? I don’t even have a garage for it. All it is is a show-car, for investment.
Plus it’s one more internal combustion engine to maintain. I already have eight!”
“Do you realize that in about 20 years no one will be left to drive performance cars? These whuppersnappers can’t drive stick-shift.
Getting a car with a stick-shift is near impossible.
In 20 years stick-shift will be but a memory.”

• RE: “Old folks......” —My wife is 68, and I soon will be.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I pretty much recovered.

E-mail billing

2012-01-28T11:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday (Friday, January 27, 2012) I got an e-mail from National Grid, our electric utility.
Our January 2012 billing for electrical usage was available for viewing.
And paying.
Great idea! Save a tree!
Cut out the U.S. Postal-Service.
I already do online bill-pay through our bank.
No more paying bills by monthly check.
All bill-pays are paid online.
So far, National Grid is the only one for which I do e-mail billing.
This is the second month.
Open e-mail.
“First you must sign in to view your bill.”
“WHAT? This isn’t how it was last month,” I said.
“To sign in you must first register.”
When our bill comes snail-mail, it takes about 30 seconds to open the bill and put it on my desk for processing.
So far I’ve gobbled up about two minutes.
“This is not saving me time,” I said.
I set about registering; supposedly about five minutes.
“Please enter a valid password.”
I did so, or so I thought.
“Negatory. Please enter a valid password, eight characters minimum.”
I added a character to the seven-character password I usually use.
“Negatory. Please enter a valid password, at least one capital-letter.”
I changed the lead character of my password to a capital-letter.
“Congratulations, you have successfully registered with National Grid’s online bill-viewing.”
“WOW! Thrill,” I said. In about the time it would have taken me to pay the bill, and take a nap.
“Back to snail-mail,” I thought.
“Please enter account-number and last four digits of your Social-Security number.
Okay, but “too many techies,” I thought.
Just because you can do something doesn’t make it sensible.
“Why have I gotta register just to view my bill?”
Finally our bill was available for viewing.
I printed it, so I could set up an online bill-pay with our bank.
Yet another tree falls in the forest, and it’s my paper, not National Grid.
Shift the cost of paper to the consumer.
I noticed a red button to the right: “Pay bill.”
Oh no ya don’t!
I ain’t authorizin’ some payee to process my bill-pay, and mistakenly empty our checking-account so they can buy a Mercedes with our money.
I’ve seen it happen.
A friend authorized automatic payments to repay her college-loan. It mistakenly overdrew her checking-account, and she had to straighten it out with somebody in India.
“We understand your concern.”
I’m not havin’ that happen.
Only I authorize bill-pays.
I don’t trust payees. —If anything can go wrong, it will.
So far so good.
Took me five times as long to pay our National Grid bill.
What will it take next month?
This isn’t progress when I gotta blow 15-20 minutes just to pay a bill.

Country Curtains

2012-01-26T15:36:00.001-08:00

Our bay-window (the Christmas-candles are still up). (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Last Sunday (January 22, 2012) we went to our local Country Curtains outlet to try to engineer something for our bay-window pictured above.
Country Curtains is not Mighty Lowes or Wal*Mart. We had been to Lowes but our window is a challenge.
As you can see, our bay-window is entirely framed with wood, with wood molding. But the window-unit itself is vinyl, which means curtain mounting hardware can’t be screwed into the vinyl.
It has to be screwed into the wood framing or molding.
Other givens were at play, namely -a) whatever was installed allow light, or filtered light, into the room, and -b) whatever was installed would insulate, since the window is a very large hole in the wall.
A guy came out from Lowes to measure each window-pane for blinds mounted to the top-surround.
We thought about that, and decided against blinds.
Five individual top-casings, at the angle of each window-pane, would be partially obscuring the top of each window, in the top window-casing.
And blinds wouldn’t be insulating.
Individual insulating shades had the same problem, and would partially obscure with a stack when retracted.
The fact it’s a bay-window makes a single insulating curtain difficult.
A bay-window is not straight, so a rod for a close curtain has to be curved.
There are curved rods designed for bay-windows (we saw one at Lowes), but not the shape or length we have, even with adjustment.
Most rods are shorter, and don’t match our window.
So finally we decided on a single straight rod for an insulating curtain covering the window-opening.
Such a curtain would cover the window-hole, but could be pulled open (back).
The curtain would be hung on a traverse rod with pull-back strings.
Pulled open, the curtain would leave a stack, perhaps a single window-pane each side.
So off to Country Curtains to -a) purchase an insulating curtain, and -b) purchase hardware and a traverse rod.
We took along a Country-Curtains catalog, which my wife gets in the mail.
Country-Curtains is nationwide, but this was a local store.
The store was awash in faux-window curtain displays, pretty curtains everywhere amidst beautiful antique furniture also for sale. Very crowded and florid.
But then we detailed our requirements, particularly an insulated curtain.
Hemming and hawing.
Our window-opening isn’t a standard width. A standard curtain would be too small or much too big.
Except for one curtain, about the right width, but it would need to be shortened.
Everyone stared at me, my wife and the sales-clerk.
“Yer lookin’ at me? I’m supposed to pass judgment on this?
Well, I guess it looks okay, except it reminds me of a mattress-cover.
But it’s the only one that comes close to fitting.
I guess it’ll do.”
“Which color?” Blue or black or cranberry?
“Black looks gray,” I said. “And no cranberry” (a mattress-cover).
“I guess blue will look okay on yellow walls.”
It still looks like a mattress-cover, but it’s the only one that fits.
Next was hardware; the traverse-rod.
We bought a decorative traverse-rod, as opposed to an el-cheapo rod that looked like junk.
“Which end-insert do you want, our birdcage, our” (whatever) “or the fleur-de-lis?”
“The dagger,” I said; the fleur-de-lis.
Men, they just don’t understand.
I’m sorry, but if a Japanese maven fails in business, he falls on that traverse rod.
The sales-associate had the traverse-rod and various brackets in stock.
But the curtains and daggers have to be ordered.
Now, can I escape the store without forking over $500?
$408.78.
I noticed a small sign on the counter: a “certified clutter-coach” was going to give a presentation.
“Certified by who?” I asked.
“Marcy, it’s everywhere,” I said under my breath, chuckling.
The bracketry is so involved we probably will farm out installation.
I don’t have hours to figure it all out.
I’m not Einstein.

• RE: “Marcy, it’s everywhere!” —“Marcy” is my number-one Ne’er-do-Well — she was the first I was e-mailing stuff to. Marcy and I worked in adjacent cubicles at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired. A picture of her is in this blog at Conclave of Ne’er-do-Wells. At one time she asked how I managed to dredge up so much insane material to write up, and I responded “Marcy, it’s everywhere!”

Rads

2012-01-25T12:36:00.001-08:00

“It sure is nicer going to Thompson Hospital,” my wife observed yesterday (Tuesday, January 24, 2012).
“No traffic-jam, no giant parking-garage, tiny hole-in-the-wall office, and they take me right in.
It’s as if they’re waiting for me.”
Thompson is a small hospital in the nearby city of Canandaigua.
My wife has cancer, but supposedly not fatal, at least not yet.
Actually, she has two cancers: -a) Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and -b) metastatic breast-cancer.
The Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma appeared about four-and-a-half years ago as a hard tumor in her abdomen.
That was poofed with C-H-O-P chemotherapy.
The metastatic breast-cancer did not have a primary site; it never appeared in her breasts.
It was first noticed in her bones, where breast-cancer metastasizes.
We knocked that back with Femara®, the trade-name for Letrozole.
Femara is an estrogen inhibitor. Her breast-cancer was estrogen-positive.
Her breast-cancer just about disappeared, but has since reappeared in her bones. (No Letrozole for a while. —And now the Letrozole is generic.)
So the Lymphoma has reappeared, a tumor in her abdomen.
No more C-H-O-P chemotherapy can be applied, after eight applications you risk heart-damage, and we’ve used all eight.
Other chemotherapies have been tried, and all found wanting.
The next step is radiation, which will probably shrink the tumor, but not cure her cancer.
The tumor may eventually kill her.
A pill chemotherapy will be tried after radiation, but it’s only a maintenance chemo, and may not work anyway.
Her radiation treatment began yesterday at Thompson Hospital.
Cancer treatment began at Strong Hospital in Rochester, Wilmot Cancer Center (“will-MOTT;” as in “Mott’s” applesauce).
Strong Hospital is very large, and getting there is a 45-minute trip, usually in careening NASCAR rush-hour traffic.
Radiation can be administered by Thompson, they’re affiliated with Strong.
Yrs Trly has been the driver for every foray to Strong.
My wife is “automotively challenged.” The traffic and parking-garage would be intimidating.
But she has driven herself to Thompson; it’s not a dreadful challenge. About a 20-25 minute drive.
Chemo infusions were at Strong.
Since they took hours, what we did is I let her off for the infusion and thereafter drive back home.
We always had to leave our dog behind in the house.
That way I could come home to rescue the dog.
I’d take the dog for a walk in our fenced backyard, and thereafter await a call from my wife that she was done, and I could pick her up.
I’d then pile our dog into our van, drive back to Strong, and pick up my wife.
At Thompson we don’t have to do that.
My wife can drive herself, so far.
Radiation is only about 15 minutes per treatment.
So my wife could make a surgical-strike, while I took the dog to nearby Boughton Park (“BOW-tin;” as in “wow,” not “oh” or “who”).
If radiation treatments had been at Strong, no park for the dog.

• “Canandaigua” (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where we 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. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.
• “CHOP” chemotherapy is Cyclophosphamide, Hydroxydaunorubicin (also called doxorubicin or Adriamycin), Oncovin (vincristine), and Prednisone or prednisolone.
• “Automotively challenged” means difficulty making driving decisions. —For example, stick-shift is out.

Inspiration or job-preparation?

2012-01-24T11:12:00.001-08:00

For some unknown reason, perhaps because she’s an outpatient at the University’s Strong Hospital, my wife gets the University of Rochester Alumni Magazine.
We did not attend University of Rochester.
It’s hoity-toity. My wife’s brother graduated there, but I wouldn’t have gained admittance.
In fact, I was barely admitted to the college I attended, Houghton College, south of Rochester in western New York (“HO-tin;” as in “oh,” not “how” or “who”).
I had to attend summer-school to prove I could do college-level work.
Which I could, because it was that or ‘Nam.
The UofR Alumni magazine makes an interesting point.
College costs so much any more you have to graduate with a job lined up.
Fortunately this wasn’t the case when we were in college.
Houghton cost perhaps $2,500-$3,000 per year at that time (middle ‘60s).
My father made up the difference my first two years, but after that it was President Johnson’s National Defense Student Loan program (NDSL).
I might be able to generate $1,600 with a summer-job, but the rest I paid for with student-loans.
So I graduated with debt, but it wasn’t staggering, about $3,400.
I paid it off in about four years.
And I wasn’t a walkaway — I paid it off.
So my college experience was inspirational.
I majored in the good professors: history.
My wife also majored in good professors, history and English.
History and English wouldn’t cut it in today’s world.
You’d graduate with staggering debt.
The only way to pay that off is Engineering or Business Administration.
Major in history and land a job at Mickey-D’s.
Even as an Engineer or Doctor, paying off your debt might take 10 years or more.
I never regretted attending college, and I was the first in my family to earn a degree — although I’m pretty sure my father could have.
And I feel fortunate it was inspirational instead of mere job-preparation.
Professors used to value my opinions. —I doubt that could happen in today’s world.

• “‘Nam” is of course Vietnam, the Vietnam war.
• “Mickey-D’s” is McDonalds.

Class of 1987

2012-01-23T12:23:00.001-08:00

The March 2012 issue of my Classic Car Magazine prompts an interesting consideration.
The Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) considers anything older than 25 years a so-called “classic-car,” eligible for judging as an antique at car-shows.
This means the 1987 model-year becomes a “classic” this year.
To me this is laughable.
I have a hard time imagining I’d get turned on by a beautifully-restored ’87 Chevrolet Caprice stationwagon at a car-show.
Or an ’87 Mustang. Or a Turbo Thunderbird. Or a GMC Safari minivan.
Well, the first Ford Taurus is a landmark car, the car that saved Ford Motor Company.
I remember renting one in Denver, and I was impressed.
The only thing wrong was the power-steering, which felt like cold molasses.
Ford’s attempt to give it European steering-feel crashed.
Otherwise it was really good. I rented a Chevy Corsica a few months later and it was awful.
But the only notable car for 1987, the one that qualifies as a classic, is the Cadillac Allanté, an attempt by Cadillac to market a megabuck performance roadster to compete with the Mercedes SL.

Allanté roadster.

The Allanté debuted in the 1987 model-year, and was an almighty stretch for Cadillac.
The underpinnings were Cadillac, but the styling and body were by Pininfarina of Italy (“pin-in-fer-IN-ya”).
(Pininfarina is responsible for many Ferraris.)
In fact, Allantés were started in Italy, and then shipped to Cadillac's Detroit/Hamtramck plant for completion.
Making for the world’s longest assembly-line.
The only thing wrong with the Allanté was that it was front-wheel-drive, using pretty much the standard GM front-wheel-drive platform.
Everything else in its market-segment was rear-wheel drive, and the opinion of sportscar-wags was that a megabuck performance roadster should be rear-wheel drive.
Supposedly front-wheel-drive was not Cadillac’s decision.
But it’s hard to imagine Cadillac reconfiguring everything just to meet that requirement.
But build it they did, and the Allanté is the most memorable car of the 1987 model-year.
If I saw one at a car-show I’d be impressed.
And that’s despite its disco styling.
A 1987 Chevrolet El Camino maybe, but a Chevette or a Dodge Diplomat are forgettable.

What next, Microsoft?

2012-01-22T18:04:00.001-08:00

First was mighty Pennsylvania Railroad, the widows’ and orphans’ stock, that never failed to pay a dividend; the so-called “Standard Railroad of the World.”
Pennsy had already merged with arch-rival New York Central in a flailing attempt to remain solvent, since the government wouldn’t approve merger with Norfolk & Western, who eventually ended up operating Pennsy after Norfolk & Western merged with Southern Railway.
That is, Norfolk Southern owns and operates the old Pennsy lines, most that is, after Penn-Central successor Conrail was broken up and sold in 1999.
So it wasn’t actually Pennsy that went bankrupt; it was Penn-Central, the largest corporate bankruptcy ever at that time, June 21, 1970. (Penn-Central continued operations through 1976.)
Although government policy can partially take the blame, plus the tendency toward individualized personal transport, the auto.
I also remember the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle newspaper wailing about Penn-Central’s proposal to end delivery of newsprint by railroad boxcar.
The railroad wasn’t being compensated anywhere near the cost of delivery, yet the newspaper wanted to continue railroad delivery.
Can you say “corporate welfare?” Empty the pockets of the railroad so managers at the newspaper can buy a Mercedes?
Government built the Interstate Highway System. It also funded massive airport expansion, and set up an airway control system.
Railroads have their own control system; it isn’t a government operation.
It’s the railroads that keep trains from crashing into each other, and they do pretty well.
Together the government highway system, and airline transit, made railroad passenger transport unattractive.
Still, railroading is superior at carrying freight. It’s so much more efficient than trucking.
A single train, with only a crew of two or three, may be moving 200 or more trailer containers.
Trucking needs a driver for every one or two trailers.
And railroading uses much less fuel per ton-mile.
No way could trucking move the quantity of coal or grain or ethanol a train can move. One coal-car can carry 120 tons of coal — and a coal-train might be 100 cars or more. —Trucking can’t even come close.
Shipping can be even cheaper, but there you’re limited by where the waterways go.
The rail network is more extensive. Not as extensive as trucking, plus the railroad maintains its pathway.

Next was General Motors, who once claimed “what’s good for General Motors is good for America.”
Well, perhaps; but GM was saddled by heavy costs, and also seemed to suffer from myopic vision, like they were too big to fail.
They continued to build uninspired and unreliable cars, while the Japanese built better and more attractive cars.
Perhaps the best example of the turkeys they were turning out is the Pontiac Aztek, the UGLIEST car of all time.
Whatever possessed The General (General Motors) to market this styling abomination is beyond me. Plus its underpinnings weren’t much.
If it had been All-Wheel-Drive it would have been interesting, but it wasn’t.
It was just GM’s standard front-wheel-drive platform made into a box.
Box-like styling is more useful, but needs a prop. That prop would have been All-Wheel-Drive.
The Aztek was also a styling disaster; like GM stylists were confused.
A Japanese manufacturer, Toyota, became the number-one auto-seller. Mighty GM was left in the dust.
The General eventually had to declare bankruptcy; it couldn’t meet its financial obligations.
Mighty GM had to rationalize. It had to dump some of its storied brands.
Oldsmobile ended before the bankruptcy, and then Pontiac was lost with it.
Saturn was also dumped. Saturn was a somewhat successful attempt by GM to build and market cars Japanese-style.
It started good, but caved to the GM way.
Various Saturns were rebadgings of other brands. The General had a habit of fielding the same car across it’s many brands. There were Pontiac and Buick versions of the Chevy Cavalier, even a Cadillac version. Plus a Saturn version.
Dealers were fighting each other selling pretty much the same car.
Cannibalizing each other.
Perhaps the best Saturn was the first; almost a Honda.
Finally GM was competing at Honda’s level.
But then Saturn caved.
Ever more GM platforms were shared, and Saturn became GM, uninspiring.
Only four brands are left, Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC — and GMC at first was essentially the Chevy truck.
Which it still is. Ya don’t see GMC versions of the Chevrolet Cruze.
The General apparently recovered from bankruptcy, and is building better cars.
GM has become as reliable as the Japanese; it’s back to number-one.

So now it’s Eastman Kodak that declared bankruptcy.
It was so tied to film, it failed to cash in on the switch to digital photography.
So now the Japanese have the market Kodak should have got.
When I came to this area in Fall of ’66, I surveyed the Kodak Employment Office on Brown St. near State St.
But I didn’t go in.
The opinion was a job with Kodak was a job for life.
If I had I’d have become one of the Kodak retirees now worried about pension and health-benefits.
Yellow Father (Kodak), who was Rochester, is DONE.
The largest employer in Rochester is no longer Kodak. It’s University of Rochester, primarily its health-system, which includes a large hospital.
I used Kodak products for years, Tri-X film, PolyContrast print paper, and Kodak photographic chemicals, developer, stop-bath, and fixer, etc.
My dark-red darkroom-light was Kodak.
I remember riding my bicycle to LeBeau Photo (“luh-BOW;” as in “bow-ribbon”) on Lyell Ave. (“lile;” as in “aisle”) in Rochester. I’d load up on Yellow Father. There were alternatives, but Yellow Father was best. —Also what I knew, dependable.

So one-by-one the mighty pillars fall, seeming victims of their own weight.
Heavily freighted with demands to maintain the status-quo, while markets changed.
Pennsy tried to put on a good face while falling apart. It always paid a dividend.
The General fell to marketing cars that were turgid and unreliable (at least that was their reputation) compared to Japanese offerings.
Kodak, whose immense power was its dominance of photographic film, failed to follow the market-change to digital photography — even though they invented it.
I wonder what will become of Kodak Park, the massive facility Kodak built in Rochester to manufacture and process its photographic products?
The Park stretched for miles. It even had its own railroad and fire-department.
When I drove bus we drove Park-and-Rides through the Park.
I’d enter at one end amidst massive manufacturing buildings, and drive the Park’s road all the way out to the boonies at its other end.
This was in the morning, so I’d let people off where they asked.
I also remember it stunk. It had the heavy aroma of photographic fixer.
You could smell it clear on the other side of town if the wind was right.
Already many of the buildings were torn down — usually dynamited in front a news-cameras.
A lot of the Park has been sold to start-up businesses, many with ex-Kodak employees.
Supposedly Kodak will reorganize and re-emerge.
But what if it’s liquidated?
I have a Nikon digital camera (made in Japan).
At the same time, storied brands like General Electric and Ford still prosper.
What is it, the company leadership?
General Electric is manufacturing jet engines and railroad locomotives, not just light-bulbs or irons.

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability.
• “Park-and-Rides” were bus-trips from suburban or rural end-points, usually through Park-and-Ride parking-lots, where passengers would park their cars, for a bus-ride to work in Rochester.

Steer the car, Honey!

2012-01-22T14:29:00.001-08:00

The other night (Friday, January 20, 2012) the ABC-TV Evening-News did a report on three city mayors complaining about our nation’s roads.
All I remember is Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
ABC went bonkers about the joy of driving.
There was Dinah Shore singing “See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet” in her famous YouTube clip.

(The ’53 Chevy was a turkey.)
Next was a chrome-laden ’58 Oldsmobile four-door hardtop majestically cruising the Interstate.
Next was a baby-blue ’60 Corvette passing close underneath the photographer in the bed of a pickup.
Yes, driving was a joy back then.

Photo by BobbaLew.

The Wagon.

I remember cruising the highways of northern Delaware in my parents’ ’57 Chevrolet Power-Pak stationwagon.
I thought the world of that car; even paraded it as my own.
But back then gasoline didn’t cost almost $4 per gallon, and there weren’t so many cars fouling the atmosphere.
You could cruise the highway in a glittering land-barge without feeling guilty.
The mayors decried the dreadful condition of American highways, the potholes and crumbling bridges.
That they even rate lower than Malaysia.
The government seems to be posturing instead of getting things done.
The report ended with a girl driving a red convertible, top-down.
The girl threw her hands in the air, no longer steering the car.
An iconic image, freedom of the highway.
But the car started wandering left — it drifted across the double-yellow.
“Steer the car,” I shouted.
Reality impinges.

I could tell stories!

2012-01-19T16:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday (Wednesday, January 18, 2012) the dreaded 282 Alumni held one of its regular quarterly meetings.
The so-called “Alumni” are the union retirees of Regional Transit Service in Rochester, NY.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS — “Transit”), a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs.
While a bus-driver there I belonged to the Rochester Division of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), Local 282. (ATU is nationwide.)
The Alumni was a reaction to the fact Transit upper-management retirees ran roughshod over union retirees — a continuation of the bad vibes at Transit, management versus union.
Transit had a club for long-time employees, and I was in it. It was called the “15/25-year Club;” I guess at first the “25-year Club.” But they lowered the employment requirement, and renamed it “15/25-year Club.” The employment requirement was lowered even more; I joined at 10 years.
My employ there ended in 1993 with my stroke (disability retirement); and the “Alumni” didn’t exist then.
The Alumni is a special club — you have to join.
It’s an Amalgamated Transit Union functionary. It isn’t just a social club.
It has bylaws, officers, and an Executive Board.
In many ways it’s just like our union-local, except it entertains issues of interest to retirees; like Medicare, healthcare, and diabetes and Alzheimer’s.
“Dreaded” because all my siblings are flagrantly anti-union, like the proper way for hourlies to parry the massive management juggernaut is one employee at a time; in which case that single employee gets trampled because he’s not presenting a united front with power equal to management.
Like the proletariate’s attempt to exact a living wage from bloated management fat-cats is what’s wrong with this country.
My younger brother from northern Delaware, perhaps a fat-cat, but only because of his high salary, recently declared the “occupy Wall-Street” crowd a bunch of freeloaders.
Little did he know my wife would blast him from his high-horse with all the evils and stupidity of corporate America.
“Don’t you get Rush Limbaugh up here?” he asked me.
“What, pray tell, would I wanna listen to that blowhard for?” I commented.
Not many were in attendance at this meeting, perhaps 10-15.
We usually rate about 30.
Joe Carey (“kar-eee;” as in “arrow”), the recently retired president of Local 282, and de facto leader of the Alumni, apologized.
Apparently people had asked him if there was a meeting, and he told them he wasn’t sure.
Which explains the low turnout.
There also was no speaker.
Previous meetings had a speaker; our Vision-Care, our Dental-plan (both with reduced negotiated rates), or BJ’s Wholesale Club. (What am I gonna do with 100 pounds of bulk rice?)
Last time we had a podiatrist. His best comment was high-heels were keeping him in business.
We also had a diabetes specialist once. Most of our Transit retirees are diabetic, yet I’m not.
It’s no wonder, with all the sugar they dump into their coffee. —I drink it black, and decaf only.
So it was more a social meeting.
People were complaining about the Alumni newsletter, that it looks so bad compared to my old union newsletter, also an unpaid volunteer effort.
The Alumni newsletter is generated by an aging computer-savvy retired bus-driver.
Like all of us, he’s getting older. A newsletter is an incredible time-gobbler; I know from experience doing my union newsletter.
That retiree is falling apart, and I’m sure he wants someone else to do it.
He asked me once if I could help, but I told him I was up-against-the-wall already.
I’ve told him since I could edit stuff, check spelling, grammar, syntax, etc.
I haven’t heard from him since.
He also related his greatest difficulty was getting promised copy on time — a problem I knew all too well. The whole idea of a union newsletter was articles from union officialdom, which I never received during the entire year I did it.
People suggested I could make the newsletter look better, but all I can suggest is -a) two columns per page (instead of one), and -b) don’t distort the pictures by stretching them.
Which isn’t paginating the entire newsletter, which I don’t want to do.
“It doesn’t look that bad,” I said.
Around-and-around we we went, over pancakes for me, and gigundo omelets for some of the others.
A management person was there, Gary Coleman (“Coal-min”), husband of a recent bus-driver retiree.
Apparently Gary had been told to not show at Alumni meetings.
Well, why not?
Gary was lower-level management and once a bus-driver.
He’s one of us.
He knows the insanity we all faced; he’s not one of the high-and-mighty that refused to ride with the riffraff. (That was their term for our passengers.)
His wife Mary is a recently-retired bus-driver.
She was glad to get out!
Things seem to have got worse since we were there, although I was gone before most of the others.
We seemed to get madness from all quarters; passengers, upper management, etc.
I could tell stories!

• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I pretty much recovered. It ended my career driving bus.
• RE: “De facto leader of the Alumni.....” —Joe Carey is not the president of the Alumni, but more-or-less leads our meetings.
• I once did a newsletter for our union; it lasted a year, and ended with my stroke.
• “Pagination” is the complete generation of a page; layout of story-text, ads, and pictures (“art”).

Cellphone phishing

2012-01-15T07:05:00.000-08:00

I’m walking our dog back toward our van at nearby Boughton Park (“BOW-tin;” as in “wow, not “oh” or “who”), probably last Thursday, January 12, 2012.
Suddenly my SmartPhone rings.
I unholster my SmartPhone from my back pocket.
“Unknown caller,” it says.
“Hello?”
“Hi, I’m Amy.” (A robo-call.)
“You have been personally selected to complete a short 30-second survey.
To do the survey, please press one now.”
I’m holding back a four-legged enthusiastic hunter. I can’t do no survey.
Click!
End call.
Yesterday (Saturday, January 14) I’m walking our dog around our property.
I can do this loose, since our yard is fenced. —Cost us a fortune, but it’s the best fortune we ever spent.
Ding-a-ling!
Another unknown caller.
“Hello?” (Another robo-call.)
“This is HSBC bank.
We regret to inform you your debit MasterCard has been locked.”
“We don’t even have a debit MasterCard,” I shout.
“That HSBC account was closed years ago.”
“To unlock your card, please press one now to access our Security Department.”
Again, click!
End call.
My wife apparently got the same robo-call on her cellphone.
We use the Habecker rule (“HAH-beck-rrr”).
Vern Habecker is our old neighbor across-the-street.
He died a while ago at age-93.
He didn’t trust a soul.
My hairdresser came out to give him a Mason award, and Vern wouldn’t even let him in the door.
“Get outta here before I get my Smith & Wesson.
I don’t know you from the Moon!”

• Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s six, and is our sixth Irish-Setter, an extremely high-energy dog. (A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. abusive or a puppy-mill. [Scarlett is a reject from a failed backyard breeder.] By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up. —Scarlett isn't bad.)

Snowblower time!

2012-01-14T06:24:00.001-08:00

Yesterday (Friday, January 13, 2012) Winter hit with a vengeance.
We had it easy until yesterday. No snow to speak of, only occasional rain, and warm and sunny days.
But yesterday we got clobbered.
Not that much snow really, but heavy wind and icy cold.
The snow was blowing and drifting.
I had planned to work out at the YMCA in nearby Canandaigua.
So I backed out of our garage.
Through drifts eight to 12 inches deep.
This looks like an eventual snowblow.
The wind was howling and the snow blinding.
Our car has All-Wheel-Drive, so the snow has to be really deep.
Otherwise it will go through anything.
I arrowed out our driveway onto the main highway in front of our house.
About all that told me where the driveway was were two reflectors I have at the end of the driveway.
The main highway was completely snow-covered; I don’t think I ever saw bare pavement.
I drove up the road and turned east toward Canandaigua on 5&20, also completely snow-covered.
I rarely got above 35 mph. It was a struggle to see where I was going.
I slowly treaded east a while, then down a hill into a slight defile. It’s not much, only about a 50-foot change in elevation. Then slowly up the other side.
Not too bad, but only about 30 mph.
Then down again, this time about a 75-foot change in elevation.
I saw a large Chevy van stopped in front of me, its driver waving his arm.
Up ahead on the uphill was a stopped truck, perhaps unable to make the hill.
Trucks are not All-Wheel-Drive, so it might have been spinning its drive-wheels.
The pavement was completely snow-covered.
I had no problem coasting to a stop — I wasn’t going fast anyway.
Now what?
A side-road was to my left.
If a truck is stuck ahead of me on a main highway, it looks like I better go back home.
Rarely do I ever have to turn around.
I turned onto the side-road, Rabbit Run, and the adventure began.
Get back home on secondary roads; I didn’t think I could U-turn on a main highway in blinding snow.
That’s asking to get tee-boned.
Back into our garage through foot-high snowdrifts.
Snowblower time!

• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center,” usually three days per week, about two-three hours per visit. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where we 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. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.)
• “5&20” is the main east-west road (a two-lane highway) through our area; State Route 5 and U.S. Route 20, both on the same road. 5&20 is just south of where we live. It used to be the main road across Western New York before the Thruway.

Uh-ohhh

2012-01-13T10:53:00.000-08:00

Yesterday (Thursday, January 12, 2012) I decided to fire up my MyCast® weather-radar before taking our dog the nearby Boughton (“BOW-tin;” as in “wow,” not “oh” or “who”) Park for a walk.
It was raining lightly, and I wanted to see if we were gonna get drenched.
MyCast was good for this.
Their weather-radar is animated, perhaps four scans at earlier 15-minute intervals are displayed. So you can see if a storm is coming.
I used it to decide whether to mow lawn, and take the dog to the park.
One of the locations I have is The Mighty Curve near Altoona, and I could access it with my SmartPhone. It saved me from a downpour once — an approaching thunderstorm.
Instead of what I usually get, I got a welcome-page.
“Why am I getting this?” I asked.
“We have made major enhancements to MyCast.com, adding several new features and providing you with a better web-viewing experience. We think you will like the changes we have made!”
“Uh-ohhh....” I said.
“Where’s the log-in?” I asked. “There isn’t any!”
I tried various log-in procedures with my Internet-browser, but each time I got the welcome-page.
Quite a few of my weather-locations were set by geodesic coordinates, got by standing in place with my cellphone, and getting them from the GPS satellite.
Places like Horseshoe Curve, our house, and nearby Baker Park in Canandaigua.
Other places are ballparked, De Land Fl (my mother-in-law), Fort Lauderdale Fl (my recently deceased sister), Wilmington DE (my younger brother), and Boston MA (my other brother).
I never had a chance to get the exact geodesic coordinates for these locations.
My old weather-radar showed a 90-mile-wide display, but it was centered on my location.
90 miles displays way more than the immediate location, but it looked like all my locations got zapped.
I fired off an e-mail to their “Feedback.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“It looks like all my locations got zapped.”
I got an immediate response.
“We have updated the MyCast web-site, you can still get weather forecasts and maps through the new site: www.my-cast.com. The old site is no longer available.
We did eliminate user accounts completely as they are no longer supported, but you can still save any number of locations simply by bookmarking the locations you’d like in any browser!
To do this, just search for a location you’re interested in, and when it’s found, make a bookmark.
You can enter a latitude and longitude right into the search box like... 44.85,93.5
You can also share locations with others by just sending them the link.
We hope you’ll enjoy our new features like weather maps that you can pan and zoom, the interactive StormWatch map, and bookmarkable, sharable locations. You can learn more about what’s new here.”
“No longer supported” Hmmmnnn.......
Why thank you MyCast! Like I have all those geodesic coordinates memorized.
If I had any idea you were gonna do this, I woulda stored those coordinates.
Thanks for warning me MyCast! —Outta the clear blue sky!
Last night I fired up the new MyCast yet again, and cranked “West Bloomfield” into the search-window.
It brought up a radar-display covering most of western New York.
Well, I can deal with that, but it’s way more than I need.
The radar was also static, as it could also be on the old site.
The old site had a means to animate the display, and I discovered a small arrow on the new display animated the new display.
Progress, I guess, but it ‘s still showing way more than I need.
A while ago I used to e-mail through MyWay®, a web-mail; and it was pretty slick.
Then they went and “improved” their site, making it a royal pain.
It was so bog-slow I had to flee it.
I went back to my old Netscape e-mail.
This laptop has an even better e-mail I use: AppleMail.
Apparently MyWay still exists, but like before it hung upon loading after I logged-in.
Now I’m tempted to trash MyCast, although maybe not.
There are other weather-sites.
And it looks like with the new MyCast I need an app for my Smartphone!
Previously my Smartphone was accessing my MyCast Internet-site.
Will the new MyCast save me from a drenching?

•

The “Mighty Curve” (Horseshoe Curve), west of Altoona (“al-TUNE-uh;” as in the name “Al”), PA, is by far the BEST railfan spot I have ever been to. It was a trick used by the Pennsylvania Railroad to get over the Allegheny mountains without steep grades. The railroad was looped around a valley to climb the mountains without steep grades. Horseshoe Curve was opened in 1854, and is still in use. I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two (I’m almost 68). The viewing-area is smack in the apex of the Curve; and trains are willy-nilly. Up-close-and-personal. —I’ve been there hundreds of times, since it’s only about five hours away.
• “Canandaigua” (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where we 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. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.

We managed to pull it off

2012-01-11T17:51:00.000-08:00

Two heavy medical-appointments in one day (yesterday, Tuesday, January 10, 2012).
The first was my wife; the second was me.
My wife’s medical appointment was at Strong Hospital in Rochester, NY; Wilmot Cancer Center (“will-MOTT”).
It was at 8 a.m., but we had to be there for a blood-draw at 7:30.
Our house to Strong Hospital is 40-45 minutes.
We live in the tiny rural town of West Bloomfield, about 20 miles southeast of Rochester — mainly south.
We had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to leave by 6:30-6:45.
4:30 sounds extreme, but the dishwasher has to be emptied, we dress, and breakfast must be eaten.
So as 6:30 comes around, breakfast is being finished.
After that come bathroom ablutions.
Do it or it doesn’t get done.
We got on the road about 6:50, still dark, our dog abandoned in the house.
It was still dark when we got on Interstate-390 about 15-20 minutes later.
It was NASCAR rush-hour, the expressway a strident ribbon of madly cannonading red brake-lights.
Avoid the hard-charging idiots, desperate to be first to the free donuts.
It was beginning to lighten as I pulled into Strong, and let out my wife at the entrance.
I thereafter went to park the car in the vast multi-story parking-garage.
At 7:30 in the morning it was still pretty empty.
As I entered Wilmot, my wife’s blood-draw was being started.
Next was the appointment at 8, her oncologist, a very knowledgable and caring expert.
My wife has cancer, but supposedly not fatal, at least not yet.
Actually, she has two cancers: -a) Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and -b) metastatic breast-cancer.
The Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma appeared about three-and-a-half years ago as a hard tumor in her abdomen.
That was poofed with CHOP chemotherapy.
The metastatic breast-cancer did not have a primary site; it never appeared in her breasts.
It was first noticed in her bones, where breast-cancer metastasizes.
We knocked that back with Femara®, a trade-name for Letrozole.
Femara is an estrogen inhibitor. Her breast-cancer was estrogen-positive.
Her breast-cancer just about disappeared, but has since reappeared in her bones. (No Letrozole for a while. —And now the Letrozole is generic.)
A lymphoma tumor has since reappeared in her abdomen.
A recent chemo for that failed, so the next step is radiation.
That entails a consult with the radiologist, and planning.
“I can set up with the radiologist about 10 a.m.,” the oncologist suggested.
“Can’t do it!” my wife said. “My husband has a stress-echo scheduled at 12:30. 10 o’clock is too tight.”
“At Strong?” the oncologist asked.
“Of course not,” my wife said. “Another location far away, plus our dog is abandoned in the house.”
The reason for the blood-draw was because the most recent chemo, Cytarabine (“sigh-tare-uh-BEAN;” as in “arrow”), lowered her blood-levels.
They were worried about anemia, and in my opinion she was smashed.
They were worried she might need a blood-transfusion.
We walked out forgetting to get their advice — the test results.
She would need a transfusion. That was the next day. They called back.
We charged directly home, partly to make my appointment, but mostly to rescue our dog.
I had plenty of slop. This is never guaranteed. Strong tends to suck you into their system. A one-hour appointment can turn into five-six hours.
My appointment, a stress-echo and doctor consult at Rochester Cardiopulmonary, was another 40-45 minute drive.
My appointment was at 12:30. I’d have to leave at 11:30-11:45.
I zoomed up to Rochester Cardiopulmonary. Arrived a few minutes early.
Was directed to the stress-echo test room, after waiting a few minutes.
The stress-echo room has a treadmill and an ultrasound display.
“I do work out,” I told the nurse.
”Target pulse-rate for someone my age is 126 heart-beats per minute, and sometimes I see over 130.”
“Our goal is to get you up to 150,” the nurse said.
(The highest I saw was 111.)
“Sheer baloney,” my heart-doctor said later. “Get up to 150 and you’ll pass out! Who told you that?
Your heart works fine, Mr. Hughes; no blockages, etc.”
“Well it better,” I said. “That’s the whole reason I work out — to keep the old ticker workin’ fine. My workout is mainly aerobic.”
“Get outta here. See you in 18 months! You’re shaming some of my patients!”
Of interest to me was seeing how far back my heart-doctor and I went; since 1994.
He was the one who performed the heart-catheter procedure on me before the open-heart surgery that repaired the flaw that caused my stroke.

• “CHOP” chemotherapy is Cyclophosphamide, Hydroxydaunorubicin (also called doxorubicin or Adriamycin), Oncovin (vincristine), and Prednisone or prednisolone.
• The whole point of a “stress-echo test” is to make your heart work hard, and then see if it works right when stressed. (Mine does.)
• “Mr. Hughes” is me, Bob Hughes, BobbaLew.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I pretty much recovered. It was caused by a Patent foramen ovale between the upper two chambers of my heart. This flaw passed a clot to my brain.

2012-01-10T18:21:00.001-08:00

(I suppose it’s “linked-in,” although I was pronouncing it “link-uh-din” at first.)
“What is it?” my wife asked.
“I guess it’s a sort of Facebook for professional people,” I said.
The other day (Sunday, January 8, 2012), after posting a blog on this site about Microsoft Excel®, I decided to try to e-mail a blog-link to Jack Kellogg, my Excel instructor at Bloomfield Central School, who deserves some of the credit for my having a fairly good handle on Excel.
To find his e-mail address, which I no longer have, I cranked “Jack Kellogg Excel” into Google, and came up with various Jack Kelloggs, one of whom sounded like him.
“Jack Kellogg on Linkedin; view complete profile......”
I clicked that.
Suddenly 89 bazilyun different links, all a seeming wall to protect Jack Kellogg.
Mental overload!
What, pray tell, is an old stroke-survivor supposed to do with 89 bazilyun choices?
One of which was to log-in, that is, join Linkedin.
I joined.
Ding! An e-mail arrived.
“Confirm e-mail address.”
I tried; “Please log in.”
I logged in. Again I got 89 bazilyun choices, all of which led me to “please log in.”
“What?
I thought my responding confirmed my e-mail address.”
And so it began: 89 bazilyun choices, all of which lead to “Please log in.”
“We seem to be going in circles,” I observed. “This isn’t worth it.
This site is too tech-driven.”
Logged in, I was presented with various professionals to network with.
I noticed Dan Gnagy (“naggy”), my old computer-guru at the Mighty Mezz.
I also noticed Dave Wheeler, a long-ago coworker at the Mighty Mezz.
I also was presented with complete strangers, graphic-designers and “social-media experts.”
“So what is required to be a social-media expert?” I asked.
“Do colleges now have majors in that?”
“You declare yourself a social-media expert,” my wife commented.
I “selected” my “network” with Gnagy and Wheeler.
I successfully selected Gnagy, but no Wheeler.
I also somehow selected complete strangers I’d never heard of.
“I did? Who are these people? I didn’t select a single one.”
“Send Dan (Gnagy) a message.”
I generated a message in my word-processor.
I plugged it into the message-window.
“Please log in.”
I did so.
“Send message.”
I clicked that. Nothing happened.
Or so it seemed.
Maybe my message sent, maybe it didn’t.
Linkedin seemed rather obtuse.
Every move seemed to want a log-in, even after I logged in.
“This isn’t worth it,” I said again.
“Linkedin is not helping me any.”
It wants me to register, and then it hits me with a “You’re already registered” message.
I gave up.
Jack Kellogg is not getting my blog-link.
Shut out by Linkedin.
And now I get e-mail updates every day from Linkedin.
Complete stranger updates.
Updates that want me to “Please log in,” followed by “Please log in.”

• RE: “Bloomfield Central School........” —We 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. Bloomfield Central School is the high-school within the village.
• RE: “Old stroke-survivor.....” —I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I pretty much recovered. I’m also age 67.
• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired six years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where we 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.)

Newfangled Hexx-Cell®

2012-01-08T12:29:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of every new year, I generate two new Excel spreadsheets for our income-tax.
These don’t really apply any more, since it is no longer to our advantage to itemize deductions.
We qualify for the geezer deduction. It’s higher than itemizing.
My two Excel spreadsheets are -1) itemized deductions, and -2) income.
Even the income spreadsheet no longer applies.
We only have four incomes: Social-Security for each, and pensions for each.
We’re not hitting our IRAs yet; we don’t need to.
We get statements from each income-source, and they usually don’t agree with my spreadsheet.
This is especially true of Social-Security.
I go with the statements. They’re what’s reported to the Infernal-Revenue-Service.
What I do is copy my old header-row and paste it onto a new spreadsheet.
Dead simple, except Microsoft seems to have “improved” (???????) Excel.
Almost two years ago I bought this new laptop.
It replaced an old tower I was using.
That tower had Excel-98 on it, what I had been using, and knew fairly well.
I still have that tower. It was state-of-the-art 10 years ago.
It has Quark® on it, and I use it when I need Quark.
I’m not about the spill 89 bazilyun dollars for a newer Quark for this laptop, not when I do so little with it.
I had it on the tower because it was one of the “Big Three” the Mighty Mezz used: Photoshop®, Freehand®, and Quark. (I had all three.)
The newspaper was paginated in Quark.
My Quark is 4.1 — ancient.
My macho blowhard brother-from-Boston, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, calls it “Quack,” and claims Microsoft Word® is superior.
Well it isn’t, or at least wasn’t.
The Mighty Mezz was paginated with Quark. At that time Quark ran circles around Word.
I’ve had experience with both. Quark was much more flexible and capable.
Years ago I paginated a union newsletter with Word.
But at the Mighty Mezz I discovered Quark; that it was so much more powerful.
So I copied my header-row off my 2011 spreadsheet, and pasted it onto a new Excel spreadsheet.
WHOA! Nothing worked like usual. My header-row was taking up two rows because I couldn’t widen columns, at least not like I had done previously.
And furthermore my new Excel spreadsheet had a four-letter file-extension: .xlsx, not .xls as it had been in the past.
Apply guile-and-cunning.
The “save-as” window has a “save-as Excel-98” option, so I tried that.
VIOLA! Back to the Excel I know.
.xlsx must be the new improved Excel, although if so it’s not improved in my humble opinion.
Not if I can’t work with it without a lot of research and/or fore-knowledge.
Excel-98 I pretty much learned on my own, although I had an Excel guru helping at Bloomfield Central School.
There were only two of us in the class, and the other poor girl was totally buffaloed.
I was the only one making any progress.
The guru was showing me shortcuts and making suggestions I found interesting.
For example: “You can widen your columns by doing such-and-such.”
So how does one do that with the new improved Excel?
Must I use Microsoft’s dreaded help-section?
89 bazilyun Frequently-Asked-Questions.
Chat with techies in India?
“We understand your concern, and are happy to help.”
After that, “Uh-duh.”

• “Quark” is a very powerful word-processor, among other things. It can be used to do complete and complicated pages — including pictures.
• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired six years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where we 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.)
• “Paginate” means to completely generate a page (like for a newspaper or a magazine). Bring the stories in and flow them into story-boxes, and also add “art” (pictures, whatever).
• RE: “Bloomfield Central School........” —We 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. Bloomfield Central School is the high-school within the village. The Excel course was a night-course.

Go figure

2012-01-05T13:02:00.001-08:00

The other night (probably Tuesday, January 3, 2012) my wife happened to open one of my blogs on this site, my Monthly Calendar Report for January, 2012, in her default browser, Microsoft Internet-Explorer.
My wife drives a Windoze PC. I drive an Apple Macintosh (Gasp!), much to the noisy dismay of all my siblings, who loudly insist Jesus uses a PC, and anything Apple is of-the-Devil.
My siblings are all tub-thumping Christian zealots.
I’ve never been able to reconcile this with their use of iPhones and iPods, while my cellphone is a Motorola DroidX (Gasp!), not Apple.
My sister’s cellphone is a DroidX, yet hers is blessed, while mine is of-the-Devil, rebellious, and above-all stupid.
An unfathomable occurred on my wife’s computer. Her Internet-Explorer (IE) wasn’t displaying any of my pictures.
She thereupon tried opening the blog with her Firefox browser, and there were the pictures.
This blog-site gave up on Internet-Explorer a few years ago, and suggested I switch to Firefox.
Seemed okay to me. I’d heard good things about Firefox from a PC user.
These blogs are HTML, which explains bolding and underlining.
This blog-site also used to store photographs, but I gave up on that when it seemed to have maxxed out.
I switched to PhotoBucket.
The blog pictures are just a simple HTML-tag which goes to a PhotoBucket web-address.
Before this blog-site gave up on Internet-Explorer, I used to fiddle it with IE — as my default browser.
Now I always use Firefox, much to the noisy dismay of my siblings who loudly tell me Jesus uses Internet-Explorer.
I still have an IE, but rarely use it. Some of my train sites wouldn’t work with Firefox; they’d only work with IE.
But now they work with Firefox.
I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two (I’m 67).
My siblings call it “fox-fire,” intentionally mispronouncing the name as a put-down.
My younger brother in northern Delaware apparently uses Google Chrome, and loudly insists I try it — that I am stupid otherwise.
Well, that’s not Internet-Explorer, and I’m happy with Firefox.
Furthermore, I’m leery of anything Google.
Google seems to want to replace my AppleMail, which I’m quite happy with.
I have a GMail account, but it’s secondary. I ain’t lettin’ ‘em toss my AppleMail.
This laptop has Apple’s “Safari” browser, and it apparently uses it as the default browser.
Click an AppleMail link and it opens Safari.
(This is like my wife’s PC. Since it’s Microsoft Windows®, it uses Microsoft’s Internet-Explorer.)
Well okay, but I always use Firefox. It’s permanently open.
I suppose I could link my AppleMail to use Firefox instead of Safari, but why bother?
Safari seems to have caught up with Firefox, but all my bookmarks are in Firefox.
So why isn’t Internet-Explorer displaying my pictures for my wife?
Do I research this? (Pull my hair out?)
Years ago I had to do a special photo-tag so IE wouldn’t muck up my pictures. Most computer-users (like Granny) use Internet-Explorer.
“BlogSpot gave up on Internet-Explorer a few years ago, supposedly because it was inferior to Firefox,” I said.
“So I ain’t fixin’ it!”
The next night she opened my next-day’s blog-link with her Internet-Explorer.
It displayed the pictures.
Go figure.

• “Windoze” is Microsoft Windows. Macintosh users claim Windows is inferior, but I don’t know as it is.
• “HTML” is Hyper-Text Markup Language. Invisible HTML-tags denote how things should display.

Stink

2012-01-04T10:59:00.001-08:00

“How come every time I pump gas at this Valero station it smells like the old Delaware City refinery?” I asked the other day (Monday, January 2, 2012).
“Delaware City” is a tiny town south of Wilmington, DE the refinery is near. —I think it’s at the Delaware river end of the cross-peninsula Chesapeake & Delaware canal.
The Valero gas-station is along our way to Rochester, NY, and since our car was approaching empty, I decided to hit the Valero instead of the place I usually buy gas in West Bloomfield, which the car would have attained, but costs more.
We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.
The Valero seems to be in a price-war with a nearby competitor. They both have the lowest price per gallon I’ve seen recently, $3.35.9.
Our West Bloomfield gas-station would want around $3.44. I’ve seen it as high as $3.49.9 at a gas-station I no longer patronize.
The Delaware City refinery opened in 1956 as a “Flying-A” refinery, Tidewater Oil.
It was designed to process so-called “sour crude,” foul-smelling stuff from Venezuela, the opposite of “sweet-crude” from Saudi Arabia, which is easier to refine.
“Sour crude” apparently has sulfur in it, but is cheaper.
My father got a job in that refinery when it opened. He had previously worked in a south Jersey Texaco refinery.
That job was the reason our family moved from south Jersey to northern Delaware in late 1957.
That refinery went on to become various oil-companies, although I think it stayed Tidewater (“Flying-A”) as long as my father worked there.
His job was a step up from his job at Texaco. He became an inspector, semi-management, and retired as management.
My father retired in 1981, and died in 1994 in south Florida of Parkinson’s Disease.
My younger brother Bill still works at that refinery, although it’s had various owners during his employ.
Texaco sold its south Jersey refinery, and purchased the Delaware City refinery.
It’s had other owners since, and a recent owner was Valero.
Valero gave up on the Delaware City refinery not too long ago, and was gonna shut it down.
But somebody else bought it.
I worked at the Delaware City refinery myself after my freshman year at college. But not for Tidewater, or even the permanent contractor they had working for them: Catalytic Construction.
I worked for Myers & Watters (pronounced “Mahz n Wawdzzz;” [as in “ah”], the way my Greek supervisor pronounced it), a painting contractor.
Like all oil-refineries the Delaware City refinery had steel equipment that needed painting: tanks, pipes, and towers/what-not.
My father arranged the job.
He inspected the work of Mahz n Wawdzzz, and was justifiably quite fussy about it.
Like most contractors, Mahz n Wawdzzz was hot to take shortcuts.
My father suggested to that Greek supervisor at Mahz n Wawdzzz a summertime job for me, to help defray my college expenses.
But I wouldn’t be union.
The union would permit me on-site, but at a lower pay-rate.
For Mahz n Wawdzzz it was “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.”
I had a job, but I don’t think my father was any less fussy.
And Mahz n Wawdzzz loved me. I always showed up on time, and was willing to work.
Our first job was painting a pipeline to the docks.
My job was to sand pipe-bottoms for painting, and the pipes were about a foot or two above the ground. —I used to call it “making love to the pipes.”

Making love to the pipes. (That’s the cat-cracker back there.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)

One time I cleaned caked oil and grease off a leaky pipe junction, a very dirty job. The pipes were massive, about three feet in diameter. —Most of the other pipes were three to eight inches, sometimes a foot.
My second job was to help union-painters painting a large 48-foot high tank.
But that only lasted a week or two. Our rigging slipped and a fellow worker almost fell to the ground; 48 feet.
I was scared after that, but scared even before that.
I was taken off that job and put on job number-three, filling two sandblasters cleaning rust and scale off of four-story steel-encased heater units.

Both guys are sandblasting. (A Hydrodesulfurization heater.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Mahz n Wawdzzz had two kinds of employees (three if you included me), Mahz n Wawdzzz employees and union-hall employees, workers hired from the local painter-union hall.
The Mahz n Wawdzzz employees were also union, but permanent Mahz n Wawdzzz employees.
The other guys weren’t.
The pipeline was mostly union-hall employees, and the guys sandblasting were Mahz n Wawdzzz employees.
One of these two blaster guys had an especially trashy mouth.
He’d go ballistic when things went wrong, and start cursing violently.
The other guy was very friendly, and decent.
One Mahz n Wawdzzz employee was a complete weirdo.
His mission was to make me a sinner, since they all knew my father was very religious.
They were somewhat successful, but I had my standards.
I had to come at that weirdo with a broom once.
My coworkers thought that uproariously funny.
“Little Bobby terrorized ‘The Boog.’” (That was his nickname; “Booger.”)
My job at Mahz n Wawdzzz lasted another four summers, even after I graduated college.
But after college the union wanted me to join, and I wasn’t about to — not after four years of college. So I split for Rochester, NY.
Mahz n Wawdzzz was based in northern Philadelphia, and did jobs as far as 125 miles from base.
The Delaware City refinery was left behind, and I did various jobs all over the area.
One job was tending four six-bag blasters in a south Jersey tank-farm.
The blasters used in the Delaware City refinery were only three-bag, pushed by a small 150 cubic-feet-per-minute rented Schramm compressor.
Our four six-bag blasters were pushed by a giant 600 cubic-feet-per-minute compressor. It had a bus-diesel powering it; 8-71 (V8).
Firing it up and engaging it was a consummate thrill: IMMENSE POWAH! (I was operator.)
The tanks were down inside dikes, in case they leaked. Our Greek supervisor’s son almost flipped that giant compressor backing down an access-road to position it. —You would have needed a crane to rescue it.
He didn’t.
The monster had no brakes, and he was towing it with only a half-ton pickup.
The blaster-guys were upset I was reloading so fast. They couldn’t get a complete cigarette smoked.
But Mahz n Wawdzzz loved it.
The blaster-guys were up inside the tank, and here I was outside signaling I was about to turn everything back on.
Never mind that smoking was verbotten, and they were doing so atop a gigantic floating-roof tank full of av-gas.
Heavy with fumes.
I learned about “blueing;” the addition of blue paint to white to make it look heavier. By adding blueing you could make one coat of white paint look like two.
I also drove a company stake-truck full of equipment to the giant Morris steel-mill near Trenton. (Morris at that time.)
Thank goodness I didn’t have to work in there.
What I remember is how grungy it was, and the giant smoking slag-heaps.
It looked like Hell.
Slag was apparently a byproduct of steel production, especially if they were using melted scrap.
Early after my Junior year at college we moved equipment to a 175-foot high golfball water-tower in Baltimore.
A “Golfball” is a giant spheroid standing atop a single leg, and at 175 feet it was frightening.
I couldn’t do it.
After Baltimore, which was only one day, we transferred to another golfball water-tower in Ventnor, NJ, south of Atlantic City, on the Jersey seashore.

That’s the new Ventnor golfball in the distance. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

It was the best job I ever did at Mahz n Wawdzzz.
At only 125 feet it was much less frightening.
It was also the most fun job we ever did.
It was the seashore, so surroundings were nice.
Again I was tending blaster, but only one three-bag.

On top (accessed through the manhole at right). (Photo by BobbaLew.)

I had two fellow employees. One was the foreman I always worked with, Billy Gardiner, and the other was “Gerald,” fairly pleasant.
Both were Mahz n Wawdzzz employees, and Gardiner was always hot to have me as his helper.

Gardiner painting. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Gerald always bought lily-white new dress shirts he’d throw out after they got splattered with paint.
He’d also buy a new white Pontiac convertible every year.
This was back in the middle ‘60s, when Pontiac was at its apogee.
Our blasting was superficial, only removing scale from construction, which was like assembling a large kit.
All the steel panels were pre-formed. All you had to do was weld it all together. I suppose a large crane hoisted everything into position.
Hardest for us was painting inside the tank. Gardiner, who did the painting, had an air supply. Gerald and I, the helpers, didn’t.
The paint-fumes made us drunk.
Outside was a challenge too.
Gardiner was the painter, and sprayed.
At least half of what he sprayed blew away.
Our rigging was also challenging, since you have to paint the underside of the golfball.
The painting was done with an air-powered spider, suspended from a quarter-inch steel cable.
The spider had to ride another cable to get close to the tank’s underside.
This was where Gardiner’s experience applied; getting it all to work.
We also had to replace the quarter-inch cable. It started stretching once, and Gardiner was afraid it would fall. —That’s 75 feet above the ground.

Photo by BobbaLew.

“Get back! Get back! This thing may fall. The cable is stretching!” —Billy is riding the spider.

It didn’t fall.
I worked plenty of oil-refineries, but the Delaware City refinery had a distinct smell.
My thought was it was the “sour crude.”
And for some reason the nearby Valero station smells like that.
I wonder if it’s still pumping gas processed by that Delaware City refinery?

• A “floating-roof tank” is just that; its roof floats atop the tank’s contents instead of being solidly-mounted to the tank-sides.
• “Av-gas” is aviation-gasoline, very high octane at that time.

Monthly Calendar Report for January, 2012

2012-01-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

(Another year, and another occasion to ask whether I continue doing this.
Last May it became questionable.
My wife was in the hospital, and in bad shape.
She has cancer, but supposedly not fatal, at least not yet.
Actually, she has two cancers: -a) Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and -b) metastatic breast-cancer.
The Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma appeared about three-and-a-half years ago as a hard tumor in her abdomen.
That was poofed with C-H-O-P chemotherapy.
The metastatic breast-cancer did not have a primary site; it never appeared in her breasts.
It was first noticed in her bones, where breast-cancer metastasizes.
We knocked that back with Femara®, the trade-name for Letrozole.
Femara is an estrogen inhibitor. Her breast-cancer was estrogen-positive.
Her breast-cancer just about disappeared, but has since reappeared in her bones. (No Letrozole for a while. —And now the Letrozole is generic.)
She was in the hospital because of side-effects.
Her cancer was blocking her kidney-drains, and blood-return from her legs.
Her legs and abdomen swelled.
Her doctor seemed unaware of what was happening — politics.
So I was alone in our house, and had to do everything.
My daily blogging became impossible, except I was making time for it, sorta.
There were 89 bazilyun things to do, beside walking the dog, and mowing lawn.
Working out at the Canandaigua YMCA became impossible, mostly because of not wanting to abandon the dog.
But I kept doing these calendar-reports.
I happened to visit my lawnmower guy, a fellow railfan to whom I e-mail my Monthly Calendar Reports, mostly because they’re of interest to him.
I explained my wife being in the hospital, “but I can’t put my pen down,” I told him.
So my wife may expire this year — and I don’t look forward to it.
She’s the BEST friend I ever had.
But knowing how things were when I was alone, these Monthly Calendar Reports will probably continue.
Daily blogging probably won’t — already it’s no longer daily.
But I can’t put my pen down.

1964 G-T-O. (Peter Harholdt©.)

—Quite often my own calendar renders the best picture.
But not this time
My Motorbooks Musclecars calendar presents the greatest G-T-O of all, the 1964 model, the first one.
The G-T-O was first marketed as a Pontiac Tempest option.
Simple formula. Shoehorn gigantic engine from a full-size car unto the smaller midsize car.
In this case a 389 cubic-inch motor from a full-size Pontiac into the midsize Tempest, and hotrod the engine: triple deuces.
(Three two-barrel carburetors in a row. —An option; standard was a single four-barrel.)
It was a gamble.
Hope the bean-counters at General Motors don’t go ballistic.
After all, the G-T-O at first was just an option-package.
But it sold like hotcakes, 32,450 units for the 1964 model-year, 10,000 before 1964 began.
G-T-O stands for Gran Turismo Omologato, nomenclature for a Ferrari racecar meaning it was homologated for Grand Touring racing.

The Gray Ghost.

Being homologated, a ’64 G-T-O was raced in the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) Trans-Am series for pony cars in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
It almost won a race once, competing against much newer cars.
But it was limited to 305 cubic inches, not 389.
It rendered hope for us ’55 Chevy fans.
It was called “the Gray Ghost” because it was painted gray.
And so began the musclecar phenomenon.
Full-size hot-rodded engines into midsize cars.
Sadly, Pontiac (General Motors) restyled its midsize cars for 1965, and in so doing lost a great-looking car.
I remember a guy at my college got a ’65; it was ugly.
I scrawled “cheap American trash” in the winter salt-spray encrusted on the side of his car.
Thus causing a great conflagration. The guy was the Dean’s son — I almost got canned.
The musclecar concept went crazy later. Ever more hot-rodded engines were getting stuffed into midsize cars.
Hood-shakers lacking balance, and chassis and suspension that didn’t seem to keep up.
I remember a guy putting a 454 BigBlock Chevy in a ’55 Chevy convertible. It was just about undriveable. It would twist the whole back end. —All he could do was pussyfoot!
As the years passed, the musclecar concept became a frightening parody of the original concept, as Detroit crammed ever more displacement and horsepower into their cars.
Although from what I hear the original G-T-O was a bad handler.
Too much horsepower in an inadequate chassis.
The midsize Pontiac was hardly a handler, hardly a Ferrari.
Stuff all that power into it, and you’re into the trees!
About all musclecars were good for was straight-line acceleration and burning up tires.
Supposedly Buick and Oldsmobile made an effort to make musclecars handle.
But what can you do with an unsophisticated chassis design and all that engine-weight?
Yet of all the musclecars, this is the one I’d want.
The first G-T-O, the 1964 model. —The best-looking musclecar.

Crew-change at Rose. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

―The January 2012 entry of my own calendar is a crew-change at Rose, northern Altoona (“al-TUNE-uh;” as in the name “Al”).
None of my calendar-pictures are reruns. Some are extraordinary, but not this one.
I only ran this picture in my calendar because it’s not too bad for a snow-picture. The train is M0N, with GEs on the point.
M0N is an advance section of train 10N, a mixed freight. Grain cars are a big segment of the 10N’s consist.
Rose is a regular crew-change point. We are looking down from a highway overpass.
Altoona was the center of Pennsy (Pennsylvania Railroad) operations. They had gigantic mechanical facilities, and used to manufacture locomotives therein.
Altoona was also a major classification point. Massive yards were in place, now mostly abandoned.
Even now the railroad still divides into two sets of through tracks, one set for expedited trains, and the second set for drags.
M0N is on the expedited tracks.
Altoona is also the base of the 12-mile Allegheny mountain grade, less than 1,200 feet above sea-level at Altoona, up to 2,191 feet on Track One, and 2,161 feet on Tracks Two and Three.
Helper units get added to many trains at Altoona to assist up The Hill, and add braking descending.
The helper-sets used to be two EMD (General Motors’ Electro-motive Division) SD40-2s. Now they’re two SD40-Es, EMD SD-50s modified and downgraded horsepower-wise by Norfolk Southern for helper-service.
Norfolk Southern now owns and operates the old Pennsy lines. Norfolk Southern is a 30-year-old merger of Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway.
Norfolk Southern got the old Pennsy lines when Conrail was broken up and sold in 1999.
(CSX [railroad] got Conrail’s old New York Central Water-Level route across New York state. —”Water-level” because it followed rivers, and had easy river gradients. It more-or-less paralleled the Erie Canal.)
The picture was taken February 13, 2010.
It had snowed some before this trip, especially in higher elevations, like the Allegheny mountains.
The trip down was easy, but up in Gallitzin (“guh-LIT-zin;” as in “get”) the snow was 3-4 feet deep.
Gallitzin is top of The Hill, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s old crossing of the Allegheny mountains, what had previously been a barrier in PA to west-east commerce.
Horseshoe Curve was completely snowed in.
I tried to walk in, but found myself hip-deep in a snow-berm left by plows.
By now we were chasing trains (“Tours”) with Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”)
I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two (I’m 67).
I’ve written up Phil so many times it would be boring.
If you need clarification, click this link, and go toward the end of the post.
The snow was so deep we weren’t sure Phil could get us trackside, but he said there were plenty of grade-crossings, etc. we could go.
So off we went, and Rose was our first stop.
Train M0N needed a crew-change, and it would be done at Rose, the regular crew-change point.
The crew had probably started outside Pittsburgh, and come all the way east.
It had probably taken less than 12 hours, the working limit for locomotive crews.
Often a train gets delayed, and the crew runs up against the 12-hour limit.
In which case the train stops, and a replacement crew gets taxied out.
Large Chevrolets vans were on-hand to taxi crews.
M0N probably came down Track Two, to avoid the steeper grade at the top of Track One.

The Powhatan Shuttle. (Photo by Bill Gantz.)

―The January 2012 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is the “Powhatan Shuttle,” passing frozen Captina Creek west of Alledonia, OH.
I’ll let the calendar explain things:
“Bill Gantz, a 14-year veteran of Norfolk Southern, knows this location well. He has been a locomotive engineer on this 17-mile run from the New Century and Powhatan-6 mines for the past ten years.
‘We had a snowfall during the night, and I wanted to get out there and get a photo while it was still pristine,’ Gantz says. ‘Obviously, I knew when the train would be coming, so I hiked through knee-deep snow and waited about 15 minutes for the train to come out of the New Century load-out.’”
3332 is an SD40-2.
You can tell by looking. It has the shortened hood, yet the long frame of an SD-45.
This is how SD-40s were built, they used the long frame of an SD-45, yet had extended porches in front of and behind the hood.
Dash-2s had modern modular electronics, that could be easily replaced.
SD40-2s are only 3,000 horsepower, yet are one of the most successful railroad locomotives ever made.
Many are still in service. (The last ones for this nation were built in August 1984.)
SD-45s generated 3,600 horsepower, but with 20 cylinders had a propensity to break their crankshaft.
SD-40s were only V16.
Most railroads didn’t think 3,600 horsepower was worth it, even after EMD redesigned the engine-block to solve the breaking crankshaft problem. (Earlier blocks would flex.)
This train has only one unit, which means the train is short or downhill.
The coal-cars are Norfolk Southern “Top-Gons,” rotatable cars converted from regular hopper-cars. “Rotatable” in that the cars can be flipped to dump their contents. The Top-Gons don’t drain their coal through bottom hoppers like a regular hopper-car.
So in essence they’re a gondola-car (“Top-Gon”), except they have high sides so they can carry lots of coal.
Top-Gons are also steel; similar coal-cars are aluminum to be lighter.
In all cases the composition of a coal-car depends on how acidic the coal is.
Both steel and aluminum corrode.
Aluminum is also more brittle; steel can be banged around.
It probably cost less to convert old hopper-cars into Top-Gons than capitalize brand-new aluminum cars.
I’ve seen hundreds of Top-Gons, but I don’t know about aluminum cars.
(Although I’m told I have, and I faintly remember it. —It’s just that aluminum cars look so much like Top-Gons.)
The core of an old hopper-car is halfway to a Top-Gon.
The major modification is rotating couplers.
Plus you’re getting rid of hoppers that often have to be thawed or banged open. —Then the coal has to drain through the hoppers. I.e. it has to not be frozen.
Rotatable cars work better at unloading coal.
The “Powhatan Shuttle” sounds like a small train to service those coal load-outs.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Train 538 (a coal-extra) climbs the Allegheny mountains. (The coal-car is not a Top-Gon. It’s aluminum.)

I’ve seen similar coal-trains on Norfolk Southern’s Pittsburgh Division. But more locomotives are needed. The trains are long and heavy, and also uphill.
The coal-trains run as extra on the Pittsburgh Division.
One wonders if the “Powhatan Shuttle” is a similar challenge.
Coal-trains on the Pittsburgh Division are Run-Eight (wide-open) climbing, six or eight or more locomotives.
A lot of coal gets moved on Norfolk Southern; at least on the old Pennsy lines thereof.

Jugs! (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The January 2012 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is three Jugs flying in echelon formation.
The Republic Aviation P-47 Thunderbolt was a gigantic fighter-plane.
It had a single two-row 18-cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-2800-59W Double-Wasp radial piston engine of 2,535 horsepower, 2,804 cubic-inches displacement, which is incredibly powerful.
A P-51 Mustang had only 1,695 horsepower, powerful for its size, but a smaller airplane.
I’ll let my WWII warbirds site explain it.
“First flown on May 6, 1941, the P-47 was designed as a (then) large, high-performance fighter/bomber, utilizing the large Pratt and Whitney R-2800 Double-Wasp engine to give it excellent performance and a large load-carrying capability.
The first deliveries of the P-47 took place in June 1942, when the U.S. Army Air Corps began flying it in the European Theater.
Though it was an excellent airplane, several improvements were made as production continued, with each improvement adding power, maneuverability and range.
As the war progressed, the Thunderbolt, or ‘Jug,‘ as it was affectionately called, gained a reputation as a reliable and extremely tough airplane, able to take incredible damage and still return its pilot home safely.
P-47s logged almost 2 million flight hours during the war, during which they were responsible for the destruction of over 7,000 enemy aircraft in the air and on the ground in the European Theater alone.
Later in the war, Jugs served as escort fighters for B-29 bombers in the Pacific.
Mostly, though, they excelled in the ground-attack role, strafing and bombing their way across the battlefields of Europe.”
“Echelon formation” is what we see here, airplanes side-by-side, but flying behind the wing of the airplane in front. (From the front, “echelon formation” presents a step formation.)
By doing so the airplanes can fly tightly, so are hard to attack.
Although it was very difficult to take a P-47 out of the sky.
Like most military airplanes they had self-sealing fuel-tanks, so they sealed if shot up.
The P-47 could sustain incredible damage, yet still return home.
The Double-Wasp was American airplane engine development at its apogee, incredible horsepower out of the internal-combustion engine.
It’s part of the reason our nation won the war.
Technical savvy was being thrown into engine development, the sort of savvy the Germans and Japanese could only mimic.
Once everything got going, the Germans and Japanese were left in the dust.
Part of it was our railroad system, its incredible ability to move freight — especially war materiel.
And the fact cargo-ships were being mass-produced.
Also the fact our continent was more-or-less immune from attack.
That railroad-system could move mountains of freight without damage. European railroads were being bombed to smithereens.
Incredible horsepower from an air-cooled radial airplane engine was mainly the Navy, their desire to advance air-cooled radial engine development.
Air-cooling obviates a liquid cooling system, which can be shot up and made inoperative.
The Army Air Corps allowed liquid cooling; the P-38, P-39, P-40 and P-51 are liquid cooled.
So much horsepower was developed the Army Air Corps had to climb on board.
Ergo, the P-47.
A gigantic fighter-bomber with a HUGE payload.
A P-47 had eight machine-guns. I think a P-51 had only six.

The diesel locomotive everyone venerates. (Photo by John Dziobko, Jr.)

—The January 2012 entry of my All-Pennsy color calendar is two coupled Pennsylvania Railroad Alco PAs at South Amboy, NJ, across from New York City.
The Alco PAs were downgraded to service on New York & Long Branch, a joint commuter railroad operation in northern NJ with Pennsy and Jersey Central.
At South Amboy the diesels would be switched out and replaced with Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 electric locomotives for the trip into New York City.
“Alco” is American Locomotive Company of Schenectady, NY. For years, American Locomotive Company was a primary manufacturer of railroad steam locomotives.
(It was originally a merger of many steam locomotive manufacturers.)
With the changeover by railroads to diesel-locomotives, American Locomotive Company brought out a line of diesel-electric railroad locomotives much like the railroads were changing to, and changed its name to “Alco.”
Alco tanked a while ago; they never competed as well as EMD.
The Alco PA is declared the prettiest diesel railroad locomotive ever.
It’s a first-generation unit, meaning it was among the first diesel railroad locomotives the railroads dieselized with. —Although not Alco’s passenger locomotive, the DL-series.
It’s a passenger version of the Alco FA, which has the same lines, but not the PA’s lanky proportions.
The PA was long to accommodate six-wheel passenger-trucks; the FA is only four-wheel. (Although only four of those six wheels per truck were powered.)
General Motors Electro-motive Division (EMD) did pretty much the same thing; lengthen the bulldog-nosed F-unit to accommodate six-wheel passenger-trucks. (Same thing, only four wheels powered out of six per truck.)
Such was their E-unit, although the E-unit goes back before the F-unit; for example the longer-nosed EA and E-6.
But EMD put two engines, two V12s, inside the carbody.
The Alco PA stuck with only one, a massive turbocharged V16 that could push 2,000 horsepower worth of traction-motors.
Pretty as they were, the Alco PAs were unreliable. It was their new 244 engine, rushed into service, and poorly developed.
Unreliability could be a bugbear.
If a locomotive cripples, it and its train tie up the railroad. Nothing can move until the cripple is rescued.
It isn’t like highway vehicles that can just drive around the cripple.
Trains are using the same pathway. A cripple blocks it.
Turbocharging uses exhaust-gases (through a turbine) to spin superchargers.
The turbo could burn out, starving the engine for intake-air.
EMD’s first locomotives weren’t turbocharged.
Their superchargers were driven directly.
They weren’t subject to their turbo burning out, or becoming sickly.

Santa Fe Warbonnet PA.

Alcos were notorious for pouring gobs of black smoke out of their exhaust; i.e. the turbo was sick, so the engine was running too rich.
If the turbo blew, you might get flames out the exhaust.
Like most railroads, the Pennsylvania Railroad was at first using PAs in passenger service.
But unreliability required downgrading.
So PRR took the PAs off cross-country passenger service, and put them in north Jersey commuter service instead.
Which is what we see here.
Two Alco PAs are about to be coupled onto a north Jersey commuter-train, replacing the GG1 electric that brought it from New York City.
The New York & Long Branch is actually a Jersey Central line, but began joint operation with Pennsy after Pennsy threatened to build a competing line.
But the NY&LB was never electrified, although some of it now is (at taxpayer expense).
South Amboy (across from New York City) was the original engine-change.
Pennsy electric locomotives to-or-from New York City would get swapped for non-electrics, what we have here.
And NY&LB was where many Pennsy passenger locomotives served their final days; e.g. the K4 Pacific steam-locomotives (4-6-2).
—And then diesel locomotives unsuited for high-profile passenger service, for example the Alco PA.

A hot-rodded 1933 Ford roadster.

—My first thought was the January 2012 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar was a hot-rodded 1934 Ford roadster.
But it’s not. It’s a 1933 with the ’34 Ford grille.
There are people that love the ’34 Ford as a hotrod.
Not me; I prefer the 1932 (the Deuce).
People like the laid-back snarling lines of a ’34 Ford, but I prefer the vertical lines of a ’32.
The ’34 Ford is okay — better than the ’33, which it looks like.

The Milner coupe from American Graffiti.

A Prowler.

But the vertical lines of a ’32 are perfect for a hotrod.
One of those ’34 lovers is hotrod builder and stylist Chuck Foose, so smitten with the ’34, he designed his Plymouth Prowler to look like a ’34 Ford.
It comes off as a joke meeting the federal bumper-height requirement.
But behind that ridiculous bumper is a radiator-grille that pays homage to the ’34 Ford.
The motor in a Prowler is a joke too. It isn’t a V8; it’s a V6.
Who ever heard of a hotrod with a V6?
I’m sure there have been a few. After all, hot-rodders were souping up inline sixes as well as the Ford Flat-head V8.
But a hotrod with anything other than a V8 motor?
No wonder the Prowler tanked! — Although that ridiculous bumper didn’t help. I’m sure Foose was appalled.
This car began life as a coupe, but was converted to a roadster.
Okay, except to my mind, a hotrod looks better as a coupe, and a coupe can be driven in rain.
With a roadster ya hafta put the top up (if it has one), or garage it.
It also suffers from what all early-‘30s Ford roadsters suffer from, too much back-end.
The customizers also used special headlight nacelles that look silly compared to bullet headlight nacelles from that era.
It’s an old car. Modern headlight nacelles look out-of-place.
The color is also a bit strange. Too muted compared to the Milner coupe above.
This car is also displaying another problem with post-’32 Fords.
Take off the hood to expose that engine, and you get all that strange firewall paneling.
The ’32 was the first Ford with its gas-tank no longer in front of its windshield — to drain gasoline by gravity down to the engine. It was between the frame-rails in the rear of the car, behind the trunk.
It needed a fuel-pump, probably Ford’s first application thereof, over Old Henry’s dead body.
But Ford hadn’t yet gotten away from that earlier styling.
So a ’32 Ford firewall was still squared off in front of the windshield. The hood didn’t reach back to the windshield.

A Pennsy Alco FA and two FBs. (Bob’s Photo©.)

—So here we have the Alco FA freight-unit, as opposed to the lanky and beautiful Alco PA passenger-units pictured above.
The January 2012 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is three Alco freight-units, an FA and two cabless FBs, heading a merchandise freight west out of Crestline, OH.
When railroads began dieselizing, railfan photographers often refused to photograph diesels.
Or maybe they did because that was what came into view, which may be what happened here.
Were it not for the fact the PA is more gorgeous still, the FA would have been assayed as gorgeous.
But gorgeous doesn’t get a railroad’s imprimatur, not when an FA might cripple and tie up the railroad.
Yet a less-attractive bulldog-nosed EMD F-unit wouldn’t cripple.
A railroad is quite justifiably more interested in reliability.
Attractive as the Alcos were, they weren’t reliable.
(Baldwin diesels were worse yet.)
A freight like the one pictured was a crap-shoot. You hoped the FAs didn’t cripple.
The FAs had the Alco 244 engine, fielded too quickly and not properly developed.
Pennsy had to purchase from all the diesel manufacturers, including the poor ones (e.g. Baldwin and Alco), since Pennsy dieselized late. EMD couldn’t meet their sudden and incredible demand.
Pennsy was a coal-carrier. They long hung onto steam.
But the pressure to dieselize was enormous. Diesels cost less to operate and maintain.
Other Alco diesels were better developed. Their 251 engine was more reliable.
But Alco’s reputation for unreliability was set by the 244.
Railroads even swapped out the Alco diesel for an EMD engine.
An EMD engine in an Alco car-body.

Old Hammerhead.

Lehigh Valley Railroad swapped out the engine in an Alco RS-3 road-switcher, creating “Old Hammerhead,” a locomotive never scrapped, now owned and operated by the nearby Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum.
“Hammerhead” because of that short hood raised to the cab-roof top. If I’m right, the short hood had to be raised to accommodate a passenger-car steam-heat boiler.
A typical RS-3 doesn’t have that raised short hood. It’s the same height as the long engine-hood.
The Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum used to be the long-running Rochester Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society (NRHS), since 1937.
But the group recently split from NRHS. NRHS wasn’t doing them much good.
Railroads continued to use the Alco FA.
VIA, the Canadian equivalent of Amtrak, kept running them, even in passenger service.
I remember the Ontario Midland shortline, which exclusively used Alco power, having ex-VIA FAs, still fully Alco.
We rode a fall-foliage excursion behind one once.
But railroads gave up on Alco.
In fact, Alco locomotive production in this country ceased in 1969.
EMD became the primary supplier of railroad diesel locomotives in North America. —That is until recently, when General Electric became dominant.
Alcos might have looked prettier, but they could tie up a railroad, and often did.
I’ve seen trains limp in with only two units running out of three. What if it’s one out of three, or none?

Coal-train DVD

2012-01-01T11:11:00.001-08:00

Train 538, a coal-extra, passes under the signal-bridge at Summerhill, PA. (This train is mostly aluminum coal-cars, perhaps from the DVD mine — and is climbing the western slope of the Alleghenies.) (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

Coal-extra 538 (same train as above) approaches the summit at Five-Tracks. (The three tracks at right are usually eastbound. The one at left is westbound, and the track next to it can be either way. —The stopped train on that track is eastbound doing a brake-test before entering the tunnel at the top [not visible] and descending.) (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

A week or two ago I received a free and unsolicited DVD from Trains magazine, first of a series on current railroading.
If I wanna continue the series, they want money.
I don’t.
I decided to play the DVD before returning it (free).
I’ve subscribed to Trains magazine since the middle ‘60s. I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two (I’m 67).
The DVD treats what coal-trains have become, conduits to quickly sate our nation’s appetite for vast quantities of coal.
The video is a bit overproduced — it’s hard to take, especially the booming music.
It also blasts the trains by at unattainable speeds. (Speeded-up motion.)
The coal is burned in power-plants to produce steam to generate electricity.
Coal comes in various grades; this is steam-coal.
The coal in this DVD is mined in an open-pit mine southwest of Pittsburgh, PA, then transported by rail 300+ miles to a power-plant near Washingtonville, PA.
The power-plant has an incredible appetite, a train a day of 100+ cars carrying 120 tons of coal each.
I remember when 100-ton cars were considered extreme; before that was 80 tons and 70 tons.
The coal-cars are aluminum and steel, aluminum sides and ends.
They also are not hopper-cars; they’re deep gondola-cars.
I thought I had never seen an aluminum car, but according to my friend Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”) I had.
It’s just that these aluminum cars look so much like all-steel “Top-Gons,” which I’ve seen so many times.
Phil is the railfan I chase trains with in the Altoona, PA area (“al-TUNE-uh;” as in the name “Al”).
I’ve blogged Phil so many times it would be boring.
If you need clarification, click this link, and go toward the end of the post.
It explains Phil.
To get from the mine to the power-plant, the train has to cross the Allegheny mountain-front, once a barrier to west-east commerce.
But the Pennsylvania Railroad flattened it back in 1854, a major engineering achievement.
Pennsy is long-gone; the railroad is now operated by Norfolk Southern.
Pennsy did not flatten it entirely; it’s The Hill, up an over.
The engineering achievement is to make the leap without steep grades or switchbacks.
(That’s back in the 1800s, when grading wasn’t what it is now.)
Switchbacks are ponderously slow to operate. A train goes to the first stub-end, stops, and then reverses up to the next stub-end, after which it continues forward.
Pennsy built a continuous railroad, fairly steep, but not impossible.
And no switchbacks.
A heavy coal-train would need helper-units, additional locomotives to make the climb, and hold back the descent.
The coal-cars are quickly flood-loaded at the mine.
Each car passes under a massive chute, perhaps 10 by 18 feet, from which coal is quickly dumped into the car.
Filling the entire car takes less than a minute — that’s 120 tons!
And the machine forms the load into a so-called “bread-loaf;” it’s open on top, and bread-loaves don’t blow.
Meanwhile the train is being moved slowly the whole time, but only 3-4 mph.
So it takes about 3-4 hours to fill the entire train.
Once loaded, off it goes over the branch that serves the loadout, then onto the old Pennsy main.

Off it goes (the train looks like Top-Gons). (Photo by Willie Brown.)

Even through Pittsburgh, and then up the Alleghenies. Helpers get added at Johnstown, PA.
Getting a heavy train over The Hill is the hardest challenge, mainly descending, to keep it from running away.
At the crest of The Hill the front-end is already descending, while the back end is still being shoved uphill.
This has to be done without breaking couplers.
The locomotive-engineers are operating by the seat of their pants.
Once at the power-plant, the coal-cars are flipped to dump their contents.
The cars can be rotated without uncoupling. Rotating couplers.
Obviously the announcer was buffaloed by this. The entire operation is impressive.
The coal-car is tied down, and then rotated to dump its contents.
That’s a coal-car of 120 tons contents.
The equipment is massive.
The locomotives are no longer pulling the train. The coal-cars are being moved by the machine.
Rotating is also a lot faster than emptying a single hopper-car; where the hopper-doors may be frozen shut, and the coal may be frozen.
Phil apparently got the same DVD, and says it’s a program that appeared on History Channel.
Which perhaps explains the overproduction, that it’s aimed at generations younger than me.
Facebookers and iPhoners. Youngsters accustomed to and expecting sensory overload.
It may be marketed and promoted by Trains, but it doesn’t come off as the Trains productions I know, and I have many early Trains videos, on VHS video-tape.
It’s also overkill compared to my many Pentrex train DVDs. The announcer is imitating Ty Pennington of Extreme Home Makeover.
I wonder if we can sustain such profligacy, burn that much coal and fill the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.
All to maintain our incredible demand for electricity.
I’ve been to the Los Angeles basin at night, and seen the future from Mulholland Drive Overlook in the Hollywood hills.
It’s frightening. A never-ending carpet of strident orange glow. Parking-lots and highways lit by sodium-vapor lights, and skyscrapers glittering like tiny jewels in the faraway distance.
No wonder the Colorado River is a mere trickle when it meets the Pacific Ocean. It’s been sucked dry by irrigation and power-generation.
Here in the east we burn vast quantities of coal to generate the power needed.
No way could trucking deliver that much coal.
A single truck couldn’t carry 120 tons.
And I doubt our highways would support such a load.
And it would take a lot more fuel just to deliver it.
Railroads are perfect for the job.
(Nearby is a salt-mine with rail service, a short railroad branch just to serve that mine.
But there it’s covered hoppers; the salt can’t get wet.)

Good old Bennett Road

2011-12-29T18:26:00.001-08:00

I’m calmly motoring east the other day (Wednesday, December 28, 2011) on County Road 39, headed for Mighty Tops in nearby Canandaigua, headed toward the intersection with Bennett Road, a cross-road.
I can see the Bennett Road approaches to County Road 39.
About 400 yards away, I see a red SUV approaching; it’s headed south.
It stops and safely crosses County Road 39, me still 300 yards away — that’s three football fields.
I continue approaching Bennett Road.
Suddenly a dirty white Ford pickup is approaching the intersection southward on Bennett Road.
Even though I have the right-of-way (no stop-sign), I instinctively let off the gas and put my foot on the brake.
Good old Bennett Road — I know how it is. I’ve already had two phenomenal avoidances at this intersection.
-One was a girl on her cellphone — drove right in front of me.
I had to do an almighty swerve, and I doubt she ever saw me at all.
-The second incident was a lady in a Chevrolet pickup towing a horse-trailer. She turned right in front of me, and again I had to do an almighty swerve.
I passed her later, and she was surprised, like “where did he come from?”
“You can thank your lucky stars I once drove transit bus,” I thought; “so I expect such insanity.
Otherwise I probably woulda tee-boned ya.”
The dirty Ford pickup slowed as if to stop, and then charged right out in front of me.
25 yards and closing; I slammed on the brakes.
Someone was riding shotgun, so I couldn’t see the driver.
But I doubt he saw me; if he had he woulda stopped.
My guess is he looked only the other way, and seeing no-one charged.
The shotgun rider saw me; I saw him gasp.
“You just nearly got hit,” he probably said to the driver. “That car you didn’t see just saved your butt and mine. He woulda hit my side.”
Doesn’t hurt to stop and look both ways before ya main intersection with stop-signs only on your road.

• “Tops” is a large supermarket-chain based in Buffalo we occasionally buy groceries at. They have a store in Canandaigua (“Mighty Tops”).
• “Canandaigua” (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where we 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. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.
• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. —As a bus-driver I had to parry madness in the streets, NASCAR wannabees and befuddled grannies. (“Oh look Dora, a bus, a bus. PULL OUT! PULL OUT!”

Marcy, it’s everywhere!

2011-12-29T06:53:00.000-08:00

Newt.

I avoid politics in this blog, but Newt Gingrich’s assertion a cruise helped him better understand the plight of the average American has to be the most insane thing I’ve heard yet.
This is as insane as saying buying a brand-new Mercedes helps one better understand the plight of the average American car-buyer.
And that’s buying a new car. Even new cars may be climbing out of reach for this kid. I can’t afford to just suddenly part with 40,000 smackaroos.
Newt’s stunning claim falls into the “Marcy, it’s everywhere” category.
Marcy is a long-ago coworker at the Messenger newspaper in nearby Canandaigua, the best job I ever had.
She was saving every blog I wrote, since they made her laugh.
One day she asked how I managed to dredge up an insane topic to blog every day.
I looked at her a second and said “Marcy, it’s everywhere.”

• “Canandaigua” (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where we 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. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.
• The “Messenger newspaper” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger, from where I retired six years ago. —I worked there almost 10 years.
• RE: “Marcy, it’s everywhere!” —“Marcy” is my number-one Ne’er-do-Well — she was the first I was e-mailing stuff to. Marcy and I worked in adjacent cubicles at the Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired. A picture of her is in this blog at Conclave of Ne’er-do-Wells.

Ringtone

2011-12-28T10:48:00.000-08:00

Last night (Tuesday, December 27, 2011) yr fthfl srvnt successfully made an MP3 be the ringtone on his DroidX® SmartPhone.
It’s an MP3 I recorded myself long ago of a steam-locomotive whistle being blown for a railroad grade-crossing in West Virginia.
My brother and I were pacing the locomotive so I could record it with a rented video-camera.
That video will eventually be on YouTube.
It was 1993, and the locomotive was being used to haul an annual fall-foliage excursion.
It’s also a railfan excursion, which explains -a) the steam-locomotive, and -b) why we were chasing it.
I’m a railfan, and have been since age-2.
The locomotive was actually Nickel Plate 765, masquerading as Chesapeake & Ohio (railroad) 2765, the same wheel-arrangement, and fairly identical.
The excursion was traveling Chesapeake & Ohio’s old mainline through scenic New River Gorge.
I’ve ridden the excursion myself, and it’s thrilling.
My brother was working someplace in the Midwest, and was going to drive home to Boston for the weekend.
But I convinced him to detour his company-car to see this locomotive.
It blew him away, as I knew it would.
He’s a railfan of sorts, and they run 765 hard.
They can. It’s a restored locomotive, but 765 was an excellent locomotive.
Pere Marquette (“pair mar-KETT”) 1225, the Polar Express locomotive, is the same, but can’t run as hard.
It’s touchy. 765 is all over it.
I’ve wanted to do this a long time: make 765’s whistle be my ringtone.
I made the MP3 years ago, but Verizon, my cellphone provider, wouldn’t let me install it.
They wanted to install one of their proprietary ringtones; electronic Ride of the Valkyries, Saints Go Marching In, whatever.
So record it with my phone, which sounded terrible.
That was years ago, before my SmartPhone.
Verizon seems to have caved.
Supposedly I could make an MP3 be my ringtone on my SmartPhone.
Google “MP3 to ringtone on DroidX.”
Gobbledegook.
So first of all, transfer MP3 to SmartPhone.
A SmartPhone is a mini-computer, so I USB-ed it to this laptop.
There it is, on my laptop’s desktop.
Open file-structure on SmartPhone.
My train-whistle is a so-called music-file, so I opened the music-file folder on my SmartPhone — empty.
I duplicated my 2765 MP3 on my laptop, then moved the duplicate into my SmartPhone’s music-folder.
Okay, disconnect USB. Bring up file on Smartphone Play it.
WHOA! The sucker is on there and playing.
So make it my ringtone.
I happened to hit the menu-key as the file played.
But, another fevered Google-search.
More gobbledegook.
But I thought I saw “make ringtone” in that menu, so I played it again.
Yep, there it is: “make ringtone.”
I touched that, and called my SmartPhone from our landline.
WHOA! It actually did it!
I’m 67 years old. I’m not supposed to be able to do this.
Us old farts are supposedly technically challenged.
I called my SmartPhone again. It’s still there. This wasn’t a dream.
Part of the reason is because I previously had a standard bell-ring as my ringtone.
Someone in the Canandaigua YMCA locker-room apparently had the same ringtone, and their phone was ringing.
I unholstered my SmartPhone; was it ringing?
The guy walked by. “I thought that was my phone,” I said.
A few years ago I went along on a bus-ride of railfans to a dinner-train excursion down in Pennsylvania.
Quite a few of these people had an identical diesel-locomotive air-horn on their cellphones as their ringtone.
“PRAAAMMP-PRAAAMMP-PRAMP-PRAAAAAMMMP!”
“Whose phone is that? That your phone, Charlie?”
With 765’s whistle I’d know it was my phone.
This was not done the gobbledegook Google way.
Guile and cunning.
It wasn’t rocket-science.

• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, shortly after this trip. I pretty much recovered.
• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center,” usually three days per week, about two-three hours per visit. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where we 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. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.

Sonicare®

2011-12-27T06:29:00.001-08:00

Sonicare®

Yrs trly has finally been able to set up his Philips Sonicare® electric toothbrush.
Actually it’s battery-powered, and seems dainty. Its brushing-action seems very small compared to manual brushing, but quite agitated.
It’s about time.
I bought it almost five months ago, after my dental hygienist suggested I should — that it would remove plaque better than manual brushing.
“There is no plaque in the Dental Hall of Fame.”
That’s an old Bob & Ray joke, delivered in their usual deadpan.
The challenge was not the electric toothbrush. It was the manual.
Find time to read a gigantic instruction manual, full of dire warnings and boring advice.
Like “Don’t dunk your electric toothbrush in water,” and “Don’t use while bathing.”
I need a manual to know that? —Has the American public public got that stupid?
Yet assembly seemed difficult. I needed the manual to do so.
So plow though all the dire warnings and boring prose to get to assembly instructions.
That’s maybe 45 minutes, which I couldn’t find between all the errands, medical appointments, bank-balancing, dog-walking, lawn-mowing, and bill-paying.
In fact, what I did was peruse the manual while eating breakfast.
I was able to try assembly after walking our dog.
“Did you use it last night?” my wife asked.
“No,” I answered.
“It was approaching 11 p.m., and I’m sure my first try would be at least a half-hour of trial-and-error.
I wasn’t up for that,” I said.
So there it sits in our bathroom, its tiny green charging-light faintly illuminating our bathroom in the dark.
One of a forest of other green on-lights throughout our house, for example the backup-battery for our DVR, our carbon-monoxide sensor, our blinking smoke-alarms.

Queen of the Seventeen

2011-12-24T12:39:00.000-08:00

This morning’s transit-dream was about good old Hazel Rolle (“roll”), the so-called “Queen of the Seventeen.”
Hazel, like me, is a retired bus-driver from Regional Transit Service (RTS, “Transit”), although she probably retired well after me, since I retired early because of my stroke.
In fact, I only worked for Transit 16&1/2 years, 1977-1993; my stroke was October 26, 1993.
Hazel was ahead of me in seniority, and probably worked there 30 years.
Regional Transit Service, in Rochester, NY, is a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs.
The Seventeen is Transit’s 1700-line, a really nice ride.
It was almost rural in character, and had a great clientele.
They weren’t always threatening to shoot you, or ripping you off, like a city bus-line.
The 1700 didn’t even go through downtown Rochester. It used the same terminal as our Park-and-Ride buses, behind a downtown shopping-mall.
It left the city via a ritzy boulevard, and headed out into ritzy suburbs.
Its destination was Pittsford, an ultra-rich suburb on the old Erie Canal.
Your clientele was often domestic-help for Pittsford’s residents.
There were two colleges out along the line, and they were the only problem.
One was St. John Fisher College, which I’d access via a long driveway-loop — in-and-out.
Students would go ballistic when I drove out the driveway and headed for Pittsford.
“Hey man, where ya goin’?”
“Pittsford, just like the sign says,” I’d answer.
“We thought ya were goin’ downtown,” they’d wail.
“Anybody read at that there college?” I’d ask.
It was always a joy to leave them shivering in the cold along the avenue into Pittsford.
“I’ll be back in about a half-hour,” I’d say.
The other college was Nazareth, another in-and-out driveway-loop.
The trouble was the bus-loop itself, full of illegally-parked cars.
“No parking, bus-loop,” signs said.
I’d have to get off my bus and go inside an adjacent building to get the receptionist to make an announcement over the building P.A.
I couldn’t negotiate the bus-loop without driving all over the grass to avoid the illegally-parked cars.
Driving on the grass was a definite no-no. The college would sue the bus-company for damage.
Hazel was a volunteer helper at my polling-place; help the old folks vote.
“Are ya sure ya can read all those instructions, honey?”
That was Hazel all right. She was always calling everyone “honey.”
“Of course I can,” I responded. “And I drove bus at Transit just like you, Hazel.”
She didn’t recognize me.
“1703,” I said. “I drove it three years.
Nicest ride I ever had,” I added.
“Eugene Muhammad had it, then he gave it up, and then I drove it.
And Eugene Muhammad is still alive,” I said. “Silver hair instead of coal-black, but it was him, and he remembered good old 1703.”
And Fred, the passenger at Nazareth we all dreaded. He was always yakking at you like we were his best buddy.
Try to avoid bus-accidents with Fred yakking at you.
Eugene was always yelling “Come-on down” in the Drivers’ Room (at RTS), when the Dispatcher called an Extra-Driver to report for duty.
The Extra-Drivers were on hand to substitute for a sick or unreported bus-driver, or take a bus out to replace a crippled bus, or to fill in behind a loaded bus.
“Come-on down” is reprising the Price-Is-Right TV-show.
Eugene was being sarcastic.
I’m sure Eugene had been an Extra-Driver once. But 1703 was a nice ride, and had the same hours every day.
Which is why I avoided the Extra-Board. Hours as an Extra were different every day.
Plus there was always the chance you’d get sent on a trip out along streets ya didn’t know.
Often during blizzards I’d get sent who knows where to make a trip that hadn’t been made for some time.
“I need a navigator,” I’d say to my passengers. “I don’t know this route.”
Passengers just loved that; “not some self-absorbed idiot that takes us astray.
We just wanna go home.”
Hazel drove 1702 or 1701, the two all-day buses on the 1700 line.
1703 was an extra afternoon trip, added to shorten headways.
1703 had a school-trip attached to it — Transit ran segregated school-trips along established bus-lines.
The trip was kind of a drag, because the kids were really wired, and they were seventh- and eighth-grade.
What I’d do if they were complete monsters is just drive around the block back to the school.
They hated that. What they wanted was to get home, so it shut them down.
After that school-trip I had a 50-minute layover before my first trip to Pittsford, enough time to nap over the motor.
I’d set my alarm-watch, and go sack out.
Paid to take a nap!
And once I started driving the 17, it was fabulous.
Which was why Hazel always picked it.
On my second trip I carried a bunch of commuters out to Pittsford, and they’d sit in the back and discuss politics (or religion/philosophy [gasp]).
This was way better than shooting off firecrackers, playing dice on the bus-floor, or laying plans to mug the bus-driver.
I made three trips to Pittsford; which was one too many — done at 7:30, late.
But it was a nice ride; one of the best.
I don’t think Hazel ever recognized me, but she did recognize 1703, Fred, and Eugene Muhammad.

• At Transit, bus-runs were chosen according to job-seniority, so old-heads usually got the best runs.
• “Park-and-Rides” were trips from suburban or rural end-points, usually through Park-and-Ride parking-lots, where passengers would park their cars, for a bus-ride to work in Rochester, then back.

Gone

2011-12-20T19:07:00.000-08:00

October 27, 1945 - December 19, 2011. (Photo by Eleanor C. Hughes.)
(Eleanor Hughes is my mother, long gone.)

My sister Betty from Fort Lauderdale, FL, one year and four months younger than me, is gone.
October 27, 1945 to December 19, 2011, just past 66 years (I’m 67).
She developed pancreatic cancer, and it took her suddenly and quickly.
Although she didn’t do much for it. She was in great pain, and unable to eat. —She just wanted to get it over.
She may have had an inkling of what was happening last summer, when she took a giant motor-trip north to visit her siblings, including me, the eldest, the so-called “black sheep of the family” (a Democrat [gasp]).
(Most of our family lives in the northeastern U.S.)
She had a hard life, married four times.
Although the last time was the most successful. It’s lasted since 1990.
She had an only daughter by her first marriage, who did extremely well.
This was despite her daughter’s lack of a father-figure until she was 31.
I wonder if her actual father is still alive? (He disappeared.)
My siblings are all fighting amongst themselves regarding a eulogy one wrote.
It mentions promiscuity and failed marriages.
I sort of agree with the critics. To me her daughter was her greatest triumph. The eulogy seems to miss that.
My sister and I were very different. We went our separate ways after growing up.
She attended nearby Houghton College (“HO-tin;” as in “oh,” not “how” or “who”) for two years, partly because I did, and she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life.
People were surprised we were related, from the same family; we were that different.
My sister was assertive, and I’m not. I’m the so-called “thinker,” leery of making decisions.
My sister dropped out of Houghton after two years, home to get married. —I graduated, first in my family to graduate college, although I think my father could have.
Her first marriage crashed.
Supposedly that was her mate’s intransigence (and infidelity).
Although I don’t think he had any idea what he wanted to do with his life either.
Although I also think an assertive person like my sister could be hard to live with.
And so began the insane rollercoaster of her life.
She moved to Fort Lauderdale from northern Delaware after divorce, a single mother, allied with a guy she eventually married, who wanted to help her.
But she was leery the guy never committed to her daughter.
So she fell into a relationship with that guy’s business-partner, sort of a redneck.
That guy became marriage number-three, and it too failed over her daughter.
She wanted her daughter to attend a private college, yet that guy didn’t wanna spend that much.
He also had children from a prior marriage, the same age as her daughter.
An almighty tempest arose. Mr. redneck became abusive.
So ended marriage number-three.
She became an ardent church-goer, much like my parents.
The church solved all her problems, and gave her life fulfillment.
She had returned to the religion she was raised with, although I had walked away, unable to make the so-called “leap of faith,” wherein you deny all scientific evidence.
She became friends at that church with the guy who became marriage-partner number-four, although there was scuttlebutt among my siblings she should not get married at all.
But marry him she did, and that was successful.
Although he got Parkinson’s Disease, but he’s not bad, at least not yet.
At last my sister was happy, or so it seemed.
If we are like each other at all, it is in the fact we are both ornery, and enslaved to “I gotta see this!”

Photo by BobbaLew.

She’s still got it!

A couple years ago my sister and her fourth husband came north to visit us, and we took a dinner-excursion on the Erie Canal packet “Sam Patch.”
My blowhard macho brother-from-Boston, who loudly badmouths everything I do or say, began fulminating something about where concrete-barges dock, a demonstration of his vast knowledge about everything.
Yet my sister sprang up and hung her head the boat’s window.
In rain.
We had navigated into Lock 32, and the lock was functioning, slowly filling with water to raise us to the next canal level.
“WHOA! I gotta see this. This is really neat!”
She still had it; rough as her life was.
The childlike wonder of all experience that I have.
Last summer we spent time on Norfolk Southern’s (railroad) Pittsburgh Division near Altoona, PA (“al-TUNE-uh;” as in the name “Al”), the location of Horseshoe Curve, where I’ve been hundreds of times.
My sister had never seen Horseshoe Curve.
(I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two.)

Photo by Linda Hughes.
(Linda Hughes is my wife.)

We went to a back-country grade-crossing north (railroad-east) of Altoona, and set up at trackside.
All-of-a-sudden a train was coming!
It blasted right by us; we were about 15-20 feet from the track.
My sister was thrilled, and she’s not a railfan.
A train passing is an incredible sensory rush.
She still had it.
Yet now she’s gone.
I won’t be able to attend her funeral.
My wife also has cancer, and is starting a chemo regimen.
She is getting slightly tired.
I doubt she could make the trip, and I don’t wanna leave her alone.

• “Houghton” is Houghton College in western New York, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I graduated a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college. —My wife graduated Houghton the same class as me.

Not class

2011-12-18T11:24:00.000-08:00

(Photo by Richard Lentinello.)

The February 2012 issue of my Hemmings Classic Car magazine celebrates the 1958 automotive offerings as some of the greatest cars of all time.
I beg to differ. I always felt General Motors’ 1958 offerings were among the WORST they ever sold.

A ’59 Olds, the ugliest car ever.

Photo by BobbaLew.

The ugliest Chevrolet of all time.

A ’58 Plymouth Fury.

A ’58 Ford.

Not the worst. That’s 1959, when General Motors trotted out the 1959 Oldsmobile, what I call the ugliest car of all time, and the 1959 Chevrolet, what I call the ugliest Chevrolet ever.
Although a good friend of mine disputes my ugliest car choice. He says it’s the Pontiac Aztek, and I sort of agree. Too bad he wasn’t born yet in 1959.
There were cars in the 1958 model-year that looked pretty good, like the ’58 Plymouth and the ’58 Ford.
Plymouth finally put four headlights under those gigantic headlight brows, and Ford made their ridiculous 1957 body look pretty good in 1958.
About the only thing wrong with the ’58 Ford was its taillights.
But for 1958, the General made their offerings look awful.
It was a continuation of 1957’s bloated styling.
With almighty dollops of chrome.
In late 1957 I began eighth-grade at Delaware Township High-School, a new high-school meant to accommodate the post-war baby-boom.
(We lived in Delaware Township, although now the school is called Cherry Hill High-School West. [Apparently there is now a Cherry Hill High-School East. —I’m not surprised, our area grew mightily.])
I also did seventh grade there, but at that time only the classroom wing was finished.
1957 is also the year our family moved to northern Delaware, so my father could pursue his new job south of Wilmington.
But I stayed at Delaware Township High-School until Christmas vacation. I stayed with my paternal grandparents in Camden, NJ, and rode the transit-bus out to Erlton (“EARL-tin”), our original home-town, so I could continue at Delaware Township High-School.
My first day in my northern Delaware high-school was their last day before Christmas vacation, also before beginning the new year in another new school, again an attempt to meet the post-war baby-boom.
Before our family moved, I rode bicycle with friends out along Haddon Ave. west of Haddonfield (“ha-din-field;” as in “had”), NJ.
Haddonfield is an old Revolutionary-War town just south of where we lived in Erlton.
We rode up where Haddon Ave. passed over the old Pennsylvania Railroad bypass to Philadelphia.
Adjacent were car-dealers, mainly a Buick dealer.
The dealer had new Buicks in his lot under fabric covers to hide styling.
Those Buicks were among the silliest Buicks ever, the waffle-iron grille.
Styling was gigantic and ridiculous, even more bloated than the ’57 Buick, which also looked ridiculous.
The cars were behind a chainlink fence, so we couldn’t raise the fabric covers.
All we could do was peer inside and imagine what the car looked like.
We could see a smidgeon of the waffle-iron grille.
Then I saw the 1958 Chevrolet, a travesty compared to the fabulous Tri-Chevys of 1955-1957.
Spare lines had been lost in a deluge of bloated sheetmetal.
New was the Impala, based on the larger GM chassis.
Not bad looking if that’s what you wanted, sweeping lines and gull-wings.
Worse yet were the standard Chevys, the Bel air, Two-Ten, and One-Fifty.
The Tri-Chevy ruined by bloated styling.
I was devastated.
The elegant Tri-Chevy was gone.
The magazine features two ’58 Oldsmobiles (above).
Sorry, but in my humble opinion the ’58 Olds was a disaster.
Bloated styling and ridiculous lines.
And gobs of chrome.
This from the brand that brought us the fabulous ’49 Olds.
Essentially a Chevrolet with a modern overhead-valve V8 engine.
The motor everyone wanted to wrench into their hotrods.
That is, until Chevrolet introduced its fabulous SmallBlock V8 for the 1955 model-year.
How depressing to think of these fabulous motors dragging around all that sheetmetal.
For example, a SmallBlock in a ’58 Chevy.
I remember riding around in a ’58 SmallBlock driven by a guy whose parents belonged to our church.
Later this guy got a yellow-and-white two-tone ’55 Chevy SmallBlock Bel air two-door sedan.
He was only a high-school part-timer, so he’d leave school early.
Every day on leaving he’d rev it up through the gears (it was three-speed column-shift) in front of our school.
I was in ecstasy.
I’d drop everything in the class I was in, and listen to the sound.
“There goes Bates!” wound to the moon.
The ’58 Oldsmobiles pictured have a 371 cubic-inch version of the Rocket V8 motor.
It had to be that large to drag around all that sheetmetal. And the gobs of chrome, and that grille-mouth that just doesn’t work.
Compare the grille-mouth of a ’55 Chevy, simple and basic.
The ’58 Oldsmobile was a styling disaster, although not as disgusting and silly as the ’59.

• “The General” is General Motors.
• The 1955-1957 Chevrolets are called the “Tri-Chevys.”
• “Erlton” is the small suburb of Philadelphia in south Jersey where I lived until I was 13. Erlton was founded in the ‘30s, named after its developer, whose name was Earl.

Nothing over $80,000!

2011-12-15T14:20:00.001-08:00

Are they kidding?
This is as laughable as the four-hour erections in the Cialis ads.
(Ever wonder if there’s any water in them bathtubs?)
So says the cover of my January 2012 issue of Car&Driver magazine, detailing the 10 best cars for 2012.
Okay, the Ford Focus is $17,295-to-$23,495, the Honda Fit is $15,945-to-$17,680, and the Mazda MX-5 Miata is $23,985-to-$29,455.
But the Audi (“OW-dee;” as in “wow”) A6/A7 3.0T Quattro is $50,775-to-$60,125, and the BMW 3-Series/M3 is $38,125-to-$71,125.
Even the Boss 302 Mustang is $38,105-to-$48,100, and the CTS-V Cadillac is $65,390.
The Honda Accord, perhaps the car best-suited to American driving conditions, is $22,150-to-$28,325, and the Volkswagen GTI (I had an ’83) is $18,765-to-$25,465. (My ’83 cost nowhere near that.)
The Porsche (“POOR-sha”) Boxter is $49,050-to-$67,250.
So much for the Boxter. Lust-able, but at that price, you’ve lost me.
These prices are stratospheric.
And so it goes. Inflation ratcheting up the price of transportation.
I remember when I bought our 2005 Toyota Sienna van six years ago, I gulped at the $30,000 I forked over.
To replace it would probably take 40,000 buckaroos.
Beyond that, I’ve become my paternal grandmother.
Most important is a car start, and run reliably.
Performance, what Car&Driver is trumpeting, is frivolous stuck in traffic, which is a lotta the time.
The Honda Fit is a great car, but $16,000 is a lot of money for basic transportation, no matter how inspired it is.
And as appealing as the Boxter might be, I might be able to appropriately enjoy it about one percent of the time.

1968 Triumph TR250 (same color as mine).

Mine was red with a black stripe.

We had a Triumph sportscar once. It was totally unsuited for basic transportation.
We replaced it with a Chevrolet Vega GT, much better-suited to basic transportation, yet still enjoyable.
The Vega GT didn’t set me back $30,000. In fact, the Triumph cost $4,500 brand-new, a fortune at that time.
Cars are of course better nowadays.
Our Sienna isn’t washed up at only six years.
In fact, it seems new.
Our Honda CR-V is eight years old, but not showing its age. Only that it’s out-of-date.
My Triumph was done at six years.
But $16,000 or more for basic transportation?
Go back far enough, and basic transportation cost around $500.
When my father was raised to $100 a week in 1949 it was a major stride forward.
And a $12,000 annual salary offer in 1956 was a giant leap.
My wife always says we did fine under inflation, but I don’t know.
The price of basic transportation climbs ever higher.

• The “CR-V” is our 2003 Honda CR-V SUV.

Fast and loose with the law

2011-12-14T07:22:00.001-08:00

A while ago my wife got a free and unsolicited DVD from one of her quilting magazines, with instructions to mail it back if she didn’t want it, or pay for it if she did.
“They can’t do that!” she said. “I didn’t ask for that DVD.”
A disclaimer was included: “Because you didn’t ask for this special DVD, you don’t have to participate or send it back, and you can consider it a free gift.”
“Okay, free gift it is,”she said. “I ain’t payin’ for it, and I ain’t sendin’ it back.”
So began a torrent of bills from the quilting magazine, demanding we pay for it or send it back.
Finally, in exasperation, as if we had no better to do, my wife called the quilting magazine, wondering why we were getting billed.
Around-and-around she went. (“Please hold during the silence: Boom-chicka, boom-chicka, boom-chicka.”)
She was able to get us off their ne’er-do-well list.
The other day (probably Monday, December 12, 2011) I got a free and unsolicited DVD from Trains Magazine, with a request I pay for it or mail it back.
Here we go again!
Again, the disclaimer: “Because you didn’t ask for this special DVD, you don’t have to participate or send it back, and you can consider it a free gift.”
Worst of all, this was good old Trains, where I’ve been a constant subscriber since 1966.
David P. Morgan (DPM), the editor then, is probably spinning in his grave.
David P. Morgan was why I subscribed to Trains.
DPM’s appreciation of trains was identical to mine.
He also had a way of considering more than drama.
As such, he made me think.
More was at play than just liking trains.
DPM eventually died, and was replaced by various editors that weren’t DPM, but now the magazine is in pretty good hands, although it isn’t DPM.
But a free and unsolicited DVD?
Sorry Trains, but this is stooping.
And I ain’t fallin’ for it.
Fast and loose with the law!
Will I cancel my life-long subscription?
Probably not.
But you’re on notice, Trains.
(At least they’re paying the return postage......)

Tiger-Tracks

2011-12-13T14:56:00.000-08:00

Tiger-Tracks. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

The other day (Sunday, December 11, 2011) yrs trly attended the Tiger-Tracks model-train show at Rochester Institute of Technology.
I attended with Gary Colvin (“COAL-vin”), like me a retired bus-driver from Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY.
We attended this same show last year. I’m not much into model railroading, but Gary is.
This was the third time for me, second for him.
The first time I attended with Art Dana (“DAY-nuh”), since deceased, also a retired bus-driver from RTS.
Art was very much into model railroading and convinced me to go.
Art had Parkinson’s Disease, so I took him.
The show seemed slightly less extensive than last year, and a little less crowded.
It’s held in Gordon Field House, a sports facility at Rochester Institute of Technology, and is mainly vendors.
Although quite a few model-railroad layouts are put up, plus displays from live-steam groups and outdoor model-railroad facilities.
“Live-steam” is just that, small model steam-locomotives that burn fuel to generate steam to operate the model.

Photo by BobbaLew.

HO model of the greatest railroad locomotive ever.

Photo by BobbaLew.

This thing is doin’ at least 90.

Photo by BobbaLew.

STAND BACK!

Photo by Tom Hughes.
(Tom Hughes is my nephew, also a railfan like me.)

Restored GG1 at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.

You can walk out with model-train equipment — and bargaining triumphs.
Last year I walked out with an HO model of a GG1 (pictured; “Jee-Jee-ONE,” I only say that because Dana was mispronouncing it “Jee-Jee-Eye”), to me the greatest railroad locomotive ever.
This year it was Gary. He walked out with a plastic Revell® N-gauge roundhouse kit, and a model tower of some sort.
28 buckaroos for the roundhouse kit, after much fevered dickering.
The GG1 sits on a bureau in our living-room with a model of a TWA Lockheed Constellation, to me the prettiest airplane of all time.
I was lucky enough to witness GG1s in actual service, and every time I did they were doing 90 mph or more.
With computerization, model-railroad operation can be much more realistic.
The power-supply (the track) is fully energized, and decoders in each locomotive partake of what’s needed when, often by radio control.
Even then it ain’t real railroading, where train-length might be over 100 cars.
I saw one train pulling about 25 cars. That’s way better than only five cars (my past). —And models capable of 250 scale mph, which could stop from that speed in 100 scale feet.
Do that, and you toss everyone on the floor!
As we finally left, we passed a display of various model-railroad track gauges compared.
They were straight-track sections of equal length.
First was G-gauge, a gigantic 1.772 inches between rails.
Next to that was O-gauge, Lionel three-rail track, 1.25 inches between the outside rails, made of stamped tinplate.
Next was S-gauge, also tinplate, American Flyer’s gauge, 0.833 inches between the rails, but only two-rail.
I lusted after American Flyer as a child, since two-rail was more realistic, but I had Lionel (three-rail).
Next was HO-gauge, “half-O,” 0.64961 inches between the rails. HO was much more realistic, although wheel-flanges and the track itself aren’t.
Next was N-gauge, only 0.354 inches between the rails. N-gauge is smallish, but can fit much more layout in a confined space.
Next was Z-gauge, tinier still, at only 0.256 inches between the rails. In Z-gauge the locomotives might only be an inch-and-a-half long, and less than a half-inch high.
The boxcars might be slightly more than an inch long.
There’s an even smaller gauge, TT (“table-top”), but that wasn’t displayed.
Someone was explaining all the model-railroad gauges.
“The gauge I prefer,” I said; “is four-feet eight & 1/2 inches,” which is standard railroad gauge.
I was looked at askance.
“The real thing,” I added, to explain.
“Oh yeah,” the guy said. “One-to-one.”

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (“Transit”), a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. Gary started about a year after me. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. Gary worked at Transit almost 30 years.
• Standard railroad gauge, in real life, is four-feet eight & 1/2 inches.

HANG ON FOR DEAR LIFE!

2011-12-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

Scarlett. (Photo by Linda Hughes.) (Linda Hughes is my wife.)

Normally I’m the one who lets the dog out in the middle of the night.
I get up around 2 a.m. to go to the bathroom, and let our dog out.
She goes out and patrols the backyard, loose; our backyard is fenced.
She’s snagged a few rabbits in the backyard.
I’ve had to go out in my bathrobe and bring her in.
If a rabbit is in that backyard, it’s dead meat.
The dog is very much a hunter.
If she senses a critter she goes bonkers!
Squirrels, chipmunks, deer, geese, crows — the blue heron.
We walk her on a leash, except in the backyard.
She may or may not go to the bathroom.
I also turn off all our Christmas lights.
But last night it wasn’t me.
I had worked out at the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym yesterday morning (Friday, December 9, 2011), plus performed a few errands.
Our dog had also been left with a groomer, so had to be picked up.
No time for a nap, so I was utterly blasted from working out. —I’m 67.
Apparently my wife let the dog out about 2 a.m., and turned off all the Christmas lights.
The dog gets on our bed after going out.
Before that she sacks out on a dog-bed at the foot of our bed.
We have to sleep around her, but it’s not too bad.
She’s not that big, and sleeps between our feet.
Yesterday I had her partially groomed.
It was a girl named Lisa Robinson, who used to sell ads at the Mighty Mezz.
She married Bill Robinson, once a reporter/columnist at the Mighty Mezz.
I worked with Robinson for years.
Apparently Lisa loves dogs.
She’s a groomer at Finger Lakes Animal Hospital in nearby Canandaigua, and has been there for some time.
89 bazilyun snapshots of various dogs are on the office-walls.
I only noticed one Irish-Setter, although I’m sure there are more.
I didn’t pore through all the snapshots. There are way too many.
A lot seem to be smallish dogs.
Our dog weighs 72 pounds, fairly big for an Irish-Setter.
Our dog is also incredibly strong.
At the park she’s hunting, and if she senses anything it’s HANG ON FOR DEAR LIFE!
We’ve spent hours while she’s dug at holes, tossing earth on our pants.
I didn’t have Lisa do much, just cut her nails, trim her paws (to negate snow-clumping), and comb out her coat.
—To remove seeds (she’s a seed-carrier).
My wife is the current groomer; I’m not very successful.
The dog fights my wife somewhat, but doesn’t seem to fight me.
What I dread is a massive burr-accumulation, or seeds.
If muddy she needs a bath.
But my wife has cancer, and may die eventually.
I’m very committed to this dog; the deal was “I’ll take you home, and try my best.”
That was three years ago, and I had just come off a high-energy Irish-Setter.
So I thought I could handle her; still think I can.
The fact we’re retired means we can give her many walks.
This dog is also very attached to me — I’m the boss-dog. (She knows I look out for her.)
Although I think the dog is mainly a people-dog. She doesn’t have much patience with other dogs.
So having Lisa groom her was a trial run.
If my wife dies, that’s half the dog’s attention.
Although we seemed to do okay when my wife was in the hospital last spring.

• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center,” usually three days per week, about two-three hours per visit. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where we 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. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.
• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired almost six years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years.

“You’re becoming a SmartPhone junkie....”

2011-12-08T09:25:00.001-08:00

.....my wife commented the other day (probably Tuesday, December 6, 2011).
“Yes, I guess I am,” I thought to myself, as I added appointments into the calendar on my SmartPhone.
My SmartPhone has a calendar-ap on it.
My SmartPhone is a Verizon DroidX®.
Great idea; carry your appointment calendar in your back pocket, and thereby make appointments outside, that don’t conflict with previous appointments.
We have appointments up the waazoo, so what was happening previously is we’d make an appointment with the caveat I might have to reschedule.
I’d come home and see if my new appointment conflicted with a previous appointment, in which case one would have to be rescheduled.
But now with my SmartPhone calendar in my back pocket I can avoid conflicts.
Although everything has to be entered, which takes time.
It also takes time to reschedule.
Plus there’s the embarrassment of having to do so.
I’m at Urology Associates of Rochester (NY) last week for my every-six-months prostate exam and assessment (mostly the results of a PSA blood-test).
All-of-sudden “DING,” the alert-sound my SmartPhone makes when it gets a notification.
“Now what?” I shouted as I grabbed my SmartPhone.
I was mightily embarrassed. Here I was committing the cardinal sin to medical professionals — I was talking to my doctor — paying more attention to my SmartPhone.
“I’m sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I forgot to turn this thing off.”
“Please turn off cellphones,” a sign says in the dentist-office.
“Ya better let me turn this thing off before starting,” I say.
“Please turn off cellphones when checking out,” says a sign at our organic market. “Please be considerate of our cashiers.”
Right, cellphones are a distraction.
I’m not about to make someone wait so I can answer my phone.
And a SmartPhone can be even more distracting. Add notifications, e-mails, etc.
If my SmartPhone rings while I’m driving, I ain’t answering.
I can’t both drive and carry on a cellphone conversation.
It’s got voicemail, plus I get notification of a missed call, which I can return.
Beyond that, cellphone use while driving is illegal in this state (NY), although drivers pay little attention, and go ballistic when written up.
“Oh no ya don’t!” I thought to myself at Urology Associates of Rochester.
“I ain’t lettin’ no cellphone control my life.”
But if they need to schedule a follow-up, out comes my SmartPhone.

• “A PSA blood-test” looks for Prostate-Specific-Antigen in the blood. If it’s high, it indicates the possibility of prostate-cancer. (I usually always pass.)

There is no such thing as multi-tasking

2011-12-06T11:22:00.000-08:00

Yesterday (Monday, December 5, 2011) we had a medical appointment in Rochester, NY, which is about 18-20 miles from where we live.
A friend I graduated college with, who now lives in Massachusetts, apparently had a minor fender-bender accident with his car, so he e-mailed me to say he was okay.
He also e-mailed me the following news-link, detailing how 10 or more megabuck supercars (eight Ferraris, one Lamborghini [“lam-bor-GEE-nee;” as in “Sam” and “get”], and two Mercedes) in Japan all got smashed up.
So I e-mailed back “which Ferrari were you?”
My friend and I are both car-nuts.
I got the following response: “Me? I was the one driving the light brown 1980 Datsun 4-door, just minding my own business, going down the highway at my usual 35 mph, when that string of red cars came up behind me like bats out of hell. That first one tried to pass me, must have been going at least 140 mph. Jeez Louise, I saw the whole thing out of my rear view mirror. I just wound up the old buggy to 52, had to hold tight onto the wheel, and kept on going. Kids these days, I swear!”
So here we are, my wife and I motoring back from the appointment.
I was explaining to her my e-mail exchange with my friend.
My SmartPhone gets my e-mails, so the e-mail exchange was coming to my SmartPhone.
I.e. The e-mail exchange was on my SmartPhone, as well as this laptop.
I hardly ever reply to SmartPhone e-mails. Doing so requires use of the SmartPhone virtual keyboard, which is near impossible. I could also use voice-recognition, but that is undependable and usually needs editing.
I wanted to show my wife the exchange, so I unholstered my SmartPhone from my back pocket.
Not easy harnessed into a driver-seat, but it can be done.
SmartPhone out, I started firing up the e-mail exchange.
WHOA! Doing so requires requires taking my eyes off the road and looking at my SmartPhone.
I don’t like it.
We started drifting toward the right shoulder.
When I’m driving along and my SmartPhone rings, I don’t answer.
I can’t drive and operate a cellphone at the same time.
The call will go to voicemail. A “missed call” will get memorized. I can call back.
I’m not about to have my driving compromised by a phonecall.
Driving takes 100 percent concentration.
Beyond that, cellphone use while driving is illegal in this state (NY), although miscreants go ballistic when written up.
I pass hundreds yammering on their cellphones while driving.
The other day I noticed a girl texting.
She was following a slowed traffic-jam.
Taking your eyes off your leader is an invitation to rear-end.
There is no such thing as multi-tasking.
What’s happening is perhaps a second-or-two is applied to each action, jumping back-and-forth between driving and your cellphone.
A friend has Bluetooth® in his car.
Apparently his cellphone Bluetooths to an in-dash receiver which puts his call on the car-radio. It also has a microphone.
Nice idea; hands-free cellphone operation while driving.
But I don’t think I could even do that.
Carrying on a cellphone conversation would distract from my driving.
We put away my SmartPhone.
I can’t both drive and operate it at the same time.
I have to pay full attention to avoid accidents. Other drivers are hot to commit hari-kari.
I don’t know how many phenomenal avoidances I’ve had, and how many times I’ve been cut off. —And many involved cellphone users.
Beyond that my wife was going ballistic.
That SmartPhone had me wandering all over the road.
As I said above, I don’t like it.

• A “virtual keyboard” is a keyboard displayed on the SmartPhone touch-screen. It operates by fingertip-heat. Touching the “virtual keys” generates text. (It’s so tiny it mistypes.)

I am a high-school grad-you-ate!

2011-12-02T14:05:00.001-08:00

My SmartPhone gets my e-mail.
My SmartPhone is a Motorola DroidX® through Verizon.
A notification came from Wal*Mart that an ergonomic office-chair I ordered online was available for pick-up at their Canandaigua store.
The e-mail came to my locker at the Canandaigua YMCA while I was working out.
I don’t take my SmartPhone into the Exercise-Gym at the YMCA.
I don’t want it distracting me, and beyond that it’s against the rules. —Like cellphone use while driving is illegal in this state, yet no one pays attention.
Ride-of-the-Valkyries (ringtone) on the elliptical next door.
So, e-mail received, do I go to Wal*Mart or not?
It’s out past the supermarket I was gonna patronize anyway.
I decided to do Mighty Wal*Mart.
Into the gigantic superstore, no urine-smelling geezer-greeters to kiss me.
But there was a scrawny kid outside in the cold manning a Salvation-Army Red Kettle.
His bell-ringing was intermittent — it sounded anemic.
Now, find “Customer Service.” It’s usually at the front of the store, in front of the checkouts.
“I need to pick this up,” I said, showing the Smartphone e-mail to an associate in Customer Service.
“Back of the store,” the kid motioned. “‘Site-to-store’ pick-up is in that tiny alcove.”
I hiked across the vast store.
Outrageous reflective Santa outfits were on sale, “only $5.99” (or so).
Probably made in China by child slave-labor.
I finally attained the tiny alcove, and fell into line behind doddering grannies laying away thousands of dollars of Christmas gifts.
All junk, stuff that would get liked upon opening, then tossed aside.
There were two grannies. Twenty minutes. I waited patiently. —I was tempted to leave.
Finally a clerk asked my why I was there.
“I need to pick this up,” I said.
“Uh, what’s that?” the befuddled clerk asked, peering, mystified.
“That’s my SmartPhone, and your e-mail is on it.”
“Ummmmm......”
“Wait a minute,” I thought to myself. “You’re dealing with Wal*Mart store-associates. Gizmos like a SmartPhone would cause mental block.”
“Your name please?”
“Robert Hughes,” I said, pointing to the e-mail display on my SmartPhone.
“I’ll look out back,” she said, paying no attention to my SmartPhone.
Interestingly, the SmartPhone e-mail from Wal*Mart had a scannable barcode on it.
“Wal*Mart associate only — please scan.”
In other words the clerk could have scanned that barcode on my SmartPhone. It would have told her all the details of my order.
(The SmartPhone display is good enough to render a scannable barcode.)
“But we ain’t doin’ that.
Get outta here with that SmartPhone.
What are you, some kind of Democrat? (Gasp!)
I am a high-school grad-you-ate!”

• “Canandaigua” (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where we 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. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.
• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center,” usually three days per week, about two-three hours per visit.
• “Robert Hughes” is me, “BobbaLew.”

Monthly Calendar Report for December, 2011

2011-12-01T06:11:00.001-08:00

“Home for Christmas.” (Photo by BobbaLew.)

―Here it is! The picture that makes my calendar. Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian at Fostoria, PA. “Home for Christmas.”
The December 2011 entry of my own calendar is one of the best pictures I ever got, perfect for December.
And it’s not a rerun.
But actually it was shot February 13, 2010.
It had snowed some before this trip, but apparently quite a bit in higher elevations, like the Allegheny mountains.
The trip down was easy.
Snow might have been plowed three feet high along the highway, but the pavement was bare.
Not so in Gallitzin (“guh-LIT-zin;” as in “get”), top of The Hill, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s old crossing of the Allegheny mountains.
When we arrived at Tunnel Inn in Gallitzin, the bed-and-breakfast we stay at in the Altoona (“al-TUNE-uh;” as in the name “Al”) area, owner-proprietor Mike Kraynyak (“crane-eee-YAK”) was blowing out his tiny parking-lot with a snowblower.
The snow was three to four feet deep.
Streets were impassible and being cleared with giant front-end loaders, even the main drag.
Mike’s snowblower seemed overwhelmed, and that’s despite a 2&1/2 foot high front opening.
A friend was trying to hand-shovel giant snowpiles off the outside staircase to his upstairs viewing-deck.
Mike was also trying to clear a path to the staircase. It looked like a trench through the deep snow.
I’ve written up Tunnel Inn so many times, it would be boring to do it again.
If you need clarification, click this link, go slightly down into the first calendar-entry, and read about Tunnel Inn.
Usually Tunnel Inn is closed during winter, but Mike always did a Valentine’s Day special.
He didn’t do it this past year.
What he’d do is open the Inn about Valentine’s Day, take reservations, and turn on the heat.
By then we had begun doing train-chases (“Tours”) with Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”)
I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two (I’m 67).
Phil’s another topic I’ve blogged too many times.
If you need clarification, click this link, and go toward the end of the post to read about Phil.
We had supposedly reserved for the Valentine’s Day weekend, but Mike wasn’t sure.
Our usual room was already reserved for someone else, but we could have “AR,” the downstairs handicap suite.
“AR” is an old Pennsy tower in Gallitzin, closed and abandoned, but still up.
The towers were named after their telegraph call-letters, e.g. “AR,” “UN,” “SO,” “MG,” and “MO.”
As mentioned, Tunnel Inn caters to railfans, so the suites are all named after rail things.
There’s an “MO” suite, and “AR” is the handicap suite.
“AR” is downstairs and quite large. All the other suites are upstairs.
“AR” goes at a higher rate, so I told Mike we’d take it if we could have it at the upstairs rate.
Agreed.
So next morning, February 13, Phil arrived to “tour” us.
We wondered if he could actually do it.
Horseshoe Curve was completely snowed in, entirely inaccessible.
I had tried to enter, but ended up hip-deep in a blocking snow-berm left by plows.
Horseshoe Curve is another topic blogged many times. If you need clarification, click this link, go down to the second calendar-entry (Audio-Visual Designs black and white All-Pennsy Calendar), and read around the picture of “the Mighty Curve.”
Phil said there were plenty of grade-crossings he could take us to get trackside.
So off we went, north of Altoona, railroad east.
Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian was coming.
We pulled up to a grade-crossing in tiny Fostoria, and here it came.
BAM! Got it.
Best of all, the ties were covered with snow.
And the light was perfect, muted winter light.
Conditions were fabulous the entire chase.
Squalls and the sun coming out between snow-bursts.

As good as the leader. (Photo by Willie Brown.)

―I try to not put two train pictures next to each other, but not this time.
The December 2011 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is as good as my own picture, in fact I’d say better.
The only reason I made mine number-one is because it was perfect for December.
The Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a better picture.
Apparently this location, Time, PA, is very well known.
The red barn is known as “the red-barn of Time.”
I had to do some serious poking around to find “Time, PA.”
When I cranked “Time, Pennsylvania” into my Google Satellite-Views, it gave me 89 bazilyun hits all across Pennsylvania, from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and Erie.
Time-Warner, time in Philadelphia, Time Restaurant, the New York Times, etc.
WHAAAA.....? Usually Google Satellite-Views is pretty good. What prompted that?
I dragged out my DeLorme Pennsylvania gazetteer.
It had the tiny town of Time in the far southwestern corner of the state, out in the middle of nowhere.
So I set my Google Satellite-Views to that area.
Little made sense.
I couldn’t make highways agree with the gazetteer, although the gazetteer was probably out of date. It’s late ‘80s.
Satellite-Views had the Interstates nearby, including the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
But not in the gazetteer — although the area of the gazetteer may have been much smaller than the satellite-view.
I kept noticing what appeared to be an open-pit coal mine in the Satellite-Views, so I zeroed in on it.
And there did appear to be a railroad coming out of it, just a loading-track circling the mine.
And there appeared to be a train on it.
I never found “Time” on my Satellite-Views, but this was the railroad depicted.
And I noticed a few places that looked like the photo location, curvature that matches what’s depicted.
The photographer said he lives nearby, so has taken this picture hundreds of times.
You’d need a railroad scanner to know what’s happening, plus knowledge of operations.
The track-curvature has the train in full display, snaking the curves.
And it’s coal, what the line would be carrying.
Of course, it’s just a branch specific to that mine.
Genesee & Wyoming Inc. (railroad) built a specific mine-branch nearby, but it’s a salt-mine.
It replaced other salt-mines closed as unsafe.
The salt-mine is new, about mid-‘90s, well after I moved up here.
The railroad branch is also new. Railroad was nearby, but a branch had to built to that salt-mine.
The open-pit coal-mine looks new too.
I can hardly imagine trucks hauling out all that coal when a railroad can haul hundreds of truckloads in just one train.

Mustang! (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The December 2011 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a close-on shot of a P-51 Mustang.

Photo by Philip Makanna©.

Curtiss P-40 Warhawk.

Probably shot at the same time, with the same telephoto, as the picture at left.
But I think that picture is better, even though a P-40 isn’t a P-51.
The P-51 Mustang is the propeller airplane everyone venerates, the quintessential hotrod airplane.
Some Navy fighter-planes, e.g. the Grumman Bearcat, may have been better. They had more horsepower, 2,100, versus the Mustang’s 1,695.
I saw a Bearcat do an aerobatics demonstration once. It seemed comparable to anything a Mustang could do.
And every American, BY LAW, should see, and hear, a Mustang fly aerobatics.
I will never forget it. That’s goin’ to my grave!
The Mustang has beauty and grace the Bearcat lacks.
Not only is it a hotrod, it’s a beautiful airplane.
But it has limitations.
It’s a taildragger, and with it’s long nose it has to be taxied side-to-side to see where you’re going.
Plus the machine-guns, in the wings, are aimed a little inside at a convergence zone.
Not like a P-38, where they’re in the nose, aimed straight ahead.
You have to get your target into the convergence zone, lest you waste bullets.

Photo by Philip Makanna©.

A P-38.

It makes you wonder if the P-38 was a better fighter-plane, on tricycle gear with its guns aimed straight ahead.
It also makes you wonder if the P-38 would have been superior with the Packard-Merlin V12 as used in the Mustang.
All the P-38 had were Allisons, although it did quite well.
And the engines in a P-38 were counter-rotating, which offset engine torque.
With its single engine a P-51 would have to be trimmed to offset torque-pull.
Never mind!
The P-51 was phenomenally attractive.
Many are still flying (150), only a few P-38s (around seven).
Some P-51s are raced.
More horsepower can be extracted from the Merlin V12.
Enough horsepower to allow a five-bladed propeller, or even twin propellers.
Yet the airframe might be a half-century old.
Compared to a P-51, a P-40 is an old turkey.
But the P-40 came off better photographed close-on.
It’s almost like you have to see the complete P-51, especially its empennage and bubble canopy.
(The empennage is the tail-surfaces.)
As a child my first flyable model-airplane, string-tethered for circular flight, was modeled after the P-51.
But it was just a solid plastic casting, but redesigned for light weight and maximum wing-surface.
Its proportions were much longer than the P-51, but the wings and empennage were P-51 — although the wings were bigger.
It had a tiny .049 cubic-centimeters (I think centimeters; althought it could be cubic-inches) Cox engine that ran on model-airplane fuel slightly laced with nitromethane.

A-bone. (“A-bone” is a derivation of “T-bone;” a Model-T Ford. The car is a Model-A.)

—The December 2011 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a 1931 five-window Model-A Ford coupe.
Five-window meaning it has five window-lights instead of just three.
That is, a window behind the door-post.
Three-windows don’t have that, and to my mind look better.
If I saw this car in-the-flesh I’d probably be impressed.
After all, I saw a Model-A five-window hotrod in gray primer at a show and was impressed.
It had a souped-up overhead-valve Cadillac V8 engine, and was driven in. Open exhausts, it sounded great.
But this car stops me short.
It’s yellow, a preferred color, but not the color of the Milner coupe from American Graffiti.

The Milner coupe from American Graffiti.

The calendar-car is also a Model-A. The Milner coupe is a ’32 Ford, slightly better looking.
And the top of the calendar-car looks too chopped; the Milner car is just right.
I also have a problem with the flames. They look too orderly, and they’re not needed.
No flames on the Milner car.
But the calendar-car has spun-aluminum Moon hubcaps on the wheels, very much the rage in the early ‘60s when I was in high-school and college.
(I think Moon was the manufacturer,)
Those things are a prize. Where does anyone find such a thing nowadays?
They’re much better-looking than gigantic modern chrome spider alloys with rubber-band tires. Those things on a hotrod look terrible.
The wheels distract from the car.
They especially look terrible on a ‘50s customized car.
At least this thing has a proper hot-rodded V8 engine, a SmallBlock Chevy with triple two-barrels.
A friend of mine, Art Dana, since deceased, tried to put triple two-barrels on a hot-rodded ’56 Pontiac V8, but failed.
It would backfire through the carbs. He had to install a single four-barrel.
The radiator-grill also looks slightly tilted forward at the top.
But that may be the car’s rake; the fact that the rear is at stock height, and the front lowered.
At least the grill is ’32 Ford; much better looking than the Model-A grill.
The shifter-knob in this thing is a miniature skull.
In Art’s car it was a beer-can.
All period pieces, as are those spun-aluminum Moon hubcaps.

There’s an Alco in the lashup. (Photographer unknown.) (“Alco” is American Locomotive Company of Schenectady, NY. For years, American Locomotive Company was a primary manufacturer of railroad steam locomotives. [It was originally a merger of many steam locomotive manufacturers.] —With the changeover by railroads to diesel-locomotives, American Locomotive Company brought out a line of diesel-electric railroad locomotives much like the railroads were switching to, and changed its name to “Alco.” Alco tanked a while ago; they never competed as well as EMD.)

—The December 2011 entry of my All-Pennsy color calendar is a Pennsylvania Railroad freight passing Lincoln Park near Detroit, along Pennsy’s line to Detroit.
It was December of 1964, my junior year in college.
The Pennsylvania Railroad still existed, though foundering.
It hadn’t been folded into Penn-Central yet.
That was 1968, a merger with arch-rival New York Central. The two railroads had many competing lines in Ohio and Indiana.
Penn-Central was of course doomed.
It went bankrupt because of the incompatibility of computer systems, and intransigence of Pennsy management in Philadelphia, plus forced inclusion of New York, New Haven & Hartford (NYNH&H; “New Haven”) by government fiat.
The Pennsylvania Railroad might have done better if it could have merged with Norfolk & Western, but that was not allowed.
Similarly New York Central might have done better with Chesapeake & Ohio, a proposed merger that also was not allowed.
What we have now, by default, is the two mergers proposed long ago: Norfolk Southern, a merger of Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway, operates the old Pennsy lines.
And CSX (railroad), which includes Chesapeake & Ohio, operates the old New York Central lines.
Although Conrail was a step along the way, a government-sponsored merger of all the northeast bankrupt railroads — there were many, including Penn-Central. Conrail eventually went private, and was broken up and sold to Norfolk Southern and CSX.
Norfolk Southern also has a presence in New York, the old Erie mainline across the southern part of the state.
Likewise CSX has a presence in Pennsylvania, the old Baltimore & Ohio line from Pittsburgh.
Northeast rail competition maintained, supposedly.
The train is led by two EMD GP-35s.
“EMD” is Electro-motive Division of General Motors, GM’s manufacturer of diesel railroad-locomotives. Most railroads used EMD when they dieselized. They were more reliable.
Pennsy had 119 GP-35s. 116 survived into Conrail, and the last was retired in 1994.
Many railroads traded their first-generation diesel-locomotives for GP-35s, reusing trucks and traction-motors from their first generation locomotives. Which means some GP-35s had Alco trucks.
The third unit is Alco, probably one of their Century series, probably as good as EMD, but by then GE had entered the locomotive market with its Universal (U-boat) series, and also Alcos had a reputation for being unreliable.
Earlier Alcos were unreliable, and the Century units were a response to GE’s Universal series.
Alcos used turbocharging, exhaust-gases used to spin intake-air superchargers via turbine.
Turbochargers were prone to failure.
Earlier EMDs weren’t turbocharged — they used mechanical supercharging. The reason EMD came to dominate the market was reliability.
This is despite their using more fuel than an Alco.
The Pennsy line to Detroit was a late addition to their system, part of PRR’s Lake Region headquartered in Cleveland.

1968 Camaro RS. (Photo by Ron Kimball©.)

—Ho-hum!
The December 2011 entry of my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar is a 1968 Camaro RS.
“RS” stands for Rally-Sport.
It could be said that the 1968 model-year was the final year of the introductory Camaro, although the 1969 model-year is pretty much the same car — same roof, etc.
The introductory Camaro, introduced in 1966 for the 1967 model-year, was Chevrolet’s response to the phenomenally successful Ford Mustang, introduced in 1964.
Chevrolet has been caught with its pants down.
The Chevy SmallBlock was a phenomenally attractive engine not available in an attractive car.
The only attractive car the SmallBlock was in was the Corvette, a two-seater, expensive, and impractical.
Also a fiberglass body, like riding in a drum.

A 1962 Corvair Monza coupe. (I had a black one, but it was PowerGlide.)

Chevrolet was selling a car to the sporting-crowd that would eventually buy the Mustang, the Corvair Monza.
Great as it was, it wasn’t the SmallBlock, and it was kind of weird.
There were issues about its rear-suspension and motor-location, which was in the rear (mimicking the Volkswagen Beetle).
The Mustang was very much what the sporting-crowd wanted. It was essentially a Ford Falcon, but with its nose lengthened and rear-deck shortened per sportscar appearance.
That is, its top was moved rearward.
The people at Ford, led by Lee Iacocca, saw a market for sporty cars that no one was filling.
All they had to do was reconfigure the Falcon, and VIOLA! Sporty-car.
The Firebird was Pontiac’s version of the Camaro, and a local radio announcer recently called it a sportscar.
I beg to differ.
The Firebird and Mustang and Camaro are Detroit sedans with sporting pretense.
They had the appearance of a sportscar, but were still a Detroit sedan.
They had the long nose and short rear-deck of a sportscar, but still four seats, and large heavy doors.
Although those rear seats were cramped.
Your knees were into the front-seat backs, and your head was in the roof.
A so-called 2+2, rear seating for munchkins.
Camaro didn’t start looking good until the second generation, introduced for the 1970 model-year.
That’s when GM stylists put looks before practicality.

A 1970 Camaro Rally-Sport Z-28.

Photo by Ron Kimball©.

A 1970 Trans-Am Firebird.

The 1970 Camaro is one of the best-looking cars ever, although it’s too big.
The 1970 Firebird looks even better, since unlike the Camaro it’s not depending on Ferrari styling-licks.
By 1970, Rally-Sport became a special Endura® front-end. (The 1970 Camaro pictured is a Rally-Sport.)
The radiator-scoop was not crossed by the bumper, which was actually split into two sections.
The entire front-end was a special Endura fabrication, individual to only Rally-Sports. —Pontiac’s Firebird had it too.
The introductory Camaros aren’t bad, just not as good-looking as the second generation.
At least they had the fabulous SmallBlock V8, available with four-speed floor-shift, and didn’t cost a fortune like a Corvette, or were as impractical.
I rode in a ’63 Corvette once. There was no trunklid. You shoved luggage between the seats into the trunk-cavity.
The calendar calls an “RS” a musclecar.
I doubt it.
It’s probably the SmallBlock with four-speed. Those ports on the hood are just fake trim. The place to gather air for induction was the base of the windshield; it was high-pressure. —You saw that in later Camaros, especially for racing.
But a first-generation Rally-Sport is not a gigantic 450+ cubic-inch hot-rodded motor that shakes the hood at idle.
It won’t cream everything in a straight line, nor burn up the rear tires.
Although it probably could. Those tires are lightly loaded, and the SmallBlock in a Rally-Sport would be strong.
To be a musclecar it has to have the BigBlock, and I don’t know that 1968 Rally-Sports were available with the BigBlock.
Rally-Sport was apparently a long-running Camaro option, Z-25.
It replaced the “SS” option for Camaros.
Early “RS” Camaros have disappearing headlights, which this calendar-car has.

Two Pennsy M-1s (4-8-2) at Rockville Bridge. (Photo by Don Ball©.)

—Into the doldrums with Don Ball.
The December 2011 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a typical photograph by Don Ball.

Photo by Don Wood©.

Photo by Jim Shaughnessy©.

Photo by Phil Hastings©.

Photo by Don Wood©.

Not photogenically dramatic, but full of action.
We have two Pennsy 4-8-2 M1 Mountains, one storming off Rockville Bridge, and the other waiting for it to clear.
Ball was photographing steam-locomotives all over the northeast.
Compare Phil Hastings, Jim Shaughnessy, or Don Wood, who the Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar began with.
Ball managed to snag a lot of steam action, but his many pictures are flat.
Some of Wood’s photographs are the greatest Pennsy steam-locomotive action ever recorded, e.g. the Mt. Carmel ore-train in snow, and K4 Pacific (4-6-2) #612 on a railfan trip.
Shaughnessy is comparable, a Pennsy Hippo (2-10-0) on the Elmira branch.
I’ve seen hundreds of Ball photographs. He was all over snagging steam-locomotive action.
But none are memorable.
Wood’s Mt. Carmel ore-train I’ll never forget.

And now for the addendums; the fact a few of my calendars have additional pictures.

At the Mighty Curve. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—My own calendar has a cover picture, a rerun, but one of the best I’ve ever snagged.
I’ve taken hundreds of pictures at Horseshoe Curve, but only this one seems to have worked, and the train is downhill.
Horseshoe Curve is not very photogenic; you’re inside the Curve.
And no camera can ever do the place justice. A camera flattens it out. You get no idea it’s draped on mountainsides.
Yet this photograph looks pretty good.
It’s pretty much empty of tourists, and GP-9 #7048 is in it.
It’s an old picture, 2005, so 7048, though rusting, still has its red keystone.
7048 has since been repainted, and no longer has its red keystone.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Nope!

So I tried again, 7048 at left, with an approaching westbound Amtrak.
Nope; didn’t work.
The greenery has grown up along the track, and partly obscures the train.
And of course #7048 no longer has its red keystone.
I didn’t have my position exactly right, nor my focal-length, so probably I’ll try again.
But the greenery grows ever higher each year.
In steam days it was kept down by the ash.
This is what photography seems to be for me, a crap-shoot. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t.

The So-Cal lakester.

—My Oxman Hotrod Calendar has one of the most famous racecars ever, the So-Cal belly-tank lakester.
The car was built in 1948 from a surplus P-38 drop-tank (auxiliary fuel).

Photo by BobbaLew.

A Ford Flat-head V8 (note flat cylinder-head casting on left cylinder-bank. Both head-castings are finned cast-aluminum Offenhouser [“off-in-HOUZE-err”] high compression hotrod parts — stock flat-head cylinder castings are cast-iron and not finned).

It had a highly-modified Ford Flat-Head V8 in it, unsupercharged.
It was raced quite a bit in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s in southern California dry-lakes speed-trials.
But its greatest achievement came in 1951 at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, 195.77 mph two-way average, and 198.34 one-way.
That is just incredible for an unsupercharged Flat-Head Ford V8.
So the guys at So-Cal Speedshop looked at a P-38 drop-tank and said “yeah, we could get a Flatty in there, and a driver too.”
So began modification of the drop-tank into a car.
This racer is obviously not streetable.
Like dragsters, there’s no radiator.
Run the motor long enough to make the speed-trial, then tow it back to the pits motor off.
It looks like coolant-water was circulated into a holding-tank, but there’s no radiator.
I also doubt there’s any suspension to speak of. Maybe a little up front, but the rear looks hardtail.

I hafta do at least this one.

It’s also extraordinary this car still exists. Usually racers get scrapped. Often parts get recycled into newer racers.
What we have here is a prize. I wish I could run all the photos the calendar ran.

Train 955 westbound on Track three, the Executive Business-train. (Photo by Sam Wheland.)

―My Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar has the Norfolk Southern Executive Business-train.
The picture goes with a 2-year planner I never use.
It’s at a location I know well, Cassandra (“kuh-SANNE-druh;” as in the name “Anne”) Railfan Overlook. I’ve been there many times.
One of my best photographs is at Cassandra Railfan Overlook.
The original Pennsy main used to go through Cassandra.
But there were a lotta tight curves.
So in 1898 Pennsy built a bypass that circumvented Cassandra, taking out curvature.
But it involved a deep rock cut.
State Highway 53 used to go through Cassandra too; now it doesn’t.
The highway had to cross the new bypass to access Cassandra, so the rock-cut was bridged.
Apparently that bridge lasted until Route 53 was realigned to bypass Cassandra.
The highway bridge was removed, but the abutments remained.
It was decided to use the old abutments for a pedestrian bridge, so residents of Cassandra didn’t have to cross the tracks at grade to work east of the railroad.
Railfans began congregating on the pedestrian bridge.
A resident of Cassandra noticed, so put in benches and started mowing lawn.
That resident eventually became Cassandra’s mayor.
And so was created Cassandra Railfan Overlook, one of the best places I’ve ever been to watch trains.
What makes it great is the shade. The benches are under trees. In most other locations you’re under direct sunlight.
And the parade of trains is interesting and constant.
You’re on the West Slope of the Allegheny mountains, uphill averaging about one percent.
Locomotives are hammering. (It goes as high as 1.53 percent at the summit.)
A heavy train might have one helper-set on the front, and an additional helper-set on the rear, if not two sets. —That’s four or six additional locomotives; everything Run Eight. (Wide open!)
You’re also between two defect-detectors, 253.1 toward Lilly, and 258.9 in Portage.
So you can tell with a railroad radio-scanner if something is coming. “Norfolk Southern milepost 253.1, Track Three, no defects.” —That’s an approaching westbound.
One afternoon we couldn’t leave for over two hours. The detectors kept calling out trains; at least eight or ten.
The Executive Business-Train is office-cars the railroad uses to entertain shipper head-honchos.
The office-cars are painted Tuscan Red (“TUSS-kin;” not Tucson, Ariz.).
Tuscan Red was the passenger color both Pennsy and Norfolk & Western used.
(Norfolk Southern is a 30-year-old merger of Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway. NS took over the old Pennsy lines when Conrail was broken up and sold in 1999.)
Norfolk Southern restored four classic diesel-locomotives to pull its Executive Business-Train; EMD F-units.
They are known as the “Tuxedos” because of their paint-scheme.
The Executive Business-Train is stored in Altoona when not in use.

Paperless

2011-12-01T05:53:00.001-08:00

Yesterday afternoon (Wednesday, November 30, 2011), yrs trly managed to change one utility to so-called “paperless” billing, National Grid, our electricity supplier.
Makes sense. I’ve wanted to do it a long time, and hope to eventually do it for all our utilities.
E-mail the bills, instead of snail-mail.
But I ain’t havin’ ‘em do automated bill-pay.
Not the payees.
Authorize that, and the payee can go bonkers.
I’ve seen it happen.
A girl I worked with authorized a creditor to automatically charge her account every month to pay off her college loan.
The system went bonkers.
Multiple charges per month overdrew her account, and sent her bank into penalty mode.
Try to straighten that out, with people in far-away India, of course.
“We understand your concern.”
I pay my bills online, but only I institute the charges, not the payee.
And the bank better not screw up, or there’ll be hell to pay.
And they’re not in India.
The way it will work is National Grid e-mails me their monthly bill, and I authorize the bank to pay ‘em.
Just like I do now, except the current bills come snail-mail.

Queen Mary

2011-11-30T08:58:00.001-08:00

The Queen Mary somewhere in South Dakota. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

The other morning (Monday, November 28, 2011) I dreamed about one of my most memorable and all-time favorite vehicles, our 1979 Ford E-250 van, nicknamed the “Queen Mary.”
Normally I’m a small-car person, but fellow bus-drivers I worked with at Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, namely Levi Anderson and W.D. Johnson, suggested I buy a van.
It was mainly W.D., who drove me around in his trashy Ford van. But both he and Levi had vans.
I looked at everything, Chevrolet, Ford, Dodge. But as W.D. told me, “Ford makes the best van.”
I remember looking at a tired Chevrolet with over 150,000 miles. It was on engine number two, and transmission number three.
PASS!
I looked at a black Dodge custom-van. The guy had just purchased a new black Ford van.
I also looked at a gray Ford van done up as a love-nest.
“If this van’s rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’.”
No windows, and the back was done in three-inch black shag carpet with spider-lights on the ceiling.
A policeman pulled me over, and I had him see if it was stolen.
It wasn’t.
The motor, a five-liter Ford V8, had tubing headers, and they assaulted your ears.
I also looked at a six-cylinder unfinished window-van, and it was raining. Yet the windows were open.
Again, pass!
The year was 1985 or ’86, and our ’76 Volkswagen Dasher stationwagon, perhaps the worst car we ever owned, was falling apart.
It needed to be replaced. Yet I wasn’t seeing an attractive van.
They were too worn or customized. —I had no use for the motorized boudoirs.
On my way to see another van far east of Rochester — we were still living in Rochester at that time — I noticed the Queen Mary in a Chevrolet dealer’s used-car lot, also far east of Rochester.
I turned around and went back to look.
A custom-van, but not much.
Just cut-in side-windows and carpet, not unfinished or a boudoir.
I road-tested it, and had a dead battery.
The dealer had to come out and rescue me, and thereafter installed a new battery.
I made an offer, probably higher than I could have.
It looked like a five-liter SmallBlock, but it was the gigantic 460 cubic-inch BigBlock.
Pistons the size of paint cans.
10 miles-per-gallon.
Every 300 miles, 30 gallons.
No wonder it had been traded!
The salesperson had to drive it all the way to our house in Rochester to deliver it, about 20 miles.
Then I had to cart him back to his dealership.
Not long after I got it, I had a local shop install a trailer-hitch.
I decided to take it to my baby sister in Lynchburg, VA.
(She’s 17 years younger than me; I’m the oldest)
I would trailer the motorcycles of my brothers and I.
But one brother bailed. —The one from Boston, but at that time living in Fulton, NY as a job-site project manager. (He was constructing a nuclear power-plant.)
I’d use his trailer, but only trailer the motorcycles of myself and my other brother.
The van ran hot going to Lynchburg.
It never blew, but it ran hot.
It was beastly hot outside, and I had everything going full-blast to offset running hot.
100 degrees outside but with the heat on (all windows open).
Inside the van was an oven, and we had our dog with us.
We made it, but I decided the cooling-system needed complete overhaul.
Back home, about a half-year later, I drained the antifreeze and removed the giant radiator.
The radiator was big enough to heat an airport hanger.
I took the radiator to BJR in Rochester to be boiled out, but they suggested it needed to be recored.
The core was three rows thick, but the top and bottom tanks could do four, so I said do four.
That would require more antifreeze, but it would never overheat.
The bottom tank also had a transmission cooler in it, so I had to fabricate new tubing-lines to that.
I also had to custom-make the lines, to avoid a spoiler I was gonna install.
(Like a spoiler was gonna make something as big as a barn use less gas.)
During this project I got to appreciate what Ford had done.
The front-wheels were on elegant swingarm forgings that would make Old Henry proud. —They looked like something from a Model T.
I realized that gigantic engine was still good for the Pacific Ocean, even though the van was over seven years old.
The automatic transmission was a C6, a monster.
And the rear-axle was Dana.
“250” was three-quarter ton capacity.
The van had two fuel-tanks; 20 gallons each. (You could switch between either.)
40 gallons total capacity. If that thing ever torched, it would look like Armageddon.
I also replaced all the coolant hoses, all but one tiny one I didn’t see, the one that blew a few years later, which we fixed with duct-tape.
I began to consider a cross-county vacation trip, and we’d camp out in the van.
But for that it would need new tires and shock-absorbers. It also could use new wheels.
I contacted Frey the Wheelman in Rochester, and purchased four new wheels, 17.5 inch diameter, six stud.
I also purchased four new Michelin snow-tires.
I ordered Koni shock-absorbers, for self-installation. —I had installed Konis on my Vega, and they were wonderful. (They saved the car!)
So began our trip; trip number-two heading west.
Maybe not the Pacific this time, but at least the Rockies.
And this time no scenic routes; just get on the interstates and aim west.
We had two weeks. Our intent was to camp out every night, but motel the weekend.
But that didn’t happen. The van was so comfortable, we camped every night. We had a commode, and sleeping-bags on an air-mattress on the floor.
The only problem was ventilation.
It was near 100 degrees at the Missouri River, and we were in direct sunlight until dusk.
I had zippered screens over the windows, but the side-windows only opened an inch at the bottom.
Yet what an adventure this was.
110 degrees with the air-conditioning on, uphill to Mt. Rushmore, and it didn’t overheat.
And we didn’t visit Wall Drug.
We drove as far west as Montana, but then turned back to do Yellowstone National Park.
Bubbling stinkpots and Old Faithful. Weird things were going on in Yellowstone.
After Yellowstone we camped in a campground in the lee of the Grand Tetons.
It went down to 38 degrees, in July.
And next morning there they were. Every American, BY LAW, should see the Grand Tetons at dawn.
And the Queen Mary was gobbling it up, no problem.
It would have made the Pacific.
We pulled into a lonely gas-station out in Wyoming, and I heard a cheer out back.
“Slap another steak on the grill, Martha. 40 gallons!”
Down into Denver, and then west on Interstate 70.
Up and up we went, clear up to the Eisenhower tunnels, 11,158 feet above sea-level.
Then it was back down to Leadville; a continuous downhill rollercoaster.
In southwest Colorado we drove south into Ouray, which is inside a three-sided box canyon.
The only exit south is up the south end of the box, an Alpine highway.
Switchbacks and hairpin turns, just like the Alps.
We were on the “million-dollar highway,” its pavement supposedly flecked with gold and silver.
Finally a last look at Ouray, far below.
We also drove up the Pikes Peak Highway, and here we go again.
Every American, BY LAW, should be required to drive the Pikes Peak Highway, although I hear it’s now pavement. When we drove it, it was still gravel.
No mistakes. No guardrail. Thousand-foot dropoffs awaited.
And when you get to the top you sing “America the Beautiful” like we did.
After all, that’s where those words were written, as a poem by Katharine Lee Bates in 1895.
“Purple mountain majesties” to the west, and “amber waves of grain” to the east.
8.5 miles-per-gallon, although most of it was in second gear.
Back home the E-250 began deteriorating, the rust-worm. Salty slush was getting inside.
It got so it wouldn’t crank that giant motor when warmed up.
I had to let it cool so it wouldn’t have so much compression.
When I finally parked it, its C6 was leaking transmission fluid like a sieve.
I also put it back on the tires it came on, so I could sell the Michelin snows.
We nicknamed it the Queen Mary because it was so big.
Parking it at Wegmans was like docking a ship. It took two moves. First aim, back up, and then in. —Its wheelbase was 138 inches.
I finally had some charity tow it away, and I bet its 460 is powering a dumptruck or something.

• 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 its environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability.
• “Old Henry” is Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, very much a pragmatist.
• “C6” equals a heavy-duty truck version of the Ford Cruise O Matic automatic transmission.
• “Wegmans” is a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester we often buy groceries at. They have a store in nearby Canandaigua, where I’d take the van. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where we 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. We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.)

Facebook unfriend

2011-11-29T19:08:00.001-08:00

Last night (Monday, November 28, 2011) yrs trly successfully reduced his Facebook “friends” list from about 47 down to 35.
35 is not 1,035.
Facebook is something I put up with, a little.
I keep Facebook historied on my browser, so I don’t have to log into it, but I hardly ever look at it.
It’s a royal pain to navigate, and has locked this computer.
The fact I even have a Facebook is due to a fast-one on their part.
An old friend sent me a Facebook “friend” invite, so I responded favorably.
“To respond favorably to a Facebook ‘friend’ invite, you must have a Facebook of your own.”
Okay, so be it, little knowing what I was getting into.
I therefore inadvertently set up a Facebook of my own, wide open to targeted marketing.
My friend has since dumped her Facebook, tired of the vapid comments and targeted marketing.
I’ve been tempted to dump my own, but I let it keep going because so many of my actual friends use Facebook.
But I pay little heed to it — I hardly ever fire up my news-feed.
Facebook has a word-limit.
This makes utterly no sense when you can upload videos with 89 bazilyun bits; way more than a word-post.
I never can say much to anyone.
Just “burp” and “fart” and “belch.”
Obviously critical-thinking is uncrunchable; too many words.
It seems critical-thinking has disappeared for the Facebook crowd, replaced by simple vapidities, like “congrats” and “you go girl.”
If I wrote a cogent dissertation of multiple phrases (I can), it wouldn’t get read by Facebookers.
Multiple words equals boring.
What they want is a few simple words like “congrats” and “you go girl.”
So I had only 47 “friends” in my Facebook friends list, proving I’m a pathetic loser, refused social interchange — must be my politics or something, like I’m a Democrat (Gasp!).
And out of those 47 there were only a couple I actually heard from.
Facebook was always sending me “friend” invites, none of which I responded to.
Why bother? “Friend” someone on Facebook, and never hear from them again.
Like the mysterious Al Repko (“rep-ko”), a classmate in college, who apparently got a Facebook a while ago, friended me, and I haven’t heard from him since.
Or Russell Donovan, a high-school classmate, who asked if I was who he thought I was, I responded favorably, and into the ether he disappeared.
That was almost two years ago, and I haven’t heard from him since.
I sent him a Facebook message, and no answer.
A guy I graduated college with, an actual friend, doesn’t have a Facebook, and refuses to get one.
“Just a few friends is enough,” he tells me. “I don’t need 89 bazilyun Facebook ‘friends.’”
So how does anyone “unfriend” someone, people I never hear from?
“I’ve done it before, but that was years ago.”
I fired up my Facebook tab, and studied the interface.
As usual, totally incomprehensible, accompanied by the usual weirdness of targeted marketing, my age, the fact I’m a railfan, and I like Bach and cross-country skiing.
“Home refinance,” it blared; and “Obama help for the elderly.”
At age 67 I don’t yet consider myself elderly.
Plus Amtrak and model railroading — I don’t even like model railroading.
And the usual lithesome lassies trumpeting people-searches: “I’ve been looking for you!”
I don’t touch that targeted marketing with a ten-foot pole.
Once they even had one my own pictures, stolen from this blog (or PhotoBucket, where I store ‘em).
Plus it wasn’t actually my own photograph. It was a screenshot of someone else’s photograph I’d used as illustration.
Yet since I floated it, it was my photograph.
Weird!
Nothing; I didn’t see an “unfriend” option.
“Well, I guess I gotta Google,” I said.
“Facebook unfriend,” I entered.
A hit; actually quite a few.
How many times have I used Google to figure out how to do something?
“Bring up your friend’s profile-page, click “friends,” and you get an option-menu.
Find ‘unfriend’ and click that.”
This is not how I actually did it.
If I fired up my own friend-list, I’d get the same option menu for each friend.
I didn’t have to bring up their profile-page to “unfriend” them.
So zap! 47 down to 35. At least 35 is better than my aunt in south Jersey, who has only one “friend,” my brother who set her up.
Out of that 35 I have only one “friend” who responds consistently, Paul Long of Danville, VA.
Paul and I used to work at the Messenger newspaper in Canandaigua, although I never knew him at that time.
(I retired from the Messenger over five years ago. It was the best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years. A class act.
“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where we 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.)
Paul was sports-editor, and I was sort of an editorial-assistant.
I send Paul a lot, probably more than I would any one else, because I can count on him to read it.
And he usually responds immediately; to everything.
So out of 35 remaining Facebook “friends,” a have only one actual “friend,” or so it seems.

Rail groupings

2011-11-26T11:32:00.000-08:00

The Winter 2011 issue of my Classic Trains magazine (apparently there are only four issues per year; one per season) has an article about rail-groupings proposed in the 1920s.
These groupings were government proposed, a result of the success of the U.S. Railroad Administration (USRA) during the First World War.
Rail-transit became so bollixed during the war, the USRA was set up to rationalize things.
Freight would plug rail destinations, and shippers couldn’t get cars.
The USRA instituted freight routings across railroads that otherwise competed.
Other connections might be avoided.
They even instituted steam-locomotive designs (USRA locomotives), which many railroads purchased.
There were apparently three plans: -a) the preliminary Ripley plan (whose author was William Z. Ripley); -b) The Interstate Commerce Commission’s plan; and then the so-called -c) “final” plan.
Ripley’s plan and the Interstate Commerce Commission plan were very similar.
What interests me is how these groupings addressed the fact the Nickel Plate (New York, Chicago & St. Louis) never attained New York City.
“Nickel Plate” comes from the fact a New York Central executive was so distressed by the competitiveness of New York, Chicago & St. Louis he said it was nickel-plated.
And so New York, Chicago & St. Louis renamed itself Nickel Plate.
But New York, Chicago & St. Louis never crossed New York State to attain New York City.
It only attained Buffalo.
I’ve ridden the old Nickel Plate line west of Buffalo through Erie, PA.
Nickel Plate always seemed rudimentary compared to New York Central’s old Michigan Central line (I think it’s Michigan Central, but it could be Michigan Southern).
Up-and-down, and even street-running through Erie, PA.

Photo by BobbaLew.

10 mph! (This is a Norfolk Southern railfan excursion with Norfolk & Western J #611 [4-8-4], street-running through Erie, PA, on the old Nickel Plate. At that time (late ‘80s), 611 was the only J operating. Norfolk Southern is a 30-year-old merger of Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway. Nickel Plate was earlier merged by Norfolk & Western.)

That is, Nickel Plate’s mainline though Erie was on 18th Street. How did one boom-and-zoom that?
You always had to slow for Erie, maybe 10 mph.
And only recently did street-running end through Erie when the old Nickel Plate was realigned into the old Central line to cross Erie.
That would have never happened years ago. Nickel Plate and Central were always at war.
And most of Nickel Plate is only single track. Central was at most four — now it’s two.
Yet Nickel Plate ran expedited freight at 50-60 mph, while Central plodded.
Central was the heavyweight carrier, and Nickel Plate was the thorn in their side.
Nickel Plate’s railroad could handle the speed, but it wasn’t easy.
Instead of easy lakeside gradients New York, Chicago & St. Louis was inland, and climbed the hills instead of just cutting through them.
Lake Erie was fed by numerous streams that threaded deep glens.
Both railroads had to jump them to follow the lake, although Central, being lakeside, might have easier approaches.
So how did the ‘20s plans address the fact Nickel Plate never attained New York City — it didn’t even come close. It had to depend on connections to forward freight to New York City.
In the late 1800s the West Shore was built to compete with New York Central railroad in New York State.
It was financed mainly by Pennsylvania Railroad, arch competitor of Central.
It was called “West Shore” because it went up the west shore of the Hudson River.
West Shore never attained New York City proper, as did New York Central, although Central’s old line into New York City is now Metro-North Commuter Railroad, a government entity, which mainly transports commuters into-and-out-of the city.
West Shore attained northern New Jersey across the Hudson from New York City, as most freight railroads now do.
There is no actual freight-railroad service into New York City from the west. Freight gets trucked into the city from north Jersey. (It used to be ferried.)
Like Nickel Plate, West Shore was rudimentary compared to New York Central.
But then Central began financing the South Pennsylvania Railroad in PA to counter the Pennsylvania railroad.
The South Pennsylvania was never built, but much of it was graded, and numerous tunnels dug.
The tunnels were later incorporated into the Pennsylvania Turnpike, although they had to be re-dug for highway use.
One wonders if South Pennsylvania would have been electrified with all those tunnels.
A steam-locomotive couldn’t work steam in a long tunnel. It would asphyxiate the locomotive, and likely its crew. —Unless the tunnel was heavily ventilated; and a steam-locomotive would need a lot of ventilation.
The competition got so out-of-hand, financier J.P. Morgan got all the warring parties together on his yacht on Long Island Sound to work out a deal.
New York Central would stop financing the South Pennsylvania Railroad, for which they got the West Shore.
In other words, West Shore became no longer a competitor. It became part of New York Central, and much of it was abandoned.
One can still find remnants of the old West Shore across New York State from the Albany area to Buffalo.
Only two segments remain: -a) the old West Shore line south of Rochester, NY, now used as a bypass (West Shore didn’t go through Rochester), and -b) the line along the west shore of the Hudson River to the New York City area in north Jersey.
That line is now CSX (railroad). Freight on CSX uses the old New York Central main across New York State, but then transfers onto the old West Shore to get into the New York City area in north Jersey.
I’ve always felt Central’s getting the West Shore was a mistake; that it could have been a way for Nickel Plate to extend itself to New York City.
And like the original New York, Chicago & St. Louis, much of it was within sight of Central.
So like Central it was water-level; easy to operate.
If Nickel Plate was running West Shore, it would have been the same spoiler New York, Chicago & St. Louis was.
And it would have been accessing a namesake city.
But Central’s getting the West Shore was before the turn-of-the-century.
The proposed plans were 1920s. How did they connect Nickel Plate with its namesake destination?
The Ripley plan proposed allying Nickel Plate with Delaware, Lackawanna & Western (DL&W), the ICC plan allied it with Lehigh Valley (LV; or “Valley”).
Both only went as far west as Buffalo, but both were mainly coal-roads, built mainly to access the northeast Pennsylvania anthracite coal-fields.
Anthracite coal is very hard and rocky, and doesn’t burn as well as soft coal.
Yet it burns much cleaner. There’s hardly any soot. “Phoebe Snow” was DL&W’s selling-point, a fictional matron in a lily-white dress that never got soot on it when she rode DL&W trains, which were burning anthracite.
I’ve ridden behind soft-coal burning steam locomotives. You had to wear swim-goggles to keep the cinders out of your eyes.
But the firebox grate of an anthracite-burning steam-locomotive had to be much wider to generate the heat of a soft-coal burning steam-locomotive.
The so-called “Wooten” firebox (“WOOO-tin”), much wider than a soft-coal burning firebox.
Allying Nickel Plate with Lehigh Valley or Delaware, Lackawanna & Western just ratified what was already happening anyway, that Nickel Plate could connect to Valley or DL&W at Buffalo to access the New York City area.
Both LV and DL&W had mountain grades to contend with; West Shore didn’t.
The Buffalo extensions of both railroads were afterthoughts, an attempt to attract bridge-traffic like Nickel Plate.
Another bridge alternative was Erie, although unlike Valley and DL&W it ran all the way to Chicago. (Erie also had some stiff grades.)
Erie was not aimed at the anthracite coal-fields in northeast PA, although it built a branch down into the area.
Anthracite coal to New York City was an incredible traffic-generator.
People used to heat with it, since it burned clean.
Erie was an attempt to build railroad across southern New York, so unlike Central it encountered hills.
Erie’s first destination was Dunkirk on Lake Erie, west of Buffalo.
Erie’s main to Dunkirk became a branch as Buffalo became the major lake port on Lake Erie. (It was where the Erie canal ended.)
Buffalo also became a railroad interchange point; like Chicago.
Erie merged a Buffalo-line that crosses Letchworth Gorge on a massive trestle.
That trestle was wood at first, but that burned.
It was replaced with an iron trestle, and now it’s steel. (I think there have been three trestles. —We’ll soon have a fourth, but it will be a bridge.)
The Erie line went from Buffalo east to the Erie main at Hornell.
Erie merged with Delaware, Lackawanna & Western in 1960, becoming Erie-Lackawanna (EL).
Their lines were often in sight of each other; a lot of DL&W in New York was pulled up.
Erie-Lackawanna at Buffalo became a connection for freight from Nickel Plate, although by then Nickel Plate was Norfolk & Western.
In fact, EL became sort of affiliated with Norfolk & Western through subsidiary Dereco.
Massive Bison Yard was built near Buffalo; but now it’s all but abandoned.
About all that remains are the through tracks to the old Erie line to Hornell.
The old Erie line in New York is now Norfolk Southern, so NS is through from Chicago to the New York City area through New York State. —That is, Buffalo to Hornell. Erie’s main from Hornell west through southwestern NY is a shortline.
Essentially the old Nickel Plate has finally connected to its destination city.
Continuous railroad from Chicago to New York through New York State. Competition for the old New York Central, now CSX.
And the West Shore just disappears.
A railfan friend doesn’t bemoan the fact Nickel Plate didn’t merge West Shore. (And he was president of the Nickel Plate Historical Society.)
“What happened is what happened.”
The completion of Nickel Plate occurred without government planning.

Gobbledegook

2011-11-24T15:14:00.001-08:00

“Attention: The settlement will provide a cash payment if you are the original owner of certain Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro computer models (“Subject Computer”) or separately purchased an Apple 60W or 85W MagSafe MPM-1 (“T”) Power Adapter (“Adapter”), your Adapter shows signs of Strain Relief Damage, and you purchased an Adapter as a replacement (“Replacement Adapter”) within three years of purchasing the Subject Computer or Adapter.
You may also be able to obtain a Replacement Adapter at no charge from Apple if your Adapter shows signs of Strain Relief Damage in the future.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California authorized this Notice.

To learn more about the settlement (including whether your computer is covered by the settlement), make a claim or exclude yourself from the settlement, call 1-888-332-0277 or go to www.AdapterSettlement.com.

The Settlement: The settlement will provide a cash payment if you are the original owner (by purchase or gift) of certain Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro computers (“Subject Computer”) or separately purchased an Apple 60W or 85W MagSafe MPM-1 (“T”) Power Adapter (“Adapter”), the Adapter showed signs of Strain Relief Damage, and you purchased a Replacement Adapter at your own expense within the first three years following the initial purchase of the Subject Computer or Adapter.
If the Court approves the settlement, you may be entitled to a cash payment in the following amounts depending on whether you purchased your Replacement Adapter during the first, second or third year following the initial retail purchase of the Subject Computer or Adapter: (a) first year, the actual amount you paid (excluding taxes and shipping/handling fees) up to a maximum of $79; (b) second year $50; (c) third year $35. There is a limit of three refunds per Subject Computer.
You may also be able to obtain a Replacement Adapter at no charge from Apple if your Adapter shows signs of Strain Relief Damage now or in the future.

Your Rights: If you qualify, you may send in a Claim Form to ask for payment, or you can exclude yourself from the settlement or object to the settlement.
To claim a cash payment, you must mail the Claim Form postmarked on or before March 21, 2012.
To claim a Replacement Adapter, you must contact Apple within three years from the date you purchased a Subject Computer or standalone Adapter, or May 21, 2012, whichever is later. If you don‘t want a payment and you don’t want to be legally bound by the settlement, your opt-out request must be postmarked by January 6, 2012. If you stay in the Class, any objection you have to the settlement must be received by January 6, 2012.
Call 1-888-332-0277 or go to www.AdapterSettlement.com to get the information you need to make a claim, exclude yourself or object.
The Court will hold a hearing in this case (In re MagSafe Apple Power Adapter Litigation, Case No. C09-01911-JW) on February 27, 2012, at 9:00 a.m. to consider whether to approve (1) the settlement and (2) attorneys’ fees and expenses of up to $3.1 million and a service award to each named plaintiff of $5,000.
You may appear at the hearing, but you don’t have to. To obtain a full Notice and Claim Form, go to www.AdapterSettlement.com or call toll free 1-888-332-0277. For more details, go to www.AdapterSettlement.com or write to Helen Zeides, Esq., Zeides & Haeggquist, LLP, 625 Broadway, Suite 906, San Diego, CA 92101, (619) 342-8000.”

“WHAAAAA....” I said.
I get gobbledegook like this all the time, at least once per month.
“Join our class-action suit; hit the jackpot. You may be entitled to 89 bazilyun dollars (a few bucks).
Hit the big guys. Even the score!”
Just yesterday (Wednesday, November 23, 2011) we received another class-action settlement regarding the air-conditioning compressor for our 2003 Honda CR-V.
Do I or don’t I?
The air-conditioning on the CR-V still works fine, and the car is eight years old.
The air-conditioning hasn’t been touched; it’s as-delivered.
I haven’t yet had the air-conditioning compressor fail, and I haven’t even had the system recharged.
When it does fail I’ll be more interested in replacing the car.
When the AC failed on our old 1993 Chevrolet Astrovan, I didn’t repair the system. The Astrovan was 12 years old, 140,000 miles, and felt sick.
It needed a complete chassis rebuild, among other things.
Repairing the AC would have only fixed that one system, and woulda cost a fortune.
I started looking to replace the Astrovan instead, and did.
I wouldn’t be surprised if our CR-V far exceeded 12 years.
A previous Honda did, and the AC on it was still working when it got smashed up.
In fact, we’d probably still be driving it if it hadn’t got smashed up. —Insurance totaled it for $500; it woulda cost well over $1,000 to repair it.
I was tempted. (I didn’t repair it because I was about to replace it anyway.)
And the AC would probably still be working.
It got smashed up at 160,000 miles, 13 years.
The CR-V replaced it.
“Get this, folks,” the salesman gloated. “The CR-V gets 26 mpg highway.”
“Old car got 29,” I snapped.
I wonder what “Strain Relief Damage” is?
I’m not about to call the 800-number and find out.
I go by a simple rule.
If this laptop works, I don’t fiddle with it.
If it starts smoking I take it to Mac Shack.
There’s a youngish guy there I trust (he set up this laptop), and if I’m entitled to a free power-supply, he’ll tell me.
Mac Shack is not affiliated with Apple, but they service-and-sell MACs.
Beyond that, I’m not the original owner of this MacBook Pro.
It was purchased refurbished from the Apple-store.
Which means I wonder if it was wonky with its original owner?
Enough for that person to get angry and trade it for a Windoze® PC?
In which case Apple replaces what caused the wonkiness, and then tested the computer to make sure it worked.
Which is why I bought refurbished!
I also know how Windoze PC users go ballistic taking on a Macintosh.
(My wife drives a PC.)
Macintosh and Windoze PC are two different things, although I’ve driven both.
A PC-user I know is thinking of switching to MAC.
I advised against it.
The MAC way of doing things would just be added frustration.
So do I line up with the class-action suit against Apple?
No smoke yet!

• “Mac Shack,” east of Rochester, is an independent dealer selling and servicing Apple products, especially computers.
• Apple-store, affiliated with Apple Computers.
• “Windoze” is the Microsoft Windows computer operating system. MAC-users often claim it’s inferior and slow, which is where “Windoze” came from. Windows more-or-less copied the Macintosh graphic interface.

48 years

2011-11-22T10:23:00.001-08:00

If today is November 22nd,” I said to my wife; “it’s the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy.”
Today seems to come-and-go any more, but the assassination was watershed for old geezers like me.
Finally it seemed our nation was emerging from post-war fatuism, and all-of-a-sudden BOOM!
I was in my sophomore year of college.
I walked out of the Chapel building basement at college, where I’d had a class, and word was spreading like wildfire.
All-of-a-sudden Walter Cronkite was announcing the president was dead.
It was like the world had ended.
Kennedy seemed to signify the reemergence of reason over post-war excess.
Detroit was no longer trumpeting tailfins.
Kennedy was not perfect — there certainly were enough donnybrooks in Washington.
But it seemed he was more than the caretaker Eisenhower seemed to be.
During Eisenhower it seemed there were no donnybrooks in Washington.
Kennedy was involving us, and there could be differences.
Failures were out in the open, not swept aside in post-war jingoism.
But all that goodness ended when Kennedy was assassinated.
Some of my college-mates drove down to Washington to witness the funeral procession.
A friend suggests this nation is done, and I sort of agree.
And it seems the end began 48 years ago.
(At least Obama hasn’t been assassinated yet, and I’ve been worried.)

Four-speed dual-quad Positraction 409

2011-11-21T06:55:00.000-08:00

“Four-speed” equals four-speed floor-shifted standard transmission, the pinnacle of hotrod transmissions in the late ‘50s and early‘60s.
The Borg-Warner T10 was the first four-speed car transmission available. It debuted in the ’56 Corvette, but quickly gravitated to other GM product lines, e.g. the ’57 Chevrolet and Pontiac.
It also shifted with a manual floor-shift lever, much more direct than shifters on the steering-column.
Hot-rodders had been converting their column-shift cars to floor-shift for years.
A four-speed just added another gear, sporting practice.
I think it was an adaptation of a three-speed transmission, and shifter-linkage was outside the gearbox.
An alternative was automatic transmission, but it sapped power to run pumps, so wasn’t as efficient as standard transmission.
Automatic transmissions also relied on hydraulics, so the engine had to rev fairly high to get a decent rate of acceleration.
Slip-and-slide with PowerGlide. (PowerGlide was Chevrolet’s automatic transmission.)
Automatic transmission did not shift as quickly as a manually-shifted standard transmission, although that advantage degraded.
Now drag-racers use auto-tranny. It’s usually faster than a manually-shifted standard transmission.
“Dual quads” equals two four-barrel carburetors, quite a bit of carburetion at that time.
Now single four-barrel carburetors are available with higher intake-rates than dual quads.
But in 1960 dual-quads were pretty strong.
I remember a high-performance SmallBlock Corvette engine available with dual quads.
With dual-quads an engine can move a lot of intake-air, and thereby be very powerful.
“Positraction” was a special differential design to offset wheelspin.
Dump the clutch in a drag-car, and one wheel might start spinning. Differentials being what they were, to accommodate different wheel rates as car rounded a corner, would transfer power to the spinning wheel, while not much would get to the wheel that hadn’t broken traction.
Positraction stopped wheelspin, and delivered equal power to both drive-tires.
A car with Positraction didn’t burn up one side with wheelspin.

A 409.

“I wonder how many realize how significant the 409 was when it debuted for the 1961 model-year?” I commented to my wife.
“Probably anyone else from that era interested in hotrod performance,” she said.
Detroit had been flirting with 400 cubic-inch displacement for years.
Ford had an engine at 390 cubic-inches, and Mercury had an engine at 430 cubic-inches.
But it was a stone.
It seemed no one wanted to take hotrod engine displacement over 400 cubic-inches.
But then Chevrolet bored and stroked their 348 cubic-inch truck-block to 409 cubic-inches.
The 400 cubic-inch barrier had been jumped.
And it was Chevrolet that did it, not Pontiac or Oldsmobile or Ford.
Humble Chevrolet with a killer motor!
Everyone wanted a 409, the car that beat all competition.
I remember Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins racing a 409 Chevy at Cecil County Drag-o-Way in northeastern Maryland.
He always won. Nothing could beat his 409.
That is, until Chrysler debuted its 426 Hemi motor, at which point Grumpy switched to a Hemi.
My brother-in-Boston, very much a Chevy-man, claims the 409 is the first “BigBlock” motor.
Not exactly.
The 409 is mega displacement, but not the same block-casting as later “BigBlocks.”
The 348 cubic-inch truck motor was also called a “BigBlock,” but it’s not the same casting as the “BigBlock” introduced in the 1966 Corvette at 396 cubic-inches. (That engine was later expanded to 454 cubic-inches; and is no longer installed in cars.)
Later BigBlocks had special cylinder-heads, almost a Hemi, with splayed valves.
The 409 wasn’t that.
Its valves were at the same height like the Chevy SmallBlock.
And it wasn’t the same casting as later BigBlocks.
It was its own design, unrelated to the SmallBlock or later BigBlock.
Of interest was that all 409s were essentially custom-made.
Bore a 348 out to make it a 409, and you’re asking for casting porosity.
Tiny air-pockets might be in the cast-iron that could leak coolant through the cylinder-walls.
Every 409 had to be manually checked to make sure it wouldn’t leak.

Droid camera follies

2011-11-20T12:50:00.001-08:00

(Photo by Linda Hughes. [Linda Hughes is my wife.])

Yesterday morning (Saturday, November 19, 2011), after dropping our van off at Auto Wash in Canandaigua for complete detailing, we took our dog to nearby Baker Park for a walk.
It was beautiful Fall weather, strident Fall sunshine, although slightly coldish and breezy; long-underwear with a down jacket. About 45 degrees.
As we rounded a bend during our first circuit on a footpath, we came face-on with the two giant weeping-willows pictured above.
The willows were yellow, leaves changed.
The sun was right on them.
“Well, I gotta photograph that with my Droid when we come around again,” I said to my wife. We do four circuits.

A Droid-X®.

I have a Motorola Droid-X SmartPhone through Verizon.
It will take pictures, and in fact does pretty well.
It shoots Jpegs at 300 pixels-per-inch, same as my Nikon digital camera, although the Nikon could do tighter resolution.
I don’t shoot extreme with my Nikon. What I do is quite good, and shooting 300 ppi Jpegs maximizes shots per memory-chip.
(I could shoot at a lower resolution, and get even more shots per memory-chip, but I don’t.)
My Droid is so good, the only advantage to my Nikon is -a) interchangeable lenses, and -b) exposure and/or shutter-speed control.
Neither of which I have on my Droid; it’s auto-exposure.
I’m using auto-exposure with my Nikon, but don’t have to.
Like in the snow, when auto-exposure can get fooled.
But what my Nikon turns out is good enough to correct with Photoshop®, if I have to.
Which usually isn’t much.
So I unholstered my Droid, and handed off the dog to my wife as we rounded the bend the second time.
I set up to shoot the willows, still all yellow in strident sunlight.
But my camera-app was doing an anomaly.
It would follow the image about a half-second, then freeze.
I tried it again from start, same freeze.
The video-cam app was doing the same thing.
I tried again, same result.
I gave up. A picture with my Droid was clearly impossible.
I suspected I was doing something wrong.
We shot the above picture with my wife’s cellphone camera; not my Droid, but not bad.
Farther along I sat at a picnic-table, and tried “camera-settings.”
Nothing that would make the image unfreeze.
The camera-app was still doing the same thing.
One-half second and then frozen.
We drove home with only the image in my wife’s cellphone camera, which also presents hairballs.
But only to me. I pushed what I thought was the camera-button, but got “please say a command.”
I don’t know my wife’s cellphone.
I dragged out my totally uninformative Droid manual, but it was no help at all.
So I texted my hairdresser friend, the guy who prompted me to purchase my Droid.
He has a Droid of his own, an early Verizon model.
“I went to take a picture.
I fire up the camera app.
I see about a half-second live, and then the image freezes.
No shutter-trip.
What’s happening?”
He responded a few hours later.
“Take the battery out and restart,” he said.
Aha! A total power-off reboot.
A SmartPhone is a mini-computer.
With a personal computer a power-off reboot is to pull the plug.
I’ve done it many times — total power-off to a computer.
Doing that makes a computer rebuild its operating-system.
I’ve already had to pull the battery once with my Droid.
It had hung for some reason.
So I pulled the battery out, reinserted, and my camera-app was working again.
Here at home. Too late for the willows.
So I fired off an e-mail to my hairdresser.
Texting with my Droid is near impossible.
It requires use of a virtual keyboard on the SmartPhone display.
The virtual keyboard is near impossible. Chipmunks would be challenged.
“Battery removed, then reinserted.
Camera unfroze, I guess. (We’ll see tomorrow.)
Which begs the question, ‘What do you do if the battery is soldered in?’
(I worry about that with this here laptop. A total reboot from shutoff requires shutoff. What if I can’t shut off? Apple has some software solution requiring extended hold-down of the power-switch.
What if that’s hung?
I’ve had to do that once, but what happens if that doesn’t work?
I know all too well software can be flaky.)
I bet an iPhone has something similar......
(I’d have done this text, but it’s way too many words for a virtual keyboard, or voice-recognition.)”
—My hairdresser’s next SmartPhone will be an iPhone 4S. The battery in an iPhone is soldered in. It can’t be pulled.

• “Canandaigua” (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where we 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. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.
• Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s six, and is our sixth Irish-Setter, an extremely high-energy dog. (A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. abusive or a puppy-mill. By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up. —Scarlett isn't bad.)

Detail

2011-11-20T06:23:00.001-08:00

Yesterday (Saturday, November 19, 2011) we took our 2005 Toyota Sienna van to Auto Wash in nearby Canandaigua, to be completely detailed, wash, wax, interior, the whole kibosh.
$204.25, which includes $14.25 sales-tax. That’s $190; $50 extra because it’s a van — a big vehicle.
The other day we had Auto Wash do our 2003 Honda CR-V, just an exterior wash and wax; $75.
We do the inside of our van because we usually carry our dog in it. It gets dirty.
This is the third year Auto Wash has done our cars. They do an excellent job.
Much better than we would do, and no doubt people wonder why we aren’t doing this ourselves.
Up until a few years ago we did, but we’re old, and waxing a car is an all-day affair.
Auto Wash can do it in half that.
I think they are also detailing used cars for auto dealers in Canandaigua. We often see cars in there with dealer-tags on them.
Beyond that our CR-V has a lot of black plastic on its exterior. Wax on it looks terrible.
The guys at Auto Wash admitted they have tricks to deal with that.
“You do, and I don’t,” I said.
There’s probably some goop for dealing with wax on black exterior plastic, but I don’t know what it is.
Nor do I care.
Let Auto Wash do it.
“So what do you think?” asked a pimply kid showing me the van.
“Do I come back here or not?” I commented. “How many times is this? This is the third year.”
I went inside the office to pay the tab.
The owner, young Bobby Marchenese, processed my Visa charge.
“Still here?” I asked.
Bobby seems too young and boyish to be running a business, although it was him the last three years.
Auto Wash is also a self-serve car-wash with booths to spray your car.
Plus interior vacuums.
It also has an automated drive-through car-wash.
I guess detailing is a sideline.
Auto Wash has separate buildings for detail work.
“I’ll use your bathroom while you process that charge-slip,” I said. “I have a long trip home.”
“Here’s your charge-slip,” Bobby said, as I came back out.
“Now, you probably need a signature,” I said.
“Not any more,” Bobby said. “The bank is no longer requiring a signature.”
“Ya mean they finally caught on?” I said. “I never sign for online charges, whose amounts are often larger.
The reason I asked,” I said; “is because the other day I had to sign the charge for our CR-V.”
“That guy’s probably still following the old procedure,” said Bobby smiling. “He’s not hip.”

• “Canandaigua” (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where we 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. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.
• Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s six, and is our sixth Irish-Setter. (A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. abusive or a puppy-mill. By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up. —Scarlett isn't bad.)

Apogees

2011-11-18T13:14:00.000-08:00

‘56 Lincoln. (Photo by Jim Donnelly.)

‘61 Pontiac. (Photo by Richard Lentinello.)

My January 2012 issue of Classic Car magazine has me blogging yet again.
They featured two of the greatest cars of my youth: —A) the 1956 Lincoln, and —B) the 1961 Pontiac.
It’s their Editor-in-Chief, Richard Lentinello; obviously a boomer who grew up the same time I did, and loves the cars I do.
The ’56 Lincoln, outrageous as it is, was the most successful rendering of middle ‘50s gauche styling.
The ’61 Pontiac, to me, is the greatest Pontiac ever marketed.

’57 Lincoln.

Compare the ’57 Lincoln (at left), caving to the pressure of four headlights and fins.
“I got it, JB. We just flare out the tops of those rear fenders, and we’ll have fins.
And we can graft four headlights onto the front of the car if we make ‘em vertical.”
During the early ‘50s Lincoln found itself competing with Oldsmobile, a step down from its avowed mission.
To compete with Cadillac, the Lincoln would have to be made longer and lower and much larger.
It was a huge investment, but Ford succeeded.
The Lincoln wins.
It’s far more dramatic than the Cadillac, which was reduced to getting by on chrome and its reputation.
Now, to just get Cadillac buyers to try a Lincoln.
The Lincoln looked more state-of-the-art than Cadillac, which was essentially the grand ’54 rehashed.
’54, ’55 and ’56 are all pretty much the same car.
I remember driving a ’55 in college during a blizzard.
It was amazingly sure-footed, a comfortable land-barge.
The roads were slippery, but I goosed it once.
The back end slewed out in a ponderously slow drift.
“Are you sure you want me drivin’ this thing?” I asked the owner. “I’m used to Chevrolets. It’s your baby!”
Would a ’56 Lincoln be the same?
I hope so.
It sure looked better, even if a bit outrageous.
Gauche styling conservatively rendered.
It’s those headlights and rear fenders.
Automotive styling in the mid-‘50s was outrageous, yet the Lincoln looked pretty good.
The ’56 Lincoln looks fabulous; they ruined it for 1957.
By 1961 Pontiac had become a performance brand.
It was corporate-head Bunkie Knudson (“NOOD-sin”), brought in to make over a grandmother’s car.
Supposedly making it a performance-car would make it appeal to young people.
Which it did, and I was one.
In 1961 I was in eleventh-grade in high-school.
1960 was the ultimate manifestation of Pontiac as a land-barge.
Grand and huge.

‘59 Pontiac.

Yet very well done compared to 1959 (at left), which was ugly.
But for 1961 the General wanted to make its cars smaller-looking, and dispense with the wrap-around windshield.
And lurking beneath the hood of a Pontiac could be a high-performance motor. Pontiac had a penchant for triple two-barrel carburetion.
For 1961 Pontiac had to be restyled, yet still look like a performance-car.
Lean!
They pulled it off successfully.
The ’61 Pontiac is the best-looking Pontiac ever marketed.
And you could get it with a four-speed floor-shift, which is what this car is.
A triple-carbureted four-speed ’61 Pontiac, even more desirable, to me, than an early G-T-O.
(And the ’64 G-T-O is the best G-T-O.)
And that’s despite the ’61 Pontiac’s vestigial wrap-around windshield.
Like lower door extensions in the ‘40s over what used to be running-boards.
General Motors always seemed to be transitioning.
Why not dump the wrap-around windshield, with its stupid knee-bashing dog-leg?
And look at those wheels, a special option only Pontiac had.
I think the wheel-centers were cast aluminum, and the wheel-rims bolted to that.
I never knew how the wheel-centers attached to the hubs. Perhaps that’s under the hubcaps.
Those wheels were a lighter-weight racing application, and looked great.
The ’61 Pontiac looked so good I tried to interest my father into buying one.
I was loudly denounced as a despicable sinner. Our family always bought sensible Chevrolets. Used too.
A new car would be of-the-Devil.
A high-school friend’s father bought a new ’62 Pontiac, not as successful looking as the ’61, but still a strong performer with an enviable reputation.
My friend used to drive it flat-out through stop-signs at night.
Despite that, he never smashed up — I guess he was lucky.
That Pontiac was the perfect lawn-job. Back up onto the lawn of a target, and spin the rear drive-tires, tearing up the grass.
My friend went on to work at Pontiac as an engineer — he made a life-long career of Pontiac performance.
And to me the ’61 Pontiac was the apogee.
(Now Pontiac is gone.)

• I’m not a “boomer” (post-war baby-boom). 1944, pre-boomer.
• “The General” is General Motors.
• My parents were tub-thumping born-again Christians.

It’s ACTUALLY logging me in

2011-11-15T11:55:00.001-08:00

For the past couple days I been wrastling with our bank’s new online banking system.
We’ve been using online banking the past few years.
I like it because it allows me to initiate online bill-pays.
None of this foolishness where a payee depletes our checking-account with mistaken multiple bill-pays.
I’ve seen it happen.
A friend authorized a creditor to automatically charge her checking-account for electronic loan-repayments.
It went crazy!
It instituted multiple erroneous payments, depleting her checking-account causing overdrafts.
If I’m instituting the bill-pays, I can keep that from happening.
Unless the bank screws up, which they better not.
I show up at the bank with a loud mouth.
I scare customers by driving bank personnel crazy.
I used to work for a bank, and I know how it is.
The extent to which you get a bank to do anything is a direct function of the size of your bank balance.
Or loudness of your mouth.
To a bank I’m small potatoes; I’m not a Kodak or Xerox, or CEO thereof.
And I don’t belong to the Chamber of Commerce, the Lions Club, or the local Rotary.
Years ago a bank lost my paycheck deposit.
They didn’t deposit my paycheck, so checks started bouncing creating overdraft penalties.
I had a receipt. I stormed the bank.
Frightened customers fled in terror. Bank personnel scurried in fear.
“Here, see this?” I shrieked. “It’s your receipt, and I ain’t leavin’ until you put that money in our account!
Tain’t my fault you lost my deposit. And you can just reimburse all your penalty fees.
I used to work for a bank,” I shouted. “Your offset is your loss. You can use that to credit our account, and I ain’t leavin’ until ya do!
I can have my employer stop-payment on that missing paycheck, and issue another. That’s your recovery.
Meantime, ya can credit our account, per your receipt.”
I went through all the motions with the bank’s new online banking system.
“First-time login?” —Yes.
“We’ll e-mail a security-key. Use that to set up.”
I set up, supposedly registering this computer, or so I thought.
I tried logging in; I thought I should be able to.
But it wanted to send another security-key, as if I were a first-time user.
Back burner.
That was a week ago.
I tried calling the bank yesterday morning (Monday, November 14, 2011).
“We are experiencing heavy phonecall volume.” (In other words: “We are swamped.”)
“If you are having difficulty with our online banking system, we have extended our calling hours, and ya might wanna also try our online prompt.” (In other words: “Read the instructions, stupid!”)
As always, the instructions run up against the fact I had a stroke, so I can’t adequately concentrate.
Okay, I tried again, as I had many times.
Again, the security-key bit.
BOINK! Security-key number ten.
There’s the new site, elaborate and glitzy.
But it also threw up a window: “Do you wish to register this computer, or continue security-key logins? Registering your computer bypasses security-key logins.”
Wait a minute! I never saw that before — or noticed it. Maybe I was shown that earlier and bypassed it, continuing security-key logins.
I clicked “register this computer,” and tried logging in again.
“WHOA; it’s actually logging me in.
I don’t hafta call the bank,” I said.

• Rochester (NY) is mainly Kodak and Xerox, or was.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I pretty much recovered.

Election day

2011-11-10T10:49:00.001-08:00

“Boy I sure am glad Election is over,” said a guy in the Canandaigua YMCA locker-room yesterday (Wednesday, November 9, 2011).
“I was sick of all those TV ads.”
“Vote for me,” said another; “and all will be sweetness and light.”
“Throw the bums out,” I was tempted to say. “Replace ‘em with another set of bums.
And then next election cycle we throw those bums out, and install another set of bums.”
And so it goes, forever and ever.
But I didn’t say anything.
Tuesday, November 8, was Election day.
I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center,” usually three days per week, about two-three hours per visit.
(“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where we 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.)
“We made history!” screamed some fat flunky pumping the arm of Maggie Brooks, who had been re-elected County Executive of adjacent Monroe County, location of Rochester, NY.
We live in Ontario County, in the Rochester area, southeast of Monroe County.
I don’t think so.
If Maggie’s hand-picked candidate for District Attorney had been elected, it would have been historical.
But he wasn’t. He lost to a Democrat (gasp).
Maggie is Republican, as is this area.
Her re-election was pretty much assured.
People are considering running her for U.S. Senate, but that may be a mistake.
New York State is not Monroe County.
Maggie’s opposition was Sandra Frankel, supervisor of the Town of Brighton, southeast of Rochester, a suburb.
Mud flew back and forth.
Various scandals occurred during Maggie’s past administration, and they were aired.
“Had enough?” said Frankel.
“Elect Frankel and get scandals under her,” I thought.
A gigantic ad, at least two minutes, was on TV, demonstrating all the good feelings created by Maggie.
Thankfully this wasn’t a major election.
We only saw about a month of ads, not three months.
“Mud season,” I declared to my wife as the ads began.
Accusations of scandal under Maggie, and tax and salary increases under Frankel in Brighton.
“$35,000 in salary increases to herself over the years!” screamed an accusatory Maggie ad.
“$35,000 sounds like a restrained salary increase over the years,” I commented. “Keeping up with inflation.
I wonder how much Maggie has blown up her salary?”
We never heard about that. —Tit for tat.
Maggie bragged about her flat tax-rate.
Although she had to do various financial shenanigans to maintain it.
County finances are always up against unfunded mandates.
Thankfully this kind of posturing doesn’t fly in Ontario County.
The previous Canandaigua Town Supervisor tried that. Bombast and vitriol.
He was thrown out of office after a drunk-driving conviction.
(Which he of course protested as a liberal witch-hunt.)
So not much was happening election-wise in Ontario County.
But since our TV comes from Rochester, we get all the Monroe County political ads.
About all that was happening was local councilperson elections, and they don’t make Rochester TV.
Beyond that, our little town, West Bloomfield, had a proposition to authorize building of a new town hall, 1.98 million dollars, The “Taj Ma-hall.”
It was voted down; second time.

• RE: “Democrat (gasp)....” —All my siblings are tub-thumping REPUBLICANS; but I’m not, so I’m of-the-Devil.

Day of reckoning

2011-11-09T06:18:00.001-08:00

Last night (Tuesday, November 8, 2011) I wanted to set up an online bill-pay to National Fuel, our monthly gas-bill.
Crank bank’s web-address into my browser-window, which is Firefox® (“Gasp!” say my siblings, who loudly insist I’m being rebellious by not using Internet-Explorer, the browser Jesus used).
“Welcome to our new online banking-center.”
“Uh-ohhhh.....” I said. “The day of reckoning, Tuesday, November 8. Our bank warned us.”
The day the bank rolls out its new online banking web-site, instituting sweetness and light, a beauteous web-site, guaranteeing ease of navigation, supposedly better than the one they had.
Pardon my skepticism, but I know how these so-called improvements go.
Order-out-of-chaos is usually chaos.
I dragged out the bank’s prompt-sheet I printed a few days ago.
“First-time login.
Enter ‘user-name,’ and click ‘first-time user.’”
Done.
“A secure identification-code will be sent to you. Select phone-number or e-mail.”
“‘Bong!’ there it is,” I said; “via e-mail.”
“Enter delivered secure access-code.”
Done.
“Read online banking access agreement; click ‘accept.’”
Done.
“Review online profile.”
Done; except it needs minor fiddling.
“Create new online password, confirm, and then ‘submit.’”
Done.
Okay, enrollment completed. Off we went. There’s my checking-account register, and on to online bill-pay.
Wait a minute; it wants me to correctly answer four security questions — used to be only one. Four is a navigation improvement?
The usual: “mother’s maiden-name; name of your first pet, what town you were born in, father’s middle-name.”
“My father didn’t have a middle-name,” I shouted.
Thankfully they had alternative questions: “What state were you born in?”
I successfully instituted an online bill-pay to National Fuel.
All my online bill payees had been carried over. I didn’t have to set that up again.
I closed out. Now to try logging in again. (Awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity....)
User-name and password to login window, without the “first-time user” box checked.
“WHAT?” It wants to send me a first-time user password again, or so it seems.
We wrastled with it at least three tries. Blew well over an hour of my life, which I won’t get back.
Each time it demanded a first-time user login.
Finally, I gave up.
They got a “contact us” e-mail asking “What’s happening?”
Their response will probably be to telephone their Help-desk.
This is progress?
Technology the time-saver?

• “National Fuel,” based in Buffalo (NY), is our natural-gas utility.
• All my siblings are tub-thumping born-again Christians.

97,000 smackaroos

2011-11-08T12:04:00.000-08:00

$92,000 base price, $97,000 as-tested.
“For what?” I cried.
Okay, it’s a factory hotrod version of a BMW sedan.
“Great, stuck in a traffic-jam with little to do other than twiddle the stereo-knobs, or call your mother on your cellphone to complain about your marriage-mate.”
I’m sorry, but I’ve become my paternal grandmother.
Performance is great fun, but I hardly can ever use it.
And if I do, I get waylaid by the constabulary, and line the pockets of local government.
What happens if my Ferrari won’t start?
How do I get to work?
And most of the time in NASCAR rush-hour I’m being parried by drones in inferior cars from Ford, General Motors, and Toyota.
Zippity-doo; I know what I have will skonk ‘em royally, but I usually can’t.
What I end up doing is avoid the NASCAR wannabees and ignorant grannies that cut me off unsignaled.
A while ago the dream of a Porsche (“poor-SHA”) Boxter wafted placidly through my brain.
A Porsche that didn’t cost 89 bazilyun dollars.
But then I saw what they wanted; still way too much.
Every once-in-a-while the Corvette sounds interesting, or perhaps the new Mustang (V8 of course).

My hairdresser’s StingRay.

My old hairdresser had a classic ’67 StingRay he had to part with, and it sounded interesting.
PASS! Where do I stretch such a thing out?
Welcome to the traffic-jam on Interstate-490. Please get in line.
And if an opening appears where I can floor it — not likely — I get the gendarmerie behind with sirens and flashing lights.
I agree with my grandmother. All the car has to do is start and run reliably.
And not cost a fortune.
Beyond that is posturing.
A $97,000 BMW makes no sense at all.

• Car & Driver is the automotive magazine I subscribe to — since 1966.
• “Interstate-490” is the main interstate into and out of Rochester, NY.

Showstopping Thanksgiving cake

2011-11-08T11:05:00.001-08:00

“If I ever found anything like that on our Thanksgiving table, I’d personally scoop it up and take it out to our mulch-pile,” I said.
The November 2011 issue of my wife’s Better Homes and Gardens has a photograph of a so-called “showstopping Thanksgiving cake,” pictured above, on its cover.
“Looks like potato-peelings on top,” I said.
“And it looks like house-garbage was slathered between the layers.
I put that thing on our mulch-pile, and it will scare away all the birds.
I’ll hafta turn it under the grass-clippings.”
My wife gets Better Homes and Gardens magazine, as does my sister-in-law in Florida.
This is despite my wife’s complaining how unrealistic it is.
“Did they ever hear of mud? Dogs track in dirt,” she says.
Years ago I worked at a bank-branch south of Rochester, NY supervising its teller-line.
I had two ladies working for me, one of whom regaled me with tales of visiting the other lady’s house.
You couldn’t walk into her so-called “living-room;” it was off-limits.
Heaven forbid ya track dirt on the carpet.....
Sounds like a candidate for a Better Homes and Gardens feature.

“Is it a Chevrolet?”

2011-11-07T12:17:00.000-08:00

This is the Bow-Tie I had on our Astrovan.

As of November 2011, the Chevrolet brand is 100 years old.
Not much has been made of it.
No mention of it my Car & Driver magazine.
The only magazine mention I got was my Hemmings Classic Car magazine.
And that was because the Chevrolet brand has so much history attached to it.
It became the dominant brand in the General Motors line-up in the ‘40s and ‘50s.
Chevrolet is no longer the almighty colossus it was in the ‘70s; poised per government scuttlebutt to take over the entirety of automobile manufacture.
Those government guys were a bit off.
Chevrolet was powerful, but:
—A) It was selling what the public wanted, more-or-less, and
—B) It had competition, Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corporation.
Its greatest competition was Japanese.
The Japanese were marketing to meet Chevrolet’s fatal flaw, its inability to make an attractive small car.
GM tried mightily, but their heart wasn’t in it.
And it was GM, not just Chevrolet.
General Motors had been building pretty much the same car since the late ‘30s, across all five product-lines.
Although on different wheelbases: A, B, and C (C being the largest).
Every time ya see a Cadillac think gussied up Chevrolet on the bigger wheelbase, with a Cadillac engine and different front and rear clips.
But between the wheels they were pretty much the same car.
Take the side-trim off a ’55 Chevy and it looks like a Buick.
Which it is, sorta.
Except Chevrolet and Buick had their own engines; until the ‘70s.
I remember the flap that occurred when Oldsmobile started installing the Chevrolet SmallBlock in its midsize cars.
The last car my parents drove was an ‘80s Buick, but it had the Chevrolet SmallBlock, very anemically done.
No mention Ford and Chrysler had been using common engines across their product-lines for years.
The media went ballistic. Supposedly General Motors was pulling a fast-one!
Then during the early ‘60s, General Motors started branching out; smaller wheelbases, midsize and compact.
This went across all five GM brands. Even Cadillac introduced a small car, the forgettable Cimarron, based on the GM J platform for the 1982 model-year (e.g. the Chevrolet Cavalier).
Other manufacturers were doing the same, Ford the Falcon and the Fairlane, and Chrysler Corporation with various small and midsize cars — like the Valiant.
Yet Chevrolet was still selling a full-size car, based on the other GM full-size offerings.
It was a Chevrolet in name, but also an Oldsmobile or Buick. And Cadillac was more-or-less the same car.
It seemed like Chevrolet had lost its bearings; like it was no longer marketing cheap and reliable transportation.
They might sell small cars, but so did the other GM brands.
When Chevrolet introduced its Nova, a small, cheap and reliable car, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick all wanted their own versions: the Oldsmobile Omega, the Pontiac Ventura, and the Buick Apollo, which is what “Nova” stood for: N-O-V-A.
Chevrolet was no longer manufacturing what appealed to my paternal grandmother: cheap and reliable transportation.
My grandmother was very much a Chevy-person; basic transportation. Everything else was mere posturing.
GM’s profit was in profligate gas-guzzlers.
A giant market for small cars arose in California, and spread east.
GM’s response was the Chevrolet Vega (before that was the Corvair, an even greater marketing mistake).
The Vega was nice-looking, especially the GT hatchback — I had one.
But its motor was cast-aluminum without iron cylinder-liners.
The aluminum-alloy was heavy with silicon, and the cylinder-bores would get lapped with acid, to etch away the aluminum to leave a silicon bore-finish, which wore as well as iron.
Trouble was, if the motor overheated, the block warped, destroying linearity.
The bores would wear so much the engine burned oil like a mosquito-fogger.
Beyond that, a lot of the structural integrity of the car, which was great at first, was in thin panels that quickly rusted away.
Without that paneling, the front-end of a Vega would droop as it collapsed.
My Vega did that, much as I liked it, and babied it.
It became a low-rider.
Look under the hood, and all the inside fender-walls had rusted away.
Without those fender-walls, the motor and suspension mounts bent upward under the weight of the engine, lowering the front-end.
I also got heavy rust around the windshield.
The windshield surround was a thin panel that filled with salty slush.
Despite all that, I’ve always been a Chevy-man.
It goes back to my parents always driving Chevrolets, and Chevrolet fielding its revolutionary SmallBlock motor as I came of age in the late ‘50s.
The Chevy SmallBlock is the motor that finally put the famous Ford Flat-head V8 out to pasture.

Photo by BobbaLew.

And the Ford Flat-head inspired the hotrod movement.
It was cheap and available, and responded well to backyard hot-rodding.
But so too was the Chevy SmallBlock, which breathed much better than the Ford Flat-head, since the SmallBlock was overhead-valve.
Soon hot-rodders were replacing their Flat-heads with Chevy SmallBlocks.
Doing so was worth the trouble.
The Chevrolet brand was founded by Louis Chevrolet and ousted GM founder William C. Durant on November 3, 1911.
Louis Chevrolet was a famous French racecar driver and mechanic.
Chevrolet was not a low-priced car at first, but General Motors acquired Chevrolet in 1918 (with Durant re-entering).
Chevrolet was positioned by then GM president Alfred Sloan to sell a lineup of mainstream vehicles to directly compete against Henry Ford’s Model T in the ‘20s.
Chevrolet became a venerable icon.
In the ‘50s, when I was growing up, Chevrolet came to symbolize the great destiny of America after World War II.

Photo by Eleanor Hughes. (“Eleanor Hughes” is my mother.)

The ’39 Chevy crippled in New York City on the first day of our vacation to New England in 1951 (I was seven). The condenser had burned out.

Photo by Eleanor Hughes.

My father in front of our ’41 Chevy.

The first car I remember is a ’39 Chevy, the car that apparently replaced the ’33 Chevy my father had when he got married in 1941.
They may have still had the ’33 when I was born (1944), but the ’39 was what I remember.
My father began looking for a replacement about the time he started his new job at Texaco’s Eagle Point oil-refinery in south Jersey.
The ’39 broke its timing-chain one afternoon returning from the refinery.
We purchased a well-kept 1941 Chevrolet from someone in our church.
The ’41 Chevy was one of the most popular used cars of all time. (The others were the ’57 and the ’64.)
The ‘41 was an antique when we bought it about 1949, but it looked great.
It was equipped with various non-stock options, a spotlight and a metal windshield visor. It was a Special Deluxe; only four side-windows instead of six. It was powder blue.
It was in great shape visibly, but I remember it overheating on the Pennsylvania Turnpike near Pittsburgh during a vacation-trip to Arkansas.
It had a clogged radiator.
I remember my father fixing it by removing the thermostat (not advisable, but he didn’t know that), and replacing the gasket with a cutout from a Ritz cracker-box.

Soon after we purchased the ’41 we went to mighty Rohrer Chevrolet east of Camden, NJ. (Rohrer Chevrolet no longer exists.)
We went out back into the service area, and there on the wall was a Texaco sign.
All was right with the world.
We bought Chevrolets, and my father worked for Texaco.

This was my siren-song growing up. What a great country America was, and our family drove Chevrolets.
Chevrolet symbolized a shining future.
Furthermore, in the 1955 model-year Chevrolet introduced a revolutionary V8 motor, the vaunted SmallBlock.
It had a light-weight valve-train, so could rev to the moon — just like in Europe!
As mentioned above, the SmallBlock revolutionized hot-rodding.
Beyond that, Chevrolet introduced the Corvette, a sportscar wannabee, for the 1953 model-year.
To make it more a sportscar, the SmallBlock was installed, and a four-speed floor-shifted transmission was introduced.
All this stuff could be easily installed in a ’55 Chevy, a four-speed SmallBlock.
The SmallBlock in a ’55 Chevy was the same engine-block as in a ‘Vette.
The concept swept me along all through high-school and college.

Photo by BobbaLew.

My dream: a ’55 Two-Ten hardtop. (This thing was four-on-the-floor; ‘Vette motor).

Photo by BobbaLew.

The wagon.

My dream was a 210 hardtop like the car pictured at left, or perhaps a stationwagon, more practical. (My parents purchased a ’57 SmallBlock wagon after my freshman year in college. It was phenomenal, a 283 PowerPak with four-barrel carb and dual exhausts.)
In 1954 my father began looking for a replacement for our ’41.
By the beginning of the decade, Chevrolet was offering automatic-transmission, its two-speed PowerGlide. (“Slip-and-slide with PowerGlide!”)
The ’41 wasn’t automatic.
We were considering a ’50 or ’51 at first, but my father came across a 1953 210 two-door with tinted glass, only about 5,000 miles.
It was from a matron in Philadelphia (across the river from where we lived in south Jersey).
A ’53 in ’54 is almost new, the newest car our family ever bought.
$1,200, and my father had to borrow from my paternal grandfather, a stickler about money.
He was probably asking my father for that money every week.
That ’53 Chevy was the car I learned to drive in.
I will never forget the first time I depressed the gas-pedal and felt that old turkey move.
Our ’53 became known as “the Blue Bomb,” partly because it was dark navy blue, and partly because it was such a pig.
As was his custom, my father never took care of it.
When it finally failed inspection, at 10 years and over 100,000 miles, it failed because its brake-shoes were worn through to the backing-plates.
The shock-absorbers were totally useless. Bouncy-bouncy-bouncy!

Photo by BobbaLew.

The Blue Bomb after my accident.

And the ’53 was the car I slid into the back of a Mercedes-Benz at an icy railroad-crossing.
Our ’53 was the most damaged; the Mercedes not at all.
My father had a local shop do only basic repair, enough to make it operable.
No cosmetic repair.
So I drove it with a punched-in face for a while.

Photo by BobbaLew.

The Beast.

1968 Triumph TR250 (same color as mine).

My first car was a sportscar, a Triumph TR3 nicknamed “the Beast.”
It wasn’t a Chevrolet. (Gasp!)
After I got married in December of 1967, we got another sportscar, a brand-new 1968 Triumph TR250.
It was awful, totally useless as basic transportation.
One afternoon in 1974 I noticed a used 1972 Vega at Taylor Chevrolet near where we lived in Rochester, NY.
(Taylor Chevrolet went defunct, was torn down, and replaced by a supermarket.)
It was a GT hatchback, four-on-the-floor, with a two-barrel carburetor for added performance.

Mine was red with a black stripe.

It was much more pleasant than our TR250, mainly because it served well as basic transportation.
I drove it quite a while, but it was the last Chevrolet I owned until 1993.
It rusted to smithereens, as Vegas did, plus fell apart.
It also overheated, the bane of all Vegas (see above).
I drove it all the way to my parents in northern Delaware, and my paternal grandmother, who was living with my parents, looked at it soulfully a few minutes, and plaintively asked me “Is it a Chevrolet?”
“Well, sorta,” I answered. “It has the Chevrolet name on it, but it’s not the Nova.”
Novas were very basic; the kind of basic transportation my grandmother would approve.
She was asking me the saintly question: “Was the Vega sensible; a Chevrolet?”
My uncle (my father’s younger brother) was in deepest doo-doo because he bought Fords.
He liked a car that responded to the throttle, and Fords sorta did.
To my grandmother, performance was disgusting. What mattered was that the car start and run reliably.
That supposedly was Chevrolet.
After the Vega I fell to buying Volkswagens, a ’76 Dasher stationwagon, and then a ’78 Rabbit.
They were our first front-wheel-drive cars, and also our first automatic transmission, which meant my wife could drive them.
When the Dasher became unusable I bought a giant Ford E250 van, the most memorable vehicle I’ve ever owned.
My macho brother-from-Boston, also a Chevy-man, test-drove it, and loudly declared “There’s only one problem. It ain’t a Chevy!”
That van was auto-tranny, and I traded the ’78 Rabbit for a brand-new ’83 Rabbit GTI.
That was a five-speed; my wife couldn’t drive it.
Our van rusted apart, so we bought a brand-new ’89 Honda Civic All-Wheel-Drive stationwagon.
It was auto-tranny, so my wife could commute with it.
It lasted 13 years, and went 160,000 miles.
We’d still be driving it, but it suffered a minor crash that totaled it.
It was like Honda was building the cars Chevrolet should be.
But then I noticed Chevrolet was building a desirable vehicle, the All-Wheel-Drive Astrovan.
The siren-song arose again: “See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet.”
I bought one. Dinah triumphant!
We drove it 12 years, 140,000 miles, despite it throwing various curves at us.
It broke a torsion-bar, requiring replacement of both.
(The front-suspension of an AWD Astrovan was by longitudinal torsion-bars, parallel to the frame-rails; not coil-springs.)
Most irksome was a “check-engine” light that winked at me if I drove hard.
Finally the engine barely ran, but a local Chevy dealer successfully diagnosed why — the dealer where I bought it never did — and it ran fine after that. (Defective oxygen-sensor.)
It began leaking oil. A gasket had failed.
Another problem that occurred occasionally was a lockout switch that wouldn’t let you put it in gear if it stuck.
This acted up twice, and the stuck switch could be fiddled free with your toe.
But the second time was when we arrived for Amtrak’s Auto-Train. I was afraid the stuck switch wouldn’t allow Amtrak employees to load our Astrovan.
(“Auto-train” is a railroad-train to Florida where you take your car along; in this case our Astrovan.)
So over the years, three switches.
They were a cheap design, bound to eventually fail. My grandmother wouldn’t have been pleased.
Our Astrovan became ungainly, and started falling apart.
So I turned it in for a new 2005 Toyota All-Wheel-Drive Sienna minivan, not bad, and much better than our Astrovan, which always seemed cheap.
So for the moment we are Chevy-less.
Dinah is in the background.
But I went to a Chevy dealer not too long ago to look at a new Chevy Equinox.
Our 2003 Honda CR-V is getting on in years.
The salesman was a viper, he wouldn’t let us out of the dealership without selling us a car.
But the folding rear-seats were not dog-friendly. (They aren’t in our CR-V either.)
I had to be unsociable.
You are a viper, I become a viper!
We walked out.
Despite that, Chevrolet has made 100 years.
And I’m still a Chevy-man. I wish I could buy a Chevrolet!

• “Carb” equals carburetor.
• “Tranny” equals transmission.
• My wife is “automotively challenged.” She has difficulty driving.