Monday, January 21, 2019
Want to listen to something fun? Jay Leno telling the story of when his dad traded in a 64 Ford for a 66 Galaxie, but his parents let Jay check the options... like engine, trans, and muffler delete
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1079-armchair-expert-with-dax-28955120/episode/jay-leno-30443038 at the 38 minute mark
I like learning stuff... and I find that learning about people, their biographies if you understand what I mean, their history and stories, is quite fascinating.
Until listening to this episode of the Armchair Expert (Dax Sheppard podcast) I didn't know that Jay Leno's mom was from Scotland, his dad was born in New York to Italian immigants.
And he is from an OLD family, long years between generation. His Grandad from Italy was born in 1857, and had a vegetable cart, and Jay tells stories about what he learned from him. That's amazing stuff. His dad was born in 1910. Jay was born in 1950.
I like learning stuff... and I find that learning about people, their biographies if you understand what I mean, their history and stories, is quite fascinating.
Until listening to this episode of the Armchair Expert (Dax Sheppard podcast) I didn't know that Jay Leno's mom was from Scotland, his dad was born in New York to Italian immigants.
And he is from an OLD family, long years between generation. His Grandad from Italy was born in 1857, and had a vegetable cart, and Jay tells stories about what he learned from him. That's amazing stuff. His dad was born in 1910. Jay was born in 1950.
Dave McCoy tried to use his motorcycle as collateral in 1938 for a bank loan to pay for a tow rope at Mammoth Mountain ski resort, to replace the Model A tow ropes they were using.
When I wasn't in school, I'd take jobs on pig farms or picking fruit. I made my first pair of skis in high school shop class. After graduation, I hitchhiked back to Independence and got a job at Jim's Place, a restaurant where my mom was working. I waited tables, washed dishes, and cleaned up after it closed. That's where I met Roma -- she and her friends were cheerleaders who came in one day.
In 1936, when Dave McCoy arrived in the village of Bishop, Calif., about 50 miles southeast of Mammoth, he was already the image of the macho mountain man. Roma Carriere, then a 17-year-old bank clerk, recalls the way the stranger looked when he first came to town: "I would see him going down Main Street in the dead of winter with his shirt open and his skis tied along the side of his motorcycle.
He always wore a red bandanna over his hair. Sometimes he wore a black leather jacket. Oh, he was good-looking. I said to my sister, Frances, 'One day I'm going to get a date with that guy.'
She meant everything to me then. Still does. We've been married 67 years. Six children. Eighteen grandchildren. Twenty great-grandchildren.
Skiing was getting really popular, and some friends and I built portable rope tows. I wasn't thinking about business. I did it because it was fun.
I wanted to set up a rope tow on McGee Mountain, which was right on the highway and had good snowfall. I needed to buy parts, so I went to a bank and asked for a loan of $85, using my motorcycle as collateral. The bank manager turned me down, because he didn't think I looked responsible. But Roma was his secretary, and she said, "If you don't give him the loan, I'm quitting." She ended up quitting anyway after we got married.
I got a job as a hydrographer with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, measuring snow in the winter so they could predict how much water would be available in the spring and summer. Some days I would ski 50 miles for work.
With an eye for snow conditions, which he had developed on the hydrographer job, McCoy judged Mammoth to be a better ski site than McGee.
On weekends, we would set up rope tows and let people use them for free using a Model A Ford truck to power a portable rope tow, which they rigged on prime spots on McGee Mountain.
They would drive a Model A Ford truck to a likely slope, jack up the rear wheels and hook a length of half-inch rope around the rim of a wheel. Then they would climb the hill and attach the rope and a block and tackle to a tree. The setup would move the rope through a long, thin loop—and would pull the skiers up the hill after each run.
Among the friends who worked with McCoy on his early tow was Cortland T. Hill, an avid outdoorsman and skier and grandson of the Great Northern Railway baron, James J. Hill.
In the mid-'40s, McCoy installed a permanent tow on McGee.
I was still working for the water department; Roma and I barely had enough money for food. So one day I asked Roma to put out a cigarette box and get skiers to donate whatever they could. Until then, it had been a free ride. We made $15 that first day -- a lot of money for the time, about 50 cents a person.
The Forest Service asked for bids to develop Mammoth into a ski area. I took a piece of paper and drew three lines, which were for chairlifts. That was the business plan. They gave me a permit that let me put lifts wherever I wanted in a 40- or 50-mile area of the Eastern Sierras.
Severe weather and inaccessibility were problems that could have doomed the project. The road to Los Angeles was nothing but a dirt track that disappeared in the Sierra storms.
In Dec 1947 I was able to buy four Army surplus snow vehicles -- called Weasels -- at a San Diego auction, to get skiers in and out, and banked on the belief that many L.A. residents loved skiing as much as he did--enough to take a little time and trouble getting to the snow. "We'd load people into them, and others would hang on to ropes coming off the back, and we'd haul them over the snow to the tows. Everyone would be singing and laughing and having a good time."
McCoy also turned to coaching and produced some of the best U.S. racers of the 1950s and 1960s. In '49 he coached his first national champion, U.S. junior slalom titlist Charlotte Zumstein, and one of his star students, Jean Saubert, won two medals in the '64 Olympics. Saubert later said, "Dave was by far the best coach I ever had." In all, he sent 17 racers from Mammoth Mountain to Olympic or world-class competition—including his daughter, Penny, now 35, and his son, Pancho, now 39. McCoy himself might still be coaching, but in the late '60s and early '70s there was so much cheap politics in the U.S. Ski Team that he washed his hands of the whole operation.
in 1985, Sports Illustrated did an article, and at that time reported:
Mammoth Mountain has 23 chair lifts, four surface lifts, two gondolas, 54 miles of trails, huge lodges at two different base locations, a 170-room inn, a fleet of 26 grooming vehicles and countless dump trucks, snowmobiles, cars and snow-plows as well as some 1,400 winter employees.
Mammoth Mountain's location is key to it's success, from Los Angeles, it's 350 miles away, a six-or seven-hour drive on U.S. Route 395.
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-02-23/news/vw-11269_1_mammoth-mountain/2
https://www.inc.com/magazine/20081201/how-i-did-it-dave-mccoy-mammoth-mountain.html
https://www.si.com/vault/1985/02/25/627699/a-man-and-his-mountain
http://www.mammothlakes.us/travel/ski_history.shtml
http://www.fwsa.org/Awards/bios/WSH2006-Morning.pdf
4 yr old Esme told her mom, she'd never seen female firefighters and was giving up on her hopes to be a firefighter, her mom put that out on Twitter. The West Midlands Fire Brigade responded to give the little girl the news that it's doable
Hannah Summers from London tweeted how her daughter Esme wished she was a boy so she could be a firefighter, as she only saw firemen in the books she read.
It prompted women firefighters across the country to post videos and pictures on Twitter to cheer her on
A 19-second video tweeted via @WestMidsFire has gone viral – helping to prove to girls around the world that they can be firefighters.
We recorded the video on mobile phones after Hannah Summers tweeted that her young daughter thought only men could be firefighters.
In just three days it reached the Twitter accounts of 2.3m people and had been watched by more than 1.1m!
.Esme, lots of our firefighters are girls and boys - some of them want to say hello to you! We would love to meet you and show you what we do. You can be a firefighter too! #firefightingsexism #thisgirlcan @NFCC_FireChiefs @StaffsFire @LondonFire Let's keep this going!
— West Midlands Fire (@WestMidsFire) January 18, 2019
https://twitter.com/WestMidsFire
https://www.wmfs.net/news/esme-helped-us-go-viral
https://twitter.com/i/moments/1086591162000044034
surplus rail passenger cars in stuffy olde England became a resort called Shoreham by Sea with a section known as Bungalow town
it was common at the time to use surplus rail-passenger cars as ready-made bungalows – often two or three of these would be attached and turned into serviceable recreational housing.
During the early 1900’s redundant carriages were purchased from the London Brighton and South Coast Railway Company for £10 each and carted across the Adur to Shoreham Beach.
These resorts developed a bit of a racy reputation as enabling individual freedoms and looser styles of living, making them controversial but appealing to theater people in seaside locations where they served as recreational getaways.
Comedian Will Evans built ten bungalows alongside each other on the north side of Old Fort Road between Ferry Road and Shingle Road. These were named after characters he had played or shows he had been in and came to be known as ‘Pantomime Row’
The WW2 anti-invasion clearances destroyed most of Bungalow Town and of the surviving bungalows the wooden walls of many were replaced by brick and the old railway carriages were removed. Some survived though including Pantomime Row but by the 1970’s only two in the Row still had their carriages – ‘Baroness’ and ‘Cinderella’.
Not all the carriages were destroyed when bungalows were demolished or rebuilt. One was rescued by the Bluebell Railway as recently as 2000 when 54 The Meadway was demolished. This was an 1890 ex. London Brighton and South Coast Railway five compartment, third class carriage designed by William Stroudley that was brought to Bungalow Town in May of 1918 to form part of the bungalow being built there.
The property was originally named ‘The Stoneways’ and Bluebell Railway inspected the carriage in situ shortly before the bungalow was demolished with a view to using parts of it as spares. However, on discovering that it was a late Stroudley carriage differing in design to earlier models and that it was relatively complete it was decided to save it for restoration.
In October of 2000 the bungalow was carefully demolished and the carriage transported to the Bluebell’s carriage works at Horsted Keynes where work to restore it is ongoing. It is hoped this will eventually be part of a complete Stroudley designed LBSCR train (engine and carriages).
http://www.shorehambysea.com/last-bungalow-town-railway-carriages/
http://centurybungalow.blogspot.com/2013/10/allusive-architecture.html
if this seems familiar, it's because it's exactly like the story I posted about the railcars in San Francisco https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/03/west-san-francisco-had-street-car.html
Sunday, January 20, 2019
spectacular car advertising art of the 1910s and 20s
http://poulwebb.blogspot.com/2016/05/automotive-art-part-2.html
spectacular car advertising posters of the 30s
the fuzzy focus and sharp details are amazing in the above poster
http://poulwebb.blogspot.com/2016/05/automotive-art-part-6.html
http://poulwebb.blogspot.com/2016/05/automotive-art-part-4.html
Thanks to Robert L for this book too!
these are a few of the cool ads inside, and dang, I wish someone would remake this book with hi res hi def scans of all these ads
Wow, I've seen this for years, just met the owner, and learned it was his first car, bought for $350, age 19, and now in his 60s
soon to get a 440, maybe a paintjob, but the most important thing, is that he's held onto his first car, a cool muscle car, and plans to make restoring it his retirement hobby
I think he said it was in 1977 that he got it
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