[PRCo] Re: Interurban track remains/ row

[Fred Schneider]

Which book are you talking about, Ken?  The larger original edition published
by Kalmbach in 1967 or the newer and smaller version done by Don Duke (Golden
West Books) in 1987?  And whose artistry are you talking about?  Bills?  Mine?
I had a lot of Boston stuff in the second book, and more New Orleans in the
first one.   But I would hope you are speaking of Middleton because he had a
much greater sense of artistry than I and he wasted far less film.  The last
time he and I went out, he was still toting a tripod to make sure the image was
perfectly sharp.

I became acquainted with Bill when he was doing the first volume edition of
Time of the Trolley ... the late Steve Maguire referred him to me.  Bill was
still in the navy then, stationed down in Norfolk, Virginia.  From there he
served his nation in Korea, Japan, California and Hawaii before retiring from
the military and becoming Vice President of Buildings and Grounds (including
the bus system) at the University of Virginia in Charlotte.  Bill always had a
sense of art in pictures;  I'm aware because I did all his photo processing for
more than two decades.  I also revere him for his ability to deal with a person
both on a professional and on a friendship level, and never let one get in the
way of the other.  When Howard White and I were editing Headlights magazine,
Bill was the only contributing author whose work did not need to be edited ...
he wrote in a very tight, concise style and never missed a salient point.  You
couldn't edit it ... most of his pieces were so tight you could not remove a
single word without loosing the meaning.   Now my friend is 75 and recovering
from a stroke and still talking that he wants to go out with me to take
pictures on the Northeast Corridor.  It is hard for me to accept this because I
can still remember a marathon that he entered in Japan, in which "The Old Man"
(Younger Bill's term) came in about five minutes behind his teen aged son.
I've totally lost track of the number of books he has authored ... probably
around one a year throughout his life ... and the number of magazine articles
seems to be infinite.  And he was only slowing up in the last several years
because his wife Dorothy's health had deteriorated.  Still, he did the subway
book ("Metropolitan Railroads") for Indiana University Press in his 75th year!
I' will be happy if I could just walk to the kitchen at 75.

Fred Schneider

Ken & Tracie wrote:

> If you can, look at his pictures in William D. Middleton's "The Time of the
> Trolley." His New Orleans and Boston photos are quite artistic.
>
> Pepa Kalousek wrote:

fws