Robert Pence

Excellent post! Retail sprawl in many areas seems to be experiencing declining life spans and accelerated mortality over the past few years, and the result is a lot of abandoned blight and thousands acres of cracked, weed-strewn pavement and ruined land that generate little or no tax revenue. As noted in comments, Wal-Mart contributes to the problem by abandoning existing properties to build new superstores in the same markets. Not only do they leave vacant, hard-to-market properties behind, but the new superstores foster the growth of their own new fuzz and contribute to the decline and abandonment of the fuzz that grew up around their old stores. It's too late to fix what already has happened, but developers of new retail sprawl should be required to put money in escrow to cover eventual demolition and remediation costs.

Your GrandDad sounds like he'd fit right in on the forums!

Wow! I never knew about that. It looks like a fascinating place.

I'm aware of the rules about taking anything out of the woods in a state park; that's the same in every state and national park I know of. The naturalists and the DNR conservation officers know all kinds of stuff about local habitat, though, both inside and outside the parks, and they might be able to steer you to a landowner who has pawpaws growing on his property. They're winter-tolerant, of course, and you could grow them in large pots or a garden.

Neat photo! I never cared that much for venison, so the deer are safe to browse so far as I'm concerned. Steam is beautiful to see, hear and smell, dramatic and sometimes spectacular, but it's labor-intensive and logistically complex. Running a steam locomotive is damn hard work compared with a diesel. On a day-in, day-out basis you're going to have a hard job finding a fireman who will wield a shovel in a sweltering cab on a summer day for anything a short line can afford to pay, and stoker-fired locomotives usually are big and way out of a short line's league. Coal and water present tough logistics problems compared with calling the local fuel supplier to come to your siding every now and then with a tanker. Replacement parts usually have to be custom made by a machine shop that can handle really heavy work. Railroading is a dangerous occupation, and when you add steam you multiply the hazards. If a neglected boiler fails, it fails catastrophically and instantaneously, and you won't get any eyewitness accounts because everyone within sight will be dead. That's why state- and federally-mandated inspection and maintenance requirements are so rigorous. You won't find much steam in operation except on tourist roads that have an abundance of seriously-committed volunteers, or on commercial tourist venues like Strasburg and Cass and Mount Washington that can sell a lot of tickets for a lot of money to keep things going. To find working steam, go to Kalmbach Publishing and order the current edition of their Tourist Trains Guidebook ($18.95). It lists most rail museums, both static displays and operating steam and diesel tourist operations. Spend some time at some, and if there's one near you, you might want to consider volunteering for a summer. You may start out sweeping cars, cutting weeds and picking up litter, but you'll get close enough to the real deal to see if you want to get more involved.

I've never seen them in a regular grocery, but you might find them at small-town farmers' markets in the fall, or at a specialty grocer. A good place to start looking might be to ask around the food co-ops and natural foods shops. You might be able to find a farmer who has them growing wild and will let you harvest your own. I'll bet that if you ask some of the DNR park rangers and naturalists in the state parks and game preserves, they'll know where they're growing. You might even be able to score some persimmons, too. I've never tasted those, but I've heard they're pretty good after the frost. Before the frost, just don't.

You could always use pawpaws instead; they're native to much of the northeastern US. Their nicknames include "poor man's banana" and "Hoosier banana." We have a partly marshy woods where they grow wild; Dad thought he had eradicated them, although I don't know why he thought he had to. After a few years, though, they started to come back. The last time I was back there, there were several fair-sized groves. They ripen in fall and have a flavor and texture similar to bananas but IMO somewhat softer and sweeter. If I were to try to gather some, I'd have to get there before the deer and raccoons do, because they love them.

I grew up just inside the edge of a large Amish area, near Berne, Indiana. In that area there are three major anabaptist groups, the Amish, Mennonites and Apostolic Christians. The Mennonites and Apostolic Christians all use modern technology freely, and to see them on the street you wouldn't pick them out from anyone else except for the way most of the Apostolic women wear their hair up on top of their heads. Engage in much conversation, and you'd probably pick up on it soon enough, because their very devout religious beliefs permeate every aspect of their lives. Not that they'd talk down to you or try to convert you, but you'd soon be aware of the difference in their outlook. An Apostolic family has rented our farmland going into the third generation, now, and I can't think of anyone I'd rather deal with in terms of work ethic, honesty and taking care of the land. That doesn't mean all the Apostolics conform to those standards, though. One family held the local John Deere franchise for many years, until they got caught fudging the numbers in a company trade-in incentive program and skimming ten thousand here and ten thousand there. Do that very much and soon you're talking real money. John Deere prosecuted and sued for recovery, and the dealer went out of business. Someone else has the franchise now. Every group has its bad apples. The Apostolic Christians have in recent years become more and more averse to public schooling in the area, and have set up their own Christian academies. I think they prefer that to home-schooling, and they have a large enough community to support decent-sized schools of their own. The Amish in that area, on the other hand are readily identifiable. They're pretty strict and austere and all wear black or dark blue garb, and unlike the Amish in some other parts of the state, they travel in open buggies year-around. In the dead of winter you'll see them going down the road in their open buggies, sometimes using very large black umbrellas as shields against the icy wind.

The guy is tiny. He's only about four feet tall. JK :-D He's a good six-footer. I think the locomotive stands about fifteen feet from the rail to the top of the smokestack. Even though it worked out of Fort Wayne and New Haven, Indiana back in the day, and is still based outside New haven at the shops of the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society, it has strong Ohio connections. 765 was built in Lima in 1944 for the Nickel Plate (New York Chicago & St. Louis) Railroad, founded by the Van Sweringens who also developed Shaker Heights and built the Shaker Rapid and Terminal Tower. The Van Sweringens, Oris and Mantis, are buried in Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery.

... and right across the street from the 412 Club. The 412 used to have really good Mexican food until the cook left to start his own place east of town. I haven't been in there since. I think it's just a karaoke dive now. The 412 building used to house Krull's hobby shop, one of the fabulous old-school hobby shops from the fifties that sold Lionel trains and Revell model car kits and just about everything else a geeky kid could go nuts over. The present Greyhound Station used to be a gas station, back in the day when gas stations still had service bays where they could change oil and tune up cars. Greyhound used to be in one of those wonderful Deco blue-tile depots with the glass-block windows and canopied bus bays on Jefferson west of Harrison, right by the downtown hotels and restaurants that no longer exist. Trailways was next door, and the railroad station was a short walk away. After Greyhound moved out, some lawyers bought the building and the rather grand Knights of Columbus building next door. To avoid a battle with preservationists they staged a weekend midnight raid, having a demolition contractor come in late on a Saturday night. By Sunday morning everything was flattened. It was a parking lot for quite a few years. The site is now part of Harrison Square where the ball park is going in and a Hilton Gardens Hotel will be built. Amish people can travel just about any way they please, except that they don't drive cars (or fly airplanes, I suppose). They travel by car, by bus, by train, by air, and I suppose by ship if necessary. I've seen Amish families riding tourist trains like Ohio Central, and I've seen Amish kids on carnival rides. Some Amish construction crews even buy vans, and then hire English (their term for non-Amish) to drive them. One of the fanciest, hottest country dancers I've seen was a very handsome young Amish guy at a small festival where there was a pretty good local band playing. He was dancing with the young woman who had driven the group to the event, and they were both just amazing. After a short time most of the other people just cleared the floor to watch. The older-generation family members were having a good time watching the show, smiling and laughing. That group was from up north, around Lagrange, I think. You wouldn't see the old-order Amish from my neck of the woods participating in such shenanigans, at least at a public venue.

Greyhound is the other example of what privatization can do for transportation. Fort Wayne is approximately 150 miles from Chicago, straight up US 30, and we used to have about five daily round trips that made the run that way, plus a locally operated O'Hare Express that ran direct to the airport in about 3 1/2 hours. Now there are two, and neither uses the direct route. One goes via South Bend, maybe 40 miles out of the way, and the other goes by way of - get this - Toledo - with a layover there to change buses. It goes 100 miles east (1 hour 55) plus 1:05 layover to connect with a bus going west to Chicago. Total time, Fort Wayne to Chicago, is 8:45. Fare is $45 one way. Even a slowpoke like me can drive it in less than 4. Of course, I'd miss the layover in the Toledo station. The last I knew, it was really lovely.

Pittsburgh & Lake Erie (P&LE) RR yard, Struthers, Ohio - 1985

Nice job! I like that a lot.

yellow & firm, sliced, on cornflakes with milk or blended with Edy's Grand vanilla ice cream and a couple shots of Bacardi Gold.

Ooooohhh! Purty! Gorgeous shot, lovely blooms. Summer is making its much-delayed appearance.

Extracting hydrogen from human/animal waste and decomposition of waste vegetable material is a goal worthy of research and development. Already there are working facilities that capture methane from sewage treatment plants and landfills, and farm-scaled methane digesters probably will become more common as the technology becomes more accessible and fuel prices continue to rise. Maybe I'm missing something in this article, but it escapes me how this part about agricultural ammonia helps build a case: Anhydrous ammonia fertilizer provides nitrogen to boost drought resistance and crop yeilds, primarily in corn. It's composed of one part nitrogen and three parts hydrogen. The hydrogen used in making anhydrous ammonia is extracted from natural gas or petroleum components, primarily methane, propane, butane and naphtha, via a complex process involving heat, pressure, steam and catalysts. In addition to hydrogen, the process yields byproducts containing sulfur compounds. Nitrogen is obtained by compressing air until it becomes liquid, and then using fractional distillation. The nitrogen is combined with hydrogen to form anhydrous ammonia that is shipped via diesel fuel-powered barges, railcars, trucks and pumped through 3,000 miles of pipeline with electric motors. How is natural gas- and petroleum-derived anhydrous ammonia relevant to the topic of the article? It would be more efficient to use the natural gas or petroleum as fuel, without all the energy-intensive processing. Maybe the writer turned it up in his research and threw it in there, but if the researchers/promoters included it in their pitch, it smells of obfuscation and puts this "breakthrough" in the same file drawer with cold fusion and using the energy from radio waves to extract hydrogen from seawater.

Honey, you ain't saw my lawn or my furniture, or ate my cookin'. On the other hand, the ladies (and men) ain't 'xactly lined up at my door. And MTS, your saga makes me glad I live in boring old Fort Wayne. Watching the drunks drive off the curve or into the pond is about all the excitement I can stand. Just reading about all that commotion makes me want to go spend a weekend at the farm to calm down.

I deplore the use of EIFS to deface heritage buildings, but the same has been done with facing brick, too. I have seen EIFS used to good effect to update some unattractive late-60s / early70s facades, especially the white glazed-brick ones. I've seen it used well on some early-1900s industrial buildings, too. Not that a good historic restoration wouldn't have been better, but when you're talking about a two-block complex of long-neglected four- and five-story buildings, cost becomes a factor. I'm not saying I like it much, but in some cases I've seen, it was better than doing nothing or installing coated-steel siding.

EIFS - Exterior Insulation Finishing System. It's often applied to masonry buildings, really trashing the character of historic ones. It has a stucco-like texture. This was a pretty respectable-looking late-1800s brick building before the Odd Fellows made it look, well, odd. It looks especially wonderful after a few years, when it's been a chipped off and busted up along the bottom and on the corners by hand trucks, carts, etc.

If he has a business need for that type of truck, the F-350 is probably one of the best rigs out there in its class; mechanically and structurally it's pretty near bulletproof. If he drives a big truck for image, tricks it out with all kinds of after-market gadgets and appearance trinkets and never uses it as a truck, it's a pretty expensive ego trip that won't be easy to come back from.

I sold my F-250 Powerstroke Diesel pickup a few years ago, and I missed it for a while. Now, I'm happier every day about that decision. Seventeen MPG didn't seem so terrible, back then. I can't imagine traveling halfway across the country in that rig now.

Wow, what a crowd! There's tremendous energy there, and great photos. This shot is a prize-winner:

Fabulous pics, lush, elegant neighborhood!

Good stuff! A lot different flavor from many of the Austin photos we see on the forums.

I love it when you talk in third person. lol At least the pope doesn't use the Royal "We" that used to be the custom of kings and queens. :-)