[PRCo] Re: What was it like?

[Edward H. Lybarger]

We actually tried to watch this extravaganza last week when we were parked
in a motel in beautiful Burnham.  After about 40 minutes it put us to
sleep...the pace of the program was almost as slow as the pace of the actual
trip.  The traveler's name, by the way, was Horatio Nelson JACKSON.  Horatio
Nelson was a British admiral.

-----Original Message-----
From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
[mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org]On Behalf Of Fred
Schneider
Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2003 7:44 PM
To: Carl Schultz; elmer fry; joel lubenau; bill ulrich; timothy jones;
fschnei; pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org; Mark Dawson; scott becker;
Bernie Orient; jack samuels; fschnei; Dennis F. Cramer; Lynn Keller; Ed;
Barb Kearns
Subject: [PRCo] What was it like?


If any of you have not seen it ... the Ken Burns series on PBS
television has been running and repeating a story of Horatio Nelson's
first cross country automobile trip in 1903.  Very much worth seeing for
the start of the auto era .. the Winton broke down repeatedly ...
numerous tires, blown engine, broken drive chain, broken axles ... you
name it, it broke.  The total cost for the trip including the automobile
(which was pretty much beat to shreds in 3000 miles), the mechanic,
services in route, lodging, food was $8,000.  Sounds expensive for a
cross country motor trip today, does it not?  We know we could do the
same thing in a brand new car (at 50 cents per mile) for about $2,500.
But remember inflation.  Nelson paid, in 2003 dollars, the equivalent of
$800,000 just to win a bet of $5,000 (it was $50 in 1903 dollars) that
he could not cross the country in a motor car.

Makes the trolley car at a nickel a trip ($10 to go to work and back in
today's money) seem like a real bargain!

It also makes both my grandfathers seem like spend thrifts because they
both had automobiles in the teens.  Grandpa Rebele had a long series of
off brand automobiles ... I remember the late 1930s Graham-Paige and the
1949 Kaiser.  There is a lovely story of him stopping on route 19
outside Meadville PA to dust off his car because he didn't want to come
into the city in a dirty vehicle.   The joys of dirt roads!  And also
the tales of him backing cars up mountains on the Lincoln Highway (the
fuel was fed by gravity and a tank on the rear would not work motoring
up hill because it was lower than the carburetor).  Grandpa Schneider
only had one car, an air-cooled Franklin which he used to knock down a
neighbor's front porch.  After he spent a week rebuilding the porch, he
sold the car, and then spent the rest of his life (until 1960) walking
everywhere he needed to go in Marietta, Ohio.  Before you ask if Grandpa
Schneider got his driver's license from Montgomery Wards store, me
reminded that this happened before Ohio required licenses and a skills
test.

Mom used to say that, when she met Dad about 1928, he had a wish list
with two items on it ... a radio with vacuum tubes (to replace his home
made crystal radio), and a new Model A Ford.  He was tired of borrowing
an aunt's 1925 Chevy or using Pittsburgh Railways or trains or packet
boats to get around.  He graduated from Carnegie Tech in 1930,
immediately started to work with AT&T and went out and, with borrowed
money which was uncommon for him, bought the Model A.

I think those of us working as docents can weave our own families into
this, or use our families to help understand what happened.