[PRCo] How far off TRACK can we get????

Tue Jul 16 11:08:44 EDT 2013

That was one of the points I was making.   Remember the story we did in Headlights on Jim Shuman's week-long vacation in Indiana in the 1938.   He had to take a week off without pay and the total cost of the trip was about a third of his annual wages in an umbrella factory to ride the Pennsy to Indianapolis, take the fantrip on the Indiana Railroad, ride the NYC over to Peoria, look at the Iillinois Terminal and return home.   

The 1939-1940 "See Both Worlds Fairs for $100" bargain coach ticket on all the US railroads, if adjusted to inflation would be about $1,657 today and if you wanted a berth to sleep in, that would be extra.   The dining cars were extra.  Hotels were extra.   Makes you realize how cheap air fares are today, doesn't it?   I knew a number of people who availed themselves of that bargain.   John Bowman and Leon Franks went from Lancaster to Washington, then the Southern to New Orleans, SP to Los Angeles, and because the SD&AE was washed out and they couldn't use the originally planned route through San Diego, the agent in LAUPT rewrote the ticket so they could make a roundtrip from LAUPT to San Diego on the Santa Fe.   Then up the coast to San Francisco, Seattle, back to Chicago on the Milwaukee Road and home on the PRR.   Shuman went to Chicago, met George Krambles and Bill Janssen, and went west on the Milwaukee, down to SF on the SP and home on the UP and PRR … he had to get back to work on the Pennsy.   Difference was, John was living with family and Shuman was supporting mother and sister.

Restaurants?   A cheap 50 cent meal in a restaurant in the Depression would be a cheap $7.50 meal today but there were not many 50 cent meals.   A cheap one might have been 75 cents.    We didn't have Booger King, Kentucky Fried Rat, McGristles, etc. back then.   Your local neighbor was trying to make a living running a restaurant.   

I have no idea, John, what was normal other than I have come to understand that most or perhaps many laborers and plant workers didn't get time paid vacations until after the war.   I know that I have seen photographs of my maternal grandparents, my mother and her brother (at about age 5) on one of the Green Line steamboats on a Shrine cruise from Pittsburgh to New Orleans in 1925.   But you also need to understand that my grandpa was a self-employed electrical contractor in Pittsburgh who dealt not with wiring houses but with wiring large buildings … stores, factories, doctors offices, hospitals, etc.  He didn't get his own hands dirty.   He and Uncle Emil sat behind desks at 209 Fourth Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh.   My grandpa took routine summer vacations at Virginia Beach in the 1920s … motoring vacations.   There was a great story my dad told of him stopping outside one town up on route 8 in northwestern Pennsylvania (8 was one of the last main highways to be paved), and wiping the dust off the car before driving into a town because he didn't want to be seen in a dusty machine.   His brother was also an inveterate traveler, but he had the money and no wife or kids.   

And my dad?   I have no idea what vacation policy Gulf Refining Corporation had for its employees … dad worked for them in the middle 1930s in the test lab and he was with them when they built the first structures at Harmarville.   He then went with National Electric in Ambridge.   During the war he was a design engineer with Penn Electric in Irwin … designing apparatus for merchant marine ships … I think they had a close laison with Bethlehem Shipbuilding in Baltimore.   After the war National lured him back with double his salary and he immediately started looking for an escape.  In 1947 Armstrong hired him in the Pittsburgh plant and in 1949 decided they were satisfied enough to move him to Lancaster as the resident engineer in the Lancaster Closure Division.   All of those were professional level jobs.   Yes, I understand that he was probably an exception.

There is a color slide of me swimming in Lake Erie at Presque Isle in 1941 proving that he went somewhere that year.   But he also said he always spent the first week of his vacations in Pittsburgh scrubbing all the trim on the house and repainting it …. acid rain could do a number on paint in a year's time.   

Then we have 1942 … no memories.  May have gone to the grandparents in Ohio.   But I would have been 29 to 31 months old that summer and most of us do not have detailed memories at that age.

>From December 1942 through the fall of 1945 … none of us were going anywhere on 3 gallons of gasoline a week and bald tires.

I have a memory of seeing tan and cream trolleys with green and red tailings in downtown Cleveland and that would have had to have been the summer of 1946 or 1947.   Somewhere in there visiting Niagara Falls for the first time and visiting Dad's sister, when she lived in Dayton, fit it.   

But the longest real trip came in 1948 and it amazes me that dad pulled it off with the 1939 Chevy just before he traded it in…..   Pittsburgh to Buffalo, Hamilton, north to Owen Sound, west through Ontario to Windsor, Detroit, Greenfield Village, Chicago … that was the year I said I wanted to see the Railroad Fair … then Marietta, Ohio to see his parents and home.   I'm sure it took the entire two weeks.

And 1949?  That was the year we moved here.   Just after the move dad dragged us to Wildwood, NJ.   He got such a god awful sunburn that after three days at the shore, he loaded us in the car and with great pain, he managed to drive to Baltimore and Washington and look at things in the shade.   And by this time I am recording the highways traveled.   

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Ethnic restaurants filling a niche market … you mean like Chinese for lunch yesterday, Cajun for dinner last night, Indian for lunch today.   Some people would never understand us.   

But John (and the rest of you), I also wonder if the relaxation of rules against intermarriage of races has also had a lot to do with that.   In 1895, there was an editorial in the Lititz newspaper that the Italians who were building the new trolley line should go somewhere else on their day off … that they were not welcome to spend their money in that Germanic village.   Don't let the door hit you in the ass as you go.   I can only imagine how much of a stir was created in the family in the 1890s when my Lutheran German grandpa fell in love with an Episcopal Irish girl from Wylie Avenue.   Perhaps it was tolerated because she wasn't Catholic Irish.   (That's not me speaking guys, as Will Rogers once said, I don't make it up, I only report it.)

And I think the one of the greatest reasons for the spread of cuisines today may be intermarriages from different nations and different ethnicities and races.   Back in the 1970s the cafeteria manager in the Labor and Industry building in Harrisburg decided to add collard greens to the menu one day a week for the black customers …. it was about four weeks before he had enough cooked each day because he discovered to his surprise that the rest of us would eat it.   Did he do that?   Or was it because some of the whites were already living with blacks?    I know if I want collard greens today, the best place to go is my granddaughter's home when her mother-in-law is there … then you get all sorts of good black down-home southern cooking.   

There are all sorts of Mexican restaurants in this town but most are for the gringo trade.   A true Mexican wouldn't eat in them.   But there is also a tiny convenience store selling everything from soap flakes in a Spanish language box to tortillas to plastic Jesus for your car.   In the back of that store is a small kitchen and eight tables … they sell real Mexican food to Mexicans.   How did I find out about it?   From Chinese adopted sister whose sun is engaged to a Mexican girl.   

But you are getting my thoughts.   I want to know what the rest of you think.

On Jul 16, 2013, at 9:26 AM, John Swindler wrote:

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> In the 1940s and 1950s, most families were unaware of regional variation in cuisine because most families could not afford vacations that would encounter regional variations.  Most families could not even afford frequenting local restaurants.  Your family was an exception, Fred - your dad was a manager at Armstrong.  
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> What changed??  Society became wealthier.  Travel - and supporting a proliferation of restaurants - expanded over a couple generations, from just the wealthy, - to the wealthy and well to do, - to now the average person.  It's become a mass market.  Unfortunately, it has also hurt regional variations as restaurant chains proliferated.  Perhaps ethnic restaurants have filled that niche market. 
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> As for jets taking away the train business, it was probably the Pullman business that was most affected by the 707.  For the coach passengers, it was probably the auto plus interstate highways.  The problem for the rail business is that it was/is labor intensive.  A bus is cheaper.  An auto - once the capital cost is incurred - is cheaper yet.  Also much more convenient.  
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>> From: fwschneider at comcast.net
>> Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 20:14:49 -0400
>> To: pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org
>> Subject: [PRCo] How far off TRACK can we get????
>> 
>> 
>> We have had a long discussion, mostly involving Dwight and Bob Rathke and myself (and anyone else who gives a hoot) about the trains into Cleveland and my questions about how the jets took away their business.
>> 
>> While having dinner tonight in a Mexican restaurant, I began to wonder, did aviation also influence how we eat?   
>> 
>> Let me walk you slowly into this….
>> 
>> In the 1940s and 1950s we had tremendous regional variations in cuisine in the different parts of the United States.   For example, ham and eggs in Virginia meant Smithfield Ham.   Eggs for breakfast in the southeast always meant grits will be served on with the eggs … like-em-or-not you will have grits with a dollop of butter on the plate.   New Mexico had its favorites like chicken fried steak (breaded steak tossed into a deep fat fryer).   Chinese food?   Why you went to Chinatowns in places like New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles for that.  Pierogies?   You might find them in the coal regions like Shenandoah or Wilkes-Barre or Scranton, PA.  
>> 
>> But today we find all sorts of food everywhere….   Well, everywhere but Washington, Pennsylvania.   :<)  
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>> And I have been questioning why and have come up with the following reasons.
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>> 1)  Background:    In the 1940s and 1950s we traveled by train or automobile on two-lane roads at an average speed of 30 miles per hour.   You did not get very far in a day.   Two things happened almost simultaneously.   Jet planes and better navigation systems happen after 1958.   The very first interstate highway shields were erected in 1958 or 1959.   Both spread like a grass fire in a drought.  Suddenly it was possible for us to fly cross country in a six hours or drive across the nation in three or four days if you were a maniac. 
>> 
>> 2)  Background:  Prior to the 1945 vacations were essentially a perk of the rich, management and executives.   After World War II it became a common perk of the rank and file.   You no longer had to risk getting fired for taking a week off without pay to take a railfan trip  (or any trip).     
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>> 3)  Background:  Prior to the 1960s many states had rules preventing any form of intermingling of races let along intermarriage of races.   Today if I want collard greens and black-eyed peas, best place to get them is to go to my granddaughter's home when her mother-in-law is visiting and bringing some of her home-cooked delicacies.   Yes, his side of the family is African American and southern.   I recall having dinner a few years ago in a Chinese restaurant in Hardeeville, SC … Chinese lady was the hostess, her African-American hubby was in the kitchen cooking … 30 years earlier they would both have been thrown in prison for intermarriage.   But obviously that does spread cuisines around.   I suspect that the big change is Chinese living with Mexicans or Whites with Blacks today but then I imagine that it was probably a really big deal in the 1890s when my German grandfather went up in Herron Hill and fell in love with an Irish girl … that wasn't proper then either.   
>> 
>> OK guys … what did I miss?   What causes all these wonderful foods to move around?   I think we can agree that food is much more homogenized today … we no longer have to go to West Texas or Arizona to find a really good Mexican meal … you can find authentic Mexican anywhere (and bad Mexican anywhere).  But what causes it to move?   What did I miss?   What is most important?  And since Dwight's wife was in the restaurant business, I expect him to respond.
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