Wednesday, December 31, 2025
National Park Service windshield stickers
a Minerva with the unusual accessory headlight that mounted under the radiator cap
interesting huge sticker on the passenger side of the windshield, but I can't make it out completely, something about .... Permit, state of ...
The end of WW2, was a situation that the military had no idea how to deal with... how to demobilize the troops, the Army had 8M men, the Navy had 3Million, and the railroads needed employees back on the job (one of my few long form reading posts if you're interested)
When WW2 ended the Army analyzed its qualifications
for discharges based on the labor needs in industrial areas, such the railroads.
50 percent of the physicians in the service did not see combat service or deal with casualties but did purely administrative work.
The end of the war drawing near seemed to evoke deep civil yearnings of the people, and to stimulate the desire to return to normal, everyday things. It awoke at the same time the darker side of their natures; they became less trusting; more inclined to doubt. Particularly they now suspected the purity of motive of the military. Reasons advanced for a position, or offered in way of an explanation, accepted without qualm in former times, were more likely to be questioned now. It was, after all, the temper of the times.
At the time of Japan's formal surrender, there were millions of idle men sitting around camps. This angered the men in the camps; it angered wives and parents; and, most assuredly, it angered Congress. It was an intolerable state of affairs, and Congress took it upon itself to determine why in the old Army phrase there were men who were "busy doing nothing."
(after this debacle, congress learned how many medical staffers were needed back in the states, but were stuck overseas with nothing medical to do, learning the nomenclature of the M1 rifle, the machine gun, the carbine, the hand grenade, close order drill, compass reading, map reading, first aid and sanitation; inspecting latrines, kitchens, and fly traps (not making any of this up, Sept 1945, congressional record) but I'm not going to repost all that, it's at the link if you want to dive into it page 131 https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/23619)
50 percent of the physicians in the service did not see combat service or deal with casualties but did purely administrative work.
The problem became
particularly acute in early July when transportation
authorities found it necessary to move the thousands of
redeployed veterans from Europe to the United States.
Several things became quickly apparent. Either the rail roads were not sufficient to handle the vast number of servicemen or there were some monumental mistakes in scheduling, as members of the armed forces found it necessary
to wait an inordinate amount of time before they were loaded
on board a train.
Adding to an already unpleasant situation,
too, was the general crowding on the trains: extremely long
lines to the dining cars, and in the mornings and evenings,
lines to the restrooms.
Equipment was poor: lights did not
always work; seats were sometimes torn. And particularly irksome to servicemen was the discomfort of traveling
great distances without Pullman cars.
The hot July weather
did not help matters, either.
During this hot month of July a series of incidents
happened that dramatized some of the problems of redeployment - incidents that were publicized by the newspapers.
In
Memphis, for example, an irate railroad worker Carl Cannon
spotted a group of German prisoners of war traveling in
Pullman coaches. This was a newsworthy item, for there were
literally thousands of GI's home by now who had ridden miles
and miles in French box cars (the notorious 40 and 8) and
who could not understand why enemy prisoners of war in this
country did not travel in the same fashion.
Unknown to
Cannon perhaps was that these were hospital cases and psycho-
neurotics.
At any rate, he chose to call the local newspaper,
and one of the supervisors of the railroad sought to stop
him, which spoke better of the supervisor's courage than it
did of his wisdom, for Cannon was a 300 pound former athlete
and one time boxing coach of Mississippi State. Cannon said it was necessary for him to "slap down" the supervisor before he could make the call.
Within about a week's time from the incident that
happened concerning the German prisoners of war, a rather
voluble Colonel (Peter DePaulo, in a post a couple after this) in the Transportation Corps spoke out on
some of his ideas concerning the transportation of GI's.
It was far from adequate, according to him, and he was
particularly condemnatory of the railway equipment which
he classified as strictly "toonerville."
The Colonel's
statement which was picked up and spread by the newspapers
aroused national attention, and many people thought that
they recognized the Colonel's name, which may have been the
case, for Lieutenant Colonel Peter DePaolo was the winner of the 1925 Indianapolis 500.
The Army definitely did not appreciate
the Colonel's remark and quickly sped him down the road to
a rapid retirement. The Official explanation was that the
Colonel had more than the sufficient number of points to
be discharged. No explanation was given as to the actual
number of points that he possessed; however many, they
were more than enough.
Much less spectacular than any of these incidents,
but cumulatively more important perhaps were the letters
to Congressmen, phone calls and letters to newspapers, and
the private gripes of GI's that railway transportation was inferior.
Some blamed the railroads for the situation;
some, the Army, and some, the Office of Defense Transportation. The Mead Committee opened hearings to determine
just what the situation was with the railways, with the
hope of making some meaningful and constructive suggestions.
The Committee found, as had been maintained by the
ODT, that there was a shortage of labor on the railways and
tried to secure from the Army a pledge to furlough or
discharge men to work on them.
The Army was reluctant to
do this; they needed railway workers themselves during this
period of redeployment. They had already furloughed some
during the month of June, and, most of all, they did not
want to interfere with the point system.
The Committee
stressed that there were many former railway workers who
were not working on the Army's railroads and asked that
these be released. To stress the wisdom and practicality of furloughing these men, the Committee repeated the
observation of the Director of the CDT that one good railway
worker at work on the railroads was worth a hundred railway
workers in the Army. But the Army was still reluctant to
release them.
This particularly angered the Chairman of the
Committee who stated that there were a number of areas of
which he was aware (Iran for one) where railway labor
battalions were being phased out. Nor could the Chairman
‘understand, as he later told the newspapers, why American
Soldiers were used on the French railroads at a time when there was wide-spread unemployment throughout France.
There was to be sure, a shortage of all railway
cars, but the shortage of Pullman cars was particularly
acute. Undoubtedly, the wear and tear involved in
transporting hundreds of thousands of troops was probably
the most significant reason for this, but apparently there
had not been a sufficient number of them manufactured during
the war.
Burton K. Wheeler said on the floor of the Senate
that many of those that had been manufactured during the
war had been sent to South America.
Senator Scott Lucas of
Illinois reminded the Senate that the Committee to
Investigate the National Defense Program had in the past
opposed the manufacture of additional Pullman cars as a
luxury that was not in the spirit of the war. At any rate, the ODT did its part, and called for the transfer of 895
Pullmans that had been used for civilian service and ordered
the manufacture of an additional 1000 cars.
Meanwhile, back at the war Department, pressure was
mounting. For a period of several weeks, the Army had been
taking a beating in the newspapers. Thoughtful articles
such as that which appeared in the New Orleans Times
Picayune tried to be fair and understand the Army's position
but at the same time stressed the importance of having the
nation's railways operate as efficiently as possible, which
the Army could help with the release of railway workers.
The last day of July the Army finally relented and announced
that it would release 2,063 men engaged in work in railway
shop battalions, and 1,362 men involved in active railway
service in Europe would be released to work on the railroads
in the United States.
A few days later with the hope of
scurrying up more workers, Patterson wrote the Deputy Commanding General of the Army Air Force and reminded him
that the previous June the war Department had asked for the
furlough of 4000 railway workers of which the Air Force was
expected to furnish 1,755, but as of the date of the writing of the letter (Aug. 2) had only furnished 814
In view
of that, Patterson asked the Air Force to speed up its
efforts. Within two weeks of the time that the Army began
the acceleration of its efforts to discharge some men and
furlough others, the war ended. There were no further
demands on the Armed Forces to release men to work on the
nation's railways.
The debates that were conducted over the nation's
coal mines and railroads, and where to get men to work them,
were indeed acrimonious at times. Unfortunately the Army
alienated a number of the members of the Mead Committee and
much of the general public, as well as drawing the ire of
prominent Senators as well.
Edwin Johnson of Colorado
accused it of hoarding manpower;
Robert Taft said that Army
policy was blind, stupid, and stubborn.
Kenneth Wherry of
Nebraska said that the Army was deliberately keeping men in the military in order to influence Congressional policy
toward the Armed Forces.
The end of the war drawing near seemed to evoke deep civil yearnings of the people, and to stimulate the desire to return to normal, everyday things. It awoke at the same time the darker side of their natures; they became less trusting; more inclined to doubt. Particularly they now suspected the purity of motive of the military. Reasons advanced for a position, or offered in way of an explanation, accepted without qualm in former times, were more likely to be questioned now. It was, after all, the temper of the times.
Congressmen realized this, and to an
extent they were even responsible for it, but they welcomed
the opportunity it gave them to reassert the civil power over the military; to curb the ambitious officer; to demand
economy in expenditures; to question the need of personnel;
to set limits on the numbers of officers and men.
At the time of Japan's formal surrender, there were millions of idle men sitting around camps. This angered the men in the camps; it angered wives and parents; and, most assuredly, it angered Congress. It was an intolerable state of affairs, and Congress took it upon itself to determine why in the old Army phrase there were men who were "busy doing nothing."
The most vocal suspicion was that the armed forces wanted to remain large because the number of officers and the availability of promotion were dependent on the size of the armed services. The brass wanted to hang onto their jobs, which were better than anything they ever had in civilian life, and the number of officers was dependent on the size of the Army.
(I could go on, the rest of this dissertation for a doctorate of philosophy is extensively filled with facts from congressional records, newspapers, letters from soldiers, etc but I don't think it relates to my focus on vehicular stuff)
(but if you want to read about the absolute shit show the Army was engaged, get to page 123 of https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/23619 for the info on cutting lawns with bayonets,
picking up
cigarette butts and mopping floors, clean the rifles of officer
candidates, and pick up leaves in one place and put them in
another ((Instead of getting demobilized out of the Army now that the war was OVER))page 128 the Navy shamefully wasted manpower and
equipment and spoke of transports flying from coast to coast
carrying sandbags
the "armless" driver Bill Baldwin and his 1922 Velie Roadster, which he drove across the United States,
The Velie company was founded by a grandson of John Deere
when it comes to bridges, what is more unusual and rare, then a cast iron private one, over a public street, in a major city? Oh, and it's got a 3 car garage. Except no one wants to live there, everyone only wants to flip it
The 118-year-old bridge, which picturesquely hovers above a cobblestone street that was a private access lane to the horse stables of wealthy Hudson Street residents in the early 1800s, connects a landmarked four-story mansion with a private 1,200-square-foot rooftop terrace to a loft across the street.
The landmarked property also features a private three-car garage — and more than 4,000 square feet of air rights.
the 1907 townhouse on the west side of the bridge – 9 Jay – was originally the carriage house for the building on the east side of it – 67 Hudson – which, when it was built in 1900, was a branch of the New York Hospital.
Ambulances pulled into the Jay Street building and patients were taken upstairs and across the bridge to the hospital.
The previous owners (billionaire real estate types) bought it in 2022 for $20 million and figured someone else will pay more if this gets better publicity, so they've listed it for a 10 million dollar mark up at $29.95M.
Before that, it languished on the market for years. It was first listed in 2015 by an American fashion designer from the ‘90s who bought 9 Jay (which came with the bridge) in 1985 for $499,000, in a bidding war with Andy Warhol.
He then bought 3A and 3B at 67 Hudson for $300,000, combining those two apartments and completing the connection to the townhouse.
The hospital put up the three-story structure across Staple Street and linked the two buildings with the cast iron bridge.
Tuesday, December 30, 2025
Peter DePaolo, winner of the 1925 Indy 500, (nephew of Ralph DePalma, winner of the 1915 Indy 500), in the 1925 Duesenberg race winner. Check out the sidewinder centrifugal supercharger (Thank you Steve!)
In his obit, it's pointed out that he declared he'd win the Indy 500 after seeing the immense joy that his mother had when she saw her brother win, and he wanted to be the cause of that much joy. He did, and he was
He then worked for Firestone as a highway safe driving instructor
In 1934, while racing in the German Gran Prix at Avus, a con rod launched out of his engine, and smashed into a wood pillar next to Hitler's face. Narrowly missing changing the direction of WW2 in the European theater, and the fate of a 100 million people
During WW2, he was installed as a Lt. Col., and chief inspector of bombers and fighter planes that made emergency landings in Switzerland in November 1944 to inspect the condition of the bombers at the direction of General "Hap" Arnold, who thought that some of them might have made emergency landings without sufficient damage to escape the war.
Between 1943 and 1945, 166 American bombers sought refuge in Switzerland, of which 41 were destroyed in crashes or forced landings. 39 bombers sustained severe damage, and another 86 suffered minor damage.
In November 1944, a five-member delegation from the United States arrived in Switzerland to advise our mechanics and specialists on aircraft maintenance. The head of the delegation, Lieutenant Colonel Peter DePaolo, described the condition of the parked aircraft as very good and determined that virtually all could be flown back after appropriate overhauls.
The army quickly parted ways with DePaolo, as the result of his protest against the conditions under which servicemen had to return home in. When he arrived at Camp Beale with a train-load of weary GIs and publicly voiced his criticism of the conditions they traveled in and he was called to Washington DC and gave details of the cramped conditions.
A week later he is a civilian. Good for him, integrity and leadership are only valuable to the military when they are not at odds with upper management - but that is not the core of integrity and leadership. He stood for what was right, and was canned. Proving that the military doesn't have the enlisted in it's priorities
DePaolo was instrumental in bringing a Ford factory team to NASCAR, which then led to the formation of the legendary Wood Brothers and Holman-Moody teams.
In 1956, as a team owner, he hired Fireball Roberts and Ralph Moody as drivers, and
DePaolo’s Long Beach operation focused on USAC’s stock car division and featured drivers Troy Ruttman and Jerry Unser.One of those happened to be Glen Wood, of the eventual Wood Brothers fame. After a convertible race win in April 1957 at Fayetteville, North Carolina, DePaolo reached out to congratulate Wood on the victory and asked him if he needed anything. Wood responded that he needed a set of tires for the upcoming race at Richmond. DePaolo sent six tires, and Wood won that race, too.
Eventually, DePaolo would help connect Wood to Ford and land Wood Brothers Racing as one of Ford’s premier teams. Without DePaolo helping him them get Ford support, Jensen said, Wood Brothers Racing may not have become the historic team that it did.
“That began a steady supply of parts to Glen, which would eventually include money,” Jensen said. “But, initially starting out, it was the support he needed, the parts and pieces he needed, to keep racing. That was really what kept the Wood Brothers in the game, and now, 75 years later, they're NASCAR's oldest continually operating team.”
DePaolo Engineering sold it's equipment and machinery to Holman Moody.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/8THAFHS/posts/6752213718161434/https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/23619
do you remember the wheatfield in Brooklyn I posted about in August? Ethan Hawke is making a movie about it
Agnes Denes, a pioneer of ecological and land art known for work on a monumental scale, will be the focus of an upcoming documentary
The untitled project will explore a prodigious talent who continues to make art at the age of 94. Denes, born in Hungary in 1931, has been based in New York for decades and it was in Manhattan in 1982 that she created her most celebrated piece — “Wheatfield – A Confrontation,” that saw her plant and harvest “a field of golden wheat on two acres of rubble-strewn landfill near Wall Street and the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan,” https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2025/08/agnes-deness-wheatfield-confrontation.html
FirstGen Content’s Girson originated the project. “Like so many, I had somehow never heard of Agnes Denes when I first saw the iconic photograph of Agnes in her wheatfield,” he said.
“That project, like Agnes’s singular career and enduring belief in the human spirit, represents the highest ideal of art—and art’s vital role in our shared human experience. That Agnes spent years as a neglected-yet-revered working artist in New York City adds intrigue and complexity to her story, which we are excited to share with people when the film is ready.”
a family wanted their tractor restored and a tractor restoring student needed a tractor to restore for the Missouri State Fair but couldn't afford one. It won Grand Champion Restored Tractor at the Missouri State Fair.
Borts was a student at Jamestown High School and president of his Missouri FFA chapter when a relative approached him and his father about a restoration project. The relative, Chris Schoenthal, was impressed with Borts’ work restoring a 1951 Oliver 77, which won Reserve Grand Champion Restored Tractor at the Missouri State Fair.
But there was also a deeper reason behind his request. Schoenthal, who was in his 40s, had been battling cancer for more than three years when he approached Borts about the 826 tractor, which had been owned by his family since the 1970s.
“The Schoenthal family wanted the tractor restored but didn’t have anyone to perform the restoration,” Borts said. “I wanted to do another tractor restoration for the Missouri State Fair [after the Oliver] but didn’t have the finances to purchase another tractor. So, this was the perfect match.”
China has set a new world speed record by accelerating a 2400 pound test vehicle on a superconducting maglev to 400mph in just two seconds. It looks like the purpose and eventual application will be launching jest from aircraft carriers
This speed broke the global record for the same type of platform, making it the fastest superconducting electromagnetic maglev testing speed in the world, a new global benchmark
“It resolves core technical challenges including ultra-high-speed electromagnetic propulsion, electric suspension guidance, transient high-power energy storage inversion, and high-field superconducting magnets,”
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3337735/chinas-record-smashing-maglev-achieves-0-700km/h-acceleration-less-2-seconds
a meteorite the size of a Christmas turkey broke up over a small village 60 years ago, the largest meteorite to hit the UK, was on Christmas Eve 1965. A kid found a 3 pound piece of it, and sold it to buy a 10-speed Raleigh racing bike
When a meteorite the size of a Christmas turkey broke up over a small British village 60 years ago, David Radford was a teenager who had a second-hand bike.
This changed after he found a fragment of the meteorite when he was playing with friends at a park. His foot fell down a hole, and he found the 4.5 billion-year-old piece of space rock.
A week later, there was a knock at David's front door. The late British astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, and an official from one of the museums in London
After the two visitors confirmed it was a meteorite, the museum official asked if they could buy it from him.
He said he was given 530 dollars when adjusted for inflation, as the going rate was a dollar per ounce of meteorite.
"I was wanting a new bicycle, and I'd got the family hand-me-down, so I wanted to replace that," David said.
He bought a 10-speed Raleigh racing bike, but said his mother made him set up a bank account with the remaining money.
After the two visitors confirmed it was a meteorite, the museum official asked if they could buy it from him.
He said he was given 530 dollars when adjusted for inflation, as the going rate was a dollar per ounce of meteorite.
"I was wanting a new bicycle, and I'd got the family hand-me-down, so I wanted to replace that," David said.
He bought a 10-speed Raleigh racing bike, but said his mother made him set up a bank account with the remaining money.
When a Wyoming crumbling bridge was failing, engineers turned to the Bailey Bridge concept invented during WW II to replace nearly half the state’s bridges which are past their prime.
"Like an Erector Set, it comes totally broken down to the site, and then it's assembled at the site by the contractors,” Sobecki said. “The whole thing is built on the premise (that) it’s pre-fabricated, made in the shop. Then the pieces ship out and you just bolt it and pin it together at the job site and launch it.
“You don't need heavy cranes. You don't need welders out there. It's designed to be built with a minimum amount of equipment."
According to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association's (ARTBA) analysis of federal data, 204 of Wyoming’s 3,136 bridges — 6.5% — are classified as structurally deficient, meaning at least one key element is in poor condition.
Nearly half of Wyoming's bridges are more than 50 years old, approaching or exceeding their intended design life and potentially requiring greater maintenance. State transportation officials have identified 1,180 bridges needing repairs.
The American Society of Civil Engineers' 2025 Infrastructure Report Card paints a more concerning picture of aging infrastructure.
The ARTBA reports that 945 of South Dakota's 5,883 bridges — 16.1% — are structurally deficient, one of the highest rates in the nation and more than double Wyoming's percentage.
Nebraska struggles with sheer volume. With 15,398 bridges — nearly five times Wyoming's inventory — the state has 1,217 structurally deficient structures, or 7.9%.
Increasingly extreme weather is driving demand for emergency bridging solutions. "Whether you believe in climate change or not, there is a bigger propensity of flooding and hurricanes and all that stuff, and it does drive our business," he said.
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2025/12/27/crumbling-bridge-near-alpine-replaced-in-days-with-wwii-erector-set-tech/
(if you plan to invest in something, I think copper, silver, and bridges would be a good idea right now)
The Japanese Ministry of Defense announced investigations confirmed that Kawasaki Heavy Industries had supplied fraudulent test data on its engines and provided inappropriate gifts to a number of naval personnel over the past 40 years.
Kawasaki announced in 2024 that information surfaced showing a long-term pattern of falsifying test data to ensure engines were delivered on time per contract requirements
Kawasaki Heavy Industries supplied engines for Japan’s submarines and in July and August 2024 discovered its contractual required testing of submarine engines fuel consumption level reports were falsified for the engines of 23 of its submarines
Kawasaki Heavy Industries supplied engines for Japan’s submarines and in July and August 2024 discovered its contractual required testing of submarine engines fuel consumption level reports were falsified for the engines of 23 of its submarines
hard to believe that someone had a 60 million dollar collection of motorcycles and art that they didn't legally isolate via money laundering, from illegal acts so the govt couldn't seize it...
The 44-year-old Canadian national, who is on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, is wanted for allegedly running a transnational drug trafficking operation that ships cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and Southern California, to Canada
Barney and the 999
https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/517/
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