Text 1142, 207 rader
Skriven 2012-07-22 06:58:15 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
   Kommentar till text 1007 av Richard Webb (1:116/901.0)
Ärende: Darwion award candidate
===============================
21 Jul 12 01:49, Richard Webb wrote to Roy Witt:

 Roy>> Heh...well there was 'Six-Pack' whom I successfully avoided getting
 Roy>> involved with. I wasn't turned off by the fact that she was black
 Roy>> as much as the idea of her body odor passing through my delicate
 Roy>> nostrils.

 RW> <hmmm>  I've had experiences like that.

I happened to get close enough to get a whiff of her once, while
traversing a crowded narrow restaurant isle.

 Roy>>>> Dunno...I wasn't there. I have noticed that the freight cars
 Roy>>>> headed south are 'hoppers' full of concrete materials and those
 Roy>>>> hoppers going north are full of sand and gravel.

 Roy>>> Especially attempting to stop. That's what I think when I see a
 Roy>>> load of gravel in the hopper of an 18 wheeler coming off the
 Roy>>> freeway at freeway speeds of 65/70mph, even though the ramp
 Roy>>> speedlimit is 45 mph. And then they think they have the right of
 Roy>>> way over traffic that is already on that ramp.

 RW>> OH yeah I'm awlays amazed at those guys.  I know our remote
 RW>> truck is heavy even for a 19" bed box truck, because of the
 RW>> lead and other insulating materials under the skin of the
 RW>> box and all the electronics inside.  Bringing that bad boy
 RW>> to a stop from highway speeds can even be fun.  Iirc it tips the
 RW>> scales when the duals in back are on the platform at 18k or
 RW>> thereabouts.

 Roy>> One nice thing about air and hydraulic assisted braking is that the
 Roy>> power assist does all the work with just a light touch by the
 Roy>> driver. The first time I towed the race car and trailer, I had no
 Roy>> electronic hook-up for the trailer brakes and it was all the 4
 Roy>> wheel discs on the pickup could do to bring that baby down. It was
 Roy>> at that time that I gave more thought to installing the trailer
 Roy>> brake controller in the pickup.

 RW> YEah I know, and this one just has the hydraulics.  Has the
 RW> air horn though, but the tank for the air horn seems to
 RW> slowly leak air.

Might be a cracked hose too.

 RW> I think it was aftermarketed to just use hydraulics for the brakes,
 RW> adn I'm not sure that was such a great idea.

Hydraulic assisted braking is an OEM heavy duty truck feature. Especially
if it's a diesel powered truck. Although I've seen big block gasoline
powered Chevys in 3500HDs using OEM hydraulic assisted braking.

 Roy>>> I've heard stories about those bulls, but havn't seen any of it up
 Roy>>> close. It seemed like every RR employee was on the lookout for
 Roy>>> youngsters crossing the tracks at the yard. A chase would always
 Roy>>> ensue and when we made it to the 'other side' the chase ended.
 Roy>>> Don't know what would have happened had we been caught, since we
 Roy>>> were always faster than those fat bellied RR workers. 8^)

 RW>> YEah I noted that with the bulls even in the railroad shops, we used
 RW>> to cut through there to go sledding, our favorite sledding spot was
 RW>> a hill which was now just pastureland, but had been used for some of
 RW>> the first air brake tests way back when.  I think the bulls were
 RW>> told, whether it be kids or hoboes that once you got past rr
 RW>> property they were to give up the chase anyway.  IT's when they
 RW>> caught you on rr property you might be in some trouble.

 Roy>> Charges of trespassing comes to mind. That's about all they could
 Roy>> do.

 RW> YEah that's about all they could do.  THe boes used to say
 RW> though that the bulls sort of enjoyed whipping up on 'em a
 RW> bit if they could catch 'em.  We may have been able to
 RW> outrun those guys, but part of being small twon kids was
 RW> that everybody knew everybody, and no doubt one of those
 RW> guys would know at least one kid in the group, and parents
 RW> would be notified, and the usual lectures ensue.

OTH, had one of those kids been beaten up by a bull, the shoe would be on
the other foot. I'd have feigned mild injuries whether that bull caught me
or not. 'He twisted my arm and kicked me in the butt, dad!' Being a RR
buff, my dad knew those guys too.

 RW> IT was just so much quicker to cut through the yard at the railroad
 RW> shops than to walk around via the roads.

The only other way to the fishing ponds was down the two-lane highway and
over the guard rail at the bridge...

 Roy>>>> Illinois Central ran through Freeport, where my grandfather
 Roy>>>> (clark) would get on board as the conductor of the Land-O-Corn,
 Roy>>>> ride it into Iowa and back to Chicago and then back to Freeport
 Roy>>>> where he got off...all of that track is gone now and so are the
 Roy>>>> yards and the depot. Used to be 3 or 4 sets of tracks ran along
 Roy>>>> the Pecatonica River (

 RW> <snip>

 RW>>> YEp, my mom's dad was an engineer for C B & Q, and then for
 RW>>> SAnta Fe.  One of her uncles who lived in MEdia, Il. not too far
 RW>>> from where you grew up iirc was a fireman in the steam days.

 Roy>>> Hmmm. Media is in Chicago. Freeport is about 120 miles to the west
 Roy>>> of Chi-town, on Illinois/Interstate 20...

 RW>> YEp, that sounds about right.  Back in the days when mom
 RW>> remembers visiting the old guy with the family (they rode
 RW>> the train of course) it wasn't part of Chicago exurbs she
 RW>> says, just another little town.  THis was before ww2 though.

 Roy>> I was too young to know about such things, but my grandma Witt
 Roy>> would take me to Chicago to see the live western shows with Roy
 Roy>> Rogers, Dale Evans, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, etc.. I was known
 Roy>> to 'open carry' in those days with my two six guns and cowboy chaps
 Roy>> on the ride, ca1946-47...

 RW> That was quite a tiem to live around there.

Riding the train into Chicago and back was quite an experience, one that
I'll never forget. I've forgotten most of the western shows, but the
trains still impress me.


 RW> MOm's aunt lived in Villla Park when I was growing up, when we'd go
 RW> over there to visit I'd hear lots of stories.  IN fact,
 RW> mom's aunt on her mom's side, the uncle I referenced was on
 RW> her dad's, who lived in the Chicago area all the time I was
 RW> growing up married a farmer from outside there where
 RW> Standard Oil wanted to build a facility, I think
 RW> distribution and possibly refining.

That had to be around the lower East Side, maybe close to Calumet City.

 RW> Part of the deal for his farmland was S.O. stock, and she still had
 RW> quite a bit of it when she died.

Would have been nice to be mentioned in that will.

 RW>>> THis one was same vintage, Murray Iron works iirc.
 RW>>> DIfferent name now, but it's still in business, friend of
 RW>>> mine's a machinist for 'em.  My xyl sold him some "joe
 RW>>> blocks" is waht he called them that were her ex husbands.

 Roy>>> Stover went belly up during the depression or after WW2 ... Jo
 Roy>>> Blocks were called that because the inventor's name was Joe
 Roy>>> something. He was a Swede, I think. They're precision metal blocks
 Roy>>> that are lapped to size and they're supposed to have a tolerance
 Roy>>> of plus or minus .0001"... If you gave them some finger-oil and
 Roy>>> rub a few together, they'd stick together if you needed a stack to
 Roy>>> make up a set thickness of blocks. Too expensive for a machinist
 Roy>>> to buy, but they were easily lost for whatever reason. I have a
 Roy>>> few odds and ends in my tool box that I used to check the accuracy
 Roy>>> of my 'mics'

 RW>> That sounds about right.  These had a nice carrying case.  I thought
 RW>> they were probably templates for something like that.

 RW>> Not templates, but precision building blocks...

 RW> Okay, wrong choice of words there <grin>.

 RW>> Iirc he gave the xyl a couple hundred bucks for 'em. WAs a nice set,
 RW>> you coudl tell that just by looking, and my buddy the machinist was
 RW>> quite happy to get them at that price.

 Roy>> I'll bet. I'd give a couple of hundred for a set.

 RW> I'd bet so.  sHe felt she got a good deal though, we needed
 RW> the $$$ and didn't need them.  HE was crowing about the good deal he
 RW> got, he was the only machinist around the plant had some.

I think I'm the only one in town who does custom machining that has an 18"
by 24" granite plate for checking the parts I make. It would be nice to
have a set of 'jo blocks' to go with it. Not that anything I do these
days has to be that accurate.

 Roy>>> LOL! Been there and done that. Dropped on my knees to a block of
 Roy>>> concrete just under the water's surface. I didn't have much fun
 Roy>>> that day.

 RW>> <ouch.  Can picture it.  The cedar river there was sort of a gravel
 RW>> bed, and though it ran fairly fast through there it wasn't that
 RW>> deep, and i knew letting go of my handhold was not a good idea!

 Roy>> Definately not a good idea. Water tends to pack gravel down so it
 Roy>> can be as hard as concrete to land on.

 RW> That's kinda what I figured even then, didn't look like any
 RW> fun.

It wouldn't have been.

                R\%/itt

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