Retirement on Social Security? HaHaHa

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In the USA a lot of people didn't contribute enough to social security so they are now headed for social welfare or whatever miserable fate that the lack of money will deal to them. 
If you have enough time to plan ahead and aren't already retiring soon then you have a chance.

There are several ways to invest that will pay off later with little to almost no risk.

Disclaimer:
I am not selling any investment portfolios here just offering  ideas! The younger you are the easier it will be to set your self up for retirement.

I like one idea; judiciously buy collectibles for low money and after 50 years realize the current worth.
The web page How Can I Build A Nest Egg offers some good information.

Here's a tip stay away from Bernie Madoff... Oh never mind they got him already.

Al Qaeda Wants To Control Syria

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Ayman Al-Zawahiri is backing the Syrian revolt

A sure fire way for fanatical muslims to take over in Syria in the same way as what is happening in Egypt.

Al Za-Wahiri was quoted as saying "If we want freedom, we must be liberated from this regime. If we want justice, we must retaliate against this regime,"
The odd thing is he never was part of the Syrian people.

Ayman the Evil One is inveigling his way into this at a  time when things are out of control.
It will sure be a lot worse tha it was if they take over and the Taliban will rule the day.

There are a lot of good non-theists and Christians living there. Their days will be numbered if this comes to pass, and I suspect it will.

As bad as things were in Egypt and Libya it is worse in many ways with fanatical Muslims controlling the government.

Forget about tourism to the pyramids or lovely Damascus... Just write it off as another disaster.

Hugo Chavez - Anal Sphincter

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Chavez supports Bashir Al Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Here is a guy who managed to pull off a coup d'etat in 1998 and install his own constitution for Venezuela.Despite his autocratic rule he has managed to stay in power through any means possible.
Don't get in his way that's all.

Aid to the murderous Al Assad

Now the douche bag is sending  a tanker ship filled with diesel fuel to Assad  the dictator of Syria despite the international sanctions.
 How does he figure that it makes any sense to support Iran and Syria's corrupt and oppressive governments? 
I think it is because he is trying to organize a sympathetic alliance  by buying the allegiance of those countries who might stand with him against the EU and USA.

He has a lot of enemies and I wonder why someone hasn't managed to put a bullet in his head? I don't know.  Let's just say Venezuela probably isn't the best spot to go on vacation until there is an overthrow of his dictatorship.

Murder is OK according to the Florida Law

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Trayvon Martin Was Murdered

Read the Florida Gun Law concerning self protection.
Concerning the recent murder and it's cover up, here are points to consider.

• The most obvious case of out right murder in recent history that went unchallenged by the police.


• George Zimmerman stalked and attacked then shot a young boy who was 100 lbs smaller and not a threat in anyway.


• Why would an unarmed boy with a bag of skittles and a can of iced tea ever attack a 28 year old man who is armed with a gun?


• The boy was legitimately in the neighborhood visiting with his father


• During a call to the police the murderer was ordered to not pursue the victim, an order he refused to follow


• The shooter made claims that the child looked like he was on drugs, and that "These a**holes always get away," how could he even perceive that someone was on drugs from a distance and does that give you the right to kill them if so?


• Police cover up, the Sanford police plan to release only part of the tapes of the 911 calls. Why not all of them?


• The screams on the tape are of the boy begging for help until there is the gunshot

Oh, and there is more. The FBI is getting involved only after a huge outcry and public pressure.

It is Our Whole World after all

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It is Our Whole World after all now isn't it?

by Roger Chartier
Well yes it is and this time I am writing to complain about my health.
Usually it isn't an issue but lately... Jeeez, I have to tell you my guts are ailing me just a bit.

Oil?

If you think that you can figure out what it is that is ailing you and fix it yourself that is cool but after a few days of being slightly sick.

"Slightly" is a key word here; it is getting  to be an aggravation.


I think that maybe too much oil in my food could be the issue. I'm not so sure though. 

Well time will tell and in a few days it should be gone or else I have to start thinking about an appointment with a doctor.

Did you notice that I didn't say with my doctor? Aha!

With a doctor, because my doctor might well be too busy or whatever it is that gets in the way of an appointment the next day.

I mean really he could be 8,000 miles away and who knows for sure but anyway...

Well thanks for listening to this raving post and I promise to try to get better before I post here again.

Older than dirt

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My wife’s 96-year-old mother has sent something in her most recent letter.
I will attempt to OCR scan it:

Someone asked the other day, “What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?”
“We didn’t have fast food when I was growing up,” I informed him. “All the food was slow.
“C’mon, seriously. Where did you eat?”
“It was a place called ‘at home,’” I explained. “Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn’t like what she put on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.”
By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn’t tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.
Here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:
—Some parents never owned their own house, wore Levis, set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country, or had a credit card.
—My parents never drove me to school. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, slow.
—We didn’t have a television in our house until I was 10. It was of course black-and-white, and the station went off the air at 11, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God. It came back on the air at about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally-produced news-and-farm show on, featuring local people.
—I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone was a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn’t know weren’t already using the line.
—Pizzas weren’t delivered to our home — but milk was.
—All newspapers were delivered by boys, and all boys delivered newspapers. My brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. He had to get up at 5 a.m. every morning.
—Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.
If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren.
Memories:
—My Dad was cleaning out my grandmother’s house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt-shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of our ironing board to “sprinkle” clothes with because we didn’t have steam irons.
How many do you remember?
-Headlight dimmer switches on the floor.
-Ignition switches on the dashboard.
-Pant-leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
-Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.
Older Than Dirt Quiz
Count all the ones you remember, NOT the ones you were told about (ratings at the bottom).
-1) Candy cigarettes.
-2) Restaurants with tableside juke-box terminals.
-3) Home milk delivery in glass bottles.
-4) Party lines on telephones.
-5) Newsreels before the movie.
-6) TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were on until TV shows started again the next morning; there were only three channels [if you were fortunate]).
-7) Peashooters.
-8) Howdy Doody.
-9) 45 RPM records.
-10) Hi-fi records.
-11) Metal ice trays with lever.
-12) Blue flashbulbs.
-13) Cork popguns.
-14) Studebakers.
-15) Wash tub wringers.
—If you remembered 0-3, you’re still young.
—If you remembered 3-6, you are getting older.
—If you remembered 7-10, don’t tell your age, and
—If you remembered 11-15, you’re older than dirt!!! THAT’S ME!!!

My wife’s mother lives in a retirement-center, but still “independent-living.”
She still writes letters; computers and e-mail are anathema.
She has macular degeneration, and uses a print-magnifier, a machine which projects the image of a page in its enlarging screen, that is, enlarged type.
She’ll probably make 100, despite claiming she was at death’s door all her life.
She still walks to church, and takes care of “the old folks,” people much younger than her.
When we visit it’s “you kids sure are having fun with your gizmos,” this laptop and my SmartPhone.
My wife’s older brother visits often, and he too has a laptop and SmartPhone; “gizmos.”
(We’re both 68, he’s 70.)
I’d add a few things to this printout.
—A) Our bread was delivered door-to-door by a breadman in a delivery-truck, just like our bottled milk.
—B) My father’s ’39 Chevy — the first car I remember; I was born in 1944 — had a large foot-button beside the gas-pedal. When depressed, it engaged the starter; you couldn’t start the car unless you depressed that foot-button, which I guess was the equivalent of a starter-solenoid.
—C) Our first car with turn-signals was our ’53 Chevy; the car I learned to drive in. Everything before that was arm out the window. —I fell behind a Model-T Ford the other day. Its driver stuck his arm out to signal a right turn. (The car was a black tea-cup roadster with its top up; no side-windows.)
If a younger driver had been following, he would have been dumbfounded.
—D) Studebaker? Anyone remember Packard?
—E) We also had a party-line, but only one other party was on it. Calling that other party was near impossible. (My wife’s party-line was 10 parties per party-line; only two telephone-lines to her little back-country town.)
My wife says define “rubbering.”
“Rubbering” is to listen in, inadvertently or intentionally, to other calls on the party-line.
If anything significant happened in town, like a fire, the whole town jumped on the party-line, a massive conference-call.
My wife’s grandmother once lived in Lawrenceville, PA, just south of the New York border. Her telephone had a hand-crank, no rotary dialer. You cranked to get the operator.
Go back far enough and our family’s first telephone service was through an operator switchboard. You told the operator who you wanted, or what number.
—F) Our first TV, in 1949, was also black-and-white, made by RCA (Radio Corporation of America), not in the Pacific Rim for Wal*Mart — although it was purchased from Sears, where my father worked as a second job.
It received its signals, only three channels — all from Philadelphia — over a flimsy two-pronged aluminum antenna attached to our chimney.
All TV transmissions were over-the-air, like radio, not via cable or satellite-dish. And all houses had that flimsy antenna, which you hoped a hurricane didn’t topple.
And that TV used orange-glowing hot cathode-ray tubes to function. It wasn’t transistorized.

DETAILS:
—My recently-deceased slightly younger sister and I walked to school every day, six blocks.
50 miles each way, uphill both goin’ and comin’.
And it was always snowing, even in summer.
Turn around and the snow turned with you. It was always in your face.
Barefoot in snow eight inches deep!
We also rode our 50-pound bicycles to school; and locked them in a bicycle-rack.
When I drive through a nearby village I see mom at the end of the driveway in her idling minivan, teenagers without jackets inside, waiting for the schoolbus that takes them around the corner to the school.
No wonder today’s youth are flaccid and out-of-shape. —Heaven forbid they dress for weather; baggy shorts in a blizzard, for crying out loud.
My wife rode schoolbus, but her trip was over four miles on country roads without sidewalks.
—My mother’s sprinkler-bottle was an old glass Pepsi bottle, and she used to hang our laundry on a clothesline outside to dry. We didn’t have a dryer until I was a teenager and we moved to a house in northern Delaware that had a laundry-room. —I’m originally from south Jersey, a suburb of Philadelphia.
And our first fully-automatic clothes-washer was a Bendix purchased from Sears. Bendix no longer exists, and I see Bendix was not the actual manufacturer of its washing-machines.
The dishwasher was my mother, and the Bendix was in our kitchen, and it was often broadsided by our cat, sliding a corner on our linoleum for his supper.
I don’t remember a wringer-washer, just the wringer.
My wife explains doing laundry with a wringer-washer, an all-day affair, involved everyone carting tubs of water heated on the stove before school.
Completed laundry would be hung out to dry.
I’ll say a few things about Howdy-Doody and 45 rpm records.
Howdy-Doody was the first TV program I watched regularly along with The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy.
Howdy-Doody was a string puppet; the program’s emcee was Buffalo-Bob in cowboy-garb.
The kids all sat in the Peanut-gallery; and another character in the show was Clarabell the Clown, a mute who was always spraying Buffalo-Bob with a seltzer-bottle.
The first Clarabell was played by Bob Keeshan, who later became Captain Kangaroo.
The Lone Ranger was played on TV by Clayton Moore; and his Indian sidekick, Tonto, was played by Jay Silverheels.
The Lone Ranger’s horse, a white stallion, was called Silver, and Tonto’s horse, a paint, was called Scout. (“Hoppy’s” white horse was Topper.)
45 rpm records succeeded 78s (78 rpm). 45s had a big hole in the center, and if I’m right were an RCA marketing invention. (Our family had 78s; and even had a Silvertone recorder that would cut 78s [like of my maternal grandfather, who died in 1954].)
I still have a few 45s in my record-collection, all classic pop records.
One is much better from iTunes. The iTunes download doesn’t have the warp the 45 rpm records had. (And every pressing had it — you’d hear it on the radio.)

What a chuckle this addenda was. Especially the sprinkler-bottle.

Yo Quicken

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In nine years of using Quicken 2003 for MAC, thousands of checks, I never had the strange anomaly illustrated above.
The written amount and numerical amount always agreed.
I download and install Quicken Essentials for MAC, and I get an unfathomable mystery.
.....Which I see no way to fix.
I tried the “edit,” and I got only the numerical amount, which was correct.
This was the way it was for my ancient Quicken 2003 for MAC, except the numerical and written amounts always agreed.
The written amount was never a penny less.
This anomaly means I have to test-print every check on a blank sheet of paper to see if the two figures agree.
So if they don’t, I can hand-write the check.
My wife did Google-research to see if anyone else was getting the problem, and found that Quicken Essentials didn’t even have a check-writing function at first.
The assumption was that everyone would be doing things electronically.
Well I do, but occasionally I have to use checks.
I can’t pay my water-bill electronically, or even my newspaper subscription.
And my newspaper uses the same bank I do.
I authorized an electronic bill-pay to that newspaper, but the bank had to issue a check.
If I’d known, I would have paid by check myself.
There are other bills I can’t pay electronically, and bills I pay in a roundabout fashion.
My auto insurance has screwed up with electronic bill-pay, so I pay my local insurance-provider, in which case a human (their receptionist) intervenes to assure proper credit.
Sometimes a human is required to get the system to not screw up.
And sometimes I wish a human were around to catch my own errors.
Like the time I mistyped a credit-card payment by a penny, and the credit-card bank went bonkers, saying I hadn’t fully paid a bill, and started charging me interest on that penny, plus a $10 service-charge.
A human woulda caught that mistake, and probably called me.
“Are you sure you wanna short your payment by a penny?”
So I often need to pay by check.
Some of the charities we give to don’t do online donation yet.
Or they require credit-card information I don’t want to divulge.
That is, they don’t do PayPal.
I have to issue a check.
You can’t just assume all money disbursements can be electronic.
And good old Quicken 2003 printed an attractive check.
Quicken Essentials for MAC does okay too, now that it prints checks.
Users were all up-in-arms with a checkless Quicken Essentials.
But what do I do if the written amount is not the same as the numerical amount?
I had to hand-correct and initial my correction.
And now I have to test-print every check to see if it’s wonky.
You’re losing me, Quicken!
I know I’m not using all your glitzy bells-and-whistles.
All I’m doing is keeping track of two accounts.
And printing checks for one.

C7

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2014. (Ugh!)

The April 2012 issue of my Car & Driver magazine features “25 Cars Worth Waiting For,” one of which is the new C7 Corvette which will debut for the 2014 model-year.
C7, eh? (Seventh Corvette version.)
I wonder if it’s a new chassis?
The C5 and C6 Corvettes are the C4 chassis, uprated of course, to make the car handle better.
It sounds like the C7 Corvette is still the same chassis layout, a leaf spring in the rear.
And to my mind, the new C7 is much uglier than the C6, which was one of the best-looking Corvettes EVER.
They made that chassis handle pretty well, to me the result of big tire-footprints on chassis-geometry optimized for those tires.
But you put similar tires on a C4, the disco-Corvette introduced in 1983 as an ’84 model, and it might handle about as well.
The chassis is also quite low to the ground, and very well balanced.
The transmission, its weight, is in the rear.
Corvettes always suffered from excessive weight; they’re hardly a feather-light Lotus.
The Corvette’s advantage would be blunderbuss acceleration between corners.
I saw this at a race years ago. A 427 ’70 Camaro creamed a Porsche (“POOR-sha”) on the straights, but the lighter and more sophisticated Porsche was all over the Camaro in the twisty parts.
Corvette has always been special to me, although the earliest Corvettes were mainly its fabulous SmallBlock V8 motor.
The chassis was essentially that of a ’53 Chevy, which compromised the SmallBlock.
Corvette was much better after 1963, the first Corvettes with independent-rear-suspension (IRS).
The IRS was rather crude, but helped the SmallBlock V8.
The C3 was essentially the crude C2 chassis with a dramatic Mako Shark body.
But it was still the SmallBlock engine, although you could get it with a Big-Block.
The Big-Block was also available in late C2 Corvettes, and the largest was a gigantic 454 cubic-inch version in the C3.
Maximum acceleration, but such a large heavy motor threw the balance off.
On a twisting byway a BMW 2002 could leave it behind.
In other words, don’t ask a 454 Corvette to corner — the trees were waiting.
Unfortunately the C7 Corvette takes its styling-cues from the new Camaro, which to me is incredibly ugly.
The new Mustang is much better looking. The Camaro is so slammed it looks like a tank.
Chrysler debuted gun-slit windows on its new 300 sedan, and GM quickly jumped on the bandwagon. The new Camaro has gun-slit windows, as does the Chevy Volt.
The C7 Corvette doesn’t look as bad, but its rear-end is that of the Camaro.
Taillights slammed rectangular into a tiny panel framed by rear-fender extensions. —That panel slammed atop a gigantic bumper-piece.
Also too much styling filigree.
To me this is sad because the C6 Corvette was one of the best-looking Corvettes ever.
At least Corvette remains the individualized offering it always was. In the ‘80s John Z. DeLorean (“de-LORE-eee-un”), head-honcho of Chevrolet, wanted to shorten the Camaro into a two-seater and call it a Corvette.
Thankfully, this didn’t happen.
Car-and-Driver wishes all Chevrolets were as good as Corvette, although it still needs better seats.


C6.

• “Independent-rear-suspension” is to make each rear-wheel independently sprung from its opposite. Most car-suspensions are (were) the Model-T Ford layout, each wheel firmly attached to a common axle — so that as one wheel was bumped, the opposite wheel was effected too.
• The Chevrolet “Big-Block” V8 was introduced in the 1965 model-year at 396 cubic-inches. It was made in various displacements: 402, 427 and 454 cubic inches. It’s still made as a truck-motor, but not installed in cars any more; although you can get it as a crate-motor, for self-installation. The Chevrolet “Small-Block” V8 was introduced at 265 cubic-inches displacement in the 1955 model-year. It continued production for years, first to 283 cubic inches, then 327, then 350. Other displacements were also manufactured. The “Big-Block” could be immensely powerful, and the “Small-Block” was revolutionary in its time. The SmallBlock is still produced, although much improved since 1955.

Lido

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Lee Iacocca.

The May 2012 issue of my Hemmings Classic Car magazine has a so-called “interview” of Lee Iacocca (“eye-uh-COKE-uh”), the guy who shepherded the new 1964 Mustang into production, and eventually headed Chrysler Corporation, saving it from the brink.
I plowed through it, but it wasn’t that good.
Lido Anthony Iacocca is perhaps the most important car-guy of our time.
He managed to get Ford Motor Company to develop the Mustang, and this was just after Ford crashed mightily in flames with the Edsel fiasco.
The Deuce, Henry Ford II, head-honcho of Ford at that time, grandson of company-founder Old Henry, was justifiably skeptical.
The Edsel had been a disaster. Focus-group research made it look promising.
But no one was buying. Edsel’s styling was laughable. A lollipop-sucking Mercury!
But Lido was a car-guy, and he knew the demand was there for a sporty-car that wasn’t the weird Corvair Monza.
He convinced The Deuce to gamble, and then Ford made buckets of money. The Mustang was the sporty-car Americans wanted.
Conventional underneath — a modified Ford Falcon — the sporty flair of a Corvair Monza without the weirdness.
Lido is from Allentown, PA, and is an engineering graduate of Lehigh University.
He always wanted to work for Ford; his family liked Fords.
After graduating college, he hung around a local Ford dealership, and found what he really liked was to sell cars.
A marriage made in Heaven, a seller of cars as well as a developer of cars.
But more than anything Lido was a car-guy, as opposed to a corporate bean-counter.
What he developed reflected his car-guyness, particularly the Mustang.
He wasn’t the developer of the Mustang as much as the guy who convinced The Deuce to do it.
But Lido had a later falling-out with The Deuce, and was let go.
Strange products were in his resumé beside the Mustang: the Maverick, the Pinto, and particularly the Lincoln Mark III, a car he was most proud of, reflecting his penchant for gaudiness.
Out of Ford, Lido was snapped up by ailing Chrysler Corporation.
He set upon two missions: -a) to make a success of Chrysler’s humble K-car, and -b) add Jeep to Chrysler’s product-line. —He correctly surmised the new Jeep Grand Cherokee was desirable.
Perhaps Lido’s greatest achievement at Chrysler was development of the K-car into a minivan.
No one yet had a minivan; even Ford had bypassed the concept.
And it was Ford that initiated the concept.
It was the Mustang all over again; develop an existing platform into something the public wants.
Soon everyone was marketing minivans, even Ford with its Windstar.
Just like the Mustang it generated imitators —And Camaro had the fabulous SmallBlock V8.
Lido is now 86, and still involved in the car-biz.
His puss decorates National Parts Depot, a parts source for ‘60s and ‘70s American cars — “American history,” he says.
I guess he’s National Parts Depot’s head-honcho.
Chrysler moved on after he left, but Lido’s lasting legacy is the ’64 Mustang, the car America wanted.
What Lido regrets most is he let Chrysler merge with Daimler-Benz, manufacturer of Mercedes Benz.
The merger didn’t go well, and Chrysler is now back on its own.
Lido is obviously a car-guy. He counts numerous Ferraris, a Lambo, and a Dodge Viper in his stable.
This “interview” didn’t do him justice.

• The Chevrolet “SmallBlock” V8 was introduced at 265 cubic-inches displacement in the 1955 model-year. It continued production for years, first to 283 cubic inches, then 327, then 350. Other displacements were also manufactured. The Chevrolet “Big-Block” V8 was introduced in the 1965 model-year at 396 cubic-inches, and was unrelated to the SmallBlock. It was made in various larger displacements: 402, 427 and 454 cubic inches. It’s still made as a truck-motor, but not installed in cars any more; although you can get it as a crate-motor, for self-installation. The “Big-Block” could be immensely powerful, and the “SmallBlock” was revolutionary in its time. (The SmallBlock is still made, although much improved.)
• A “Lambo” is a Lamborghini (“lam-bore-GEE-nee;” as in “get”), made in Italy, perhaps even more a supercar than a Ferrari.

And so began.......

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......the frenzied wild-goose chase of trying too keep up with our gigantic lawn.


Off we go! (Photo by BobbaLew.)

(4.7 acres; I mow about 2.5.)
I had to do the first mowing yesterday, Tuesday, March 27, 2012.
Usually I don’t have to start mowing until April, but we had a long warm-spell in March, temperatures well into the 60s, 70s, and even 80s.
I could see our grass was growing, some over seven inches high.
I had to suddenly get out our 48-inch zero-turn lawnmower, and remove its three blades for sharpening.
A “zero-turn” is a riding-mower; “zero-turn” because it’s a special design with separate drives to each drive-wheel, so it can be spun on a dime. “Zero-turns” are becoming the norm, because they cut mowing time in half compared to a lawn-tractor, which has to be set up for each mowing-pass.
I had to suddenly turn over the blades to my mower-man, and usually it takes him a week or two to sharpen them.
But he cracked the whip, and had the blades ready in a couple days.
I would need those blades quickly.
Back on they went; ready-to-mow. But it was raining. Our lawn was boomin’-and-zoomin’.
Our lawn is comprised of four segments, actually five if you include the immediate backyard which has to be mowed with a small push-mower.
I’ve tried it with the zero-turn, but it’s kind of abusive.
It’s big and heavy and leaves turning-divots.
The other four segments are large, and can be mowed with the zero-turn. They are -1) our immediate front-yard, about a half-hour; -2) the south wing, about an hour; -3) the north wing, almost an hour, and -4) our gigantic Back-40, almost two hours.
The front grows fastest.
I don’t mow the entire lawn unless I need to; I can usually only mow a segment or two.
The south wing needed mowing; our front-lawn was perhaps a day behind.
The north wing and the Back-40 were perhaps a week behind, although the north wing grows slowest.
Our immediate backyard, the small mower, would need mowing first. It was perhaps two days behind the south wing.
I mowed both the south wing and the front yard yesterday, about two-and-a-half hours.
Our zero-turn has a habit of throwing its blade drive belt on engagement. I was expecting to have to rethread it.
But it didn’t.
Off we went! Boomin’-and-zoomin’.
May is usually the cruelest month, the lawn growing like gangbusters.
I might have to mow twice per week, lest our grass get too high and stall the mower. (It’s happened.)
I’ll be mowing through October, which compromises motorcycle-riding.
I managed to stay ahead of it last year, although I’m always factoring in rain.
Do I dare? Check the weather-radar on this computer, and outside do I see a shower coming?
Plus I get the usual madness keeping the zero-turn going.
Last year I had to replace the blade drive belt, a gigantic thingy that set me back 70 buckaroos!
Plus I got it stuck in mud a couple times.
One time a friend had to pull it out with his four-wheeler.

Pilgrimage to Cartwright’s

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Gathering of Eagles. (Photo by Gary Coleman.)

The other day (Thursday, March 29, 2012) was the annual foray of a group of Regional Transit operations retirees to Cartwright’s Maple Tree Inn out in the middle of nowhere in the eastern hills of the Genesee valley (“jen-uh-SEE”).
Maple Tree Inn is only open during maple-syrup season; that is, when sap is running in their giant stand of sugar-maples, middle February through April.
Cartwright’s is a maple sugaring operation.
They boil the sap down into maple-syrup, and then serve it with all-you-can-eat buckwheat pancakes they make in their restaurant-kitchen.
That’s all they serve, all-you-can-eat buckwheat pancakes with maple-syrup, plus ham and/or sausage. Plus coffee of course. They’re not a normal restaurant.
The vast Genesee valley in western New York was the first breadbasket of the nation.
Wheat was grown in the valley and then shipped north on the long-abandoned Genesee Valley Canal to Rochester, NY, where it was -a) milled into wheat-flour, and/or -b) shipped east on the Erie Canal.
The Genesee valley has the Genesee River flowing through it, running south-to-north across Western New York, and it empties into Lake Ontario just north of Rochester.
The river flowed over falls in Rochester that could be harnessed for water-power. Rochester was first known as the ”flour city,” water-powered wheat milling. (Now it’s called the “Flower City,” since it became a rose-cultivation center.)
The Erie Canal also went through, so wheat and/or milled flour could be shipped east.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability.
It was an interesting job at first, mastering the safe operation of large vehicles.
But I was tiring of it, especially our clientele, who could be abusive.
Most weren’t, but the job was becoming boring. I had tried just about everything.
I dreaded I had about 14 more years to go, but my stroke ended it suddenly.
My stroke was a godsend of sorts, since it directed me to the Messenger newspaper in nearby Canandaigua, the best job I ever had.
And it seemed upper management at Transit wanted no connection whatsoever with what we bus-drivers were doing.
It seemed all they wanted was to collect their bloated paychecks for driving a desk.
Often we’d get buses with failed air-conditioning, but the air-conditioning always worked in the Administration-Building.
If it wasn’t, it was fixed right away.
Plus we bus-drivers were a pack of ne’er-do-wells, unionized (gasp).
There were cheats and liars among us, but management acted like we all were.
Our relationship was always adversarial.
There was a pecking-order at the Messenger too, but the relationship with upper-management was not adversarial.
The Messenger was a happy ship. We low-line employees were valued.
Then too perhaps it was what we were doing.
At the Messenger mental input was required to put out a newspaper, whereas at Transit we were just driving buses and parrying the clientele.
Then too it might have been our pay-rate.
My income at Transit was fairly substantial, due mainly to our bus-union.
At the Messenger my pay was peanuts, perhaps partly because I was stroke disabled.
But mainly we weren’t unionized.
Stories were bandied about among us Transit retirees about some of the insanity rained down upon us by Transit management.
Like the time a bus-driver got off his bus to use the restroom in a nearby supermarket.
His bus was shut down and safely secured in the plaza parking-lot, at the layover-point where it was supposed to be. —He had called in his departure to bus-radio.
While he was in the store, some granny lost it and slid her car into the parked bus.
Management, in its infinite wisdom, decided this was his fault, and fired him.
(It was his bus, so he was obviously responsible.)
The bus-union had to jump through hoops to get his job back.
The driver was put on probation.
Um, the bus was shut down and safely secured where it was supposed to be, and he was inside the store.
Yet some granny lost it, so that’s his fault.
But it was his bus, and he had rocked the boat. So fire him!
A second story was my own recounting involving a schoolbus.
The schoolbus stopped and then restarted, clipping a car on the crossroad, which was through.
Probably due to a blind spot.
“It that had been a Transit bus,” I said; “that driver would have been fired right there!”
“If that schoolbus had been on the through road,” another driver commented; “and tee-boned the miscreant car, even though the schoolbus had the right-of-way, Transit would have fired the bus-driver.”
“That’s true,” I thought to myself.
You always had to allow for the NASCAR wannabees and ignorant grannies to avoid accidents.
“Oh look, Dora. A bus! Pull out; pull out! Heaven forbid we get caught behind a smelly old slowpoke.”
It seemed Transit management immediately assumed bus-drivers were at fault, no matter what.
If anything happened it was rocking their boat, which apparently was just to collect their bloated pay, and glom free donuts jawing at the water-cooler.
Rocking the boat equals blame the bus-driver.
I got called on the carpet myself for various insanities.
And I was one of their favorites; I always showed up on time, and rarely took time off.
They even fired a driver for not showing up while he was on vacation.
Our union was always parrying madness.
So we gathered the other morning after 9 a.m. in a plaza parking-lot, south of Rochester.
We then set out on the long 40-50 mile journey to Maple Tree Inn, about an hour.
I did not make the drive myself, unlike last year and perhaps the year before.
It seems I’ve been to this shindig at least four times, the first time driven to it.
But the roads are familiar to me.
Maple Tree Inn is just southeast of the tiny rural town of Short Tract, and I know the way to Short Tract.
It’s up the side of the Genesee valley from Houghton (“HO-tin;” not “who” or “how”), where I attended college.
Houghton College is also out in the middle of nowhere — a tiny island of suburbia out in the outback. Houghton used to be called Jockey Street, and was along the Genesee Valley Canal.
It was a den of iniquity, drinking and fighting and prostitution.
People used to race their horses up the main drag; hence the name “Jockey Street.”
Christian zealot Willard Houghton arrived and set out to clean up the town.
A seminary was founded therein, which later became a college.
I would make the drive with Vinny Arena (“uh-REE-nuh”), a retired bus-driver who started shortly after me, and drove bus 27 years before being disqualified due to a medical problem.
This was because I knew the way, and Vinny didn’t; so Vinny could drive there in his own car (he had to go somewhere else after the shindig).
Vinny recounted his failure of his first bus-driving test with the state, a story I’ve heard before.
He also explained his massive weight-loss. Vinny was once 20 pounds shy of 300 pounds.
Like me, Vinny works out at the YMCA, but not the same YMCA as me.
Vinny is now down to 189, and looks skinny.
Like me, he’s 68; but if he keeps pumping that treadmill he’ll last a while.
There were 12 of us at this shindig, two of whom were lower management; not high-and-mighty.
The rest were mostly retired bus-drivers.
One of the managers was Gary Coleman (“COAL-min”), who once was a road-supervisor and also worked bus-radio.
A road-supervisor supervised bus-drivers from a company car, and settled arguments with passengers.
The other was Dave Brown, who had also been a road-supervisor. He also worked the radio, and dispatched bus-drivers from the Dispatch Office.
Both Brownie and Coleman started as bus-drivers.
I rode back with Ron Palermo (“puh-LAIR-mo;” as in “Moe”), the retired bus-driver who organizes these shindigs.
Three were missing, Norb Dynski, a retired bus-driver who has been to these shindigs before.
Also Gary Colvin (“COAL-vin”) and Tony Coia (“KOY-yuh”). They always battled each other to see who could eat the most all-you-can-eat pancakes.
The only number I remember is Colvin eating 14.
I ate four, my limit, with two sausage-patties.
I also took pictures, but Coleman did better.
Also missing was Art Dana (“DAY-nuh”), a retired bus-driver who died a while ago at age-69.

• “Gary Coleman” is a Transit retiree. He’s not in the picture because he was the photographer.
• “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.
• RE: “Unionized (gasp)......” —All my siblings are flagrantly anti-union.
• “Houghton College” is from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I graduated a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college.
• 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.

Into the ozone

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—1) I have instituted e-mail billing with our electric utility: National Grid.
They send me an e-mail notification my monthly electric-bill is available for viewing. Give ‘em a break. They avoid postage and printing costs; my paper is used to print the bill.
I instituted this three months ago, and every month since has been an incredible hairball.
The other night I gave up. Viewing the bill was impossible.
We got a “contact-us” e-mail link, and I sent the following e-mail:
“Your e-mail gives me an amount and due-date, so I will authorize a bill-pay from my bank.
But I have yet to view the bill!
I found the ‘view-bill’ link, but it wants me to log in.
Snail-mail billing doesn’t require that.
Logging in bombed, of course; and it wanted me to set up a ‘user-profile.’
WHAT? All I wanna do is pay the bill.
Snail-mail never wanted a user-profile.
I tried setting that up at least four times, and it bombed every time.
E-mail billing takes me way too long.
Spare us the instructions on logging-in, or setting up a user-profile.
Take us back to snail-mail billing.
Paying the snail-mail bill takes me 5-10 minutes; e-mail billing blows about two hours.
I can’t afford that.”
Whaddya wanna bet I get a response telling me how to log-in, and/or set up a user-profile.
Again: “Spare us the instructions on logging-in, or setting up a user-profile.
Take us back to snail-mail billing.”
In other words, I’ve already tried setting up a user-profile, and every time it bombs.
None of this insanity accompanied my snail-mail bill.
—2) Our cleaning-lady was done the other day (Thursday, March 29, 2012), and about to leave.
20 smackaroos, which we didn’t have, so we had to write a check.
“Hand-write the check or your new Quicken?” my wife asked.
“I could try,” I answered.
My wife explained our new Quicken is throwing hairballs.
I fired up my new Quicken. —My old Quicken no longer prints checks. Long story.
“Write check,” I click on the menu-bar.
There’s the “write-check” dialog window.
I entered our cleaning-lady’s name, and the $20.
So far, so good.
But I forgot to enter the date, so the check was on the register at the wrong location with the wrong date (March 29).
So, “edit check.”
I changed the date, but what’s this?
My Social-Security deposit has become 3/29 instead of 3/13 (the date it was posted).
“Oh well, I can fix that later,” I thought.
Another try at editing our cleaning-lady’s check.
This time an uncleared gift-check written last Christmas jumped into the register four times, madly deducting its amount each time.
“I give up,” I shouted. “Hand-write the check!”
I now had to correct my Quicken register; make it agree with reality.
I deleted the extra Christmas checks, and corrected the erroneous transaction-date on my Social-Security electronic-fund-transfer.
Doing so burned up at least an hour of frenzied trial-and-error.
Strange unknowable anomalies were taking over and throwing things into the ozone.
By then our cleaning-lady was long gone with a hand-written check.
This stuff is “user-friendly?” Why does it take a computer techno-maven to do anything?
My old Quicken, and our snail-mail electric-bill, were “user-friendly.”

• “Snail-mail” is of course the U.S. Postal Service.

Whisper-quiet!

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Photo by BobbaLew.

Whisper-quiet.

Our supposedly whisper-quiet standby generator was merrily roaring away beneath our bedroom window as we went to bed last night.
It’s not as loud as some of the macho Harleys that blast our 40-mph road at 80-plus if they can crank it.
Their riders loudly blatting defiance at the surrounding countryside.
The crotch-rockets get 100 or so, usually wheelstanding.
A tight curve is north of our house. It’s posted for 15 mph.
A crotch-rocket might do it at 40-50 plus leaned over at a 40-50 degree angle to the pavement.
I can’t do that.
I’m 68 years old. I can’t race.
What I worry about is pebbles in the curve.
I lost it on pebbles once. That was an earlier motorcycle. I dumped it; tore my pants.
After the curve is a long uphill straight past our house, so everyone wicks it up. Pedal-to-the-metal!
Our standby generator kicks on if the electricity fails.
It’s an internal-combustion engine fueled by natural-gas.
It doesn’t power the whole house, but nearly.
It doesn’t push our bedroom or laundry-room or air-conditioning.
Nor does it power our dishwasher, apparently.
But it does push our furnace and water-heater, both of which need electricity.
It also pushes our freezer and refrigerator.
Also our computers and garage-door opener.
That garage-door opener was an absolute necessity.
The garage-door is gigantic, eight-foot high by 17 or more feet wide.
It’s so heavy it takes two to open it manually.
Our builder wanted to install two eight-by-eight garage-doors.
I refused.
I knew an eight-foot wide garage-door wouldn’t clear my Ford E250 Econoline van.
It would clout the outside rearview mirrors.
I’d be changing the van’s oil outside in the snow, just like our old house in Rochester.
Our standby is the same as our neighbor’s.
We got it because we were at war with him.
What matters is cylinder-count. Our standby is a one-liter V-twin.
It also seemed like a good idea.
The electricity fails fairly often out here in the country.
We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western New York, southeast of Rochester.
Usually what takes out the power is thunderstorms or blizzards.
Years ago an ice-storm took out our electricity for almost a week.
No standby then. We were operating on flashlights.
And at that time our furnace needed electricity, but our water-heater didn’t.
We had hot water, but the temperature inside our superinsulated house dropped to 50 degrees.
Our standby pauses 30 seconds before kicking on after a power-failure.
That’s enough time for our DVR to lose its settings, so we have that on backup-battery.
We were calmly watching our recorded news, when suddenly we were plunged into darkness.
Our TV and DVR remained on, on the backup-battery.
30 seconds passed, the standby kicked on, and we had lights again.
That was about 8 p.m.
Our neighbor across-the-street, the one with the first standby, called about 10 p.m.
“I see your lights are on, so ya haven’t gone to bed.”
“They’re being pushed by our ‘whisper-quiet’ standby. And I gotta listen to that thing in bed.”
This is our neighbor’s son. Our original neighbors are both gone. They’re the ones who installed their standby, and were in their 90s.
“Somebody take out a power-pole?” our neighbor asked.
There was no other reason for the electricity-failure, no thunderstorms or torrid weather.
The power-failure also took out our Internet. Apparently the nearby substation is on the same circuit as our house.
But it seemed they too had a backup generator. Last time the electricity failed to our house the Internet didn’t.
And apparently our backup battery is not satisfied with our standby’s output.
It stays on battery-backup when our standby is on.
The TV and DVR eventually failed when the battery ran out, perhaps 20 minutes.
Now I gotta completely set up the DVR again. —It lost all its settings.
Finally about 10:30, lights out, our standby blasting away.
I covered both my ears, and fell asleep, but apparently our electricity returned by 11 p.m.
I was able to operate our dishwasher.

• A “DVR” (digital-video-recorder), like a VCR, records television video on a rewritable DVD disc.
• RE: “Our computers.......” —We each have our own computer, my wife a PC, and me a MAC.
• Our “superinsulated house” has foot-thick exterior walls filled with insulation. There also is a lot of blown insulation above the ceiling.

Monthly Calendar Report for April, 2012

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Coal-train 538 climbs eastbound toward the summit, a helper-set on the point. (Another helper-set is on the rear.) (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

—The April 2012 entry of my own calendar is one of the most dramatic photos I snagged last year.
And it's at a location I never thought that much of, what Phil Faudi ("FOW-deee;" as in "wow") calls "High-Bridge" and I call "Five-Tracks."
The original Pennsylvania Railroad alignment is the two tracks at left.
The slightly higher alignment at right, three tracks, is that of the New Portage Railroad, which Pennsy came to own.
Left-to-right are Tracks Four, Three, Two, One, and Main-Eight.
We are shooting from the State Highway 53 bridge, and I've always felt this location wasn't very photogenic.
Although a strong telephoto into the curve at the top would look fine.
Phil had us on an old bridge-abutment to the right of the New Portage alignment the first time we tried here.
To my mind, it didn't work. Anything eastbound was under the highway overpass, and anything westbound on Tracks Three or Four was too far away.
Plus the old signal-tower (at left) distracted.
I've also shot through that signal-tower; it doesn't work.
We had just missed a triple; three trains at once.
Phil was depressed. He said I wasn't driving hard enough, that I had to stop being a hyper-careful ex bus-driver if I wanted to snag trains.
Later I decided more was at play than my having previously driven bus.
It's also that I'm a stroke-survivor, that I have to concentrate extremely hard to not make mistakes. That is, I can't push hard. The mental wherewithal is no longer there. —I drive within my limits.
The New Portage Railroad was new railroad built to bypass an inclined-plane railway over the Allegheny mountains.
Like the inclined-plane railway New Portage was a part of the State of Pennsylvania's Public Works System, a combination canal and rail system to compete with New York State's immensely successful Erie Canal.
The inclined-plane railway was required to cross the Allegheny mountains. There was no way a canal could breach the Alleghenies.
And there had to be inclined-planes because grading at that time was very rudimentary — it wasn't what it is now.
The State Public Works System was ponderously slow.
Canal-packets had to be lifted onto railway flatcars for portage over the Alleghenies.
It was awful with the inclined-plane railway. The trains of packet-loaded flatcars had to be stopped to do the inclined-planes, where they were pulled up the planes by rope-cable winched by stationary steam-engines.
There were 10 inclined-planes. That's 20 change-outs at the ends of each plane, plus taking the packets out of the canal and putting them back in.
The inclined-plane railway went from near Altoona to Johnstown, PA.
22 stops!
The Pennsylvania Railroad, a private effort by Philadelphia capitalists, put the State Public Works System out of business.
Pennsy was a through railroad; no stops except to add helper locomotives to climb the Alleghenies.
The New Portage Railroad was an effort to address the slow operation of the inclined-plane railway.
No inclined planes. Pennsy bought the moribund Public Works System for a song, retired the canal, and added New Portage's tunnel to its Allegheny crossing.
The New Portage tunnel is very near Pennsy's original tunnel, but slightly higher.
To add New Portage Tunnel to Pennsy's Allegheny crossing they had to ramp up to it, the infamous "Slide," 2.36 percent.
That's 2.36 feet up for every 100 feet forward, although trains are usually only operating downhill on it.
The New Portage alignment on the west slope was right next to Pennsy, so Pennsy just added it when they took over.
But those tracks aim at New Portage Tunnel.
Pennsy also rebuilt the New Portage alignment to the east for additional track over the Alleghenies.
538 is climbing the old New Portage alignment up the west slope toward New Portage Tunnel.
At the summit Track One is in New Portage Tunnel, and Tracks Two and Three are in the original Pennsy tunnel, enlarged in 1995 to clear doublestacks and two tracks.
Track Three used to be in another Pennsy tunnel, abandoned when the original tunnel was enlarged.
The New Portage alignment and the original Pennsy tunnel are on opposite sides of a small mountaintop town: Gallitzin ("guh-LIT-zin;" as in "get").
New Portage Tunnel is actually under "Tunnelhill," a tiny village south of and adjacent to Gallitzin.
The eastbound train on Track Three in the distance is stopped to test brakes before entering the old Pennsy tunnel and descending The Hill on Track Two.
The three tracks at right become one to enter New Portage Tunnel.
538 will also do a brake-test before descending "the Slide" on Track One.
The right-most track, "Main-Eight," is a storage-track for coal-trains before descending The Hill toward Altoona.




1969 Cale Yarborough Mercury Cyclone-Spoiler. (Peter Harholdt©.)

—Now, which do I do? My Oxman Hotrod Calendar has a great photograph of a track Model-T roadster, but it has an engine a bit over-the-top.
But the April 2012 entry of my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar has a really great car, a 1969 Cale Yarborough Mercury Cyclone-Spoiler.
The Spoiler wins! I'll do that track-T later.
The Cale Yarborough Cyclone-Spoiler is one of the greatest musclecars of all time.
And I had forgot about it.
It was a special model of the Cyclone-Spoiler made to satisfy NASCAR's 500-car requirement.
Ergo, not many were made.
It had extended front sheet-metal and a bluff grille to make it more aerodynamic — and therefore faster.
And it really looks great being a fastback too.

Cale Yarborough in front of his Wood Brothers Cyclone Spoiler.

Cale (“kale;” as in the vegetable) Yarborough is a famous NASCAR-driver who drove for various teams.
One of those teams was Wood Brothers, who raced Ford products, like the Mercury Cyclone.
Yarborough raced various car-brands over the years, and one of his best rides was Wood Brothers.
The last I remember, he was racing Chevrolets for Junior Johnson
The Cale Yarborough Cyclone-Spoiler was available with either the 351-cubic- inch Ford Cleveland Small-Block, or the immensely powerful 428 cubic-inch NASCAR V8.
This car is the 428 engine.
Perish-the-thought such a car showed up at a traffic-light versus a G-T-O Pontiac.
It would probably cream it!

The front-end of the calendar-car.

The Wood-Brothers Cyclone Spoiler with its bluff front-end. (Who knows if this car still exists?)

About the only car that might beat a 428 Cyclone-Spoiler would be a Hemi ("hem- eee;" not "he-mee").
This calendar-car doesn't have the bluff grille of the NASCAR racer, which is devoid of scoopiness. The bluff grille turns the front of the car into a knife.




Three Pennsy E-44s lead a mixed freight east from Enola yard in May 1965. (Photo by Dave Sweetland)

—The April 2012 entry of my AII-Pennsy color calendar is what replaced the tired P-5 electric locomotives, the E-44 rectifier units.
Rectification won in the end. Rectification is to rectify the overhead alternating-current trolley-wire electricity into direct-current electricity for the traction-motors. The traction-motors could be the same items used in diesel-electric locomotives, which use gigantic diesel-engines to generate direct-current for traction-motors.

Photo by Dave Ingles.

E-2bs south of Washington, DC.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Northbound Penn-Central E-33s approach Wilmington, DE from the south.

The E-44 succeeded where previous Pennsy experimentals failed.
The E-44 is really a development of the earlier General Electric E-33, a rectifier unit.
The E-44 is also General Electric, as the E-33 was for other railroads, Virginian at first, then sold to New Haven. When New Haven was incorporated into Penn-Central, the E-33s became Penn-Central.
The first E-44s were built with ignitron-tube rectification. Later E-44s had silicon diode rectification, and eventually all E-44s were switched to silicon diode rectification, as it was more reliable and simpler.
Some E-44s were even upgraded to 5,000 horsepower.
That was a traction-motor upgrade, how much power the traction-motors could put to railhead.
E-44s were normally 4,400 horsepower.
Even 4,400 horsepower is a lot for a single locomotive, but an E-44 had six traction-motors, and the power available over the wire was incredible.
You weren't limited by the power-output of the on-board diesel engine, or how large it could be.
The E-2b wasn't a rectifier unit. It was alternating current. There were other Pennsy experimentals that were rectifier units.
But they all failed compared to the tired old P-5s (4-6-4).
The P-5s weren't replaced until the E-44.
Amazingly the electrification on this line has probably been de-energized, and the wire removed.
About all that remains are those lineside poles.
Electrification requires heavy maintenance. Electrification is more costly to operate than diesels.
Electrification makes sense only if there is heavy train-frequency, which there's not.
About the only Pennsy electrifications that remain are the New York City to Washington DC line, and Philadelphia to Harrisburg.
Both are now Amtrak; and the New York City to Washington DC line, part of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, has heavy train-frequency, passenger-trains. Philadelphia to Harrisburg may not make economic sense — not enough train-frequency.
Electrification from Philadelphia to Paoli ("pay-OLE-eee), halfway out, makes sense because electric commuter-trains are on that line. Beyond Paoli they aren't. Freight no longer runs that line like when it was Pennsy.
There was a lot of other Pennsy electrification, but all that has been removed. I used to think electrification was forever — the locomotives would wear out, but the wire would stay up.
The wire too wears out. The locomotive's pantographs ("pant-uh-GRAFF") were sliding on the trolley-wire, wearing thin the wire. In which case a wire-train has to come out and replace the wire.



The motor in this beautiful thing is overkill — a waste.

—The April 2012 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a 1927 Model-T tea-cup roadster modified to look like a Model-T for the race-track.
“Tea-cup” because it’s a Model-T, and the two-seater roadster body looks like a cup.

The front-end of the calendar-car.

The rear-end of the calendar-car.

It has the racer-nose (see at left), that of a racecar. It's also the perfect rear-end (bottom-left).
I've seen these tea-cup roadsters with a tiny pickup bed; enough to carry perhaps a 100-pound bag of sand. Totally unfunctional, and therefore ridiculous-looking to my mind.
What I usually see when it's this rear-end is only a top-part. A bottom has been added that matches the roll of the top part, it looks fantastic!
The yellow color is also fabulous.
About the only thing wrong with this car is the engine, a four-cylinder Offenhauser racecar engine ("off-in-HOUZE-er").
Offenhausers ("Offys") were usually installed in Indianapolis 500 racecars, or racecars for that series.
Smaller Offys were also made for installation in smaller racecars. Sprint-cars or midget-racers.
An Offenhauser racecar engine is certainly worth saving.
But it should be in a racecar.
I hardly think an Offy-powered hotrod would be drivable on the street.
What this gorgeous car needs is a SmallBlock Chevy, or the small Ford V8.
This 270 cubic-inch Offy powered an Indianapolis racecar in the 1969 Indy 500.
I can hardly see it idling at some traffic-light.
The engine was later installed in a Sprint racer.
Offys are double-overhead camshaft with the cylinder-head integral with the engine-block. The entire engine, head and block, is a single casting — probably a bear to machine.
You'd have to machine the valve-seats up from the bottom through the cylinder-bores.
The cylinder-head isn't detachable.
The combustion-chambers couldn't possibly leak through a gasketed cylinder-head/engine-block interface. This engine ran a compression-ratio of 16-to-one. —It's been "downgraded" to 11-to-one. (?????????; 11-to-one is pretty high!)
A recent hot-rodded stock motor might go as high as 10- or 12-to-one. In 1969 the average compression-ratio of a stock motor was perhaps seven- or eight-to-one.
Any higher and you blow a gasket at that interface.
It looks nice — the concept is nice.
That Offy is a good fit in a Model-T.
But for proper enjoyment a hotrod needs to be drivable.
What we have here is a trailer-queen.
"Offy engine; COOL!"
That Sprint-car nose makes the car. It looks great, but driving is out of the question.
Plus the car has to be push-started. (And the auto-tranny had to be modified to do that.)
People used to race "Track-Ts."
But not with an actual Offy racecar engine.
More-than-likely it was a hot-rodded Model-T four-banger.
This car was an actual Track-T racer years ago.
Does it even run on gasoline? Indy-racers ran on methanol.



Crew-members take in the breeze as a B-6sb switcher backs across State Route 49 in Millville, NJ in the late '40s.

—This picture is not that good, but it's the world I was born into.
The April 2012 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a Pennsylvania Railroad B-6sb (0-6-0) switcher backing light across a state highway in Millville, NJ on the Pennsylvania-Reading ("RED-ing," not "READ-ing") Seashore Lines.
"Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines" (PRSL) is an amalgamation of Pennsylvania and Reading railroad-lines in south Jersey to counter the fact the two railroads had too much parallel track. It was promulgated in 1933. It serviced mainly the Jersey seashore from Philadelphia.
The tender is slope-back, made that way so the engineer could see backing up.
A yard-switcher didn't need the water-capacity of a road-locomotive. It was never far from a standpipe.
The B-6 0-6-0 is the largest switcher Pennsy used in quantity. They did an 0-8-0, but mostly used old 2-8-0 Consolidations to do yard switching.
This switcher is being used on a local, drilling freightcars into factory sidings. The line to Millville is a remnant or branch of the West Jersey & Seashore to Atlantic City from Camden, NJ, across the river from Philadelphia.
West Jersey & Seashore was eventually merged by Pennsy. The segment to Atlantic City was abandoned. Who knows if this line to Millville still exists?
It probably doesn't, unless Millville has a coal-fired electric generating plant.
Whatever freight remains probably ships by truck. New Jersey built an extensive highway-system that put railroad local-freight out of business.
I saw steam-powered local-freights as a child, but usually a 2-8-0 Consolidation.
Short trains with a coal-car or two in the consist would come out to Haddonfield ("ha-din-field;" as in "hah"), the Revolutionary War town south of the suburb where we lived. They drilled loaded coal-cars into the local coal-dealer, who had an elevated coal-trestle siding.
The hopper-cars would get drained into dump-trucks below between the trestle-legs.
By then, heating with coal was just about done. I remember only one house in our neighborhood heated with coal.
A dump-truck loaded with coal would empty its load into the house basement through a coal-chute.
Our elementary-school, built in 1926, had a coal-chute, but its heating-boilers were converted to fuel-oil.
(That elementary-school has since been torn down, including an addition built in 1952 to accommodate the postwar baby-boom.)
My paternal grandparents’ house in Camden also had a coal-chute, but was heated by fuel-oil.
When I was growing up our house was heated by fuel-oil.
The house we currently live in is natural-gas, forced air.
When I was growing up our fuel-oil furnace heated water piped to radiators.
But it wasn't steam-heat.
it was just hot water; it was also our hot-water source.
Heating with coal was dirty, and it left ashes.
I don't think that coal-dealer lasted the entirety of my childhood.
This switcher is chuffing at 10 mph, the railroad speed-limit in Millville.
It's an image I remember all too well. A B6 switcher with a short cut of cars trundling a transfer from yards in south Camden to north Camden.
And I don't remember any slope-back tenders out to Haddonfield.
And how about that '41 Chevy, one of the most popular used cars of all time?
(The others were the '57 and '64, both Chevrolets.)
My parents had a '41 Chevy, although the first car I remember is a '39 Chevy.
The '41, in excellent shape when we bought it about 1949, replaced the '39 when it broke its timing-chain, giving up the ghost. Pistons hit open valves, severely damaging the engine.
That ’41 went to Arkansas a few times, and overheated once on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
My father removed the thermostat (a bad move), and replaced its gasket with a cutout from a Ritz cracker-box.
The radiator had to be boiled out.
The '41 lasted a while, but was replaced by a '53 in 1954. That was the car I learned to drive in. It was also our first car with turn-signals and an automatic transmission — PowerGlide.
We had both the '39 and '41 at first, a two-car family. Both cars were old turkeys — it was the early ‘50s.
The ’41 fit in our garage, but by the middle ‘50s cars became too large to fit garages.
My memory is of giant rear fins sticking out of a garage, and the garage-door partially closed.
For example, the ’57 Plymouth.



Mixed-freight leaves Enola yard for Knoxville. (Photo by Bruce Kerr.)

—The April 2012 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees' Photography-Contest calendar is a nice picture, but not that interesting. Enola is the yard across from Harrisburg, PA ("ay-NOLE-uh;" as in "hey").
Enola was put in years ago by the Pennsylvania Railroad to yard freight for the northeast and west. Harrisburg became a bottleneck, so freight was routed across the river (the Susquehanna — "suss-kwe-HANN-uh;" as in "and").
This photograph is a manifestation of the old saw between photographers that every photograph needs (likes) a foreground, that a photograph needs something to give the viewer perspective.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Amtrak approaches Newark, DE station at well over 100 mph on the Northeast Corridor.

l've done it myself. Used an underpass to give an image a frame.
I got fevered rage from my blowhard-brother-in-Boston, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, that the photograph was stupid, that I made the mistake of not walking forward to cut out the bridge.
Well, my eye said I could use the bridge as a foreground. The fact I had the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to instruct my macho all-knowing brother about color balance, and setting up photos to avoid telephone-poles coming out of people's heads, was Of-the-Devil.
We used to get this at the Messenger newspaper. Somebody might photograph a basketball-game, and in the picture everyone was running to the right.
Such a photograph had to be on a left page to avoid the players running off the page.
I doubt anyone noticed — our readers weren't art-critics. More important to me was good photography.
We had sports-photographers that could do that.
But if an unnoticed water-tower is in the photograph it can distract from your subject.
The camera will see what your eye doesn't notice.
Eons ago I photographed a '56 Chevy Nomad for a guy.

1956 Chevrolet Nomad.

At that time the Nomad was a specially-styled version of the Chevrolet two-door station wagon.
Before shooting its interior, I centered its steering-wheel.
What a revelation that was.
Yes, an uncentered steering-wheel always looked weird.
So this picture has a foreground, but I don't think it works.
The tree is too dominant, and beyond that the tree is a big dark mass.
I offset that some by lightening the shadows of my scan of this calendar-photo with my Photoshop®.
But the calendar-print doesn't have that. It's a gigantic dark mass. The tree frames the train, but the train is too far away.
The old adage about foreground failed. The tree is too dominant.
I suppose an offset would be standing back and using strong telephoto.



Naval Air Factory N3N Canary. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The April 2012 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is Naval Air Factory N3N Canary biplane trainer ("BYE-plane;" since long ago I was mispronouncing it "BIP-lane")
I'll let my WWII warbirds site describe it:
"The N3N was the last biplane to see service with the United States.
Built by the Naval Air Factory, a Navy-run manufacturing complex, it was produced to replace the Consolidated NY-2s and -3s operated in the 1920s.
The N3N would be the last mass-produced aircraft built by the Naval Air Factory.
The N3N was an equal span, metal and fabric biplane. One version was built with wheels and another as a floatplane with center float and wing mounted stabilizing floats. The prototype, the NAF XNN-1 was flown in August of 1935.
The US Naval Academy kept some N3N floatplanes after the war, but the rest were sold as surplus."
The N3N is powered by a 235-horsepower Wright R-760-2 Whirlwind 7-cylinder radial piston engine.
Yrs Trly has never liked biplanes.
They're hardly the elegant hotrods the Mustang and Spitfire were. They are also nothing compared to a Corsair or even a Hellcat.
Even the lowly Douglas Dauntless comes off better.

Douglas SBD Dauntless.

The Dauntless was a slow turkey, but more attractive than an airplane with two wings.
A biplane could be a forgiving trainer, but a monoplane (one wing) was more attractive, even a P-40 Warhawk.
You don't boom-and-zoom in a biplane.

Comedy of Errors

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Anyone who follows this here blog regularly, if there is anyone at all — and there appears to be at least one out there in vast cyberspace — knows I throw a lotta stuff up here.
Not as much as previously, when I was blogging something most every day, now perhaps only one or two blogs per week.
They also know my wife has cancer.
She probably will not survive. We are now on the hospice road. She has a while, or perhaps only a few weeks — or days.
As such I no longer have time to blog something every day.
Stuff goes unblogged, like the fact my Quicken Essentials is so insane about printing checks.
Everything has to be done just so, and there’s no manual. I’ve had to deduce it by trial-and-error.
So far out of six tries, I’ve successfully printed three checks.
And one of those checks had written and figure amounts a penny different, a strange conundrum I’ve never had happen over many years of using my previous Quicken software.
I blogged about that.
It requires a test-print of every check to see if I should hand-write.
I fixed that erroneous printed check manually; initialing my change.
So far I’ve had to hand-write three checks of six.
You can’t reprint an edited check — or so it seems.
So why not use my old Quicken software?
Long story.
Apple Computer did a so-called “Security-Update” that trashed my ancient Quicken’s check-printing function.
As you can see, that got blogged too.
So what happens is I often blog something while I consume breakfast, and it may not get keyed in for a day or two.
I hand-write my blogs directly in pencil onto a yellow legal-pad for keying in later.
Rarely do I blog directly into my computer, although I have.
Every month I do a Monthly Calendar-Report.
It’s huge; I have seven calendars.
Which may seem ridiculous, but they’re not really calendars.
What they are is wall-art that changes every month.
For the past couple days I’ve been working on my May Calendar-Report.
My first calendar-entry is keyed in, and I keyed in the second calendar last night.
My third and fourth calendar-entries are written, but not keyed in yet.
Yesterday (Friday, April 13, 2012), was a medical appointment at Wilmot Cancer Center (“will-MOTT;” as in “Mott’s applesauce”) at Strong Hospital in Rochester.
Strong Hospital is a 40-50 minute trip, and we hope it’s our last medical appointment at Wilmot.
We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, about 20 miles southeast of Rochester.
Our medical appointments have often involved driving in NASCAR rush-hour.
My wife is weak, and has the be pushed around in a wheelchair.
Wheelchair gotten (Strong has wheelchairs), I shoved stuff into the pouch on the rear of the wheelchair.
I had brought along three magazines, printouts of the first May calendar-entry, and my legal-pad.
The idea was -a) reading-material while we wait, and -b) proof what I had done, and work on my May calendar-report.
As usual, the one-hour medical appointment ballooned into well over three hours.
I never read anything, no magazines. All I did was work on my May calendar report, and field e-mail on my SmartPhone.
First was canceling a treatment blood-test hospice won’t authorize — that was in the Infusion Center.
Next was downstairs to the Breast-Cancer Center for a Palliative-Care appointment.
Then it was back upstairs for our final Wilmot medical appointment. We said our goodbyes — her oncologist was in San Francisco. So all we had was his nurse-practitioner.
Her oncologist was worried his being away looked like he was just walking away.
We don’t see it that way. I told them they did okay.
I then wheeled my wife to the first-floor entrance of the parking-garage, where she’d wait for me in the wheelchair.
I drove around, and my wife got in the car. I inadvertently left my magazines, my printouts, and my legal-pad in the pouch on the rear of the wheelchair.
We drove all the way home, where I discovered my magazines, the printouts, and legal-pad were all missing.
Of course; they were in the back pouch of the wheelchair.
Horror-of-horrors!
Only the first calendar-entry was in this laptop; with the other stuff missing I’d have to rewrite all I had already written.
Plus three magazines were vaporized; not a great tragedy.
I got on the phone and called Strong Hospital.
I got a machine of course.
I had a stroke almost 19 years ago, and as a result phonecalls ain’t easy.
Around-and-around we went.
First “security,” then “lost-and-found.”
“Please hold, your call is important to us; it will be answered in the order it was received.”
I left a message at “lost-and-found.”
Finally I got referred to the information-kiosk in the hospital-lobby.
They were befuddled I was calling them, and tried to refer me somewhere else.
“But this is where I got referred; you may have my missing stuff.”
A girl went out into the parking-garage, the wheelchair was still there, and retrieved my stuff from the back pouch.
“Three magazines, a legal-pad, and two 8&1/2 by 11 printouts?”
Back to Strong Hospital, my stuff would be waiting in the lobby.
Another long trip; and about all I could think was “I guess I could field complete boners on my own,” despite being stroke-addled.

• “Strong Hospital” is a large hospital in the southern part of Rochester.