[PRCo] Re: Interesting PATransit PCC Photos

[Fred Schneider]

Herb:

William Lewis Trogdon might have also been used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Least_Heat-Moon

The third book, Roads to Quoz was difficult reading.   Ed Lybarger gave me his copy after he read it.   I said I gave up reading it.   Ed said something about having trouble himself getting through it ... wasn't at all like Blue Highways.  

But to me Blue Highways is sort of a Bible.   I was introduced to it when I found my mother reading it about 1983.   I won't say I could have written as well as he did but I understood the love he put into it.   Been there.  Done that.   Enjoyed it.   

I didn't understand it at the time, but I later came to realize that vacations and the ability to travel were something only the rich had before about the end of World War II.   I edited and published a piece in Headlights magazine that Jim Shuman wrote on his vacation in 1930s to ride the Indiana Railroad and a bit of the Illinois Terminal.   He was single and a trip of about 1500 miles and a week in duration took a huge chunk of Jim's annual wages in an umbrella factory ... something like 25 percent.  I never asked but I suspect he also had to take a week without pay.  

But I was one of the lucky ones.   My father was one of those management people who did have vacations most of my life, except for those four years during World War II when there was neither gasoline nor tires to use even if you had a vacation.   I had a mother who loved to look at how the wealthy lives ... she could have spent her whole life looking at antebellum mansions in the South.   My father loved photographing flowers, mountains, the farmer in the field.   Every summer we would be told that the car would be aimed in a certain direction and we might expect to get as far as _[Insert town name]__.   The theme was always spent the first half of the vacation wandering away from home, then turn around and perambulated back home the second week.  You would stay in any place until you tired of it and then move on.  The rules were simple ... relax, enjoy the scenery, never mattered how far you got in any day as long as you got something out of it ... that you saw something, learned something, came away richer for it.     

I still play by those same rules except the joy of retirement is not having to even care when I get back home.  I can always telephone American Express and tell them to take the bill out of the bank account.   Bank access cards are great too.  Europe is a little different because I have to get back to an airport on a certain day ...  but I have played by the same rules there ... get off the plane, stop at Hertz or Avis, and then take off.   The worst vacation I ever had in Europe was the summer Marie wanted to know in advance where she would be staying every night. And then I spent every evening on the phone in France rebooking for the next night because we were either ahead of or behind schedule.   It works so much better when you just knock on the door of a B&B or small hotel at 4 in the afternoon and ask, "Bitte, haben Sie ein Doppelzimmer fur ubernachten?"  or "Avez-vous un chamber pour un nuit?"   

For years I have kept a road atlas which I mark with an orange felt tip to show where I have been.   Some states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, California, Utah are literally blanketed in orange.   The only state missing any orange is Hawaii.  I use an apple green marker for railroads but since Amtrak took over, there won't be many more lines to add.  Why have the atlas?   Bragging rights?   Not really.  It is a way to remind me when I am in Minneapolis, for example, that I don't want to drive to northwest to Canada 1 and then west again nor do I want to use US 2 west.   I want to find another road.   It is always a quest for something I have not seen.   But sometimes it just isn't convenient to find another road.   There are only so many roads between Lancaster and Pittsburgh and I've used them.   Same with Los Angeles to San Francisco.    OK, if I have to use the same road, then I need to find something new to stop and visit in route.   

I admit to having crossed the entire USA on Interstate 70 and 80 and 90 when I was in a hurry.  But I have also driven most of the old Lincoln Highway and the old National Road and US 20 too.   It is a lot nicer to take your time and let the Ukrainian in Manitoba serve you lunch or the Hopi Indian serve dinner to you in Arizona than to suffer a franchised restaurant along an Interstate highway. 

I bought a European atlas with the same idea in mind but never marked it.  I did retroactively take 50 years of color slides and reconstruct a dated table showing where I was every day on each vacation but that is about as far as that project got.  

This year I think there is a highway west of Casper, Wyoming with my name on it.    It's called US 26.   Then into Salt Lake from the north.   I have to find a different way to Salt Lake City to see those two new light rail lines ... and maybe a new way to Los Angeles to see the Expo line.   Maybe through Tonopah, NV????    Ah ... I80 to Wendover, then south on 93 to Ely, then on 6 to Tonopah, then on 95 to Vegas.   You listening Ken?   


On Feb 29, 2012, at 9:28 AM, Herb Brannon wrote:

> And what were those other "mulitiple names" ?  Just in case I might be
> missing some of his books.
> 
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> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 07:37, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net>wrote:
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>> He has used multiple names in his writings.
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> 
> -- 
> Herb Brannon
> In Cuyahoga Valley National Park
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