Not to throw more ga on the fire, but in the April edition, the caption states, "Virginia will spend x M illions ..." and right below in the first sentence of the story is B illions. I understand it's an easy mistake to make, but how many people looked at the page as a whole during editing?
Deggesty Yes, Sam, I wonder why and where. I try to remember to check before I send my compositions out to the world, but....
Yes, Sam, I wonder why and where.
I try to remember to check before I send my compositions out to the world, but....
My best friend in HS's father, a electronics repairman by trade used to 'flip' cars for additional income. Among the cars that spent time at my friends house in addition to a Henry J, Hudson, NSU Wankel, Borgwaard, and a host of other 'orphans', no classics just everyday vehicles.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
I drove a Henry J about 160 miles one day in July of 1959. It belonged to an elderly couple (friends of the family) who were on their way to their summer home in Montreat, N.C. (about two mies north of Black Mountain). They had it loaded for the summer--and I managed to get my seabag and suitcase in also. It handled very well, even with the load
Johnny
Paul of Covington Overmod Lest you think the idea lacked attraction, consider the ineffable Nash Metropolitan Back in the mid 1970's, a friend had a Nash Metropolitan which became his son's car when he went to college. The son was surprised to find that the car was a real chick magnet.
Overmod Lest you think the idea lacked attraction, consider the ineffable Nash Metropolitan
Back in the mid 1970's, a friend had a Nash Metropolitan which became his son's car when he went to college. The son was surprised to find that the car was a real chick magnet.
Used a Metropolitan to pass my drivers test on my second try. I failed the first attempt at parallell parking dad's 19.9 foot Chrysler 300 in a 20 foot parking space. The Metropolitan was much easier to fit into the 20 foot parking space.
HS Drivers Ed was in a 63 Chevy Biscayne with 3 on the tree so using a manual trans was not a issue. Remember the DE teachers continual refrain - 'Car won't go without gas.'
I had a Metropolitan myself in the 1970s. Being a 1960, it was no longer a Nash as Nash and Hudson merged to become American Motors in 1957. The idea behind the car was to be a competitor to Volkswagen which was sold as a "second" car, the one you drove to the station or your wife drove to do the shopping but you had a real car like a Buick to actually go anywhere.
Milton Berle came up with the line about the Edsel looking like an Olds sucking a lemon. Someone, somewhere, possibly the legendary Tom McCahill said that the 58 Ford looks like Milton Berle trying to smile with a hangover.
One of the things about the Henry J and Kaiser-Frazer was to put the Willow Run bomber plant into use after they were done building B-24s. We had a Kaiser when I was a kid. I don't remember much about it except that my mother had trouble with the heavy clutch and I do recall that odd windshield.
OvermodLest you think the idea lacked attraction, consider the ineffable Nash Metropolitan
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
OvermodThis is just about as far away from an Edsel as you could possibly get in the engineering sense --
Yeah - I was referring to the use of the first name.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
This was an offshoot of the similar Kaiser idea to make locomotives: wartime adaptation of production capability and industrial knowhow. Since there was enormous pent-up demand for personal automobiles, here came Kaiser-Frazer (an 'industrial wonder' in 1947) ... and one idea was to build a relatively inexpensive, smaller car, where (presumably) the cheapness would be justified by mobility, etc. If I recall, this was actually partially funded by the RFC as a kind of analogue of the 'volkswagen' principle.
There was actually work on this concept by a noted automobile stylist (Dutch Darrin) who had done a couple of showy designs for K-F. So you can think of the result as already being some silk-purse optimization effort. My own opinion is that the industrial-design ethic of the late 1940s to early 1950s was already pretty pathetic, so it's unsurprising the Henry J was such a weird combination of lines (compare the Muntz Jet if you really want to see 'wrong').
Lest you think the idea lacked attraction, consider the ineffable Nash Metropolitan (I still have a hard time entirely figuring this idea out, but then again I'm also mystified why anyone would import a Smart Car to these shores...)
Considering the reasons behind the specific vehicle design, marketing it through Sears seems like an initial flash of genius. Of course what you save by not having a dealer network you lose when it comes time to maintain the thing, something I understand the Henry Js required with some dismal frequency despite their somewhat ... shall we say, rudimentary ... construction.
Of course this was long before my time (other than as a reader of certain car magazines in the late '60s to early '70s) and my introduction to the things was entirely through their use, by plastic-model companies, as a funky basis for a drag funnycar. (Small, don't you know, like the use of a Durango-size Dodge cab in building a 6BT-based speed-record truck...)
This is just about as far away from an Edsel as you could possibly get in the engineering sense -- Edsels were VERY large cars, intended as an 'intermediate' between Ford/Mercury and Lincoln (both the FE and MEL motors reference this) that happened to come along nearly precisely when smaller but well-constructed cars were about to become a rage. Note that the horse-collar Oldsmobile-sucking-a-lemon impossibly baroque styling was gone in a year ... and I think it could be cogently argued that a certain other company employing the designer who later produced the XNR had tremendously wackier designs ... but apparently nothing could save the (very, very expensively set up, perhaps even more expensive in constant dollars than Saturn) whole division. Or the concept of its name as a synonym for dud. Or even the whole use of that fine old name for your children...
Ercoupe is correct 54'. With that twin-tail I've also heard it called "The poor man's P-38!"
http://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2018/february/pilot/budget-buy-ercoupe
How'd they get it in Macys? They have must have disassembled it and reassembled once it was indoors!
54light15 I've seen Henry Js as a kid, but I've never seen an Allstate. Ugly damn things.
We had one, but I was too young to remember - I've seen a picture. No idea where we got it.
Built by Kaiser, as I recall. A precursor to the Edsel, by Ford, as Mr's Kaiser's name was Henry J. Kaiser...
tree68 SALfan I'll leave you to judge whether any exaggeration was involved, but someone once said that station was so powerful, if you got near a barbed-wire fence near it you coud hear Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters. Probably not an exaggeration. I've heard of it in other instances.
SALfan I'll leave you to judge whether any exaggeration was involved, but someone once said that station was so powerful, if you got near a barbed-wire fence near it you coud hear Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters.
Probably not an exaggeration. I've heard of it in other instances.
WLW and its 500 KW transmitter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbHjcwIoTiY
When I lived in Poughkeepsie, New York from 1982 to 1995 I owned a Sears kit house. I didn't know that's what it was until one day I was mowing the lawn and a guy walking by told me. He said that it came as a pack of lumber, windows, shingles, doors and plumbing fittings. He said all the houses on my part of the block were Sears kits. From the early 1930s. I started to spot them all over Poughkeepsie. Boxy structures, two bedroooms, one bathroom, a tiny kitchen. If you go to Google street view and look up 12 Park Avenue in Poughkeepsie, that's my old house.
Sears also sold cars in the early 1950s. Remember the Henry J? Sears sold them as the "Allstate." I've seen Henry Js as a kid, but I've never seen an Allstate. Ugly damn things.
Speaking of stores seelling things, you could by an airplane at Macy's. The Ercoupe (sp?) was on display at the Macy's in Manhattan.
SALfanI'll leave you to judge whether any exaggeration was involved, but someone once said that station was so powerful, if you got near a barbed-wire fence near it you coud hear Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters.
Paul of Covington Deggesty (I raised 100 baby chicks to get to do that) Did you listen to radio station XERF in Del Rio, TX? I remember they used to advertise "100 baby chicks." I believe their transmitter was across the border, hence the call letters, and was far more powerful than any US station.
Deggesty (I raised 100 baby chicks to get to do that)
Did you listen to radio station XERF in Del Rio, TX? I remember they used to advertise "100 baby chicks." I believe their transmitter was across the border, hence the call letters, and was far more powerful than any US station.
I'll leave you to judge whether any exaggeration was involved, but someone once said that station was so powerful, if you got near a barbed-wire fence near it you coud hear Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters.
Flintlock76Ever hear of Thomas Edison's concrete houses?
Before you do that, look at Thomas Edison's concrete (the houses were almost an afterthought, to take advantage of the massive upside of production). And Hurry and Seaman before him, and Jose de Navarro coming off the great convergence of New York elevated rapid transit and development of the Upper West Side, and the participation of the president of the CNJ in the enhancement of the bulk Portland cement industry ... and, not at all incidentally, the vast use of cement by Truesdale's Lackawanna...
(An interesting sidenote is why the 'best' oil for the early large rotary kilns came from, of all places, Lima, Ohio. I would not have expected this.)
What bears more than a little study is why Edison's house plans turned out to be both a flop and a relative drag on the market -- in part, because the capital intensiveness of his system was too great; in part, because the product was inherently viewed as chronically, perhaps terminally low-end. What we can dramatically compare it with, though, is Frank Lloyd Wright's response to industrial-scale cement and cheap high-strength concrete made from it: the so-called textile-block system (and its inherent use of effective tensile reinforcement). That was the system in full swing at the construction of La Miniatura (and many other houses in the Los Angeles cement-production region in that era) and it is interesting to see how fascinated Wright became in describing his methods of building using a bare minimum of standard components and material. It is one of the great pities of history that this, along with much else 'middle' Wright, was so de-emphasized by Olgivanna et al. after Wright died in the late Fifties. It is still, in my opinion, both highly relevant and highly usable in conjunction with modern high-performance additives and 3D mold-making...
... this completely outside the whole developed system of fine-reinforced shotcrete over AVG-style constructed panels or 3D-printed armatures that should have revolutionized quite a bit of custom and low-cost homebuilding with concrete by now...
Fascinating stuff, I didn't know about Frank Lloyd Wright's pre-fab houses. Makes sense, why wouldn't he want to get a piece of the action Sears and Montgomery Ward were getting? And those are nice-looking houses too, very futuristic-looking for the time.
Ever hear of Thomas Edison's concrete houses? For those who haven't, here's the story.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/thomas-edisons-concrete-houses
Let's not forget about the far better 'brother' of the Sears program, the one involving a noted Wisconsin architect that was run out of Milwaukee.
I might add that when I was looking at buying La Miniatura in Pasadena a couple of decades ago, these plans would have been used to enhance some of the outbuildings while keeping the site fully 'in character'. In my opinion they are every bit as good today as they were when new.
(There's a later 'prefab' era involving the Usonian houses, but I don't like those nearly as well... )
I'm tempted to mention that one of my architectural countercultural April Fool jokes involved a pre-incinerated kit of parts to build Johnson's glass house in New Canaan, including burnt brick and calcined mortar mix for better bathroom facilities...
Lady Firestorm has a fascination with the Sears kit houses, and has collected a number of reprint Sears home catalogs. (Montgomery Ward had 'em too, by the way.) Amazing what was available! Not just the houses themselves, but also home heating plants (coal fired back in those days) plus plumbing fixtures and interior finishes. "One stop shopping!"
It's fun driving through old neigborhoods and trying to pick out possible Sears homes. "Look at that one! You think, maybe?"
I read somewhere recently Amazon was looking at the home market, but not on the Sears scale. Amazon's considering "tiny houses," although how long that fad's going to last is anyone's guess.
Flintlock76In a way, Sears-Roebuck was the Amazon of it's time, you could get just about anything from them, all mail order. For a while reprints of turn of the 20th Century Sears catalogs were popular and the mechandise listed in them was amazing. Clothing, farm equipment, furniture, firearms, you name it.
Almost to the dawn of the Internet, the arrival of the Sears, Montgomery-Ward, and even Penney's cataogs was an eagerly anticipated event, especially in the fall, when they were filled with toys to be dreamed of.
Even those catalogs were a couple of inches thick. They very often served another purpose - booster seats for the youngsters.
I still have some specialty catalogs around as collector's items/keepsakes. It's interesting to note those on the cusp of that time that don't yet show an Internet presence.
DeggestyI never saw such in a catalog, but I understand that there was a time that you could order houses (you put them together) from Sears.
You can find histories by looking up the 'Sears Modern Home' programs -- but in the meantime you can waste the idle few hours perusing this growing archive of Sears historical material on the subject.
Be interesting to see what Mike comes up with going forward!
Incidentally I did test the 'cob hypothesis' -- Leonardian research, you know. I will say this: as a left-hander, I find it highly superior to the Arabic alternative.
York1 John
Overmod Flintlock76 In a way, Sears-Roebuck was the Amazon of it's time, you could get just about anything from them, all mail order. Their catalogs were so big, and so universally distributed, that they came to replace the corncob almost completely in American practice.
Flintlock76 In a way, Sears-Roebuck was the Amazon of it's time, you could get just about anything from them, all mail order.
Their catalogs were so big, and so universally distributed, that they came to replace the corncob almost completely in American practice.
How many of you have handled a dry corncob? The expression, "rough as a cob," has meaning.
54light15 You bought chicks from Sears? Really? I had no idea.
You bought chicks from Sears? Really? I had no idea.
Sears was a provider of day-old chicks (mine came by mail) to many people. And, has been noted, provided paper for the outhouse to many people living in the country. (When I spent six weeks on a farm in the spring of 1946, I appreciated that provision.)
Certainly. Anyone remember that camp scene in "The Cowboys" where Roscoe Lee Browne rips a page out of a Sears catalog and walks off-camera?
Flintlock76In a way, Sears-Roebuck was the Amazon of it's time, you could get just about anything from them, all mail order.
At one time you could by anything from chicks to house-building kits from Sears, although the house kits weren't around anymore by Johnny's time.
In a way, Sears-Roebuck was the Amazon of it's time, you could get just about anything from them, all mail order. For a while reprints of turn of the 20th Century Sears catalogs were popular and the mechandise listed in them was amazing. Clothing, farm equipment, furniture, firearms, you name it.
Paul of CovingtonDid you listen to radio station XERF in Del Rio, TX?
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