Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Just Winchin

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Just Winchin: Back in high school, all I wanted was a winch. I'd be sitting in math class, thumbing through an Off Road magazine, daydreaming of a put...

Sunday July 30, 1922. Traffic

 

July 30, 1922. From Westchester County Archives and Records Center in Elmsford, New York. - Bronx River Parkway Reservation, The Bronx to Kensico Dam, White Plains, Westchester County, NY.

The Irish Army took Tipperary.

Poster Saturday. One Blitz Buggy Each Month.

 

Yellowstone. A really radical idea.

A really radical idea that won't happen, but maybe should.

There have been really horrific floods, as we all know, in Yellowstone National Park. Roads in the northern part of the park may be closed for the rest of the summer.  Here's a National Park Service item on it:

Updates

• Aerial assessments conducted Monday, June 13, by Yellowstone National Park show major damage to multiple sections of road between the North Entrance (Gardiner, Montana), Mammoth Hot Springs, Lamar Valley and Cooke City, Montana, near the Northeast Entrance.
• Many sections of road in these areas are completely gone and will require substantial time and effort to reconstruct.
• The National Park Service will make every effort to repair these roads as soon as possible; however, it is probable that road sections in northern Yellowstone will not reopen this season due to the time required for repairs.
• To prevent visitors from being stranded in the park if conditions worsen, the park in coordination with Yellowstone National Park Lodges made the decision to have all visitors move out of overnight accommodations (lodging and campgrounds) and exit the park.
• All entrances to Yellowstone National Park remain temporarily CLOSED while the park waits for flood waters to recede and can conduct evaluations on roads, bridges and wastewater treatment facilities to ensure visitor and employee safety.
• There will be no inbound visitor traffic at any of the five entrances into the park, including visitors with lodging and camping reservations, until conditions improve and park infrastructure is evaluated.
• The park’s southern loop appears to be less impacted than the northern roads and teams will assess damage to determine when opening of the southern loop is feasible. This closure will extend minimally through next weekend (June 19).
• Due to the northern loop being unavailable for visitors, the park is analyzing how many visitors can safely visit the southern loop once it’s safe to reopen. This will likely mean implementation of some type of temporary reservation system to prevent gridlock and reduce impacts on park infrastructure.
• At this time, there are no known injuries nor deaths to have occurred in the park as a result of the unprecedented flooding. 
• Effective immediately, Yellowstone’s backcountry is temporarily closed while crews assist campers (five known groups in the northern range) and assess damage to backcountry campsites, trails and bridges.
• The National Park Service, surrounding counties and states of Montana and Wyoming are working with the park’s gateway communities to evaluate flooding impacts and provide immediate support to residents and visitors.
• Water levels are expected to recede today in the afternoon; however, additional flood events are possible through this weekend.

Here's an idea.

Don't rebuild the roads.

For years, there have been complaints about how overcrowded Yellowstone National Park has become.  A combination of a tourist economy and high mobility, and frankly the American inability to grasp that the country has become overpopulated, had contributed to that.  For years there have been suggestions that something needed to be done about that.

Maybe what is needed is. .. nothing.

Well, nothing now, so to speak.

Yellowstone was the nation's first National Park.  It was created at a time when park concepts, quite frankly, were different from they are now.   Created in 1872, its establishment was in fact visionary, and it did grasp in part that the nation's frontier was closing, even though the creation of the park came a fully four years prior to the Battle of Little Big Horn.  There was, at the time of its creation, a sort of lamentation that the end of the Frontier was in sight, and the nation was going to become one of farms and cities.

Nobody saw cities like they exist now, however, and nobody grasped that the day would come when agricultural land would be the province of the rich, and that homesteading would go from a sort of desperate act to something that people would cite to, in the case of their ancestors, as some sort of basis for moral superiority.  Things are much different today than they were then.

Indeed, in some ways, the way the park is viewed is a bit bipolar.  To some, particularly those willing to really rough it, Yellowstone is a sort of giant wilderness area.  To others, it's a sort of theme park. 

The appreciation of the need to preserve wilderness existed then, but what that meant wasn't really understood.  The park was very much wilderness at first, and some things associated with wilderness went on within it, and of course still do.  Early camping parties travelled there.  People fished there, and still do.  Hunting was prohibited early on, which had more to do with the 19th Century decline in wildlife due to market hunting than it did anything else.  This has preserved a sort of bipolarism in and of itself, as fishing is fish-hunting, just as bird hunting is fowling. There's no reason in fact that Yellowstone should have not been opened back up to hunting some time during the last quarter-century, but it is not as just as the park is wilderness to young adventurers from the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, and hearty back country folks of all ages, it's also a big public zoo for people from Newark or Taipei.  

Since 1872, all sorts of additional parks have been created. Some are on the Yellowstone model, such as Yosemite.  Others are historical sites such as Gettysburg or Ft. Laramie.  All, or certainly all that I've seen, are of value.

But they don't all have the same value.

Much of Yellowstone's value is in its rugged wilderness.  Some cite to the geothermal features of the park, but that's only a small portion of it.  And for that reason, much of Yellowstone today would make more sense existing as a Wilderness Area under the Wilderness Act of 1964, the act that helps preserve the west in a very real way, and which western politicians, who often live lives much different than actual westerners, love to hate.

A chance exists here to bring back Yellowstone into that mold, which it was intended in part to be fro the very onset, and which many wish it was, or imagine it to be, today.

Don't rebuilt the roads.

That would in fact mean the northern part of the park would revert to wilderness, truly.  And it means that many fewer people would go to the park in general.  And it would hurt the tourist communities in the northern areas, and even in the southern areas, as the diminished access to the park would mean that the motorized brigade of American and International tourists wouldn't go there, as they wouldn't want to be too far from their air-conditioned vehicles.

But that's exactly what should be done.

Motor Drivers required for the Army Service Corps.

 

 

1908: The World Debut of a Future Giant in the School Bus Industry

Poster Saturday (belated).

 For an explanation, see this:  

1942 Anti-Theft Sign

Monday, April 17, 1972. Women run in the Boston Marathon for the first time.

On this day in 1972, women ran in the Boston Marathon for the first time.  Nina Kusciik was one of eight women to run that year and took the women's first place at 3:10:26.  She won in the women's category in the New York Marathon that year as well.

It's almost impossible to imagine that there was once an era in which women didn't compete in long distance marathons, but indeed not only was there one, it really wasn't all that long ago.

Time magazine came out with an Army of the Republic of Vietnam helmeted soldier and the byline "The Next Big Test".  By this point in the war, it was a Vietnamese war once again.

Ford recalled all of its 1972 Torinos and Montegos due to defects in the rear axles.

This was day two for the commencing circulation of The Culpepper Cattle Company, one of the greatest films in the Western genre, in my opinion.

Saturday, April 1, 1922. Changing Seasons.

The Saturday magazines were out, and Judge poked fun, a bit, at an eternal theme.

The Literary Digest anticipated Easter, with a young woman looking less than thrilled by the probable contents of a box containing an Easter Bonnet.

And in Washington, D. C. apparently there were long lines to license automobiles.

At one time scenes like this were common locally when everyone had to obtain new plates at the county courthouse.

The United Mine Workers went on strike.

The Provisional Government of Ireland took over governing 26 out of 32 Irish counties.  On the same day police officers in Belfast murdered five men and a seven-year-old boy in retaliation for a sniper killing of a policeman.

Sir Hugh Trenchard became the first British Air Chief Marshal.

Emperor Charles I of Austria, who had failed in an effort to regain his Hungarian crown, and then fell ill in early March, died at age 34.  His last words to his wife and nine year old son were "I love you so much".  His death took place in Portugal, where he was living in exile.

Tuesday, February 28, 1922. Speeches and Actions.

President Harding addressed a Joint Session of Congress on this day.  His car was photographed on the occasion.

The United Kingdom unilaterally ended its protectorate over Egypt, but retained authority over Egyptian foreign and military affairs.

Blog Mirror: Historic Roads - Alaska Department of Transportation

The other day we discussed the commencement of the AlCan Highway.  But what about highways in Alaska?

This fascinating booklet by the Alaska DOT addresses the history of just that:

Historic Roads - Alaska Department of Transportation

Electric Crate Motors Are Here

In circulation, that is.

Ford has introduced one and GM already had one.

A crate motor is a drop in motor.  They've been common forever in gasoline and diesel engines.

Now, the electric ones are out.

I don't know how they work in this regard, but they can be mated to an automatic or manual transmission.  So they are specifically now being marketed for older vehicles, for conversion to electric.  you keep your existing transmission.

I know, I know, "they'll never work here".

Well, they will, they're going to, and the shift has really started to come.

And I know the other arguments as well.

"They aren't really green if you consider the electrical power source".

True enough, right now, but pretty soon, I suspect, coal-fired power plants will be a thing of the past.

Petroleum fueled vehicles are clearly on that path right now.

One of the supposed prohibitive facts on that that is all the old cars that take gasoline engines.  Well, maybe not so much.

Satiurday, February 7, 1942. No more new cars.

 

Today In Wyoming's History: February 7: 1942  1942   The federal government ordered passenger car production stopped and converted to wartime purposes.

This has been mentioned here before, but the official order went down on this day.

This happened in the middle of a styling change, with newer model cars becoming increasingly streamlined.  The trend would pick up again right after the war.   Cars were, for a lack of a better way to put it, becoming more modern.

The US established the War Shipping Administration.

It's interesting that a lot of these acts occurred on weekends, showing that at this point the U.S. Government was basically working seven days a week.

As it was a Saturday, the Saturday magazines were out.  On the Saturday Evening Post Rockwell's Willie Gillis appeared, getting the attention of two young women while also trying to enjoy a plate of non Army food.

The Philadelphia Courier, in response to a letter to the editor by a black man wondering if he should bother to fight for the United States given racial prejudice in the country, launched the Double V Campaign, a campaign for victory abroad and racial justice at home.

The Afrika Korps halted its counteroffensive in Libya today due to logistical reasons, having retaken nearly all the ground that had been gained by the British in 1941 in a fraction of the time that it had taken them to do it.

Vidkun Quisling, the German installed dictator of Norway, abolished the Norwegian constitution.

A Soviet offensive to relieve Leningrad stalls out.

The FBI, aided by local sheriffs, raided "Japanese owned" farms in the Palos Verdes area for contraband and found none.

Saturday, February 4, 1922. Ford buys Lincoln.

An illustration by Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle graced the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on this day in 1922.

Ford Motors announced it had purchased the financially distressed Lincoln Motor Company.  The purchase out of receivership was for $8,000,000.

Japan agreed to withdraw troops from Shandong, restore German interests, surprisingly, in Qingdao, and given the Jinan railway back to China.

A mob in British India burned down a police station in Chauri Chaura killing 22 policemen. The action had been sparked by police killing protesters some time earlier.

The family of newly elected Congressman John. L. Cable posed for this photograph:

Sailor suits for boys remained popular at the time, as this photo demonstrates.

Thursday, February 2, 1922. The birth of Checker Cab.

Washington D. C., February 2, 1922.

 

The Checker Cab Manufacturing Company was created on this day Morris Markin, a Russian immigrant, who assembled the company form the failed ruins of several others.  He was only 28 years old.

An incredible figure, he had a gift for business that had demonstrated itself both in Imperial Russia and the United States, with the Russian Jewish immigrant succeeding at nearly everything he touched in spite of the long odds involved.

Checker's were the default American cab for decades, in their final years taking on a 1950s appearance that would last until the last one was produced in 1982.

Checker cab from Wikipedia commons.

The College of Cardinals gathered in Rome to begin the selection process for a new Bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church.

This is, I'd note, also the 100th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses, timed for his 40th birthday.

You probably haven't read it.

And if you tried, you probably gave up.

And that's probably because it's crap.

Those are harsh words for a book that's widely heralded, but often people forget why a book makes a splash in the first place.  I suspect that's the case for this book.  A common reaction of people who try to read it is to find that it's "hard going" and they put it down.

This is, I'd note, the same thing that people say about Mein Kampf, which I haven't read, and I'm not going to.  I note that as these two tomes are roughly contemporaneous and lots of copies have been printed that nobody read.  I'm not saying the content is the same.  I am saying that they're both probably crap.

As for Ulysses, it's probably gathering more dust than readers, as it's just not that great.

My exposure to Joyce is from one short story of his I read eons ago while in high school, and frankly it wasn't great.

And while I'm at it, Liam O'Flaherty's short story The Sniper, which we had to read, also isn't great.  M'eh.

Anyhow, Joyce fits in the same category I'd place Hemingway.  He obtained a reputation early on and that made his reputation.  People when they read their books secretly, I think, say "hmmm. . . . not great" as whatever made them "great" in the first place applied only to their time and place, if it even applied to the time and place.  They're preserved today because of that early reputation and because English departments continue to imagine they're great.  But for English departments, they'd be forgotten.  This book, and Finnegan's Wake, are basically not read, based on the commentary you see from honest people who attempted to.

Sunday, January 22, 1922. The Passing of Pope Benedict XV

Pope Benedict XV died on this day at 6:00 a.m.  His death was due to the complications of the flu.  His dedication to peace was so pronounced that even Turkey erected a monument to him for that reason.

He'd been the Pope since 1914 and his Papacy had been heavily marked by attempting to deal with the crisis of the First World War.  A stern looking man, he's remembered for his diligent profoundly Christian efforts to end the war and his instructions to his Bishops to be more effective in their mission.  He predicted the rise of what became the Soviet Union.

On the same day, the Cheyenne newspaper had the lurid Philadelphia story of a business owner and his "stenographer" who fell victim to note-taking that was too close for the wife's comfort.

A haughty looking woman was photographed driving her motorized tricycle. 

A special parking space?

 

Friday, January 20, 1922. Things automotive.

The New York Times published a cartoon regarding the rising phenomenon of auto fatalities.  Auto fatalities were particularly severe in the early history of automobiles as all the drivers were new drivers and the vehicles were not anywhere near being "safe" by modern standards, nostalgia about older cars notwithstanding.

Lithuania abolished titles of nobility, and the death penalty.

At first, it was widely assumed that the post World War One states would follow the historical European pattern and all become constitutional monarchies, which some in fact did.  Not all, however, followed this path, with Finland, the Baltic States, and Poland providing such examples.

Pope Benedict XV was reported to be gravely ill.

Harry Burt applied for a patent on the process for the Good Humor Bar, as well as on the item itself.

Good Humor sales truck.

Early on, the ice cream product was widely distributed directly through "sales cars".

Saturday January 10, 1942. Joe Louis joins the Army. Mickey Rooney gets married. . . for the first time. Ford starts building Jeeps.

 Boxer Joe Louis, who regained his heavyweight title the day prior, joined the U.S. Army.

Joe Louis sewing on Sergeant First Class stripes.

Louis was initially assigned to the cavalry, which came about due to a love of horsemanship.

As a slight aside, this really shows wartime conditions in that the recruiting station was open on a Saturday.

Mickey Rooney, age 21, married Ava Gardner, age 19.  It was the first of eight marriages for Rooney, three for Gardner, and would last only a year, mostly broken up due to Rooney's behavior, which included womanizing.  It's interesting, I suppose, in the context of Rooney, at that time, having a very youthful and childlike appearance, and having played rather innocent roles.  Gardner, at that time, was practically unknown.

Rooney, FWIW, would not enter the service until 1944.

Even while things were getting increasingly desperate in the Philippines, the Japanese presented their first surrender demand to the forces at Bataan on this day, the first US troop convoy departed Halifax, Nova Scotia, for Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland would be a major staging area and training area for US forces in the British Isles early in the American participation in the war.

German forces in the Soviet Union began to suffer general reversals in the face of the Soviet Winter Offensive and the weather.

The Ford Motor Company received a contract to manufacture Jeeps.

The history of Ford Jeeps is slightly complicated.  Willys had secured the contract to make 1/4 ton trucks for the services but production needs were obviously going to exceed what Willys Overland could produce.  Accordingly, a contract to produce the standardized Willlys pattern of Jeep issued to Ford. Ford would build 300,000 Jeeps during the war, whereas Willys made 363,000.

Willys, Ford and Bantam had all competed for the contract for the 1/4 ton truck prior to the war, with Ford having introduced a very light vehicle, just as Bantam had.

Ford "Pygmy" competition vehicle for the 1/4 ton truck.

Pre-production numbers were actually produced in some volume, although almost all of them were supplied to the British and the Soviets via lend lease.  Production of  the standardized Jeep has started the prior summer, but the vehicle was still brand new and no examples of it were overseas in spite of it being shown in movies in that role quite frequently.

Thursday, January 1, 1942. Birth of the United Nations, an Automobile Manufacturing Hiatus.

President Roosevelt had declared New Year's Day, 1942, a National Day of Prayer.  He and Winston Churchill attended church together.

It was otherwise a working day for both men, on a day that's traditionally a holiday.

Boy Scouts with United Nations poster in 1943.

On that day, the Arcadia Conference produced the Declaration of the United Nations.

Signing of the declaration.

It stated:

A JOINT DECLARATION BY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS, CHINA, AUSTRALIA, BELGIUM, CANADA, COSTA RICA, CUBA, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, DOMICAN REPUBLIC, EL SALVADOR, GREECE, GUATELMALA, HAITI, HONDURAS, INDIA, LUXEMBOURG, NETHERLANDS, NEW ZEALAND, NICARAGUA, NORWAY, PANAMA, POLAND, SOUTH AFRICA, YUGOSLAVIA
The Governments signatory hereto,
Having subscribed to a common program of purposes and principles embodied in the Joint Declaration of the President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister of Great Britain dated August 14, 1941, known as the Atlantic Charter,
Being convinced that complete victory over their enemies is essential to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands, and that they are now engaged in a common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world,
Declare:
(1) Each Government pledges itself to employ its full resources, military or economic, against those members of the Tripartite Pact and its adherents with which such government is at war.
(2) Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto and not to make a separate armistice or peace with the enemies.
The foregoing declaration may be adhered to by other nations which are, or which may be, rendering material assistance and contributions in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism.

More nations would join in the document, which was effectively the creation of the United Nations, as the war went on.

While the UN has had a rocky history since World War Two, its origin was remarkable and does suggest that most of the world's nations can unite for a crisis.

On the same day, a significant event happened in terms of the US war effort and life on the home front, as discussed here on our companion blog Today In Wyoming's History: January 1. New Year's Day:

1942 The U.S. Office of Production Management prohibited sales of new cars and trucks to civilians.

The reason was simple enough, the war industry had gone over to war manufacturing, and not just of vehicles, but armaments and other war materials as well.

There actually are 1942 model vehicles, as they came out in 1941.  Detroit actually had produced about 1,000,000 combined 1942 models before this day, about 1/4 of the number of vehicles they produced as 1941 models.  Production of civilian automobiles would not resume, however, until the summer of 1945, and the 1946 models were actually the 1942 models.

The cessation of civilian vehicles, while predictable, did catch people off guard.  In truth, vehicles made prior to the late 20th Century really didn't last very long, something that is hard for people today to really appreciate.  For this reason, vehicles that were even a decade, or less, old at the time, were in fact old.  The cessation of production meant that for many Americans who had just come out of the Great Depression the needed to replace a vehicle was converted into a need to keep an old one running.

Interestingly civilian manufacturers at the same time worried that their conversion into war industries would mean that they'd be forgotten and lose market share following the war.  This was true of manufacturers in every sector, not just the automobile sector.

Manufactureers took different approches in the war, with some simply seeking to recall brand loyalty or even inspire longing.

But providing examples of what they were building was also extremely common.

The very late 1940s had seen an evolution in car design, with vehicles becoming more rounded.  The war itself, however, would introduce all the major manufacturers to off-road vehicles in a new way, something that impacted various manufacturers in different ways, and which is something that they didn't at first quite know what to do with in terms of their post-war production.  Indeed, Willys, as late as 1943, was still emphasizing that post-war it would be making cars again.

Ultimately two manufacturers, Dodge and Willys, would come to embrace their wartime vehicles, with Willys not only realizing that its post-war future was with the Jeep, but with it also seeking to capitalize on that during the war itself.

Indeed, Willys would start advertising for civilian sales of the Jeep before it could make civilian sales, emphasizing its off-road capabilities, although often in ways that didn't really match what would become its post-war market.  At first, for example, it was often shown pulling a plow.

It would also, however, feature such items as a letter from a girl asking for Jeep advertisement illustrations.

It might be noted, interestingly enough, German manufacturers, perhaps with the same concerns, also advertised in German journals during the war.

Their advertisements tended to be very martial, not too surprisingly.

In terms of illustrated magazines, Vogue magazine declared it a "New Year, New Vistas, New Fashions".

That would be true in all sorts of ways. . . save for civilian automobiles.

The usual football bowl games were played, although the Rose Bowl was played in Durham, North Carolina, out of a fear that the Japanese would attack.

Closer to Home.

Again, I don't know for sure what my parents would have done on this day, but for Catholics it the Solemnity of Mary, a Holy Day of Obligation.  If they hadn't gone to Mass the night prior, in their respective localities, they would have today.

My father, living in Scotsbluff, Nebraska at the time, may very well have gone duck and goose hunting with his father later in the day.  At any rate, he and they probably would have listened to one of the football games that were broadcast on the radio.