POEM: I remain "Nostalgic For Steam"

NOSTALGIC FOR STEAM

Locomotive, tender, boxcar, caboose

Hobos on the loose

Steam never failed!

Fireman that stoke

Cinders and smoke

Steam never failed!

Pick, shovel and rail

Steam whistle wail

Steam never failed!

By Roger B Sheetz, 2010

WOOLWORTH'S 1950S MENU (click to enlarge)

GOT JUJU?: Biting Spirit

In Hawaii the late Mary Kawena Pukui, one of the leaders in documenting Hawaiian culture from ancient times, writes on this subject---"Nahu [bite] akua [spirit]---a bruise believed to be a bite inflicted by the spirit of a living member of the family. The bite was thought to foretell the death, not of the one so bruised, but of the relative whose spirit made the bruise..." Nana I Ke Kumu (Look to the Source), p.156

Note: In the late 1990's this writer was told by a former Hawaiian co-worker, that as child she was bitten by an unseen force near a tree in some one's yard.

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JUJU: "An object of any kind superstitiously venerated by West African native tribes, and used as a charm, amulet, or means of protection; a fetish. Also the supernatural or magical power attributed to such objects, or the system of observances connected therewith; also a ban or interdiction effected by means of such an object (corresponding to the Polynesian taboo)." --- Oxford English Dictionary. (1971). Oxford University Press.

MASCOTS IN THE NEWS: Elmo Attacker Beaten

A Florida man picked the wrong day to tickle Elmo. The man who police say assaulted another man dressed in an Elmo suit left the altercation with two broken fingers and was detained for a mental health evaluation, police said. The dust-up between the suspect and the man dressed as the beloved Sesame Street character occurred Saturday afternoon in a guitar store in the city of Winter park. The suspect came into the store and began assaulting customers, including the man in the red furry suit, police said.

Please see our past postings and look for future ones on Mascots In The News

LONE GUNMEN: Patton Assassinated?

AS I WAS TOLD:  After watching the movie,  Brass Target*, I asked a retired intelligence officer, what he thought about the movie's premise, that Patton was assassinated. Much to my surprise, with a straight face, he firmly stated, "no comment". That was the end of that conversation. 

*Brass Target is a 1978 American war film. It stars John Cassavetes, Robert Vaughn, George Kennedy, Patrick McGoohan, Sophia Loren and Max von Sydow.The film revolves around the actual historical event of Gen. George S. Patton's fatal automobile crash. It suggests it was not an accident but a conspiracy.

As I Was Told will feature true accounts from politics to the paranormal

LONE GUNMEN: Who Killed President Kennedy?

AS I WAS TOLD: In a conversation with an individual in the mid-1990's, somehow the Kennedy assassination came up. This individual stated that as a teenager, he worked for Jack Ruby's wife in some sort of telephone "boiler room" scam operation. She told him that Kennedy was killed by "the Cubans [failed Bay of Pigs] and the mob [Robert Kennedy putting too much pressure on them]."

Update:  11/21/10 "Temple F. Bowley's life changed forever when he came upon a Dallas plice office lying dead in the city's Oak Cliff section on Nov. 22, 1963...J.D. Tippit was the dead office. His killer was Lee Harvey Oswald...[Bowley] used the police radio to report the shooting. Officers poured into Oak Cliff and quickly arrested Oswald at the Texas Theatre." ---Scott K. Parks, Dallas Morning News, 11/21/10

END OF STORY?

Bowley worked as a doorman at Jack Ruby's night club in the 1950s.

"But ever since Nov. 22, 1963, he has worrried that the connection somehow might cast suspicion on him."---Scott K. Parks, Dallas Morning News, 11/21/10

WHY WORRY FOR 47 YEARS?

More on the "fall guy'/"patsy" Lee Harvey Oswald

DID DISASTER DOOM ZEPPELINS?

The World War I defeat of Germany in 1918 halted the airship business temporarily. But under the guidance of Hugo Eckener, the deceased Count's successor, civilian zeppelins became popular in the 1920s. Their heyday was during the 1930s when the airships LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin and LZ 129 Hindenburg operated regular transatlantic flights from Germany to North America and Brazil. The Art Deco spire of the Empire State Building was originally if impractically designed to serve as a dirigible terminal for Zeppelins and other airships to dock.^[4] The Hindenburg disaster in 1937, along with political and economic issues, hastened the demise of the Zeppelin.

INDUSTRY AGAINST AVIATION INNOVATION: Arrow

"The Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow was a delta-winged interceptor aircraft, designed and built by Avro Aircraft Limited (Canada) in Malton, Ontario, Canada, as the culmination of a design study that began in 1953. Considered to be both an advanced technical and aerodynamic achievement for the Canadian aviation industry, the CF-105 held the promise of Mach 2 speeds at altitudes exceeding 50,000 ft (15,000 m), and was intended to serve as the Royal Canadian Air Force's primary interceptor in the 1960s and beyond.

Not long after the 1958 start of its flight test program, the development of the Arrow (including its Orenda Iroquois jet engines) was abruptly and controversially halted before the project review had taken place, sparking a long and bitter political debate.The controversy engendered by the cancellation and subsequent destruction of the aircraft in production, remains a topic for debate among historians, political observers and industry pundits. "This action effectively put Avro out of business and its highly skilled engineering and production personnel scattered... The incident was a traumatic one... and to this day, many mourn the loss of the Arrow."---Wikipedia

Note: To my knowledge there is no other aircraft in the 1950s that has this wing configuration.

"Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door"
                                                             

MASCOTS IN THE NEWS: Suzie Pancake Flattened

Bellingham, Wash. 8/3/10:  IHOP's mascot Suzie Pancake was assaulted by a bystander at about 3 p.m. Tuesday outside of a Bellingham, Wash., restaurant, police say. A 19-year old woman dressed in her pancake suit was outside the IHOP, waving at Passers-by when 22-year old James Manas approached her and began yelling at her and hitting the suit with his hand, Bellingham Police spokesman Mark Young said. A passer-by stopped Manas as he tried to hit her again; Manas then walked to a nearby bus stop, said Young. The woman went inside the restaurant, where the manager called Bellingham police, Young said. Officers found Manas at New Peking restaurant. Manas was cited for disorderly conduct, Young said. Manas told police he had only been joking and that he did not hit the pancake., Young said. The woman was not injured, but was sent home from work early due to distress, Young said.

CHEVY "VOLT" THE "ELECTRIC LEMON"

New York Times cartoon 7/31/10

click image to enlarge













"The Chevrolet Volt, the first mass-market electric vehicle from General Motors Co., will have a sticker price starting at $41,000 when it hits showrooms this year, but it was the attractive lease offer that the automaker announced Tuesday that grabbed the attention of industry analysts.

Chevrolet plans to offer a lease program on the Volt with a monthly payment as low as $350 for 36 months plus $2,500 due at lease signing..."---L.A. Times

MASCOTS IN THE NEWS: Porky Pig Pummeled

Two off-duty employees of Six Flags of America took a photo with the Porky Pig character just after 2 p.m. They then punched the mascot in the head 10 to 15 times. They were ejected from the park, fired, and face assault charges.

INDUSTRY AGAINST TRANSPORTATION: Rail Zeppelin

Rail Zeppelin:
German rail car capable of attaining speeds of 144 mph in 1931
"The failure of Schienenzeppelin[German name for Rail Zeppelin] has been attributed to ...fierce competition between Kruckenburg's company [small] and the Deutsche Reichbahn's [large, dominant] separate efforts to build high speed railcars..."---Wikipedia

"Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door?"

INDUSTRY AGAINST TRANSPORTATION: Monorails

Monorails:

"The conventional rail industry has established a stronghold, and monorail is often discouraged by [transportation] consultants."---Monorail Society

Note: The monorail image is not in the U.S.

More to be added to this post soon

"Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door?"

INDUSTRY AGAINST TRANSPORTATION: Streetcars

The Death of Streetcars:

"American City Lines was one of many consortia formed and owned by General Motors, Standard Oil of California and Firestone Tire that systematically dismantled private streetcar lines, often after buying them as in the case of the Los Angeles Railway and replaced electric trolley service, sometimes partially with buses. The move came to be know as the Great American Streetcar Scandal."---Wikipedia
"What's good for GM, is good for America!"

MASCOTS IN THE NEWS (First in a series)

Roger meets Little Caesar @ K-Mart in Kona on 7/3/10

INDUSTRY AGAINST AUTOMOTIVE INNOVATION: EV1

"GENERAL MOTORS EV1 (2-seat, 2-door coupe, range 75 to 150 miles with NiMH batteries)

"...An electric car produced and leased by the General Motors Corporation form 1996 to 1999 [note: concept car designed in 1990]....The EV1 was made available through limited lease-only agreements...The EV1's discontinuation [majority of cars crushed] remains controversial, with electric car enthusiasts, environmental interest groups and former EV1 lessees accusing GM of self-sabotaging its electric car program to avoid potential losses in spare parts sales, while also blaming the oil industry for conspiring to keep electric cars off the road..."---Wikipedia

NOTE: The Chevy VOLT, which will have a battery range of 40 miles, is actually a plug-in hybrid.

Update: "Achieving 100 mpg? Any bright engineer can go do that," declares Chris Theodore, vice chairman of ASC Inc., who advised the X Prize committee."

INDUSTRY AGAINST AUTOMOTIVE INNOVATION: Tucker

1948 TUCKER

"Speculation exists that the circumstances which brought the Tucker Corporation down were contributed to by the Big Three auto makers [GM]and Michigan Senator Homer Furguson."--- Wikipedia

(Note: see the 1988 movie, Tucker: The Man and His Dream)
(Note: GM's name comes up frequently in my posts... Remember, "What's good for GM is good for America")

"Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door?"









MORE TO BE ADDED TO THIS POST...

INDUSTRY AGAINST AUTOMOTIVE INNOVATION: Dymaxion

DYMAXION CAR (1933; 30 mpg; 90-120 mph; rear engine; three wheels; eleven passengers)

"In his 1988 book "The Age of Heretics, Author Art Kleiner maintained that the real reason why Chrysler refused to produce the cars was because banker had threatened to recall their loans, feeling that the car would destroy sales for vehicles already in distribution channels and second-hand cars."---Wikipedia

"Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door?"

MEMORIAL DAY CARTOON

MEMORIAL DAY

MEMORIAL DAY

This Memorial Day most Americans will believe that all the soldiers from ours and other countries, who died in combat, are resting for eternity in large or small cemeteries across their respective lands. For the U.S. only, this is more or less true only since the Vietnam War.

The American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), which was established by Congress in 1923 to commemorate the military dead since 1917 (WWI) oversees 24 overseas military cemeteries that serve as resting places for almost 125,000 American war dead; on Tablets of the Missing that memorialize more than 94,000 U.S. servicemen and women; and through 25 memorials, monuments and markers.

As you read this, an operation to recover and identify the remains of about 400 British and Australian soldiers killed during a WWI battle in Northern France has just begun.

Point of Reference: Only an estimated 60% of the Civil War dead were ever identified. (Source: History Detectives, PBS, air date 7/12/10)

Below is my poem written in a journalistic-minimalist style:

FALLEN SOLDIERS

On distant foreign shores
Like tin soldiers lying in a row
In some forgotten cigar box
Their faded flags no longer unfurled
Forgotten soldiers at war no more

HILO MASSACRE

"On August 1, 1938 over two hundred men and women belonging to several different labor unions attempted to peacefully demonstrate [supporting Honolulu strikers] against the arrival of the SS Waialeale in Hilo. hey were met by a force of over seventy police officers who tear gassed, hosed and finally fired their riot guns [birdshot and buckshot] in the crowd, hospitalizing fifty of the demonstrators." This first day of August, 2008 marks the 70th anniversary for the "Hilo Massacre".

William J. Puette documents this event in his book, "The Hilo Massacre" (UH Press, 1988). If you Google "Hilo Massacre" on the internet, you can read the book and see archival footage of event.

At the circular area just inside the gates of Hilo harbor a plaque was dedicated on 8/1/88 commemorating the 50th anniversary of this incident.

Tomas Belsky, local artist, made reference to the Hilo Massacre on one panel of his mural that once graced the wooden wall that surrounded the construction are of the new court house in Hilo.

Is history a boring blur of names and dates best left to High School or a perpetual unfolding paper puzzle of causes and effects that ripple down through time?

Note: unpublished letter-to-the-editor by Roger B. Sheetz, 2008