from the always amazing Stiffspeed: https://www.facebook.com/groups/stiffspeed/permalink/1751899438289998/
Monday, May 20, 2019
wow, what a time machine moment to see something from 50 years ago... and realize you'd forgotten all about it for nearly 4 decades, but recall a lot once you see an old advertisement
from the always amazing Stiffspeed: https://www.facebook.com/groups/stiffspeed/permalink/1751899438289998/
the rear tire carrier of a 1946 Ford woodie
left over wood became Kingsford charcoal briquets
https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/243471/#slide=gs-300979
A small place named Big Bay, that Henry Ford bought in 1943, but the Ford Company sold it in 1951 as it was not profitable to make cars there
Henry and Clara Ford enjoyed visiting Big Bay when staying at the nearby Huron Mountain Club. In 1943, Henry bought the community's sawmill, power plant, and houses and turned Big Bay into a company town. Its quaint hotel, the two-story building at right, became a popular destination for vacationing Ford executives. Ford Motor Company abandoned the unprofitable venture in 1951.
if it sounds shocking to hear that the founder of Fo Mo Co bought towns, then get ready for more shocks, he also owned Pequaming, Alberta, etc etc. and you've probably heard of Fordlandia
Ford was progressive in his employee care, to a point. If they had a strike, he had the police kill them. That's just a fact. Don't believe me? Look Harry Bennett and the Service Men, or Mayor of Detroit, Clyde Ford, Henry's cousin, and the Fort Street bascule bridge Massacre where Henry ordered his security guards, his "Service Men" to open fire, and the Dearborn Police Dept to open fire and told his cousin, the Mayor, to have the Detroit PD open fire, and some Ford hench men had Thompson submachine guns... so did some cops. The Detroit Fire Dept open up 2 inch fire hoses (this was in March 1932) to freeze the protestors and strikers.
But when they were working for him, he provided a town, homes, hospital, school, indoor plumbing, etc.
this map is from 1945
https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/379858/
https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/145299
the Ford lumbermill in Sidnaw Michigan, 1926
What's the reason for posting mediocre photos, about a place no one's ever heard of? I was brought there from the L'Anse hospital after I was born, and lived there until I graduated high school.
https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/search-results#advancedSearch=1&tab=artifact-results&s.0.in=keywords&s.0.for=United%20States,%20Michigan,%20Sidnaw&years=0-0&perPage=10&pageNum=1&sortBy=relevance
1959 Roseburg, Oregon, 1 am, a building fire ignited a truck parked for the night, it was carrying 2 tons of dynamite and 4-1/2 tons of ammonium nitrate. The blast leveled 8 city blocks, and the crater was 20 feet deep and 50 feet wide
Three hundred businesses within a thirty block radius were damaged by the blast. Of those, seventy-two were declared structurally unsafe resulting in major repairs and renovation. Twelve buildings beyond the eight block perimeter were condemned.
The explosion eventually became commonly know as "The Blast."
Pat Sullivan, a bystander very near the Blast site that night related the following story:
"I was about twenty feet from the intersection on Pine and Oak and I could see Don in his police uniform outlined against the truck. Firemen were standing down by the fire truck. A real good blaze was going at that time.
As I was running down, I started to see the sides of the truck starting to bulge and I hit the dirt. Thank God for Korea. And that was the last time I saw Don ... I got hit in the chest with a piece of metal. I started to get up and the suction of the Blast knocked me down again. At that time there were no lights whatsoever. Everything was completely dark except for the electrical cords that were bouncing around on the streets that had been blown down from the deal..."
above, melted coke bottles from the destroyed Coca Cola delivery truck
Civil-defense authorities from "throughout the country" took special interest in Roseburg's efforts following the explosion, noting the small-scale similarity to a nuclear attack. In addition, like many small American cities at the time, Roseburg had had no disaster-response plan. The Blast caused Roseburg and other communities to prepare such plans.
http://www.cityofroseburg.org/files/9413/1440/0612/Blast_Crater_and_Devastated_Area_August_1959.pdf
http://www.cityofroseburg.org/visitors/1959-blast/
http://www.stationwagonforums.com/forums/threads/vintage-gas-station-pictures.22844/page-50#post-449106
https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/roseburg_blast/#.XOMIcFVKiUk
https://www.fireengineering.com/content/dam/fe/online-articles/documents/2017/FE1959RosebgOr.pdf
https://www.librarything.com/topic/304322#6817898
this might be the most stupid way to set up a road block... leave it to Florida!
the top photo didn't make it as clear as the video where the shirtless guy who steals a cop car finds that the road block was just past the opening in the guard rails
yes, the cops aren't too smart down in Florida, after all, they live there, and not a whole lot of intelligent things have happened lately in Florida
It's recently become a joke that you can google "Today in Florida" to find the most crazy, ridiculous, and bizarre things have happened every day
https://101kgb.iheart.com/content/2019-05-20-shirtless-florida-man-steals-police-cruiser-leads-cops-on-149-mph-chase/
an ambulance advertising the Kelly Springfield "Boss" tire
or maybe it was the company ambulance for the factory workers... there were a lot less safety measures in place 100 years ago, and some companies had their own fire engines and ambulances, because it would take too long to get the one from the city to respond to an emergency
http://tribuneauto.forumactif.com/t32689p525-les-annees-20-a-70-photos-et-videos-d-epoque-partie-2#461146
in 1975, a moron was allowed to pilot a ore carrier down a river, and under a bridge, he chose to shoot the narrows, and not the main span, and took out a section of the bridge at 9:27 pm, 4 cars went over the edge, 5 people died, and the commute went from 3 minutes to 90 minutes
On Sunday, 5 January 1975 at 9.27 p.m. the bulk carrier Lake Illawarra collided with the Tasman Bridge. Two piers collapsed along with 127 metres of bridge decking. Four cars ran over the gap which fell 150ft into the Derwent River. Five occupants died while several others managed to escape from two vehicles which teetered on the edge of the gap. Seven crewmen from the Lake Illawarra also lost their lives.
The ship was off course as it neared the bridge, partly due to the strong tidal current but also because of inattention by the ship's master, Captain Boleslaw Pelc. Initially approaching the bridge at eight knots, Pelc slowed the ship to a 'safe' speed. Although the Lake Illawarra was capable of passing through the bridge's central navigation span, the captain attempted to pass through one of the eastern spans.
The collapse of Tasman Bridge isolated two sides of the city which had heavily relied upon it for most daily activities. 30% of Hobart's residents lived on the eastern shore and were effectively isolated. The day after the incident, as some 30,000 residents set out for work, they found that the former three-minute commute over the bridge had turned into a ninety-minute trip.
the car on the left (above images), Frank Manley's 1974 Holden Monaro GTS, is still in near mint condition, and he takes it out of the garage for events and shows.
As we approached, it was a foggy night...there was no lights on the bridge at the time. We just thought there was an accident. We slowed down to about 40 km/h and I'm peering out the window, desperately looking to see the car...what was happening on the bridge. We couldn't see anything but we kept on travelling. The next thing, I said to Frank, "The bridge is gone!" And he just applied the brakes and we just sat there swinging. As we sat there, we couldn’t see anything in the water. All we could see was a big whirlpool of water and apparently the boat was sinking. So with that, we undid the car door and I hopped out. - Sylvia Manley
[Sylvia] said “The white line, the white line’s gone. Stop!" I just hit the brakes and I said “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t stop.” And next thing we just hung off the gap...when I swung the door open, I could see, more or less, see the water...and I just swung meself towards the back of the car and grabbed the headrest like that to pull myself around. There's a big automatic transmission pan underneath [the car] - that's what it balanced on. - Frank Manley
The other car contained Murray and Helen Ling, with their two children. As they were crossing the bridge, they witnessed two cars seemingly disappear, so he slammed on the brakes, stopping mere inches from the end of the bridge. A car travelling behind didn’t react so fast, causing the EK Holden to teeter on the edge of the bridge alongside the Monaro. Murray got his family out of the car and tried desperately to stop other cars on the bridge from driving straight off the edge, to almost no avail.
Horrified, he witnessed two cars plummet off the edge of the bridge after attempting to wave them down. Fortunately, he did stop a bus load full of people, which slammed into the side of the bridge as it skidded along the bridge.
Following the incident Frank Manley used the Monaro for daily driving, but he always knew it was no ordinary car. He vowed to never take it out of Tasmania, and over time it became an icon of Tasmanian motoring. He left it in storage for a number of years and brought it out only on special occasions, such as the 40th anniversary of the disaster in 2015. It now resides in the National Automobile Museum of Tasmania, where it sits proudly, unrestored and in mint factory condition, under a giant poster retelling its story.
https://www.vintag.es/2015/01/the-tasman-bridge-disaster-occurred-in.html
https://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/historic-monaro-out-from-under-wraps-for-anniversary-of-tasman-bridge-disaster/news-story/67a6e13d49e2e23187e687d776debcca
https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/tas/tasman-bridge-disaster-ng-3ab6314370988d3e65a0978f68dd3e1c
https://www.carthrottle.com/post/2zl795y/
most bizarre thing you'll probably hear about today, a crazy man in South Africa while yelling that he wants a Lamborghini, drop kicked Arnold Schwarzenegger in the back. I can not make up anything more random than that
video if you click on the link
https://pagesix.com/2019/05/18/arnold-schwarzenegger-drop-kicked-while-greeting-fans-during-south-africa-appearance/
a chariot procession called Ratha-Yatra, moving an idol from the famous temple to Lord Jagannatha in Puri, India
Every year in the rainy months, a chariot procession is taken from the main temple to the temple of the Lord's aunt.
the size and weight of the chariot gave the meaning of imposing and unstoppable, to the word Juggernaut, mostly due to the law of physics... an object in motion, where the weight and mass have inertia, tends to stay in motion until and equal and opposite force bring it to a stop
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/bqljaa/a_juggernaught_is_an_indian_temple_that_was_moved/
Sunday, May 19, 2019
coolest thing I've read in weeks, how Louie Unser won the 1961 Pikes Peak race - genius tactics
Louis J. Unser. drove a tour bus up the Colorado road several times a day as a teenager, and it paid off with consecutive 1960-61 Pikes Peak Hill Climb wins.
and his experience from winning the 1960 hillclimb taught him a way to put the odds of winning the next in his favor: be the last to make the run up the hill.
In Joe Scalzo’s 1971 book, The Unbelievable Unsers, Unser explained that he was counting on quicker qualifiers to sweep the unpaved road clear of loose gravel.
“During the qualifying run Louie had purposely stopped his car, parked, and chatted with some spectators along the side of the road for a few minutes,” Scalzo wrote. “His time, with the delay, was of course very slow.” That advantage combined with on-and-over-the-edge driving defeated Turner’s 406 Galaxie by the smallest margin ever recorded: 2.4 seconds.
https://www.hotrod.com/articles/louie-unser-gave-chevys-new-409-thrilling-early-victory-pikes-peak-1961/
Kickapoo Hotel (36 rooms) was at 730 Main St, Peoria, IL, and built over a Shell Station... is it me? Or is having a gas station under your hotel a bad idea?
above, 1964
notice the area just under the Shell Station, blank in the above photo, but below they used it for the Hotel signage
notice that below that is the Anheuser Busch eagle... Why? The Kickapoo Building was built in 1911, by St. Louis brewery Anheuser-Busch. During that era the brewery built several establishments to serve their products. The buildings often had distinctive architecture.
The bars/pubs/saloons that were connected to a brewery, or had a contract with one, were "tied houses" in contrast to a "free house" which was un-affiliated with any other particular company, and did business however they chose to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickapoo_Building
1945
but skip ahead to the current time,
and the Busch sign is now where Hotel was
the building was originally used as a tied house for the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, which sought to expand its presence in Peoria's large brewing industry.
The two-story building has a flatiron shape, (flat iron, the ancestor to a steam iron, still has that triangular shape) a design which took advantage of its triangular lot.
Flatiron buildings were once commonly built in Peoria as a necessity of the city's geography; while downtown Peoria was built on a grid aligned with the Illinois River, its subsequent additions were usually aligned with the cardinal directions, and extensions of streets from the additions into downtown led to the creation of many triangular lots.
The Kickapoo Building's lot was created by three of these streets, Main Street and Glendale Avenue from the original downtown and Knoxville from the boundaries of several later additions; while it was not the first building on its triangular lot, it was the first one to take full advantage of the space.
It's the last flatiron building in Peoria
Modern commercial development and freeway construction eliminated many of Peoria's diagonal streets downtown, including Knoxville Avenue itself, and took many of its flatiron buildings with it; the Kickapoo Building stands out among the survivors for its decorative commercial storefronts on all three sides.
this photo from the other side, as you can see from the lower left, where the van is at the old gas station was
It’s been the site for a saloon, hotel, gas station, restaurant, architectural office and uniform company, to name a few.
Anheuser-Busch recognized Peoria as the national distilling and brewing center it was in 1911. That was a time when the city had 11 distilleries, 14 breweries and 323 saloons and St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch wanted in.
So the brewery established a tavern amid all this competition that only served Anheuser-Busch beer.
The so-called “tied house” concept went out with Prohibition making the building, with its flat-iron shape, all the more unique
https://www.apartments.com/kickapoo-apartments-peoria-il/g7l0bdz/
https://www.pjstar.com/article/20140412/BUSINESS/140419717
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kickapoo-Building/923973607656714
Saturday, May 18, 2019
the nicest Dart I've seen that wasn't at a concours
I asked him what he roughly had in it, thinking the answer was 30-40, but he surprised me when he said 17-18. I'm serious, this is amazingly nice in all respects
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