100000 Miles and Then Some

 

It wasn’t the first time that Frank and I started a trip in the rain. We never let a few raindrops keep us from having a good time. Frank had arrived early, and we were on the road by 5:30. The rain continued to come and go as we drove north.

    We stopped for a coffee in downtown Butler but were over an hour early. The shop hadn’t opened yet. We continued on to Sheetz. Their coffee is always hot and delicious. They have nice clean bathrooms also, something I always remember when I’m on the road!

    As is always the case, along with photography, geocaching was included on the itinerary. We found just over half of the ones we searched for, not our best day but we weren’t complaining.  The rain tapered off when we were outside of the car searching; still I was happy that I had worn my wide brimmed hat.

    While none of the caches were difficult, they often brought us to some beautiful areas. We visited a few streams, the water on the grass and fresh growth made everything thing look bright and vibrant. The reflections in some of the streams and the sounds of the water flowing over the stones in them gave me a feeling of freedom. All my worries and cares drifted away with the water. Some of the fields were covered with yellow flowers giving them a yellow tinted blanket. Purple and white flowers lined the roads, the rain glistening on them; it was great day to be out.

    Freedom Falls on Shull Run could be heard from where we parked the car. The trees overhead helped keep some of the rain off of us but my coat was drenched by the time we returned to the car. Besides the falls, we also made a quick visit to the old iron furnace stack located just downstream.

    The rain added to the flow coming over the falls. At its base the water was clear showing the depths of the pool below. During other visits we have seen swimmers here and chances are that this coming Monday, Memorial Day, there will be some here enjoying both the cool water and the sounds it makes as it rushes over the edge.

    We stopped and watched heavy equipment working in a pit on the side of the road. Deep in the ground they looked like Tonka toys from where we stood.

    We drove through lots of small communities filled with small houses. In many of them we saw the older houses on the fringes, sometimes overgrown and even forgotten. I wonder what happened to the people who lived there, did they move, was it health problems or maybe they have passed away. Some are extreme with vines growing up their sides, the decorative landscaping of the front yards overgrown and trying their best to hide the house from view, toys and tools rusting away in the yards. In some cases the houses are barely standing. A few years from now, they will be lying on the ground, gone from both sight and memory.

    Our trip took us through the town of Franklin, the county seat of Franklin County. It is a beautiful town with a nice collection of restaurants and shops. A stop was made at the Iron Furnace Coffee shop, it seemed appropriate.  I couldn’t pass up getting one of their tee-shirts. Celebrating two of my interests, coffee and iron furnaces, it was great. All it needed was a mention of books on it and I’d be over the edge.

    Heading south on rt.8, we stopped to look at a heron rookery. Turkey buzzards were flying around the area and we could see herons standing on their nests watching them, perhaps guarding their offspring.

    A mile further and we pulled over to the side of the road. This would be our last planned stop, the Victory Iron Furnace. We loaded up with our camera gear and dropped down into the woods. We had to crawl over a deer fence but there were several spots where it had collapsed, making it easier for us. Working our way down the steep hillside into the valley we encountered a few downed trees which blocked our passage. Other than these detours, getting to the stream at the bottom was fairly easy. The stream, Victory Run, was our next obstacle. Last time I was here it was shallow enough that I could hop from rock to rock to get across. The recent rain had swollen it. 

    Did I mention that a little rain never held us back? The water was only a little over my knees!

    The furnace is only visible when you near it. The flat area in front of the stack, where the casting house used to stand, is filled with trees, weeds and jagger bushes, effectively hiding it from sight.

    This iron furnace was only in operation for about 7 years.  Built in 1843, the Victory Furnace was built up against a high hillside. Many furnaces were built like this to ease putting the various materials that make iron into the top of the furnace.

     I found a piece of slag on the ground near-by. Slag is a byproduct of the iron making process. Impurities float to the top of the molten iron. It is removed from the furnace before the iron is cast. Slag can be found near any old furnace. The piece I found was probably over 175 years old. Bits of un-burnt charcoal and wood can be seen in it.

    As with most of Pennsylvania’s iron furnaces, almost everything that once stood here is gone. A flat area on the hillside above the furnace was where the charcoal house once stood and the level remains of a road can be seen in places, now traversable only by foot.

    The trip across the stream and up the hillside to the car was uneventful though we were both happy to be back.

    Almost 20 miles further down rt.8 we came to a spot I had been looking forward to all day. My odometer turned over to 100000 miles! I don’t know the reason why but I always enjoy watching and noting things such as this. I can remember as a kid watching my watch as the date changed. It doesn’t always change right at midnight! I guess it is a human condition, a variation of birthdays and New Years Eve parties. I had to stop and take a picture!

    We arrived back at my house 9 hours after we left. Both of us felt pretty good after that amount of time in the car. I’m looking forward to an even longer trip soon across the state!

    Heavy thunderstorms descended on my house about an hour after we got home. With news reports about heavy rain and a tornado in some of the areas we had traveled through, it seems that once again we had timed things just right! I have to add, it sure felt good getting out of my wet clothes and into a hot shower!

Weeding out the New (?) Stuff

While organizing my shelves, I came across some books whose time had finally come to be removed. I always find this a difficult thing to do but as more books come in, sadly some have to go. In the collection about machine shops and machining, I realized that some of these books were never going to be used by me again. I realized that some of the newer books could be used by someone still working in the trade. Much as I hated to, I weeded out the newer books and set them aside for resale.

    Some of the books on these shelves I find extremely interesting. Many of them were printed in and around the early 1900’s. I find the subject matter in these books fascinating having worked as a machinist for so many years., A few of the book covers are embossed, with the lettering raised up in nice old-style fonts and a couple books have gilded edges. They knew how to print nice books back then. Some of these books are like artwork!

    One small book, a mere 3 ½” x 5 ½”, printed in 1924 is filled with lots of line drawings, charts and tables. Hard bound, it was made to be kept in a workers tool box for quick referencing. It was distributed by International Correspondence Schools of Scranton, Pennsylvania as a text book. In the back are the notes of the man who owned it, George K, they tell the dates when he left from one section of the shop for another, moving up the ladder. He started the course on Dec.3^rd, 1929 and by 1932 had worked his way into the shaper and planer department. Filled full of machinery instructions, the final 10 pages of this book deals with the subject of first aid, you never know what might happen in a machine shop!

    I am infatuated with books such as these. It is always a trip back into history when I read them. The equipment shown in the books, often drawn, is equipment that is never seen in shops anymore.  I find it amazing to think about all the things built with these tools; airplanes, trains, dams and ocean liners, built with equipment run by overhead belt drives. The computers of those days were slide rules. Types of machinery like these are still being used but the machines shown in these books are extremely out dated.

          Back in the day when I was working and was the only machinist in our shop, I purchased some books to be used for reference. They sat on a shelf beside my desk right outside the machine shop. Sadly, even though the books were there for everyone who used the shop, I was the only one that opened them.

    I have always thought that to improve your job performance, knowledge of how your tools and equipment runs is important. Knowing how to calculate feeds and speeds should be more than just guesswork. Keeping track of the directions the industry is going can also help your performance. Machine shop trade magazines were also set on the shelves for people to read. You can guess who the only reader of them was…

    When visiting the cubicles of other employees I almost always scanned their bookshelves. I’d often borrow some of their books and I’d like to think that they were glad to see that someone else was interested in them! It is amazing the various topics you can find on people's shelves.

    Sadly, even back then, people didn’t seem to read that much. Fellow workers would joke about the “library” sitting beside my desk. It didn’t bother me though; I knew where to go to get the answers to the questions they brought me! I would tell them that they could get better answers from the library than on their phones but unfortunately, that didn't always hold true.

    I find that it is good to have the knowledge of how to solve a problem. Finding an answer on-line is fast but knowing the reason why that is the answer is important also. Using your brain to solve a problem is good exercise. Like jogging or weightlifting, mental exercise strengthens you also. It builds up your thought process and the ability to sift through possibilities and scenarios, helping you to find answers quicker.

    Punching some buttons on your phone can quickly find the information you need but does it strengthen your mind? In today's modern world where quick responses are mandatory, our computers and phones can supply these things within seconds. What I wonder is, what is happening to the strength of our minds as we become more and more dependent on this technical wizardry? We need to exercise more, both physically and mentally!

    I am now going to attempt to sell these newer books, hopefully to another person like me, one who enjoys having the answers close at hand…in a book. I've already found a man who is interested in a couple of them.  As for the other older machinery books I have, I'll keep on paging through them, enjoying the machines and reliving the past.

Dodging Raindrops

 Sitting at home and waiting for body parts to heal is never fun. In fact it can be down-right boring.  Ann Marie and I are both favoring different parts of our bodies right now, trying our best not to antagonize anything and make it worse.

    We decided to break things up a bit and take a small road trip. We’d do a couple geocaches, stop for a cup of coffee at a favorite coffee shop and then head home. We wouldn’t go far and we’d limit our activities. Tuesday looked like the day for it, our schedules were both clear.

    On the road, we passed the new location of our favorite farm store. Pulling in we found out that it was their second day open. (Their official opening will be on Wednesday) Harvest Valley Farms is where we go for fresh veggies and fruits. They also carry meats from local butchers and best of all, their fresh baked pies and baked goods are delicious! Their new location has a large area for plants, along with a greenhouse. They had herbs, flowers and tomatoes to name just a few. The humid smell of the plants growing in the greenhouse started us thinking about our own gardens, bringing back the urge to dig our hands into the soil.

    We did some geocaches located on some back roads we hadn’t been on before. One of the caches we found was my 2500^th find! The best cache we did was inside a small local “free” library. The cache itself was a hollowed out book. How cool! A couple of them were beside a small stream, running fast with dirty brown water from the recent rains. We were dodging rain during the whole trip, dark clouds and rain one minute and then sunshine and brilliant colors the next.

    We stopped for coffee and spent some time watching the customers come and go. It was a never-ending parade of people. There were different styles of dress, different types of drinks and snacks and also, different speeds. Some were in and out in a minute or two while others, in a more leisurely mood, stopped to talk with friends. Some came in to work. Laptops and paperwork were set up on their tables. The smell of fresh coffee hung heavy in the air mixing nicely with an undercurrent of conversation. It is a very comfortable place, and we never tire of it. The time always passes quickly.

    We did a one more cache after we left. Having not planned on doing it, I never wrote down the co-ordinates or entered them in the GPS. I knew where it was located and since we were only a “few” miles away, we went over to see if we could find it. From reading the cache description, I knew it was hanging on a gate. The problem was finding the gate; it was lying in the woods, not far from the gateposts. After 3 or 4 minutes, we had found it! I always get a kick out of finding a cache without using the GPS. Some caches are extremely obvious hides and are easy to find while others require a bit of searching. This was one of the latter.

    We also made a quick stop at the Winfield Furnace involving another “short” detour but well worth it. The rain we had been driving in and out of had started up again. The furnace and the pathway leading to it were surrounded with flowering trees and their scent was overpowering. If only it could be bottled! It was heady and made me forget about the rain. I didn’t care that my camera and shoes were getting wet. The combination of rain and flowers carried me away. These smells are the things that dreams are made of, the smells I look forward to each year, the smells of springtime.

    It was only 5 miles away home when we ran into our first road block. We had passed hundreds of uprooted trees, remnants of last Tuesdays storms. Huge trunks lay on their sides and wide lateral roots stood high on edge, chain sawed ends faced roadways and driveways, unruly piles of limbs sat adjacent to the pavement, all of them cleared from the roads to allow passage. We were almost most home when we finally got caught, a ¼ mile from the last turn and we came across a wooden horse with a “road closed” sign on it. Tire tracks in the edges of the yards showed that we weren’t the first to have to turn around. A detour of about a mile and we were back on our route.

    We were both glad to be home. We both handled the drive with only minimal discomfort. The wonderful smells of the flowers, shrubs and trees made the ride enjoyable and the colors of the new foliage, dampened by the rain and lit by the sun peeking through dark clouds gave each turn in the road another view of Mother Nature’s handiwork! It turned out to be a great day for a ride, our boredom was quickly forgotten.

Desert Solitaire

 

Having recently found out that my nephew, a good friend is reading and enjoying a book that I had read and loved decades ago, I pulled my copy off the shelf and started re-reading it. This isn’t just the second time I’ve read it; I can’t even guess at the number times I’ve been transfixed by this book.

    The book is Desert Solitaire, written by Edward Abbey in 1968. It was the first non-fiction book that Abbey wrote, a nature narrative compared by some to Thoreau’s Walden.

    I probably discovered the book in the mid 70’s. Telling about his years as a park ranger, Edward writes about the joys of sitting with his cup of coffee and waiting for the sun to make its appearance in the morning and watching the moon rise in the evening. He writes about the things I wanted to do and things that I still do now!

    As I was reading, I watched as the sunlight crawled up the hillside across from my vantage point. The sun was slowly setting, I couldn’t see it from where I was, but I could see its light. As the sun dropped closer to the horizon its orange light climbed up the hill across from it, leaving the trees below in shadow. Soon it was on just the tips of the trees and then the brightness of the sun disappeared.

    It is a Friday night; the sounds of the traffic on the roads below have quieted down. It is far from silent though, nothing like the quiet and solitude of the desert that Edward had written about.

    The trees and the woods are losing their details, the trees are no longer individuals, they have become a mass, a collection of greens and browns. A few dead trees stand separately, their trunks and branches white, like skeletons. In the sky the clouds are gaining a pinkish tinge.

    I had just read about Edward’s ideas about banning cars and roads from the national parks. Eliminating powered transportation and requiring visitors to hike or ride on mules or horses, making them see the wonders of the land the way they have been seen for centuries, under their own power. He was definitely against “industrial tourism”.  He knew it was coming and there wasn't much he could do other than write about it. (He does mention a couple other things in his book(s)...)

    My reading has only taken me through 60 pages, give or take, yet I understand already what it is about his writing that captured me so long ago. I don’t agree with all his ideas but yet I have always admired this man, his thoughts and his writing.

    I am no longer sitting at a table in my backyard in Western Pennsylvania. I am in Arches National Park in Utah, along with my teacher Edward Abbey. He is explaining about the desert, telling me about the wildlife, the soil and the plants that inhabit this difficult land. He is telling me how important it is that we preserve our world!

    If you’ll excuse me now, I am going to sit down by his campfire again and listen a bit further. This is just like visiting with an old friend!

An Amtrak Journey

This may not be exactly what you were expecting... let me tell you a bit more.

    I’m not sure what it was exactly that brought the idea into my head. I was thinking about photography. This moved into catching a picture of a train coming through the city, with the buildings behind it glowing from the rising sun. “There had to be a spot where this could be caught!”

    I started by consulting my maps and a web site called “The Photographer’s Ephemeris”, a site that shows the direction and times of sunrise. I found out that Amtrak has a daily train to NYC, leaving the Pittsburgh station six days a week, leaving at 7:30! Looking at the maps, a couple spots presented themselves.

    During the upcoming days, I visited them. Some appeared better than others, there weren’t as many as I had hoped. My first attempt was from a parking lot beside the tracks.

    I had to wait for a good morning; wanting the sunrise reflecting on the buildings meant that I needed a day without rain or heavy clouds. This can be difficult in Pittsburgh. Finally a day arrived that met my criteria. I got there early, the parking lot was empty. I parked near a set of signal lights, hoping to catch the engine coming between them. The camera was set on a tripod, the scene was framed, all I needed now was the train.

    Just before it was due to leave the station a car pulled up, the window rolled down and a security guard asked me what I was doing. I explained and was told that I was on private property and would have to leave. I talked and maybe even begged a bit and was granted 5 more minutes. Just as this was given to me, the train came into view. I snapped my pictures, thanked the guard and tore down my set-up. I won’t be returning to this site again!

    The pictures were OK but I felt as if I could do better so… My next spot to attempt my picture from was a bit further away. I figured I could get a sharper image by adding a bit of distance from the train, making the speed of the train less noticeable, showing less blur.

    The sun was rising a bit earlier each day making the chances of sunshine on the buildings a little better but as I already said, the weather always plays a part in any outdoor photo shoot.

    The next site was on a bridge that spanned the railroad tracks, about 1000 feet further away from the last site. The day I chose was cold and the ground had a light layer of snow on it. Clouds were in the sky. I was glad I had brought gloves! The train came right on time but the city wasn’t lit up. My best picture from that day showed the snow blowing off of the top of the train; the city wasn’t in it.

    I returned a week later and tried again. While I got the city in the picture this time, once again the morning sunlight I had hoped for never developed.

    Looking at the pictures intrigued me. I decided to forget the city and go for another location. Out came the maps again. I found what looked like a good spot in-between Shadyside and Homewood. I took a ride to scout it out and it showed possibilities. A signal tower sat on either side of the tracks; maybe I could capture the train between the pair. The sun (if there was one) would be illuminating the front and side of the train.

    I returned with the camera to see what I could get. The sun was up, things were looking good. I decided to skip the signals since the lights wouldn’t be visible in the picture. The train came and a couple pictures were taken.

    These pictures were starting to become an obsession now! I decided to try again with my 4X5 camera so 3 days later I returned. I caught it between the signals this time, but the train was blurred, the shutter speed was too slow. Drat, always something!

    I started looking further out the line. Looking at the maps I noticed the tracks went underneath the George Westinghouse Bridge in East Pittsburgh. Oh it takes so little to grab my attention!

    My buddy Frank and I planned a trip out to where we thought we’d get a good view of both the bridge and the tracks. We had found a geocache a few hundred feet away a couple years ago. A bridge once crossed the tracks here and the pier provides a wonderful view of the valley. A section of the old brick road leading to the bridge is visible poking through the dirt and weeds. Stepping over a broken wooden roadblock takes you to a comfortable spot complete with a concrete shelf to put excess camera gear on and provide a windbreak.

    While we were setting up and then waiting, we watched a westbound freight pass by. Ten minutes later the Amtrak train came, about 20 minutes after it left the city. High hills are on either side and the light wasn’t the greatest…so we decided to come back another time.

    A week later, we were back again. The sunlight was just hitting the top of the bridge. We surveyed a few other sites in the area before we set up. Frank decided to go a little lower down the road while I stayed on the bridge pier. We got some nice shots including a few with the moon in them but we still weren’t satisfied. Was I pulling Frank into my obsession?

    We returned one last time. (at this writing) It was eleven days later on a Saturday morning. There were occasional drizzles as we drove back to East Pittsburgh. We brought Kelle and Ann Marie with us this time, for company, perhaps good luck and to share the excitement of the hunt.

    This time we set up underneath the smaller bridge in front of the Westinghouse Bridge. While the on and off rain never came down hard, the bridge provided a cover for us.  It also gave us a different view of the train and the bridges.

    I brought my 4X5 camera along and I set up a bit closer to the tracks than Frank. The women hung out beside the car. We heard lots of train whistles while we waited but none of them were from the train we were waiting for. Then we heard it, there was a definite difference in its sound! The headlight first appeared between the branches of the trees and then there it was, speeding towards us. I took a few shots with the digital camera and then depressed the shutter release on the bigger camera. A couple more digital shots of it as it raced away from us and then I started tearing things down. All that preparation for only 10 or 20 seconds of excitement, was it worth it? As far as I was concerned, it was!

    We repacked the car and headed for a place to get some breakfast to celebrate a successful trip. Even if the pictures don’t come out as we planned for them, we were still happy!

    Thinking about the various shots I’ve taken, I figure this will probably be the last time we come out to this spot. I can let this series go now. I developed the 4X5 negative, it came out OK, it’s the photo at the top of this story.

    I don’t think I’ll be chasing this train any further. It was nice knowing when it was going to pass as compared to just standing trackside and hoping a train goes by. Should it pass me again, I’ll take another couple pictures of it. I’ve been taking shots of this train long before this year.  

A past shot of the morning Amtrak train coming into the Horseshoe Curve

The search always continues, whether or not I get anything isn’t important, it’s all about the hunt

I See Ghosts!

Whenever we drive into a new town or city, we always look at the buildings.  They give us an idea of what the town is like now and what it used to be like. They tell us a little bit about their history, they tell us a bit about the people who founded the towns and what they did.

    It isn’t so much the new, shiny glamorous buildings that have recently been erected; it is the older buildings, the ones which aren’t streamlined, dull and boxy or looking just the same as the others around them. We look for the buildings in-between the new ones, the ones still remaining. Those with ledges complete with nice patterns carved into them, false facades crowning their fronts, fancy brickwork, maybe even gargoyles. Its things such as these that set them apart from the newer creations. It often seems that an older, dilapidated building has more class as compared to a new sleek building that was planned complete with a tight financial bottom line in its plans.

    Driving past these older buildings we often spot painted signs on them. If we are lucky, a complete sign will be visible. A sign advertising a company that used to occupy the building or maybe a product such as candy, flour, chewing tobacco or a soft drink. Coca-Cola and Mail Pouch Tobacco signs can be seen all over the place! Some signs are so faded that you can only guess what they might have said while others appear as if they’d been painted yesterday. Many of these signs have been painted over with other signs, making them even harder to read!

    They are called “Ghost Signs” The men who painted them, called Wall Dogs or Barn Lizards used oil and lead based paints which helped the signs last longer. The men who painted them did it by hand, they were true artisans!

    Many of these signs are found near the centers of towns or in the commercial districts. They are also seen near railroad stations and places where newcomers might congregate. In some cases, a new building was built beside a sign, hiding it from view and also the damaging effects of sun and weather. When the building was demolished, the sign became visible again. There may be many you pass daily and never notice, they have become part of our background. Further out from the cities, in the country side, Mail Pouch tobacco signs decorate barns in over 20 states. Between 1891 and 1992 thousands of barns were painted with their ads. A pair of skilled men could do 2 barns in 12 hours!

    The signs may be for Banks, Savings and Loans, Tailors, Machine Shops, Shoe Stores, Drug Stores and Grocery shops. They advertised the things that the people needed. The signs are a part of their history! A lot of communities are still using these signs though now they are more as a tourist attraction as compared to a selling device. Some have restored older signs and some have painted new signs. To someone who looks for ghost signs, these aren’t quite the same as finding the older, original signs. They consider re-painting a sign sort of like re-touch a piece of artwork. These were done by masters of their craft and by re-touching it, you might be possibly damaging it. The new signs, while they look nice, aren’t quite as exciting as the originals!

    Here are a few of the signs we have come across in our travels. Most of them are original but there are a few that are reproductions. When you’re out on the road, keep an eye out for these old pieces of artwork. 

I don’t know about you, but I believe in ghosts! Keep watching for them, you’ll see them sooner than you think!