Robert Pence

Nice set of buildings. I like the one on the corner, with storefronts on two levels. Grain and supply stores were a mainstay of small towns like Mantua in the era of small family farms (80-160 acres) with diversified operations and a variety of livestock. Many of those didn't have their own feed-milling equipment, and on an as-needed basis, a farmer would shovel a pickup or a half-ton trailer behind the family car full of ear corn and maybe some oats, and go to the mill, where they'd have it ground and mixed with supplements and bagged in the farmer's hundred-pound burlap bags for livestock feed. Most of those places were on a rail siding where they received feed supplements and other bulk supplies in carload lots, and they offered grain storage, shipping, and marketing services. In addition to livestock feed products and milling, they sold farm-related hardware and tools and most had a selection of farm toys for kids. The farm supply store was a lot of small farmers' General Store, where gossip and rumors and other community news got passed around, and crop prices and speculation about the harvest got thoroughly discussed and argued about. I can't think of any modern-day equivalent; stores like TSC (Tractor Supply) offer quality hardware, parts, and tools for fair prices and a decent line of name-brand work clothing, but they're not gathering places. People wheel in to the parking lot in their giant pickups, run in a get what they need, and head out. Most don't know each other's names, and only a few are regulars enough that the cashiers know them by name.

Neat stuff! Probably a first for the forums.

Splendid sunset!

... before a moderator starts wielding the axe!

Those ducks are ancient military surplus, and I doubt if very many owners know how to maintain them, or have a mechanic on staff who does. I've read a couple of accounts of them sinking suddenly, with significant loss of life in one case.

Awesome photos, excellent testimonial to a society teetering on the brink of collapse.

Very beautiful! Just keep the filthy hippies out of the lovely park, and we'll all get along just fine. :angel:

Those aren't the cyclists I'm talking about, and I'm pretty sure they're not included in Sherman's comments, either. Those are dysfunctional screwballs who are a PITA whether biking, walking, driving, or on a skateboard. There are those of us who ride responsibly and heed traffic movement and laws, and because we're in the street and not on the sidewalk, we're the ones who are subjected to the impatient wrath of drivers who think that just because they can, they are morally obligated to drive 45 in a 30. How often does taking your foot off the gas cause you physical discomfort or cost you money? The person on a bike is contributing to reduced demand for gasoline and helping to keep the air clean, and he/she won't be taking that parking place that you'll be looking for when you reach your destination. Edit: When some moron on a bike startles the crap out of me by nearly sideswiping me on a sidewalk, I try to yell at them quickly enough and loudly enough to startle them in return. As for waiting out the full cycle of a stoplight, I acknowledge that if I can do so safely without interfering with pedestrians or vehicles moving legally, I'll move on. I come to a full stop, first. Google "Idaho Stop" for other thoughts/activism on that.

I totaled a Peugeot PX-10 when a woman opened the door of a Camaro in front of me. Fortunately, I came out with "only" terribly painful bruises and her insurance company promptly gave me enough money to buy a good frame and enough parts to build an even-better road bike. A plus; in dollar value, the damage to her Camaro was substantially more than to my bike. I learned to keep a close watch for people inside parked cars, and on one-way streets without marked bike lanes, I prefer to ride left where openeing doors are less frequent. In the late sixties there was a guy in Lima who kept a ball-peen hammer handy when he rode. He took out quite a lot of glass before the cops finally caught up with him.

Agreed. I marvel at the cluelessness of people who will start something online with that kind of theme, completely oblivious to the fact that they will attract nut cases who take it to heart and start to actualize the fantasies posted by others. I've been screamed at at close range and hit by passengers in passing cars, and had fruit, bottles, and cans thrown at me. Online advocacy of violence against cyclists encourages the freaks who only need to think they have the support of others to start acting out. The only time I ever got satisfaction was when a couple of teenaged girls threw stuff at me from a passing car, and then got caught at a stoplight. They rolled up the windows and locked the doors, and I beat on the windows and on the top of the car and put a dent in it. I hope they had to change their panties.

Great set, beginning to end. I love the bell tower shots, and the market looks first-rate - lots of goods with a lot of variety, and busy.

Gorgeous photos. The first one is breathtaking!

Good photo set; the area looks better than I expected. There's not a lot of tagging visible in the photos. To me that indicates that it's not overrun with gangstas and wanna-be's. Uh-ohh! < :speech: > White Motor Company's early automobiles were steam-powered and fueled with kerosene. Steam automobiles were much more refined than typical gasoline cars of the time, smooth and quiet and typically able to outrun most internal-combustion powered cars both in a short sprint and over a long haul. When I was a teenager, a man who ran a junkyard had a collection of beautifully restored vintage cars. Among his beauties was a White, and he'd take it out for Sunday drives sometimes in summer. It was shiny bright red. He had no trouble keeping up with traffic. There were several makers of steam cars in the early 1900s, along with makers of electrics and internal-combustion autos. By the late 1920s the field had pretty much been winnowed down to internal combustion. The Great Depression mostly finished off any struggling survivors who had managed to last into the late twenties. Some of the steam car makers transitioned, and others went out of business. I think only White survived that period, as a maker of internal-combustion-powered heavy trucks. The leading steam-car makers were Stanley, White, and Doble. All steamers were high-end, with Stanley and White comparable to, say, today's Cadillac or Lincoln. I don't know that there's any contemporary American-car market niche comparable to the Doble, but if you compare it to other classics, it probably came close to Duesenberg. It was a big, heavy, powerful, luxurious car with sophisticated technology. It employed an automatic ignition system that lit using gasoline, and then burned kerosene for normal operation. From a dead-cold start it could raise enough steam in 45 seconds to back out of the garage, and by the time you got to the street, it was hot enough to make 60mph. If I remember correctly, a Doble had a massively strong frame and weighed more than three tons. It could exceed 100mph and sustain that speed with little effort. I think it got about 7mpg. Compare that with, say, a Ford of the same era. A stock model could make 40mph if properly tuned, and with a load of after-market performance gadgets, one might make 60mph. </ :speech: >

Heh. At first I thought you said "Supperbowl," and I thought, damn! I am hungry. I should quit messing around on the forums and go get something to eat.

A couple of things don't "track" right with me. :wink: First is that dog-leg via Fort Wayne between Toledo and South Bend. Fort Wayne is on a proposed high-speed route between Chicago and Cleveland, but not as shown here. The high-quality former NYC water-level route now used by the Late Shore Limited passes about thirty miles north of Fort Wayne, and there's no really good existing, upgradable ROW between Fort Wayne and Goshen as shown on that map. I believe the MHSRA's proposed Toledo-Fort Wayne routing is via former Wabash ROW, which would take massive investment in places just to find the rails and ties and dig them out of the mud. Between Fort Wayne and Goshen, if memory serves me well, trains would have to run on the former PRR now owned by CSX, leased to RailAmerica, and operated by CFE (Chicago Fort Wayne & Eastern), to Warsaw, and then north on what used to be known as the Michigan Branch, which I don't think was ever anything more than a single-tracked secondary. I'm not even sure if that line is still in service, or if the ROW is still intact. The former PRR line has been designaled and single-tracked, and would require massive investment to bring it up to 70-110mph standards, let alone 150mph. Bringing the line to Goshen up to those standards would be building a whole new railroad from scratch. Probably the best existing, upgradable route West from Fort Wayne to Chicago is the former Nickel Plate, now Norfolk and Southern. I can't visualize a route from Fort Wayne via Goshen. Another thing that gives me pause is the writer's dismissal of long distance (Chicago-West Coast) routes as being better served by air, with no passenger rail market. He writes as if the only city pairs are Chicago and major western/West Coast cities. There are intermediate cities that make suitable pairs for high-speed rail, and that would attract sufficient ridership if frequent, reliable service were available. A Chicago-San Francisco train doesn't run non-stop between those end points, and even at current poor levels of service, I'd venture more people ride between intermediate cities than over the entire route. But it's on them internets, so it must be true. :|

Nice job! It looks like a good, solid house, and you did an excellent job of updating the living amenities while preserving its essential character. The fireplace is fabulous! My dad thought for a while that he'd get into rentals, but it turned out to not be a good idea for someone with his personality (extremely controlling). He bought a big Queen Anne duplex in the small town near where we lived, and when he and my cousin were making some repairs they found extreme charring in the attic, like yours. No one in the area remembered when it had a fire, so it must have been long ago.

Neat thread. Some nice-looking infill and appealing streetscapes.

Interesting tour, beautiful photos. Looks like you had a good day, weather-wise.

Restore something old - a house, a vintage automobile, antique furniture. Take up painting; you're a good designer, and I don't doubt you have some talent with various art media. There are a lot of people with artistic talent, but the ones who have the patience and commitment to apply real craftsmanship to their work stand out from the rest. With houses and other buildings, when you get back to the early 1900s and before, anything you have to replace will have to be hand-crafted or hand-fitted, because none of the dimensions are standardized the same as what's available now. Even if you buy period materials from a salvage shop, you still have to work with what you can find. There's a good chance you'll end up shimming and trimming and plugging holes and filling dents and moving hinges, latches, etc. There were places where I faked it with contemporary materials because I was out of time, out of money and out of work, and now when I look at them I hate them. Little-by-little I'm trying to make those things right.

Fun Thread! "More Scale!" :-D

Wow! I like those a lot; they're powerful images, and the color and contast are striking.

No, I don't think so. At least, I don't remember blacking out. :angel:

Every now and then we get smacked, but most of the "OMG! OMG! OMG!" forecasts never materialize. The memory of the blizzard of '78 lives on, though, passed on to a second generation. As soon as the weather forecasters mention snow, hordes of people swarm the supermarkets and purge them of milk, bread, toilet paper, beer, and Cheetos. I think there's a secret deal between the supermarket chains and the TV stations.

I don't know if it's still true, but Massachusetts used to be legendary for its horrendous personal property taxes, especially on things like expensive cars.

Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed the pics. I'm not intimately familiar with Middletown, but as I recall, the folks at Beau Verre stained glass and at One Floor Up, in the old Eagles Lodge building, are among the leaders. Nathaniel might know more about this, and preservationrestoration (who organized the meet) might know more details. Incidentally, much of the beautiful trim and woodwork, doors, etc., in the first floor of the Beau Verre building came from a beautiful Middletown school that was razed. The Beau Verre building was once a GC Murphy store.