[PRCo] Re: Philoshophy 101

[Jim Holland]

Good Morning!

                Fred!  --  You Didn't Not give me No choice in the matter
when, in another message, you said::

> Jim Holland said that some members of this group think I dislike
> trolleys ... I sent him my philosophy.  Let's see if he wants to
> rebroadcast it.

                It is Not a matter of what would be offensive to me but it
is a matter to understand another person's position; this affords us
that opportunity.     Thank You for sharing this insight.

JIM

PS  --  How many credit hours is this?:)
 

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Philoshophy 101
   Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 20:50:57 -0500
   From: Fred Schneider <fschnei at supernet.com>
     To: Jim Holland <pghpcc at pacbell.net>

I leave it up to you, Jim, to post this to the others if you do not find it
offensive to your position.  I've tried to present my position with regard
to the electric trolley car.  I would put this on line but you instigated
it as a private message.

On the other side of the coin, Fred, there are
those who feel that you seem to be negative, even anti-,
TrolleyCar and I don't mean present day but 1920s--1950s.
It seems to confuse some as to where you actually stand!

Good point ... and I understand they feel this way.  On the contrary I am
neither pro nor anti trolley because that would allow no changes throughout
history.  We must judge the utility of the trolley, the deep freeze, the
movie house, the automobile, and all other inventions in light of
conditions during the history of that invention.  An automobile in 1900 had
very little utility other than as a toy to be used on Sunday afternoons in
the summer, when the roads were dry.  It was essentially useless to the
masses.  On the other hand, an automobile in 1930 was very useful because
most roads in the populated part of the United States were paved (that, of
course leaves out all the principal roads across Nevada).  We have to be
able to continually reevaluate the utility of a product during its life
span, if only because the public was doing the same.

Furthermore, one needs to look no only at how one might feel if he lived in
the trolley era, but also are we doing what we should as a nation to live
in harmony with other nations in this world.

One cannot be totally anti-trolley and have collected a library of 20,000
negatives, 50,000 slides, 150,000 cubic feet of books, etc., etc., etc. 
But I lost the blind acceptance more than 30 years ago.  I was disturbed
then, when I printed two articles in Headlights, comparing busways and
light train technology, and I received a hate phone call from a member who
tried to tell me that the bus piece should not be there.  I tried to get
him to explain specifically what was wrong with it, and after poking for a
minute, I finally got him to admit that he didn't even read it because it
didn't belong there.  The man also collected real 1:1 scale buses, but bus
articles belonged only in a bus magazine.  He didn't want any one to
compare buses and trolleys.  It was improper to even suggest that auto
clubs wanted bus highways because they could later be turned into car pool
lanes and then still later into lanes for anyone.   Seems to me that is
just what happened.

I guess I would rather be accused of hating than of wearing blinders or
rose colored glasses.

I think if I lived in 1880-1900, I would have regarded the trolley as a
fabulous invention.  I would have marveled at its speed and convenience
compared to walking, but I would also have felt that a nickel fare was a
tad expensive.  If I was my present age in 1900, you can be sure I would
have used the trolley.  Had I been 20, I probably would have avoided it
unless my arms were full, simply to save money.  We must not loose sight of
the fact that the nickel fare represented was not cheap, and that using the
trolley to go to work and back six days out of each week represented about
4.5 to 5 percent of a typical working man's earnings.  If I had to take my
wife and two kids shopping on Saturday afternoon, that would have another 4
percent of my gross earnings.  Of yes, church on Sunday ... 4 people x 2
trips ... another 4 percent.  You notice we are already spending 15 cents
out of every dollar on trolley transportation.  Interestingly, the public
also rebelled at the cost even then.  Official data shows that, while
people made extensive use of trolleys early in the 1900s, they traveled a
very limited distance.  (Example:  Here in Lancaster the average passenger
paid 6 cents despite numerous long lines with zone fares as high as 70
cents.)

If I lived in 1920 - 1930 and had been an adult, I would have been much
like my father and my grandparents.  I would have wanted my own car. 
Doesn't matter that it costs more overall, it gives me freedom.  It
attracts a girl friend.  It allows me a small room to be alone with that
girl friend.  I think I would have also noted that my car is shiny, clean,
and that the trolleys (because of my car and those of others) is dirty,
rusty, the wood is rotted, and it needs painting. It makes a lot of noise,
it hogs up the street (remember perception is reality), and keeps me from
getting where I want to in a hurry because it is in front of me.

Had I grown up in the 1930s and 1940s, I think I would have admired my
uncle.  He was once thrown out of high school (about 1936 or 1937) for not
showing up for detention.  He has something more important to do that day
... he was teaching a teacher how to drive.  He was suspended, and my
mother had to go to the principal and talk him back into school.  When I
was five I can remember his car ... a 1941 fire engine red Plymouth
convertible with white wall tires and a radio.  Let me tell you, that car
was like a vacuum cleaner when it was driven past young women.  He had a
lot to choose from.  My Aunt Evelyn was one of those so attracted, and she
surely was not hard to look at.  I imagine that Freddy never voluntarily
rode on a trolley after he was sixteen.

Am I anti-trolley car?  Well, it's a fun thing to play with at trolley
museums.  It was a fun thing to ride in my youth.  But that is because I
have this male interest in mechanical things (and not the male interest in
"sports.").  But for me to want to use it, it needs to be practical.

When I was in high school I had no strong interest in automobiles.  My
friends all lived along bus routes.  We still had acceptable evening bus
service until 1957.  I found girls later in life than most men, therefore
that wasn't an issue.   In 1958 I united with the army, and there was still
quite acceptable bus service between army bases and nearby towns ... Public
Service ran every hour from Fort Dix NJ to Philadelphia and New York ...
and perhaps the seacoast too (it was winter and I didn't explore that). 
Fort Gordon Bus Company ran into Augusta, GA at least every hour and
probably every half hour.  Down in Texas, the Santa Fe Railroad had a
convenient train that brought me back to the base in time for lights out,
whether I was in Houston or just nearby in Temple.  Then the army put me in
Germany for two years ... hell everyone either rode a bike, walked or rode
public transport in Germany in those days.  I bought my first automobile
when I came home in 1961 and needed one to commute to college.  I wish I
still had that 49 Packard.  I mentioned women earlier.  I was spraying a
fresh coat of black lacquer on the car (in pre OSHA days) and my father
remarked that, if I had stayed out of the woods, I wouldn't need to paint
the tree branch scratches out of it.  Hey, the trolley didn't go to the
woods.

The second point about harmony in the world is much more difficult to deal
with.  Obviously we are willing to beat up on other oil producing nations
in order to get fuel from them at prices lower than what it costs to pump
our own fuel out of the ground.  Fuel supply projections are certainly
flawed; but we've recognized and then ignored for at least a half century
that fossil fuel supplies are finite.   It is distressing to me that
Americans find it necessary to drive SUVs getting 8 mpg on the open road
while a typical western European would consider my 27 mpg VW Passat as top
end, and the majority of car owners over there are in something
considerably smaller, probably something averaging 30 to 40 mpg.  It is
also distressing that we have thrown away our cities.  Where are we going
... I've seen one projection that shows radical increases in fuel prices as
demand begins to exceed supply in perhaps ten years.  Will it take us
another 100 years to reconstruct the cities we destroyed in the previous
100 years?  Maybe.

Ed Lybarger and I were in a small German town outside of N?rnberg perhaps
four years ago.  I remarked that it seemed to be a wonderful place to
retire.  He disagreed.  I tried to make the point that the town had not
been destroyed in the rush to the suburbs.  I would be able to buy a suit
of clothes, a restaurant dinner, groceries, a toner cartridge, a ream of
paper, a book, and even salvation from the local Roman Catholic church. 
And if I really wanted something more esoteric, I could walk to the train
station, be in N?rnberg in fifteen minutes, and then take the tram to the
model store to buy that Faller plastic building kit.  The point I was
trying unsuccessfully to make was that I could retire without the need for
an automobile and still live as an independent human being, one not
tethered by a string to the nursing home and their van.

So there are two environments ... public transport works well in some
nations and very poorly in ours.  Unfortunately, I live here.  And if it
functions poorly, for whatever reason ... because the promoters made it too
costly, or the politicians used it as a bronze tablet on which to put their
name, or the unions needed above average wages, or simply because the
public doesn't want ... that I have a hard time accepting that we should
spend money having it today, except in the very largest cities.

And this has nothing to do with a hobby.  It's more like Bridgitte Bardot
was nice to look at but I don't think I would want to bring her home.

So what am I doing?  I essentially have two hobbies.  Trolleys are nice to
look at.  But there is also the issue of hard and cold mathematical facts. 
And I'm trying to straddle both areas.  Maybe this is more like the story
that, "You can never go back home."   Home isn't where you left it.

Make sense?