Hello Uncle Ken, Guy, and the other "boys in the back" (front?),

How's everything going?  Grandson, Guy and Bev, Mike in the loader, other Mike, Bobby and his boss, do I dare to ask about Dino?  Of course you can't immediately answer, so I will just ramble on for a while, I have some experience at that.

I really miss sitting around in the morning  with you guys, solving the worlds problems, so instead I've been writing letters, a bunch of them are enclosed.

Drivers License numbers

We all know that there are tricks in your drivers license numbers, an insurance agent just showed me that the whole number is a code for your name, birthday, and sex.  Ill show you.

The first digit, is the first letter of your last name (duh!)
The next three digits is a "soundex" code for the way your last name sounds, is yours XYZ?  Guy knows how Soundex works, its a census code from the 1930s.
The next three digits is your first name and middle Initial.  Some common first names have a number, otherwise it would be first initial. .  Kenneth is K, 500, M is 540, but Margaret is 560 and Mary is 580.  Note that numbers have both male and female names, 560 is Margaret or Martin. Your middle initial is a number 1-19 which you add to the first number.  Some numbers have more than one letter, 19 is W,X,Y, and Z.  If your middle name was Xavier you would be 519, Mary X. would be 599.
The next two digits are your year of birth.
The last three digits are the day of the year number, counting February as 29 days and skipping 61, 62, 124, 186, 279, and 342 (I have no idea why they skip those numbers).  Therefore, Jan 1 would be 1 and Dec 31 would be 372.  One last trick, for females you add 600 to the last three, John is 095 (Apr 2)  but Jean would be 695.

Dogs.  I've been reading a lot about dogs lately, I'm a dog person, and I think that you may be, too.  I haven't been reading about training, or breeds, rather about background, history, intelligence, etc.

Dog intelligence. Maybe it's just the books I've been reading (dog people seem to get carried away sometimes), but dogs have been looking smarter all the time.  Most people seem to think that dogs are in the middle of the "top ten smartest", right behind cats, but they've moved up some in my mind.  Here are a few points.

Catching balls. We both know that almost any dog with two working eyes can catch a ball or treat in the air, but there may be more to this than meets the eye.  The dog has to understand ballistics, the trajectory of a ball isn't a simple curve, it's an arc that gets tighter at the end.  Yet at the end of that arc is a dog with an open mouth, and Jax rarely misses.  In fact, if she can move her body fast enough to get near the end of that arc, she almost never misses.  Frisbees are even tougher.  Does she take the wind into account, or is she correcting for the changing trajectory?  We may have been taking some pretty serious brain action for granted.  Can cats or other land animals catch a ball in the air?  I don't know, I had a cat for almost a week once, and that animal so impressed me that another cat has never again crossed my threshold.

Dog language. Dogs may recognize their name and a few other words, the rest is voice inflection, right?  Crap.  Dogs regularly learn 25 to 50 commands, often with voice, whistle, or hand signals for the same command.  The dog recognizes the command, has emotions relating to it (usually "oh boy"), and will take action relating to it, often several steps.  For instance, if Jax (certainly no genius) hears me ask if she wants to "go for a ride" or "go for a walk" she's at the front door, "go outside" sends her to the back door, and "go outside to play"  sends her scurrying around for her frisbee, then she is at the back door.  In all cases she is in a blind panic of joy, yipping, jumping, and running, with her tail almost wagging itself off her butt.  And she recognizes these commands from all four of us, in almost any tone.  Voice inflection, sure, but all of these commands are similar, yet she recognizes the difference, no matter who is saying them in what tone.  And we consider her to be an average mutt, with no real training.

Dog senses. You know about some dog senses, but did you know that dogs (and cats) have a "Jacobson's organ", which let's them taste the air, like a snake?  With a sense of smell like that, who needs to taste the air, too?  Of course, how can you tell the difference between what they smell, and taste?  Too deep for me.  Dogs (and many other animals) can probably sense the air pressure (like a barometer), and may even sense the Earth's magnetic fields.  Is this how they can sense earthquakes, and sometimes find their way long distances?  How about Dino's daughter's "fit dog", was that smell, or was the dog reading her brain somehow?

I would love to be able to read a dog's mind.  All that, and emotionally soothing and fun, too.  If I could only teach her to shit in the toilet.

Hit and Run. Linda got hit at her work last week, or the Jeep did, really. She parked it at 6:00 AM, and at 3:00 PM the left front corner was bashed. SHIT!! This might have been the end, hit and run, but instead there was a story. Her boss left for lunch, when he came back he parked one space down from Linda.  He noticed that there was a "conversion van" next to Linda and himself. The boss  knew what car Linda drove and walked right past her Jeep, taking little notice.  When Linda went to him and said she had been hit, he remembered the van next to her and gave her the security tape of the parking lot for the day.  Nice to be close to the boss, isn't it.

She came home with the tape, we "damned" for a minute, then put the tape in the VCR.  There are four cameras, two on each side of the building, watching the parking lots.  The tape is in black and white at slow tape speed, and cycles between the four cameras, about three seconds per camera, so you get three seconds of poor quality video, then nine seconds of other views.  Once we identified the views and got the sequence down, it worked.  Camera one and two are on the wrong side, camera three sees the Jeep in the distance, and camera four is pointed right at it in the foreground.  The rhythm is one two three, four five six, o-ver there, right in front. Bingo.

The video stinks, pure and simple.  The red Jeep appears white, as does the tan conversion van.  No license plates, or even faces, and the corners of the lot are out sight, but there was enough.  1:30 PM, light clothed man gets in van, no wreckage in sight, van pulls in front of Jeep, when it clears there's a headlight bezel on the ground, got him, sort of.  Twenty minutes later a light clothed man comes by and checks out the damage on the Jeep.  If that's him, then he knows.  Jerk.

We cued up the tape and head for the cop shop.  They call a cop in to write up the report, but he can't view tape.  The department only has one VCR, and it's busy.  Our cop really doesn't much care, it's only a fender bender, I don't really blame him, now.  At the time I was as disgusted with the cops, there's more, but that's another story.

The next day I drove Linda to work.  Will the van be there?  We both thought that he would drive a friend's car for a while, but there it was, in almost the same spot.  During the morning several Mexicans ask Linda if she found out who did it, she answered "I'm real close".  These are her friends, but it's clear they know and are holding out.  Oh well, bigotry works both ways, I guess.

When the cops show up at 10:00 AM and "will the owner of" blasts out of the P.A., suddenly Calixta (a male name) is all up front.  Sorry I didn't stop, I was in a rush.  Why didn't you say anything this morning? I didn't know who's car it was.  Lies, but he had a real license, insurance, and admitted to the cop on the accident report that he hit the Jeep, then left.  Linda let him slide on hit and run, I wanted him written up, but it's her world, she has to live in it.  When he asked her to go to his friend's body shop in Aurora, she drew a pretty bold line.  Something like "I live in West Chicago, I work in WC, my Jeep was hit in WC, it's going to be fixed In WC.  If you came forward, maybe, but you ran."

Bottom line to date, small shop using crash book says $750, computer shops say $1,000 to $1200.  Oh well, at least checking out the surveillance tape was cool, in hindsight.

Mark 15-2.  While watching Jesus Christ, Superstar with Sara (13) I wanted to get an "exact quote" of what Jesus said when Pilate asked if he was the king of the Jews.  I reached for my reference Bible, a garage sale textbook, copyright 1986, with maps, time lines, indexes, and lots of footnotes.  I soon had four different bibles open to Mark 15-2.  Mark was the first of  the "Synoptic"  three written and least spin doctored.  Least spin doctored, however, doesn't mean much.  I have been very careful copying these versions, right down to the capital letters.
 

"Are you the king of the Jews?" asked Pilate.
"Yes, it is as you say," Jesus replied.
(New International Version @ 1986)

And Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?"
And he answered him, "You have said so."
(Revised Standard Version @ 1972)

And Pilate asked him, Art thou the King of the Jews?
And he answering said unto him, Thou sayest it.
( King James Edition @1977)

Then Pilate asked Him, "Are You the King of the Jews?"
He answered and said to him, "It is as you say."
(New King James Edition @ 1982)

Simon of Cyrene. Simon of Cyrene and his sons Rufus and Alexander (who's ossuary has been excavated) seem like a minor detail in the Bible, Mark says that Simon carried Jesus cross (Mark 15.21, Matt 27.32, Luke 23.26).  It is generally accepted that Mark was written about 70, just before the Jewish revolt, Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source for their books, written maybe 20 years later.  For Mark to name Simon and Sons probably means that they were real people who would be known by readers at the time (especially Simon?, neither of the sons are mentioned in Matt or Luke), but there is no other mention of them in the Bible or elsewhere.  Were they Church leaders, Jewish revolutionaries, or rock superstars?  No clue.  But if you accept them as real people, then Alexander's ossuary is physically and historically as close to Jesus as anyone has gotten to date.  (At that time Jews left the body in a tomb for a while to rot, then stuffed what was left in a jug, or ossuary, probably to save space).  No one seems to have said that the kid's grave is holy, or even Christian, so there seems to be little propaganda associated with it.

Many of the Christian holy places in Jerusalem were "found" by Emperor Constantine's  mother in the early 300s, after his conversion.  Although many of her "finds" may be authentic, there were and are so many axes to grind that any "find" could be false.  I personally feel that the tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is as likely as not, but I have a lot of trouble with Jesus foreskin, or the stump that the "true cross" was cut from.  Who knows, maybe in hundreds of years Alexander's ossuary may be in a church, but right now it appears to be an archeological find, not a relic.

Moses Making God. When Moses came down from the mountain with the "Big Ten", the Jews built "The Ark of The Covenant" to hold the tablets, and a mobile   "Tabernacle" to keep the Ark in.  The "Tab"  is basically a two room tent with a fence around it, all of which knock down for travel.  The Bible gives very specific (for Jews) directions on how to build all of this, right down to color.

According to Biblical Archeology Review it is a close copy of Ramses IIs "War Tent".  Kings and Generals often had war tents, from very early Egypt to the end of Rome, and sort of to this very day.  Ramses II was a god, at least in his mind, so a tent being a holy place where a god lives is a natural, especially for a nomadic Jew.  The Tab having the same ritual details as the tent, it looks like whoever designed, built, or wrote about the Tab  in the Bible was very familiar with Ramses II, who is thought to be the Biblical "Pharaoh" by other people for other reasons.  Since Ramses II is real, I think this tent deal sort of backs up a Moses in Egypt connection.

Dear Ken,

I found a three hour History Channel tape, "Who Wrote the Bible?".  I must have set the timer and forgotten about the tape, it was like finding a "lost gospel".  It was good, it assumes the religion, but is very objective about the books.  Here are a few quick points.

First, you have a different bible.  I thought that "King James" was Catholic, wrong!  Many Bibles have a Prot and Cath version, you have five more books, and some protestant Bibles have the "Apocrypha", books that didn't make the final cut of the Hebrew Bible, but are often added as a type of appendix.  They weren't cut because of their content, but rather because of time.  The Jews wanted a bible now, they didn't want to mess with translating a bunch of lately written Greek books.  I have four or five Bibles, all are Prot, just by chance. Restricted vision, and I didn't even know it.

I've been hunting down old New Testament documents lately.  The first Christian writings we now have were probably Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, written in 50 from Corinth (Greece).  He probably wrote Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans in the winters  of 52-53, 53-54, and 55-56 respectively, from the same area.  These were written to congregations he had formed, but there is no idea how many people were in these "churches".  Some he wrote, some were dictated, they were copied, shared, and became holy, no originals are known to exist.

The gospel "John" was probably written in the very early 100s, there is an actual fragment of John from 125, very, very early.  The "Revelations" of John was written earlier, maybe in the 90s, by a "church leader" named John while he was exiled on the island Patmos, off the coast of Turkey.  Both "John" and "Rev" seem to be written by the same person, and although there is no evidence that he was the apostle John, there is no evidence that he wasn't, either.

One more quick paragraph.  In the last letter I rambled on about Alexander of Cyrenes ossuary being historically close to Jesus, I think I may have beaten Alex.  In 1990 the tomb of the Caiaphas family was found, with the ossuary of Joseph inside.  Sound familiar?  Joseph Caiaphas was the Jewish high priest from 14 to 37, who, with his father-in-law and ex-high priest Annas, gained fame by ratting out a Gallean  to the Romans (?).  These are real people from non biblical sources, and they were pretty close to Jesus.  Move over, Alex?

Yours truly,
John D

Hello Guy,

Marc Rich.  I was just thinking how nice it was that Clinton was finally disappearing when he got caught stealing furniture from the White House.  How low can you go?  Bill Clinton, king of the limbo, apparently can get flat on his back with his legs apart, like the cheap whore he apparently is.

I sort of swore off political news a while ago, but yesterday I caught a glimpse of an evil shyster lying to Congressmen from both sides of the aisle, and I was hooked for the day.  I'm recovering now, so I haven't followed up, one day was enough to disgust me.  Ill try to say cool.

Let's see if I got this right.  This public relations school handsome lawyer was working in the White House as a counsel to the President of the United States of America, and now he represents Mr. Marc Rich, one of the F.B.I.'s 10 Most Wanted.  A man who made illegal oil deals with  Iraqis, possibly during a war, at least an embargo.  A man who, when he knew that the feds were ready to indict him, takes it on the lam to Switzerland, where he's been making millions ever since.  A man who tried to renounce his U.S. citizenship and, after being rejected by Israel, tried to become a Bolivian citizen.  Bolivia, like a damn Nazi!  A man who's ex-wife not only greases both Hillary and the National Dems big time, but who pays a fifth amendment protected "huge" sum to the Clinton Library (of Pornography).  This lawyer's clientele is improving.

I sat and watched this lawyer say that since Marc was already living in his Swiss castle before being indicted, he wasn't on the lam, he just hadn't returned home yet.  That a steamer trunk full of incriminating documents hadn't been almost smuggled to Switzerland, it was being sent to an honest lawyer, really.  That there is no chain of command in the justice department.  And that Clinton judged the Marc Rich pardon solely on it's merits.  What fucking merits, you lying shyster?!  Do you have any idea of the difference between right and wrong?  Even in Washington D.C., this sounds evil to me, but then, I have some morals.

I wrote the above about  a week ago, I thought that this crap would go away, but apparently I was wrong (again).  I can understand why people want blood, they deserve it.  You really can't qualify Presidential pardons, but this is so out of line.  Every  lame duck helps his buddies if he can, but selling the office to the "ten most wanted" is beyond any reason.  Maybe Hillary can be popped for campaign irregularities, but I doubt it.  In future years the citizens (morons) of New York may forgive and reelect, but I won't forget.  I may be crazy, but if more Americans were crazy (and had a memory), maybe, oh well, fuck it.  I'm pissed again, where are the Rolaids?  Can I get cable to block CSPAN and CNN?

That's it, I'm winding this up.  This shit gets me physically sick. Later

Prophet of Doom

Ken,

Church of the Holy Sepulcher

This is one of the holiest places for Christians, duh.  The tomb of Christ, and rock the cross was mounted on (Golgotha) are both inside the church. Most of what I have read is about the tomb, and the edicule, a small, very fancy shed that surrounds it, inside the church.

This tomb is another of Constintines mom's finds from the early 300s.  Is it "the" tomb?  Maybe, at least it's possible.  It may have been outside the wall in 30 (an active tomb would have to be), and it's about what you would expect.  It was a small room/cave in the side of a cliff, with a large stone wheel/door which rolled in front of the rectangular opening, like a primitive sliding door.  Tombs were often for families or groups, and we know Jews moved their dead into ossuaries, so they may have gone in and out of the tombs often enough to want an easy entry.  Maybe a family could move the stone, but an animal or grave robber might have a hard time sneaking in?

Now say that you are a rich Roman Christian and want to pray at the tomb, what do you do?  Step one was to level the cliff except for the stone immediately around the tomb, so you have a stone outhouse with two foot thick walls standing on a rock plain.  Around that you build an edicule. Then you build a church over everything.  Sometimes a conqueror knocks the church down, time to build another one.  Once a Muslim crowd got pissed and beat on the tomb itself with hammers, half leveling it before they gave up.  Time to build another one.  While the British ruled Palestine in 1927 the edicule started falling down, so they propped it up with wood and cables, that's the shape it's in today.

I borrowed a cool book by an architect/ archeologist who would like to repair the tomb and sepulcher.  He was able to get permission to make a good survey, with photos, laser measurements, and computer analysis, but he couldn't disturb anything.  There aren't a lot of plans to what was done to the church and when it was done, much of the information is from paintings in other churches, often painted by pilgrims after returning home.  Much of the original was damaged and has been covered by successive construction, often in layers.

This gent is going to have a tough time trying to repair anything, or even finish his survey, this place is so holy to so many.  Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenians (the first Christian country), Syrians, and Copts (Greek influenced Egyptians, a very old sect) all share the church, and since the mid 1800's Ethiopians have been living (squatting?) on the roof, trying to get in.  Two Muslim families have been locking the door at night for almost a thousand years, so none of the Christians can pull a fast one on their roommates.  Getting all these people to agree to exploratory surgery on their holiest spot would take a miracle.

The Franciscans run an great web sight on the church of the Holy Sepulcher at http://www.christusrex.org/www1/jhs/TSspmain.html, they are the Catholics in the church. Check out the address, "christ us rex (king)", pretty catchy.   Computer technology on the beginning of an ancient religion, two thousand years in nanoseconds, right at our fingertips.

Yours truly,
John D

Impressive story last week, Starlight Foundation donated a bunch of computers to a bunch of Chicago children's hospitals.  Computers them self are no big deal, but these are mounted on mobile tubular red racks, I think they roll to a bed, wheelchair, or you walk up to them.  These "strollers" look like such a great idea, not only in hospitals but schools, daycare places, etc., I hope someone deserving makes a ton of money.

Driving down the road, I followed one of the thousands of SUVs (I hate that term) when I noticed (yes I can be chicken shit)  that it had NO RWD.  At the light I closed up on it and was further shocked to see that it wasn't a jap, as it appeared, but instead was one of the many FoMoCo products, I think it was an Escape.  I do believe that if you are a poor driver FWD is probably easier to drive safer than RWD,  but a front drive only SUV just plain disgusts me.  If  you are not able to deal with front/rear weight bias, why are you driving a short, high center of gravity vehicle with it's handling deficiencies?  Marching backwards into the next millennium.

A few thoughts on the first war of the century.  First, a catchword.  "Folks".  The first person I noticed using it was the short round black doctor in Washington D. C.  when the Anthrax first hit.  At the time I thought that it showed this guy to be a hick.  Since then I have heard it from everyone, from Bush to marines in the desert.  Bush is a Texan, it sounds right, but when press secretary Ari Fleischer uses it, it's noticeable.  Over time, I've been won over.  Less formal, I think it shows a sort of old fashioned respect for the individual, they are "folks" instead of "personnel", "victims", or "enemy forces".  Not a bad catch word.

At first I thought Powell and Rumsfield had each other's job, but I've really been enjoying Rumsfield's Pentagon briefings.  I don't know if he's really any good at Secretary of Defense, but he puts on a hell of a show.  On the other hand, Tom Ridge looks great for his job, strong, a great stage name, and an excellent background for the mission, but I wish he would stay off the tube.  And change the name of the job, "Director of Homeland Security" sounds so Nazi-ish.

Ben Lauden Tape.  While watching the "helicopter crash" section, I was checking out the wreckage.  There was a 2 cylinder air cooled head, they zoomed in on a plug.  Around the other side, another head, and there is a turbo up on top.  This helicopter had an opposed 4 cylinder, air cooled turbo motor, like a Lycoming or Continental.  That would make it some tiny two seat training bug thing.  What was a tiny thing like this doing crammed full of electronics in Afghanistan?  Spook stuff?

Not a real interesting war for me, but there are a few technical toys that I've noticed.  It was a shock for me that B-52s are now dropping smart bombs, but it seems so logical.  Dial a GPS grid and let go.  Fly around in a circle with 80,000 lbs of bombs. using 2,000 lbs at a time, whenever the grunts call, what a weapon.  Today a B-1 went down, they let slip that B-1s have dropped more "tons" than B-52s, probably on the same type of missions.  I wonder if they also drop laser and TV guided bombs.  Also in the air, not only are the drones spying on everything, they are now armed with Hellfire laser guided anti-tank missiles.

Now to low tech.  The opposition forces are using old Soviet tanks and APCs.   They seem effective.  They are very black smoky, but the altitude may help.  Wouldn't a diesel overfuel in thin air, the injectors squirt the same amount of fuel, but there is less air drawn into the cylinders?  Sound right?   No way these old rats have "computer motors".  Switch to gunfire now.  You may have seen tank cannon fire in the past, very powerful.  Some of the tanks on the news roll backward when firing, I never thought about it, but I'll bet you have to have the brakes on if standing still when you fire.  Are the Afghans lazy and stupid, or do the tanks have no brakes?

Afghans.  They have hidden in caves and tunnels since the Soviet invasion?  And then some!  They hid in irrigation tunnels in 320s BCE, when Alexander the Great (he's not so great to them) rolled through town.  I tried to track them down, all I got was that they were built by farmers long before that.  I would think a government would be involved, but the trail goes back farther than I could follow.  And the Afghans have tribes and war lords, right?  I have noticed that a lot of trucks of the "opposition forces" have large pictures in the right windshield.  I am guessing that these pictures are the warlord the "folks" show allegiance to.  Instead of reading the bumper markings, you check the windshield.  Sound good?

I have some more on Saints, but it's getting late, Ill wind this up and send the Saints later.  You've been warned!  Please say hello to the rest of "the boy's in the back" (yea, I know which way the building is located, but I like the phrase).

John D

Dear Ken,

AUTOMOBILE COMPUTERS. A hot rod show on TNN got me thinking about them.  We've known about "replacing chips" for a while, but now GM computers have "flash memory" that can be rewritten, "reprogrammed".  Fuel ignition, RPM, shift points, etc., can be changed in seconds.  Talk about "tune-ups", you could "cold start and drive" your Camaro to work all week at 30 MPG, then on Sunday do a quick "flash" and run an 11 second quarter.  Same for a pickup, commuter all week, trailer hauler on the weekend.  You plug the Macks in, they may be "flashable", can your friend from D.P. do that?

What is this about?  You know "RAM" (random access memory) from your PC, buried way inside is a tiny bit of "read only memory" (ROM, as in CD-ROM), which always holds the same information, even after the power is shut off.  In PCs the ROM only tells the computer to "start up, check yourself out, look to drive A:, B:, C:, wherever, for more instructions, then everything else loads into RAM, which is big but erases when power stops.  In cars most memory is/was ROM, with "flash" you can plug into the ROM and change it with a quick jolt, changing the factory settings.  Now the ROM remembers the new instructions, even after power off.  GM probably can't let owners change these settings, the EPA probably would flip out, but just like the "new chips", this stuff is after market.  This stuff is probably common in racing, you may know about it, but it caught my attention.

In the big letter I badmouthed FWD, then I drove the kid's Cavalier in the snow/ice.  It has ABS and ETS, electronic traction system, which cuts power when there is wheel spin.  It's ignition interrupt and maybe fuel, I'm not sure.  Anyway, on the slick I overpowered the car, just like an old RWD gear head, just for the fun of it.  Nothing doing.  You don't feel the engine cutting out, it's more like driving uphill or driving in sand, the power seems to be there, the car just accelerates slowly.  As for ABS, I guess it works, I didn't push too hard, it's not my car.  I've sort of assumed that ABS has been effective for a couple of years now.

I may be an auto conservative, but I'm not blind.  My '72 Plymouth showed me electronic ignition worked, the Celebrity Eurosport showed me that fuel systems were there, and the Jeep proved transmission control, even if the japs did it.  Now I believe in traction control, both power and braking.  I have been a wheel person my whole life, and there is no way I could drive that car as well as the computers do.  I'm expecting that it will be easier to drive than the Jeep until the snow starts to get deep, when the ground clearance, higher tires, and extra power come in.

What's next?  I think that some cams have adjusting timing, will we be saying "intake valve solenoids" soon?  Do we dare to affect steering, could you not steer beyond the limit of adhesion?  We do it with brakes, why not steering? How soon until we "drive by wire"?  You wouldn't need the strength under the dash to support the brake pedal or steering column, another ten pounds of steel.  Hang  the controls on the plastic dash that snaps to the firewall, or even put them on a cord, like a video game controller.  Some suspensions can adjust ride height and firmness now, can we lean into a turn, or keep the same weight on all wheels?

Right now I'll bet that we could make a vehicle with fuel/battery/solar power source driving individual motors/generators on all wheels, however many, with traction control in all directions.  How much farther can we develop the wheel?

SAINTS. You and Guy probably know much of this, but for me, "it isn't a rerun if you didn't see it the first time".

First, my sense of order was shaken to it's very foundation by the "General Roman Calendar".  Saints are arranged by the day of the year that they died on, unless politics needs them somewhere else in the year???  I have to use the index, then go to a date, and this doesn't seem natural.  There is also a calendar for the Church of England (Anglicans), the Episcopal Church in the USA (I think these are Anglicans in America), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the USA (I don't know how many of the Lutherans are in this group), and the Greek and Russian Orthodox Church (I don't know if the Greeks and Russians share one calendar, or each have their own, they are usually referred to as "Greek and Russian" [Is that because we look at them from the Western branch, "all Easterners look the same"?] ).  How's that for a run-on sentence, ninety one words!!!  Damn but I'm good at babbling!

Saints started out as local holy heroes, usually martyrs.  They were buried in a church, and a "cult" (correct word) built up.  Around 500 the Bishops took over the process, the Pope acted only as "Bishop of Rome".  In 993 Pope John XV canonized Saint Urich of Augsburg (July 4), the first time as Pope.  In 1243 the Papacy took complete control, procedures were formalized, and the process has evolved from there.

On the Roman Calendar, "Red" saints are martyrs, "White" saints are 2 or 3 miracle people, and there are also "Holy" and "Blessed" people.  The definitions and rules change with time and politics.  Now the Church also recognizes "Holy people" of other faiths, Gandhi, Buddha, Mohammed, etc.

The Church has a formal inquest, sometimes a "devil's advocate" argues against Sainthood, like a prosecutor.  There are reviews, too, saints can be promoted or demoted.   Mary the mother's status has changed more than once.  Yes, she is the mother of God, but she never performed any miracles, and different groups have different views of her.

The other church calendars must have similar procedures.  Some of the saints are the same, some aren't.  I don't know if the protestants use info from the Catholics, or if they have investigated every saint them self.

Part of the current politics that caught my eye was the Catholics in Eastern Europe.  Since World War II the Church had been collecting and stockpiling saints and saint info from the Communist countries, to use against the godless commies when the time is right.

Ken, it's 8:00 pm, I'm going to stop now so I can make tomorrow's mail.

Have a smooth January
John D

Hey  Ken,

First, could you tell "Quiet Mike" about the governor of Arkansas. On January 21 he moved back into  the remodeled Governor's Mansion.  For the previous 18 months he had been living in a TRIPLE WIDE!!  Of course, he's only the governor of one of the poorest states, not like an Arkansas Governor could ever become president!(?)!

My father and I went to the auto show, the most impressive thing I saw was a waterfall for Jeep right inside the door.  There were about a hundred streams of water falling parallel to each other, and each stream could be turned on and off by itself, almost to the drop. By turning the different streams on and off, it could make patterns and even words out of falling drops of water.  Very cool, someone else must have seen it (Pelke?) and told you already, it was so cool that a crowd gathered, ignoring the vehicles, watching the water.  You know I was part of the crowd.

I'm going to talk Volkswagen, they have a lot of tricks per buck.  They vary cam timing by using idler slides to change the length of the timing chain between various pulleys, which changes the relationship between the gears.  With DOHC the exhaust cam runs two valves (I assume, it was cut away), and the intake cam has three lobes (per cylinder), the middle lobe has a different profile from the two outside ones.  I couldn't (can't) figure out how much this all changes valve timing, or when, but I can understand that it does.  Not everyone followed the VW cam path, I saw other engines that adjust the cam gear on the cam, but I couldn't see what makes the gear move, is it centrifugal force, or is there some lever behind the gear that I couldn't see?  Don't know.  Anyway, VW is moving all these valves around at different times, then they bolt a turbo on anyway.  It's trick, too.  It has a bypass valve on the intake side, so it can spin up at very low RPM and dump intake air when the speed goes up and the boost increases.  No waste gate, no noise, and the bypass dumps back into the manifold in front of the turbo, already clean and ready to go around again.

VWs really pushed the limit with their new motor, a "W 8".  It's basically a "V" engine, but each bank has 2 sets of cylinders at 15 degrees to each other, kind of a "V" block with "Y" banks.  I've enclosed some VW propaganda, It would be impossible for me to explain one way, without "I see"s coming back.  I'm not sure the complexity is worthwhile, the main advantage seems to be a very short block for the number of cylinders, but  are fewer, larger cylinders so much less efficient that you want to cast and machine the most complex block in history?  I didn't notice, or remember, if these cylinders all had 5 valves per, either way, what a complex mess.

I felt that Subaru tried the most to get the least.  I have always thought that opposed, or "flat", engines should be the strongest and smoothest  per cylinder and cubic inch, even after I owned a VW.  Strongest bottom end, with equal forces from both directions, short crank, bla bla bla.  Yet Subarus have not really been known for their pavement ripping power, even though they have sort of made some "sport cars".  They have 4s and 6s, some with turbos, and they have cranks that boggle the mind.  Instead of putting opposing cylinders on the same crank throw, like VW, they have a separate throw for every cylinder.  I don't remember whether there is a main bearing between every cylinder, or every other, but either way, they need a mighty fine crank.  The counterweights between throws and bearings are about one quarter inch wide.   At first I thought it must be built up out of plates, but there are casting marks around the bottom of the weights, I believe it is cast and ground.  If it is, some of it seem to be ground pretty fine to me.  I walked away and looked at a pro rally car, and yawned.  Turbo Boxer Six with All Time All Wheel Drive.  The words sound cool, but the car didn't light me up.

I've sent you brochures on hybrid gas/electrics.  I think these may be a wave in the future, for the urban sufferer at least.  They both get better mileage in the city than highway, what a switch, huh?  Not much air resistance at city speed, and by recharging when decelerating they save braking energy in the battery, instead of turning it into heat in the brakes.  Of course, in the real world these are both shitboxes, I'd feel safer in a Radio Flyer going downhill, but I believe we may have to look at more of these in the future.

General Motors is pulling the classic shell game on the chumps, with help by AM General.  Hummers are or will be for sale through GM dealers, the real HUMV by AM General.  Right next to the tricked up Suburban with square HUMVish body on it.  Real McCoy is called H1, sheep in wolf's clothing is called H2.  Sheep is pretty harsh to the Suburban, which has been updated big time, and the H2 is state of the art GM chassis, but trading a PU or Suburban body for an ugly, square, probably loud (think of the wind noise at 65MPH) and expensive army truck knock-off body seems like a less than slick use of fifty grand.  Less comfort than stock, with no real increase in off road ability.  The H2 may carry bigger tires than the Suburban, otherwise it's pure GM 4X4.  The thing that got me was that very few of the people there had any idea what was going on, the vehicles are tough to tell apart.  The only real HUMV that I saw was on a raised platform, so you could look underneath, but couldn't really compare the body  with the H2s.  And some thought, and told me, that GM owns AM General, which I doubt.  Business wise it makes sense to me, AM General gets a dealer network, sells a few HUMVs, and makes money selling a made-up name. GM may have to support a few AM General vehicles (which already have GM engines and trans's), in return they can expand their high end 4X4 market, and make sure that some fools have far less money to waste in the future.  If these people have this much money, they can share some of it with the US economy, and the UAW.  It's almost like a sin tax, if you really want to do this, it's gonna cost ya!

Later
John D

Lately I've been checking out Amelia Earhart, which led to aircraft and engines of the 1930s, etc.  While in the neighborhood I did some thinking about your father's ride.

The B-17 was actually close to obsolete when at it's peak.  It was developed between 1935 and 1939 as a coastal anti shipping bomber.  Yup, the bane of Berlin was designed to protect San Francisco from Japanese battleships!!  There were B-17B(?)s at Pearl Harbor, if they knew the japs were coming they would have flown out to meet them. We were isolationists in the late 1930s, bombing Europe was not a priority.  In 1940, when people started waking up, the B-17 was a solid, conservative design which was flying, so it was polished up and used.  It went on to overshadow it's replacement, the B-24.

The B-24 Liberator was the U.S.'s major heavy bomber in W.W.II, 19,203 built vs 12,731 B-17s, but nobody really knows or cares.  The B-24 was a modern design, but was a pig.  Flew like shit, crashed easily, hard to bail out of, expensive, difficult to build and maintain.  While the B-17 was sort of a final development of one style, the B-24 was an undeveloped beginning of a new style, and had problems.  When things got tough, the Army used the tough old bird.  If you were being shot at, would you rather be in a Dakota pick-up or a Caravan minivan?

I've been calling the B-17 an old design, here are a few examples.

The B-17 has "tail dragger" landing gear, two main wheels with a small following tail wheel, the tail flies first, leveling the plane, then it takes off.  In W.W.II "tricycle" landing gear came in, two main wheels with a smaller nose wheel, this is the standard today, it has advantages on the ground.

Wright Cyclone nine cylinder radial engine @ 1,200hp.  Big powerful, reliable engine.  But at that time engine makers were starting to put a second row of cylinders behind the first, by making the engine a foot or two longer you can double the displacement and power, engines go from 1,000+ hp to 2,000+ hp.  The B-24 has Pratt & Whitney "twin"s (7X2=14 cyl) and the B-29 "Superfort" has Wright "duplex's (9X2=18cyl), really two B-17 engines in one.  The B-17 missed these by a couple of years.

High Altitude but not pressurized, much less heated.  35,000 feet is jet airliner altitude, a B-17 waist gunner is basically looking out an open window at 180 m.p.h.  These guys had to breath oxygen and wear electric underwear, probably torture, even before they had to fight for their lives.  If you have to pee, does your dick get frostbite?  I seem to remember something about wounded surviving a long time, does blood flow slow, or freeze?

Flying Fortress.  This is a failed military theory.  No bomber was able to defend itself against enemy fighters.  The 8th AF tried different formations, keeping the planes close together to help each other, but the B-17s were massacred until the fighters started escorting them, even then they took horrible losses.  There was one raid, maybe Schweinfurt #1, that was so bad that all bombers were grounded for a while, the generals said "holy shit, we can't go on killing so many of our people, what can we do different?"  They  did something to get by, fighter escort saved the day, but the real answer started in 1938.  The British RAF wanted a four place light bomber.  DeHavilland Aircraft instead built a two seater, the two extra crewmen, weapons, weight and space for them was traded for speed.  They had to jam the "Mosquito" down the RAFs throat, but the Germans could never catch them, they bombed Berlin with almost no losses.  This was the future.  After the shooting gallery over Germany, that sitting duck target shit was history.  From now on bombers would run, the job "gunner" went the way of cooper  and blacksmith.  Think of the B-52 "Stratofortress".  Huge Boeing jet bomber, 40 tons of payload, yet it goes way over 500 m.p.h. and the only guns are in a tail turret.

A little military background.  "Strategic" is where you attack the enemies home in order to halt his ability to resist.  If you attack the factory, they can't build weapons.  If you blow up the electric powerplant, they can't run the  factory, etc.  "Tactical" is when you attack in direct support of your forces, if  you bomb a bridge to save your soldiers, that's tactical.  There is some overlapping between the two, if you bomb a railroad yard, the troop train headed for the front would be tactical, while the coal train on the next track would be strategic.  The difference isn't really black and white, rather an idea.  B-17s may have made tactical attacks on D-day, etc., but light/medium bombers usually handle tactical missions, heavies are commonly used strategically.

How effective was Strategic Bombing?  This has been widely debated, people go either way.  In a B-17 world the opinion is probably "very, couldn't win the war without massive bombing".  "Hap" Arnold is a kind of hero, and so many people tried so hard, nobody wants to admit defeat.  Other people think it was a tragic waste of effort and people.  London, Berlin, and Tokyo were all bombed, they were all hellish, but nobody surrendered, no civilians had their morale broken, no armies mutinied.  Messerschmitt Factory bombed?, move it underground.  Ball bearing factory bombed?, disperse the machines and set up a cottage industry.  Oil refineries, once the fire goes out, they're mostly plumbing, repaired to 80% in a week.  All this is a major inconvenience, affecting productivity, but not fatal.  Germany produced more of everything in 1944 during the bombing than they did in 1942, before it became big time.  Japan was finally beaten from the air, but it took two A-bombs in a week, and that was just barely enough.  Certainly the Germans were hurt bad from the air, certainly it shortened the war, but how much, and how much more useful might some of the men and material have been somewhere else?  Tactical air was a huge success, from the first Stuka in Poland to the last "smart" bomb in Afghanistan.

Yours truly,
John D

What a show of military hardware!  The Israelis have always been "scroungers", taking whatever they could get and modifying it for their special needs, and they're still at it.  It has been a real challenge figuring out what I've been looking at.

Since the Palestinians have no tanks or aircraft, the main threat to armor is "Bazooka" type weapons like the Soviet RPG (rocket propelled grenade).  These have "HEAT" (high explosive anti-tank) warheads, which focus an explosion into one "hot spot" that burns through armor.  (Focusing the "hot spot" correctly is very important).  The Israelis have had plenty of experience being hit with HEAT rounds, and have spent a fair amount of energy countering this threat.  First step is lots of machine gun fire, it's tough to aim when .308 and .50 caliber rounds are passing through your body.  Then you start on armor.

Appliqué armor.  You remember this from W.W.II movies, etc., just welding more steel on weak points, Sherman tanks often had them on the side of turrets and hulls, sometimes on front, too.  This is pretty low tech, is heavy and shows design weakness, but it is still occasionally used, some M1 Abrams have appliqués on the front face of their turrets.

Spaced armor.  The Germans came up with this during W.W.II, an effective idea still widely used against "HEAT" warheads.  You place a thin layer of armor a short distance in front of the main armor, when the "HEAT" warhead (which is probably on a slow, weak rocket) hits the outer layer it goes off, the "hot spot" is moved back, maybe outside the main armor.

Reactive armor.  This is spaced armor taken one step farther.  You take boxes, fill them with explosives, and stick them all over your tank.  Mix the explosives so bullets, mines, etc., don't set it off, only extreme heat will trigger it.  Extreme heat, like a HEAT round going off against it.  The box explodes, not only moving the "hot spot" away from the armor, but blowing it in all directions.  You have an explosion, but not directed at the tank anymore.  You only use it on tanks, it is still quite a bang, but the people inside the tank blink a few seconds (or whatever happens) then go back to war, with only a black mark where the round hit.

Now what are the Israelis hiding with this extra armor, plus the other crap you pile on any vehicle?

US M113 APCs, you recognize the flat sided shape.  Some have spaced armor on the sides, looks like each side sticks out a foot or so, making them look almost as wide as long.  By the way, you can put stuff between the 2 layers of armor, fuel cells are quite common.  Since the M113 is supposed to be amphibious, they all have a board across the front that hinges forward to be a "bow plane", the Israelis are the first people I've noticed that have thrown these away, not much water in a desert.  This makes the front look even flatter, but you can see the engine hatch to the right.  Some have spaced armor on the front, too, these seem to have a double opening door deal.

US M48 & M60 tanks.  These are what you and I knew as tanks from the green clothing days.  The M60 has a strait bow (instead of curved) and a larger turret, but in the field only a real pro could tell the difference.  I know that the Israelis have both, when seen from the rear their engine compartment is all angled louvers split in the middle.  The M48 started with a Continental V12 air cooled gasser(w/Allison trans), but went to Diesels, all M60s are "smokers".  The Israelis like this engine and trans, they back-fit and "swap" them into anything they can.  Side note:  once Mike D. and I were talking about how loud tanks were, then he said "and then the tank retrievers fired up and they were even louder".  I've given this some thought in the last fifteen years, could the M 88s have been gassers while the tanks were smokers?  See if he remembers, probably not.

Israeli Merkava (Chariot) tank.  Their local design, and very good.  The Continental engine in front under a wide, inclined glacias (hood), small looking turret in back.  The crew hides behind engine and low in turret, they have a small door in the back of tank, like an APC, and they can have a couple of grunts inside, instead of extra ammo.  This is first line equipment, I see them around Arafats place in Ramallah, but otherwise more in the North, when the news whores are talking about Lebanon, Syria, and Hezballah(?).  My guess would be that these are saved for real war more than the street bandit shit.

British Centurion tank.  This is the tank that won the 1967 war, remember them with the big boxes on the sides of the turret and sand shields over the tracks?.  Slightly before the M48, and better armored but with shitty engine/trans.  Israel bought at least 2,000 Centurions, 1,000 may still be in service as tanks, again with Continental engines.  I have not seen any of these as tanks, but saw several (or one several times) without a turret, as maybe an engineer vehicle or rocket launcher?

Soviet tanks and armored vehicles.  You probably remember that in 1967 the Israelis captured alot of Arab "Soviet supplied" equipment, they got some more in 1973, and they have used it.  I know that T54/55 tanks got "our" (actually British) 105mm tank guns, maybe engines too.  I have not seen any Soviet tanks as tanks, but I have seen some APC type vehicles which appear Soviet to me.  They may be T54/55 or T62 tank chassis (5 large road wheels), which the Israelis have plenty of, or they may be something else, who knows what arms bazaar Israel shops at.  Anyway, these have been zipping around Ramallah with a couple of machine guns on top, they look like the whole side is track, while the M113s look flat sided with tracks very low.

US HUMVs and "armored cars".  I noticed an armored HUMV, only because the door was open and I saw the thick windows.  I knew this was an "option", the US uses them for MPs and airfield security.  I first thought that the reporters were being shuttled in these when they referred to "armored cars", later I saw that they have been renting bullet-proofed SUVs (I still hate that term).  The real surprise was that one stood up to a burst of rifle fire from Israeli troops.  Of course, since everyone has gone to 5.56mm (.223cal), "rifle fire" has lost some menace, but still, a private vehicle standing up to a military weapon is impressive to me.

Speaking of pitiful, weak military rifles, the Israelis are using M-16s.  I know that the barrels are heavier, the rifling twist was increased to 1 in 12, and I think the slugs are heavier, but I will always think as that gun as a shabby piece of shit.  I personally didn't hate the plastic back then, it was kind of modern, but when you took off the plastic, you got to the shabby aluminum tube, backing to hand grips, etc.  From the firing pin out, that was a cheap, light duty machine.  Why would Israel use it when they have an excellent rifle, the "Galli",  an improved AK type that uses American 5.56mm ammo, is strong, and locally made?  I think I heard a trick that may explain.  America dumps tons of money on Israel, "a third in military aid", right?  There are strings attached, all US money must be spent on US weapons.  Makes perfect sense to me, keep Americans working, Israel gets free M-16s instead of building "Galli"s at their own expense, as "win/win" as arms dealing gets.

Blimps.  In the past I watched a "Modern Marvels" or similar show about blimps, I seem to remember that Paris uses them for police surveillance, cheaper than a helicopter and longer endurance.  I saw a reference and picture of one over Bethlehem, I couldn't see clearly to know if it is manned or remote, it's hard to guess the size of a blimp in the sky with no other reference.  Israel does do weird things (the whole reason for this letter), is a "manned attack blimp" beyond their ability?

Speaking of going on, I've done it again.  By the time I finish this there may be peace in Palestine, if I don't start to wind up.  Enclosed is an article on Sears houses for Matty

Yours truly,
John D.

Here is a riddle from the past.  I found a picture of the C.&N.W. roundhouse in Aurora.  Yes, I said C.&N.W., not the C.B.&Q., which we all know and love.  In 1884 the C.&N.W. built a two stall round-house (with a turntable) in Aurora, by 1946 it had three stalls and was out of service, some of it had been torn down by 1954.

Background - After the Northwestern went west through Geneva, they built/bought branches north and south along the west side of the river.  Most of this right of way is now bike path.  The north branch went along the west side of Wheeler park (then a quarry), cut east across Ill 31, and ran along the river north to St. Chas, ending at "the piano factory".  The south line crossed Ill 31 near the south end of Fabyan park, curved south (under where the Fabyan Parkway bridge is now), and followed the river.  Depot Park in Batavia is on this line, you can probably remember tracks running through the streets in Batavias business district on the west side.  Farther down, at Mooseheart, the line was  just east of Ill 31, between the highway and Mooseheart's sewage treatment plant.  (The line that ran through Mooseheart is the C.B.&Q. line that runs along Highland in Aurora, it used to make it all the way to Geneva, I remember it petering out in an industrial district in west Batavia.)  The C.&N.W. then goes beside Harner's in North Aurora.  The "castle" behind Harners is an old C.&N.W. soybean silo, I know because there were still some beans in it when I climbed in it in the 1980's.  In Aurora the Northwestern had a depot on New York St., it must have been where the little Armory is now.  This was an industrial area then, with several sidings. From there, it was street (alley?) running until the line hit the Burlington near North Ave. and Prairie St., but I don't know which railroad owned the tracks.  The plat maps just show it as a public street/alley.  By the way, the "old" Burlington bridge (before the line was elevated) is still there, just north of North Ave. bridge (which is being reconstructed now).

At first I believed that the "mystery" roundhouse would have been near the depot.  I've scanned a picture (I'm still not the best scanner) and enlarged the background, but I don't know Aurora history well enough to recognize any buildings, even though the one with the mansard roof should be distinctive.   There is one similar at Lake St. and Gale, could we be looking north-west from the very south end of the line?  This may bug me enough to jump in the Jeep and hit the Aurora historical society, I've already tried the Aurora library with little real luck.

I've been looking at a lot of old pictures (half-tones in books) of Aurora, horse cars in front of the G.A.R. building, streetcars on Broadway going under the "new" elevated "Q", etc., I've included a couple.  I thought that you might be interested.  The one of downtown with the "old" car barn in the foreground interests me because Rocky, "Quiet Mike", and I watched them rip out it's foundation (and some ties) when we were re-constructing the Benton St.  Bridge.  And the "new" car barn is still there, it's a NICOR garage right where Prairie hits River St.  Except for the roundhouse, the pictures come from Aurora-Elgin Area Street Cars and Interurbans by Hopkins Stolp Peffers.  Volume I covers 1901-1923 and the line to Yorkville, Volume II is 1878-1900 and 1923-1935, there are other volumes on "the third rail", etc.  They are half Aurora area and half Elgin, with  the tri-cities tying them together.  These are full size picture books from the library, probably Dewey number 385.5 PEF or so.

I think the Jeep is so cool, here is something to share with Dennis.  The Harmonic ballancer was failing, so I started to dig in.  The fan belt is a pain (five bolts involved), but now it's off, how about the fan shroud?  The radiator looks high, maybe I should check from below, cool, this mud flap thing snaps right off.  Holy shit, it looks like the Cherokee is built to accept a front mount PTO!  Not only is the radiator above the crank line (that may be common, I don't know), there is a large oval hole stamped into the lower front bulkhead.  If you drilled a hole in the center of the bumper, you could probably crank start the old Rambler six.  How many family wagons can run a mechanical winch direct drive?  Not a terribly useful feature, but it shows a different mindset from the Japanese gentlemen who bring us Front Wheel Only SUVs (I still hate that term) that look like Renault "LeCar"s on steroids.  And I still sit lower than them with better off-roading.

Speaking about off-roading, Sara (age 14) and I got the scare of our lives the other day.  In Aurora we had "wandered" south on Water St., then gone west and south on Stone, so we were behind Guy's "manhole factory"(?), the whole area is an overgrown wilderness.  We found the east end of the "old" Burlington bridge, then headed maybe east until we were at the mainline, across the tracks (and fence) from the old passenger station.  As I looked at my left mirror, I saw a man lying in the grass right next to me.  Oops, sorry I said, then noticed that his eyes didn't blink.  Oh, shit, don't be a body, Mister, are you dead?  As soon as I said that, Sara was leaning over me, should we poke him with a stick, or maybe pour water on him?  Then he slowly closed his eyes, opened them, and started looking around.  Suddenly he appeared to change from a dead body to an awaking junkie, and the Jeep changed from Drive to Reverse.  I usually use very little throttle off road, not this time.  After several hundred feet of grass and branches slapping both mirrors (hard!), I came to a side trail, and pulled forward and left, going down the embankment!  Yes, much of my reverse race was done on the edge of an old railroad embankment, some of those branches on my left mirror could have been trees!  If we had fallen off that, the only person who could find us would be that junkie.  And that's another scary thing, I hope he was a junkie, and not someone who needed help.  He was so close, so unexpected, and so mean looking, I just and panicked.  We had left the dogs home so we could go in the library, turned out that we could have used them!

Take care, sooner or later Ill drop by, you've been warned.

Yours truly,
John D

The headline from West Chicago, we have a miracle.  The "Holy Virgin" has appeared twice in the alley next to  Grobes True Value, our old style hardware store.  I am not kidding!  This is our family's special alley, old railroad yard with 1880s pump house on one side, library on one end, Grobes, Dairy Queen, water tower, and fire station on other end, with the bike path to Linda's work running down it.  We use it almost daily.  On Thursday I was baby-sitting two neighbor kids, when we finished looking at fire trucks we took off south down the alley toward the library when we came across a tree with ribbons on it and a few people next to it.  Who would have thought that I would have stopped to see what was happening?  Sometime someone had glanced off a tree along the side of the alley (most of them in the row, actually), when the tree healed there was a white oval with a dark stain(?) which looks just like Mary.  I looked at this tree from inches away, with a picture of Mary stapled above the "miracle",  and it's a hell of a match.  Later, when I took Linda and Sara to see, there were more than ten people there, flowers had been planted, candles lit, and another tree had another Madonna, not as clear as the first, it seems to have about half the attention that the first one has.  On Friday afternoon, when I went to Grobes, I left Linda in the car.  She said that there was constant traffic past them, some families get out and kiss the tree.

The entire thing would have been hilarious if I hadn't gotten out and talked to people.  This is serious, people are praying and crying, you can sort of feel reverence,  like walking in a church.  You have probably guessed that most of the prayers are being said in Spanish.  I think that many older Mexicans have a sort of primitive, basic culture compared to America's modern degeneracy, they seem (are) far more religious, and I imagine more believing.  And once they focus on something,  just the people's devotion makes the place holy, sort of.  You and I have discussed this, "is the relic real?",  it doesn't have to be, it can be a symbol, like a flag.  And in my own world, this is cool beyond belief,  I can watch a miracle from the start in my own backyard!

I took a shot at Hebrew, what a bitch.  I knew  "no vowels, multiple meanings",  but didn't realize it first hand.  And the letters are completely different, I cannot recognize them.  I've included Jerusalem and Bethlehem,  I couldn't make the characters for anything else, and gave up.  But even with these, you can see the problems.  "Bread place" is basic, but I don't see where "founded in peace" comes from,  I would lean toward "where peace flows to" or something.  This book was spun towards god, Jesus is referred to as "Our Lord", I think the spin  affects Jerusalem, too.  There was a "Jeru" god from way back, "Jerus peace" is an option, but Jeru isn't mentioned in this book.  I think Jesus is also shorted.  "Jesus" is from his Greek name,"Iesous", in Hebrew his name was a short "Joshua", Joshua is there, but no short form.  Is this guy "de-Hebrewing" Jesus?

Deadline time. Later

Yours Truly
John D

Bethlehem

1004  BAYITH bah-yith;  probably from 1129 abbreviated; a house (in the greatest variety of applications, especially family, etc.,:-court, daughter, door, + dungeon, family, + forth of, X great as would contain, hangings, home(born), (winter) house (-hold),inside (-ward), palace, place + prison, + steward, + tablet, temple, web, +within (-out).

1035  BEYTH LECHEM bayth leh-khem;  from 1004 and 3899; house of bread; Beth-Lechem, a place in Palestine.

3898  LCHAMM  law-kham;  a primary root, to feed on;figuratively to consume;  by implication to battle (as destruction):- devour, eat, fight (-ing), overcome, prevail, (make) war (-ing).

3899   LECHEM lekh-em;  from 3898; food (for man or beast), especially bread, or grain (for making it):  -(show-) bread, X eat, food, fruit, loaf, meat, vicituals.
 

Jerusalem

3384.  YR'   or YRRH  yaw--raw;  --a primary: properly to flow as water (i.e. to rain); transforms to lay or throw (especially an arrow, i.e. to shoot); figuratively, to point out (as if by aiming the finger); to teach.  Related words: archer, cast, direct, inform, instruct, lay, show, shoot, teach(-er,-ing), through.

3389  YeRÚWSLAYIMM or YeRÚWSLAYIIM  yer-oo-shalahyim; --a dual (in allusion to its two main hills): probably from (the past participle of) 3384 and 7999;  founded peacefull; Jerushalaim; Jerushalem, the capital city of Palestine.

7999  SHLAMM shaw-lam; --a primary root, to be safe(in mind, body or estate), figuratively to be (casual make) completed; by implication to be friendly; by extension to reciprocate (in various applications):  -make amends, (make an) end, finish, full, give again, make good, (re)pay (again), (make to)(be at) peace(-able), that is perfect, perform,  (make) prosper (-ous), recompense, render, requite, make restitution, restore, reward.
 
 

STRONGS EXHAUSTIVE CONCORDANCE OF THE BIBLE
by James Strong, S.T.D.,L.L.D.
Thomas Nelson Publishers
Nashville TN 37203

I know this is soon for a follow-up, but we had an interesting weekend.

First off, the shrine is alive and well.  Sometimes there are a few people there, sometimes more than twenty, but it seems to have reached a manageable level for the town and alley, Grobes parking lot is still accessible, if a touch crowded.

I found the C&NWRR roundhouse in Aurora, I just kept looking at old pictures until I found it in a Peffer book.  It was north of New York street, right across the river from it's larger cousins at the Q.  I've enclosed a picture, but I recognize very little, this picture is from around 1920.
While on New York street a while ago, I noticed that the little armory appeared deserted, no signs in the window, even the name was off the building.  I imagined that this was related to 9-11-01, were they keeping a low profile, or had they moved?  Both, sort of.  The 66 Inf Bde (ILNG) was federalized and is in Europe, I don't know if C Co 1/178th Inf will come back to Aurora when they are released, they aren't listed in the new phone book.

"The Case of The Suicidal Opossum".  Coming out of the forest preserve, Sara (14 years) and I were walking down some railroad tracks when we came upon a decapitated opossum, head on one side of rail, body on the other side.  This is a slow curve through the woods where UPRR coal trains pull north onto the EJ&ERR, similar to the hill you listened to the steam engines on the "Q" on at night, except that it is dead level.  How stupid can a wild animal be, to walk ONTO a track (it's head was between the rails) in front of 20,000 hp worth of locomotive dragging 100 cars of coal at 5 mph?  Opossums have survived how many hundreds of  thousands of years?   Anyway, it was dried out and the skeleton was in such good shape (except for the neck) that we went back with a box, the "dumpossum" now resides next to Guy's woodchuck.

The opossum led me to a major computer breakthrough,  I cannot believe how ignorant I have been.  I've been seeing satellite photos for years, but they have always had Microsoft addresses, using a Netscape browser on a Mac makes MS land enemy territory, there are so many hangs, freezes, etc., that I keep away.  I have also stayed away from Mapquest.com, I love maps, but computer maps are to digital for me, I like curves, not kinks.  Big mistake.  On a Mapquest map, there is a tiny tab that says "aerial photo", behind it is a whole new world for me.  Pick a target with the map, then switch and zoom in, I can clearly see the twelve foot pool in our backyard.  Or the traces of pre 1960 railroad tracks in the forest preserve that we missed from the ground.  Extra cool!

I forgot to tell you about the "blimp race" we saw last month.  We (Linda, Sara, Pat (friend), the dogs, and I) were sitting on the patio grilling supper one evening when we heard aircraft engines (piston),  then two blimps(!) passed directly over us, at very low altitude.  They were neck and neck and maybe one "blimp width" apart, there is no way I can judge speed or height on a blimp, but they were impressive as hell.  The dogs freaked out, the rest of us were stunned.  I think they were "Saturn" and "Met Life", and they appeared to be different models, but about the same size, that was about all I could comprehend.  We are used to them, they park (moor) at the airport, but this was the coolest encounter we have had (so far)!  I don't know the landing patterns very well,  light planes stopped approaching over our house years ago, but helicopters go east just south of us (other side of street) at very low level.  I wonder if we are the middle of a low level helicopter sneak route to the heliport on the south east corner of the field, under the normal approaches.

Pulling the plug here, Sara and I are on the trail of the Jos. B.  farm from 1874, will let you know later.

Yours truly,
John D

One morning Sara (age 14) was bored, so we loaded the Jeep up with dogs and maps, and hit the road.  I have an 1874 atlas that shows "Jos. B" straddling a  section line both north and south of "State" Rd.  No sign south of "State", but you can see the trees around (and in) the barn area on the north side.  When we went through the tree line, we entered what we guessed was the pig area, a very low, wet, "organic" rectangle on the west end of the area.  Not very pleasant, especially with the mosquitoes, but we came across wooden fence poles with barbed wire bits on them, so we considered that pay dirt.  It looks like the house may have been where the south right of way is now, but we're not sure, much of the land south of the R.O.W. has been changed.  Anyway, we felt we had found "Jos 1874".

While we were looking, a XYZ employee stopped by, and referred us to Bob (XYZ are the first three letters of his family name).  When I mentioned the "B" name he said that they had bought the S.E. corner  from George, and Andrew was east, by the E.J.&E. on the north.  We entered on an asphalt frontage to the "pump house" that drains the water from under the bridge, through the trees and bingo, our "hard evidence" was an ancient utility pole.

Three "B"s in an hour was enough, it was hot, so we headed for home.  I called that place and got Bob from grounds.  His family are farmers from up here, they hung out around Wilson St., so Bob knows the history of the area.  Yes, they had to knock Andy's corn crib down a couple of years ago, it was attracting kids, but Jos 1874s place drew a blank, must have been down before his memory.  I have a note on a Joseph's barn burning down in 1967, but I don't know which Joseph that was.  Anyway, he also knew your "girlfriend"s farm, there is a small barn and a pole barn just inside the property, right behind the corncrib you see today.  I don't remember her name, I have four names  connected to the corner, but the whole area was owned by and leased to so many friends/relatives that I get lost.  A George "B" lived farther north, on the west side, he retired in 1950.  I bet this is the same George who sold the land kitty-corner to XYZ.  Bob knows the farm, but George's name isn't familiar.

While I was on the horn with Bob and company, Sara fired up the computer and found a web site, plus more.  She e-mailed some scientist who was very nice.  They were away and wouldn't be back until September.  The e-mail address impressed us, CERN is the European Accelerator, on the French-Swiss border.  Also the place where HTML standards were published in 1991, these are the "links" on the World Wide Web.  Without them, we would have to enter the whole address, now we point and click.  Not only big time science, but internet history, as well.  Pretty cool to us.

I'm writing this on one of my "new" computers, I've spent $30 on PCs in the last month.  Two are "no name" towers, one has an Intel Pentium running at 100Mhz, the other has an AMD K6 at 300Mhz.  My Chevrolet mentality carries over to electronics, the fast AMD is in the back room, it probably will never know electricity again.  It was from the Yuppie salesman across the street, fast, full of crap, and it crashed like a "box of rocks".  The slow Intel didn't have many programs, was owned by a teacher from Aurora, and worked pretty smoothly.  I pretty much stripped everything I could from it, installed Windows 98, and a few solid games/programs.  Next stop, father in laws in Downers Grove.

My third PC gets it's own paragraph.  It's a Compaq Presario 5528 with an Intel running at 75Mhz.  Why do I like the oldest, slowest of the three?  Because it is almost a dead ringer for my #2 Mac.  Both are school type models, CPU, monitor, and disk drives in the same unit, plug keyboard, mouse, and AC line in, you're in business.  They have the CD and floppy switched around, and tiny cosmetic differences, otherwise they are the same machine done two different ways.  The Compaq is probably six months older, it runs at 75Mhz verses 120Mhz for the Mac, and the Mac is loaded with memory, otherwise, they went head to head when new.  The Compaq has Windows 95 with Compaq tricks like a "Compaq introduces Windows 95" startup screen, so I haven't updated to Windows 98, but I may, I've upgraded the Mac system.  And although the Mac has more speed and memory, it also has more programs, and is used on the internet.  The Compaq has phone utilities, so it could have faxed and done crude networking, but there is no sign of the internet anywhere.  So their performance sort of balances out, and they balance our living room, we have put them in opposite corners, and often both are in use at the same time.  I don't know if you remember, but we have the #1 machine downstairs in the library/office area, we keep a machine or two tucked into corners upstairs to putter with while being social.  It is so cool, we can be using all three at once, and switch around as we need.

I don't pay too much attention to construction just now, but I've saved up a few thoughts. Lompoc has some new Macks (switch fields, now I add a K) that look pretty smooth.  The doors are cut out in front for the mirrors, I think it looks cool, but Matty said you can't roll the windows all the way down.  Would that be a bummer, or would you still have enough arm room?  Wouldn't a shorter (front to back) window with a big vent be cool, or would it be too narrow to lean out?  I can't tell if these are new "R"s or the larger cab, like Harry Kuhns big tractors.  The trick that you see from a mile away is the hood, not only is it smooth and low, it has a point in the grille that must be cosmetic.  On a Mack, cosmetic?  What is next, chrome?  And it works!!!  These big orange Macks are beautiful, and that little grille trick looks just right.

I've seen very few of your trucks this season, usually one in the back of a lot doing curbs, until this week, big time in Glen Ellyn. I know you are open, Arthur's pickup is only up here when it rains, maybe your big jobs are in a different direction.

So much for "concrete" objects, back to "spiritual" ideas.  I have the answer to the Catholic church's "Pervert Priest Cover-up" problem, and in a reasonable world, it might even work.  Subcontract the diocese to local orders.  The Chicago Archdiocese could become The Brotherhood of Cardinal Bernadine, under the spiritual control of Rome, but run locally.  Instead of this "old boy network" run by a politically appointed dictator, you have a confederation of local orders with some central guidance.  This is what many Protestant churches do in their structure, the Catholics would just be doing it on a larger scale.  If the Brother Bernadines from Chicago and the Brother Als from San Francisco want to be in a "North American Council" they could, but they would be members of, not responsible to, this council.  You would want to support some international, Vatican operations, disaster relief type stuff, and pay the Pope's gang for pomp and circumstance, like royals.  But the Order is responsible to the membership, priests could go order to order, but they would be hired locally instead of being appointed from above.

Like that could ever happen.

I noticed an odd thing recently.  Linda's father is 3rd generation Polish American, you can imagine how he may have been taught in a Catholic School in the 1930's.  In passing I mentioned the Orthodox churches being independent of the Pope, and he got pissed.  He is their Pope and they are responsible to him.  I don't fight with Mr. B, and I wasn't sure, so I hit the library. In the 300's there were five or six big  bishops, called patriarchs in Greek.  Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, a couple others were sort of independent of each other, with Rome as sort of senior member, the Peter-Rock deal.  Over the years the bishop of Rome (papa in Latin) claimed more power, by the 1100's the easterners were sick of it.  When the Pope demanded that the Patriarch of Constinople sign a document of allegiance, he said no, so the Pope excommunicated the patriarch, his equal!  Since then the Orthodox churches have hated the Romans, I wonder why?  Anyway, I bet Mr. B was taught that the Orthodoxs were bad boys who ran away, but should come back.  Possible?  Interesting side note, Orthodox priests must be married before they are ordained, you can't get married while a priest.  Not classy for the priest to go out on dates, that could be awkward.  And Orthodox bishops are almost never married.  Why?  They come from monasteries, priests don't get promoted often, if at all.  So the legend of the married priests has some serious qualifications.

Well, it's a weekend plus later, this letter is already way to long, so I'm going to mail it now, and start on another.  This way you know what is coming, and can refuse delivery.  Say hello to everyone (except Al, Tony, etc.), and let's see if this printer works.

Yours truly,
John  D

Bad news in the small animal museum.  The new dog, Roxy, discovered the cleaned bones in the garage, and the collection was somewhat disrupted.  The major damage was to the skull of "the dumbest opossum", but there were bones all over the house and yard, mixed up with our long time exhibit "Guyshot Groundhoggus".  Since both skeletons  had the skull and vertebrae cleaned first, the coolest bones were involved.  The two animals were close enough in size to make identifying some similar bones difficult,  and we thought it was to gross and smelly to clean the hips and rear legs.  We had done  maybe half the bones, but this is near puke work.  We put some bones in a glass jar full of bleach for a couple days, and  the most revolting "Satan's stew" of gross scum appears.  We use rubber gloves, tongs, and sticks, and flush the stuff down the toilet, it's to vomitious to dump on the ground.  We left the possum skull in a week, that was to long, the skull itself had turned chalky and some teeth fell out.

It is nice to have no dead animals in the garage for the first time in years, but they were sort of cool.  We never did much scientifically, but we did play with skulls, teeth, and other stuff.

Our new dog, Roxy, is riot.  She is an athletic one year old Jack Russell Terrier, 16 pounds and 16 inches at shoulder. She's an "overdog", over 12 inches, 12 inch and under is an "underdog". So that's where that term comes from. Lara spent bucks and picked a good example of the breed.  This dog is crazier than me, the other dog, and the squirrels in the back tree combined.  Good senses, bright eyes, very smart, but hyperactive, impulsive, and unable to understand any type of command or discipline.  This dog can not sit, even when I am holding her hips in position.  She almost responds to her name, and maybe "no", that's it.  She gets by because she is almost telepathic about your mood, and has no evil in her soul.  A couple of stern words and she is traumatized, a whole harsh sentence would kill her.  She catches flying bugs and can reach the next utility pole in less than two seconds from a sitting start, but can be afraid of leaves and the dark.  I can control her by humming until she sees a butterfly, then she may either attack or flee.  She is a mini attack dog with a loving, cowardly personality.  We wish she would feel safe in her own back yard, but it is so cool the way she always tries to lean against someone (especially her adopted sister) when she sleeps.

You had to know that there would be some Bible, don't worry, it's only a gateway.  The Hebrew Bible has a bunch of new (to me) names from the east, so I looked some up.  They lead into Mesopotamia, Tigris and Euphrates rivers, fertile crescent stuff.  Way back in pre-history days, people started farming there.  Farming is more complex than hunter-gatherer type stuff, you have to plan ahead (I'm telling you about farming?).  Around 3,500 BCE  people in  the area started writing.  Not religious works to start, but tallies of animals, produce, and property.  With written records, suddenly you can expand from families and tribes to cities, states, and empires.  Ur (Abraham's home), Sumer(ia), Assyria, and Babylon(ia) develop, familiar background names in the Bible, but the wrong direction for most of us (Westerners) to care, we generally look to the west, to Egypt.

We are familiar with these people leaking into the middle east from the Bible, at the same time they also went east and influenced Persia and maybe India.  As the different city/states fight and align themselves with each other, the names and areas of the empires change, and the people get mixed up.  To them, Hebrews are just one more tribe to deal with, no different than any other.  Thanks to one book, and some spin doctoring, we think we know more about the squabbles between one tribe than the clashes between empires two hundred miles east, and their developments, which directly affected not only the middle east, but most of the world.  Jews were just a sideshow in the sticks.

Remember last year, when I was wondering about the underground tunnels in Afghanistan?  The farthest back I could get was Alexander the Great, in 325 BCE  Because I am really not an effective researcher, it never occurred me to go next door to Iran, formerly Persia.  Duh.  Sargon II of Assyria brags in 700 BCE that he had destroyed some of these tunnels.  They are called qanats, and they seem to go back to at least 2500 BCE.  They were/are common throughout the area, but seem to have started in a northeastern corner of Persia, where primitive mining and smelting go back to before dirt.  They aren't mines, though, they are a water system which puts the Roman aqueducts to shame.  Four thousand five hundred years ago the locals would find a good well on the side of a hill and then dig tunnels to the local villages.  You end up with an artesian well providing water for up to 40 miles, but a couple of miles would be more common.  Tehran's main water supply into the 1960's were qanats, they are still in use in the countryside.  And here's a neat side trick, every one hundred fifty feet or so they sent an air/elevator shaft to the surface, so you have a row of effective wells the whole length of the tunnel.  A benefit of writing, they put a system of water rights together, much which continues today.  Of course, modern times are screwing them up, modern deep wells deplete the aquifers, at least changing, if not destroying, the qanats.

Now we head east to Afghanistan.  Do you remember when the Taliban blew up two huge Buddha statues carved into a cliff, before the war?  They (the Taliban) were such assholes that the locals packed up everything they could carry, and headed for the border.  What could they carry?  Ancient manuscripts that have been called "the Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism".  A library of early Buddhist works from 200-700, written on birch bark, palm leaves, and skin.

Now back to a European connection!  The language they are written in, Sanskrit, is one of the oldest Indo-European languages, so the Buddha papers from 200 Afghanistan are related to German and English, and the Mediterranean languages which cut south from Poland maybe and came out around the Greece area.

It takes me so long to finish a letter that new things happen before I lock it up, so I edit and add and on and on.  See how smoothly I moved into the Church Barn sale on Main St. Batavia west of Randall?  It was huge, very well organized, and a gold mine for me.  A Catholic student Bible, my first Catholic one of any type, and it's all explained to me by Rome. Cool.  Then I hit the mother load, a CD-ROM of Mac OS9 for five bucks, stuck in the back of some stupid games!  Imagine finding Windows 2000 like that.

I started to stuff OS9 into the #2 computer first, and it wasn't going very smoothly.  I was considering going back to 8.6 when I caught a glimpse of "commercial language kits" in one of those endless "read me first's.  "Enhanced language support"  means that the machine can now speak Spanish, reading out what we type.  Yea, West Chicano, I know, but Sara is (and has been) taking Spanish, we listen to radio and television, and she tells me what she can pick up.  This may actually be useful.  And there's more...


I can now word process in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Polish, Russian (commie), and could in five other languages if I wanted to install them.  I use SimpleText the way you use WordPad(?)  to read directions on software, it's a tiny word processor that is built in everywhere.  I just load a version in a different language, like "SimpleTextArabic", and I'm set.  When it opens, everything, the menus, commands, "save window", everything is in Arabic, but it is in the same place and has the same key commands ("command S", etc.), so it's pretty easy to figure out what to do.  I have a couple of fonts for each one, Arabic is a beautiful looking language, in Hebrew I have the one that you think of, painted looking letters, and also one that is much cruder, like a stick writing in the dirt.  I have passed out of my "Hebrew/Greek" phase just now, but I'll be back.

After finding out I was "multilingual", I put OS9 on the #1 machine downstairs, and it kept getting better.  The system is huge, and barely fits on the 603e/120Mhz/48MB machine upstairs, but really came into it's own on the G3/300Mhz/80MB downstairs, which can use the power.  Faster, smoother, more capable.  Thank you, unknown church.  I also was referred to a gent from Argonne Lab who is interested in some of my ancient Mac stuff.  A well spent Saturday morning

Back to the Bible again, but this ones more to Guy.  He once told me about seeing a program on the "Lost Tribes of Israel", I finally got it, a Nova from 2000, it was on this week.  He was right, I loved it.  Is a black tribe in Zimbabwe Jewish?  DNA evidence first, explained.  Bible reference, poor, almost a dead end.  Possible route of migration, excellent, with a "lost city" of stone in the jungle, world class dam failure in a desert, Top Yemen historian making connection.  But the background is the most interesting to me, these people have an oral Jewish tradition that goes back before the Hebrew Bible!!!  If these people did leave when the Assyrians took Israel (which looks very likely), then they may have had an early Torah (first five books), but that's it, the Torah was edited, and the rest written/edited, in Babylon, after they left.  And even if they had a scroll, they lost it long ago.  These people still do ritual sacrifice, done in the temple until 70, but not done in "the field" since Babylon.  Unfortunately, they now have the Bible from the outside, so they have been contaminated, but when they start acting out some of their oral stories, you are pretty much looking at a three thousand year old ritual.  Thank you Guy.

Even more on the tube, I saw part of something on "The Queen of Sheba", with a real city.  I didn't know that "Sheba" had been identified, and I missed the first half hour, so Ill stop until I know more.  Verrrry interesting, but unproven.

Yours truly,
John D

I don't know which disappoints me more, this sniper near Washington D.C., or the country calling a .223 a "high power rifle".  Sniper is bad, enough said.  But I cannot let this .223 shit pass

You and I wore green clothes when the Army was going through "the change", did you train with a M-14 (.308, 7.62mm)?  I used a M16 (.223, 5.56mm).  I saw (and heard) .45s, and was issued a shotgun, but the only 7.62mms I saw (outside training) were being used by the Germans.

In the fall of 1971 the M16 had a horrible reputation.  It was first done cheap and wrong (powder), and people died in the jungle.  They did quick-fixes, I think they finally got it right in ten years or so, but in my day this gun was a piece of shit.  I'm not a gun person, but I knew auto mechanics, this thing was made like the underside of a dashboard.  And it wasn't just cheap (the bolt and cast receiver were fine), it was mechanically stupid.  A spring in the butt?  Worse, they tapped the gas from the barrel, ran it down a cheap tube, and let it blast out directly against the bolt.  Imagine a Detroit Diesel with no pistons, let the explosion blast out the bottom of the cylinder against the crank.  Smooth.

Since Americans were being blown away by mid sized rounds (7.62x39 in AK47s), they obviously worked, but why did we choose to go with a small, fast bullet?  Germany (W.W.II), Spain (CETME), and Russia all went with a .30 cal. in a short cartridge, how would we have done with a pointed round in a .30-30 type cartridge.  Did the U.S. change the natural evolution of the assault rifle with pure money, to avoid admitting the 5.56mm decision was wrong, or were we ahead of the times?  Doesn't matter anymore, we've made it a world standard, and it seems to work now.

I guess a country which has seen a 55 mph speed limit is so numb that a round designed to kill small mammals is now called "high power" and a "large bullet" (honestly, I heard that line on CNN).  I think of a .45-70 Govt, a .30-06, or a Weatherby "Safari-type" round as "high power", the .308 Winchester (7.62 NATO) just made the cut-off when it was new, now it is the standard.

This guy, and his gun, are deadly, no argument.  But if the news-whores think a .223 is a powerful gun, what are they going to say when some wacked out ex-Marine from the Idaho Militia blows into town with one of those Barrett autoloaders that uses the .50BMG (Browning Machine Gun, 12.7mm NATO) round, blowing autos to scrap at one mile???

Yours truly,
John D

At least one of Lompocs new "Big Macks" is an all-wheeler.  I saw it turn a corner towards me from a block away, and thought "what a rube, who would drive a dead like that?"  As he came towards me, I had to apologize mentally, as I saw the front axle.  The closing speed was to great to see very well, the cab may (must?) be higher, but it was hard to notice.  Looks good, but after all these years, "the Greatest Name in Trucks" is still having a tough time getting it's all-wheelers to turn.  It looks like it steers like that big "cornbinder" (remember calling Internationals that?) from St. Charles.  Well, at least it isn't as ugly as the "DMM"s were, even if it still wallows around corners the same way.  I don't know why Oshkoshs seem to have a tighter steering lock, most front axles are from the same vendors (Rockwell or Eaton, right?), and you would think they all have the same wheelbase (specd to the same laws with the same mixers, right?), yet I never felt as maneuverable as an Oshkosh.  I know that the cab/hood position changes the way the vehicle looks on corners, but I was always sure that the Macks really had a wider radius at the tires, it sure seemed that way on the job.  Oh well, none of my business anymore.

Railroads have so many strange machines, I have been galking at them for as long as I can remember.  How many times did I go behind the plant to try to figure out what was parked there?  So when the dogs and I saw a backhoe-like thing down the tracks, we strolled over to check it out.  This wasn't a made to order thing, but a very clever Mickey Mouse job.  They made a two axle (one axle on each end) lowboy type rail car and ran a small backhoe onto it.  For motivation they plumbed the machine's track motor hose to a motor on the car which ran an axle by chain.  The railroad didn't own it, a contractor did, rail maintenance without high dollar specialized equipment.  Slick, huh?

Saw a Cat 953 (small tracked frontloader) with some strange markings.  The stickers said Holt/Cat in two boxes, like Cat/953 would be.  I remembered that Holt and Best merged and became Cat long ago, why Holt/Cat now?  It turns out that Holt is a big Cat dealer in Texas, and has the clout to use their name with the Cat trademark.  I've enclosed their history timeline from their web site at www.holttexas.com, but it doesn't really connect Bill Holt 1933 with Caterpillar 1925.  Was Bill related, and how, to Benjamin 1886?  Neat stickers, anyway.

I have stumbled onto the 1874 Federal Census for this county, and have found the B.s from the old map, if I take the time to match them up.  One of them has an "old lady H" living with them, another has her grandkid(?) as a farm laborer.  I'm not really there just now, otherwise Id look farther into John E. and his brothers, three Naperville boot and shoe makers, or the E. brothers, a laborer and a teamster, possibly related.

I can't keep focused, I still want to check out the Knights Hospitalers, they are still in business, you know.  This Mesopotamia stuff lead into languages, which is tough for me, I couldn't diagram a three word sentence.  I have a book of language history and evolution for laymen, it's still above me, but I can sort of follow the main ideas, even if I can't follow the details.  With this I had hoped to get out of Iraq, but Lara (22) is getting into India with Asha, Sara's (14) friend, and Joe's Humanities class is rolling into the Nebucanezzer age.  I wish I had more brain, it's overheating now, time to cut and run.

Yours truly,
John D

I've gotten "stuck in the mud" of Mesopotamia, and I might need a wrecker to get out.  I thought I could power through this soft spot on my way to Persia, but my brain lost RPMs and bogged down, now I'm in up to my axles.  I didn't see the soft language, I should have walked the job first.

We have talked about the difference between Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek/Latin, this is Semite verses Indo-European.  When I went east from Israel the same thing thing happened in Mesopotamia, so I moved back to get a wider view.

Slight background break.  Semite (a Jew-hater is an anti-Semite) is not a race of people, but a language group, coming out of the deserts of "Arabia".  Because so few people speak them, the people are soon all related anyway, so it looks like race to me, but it's not really.  Hebrew is the Old Testament, Aramaic would be spoken in the New Testament, and Arabic is the (only to some) Koran (our spelling).

Why are the children of Abraham getting beaten up by the Indo-Europeans?  Maybe because they spoke a crappy, vague, ineffective language, and were going up against the big winner of the language wars.

Indo-European may have started around northern India, and spread like the plague.  Some people probably went strait across Persia (Iran) and into Mesopotamia (Iraq).  These would be the Indo-Iranian languages of Hindi-Urdu, Persian, Kurdish, and Romany (the language of "Gypsies", who are from northern Iran.)  Others went north into Russia, turned left, and kept going west.  Some dropped off to the south from Russia, they came into Iraq from the north.  A little farther west, stake a claim, and you have the Balto-Slavic (eastern European) Russian, Polish, Czech, etc., eventually coming out south in Greek.  Strait west from Poland you evolve into the Germanics, German, Dutch, Flemish, and English, with Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic on the north flank, and Yiddish thrown in the mix.  Somehow the family went into Italy, where Latin then evolved into the Romantics, Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Wow.  If you're a displaced Judean priest trying to clean up the Bible while in exile in Babylon around 600 BCE, things may look grim.  If you stand on top of the great ziggurat and face southeast, there's south India.  Turning to his left, everything he sees around to Spain due west is Indo-European, then comes Egypt speaking Hamitic.  The only people who he could talk to were the nomads in the desert to the south, and they had nothing worth saying.  He should tell someone, maybe something about a tower to reach God, like this one in "Babble-on".

You've probably noticed that I've climbed out of the mud and into the library.  All the times I've said the Bible was influenced by Babylon, I didn't really get it.  They could see the tower of Babel.  Every kid in the street knew the stories of Gilgamesh having the rejuvenating plant stolen by the serpent (garden of Eden?), listening to Utnapishtim tell of the flood, and meeting Enkidu, who was made out of clay in the image of god, just like you.  Influenced is a mild word.

Of course, to understand this, I've simplified.  A lot.  Semite didn't hit a solid wall, power (and languages) went back and forth in Mesopotamia, a ruler could speak a different language from his people, and not just Semite vs Indo-Euro, there were inter family rivals as well.  Indo-Euro was a family of languages, not an alliance, and you can see today how friendly the Semitic Hebrew and Arabic cousins are today.  So the tower of Babel is probably an accurate idea of the area, in it's way.

I think one result is ironic.  The Jews probably translated many stories from Indo-Euro into Semite, then brought them "home" to Israel, where the Indo-Euro Greek stole them and translated them back.  Since the Jews weren't (aren't) missionaries, they didn't try to spread their religion (and Hebrew), other people stole their ideas, not their religion.  Later, when Mohammed "saw the light", he (they) felt the duty to spread the word, and Arabic, the official "holy" language of Islam, went with it.  Most Muslims speak Arabic to this day, while Hebrew, except for a "modernized" version used in Israel, is closer to Latin, an historic relic used in some church services, but not in the real world.

I've finally gotten some traction, and am getting out of the language bog.  There is some god stuff in Mesopotamia, but I want to hit Persia first, a major source.  With some of the words drying out, I should be able to pour the god approach on the way out.  Quick, for a change, quit while you're ahead, John.

Yours truly,
John D

I'm enclosing a page from Trucktrend, a 4X4 magazine that caught my eye for a day.  The main story is an experimental diesel in European Jeep Grand Cherokees, but the Daimler-Chrysler marriage is the interesting part to me.  I knew Jeep was big in Europe, they are continuing the "Cherokee" name to the new body we call "Liberty".  Jeep has always been marketed overseas, they are designed to use mirrored parts for right hand drive.  Anyway, what I thought was cool was the Jeep's factory-mates.  Grand Cherokees next to Mercedes M-Class (4X4) is pretty classy, but then you add Chrysler Minivans and their derivative, PT Cruisers, and you really cover a wide range.  I'll bet the minivans and PT Cruisers can be built on the same line, but can the Jeeps and the Benz's?  One line for all, one for vans and one for trucks, or vans plus two?

Another Chrysler trick caught my eye.  A blast from the past, probably yours, too.  All through the sixties, whenever anyone of us had a fast car, there was always one standard.  Whether it was Jack's Goat, Linda's Camaro, Frank's Grand Sport, or even Mark P.'s '69 Chevelle 396-375 hp, there was always one word which would trump them all, "Hemi".  The blue 68 (?) Hemi Road Runner on Main St. Downers south of 63rd Street was the most awesome auto display I ever saw on the street.

Then we grew up, sort of.  Hemispherical is a shape, not a trade name.  Yea, yea, more surface area, bigger valves, faster fire, thatís all right, but Dodge and Harley are soon sharing the idea with tiny Honda autos.  Technology soon passes the "hemi" and makes overhead cams common, you need two cams and at least three valves per cylinder to be above run of the mill today.  So when I saw an article in the November 10 Trib on "Hemi is powering" I was not impressed, I assume that Honda lawnmowers are "hemis".

It turns out that Chrysler's new 5.7 liter (about 350 inches) truck motor looks not like two high-tech four bangers siamesed at the crank, but more like a direct descendent of it's old namesake.  Where's the cam?  "Down in the valley", where it uses pushrods to sneak at different angles between ports to operate rocker arms (on shafts!!).  Today's manufacturing methods but Zora Arkus-Duntov would recognize this as a development of his "ARDUN" flathead Ford truck conversion motors from the thirties.  And those cakepan sized valve covers with plugs in the middle!

This seems like a natural connection with the past, especially for Dodge trucks.  A conservative design, with basic, proven engineering, in an application that can require high, steady torque for long periods.  Good market, too.  The people who need the power probably recognize the hot rod heritage.

No point in talking about marketing any more. I just saw part of a Dodge commercial on the Bears game, old guy in PU towing race car talking to idiot kids. Looks good.

As natural as this seems to me, this sort of surprises me busineswise.  Chrysler is, as we speak (read), selling a new 3.7L V6 / 4.7L V8 truck engine series with a SOHC, and magazines say itís a good motor, yet they go (almost backwards) to an OHV on their new "big block".  Strange, but cool.

So much for now, I'll drop a line for the site.

Yours Truly
John D.

We finally have the web site done.  Wheelman 1 to ?? were taken, I was born in '52 and the upstair computer is a 5200 series.  It is very plain, and there is a story behind that, short version, we spent more time to make less than necessary.

Small websites are often free, our cheapo dial-up internet service provides us one, we used Tripod because Sara already has a site there.  You can log on and they lead you around by the nose, like a "Wizard", asking you to choose a background, color, pictures, adding what you want until you have a site.  You could make a respectable page with very little effort.

You know we didn't do it the easy way.  HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the language browsers talk to each other in, my Netscape Navigator to your Internet Explorer(?) to my father's AOL.  It tells the browser what to do, but not how to do it, so each browser can be different, as long as they all understand the instructions.  Directions are surrounded by < marks, and there are plenty of them.  You start with only one type font, size, style, etc., if you want a word bold, you type "if you <start bold>want<end bold> a word bold."  Anything other than the default settings needs <instructions>.

We used a "text editor", which is a stupid typing program, like "Wordpad(?)", and a part of Netscape that lets you add some things like a word processor.  There are lots of web building softwares, we used the basic, free minimum.  When we thought we were done, we pasted it right over the Tripod stuff, bingo, failure!  It came up, minus title, in huge type.  Next day, new thought, we pasted it into the Tripod stuff, and it worked.  It may relate to the advertisement they run on our "forehead", our "free" code was clashing with capitalism.

Well, wouldn't that be my style.  Instead of having an easy, good looking site, we spent weeks trying to learn how to do the grunt work in order to produce a underwhelming place.  Then we worked on anonymous.  Part of the Tripod stuff I had to leave in was questions about subject, content, and author.  These are keys that search engines use to see if they should show the site.  Since we aren't looking for an audience and don't want to come up on real searches, we left that stuff blank.  Private publishing.

We only put one outside link in, just to do it, it's to the Franciscans in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  Is that ironic?  I'll probably add a few letters, and I should try to put a map or picture in sometime, otherwise, I'm content.

Sincerely,
John D.

I've been promising you "Hospitallers" for a year now, so I'm starting now.  The subject didn't really light me up, I'm not sure if this is because the sources I have are boring (which they are) or if the subject itself is boring (which it shouldn't be).  Well, lets see if this works.

Background.  In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a crusade to bring the "Holy Land" under "Christian" control.  In this case, Christian means "Roman Catholic".  Earlier Palestine had been ruled by the Byzantium Empire.  Remember Constintine, who converted Rome to Christianity?  He moved the capital from Rome to Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople.  Modest man.  In the move, Papa, the Bishop of Rome, was left behind, this is the difference between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, and competing empires, sort of.  Anyway, in 1071 Jerusalem went from Byzantine control to Turkish, which also meant from Christian to Muslim.  Christians could still go on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, but it was a lawless time, and lots of pilgrims were ripped off.  This was more of a law problem than a religious differences, Muslims were "one godders" and fairly tolerant of both Jews and Christians, who believed in the same God.  At least they were tolerant until 1099, when Pope Urban's boys showed up.

Historians say that Urban cranked up the crusades partly to stop inter-Catholic violence in Europe.  You had too many "second sons", who would not inherit, becoming "knights" and attacking their neighbors.  Why not stop them from fighting among themselves by creating a common enemy?  Not because it was stupid to send an army past one empire to attack a hostile, stronger empire in their own back yard.  And certainly not because it was immoral.  The war-mongers has already cheapened the "Prince of Peace", Constantine fought under the cross, it wasn't hard to convince the laymen that god wanted them to kill.  Both the Jews and Muslims believed in a warrior god, why not people who worshipped his son, also?  Just because the namesake of their religion was a pacifist was no reason to pass up a good war.

Anyway, when Urban talked, people listened.  Maybe a little to well.  The rabble just took off on "the Peoples Crusade", made a mess on the way, and got slaughtered by the Turks.  The "Princes' Crusade" took it slower, planned ahead, and by June 1099 they were besieging Jerusalem.  The door opened on July 15, 1099, and inside the walls the Christians pulled off one of the low points of the religion.  They let the city fathers leave, after paying a huge ransom.  That was the end of their mercy.  The Jews hid in a synagogue, which the Christians burnt to the ground.  And all the Muslims, even the ones who had surrendered, were murdered.  Men, women, children, by the thousands, lying dead in the streets.  A real class act, and one that the Muslims didnít forget.

Remember the Muslims being tolerant?  Somewhere around 1080 they had let some traders from Amalfi, an Italian city-state, set up a hospice in Jerusalem.  The grandfather of today's hospitals was more like a hostel (hostel, hospital, and hotel all have the same root words).  Remember Ingrid Bergman in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness?  You can rest, get a meal, maybe get cleaned up and nursed, while listening to Bible stories.  Not only religious, but practical.  If you are selling passage to pilgrims, how handy to have a place to stay at the end?  A package tour.

The Benedictines sent Brother Gerard, "the most humble man in the East and the servant of the poor", to organize the "Hospice of St John"(it's not clear which St John to start with, later it became "the Baptist").  Brother Gerard was so "humble" that when the crusaders came to besiege Jerusalem, he was allowed to stay in the city when the Turks kicked all the other local Christians out.  Notice that a month before the massacre of the Muslims, the Christians were allowed to leave Jerusalem unharmed?  Anyway, after the fall, the little hospice grew fast, by 1113 the Pope recognized it as an independent Order, with "daughter-houses" all over Europe.  When Bro Gerard died in 1120, he left a "Hospitallers" tradition that's lasted to today.

Even when the Christians were in control of the cities, they were still "Infidels" in a Muslim land, and the countryside was a dangerous place to show a cross.  "The Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon", or Templars, started as a small group of ranger type knights, to keep the roads safe.  Soon they were a mighty Army, and an independent order themselves.  There is a difference between convoy escort and invading Egypt, though, the roads never were safe, and the Christians were kicked out in 1291.  Good idea gone bad, but they were a hell of a story while they were around, and legends still hit the History Channel.

When Brother Gerard died, a French knight named Raymond de Puy took over the order.  He was a great leader in his own way, but not Bro Gerard's way.  He grafted a military wing onto "The Knights of St. John", sort of a copy of the Templars.  They would run the show until 1798.

When Acre fell in 1291 and the Templars headed to Europe, the Hospitallers hung around Cypress and kept stirring things up.  In 1309 they conquered the strategic Greek island of Rhodes, and started building castles and a navy (galleys with Muslim slaves on the oars).  The pope, happy to have them in the front lines against the Turks, recognized them as sovereign, and they still are recognized by thirty or so countries.  From their own island, they held off the Turks through invasion after invasion, until Sultan Suleiman "the Magnificent" got pissed.  After a six month siege with tens of thousands of casualties on both sides, the Hospitallers surrendered "with honor" on December 26, 1522.  Suleiman let them go with their weapons and possessions, and even offered to help repair and provision their ships.  Again Muslim generosity would backfire.

Eight years later the Knights moved onto Malta, a small rock south of Sicily.  They rented it from Spain for one falcon a year (Humphrey Bogart and The Maltese Falcon).  They set up and headed out to police Turkish "Corsairs", subjects of Suleiman.  Pissed again, his army hit the beach on May 18, 1565, tried with all their might, and almost pulled it off, but on September 8 they gave up, leaving maybe 30,000 dead behind them.  The Knights would stay on Malta.

For a while, at least.  They slowly became obsolete, soft, and missionless.  Malta went from a fortress to a resort town, soldiers became pimps.  A small group of Knights rowing (still with Muslim slaves) and sailing around were no longer very important.  When Napoleon showed up with his whole fleet on his way to Egypt, they made a lame attempt to defend, but on June 11, 1798 the Knights left the island with nothing but the clothes on their back.  Onward Christian soldiers was now only a hymn.

Even when the knights were at the height of their power, there was always the hospital. In the warfare, filth, and disease of the middle ages there were few sick Hospitallers, they were well fed, clean, and if injured, would get the best care.  When under siege not only the knights and soldiers, but the entire civilian population of the island would have shelter, food, water, and their health.  Now that the military side got themselves kicked off a rock, the hospital almost went under.

There was some ugly power grabbing, and some of the branches split off, partly due to the Protestant reformation.  Tsar Paul of Russia tried to claim the order, having himself elected Grand Master, but the Pope and most Catholics didn't recognize the election.  For a while there was no Grand Master, the rule of the Lieutenants, but then they started to get their act together.  They moved into the Palazzo di Malta in Rome and got back to hospitals.  Pope Leo #13 reinstated the Grand Mastership, and they chugged on.  Today they are The Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta.  They kept the chivalry shit from the military side, there are still "knights", but now they set up emergency hospitals and do disaster relief like a small red cross.  In fact, their symbol was and is an opposite red cross, "The white Cross of Peace on the blood-red field of War".

After the fall of Acre, the Hospitallers were actually an asset to the west.  The "Muslims" were Turks encroaching on Greece, and various pirates, Rhodes then Malta were a stabilizing influence in the Mediterranean.  While the Templars went to Europe and became secret bankers, the Hospitallers stuck to their missions.  When the Templars fell, the various Hospitaller branches inherited quite a few Templars, and much of their property.

Today the direct descendants of the order are still in the Palazzo di Malta.  Breakaway Protestant branches in northern Germany and Britain/Canada are still strong, a main function, St John's Ambulance Brigade, is very big in Europe and Canada.  Interesting side note, the German branch has Her Royal Highness Princess someone as their patron.  Although Kaiser Whilhelm abdicated the throne near the end of World War One, the German royal family still exists, at least in their minds.

The Catholics now recognize several Protestant branches as related, they get along and work closely.  The Russians are a different story, they are considered illegitimate by the "blue bloods", and this has led to legal challenges.  There are "Hospitaller" orders all over the United States, at least, the internet lists hundreds of them.  Many of them are related to churches, both Catholic and Protestant, there are men's clubs, women's auxiliaries, and bowling leagues all over the country, and apparently some charity scams use the name, too.  Many claim they descend from the Russian branch, some may, but after the Soviet Union, who knows?  Anyway, the "real" orders have filed lawsuits all over the world, trying to protect the name.

Sort of on the same line, the Templar name has also been used by others.  In Geneva there is a Good Templar Park.  I wondered about that, since there aren't any more Templars.  Turns out that the park was originaly part of the "temperance" movement, a place where people could go on weekends and vacation without alchohol.  They have a Malteese cross on the gate, a Hospitaller sign.  Apparently window dressing, maybe some time I'll check it out, but for now, it's time to move on. Time to be Mr. Mom and pick Sara up, so more later.

Yours truly,
John D.

Every year I get a Gun Buyers Annual and go through it.  This year I came across a strange trend, possibly because of the editors own interest, but it is so cool, and odd, that it has stolen my mind (petty theft).

Background.  In the American civil war the common military weapon was a muzzle-loading rifle.  There were a few lever action "Henrys", ancestor of the common Winchesters, but they were rimfire cartridges.  Since the firing pin has to dent the rim of the case, the case cannot be very thick, so the cartridge must be rather low powered.  Fast firing, but not a lot of range or knockdown power.  The first real military cartridge was the .45-70 Government round, lots of powder pushing a large bullet.  This was standard issue during the Indian wars, Custer's cavalrymen used a carbine to fire this big round, probably a lot of bruised shoulders on the dead troopers.  Anyway, from about 1870 to 1890, this was the standard army round, then came .30-40 Krag (short lived), the .30-06 (06 is a year, not powder), .308 (7.62mm X 54 NATO), and .223 (5.56mm X nothing  NATO).

The .45-70 Gov't round was a "man's" round, but it has been obsolete for more than 100 years.  I was surprised to see an article on someone making a .45-70 version of the SMLE (Short Magazine Lee-Enfield).  The SMLE family was the standard British bolt action during both World Wars, it used a .303 round comparable to the .30.06.  The Number 5 "Jungle Carbine" is a very cool looking model developed for the jungles of the Pacific war, this new .45-70 looks similar, but with a monster round.  I have enclosed a scan, looks nice, but who would want it?

Interesting, but there was more.  The very next page had a .45-70 revolver!  Holy crap, look at the size of that cylinder!  If the .45 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) and .45 LC (Long Colt) rounds were a handful, who other than a football lineman could fire this hand cannon?  How far can this lunacy go?

All the way to elephant guns.  Before reliable big bore bolt action rifles, big game hunters used big double barrel rifles.  If a 12 gauge double shotgun is a heavy, powerful gun, what would a double rifle, with stronger barrels, be like.  I don't know much about sporting weapons, my interest is usually military, but if you wanted an American big game weapon in the 1880's, this Kodiak would probably be the hot ticket.  Were there American elephant guns then?  There is one now.

I'm sure that you know that children's toys expand every day, if you can think of it, someone will make it.  Adult toys seem the same, there is no reason on the planet for any one of these three big .45-70s to be on the market today, other than pure, massive, impressive fun.
 
 

Yours Truly,
John D.

Tell Matty that there is a Boeing 727 parked on the west side of DuPage airport.  Looks like it used to be painted for American Airlines.  In the past a "Connie", Lockheed Constilation four piston engine airliner from the '50's, came in, it was a special minimum fuel landing and takeoff deal, the 727 must have been, too.  Still, nothing like the 727 that landed at Meiggs field for the Museum of Science and Industry.  I'm sure he remembers that one, a virtually no fuel one chance only screacher.  Anyway, I haven't tried to find out why it's there, maybe sometime.

The next part is a bummer, about fatal accidents.  The end of the bummer part is marked.

Last week a couple from Westmont/Darien(?) wiped out at Ill 83 and US 45 avoiding a deer.  That is a good place for weather, road, and the "X" factor to get together for an accident.  Press says bright future wiped out.  Typical story for the season.  This got me to writing, those kids may be known to some of your east DuPagers.

Brian, a friend of Lara's (age 21) since junior high had come home for Thanksgiving.  One night he picked up Damon (another Lara friend) and headed for AMC 30.   They died on Deihl road just east of "River" (fuck Raymond), with at least one person in the other vehicle, a mini-van. You may have heard of it, and your drivers have probably seen the crosses.  (I told the kids where to put them, they were setting up a half mile east).  We heard about it around 2:00 a.m., when Lara called up, crying, to tell us she wasn't coming home that night.

One of the first things I wondered about was why did two people die in the Blazer in an accident with a mini-van?  No seat belts?  No, they were probably wearing them, Damon was a believer.  But Brian had installed a sound system in his new ride, plywood box with speakers, etc, the speculation from the scene was that all that crap probably did it, both in the impact and the roll.  They sell those ready-made at Wal-Mart.  Do people just not realize the danger?  Or not care?  Probably both.  Am I tying my shoelace, or searching for the lowest common denomenator of drivers.  They're both down there.

How drunk was Brian?  (I assume alcohol in most night accidents.)  Probably not at all.  Damon was a beer person, but Brian was pretty dry.  Test not back as of Jan 4.  On the other hand, if they come back positive, even just a little, then he was probably more hammered than the number indicates, being an amatuer.

How fast was he going?  To fast, obviously, but probably not crazy young man fast.  Damon, who was passenger, was a concerned, almost cowardly, driver.  In fact, there seems very little of the male macho driver attitude among Lara's friends, Joe is also kind of mild, Lara does much of the driving.  Brian, with a new Blazer and a super stereo, may have been her gear-head friend, but if he went lunatic then wouldn't Damon make noise?

How did it happen?  We don't have the police report yet.  Brian was apparently eastbound just east of River when he started heading left, sort of oversteering into a very mild curve, crossed a wide "dead" lane and into the westbound lanes, nailing the minivan.  I'm not sure what the minivan did, but from the wreckage and discarded bloody gloves it seems to have ended up in the westbound outside lane, possibly right where it was hit.  Blazer looked to hit the north curb (hard), then kept going northeast down hill into a field, rolling over somewhere.

Why did he loose control?  Partly weather, I imagine.  He could have come south on River over the tollway, then turned left, east onto Deihl, that way he may have lost it in the long downhill left, and never really gotten control.  Or, he might have taken Ill 59 south to Deihl, turned east, and lost control crossing River.  That would probably be at a much higher speed and would have looked less scary going into it.  Speeding up to make the light?

I was never very fond of most of Deihl.  East of Mill it has a hard crown, made worse by sweeping curves.  Between Mill and Winfield road it's comfortable, but when you get west of the theaters it gets squirrely again, and stays like that west of River almost all the way to the Kinder Care/water tank/dog pound area.  Woods and water on the south, tollway on the north, and more of those curves, somehow it adds up, I was always careful in dead axle trucks.  128 never bothered me, back then I used to think about it, was I going slower (probably) or were the front wheels pulling me through?  (I will die thinking that the all wheel Macks handled better, especially in the weather, because the front wheels pulled).  Anyway, I think that that area has always felt worse than it looked.  I seem to remember a Wherli truck rolling over on Diehl from River while the paint on the new, realigned pavement was still wet.

Sure, it was probably his fault (both Brian and Wherli), but I'm not sure that Brian was as out of line as it may appear.  Maybe more ignorant than evil.  Fortunatly both Brian and Damon had their lives in good order for the end.  Brian had come home for a week with his mother, Damon's parents had just gotten married, no wives, girlfriends, or kids left behind.  Damon worked with Lara watching kids at the "Y", some of the kids came to see him.  They weren't saints, just nice "kids" with lots of friends to miss them.

The mini-van took a beating, I think it was full of an Indian family and friends, one dead for sure, the rest fucked up.  I think they were minding their own business.

I'm going to  wind this up, and see if I can breath any life into maps and addresses, it's just to long and not interesting, even worse than this one.

Yours truly,
John D.

You must remember that I'm a headlight fanatic.  Lara's Cavalier has a sort of GM on all the time partly automatic light system thatís simple and effective.  Running/parking lights go on when in gear, but the simple trick that makes it work is an idiot light!  There is a green light on the dash that you only see when it gets dark,  in the daylight itís not bright enough.  So if you see the green light, you turn on the headlights.  A typical bell goes off if you open the door with the lights on, as a reminder to not leave them on.  Not idiot proof, but if you notice the green light (which you do) and care at all, you should get by.

Pat used to have a Cadillac, now she has a Lincoln, and they both have automatic lights, neither which ever impressed me.  My primitive method is to always turn on the lights as soon as I crank the engine, but that is to simple and effective for widespread use.  The Chevrolet deal seems to be an excellent compromise, only an idiot asshole could avoid being safe.

I'm reading a book about SUVs (god I hate that term) called High and Mighty by Keith Bradsher, a reporter and professional Nader type whiner.  He's a fanatic, but I agree with much of what he says.

First, I believe that most of the people who drive SUVs should be in minivans.  I believe you probably assume that, too.  From the very start, Chrysler made the correct vehicle, and people bought it.  But then more and more people moved up (?) to the SUVs.  This book sort of explains how the various auto law loopholes led to these mutant Cadillac / Suburbans and one ton Lincolns.

Detroit has to balance market demand against many things, Washington D.C. gives them emission, safety, fuel economy and trade regulations, among others.  Then there is the specific use, and how that affects other business.  Add in the lobbyists, lawyers, and various whores, and the story is pretty good.  Weíve been watching little pieces of this since the mid-sixties, at least, I enjoyed seeing how the pieces cross and fit.

First, I'm going to list a few "one-liners" of the business, then a short (?) history of the cancer of SUVitis.

At different times with different laws, mini-vans that have "flat load space floor with easily removable seats" can pass for a big van, which may be exempt from something so plumbers can use them effectively. (I think that mini-vans are pretty well controlled, they do good in crash tests, etc.)

When I was in the Army I drove a three door Suburban, I thought that was standard until 1973.  Wrong, most old Suburbans apparently had two doors, panel trucks with windows, the third door was a late option.  You didn't put people in Suburbans back then, one of the major uses was funeral parlor body pickup vehicle.  The floor was purposely made the right size and height for a body or coffin to be easily loaded.

The basic Jeep was always flat, but they made a small pickup truck/ station wagon, and the first Jeepster, with flat panels, too. Why?  Because Willys couldn't pay for a auto body stamping plant, they went to appliance manufactures, who could only do simple, flat stuff.

Do you remember when jap pickups first came over, they didn't have beds?  The beds were put on at the dock, to avoid a 25% tax on imported cargo vehicles.  This wasn't protection against Japan, it was the result of an argument with German chicken farmers between 1957 and 1961.  The krauts cheated on some trade deal, so in 1962 a Swiss court ruled that America could "get even" by taxing something German.  Volkswagen sold the right number of commercial vans and pickups  so a tax went into effect.  The krauts said "screw it", they sold enough Microbuses as it was, so they stopped bringing in the PU and panel van versions.  Nobody gave the tax another thought until the japs hit Long Beach, they had to get past the tax by putting American boxes on their chassis-cabs, which were exempt.

In 1973 the E.P.A. let the little Jeep slide through with the "big pickups".  Why?  New owner AMC was to lame to figure out how to meet the regs, no one else would sell them the new technology, and most of the few Jeeps sold were work trucks, so an exemption made sense.  Then AMC started selling them to kids for fun.

Chrysler market researchers had a good idea of American tastes, they knew that 80% of buyers didn't like their "new look" trucks, most hated it.  But of the other 20%, many were wild about the look, and since Dodge only had 4% of the market, 20% looked real good, they went for it, and got it!

AM General, and now General Motors, also knows American taste.  Who would buy a Hummer?  Extroverted males who have performed NO military service, but wish they had.  There is a potential image problem, a large number of veterans are offended by never servers driving pretend army trucks, I know I am, but I didnít realize my opinion was shared by enough people to count.  While talking pretend, the H2 (Humburban), by request from marketing, had it's windshield flattened and placed more upright, to look more like the real thing, fuel mileage be damned.

Detroit has had a pretty easy time keeping control of the big pickup market, why?  Because this is the only place they are used, most of the world would put a flatbed or army 3/4 ton type box on a truck this size.  The small pickups have spread, (how many do you now see, with machine guns mounted, in the hands of third world militia's?), but the big ones still rarely leave the continent.

Now it's time to wonder how these monster SUVs have hit our streets in the hands of idiots.

Today's monsters sort of come from two directions, both of them small and reasonable.  The one direction is the S10 and Ranger pickups, both an effective downsize of pickup trucks, with their Blazer Bronco derivative.  These are cargo related, and have a fairly direct evolution to this day.

The other direction, from Jeep, sort of fucked things up with the Cherokee, which was actually an upsize of a passenger vehicle, the "CJ".  Jeep did have a big pickup/Wagoneer/Cherokee, which was a truck, but the new Cherokee wasn't downsized, it's related to the new Wrangler that came out one year later.  With common running gear, these were passenger vehicles, not cargo.  With 4 wheel drive assumed, no cargo stresses,  nothing useful from the old model, and the CJ's legal exemptions, AMC drew or bought whatever they needed to make a small off road station wagon.  And sold a ton of them.

The S10 Blazer, like the full sized pickups and Blazers before, was really a two person cargo vehicle.  I had one, and the jump seats were just adequate for kids, and a pain to use.  That's what we wanted.  But our wives liked the station wagon's back doors.

Now the auto industry sales whores sold the country out.  S10s had a 4WD option because Keith G. needed it, Jeeps had it because they are Jeeps, but mama had no use for it.  I had a 2WD Blazer and never had problems, it was better balanced and had better ground clearance than a PU.


Linda's Jeep has 4WD, we use it a few minutes a year, tops.  And I do go off road.  Just like my old Blazer, the Jeep's ground clearance and short wheelbase benefit my off-roading far more than any extra traction.

Now that the sales whores have convinced mama that she needs a four door four wheeler, all hell breaks loose.  The Cherokee had four doors and a longer engine compartment, with a lower center of gravity and wider track, than the truck design two door Blazer, and at almost a thousand pounds lighter, it had a fuel economy edge, too.  Tough act to follow.

Keith ran his S10 from beer-spilling rough in a ditch during harvest to 120+ M.P.H. on I 55, and it did just fine, didn't crash, didn't roll over.  But when you make it a foot longer (and heavier), for the rear doors, and put mama (who doesn't drive anything like Keith) in control, well, you can see the beginning of the problem.  Then you add power rear door windows, a comfortable back seat, rear window wiper, heated musical vanity mirrors, bla bla bla, and you lose, lose, lose.  Fuel economy, safety, and emissions suffer because you are hauling people in a truck.  But as long as you can get away with it, and make tons of money, what incentive is there to stop?

Then there are always the japs.  They build small trucks, too, and see a chance.  Do you remember the early Toyota 4-Runner?  It had rear seat foot boxes sticking out below the frame.  But they adapt fast.  Since the japs owned "little", Detroit's easiest escape is bigger.  Remember, the S10 and American-built Ranger were already slotted slightly larger than the japs.

 Then Jeep throws more meat into the feeding frenzy.  Their new, much improved Cherokee is done, but they are still selling out the old one.  So they add "Grand" to the name, throw in leather seats, and move it up-market,  selling it next to it's predecessor.  Mo money mo money mo money!  Another well designed, more expensive, passenger vehicle that the others have to catch with trucks.

Plus "they" passed a "luxury car" tax on vehicles which cost over $30,000.  SUVs excepted.  Chevy's Suburban suddenly looked like "the biggest SUV on the planet", if you called it a Caddy, how many high dollar options could the chassis haul?  And Ford's new Expedition, a Suburban parallel, could be a Lincoln.

How high will this spiral go?  You remember when the line for light / heavy pickups was at 6,000 # G.V.W, so the 1/2 tons had 6,200 # G.V.W. sport models?  The line went up to 8,500#, and stayed there, with vehicle downsizing and weight control, what are the odds that a personal use vehicle would hit that?  Ask Cadillac and Lincoln, who are both selling 8,600 # G.V.W. SUVs (god I hate that term).  Passenger cars meeting the federal regulations for a one ton dump truck?

Although Jeep may have sparked a forest fire, they didn't get all that carried away.  They had the bad taste to call a Cherokee a Sport (what sport?)(is that where Sport Utility Vehicle came from?, god I hate that term), but basically they have kept building Jeeps.  After it was long obsolete, the Cherokee was very lightly warmed over, but this was just smoothing out some of the original glitches.  The "Grand" was a little larger, but it brought a 3 link rear axle (replacing leaves), more rear seat footroom, and a more modern body, that's basic evolution.  The new "Liberty" has a real front suspension, but it's still a Jeep, a small passenger vehicle to drive in the dirt.  I don't know if it connects to you, but when the Grand Cherokee went through itís mid-life(?) face-lift, it got better off-road.  The newer body has the lower rear corners rounded out, the old style was a tail dragger, by Jeep standards.  Can you tell from my prejudiced tone that I own one.  Dennis probably sounds the same, and he bought almost the worst example built, at least it has a "strait six".

Ford has taken much of the heat on safety, almost from the start.  The Jeep CJ was an early 60 Minutes rollover star, the Cherokee design team knew it, and seemed to do their homework.  Both Cherokee's have had the best insurance rollover numbers of all SUVs, very close to car numbers.  But Ford, who had big problems with the Bronco II, decided to fight.  And they won.  They proved that the Bronco II was not, on paper, much worse than some other SUVs, and the NHTSA does not have the power to enact standards that would eliminate an entire vehicle class.  Since it seems almost impossible to make a standard rollover test (too many variables), NHTSA gave up, no standards, the "new", longer, heavier Explorer had the same front end as the Ranger/Bronco II.

I'm prejudiced against Ford.  Although they are not to my taste, I have operated Fords which I considered effective.  But I have also driven Fords which I consider "peanut wagons", large bodies on small chassis, in fact, I consider them a Ford specialty.  I simply do not think that Ford Motor Company gives a rat's ass for chassis design.  The decision to lower the Explorer's tire pressure to twenty six P.S.I. is a perfect example.  Don't fix the chassis, let the air out of the tires.   Selling the public what it thinks it wants is one thing, telling housewives to drive their overloaded trucks with flat tires is another.  Then they dump on Firestone?  Harvey Firestone was one of Henry Ford's best friends, the two companies have been in bed with each other since wire wheels.

I couldn't read this book strait through, it irritates me, both what has happened, and what the author is saying.  It's all Detroit's fault, made worse by corrupt Washington politicians?  I can see faults both in his facts and the way he spins his numbers.  Nobody forced these people to buy these pigs, they could have gotten a better vehicle for less.  They are just too damn selfish.  I have included a few paragraphs from Mr. Bradsher on who drives SUVs.  He explains where his info comes from (automotive poll companies), and I enjoy his opinion, but I don't think he is really qualified to make these conclusions, even though I agree.

This doesn't really apply to us  directly, though.  This book is aimed for "yuppies", and maybe that's a good thing.  They are a main buyer of these things.  It's the snotty bitch across the street from me, trade in your goddamned Lexus 4-wheeler for a sedan, maybe made in your own country!  Of course, it will affect us, we will have to obey the laws or pay the insurance or whatever comes down the road as a result of this craziness.  Also, much of this SUVitis applies to many pickup drivers, which directly affects the "real" pickup people.

Enough of this stuff, I know that many of us have these thoughts, I just tried to say it.

I'm sure that you know better than me how impressive pulling can be.  This is a great motor sport for the spectators, not only can you hear and feel the power, you can clearly see it.  I saw a clip on television on a class I hadn't seen before, impressive yet real world.  Big motor tandem axle road tractors, apparently fairly close to stock.  They seem to replace the fifth wheel with a ballast box, then hook to the sled with a pintle hook.  All the rear wheels spun together, I didn't see any bouncing, my guess is that these were individual springs or airbags, I can't imagine a typical Hendrickson walking beam acting like that.  From the front they torque twist, and pull little wheelies, both one and both wheels, itís heavy duty truck power, not tractor or super modified truck pulling.  And I would think that as long as you donít bounce, it would be pretty safe for the vehicle.  You could almost drive a work truck to the track.  Almost.

Well, once again, I got carried away with a thought, and took a week to write it down.  I didn't get to why people are so automotively ignorant, Brian got me to thinking about this again.  Maybe later, or maybe I will cut you some slack, and go elsewhere.  Our township system of surveying relates to how many acres an ox can plow, "addresses" keeps getting longer, editing is losing to babbling.  No telling what I'll spring on you next.  Once again, youíve been warned.

Yours truly
John D.

Dear Ken,

Here comes a blurb on surveying maps and addresses.

The United States has used two basic methods of surveying. The "old" style is called "metes and bounds". A person plots out the actual land he wants, then describes it geographically. A description like "North side of the Pike between the old oak tree and the creek" may make sense at the local general store/post office, but reads as gibberish to someone not from the area. Itís also near impossible to figure area. Some of New England was surveyed this way, in Illinois Vandalia was done this way, old French influence.

In the "Land Ordinance of 1785" standards were set for a basic grid survey, the hot new idea at the time. You take a N/S line for a "Principal Meridian" (the 3rd runs through Centralia) and measure from there. Every six miles you draw a "range line". The E/W "baseline" (also through Centralia) is the starting point for the every six mile "township lines", range lines times township lines make 36 square mile boxes called "townships" which are divided into one square mile "sections". In every township one section is used for, or sold to finance, schools. The rest are sold as one piece, or "subdivided" into halves, quarters, etc., 40 acres is 1/16th section.

The various measurements may seem odd today, but in their day they made sense. Miles and acres go way back, but in surveying, feet only go back around one hundred years. And in the past, it was much easier to divide things in half, you couldnít do tenths in the field. Thatís why you use quarters, eighths, etc.

Before feet were used, a "chain" was the standard measure, because of a mathematical trick. Chain X chain = acreage, with a decimal point change. A quarter of a chain is a rod, there are eighty chains to the mile. Decimals are already sneaking in, though, you move the decimal point to get acreage, and there are one hundred links in a chain, instead of eighty.

Feet replaced chains around the turn of the 1900ís, you can sometimes see the changeover. Street right of ways are often 66 feet, from one chain. No inches, though, tenths of feet, instead.

The way sections in a township are numbered also shows an older mindset. You start with "1" at the northeast corner, then go west, with "6" at the northwest corner. Drop one section south for "7", then head back east. Repeat the pattern two more times, 6 X 6 = 36. This is the way you plow a field with oxen, instead of numbering the sections the way you read.

Around Chicago itís pretty flat, and the grid was surveyed before the area was very developed, so most major roads are strait on the section lines. Some roads are affected by old Indian trails, or rivers, or both. Ogden Avenue and Lake Street are old corridors, and parts of Ill 53 and 59 are old trails along river valleys, but if you look at a map, most streets are N-S or E-W.

In 1908 Chicago renumbered the city to match the grid. Iím surprised that it was so recent, the streets were laid out on the grid before the fire in 1871, and I canít imagine the south side without numbered streets. Anyway, two section line streets were the base, State Street becoming 0 E/W while Madison Street became 0 N/S. Chicago and much of Cook County started numbering directly from there, while the collar counties numbered their section addresses from Chicagoís base lines, rather than Centraliaís (actual surveys are still measured from Centralia, of course). Between these two numbering systems, you can locate most addresses in the Chicago area directly to a specific spot on a map.

The Chicago city grid takes some math to use. On most North/South streets there are eight blocks to the mile. My guess is that the streets were surveyed like a farm, divided by half mile, quarter mile, eighth mile. If you wanted to have 100 numbers per block, you end up with 800 numbers to the mile, sort of an awkward amount in the decimal world of today. To the North you have Chicago (800), North Ave (1600), Fullerton (2400), up to Touhey (7200), to the west you have Halsted (800), Ashland (1600), Western (2400), out to Harlem (7200), all your miles are multiples of eight.

On the south side the E/W streets use their address as their name, but the numbers are screwed up, so it gets stranger. Mile one is (Theodore) Roosevelt Road, numbered as 1200 south (hence 12th Street). Mile two is 22nd Street, and mile three is 31st Street. 1200, 1000, and 900 numbers per mile. After that, itís 800 per mile, 39th St., 47th St., 55th St., 63rd St., but the extra 700 numbers in the first three miles leave you with odd numbered mile streets.

Anyone who has spent any time outside of the Tri-State Tollway has come across twenty five "W" blah blah blah. This is a "secret code" for the section that starts 25 miles west of State Street, blah blah blah is the actual location in the section, one thousand numbers to the mile. 25W250 is 25 1/4 (.25) miles west, 25W500 is 25 1/2 (.5) miles. N and S are North and South of Madison Street in Chicago. In West Chicago Forest Ave. is on the same section line, the stripe in the middle of my street is 0N/S.

I have never been able to easily convert the numbers into distances, even the fire numbers out west, but they can easily locate an area. Lamon and Wabansia may mean nothing, but 1700N 4900W is recognizable as near North (1600) and Cicero (4800), so when you are eastbound on IL 64 at 5000W, you better get in the left lane.

In Chicago a pro can drive almost exclusively by the numbers, rarely using a map, but out in DuPage, the numbers are used less. There are so many different suburbs with different layouts and numbers that you almost have to imagine the area, possibly with a map. The section numbers are often only a strange address on an unincorporated patch of land between two subdivisions. But if you know them, they can still be a good map tool, you may only have to search one section, instead of a whole town, for that half block long cul-du-sac.

As for suburban address, this is an art form. Maywood is a very close to Chicago breakaway, with 1st through 25th Avenue. Some DuPage towns like Downers Grove use Chicago numbers N and S, with their own E and W. Others have their own numbers, or even none, like Warrenville, using the "county" numbers. Some make the baseline main street, the tracks, or the river, Glen Ellyn numbers from west to east. And there is always Riverside and Claredon Hills, laid out specifically to beat the grid. Unless you know the specific townís system youíre guessing. Then remember how many streets are town lines, with different systems on each side.

Well, Sara says this is long and boring, but then I added chains and rods, and I know thatís fascinating and upbeat, so now this must be a joy to read. Yea, right. Talk to you later.

Yours truly,
John D.

I've been giving rollovers a lot of thought, and I realized that I know nothing about them.  Of the thousands of rollovers I have seen, they have all been on a racetrack, a movie screen, or a television.  With all the driving I've done, all the accidents, police tows, and fatals I've seen, I don't recall ever seeing a rollover.  I have seen trucks tip over on their side, but never really roll.  Even in red, what we called a roll was more a slow tip, maybe all the way into a hole, but still.  When #164 went over on North Ave west of Ill 59, maybe that was a real roll (I saw the wreck in D.P.), and Jeff S. told me that he rolled his Ranger (?) PU (how surprising), but cars and light trucks donít seem to go over very often.

I have some "death by rollover per one million registered vehicles" insurance numbers from 1999.  A full sized auto has 9, a midsize car 14.  The first Jeep Cherokee 4WD is 15 (pretty damn good, brag brag), in 2WD it goes up to 21.  The bigger Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD is 23, 2WD 36.  The S10 and Explorer "type" is 39 for the 4WD and 69 for 2WD.  Federal numbers for "rollover per 100 crashes" are SUVs 5, PUs 3.8, Minivans 2, Autos 1.7.

I may not know much about rollovers, but the pros don't seem to know much more.  It's generally assumed that the major cause is driver error, but that's all that's clear.  You can draw lines from the tire contact point to the center of gravity, multiply it by the phase of the moon and anything thing else, but you have so many variables that the answer is pretty much mush.  Every vehicle has different springs, depending on option load.  And a different center of gravity.  Which tires?  Wheels?  What type of pavement?  On and on.  Why do the Jeeps do so well?  Unit body?  But the Cherokee has the crudest suspension.  No other unit bodies to compare with.  Why do 2 wheelers have higher rates?  This guy suggests its because they're cheaper, they are driven by lower income drivers.  Or maybe...

These numbers don't break between GM and Ford.  That would interest me.  I looked at a Ford shop manual, the Ranger, Bronco II, and Excursion, both 2 and 4 wheelers, all have a type of that old "twin I beam" suspension.  The first time I saw one of those, back in the '60s, I was horrified.  Everyone knew about VWs and Corvairs jacking up from Unsafe At Any Speed, yet Ford put swing arms under the front?  God, what horrible camber change, you could see it.  And over the years the length of the arms has gotten shorter.  On the front end of passenger vehicles?  This makes me damn suspicious.

I went to the local Chevy dealer to pick up a few brochures, I'm enclosing them.  The Trailblazer is a four door only just now, and has a 5 link solid rear end.  With this sedan suspension grafted on a truck, I can imagine better braking and maybe handling.  On the other hand, they do make it longer, and even longer yet, and put more people in it.  Pure evolution, nicely done, but more of the same.

Chevy improved the rear end, but they weren't the first with the most.  I have seen Explorers with completely independent rear ends, and apparently Ford has taken the lead on heading off damage to other vehicles.  They lowered front frame rails and added a bumper underride bar (pipe?) under the front of the Excursion (and F250), so they impact autos lower, with the same level of damage as the smaller Explorers.  GM and Toyota, at least, have followed the lead, trying to lower the horrible kill rate on other vehicles.  I'm not going there, though.

The primary (90%) cause of all rollovers is "tripping", where the lead wheel is slowed, and the weight goes up and over.  Bill Knowles (spelling?) showed me (and everyone else) pictures of on road rollovers, and they all had gouge marks on the pavement from the lead wheel.  A front tire failure can trip (Firestone?), at Brian's crash I noticed a broken curb, and bumper rails can do it, often the wheel gets stuck under the rail.

Another major roll danger for SUVs is side impact from a legal height bumper vehicle.  The auto dives under the frame and wedges the weight up.  The auto still goes under the truck, but gets some revenge by flipping the truck.  This may have happened to Brian, too, trip and wedge.

Rollovers may be rare, but they are grim.  A quarter of auto deaths from one per cent of the crashes. Lots of head and spine injuries, in Utah three quarters of all auto paralysis cases.  Even with seat belts, you have major side impact forces, with a little of every other direction mixed in.  If you aren't belted you probably get thrown out and rolled over.

For all the thought I have put into this, the basic answer is still the obvious one.  You have the wrong person driving the wrong vehicle.  As soon as I went into the dealer, I could see why.  I generally refer to most salesmen as "whores", I really should think of a more degrading term for auto salesmen.

As for the vehicles, I think that the improved rear suspensions may be a step back, making things "not quite as bad".  Most of these vehicles, small and large, are almost immoral in four door versions, they are trucks, maybe they should have exemptions for the first two or three passengers only, or maybe higher taxes for more than two doors.  Railroads and landscapers may still need 4 door PUs, and Gary R. and the horse crowd need their Suburbans, but if you want to haul common people this way, maybe you should design a safe passenger vehicle, instead of hauling them like freight.

Maybe evolution and the japs will cure the problem.  How much farther can this trend go, before it collapses.  War with Iraq sends gas to $4.00 a gallon?  Insurance?  Or will it be Honda?  They are showing adds of a more sensible looking vehicle, they may not get it perfect to start, but they will keep developing until itís damn close.  I should give GM credit for trying with the Aztek types, but they're so gross looking, not even a near miss.  And how come the PT cruiser is alone in it's class, shouldn't some SUVers go there?

As for the self-centered, ignorant lemmings who want to look tough as they drive over the cliff of common sense and drown in an ocean of selfishness, well, the problem is that they don't really drown, only 39 per million owners.  The rest swim around, threatening us with their sheer mass ignorance.

I hope I've gotten this blazer crash thing out of my mind.  Hey, all the time I drove I had back problems, and I used to jolk about waiting for a plastic spine.  Channel Two News reports on an artificial disk, simple, probably in once, and forget about it.  The doctor of the test said that the receptionist could tell who had them as soon as they came out of the elevator.  Channel two news website has a contact, they're looking for volunteers.  Anybody there on a back injury?

That's all, bye.

Sincerely,
John D.

I have always been a fan of NASA.  This time, though, I'm having some serious problems.

When the shuttle was first making headlines, we all heard about the tiles.  I remember someone holding a tile that was glowing red on one side, yet cool to his fingers.  And how complicated they were, no two the same, would they stay on, how many missing tiles would cause a crash, etc?  At the time, I thought about repairs, I thought that they could mix a resin or epoxy to repair damage.  Not so.  Why?  It's been flying for ten or twenty years, yet no "tire patch kit" has been developed?  Then NASA says that they couldnít space walk under the craft anyway.  EXCUSE ME?  People have been walking since Gemini, and done repairs to themselves and others, yet the Shuttle crew doesn't have the ability to check their own vehicle for damage, much less repair it?

To me, this is intolerable.  This country could  develop a patch, and these people should have been practicing walking the whole vehicle.  This has to be a matter of money, and it should have been spent.  Would you seal a person in an automobile and have them cross a desert, without so much as a spare tire, the tools to change it, and the knowledge of how to do it?  This is too basic, I will never again listen to a NASA employee speak about safety without thinking "yea, right".

Speaking about flat tires, last weekend we watched a "docu-drama" movie about the Temptations.  They used the original music, the scene where they recorded "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" was fabulous.  But a scene that caught my eye was when their bus had a flat tire and a redneck shot at them.  Fuck the redneck, I remember the end of "Easy Rider", much more dramatic.  The bus was interesting part to me.  It was a late 50's/early 60's GMC "P" model.  I remember that GM buses were "T"s for transit, but highway coaches were "P" for parlor.  Anyway, you may remember from your Coffman days that when you take the front bumper off, the spare tire is lying flat behind it.  Long ago I drove both "T"s and "P"s, I don't know if transit busses have spares, seems unlikely, but it would have made me feel safer if I knew there was a spare right under me in the "P".  At the time it was a drivers concern that there was nothing solid in front of the axle, if you crashed, you lost at least your legs.  Lower Wacker entering and leaving the Greyhound station, at full lock with those pillars, was the scariest.  I don't know if you ever drove one, but a forward control transit bus, with it's extreme steering lock, meant that the driver could be going sideways over the sidewalk while the outside tire was still on the pavement.  Maybe they scared us on purpose, to keep us safer drivers, oh well, water under the bridge.  It was always the passengers that I really feared, especially on the Saturday run to Statesville, those busses were always packed, wives, kids, and some mean looking "friends".

I'm going to stop now, and mail this with the last letter, saving postage.  Mr. Mom duties call, see you later.

John D.

Iíve gotten bored with vehicle safety, the bottom line stays the same. Ignorant people drive the wrong vehicle badly and hurt themselves, sometimes taking other ignorant people with them. Iím not even going to mess with the rudeness factor.

Main Street (100-200 blocks) in West Chicago was platted in 1850, around the railroad. Most of the current brick buildings were built in the late 1800's, and all frame buildings are older than 1901, when a fire ordinance ended wood construction. A few years ago Martam "dissappeared" the street right down to the sewers, and did a complete makeover, with trees and bricks and cast iron, the whole works. About the same time most of the buildings got federal money to fix them up, then a movie company came to town and spent even more money. The kids and I have watched these two blocks turn from a run-down slum to an attractive old district, and Iíve enjoyed it. Unfortunatly, we have no business in any of them, the only building weíve been in regularly is the 1886 ex-town hall now City Museum. But it looks nice.

Looking at a picture of a "Third Rail" car rumbling down the center of the street (the Geneva branch was active from 1909 to 1937) looked like a perfect model railroad scene, a simple shelf diorama. So did we head for a hobby shop? You know better than that. We hit the library, museum, and shot a couple rolls of film. All the pictures of the front of buildings are taken from a range of one chain (66 feet). Since I know how wide the lots are from the tax map of the block, I can scan the pictures to an output width that is exactly to scale (HO). By pure chance, it turns out that a picture taken at one chain and printed to a 4" X 6" format comes out at 98 to 99 per cent of HO scale, so I can measure horizontal distance directly off the print. For height, I think we will use a protractor with a weighted thread (plumb bob) to measure the angle to the roofs, like the high school students measuring those trees on Mill Street. I already know the distance, 66 feet, Sara can do the math. Iíve also been making line drawings of buildings, especially those which are gone now. My two best sources are an 1896 Sanborn fire insurance map (which my father remembers how to read) and the current tax map, with some pictures and hints from old papers, Iím trying to reconstruct 1925 or so. One tiny detail, the town printer explained, was the top of the Town Hall flagpole. A red lightbulb, if the town constable was on his rounds and was needed at the station, the red bulb was turned on. Interesting detail. So Iím working on a two dimensional paper model railroad, with buildings tacked to the wall, and a scanned railroad car on the street tracks.

A helicopter ambulance driver crashed and died on his planned last day of work, doing "one more run" to the gas station. Not clear why. At DuPage Airport the "Air Angles" hanger is on Kress Rd., the east side of the long N/S runway. The fuel dock is on Kautz, by the new tower and hangers on the west side of the runway. To fuel, they run S along Kress and cross Roosevelt, ducking west under the flight path between Roosevelt and Fayban, then back north along Kautz. He crashed while "ducking under". The area is mostly sod farm, but there are some tree lines, and a couple of wooded mounds. I wonder if those are natural, or manmade, and why? Anyway, I think he hit the sod, but close to a mound. I was caught in traffic for the procession, very impressive. These guys seem to be big west, the fire truck names went from Wheaton west thru Kane and DeKalb counties, how far is Amboy?

Lara (age 21) needed a laptop, so we went shopping. Several store "deal of the week" machines came in at $900 ish, Dell and Gateway a touch higher for a specific model, and Apple slightly higher yet. The PCs have pretty much NO bundled software, you would have to buy your "works/office" programs for hundreds more, AppleWorks comes standard, but MS Office would cost. Web browsers are free.

Iíve had pretty good luck at Global Computer, the building off Jefferson, Guyís been there. They had what looked like the perfect deal, a remanufactured Toshiba for $400. When the CD-ROM didnít work, we sent it (just the CD) in for warranty, a week later Global gave us a new(?) complete rebuild, "send back what you donít need, and weíll give you full credit. They stood behind the product, and for the weekend, I had two identical machines, minus one disk drive. Very lucky for me.

Friday evening I sat down with my "Windows 98 upgrade" disk, Windows 95 wonít run our printer or scanner. Simple upgrade? After hours of frustration, it turns out you cannot (almost ever) simply upgrade a laptop, you must clean install. So I wiped the hard disk, then started over clean. In DOS, off a floppy disk, because the CD-ROM isnít "native", it runs off a card. When Iíve DOS-ed the CD driver in, weíre off to the races. Until the registration window pops up halfway through. Since the disk is wiped, it forgot it was legit. I have a green certificate, but no System CD, actually, I have three or four of these certs, but none of the disks. What happens to these, are they pirated somewhere else? Iíve bought from several mail order places, none has ever given me a disk. Strange world.

With Bill Gatesís paranoia, the upgrade wouldnít work on the Toshiba with either of my other system disks (one Win 3.1 and one Win 95), and I didnít have the Toshiba disk. I called Microsoft, they wouldnít support anything Win 95. Huh? They actually put hidden files on the machine that cannot be erased, every floppy disk has a number, itís like Iraq, state control of the resources, if you say(do) the wrong thing, poison gas.

After getting a generic Win 98 OEM disk, I was ready to update the modem. That is because Win 98 wonít recognize the built-in modem. Download at Toshiba.com, but without a modem, how? Use the other machine, download a huge program, copy program 1000 lines at a time times five floppyís, DOS it into the other machine, compare and edit (mostly spaces every 1000 lines) the entire 6+ MB program. One of Lindaís geek co-workers said he didnít know it could be done like that, but I did it. Now I could hook the machine up to Toshiba.com and fix the rest of the glitches, like the built in display driver.

At the same time I was having problem with TaxCut on Mac, one of H&R Blockís researches called. We got to talking, it took her five hours to upgrade her brotherís Toshiba, and she didnít know about the modem, heís not online. That made me feel better, she was a full time professional geek, and had trouble. It only took me from Friday evening to Tuesday morning, with two all-nighters, to get the machine perfect. In the end, I really nailed it, with Office 2000, 192MB memory, 6 GB hard drive, and 13" great color screen, she has a killer machine that is light and thin, running as sharp as Windows gets. Whew.

I got a better look at Lompocís all wheel Mack. It runs the front axle off the middle axle, like those GMC conversions Elmhurst brokers had, I imagine the Mack is a conversion, too. That still doesnít look like the right way to me, Lomboc has big all wheel Internationals and White/Volvos (?) with transfer cases, maybe the aftermarket has trouble mounting a case, or maybe the parallel driveshaft setup is lighter or cheaper? You donít need ranges anymore, transmissions can have plenty of low gears. I imagine these middle axle take-offs are part time, can you fit two power dividers on one axle? Maybe Matty can remember, I think he saw them at Lompoc.
 
 

Sincerely,
John D.

Sara (age 15) and I went to the helicopter crash site the other day. There is a cross and flower tribute in a field access on the north side of Fabyan east of the county line, the site is a couple hundred feet north. A tree line runs N/S, on the east side of it is a 200' X 200' ish square, where a cornfield has been leveled with a machine. It looks like the aircraft may have been heading westish, hit the ground, and bounced into the side of the trees. OR, he may have been heading NNW, hit the trees with his "left front" corner, and deflected 90 degrees to the right, hitting the ground. Any way, he hit the sides of the trees, not the top, so he was very low here, already in bad trouble.

After the field, we went to the company hanger. These guys are like firemen (duh, many of them are EMTís), a pilot showed us the whole place, let us sit in a machine, and told us we could come back any time with a camera. He was vague about the crash, wouldnít you be reluctant to discuss a senior driverís fatal accident with a stranger?

All the machines we saw were Bell 222ís, but the machine that crashed wasnít. That disappointed us, we had found a few scraps in the field, and wanted to match them up. Sara found the tip of a blade, but we donít know if it was a main or tail rotor. There were a few other interesting pieces, one was a bracket for a 1/4 inch bushing, it sort of looked like the bracket for the little wheels on a garage door. The mounting area was a two inch square, with four 1/8 inch bolts going thru a 1/2 inch insul block. The amazing thing was that this piece mounts to a piece of bonded fibers that is about as thick as the cardboard on the back of a pad of paper. I cannot imagine how this material could support any loads other than some twisting. Matty disagrees with me, but I know that much of the skin of aircraft is structural.

I got a few things wrong in the last letter. I said that these guys seem to be big out west, but the pilot disagreed. They have no affiliation with any hospital, they go wherever the business is. They have another hanger (no heavy maintenance, they have an old ambulance as their service truck) in Hammond, and one in Rockdale or Rock Falls, or some other Rock (not Rockford). As for going around the south end of the runway, they donít. They get an OK from the tower and cut across the runway. He wouldnít say anything about why this guy was down there, I didnít push.

Iím going to try to cut this rather short (for me), a war has distracted me from my W.C. model, truck history, Wayne township (home of "little woods"), and old toys. I thought I could let it pass, but live coverage from a cavalry squadron was to much. Later

Sincerely,
John D.

I tried to stay away from Iraq, but green fascinates me, not just the machines, but also the organization. I was thinking about how much combat power we lost when the helicopters were grounded during the sandstorm. Way to much, there is only one heavy division there, the Airborne and Marines are light, and depend on aviation for most anti-tank and artillery work. The 4^th Infantry division equipment was rusting in the Medeterrian, and the people were not training and "acclimatizing" in the desert. Hindsight can be 20/20, but I felt that when the Turkish parliament voted no, we should have said "screw the Turks", kept the money, and headed south right then. Even with the 4^th, we are still pretty lame. All the lessons that George senior learned in Gulf War I Junior forgot for II. I do think that a non-veteran president may not appreciate how the green works.

In Gulf War I we had 4 U.S. heavy divisions, plus one British, two Egyptian, and a slew of brigades and regiments. Plenty of armor. Five light divisions and countless brigades left plenty of people for other tasks. Massive overkill, and the Iraqis werenít very dedicated. This time we have one heavy and maybe three light divisions, plus a British Armored Brigade, to invade their "homeland" (another term I hate). Are we really that strong? Do Juniorís generals have the balls to tell the truth, or are they a bunch of "yes-men"?

The 3^rd Infantry Division ("Rock of the Marne" from WW I) never interested me before, but their history in Iraq comes from two directions, I will try to explain, but there will be some background first.

In 1990 the Army had ten heavy divisions, but most were at 50% to 66% strength. Some of this was because the iron curtain had come down, but much of it was an economy measure. Many divisions had only two active brigades, the third would be filled by a National Guard "roundout" Brigade. This didnít work, the guardsmen did great in support, but no guard infantry or armor unit was ever combat ready. The guardsmen were mature and knowledgeable (engineer units have traditionally been "old men"), but itís tough to get a thirty year old married with a family PFC to crawl through the sand like a brainwashed kid grunt. Instead, the army scrambled and cannibalized anything they could find to fill in the gaps. The 24^th Inf Div took the infantry school from Ft Benning (197^th Inf Bde), the 1^st Inf Div got a brigade from the 2^nd Arm Div, the Marines also got a brigade from the 2^nd Arm Div (remember the "Tiger" brigade?), and the 3^rd Inf Div was stripped to make one solid brigade, which went to the 1^st Arm Div. Even so, the 1^st Cav Div had only two brigades. The "donor" units became hollow shells, and were eventually disbanded.

Why three brigades? Since the ëthirties the Army has been "triangular", based on one idea. A commander can effectively deal with five things at once. A company commander will have three line platoons, one service/support platoon, and the odds and ends. A battalion will have A, B, and C line companies, D will be special (heavy, light, weapons, whatever), and again, odds and ends. Two is not enough, four will bump into each other. Three is just right.

While in the background, let me talk about brigades verses regiments. Regiments have been obsolete since WWII, the army has maybe a couple of actual regiments, the rest are just names. Why? Flexibility. A regiment has specific, built in units. First battalion would be A, B, C, and D company, 2^nd would be E, F, G, and H, 3^rd would be I, K, L and M. The problem is that you have a fixed unit. A brigade, about the same size, has no built in units, itís just a headquarters. Battalions and other units are assigned, often permanently, but can be any size or number. Flexibility.

If there are no more real regiments, why the names? Some must be for effect, like the 160^th Avn Regt (special ops), which is surely actually a brigade. The rest are names. Between 1955 and 1965 the "Combat Arms Regiment System" was put in place. Almost all regimental headquarters went to zero strength, the battalions were assigned to various Brigades. This makes it easier to make the Army larger or smaller. If you need a small army, you may only use one battalion per regiment, like the 3rd Squadron/7^th Cavalry (regiment is assumed, if the unit is other than a regiment, it must be called company, brigade, whatever). Sound familiar? The 3^rd Squadron/7^th Cavalry is assigned as the division recon of the 3^rd Infantry Division. Apache, Bonecrusher (how stupid, are there no "B" Indians?), and Cheyenne Troops indicate a C.A.R.S. unit, otherwise the third squadron would be Indigo, Kilo, and Lima Troops. Anyway, if you need more units, you could activate the 1^st Battalion/7^th Cav (the infantry units in the 1^st Cav Div (only) have battalions, but use cavalry regiment names), if you need only a few more, 2^nd Bn could be B Company (or Troop)/7^th Cav, the 4^th Bn could be 4^th Platoon/7^th Cav. They donít really relate to each other, they can be assigned anywhere, but you can keep Custerís 7^th Cavalry (Garry Owen) flag flying, giving the unit an artificial history.

Back to the 3^rd Infantry Division. In Gulf War I a Brigade (2Bde HHC, 4/66Arm, 1(M)+4(M)/71Inf, 2/41FA, and 26FwdSptBn) went to the 1^st Arm Div, so the name of the division was there, ending up just southwest of Basra. The rest of the division was inactivated in Germany in 1992, the 2nd Bde was inactivated there two years later. Then how did they get back? Name games. The Army plays it at all levels. In Gulf War I the 24^th Inf Div, from Ft Stewart GA, was the heavy division of the Rapid Deployment Force, backing up the 82^nd and 101^st Airborne Divisions, so they grabbed the 197^th Inf Bde and were the first off the boat, back when we were only "Shield"ing. After the "Storm", they went back to Georgia, where they stayed until January 1996, when they were inactivated. No infantry at Ft. Stewart? No, this was a "flag transfer", one day the unit was the 24^th Inf Div, the next day it was renamed the 3^rd Inf Div. You could go to bed as the 2^nd Sqdn/9^th Cav (Buffalo Soldiers), and wake up as 3^rd Sqdn/7^th Cav (Garry Owen). Of course, you went from one of the best "Indian fighter" regiments to one of the worst, and had to sew new patches on your shoulder, but thatís the army for you. The killer is that twelve years later, the same equipment did the same job for the same presidential family, only under different names. And this time they didnít wait for the six other heavy divisions, you had to do it alone. And this time you only have 66% of your power, two brigades with 6 line battalions, instead of three with nine. How and why? Next paragraph.

I have enclosed a outline of a current division, and a chart of the 1990 24^th Inf Div. After all the scrambling for Gulf War I, the same division still has only two line brigades (called "Armored" and "Infantry") for Gulf War II, and they didnít get reinforced that I know of. Some support units, like the Engineers, still come in threeís, so there is still potential support for three brigades, but the 3^rd brigade headquarters, and three other line battalions, are missing. Like I said, Junior seems to have forgotten the lessons of his father.

As for the actual war, tactics donít really fascinate me, other than how they affect equipment and organization. Bloody and stupid, in general, especially in this one (hopefully not much longer). Bad weather, long supply lines, and guerillas? Have Hitlerís problems in the Soviet Union been forgotten? These sandstorms are almost like a Bible story, the waters closed in on Pharaohís army, something like that. Juniorís a Bible fan, how many times did God save the Jews against the odds?

The 173^rd Airborne Brigade doesnít have the reputation that the two divisions (82^nd and 101^st) have, maybe they should. The main unit of the brigade, the 503^rd Para Inf Regt, was formed in February 1942, with the 501^st, 502^nd, and 504^th. The 502^nd went to the 82^nd Abn Div, the 504^th went to the 101^st Abn Div, both division went to Europe and fame, the ë01 and í03 went to the Pacific, and jumped into the jungles, and obscurity. The 173^rd Abn Bde was formed on Okinawa in 1965, and was the first American combat unit in Viet Nam, where they made the only combat jump of that war. They will probably have that honor in two wars, now that they have jumped into northern Iraq. I believe that there may have been jumps in Panama, and maybe Grenada, but do those count?

Later (this time it probably will be).

Sincerely,
John D.

I know I said I would give you a break, so I lied.

First, I forgot to talk about the louvers on the tanks. In the first days of the new war I noticed some sort of louvers on the side of the tanks. What are these, some sort of "get unstuck in the sand" things? Then I noticed little ones on the back of some vehicles, and on turrets. Even HUMVís. The British have them, too. Sometimes they look sort of reflective. Iím pretty sure that they are some sort of identification panels, maybe the airplanes can see them with special vision. A high-tech version of those colored sheets?

I watched a very impressive show by the 101^st Airborne in An Najaf(?). I watch CNN and BBC, I donít know if you see these elsewhere. "Imbedded" reporter doing a setup culture piece with some Captain got the coolest background. The Captain is telling the history of some mosque (burial place of Mohammedís son-in-law Ali, the first Shi'ite), and how he feels the holiness of the place, when the locals take offense. The Americans have permission from an Ayllatoyah, but the crowd doesnít know this, so they start shaking their fists at the troopers, demonstrating, not fighting.

This Airborne Captain has his men back up ten feet, go down to one knee, and hold their weapons up at "port arms" upside down, with the barrels pointing down. It was at least a full squad, the whole width of the street, in a good strait line. This has to be a trained maneuver, these guys were all on the same knee, and did it so well.

Truce. The men in the front of the mob turn around and try to smooth things out. The first couple of rows calms, but the mob is a block deep. The Captain, who has been walking along the line holding his gun up by the barrel, tells his guys to withdraw, bows to the crowd, and leaves. Perfect Hollywood "hearts and minds" stuff, and they looked damn good.

I think the first CNN hero I saw, I never saw. On the first daylight race across the desert by the 3^rd Squadron/7^Th Cavalry, the cameraman sat on the hood of a HUMV for hours. My first live coverage scenes were made possible by a man brave enough to sit on the hood (I know I said it twice) of a pickup truck following a hundred feet behind a tank, with a Bradley right behind them. I hope he gets a raise!

Another CNN hero came out of almost nowhere. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is a young, personable talking head who does the "health minute" on the morning show, jolking with a blond anchor. Nice guy, big deal.

Until you drop him in a Navy mini-M*A*S*H type tent ("The Devil Docís" sounds so stupid to me) in a sandstorm, hey, heís pretty good. Then he gets better. Turns out heís a brain surgeon, and the Navy canít get one to work in a tent, would he help out if necessary? So far, heís scrubbed at least twice. Sure itís more Hollywood, but we used to laugh at the name, now we watch the man.

Third Infantry Division served a "search warrant" on one of Saddamís palaces, god I love it. Two "task forces" from the 2^nd Brigade drove into Baghdad in broad daylight. What a demonstration! Brilliant.

A "task force" is a modified battalion. Two battalions, one armor, one infantry, exchange a company, you try to exchange the same letter. The infantry battalion trades "Bulldog Co." for "Brute Co." from the armor battalion. You also trade at company level, a "team" is a company with one platoon switched. You do this to balance the man/machine ratio at a smaller unit level. Very common practice, every infantryman wants to have tanks, and the tankers want more grunts to watch their backs.

I mentioned the 3^rd Infantry Divisionís "ghost" brigade, on that sheet I sent you. Iíve been hearing of the 1^st and 3^rd Brigades all along, these "task forces" are the first Iíve heard of the 2^nd Brigade. Iím guessing that they took one battalion from the 1^st and 3^rd brigades each and "task forced" them into a "2^nd Brigade". That way the division would have 3 2-battalion brigades, instead of two 3-battalion ones. Do you need to read that again?, Iíll wait a second.

I have always been interested in the Army because it has the machines, and because I know it. But where would this country be without the Marines to bail us out? While I am watching this understrength Army mechanized infantry division pull off major maneuvers, the Marines are doing the same job with nothing.

I donít get into the Marines. They have a crude, light, World War II type structure, yet they can fight anywhere in any number against any number, while mixing with the Navy. Plus they have their own air force that can land on boats.

A Marine division has probably three infantry regiments, and an artillery regiment. They have (only) one tank battalion, one amphibious tractor battalion, and one LAV battalion. And the few machines they have arenít all that hot.

This war they have M-1 tanks, they won with M-60s last time. Their amtracs are old, with only a .50 caliber MG/40mm blooper turret, their power is the twenty Marines they hold. Driving these things in the desert, the Marines were able to move 100 miles in one day. The LAVs haul half as many Marines twice as fast, they have "Bradley" turrets but no anti-tank missile and not much armor. If they see a tank, I think the Marines are tough enough to get out and beat it to death with rocks. Even their artillery is crude, the Army shoots out of M109 "Paladin" self propelled guns, the Marines are the ones who are out in the open, ramming shells into the breach with poles.

Their air force is junk, too. The Army used the AH64 Apache in the last war, the Marines are still using warmed-over AH1 "Huey" Cobras from Viet Nam. The Marines have Harriers, thatís because they canít count on getting an airport, theyíre expected to fly out of roads in the forest. Their medium helicopters are the CH46, the model before the Armyís CH47 Chinook, and theyíve been around forever. Everything they have is high-mileage.

In the last war, the Marines went into south Kuwait almost as a diversionary attack, they ran north so fast that the Army in the west had to race to try to keep up, the Marines were chasing the Iraqiís out of Kuwait faster than the Army could head them off. This time theyíve taken the whole right flank, pretty much by themselves. For old fashioned light infantry, the U.S. Marines seem to kick a lot of ass, and weíre damned lucky to have them.

Yesterday they dropped "two yards" of bombs on one building, the people looking in the hole look stunned. Yet so far nobody has said "holy shit, the building next door is still standing!" Sure, a lot of windows have been broken, but it goes from absolute rubble to blast damage in feet. If someone set off 4 tons of explosive in my neighbors basement, well, I canít even imagine, itís still a safe feeling, living in America, even after everything.

Well, theyíre pulling down a statue of Saddam, and wouldnít you know it, itís the Marines. I am so happy our military could pull this off (I still think they are half-strength), they have looked pretty professional. Now the "diplomats" have a chance to re-screw the country up again. Well, my days as a "war correspondent" are about over, but I have one last gasp. Mortars.

A scene of an American "60mm" mortar firing in the north caught my eye. It was pretty long for a "60mm", the explosion wasnít all that loud, and about two seconds afterwards you can hear the barrel ring, very clear tone. This makes me think of high-tech thin but strong alloy, instead of clunky steel?

I believe that some big mortars are still rifled, but all I have noticed are the smooth-bore with the cast tail fins. Iíve noticed the cast tails before, fragments are seen any time locals anywhere suffer mortar attacks. They donít seem either smooth or light, why not flat fins? Since I have never actually seen a mortar fire, I have never seen the forest through the trees.

Looking at the tube that comes from the main body, it has holes in the side, above where the tail attaches. Does the explosive power come out these holes, too? Possibly the gas seal is around the main body, not below the tail. If so, the tail is in the actual fire, this might explain it being cast, sheet steel could bend or burn during the explosion. Possible?

Iíll be going back to modeling West Chicago, maybe. I have most of the easy buildings done, and have most of the technique smoothed out, so Iíll probably loose interest pretty soon. Besides, the sun is out, summer is coming.

Sincerely,
John D.

Over the years railroads have taken me many places, especially in my mind, and once again Iím on an unexpected journey. A stroll down memory lane from Minneapolis has led me to the alleys of Chicago, a rather interesting piece of history to me.

In the 1890ís Chicagoís street congestion hit near gridlock, and since the city took little responsibility for "public" transportation, several private companies tried to solve the problem by building "elevated" railways into the city center. Unlike the "steam" railways, the elevated people had to deal with city "franchises", a morass of politics and bribery that the street railways (horse, cable, and electric) were already stuck in.

The Chicago and South Side Rapid Transit Railroad built their structures over alleys, rather than the streets, much easier and cheaper. Although I have an impression of the "L" over streets, this is actually the exception outside the loop and Lake Street. They are often elevated, to avoid crossing streets at grade, but usually on their own right of way.

Anyway, when the South Side "L" was being built, it called attention to the large numbers of "back yard houses" and tenements in the city. Back yard what?

Chicago had a huge overcrowding problem in 1900, just like other large cities of the time (and now). As more immigrants came to town, existing houses were broken up into small apartments, duh, we all know that, and you donít need to go to Chicago to see that, Aurora will do. But Chicago had another trick, which I never noticed before. Many houses were small, single family dwellings, worth much less than the property they were on. How to make more money from your land? Jack the house up, move it into the back yard, and build a two-flat in front of it. Grandma lives in back, Mom and Dad take one apartment, and rent the other out. Three dwellings on one lot, and most of the people are related.

I understood tenements, and the little houses built below the raised street grade are Chicago classics, but I had never heard of the "back yard houses". When I blurted this out, both Linda and Pat (friend) knew a relative who lived in one, "Little Grandma" and "Auntie so and so". They both described little old ladies sitting in rocking chairs on their "front porch" in the back yard.

Now Iím on a trail that leads to "urban renewal". When we moved here in 1960, that was a catch phrase. Tear down slums and build either interstates or high rise "projects". As a kid, it made sense, sort of, but neat old stuff was disappearing. Over the years I have realized more and more of this loss, and with "20-20 hindsight" some of it seems a waste, but realistically, slums are slums, much of what is gone was probably beyond hope, anyway.

Years later, shortly after the Army, I drove for a company which hauled into the "projects". We would start early and get there before most of the residents were awake. Even so, it was tense, driving a six-wheeler down sidewalks, through playgrounds, and between buildings, with an often hostile audience. This is where I became hostile to the C.H.A., piling up low income people twenty stories high. Why has Chicago gotten into the housing business? Bad idea?

Not really to start with. The slums were out of control by the time the "Lís" went up around 1900, and things only got worse. Already overloaded with immigrants, during World War One more people came to town for defense work. Then the depression hit.

Among FDRís "new deal" anti-depression programs (W.P.A, C.C.C., T.V.A., etc) was the Federal Housing Authority, which dumped some money on the city. Chicago already was into various "projects", the lake shore, Wacker Drive, Union Station, and others. Some were public money, others were private, with the city helping with condemnation, street and utility work, etc. With half the city unemployed, living in rotten shacks, spending the money on "slum clearance", as it was called then, was only logical.

The "Jane Addams Housing Project" opened in 1938, "Ida B. Wells" and the original "Frances Cabrini (before the -Green) Homes" in 1941. These were close to paradise, Iíve been inside a couple in the 1970ís, and they were still nice then. I have never been able to keep track of the different names, but the older projects worked.

Why? These were built during an idealistic time, social reform was big, and the design was rather humane. They have no more than 25% of the property built up, with a mix of two story row houses and three story walk-ups. I think the height is very important, especially with kids. And there were far fewer people on the land than there were with the slums, and with 75% of the property clear, plenty of park and play room.

Maybe it was World War Duce that sent the C.H.A. strait to the burning hell that it became. We could build huge war projects well, why not a huge housing project? Not because it was stupid!! To give credit where credit is due, several private projects went high rise before the war, the C.H.A. didnít get in the game until 1950, when they opened Dearborn Homes, 12 seven story and 4 nine story towers.

Whoever bragged about covering only 16% of sixteen acres could not possibly have had, or even have been, a child. All the park in the world wonít help a poor two year old whoís looking down on it from seventy to ninety feet up. Three stories is a stretch for kids, if nothing else, they start peeing in the bushes. How could so many college educated architects, engineers, and politicians make such an incredibly stupid decision? What were they thinking? That would seem to be common sense, even in the forties. I know that I can be overly pro-kid, but what kind of parent would want their kid in one of those buildings? There must be some kind of graft or racism or class contempt here, something stinks. But I donít want to get any deeper into Chicago politics, bums me out.

So I'm going back where Iím comfortable. Or not. I'm going to go into streetcars, busses, "L"s, and the C.T.A. Will "streetcars" take as long as "Templars" did? Probably not, but you may get lucky and not hear from me for a while, summerís coming, less time inside.

Sincerely,
John D.

Do you know where the name "highway" comes from? Itís the old farm road thatís high enough out of the valley that it doesnít flood.

Iím going to take shot at streetcars, then buses. You may want to skim this one, Iím accenting a few key words to make it easier. The beginning is me in Minneapolis, later on the C.T.A. part is marked.

As long as I can remember I have had a specific picture of streetcars on the street, and the unusual way they went around corners. Yet I can only remember seeing one Chicago streetcar, which moved maybe fifty feet in a strait line. The only other streetcars I ever saw (before Europe) were in Minneapolis, when I was a very small child.

I think I once told you how young I must have been when I last saw a streetcar. I bought a "Twin Cities" streetcar book from a train show at the local V.F.W. hall, the dates surprised me. They still do.

First, the memories. I remember "P.C.C." cars running on our street, and one coming out of an "alley", turning onto a street. I also remember an old, "trolley" type, with a coal type stove in the rear, standing in the snow. I used to think it was a "sweeper" or plow car, but now Iím not so sure.

Whatís a P.C.C.? In the 1930ís, when the private auto really started to compete with public transit, the streetcar industry held a "Streetcar Companiesí Presidents Conference Committee" meeting to get together and design a "standard" streetcar. The big improvements were in the running gear, but the people saw the new style bodies. In Chicago they were known as "Blue Geese" and "Green Hornets" after their color schemes, in Minneapolis they were called "Streamliners". Any old streetcar which doesnít look like a trolley was probably a P.C.C. The P.C.C. ideas and some technology even went back across the Atlantic, lasting into the 1960s.

Now back to childhood memories. I was born in April 1952, the Twin Cities Rapid Transit sold itís P.C.C.s before the system closed, they stopped running in June 1953. Therefore, any memory I have of them would be from age 14 months, or earlier. The system limped on for another year, so my car in the snow could be from the winter of 1953-54, when I would have been nearly two, still pretty young. Still, Iím pretty sure thatís where my memories come from, I remember the Chicago car (from 1957) looked different. It was, the Chicago variant was longer, had more doors and had no "wheel well" cutouts by the trucks, another firm memory. Surprisingly (to me), the Chicago cars were narrower, 8í6" verses a full 9í in the Twin Cities. Most other P.C.C.s were eight footers.

The streetcars may have been gone, but there were plenty of traces left. Before I moved South at age eight I spent some time tracing the right-of-way, especially around Lake Harriet, two blocks from home. The right of way, station, pedestrian subway for the lakeside bandstand, and old stone gate to the cemetery were so cool that Minnesota made it into a museum, the cars are running there again.

My "streamliner on a curve" memory is certainly one block north of home, where the Xerxes cars turned south from a private right of way. France cars kept going west to the city line (as far west as I explored), and Hopkins went farther west on the old interurban line to Lake Minnetonka, home of the Tonka Truck plant. I just learned that the right of way goes back to an 1878 narrow gauge railroad.

To the east that right of way went behind the Catholic school, through the "Upton" business area and on to the lake. Beyond my range the line went on downtown, many cars were through-routed into St. Paul, and the line could go east 20 miles to Stillwater, on the Wisconsin Border.

At the time I was jumping on empty ties I was too young to map, damn. Iíve put memories in order, with the book, Mapquest aerial photos, and a bunch of photos. StillÖ

As a railfan, I can hardly complain. In 1960 we moved to the "western suburbs" two blocks from the classiest railroad on the planet, the Burlington. And my dad introduced me to the "abandoned electric railroad", even showing me the "bridge that went nowhere" (over the Chicago River) and the Wells Street terminal tracks before they were torn down (in 1961 and 1964, respectively). Since then I have walked, biked, motorcycled, pickup trucked, dump trucked and ready mixed it, and Iím back to bikes. And itís warmer here.

Now Iím talking about the C.T.A.

In Illinois there is a bus width exemption "in counties with a population of 500,000 or more". This was a way to not say "Cook", the only county that size, because C.T.A. buses were wide, the only eight footers in Chicago ran under the Lake Street "L".

The Chicago Surface Lines set a specification in 1927 that has pretty much lasted to today, two axles, unit body, engine under floor, two doors. In the ë30s the engine went from the middle to the rear, and the exit door went from the rear to the middle. In the 1950ís the standard width had gone from 90" to 102" (8í6"), and length was going from 35í to 40í, where both have stayed.

They may have got the chassis right, but they didnít have a standard engine, they used everything. They had gasoline, diesel, electric, and propane buses running together, all the way into the sixties! In fact, the propane buses outnumbered all the rest, combined. Isnít propane a spark ignition (gasoline type) engine with a different carb? They finally dieseled out with those GMC "fishbowl" buses from the mid 1960ís on, I imagine the other manufactures switched to diesels with their "New Look" models then, too. (Most 1945-1960ish buses are called "old look", with the 1960-1975ish called "new") Maybe they also used Jimmy-Allisons? I should check. I did, and it appears that they did.

I will always think of the C.T.A. as those GMCís, I got to drive one a few times at Valley Transit. They are all gone, in fact, there have been no GMCís since 1996. Flxible and M.A.N. are the big guns now.

I was apparently so dazzled by the GMCís that I didnít see the big picture, General Motors never really cornered the market in Chicago like they did in some other cities, or even the suburbs. The C.T.A. and itís street predecessor Chicago Surface Lines bought from everyone. Pre WW II Yellow became GMC, but had to compete with Flxible, Marmon Herrington (largest order of trolleybuses in history), Reo, Superior, Twin Coach, White, even streetcar makers ACF/Brill and St. Louis Coach. Mack didnít do very well here either, only one order for 17 buses.

How did GM miss out, with their excellent (for 1945) TD series with the 4/6-71 Allison combo? In many places they had a near monopoly, knocking streetcars out almost single-handedly. I have a couple of guesses, for what theyíre worth.

First, the Chicago system was large, and they didnít shop off the shelf, they took bids to their spec.ís. Like their 8"6" width, why custom order/build for a measly six inches, yet they did (do). GM was pushing standard bus (and train) design after WW II, but they couldnít stampede Chicago into something the city didnít want.

Second, Chicago didnít dieselize after WW II, even when they replaced streetcars with buses. It had a fair load of trolley buses, but the major fuel into the sixties was propane, the city had a good source. Without the Jimmy under the back, the GMC is just another chassis, did they want to get into that market? Is their a large enough profit on the body without the drivetrain?

Third, Chicagoís shift from streetcars to buses made sense. In my early home, the "Twin Cities", there were criminal activities by the transit company officials, but in Chicago, the changeover seems sensible, sort of.

In 1947 the C.T.A. took over most of the private "L", streetcar, and bus lines. The different "L" companies operated together as Chicago Rapid Transit, and the streetcar and most bus lines operated as the Chicago Surface Lines, but the "L" and surface lines competed against each other. Therefore the C.T.A. inherited a bunch of financially hopeless private companies with duplicate and often competing lines.

Public transit started losing passengers as soon as Henryís "T" hit the street, after WW II they hemorrhaged customers. The private companies had no hope. In Chicago mayor Ed Kelly, with help from then state senator Richard J. Daley, pretty much stole the private companies from their investors, paying less than half their legal (from a 1943 judgement) value. Now that they had the companies, they had to make them viable.

First came "rationalization", just like today, fire anyone and junk anything that didnít make money. You didnít need to run the street lines parallel to the "L", they could turn 90% and feed the "L" instead. (One exception, on Lake St. buses kept running under the "L" until the late 1990ís.) If you donít fill the car, cut back the service. Unfortunately, streetcar tracks donít move very easy, so abandon them and use rubber tires on the new route. Also, most streetcars were "two man cars", a bus only needed one, very important in a company with the payroll the size of the C.T.A..

Now the equipment. The surface lines were in pretty good shape, they even bought equipment just before the C.T.A. takeover. The "L" was another story, almost all of the cars were from 1924 or even earlier, and everything was worn out. What to do, in Chicago, you "cook the books".

The brand new streetcars could be scrapped, many of the parts could be used for new "L" cars at a cut-rate price. To cover up, you replace streetcars one for one with buses, which seat almost as many people, cost about as much as the streetcarís (doctored) scrap value, and only need a one man crew. Of course, streetcars accelerate faster, need only a fraction of the maintenance, and have almost twice the life of a bus. The real numbers come up more like three buses for two streetcars, replaced in twelve instead of twenty years, with less of their life on the street, but we wonít tell the people.

One way the C.T.A. measured equipment needs was "headway", how far the buses are apart. Trolley buses were cost effective on lines with a headway of fifteen minutes or less. On the trolleybusís longest and heaviest line, the fifteen mile long N/S Central Avenue, the rush hour headway was forty-five seconds! That means that there is virtually always a bus loading at your stop! Itís almost a conveyor belt.

Streetcars could do slightly better. They were slightly longer, had twice as many doors, and had a conductor to collect fares on the fly. They also accelerated much faster, braked easier, and didnít have to pull over to the curb. But they needed to run full and often to pay for themselves, and there werenít that many passengers any more.

Not only did the private auto take away the streetcarís passengers, it also took away the road. As streets were improved after the war the C.T.A. could either upgrade the tracks, or abandon them. When they abandon, they had to pay the city $10,000/mile, but since the Chicago mayor appoints the majority of C.T.A. directors, the whole process is sort of incestuous. The cars ran where hizzonor wanted them to run, which was mostly nowhere.

Yea, they ripped off the surface lines, but the "L" got hundreds of new cars that they needed, and the city got the unified transit system they wanted. The C.T.A. survived into the sixties by "robbing Peter to pay Paul", and we were able to ignore paying for public transit into the early seventies, when we created the R.T.A. to do what the C.T.A. was supposed to do in 1947.

It was probably done effectively. In the entire country mass transit took a hit by the auto, at least the C.T.A. was able to loot the streetcars to benefit the "L". The streetcars were new when scrapped, but they would have been near useless in ten years anyway, the C.T.A. was able to play them into buses and "L" cars.

Much of my streetcar stuff comes from books by Alan Lind. He wrote both my Twin City Rapid Transit book, and the best book on the Chicago Surface Lines.

While digging around, I came up with some bus background.

Like streetcars, my first memory of "the Hound" (Greyhound) is from early Minnesota. I took a ride on one of the first "Scenicrusers", those half low-half high PDH4501s (built 1954-60) that GMC made exclusively for Greyhound. They were the first interstate buses that went to 40 feet, that design convinced the "I.C.C." that long could be safe. I imagine that the third axle helped.

They werenít a total trend-setter, the driveline had two 4-71s, a design which was "not entirely successful". Around 1960 most still in service were refitted with 8-71s and 4-speeds by Marmon-Herrington (that Marmon name again).

I "broke" the GM bus code. I knew that "T" and "P" stood for transit and parlor, there was also a "S" from 1960 on. Suburbans were transits without standee windows (the little ones over the regular windows), rear doors, and all seats facing forward. The "D" is for diesel, somewhere along the line it became a "6" or "8" for number of cylinders (not enough gassers to matter). Third letter was "H" for hydraulic or "M" for manual transmissions. I remember those crappy two speed "powerglide" type transmissions, when it was cold it could take minutes (literally) to engage "D" or shift to "R", grinding all the time. The next two digits are number of passengers, an even number indicates a wider 102", like Chicago. Some highway coaches today are "wides", but it is still unusual, eight footers appear to still be standard. GMís next two digits are model number, so a TDH4515 was an "old look" and a TDH4516 was a "fishbowl".

They changed the codes for the RTS, built by GMC to explore federal ideas for a new age bus family. It was a pretty crappy design, and was built shoddily. One example, the feds didnít want people to trip on the seat supports (?), so the seats attach to the sidewalls. So? That means the walls have to be strong enough to support the entire passenger load cantilevered off of them. And the floor still has to be strong, too, if you expect the people to be able to walk to their seats. Of course, with the narrow "aerodynamic" body (on a vehicle that cruses at 35 M.P.H.), the isle was only about a foot wide, so the walk is more of a climb. In a city transit coach. Well, nobody has ever said that Washington D.C. is a center of common sense. Between the stupid design goals, engineering weaknesses (the A/C was lame even for Canada) and the constant mechanical failures, these babies were often bum-rushed out of service as soon as possible, on one system at least the old fishbowls outlived the RTS.

In my early memories Continental Air Transport used Flxibles, the ones with the roundish, no window rear ends which swooped up into a "hood scoop" on the top rear. Do you remember them? The basic design goes back to before W.W.II with a strait six Buick, "Airporters" were special models with roomier three wide seating.

Flxible started out making motorcycle sidecars with a "flexible" connection, the name was misspelled so it could be trade-marked. Between the wars they got into buses, also selling to the Hound. They even built a two axle "knock-off" of the two level GMC. After W.W.II Flxible joint marketed (built?) "Twin Coach" (nee Faegol) buses. This is why some have those small "wings" on the upper front corners, a "Twin Coach" trade-mark. In 1954 Flxible bought rights to the designs when Twin got out of the business. They finally went bust in 1996, after Grumman bought and later sold them, Rohr was also involved somehow.

When I was driving buses in 1973-74 I was aware that Trailways were getting new "Eagles", just now I learned that Eagle is a Trailways model, not a company. Trailways bought the same buses as everyone else, but in 1955 they contracted to a German company for the first Eagles. A couple of years later Trailways formed their own company in Holland. Eagles were built in Europe until 1974, when a plant was opened in Texas. How big do you have to be to manufacturer your own equipment? I can think of Consolidated Freightways and Freightliner, Checker cab and Checker, and Greyhound with MCI (another new one to me). Greyhound bought the Canadian builder in 1948 for their Canadian lines, in 1963 they started supplying the American end, the last GM Hounds were PD4107s in 1967.

I donít see any real domestic transit bus manufacturers, considering that all government vehicles must be "built in the U.S.A." since 1975 or so. New Flyer is a Canadian company with a "final assembly" plant in Minnesota, Nova is a division of the Canadian Prevost who builds the GM designed RTS in, are you ready? Roswell, New Mexico. In Area 51? Crap, thatís probably not even an Earth bus. NABI (North American Bus Industries) is a Hungarian company, registered in the English Channel island of Jersey (yea, where the cows came from), they own a plant in Alabama. Probably building buses next to double-wides. Finally, Orion is a Daimer-Chrysler company, and you know that Dodge didnít design it in Hamtramck.

I got much of this info from www.coachinfo.com, there will be an "AllAboutBuses" menu on the top of the page which leads to different manufactures. These guys sell old bus manuals, but have a lot of background posted. Ultimate Truck & Van Spotterís Guide 1925-1990 by Tad Burness is also pretty good, itís a sketch book with notes in the margins. I usually like some kind of catalogue or list, but this is a fun "flipping through" book, with buses included.

I forgot all about AM-General, Iíll have to see if they are still in the bus business. Apparently not, it looks like 1974-1978. I still like their history. When Studebaker was going under in 1964 they sold their South Bend truck factory to Kaiser-Jeep (nee Willys). This is the factory which built "deuce and a halves" in W.W.II, second to GMC, who drew the designs. Actually, many of the Studes were 6X4s, and went "lend-lease" to Russia, who copied them as Zils. Yes, thatís right, the major Soviet truck manufacturer started by building imitation Studebakers. Anyway, American Motors bought Jeep in 1970, a year later they started AMóGeneral division to continue with government contracts. Not just 6X6s (both 2 1/2 and 5 ton), all the later Post Office Jeep "Dispatchers" (everyone knows CJ5s, few recognize the name of DJ5s, even though they brought our mail for years) were AM-Generals, as are todayís HUMVs. The real Army ones, not the "Hummer H2" Humburbans, though. Good, Iíd hate to think of my Cherokee (designed by AM, built by Chrysler) being related to those things. I guess it is a little, though, mine does have a GM ignition switch/lock. In 1983 LTV (remember one of the first conglomerates, Ling-Temco-Vought?) bought AM-General, and now theyíve made that joint marketing deal with GM. What a family tree!

More Jeep. My transfer case has a pretty deep low range, 2.72:1, special models of new TJ have 4:1. The common engine (4.0L [248] H.O. Rambler six) has 225 ft-lbs. of torque X 2.80 1^st/w torque converter (or 3.83 manual first gear) X 4 in the TJ transfer case X 4.11 axle ratio (another TJ option, mineís 3.55). Thatís more than 14,000ft-lbs in a manual, an automatic with torque converter might be even more, but I donít know how to figure it out. On top of that, the TJ has optional air-locking rear and front differentials! Holy shit, how strong must the axle shafts be to take all that load, possibly on one shaft only! I would think you could snap it like Lurch in 118. I figured him as a 237 at 500(?)ft-lbs. X 23.08 (1^st LL) X 4.11(?)axle =47,400, X 1/2 (two axles can spin) = 23700 per shaft, not even double the Jeep!!! Maybe Iím guessing low on the Mack, but Iím sure that the little Jeep is pulling some monstrous numbers for itís size.

Lara (age 22) asked me to follow up on Damon (who died on Diehl). The sheriff finally got off the crash report (dated November 28 of last year), big deal. All the public can get is the initial report, anything more requires a supoena. Like the toxicology report Iíve been waiting for, or even the measurements they made. The "DIAGRAM" and "NARRATIVE" say "see E.T. and follow up reports. Iíd like to, but again, supoena. So much for the public record.

I would have been better off coming over and talking to you, then I could have gone next door to look at the wrecks. The thing that really gets me is that I just read an O.S.H.A. report on the internet about a Tennessee hillbilly who raised his box, then proceeded to lean over the frame to work on the valve body. I can surf to this guyís name and address, but I canít buy a diagram of Brianís boo-boo from my own county?

Yours truly,
John D.

I babbled a touch about a coal mine disaster in Cherry, just north of LaSalle.  I know I asked Mike B., heís probably still shaking his head.  I had been reading about it, the story hit me right.

I think of coal miners as "Pennsyltucky" (thanks Matt) hillbillies, and the human story is so awful that even I canít look past it to see the mines as machines.  A group of pre-revolution Englishmen wander into beautiful but hard mountains, and stay there for hundreds of years.  Then robber barons come in, steal the land from the locals, and force the now poor ex-farmers/timbermen to slave underground, to get buried, burned, and black-lunged.  Throw in scabs and Pinkertonís and itís pretty grim in coal mines.

This "mountain mining" assumption is despite the fact that Iíve been inside the Illinois mine at the museum, have worked with people who have old mines literally in their back yards (the reason I asked Mike B.), and went to Greer Tech/Ryder in an old strip mine near Braidwood.  Even one of my favorite abandoned railroads, the last part of the Aurora-Elgin interurban system, hauled Illinois coal through South Elgin to the "Nut House" into my memory.

Sideline:  In Oakbrook there is a monument to worker justice, sort of.  Peabodyís tomb.  The guy from the coal company built his estate between Ill. 83 and Cass Ave, from 31st to 35th Streets.  The day of the "grand opening party" he was thrown off his horse and killed.  The family gave the place to the Franciscans, only string, maintain the tomb.  In our memory the monks sold out, now there are million dollar castles in a subdivision.  Is that ironic, robber baron to poor monks, now back to robber barons?  Dennis, Matty, and the Reids all know the place, but I donít know if they know the coal background.

Back to Cherry.  This disaster was in 1909, 259 out of 481 men died in a stupid fire in a hay bale headed for the mules.  You may have known this, but I was surprised to find out that hay bales donít burn.  What looks like a bundle of fuel has too much moisture and not enough oxygen to do much more than singe around the edge.  Unless you leave it sitting under a leaky kerosene lamp.  That, and a little more stupidity, led to a grim six month fire.
At the time this fire was a major issue,  laws were written directly relating to both workers compensation and child labor.  This is background to me, though, the mine interests me.

Cherry mine was a size and scope I can understand.  It was state of the art ("fireproof") near the end of "manual labor" mines.  There was electricity for lighting, pumps, and fans, (actually, the juice had failed a week before the time of the fire, hence the kerosene lamp) but all labor was by men or mules.  There are two hoists, one main one, and a smaller one which went through the air shaft.  It didnít hoist to the surface (there were escape stairs in the shaft, instead), but did hoist between two levels of tunnels.  Both (all?) hoists have two counter-ballanced "baskets", one goes up, one goes down, like a counterweight in an elevator.  Hoist operator is the most important position in the operation, everyone and everything goes in and out on his cable, commands are by bell signals.  When you get to a level you have horizontal tunnels with little tracks, a mule pulls six cars, each 3í wide by 6í long by ? deep, carrying ? lbs. of ore.  This may be the start of lazy teamsters, the mules soon learn that six cars means go, the men just follow.  The mules taught the teamsters another trick, job action, a mule would NEVER pull seven cars, loaded or empty.  Men do the switching, a man can push one loaded car.

Almost five hundred men go underground, there must be another hundred on top, but itís really a large small time operation.  Everything is one man or two man teams.  Two "miners" drill and blast a little tunnel, then leave.  Two shovel guys fill up cars, once in a while someone stops by to switch cars, other jobs are done by one or two guys, there may be a lot of people underground, but theyíre spread out all over, doing small jobs.  Thereís only one main shaft, dispatching is simple, anything loaded goes up, empties go down.  The only loads that ever went down were the bales of hay that killed everyone.

This was important in 1909, if I cared it would be a great local history starting place. I sort of wondered why a third generation Italian-American family (Keith G.) would be farming some of the flattest land on the planet, I had never heard of Italian coal miners.  Was there a "great grape (or olive) famine of 1880 that sent a wave of immigrant mountain people five hundred feet below a cornfield?

Sincerely,
John D.

Long ago and far away, when I was in my "road whore" phase, we wer doing some work on Midway Airport.  I believe it was Prairie who had set up a portable plant across 55th St.  While washing out on the field, Keith pointed out that we were on the remnants of a brick street.  I considered stealing a brick, but didn't, I still regret that one brick.  How cool would that have been?  At the time I lightly checked out Midway history, opened around 1926 was all I got.  Bits and pieces have come up over the years, now I have "a book", Chicago's Midway Airport by Christopher Lynch, printed in 2003 by Lake Claremont Press, Chicago.  I got it in Naperville when I was there, Dewey number 387.736 LYN.

In the early days (before W.W.I) airplanes were rare, exhibition flights were the only activity.  Grant Park was the common venue, Hawthorne Park in Cicero was also used.  The only real airfield was the White City Balloon and Blimp Port.  White City was an amusement park near 63rd Street and South Parkway.  If this is the "South Park" which became M. L. King Drive, then this would be near today's Washington Park.  Makes sense, the 1892 fair was around there.

Grant Park aviation took a hard hit on June 29, 1919, with the Wingfoot crash. Huh?  Hindenburg, sure, but Wingfoot?

Goodyear's first commercial blimp, the "Wingfoot Express" (think of their logo), was built at White City (the Akron, Ohio blimp port built during the war was for military use). Wingfoot was on a publicity "maiden flight" when it crashed in flames into the Illinois Trust and Bank lobby at LaSalle Street and Jackson Blvd.  The immediate reaction was "danger", "murder", and, of course, "let's pass some stupid laws" (not much different from today).  No more flying over downtown, even the Army air mail service was kicked out of Grant Park.  The useful outcome was an end of hydrogen in blimps.  American blimps (and dirigibles), that is, we had the world's only supply of helium, which we kept from the krauts, hence the 1936 Hindenburg crash.

Cicero had an airfield for a while, a McCormick family (IHC and Tribune) project, but they lost interest and sold the land. Then Maywood became the aviation stronghold, with Maywood field where Loyola Hospital is now (SW corner 1st Ave. and 12th St.) and Checkerboard field right across the street on the SE corner.  Charles Lindbergh flew army air mail flights from Maywood to St. Louis.

Ashburn field at 83rd and Cicero, home of the Illinois Aero Club (after they left Cicero), was too swampy for the "big, modern" planes after W.W.I, so in 1922 an onion field at 63rd and Cicero was leased from the Chicago Board of Education.  (Remember, one section of every township goes for education?  I believe that section was the square mile bounded by Cicero, 55th, Central, and 63rd).  Charles Wacker (from the Drive) started pushing for a city airfield, with the new air mail private contract law signed in 1925, improvements started.  On May 8, 1926, National Air Transport (the beginning of United) flew into the uncompleted field, Municipal Airport ("Muni") was officially opened December 1, 1927.

I had compared pre and post W.W.II pictures of Midway (renamed in 1949 in memory of "the battle of"), they didn't make sense.  Now I know why.  During the war the airport was expanded.  Before it was the southern  half (mostly southeast quarter) section, after, the whole section.  The C.&W.I.R.R. (a.k.a. Chicago Belt), which used to run about 59th St., was relocated north of 54th, the roadbed became an E/W runway.  (It required an act of Congress to vacate the tracks for "military operations").  The old NW/SE runway was extended to 55th and Central, a new NE/SW one was built.  Since both old and new layouts were square, and the points of the compass don't change, both layouts look the same from a distance.

At the same time Muni was expanding into Midway, it's successor was plowing dirt, too. ORD doesn't stand for ORcharD, it means ORchard-Douglas.  Donald (Douglas) threw up a war plant to build C-54s there, we knew them as DC-4s, four engine airliners.  Midway was small for more than two engines (in 1949 a TWA "Connie" skidded into the intersection of 63rd and Cicero), and the new jets with their long takeoff runs were way too much.  The switch came around 1960, Midway became a ghost town until Midway Airlines was formed in 1979. Midway Airlines went bust on March 25, 1991, but Southwest had moved in in 1985, ATA came in 1993.

By the way, Edward "Butch" O'Hare (son of Al Capone's lawyer "Easy Eddie") was a Navy flyer who won the Medal of Honor for shooting down 5 japs near the Solomons three months before the battle of Midway.  He was killed in action just over a year later, in November 1943.  Orchard Field was renamed for him on July 8, 1949, by the same ordinance that changed Muni to Midway.

 The city finally bought the airport from the Board of Ed on February 28, 1982, before it had been leased.  Hale Elementary school was in the corner of  the section at 63rd and Central until it was closed in 1955, for the last year the two NE/SW runways of the "world's busiest" were closed during school hours!

I've been trying (not very sucessfully) to keep my blood pressure below 150/100, so I'm going to leave this as a short (?), one topic letter.  There are a few starting points in today's paper, but if I go any further my head is liable to explode.  Expect something on St. James' Farm (Winfield and Butterfield Roads) and the McCormack family.  Later.

Sincerely,
John D.

When in my "Hospitaller" phase I noticed that there was still German "royalty".  Do I have this right?  In 1914 a crippled, insane (probably manic-depressive like me) blue-blood got jealous of his King and Tsar cousins and helped start a World War, which helped bring us "trench warfare", "machine guns", and "poison gas".  Four years later, after ruining much of Europe, he quit and ran away to Holland, leaving behind chaos which led to Hitler and yet another World War.  After that mess, Germany started all over, endured a "cold war", reunified, and started to become a real country again.  Yet after all those deaths, crimes and atrocities, the Emperor's great, great grandson still thinks he is rightful King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany?

A touch of background.  At the beginning of W.W.I King George of England, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, and Czar Nicholas of Russia were all related to Queen Victoria, actually, most of northern Europe royalty was related.  ("Kaiser" and "Czar/Tsar" come from "Caesar", and mean Emperor).  The German states had just (1860-80's) "unified" (mostly by force) under Otto von Bismarck, the King of Prussia became Kaiser. Austria-Hungary was also an Empire.  Why the British Empire had only a "King" escapes me.  Why he (George V) changed his family name from "Saxe-Coburg-Gotha" to "Windsor" (the name of a palace) makes perfect sense, though, how do you hate the "Huns" during World War I when your king is one of them?

Anyway, the Kaiser's first sons' second sons' third sons' first son is now King of Prussia and heir to the Empire.  At first I thought this was stupid, then I mellowed.  Guy and I keep track of our family tree "just for fun", why shouldn't the krauts?  Then I realized that it does, in fact, matter.  When the wall came down and Germany reunited, royal bodies started being moved to a palace in Potsdam, a suburb North of Berlin, and an ancestral home to the royals.  Huh?  Lineage relates not just to titles, but inheritances, and there are apparently income and property rights that have endured over eighty years, two World Wars, and three different governments. Hitler may have stolen from the Jews, but not from the Princes.

There's apparently enough loot for two sons who abdicated to go back to court to regain their share.  They had to abdicate to marry "below their station", Wilhelm's will didn't allow for any fresh genes to water down Victoria's hemophilia.  This is a recent, possibly current legal tangle, but I don't give a rat's ass for these snobs, so I'm stopping here.

"Abdication" always makes me think of England's King Edward VIII, George V (W.W.I)'s son and older brother of George VI (W.W.II), Elizabeth's old man.  Eddie abdicated to marry "American divorcee Wallace Simpson" in 1936, right?  That's the cover story.  Reality would take into account that he was considered to be a pro-Hitler traitor before W.W.II started, and the British government, especially the House of Commons, was mumbling that they wouldn't follow him anywhere under any circumstances.  He was forced out, eventually he became the governor-general of the Bahamas to keep him out of the country.  Even that didn't keep him out of trouble, he came close to being tried as a traitor during the war.  It's not seemly for a royal to meet with enemy diplomats during a war, and allowing German U-boats to secretly resupply on British territory was (almost) too much.  Still, blood seems thicker than water, so he married "for love" in many history books.

I've included a list of other "loser Kings ", the ones with one asterisk have actually been personally kicked off their throne.  Notice that Poland elected it's kings?

My father just got a "Zepplin" toy at Kane County, it looks like the one the younger, crybaby brother "Randy"(?) gets in the movie A Christmas Story.  That was his neat deal, but he got a good money deal for Sara, the age 15 musician, at a garage sale.  For $100 he got a trumpet and a trombone.  The trumpet is old, on e-Bay it's worth $65 (low) to $115 (average), but the trombone was the winner, worth $200 to $300 (used) retail.  She was already signed up for "bone" in independent music study next year, now she owns one.

Sara pulled off the real deal herself.  We have kept Linda's old (1965) Gibson student guitar all these years, mostly as a memory.  Sara pulled it out, since she reads music, in a couple of days she was able to translate trumpet music and play her parts on the guitar.  Unfortunatly, in guitar music, especially "garage bands", you don't really play a melody, you bang a bunch of chords instead.  She had no interest in learning a bunch of weird fingering, and she didn't want to compete with people who take it seriously.  So we took the Gibson to Hix Brothers music, by the mineature golf course on the south side of Fox Valley Mall.  In good condition it's worth about $150, but this one needed repairs, about $110 retail.  They would credit us $75 on a trade-in, that's about what we expected, we had already called around.  It seemed good for a 35 year old broken-down bottom line student model that cost $50 new during the "Beatles invasion".

Then the horse trading started.  He had a one year old Fender "Jazz" style Bass Guitar with no electronic guts.  (Why would someone strip a one year old instrument, then trade it in?)  If he put new "pots" in, would she direct trade?

Why such a deal?  Not sure.  A Jazz model has a thinner neck, strings closer to the neck/body, and a "wider range of sound".  Apparently rockers think a Jazz is a girlie machine, they want a hard, low, loud sound.  They often get five, and even six, strings, to get super low window shaking noise, apparently this is a specialist machine, looked down on by hard rockers.

Sara, on the other hand, is a girl, and a Jazz nut (she'll be second chair trumpet next year in the school Jazz band, a speciality unit).  In  jazz bass guitar is a direct replacement for a big string bass, the kind you stand up with.  Good jazz bass players have "fretless" (the lines on the neck you press the strings against) basses, you have to get your fingers just right, like a violin.  Sort of "analog" instead of "digital".  Side note, guitars are "percussian" instruments, you hit (pluck) the strings, on a "string" machine you usually use a bow.

Anyway, for no real money Sara has a spare trumpet, her first instrument.  She has a good "bone", probably her second.  And after a few hours in the basement, using her sister's old amp, she's starting to pick up bass.  Good week for her.

This is hardly a smooth stopping point, but I want to get this in the mail today.  Later.

Sincerely,
John D.

This bit cracked me up.  Last week the Italian Prime Minister told a German diplomat that he would make a good "Kapo" in a movie.  Of course the Kraut got pissed, duh, and they have been arguing ever since.  The trick that the networks missed for several days wasn't the insult, but the meaning of the insult.  The Italian has made his money in the television industry, where "Hogan's Hero's" is still big money.  Since the Kraut is named "Schultz", the Italian was calling him "stupid", not "evil".  Ha!

The other day Sara and I were walking a dog along the old alignment of Kress Road, next to the new bridge embankment.  We came across a spot of burnt trash, and I asked why would you set a "fly-dump" on fire, wouldn't you try to get away without attracting attention?  As we kicked through the pile, the truth slowly dawned.  The first piece we recognized was an auto speaker.  Much of the glass was curved, a sure sign of automotive origin.  Then it becomes clear.  There's the gasket from around the windshield, with a piece of plastic dashboard attached.  This is a crash and burn site.

Earlier this year, while taking Linda to work, we saw the cops packing up from a fatal scene.  At the time the laser and target were the give-away, we learned that it was a van from the paper.  (I looked it up, the police were called at 1.27 a.m. Dec 26, 2002).  I believe this is what we stumbled on.  Sara found the most moving piece, a seat belt buckle melted into something.

Sara and I didn't have Roxy, the two year old Jack Russel Terrier, on this walk, she's still hard to control.  At any time she can get spooked, and run back to the Jeep, if the door isn't open she tries to climb in through the wheel wells.  Her brain is at least as twisted as mine, she is intelligent, but can go off the deep end at any minute.  Smart?  She understands when we point at something, and will change direction to get to the "pointed at" object.  On the other hand, I had to teach her to catch.  We've been bouncing things (like treats) off her nose since we got her, what's with that?  Then the other day I spent ten minutes throwing popcorn at her, suddenly a light bulb lit up over her head, now she's deadly accurate.  I would think that catching would be a natural trait, but this dog had to be taught.  God, I wish I could read their minds, but then, I still need help with my own thoughts.

You know I'm a dog person, now more than ever.  Two dogs, and plenty of time with them, many of my expeditions start as "walking the dog(s)".  This time they have lead me back to language, but through a back door.

Sara and I were joking about the "godders" spelling the title backwards, god come from dog, right?  No, dog comes from 11th century England, sort of out of the blue.  Dog appears to have been a breed of hound, as "hound" became used for "pack-hunter" types (fox-hound, etc), "dog" was used for animals not in a pack.

Etymology is the study of word origins.  Can you imagine how hard it was for me to get that spelling right on the library's computer catalogue?  I don't want to know the origin of the name, somewhere in hell, I imagine.  Anyway, once again, someone who can't handle English, much less German or Spanish, is back in the past, tracking down archaic words.

I've talked about the Indo-European language before, this time I hunted it down a little farther.  They have, actually, I just read their books.  This is a detective game, because no one speaks it, it was never written down, and most languages, different as they sound, come from it.  To find out, you have to work backwards, both with the languages and the people who speak them.

The majority assume that Indo-European was spoken before 3,000 B.C.E. in the south Russia to Ukraine area, between today's Moscow and Kiev.  From there people went south to India and west to Europe, hence the name.  Not only is that where the migrations may have started, the original words seem to relate to conditions there. This is the only place where salmon (lachs), turtles, and beech trees (bhagos) grew together.  The people farmed (agros became acre and agriculture) grain (granom), but their livestock, horses (ekwos) and pigs (su), were more important to them.  We even think they were sun-worshippers, aus (dawn) became East, Easter, and Aurora.  Lithuanian is the closest modern language, both geographically and evolutionary
A minority theory is that the roots are from before 6,000 B.C.E and from "Anatolia", modern Turkey.  They used the Semitic words down there that ended up in Indo-Euro and are closer to Mesopotamia, generally considered the area where farming started.  Also, the European gene pool seems to have fanned out from Turkey, so the migration may have started there.  This is a newer idea, but the gene evidence looks good.

This is a hot debate among people who care, but it's only a couple of thousand years, and even fewer miles, between the two.  Since neither the Russians nor the Turks wrote anything down back then, we can only guess.

Languages have two types of word origins, native and borrowed.  A native word goes all the way back to the start, over time it evolves, but you can follow it back from change to change.  A borrowed word, on the other hand, comes from a different language, so it just sort of appears out of the blue.  "Sister" is native, going back to "swesor", meaning "kinswoman".  "Cousin", on the other hand, is borrowed from old French "cosin".  Since French is also Indo-Euro, though, "cosin" also comes from "swesor".  Huh?

I don't know how the linguists figured this out, but sometimes when languages split, they have "regular" sound changes.  This happens a lot between Germanic and Latin, for example, the Indo-Euro "P" in "piskos" becomes "F" in Germanic "fiskas" (to English "fish"), but stays "P" in Latin "pisces".  Since all "P"s become "F"s in Germanic, it's regular. With more complicated changes "swesor" became "sobrinus"(?) in Latin, add prefix "con" and "consobrinus" can be shortened to the French "cosin".  Even looking at the flow chart, this is a tough one for me, but it means that "cousin" is borrowed to help out the related "sister".  Why? Because at the time of the Indo-Euro you could have  "kinswoman" describe both sis and cos, everyone in the clan was related and pretty much interchangeable.  Later you needed to borrow words to show the difference.

There are scads of borrowed cousin words like these.  Some are pretty close, "nose" and "nasal", "mind" and "mental", but others are remote, like "tooth" and "dental".

English is a Germanic language, but we have borrowed so many words that more than half of the language comes from Latin and the later French.  Latin got started when the Romans invaded, later the Normans (frogs from Normandy) moved in.  Normans were Vikings, North-men, so they had already gone from north Germanic to Latinish French.  Charles Berlitz, a language guru, says as rule of thumb, one syllable words are usually Germanic, Latin used prefixes and suffixes, so multi-syllable words are usually Latin based.

The animal that started it all for me was the Indo-Euro "kwon", the krauts changed the "k" to an "h" and went to "hund" and on to "hound".  The Latins kept the "k" sound but used a "c" to show it, hence "canis" which leads to both "canine" and "kennel".

Animal language seems to relate to their physical characteristics, all dogs speak the same tail wagging and ear signs, whether from the U.S. or China or wherever.  They learn different human commands, but all bark in the same tongue.  Because all animals sound the same, you can compare human languages by the way they describe animal sounds.  All cows say about moo, from mu to meuh.  Cats all say meowish things except for the japs, they use n'yao.  Dogs show a lot of difference, from bow-wow to gaf-gaf (Russian), but there are a lot of different sounding breeds (accents?), and all languages use two similar syllables.  On the other hand, dogs are "linguistically" useful because virtually all men have had dogs pretty much forever.
Children start out like animals, most babies say "ma-ma" or similar noises.  Laughing and crying are also animal type noises.

In America we shy away from "four letter words", this is odd, since through history most "god" words have had four letters.  Wait a minute, "god" has three letters.  Yea, but "gott", it's ancestor, has four.  As does "Zeus" and "Jove".  Outside of Indo-Euro this is also common, Hebrew YHWH and Caanite Ba'al are two.  There are a lot of others, but I've already returned that book, I'm writing this as an afterthought.

None of these language guys think that Indo-Euro became the most common because the language is a good one, it's because the people who spoke it were successful.  It had no written form, Indo-Euros borrowed Semitic letters.  "A" comes from the Semite  "aleph", or ox, turn a capital "A" upside down, is that a picture of an ox?  "B" is from "bet", or house, as in Bet Lehem into Bethlehem.  One square built(?) on top of another, our capital "B" rounds out one side.  There's "alphabet" right there, the Phoenicians used the pictures for sounds, then the Greeks took over.

Greek didn't make it as big as I would have thought.  Alexander conquered everything from Egypt (Cleopatra was a Greek) to Pakistan around 300 B.C.E., Greek was the common language of commerce into the Roman (Latin) age, virtually all of the Bible's new testament was written in Greek, yet the language is a dead end, nothing evolved out of it, unlike Latin, which evolved into Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.  Everyone borrowed from Greek, but no one really modified it.  Latin came right behind it, big time, and later Islam, using Arabic, blew through the southern area.  Only Greeks speak it now, although they have expanded the language, it's still much the same, modern Greeks can often read two thousand year old Bible passages easier than we can understand five hundred year old Shakespeare.

Now, for a change, language in the western hemisphere.  Today, only the Italians think that Columbus discovered the "new world" (what hypocrites, back then he moved out of Genoa to Portugal and had to whore out to Spain to get a boat, but now that he has his own "Day", he's an Italian national hero).  Anyway, the Vikings built settlements in Labrador long before Chris got lost and found "the Indies", and the Irish Celts were probably here, too.  But there's evidence that others were here, too.

When the Spaniard Cortez landed in Mexico the Aztec king Montesuma thought he was the white god from the sea, Quetzalcoatl, on another visit.  Soon his priests discovered Basque(north Spain)-sounding words in the Aztec language, with the same meanings.  Greek-sounding words are also found not only in both the Aztec and Mayan languages, but in AmerIndian languages both north and south.

It's not just sound-alikes, either.  Norse rune writing has been found in Minnesota, Phoenician (or Carthaginian, the difference is time) writing has been found both along the Amazon in Brazil and in Mechanicsburg, PA, and Hebrew/Caanite writing and coins from 130 have been found in Kentucky and Tennessee.  There are common words in the Andes and in Maori, the New Zealand native tongue, but it's not clear in which direction those words migrated.

If this sounds like science-fiction, that's because the kooks use these facts to justify anything from Atlantis to extraterrestrials, not to mention the "lost tribes of Israel".  But are occasional trips, planned or not, across the oceans so unbelievable?  Remember Thor Heydhal, with Kon-Tiki and Ra?  His science has long been discredited, but he did make it across oceans in both a Balsa wood raft and a boat made from reeds.  The Vikings made it in "long ships", and the Irish may have been using animal skin rowboats.  Why not a lost Medeterrian style galley?

I've done almost nothing on AmerIndian languages, or any of their history, actually, but I imagine that will change.  "Whiteys" wandering the interior thousands of years ago would be interesting.  I'm not aware of much evidence, the middle-east has lots of old artifacts, mostly because the weather is better for preservation.  Science fiction idiots have cheapened some of this American stuff, look at what they did to "Area 51".  A secret Air Force base for U-2s, SR-71s, and F-117s are cool enough for me, without "dead aliens".

Quickly, a note on the airplanes.  The U-2 was called "Utility" for secrecy, it should have been "R" for "Reconnaissance".  The SR-71 was a "RS" for "Reconnaissance Supersonic", Lyndon Johnson got it backward, and no one had the guts to tell him, so they changed the name, instead. I don't know the story on the F-117, it's a ground "Attack" craft with no air to air "Fighter" capability at all, how it became the "Stealth Fighter" is a mystery to me.  Probably another Pentagon lie.

I just wrote you about "loser kings", then the Elgin Courier News came up with the death of the "Countess of Paris".  The first French revolution was in 1789, then Napoleon I formed and lost an empire, a couple of kings showed up for a while, Napoleon III took a shot at emperor until 1870, and since then the country has had some more "Republic's", with DeGaulle popping up a couple of times.  For two hundred and fourteen years the Frogs have been arguing over who's in charge (who would want to be?), and it appears the fight will go on.  They make the Krauts, at it since 1918, look like rookies.

Well, again I've dragged a short letter into weeks, and I'm still not done, so I'm cutting back to here.  Later.

Tours Truly
John D.

If there was any question as to my curiosity, or where it comes from, the answer was on my father's deck the other day.  We were sitting around, discussing our backhoe discoveries.  Yup, even though neither one of us have anything to do with backhoes, we had both just stared at two, big and little, in different counties, on the same day.

Me first.  Plumbers have been buying tiny backhoes for the last few years, I saw one which was only slightly bigger than the ones that kids sit on in the park sandboxes.  A van pulled a one axle trailer, with two pickup type tires on those white spoke "Jackman" type wheels (someone must have a warehouse full of them, left over from when they went out of style).  When the "hoe" is unhooked, the tongue drops onto a golfcart tire caster that freely rotates 360 degrees, instead of a landing gear.  You lock the hubs on the "big" wheels, then they are driven, skid-steer style, by two hydraulic motors.  Fire up the Wisconsin(?), and you have a tiny relative of those forklifts that the sod truck trailers hang on the back.  There are two outriggers that spread out behind the tires, and the boom centeres strait back, so it's like the back of a loader/backhoe tractor, without the front axle or loader.  You (a laborer, not an operator) stand next to the machine to operate the controls, there's no seat that I could see (maybe an option?).  Is a two cubic foot bucket on a five foot boom and four foot dipperstick worth over 100 grand (I was told)?  I don't see how, but not being a fan of shovels, if someone is going to spend that much money to keep a man out of a hole, more power (and money) to them.

My father, watching sewer work in front of his house, spotted a trick that is not only useful, but rather brilliant.  A new, big Cat with a quick-change bucket, same idea as some front loaders have.  Instead of a laborer knocking the two pins on the bucket in and out, there are two lugs on the bucket, and a "shoe"(?) with two slots on the end of the dipperstick.  One is sideways, one is up and down, so you slide, push, and flick a lever, a little thumb clamps the up and down slot closed.  With the bucket this easy to switch from the cab, this guy constantly switches from a pavement hook thing to a wide stone bucket to a narrow toothed thing.  Slick.  And when lifting pipe with a cable, he drops the bucket completely, just to make it easier.

There's more.  Since both lugs are the same, he drops the bucket, rotates it 180 degrees, presto-chango, the backhoe becomes a shovel.  I imagine you could do this with the two pins, too, but I never saw it done in all my time in construction.  Is that useful?  If there is a cross line, he can trench right up to it, dig under like usual, then back up and shovel under from the other side.  That stops the "bottom man" from clawing dirt out from under the cross line for the hoe to scrape and dig away.

I didn't see it, but I can see another use.  Pouring concrete into a backhoe bucket is awkward, you have to not only raise and lower the chute, but often swing it, too, and that can be a bitch, as well as messy, especially with stiff stuff while leaning.  It's an easy way to tear the splash boot, if nothing else.  Ask any of "the boys".  With the bucket shoveling, you could have the mixer come in from the side, and only use the hoist.  Actually, an operator with an imagination probably can think of lots of uses for the "shovel mode".

Not only is this useful and time-saving, Cat did it very cleanly.  With a bucket on, you have to look very close to even see the quick-change setup, the biggest give-away are the small hydraulic lines on top of the dipperstick.  Whoever saw this "forest through the trees" should get a huge bonus.  And at the cost of a new machine, this tiny gimmick's cost is a drop in the bucket (pun recognized after written).

Reminded me of a different small hoe I saw a couple of weeks ago, a Kobe-whatever.  Rubber tracks.  Not pads on the track, the whole track is a cross between a tire and a conveyer belt.  There are steel rods that run sideways, and maybe there are steel belts inside the track, but there wouldn't have to be.  You can use the stiffening across the tread, but the belts don't need to (shouldn't be?) stiff, so they could easily be some nylonish flexible material.

Unlike the other two tricks, this one is obviously useful, no pins and links.  Unlike the Cat, though, this whole machine is "cheap jap junk", the rubber band tracks may be an idea for the future, but they emphasize the Tonka toy-like machine.

Finally, a step back to common sense on the state's roads, but probably worthless.  "Keep right except to pass" was the first traffic law on the book in Illinois, I was crushed when "Box" told me that it was gone, his daughter was taught in Driver's Ed to use whichever lane was easiest.  I hated Lurch running in the inside lane, when Guy started doing it (after he was in an accident and felt he got shafted on a ticket) I was livid, but couldn't say or do anything.  Gov Rod B. (who I consider a semi-crooked lightweight, but voted for anyway, at least he wasn't another perjury-prone Ryan) signed a bill putting the old rule back, sort of.  On Interstates, if they aren't crowded and the weather is good(???).  Way to little, way to late, and unenforceable, probably more wasted ink, but in theory a tiny victory.  Still, I believe that red lights and turn signals are still the law, getting back to enforcing the basics would be far more useful, but what the hell, maybe some crooked cop will get a hernia lifting a worthlessly bloated lawbook.  What am I thinking, a cop and a lawbook, AM I NUTS???  Oh yea, I almost forgot.

Here's one for Matty.  We were driving south on Powis Rd, next to the Airport, when peripheral vision struck.  Was that a jet trainer I saw between two hangers?  Screech into a tight right, not only is it a trainer, it's a Czech-built Aero 39 Albatross, standard in the old Soviet Union.  The nose is odd, very "ant-eaterish", I've enclosed a scan of a drawing, but it looks even odder first hand.  There's even a "Red Star" painted on it, this must be some sort of "rent a ride" deal.  Then Sara said "there's people in it", sure enough, it was cranked up, and soon pulled away.  Odd, the front wheel steering doesnít really match the rudder flap angle, if they don't operate separately, there is at least some weird ratio changes between them.  Maybe the faster you go the closer they get to the same steering angles, maybe the front gear rotates freely, and you "skid-steer" the main gear brakes, maybe Matty knows how that works.

I'm running out of nothing, If I keep going, this may actually have some content, so I'm throwing out the anchor. Later.

Sincerely,
John D.

Thanks to "The Dead Sea Scrolls", I have centered on "The Levant", an old term for Israel/Palestine and Lebanon to the north, with some Syria.  So does everyone else, many consider this "The Holy Land".  This is a "crossroads", Egypt, Anatolia/Turkey, Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia, and Persia were the various movers and shakers, with Jerusalem stuck in the middle.

"Monotheism" (one god) seems to come from east of here, very much like Indo-European languages.  I haven't yet seen a connection between language and religion, I think it's more likely that both came from the area just because this is where civilization developed, the "fertile crescent" stuff.  Once cities develop, farmers look (to some of us non-agrarians) like the hicks from the sticks, but farmers are really the first civilians.
Background on basic people.  You've heard "hunter-gatherer", that's pretty basic.  Then you start to specialize.  (The saying is that a specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less.)

Hunting is pretty basic and animalist, shh, keep upwind, get your pointed stick, run and kill.  Then you binge on raw meat.  If you get fire, bingo, steak.  Cooking releases even more nutrients in an already useful food.  (There is a line of thought that meat made humans smarter.  The brain uses up a lot of energy, the more strong food, the more extra energy for the brain).

Farming is a lot harder.  I'm telling the son of a farmer?  You need to co-operate, and stay in the same place.  You need a calendar so you can plan ahead.  Probably counting and writing, too.  Water, sun, weeds, bugs.  Plus, you do a lot of work that only pays off way down the road.

Herding is sort of halfway in the middle.  You have to catch the animal, but then you have to keep it.  Now it's considered a type of farming, I guess, but it used to be more like ranching, even nomadic, you often didn't need any fixed base.

Gods go way back, starting out very localized.  A hunter respects the spirit of the animal most.  A farmer cares more about the wind and rain gods.  Every group uses their own names and images.  This is "polytheism", we know about the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods most, they are closest to our history.

If you are a successful people, you're group gets larger.  The people specialize more, soon you have tradesmen.  And more gods.  The simple people can't remember all the gods, much less all the prayers, so you get priests.  The priests know the gods and prayers, so the people have to rely on the priests, who actually do little real work, to make their lives easier.  The people are cut off from their gods, the priests get more powerful.  Not a real good deal for the working class.

Hinduism is polytheism run amok.  India was an easy land to farm, with lots of people, you could have more priests per worker.  With all these priests, you have a lot of people trying to keep their power, so they make more rules that the common people can't understand or challenge.  Soon their first four ranks of people become hundreds of "castes", since the people on top want to stay there, "the rules" say you can't move up in caste.

About 600 B.C.E. an Iranian Hindu-type prince-priest learns pretty much all the knowledge in his world.  (Actually, Azerbaijan is now one of the ex-Soviet states just north of Iran).  Catch is, he's nicer than selfish.  When he goes to war, he doesn't fight, he treats the wounded.  Then the sick, and poor.  Why is he so lucky, and others are so miserable?  "See you later, wife, family, palace, I'm going to live in a cave and think."  After a while, he gives up, "I'll never get it, tomorrow, after the dark, when it's light, I'll go home.  Light and dark, that's it!  Right and wrong, good and evil.  Day is always light, night is always dark".  (I guess they never had rainy days or full-moon nights, but that was how he saw it.)

This idea of good and evil is common now, but people have always had a hard time with the balance. Does good triumph over evil?  Who is stronger, Michael the archangel, or Satan, who also started out as an angel.  If good is stronger, why is there evil?  Can an evil person become good?

Back to the priest in the cave.  We westerners can't pronounce his name easily, so we call him Zoroaster.  Remember we laughed at the Zoroastrians, hiding in a tent in a corner of Iran, keeping the fire going?  If the priest falls asleep, does he "flick his Bic"?  "Sure, the fire been going for thousands of years, I've been watching it".  It's not just fire, earth and water is also holy.  But they're not "fire worshipers", it's just one part of Zoro's idea.  Good and evil?  That's only part of it.  The trick is that good and evil are two sides of ONE GOD!

This is "dualism", the good and evil sides of one force.  In the east they have a symbol for it, the "monad", that circle that's split with an "S", black and white.  It's sometimes called "Ying and yang", you see it on the Korean flag, kung fu uniforms, or the old Northern Pacific railroad logo.

Yup, Zoro is the first major one-godder.  He called it Ahura Mazda.  Mazda, shit, well, it least he didnít call it Hyundai.  By the way, I'm using "it" not as disrespect, just not "he" or "she", although it did soon become he.

Zoroaster's one god isn't simple, how could the one greatest force be?  Not only is it good AND evil, it also has other aspects.  Good mind, good order, wisdom, piety, well being, and immorality.  This was tough for the workers to understand, so the aspects became angels, looking like men who have one strength.  This is easy for people who are used to many gods to understand, and gradually many other old gods become other angels.  They're not separate gods, but parts of the one.

Okay, Zoro's in a cave, how to spread the word?  Go to the king.  How to get in the door?  Hold a fire that burns but doesn't consume (Moses only looked at the bush, Zoro held it?)  Once in the door he makes a deal with the king.  If I can convince you, will you make it official?  He argues with the priests for three days.  His logic wins the day, and soon there is one god in the state religion.

On the side, Buddha has a similar encounter around the same time.  Water flows downhill, right?  Can your idols make water flow uphill?  No, then they must be false gods.  Good logic, huh?

How do we get this?  When the Jews are deported to Babylon around 500 B.C.E., guess what the state religion is there?  Right!  While sitting in the shadow of the tower (Ziggurat, like a pyramid) of Babel (Babylon) listening to flood stories, they can't help but notice that everyone else has one god.  So the Jews rip off the Iraqi national religion!  Would Saddam love that?  Before the exile, YHWH is "their" god, quick, spin-doctor the Bible so he's the ONLY god.  Of course, they knew it all along.  Right!

I have to slip in a word origin.  In Zoro's language, priests were called Magi.  You know the "three wise men from the East", and "Gift of the Magi".  Their powers were "Magic".

If the Iranians started one-goddism, how come Christians seem to come from Jews?  Because Alexander the Great kicked Darius' ass.  When this "Greek" Macedonian rolled into town, he torched the holy books and dumped his Zeus-buddy gods on the locals.  Some of the one-godders hid in tents with their fires, some ran to India, where they are called "Parsees" (from "Persians", they're the largest group of original Zoros), and some Jews had already gone back to "the Holy Land" where they stuck it out through the Greeks and Romans. If a dirt-poor bastard from the northern sticks (Galilee) hadn't become a social revolutionary and hired a henchman named Simon/Peter who went into business with a Roman named Saul/Paul, our money might say "In Jupiter we Trust"

If Zoro started "One-godism", how come we can't even pronounce his real name, Zarathustra, much less know who he was?  You have to give credit to the Jews, they wrote a lot more than the Iranians, and kept their Semitic language intact.  When the Greeks lost the East, Zoro's followers recovered what holy works they could, but their wasn't much left, and their Indo-Euro language had evolved so much that some of what was left is still untranslatable today.  Isn't that a bitch?  They worked out the original idea, wrote it down in a language related to ours, then lost it.

The Jews spin-doctored it into their crappy language, in 600 Mohammed did another rewrite into the Koran, and conquered the original homeland, bringing a twice-bastard book back in Arabic.  When our puppet the Shah of Iran fell, Khomeini's buddies almost finished what Alexander started, it's guessed that there are less than 10,000 of the old believers left in Iran, and the Parsees aren't very strong, either.  Yet Zoro's basic idea is the majority religion on the planet.  How's that for no credit?  Copyright laws were pretty lame 2500 years ago, I guess.  The Zoros did keep one cool (I think) prayer; "I praise aloud the thought well thought, the word well spoken, and the deed well done".

I spent so much time trying to get across the desert into Mesopotamia, finally the path was a simple, almost childish book written in 1929, How The Great Religions Began by Joseph Gaer.  I picked up a paperback reprint two years younger than myself (printed May 1954) for a buck at the used book store.  And I paid four times the original price, 25 cents.

For me this has been quite a revelation, I'm almost "born again".  No, I'm not going to sacrifice a lamb to YHWH, but the path of religious evolution seems much clearer to me.  I've often wondered how a mean little warrior tribe has had such an impact on peoples beliefs.  Literature, that's it, the Jews never did anything world-shaking, didn't discover anything radical, the evolution seems so obvious, the Holy land is mostly just a library of history, with  some spin-doctoring thrown in.  The Jews did hang onto it through hard times, and wrote it down, so thanks, Jews, you did maintain a good bridge.

This pretty much wraps up my "quest for religious truth" (at least for now), I think I've sort of got the main points.  I'll probably get details, fill in the blanks, that sort of stuff, but I'll just as likely head to the East.  Buddha, Confucius, that type of stuff, or maybe I'll go to Africa and the Americas for some tribalism.  I'm off to the used book store, wonder where a few bucks will lead.  Later.

Yours Truly,
John D.

First hand, we're pretty much immune.  With a Macintosh using a Netscape browser, none of that Microsoft shit can touch us.  I could probably forward something infected, but it couldn't dial up and call itself out.

Instead, the virus stole our e-mail address from somewhere and used it to bother others.  The Crystal Lake Park District sent us an e-mail, saying the attachment we sent them was infected.  What attachment?  We didn't send anything, it's not our style.  So I called our provider.  That's what it does, it goes away September 10, if it's not using your machine, there's nothing you can do.

Where could the virus have gotten our address?  Anywhere, but it's probably from a personal account somewhere, business computers should have anti-virus running.  I rarely use e-mail, but Sara lives in an electronic world, trumpet and jazz musicians all over the world have our address, plus half the high school.  What are the chances that one of those people have been hit?  High schoolers or musicians (or both) catching a virus?

It's a week later, I've cooled off.  Friend Pat's kid had his PC ravaged by it, all he gets is "illegal operation" or something.  Ha, if he bought a Mac he'd still be safe.

I'm going to dump a couple of half-done things here, to get rid of them.  If any interest you, good, otherwise, sorry.

Yours truly
John D.

West Chicago used to have a commuter yard full of steam engines right behind Main Stree.  I ran Sara up to the museum, then abandoned the Jeep in the library lot. This area used to be the yard, so I tried to squint back fifty years, and took a stroll.

When the Northwestern got to West Chicago there was neither a town nor a Northwestern.  The Chicago & Galena Union cleared the Wheaton boy's farms and set up a yard and repair area in some company owned property where the track was to curve northwest to Elgin and beyond.  A bunch of Aurorans were headed here with their Aurora Branch (to become the Burlington) R.R., more were coming from the St. Charles branch (which disappeared), so there was a Junction.

A small town started up on the inside of the curve, the Main Street business district goes S.E/N.W. rather than following the grid.  This ends up in a several block tri-angle area, but it works out okay today, even though it was a mistake.

It wasn't the street, or the tracks, that was the mistake.  The whole idea of the "lead mines of Galena" was wrong, the railroad never bothered to get there.  Although they ran through Elgin and Belvedere, it was never big time, the railroad soon evolved into the Northwestern, and headed due west out of (owner) Turner's junction enroute to Geneva and Iowa.  This is the main west drag, and operations moved onto this line, the northwest line gradually faded away, today the "Belvedere subdivision" doesn't even go through to Chicago, the tracks curve west into the freight yard on the west line.

Business left the first yards and buildings to the side, but it worked out pretty well for the Chicago passenger trains.  The commuters were based out of this yard until 1956, when the service was dieselized, modernized, and moved into the new coach yard west of town (north of Harry Kuhn's asphalt plant at Roosevelt and Fabyan).  For the first time in a century, the yard is empty, by 1961 the track was torn up.  Or was it?

Today there is an alley named Turner Ct. behind Main Street (southwest side), then a couple of parking lots and our ten year old library, which fronts on our Washington St. (Washington connects Geneva Road to the east with Fabyan Parkway to the west).  Across Washington from the library is a shabby Clark station, and a scrapyard.  The scrapyard office is an 1869 depot building, part of town history, but the yard itself is the northern part of the old commuter yard.  Makes sense, I've assumed it all along.

This was my thinking as I wandered over to the scrapyard.  They're VERY no tresspassing, I've tried to go through the office, since then I have absolutly stayed off their property.

Off west I wander, thru the back of the park district, until I hit the E.J.& E.  Then I head north, along the west side of the scrapyard.  The tracks bear slightly to the west, and here comes the shape of the scrapyard cutting across a swamp from the east, the two alignments curve together and head off northish together.  There are all kinds of abandon signal bases and slabs along the "J.", this used to be an important area.

Looking into the scrapyard is sort of looking into the past, it's mostly overgrown and abandoned.  The siding that comes out has been disconnected. And the old R.R. magnet crane appears disused.  But there seem to be more signs of tracks than I would have thought.  Hard to tell, thru the weeds and old trucks.

Past the yard and I'm idling (on foot) when I realize that this is another R.O.W. coming up from behind my right.  Poking thru the weeds, hmm, there's track in there.  It runs along the back of the scrapyards neighbor, in fact, he's using the tracks and ties as his west wall.  But that lines up with, no, I just don't see it.  I'll need to check the maps again.  On I go, past a dumpster (more on that later) to a cross street, skip the east side for now, I want to check something.

I wasn't squinting far enough back.  The E.J.& E., now the main drag, came later (1888) and snaked across the end of the yard, but wasn't part of it.  The "disconnected siding" was actually the main throat of the yard, it didn't connect to the "J.", it crossed it.  The other alignment may have been the line to the old industries to the north.

I have dozens of maps of the area, plus the Mapquest photos, but it was tiny details from several different maps that hooked it all together.  The prize was a map from 1909, which shows most, if not all, of the tracks from that time that made everything fit.  I'm sending you a scan.

With a clearer picture I jumped on my bike (yea, I'm riding again ) and took another look.  Sir, do you mind if I look in your backyard?  Sure, just watch the dogs, I've got pit bulls.  Damn right I'll watch them, IN MY MIRROR.  This is a hobby, not a crusade.  Is he so drunk that he thinks, oh well.

Bottom line, some of the north half of the old yard is intact.  I don't know why the scrap guys didn't tear it up, I thought rail was valuable. They seem to have used some of the tracks for their crane to load gondolas, etc, but not for a while.  Anyway, that's my lost railroad yard.  Second one, actually.

The Burlington used to run it's commuters out of Downers Grove, they moved (to Eola, right?) when they dieselized, too.  The yard was between Main Street and Belmont.  On the south side a tower is still there, boarded up, I think the yard was on the north side.  There is a Hines lumber yard and some mover there, there was an oil depot and some railroad property, Burlington crews worked out of it until a couple of years ago, at least, they still may.

While I was wandering along the "J." I looked into one of their scrap dumpsters (who, me?), on top was a switch stand, the lever that you move to align the track.  This one stands about three feet high, minus the sign/flag on the top, you lift the arm up to horizontal and rotate it side to side.  At first I thought "how cool would that look in my back yard?", but being in a scrap (not waste) box, the material is owned, not thrown away.  So I talked to a welder, who gave me his boss's business card.  So far, so good.

When I picked up Sara at the museum, I mentioned my find to Sally, my museum "contact" before Sara started there.  Was she interested, and could I use her name?  Maybe, and sure (I'm sort of a regular).  Jose the "J." supervisor said "it's in the box?, just take it".  So Sara and I did.

When Sally saw it, her eyes lit up.  I dropped it off at the city garage, for steam-cleaning.  If the museum keeps it, I get to be the "doner", if not, I get to set it up in the garden, but from Sally's voice, that seems unlikely.  Either way, cool.

Sara (age 15) and I picked up on reruns of a TV series from 1999, Roswell.  The story line is that three kids in the high school are survivors from the 1947 crash, trying to keep secret and pass as human.  Altho it's sort of SciFi (that's the channel showing it), it's also a high school program, pretty good if you get into teen programs, and we do.

You know we (I) didn't let it go, soon UFO books were on the table.  I used to think that UFOers were cranks, now I think they are obstinate, ignorant cranks.  This coming from someone who assumes there must be life out there.

The Air Force published a book, The Roswell Report: Case Closed, in to discount a lot of UFO crap.  Do I believe the Air Force, a week after reading about the ATF/FBI crap at Waco?  Yes, pretty much, not because I believe the Feds (yea, sure, Saddam threatened the U.S.), but because they put together a reasonable sounding report, using real scientific methods.

First, "weather balloons" and UFOs.  They're not talking about those round balloons to measure the wind, but ultra high altitude (100,000-200,000 feet, a SR 71 flys around 80,000 feet) research balloons.  You have seen pictures of these, they are silvery and look almost empty, like an upside down sock with a tennis ball in the toe.  They look empty because near the ground, where the pictures are taken, they are almost empty.  When they get up high, with the thinner atmosphere, the helium expands, stretching the envelope way out, usually described as "onion shaped".  These are the balloons in question.

From the end of World War II to probably now, more than 2,500 of these have been launched, many from Holloman air base, west of Roswell.  They are used as targets for missles (with radar reflectors hanging under them), for dropping dummies and occasionally humans in parachutes (CPT Joseph W. Kittinger jumped from 102,800 feet in 1960, still a record), and for space programs, carrying instruments and sometimes test animals way past airplane altitudes.  These balloons, and things dropped from them, landed all over New Mexico and west Texas, plenty came down around Roswell.  And when they did, Air Force chase teams followed them all over the desert.  Duh.

These chase teams used civillian style cars and pick-ups, jeeps, 3/4 ton "weapons carriers" (those Dodge Power Wagons) with radios, and 2 1/2 ton 6X6s, both covered and wreckers.  Later they converted a couple of 3/4 ton ambulances as their commo (radio) vehicles.  They also hired locals to help them, with mules, tractors, and even a Cat once.  Not to mention helicopters, light planes, and even C-47s (military DC-3s).  It was common to block roads and land planes there, after all, it was the middle of nowhere, sometimes they even used 2 1/2 ton tankers to refuel the planes.

The "origional" Roswell was probably a balloon, hanging several reflectors under it.  But back then, this would look pretty strange, who knew what a radar reflector was, or what polyethylene looked like?  Then the flyboy "circus" (their word) shows up and clean everything up.  Secret?  Maybe, but cleaning up was S.O.P. to avoid irritating the locals, turns out that cattle eat balloon scraps, then get sick.  Raking up the junk keep claims down.

Okay, now we have the first "spaceship", what about the aliens?  For a start, they dropped a lot of anthropomorphic ("crash test" type) dummies, some have never been found.  Sort of human looking, but no real eyes, nose, mouth, or ears, just vauge shapes made out of plastic, a new material at the time.  Who had heard of crash test dummies back then?

Alien autopsies? On June 26, 1956, a propeller driven KC-97 tanker crashes and burns, cooking all eleven crewmen.  Three "crispies" with arms and legs burned off are brought into the hospital, but they stink, people start gagging, soon the bodies are hauled off to a refrigerator (in the P.X.!!!).  The base isn't equipped for this, so a couple of specialists from Wright-Patterson (Ohio) Air Base come in to identify the bodies, then the local undertaker is contracted to take care of the bodies, before they are hauled off to next-of-kin.

In a May 21, 1959 manned balloon crash a pilot has his head crushed, his forehead swelled up, as did both (black) eyes.  The chase team choppered him to the Walker (nee Roswell) base hospital.  Which, at the time, was a S.A.C. nuclear base.  S.A.C. boss General Curtis LeMay (remember him, George Wallace's running mate, fat guy with a cigar?) regularly has his guys hold surprise inspections, so when an unknown officer says "I'm bringing in an injured balloon pilot" the Roswell guys say "yea, sure", thinking it's a test, meet the helicopter with M.P.s, escort the pilot to the hospital with machine guns, and hang around.  A bruised, ugly looking man is treated, then quietly slips out, trying to avoid attention.

Take these incidents (from 1947 to 1959), add a few other balloons, alcohol, bullshit, and stupidity, multiply by 1950s paranoia, and bingo, soon you have aliens being hauled off to Area 51.

Speaking of which, how did the aliens get to Area 51?  I have no idea, and the Air Force can't address it (remember, Area 51 officially still "doesn't exist").  I'm not going there, though.  You know I get upset when I'm around to much stupidity, this is like drowning in it, I give up.

Never really caring, I assumed that Area 51 was near Roswell.  Wrong.  Roswell, a fair sized city, is in S.E. New Mexico, while area 51 is in Nevada, north of Las Vegas, where there is nothing.  There is more than one and a half states between them.  No connection at all, other than flying.

Area 51 went "black" for the U-2 trials, and has been ever since.  It's common knowledge (but not public record) that "Have Blue"/F117 Stealth Fighters" have been tested, and crashed, there, probably M.I.G.s and god knows what else, too.  But a secret testing base wasn't good enough, they (the cranks) needed UFOs, too.  Like saying that since you haven't been in your neighbor's house lately, they must have aliens there, also.  What kind of thinking is that?

Now I want to take a look at Area 51.  Of course it's not on the map, but Groom Lake, the only real landmark, is on some.  So I go online and dial up MapQuest.  No Groom lake, so I zero in on the area, using the county boundries as reference points.  Strange, the little tab "aerial photo" isn't there.  So I try the closest town, Rachel, to the north.  Still no aerial photo tab. Hmmm.

Lets try to sneak up on it, center on Las Vegas, hit the photo tab, then move N.N.W. frame by frame.  That must be US 93, here comes the White river, should be west of that bend.  Hmmm again.

It took awhile.  I should have remembered, there's no water in Groom Lake.  I finally realized what the strait line across the light circle is, a runway on a dry lake, that must be it!  Zoom in, what the hell, looks the same.  No note, or warning, MapQuest simply won't zoom in.  Figures.

Time to check with the cranks.  Search Google for "area 51", about a million hits.  After a few "loon links", bingo, "high res satelite photos".  They aren't as close as MapQuest shows my house, but that's an airbase, all right.  No planes, maybe a few vehicles, but the place looks pretty empty. I didn't expect to see a plasma driven space plane, and sort of expected some red screen blaring "National Security", so this really isn't so bad.  What other country would let anybody see any photos of the counries most secret military base?  I may not agree with my government (on many things), but this "freedom" thing is still pretty cool, too bad we're not smart enough to do it better!

Do I believe the Air Force about Roswell?  Mostly.  They say nothing was secret, that nobody was ever rude to the locals, and they could see and/or talk about everything.  Bullshit.  Back then the military could probably push civillians around, and I assume they did.  The locals probably were cooperative, but some of those tests must have been secret.  They were testing, among other things, components  for the "Mercury" space program, and I doubt that the military wanted the civillians to get in the way or take souvineers.  So a blanket "nobody was rude" line doesn't ring true to me.  On the other hand, they make a strong case that there was no UFO crash (like the case needed to be made), and that pretty much everything can be explained.  That part I believe, if only because the UFO stories sound incredible, and the explanations sound realistic.

Will the hard core cranks still believe in a cover up at Roswell?  Of course.  In one day of casual reading I can see holes in the Air Force story.  Sure, there was no black sergeant in 1947 (the military was still segregated), but why didn't they look for him in 1958, when he was probably there?  Some Air Force witnesses" statements don't agree with others.  Some questions weren't asked.  And some (many?) statements were clearly coached.  Still, most of the Air Force story makes sense, and pretty much none of the ledgends do.

This stuff happened happened fifty years ago, many people are dead, others don't remember.  And it's harder to prove nothing than infer something.  All in all, tho, for all the smoke, there's not much fire, even tho cranks have been throwing all the fuel on they can dream up.

I mentioned Zoroaster splitting from the local main line polythiesm, he was only one (probably first) of a whole batch of people that gave up that stuff around 600 B.C.E.  Another prince who bailed (on Hinduism) was Siddhartha Gautama, who became Buddha (The Enlightened One).  I always thought of him as a jolly fat Chineese guy, but that isn't him, that's a kitchen god.  Buddha was an Indian (Hindu's later pushed the Buddists out), and went from being a strong warrior to a skinny, Ghandi-type near skeleton.

A very similar prince was Nataputta Vardhamana, a.k.a Mahavira (Great Hero). His life is so close to his buddy Buddha that you can't really tell them apart.  Ledgend has them so mixed up that either one could be a model for the other, or they may even be the same person, spun of in two directions. In the West we pretty much ignore both him and his (another Hindu breakaway) religeon, Jainism, despite all the cool names.  Jainists (I have no idea how to pronounce it) are so respectful of life that they broom the ground in front of them so they won't step on and injure any bugs, and even wear veils so they won't inhale any.

Zoro, Buddah, and Maha all were richies, Confucius, a tad farther east, had it tougher, his rich old man died, so his widowed mom had to scrimp to send him to school.  He became a teacher, and wasn't initially as sucessful as the Indians, it took a while for his thinking to catch on.  This may be because he didn't get any help from a god, he was probably an athiest, and his idea's of good and evil are actually a philosophy, rather than a religeon.

Confucius' family name in Chineese was Kung, when he became "The Master" it spells out as K'ung Fu-tsu, the origin of "Kung Fu fighting"?

Confucius once may have visited a famous old crank in the mountains named Li-poh-yang, titled Lao-tsu (Old Master, must be the same tsu that Confucius used).  Lao had been the court archivist, until he got disgusted and quit.  Buddha thought Lao had all the answers, but Buddha couldn't understand them.  Somehow Li begat Lao begat Tao, the name of the religeon.  Taoists later became rivals of the Confucius followers in the royal courts.  In the end, they both pretty much have lost out to the Buddists missionaries who got kicked out of India.

All of these guys pretty much blew polythiesm off, and concentrated on good verses evil instead.  Maybe the god(s) aren't as important in the East, (Buddah fits nicely over local gods, that's sort of japanese Shinto) but most of the world's religeon  goes back to a few men who had sort of similar thoughts around the same time and in the same place, give or take a century and a few thousand miles.

Maybe a touch more, Zoro may go farther back, and is farther west (Iran), I still think he's underrated, maybe the greatest single influence ever?

Damn John Ashcroft and his buddy Tom Ridge. Damn our panicked, silly anti-terrorism binge. Damn the American lack of restraint, common sense, and patience. And double damn our unrealistic expectations which allow politicians to lie, to make false promises, and to simplify and spin real problems into campaign sound bites with simple cures.

What brings this up? Fermilab is closed to the public! What has always been a community asset, a sort of national park, is now a closed government compound, maybe not Area 51, but the locals now have very limited access. You can walk or bicycle in, but you can not drive even to Wilson Hall, the hi-rise "brain" building. In order to buy tickets to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, we have to call or go on-line to get a security clearance just to go to the box office to get tickets. Damn.

Yes, I know that 9-11-01 changed the country, and like anyone else, this has torn me up. But what has caused more damage, the act, or our shallow reactions? Does anyone really believe that we can defend against any and all terrorism?

When I first started going to Fermilab in 1969, there was still a Weston police car parked on the street. The fire trucks were still labeled Los Alamos. Farmhouses and buildings still stood. And, even in the middle of construction, people were welcome. I have walked in the ring tunnel, and watched the magnets being installed. Scientist's riding "company" tricycles would stop and talk. People came in just to see buffaloes. Visitors were encouraged, and many of us came, and have continued to enjoy the reservation, right into this millineum. Then terror struck.

I've been there, personally and professionaly, ever 1969. Drove, biked, walked, dug, paved, poured, and delivered. And I enjoyed every minute. I've practiced driving, and taught my daughter to drive, there. Now I'm out in the cold. And it hurts, bad.

What terrorist target is there? Sure, you could do damage, but there wouldn't be any major disaster, people in Warrenville or Batavia aren't at any great risk. You could kill a few, but there aren't any great crowds, nobody depends on the lab for anything more than their jobs. You could cause more damage by bombing the restraurant at Washington and Chicago, or any telephone exchange, than by leveling Fermilab.

More security, sure, sign people in. Search cars? Sure, they always could, there have always signs at the entrances saying you are subject to search. When they stopped through traffic, you had to leave from the same gate you entered, that was inconvient, but made sense, the traffic was bad. But close the whole place? Why? Really, WHY???

After watching a few parades this summer, I started thinking about floats. Could you mount a garden tractor's hydrostatic axle on a frame, mount the engine remotely, and run hoses to the axle? You would know, I have no idea how they are arranged, so I headed to the library. Nothing on lawn tractors, but I grabbed a couple of tractor books, anyway, here we go again.

I knew that Ford of England called it's tractors "Fordson", but I didn't know the story. Now I do. It's because of a con-man from Minneapolis, which was the center of tractor development in the early part of the century. At least thirty companies built tractors there, plus seven across the city line in St. Paul, and several others in the area. Minneapolis-Moline was sort of the I.H.C. of the north, two "Minneapolis" companies got together, along with the Moline (Illinois) Implement (nee Plow) company. Did you know that M-M was merged into White in 1969, along with Oliver and some Canadian company named Cockshutt?

In 1916 W. Baer Ewing paid Paul B. Ford to use his name in the "Ford Tractor Company", so they could cash in on Henry's fame. Not able to use his name on his new tractors, "Henry Ford and Sons" was incorporated a year later, hence "Fordson". Cracks me up, Henry Ford was chumped out of his own name. Fordson did pretty well for a while, but in 1928 production was moved to Cork, Ireland, partly because of the huge Russian market, and partly because of one of Henry's political brainstorms (which went sour). He may have sold a lot of tractors (and trucks) to Russia, but he lost much of his American market. In 1933 production was moved to Dagenham, England, maybe Ford still builds tractor there, in 1939 production started back in the U.S.A., using the Ford name, since Ewings's smoke and mirrors act only lasted a couple of years, he apparently took it on the lam to Canada.

Fordsons were fairly sucessful when built here, they weren't the best, but they were light, cheap, and easy to maintain, partly because they had so many common automotive ("T" and later "A") parts. One weakness, if the plow hit a rock or hard spot the tractor often wheelied up and over onto it's back, maybe killing the driver. This was a common problem, but the light, short wheelbase Fordsons were especially suseptable. When American production restarted in 1939, Harry Ferguson's idea, the three point hitch, beat the wheelies. Not being a farmer, this hitch never made sense to me, but by placing the "pulling" links under the axle line, the nose was pulled down, not up, big safety improvement. (I've heard of Harry before, he was an Irish tractor genius, some of his stuff has spread to autos and trucks.) When Henry II (dead Edsel's son) took over from his grandfather in 1946 he immediately fucked Harry, who got 1/37th of his agreed upon cut. So much for "Ford-Ferguson" agreement, which was a "Henry built, Harry sold" deal. The grey and red color scheme lasted until 1962, when the blue came.

I can hardly talk about farm tractors without mentioning Deere. Like any machine person, I have been impressed by the two cylinder "poppin' Johnny", how can anything so crude work. It's not often that you can actually see an engine work stroke by stroke. I was surprised to see it's time frame, they didn't start selling until after W.W.I, and kept on to 1959. The thing was "conservative" when first designed, it didn't even get a water pump until 1950, when Korean War copper shortages made them switch to crappier steel radiators.

After W.W.II Caterpillar had such a demand for construction equipment that they cut a marketing deal with Deere, refering all agricultural orders to Moline. Think Cat wishes that they had those customers back today?

A few diesel Deeres in the '50s had "Jimmys", and I saw a (not Deere) reference to a 2-71. 2-71? I've known 3-53s and 4-71s, but 2-71? That's weird. Most tractor manufactures seem to build their own engines. Other than GM one vendor does stand out, Contintental. The only time I've seen them has been in army trucks or rotten old junker machines, but they seem to have been respected in their day. I don't really know much about Contential, hmmm. There are a few Hercules's out there, I didn't realize they were a separate brand, I thought they were a model of Contintental. Then there is the odd Perkins, Buda (another ?), and recently a few Cummins, but usually the V-903 (this is a 903 c.i. V8?, right), rather than the 855 c.i. NH series.

Surely the 1938 Minneapolis-Moline U-DLX (U model DeLuXe) Comfortractor in Prairie Gold must be the coolest American tractor. I didn't realize that it had a two seat cab, it was meant to be driven to town on weekends, saving the need for an auto. The Europeans did this, but the distances are shorter. When I was driving in Germany (1972-1973) tractors were on the road regularly, pulling trailers. They looked like warehouse/airport "tugs" to me, with front fenders and fairly wide front tires, but I don't know if it's Frau Lander's ride to Kirche on Sonnetag any longer.

No religion? No, I've been from Animism to Zoroaster, maybe something will come up, but I'm done for now.

How about language? Yes, Sara (age 15) found something that I liked, this is from one of her e-mails, letter for letter:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Petrty amzanig huh?

MS Word's "spell-checker" got most of those words right. The third and fourth words are wrong, it should be either "a researcher" or "research", neither fits, but how easy would it be to make a typo in this paragraph? Still, I noticed, did you? This is sort of the same thing my father learned from Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics years ago, you only read a word or two from each line, and fill in the blanks. He wasn't very impressed, you can read very fast and get the general idea, but not details, and we Earharts often appreciate details.

Leave it to the "quads" (dogs) to show me how man changes the environment. I have been walking them in Manville Oaks Park (north of Wilson Street and east of the E.J.& E) for years. This is a field that has gone to short-cut grass, with some clumps of bushes. When the girls started sniffing around a hole in the bushes, I realized that there was a culvert under them, in fact, most of the bushes are in a line running along a dip in the field. Now I see the forest through the trees, there used to be a creek here, now it's underground. The clumps of bushes must be where the pipes are broken and water leaks out.

I think I told you about what I thought was an old cow subway under Wilson Street. Old farmer Bill (south side of Wilson, Phoebe's owner) said it was only a culvert, but water wouldn't run under it now. If the grade was a couple of feet lower, though, then an area west of the tracks (in Fermilab, possibly another B. farm) would drain under the tracks and street and on to Kress Creek, right along the line of bushes. I knew that you guys drained fields, but an entire creek underground for close to a mile?

Enough for now? Probably too much, very little content per word. Later.

Yours truly,

John D.

I am now supposed to write one hour a day, when at my mental peak.  When would that be, twenty minutes after I'm dead?  Anyway, I now have a schedule, so guess who hasn't turned on this machine in a couple of weeks?  Quick, more drivel, I have to catch up.

Linda and I saw a cartoon "Greek job" (rear-ender) a few days ago.  Jap pickup stopped short for a light, and the moron in a small sedan behind did a perfect "submarine".  As the car wedged under the PU's step bumper the grill and hood ripped up and over.  Remember how hoods occasionally opened up and folded over the windshield in the old days, before the second latches were standard?  That's what happened, all #2 could  see was hood (and airbag).  #2 may actually have struck the PU's rear axle, and the step bumper was inches from the windshield of the moron.  #1 looked undamaged, I'm sure that it was a "pick it up off and drive it away" deal.

"Future Shock" is how you hit your "peak" early, get comfortable in your world, then watch everything you know become obsolete.  I have always had a bad case relative to driving, hitting 120 M.P.H. in twenty seconds was a hell of a rush, even if it did take "miles" for eight inch drum brakes to bring reality back.  We used to cruse the tollways at 90 M.P.H. and my MGB-GT used to hit 110 M.P.H. on the way to work in Park Ridge.  Then insurance, fuel prices, and reason took it all away.  Damn but I miss the sound of a small block when you take your foot out of it at six grand, and the 10.25 to one compression slams the tach back down, shifts used to really be fast back then.

The good guys put their cars on trailers, we half-assed guys either bought bikes or became obsolete, and the world went the way of custom paint jobs, interiors, and massive sound systems.  Mechanical competence faded away, self serve fuel showed up, and I was sad.  What kind of an idiot measures an automobile in watts?  Boosters aren't springs, but amps?  What the hell, was amateur hot rodding really dead?

Maybe, I didn't see much of it for years.  Of course, we had a couple of pitiful automobile decades, but even when technology and stupidity brought some autos close to "crotch rocket" bike technology levels, it seemed like they were operated by mechanical idiots.  But hot rodding is back in town, only speaking Spanish.

I have recognized dingle balls and fuzzy dashboards as an art form, even if I thought it was a stupid one.  Low riders were functionally moronic, but funny.  I didn't go over the edge until ultra short/wide wheels migrated to trucks, a Blazer screaming down the street on those tiny tires with the frame bottoming out on the crown of an intersection was almost to much for me.  Fortunately the current trend is to taller wheels and keeping the tires in the wheel wells.

Turns out the real action is in the shitboxes.  I'm sure you have seen those tiny Hondoos with the blatty mufflers, I thought that was the current type of glass packs, noisy but no improvement in power.  Maybe they are sometimes, but not always.

I was talking to a kid working on one of these dwarfs in a parking lot, and was surprised that Spanglish or not, it was machine talk.  The car had a 96 bla bla, but he swapped in a 99 bla bla.  It wasn't a 396 325 h.p. (hydraulic lifters) for a 375 h.p. (solids), but I recognized that he was talking engine codes.  This guy is an "engranaje cabeza" (dictionary Spanish for "gear head").

This impressed me, so I "bought a book" (magazine, actually).  "Drifting" is an a.k.a. for screaming four wheel power slides.  There is some race series in Japan, around here drifters seem to  head for parking lots for S.C.C.A. autocross type slaloms, and watch Pro Rallys.  These were my passions in the early '70s, before Audi pioneered AWD racing and turbos became responsive (remember "turbo lag"?).

The kid had a dressed up engine compartment, I have no idea what was "show" or "go", but he was proud.  How much the average kid can afford is beyond me, but the articles and ads are stunning.  Sequencial twin turbos, water cooled waste gates, and air to air intercoolers seem pretty cutting edge to me.

Ragged edge, too, these guys blow up motors.  No wonder.  With a turbo and computer controls you can make almost unlimited power, pros have 300 to 500 h.p., amateurs seem to crowd 200 h.p.  Out of 2 liters (122 c.i.) or less.  Damn.

I've included an Edelbrock turbo kit article, a review of a current pro car, and the ads that are on the same pages.  The "flopped negative" opening picture of the "A'PEXi" RX 7 is a joke, the original jap racer was right hand drive, so they made a "mirror image" left drive version for the U.S.A.  You may not care about the details, but with a quick  glance you'll recognize the thinking and get the idea.  Economy shitboxes have come quite a way.  Still japs, though.

Back to the real world.  Although I'm rather a Chevy person, I have always had a very high opinion of Chrysler engineering.  So when they hooked up with Benz (who I consider to be the best) it made sense to me.  I'm not crazy about the looks of the new Jeep Liberty, but I can see some Benz influence and think I understand.  And now, Dodge.

Sara and I noticed a Dodge van mutant a while ago, there was a demo in front of Menard's.  This is a pure Euro-American hi-bred.  Someone took a saws-it-all and cut the van at the belt line.  Then they welded the roof of a M-B Postal van on top.  It sort of falls between a van and a hi-cube cab-chassis.  Then they drop a five-cylinder Benz "smoker" engine with a trick transmission in.

I noticed a new trick, although they don't really push it.  Variable Turbine Geometry.  Looks like they mounted a brake can between the two sides of the turbo, with a rod to some adjustable blade deal, not clear how it works, but you get the idea.

Ford is bragging about their new truck, saying it has the only all welded frame.  Welding a ladder frame is a reason to brag?  I thought that they were bolted for strength, for modification and repair, and to keep welding heat from changing the steel.  Of course, a welding robot has a simpler health plan than a human on a power wrench, but what American corporation would want to cut jobs?

Enough wheels.  While sitting in the basement of the city museum reading about an 1865 carpenter (A.H. Hills literally "built" the city) I think I may have stumbled onto a blast from the past for you.  Were you aware that there was a landing strip on Batavia Avenue between Route 59 and the tracks?  Did you know that Batavia-Warrenville Road (earlier a.k.a. Corporation) was surveyed at a distance of 10.5 miles by November 19, 1845?  Do you care?
I've enclosed a newspaper article and two maps.  In 1974 there was a "Sanchez" farm, the next year it was an avenue.  It appears that Patterman and Kuhn sold out about then, too.  Either you or Guy attach to Pattermans, right?

'Nuff for now.

John D.

Hope things are going smooth there.  So far, I haven't seen anything about "not Inc." being dismantled or sold, hope for you guys that nothing is going on.

I'm in kind of a slump in my writing, I'm not pulling down one hour per day, and what I do write is pretty negative.  In this electronic age, no trees are being wasted, but since Macs have a "Trash" instead of "Recycle", am I wasting electrons when I file my letters where they belong?

I was walking the "quads" by the "drain tile" when they both went nuts.  Turning around, I saw "old farmer Bill" heading toward me in a golf cart, with his dog Phoebe riding shotgun.  What a riot.  When he pulls up she bails out, then she and my Jax hook up and check out some bushes.  Doesn't the park district mind him motoring around?  Since he's selling them his land cheap, they cut him some slack.  Look what they're doing to his barn, though.

He hand built it, starting in 1933, the lintels over the windows are poured in place concrete, hand mixed.  He has shown me around, telling me how they modified it when they switched from cows to cattle (I now know the difference).  Many of the planks come from Soldier Field, they were benches replaced in some long ago renovation, you can see old bolt holes.  So the park district is fixing it up, sort of.  They are replacing the shingle roof with metal panels, like a pole barn.  Instead of restoring this classic, they are making it look like a fast food restaurant.  Bill's Burger Barn?  Crap!

I thought I had heard just about everything about American paper money over the years.  Special paper, no-smear ink, now the color changes, bla bla bla.  Then this morning I heard that it reacts to magnets!  There is iron in the ink formula!  I immediately went to the refrigerator, got a magnet, then grabbed Sara's lunch money.  It's not very strong, but if you let the bill hang and bring the magnet near the side of the bottom of the bill, it will move a sixteenth, maybe even an eighth, of an inch.  Damn.

I've been hanging out in the basement of our city museum.  They have boxes of old tools, so I identify them by name, measure them, and write down any markings, especially trade marks and owners initials.  My first project was carpenters tools, with maybe twenty-five wood planes.  I can figure out what they do, but with no knowledge of woodworking, getting the specific names right takes work.  Do you know the difference between a fillister and a reverse ogee?  Did you know that those clamps with twin screws and two parallel(ish) arms are not clamps, but cramps?  Do you care?

My best work so far was some "plaster tools", why would you need double ended spoons and trowels that look like bent butter knives?  You wouldn't, they are "foundry tools", you shape the sand mold with them before you pour in the molten metal.  Why are they here, a blacksmith wouldn't cast metal, would he?  Probably not, but a railroad shop would have a casting forge to make countless steam engine replacement parts, and this is an old railroad town.  (I wonder if Detroit still casts with sand, if a 1956 265 small block was sand cast, then a 2003 350, with the same basic design, must also be, right?  But that means that there must still be an army of craftsmen making a lost mold for every single engine block.  That doesn't seem possible today, does it?  Hmmm.)

Anyway, as long as they keep me out of sight and pay me what I'm worth (nothing), I don't detract from the city, and I get to Xerox various maps and stuff.  It gets me out of my basement, even if only into another, older one (the museum is in the 1884 Town Hall).
While sitting in the museum basement I got interested in a local Lincoln legend, trying to help with background info on railroads.  Then I started to write to you about it, but the letter sort of got sidetracked to the museum.  So this time you are getting your letter after it has been edited.  Confused?  You know that I am.

Local legend has it that Lincoln and Douglas met in West Chicago (then Junction) during their 1858 debates.  Senator Douglas was supposed to have missed his train to Freeport, and while waiting for another one, he had a chance meeting with Mr. Lincoln.  In 1928 the West Chicago Womenís Club put a plaque on the property where the "lost debate" allegedly took place, the old "Hickory Grove".  The Sandpiper restaurant now occupies the site (S.W. corner of Route 59 and Washington Street/Geneva Road), the (bent) plaque is in the museum basement.

Unfortunately for West Chicago, the legend seems possible, but very unlikely.  Most of the people who signed affidavits for the Women's club  are recounting childhood memories.  A couple remember the candidates speaking from a wagon or hayrack, one remembers only Lincoln.  Several "clearly" remember both men, but the oldest of these witnesses was eight at the time, seventy years before. Not real convincing.

Retired Newspaper editor (and local hero) John Neltnor recalled several incidents, sort of, but he tells it more as history than as a first hand account.

This leaves most of the details in the hands of Mrs. Emory Watson, and her younger sister in law Henrietta Watson Norris.  As a captain in the "Douglas Ever-Readys", a woman's political society from "Blackberry", Mrs. Watson had very clear and detailed memories.  Too many to fit in one day, actually, and she contradicts not only known facts, but also her sister in law.  Huh?

Mrs. Watson has a great tale, kind of an Elburn legend.  Mr. Lincoln spent the night after the debate near "Blackberry " (or maybe in Kaneville Township) at a "cousin's" (more likely friend's) farm, planning to take a hayride to the rally the next day.  He missed the Republican "True Hearts" wagon, though, and rode with Mrs. Watson's Democrats instead.  Nice story, but how could he spend the day after the debate meeting with Douglas, who misses his train going to the debate?  And why are there long, organized hayrides to a chance meeting?

It's as if Mrs. Watson is confusing more than one event, which makes perfect sense, she probably is.  There were at least three documented political rallies in this grove, people had been meeting there since "Indian pow wows".  People just naturally seem to meet on that hill and talk.

The main story seems to be based on August 28, 1858, the day after the Lincoln/Douglas debate in Freeport.  Both Douglas and Lincoln spent the night of the 27/28th in Freeport (they were both registered in the hotel), then presumably both got on trains.  Douglas arrived at Junction in the afternoon of the 28th for a pre-planned, advertised, and newspaper reported rally in "Hickory Grove".  This really happened.  In his speech he mentioned Lincoln, and some hecklers "gave three cheers".  This probably happened.  But was Abe himself there?  Maybe.  But it's a long shot.

After Freeport, Douglas took the Northwestern to Junction, gave his speech, then went on to Chicago.  Lincoln left Freeport, and was at El Paso (not Texas, but a downstate I.C. connection to Peoria) later the same day.  It is almost possible he took the same train as Douglas, made an appearance at Hickory Grove, then took the Burlington to the I.C. at Mendota, then to El Paso.  Maybe.

It's far more likely he took the I.C. strait south to El Paso.  In the 1850's the I.C. could average just over fifteen M.P.H., the other lines were probably about the same.  Lincoln could have made the 115 mile direct route to El Paso in time, but a side trip to the Junction with connections on two additional lines would have made the distance more than 200 miles. That's a lot of ground to cover before El Paso, especially since the Junction rally didn't even start until afternoon.

Mr. Neltnor mentioned a "Fremont" (not to be confused with "Freeport") rally which happened two years earlier.  In 1856 the Republican party had just formed, and was running John C. Fremont for president.  Abe made at least fifty speeches during this campaign, and passed through Junction several times, he may have been in Junction and been overlooked by the Chicago papers.  Maybe.

Abraham Lincoln wasnít the only tall Republican in Illinois.  John A. Farnsworth (like the Avenue in Aurora) was at the Douglas rally, and may have been here at other rallies, too. Could he be mistaken for Lincoln by the locals?  Maybe.

As for Douglas missing his train, no way.  He rolled into Freeport the evening of the 26th on a special Northwestern train, Abe came in from Dixon on an I.C. special the next morning.

There seems to be no solid evidence that Abe ever set foot in Junction.  On the other hand, this was a major transportation hub at the time. Abe is known to have taken both the Northwestern and the Burlington to and from Chicago, it's a sure bet that he at least passed through here (the "Q" main line through Naper didn't open until 1864).  And back then, "passed through" probably meant waiting for fuel and water, maybe even having lunch or changing trains.  There are lots of stories of Abe hanging around other train stations, waiting for connections, maybe he waited here.  Douglas may have, too.  One of these stopovers may have influenced the legend.  Maybe.

My feeling is that both Lincoln and Douglas were here, both probably more than once.  Douglas stumped in "the Grove" for sure, and it's possible Lincoln did, too. They both quite possibly had lunch, or at least stretched their legs, between trains on other occasions.  But speaking at the same time?  Sure, it's possible, but the odds are pretty long.  Sorry ladies, the best I can say is "maybe".

While digging through the files, I was struck by how this is similar to trying to find an "historic Jesus" from the Bible.  You have a few facts and stories spun by different people for different reasons over time.  I would see the same facts(?) and phrases coming from different places, and interpreted differently, like the four gospels.  The central characters had some similarities, too.  "Hicks from the sticks", apparently self-educated, who turn out to be far more than you would expect.

Well, it's been a hell of a week, and now this letter is deep in December.  Leaving here, more later.

Sincerely,

John D.

As dull as my world can be, I was rather overwhelmed last week.  So much happened, by the weekend I was ready to hide in a corner (rather than a basement, where I usually hide).

Walt's Mobil was torn down Monday.  Walt Lies (another early kraut family in DuPage, Lies Road is by Carol Stream) was a town fixture when we moved here.  I'm a graduate of the gas station school, I knew that the owners were often respected members of the community, but Walt rose above the average.  He was on the school board, usually the "Grand Master" of parades and events, his ad was in every paper, fundraser, newsletter, or program in town.  He had a "fleet" (two or three) of those "Mobil One" Trans Ams, rode a mineature one (a go-kart with a body) in every parade, people (like me) who would never buy Mobile gas used his station as a news stand, bought trash stickers (with no markup) there, and would greet him when meeting on the street.  You know who I mean, you have probably known a Walt or two yourself.

As the power of "service stations" went down, and his age went up, Walt fell behind the times.  When I was pushing snow off his drive, he had sublet his two "bays" to a local mechanic (whose family also has streets named after them).  In time his station, with it's four pumps, lost out to "self service" stations.  There were problems with his franchise (I think it ended up with a new station manned by "Patels"), taxes, and leaky tanks, finally he closed it down, another unsellable gas station.  Walt got feeble, went to a "home", then died.  I remember his last parade, no go-kart, and few people recognized him.  Sad.

The city condemned his property, like many others on Main Street west of Route 59.  A city improvement program has been going on in the area, I have hauled concrete to it, and they are still going.  Anyway, that's the story of "Walt's", I'm sure you have seen the same story in Yorkville or Bristol.

Then Auntie Ethel died.  In many ways it was a "mercy" death, she was eighty and worn out.  She had been bouncing between hospitals and "homes" for a couple of weeks, but it was pretty hopeless, every time they moved her she broke a rib, or her (replaced) hip popped out, and she didn't get the best care.  With a living will, and her strong opinion known, when she lost consciousness she was soon unplugged, an hour later she was comfortable (finally).

Auntie Ethel was Linda's mother's older sister, the "sisters" lived three houses apart, Matty knew the block.  With their seven combined kids, friends, and the "ethnic" family organization, the sisters were a power on the block.  When "Gram" died, Ethel became the family matriarch, and stayed fairly active in the roll until the end.  She had been a "den mother" (even Linda had a Cub Scout uniform), Uncle Johnny was the "troop leader" when the boys got older, then she became "Gram" and "Great Gram".  She was never alone, there were always kids around her, although many of them (like me) had grey hair in the later days.

 I've been away from religeon lately (I'm missing the The Di Vinci Code trend), so three ceremonies in as many hours (funeral home, mass, cemetery) was a drag.  You must remember my "respect" for the organization in Rome, but you may not remember my love of the japs.  Does the lack of a capital "j" give you a clue?  It's political, not racist, I don't hate the Chinese, I noticed that during "eastern religeons".  I just agree with Dub, "it's the same people who made Zeros".  Anyway, having a jap Catholic priest mispronounce Ethel in a cartoon accent all morning didn't improve my opinion of either Rome or japan.

I don't know if you guys really listen to the service, or if you are used to it.  It seems to me that Catholics tend to read a specific service out, with very little ad-libbing.  Very structured.  And what this priest read out pissed me off.  Maybe there are various different forms, and he chose a mean one, but this service seemed far less about Ethel and far more about everyone else better shape up or they won't be rewarded in heaven.

Then he said that communion was for "practicing Catholics only".  Duh, of course, but that sounded pretty rude, I don't remember hearing that before.  Is it just me?  No, at the restraurant even the old school Catholics had noticed it, this guy wasn't really popular.  And he had pissed a bunch of people off by driving like an asshole.  It's not just me (this time).  This guy is a jerk.

Sara (age 16) recently bought her first "professional" trumpet, most of the money came from my parents.  So when my mother asked her to go out and play for "The Salvation Army", there wasn't much choice.  We bought her a Christmas music "fake book" (I don't know why it's called that), she spent a few hours practicing, then she headed to Fields at Oak Brook to play next to a kettle.  Apparently sucessfully, she says she "really brought in the money".

This week was also Sara's debut with the Jazz Combo at school.  This is in the theater in real chairs instead of in a gym with bleachers, actually comfortable.  She's not loud enough, but she's good, and very at ease.  It's not like the days when she tried so hard to get it right, she's smooth and confident and having a good time.

I had almost made it through the week, or so I thought.  I was reading late Friday night when bang...bang...bangbangbang.  What the fuck, that's gunfire.  I look out the door (not the picture window) and see the people across the street coming out of their house like a Chineese fire drill.  Nobody is hurt, but the area is soon full of cops.

The people across the street are a Mexican family with maybe three twenty yearish old males, a fair amount of traffic, but no loud music, booze, or gang signs apparent. I was told that they were dealing, but I have never seen any signs, and the person who told me was at the time dealing Vika-something pain pills out of the crash pad next door, ironic, huh?  They are only half English, so we don't communicate much, but they are friendly and we get along.  One of the kids may be a target, but it's not odvious, who knows?

I know that some people think I live in the "Wild West", but these are the first gunshots I've heard up close since the Army.  My immediate area has been pretty safe, other than the crash pad all the houses are owned by families, whatever the language.  The yuppie bitch across the street can't remember to close her front door when she leaves (her garage is open as I sit here), yet no one steals from even such a tempting target.

I knew that the cops would be by, so I left the lights on, opened the curtain, and waited.  Sure enough, "come on in, the dogs won't bite, and it's to cold for me to go outside".

"Well, officer, it was 11:24 (right), sounded like five shots (six, actually), some small auto pistol (.32 calibre, what kind of wimp has a .32?).  No car, and nobody came across Forest (he apparently hoofed it South).  Sorry I can't help you more."

What a marksman. Out of six shots from less than fifty feet, he hit the house three times, and the pattern was a big triangle, fifteen feet per side.  In the center was a picture window, he missed it low left, low right, and high, about a foot below the roof.  That peashooter is probably more dangerous being thrown than fired, even if it was aimed effectively.  Why would someone even bother to sell .32 auto ammo, the lead would be more dangerous in a pencil.  Frankly, I'm more pissed than scared.

Saturday morning I go to the hardware store, why is everyone milling around in the lot?  The owner's wife comes around, crying, they've been robbed, and won't open until the police are done.  Robbed a hardware store?  Almost as slick as our "shooter", someone threw a brick through the front window, jumped in, and emptied the registers.  The broken front window, right at Main and Washington, went unnoticed until the owner showed up the next morning.  How many cops had blindly driven through that intersection, not noticing a broken window?  They must have been thinking of the ".32 calibre killer".

That was it, after that much (and more that I have forgotten) the goddess of boredom took pity on me and took me under her wing.  I'm back to blankly staring, with nothing to interest me, and it's about time.

Season's greetings, and you have a vacation coming up, don't you?  Enjoy.

Sincerely,

John D.

How was your vacation?  Is it possible to not enjoy Disney, it's not something I've ever heard of?  I hope you missed Pluto getting run over by a float.  I think they said it was the first fatal since the place opened.

This letter got out of hand again, so I'm cutting way back (lucky for you, right?), and making two separate sections, "Amelia Earhart" and "The Hitlers".  They connected by Lockheed leading to old German airfields with bunkers leading to The Bunker.  Strange brain, huh?

You may remember that assholes blowing red lights pisses me off about as much as anything on the planet, so saying I was a touch upset last week would be a gross understatement.

Lara (age 22) wasn't hurt bad when the senile old bitch from South Elgin blew through the red light and broadsided her.  Her four door Cavelier was hit square on the rear axle, so she spun around in place.  Seat belt and air bag bruises only.

Unit 1 (Lara) was standing NB in left(west) turn lane, Unit 2 was SB in inside lane when light turned yellow.  Car in front of Unit 2 (SB outside lane) easily stopped, and both Lara and excellent witness thought ("it looked like") Unit 2 was slowing, so Lara completes her left turn.  Almost.

Since Lara did turn left, she gets the ticket, even though the witness says the impact happened on a red light.  What can you say, the old lady fooled Lara by being unbelieveable stupid.  Shit.

Since this happened at Forest and 59, and Lara has a phone, I beat all but maybe one cop to the scene.  I listened to the cop interview the bat, he had to explain what direction on what street in what town she was at.  I was pissed, but I checked out the scene, and I knew what I was looking at.

Old bitch had at least 150 foot warning when light turned yellow, and after the impact she drove at least 300 feet more.  450 feet and an impact to stop from 35-40 M.P.H.??? Shit.

My first guess is that the old bitch's foot may have slipped from the brake to the throttle.  If she started to slow and then changed her mind, it was almost(?) criminally stupid.  Maybe she had a fit or something.

Bottom line, she lost control of her car, either physically or mentally.  Lara just didn't appreciate  how incompetent the old hag was, and paid the price.

Which was $7,000.  That is the estimate, which means that the blue book $3,000 Chevy was more than twice totaled.  Other than the trans failing at 45,000 miles, that was a pretty nice car, but Lara is checking out MoPars as well as GMs.

She was damn lucky to only have bruises.  If she had been hit farther forward, in the right side door, she would have been knocked sideways, maybe brain problems.

She probably didn't need the air bag, and it really stunk up everything we took out of the car (odviusly totaled from start).  The old bat, who hit dead on, probably was helped by it, especially as I don't think she was belted.  Since Lara's belt bruised her it must have done some good, you know that in my family the belt is always assumed.  I still think that brains and belts beat idiots and air bags any day.

Sara (age 16) is currently in Driver's Ed (lowest common denominator gym teacher class) so she has gotten a dramatic "Anatomy of a Crash 101" course, taught by a fanatic.  Lara herself is a pretty responsible and conservative driver, whatever she learns is already obsolete, someone even dumber is already out on the road gunning for her.

Now it's a week later, Lara is back in business.  Her State Farm treated her okay, rental Grand Am, reasonable settlement.  She turned around and bought a '01 Cavilier, just like the '96, it has every option except an "H.O." motor.  She couldn't find a four door with "windows/locks", which a four door needs, so she got a coupe instead.  Catch 22, the coupe doesn't really need them.  Oh well, she doesn't haul her friends around much anymore, the back seats are mostly book storage, and she likes the improved vision.  The last one was ugly teal blue/green, this one is an handsom tan, so they sort of average out.  And the coupe has an incredible factory CD/radio setup.  I just hope the transmission holds out.

It was time for my yearly gun fix, Gun Buyers Annual 2004.  I started out disappointed, nobody is showing the M-1 carbine, has this sweet old gem finally bit the dust?  Ruger has been chipping away at it for years, the Mini-14 seems to have finally finished it off.  I think the Mini-14 is a cool toy, a nineteen fortiesh  style with a modern (even if fucked?) round.  But the Carbine was the last real W.W.II army gun, now we really live in an assault gun world, the M-16 has won.

Then I got to page 150, and cheered up. Here is a whole new toy-type, "military" style shotguns.

European American Army sells various knock-offs, from the "Bounty Hunter" to the "Windicator", from some Florida P.O. (drop?) box.  They are kind of interesting, but I have no clue if they are real guns.  The Saiga is kind of AK-47 looking, with a box magazine, but it doesn't have a separate pistol grip.  Maybe some "anti-assault gun" law?

The Omega (whoever they are) SPS-12 grabs your eye immediately.  It's a very close ringer to the B.A.R.  The gas cylinder looks like a tube magazine, but this is a box magazine auto shotgun.  And the sillouette and general look cannot be mistaken for anything other than a B.A.R.

I understand the Omega immediately.  Guy could have blasted his refrigerator (stove?) either as Clyde Barrow (who used a sawed-off B.A.R.!) or Linda's 6 foot 3 inch Uncle Eddy (who followed Patton around Europe).  Since it's kind of tough to use a full size full-auto rifle in your backyard, this would seem to be a great substitute when "playing army".  But, frankly, the AK-47 thing doesn't seem right.  Maybe if it had a pistol grip and a smaller round (it is offered in 20 gauge and .410 caliber), but who wants to play "Commie guerilla" anyway?

Where did these play shotguns lead to?  Real combat shotguns.  I hauled one around an ammo dump once, so I was curious.

Like many other people, I believed that shotguns were "illegal" in military combat operations and that you could only use it as a police weapon.  Wrong.

This "urban myth" goes back to 1918, when an American was captured by the Krauts while carrying an issue Winchester Model 97 "trench gun".  The Kaiser complained thru the Swiss that the soldier was carrying a weapon prohibited by the 1907 Hague Convention as causing "superfluous injury" or "unecessary suffering" (translates either way), and would be excecuted.  It is always pointed out that the man who introduced "flame throwers" and "poison gas" to Europe had pretty big balls to complain about shotguns being inhumane.

The American lawyers thought about it, then answered Mr. Wilhelm.  Since shotguns had been used as a military weapon since the blunderbus, and were deadly at the short ranges they were being used at, they were in fact a legal weapon.  Therefore, for every American excecuted, one German would be excecuted.

"Billy" never answered back.  He was rather pre-occupied with packing his bags and running away to Holland.  So that's where we stand today.  Any time the Germans want to excecute an American for a shotgun, we'll be glad to excecute a German in return.  No one else has ever complained.

Although a shotgun may be "legal", the shell may not.  The Hague Convention of 1899 prohibits projectiles which expand on impact, like a "dum-dum" or hollow-point, this is the "full metal jacket" rule.  The U.S. is not party to this agreement, but we follow it anyway.  And pure lead shotgun pellets do expand.

Which is why the military specifically uses alloy pellets.  The lead pellets expand and deform when the gun is fired, as they go down the barrel, and when they exit the muzzle.  This means unpredictable shot patterns, which the military hates, so they stay away from all-lead pellets.  But it does mean that a civillian all-lead shell would be illegal in military combat.

I wonder what shells we used in W.W.I, maybe the Kaiser just cited the wrong law.  1907, nein, 1899, ja.  Still, after mustard gas,...

British tests show that at short range (30 and 75 yards) a shotgun is twice as effective as an assault rifle, and even beats a sub-machine gun.  I believe that the smaller size, cost, and all metal cartridges probably lead to sub-machine guns coming out on top in the military.

Benelli and Heckler & Koch are getting together to build the new M-1014 Combat Shotgun, the Marines are already taking delivery.  Other than a sight rail, it looks like any pistol grip telescoping  stock cop gun.

This will be "our" first auto-loader, pumps were used before, because of the military need for  absolute reliability.  The new gun has a gas piston system, actually, two parallel systems.  Tube magazine, though, the ability to "top off" is important.  They say a box magazine is difficult in a prone position, but when would you use a riot gun lying down?

Enough guns.  Here comes Amelia Earhart and the Hitlers.  Enjoy.

Sincerely,

John D.

Amelia Earhart is a reoccurring interest of mine, wonder why that is?  I just came across an article in a Naval History Magazine site (www.usni.org/NavalHistory/Articles) written by Col. John P. Riley, who looks at her disappearance with new (or different, he's an old-timer, actually) eyes.  Some of this sounds reasonable, even though Col. Riley has a reputation as a crank.

In 1937 Amelia was heading for "tiny" Howland Island.  The U.S. government had sent some commo guys to the island on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Itasca, they were to set up direction finders, etc.  The Itasca was hanging around, to back up the specialists, to make smoke for visibility, and whatever.

When Amelia missed the island there were some mixed-up radio messages.  Wrong frequency, procedure, equipment.  Amelia has usually taken the hit for this, she was fairly radio-incompetent, but what if it wasn't Amelia, but the Itasca, that messed up?  Would it have worked Amelia's way if the Itasca had done things differently?  This guy thinks "yes".

First, there is no reason to think that Amelia's piloting (not necessarily the best) caused any problem, it was strait flying over an ocean with navigator Fred Noonan pointing the way.  Did she mess up with the radio?  Maybe, maybe not.

Noonan was a boozer, right?  There is absolutely no evidence that he ever drank in the air, or that his work was ever affected.  Certainly not with tea-toter Amelia.  Drunk stories seem to start in the 1960's in Fred Goertner's now pretty much discredited conspiracy book.  In fact Fred Noonan was one of the best navigators of the time.  As Chief Navigator and instructor for Pan Am he helped set up the "Clipper" routes and taught everyone else how to fly them.  Midway, Wake, Guam, Noonan was used to finding islands.   If anyone could find Howland, it was probably Noonan.

It's assumed that Noonan was weak at radio, too.  At Pan Am there were radio operators, that was not the navigator's job.  But Noonan "may" have had a two year old radio license, and "may" have relieved Pan Am operators, who used Morse code.  Maybe Amelia was ignorant, but Noonan "may" have been able to take care of her.

Col. Riley makes a case that the Captain of the Itasca made a very lame attempt to help Amelia, not giving the specialists ashore proper support, and not properly instructing his own men.  Then he may have started covering his ass.

Col. Riley also thinks the Itasca search was done neither logically nor by Coast Guard standards.  The results were misrepresented and exaggerated.  Log entries have been changed, and there may be a false radio log.  People contradict each other.  Then, of course, things get classified.

There are discrepancies, and you can "read between the lines".  There always are and you always can.  But what was the background?  Was the Captain covering up, or bragging?  What was he ordered to do?  What would a different Captain have done?  Was the captain any good?  Was the crew?  Was the ship?  What shape was the entire Coast Guard in?  Were they pros, or losers?

The ship is easy. Itasca was one of ten 250 foot "Lake" class cutters (Lake Itasca is where the Mississippi starts, in Minnesota).  Commissioned in 1930, it was modern, even advanced, for it's day.  It's steam turbine/A.C. electric drive was cutting edge, economy and excellent control in ice.  Fastest, and with the longest range, of the class, Itasca worked hard, often in the Bearing Sea patrol.  The seven new "Treasury" 300 footers were launched in 1936-7, but until they were commissioned, the Itasca may well have been "the pride of the fleet".

I would think that the best ship in the Coast Guard would have the best crew, but that's an assumption.  From the radio logs it appears that some radiomen were less than good at spelling and grammar, but what would you expect from a "sailor" (or "guardsman"?) in the mid-thirties?

As for the Captain, I have no idea, and since he died two years later (and right before a major naval war), there doesn't seem to be much background on him.  By the way, "Captain" was his job, his rank was "Commander" (equal to lieutenant colonel), one step below the rank "Captain" (bird colonel).

As to the changed logs, we've both been in the military, and know that it's common to spin and even change reports.  At the time Coast Guard radio logs were routinely retyped for neatness, and were not really exact copies.  (One operator had the foresight to keep his original, they were usually thrown out.)  With no recording to check, the operators used a sort of shorthand to jot down what they thought they heard at the time, then edited it later.  There are several probable mistakes, where similar sounding words would make more sense.

Where does a "cover-up" start?  Everyone in service, especially a commanding officer, wants to look good.  "Cover your ass" is an art form, but so is getting an "excellent" on efficiency reports.  And you have to be good at both to ever get promoted.

The captain died, in 1941 the Itasca went to England (becoming H.M.S. Gorleston) on a "lend-lease" deal, and Amelia was still missing.  Yet, with all the mystery and conspiracy theories then and now, this was the first time I have heard anyone suggest that the Coast Guard may have been at fault.  They are usually the standard that everyone else is measured by.

Even if the Coast Guard was lame, they really didn't owe Amelia anything.  She was on a dangerous (and argueably stupid) publicity stunt, which went wrong.  Oh, well.

As to conspiracy theories (usually "captured by the japs"), the first seems to come from an October  1937 Australian tabloid, which led to a cheap book and then a Rosalind Russell/Fred MacMurray movie.  Most "captured" stories seem to come from this line.  There's nothing in jap war records (that doesn't mean much, they could have burned them), or in American ones, about her, just a couple of "eyewitnesses".

The only warm trail leads to a British civil servant around 1940.  Gallagher thought he found her campsite (and possibly bones) on Gardner (now Nikumaroro) island.  He filed reports, talked, and mailed stuff, but it wasn't taken very seriously, soon he was dead, too.  Looking back, it appears that he may have been right, and if so, a floatplane from the battleship Colorado probably saw and reported her campsite a week after she was lost.  Ooops.

I believe that it is still possible that Amelia's plane will be found.  It's a fairly famous mystery, and a lot of money has been spent looking already, more will surely follow.  (TIGHAR at www.tighar.org is the major effort now, their sites are cool).  That will tell us where she crashed, but maybe not why.  From now on, whenever I think about her, I will wonder about Commander Warner K. Thompson.  Maybe not accuse, but wonder.

Amelia and Fred weren't the only people to get lost in that area, either.  A few years later, during the war, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker (the World War I ace) was on a secret mission, flying through the same area enroute Australia, when he got lost, ran out of fuel, and had to ditch.  In a fully crewed B-17!  They spent 22 days in rubber boats before they were found.

T.I.G.H.A.R., the people who have the lead in Amelia, are also interested in "lost" German planes and air facilities from the war.  Having been there once, I was hooked.  Soon I was mentally probing old bunkers, and, of course, German bunkers always lead to "The Bunker".  Looking around, I ran into Hitler, his whore, and a handful of henchmen.  But they weren't doing what I thought they would.

Between the fall of the Soviet Union and government changes in South America, a lot of Nazi stuff has come out in the last few years.  I read a few new books, a few old ones,  a few sites, and tried to average them out.

First, yes, Hitler is dead.  The body burned and buried outside the bunker almost certainly was him.  The piece of skull from the cardboard box on "The History Channel" may well be, too.  The Russians got much the evidence right from the start.

I was taught that the Commies lied about everything, and everything was a plot.  This may be true, Stalin did lie and sit on the results of the investigations, but if he released them there would have been even more conspiracy theories.  Because there are more questions than answers.

The Russian investigators on the ground in Berlin were good, and would have had the same job no matter what language and uniform. Military intelligence collected evidence and gave the bodies to the doctors.  When they were done, they gave what they had to the SMERSH guys, who tried to sort it out.  Maybe they partly spun it, maybe there were mistakes, maybe things were missed, and maybe they didn't understand, but what they gave Stalin couldn't have made him feel real comfortable.

He probably had Hitler, but only probably, not for sure.  He also had at least one possible  Hitler double, and suspected others.  And he may have been suspicious of Eva Braun, who's body may have been bogus.

What? A bogus Braun bod?  Believe it, the bimbo in the background may have pulled off a disappearing act, and the trail is so cold that you have to think hard to make even a wild guess how.

The actual con (if con it was) could have been done at the last minute by almost anyone.  The female in the ditch was killed by shrapnel wounds to the chest.  That is an easy diagnosis.  The body was Eva's size and age, but had a poor diet and bad teeth.  A bridge made for Eva was in her mouth, but someone may have pulled the stiff's teeth out and planted the bridge.  Which may not have been placed in the real Eva's mouth to start with.

Both almost Adolf and maybe Eva had cyanide capsules broken in their mouth, but it's not clear that either had it in their system.  Not poisoned?  Well, Adolf shot himself, right?  Maybe, maybe not.

Hold it, everyone knows that Adolf Hitler shot himself, either in the mouth or temple!  John, you have really lost it now!

No, everybody knows that the Nazis from the bunker said that Adolf shot himself.  But they were all professional liars and scum.  It's not clear that there was blood or brain splattered anywhere, just a couple of slow leaks.  In two different rooms!  And it is not a sure thing that there was a bullet wound in the Hitler skull.  In fact, there is no clear cause of death of the probable Hitler.

You've heard the "official" story, here are a couple of alternate thoughts.

How about this?  Capsule in mouth, shot under chin, driving jaw up to break glass.  Bullet kills before poison has a chance to work.  This is probably the only way that the "cardboard box skull" bullet hole makes any sense.  Could Hitler, with Parkinson's disease, fire a Walther P 38 (first shot double action, ask Tippy?), or did he need help?

Or.  Could Bormann, in a hurry to escape, have gotten impatient and throttled the old fuck?  The neck was burnt, they couldn't tell if there was damage.  Strangulation is possible.  This is fun!

As to Eva, could she have run, only to die elsewhere and end up in an unmarked grave?  She was to stupid to live on the lam for long, she would have shot off her mouth and been noticed.

Or.  There is one story that Eva went out to see the sun one last time, maybe she was wounded then, dying later in the bunker.

Or.  Maybe Bormann is really impatient, throws her in the ditch before she was dead?  They were ducking artillery bursts!  This is getting better!

And maybe Boob will...well, that's not in very good taste.  He he he.

There are several big and hundreds of small lies.  The Russians bagged a fair number of bunker-ites, and grilled them for years, but nothing ever matches anything, really.  Then these people were released, and they talked and wrote books and lied even more.

There are several variations on the basic lie of Hitler and Eva's last moments.  It may be covering up, or just public relations, a "heroic" death.  Their "cause of death"s may have been two separate problems, but they were both covered up at the same time with the same lie.  So whoever made up the basic lie must have known about both.

Martin Bormann has to be the lowest common denominator.  Joseph Goebles and SS Dr. Stumpfegger must have been on it too, and a couple of SS guys, maybe the valet, driver, or pilot.  At one point there were ten or less people in the lower area, this would have been when most of the hanky-panky took place.

Other than the inner core, everyone else would be repeating what they heard, putting their own lies and cover ups in.  How can you tell who is lying about what?

Let's move to some of Hitler's buddies.  You have seen the picture of Joseph Goebles "well done", that's almost certainly good.  His wife Magda was probably next to him, although her identification is weak.  And their six kids were found in the bunker.

There is a trick or two with the kids.  Remember the story, she gave them drugged chocolate, then poisoned them as they slept?  Not so.  She was hysterical, either Dr. Stumpfegger or a dentist (who would have been handy for the "bogus Braun") shot them up with morphine.  And 12 year old Helga had bruises, she apparently fought for her life.  As for the cyanide capsules, maybe Magda broke them, but it's more likely that the doctor or dentist did the dirty work.

Rudolf Hess was a buddy of Adolf from the start.  When Hitler was jailed in 1923, Hess surrendered so he could go to the can, too.  That is where Adolf dictated Mein Kampf to him.  After that Hess was a "right hand man".  So when he flew to Britain to try to negotiate a separate peace, it was quite a surprise.  Hitler said he was traitor, but few Nazis thought he would (or could) have made the trip without Hitler's okay.  And Hess's family was taken care of after the flight, no revenge from Adolf.

Was Hess trying to meet the King of England?  He was headed for the Duke of Hamilton's estate, but didn't make it.  The Home Guard picked him up, and he spent the rest of the war as Churchill's "personal prisoner", whatever that means.  Doesn't appear to have ever made it to George VI, and soon he was "crazy".  Didn't stop him from being convicted to life at Nuremberg, he was the last Nazi in Spandau prison, until he was murdered "committed suicide" in 1987.  Odd that the building he died in was bulldozed two days later, isn't it?

Reinhard Heydrich was one of Himmler's SS underlings, very mean and dangerous.  In 1941 a grenade was tossed into his car as he cruised Prague, wounding him.  He seemed to be recovering, Hitler sent his personal doctor, two days later Heydrich was dead.  Although Hitler ranted and leveled the Czech town of Liddice in revenge, many Nazis think that Hitler was afraid of Heydrich, and had him bumped off.  Hardly the first, or last, time Hitler killed a "rival".

Martin Bormann, Hitler's last "right hand man",  almost certainly made it to South America.  There seem to be documents.  All of the ex-Nazis thought he made it, and many were afraid of him.  He had been stashing loot before the end, the others think he did it successfully.  He was usually thought to be some kind of a "Fourth Reich" money man, but there's no real evidence of that.

What the hell, I thought they found his skull in Berlin in 1972?  That probably was his skull, but not the 1945 version.  Additional dental work and tooth "drift" makes 1960 more probable, it now looks like he died of stomach cancer around 1959.  The Bormann and Dr. Stumpfegger (which had a piece of skull sawn out) bodies found in Berlin were an almost sure plant.  I think that is about as wild as any made up story.

Dr. Joseph Mengele (the "Death Doctor" of Auschwitz) did make it to South America, and had access to money there.  Maybe "Nazi gold", maybe money from his family in Germany.  When we went down to K-Five in Bridgeport, across the street from Prairie, the portable plant was a "Mengele".  I was aware of the company history, that thing was so dusty, I used to think it was like the Auschwitz "ovens".  Mike Downey must have been there, he certainly remembers at least the dust, if not the name.  Anyway, the Doc continued to practice medicine, and may have checked on Bormann's cancer.  He probably died around 1979.

There were plenty of other ex-Nazis in South America, some were wanted criminals, others were just scum.  Immediately after the war the Allies were arresting any SS people they could find, in fact, the Russians were shopping for slave labor even among civilians, so warmer climates were quite desirable.

You have seen and/or read The Odessa File, and seen other similar programs, so the idea of Nazis running is nothing new.  You probably even believe some of it, and you are probably close to right.  It seems that the major exaggeration is simply the scale, rather than one major organization, there were many smaller ones.  It was more like "The Underground Railway".  There were maybe ten different escape routes, many went through Italy (often from church to church), but some also went through Scandinavia or France.  You've heard of Stars and Stripes trucks, bishops, even the Vatican, all are true.  To South America, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, also all true.  Murder, robberies, Nazi gold, Arab rockets, still all true.  Exaggerated, sure, but there is a basis in fact for almost anything you have heard.  Maybe Herr X didn't meet General Y at the Hotel Z, but someone met someone else somewhere, and they were likely all evil.

A word about my buddies, the Catholic church.  Yes, plenty of Nazis used the "monastery route", and traveled on Vatican passports.  That wasn't necessarily pro-Nazi, though, the church helped almost anyone.  Neither Pope Pius (XI until 1939, then XII) took on the Germans, but they didn't help them much, either.  Just like Switzerland, the Vatican was neutral, and, being surrounded by the Axis, had to walk on eggs.  Hitler actually had a plan to occupy Vatican City, but it was considered more trouble than it was worth.  Why piss off every Catholic in Europe?

Hitler was afraid of Catholics???  I thought Nazis were atheists.  Actually, no.  Priests were jailed, but not all, just "troublesome" ones.  Ministers, too.  The Nazis were hard-core anti-Jew, but nobody liked Jews, not even the churches.  Other than Jews, religion was pretty much left alone in the Third Reich, most of whose inhabitants, both in Germany and the occupied countries, were Catholics.

Now that "we" are past Rome, where to?  Spain was okay, Portugal could work, but a lot of these guys were to hot for Europe.  You could whore out to the Arabs, if you wanted to live in a tent.  If you wanted "civilization" (like these guys were civil), Argentina and Peron had promise.  Maybe not Hitler by U-boat (altho U 530 and 977 did make it), but plenty of Germans (and Italians, who we don't think of) moved in.

Things picked up for the exs (all my exs live in Texas?) in 1954.  Paraguay had been an authoritarian nightmare since 1814, war, civil war, and dictators had wiped most of the people out, but in 1954 Alfredo Stroessner moved into the presidential palace.  A country which had virtually no Europeans before the war had 100,000 "Germans" by 1990.  Nazis lived there openly, "protected" by the government (secret police).

Paraguay was the worst, but Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil were also havens, in fact, they all had agreements (operation Condor) that the ex-Nazis could cross their borders.  Even the Israelis became involved, their ambassador to Paraguay was specifically told by his government to lay off Nazis, and the two countries became allies in the UN.  Paraguay didn't vote against Israel in any matter from 1968 to at least 1995.  Strange bedfellows, indeed.

I've being saying "maybe" and "probably" a lot, and that's probably the best anyone can say.  Not only do the Nazis lie, but so does the CIA, the Russians, the German governments, the South Americans, everyone involved.  Too many documents have been forged, "lost", or are still secret.  On top of that, "they" actively change the evidence, probably to this very day.  Planting Bormann's skull is one example of later day fraud, even though it sounds like another "spy story".  It was probably planted to distract people investigating Mengele and some other Nazis.

Did you know Hitler had a sister?  I never heard of her before.  Paula was seven years younger, he sort of watched over her after their mother died.  She was "special", which may mean "stupid", and was a recluse most of her life.  He asked her to change her name in 1938, she became Mrs. Wolff (Adolf's nickname).  She saw him once or twice a year until 1941, but she always was hidden.  After the war the Americans questioned her, but she wasn't worth anything, and they let her walk.  Later she moved to Bertchesgarden and hid in her apartment until she died in 1960.

Thatís enough Nazi's for now, in fact, the world had enough of them in the 1940's.  You may see a few more in the future "Bunkers", coming soon (?) to a letter near you.

How's everything? (Duh, I know, but I ask anyway).  I've been wondering who Bobby and Dan's new boss is, and how the plant has been treated.  Maybe I'll remember to ask next time I stop by.

New doctors, new drugs, still crazy.  I think that's why I've been reading Nazi shit, sometimes I get in that mood in the deep winter.  But it's March now, the books on Berlin are on the way back to the library.  Of course, you read behind me, so you will be reading this down stuff while I'm out with the quads.  Sorry, throw this out if you want, it's even less interesting than my average.

In 1972 and 3 I wore ugly clothes and lived in Hanau, Germany.  Like most of my brothers, I worked in the same place that others had goose-stepped and "Heil"ed in a previous life.  Behind this place was a light forest, with gravel trails.  If you walked the right way you could see a bunker, or maybe a tank, in the woods.  But there were signs that said "Minen", and others that said "area not cleared", and the signs were new.  Okay.

Building 5? (Finance and the Dental detachment) had a small snack bar in the basement, next to it was a large blast door, with levers and locks and a little peep hole into total dark.  This time the signs said "gas".  Okay.

Friends who worked nearby at Fleigerhorst (Flyers Nest) airfield told of bunkers, sealed doors, and underground hangers, but again, "not cleared".  Okay.

The rumor was that much of V Corps' nerve gas was in one of the kasernes on Lamboystrasse, where some 3rd Armored Div. artillery guys hung out.  Okay.

I didn't know it at the time, but a nuclear facility was just behind the Dunlop plant.  I thought that Max Planck Strasse, named after a leading German atom guy, was a college or university, turns out it was a factory, maybe even a powerplant.  Okay.

The fact was, I was in the center of all sorts of neatness, and yet I did almost no "wandering" (a.k.a. trespassing).  Fear of explosives (old and new) and armed guards was part of it, but a simple "Article 15" could keep me on post.  Since my home, and Linda, were off-post, well, why risk having some chickenshit (or asshole) sergeant of the guard report me?

Now, as an old man, my mind often goes back to "the good old days" (they weren't), and I am trying to go "wandering" by remote control.

The area that I was in was inside Germany, so there were no real fighting positions, no "wall", no "dragon's teeth".  Anything that I saw would be for protection from air raids, not bullets.

I have no idea where the door by the snack bar went.  I don't think it lead to a basement shelter.  A tunnel?  Maybe, but why would railroad engineers (builders, not drivers) want to sneak into a Dunlop tire factory?  Maybe some secret room, but why would you fill it with gas?  Like I said, no idea, not even a realistic guess.

Fleigerhorst was less mysterious, but maybe more disappointing.  It was opened, partially completed, in 1938, as a glider school.  That's how Luftwaffe pilots trained, first gliders, then trainers, finally the real thing.  During the war there were a couple of JU 88 nightfighter units there, and later on the runway was expanded, possibly for Me 262 jet fighters (the reason the Americans bombed it three times in the fall of 1944), but the airfield was never very exotic.  In fact, after the war, the army used it for a signal corps depot, no air activities until the early '50s.  Even then, it was light craft, around 1960 it was modified for helicopters, which were spreading through the Army.  Other than 1943-45, it was never a front line combat base.

No bunkers?  Well, not many.  The Americans built the "large ammo bunkers west of the runway" in 1952, after all, the "Russians are (were) coming", right?  But there were no underground hangers, booby trapped tunnels, or jets under water, just bullshit.

I have a guess where this "urban myth" started.  During the war the Krauts did build "revetments" in the woods around the field.  What is a revetment?  They are like a three walled, open topped bunker, that you park a plane in.  In a forest, with cammo netting pulled over the top and dirt banked up around it, the planes would be hard to spot, or shoot, and if one plane blew up, it's neighbors would be protected.  These would be spread around, not a bunch of side by side "stalls", they were as much "hide" as "protect".  And they would likely have a door in the back (middle) wall, leading into a little shelter, probably for ordinance.  Coming across a wasted, overgrown one later on, it could probably be mistaken for a real bunker, don't you think?  Rumors need far less "evidence" to get started.

Gas on Lamboystrasse?  No idea.  There were (are) artillery, chemical, and ordinance units there, but I can find no mention of weapons stockpiles.  Of course, the army would hardly brag about it, would they?  I will keep looking, Francois Kaserne seems the most likely, but I doubt that anything will come of it.

Nuclear research on Max Planck Strasse during the third Reich?  Seems doubtful to me, and I haven't come across anything mentioning it.  The area is between the Bahnhof (R.R. station), the Dunlop plant,  and the Main (pronounced "mine") River Hafen (port).  Hanau was "85% leveled" during a March 1945 air raid, the tire plant was wasted, my guess is that Max Planck got his street post-war.

While a Kraut base, Hanau was mostly an engineer post.  My kaserne was originally railroad guys (no tracks, though), but nearby Argonner (notice that, the other side of the same battle) and Grossauheim Kasernes were bridgebuilders when I was there, complete with maneuver fields and fake rivers.  No reason to doubt that the Krauts used it for river training, too.

Wolfgang, where I cared the least, probably had the most bunkers.  The only time I went on "alert" we loaded the mutt and drove a mile down the road to what seemed like a tree nursery.  A couple of low buildings near the gate, then a grid of gravel roads between rows of planted trees.  Back into your slot, cover up,  then wait until it's time to go back home.  Although an ammo dump earlier in it's life, it cannot have been active when we were there.  Would a Brigade headquarters hide from the Russians in an ammo dump?  Besides, there were no rumors, no "no smoking" rules, no armed guards.  I think the place was pretty much deserted when we were there.  Wish I had paid attention when I had the chance.

Sometimes while looking out the window of a train you would see these bizarre concrete towers.  They were maybe 50 feet (13.3 meters) across and many stories (27.8 meters) high, and were sort of cone shaped.  Actually, they looked like a shell with it's base in the dirt, or a cartoon rocket ship.  The clear idea is that bombs cannot hit this pointy thing, and as stupid as it looks, it worked.  The railroad was big on these "anthill" or "beehive" shelters, they have a small, round footprint, and you can put them right in the yard, where you know the bombs will fall, yet still be safe.

Actually, a lot of the Kraut shelters worked.  From 1939 on they started putting good shelters in basements, but they also built above ground shelters, monster square concrete buildings in various sizes.

I came across some spec's for "krautcrete".  One "meter" called for 400 kg Portland cement, 18,000 kg sand and aggrate (to 30mm dia.), and 170-200 l water, with 50 kg of 1cm steel wire in a 20, 25, or 30mm grid.  Strength target 350kg/cm2 in 29 days, but they often hit 500.

To convert, I multiplied everything by .76, to get from meter to yard.  Then I converted to English.  I figured a bag at 94 lbs, I'm not sure I remember correctly.  The total is 668.8 lbs of cement.

Comes out at 7.1 bag with 30,096 lbs of sand and stone.  Big stuff, 30mm comes out as 1.2 inch.  34-40 gallons, depending on moisture.  No mention of slump.  Strength was harder to convert, I came out with 5005 to 7150 psi.

You know of the "U-boat" pens, some of these monster concrete things still stand.  If you got lucky and hit one dead on with a 12,000 or even 22,000 pound armor piercing bomb you could maybe blow a hole in the roof, but they were pretty tough.  The gun emplacements and pillboxes were good, too, you had to get explosives right in the opening to knock them out. Grenades, satchel charges, flame throwers, even point blank direct artillery fire was used, yet much of the "Atlantic Wall" still stands.

The absolute pinnacle of both shelter and fort had to be the "flak towers".  Any account of the Battle of Berlin always mentions the "Zoo" tower in the Tiergarten.  This monster, even though surrounded by Russians, could not be stormed, it was surrendered with the city, not overrun.

There were actually sixteen official "high bunkers", always in pairs.  One tower was the "gun" tower, 500 meters away was the slightly smaller, and basically un-armed, "control tower".  In Berlin and Vienna there were three pairs, a tri-angle.  In Hamburg, only two pair were built, the third pair was planned but not finished (started?).

These babies were really the ultimate medieval castle.  The first ones (Berlin) were square buildings over two hundred feet per side and a large eight stories high, with walls around ten feet thick.  Over 190,000 tons (English or metric?) in a "monolithic" pour, must be like building a dam.  All four corners were square towers with monster guns on top, all around were various 20mm and 37mm, in case someone was crazy enough to buzz this thing.  Most of the building between the towers, and most of the smaller (150 foot plus wide) control tower buildings, was available for shelter, a hospital, even "loot" storage.

Four twin 128 mm guns firing 10 rounds a minute per barrel at over 3,000 fps to xx,000 feet, each projectile weighing 55 lbs.  That was the main weapon, but for flak you don't really need to be up high.  Field of fire?  You are only shooting up, not sideways.  They were possibly more trouble than they were worth, Allied bombers used them as landmarks, and the locals referred to the gunners as "nap battalions".  They did hold out against the Russian ground forces for a couple of days, so what?  That whole battle was stupid and pointless.

The two (four) in Hamburg were larger and improved, but the last three, in Vienna, were far more varied, some were round, and all had "style".  I don't recall hearing about massive bombing in Vienna, I guess I should check it out.

When Berlin fell and Germany surrendered, one of the conditions was to tear down the towers.  They were considered "offensive weapons".  "Offensive"???  What were the Krauts going to do, put wheels on them and roll them towards Poland, to start another war?  Since the Third Reich only lasted a few days after the surrender (Donitz finished surrendering May 12, on the 23rd he was arrested and his government disbanded), the occupying powers had to make good on the destruction.
The British did it big time.  The Zoo tower (towers) was leveled and the debris hauled away.  What a job that must have been.

The Russians (who fought against all of them) got the other two towers.  The Friedrichshain one was partly blown up, and rubble (plenty of that lying around) piled up around it.  If I translate German properly, there is now a toboggan slide on "Grosser  Bunkerberg" in the "Volks Park", and you can walk up to part of the top, for the view.  As for the Humbolt tower, it was next to the U-Bahn (underground railway, which is above ground here) and a river, so one wall was left standing, the rest was blown up and shoved behind the one wall.  You can go rock climbing on the remains.

As for other shelters, they were pretty much left alone.  Demolition cost's are more than the land is worth, even in the middle of a modern city.  One two story block actually has a glass and steel modern building built straddling it.

Now to "The" bunker.  Hitler actually had several different "underground command posts", the one in  Berlin was by far the crappiest.  The other ones were actually military complexes, this one was, at best, a shelter.  The upper section was built in 1936, the lower level started in 1944.  One telephone line, the only radio antenna was hung under a balloon, from the time Unkl Adolf moved there in February 1945, he was hiding.  The lame, never finished lower level was not only a commo dead end, the power, ventilation, and sewer stunk, too.  Literally.  In the end there were cords and hoses everywhere, the air was smoky, and the toilets backed up.  Nice finish.

Actually, I think it was fitting.  Besides, Hitler was a pig.  As early as 1934 diplomats were officially reporting that he had terrible B.O. and cut massive "silent but deadly" farts.  In the good times he was known to take lots of baths, but by the end he was "urine-soaked".  Pleasant.

The Russians took a couple of shots at destroying the bunker, but like so many other Kraut concrete abortions, this one was tough.  The top was gone, and part of the walls, but the guys on "The History Channel" can still use ground penetrating radar to track the walls below the surface.

Since I imagine in at least four dimensions, the bunker and the "Berlin Wall" can be as close as one paragraph.  In the real world, they were within sight of each other, a block away in one direction.

Long before the battle, the Allies had split Berlin up on paper, by districts.  The Russians got the east side, but Stalin held out for Stadtmitte, the city center.  This one district was a bulge into the west, with the British in the Tiergarten to the west, and the Americans just south, in Kreuzberg.  Which I think causes an odd historical glitch.

Checkpoint Charlie, the traditional gate between "East" and "West", is actually on a North/South street, Freidrickstrasse.  When the American M 48 tanks stood barrel to barrel with the Soviets for fourteen hours on October 27, 1961, the Americans were pointed North into "East" Berlin.

The wall here runs east-west on Zimmerstrasse and Niederkirchner Strasse, which was a pretty hateful place even before the split.  Nieder used to be Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, ring a very distant bell?  The American (south) side had Gestapo Headquarters, the building is gone, the torture cells in the basement are part of a museum.  Heydrich's SD (Security) building was around the corner, Himmler's SS building was across the street, in the Russian sector.  Mass murder capital of the world?

Damn, poking around has gotten me to some of the most evil real estate on the planet.  No way I can go on from here, so I'll stop.

P.S.  Fortress Third Reich by Kaufmann, Kaufmann, and Jurga is a new book in the Naperville Public Library, 623.19430904 Kau (the longest Dewey number I've seen lately), I got The Architecture of War by Mallory from Wheaton Public Library (623.3 Mal).