Showing posts with label 1950s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1950s. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Some recent bios and what they tell us about the realatively recent past.



In the last week or so, we've posted a series of threads that dealt with various personalities.  In setting them out, it occured to me how some of them actually reach back to the supposed purpose of this blog, which is:

Lex Anteinternet?





Well, in reality, that broadened out pretty rapidly to taking into account looking at everything in this era in trying to get a grasp on it.  Since then, it's certainly broadened out enormously, probably much too much.

Anyhow, some recent items help illuminate some of the things of this era, and the one immediately after it.  Indeed, as we'll discuss, one of them helps actually define, maybe, how to property define certain eras.

The items we looked at which brings this to mind are the story of Maj. Gale "Buck" Cleven, that of Dick Proenekke, and also Lee Marvin, and the work of the Southern Agrarians, and that of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

Quite a varied set, I'll admit.

Let's start with Dr. Gale Cleven, which is how most people who knew him, knew him as, the latter part of his life.


I'd never heard of Dr. Cleven until I started Watching Masters of the Air.  The show references him as being from Casper Wyoming, and that caused me to research him further.  As noted on the entry on him, he was born in Lemmon, South Dakota, but came with his family to the oil town of Lusk when he was just a very small boy.  From there he moved to Casper, at some point.

What I could find on him notes that he worked as a roughneck as a young man, while going to college to study geology.  I did both of those things also, and also simultaneously, giving me an odd occupational connection with him, although one that's not all that uncommon around here.  I did find that a little startling, however.

What all that does, however, is to show the very long-lasting economic feature of Wyoming as being an oil and gas province, something that is still the case, but waning.  It remains a strong aspect of the state's economy, however.  This has been the case since, as we explored earlier, at least 1917, although things were headed that way earlier.  It's interesting, looking back, to realize how many of us in The Cowboy State, have worked in oil and gas in some fashion.  Given the economic reach of the industry, darned near everyone at one time.

Something else that really had the reach was the newspaper, in the form of The Society Page.  I was able to track Gale Cleven, as he would then have been known, joining a fraternity and going to UW dances.  I could even track who he was casually dating.

That's odd.

Society columns in newspapers were common at least into the 1950s, and even beyond that. They reported all sorts of snoopy stuff.  I've found, for example, my grandfather mentioned in The Denver Post because his sister was visiting, this in the 1930s.  Another sister of his visited somebody in Denver in the 1920s.  Whose business was that?

They also reported on when people went on vacations, even extended vacations, which is a horrible thought.

I guess it shows, to an extent, the concept of privacy, which the Internet has eroded, is a modern thing.  In the newspapers of the 20s divorces made front page news, births were mentioned, as they are now, scandals were reported, and where you were going, with whom, was as well.

People were keeping track of things and didn't need an iPhone to do it.  No wonder people all subscribed to the paper.

This item also pointed out what a small world Wyoming was and is.  Cleven, whom I had not heard of previously, took a relative by marriage to a dance.  She was from a ranch family that owned a ranch that I later owned a piece of.  She married a rancher who left his name on a prominent local feature.  One of her brothers-in-law was the best friend of one of my old, now long gone, partners.  That fellow was killed in World War Two.  My partner was a crewman on a B-24.

In the small world item also is the thought that I, my father, my wife, and my children all walked the same high school halls, and have driven on the same streets as this fellow.  

And that fame, to the extent fame is involved here, if fleeting.  I'd never heard of him in spite of his remarkable wartime service.  Nothing is named for him here.

Another thing, and one that cuts a bit against something I've noted here in the past.

As I've noted, for at least some Americans, going to university was really a post World War Two thing. That's widely known.  Less well known is that Catholics didn't go to university for the most part until after the war (and I don't know what religion Cleven was).  

Cleven's story shows that this was already changing before the war, however.  Cleven didn't come from a wealthy family, and his parents clearly weren't college educated.  But there he was, at UW, before the war.  

University education was reaching down to the Middle Class, even though we were still in an era when less than 50% of American males graduated from high school

Indeed, while its jumping ahead, the story of Richard Proenneke demonstrated that.  He dropped out of high school as it didn't interest him but went on to, at first, as successful blue collar career.  He seems to have actually retired in his 50s.

Back to Cleven, he had what looks to be the start of a pretty conventional, Wyoming, advanced education before the war, and then went on to an extraordinary one due to the war in no small part.  That demonstrates the manner in which World War Two altered all of society massively.

We'll get back to that.

Finally, in regard to Cleven, his story also demonstrates the ongoing impact of disease in that era.  His young wife was killed by polio.

The polio vaccine didn't come out until 1955, two years after her death.  Somewhat associated with children now, polio in fact struck adults as well.  It was highly contagious and it often killed rapidly.  People went form well in the morning to dead by the end of the day.   And the deaths weren't pleasant. That appears to be basically what happened to her.

Polio, like Small Pox, and Measles are all preventable by vaccines.  So is Covid.  Not until recently, in the post Reagan post Scientific era, have Americans lost their faith in these lifesavers.  

And that is, quite frankly, stupid.

Let's look at Proenekke.


I really think Proennekke's story has been misconstrued, now that I've looked at it.  He tends to be viewed as somebody who turned his back on the modern world and moved to the Alaskan outback.  In reality, however, he's a guy who lived his whole life as a single man and retired young, then moved, in retirement, to the outback.

It's a bit different.

Proennekke's life brings to mind two items of social change, both of which are increasing rare and difficult for "moderns", or "post moderns", if you prefer to understand.  One is the existence of lifelong bachelors with nothing else being assumed about that status, and the other is the true jack of all trades.

We'll take the bachelorhood story, which we've dealt with before in another context, first.

Supposedly today 30.4% of men never marry, more or less (that's a 2010 figure) and 23% of women.  In 1900 that figure was 38.8% and 29.7% respectively, but that doesn't mean the same thing at all.  We've already seen that prior to the mid 20th Century, in many places "living together" was a crime, and in others that would have resulted in a common law marriage.  So those figures really reflect people who lived lives alone

The percentages dropped for every decade of the 20th Century, until the 80s, when they started hovering right around 30% consistently, never going back up to the 1900 38.8% for men.  For what it is worth, for women they dropped to an all-time low for the 1960s, of 17.3%, and the went up to about 23% where they've remained.  Realistically, however, the current 30% and 23% are probably significantly lower, if we take into account situations where couples exist but without the formal benefit of marriage.

And that's significant in multiple ways.

Currently, nearly any male in the "never married" category without some sort of female "significant other" will flat out be assumed to be homosexual once they get much past 30 years of age.  Many people will even assume that Catholic clerics must be homosexual, as they are required to be celibates.  The pressure is so high on unmarried males to declare, in some fashion or another, at the present time, that its actually proven to be a problem for recruiting Catholic Priests as some who have expressed a latent desire to do so have already married due to pressure, or have gone down the secularly pressured road of girlfriend and actions that used to wait until marriage to the extent that they really cannot get back from it.  For that matter, single men past a certain age are not only assumed to be homosexual, but are often societally pressured, in some areas, to be one in order to explain their status.  The thought that somebody could function, more or less alone, but with normal inclinations, just doesn't exist anymore.  The thought that anyone, and indeed anyone who isn't a cleric, could function in a single celibate way is almost regarded as making that person a raving deviant.

It was quite common, however, at one time.  Indeed, there are at least four movies that touch on the topic, all of which might be a little hard for people to grasp now, but which showed that this was a normal frame of reference for viewing audiences at one time, with those files being Marty (1955), The Apartment (1960) Only The Lonely (1991) and Brooklyn (2015).  The evolution of the films shows how this evolved, with the protagonist in Marty being a single male who is assumed by everyone, including his family, will remain one.  Indeed, they wish him to.  In The Apartment it is not assumed that the young executive will marry, even as he develops a deep affection for the female protagonist.  In Only The Lonely the situation is much the same as Marty, but with the mandatory introduction, by that time, of sex into the film.  In Brooklyn the assumption of marriage is much stronger, and indeed becomes a problem during the film.

Truth be known, however, up until at least the 1980s this was a relatively common thing to encounter, and there was no assumption that a single male was attracted to other men by any means.  Usually the single status was regarded as sort of a tragedy, but not one that was a deviation from the norm to much of a degree.  Indeed, I can easily recall several examples of this in adults when I was growing up.

One such individual was a plumber who was well liked and who lived next to my grandmother.  He was a veteran of World War Two and had served almost the entire war in a Japanese POW camp. For that reason, he never turned the lights off in his small house, as they had not done that in the camp.  HE never married.

Also, a tradesman, another person in my father's circle of friends was a fellow who was a plumber and who didn't marry until the 1980s, at which time that was regarded as nearly foolish as he would have been in his very late 50s or perhaps 60s at the time.  His long bachelorhood was not regarded as strange in any fashion, and for much of that time he lived with his mother, inheriting her house after she passed away.

Another example was a friend of my father's who was a mail carrier.  He'd started off before World War Two to become a Protestant minister in his home state of Nebraska, but like so many others, the war interrupted his planned career, and he was an artillery spotter during the war.  When he came back, he did not resume his studies, although he remained devoutly religious.  He dated after the war, at least until the late 1950s, but never found anyone and never married, passing way after my father and after having lived a very long life.  He was one of two postmen who shared a lifelong bachelorhood status, the other one living in a tiny house in North Casper, who when he passed away was a millionaire.

About the only example of this that ever struck me as odd, when I was a boy, were a brother and sister who lived down the block from us. They were both school teachers and never married, and lived into their old ages in a house they jointly owned.  I recall they called my father by a diminutive, the only people who ever did that, which he hated.

They had a Golden Labrador.

Finally, the owner of a men's clothing store here in town was single his whole life.  He was a fanatic UW football fan.

Could any of these people have been closeted homosexuals? Sure, but it certainly wasn't assumed so.  Indeed, it was just regarded as the fate they'd fallen into and a bit sad.  Most of them had something that was a bit quirky about their characters, and the majority of them were tradesmen or blue collar workers, although not all were. That might tell us something there.

Prior to the Second World War, there were entire occupations that tended to be dominated by single men.  Most of those occupations involved hard labor in some fashion.  By the 1920s ranch hands, for example, were single men, and they often spent their entire careers in relatively low paying jobs that precluded them from ever marrying.  The few places that actually have hired cowhands today, if you find a career one, replicate this.  Enlisted men in the Army had always been single in US history unless they advanced to more senior Non Commissioned Officer status.  Well after World War Two, enlisted men frequently required permission to marry from their commanding officers, and before World War Two they routinely did. Wartime was the exception, as married men were brought into the service during war.  Even junior officers were not usually married.

This somewhat reflects, therefore, the harder working conditions and lower incomes in society overall.  Being married took enough of a male's income to make it work, as women often were not employed and typically were not employed once they started having children.  Hired hand status on farms and ranches, and enlisted status in the service, precluded marriage as a result.  The long working hours in some instances, and griminess of manual labor, also worked against marriage for a certain percentage of men as hypergyny didn't favor it, if other options were available.

Indeed, this also helps explain the occupations that the actually closeted went into, as has been discussed before.  Generally occupations that paid better, or steadily, and perhaps which weren't grimy in comparison to others, also favored marriage.  Occupations that were essentially white collar in a way, that didn't favor marriage were very few and far between.

The other thing Proennekke's story brings up is the successful jack of all trades.  His father was one, and he seems to have been as well.  Men with really good mechanical skills who could go from one setting to another were pretty common, and indeed they were at least up until the 1990s.  "He's good with his hands" was a compliment that was often paid to somebody who could act as a universal skilled laborer.  

I'm sure that these guys still exist, but not nearly in the numbers they once did.  I really can't recall meeting one recently, except for older ranchers who are that way by default.  Indeed, everyone I knew of a certain age who had grown up on a farm or ranch was like this.  I was actually surprised as an adult to meet younger ranchers who didn't have those skills, although plenty of them still do.



Finally, there's the modern aspect of strongly pigeonholing, indeed even limiting, people by their perceived disabilities, many of them mild.

The item on Lee Marvin notes that he was afflicted with ADHD, which may in part account for his somewhat wild nature, his early failings at school, and his strong affinity for alcohol.  Or maybe not.  At any rate, he was enormously successful at his trade, acting, and he would never have known he was ADHD, if he was.

This is true of all sorts of things like this. Dyslexia, which I have in a mild form, also afflicted such people as George S. Patton.  Not knowing what it was, you didn't really worry about it, and carried on.  

It's not that these things should be ignored, but I worry that our appreciation of them may not be really well-founded in biology, and certainly evolutionary biology.  Dyslexia, some now claim, is not a neurological disorder or an impairment, but a concession for cognitive strengths in exploration, big-picture thinking, creativity, and problem-solving, so its a byproduct of generally positive aspects.  ADHD, which occurs strongly in some human populations, is now suspected to be an evolutionary trait favored evolutionary people, which makes lots of sense, and which frankly is something that we earlier realized when we called people polymaths and autodidacts.  In contrast, the large occurrence of anxiety in our modern populations reflects an evolutionary need to be careful and alert, made problematic as our modern cubicle lifestyle sucks.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Sunday, February 27, 1944. The Khaibakh Massacre

Weather prevented over 700 Chechen villagers from Khaibakh from being convoyed in the Soviet mass deportation of Chechens, meaning they could not meet the absurdly short deadline set by Lavrentiy Beria so they were shot.  The order was given by Mikhail Gvishiani, an officer in the NKVD.

Beria, a loyal Stalin henchman, was a first class weirdo who was also a mass rapist, something his position allowed him to get away with.  He fell after Stalin's death, was tried, and executed for treason.

Gvishiani survived the fall of Stalin, but probably only because his son, Dzhermen Gvishiani, was married to the daughter of Communist Party Central Committee member Alexei Kosygin.

It was the start of National Negro Press Week.


The U.S. Office of Strategic Services commenced Operation Ginny I with the objective of blowing up Italian railway tunnels in Italy to cut German lines of communication.

The OSS team landed in the wrong location and had to abandon the mission.

Hitler ordered the Panzerfeldhaubitze 18M auf Geschützwagen III/IV (Sf) Hummel, Sd.Kfz. 165, "Hummel" renamed as he did not find the name Hummel, i.e. bumblebee to be an appropriate name.

You would think that Hitler would have had other things to worry about at this point.

The Grayback was sunk off of Okinawa by aircraft.

Saturday, February 24, 2024

February 24, 1874. Honus Wagner born.

 


Baseball great Honus Wagner was born in Pennsylvania.  

A shortstop, he played professional baseball from 1897 to 1917.  Following retirement as a player, he managed the team he had played for, the Pittsburgh Pirates, for 39 years.  He passed away in 1955 at age 81.

Two of his brothers were also professional baseball players.

Last prior:

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Today In Wyoming's History: Major Gale "Buck" Cleven

Today In Wyoming's History: Major Gale "Buck" Cleven:  

Major Gale "Buck" Cleven

 


In the Apple TV series Masters of the Air, one of the characters is Maj. Gale "Buck" Cleven, who reports himself as being from Casper twice in the first episode.

Who was he, and was he really from Casper?

Clevens was born in Lemmon, South Dakota, on December 27, 1918, just after the end of World War One.  His family moved to Casper when he was still a child, although I'm not certain when, as they moved first to Lusk, in 1920.  He likely was a 1937 graduate from Natrona County High School, the only high school in Casper at the time (Natrona County had a second one in Midwest).  Following graduating from high school, he attended the University of Wyoming while also working on drilling crews as a roughneck.

He did, in fact, move at some point to Casper, where he was employed as a roughneck on drilling crews.  He used the money he earned to attend the University of Wyoming and was enrolled by the fall of 1937, presumably right after high school.  His name appears in the social pages of The Branding Iron as having had a date attend the men's residence hall October dance.  He was a guest of a different young lady at the 1939 Tri Delts Halloween sorority dance.  The same year he was apparently in a fraternity, as he's noted as having attended the Phi Delta Theta dance with, yes, another young lady.  In February 1939 he went to a fraternity dance with Nova Carter, whom I believe I'm related to by marriage.  A year later, February 1940, he took a different gal to the same dance.

He left UW in 1941 to join the Army, intent on being a pilot.  The October 21, 1943, edition of the UW Student Newspaper, The Branding Iron, notes him (inaccurately) as being stationed in North Africa and having received the Distinguished Service Cross, which he in fact did receive for piloting his badly stricken plane from Schweinfurt to North Africa, the flight path taken on that raid. This even is depicted in Masters of the Air.  The Branding Iron noted that he had attended UW for three years.  In June, 1944, the student newspaper reported him a POW.  He's noted again for a second decoration in the March 2, 1944, edition, which also notes that he was a Prisoner of War.

As depicted in Masters of the Air, his B-17 was in fact shot down over Germany.  He ended up becoming a POW, as reported in the UW paper, at Stalag Luft III for 18 months, after which he escaped and made it to Allied lines.  He was put back in the cockpit after the war flying troops back to the United States.

Following the war, he was back at the University of Wyoming.  He graduated from UW with a bachelor's in 1946.  He apparently reentered the Air Force after that, or was recalled into service, and served in the Korean War, leaving the Air Force around that time.

He was on the Winter Quarter 1954 UW Honor Roll and obtained a Masters Degree, probably in geology, from UW in 1956.  Somewhere in here, he obtained a MBA degree from Harvard and an interplanetary physics doctorate from George Washington University.  

He married immediately after the war in 1945 to Marjorie Ruth Spencer, who was originally from Lander Wyoming.  They had known each other since childhood.  She tragically passed away in 1953 while visiting her parents, while due to join Gale at Morton Air Force Base in California.  Polio was the cause of her death, and unusually her headstone, in Texas, bears her maiden name.  Reportedly, her death threw Cleven into a deep depression.  He married again in 1955, to Esther Lee Athey.

His post-war career is hard to follow.  He flew again during the Korean War, as noted, which would explain the gap between his bachelors and master’s degrees, and probably his doctorate.  He's noted as having served again during the Vietnam War, and also has having held a post at the Pentagon.  He was in charge of EDP information at Hughes Aircraft.  Given all of that, it's hard to know if an intended career in geology ever materialized, or if his World War Two service ended up essentially dominating the remainder of his career in the form of military service.  The interplanetary physics degree would and employment by Hughes would suggest the latter.  His highest held rank in the Air Force was Colonel.

Following retirement, he lived in Dickenson, North Dakota, and then later at the Sugarland Retirement Center in Sheridan.  He died at age 86 in 2006, and is buried at the Santa Fe National Cemetery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, his marker noting service in three wars.

Monday, February 19, 2024

Soap Blindness. Being careful about what you are wishing for.

Independent truck drivers, whom share nothing in common with Donald Trump whatsoever, are claiming they'll boycott New York State today due to the judgment against the serially indicted former President.

In the Gene Shepherd classic A Christmas Story, Ralphie imagines that he'll get "soap blindness" and live on the streets, to the regret of his parents, for having his mouth washed out with soap.  No such thing exists, of course, but in reality, if it did, it'd be worse than the remorse the parents would feel for the person enduring it.

In other words, a person needs to be careful for what they wish for.

Truck drivers, or at least American independent truck drivers, are heavily invested in the belief that "America needs us".  They're also heavily invested in a myth of manly, rugged independence.  The reality of the situation is quite different, however.

The United States went to a semi tractor supply distribution system through the short sightedness of Dwight Eisenhower, who backed the massive Federally funded expansion of the US highway system during his administration.  Eisenhower, impressed with the Autobahn, which he'd seen while the Supreme Commander of Allied Expedition Force in Europe, wanted them here.  It was really an example of the American System at work, and while I'm generally a proponent of the American System, it shouldn't have happened in this example.

Coming right at the same time that the American love of automobiles really took off, it caused a massive ongoing subsidy of the highway system, and by extension, the expansion of over the road trucking, at the detriment of the railroads.  I've posted on that here before, stating:

Trucking is a subsidized industry, but people don't think of it that way.  Its primary competitor is rail. Railroads put in their own tracks and maintain their own railroad infrastructure. When you see a train, everything you were looking at, from the rails to the cars, were purchased by private enterprise. When you seem a semi tractor, however, it's always traveling on a public conveyance.


It's doing that fairly inefficiently compared to rail.  Rail is incredibly cheap on a cost per mile basis, and it's actually incredibly "green" as well.  It's efficient.  Trucks are nowhere near as efficient in any fashion.  Not even in employment of human resources.  Trains have, anymore, one or two men crews, the same as semi trucks, but they're hauling a lot more per mile than trucks are with just two men.

And, as we also stated:

Following the Second World War the U.S. saw a rising expansion of over the road trucking.  By the late 1950s the US was, additionally, overhauling its Interstate highway system via the Defense Department's budget with new "defense" highways, which were much improved compared to the old Interstate highway system.  With the greatly improved roads, by the 1960s, interstate long haul trucking was in an advance state of supplanting the railroads for a lot of American freighting.  At the same time, the diesel engine supplanted the gasoline engine for semi tractors.  A very uncommon engine for motor vehicles in the United States prior to the 1950s, diesels started coming in somewhere in that period and by the 1960s they'd completely replaced gasoline engines for over the road semi tractors.  Now, of course, diesels have become fairly common for heavy pickups as well, and are even starting to appear in the U.S. in light pickup trucks in spite of the higher cost of diesel fuel.


The change was dramatic, although few people can probably fully appreciate that now, as we are so acclimated to trucking.  Thousands of trucks supplanted thousands of rail cars, and entire industries that were once served only by rail came to be served by truck.  The shipping of livestock, for example, which was nearly exclusively a railroad enterprise up into the 1950s is now done entirely by truck, a change which had remarkable impacts as rail shipping required driving the livestock to the railhead, whereas with the trucks they are simply scheduled to arrive at a ranch at a particular time.  Likewise, businesses that at one time located themselves near rail lines, so that they could receive their heavy products by rail, no longer do, as they receive those items by trucks.  For example, pipeyards, once always near a railhead, are not always today.


One semi truck does as much damage to the highways as 2,000 passenger cars, or some I'm told.  I was told that by the owner of a company that has semi trucks.

On top of it, truck driving isn't something Americans want to do anymore, something the independents who are protesting seem to be missing.  As we earlier noted:

There are presently 11,000,000 unfilled jobs in the United States.  These are jobs that were filled before the COVID Recession.  People aren't going back to work.

And laborers are also demanding better wages and benefits in order to do the work they're doing.

This represents a dual fundamental shift in the thinking of the American work force.  Part of it is old-fashioned, and part not so much.

As for better wages and benefits, following the Reagan Administration and the economic woes of the 1970s, American labor really faded from the scene as an organized entity.  Of course, we lost a lot of labor to overseas as well.  Now the remaining labor is fed up and taking advantage of the situation, for which it cannot be blamed.

The second part of this situation, however, is remarkable.  Forced out of work during the pandemic, stay homes, lots of people discovered that modern American work sucks. They don't want to go back, as their lives were better without the work.

Some of those who don't want to go back are truck drivers. The country is short 20,000 truck drivers right now.

In recent years the country has actually imported a lot of truck drivers, something the general public seems largely unaware of.  Anymore, when I read the names of people involved in truck driving accidents, I expect the drivers to be Russian, and I'm actually surprised when they are not.   What happened here overall isn't clear to me, but over the last fifteen years technology has developed to where it's much easier for trucking companies to keep tabs on their truckers while on the road and things have gotten safer. At the same time, this means, as it always has, but perhaps more so, that these guys live on the road.  According to Buttigieg the industry has an 80% annual turnover rate.

An 80% annual turnover rate doesn't sound even remotely possible to me, but that there's a high one wouldn't surprise me.  It's a dangerous job and contrary to what people like to imagine, it doesn't really pay the drivers that well as a rule, or at least fairly often.  Often the drivers are "owner operators" who own their own super expensive semi tractor and who are leasing it to the company they are driving for.  That in turn means that they're often making hefty payments on the truck.  I don't blame anyone for not wanting to do it.

I can blame the nation for putting itself in this situation, however.

Drivers can make a lot of money, for sure, but their paychecks often go towards paying for their trucks and the like.  Modern trucks are automatic transmission vehicles and the days of really highly skilled teamsters who knew how to double clutch and shift two gear shifts at once (which I've seen done), are long gone.  The job has become one where temporary immigrants and immigrants from the Third World are incredibly common.  

So sure, while there are Trump loving independent teamsters out there, there are a lot of drivers from India, Somalia, Russia or Mexico who no doubt have little Trump love.

And motorists have little truck love.  That's part of the reason that teamsters feel compelled to attempt to remind people that things move by truck.  The problem is, they don't have to.

Had the Defense Highway System not been built, things would move by rail, except locally. There's no reason that couldn't happen again, and if the Federal Government suddenly decided, for whatever reason (and expense would be a good one) to end the funding system, the result would be just like what happened when it quite subsidizing housing the mentally ill back in Reagan's day.  States wouldn't pick it back up.  It'd take awhile, but not as long as supposed, before rail picked its old role back up, but it could and would.  

Beyond that, rail transportation is already very "green", as noted above, compared to truck transportation.  It could be made much more so by electrifying the system, which is a proven system.  Trains engines are also more capable of readily being made in alternative fuels than semi trucks are.  Short haul trucks, from rail to consumer, are also relatively easy to make the conversion to electricity.

Up until after World War Two, most things moved by rail, and trucking was local.  The highway system, while the Federal Government was already in it, was much more local.

So, want to show how valuable you are to the economy?  Going on strike or into a boycott may do it.  Perhaps you are like the railroader of World War One and World War Two and can't be ignored.  Perhaps you are an economic Lysistrata and people won't want to ignore you.

Or perhaps people figure they're better off without you and they don't want to be taxed to support your industry anymore and they'll look forward to not seeing trucks in their rear view mirror.

Related Threads:

Supply Chain Disruption and Other Economic Problems







Monday, February 5, 2024

Tuesday, February 5, 1924. Joseph M. Carey passes away. Burying Wilson, Enjoining Tepot Dome.



Today In Wyoming's History: February 51924  Joseph M. Carey, Governor from 1911 to 1915, and member of the Republican and Progressive parties, died.in Cheyenne.

Carey was born in Delaware in 1845 and came to Wyoming after being appointed United States Attorney for the Territory of Wyoming in 1869.  He was still in his twenties at the time.  In 1871 he became an Associated Justice for the Territorial Wyoming Supreme Court, still at an absurdly young age.  He became mayor of Cheyenne in 1880.  Following statehood, he became a Senator in 1890. In 1895 he was not reelected by the legislature, which elected Senators at the time, due to his opposition to free silver, an opposition which was economically correct.  He was elected Governor in 1910 and served until 1915, joining the Progressive Party with Progressives bolted from the Republican Party.

Staying true to his Progressive views, he endorsed Woodrow Wilson during the 1916 election.  He was a supporter of Prohibition.

In addition to being a lawyer and politicians, he was a rancher, with large ranching interest in Central Wyoming.  In many ways, he's is representative of an era in Wyoming when people could come from out of state and become central in many aspects of the state's economic and political life.

In 1959, he was inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.




The Winter Olympics concluded.    France, Norway and Finland tied for gold medals.

Mexican rebels retreated from Vera Cruz as Federals won a victory at  Córdoba.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

I had always thought my grandfather on my mother's side died at age 58. . .

but it turns out, he died in 1958.

He was, therefore, about 67 years of age.

Still not ancient by current standards, but not 58 years of age, either.

That was, FWIW, the same year my parents married.

His wife, my grandmother, died at age 89, however, which is a little younger than I remembered.  It was in 1979, which is later than I remember, which means that my recollection didn't make mathematical sense, either.  I was in high school at the time, but I don't recall it that way.

That also means that she lived long enough to see one of her children die, which I knew, and two of them fall into severe illness accompanied by mental decline, which must have been hard in the extreme to endure.

Monday, January 15, 2024

Tuesday, January 15, 1974. Happy Days.

Happy Days, the legendary sitcom, appeared to mixed reviews.

1974 Happy Days cast.

Clearly riffing off of 1950s nostalgia, less than 20 years after the end of the decade, the show had more or less been laid a path to success by the recent film American Graffiti, which also featured Ron Howard portraying a major character.  Even before that, however, nostalgia had seen the rise of the rise of the band Sha Na Na which appeared in 1969 in sufficient time in which to appear at Woodstock.


American Graffiti, as we've noted here before, actually takes place in 1962, not the 1950s, but its not recalled that way.  Howard, for his part, had grown up on television as Opie in The Andy Griffith Show, which had run from 1960 to 1968, but which is also commonly thought as taking place in the 1950s, even though there's no effort whatsoever to suggest that in the show, and contemporary audiences would not have taken it that way.

As the name of Happy Days implied, the American public, troubled by the news of the ear, or perhaps of the entire 1960s, conceived of the 50s as "happy days", irrespective of what they had actually been.  The series would run for a decade.  During that time, it had a pretty substantial impact on the pop culture of the era.  My family didn't regularly watch it, probably as they'd all lived through the 50s and weren't nostalgic about it, but I can recall the revival of 1950s rock and roll it caused. And at the junior high I was attending, there were dances called "sock hops", which was a revival of a term strongly associated with the 1950s.

College shock hop, 1948.  Sock hops were called that as students took off their shoes to dance on gym floors.

I was too shy to attend them.

On the same day, a panel of experts testified that the 18.5 minute gap in the now infamous Nixon tape conversation with H. R. Halderman of June 20, 1972, was made by serial erasures.

In Indonesia, a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka turned into a riot featuring an attack, oddly, on Chinese Indonesians.

The disappointing Comet Kohoutek made its closest pass by Earth.  I recall going outside to look for it and, like thousands of others, being disappointed by not really being able to see much in spite of predictions to the contrary.

John Wayne visited Harvard at the invitation of The Harvard Lampoon to debate students on his all but forgotten film, McQ.  He traveled to Harvard Square in an armored personnel carrier from Ft. Devens.  Native Americans interrupted his travels to protest events at Wounded Knee.  Wayne ignored a question about supporting the Hollywood blacklist.

All of which shows why people were nostalgic about the 1950s.

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Blog Mirror: January 14, 1954: Joe DiMaggio Marries Marilyn Monroe


An interesting and sympathetic, while honest, treatment of a story we first looked at here in the context of her marriage during the Second World War.

January 14, 1954: Joe DiMaggio Marries Marilyn Monroe

DiMaggio, who we would have to assume had a thing for blond starlets, as this notes, would cap his marital attempts at two.  Monroe attempted three times.  So did Dorothy Arnold, who we would have to characterize as a minor actress.  She died in 1970, leaving behind her third spouse.

Arnold and DiMaggio's union resulted in the only child either of them had, the troubled Joseph Paul DiMaggio III.  He lived a troubled life, there being a lesson in here, but interestingly remained close to Monroe after his father and the actress divorced. He was one of the last people she called.  He died at age 57.

Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Super size it.

Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, January 1, 1924. Receiving the New Year.:  




When I put this up on January 1, I also posted this calendar image on Reddit's 100 Years Ago sub.  Somebody came by and remarked on how tiny the glass the young woman is holding was.

And indeed it was.

Coca-Cola for years came in a 6.5 oz bottle, not 12.  It's interesting to reflect on as it really says something about proportions.

Coke's iconic bottle was a 6.5 oz bottle until 1955.  

Its competitor Pepsi started using 12 oz bottles in 1934.  In fact, that as one of its marketing devices, as it came in a 12 oz bottle, having a jingle that went
Pepsi-Cola hits the spot
Twelve full ounces, that's a lot!
Twice as much for a nickel, too
Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you.

It says something about the quality of Coke, or at least the original recipe of it, that people would in fact pay the same amount for half of what they'd get if they'd bought Pepsi instead.  It also says something about soda in general that it's so cheap to make, the added 6 oz of product really doesn't do anything to the economic bottom line.

In 1955, Coke switched to 10 oz bottles and 12 oz bottles and offered a  "Family" sized bottle of 26 oz.  The move was not without internal company controversy, however.  One company executive stated that  “bringing out another bottle was like being unfaithful to your wife.”

But that 55 10 or 12 oz bottle isn't gigantic.

When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, when you went to a fast food restaurant and got a soda, large was a 12 oz serving with ice.  Starting in the 80s, somehow, that doubled, with stores, particularly convenience stores, advertising what was essentially double that.  

24 oz of Coke is a lot.

And it went on from there.

McDonald's, when it was first getting up and running, served Coke in 7 oz cups. After Coke switched, it started serving it in 16 oz cups.  In 1980, 7-11 introduced the "Big Gulp" which weighed in at an absurd 32 oz.  In 86, 7-11 introduced the 44 oz Super Big Gulp, and everyone went down that road thereafter.

Indeed, now, getting a small or medium soda draught is really what a person should do, and on the rare occasions when I get fast food, I try to get that.  But most people don't.  Even little kids get the 55 gallon size soda drink.

And that's really not good for you.

Friday, December 29, 2023

Saturday, December 29, 1923. The dawn of television.


Russian-born engineer Vladimir K. Zworykin filed for a patent on his Television System, which would evolve into television.  He was employed by Westinghouse at the time, having immigrated to the U.S. during the Russian Civil War.  He died in 1982, living to an undetermined age in his early 90s.

Television advertisement from 1939.

Zworykin wasn't the only individual working on televised images, and his system wasn't the only one that was around.  A system by a rival inventor,  John Logie Baird, would be the first one on the market, coming at an amazingly early 1928, with the first television station, WRGB, then W2XB, broadcasting from the General Electric facility in Schenectady, NY.  For various reason, however, television didn't really take off until after World War Two, with the 1950s really seeing an explosion in its use.  Even at that, however, many households did not have televisions until the 1960s.  I can recall the first television our family had, which must have been acquired in the mid 1960s.  My mother bought it as a gift for my father, but had as an additional motive the hope that he'd spend more evenings at home rather than stop by to visit his mother, who lived a couple of blocks away.  Indeed, my father took to television (my mother never did), and her hopes were realized.

Test pattern from when local television stations quit broadcasting at night, and reappeared in the morning, with this image.  I can recall this appearing on our television early in the morning when my father first turned it on.

That experience really shows one of the frankly negative aspects of what would prove to be a groundbreaking technology.  Prior to television, while radio had arrived, there was still a great deal of "make your own entertainment" and the visiting of friends and relatives in the evenings.  Television helped end all that, which proved to be a radical shift in long held societal patterns.  Interestingly, television itself has never portrayed that change, and continues to depict life in large part as it had been before its arrival.  You don't see television programs in which people sit around and watch television.

As we've noted here before, early television was all locally broadcast, from locally owned stations.  Indeed, the FCC strictly regulated this latter aspect of television, which of course broadcast over the public airways.  Cable made major inroads, however, not television and a near deregulation of the industry has mean that it now broadcasts over multiple channels, in multiple ways, 24 hours a day, with local ownership often not existing.

Televisions ultimately became so common that by the early 2000s, most American households contained three of them.  The number is now down to 2.5, reflecting the advance of computers, which has cut into television use.  

All in all, while undoubtedly there are other opinions, television has been enormously corrosive and detrimental to society.

Germany agreed to pay France's and Belgium's expenses for occupying the Ruhr.  The UK objected to the French collecting taxes on a British owned mined in the region.

The SS Mutlah disappeared in the Mediterranean with all of its 40 hands lost.

The Mexican Federal Army was advancing towards Vera Cruz, the rebels having been routed. . . and industrial school girls were on the warpath.


The Saturday magazines were out.



Monday, November 27, 2023

Tuesday, November 27, 1923. Oklahoma Senate Approves Ban On Mask, Oil Filters, Odd feats of strength.


No, not that kind of mask you might see in a headline today, but rather the costume of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Wiggins shoe store mentioned in this article was still open in the 1990s, and maybe the 2000s.  It no longer is. By that time, it was one of two shoe repair shops still operating downtown.

Now there are none.

The modern oil filter was patented by George H. Greenhalgh. Prior to this, automobiles simply used a screen, which would partially account for the short engine life early automobiles had.

The Purolator oil filter is essentially what most vehicles use today, and is still in production.


The Purolator original design featured the cardboard filter which was inserted into a fixed housing.  I've worked on vehicles that retained this filter design exactly, and it is essentially the same as a modern filter except now the housing comes with the filter, and you replace the entire thing.  I've also worked on cars that used this sort of filter for their fuel filter.

While a revolutionary design, it did not become immediately widespread.  It wasn't until the 1950s, apparently, when they became universal, although my 1946 CJ2A, which I sold long ago, had one.  A 1954 Chevrolet Sedan I once had also had one.

Siegmund "Zishe" Breitbart pulled a wagon with fifty passengers through Washington D.C. with his teeth.

I'll confess the point of such stunts as this really escapes me.