Car Gas station lust, that is: Sinclair Gas.
There’s a a bit that may be of interest to y’all, notably the whole “Brontosaurus” business. I have to admit that I’m with Gould on this: Bully for Brontosaurus. Mostly because I like the idea of a Thunder lizard more than the little girly Deceptive lizard.
I imagine I could go into an extended discourse here on the type specimen concept and how it tends to color our thinking of the nature of variation, but I shall spare you that.
This was actually quite a tough post to write since I knew very little about the cars of the day going in. They say if you want to learn about some topic in depth, teach a class in it. In my case, write a post on it. I still haven’t developed a “thing” for pre-1960s cars, but I appreciate them more, and not the high-end show cars of today either; I love the workaday nature of many of them. As I say in the post, we tend to only see these cars as the high-end concours automobiles they are now, but there were many, many that were just basic transportation for everyday folks to use and abuse in their daily routines.
It was the year Spain and the United States fought a “splendid little war” that marked America’s emergence as a player among the Great Powers–and boosted the political career of one Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry. It was also the year when Great Britain and France almost fought a war over an obscure town called Fashoda, on the banks of the White Nile in the Sudan. It was the year of the last battle between the U.S. Army and Native Americans, and one of the last significant “colonial war” battles in the British Empire. It was the year when Emile Zola published J’accuse, when Enzo Ferrari, M.C. Escher, George Gershwin, and Golda Meier were born and Otto von Bismarck died, radium and neon were discovered, the meat slicer was invented, and Pepsi-Cola came to market.
In Car Lust terms, 1898 was significant as the year of the first advertising campaign by an American carmaker, and the first sale of an automobile to a retail customer in the United States.
Car Lust: Is the Great American Road Trip Dead?
One of our little roundtable discussions. I made the Washington-Wisconsin trip and back twice since I moved out here, but haven’t done it since 1989 or so, it’s just too expensive relative to flying. OTOH, the last time I went back it was for 2-3 months, so it was almost a kind of move. Hard to work the economics: I can usually fly for about $400, and gas alone for 4,000 miles is around $800, plus food plus accommodations. OTOH, we still do some driving vacations, mostly fairly locally, such as around the Olympic Peninsula and such. I would drive pretty much anywhere on the west coast area, ‘cept maybe southern California.
Here I had one of my best little puns in recent memory and it only gets three comments, one of them mine.
*grumble*
A bicycle this time: The Schwinn Sting-Ray. I still have my old Continental II that I bought in like 1977/78. I rode it the last couple of summers a bit — almost every day for a couple of months — but it’s since had its derailleur go south and I haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet. I may just take the whole dumb thing apart, clean it up, and put it back together again.
But I never had a Sting-Ray.
Actually my earliest: Our Cars Week: (Not) My 1975 AMC Hornet
Yes, my old Hornet. Drove it in college and high school so it has fond memories associated with it.
Thought I’d link this blog. It kind of feeds into the occasional theme of abandonment I have around here and also my usual Car Lust gig. I like it, more so because he’s an observer rather than a collector, at least for these purposes. I especially like how he puts vintage ads in with the photos of the wrecks (which they are, really, even if not in an accident) to remind us that these were once new and shiny and people bought them and were proud to drive them around. Definitely worth perusing if you like old cars.
Posts, that is. More or less (counting them is tricky). It’s been fun. Odder than this pokey little blog. Here, I can sit down and blast out a post or two in a few minutes. There, it’s like an actual article that I have to research, write, edit, submit, etc. Actually, this thing is more like “blogging” to me: remember, ‘blog’ came from ‘web log’ which was generally just a place to post links (a log) to web sites you’ve visited. Kinda quick and dirty. Hence, links is mostly what I do here, apart from the occasional treatise on something or other.
But I like both, obviously.
Still waiting for the fat guy in the white suit smoking a cigar to send me an email saying “Hey, kid, I like your car writing. . . .” *sigh*
First off, I’ll be off in the field tomorrow digging some holes up on Camano Island so may or may not post anything tomorrow depending on when I return. Not a long day probably, but one never knows. Supposedly digging shovel probes on a beach so at least I shall be in a rather pleasant area.
Next week I think I start a 2-week survey project that will also result in limited posting (I’ll see if my colleague wants to do some while I’m busy); although it’s not an away-from-home thing, it will probably be long days and I won’t have much time or energy in the evenings to do much trolling and posting.
Also, check out my latest Car Lust post. It actually tickled me pink.
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