Robert Pence

A metaphor for U.S. domestic oil supplies While dredging the archives for fall color pics, I came across this nearly-forgotten 1968 photo of an old oil field in southeastern Ohio, along a township dirt road near Trail Run. The field was still being pumped on a part-time basis in 1968, but the collector pipeline was long out of service and oil was being taken out on an as-needed basis by tanker truck. The pumping machinery dated from the early 1900s or maybe before, with a central power and pull-rods radiating out to the wellheads.

Most of the Stirlings I've seen have been very old machines in museum collections, and used air. I recall seeing one operate at Coolspring Power Museum in Pennsylvania. I think it produced about 1/3 horsepower and weighed close to half a ton. It was built to pump water from a shallow well, and was very silent with graceful-looking movement, and intriguing to watch. From time to time at steam shows I've seen small models, including one that used icewater instead of heat to create the temperature differential.

I'll try to keep an open mind on the fantastic engine, but for now I'm filing it with cold fusion and perpetual motion machines. :|

Since posting this thread, I've learned a little more about the courthouse. As I noted in the Winchester thread (http://www.robertpence.com/winchester_in_6-05_p1.html), the Adams County Courthouse was designed by J.C. Johnson, same architect who three years later created an identical courthouse for Randolph County in Winchester. Originally it was built with a centrally-positioned Second Empire clock tower, just like the one in Winchester was. Also like the Winchester one, the clock tower proved structurally unstable from the get-to, and was said to have swayed and creaked ominously in high winds. The Adams County Courthouse was extensively remodeled around the turn of the century by Brentwood Tolan, later the architect of the Allen County Courthouse in Fort Wayne. Tolan removed the portico and replaced the Johnson's centrally-positioned tower with the present one above the east end of the building. The courthouse in Winchester kept its original tower until 1955, when both the tower and mansard roof were removed and the upper floors were extensively bastardized. I speculate that Johnson's tower was supported only by the timber structure of the roof, instead of by masonry bearing walls going all the way to the foundation, the way it should have been. My dad bought the timbers from the Winchester tower to build a bridge; they were 12 x 12 red oak.

I don't mean to be a curmudgeon (well, maybe), but in the name of accurate terminology (this topic has been commented upon at length in an earlier thread, or maybe it was on SSP): It ain't a trolley unless it gets its power from an overhead wire or two. "Trolley," in the strictest sense, refers to the pickup device at the end of the pole that follows the wire. Trolley buses are ones like Dayton has, electric-powered from a pair of overhead wires. I usually refer to these as faux trolleys. Their style is derived from vintage streetcars, but they're diesel-powered. I'm not putting them down. Anything that gets people used to the idea of riding transit is a good idea.

I'd have to go along with the idea that Toledo was pretty open sexually in an era when many midwestern cities were not. In the mid-late sixties, Toledo had the nearest out-and-out gay bar to Fort Wayne, the Scenic Bar. I think it was at the corner of Monroe and Erie. Most cities had places that were known as gay hangouts, like Henry's and the bar at the Van Orman Hotel in Fort Wayne -- shadowy cocktail lounges frequented by gay men -- where discretion was mandatory and one could meet like-minded individuals for a tryst or two, hardly ever anything more lasting. At the scenic the music was lively, the cruising was overt, and men danced with men :-o. There was no pretense or "straight" appearance to any of it. It was one big gay party. On some Saturday nights, two- or three-car caravans made the pilgrimage from Fort Wayne. A couple of blocks away, in the basement of the Milner Hotel, was a gay bathhouse affiliated with the Club Bath Chain, again the closest such venue to Fort Wayne. In the interests of decorum I won't say any more about my knowledge of that :-D. As compared with places like Fort Wayne, where a lot of the cruising was on the streets near the bar and sometimes dominated by hustlers, in Toledo the police were quite tough on both :whip:. The intention was probably not to curb immorality, but to keep people in the bar where they spent money :drunk:. Mob influence was pretty strong in most places where gays congregated (not just in Toledo), and the police were probably on the payroll. There usually wasn't a lot of competition among gay bars, and places either signed up or didn't last long. So I guess what I've come around to is that it probably wasn't progressiveness or liberality that led to sexual permissiveness in Toledo. It was an illicit business opportunity that the Mob capitalized on, and no one interfered with their enterprises.

Beautiful shots, excellent scans :clap: I'll PM you with some comments on film scanning. Right off the top of my head I don't have an answer, but maybe we can figure it out.

Quite Grand!

^I agree with you. In the past, high demand and the resulting higher prices spurred more exploration and development and more resources being brought on line. All indications are that the "more resources" don't exist, and the people who rely on their memories of past crises and their resolutions are hanging all their hopes on a paradigm that no longer applies. It would be best if they could get past the denial and start dealing with reality, emphasizing conservation to spread the consequences of diminishing supply over a long period of time and allowing society to adapt, instead of being confronted abruptly with an inescapable catastrophe.

The way the writer starts, I anticipated that he was concerned only with harvesting the potential profit from ANWR oil and gas, but toward the end of the article he does touch on conservation. His remarks on getting more freight to move by rail and water than by truck make sense, but then he justifies the proposal by commenting that the reduced traffic congestion will make car commuting more energy efficient. He gives only slight attention to reducing car commuting.

Sad, or perhaps disgraceful, considering that the Twin Cities once had one of America's most complete and effective streetcar systems, augmented by a fleet of six "streetcar boats" connecting suburban communities around the lakes with the streetcar system. They built their streetcars and even the steamboats in their own shops. I think I recall reading that the systenm was one of the early casualties of National City Lines' predation.

In these photos, Lima looks quite a lot better than I remember it from years ago. It used to really have the pallor of death about it, but it looks like someone has breathed a little life into it here and there.

Just plain fabulous! I love that city!

I thought about Amtrak, but the Cleveland arrival and departure times are bad. I wouldn't mind that if I were staying in a hotel, but I'm staying with friends and don't want to subject them to my arriving and leaving at ridiculous times. I just scored a tank of gas for $2.259/gallon, and that should get me there and most of the way back. I don't know how that happened, but I was headed back to Fort Wayne from Bluffton and saw the price on the sign at Wal-Mart. I pulled in, verified that the pump price matched the sign, filled up, rechecked the price on the receipt, and then looked at the pump again and it had jumped to $3.259 just that quick. I don't know how that happened, but I speculate there was a data-entry error when somebody updated the price, and I just happened to land on it before they could correct it. Lucky Me! Too bad my truck only holds 19 gallons.

This weekend's drive to Cleveland (200 miles each way) for the meet is going to be an expensive one, even with my little Ranger pickup. Today gasoline is around $3.19 in Fort Wayne for regular unleaded. I guess I should just be glad I traded the big van last winter. Maybe I'd better start brushing up on Greyhound schedules.

A friend in Cleveland copes with the lack of showers at his workplace by using the bike rack on the RTA bus to take his bike with him to work in the mornings, and then bikes home after work.

Man is that desperately needed! I used to use that station when I was dating someone who lived in Lakewood more than 25 years ago. It was becoming a shithole then, and I don't suppose it has improved on its own.

Me and my zinnias. This is my second year for these, and I'm still learning how to get it right. Look for next year's crop to be bigger & better:

The Segway has a gyro that keeps it upright. I don't know how strong the gyro is, or how easy it would be to overpower it. I seem to recall that George Bush fell off a Segway. Maybe he leaned too far to the right.

Holy smoke! Even the off-peak trains are full and sometimes have standees leaving Chicago, because of the way equipment is allocated for maintenance and rush-hour capacity. Headed for Indiana, I always go to Randolph Street to board, in order to have a seat. Board anywhere south of Van Buren, and you can be almost sure of standing until at least Hegewisch, and most likely Hammond. They already need more cars.

I advocate privatizing the interstate highway system in order to level the playing field for the freight railroads. The system should be divided into manageable regions and leased to private operators who would pay all operating and maintenance expense, plus a lease fee to offset local tax revenues that were lost when land was taken from the tax rolls to build the roads. The operators could collect tolls to recover their costs plus a profit on their investment, indexed to a predermined base like the treasury bill rate. That would place the burden of transportation costs more accurately on products according to the mode of transport, and allow the railroads, which pay all their costs out of profits, plus taxes on their right-of-way, a fair chance at competing with trucks for long-haul freight. Trains use from one-fifth to one-third as much fuel per ton-mile as trucks.

I'll second that: A bike is a lot cheaper, and low maintenance, too. Pick up a nice second-hand one that fits you comfortably; not a fancy, complex bike but a basic commute bike with upright handlebars and fenders. An old Raleigh or Schwinn 3-speed would be adequate for Cleveland. If you don't mind shelling out $300-$400 for a new bike, one of these might do the job very well: http://buyinnovations.com/incline_sport_comfort_cross_3.html I'm seriously considering buying one for town riding.

I remember seeing Greyhound at Cleveland's Amtrak Station, probably in the mid-1980s. I had first seen the station when it was nearly new about 1979, and had been impressed with how clean, attractive and well-kept it was compared with a lot of Amtrak facilities. On a visit a few years later I went back and saw that Greyhound was sharing the facility. I'm not sure if all Greyhound trips stopped there, or if it was just the runs that functioned as part of Amtrak's train-bus "Thruway Service." I know that most of that service is being dropped as a result of the Greyhound cutbacks. At that time, the station had been dragged down to typical bus station standards -- dingy, littered, with smudged glass suraces and a generally grimy, neglected ambiance. The few passengers there looked like they were en route taking their indigent homelessness to some other town. I remember they had the bus-station chairs with the individual pay TVs attached to the arms. It was pretty depressing.

They've announced the elimination of at least a half-dozen stops in Indiana, too, including some sizable college towns. I think Muncie and Bloomington are on the list, and neither has any other kind of scheduled public intercity service.

No, a Banana Republic would have wooden shacks for train stations, runway tarmacks for boarding planes, and dirt and gravel for the roads you drive on. Now when was the last time you got to try any of those situations? Every time I go to visit my brother, about 30 miles from where I live, I drive on gravel roads. The last time I flew to Chicago from Fort Wayne, I walked across the tarmac to climb the roll-away steps into a rain-and-dirt-streaked twin-engine turbo prop plane that had frayed carpets and upholstery, mechanics' dirty handprints on misaligned interior plastic panels, and no restroom and stunk of jet fuel. It vibrated and rattled from the time they first revved the engines until they shut them down after landing. Same deal with the outside boarding and roll-away steps at ORD, too. The lettering on the plane read TWE, which I took to mean Third World Express. As for the rail stations, KJP pretty well covered that.