Wednesday the 29th at Glacier National Park

It is good to be home sleeping in my own bed and back into my routine. Weather conditions were so dry while I was away. I would have thought the Hurricane would have sent a little bit of rain to Tuscaloosa, but not a drop fell while I was gone. Fortunately the withered up plants pretty much came back to life after a good soaking. The stuff I plant around my house has to be hardy!!

Will be leaving in a bit to the “Y” so I doubt I’ll get this entry finished before I leave the house.

Let me start with some pictures from the trip. These are from Wednesday the 28th. We are on a siding in Whitefish, MT for the day and night. We will pick up the Empire Builder Thursday morning at 7:56.

Steve got a car rental and we went in search of breakfast.. Found a great place in Whitefish called Swift Creek Café. Oh to have coffee again. Had a huge breakfast and Steve took the wheel. He has been to the park before so he knows the roads and in’s and outs. I’m never remiss to let someone else do the driving! We were so fortunate the weather held and the crowds were minimal. I can’t imagine those windy roads with bumper to bumper traffic.

McDonald Lodge was the only lodge which was still open; however it was in the throes of closing that afternoon. We got to see the inside and the grounds before it was all shut up.

Main lodge room:

Rick in Maroon, Steve in White:

View from the back of the lodge:

Steve and Rick and my hand trying to block out the morning sun:

More of Lodge:

Some Fall colour and showing the “Road to the Sun”.

Restored coaches in use photographed at rest stop:

Looking down over the edge of the wall of the road:

Closed Lodge:

Monument to Theodore Roosevelt:

Izaac Walton Inn. Had late lunch/early supper here:

Caboose Rooms to rent:

Statue at the Burlington Northern Depot:

Steve catching up on way back from dropping off the rental car:

Sun setting in the west:

Contending With Aggravation and Pictures 9/26 - 9/28

That power outage sure threw a monkey wrench into life. After my arrival home I did my best to get the desktop fired up again. My power strip has a surge protector with a battery back up. That battery back-up is invaluable for the many small outages which occur. When a major lengthy shutdown happens, like the last transformer break, it drains the battery pretty quickly. If you can get power back in a reasonable amount of time the battery easily charges. I’m thinking because I was gone for two weeks after it was drained that is the reason the battery is now dead. That battery is just barely over a year old. Time to order another one from Amazon. They are not that expensive, it is just another thing to contend with. Damn!!

If that were not enough aggravation, I thought it might be easy to down load the pictures from my Mac book to the memory card of my camera, and then just copy those files to my desktop picture files like I’m downloading pictures.

This computer stuff will drive me to distraction. I was able to download the files OK, but could not export those picture files from the folder. I had to go back to the tried and true use of a memory stick to copy from the laptop and then paste to the desk top picture files. I’m sure there is a way around this; it just is not in my range of intelligence!

Finally here are some pictures from the first leg of the trip:

Packing by gas and candle light:

The scorched kitchen cabinet:

View from my Air B&B room in Seattle:

My trusty Labatt Blue Bag on board:

Steve and I on the platform:

We have been coupled onto the back of the Empire Builder and are enroute to the departure track. Once coupled onto the train, we were taken out of the station and then backed onto the departure platform. It was amazing to witness the switches all working as we progressed. Conductor on back overseeing it all.

Pulling out of the Portland Station:

Waiting for barge traffic to pass on the swing bridge:

I loved getting pictures of the tunnel portals as we exited:

This back platform was my home pretty much the entire trip!

I forget the name of the bridge in the background, but it makes a beautiful picture:

Sunset on the Empire Builder 9/27/2016:

Pulling into Whitefish, MT at 7:21 on the 28th. We will be switched to a siding and pick up the next days Empire Builder. If you look close you can see another private car ahead of us. That poor car left a day ahead of us. That train encountered a rock slide. As I understand the passengers were detoured around while that car had to return to Portland. We had priority on being on the back of the train for the 27th. I felt sorry for them, but their view was only blocked for the first hours out before nightfall and we were uncoupled early in the morning giving them an unobstructed view again.

Piano Tracking Redo

I am loathe to say much on rebuilding on-line in a public forum. No matter what you say or do, it will be wrong to someone. The following transcribed bit from the 1978 Nation Lampoon parody Sunday Edition of the Dacron “Republican-Democrat” is the perfect illustration. The Ann Landers parody column was entitled: Dear Dorothy. The problems she solved.
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Dear Dorothy. At a luncheon at a friend’s house I discovered that there was no toilet tissue in the bathroom and as I needed some I had no choice but to use a hand towel. I put the hand towel into my purse fully intending to take it home, wash it and return it the next day. However, a while later my friend asked to see my new handbag. Needless to say she found the towel and accused me of stealing. What should I do now? EMBARRASSED PORTLAND, OREGON

DEAR EMBARRASSED: Anyone who entertains and doesn’t have the sense to check her toilet tissue supply isn’t considerate enough to have friends. If she’s really your friend, I hate to meet your enemies!

Dear Dorothy. I had a few friends over for lunch the other day and as we were visiting I noticed one of the gals was acting very peculiar. I suspected something right away and asked to see her purse. She was very reluctant to give me her purse and with good reason-she stole one of my towels! I’m shocked and don’t quite know what to do. ANGRY PORTLAND, OREGON.

DEAR ANGRY: Anyone who steals from her friends is no friend at all. Drop her like a hot brick.

Dear Dorothy. I am very generous about loaning things, but I’m really miffed. I loaned a neighbor my expensive good guest hand towels for a luncheon party. When she returned them the next day, one of them, was stained and smelled of urine. What could be wrong with her? REVOLTED PORTLAND, OREGON.

DEAR REVOLTED. I think your friend needs a hygiene lesson. And you need friends like her the way a cat needs swim fins.

Last week I put out a call for help to acquire the proper tracker bar linkage for my upright Franklin Ampico. I have owned this piano since 1975. The tracker pneumatic and linkages were missing when I bought it. I was able to acquire a tracker pneumatic and fixed up a crude tracking rod over the spoolbox which worked well enough. In the late 1980’s in patching up the Ampico to keep it playing, the tracking system was modified to shift the tracker bar.

This upright is an early A system. There is evidence of five bracket supports on the top of the spool box for a tracking rod.

Five years back I was considering “Craigslisting” this piano to free up space. It barely played and anyone reading this knows what the market value is on these instruments anymore. Still, this piano held sentimental value. After 40+ years I still enjoy listening and tinkering with it. I was able to get it to gasp through some rolls and made the decision to have it all professionally restored. It was late October 2015 the piano technician was at my house installing the works and fine tuning it all. It was heaven to have my Ampico operating again.

This past month the tracker bar stiffened up and would no longer move by the tracking pneumatic. That was the impetus to restore the tracking back to a rod system to shift the roll.

A MMD member came to my rescue. I could tell from the parts photos this would not be a “exact” replacement, but it could still be done. The tracking linkages and related parts were delivered to my door Wednesday the 27th.

I have dealt with antiques for over 50 years now. Believe me, I know the iron clad restoration rule to “never alter an antique in a way that can’t be reversed”. In my situation, I figured this rule did not apply. The chance of getting an exact duplicate of the original tracking rod was pretty much “0”.

To make this function, I would have to cut into the sides of the spool box. I do not have a fancy woodworking shop; I try to function with the basic hand and power tools. This will be a low tech installation. Painters tape was applied to the tops of the sides of the spool box and measurements were marked out. Using a fine finishing saw, two cuts were made on each side. A jewelers saw with a fine blade cut across the bottoms to make the channels. Once the rod was adjusted for the right depth, bushing felt was glued into the channels and over the rod.

The top board needed to be modified to accommodate the newly installed rod. A channel would have to be cut into the length of the top board. Again using painters tape, the measurements were laid out and marked. This board was duct taped to a scrap of plywood. A guide was set up for the circular saw. The blade height was adjusted. A run down each side and the middle of the channel was made with a finishing blade. I then “rocked” the blade from the middle cut to each side to knock down the remaining wood. This a far cry from a professional restoration, but this is not something anyone is going to see.

I was so glad Louis also mailed along the spool box parts which matched the linkages. I wanted to incorporate the new tracking rod and linkages from Louis with old brass existing roll parts in The Franklin spoolbox.  The system that originally held the piano rolls was too different from this later set up from Louis. The clearances were way off. The original brass components could have been modified with a lot of aggravation. It was easier to take off the existing hardware and replace with the “new” items.

I got this new tracking system all set up and working by late morning. The piano is playing and tracking wonderfully. I’m very happy!

Set up showing old linkage shifting the tracker bar:

Cutting in the side channels:

Gluing in the bushing felt:

Cutting in the channel:

Installation completed and working:

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Turn your Lemons into Lemonade

The internet is rife with the “moral stories” that are supposed to make you think and ponder. I often wonder how many of these stories are real, or pure drivel like the “True Confessions” published in the magazine of the same name.

This is my “uplifting story” of events which just happened this morning.

Miss Holly has a habit of flopping and rolling when she gets excited and happy. It can happen anywhere. Debbie related to how everything on my dining room table was on the floor one time she came in to check up when I was on my trip in February. (I’m still finding toothpicks from the knocked over toothpick holder!)

I should not have been surprised this morning when the water goblet I left on the dining room table was overturned and broken. It was my fault for leaving the thing out.

I was talking on the phone with my sister walking into the kitchen when inspiration hit to turn the disaster into an artistic application!

A few years back Billy received a shipment of antique stuff that was hardly packed at all. One of casualties was a LLadro figurine that lost its head. Billy gave me the pieces as he knew I’d come up with some use for the thing.

The Alabama thrift store had an abundance of glazed figurines at .79¢ ea. Using the brick saw, I was able to do a “head transplant” to the LLadro figurine attaching it with Minwax epoxy wood filler. The repair is almost undetectable! LOL!!!

Looking at the remains of the goblet I got a brainstorm to bury it into the garden so the stem and base would make a pedestal for a piece of art. The reassembled remains of the shattered LLadro head will work on the decapitated figurine. Only in Tuscaloosa, a successful head transplant and artistic application at the same time!

Turn your lemons into lemonade.

A History of Some of My Bricks

The organizers of the Spring Brick Swap in Terre Haute, Indiana put out a request for members to send in pictures of their favourite bricks or stories related to them. I got to thinking how the old bricks I salvaged back in 1983 have had such an impact upon my life. I began to pull pictures of these patterned bricks from my photo albums and realized the story was too complex too narrow down to just a couple pictures.

Let me begin by saying I salvaged out these circle pattern bricks in the summer of 1983. It was not till the summer of 1986 they began to see use around my house as edger bricks and even as a walkway.

It was the spring and summer of 1987 Ron and I got seriously to work fixing up my back yard. Ron had the green thumb for growing just about anything.

Closer shot of the bricks being used as edging:

The cement pad was taken out and replaced with garden stuff and bricks. The walkway is the patterned train station brick, while the large area is hill brick salvaged from Clinton Street Hill when it was redone in 1989.

It was in 1995 I finally built a deck to utilize the door I installed in the dining room to the backyard. To tie everything together, all the patterned bricks were brought together into a patio.

Early installation:

Roughed in deck:

Things were happening in my life. My neighborhood was getting seedier. I was no longer content in my old house. My mother died in December 1994. She was the main tie I had holding me to Lockport. The fall of 1995 I began to seriously contemplate relocating to Tuscaloosa, AL where my factory had a small plant principally to supply the Saturn line of GM cars with air cooling and heating systems.

It was January 1996 I visited Tuscaloosa, AL for the first time to check things out. I had a very favorable impression. I made up my mind to make the move. 

There was no way I was leaving my treasured bricks behind. The first load got moved south in March 1996 along with a truckload of other stuff. I rented a storage unit and slowly filled it from my numerous trips south. That poor 1995 Dakota had more miles on it nearly dragging the bumper on the interstate from being overloaded with those bricks!

Digging up the patio. Spring 1996:

One of my favourite cat pictures: Chloe is the tabby, Fuzzy is the yellow:

I had crocus growing up through my lawn in back. By the time I was moving, they had spread to where they had taken over the tiny back yard.

The bricks are gone. The finished deck. Me, Billy and Chloe. Early Fall 1996:

I closed on my Tuscaloosa house Aug 1996. The bricks I had stored in a storage facility were moved to my new abode. Chloe on the brick pile. The Train station bricks are in the back, the Clinton Street hill pavers in the front.

It was not till the spring of 1999 I was able to break out the cement sidewalk and install these patterned brick into a front walkway:

Now let us fast forward to spring of 2012. I purchased a hoard of Nelsonville Star bricks located just outside of Dayton, Ohio through E-bay.

The train station brick was taken up and the nicer salt glaze bricks took their place:

New and improved walkway with flower brick as the edge, star, and a few circle bricks and snowflake thrown in for good measure for the fill:

I was going to incorporate the old sidewalk bricks into the driveway, but they were not a salt glaze and the different dimensions in the brick did look right:

An early project back in 2000 was to install a cement walkway to my workshop. tThis walk was bordered by brick and divided into sections. That cement was torn up and replaced with brick in the fall of 2011. The one outside support "wall" was replaced with a cement footer topped with a plain solid brick salvaged from the old walkway.

This was filled in with Star Brick I acquired in Virginia:

In 2012 these Star bricks were taken up to be used in the driveway. The Train station bricks took their place in a herringbone pattern:

I acquired a another hoard of patterned brick in Tennessee which allowed an expansion and improvement project in the summer of 2013 on that walkway. It was such an aggravation to cut and trim the small odd patches of grass. Brick is so much better!

That is the history of the bricks that changed my life for the last 33 years. This just proves Ron to be true. He always explained me to people as, “That Jimmy. He is like a squirrel in a cage just going round, and round, and round!”

Remembering Aunt Rita

There was a message on my answering machine from my good friend Janey. Soon as I heard her voice I knew Aunt Rita had died. I’ll get more details today, but Janey said how Rita had provisions for no announcements of her death or any kind of funeral or memorial services. I can totally relate to Aunt Rita feeling this way.

For the record, Aunt Rita was not my biological aunt. My co workers in Department 862 at the GM Plant and I took to calling her “Aunt Rita” because her true nephew Terry, who also worked with us, was forbidden to address her as “Aunt Rita”!

That old department 862 was a special place. I probably spent ½ of my GM career working in that department. That area had a low turnover in workers. We became family over the years. Being on my own I realized early on the importance of cultivating an extended family. Aunt Rita was an important part of that family.

It was in the late summer of 1976 I was transferred to Department 862 from the “brown lines” in Building 9, because I had job rights to the open clincher job. I had trained and ran a clincher in another department where I worked off skids. In 862 I had to pull parts off a moving conveyer line. Some of those parts looked so alike, I was always mixing them up which resulted in panic for me as I would attempt to get my clincher unjammed, cleaned out, and not lose rate. Watching me run my clincher in those early days was a great source of amusement for the “clincher boys”.

That summer of 1976 found me in my first apartment on my own. It was like a rite of passage as I went through my “back to earth” phase. I had a pair of real Kelso “earth shoes” and bought food at the health food store. I made homemade Granola, which baffled my co-workers. Aunt Rita swore I was eating bird seed!

I could write a book on what transpired in 862. Aunt Rita was a great enabler. It was back in the mid 1980’s. Our foreman Lou pretty much left us alone as he knew we would always give him his numbers and quality. It was a win-win situation all around. One day Lou was particularly exasperated, and he told my clincher partner Mel and I to “Go fly a kite.”

The following day Aunt Rita showed up with a kite for me and Mel to launch. It was summer; we would take our last break outside behind the plant at some picnic tables. We got a ball of string from Bud, who ran the tool crib. My old 862 foreman Charlie encountered us as we headed out the back door of the plant. He saw the kite and took a “I see nothing” attitude.

We got that kite way up in the air behind the plant, but we ran into trouble when it nearly crashed into a taxi driving up the side road. The kite got away from us and landed up on the roof. We lost it just in time as plant security soon showed up asking who was flying a kite. Mel just answered back, “What the Hell? Who would be stupid enough to fly a kite back here?” We were guilty as Hell. We knew it, plant security knew it, but they could not prove anything.

Word quickly spread. Aunt Rita told Bud, security had found the kite and string and they were trying to trace the string back to the tool crib! Bud was a nervous wreck over that one!

Another adventure happened when we got sent home early before lunch on the day shift. I suggested to the crew we all stop by Mary Sharky’s in Lowertown. Sharkys was an institution, it was a “beer and shot” bar located in the mist of the old paper mill complex on the corner of Mill and Center St. Mary was a legend in my hometown. She told us stories of getting bootleg booze in North Tonawanda during prohibition and adding caramel colouring to it.

We all had the best time. Aunt Rita never got over the huge dog turd she spied on top of a flat rock in front of the place!

Some of my work crew outside Mary Sharkey’s.

Nick and Aunt Rita:

I’ll be reliving a lot of Aunt Rita stories in my head today.

Aunt Rita was such a vibrant, down to earth person. She lived a good life and will be sorely missed. Her health had deteriorated so, I’m thankful she passed peacefully.

I’ve been thinking too much about mortality lately. It is pretty much a given that after a generation or two families pretty much forget about their ancestors. Names are forgotten and faces in photos are unknown. This quote from the book, “Let Us Build Us A City. Eleven Lost Towns of Arkansas” by Donald Harington pretty much sums up the best we can hope for. An elderly woman ended an interview with one of the most insightful lines I have ever read. She simply said, “I want to believe that years later on you’ll still think about me.”

This is a person I have never met, but I have used her insight more times than I can remember. With my journals I often wonder if such will be the case for me. Decades from now will these musings still be read? I like to think so and that somehow my writing here can give a perspective to a life in constant transition.