Had a picture-taking afternoon with Natalie for her class project. Some shots of the neighborhood follow. The old streetcar, still in service:
Ol’ PCC #322. Served the Twin Cities from ’46 to the early 50s, then did a stint as a subway car in the Newark system, then lived out its days in Cleveland before it was brought back home and refurbished.
That’s the lake in the background on the left.
You can see why I like it here, eh? Well, we also paid a trip to the local ice cream store, Liberty Custard:
It’s a refurbished Standard Oil station. Inside, many retro joys, including this stunning sight:
Not just candy cigarettes, but VICTORY brand candy cigarettes. They have a few old pinball machines, including the 1966 Gottlieb “Crosstown.” Detail of the backplate:
An old supply cabinet featuring Val E. Forge. How nice he got a job at a company whose name sounded like his:
Off to the water tower:
The giant crusaders are the Defenders of Health, ensuring the Purity of our Waters.
Fitting image for today. And a happy Memorial Day to you all!
Pass it along, if you wish
48 Responses to Memorial Day 2009
Host with the Most
Excellent in all ways. Thanks.
Yes, it may have been a Standard Oil station, but for 10 bonus points, the question is this: Which Standard Oil company was it?
Believe me, that question is a lot harder to answer than it might seem.
_@_v – standard oil of indiana?
_@_v – aka amoco?
Wow, candy cigarettes. Haven’t seen those in, oh, four decades, I think.
You made me think of “1984″ and “Dr. Strangelove within three minutes. Either you’re that good, or I’m that wierd. I shall forth to rumination.
I am in awe and love of your water tower. Fighting envy–which of course would be bad. I am a fan of the classic old patinated painted tanks here in rural areas of Georgia, but that tank has so much style! On a side note, if those are lilacs…sigh. That is one thing I miss from my childhood in Michigan. Sorry, but all cultivars I have seen that were developed for the southern heat do not stack up.
Yeah Lilacs and Memorial Day in Michigan, I remember that too Nancy. We would cut branches from our trees and take them to the cemetery. Wonder if people still do that.
What’s the deal with the woman in the MTA car window? She seems to be having a great time on the bus a la the deli scene in “When Harry Met Sally.”
“Crusaders” aren’t really a fitting image for any day.
I love PCCs. When I was really small, my father used to take me to Pittsburgh for baseball games. Morning B&O train to Pittsburgh, ride the incline, ride the streetcar downtown to meet Uncle Myron, then ride to Forbes Field in a Cadillac with power windows. Heady stuff in 1963-4-5.
The Pittsburgh trolley system was preserved intact until 1964, when the Port Authority took it over. They started ripping up rails and cutting up cars with gleeful abandon, all while seeking buckets of tax money to build a replacement monorail called “Skybus.” Fortunately, someone figured out that the trolley was “light rail,” and therefore hip mod and trendy, before it was all gone. They replaced the last PCCs a few years ago.
That crusader is quite beautiful — I love the stern expression on his face. Water towers around here are few, and out in the more rural areas the towers are often festively painted, but no crusaders.
Can you really HAVE a “happy” memorial day? Mine are always contemplative.
Bill
I have no problem with Crusaders. With or without the “scare quotes”! So there!
Yes James, I do see why you love it there. Iconic statuary on the water tower, retro street car and candy cigarettes! Can’t get much better says me.
Al, at the risk of starting a flame war here (which is the last thing I would want to do), I completely disagree. Furthermore, I think you’ve chosen the wrong day to state your point.
But them again, I’m irritable today.
These pictures show us that a place without history is empty. Living in a city that constantly renews itself is heady, but the past is gone. Never to return or be contemplated, except in little displays in the back of a dusty museum.
Why the unlikely price of 47¢ for the candy coffin nails? (“or 3 for $1.41!”)
@IrritableBear — The men who flew the planes into the Twin Towers on 9/11 were crusaders. Let us not encourage that mindset.
Memorial Day is hardly the “wrong day” to bring up the evils of warmaking. There couldn’t possibly be a better day to do so.
IrritableBear, I agree with you. Today I watched live coverage of the laying of the Wreath at Arlington, salty, bitter tears runnng down my face remembering all my Airborne Brothers who died around me, fourty-one years ago. Those tears changed to tears of pride and joy when I saw MY president (who I did not vote for) tenderly and respectfully pay homage to all American Warriors, Crusaders of Liberty and Equal Justice Under Law. Yesterday, by the grace of God, the Great Mystery, I spent the day with my multi-ethnic family, playing with my grandkids. I can think of no better way to celebrate the life and sacrifice of our fallen heros than to love and protect all of our children here and, when possible, in other lands.
Thank you, Mr. Lileks for your commentary, pics, puzzles and Doris.
…I may have ridden that trolley when it resided in Cleveland (actually, Olmstead Township, out by the airport) – I took my son there several times when he was younger, just so he could see how it used to be. The best part was that several cars there were former Cleveland cars, a couple of which my father almost certainly rode. It’s fun to think that the three of us looked out the same windows forty years apart and wondered at the rest of the world…
Best Regards,
Mike Kozlowski
Columbia SC
From Mike Kozlowski Columbia SC:
“It’s fun to think that the three of us looked out the same windows forty years apart and wondered at the rest of the world…”
You pretty much hit the nail on the head as to why I am such a nostalgia/history buff.
Happy memorial day and thanks to all who gave the ultimate gift…
The purpose of Memorial Day, of course, is to honor the memory of those who died in service to our country. How is it necessary or useful to harp on the “evils” of war on a day set aside precisely to acknowledge one of war’s most terrible costs?
Soldiers know the price of war intimately well, in ways the rest of us can never understand, and they know what is appropriate today. One could do worse than follow their lead.
@Bridley — I think the best way to honor the memory of those who have died in the service of “our country” (they actually died for the federal government and the elites who own it) is to make ourselves keenly aware of why and how those people were sent to war in the first place.
Many people feel better about our war dead thinking that they died to keep Americans free. Well, does anybody really think we’re as free as we were before our wars of empire (including Iraq and Afghanistan) began?
Practically every move we make is now subject to some sort of government regulation, and it’s only getting worse under Obama. We are forced to relinquish nearly 50% of what we earn to government at all levels. There are so many laws on the books that everyone is now a criminal. Your communications are subject to interception without any real cause. The U. S. government can detain you indefinitely without giving a reason. The list goes on. Is this the “freedom” they died for? Nonsense. Bloody nonsense.
Sure, Al, whatever.
Dang Al, give it a rest.
As is quickly becoming his theme music, “there’s no bore like a political bore.”
Dear Al,
Please don’t be that way, on this day, in this place.
Bob
Al Federber:
You get it. I get it. As the Obama presidency wears on, Bridey, Nancy and HelloBall will get it, too. And will remember your words.
Love our periodic references to pinball machines. My favorite all-time is “Happy Clown,” a mid-’60s Gottlieb machine that I played all during high school. Just the right combination of bumpers at the top and good targets for the flippers. A GREAT pinball machine.
http://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=1114&picno=1086
NeeNee, since you go so far as to name-check me, I’ll just say it is best not to make assumptions about people’s political opinions based on how they respond to a tiresome bore on a non-political forum. (The odds that I will remember any of Al’s words more than momentarily on any topic whatever are also fairly slim.)
And, having hijacked the comments thread to far too great a degree today, I now withdraw, with due apologies.
The statuary reminds me of the absolutely enormous (monumental in the true sense of the word) Völkerschlachtdenkmal, just outside of Leipzig in Germany. It was built in 1913 on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Nations against Napoleon. It was the turning point in the Napoleonic Wars, and the largest battle in Europe before WWI. Pictures at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lkerschlachtdenkmal
(cut and paste–I don’t know how to put links in)
Fitting for Memorial Day
What Bridey said. AND ’nuff said.
I, for one, think the Defenders of the Water Tower are teh awesome!
(To use a currently popular turn of phrase.)
_@_v – hey al… why don’t you just blame it all on the jewish world domination conspiracy scheme and be done with it?
To complete the triumvirate, ditto, and ditto again. I am deeply thankful to the US armed forces that make it possible for Al, Neenee, and, indeed, all preening blowhards everywhere to enjoy a safe and blessedly peaceful Memorial Day.
“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.” (Emphasis added.)
The men who flew the planes into the Twin Towers on 9/11 were crusaders. Let us not encourage that mindset.
Wow. I wouldn’t have thought to equate the water-tower figure with the 9-11 terrorists. I am blinded by the insight.
The oath I took four times (renewed at each enlistment/re-enlistment) is still operative as far as I’m concerned.
For those of you who like to bash our country’s military, please remember this: It is them who have allowed you to do so without fear of persecution, prosecution, and possibly execution. Just remember that the next time you want to bad-mouth the military.
Candy cigarettes are illegal in Minnesota. If you look closely at the packaging, all it says is candy. The cigarette part is only in the mind.
I’m always envious of someone else’s PCCs – Toronto cashiered its fleet over 20 years ago. Sold them to Egypt, I believe, and replaced them with these awful things that say “80s” faster than Martha Quinn and Flock Of Seagulls. They’re due to be replaced, oddly (don’t know why the PCCs have lasted so much longer,) and we’re due for a set of those low-slung, European accordion cars soon. Don’t know why I’m not more excited, really.
And James, I need to know – did you BUY the pack of Victory candy cigs?
I think it’s illegal all over the country to market them as “candy cigarettes”, and to manufacture them to look like cigarettes, complete with “lit” (dyed red-orange) tips and “filters” (dyed orange) on the opposite ends. Nowadays they’re marketed as “candy sticks”, and I’m surprised to see those boxes. Most of the ones I’ve seen down here in Georgia look nothing like parodies of bygone cigarette brands (are Luckies still available? Haven’t seen them around here), but rather emblazoned with the likenesses (crude ones, usually) of some not-so-popular cartoon character like Popeye, Bluto, or one of the creations from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon factory.
Also, I remember when I was a kid a friend introducing me to the candy cigarettes, and they had the “lit” tips. That same year, another friend gave me a bubble gum cigar. You blew through one end, and a puff of “smoke” (powdered sugar) came out the other end. He gave it to me on the bus on the way to school, and by the time we got to school, all the powdered sugar had been puffed out. I had read somewhere that the companies that made these managed to stop Congress from passing a law making the products completely illegal, but there was a compromise: quit making them look like the real deal, and quit marketing them as candy versions of the pack-o-nails or lung spikes. Supposedly the candy versions made kids want to try the real thing. I never wanted to, never did, and never will.
Everytime you start posting photos of the twin cities area, I start thinking about Emma Bull’s novel “War for the Oaks.”
I believe one of the locations was that water tower.
Al, you can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. Honestly.
Go to moveon.org, and post your political heavings there.
‘Victory Candy Cigarettes’ are still available where I dwell. There is a candy called ‘Satellite Waffers’ from the early 50s that I don’t see anymore and would like to see around again. They were small, flat, round little discs with candy beads inside. The outside was mad out of ‘cone’, as in ice-cream cone material. They were peculiar candies, and they were really good.
Jessie:
You mean these?
If you like classic pinball, next time you are in Las Vegas hop in your rental car and head to http://www.pinballmuseum.org/
Spent some time this Memorial Day visiting with the nice couple that lived across the street when I was growing up, whose teenage daughter was my first babysitter. And another couple where the husband was an outstanding tenor in my church choir. A man who, with his wife, watched over my siblings and I when my parents rushed out of town to my grandmother’s funeral. A classmate of my younger sister she found irritating. The nice couple who ran our town’s little radio station for decades. My fourth-grade teacher. One of my classmates I don’t remember all that well but at least recognized as a classmate. My wife’s brother’s father-in-law. And many others.
They were nice visits, but the conversations were rather one-sided.