October 2020 - Kowalski Heat Treating

Spooky N Fun

October 30, 2020/0 Comments/in Friday Afternoon, Halloween, Trivia /by Steve Kowalski

Halloween costumes have evolved with time and technology. You can get a costume off the rack but making your own is maybe the most fun. Pull out the stops and do a deep dive into theatrical makeup. Like that cutie with the sideways smile next to the joker in row 4. Then there is the shoe family in row 5. But I really love the simplicity of the father-son costumes in rows 6 and 7. Elvis and his guitar, the Blues Brothers, Where’s Waldo and Spy vs Spy. Look at these cool couple’s costumes in row 8: Pencil & Paper and Jack & Jill after rolling down the hill. But in row 9 are my favorite subjects, food, like Bacon & eggs. And a friend of mine dressed as Mustard & Ketchup one year. Babies are always fun to dress up, too: Carrot, spaghetti, and a cupcake. Then get the pets involved. (that’s when cats will usually leave the room)

With all that’s going on, I just can’t skip Halloween. I know it’s the kid in me, but I have such fond memories of candy, decorations, pumpkin carving, and costumes. As a kid, I LOVED going to the store with my parents and picking out a costume. I remember the plastic face mask and the clothes – especially the capes! (and sword or pitchfork). Having a cape made you into a superpower – and it was even cooler running door to door and having it flap in the breeze. I’m sure mom and dad have pictures of me dressed up with my brothers and sisters – with 18 kids in the family, it was quite the task to get us all dressed, and then organized to go door to door. The memories of my girls going out, starting with me carrying them with their little containers to when they graduated to the pillowcases still bring smiles to my face. With Halloween tomorrow, I’m sure you have plans to be safe and socially distant – good luck with that. For my trivia and history buffs, here’s some fun info on how Halloween and unusual costumes came to be. Enjoy! And thanks to History.com and CNN for the info. For some fun music to play while you read along, click HERE.

Halloween is a holiday celebrated each year on October 31. The tradition originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in), when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, also celebrated their new year on November 1.
This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. It was believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred (and the need to hide from evil spirits).
In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, the Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort during the long, dark winter.
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.
By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of bobbing for apples that is practiced today.
On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.
By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, church-sanctioned holiday.
All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.
The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies.
As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing.
Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country. here are some great ghost stories
Halloween costumes from the first half of the 20th century were terrifying. Drawing on the holiday’s pagan and Christian roots — as a night to ward off evil spirits or reconcile with death, respectively — people often opted for more morbid, serious costumes than the pop culture-inspired ones of today.
It was believed that, during the fall festival, the world of the gods became visible to humans, resulting in supernatural mischief. Some people offered treats and food to the gods, while others wore disguises — such as animal skins and heads — so that wandering spirits might mistake them for one of their own. Hiding behind their costumes, villagers often played pranks on one another, but blamed the spirits. Masks and cover-ups came to be seen as means to get away with things.
In medieval England and Ireland, people would dress up in outfits symbolizing the souls of the dead, going from house to house to gather treats or spice-filled “soul cakes” on their behalf (a Christian custom known as “souling”). From the late 15th century, people started wearing spooky outfits to personify winter spirits or demons, and would recite verses, songs and folk plays in exchange for food (a practice known as “mumming”).
By the 1920s and 1930s, people were holding annual Halloween masquerades, aimed at both adults and children, at rented salons or family homes. Costume preparations, many hand-made, began as early as August. Falling right between summer and Christmas, the celebration also seemed to benefit from its timing in the calendar.
Those same decades also saw the emergence of costumes influenced by pop culture, alongside the first major costume manufacturing companies. The J. Halpern Company (better known as Halco) of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, began licensing images of fictional characters like Popeye, Olive Oyl, Little Orphan Annie and Mickey Mouse around this time. People also became fascinated with impersonating characters at the fringe of society, including pirates, gypsies and even bums became common outfit choices.
Continuing the tradition of old practices like souling and mumming, Halloween pranks became a common phenomenon in North America — sometimes to the point of vandalism and rioting. By the mid-1940s, the press had dubbed the night’s anarchy (or its broken fences and smashed windows, at least) the “Halloween problem” — and costumes may have partly enabled that behavior. In an effort to discourage criminal damage, local and national officials attempted to recast the holiday — and dressing up for it — as an activity for younger children. (The Chicago City Council even voted in 1942 to abolish Halloween and establish “Conservation Day” on October 31 instead).
After World War II, as TV brought pop culture into family homes, American Halloween costumes increasingly took after superheroes, comic characters and entertainment figures. They also became increasingly store-bought: By the 1960s, Ben Cooper, a manufacturing company that helped turn Halloween into a pop phenomenon, owned 70 to 80 percent of the Halloween costume market. It was around this time that adults started dressing up for Halloween again. Like kids’ costumes, their approach was often more fun than frightening — and would eventually be just as inspired by popular movies or Hollywood fame.
But there was still a place for scary outfits, encouraged by a slew of splatter-horror movies that started emerging in the 1970s and 80s, from John Carpenter’s “Halloween” to Wes Craven’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
According to those who track the traditions, costumes have certainly become more reflective of the times we live in, with parents dressing their kids as sports stars, movie stars, cartoon characters. Many parents like to dress up as well, when walking with their kids, or greeting guests at the door.

Top 5 Characters for 2020:
·      Carole Baskin from Tiger King. …
·      Harley Quinn from Birds of Prey. …
·      Wonder Woman from Wonder Woman 1984. …
·      Cheerleaders from Cheer. …
·      Black Widow. …
·      Most popular – witch.

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DO YOU LIKE CONTESTS?
Me, too.
As you may know the Kowalski Heat Treating logo finds its way
into the visuals of my Friday posts.
I. Love. My. Logo.
One week there could be three logos.
The next week there could be 15 logos.
And sometimes the logo is very small or just a partial logo showing.
But there are always logos in some of the pictures.
So, I challenge you, my beloved readers, to count them and send me a
quick email with the total number of logos in the Friday post.
On the following Tuesday I’ll pick a winner from the correct answers
and send that lucky person some great KHT swag.
So, start counting and good luck!
Oh, and the logos at the very top header don’t count.
Got it? Good. :-))))
Have fun!!

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Please, Let Me Decide

October 23, 2020/0 Comments/in Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Friday Afternoon, Milton, Trivia /by Steve Kowalski

Folks, this space is reserved for fun. You know me, I like fun. But I do have some strong beliefs as you’ve seen if you’ve been reading my Friday afternoon posts for a while. And this is one. Forget about Republican or Democrat, censorship is wrong and scary! And the really scary thing is that people have been trying to sensor others for hundreds of years. Even in America. The land of liberty. Where you can even wear your feelings on your t-shirt! Read on. And have a great weekend!!!

What’s the saying – “history repeats itself”? Over the weekend I was reading about the struggles going on within our social media platforms and the question of content censorship. Let’s see – 7.8 billion people, almost 4 billion online, all talking, sharing, and expressing an opinion or two – and now we’re trying to control this – talk about a PIA (Pain in the @%$) Jobs! With the free flow of content going “in”, our social media conglomerates are working furiously trying to control what’s right and what’s wrong to allow “out”. The relatively recent move to online “newsfeeds” has perpetuated this problem. Supposedly “neutral” algorithms limit what types of information are presented on the various platforms. This dilemma took me back to my school days, and the great author and poet John Milton and his take on publishing freedom. About 375 years ago, he for the most part posed the same question, in his publishing of Areopagitica on this day in 1644, challenging the notion of licensing and control of published content in England. He asked many of the same questions – should the publishers be the ones to decide, or the readers themselves, to determine right from wrong. Here’s some history I think you’ll enjoy. Many thanks to Kevin R. Davis, past Associate General Counsel at Vanderbilt University for his insights and the First Amendment Encyclopedia on free speech. Enjoy!

John Milton (1608–1674), one of the greatest English poets, made an important contribution to the idea of free speech and free press in a pamphlet, Areopagitica (1644), which he wrote and published in response to a restrictive printing ordinance established by Parliament in 1643. The ordinance required authors to get prior approval from an official licenser before the publication of printed materials. Milton published the tract anonymously, defying the ordinance’s prohibition.
Milton was born in London, where he was educated at St. Paul’s School and by private tutors. He excelled in languages and later wrote poems in Greek, Latin, Italian, and English. After earning a bachelor’s degree (1629) and master’s degree (1632) from Cambridge University, he devoted the next five years to private study. In 1638 he undertook a journey to France and Italy. Returning to England in 1639 on the eve of the English Civil War, he became a staunch supporter of the Puritans against the crown and served for a time in the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell.
Milton’s wide-ranging prose works included pamphlets on religious themes, education, and the law of divorce. His epic poems Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, for which he is most remembered, were written after he became blind in 1652.
England’s printing ordinance of 1643 prohibited the printing, binding, or sale of books except by persons licensed under the authority of Parliament and made the Stationers the agent of Parliament for the purpose of licensing printers. Anonymous publications were banned. The ordinance drew criticism, famously from John Milton.
The 1643 “Ordinance for correcting and regulating the Abuses of the Press” completed Parliament’s takeover of the licensing of printers in Britain. It was just one of a series of such controls Parliament would continue to exert over the press until 1695.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution were quite familiar with critiques of press licensing controls, which they addressed by protecting freedom of the press in our First Amendment.
British printing regulations became a weapon against Puritan, political leaders.
The Crown had regulated printing, primarily by means of Star Chamber decrees, since it was introduced to England in 1476. Like laws against heresy, libel, and treason, the general requirement of licensing for printers had been a way in which the Crown silenced religious and political dissent.
Printers were licensed through the printers’ guild, the London Stationers Company, which was chartered in 1557 and given authority to conduct searches and seizures, confiscate unlicensed works, and promulgate its own regulations. In exchange for protecting the Crown’s censorship interests, the guild received the exclusive copyright to the printed works.
The enforcement of printing laws was erratic, and the regulations became a weapon for the Crown to use against Puritan religious and political leaders during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. However, Parliament abolished the court of Star Chamber in 1641, which left English printing briefly unregulated.
Orders issued from Parliament to the Stationers in July 1641, and again in January 1642, required the Stationers to record the name of any person bringing material to be printed. Another order issued from the House of Commons in March 1643 directed the Stationers to seize “scandalous and lying Pamphlets” and to arrest those responsible.
The effect of the 1643 ordinance was to establish a prepublication censorship regime. The ordinance prohibited the printing, binding, or sale of books except by persons licensed under authority of Parliament and made the Stationers the agent of Parliament for the purpose of licensing printers. Anonymous publications were banned, as were the reprinting or importation of previously printed works.
Although Areopagitica is commonly viewed as an eloquent plea for freedom of speech, in its context it should be understood as an argument for allowing printers to bring forth works that could be subjected, after publication, to evaluation, scrutiny, and censorship as might be judged appropriate.
In Areopagitica, Milton makes four arguments against the prepublication censorship of printed materials. The first was that prepublication censorship originated with the church and for that reason should be suspect. Although this is a kind of ad hominem argument, it is consistent with Milton’s preference that works be judged through public rational scrutiny rather than by ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Second, Milton argued that readers may benefit from reading morally incorrect books along with good ones. He said, in essence, that the practice of moral virtue requires the knowing choice of good over evil. Unless morally bad books were printed, readers would be denied the benefit of learning how to discern moral falsity through the vicarious experience of it in reading.
Third, he argued that prepublication censorship is an ineffective means of achieving the goal of protecting public morality and religion. Many other activities – for example, music, theater, and dance (today we could add radio and cable television) – would have to be censored in order to regulate public morality completely, indicating that censorship of print alone is an impractical means to this end.
Finally, he suggested that licensing would have the unintended effect of weakening people’s ability to recognize and affirm truths by using their reason. This argument draws on Milton’s belief that truths must be known by the use of reason rather than by acceptance of authority; unless a rich body of ideas, including some false ones, is available for rational debate, people’s faculty of reason will not flourish.
Although the London Stationers’ Company, which regulated publishing and printing, complained to Parliament about the unlicensed publication of Areopagitica, Milton was not penalized for it, and it was largely without effect in his time.
Milton went on to write the famous Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained amongst his poetry and other writings. Licensing of the press continued in England until 1695, 20 years after his death.

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DO YOU LIKE CONTESTS?
Me, too.
As you may know the Kowalski Heat Treating logo finds its way
into the visuals of my Friday posts.
I. Love. My. Logo.
One week there could be three logos.
The next week there could be 15 logos.
And sometimes the logo is very small or just a partial logo showing.
But there are always logos in some of the pictures.
So, I challenge you, my beloved readers, to count them and send me
a quick email with the total number of logos in the Friday post.
On the following Tuesday I’ll pick a winner from the correct answers
and send that lucky person some great KHT swag.
So, start counting and good luck!
Oh, and the logos at the very top header don’t count.
Got it? Good. :-))))
Have fun!!

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

All Aboard!

October 16, 2020/0 Comments/in Friday Afternoon, Trains, Trivia /by Steve Kowalski

Trains are amazing machines. From the oldest to the newest. The biggest to the smallest. Speaking of small, check out these HO gauge set-ups. HERE and HERE. When it comes to trains, some kids just can’t stop building out their railroad sets.

If you grew up in this area, no doubt you’ve heard the name Nickle Plate Railroad. Ironically there is a Nickel Plate Road, 10 minutes from my house, I never really knew how that name came to be! The New York, Chicago, and St. Louis Railroad (reporting mark NKP), was a railroad that operated in the mid-central United States. Commonly referred to as the “Nickel Plate Road”, the railroad served a large area, including trackage in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, with its primary connections in Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Toledo. Like most boys, I love the railroad – the sounds and raw power that goes into a giant mass of wheels and steel going by catches my attention and curiosity. Where did it come from? Where’s it headed? Who’s running the train? What’s onboard? And more. Even now when stopped by a train, I look to see the names on the cars, while trying to keep track of the total number of cars being pulled! Today marks a special day for the NPR – when back in 1882 the trains ran the system for the first time, linking the populated cities together like never before. I get to see remnants of the train system working every day outside my office window. The history is centered in Cleveland and the battle for control. Enjoy, and thanks to Wikipedia for the info and YouTube for the song. Fun classic to listen to while you read.

The Nickel Plate Railroad was constructed in 1881 along the South Shore of the Great Lakes connecting Buffalo and Chicago to compete with the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway.
The new rail lines created an economy of scale – larger, more efficient factories as the agricultural heartland of America was no longer confined to a market of single day’s trip by wagon. Railroad and railroad construction became one of the largest industries during that era. By 1881 one out of 32 people in the United States was either employed by a railroad or engaged in railroad construction.
Starting about 1877, two great railroad developers, William H. Vanderbilt and Jay Gould began competing for the railroad traffic along the south shore of the Great Lakes. By 1878 William Vanderbilt had a monopoly on rail traffic between Buffalo, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; and Chicago because he owned the only railroad linking those cities – the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, making him the richest man in America at that time.
By 1881 Jay Gould controlled about 15% of all U.S. railroad mileage, most of it west of the Mississippi River and he was considered the most ruthless financial operator in America. Gould’s major railroad east of the Mississippi River was the 335-mile Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railway (Wabash). The Wabash mainline ran from St. Louis, Missouri, to Toledo, Ohio, where it was forced to deliver its railroad traffic to William H. Vanderbilt’s Lake Shore Railroad for delivery to the eastern United States.
Jay Gould and William Vanderbilt together oversaw all east-west rail traffic in the mid-west. The Seney Syndicate, owners of a 350-mile (560 km) railroad, the Lake Erie and Western Railroad, were interested in tapping new sources of revenue. The stage was set for the creation of the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad.
The Seney Syndicate, headed by banker George I. Seney, met at Seney’s New York City bank and organized the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railway Company on February 3, 1881. The original proposal for the NYC&StL was a 340-mile railroad west from Cleveland, Ohio, to Chicago, Illinois, with a 325-mile branch to St. Louis, Missouri.
On April 13, 1881, the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railway Company bought the Buffalo, Cleveland and Chicago Railway, a railroad that been surveyed from the west side of Cleveland, Ohio to Buffalo, New York running parallel to Vanderbilt’s Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway.
The idea of an east-west railroad across northern Ohio was very popular with the people of Ohio. They wanted to break the high freight rates charged by Jay Gould and William Henry Vanderbilt.
Another reason for the popularity of the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railway was the positive economic impact on cities that any new railroad went through at that time. During a newspaper war to attract the NYC&St.L the Norwalk, Ohio Chronicle Newspaper referred to it as “… double-track nickel-plated railroad.” The New York, Chicago and St. Louis adopted the nickname and it became better known as the Nickel Plate Road.
It was decided to start building along the surveyed route between Cleveland, Ohio and Buffalo, New York rather than build the branch to St. Louis, Missouri. Five hundred days later the Nickel Plate’s 513-mile single-track mainline from Buffalo, New York to Chicago was complete. The railroad was estimated to require 90,000 long tons (80,000 metric tons) of steel rails, each weighing 60 pounds per linear yard (30 kg/m) and 1.5 million oak crossties. Additionally, the railroad required 49 major bridges (talk about a PIA Job!)
Vanderbilt tried to lower the value of the Nickel Plate by organizing a campaign to smear its reputation before a train ever ran on its tracks… He succeeded in creating long-standing rumors about the line but failed to devalue the company or scare the investors.
The cost of construction was higher than expected and the Seney Syndicate began to negotiate with Gould to purchase the railroad, but unlike Vanderbilt, Gould lacked the capital. Frustrated at the failing talks, Gould broke off negotiations and gave up on his attempt to break Vanderbilt.
In early 1881, William Henry Vanderbilt could have had the Nickel Plate for one million dollars, equal to $26,500,000 today. He realized if he allowed Jay Gould to gain control of the Nickel Plate his monopoly on rail traffic from Toledo, Ohio – east would be broken. He decided he would do anything to keep the Nickel Plate out of Gould’s hands.
On October 25, 1882, (a few days after the first trains ran) the Seney Syndicate sold the Nickel Plate to Vanderbilt for $7.2 million, equal to $190,800,000 today. Vanderbilt transferred it to his Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway. However, Vanderbilt had a problem: he could not run the business into the ground or it would fall into receivership and someone else would buy it. He could not close the Nickel Plate either because it cost a fortune to buy. So, the Nickel Plate Road did business, but just enough to keep it solvent.
By the advent of the 1920s, the Nickel Plate was an obscure line that earned its keep through the transfer of freight from other rail connections. During the same period, Vanderbilt’s Lake Shore and Michigan Southern prospered and expanded.
Vanderbilt kept most of the rail traffic on his Lake Shore and Michigan Southern. Fewer trains on the Nickel Plate meant that they could move faster, so that is the railroad traffic they went after. By 1888 the Nickel Plate had been dubbed “The Meat Express Line.” Observers at Fort Wayne, Indiana reported six long meat trains every night and a couple of fruit trains during the day.
The Van Sweringen brothers of Cleveland, Ohio were the next owners of the Nickel Plate. Oris Paxton Van Sweringen and his younger brother Mantis James Van Sweringen were real estate developers who constructed a rapid transit line from their development at Shaker Heights, Ohio to downtown Cleveland. As early as 1909 the Van Sweringen brothers proposed a stub-end terminal on Public Square in downtown Cleveland. The Cleveland interurbans and traction companies were in favor of the new terminal and right-of-ways leading to it.
The Nickel Plate was the key. It traversed Cleveland from east to west, had a high level crossing of the Cuyahoga River Valley, and it was adjacent to the proposed terminal. The Nickel Plate also provided a natural route to the proposed terminal for the Van Sweringen’s rapid transit and the other traction lines.
The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway was controlled by the New York Central Railroad’s Alfred Holland Smith, a close friend of the Van Sweringens. He had guided the Van Sweringens and even financed their rapid transit to Shaker Heights. In late 1915, the Attorney General of the United States advised the New York Central that its control of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern and the Nickel Plate was in violation of the Federal antitrust laws. Alfred Smith called his friends, the Van Sweringens on February 1, 1916 and offered them the Nickel Plate. They bought it for $8.5 million on April 13, 1916, equal to $199,700,000 today. In return for operating concessions and access to certain stations, they only put up a little over $500,000 (equal to $11,750,000 today) but they controlled 75% of Nickel Plate’s voting stock.
The Van Sweringens had no intention of running the Nickel Plate. Alfred Smith was happy to give the Van Sweringens a vice-president of the New York Central, John J. Bernet, and some of his top men. Smith wanted to show that the Van Sweringens were not New York Central puppets, and the Nickel Plate needed to earn money to retire the $6.5 million in notes owed to the New York Central.
During Bernet’s reign, the Nickel Plate grew substantially. In 1922, the Nickel Plate purchased the Lake Erie and Western Railroad, giving it access to Sandusky, Ohio and Peoria, Illinois. Later that year, on December 28, the Nickel Plate purchased the Toledo, St. Louis and Western Railroad, also known as the “Clover Leaf Route”, finally giving the Nickel Plate access to the St. Louis area, as well as to the port in Toledo, Ohio.
Bernet also doubled the railroad’s total freight tonnage and average speeds system wide, while cutting fuel consumption in half. In 1934, Bernet ordered 15 Berkshire locomotives, which would become legendary with the Nickel Plate and remained as the president of the company until his death in 1935.
On December 29, 1937, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway gained control of the Nickel Plate and helped with the war effort. After the war, in 1947, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway ended its control of the Nickel Plate, when it sold off its remaining shares.
Numerous legends have grown about when and how the name “Nickel Plate” was first applied. The accepted version is that it appeared first in an article in the Norwalk, Ohio, Chronicle of March 10, 1881. On that date the Chronicle reported the arrival of a party of engineers to make a survey for the “great New York and St. Louis double track, nickel plated railroad.”
Later, while attempting to induce the company to build the line through Norwalk instead of Bellevue, Ohio, the Chronicle again referred to the road as “nickel plated” – a term regarded as indicative of the project’s glittering prospects and substantial financial backing.
At the end of 1960, NKP operated 2,170 miles (3,490 km) of road on 4,009 miles (6,452 km) of track, not including the 25 miles (40 km) of Lorain & West Virginia. That year it reported 9758 million net ton-miles of revenue freight and 41 million passenger-miles.

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Oh Granny

October 9, 2020/0 Comments/in Apple Pie, Apples, Food, Friday Afternoon, Recipes, Trivia /by Steve Kowalski

I love apple pie. So, I always get way more apples than needed for a pie. You know why? Because I also love to eat apples. Apples in the morning. Apples at lunch. Apples for an afternoon snack. An apple after my evening run. So, I ALWAYS get way more apples than needed for a pie. :)))

It’s that time of year again. I’m not sure if it’s the cool nights, early sunsets, changing cloud patterns or just my gastronomical clock changing, but there’s something about October and my need to eat lots of apple pie. It’s an odd thing, that lasts through the holidays too. Maybe it’s the piles of apples at the market or the smell of pumpkin spice at the grocery store (can’t believe how many products offer a pumpkin spice version (saw pumpkin spice Spam – what a waste of some good SPAM!), but I have the craving. My first subtle (no comments about me not being subtle!) effort to convince Jackie it’s time to bake is when I bring home a rather large array of different apples from the farmer’s market – green, golden, red, macs, Honeycrisp. Then I try pulling the pie dish out and leaving it on the counter with the cinnamon. Or maybe it’s the “backup” half-gallon of vanilla ice cream and bonus sized Cool Whip container. Jackie, amazing as always, pulls out one of her favorite recipes for Dutch Apple Pie and goes to work. I love it when the house fills with that amazing aroma of sweet apples and hot pastry dough – it settles the mind and gets me ready for the transition from summer to fall. There is nothing quite like a slice of amazing pie ala mode! Below are some great recipes, and a little history on the delicacy and the all-important crust. Enjoy, and thanks Smithsonian and the recipes from All Recipes, Inspired Taste, Taste of Home and Tasty.co.

Apple pie is a longstanding symbol of America, but the dessert didn’t actually come from America, and neither did the apples. Apples are actually native to Asia and have been in America about as long as Europeans have.
The early colonists of Jamestown brought European apple tree cuttings and seeds with them. The only native apple in North America was the crab apple, and the colonists found its tiny fruit “a poor substitute for Malus domestica.” Settlers primarily used the apples to make cider (the hard and soft kinds), which was preferred to water as a drink and easier to produce than beer, which required labor-intensive land clearing.
During America’s colonial history, planting trees was a good way to preserve a land claim; colonists who didn’t “improve” their land in some colonies, like Virginia, could have it taken away from them.
Apple trees are easy to cross-pollinate, meaning that deliberately producing new apple varieties is relatively simple. By 1800, writes Tim Hensley for the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, American farmers were growing a mind-boggling 14,000 varieties of apple, many of which had been bred in the country. Around the same time, John Chapman, otherwise known as Johnny Appleseed, had brought the apple to American folklore fame. “Chapman’s beloved apples became ‘American’ by association.”
The first recorded recipe for apple pie was written in 1381 in England and called for figs, raisins, pears, and saffron in addition to apples (now why would you go and do that??).
There were other differences, too: early apple pie recipes generally didn’t include sugar, and their pastry crust was “coffin” pastry, which was intended as an inedible container, not a part of the pie. There are also recipes for Dutch apple pies as far back as 1514.
A 1924 advertisement appearing in the Gettysburg Times promotes “New Lestz Suits that are as American as apple pie.” And by World War II, the America and pie association was cemented. American soldiers would tell journalists that they were fighting for “mom and apple pie,” giving rise to the expression “As American as mom and apple pie.”
The secret to great apple pie is also in the crust. It’s not a topic to be thrown about – as making “the best crust” has merit and prestige in a family. Surprising, the history of “crust” goes back many ages – here’s some highlights:
The first pies, called “coffins” or “coffyns” (the word actually meant a basket or box) were savory meat pies with the crusts or pastry being tall, straight-sided with sealed-on floors and lids. Open-crust pastry (not tops or lids) were known as “traps.” These pies held assorted meats and sauce components and were baked more like a modern casserole with no pan (the crust itself was the pan, its pastry tough and inedible). These crusts were often made several inches thick to withstand many hours of baking.
A small pie was known as a tartlet and a tart was a large, shallow open pie (this is still the definition in England).
Historians have recorded that the roots of pie can loosely be traced back to the ancient Egyptians during the Neolithic Period or New Stone Age beginning around 6000 BC. These early forms of pies are known as galettes, which are essentially rustic free-form pies. Our ancestors made these pie-like treats with oat, wheat, rye, and barley, then filled them with honey and baked the dish over hot coals.
Between 1304 to 1237 B.C. the bakers to the pharaohs incorporated nuts, honey, and fruits in bread dough, a primitive form of pastry. Drawings of this can be found etched on the tomb walls of Ramses II, located in the Valley of the Kings.
The tradition of galettes (pastry base) was carried on by the Greeks. Historians believe that the Greeks actually originated pie pastry. The pies during this period were made by a flour-water paste wrapped around meat; this served to cook the meat and seal in the juices.
A cookbook from the mid 16th century that also includes some account of domestic life, cookery and feasts in Tudor days, called A Proper newe Booke of Cokerye, declarynge what maner of meates be beste in season, for al times in the yere, and how they ought to be dressed, and serued at the table, bothe for fleshe dayes, and fyshe dayes, has a recipe for a short paest for tarte: “To Make Short Paest for Tarte – Take fyne floure and a cursey of fayre water and a dysche of swete butter and a lyttel saffron, and the yolckes of two egges and make it thynne and as tender as ye maye.” (where are the apples??)
Animated pies or pyes were the most popular banquet entertainment. The nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence . . . four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,” refers to such a pie. According to the rhyme, “When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing. Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the King.” In all likelihood, those birds not only sang, but flew briskly out at the assembled guests. Rabbits, frogs, turtles, other small animals, and even small people (dwarfs) were also set into pies, either alone or with birds, to be released when the crust was cut. The dwarf would emerge and walk down the length of the table, reciting poetry, sketching the guests, or doing tricks. (where are the apples??).
During Charles V (1364-1380), King of France, reign, the important event at banquets was not dishes of food but acts such as minstrels, magicians, jugglers, and dancers.
The chefs entered into the fun by producing elaborate “soteltie” or “subtilty.” Sotelties were food disguised in an ornamental way (sculptures made from edible ingredients but not always intended to be eaten or even safe to eat). During this time period, the Duke of Burgundy’s chef made an immense pie which opened to the strains of 28 musicians playing from within the pie. Out of the pie came a captive girl representing the “captive” Church in the Middle East.
The Pilgrims brought their favorite family pie recipes with them to America. The colonists and their pies adapted simultaneously to the ingredients and techniques available to them in the New World. At first, they baked pie with berries and fruits pointed out to them by the Native Americans. Colonial women used round pans literally to cut corners and stretch the ingredients (for the same reason they baked shallow pies).
Samuel Clemens (1835-1910), a.k.a. Mark Twain, was a big fan of eating pies. His life-long housekeeper and friend (she was with the family for 30 years), Katy Leary, often baked Huckleberry pie to lure her master into breaking his habit of going without lunch. Samuel Clemens also had a recipe for English Pie: To make this excellent breakfast dish, proceed as follows: “Take a sufficiency of water and a sufficiency of flour and construct a bullet-proof dough. Work this into the form of a disk, with the edges turned up some three-fourths of an inch. Toughen and kiln-dry in a couple days in a mild but unvarying temperature. Construct a cover for this redoubt in the same way and of the same material. Fill with stewed dried apples; aggravate with cloves, lemon-peel, and slabs of citron; add two portions of New Orleans sugars, then solder on the lid and set in a safe place till it petrifies. Serve cold at breakfast and invite your enemy.”

Here are some recipes to try – and yes, please stop by the office and share a slice or two.
By Grandma Ople
Favorite Apple Pie
Taste of Home
Made from Scratch

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Now That’s Funny

October 2, 2020/0 Comments/in Comics, Friday Afternoon, Trivia /by Steve Kowalski

I’ve been looking at the comic pages since before I could read. In fact, I might have learned to read in the comics section. Especially on Sundays! And to think comics were started in newspapers by that little “Yellow Kid” above at the top left over a hundred years ago. Details below. Enjoy!!

Let me see … there’s Charlie, Calvin, Abner, Blondie, Spidey, Marmaduke, Dennis, Lois, Robin, Betty, Brenda, Bugs, Cathy, Flash, Garfield, Hagar, Heathcliff, Mickey, Moon … no, not the night shift here at KHT working on your wonderful PIA (Pain in the %#$) Jobs! – but a shortlist of some of my favorite comic strip heroes. Today, Oct 2 marks the anniversary of the first American newspaper comic strip back in the 1890s, when newspapers began to add paneled drawings of created characters in various situations connected to everyday life. (likely some of my younger blog readers are asking – “what’s a newspaper”- yikes – if I had hair, it would be gray!) I’ll admit, as a kid, and still, as an adult, I enjoy reading my favorites and seeing the characters deal with life’s situations. Who doesn’t love the Family Circus, Marmaduke or Dilbert? The short, simple creativity and wit makes me smile, and very often, laugh out loud. My top three are Hagar for all of the husbands out there, Dilbert, for a look at life’s silliness, and of course Garfield, just because that cat has attitude! Special thanks to Wikipedia and Google for the history info and YouTube for the videos. Enjoy!

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, these have been published in newspapers and magazines, with horizontal strips printed in black-and-white in daily newspapers, while Sunday newspapers offered longer sequences in special color comics sections.
Storytelling using a sequence of pictures has existed through history. One medieval European example in textile form is the Bayeux Tapestry. Printed examples emerged in 19th-century Germany and in 18th-century England, where some of the first satirical or humorous sequential narrative drawings were produced. Today, quite the collectable!
The Biblia pauperum (“Paupers’ Bible”), a tradition of picture Bibles beginning in the later Middle Ages, sometimes depicted Biblical events with words spoken by the figures in the miniatures written on scrolls coming out of their mouths—which makes them to some extent ancestors of the modern cartoon strips. In China, with its traditions of block printing and of the incorporation of text with image, experiments with what became lianhuanhua date back to 1884.
In the United States, the great popularity of comics sprang from the newspaper war (1887 onwards) between Pulitzer and Hearst. The Little Bears (1893–96) was the first American comic strip with recurring characters, while the first color comic supplement was published by the Chicago Inter-Ocean sometime in the latter half of 1892, followed by the New York Journal’s first color Sunday comic pages in 1897. On January 31, 1912, Hearst introduced the nation’s first full daily comic page in his New York Evening Journal.
Starting in the late 1920s, comic strips expanded from their mirthful origins to feature adventure stories, as seen in Popeye, Captain Easy, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, and The Adventures of Tintin. Soap-opera continuity strips such as Judge Parker and Mary Worth gained popularity in the 1940s. There are more than 200 different comic strips and daily cartoon panels in American newspapers alone each day for most of the 20th century, for a total of at least 7,300,000 episodes.
In 1931, George Gallup’s first poll had the comic section as the most important part of the newspaper, with additional surveys pointing out that the comic strips were the second most popular feature after the picture page. During the 1930s, many comic sections had between 12 and 16 pages, although in some cases, these had up to 24 pages.
Proof sheets were the means by which syndicates provided newspapers with black-and-white line art for the reproduction of strips (which they arranged to have colored in the case of Sunday strips). Michigan State University Comic Art Collection librarian Randy Scott describes these as “large sheets of paper on which newspaper comics have traditionally been distributed to subscribing newspapers. Typically, each sheet will have either six daily strips of a given title or one Sunday strip. (Thus, a week of Beetle Bailey would arrive at the Lansing State Journal in two sheets, printed much larger than the final version and ready to be cut apart and fitted into the local comics page.)
Starting in the late 1940s, the national syndicates which distributed newspaper comic strips subjected them to very strict censorship. Li’l Abner was censored in September 1947 and was pulled from the Pittsburgh Press by Scripps-Howard. The controversy, as reported in Time, centered on Capp’s portrayal of the U.S. Senate. Said Edward Leech of Scripps, “We don’t think it is good editing or sound citizenship to picture the Senate as an assemblage of freaks and crooks… boobs and undesirables.”
The comics have long held a distorted mirror to contemporary society, and almost from the beginning have been used for political or social commentary. This ranged from the conservative slant of Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie to the unabashed liberalism of Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury. Al Capp’s Li’l Abner espoused liberal opinions for most of its run, but by the late 1960s, it became a mouthpiece for Capp’s repudiation of the counterculture.
Pogo used animals to particularly devastating effect, caricaturing many prominent politicians of the day as animal denizens of Pogo’s Okeefenokee Swamp. In a fearless move, Pogo’s creator Walt Kelly took on Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, caricaturing him as a bobcat named Simple J. Malarkey, a megalomaniac who was bent on taking over the characters’ birdwatching club and rooting out all undesirables.
During the early 20th century, comic strips were widely associated with publisher William Randolph Hearst, whose papers had the largest circulation of strips in the United States. Hearst was notorious for his practice of yellow journalism, and he was frowned on by readers of The New York Times and other newspapers which featured few or no comic strips. Hearst’s critics often assumed that all the strips in his papers were fronts for his own political and social views.
The world’s longest comic strip is 292 ft long and on display at Trafalgar Square as part of the London Comedy Festival. The London Cartoon Strip was created by 15 of Britain’s best-known cartoonists and depicts the history of London.
The Reuben, named for cartoonist Rube Goldberg, is the most prestigious award for U.S. comic strip artists. Reuben awards are presented annually by the National Cartoonists Society.
Many older strips are no longer drawn by the original cartoonist, who has either died or retired. Such strips are known as “zombie strips”. A cartoonist, paid by the syndicate or sometimes a relative of the original cartoonist, continues writing the strip, a tradition that became commonplace in the early half of the 20th century. Hägar the Horrible and Frank and Ernest are both drawn by the sons of the creators. Some strips which are still in affiliation with the original creator are produced by small teams or entire companies, such as Jim Davis’ Garfield.
Historically, syndicates owned the creators’ work, enabling them to continue publishing the strip after the original creator retired, left the strip, or died. This practice led to the term “legacy strips,” or more pejoratively “zombie strips”). Most syndicates signed creators to 10 or even 20-year contracts.

To get a complete list of comic strips, you can click HERE (you’ll be surprised how many there are and how many you’ve not seen or heard of).

Fun Comics Character Based Music:
Popeye
Peanuts
Flash
Spiderman
Batman

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Archive for month: October, 2020