[PRCo] Re: Introduction

Tue Mar 20 14:41:34 EDT 2012

An open letter to Jim Keener ... I thought about making it private and then thought that some of it was good enough for all you to read.
Topic 1:  Can we interest you in working for the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in your spare time.   That way you get to meet a variety of the local "strange" people.   

I have to be there this Saturday to requalify as an operator ... an every year occurrence.   By coincidence my requalification this year is the same weekend as the North Shore PAT tunnel opening so I'll get to participate in that show on Friday.

But back to PTM.   Some great people out there and most of them are focused in the same direction.    One of the things I found nice and surprising was when I attended different museum functions I counted between 33% and 48% women.   Now this a business where men normally go on Saturday's to escape the girls in their life.  I asked Dave Hamley why it happened that way.  His answer was a classic, "Guess no one told them they didn't belong."   Bravo.   I remember one lady telling me she comes to some of the picnics because one of the gay members cooks better than she does.   That too was a great testimonial.   And when one of our black operators (Homer Laughlin) died, a wreath appeared in the substation with his picture in it.   No one seemed to look upon Homer as an African American; they simply looked at him as one of us.   For those who wish to learn to operate, the spring training begins this Saturday.   (I worked in one other museum where Blacks were driven away using the N word.  I much prefer the attitude at PTM.  It's warm and friendly.)   

Dennis Cramer can explain it all and he is on this list.

Topic 2:   One does not get to see light rail lines, strange cities, different art museums or whatever the dream is by dream or wishing. It happens by buying an airline ticket or by getting in the car and turning the ignition key.   But it comes easier for those with smaller homes and less expensive cars and other less expensive tastes; in other words it's all in where we chose to spend our income.  I built my own house and paid the sucker off as quickly as I could and always owned cheaper cars which enabled me to spend more of my income wandering.   

About a year and a half ago I received an e-mail from Kevin Keefe of Kalmbach Publishing.   Kevin was writing a piece on Bill Middleton's life and wanted my help. I shot an e-mail back that said, I'll pop into your office in a couple of days and we'll talk about it. The following Monday morning I appeared on his doorstep in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin with a bunch of color slides and we had lunch.   He wanted to know if I always solved requests by simply driving a thousand miles.   I said, "No but you are in route.   I"m wander to the West Coast and and then back home."  After lunch he said he wished he could put his wife in the car and do what I was doing.   I said as I'm saying here, "Wishing never makes it happen."   Somehow you have to find ways to arrange your work and time and money so that it does happen.    Of course I'm retired now and if I want to go to Paris next week, I could but even when I was working I had ways of arranging my life.   For example, when Ed Lybarger said, "Let's go to Cincinnati next week to see a packaging museum..." I was able to say, "Why not?"    And when US Air came up with a $99 fare to London about 20 years ago, I came downstairs and asked my wife if she wanted to go to a play this weekend.   Yes, we went to London for a weekend to see a play.  Derrick is the only other person I know who would do something like that.   

Travel in my family goes back a long time, Jim.   My Pittsburgh grandfather used to talk about his summer drives to Virginia Beach in the 1920s.   He had to back the "machine" over the mountains of Pennsylvania or Maryland.   Why?   Car had a gravity fuel system.  You had to keep the gas tank above the carburetor.   My Dad remembered riding with him into Meadville in the late 1920s and his future father-in-law stopped outside of town, got out a rag and dusted the car off.  He would not be seen in a dirty car and at that time there were still a lot of unpaved main roads to put dust on your car.   Grandpa and his brother owned an electrical contracting business in Pittsburgh that wired major buildings like small factories, small schools, stores.  They had the money for vacations in an era when most people did not.   

After World War II when gas rationing was lifted, there is a movie of dad loading the family luggage into the '39 Chevy.   From then on, every summer we had two weeks of wandering.   The rules never changed.   You picked an approximate destination or maybe a real destination in advance.   You studied all the places you might want to see in route.   If you got there, fine.  If you did not, no problem.   There will be another year.  What was important was that you enjoyed seeing new things, trying new foods, learning about life.  About 4:30 or so every night, you looked for a motel.    In the 1950s, for example, our vacations were in the south.   Mom saw all the ante-bellum mansions she could find.   I saw all the steam locomotives that were still running.  The only trolleys were in New Orleans.   I learned that grits go with eggs.  I also learned all about black and white bathrooms, drinking fountains, movie theaters, etc.   Of course, after I grew up, I spent a lot of money seeing some of those mansions that I could have seen for free in the 1950s if I had not been so stubborn ... but kids are stubborn when accompanied by parents.   

My rules today are the same that my parents used except that I have applied them on two continents so far.   That forces one to try to learn a few other languages.   I do not like tour groups.   They tend to funnel you into stores where the guide and the bus driver get kickbacks on worthless trinkets made in China.   If I want something from Germany, I'll buy something worthwhile like a Canvas totebag.   Here a picture of me in England ... self portrait in a train station mirror.   What do you see that I actually bought on that trip?
Well, that was the time that Used Air temporarily misplaced my bags.   That red shirt came from a British Home Store.    More than once I bought a Wecker (alarm clock) in Germany when I dashed out in such haste that I forgot one.   

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