Biography

[Fred W. Schneider III]

I was reminded of a policy of the Photographic Society of America ...
all of their circulating photo portfolios contained a written
autobiography of each of the participants ... what they shaped their
interest in photography, cameras they owned, family, age, perhaps what
they did for a living.

It occurs to me that I don't really know most of you.  Oh, I've had
Derrick Brashear in my home a couple of times.  Ed Lyberger has been a
"fixture" here since 1973.  I met Jim Holland at an ERA convention in
San Francisco when he motored one of the fantrip cars (I have his
picture there) and we've traded Christmas cards and letters for 20
years.  But most of you are simply names; sometimes nothing more that
internet addresses.

How about it folks... would each of you mind bashing out a one page
autobiography so I can associate addresses and names with a living,
breathing human being?

I'll start off ...

Fred Schneider -- born in Magee Woman's Hospital, Pittsburgh, March
1940.  Worked in government service ... army, two years as a public
school science teacher, thirty-one years with the state of Pennsylvania
mostly as a labor market analyst, supervising analyst, and managing
analyst.  Probably wrote 600 or more economic press releases during the
state career.  I was trained at Franklin and Marshall College as a
geologist and ended up in statistics and economics.  Retired March 31,
2000.

Three years co-editor of ERA Headlights magazine.  Co-authored two PCC
books with Steve Carlson which were published by Interurbans Press.  Did
the layout for Jim Henwood and John Muncy's Laurel Line book for
Interurbans Press.  Have two other books in the hopper, one actually
dummied-out, which followed Dick Steinheimer's Growing Up With Trains
series, one was to be my work in the southeast states and the other a
variety of people from Lancaster ... may never finish them now that
Interurban Press is defunct.  Have always wanted to do the definitive
history of Conestoga Traction Co. (Pennsylvania's 7th largest electric
system ... 165 miles and 165 cars) and, since retirement, have gone back
to reading all the local newspapers.  Thought it might also be nice to
do a book on the evolutionary history of the streetcar ... treating it
not as individual cars like Birney's but as a series of inventions with
made cars possible.  But there is plenty of room for someone else to do
that ... life won't be long enough.

As you've deduced from my recent diatribe on copywrite law, photography
has been a joy and avocation for a long time ... since a gentleman in
the local YMCA gave me a used and abandoned Brownie Target 620 box
camera when I was ten or eleven.  A used Baldina 35mm followed, then a
Voigtlander Bessa (sometimes sharp ... sometimes not ... ask Bill
Middleton, he had one too), then a used Kodak Recomar (2 1/4 by 3 3/14)
and then a series of new cameras as described in a previous
transmission.  Photography is often a secret justification for doing
something else.

Love building architecture ... English Gothic cathedrals or Italian
Romanesque or the Eastern churches dripping with gold leaf, houses (I've
been photographing all the remaining 18th century homes in Lancaster
County), castles, towers, bridges (Marie claims I have an orgasmic
relationship with the Golden Gate Bridge because I've photographed it
from so many angles ... from Sausalito, from Yerba Buena Island, from
the fort below with a ship coming it, and from a Cessna 172 circling
overhead).

Celtic, Baroque, and Classical music are delights even though I cannot
sing a single note.  I'll not forget the day I found two organ recitals,
one in the Catholic cathedral and one in the principal Evangelisches
Kirche (Lutheran church) in Nurnberg, Germany ... mixed in with the
castle, the trams, the subway, and even a model store where the
obligatory purchase of a HO gauge tram was made.

Museums are turning into a strong interest ... I've motored at Baltimore
for more than a decade, at PTM for five years or more.  I've done a heck
of a lot of photo printing and mounting  and caption writing for museum
displays (and I must thank Ed Lybarger for his share of the work too).
I also had ten years under Railroad Retirement at the Strasburg ... two
in engine service and eight in the coaches.  A controller is a lot nicer
than the wrong end of a coal scoop.

And its time to quit ... Marie, to whom I've been married for 29 years,
has announced dinner.  And I never met a meal I didn't like.  Oh yes,
one daughter, one son-in-law, and one grand-daughter (12 going on 15).

NOW PLEASE, INTRODUCE YOURSELVES TO ME.

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