[PRCo] Re: Philoshophy 101

[Fred Schneider]

In Philosophy 101, there are some rather obvious incontinuities ... a few
sentences do not make sense.  Sorry about that.  Also by the name it cycled to
Jim and back to the list, software replaced the umlauted letter u in Nurnberg
or Nuremberg with a question mark.  fws

Jim Holland wrote:

> 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?