• About Ralph Friedly

Ralph Friedly

Monthly Archives: July 2014

Making Time

23 Wednesday Jul 2014

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I love to drive. When I appear at a destination, east or west, and am asked, “Did you fly?” I have often answered proudly, “No, I drove”. Why do I still prefer driving cross country when, at a time of cut rate airlines and expensive gasoline, it may be cheaper to fly? Well I simply love the feeling of sitting behind the wheel with my foot on the gas pedal, in full control of my vehicle and my fate, with some good music or recorded books to listen to, some dried fruit and nuts to munch on, heading down the highway toward some distant destination.

I have often defended this preference with the rationale – I can leave when I want, stop when I want, take as much time as I wish, pause to see the sights or to visit friends, and so on – all of which are impossible to do when traveling by air. But…I have to admit that I rarely do any of these things and seem to be consumed instead with a desire to “make time” –  travel as many miles in a day as I can, and try to get to my destination as quickly as possible.

All this began with family trips when I was a child in New Jersey. Most summers, Mom and Dad, or sometimes just Mom, would load the car with a few suitcases and some food, then load it with us kids and off we would go, toward North Dakota to see Mom’s parents, the Baxstroms, or to Missouri to see the Friedly grandparents, or both. These trips usually included a stop at the church headquarters in Westminster, Colorado, north of Denver, where we had many church friends and where Mom and Dad met as high school students. As Dad got more committed to farming during the summer it became mostly Mom who took us, leaving Dad to stay at home and cultivate his crops.

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When traveling with the family as a child, we never stopped at motels. We would instead stop and stay overnight at relatives’ homes, if convenient, or at church “missionary homes”, both of which were scattered at convenient intervals across the country. Thus planning a day’s drive did not include stopping to see any of the sights, but just to get to the next place to stay overnight. There were some exceptions to this rule – on one trip I can recall visiting some Native American areas in Minnesota and the Dells of Wisconsin, seeing Bagnell Dam and boating on the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri, seeing Mount Rushmore and buffalo herds in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the “Geographic Center of North America” in Rugby, North Dakota and visiting the “International Peace Garden” on the North Dakota – Canada border. But usually we whizzed right by these kinds of places to get to where we were headed.

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Usually the main thing for either Dad or Mom, whoever was the driver in charge for that given trip, was to “make time”. Many times, I can remember Dad or Mom just stopping along the road somewhere late at night, when whoever was driving simply could go no further, and sleeping. This was done perhaps behind a church in a small town (churches were deemed to be safe areas) or simply driving off the highway out into the middle of fields on a section or quarter road. I can remember so well Mom or Dad slumped over the wheel to sleep or leaning their heads between the seat back and the window while us kids in the rear seat flopped wherever we could, draped all over one another trying to get into a position where we could get some sleep.

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When leaving New Jersey, our first stop was always at Uncle Emil’s in Wooster, Ohio, a very convenient 500 mile trip, mostly on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. “The Turnpike”, then so called because it was the first such big toll road, was to us was one of the wonders of the world. To travel unimpeded by intersections or traffic lights, on a four lane highway with wide shoulders, through tunnels flattening out the  high ridges of the Appalachian mountains, was an incredible experience for drivers in the 1950’s, many of whom could doubtless recall how slow and difficult it was previously to travel east or west through Pennsylvania. So stage one of any trip west was this 500 mile jaunt, a good day’s drive and no sightseeing, just the regular stops at the Howard Johnson’s rest stops to go to the bathroom and buy some gas.

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The next stop could be a church missionary home in Cincinnati, Ohio, St. Louis, Missouri, or in Omaha, Nebraska. Or if you left early and drove fast and didn’t stop much, it was possible to get to Versailles, Missouri and Grandma and Grandpa Friedly’s on the very next evening. From there, it was possible to drive through Kansas and eastern Colorado and get to the church headquarters in Westminster on the third day. I remember the competition among us kids as we crossed the plains of eastern Colorado, all desperately craning our necks from the back seat to see who would be the first to spot Pike’s Peak, the first sign of the Colorado Rocky Mountains from US 36, 24 or 40. 

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 Traveling America’s highways was quite different in the 1950’s. Before the Interstate Highway network you traveled east or west, once you left the Pennsylvania Turnpike, on US 40, US 24, US 30 or US 36. These highways were mostly two lanes and of course went through countless little towns. And on these highways you actually saw much of the country, got close to the local stores and markets, could stop and get fresh vegetables at a roadside stand, or stop at a little picnic table under a tree along the highway to make and eat sandwiches. Today, as John Steinbeck mentioned in “Travels with Charley” you can go coast to coast on the Interstates and not see much of anything.

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On these long trips we children got used to playing a variety of games. One such activity was counting the cars of the railroad trains we saw. Another was to try to form the whole alphabet from license plate letters we saw on cars we passed or which passed us. Or we would form the alphabet from letters on signs and billboards along the highway. X’s and Z’s were very hard to come by, which added to the challenge and competition of the game.

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Another pleasure of the open road back in the 1950’s was reading Burma-Shave signs, which were a series of six or so red signs positioned about 200 feet apart along the shoulder with white lettering containing a clever jingle and ending with “Burma-Shave”. We eagerly looked for the next set of signs and recited the jingles in unison as each sign neared and became readable. A variety of nostalgia websites contain many of these jingles. Some examples: DRINKING DRIVERS…NOTHING WORSE…THEY PUT THE QUART…BEFORE THE HEARSE…Burma-Shave”, “DINAH DOESN’T… TREAT HIM RIGHT…BUT IF HE’D SHAVE…DINAH MITE!…Burma-Shave”, “DON’T LOSE… YOUR HEAD…TO GAIN A MINUTE…YOU NEED YOUR HEAD…YOUR BRAINS ARE IN IT…Berma-Shave”, and “BEFORE I TRIED IT…THE KISSES …I MISSED…BUT AFTERWARD-BOY…THE MISSES I KISSED…Burma-Shave”.

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Another common sight while traveling by car in the 1950’s was the canvas water container hanging from car mirrors or radiators. These containers allowed the water inside to dampen the canvas, which then kept the water cold from evaporating surface moisture. You would see these bags mainly in the west of course since the more humid eastern air was not an effective evaporator/cooler.

Since the major east-west highways at that time often paralleled railroads, I also remember another dramatic sight – long rows of telegraph poles, laden with multiple cross pieces which in turn bore dozens of glittering glass insulators carrying scores of wires. These poles and wires undulated in a picturesque and dramatic wave pattern for as far as you could see.

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On these trips our diet was very basic. We opened cans of Van Camps pork and beans and ate spoonfuls directly out of the cans or maybe if we stopped, used paper plates and spoons we brought with us. We also bought loaves of bread, bologna and mustard and ate bologna sandwiches as we traveled. I can remember one time when Mom stopped in a little Midwestern town at a Red Owl supermarket where creamed corn was on sale at ten cans for a dollar. We ate nothing but creamed corn directly out of cans for the next couple of days.

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 We usually went to the bathroom when we stopped for gas. But if there was an emergency, we simply pulled over onto the shoulder and opened the two right side car doors on the ’49 Chevy or the ’54 Chevy wagon, and the child who needed to go went on the shoulder, the doors providing some privacy.

So “making time” on the big open American highway has been a huge part of my life. But it seemed that when traveling by car I was always pressured by time or circumstance to get someplace as quickly as possible. Even now, having the joy and privilege of homes in Vermont and Arizona and looking forward to some leisurely trips between them, it still seems that there is always something that makes speed essential – a couple of times the advancing winter weather when we returned to Arizona later than we wished, or family social events and home maintenance needs in other cases. Hopefully a leisurely trip during which I could drive through the south or through Canada, or through the Midwest to again see where my parents grew up, is right around the corner.

But up to now it’s mostly been driving as fast and as far in a day as I can because some deadline or other is staring me in the face. I did break my own record a couple of years ago when we had to get back to Arizona from Vermont (again, by a certain time) and drove from Paragould, Arkansas, where we had visited the last of Dad’s siblings, Aunt Burton, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, approximately 1100 miles in a day. A great drive to be sure, and I hope the last of them. I must slow down. I have passed so many roses in my life without getting even a whiff and at this point I should not care anymore about “making time”.

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Massachusetts Driving Rules

23 Wednesday Jul 2014

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Massachusetts Driving Rules

My youngest brother recently vacationed in New England, starting by flying to Boston and renting a car. While on the phone with me he was lamenting how difficult it was to drive in the Boston area, saying that he had never experienced more difficult driving in his life.

I know what he means. When I moved to Cambridge in 1970 for graduate school I mostly got around on foot or by subway and left the car parked. But moving to the south shore the next year to work in Duxbury, I proceeded to get my full experience of the stress of driving in Massachusetts. An early experience occurred when I was driving to Boston on what was then called the Southeast Expressway. I was in the right lane minding my business more or less beside a driver in the left lane. Suddenly a motorist passed me on the right – but all there was on my right was the shoulder, mind you. Yes, he had passed me on the shoulder. I was so surprised and shaken that I had to get off the freeway, find a place to park and wait until I stopped trembling. But later experiences showed me that passing on the right and even on the shoulder was commonplace..

On many occasions, when at a traffic light, the light would turn green for me but drivers would continue to pass through the intersection, even though their light was red. Again, I was totally shocked and astonished, just as I was the first time someone pulled out in front of me to turn left, just sitting there, causing me to slam on my brakes and screech to a stop while he waited for traffic to clear from his right.

Over time, driving in and around Boston I continued to be surprised at the stupidity, reckless behavior and bad manners of Massachusetts drivers. I finally decided I would put together my own special list of “Massachusetts Driving Rules” and send them in to the Boston Globe as a letter to the editor. I never did, but reminded by my brother’s experience, I resurrected the list from my files and present it here. I am sure that most of these “rules” from the 1970’s still apply.

Freeway Rules

  1. Keep left except to pass; pass on right only; use the shoulder if necessary.
  2. If you accidently get off on the wrong exit, do not continue and get back on to find the right exit; simply stop and back down the exit onto the freeway. This way other motorists won’t take you for an idiot: they’ll simply think you are exiting.
  3. When traffic is merging, keep pushing in until the guy you are competing against “chickens out”. Do not ever take turns.
  4. When getting on to the freeway, the “YIELD” sign means keep going until the motorists in the right lane yield to you.

Other Rules

  1. When turning, first brake abruptly to confuse the driver behind you, then only signal (maybe… this is an option) as you begin rotating the steering wheel to the right or left to start your turn.
  2. At a stop sign, if the driver in front of you goes, you go.
  3. At traffic lights, regardless of whether the light is green, yellow or red, if the guy in front of you makes it, you can make it too.
  4. At dusk, always use your parking lights, not driving lights, in order to save energy.
  5. When turning right, whether signaling or not (remember that this is an option) ease the wear on your tires by swinging into the left lane and turning very widely.
  6. When turning left into two way traffic, do not wait for gaps in the traffic both ways. Simply pull out halfway, stopping traffic from your left. Then wait calmly for a break in the traffic from your right. Then proceed.
  7. When turning out onto a major road, wait until a vehicle is approaching on your left. Then turn abruptly out in front of them, accelerate slowly and do not exceed 35 miles per hour.

Retirement

18 Friday Jul 2014

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Retirement

I am finally becoming adjusted to one of the most difficult periods of my life. While the experts provide advice for dealing with life changing events like deaths, marriages, children, job loss and divorce, comparatively little attention is paid to retirement.o-RETIREMENT-facebook

The first problem for me was the difficulty of the transition from being useful and playing an essential role in an enterprise, to being essentially useless – going from having and exercising authority to having none, going from giving advice and guidance when it is sought, to realizing that they are no longer even solicited. There is certainly emotional and psychological satisfaction in feeling useful and this is obviously lost in retirement.

Another aspect of retirement with which I am still having difficulty, is that the education and training that took a professional lifetime of money, energy and time to accumulate and that had significant professional value either in the office or on the resume, have overnight lost all of their value. What good now are my hard-won doctorate, my countless professional trainings and the extensive professional reading? Where that education and training were extremely valuable in the work that I did, in retirement they have lost almost all of their value and for the most part lie dormant and dying in the depths of my mind.

Some of the evidence of this accumulation of education and skills were the hundreds of files of specially chosen professional journal articles pertinent to my professional interests and the massive professional library I had collected over the years. Finally throwing away all these precious files and giving away all of the books were traumatic actions that, while making life simpler, made me feel bereft of the comfort and support these documents and books had given me during my professional life. These documents were the armor and weapons for my professional roles and I initially felt weak, exposed and vulnerable when I suddenly did not have them.

Also the realization that all of the valuable experience accumulated over the years in different schools, school districts and international locations and that always served me well when tackling new challenges in a new location, was suddenly without value or utility, was difficult to accept. I had learned a great deal from having to adjust to new forms and varieties of professional challenges and suddenly, this wealth of experience was also worthless.

I am one person that has always enjoyed routines: the regular schedule for sleep, for meals, for showering, dressing, driving to work, the first cup of coffee in the office, the regularly scheduled meetings and the weekend schedule for home maintenance or shopping chores. That scheduled routine life has now been lost amid the utterly random “spontaneity” of retirement activities and duties. Maybe I will mow the grass today; perhaps I will start painting that room; I think I will take the car down for an oil change this morning; maybe I will start that book that I have always wanted to read. And the life maintenance duties which used to be completed quickly and efficiently as part of a day’s or weekend’s schedule now stretch out interminably and seem to take forever. However, I have managed to retain two valuable features of my daily routine: my two cups of delicious coffee in early morning while I read the Times and do some writing, and my relaxing Scotch on the rocks late every afternoon while I catch up on the day’s events on my laptop.

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Retirement has been a negative experience in yet another way. Work did not allow the luxury of focusing on the problems of aging, because of the more immediate problems presented by the work itself. It is only after retirement that I have become acutely aware of my slowly deteriorating body because now I unfortunately have the time to think and fret about it.

Finally, while I will eventually accept and deal with most of the concerns outlined above, the most surprising and pernicious aspect of retirement, and one that I can never accommodate, is the rapid passage of time. In the past I noticed that in times of idleness and relaxation, time really slowed down. And in my youth, time couldn’t pass fast enough, so eager was I to enter the next stage of personal or career development. But now when I want time to slow down, it instead speeds up. I read recently that this phenomenon is felt by most people in later stages of life and the reason for it seems to be that our brains are not learning much of anything new – surprisingly  it’s the learning that seems to slow time, explaining why time seemed to drag when as young people, learning and new experiences defined life itself. But I have found that now, even when reading new books, going to new places, writing about new subjects, all of which seem to be learning experiences, time has not slowed at all, but has continued its acceleration. What? It’s Wednesday already? It’s Friday? I can’t believe it! Where does the time go?

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In recent months I have become better adjusted to retirement and have come to better appreciate the opportunity to pursue interesting activities (like writing this) for which I never found time while working. And maybe finally doing what I want when I want does have value. But I still view the initial stages of retirement as extremely difficult – serious emotional trauma about lost value and utility and a sudden awareness of a losing struggle with time and age. And despite retirement’s many advantages I can’t see these feelings completely diminishing anytime soon.

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Mount Evans by Motorcycle

18 Friday Jul 2014

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Mount Evans

In the summer of 1975 I drove west to visit my parents and brothers in Denver as I usually have during the summer. At that time I owned a Honda CB360 while living and working in Massachusetts. So I was gratified to discover that there were some motorcycles there with three of my brothers – all Honda CB500’s.

One day my youngest brother Stan and I decided to take a trip by motorcycle to the top of Mount Evans, one of Colorado’s 55 famed “fourteeners”, a 14,265 foot (4348 meters) peak in the front range and fairly close to Denver and one of two high peaks, the other one being Pike’s Peak near Colorado Springs, that have roads all the way to the top. The Mount Evans road has the additional distinction of being the highest paved road in North America. On the appointed day I borrowed my brother Richard’s motorcycle and Stan and I took off mid morning on our adventure. We wore fairly light clothing since it was a beautiful summer day, but we carried warm jackets and gloves for the later part of the trip since we would encounter much cooler high altitude weather as we got into the high mountains.

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As we proceeded west from Denver on Interstate 70, the scenery changed to beautiful mountain valleys and forests as we ascended to around seven or eight thousand feet. We had stopped for a breather somewhere along the highway where I opened my 35mm camera, set it on automatic and hung it around my neck. After resuming our trip I took a couple of photos of my brother as we cycled along at 60 miles per hour or so.

I tried one photo of Stan as I moved ahead of him on his left. It came out bit blurry but still captured the moment and movement.

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Then a few seconds later, as I was behind him on his left, I called to him to turn around and took this shot.

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We left Interstate 70 at Idaho Springs at 8700 feet, paused to put on our jackets and gloves, and proceeded south on Colorado 103 steadily ascending in altitude for the 13 miles to Echo Lake at 10,600 feet. We then turned onto 15 mile long Colorado 5, the Mount Evans Scenic Byway, and continued on this undulating road, replete with multiple hairpin turns, for three miles to above timberline. We then continued to wind and circle upward past Summit Lake, another beautiful landmark, at 13,000 feet.

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After a few more miles of steep winding road, we at last reached the summit parking lot where there were a few cars parked at the souvenir shop that is maintained for the summer months. We hiked the additional quarter mile to the summit to enjoy the view, took a few pictures, relaxed at the store for a few minutes and then headed back down the mountain to Idaho Springs, Interstate 70 and home

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The excitement of motorcycling to such a high altitude with my youngest brother Stan made this a most memorable event which I have enjoyed recalling and reminiscing about for many years.

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The Kite Contest

14 Monday Jul 2014

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I have never been any good at winning. Under-aged and too small during high school, although I tried awfully hard, I was never the athlete I aspired to be. I ran fast but not as fast as others. I could throw, catch and hit but others could do it better. And others also passed or caught a football better than I.

This never-winning problem extended in later years to lotteries and casinos as well. While some friends became casino legends, winning easily on the poker machines or the slot machines, I only wasted my money. With lotteries I always lost except for one time when I came within one number of becoming a millionaire. Matching all the numbers but one on the Arizona Lottery at the time won me about $1300. But coming so close to the big prize and not getting it made me feel like I had lost.

But a long time ago when I was 12 years old, I did win something – a kite contest.

For some reason that I cannot now recall, the Stewart family sponsored a kite contest for local children and appropriately it was to take place in March. I do not recall any hard and fast rules – that you had to be within a certain age range or that you had to make it yourself or simply fly a kite bought at the five and dime store (remember those – with the wood pieces, the paper kite already with string in the edge folds rolled up together and sometimes even with a wad of string?) There must have been a make-it–yourself rule, otherwise where did the competition come in? Maybe since you bought the kite and assembled it you qualified as having made it. And, most importantly, what exactly was winning? Was it the biggest, the most colorful, the strangest shape? Was the winner the kite that flew the highest? All this I wonder about today but in the end, the way the contest concluded, it really didn’t matter.

What I remember vividly, however, is the process of making my kite. It was a traditionally shaped kite but extra big and extra strong. I began with some pieces of quarter-round trim my Dad had, then sawed them the right length, one about five feet long and the other about four. Then, securing them in the vise, I used his wood plane to shave off the curvature and make the sticks flat. Crossing these two pieces of wood and fastening them with string formed the five foot long by four feet wide frame of a very large kite. I then filed notches in the ends of the wood pieces and stretched some very strong nylon string around the frame.

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 I had obtained some plastic sheeting and cement, so then cut a piece of the sheeting a couple of inches bigger than the frame, then folded the edges over and cemented them. Now I had a very big and very strong kite, unlike many others I had flown.

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I punched a couple of holes in the plastic on the vertical piece of the frame and then used more nylon string to fasten what I think is called the bridle, a vertical string fastened to the longer piece of wood a little above the cross piece and about halfway down the bottom part of the longer piece. Then I punched holes in the plastic on the cross piece and tied a string between these points, wrapping it around the vertical bridle for stability. Then I fastened my kite string, also the same strong nylon, to the bridle at the point it was tied to the horizontal string.

I then made a tail for the kite out of pieces of cotton rag tied in bows and looped in another length of string and fastened it to the bottom of the kite. I still didn’t know if the kite would fly. I only knew that it was built using the correct dimensions but was simply much bigger. And it was so heavy, I knew it would need a serious wind to get off the ground – it likely would not fly in a mere breeze.

Then the day of the kite contest arrived. I was lucky – it was a very windy March day, a little chilly, not much sunshine but big gray-white clouds rushing across the sky. Well at least there was wind, quite necessary for the contest, but the wind was very strong and even seemed to be increasing in intensity on this March afternoon.

I think there were maybe eight or ten other kids who had brought kites that day for the contest. I don’t remember much about the other kites except that there were a several store-bought kites among them.

The appointed time came, and we contestants ran about to give our kites a push into the air and then reeled out enough string so they could continue upward. As I said before the wind was strong. Once up in the air, all of the kites had no problem ascending. But the wind, much stronger up high, started catching many of the kites and driving them out of control. Many spun crazily, broke and crashed to the ground. Others seemed to weaken and break more gradually, but still ended up spiraling dizzily to the ground in a pile of debris. Several that did not spiral out of control were driven so strongly by the wind that the string mooring them to their masters broke and the kites blew away, landing who knows where. Mind you, all of these collapsing and broken kites, despite their shape, were made of wood and paper.images (1)

But my kite? At first my kite, bigger than most of the others, was simply one of many. Then it was one of a few. And at last, my kite, made of strong wood and cemented plastic sheeting, and connected to its maker by strong nylon string was the only kite left in the sky, sailing high and majestically in this March gale, held upright by its long rag tail.

So what was Mr. Stewart to do? All criteria for winning had to be scrapped – it didn’t matter what the rules specified – my kite was the only kite that stayed in the air that windy day. Yes, I won, finally won something – in this case, a boy’s dream, a pocket knife with four strong shiny blades and a genuine bone handle.

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More than Transportation

07 Monday Jul 2014

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1962 Chevrolet Corvair, 1963 Pontiac Tempest, 1966 Chevrolet Corvair, 1968 Chevrolet Camaro, 1970 VW Kombi, 1972 VW Camper, 1973 Porsche 914, 1978 Honda Accord

I have always enjoyed driving. And many of the automobiles I have owned over the years, especially in my more adventurous younger days, represented something considerably more than simple transportation. I owned a number of convertibles, which to me represented breezes, sunshine, youth and freedom, and (hopefully and futilely) rendered me more attractive to young ladies (it’s interesting that today all the people driving convertibles seem to be my age; today’s young people do not seem to be interested!). And at one time I actually owned a real sports car.

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In Hiawatha, Kansas 1962

In the 1960’s I owned two Chevrolet Corvair Monza convertibles – an aqua 1962 and a maroon 1966. The Corvair was a daring product for an automobile company like General Motors: a small compact car with rear mounted air-cooled all aluminum engine with six horizontal opposed cylinders and one of Detroit’s more innovative reactions to the increasing popularity of smaller German and Japanese cars. The Corvair also had four wheel independent suspension which, along with the rear engine, gave it superb handling characteristics. It is unfortunate that an early flaw in the suspension, quickly corrected in later model years, allegedly caused some crashes, described in Ralph Nader’s book “Unsafe at Any Speed”. This negative publicity resulted in a downturn in sales and the ultimate demise of this truly unique American car.

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I lived in Denver, Colorado in 1961 and 1962 and first became acquainted with this remarkable vehicle through a good friend who owned a 1961, from the Corvair’s second year of production. On our joyrides through the curves, inclines and slopes of the Colorado foothills and mountains, I was astonished at how well his car handled and vowed to get one myself, resulting in my aqua 1962 Corvair. Then my friend and I did some joyriding in my car as well and even took it on a quick road trip to and from New Jersey in 1962.

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Charlie, Richard and Stan

When I returned to New Jersey and resumed my education, my little brothers enjoyed riding with me in the “Monza” and Charlie, Richard and Stan had their picture taken in front of it one Sunday.

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1963 Pontiac Tempest

Somewhere between the ’62 and the ’66 Corvairs, we bought a 1963 Pontiac Tempest convertible, one of GM’s “compact” cars from the 1960’s and another very unique car. The engine was a four cylinder, but a very unique four, consisting of the regular Pontiac 389 V8 with one bank of cylinders missing. To compensate for the missing four cylinders, a new driveshaft had to be manufactured for this strange engine, called the “slant four”. In addition, this car contained another GM innovation – moving the transaxle to the rear and connecting it to the engine with a flexible drive shaft, thus getting rid of the hump and flattening the floor. The car was fun to drive but owning this car ended badly. At that time we had absolutely no idea of how manage money and we discovered that we could not afford this car and were falling behind on payments. I called the GMAC office in Newark and arranged a voluntary repossession, drove the car to Newark, turned it in, gave them the keys and shamefacedly took the public bus system back to New Brunswick. So ended our affair with the Pontiac Tempest, but, surprisingly, giving the car up in this way actually improved our credit rating.

I guess it was some time after the Pontiac Tempest affair that we bought the 1966 Corvair convertible. This car served us well – taking care of our commuting and pleasure driving needs in New Brunswick for a couple of years and then taking us safely across the country in 1968 to Pinon, Arizona, my first teaching location on the Navajo Reservation. While at Pinon, this beautiful little car also took us reliably and efficiently to scores of National Parks and Monuments all over the beautiful American southwest.

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White Sands, New Mexico 1968

I had always serviced the car myself and took very good care of it. But after moving the next year to Rock Point, Arizona, the engine of this beautiful little vehicle failed on a trip to Tucson. The car was belching clouds of black smoke, running unevenly and burning lots of oil. I don’t know exactly what was wrong but it was likely a cracked piston or broken rod. Corvairs’ air cooled engines ran considerably hotter than water cooled engines and that fact could have been the cause of my problem. At any rate, I had to keep pouring cans of oil into the engine between Tucson and Phoenix, and not having the time to have it repaired, found a dealer there who would accept it as a discounted trade-in, and drove a ’68 Comaro (white with blue interior and yes, another convertible) back home to Rock Point, Arizona. I hated to say goodbye to my second and last Corvair but by that time GM had ceased production and this great automobile was history. Thank you, Ralph Nader.

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At Barbara’s 1967 – Sheila and Fifi

The Camaro convertible was a dependable car, not as good on gas but fine for driving around the Reservation and for the long shopping trips to Farmington, New Mexico. I remember one frightening incident with the Camaro. On the way back from a shopping trip to Farmington on US 160, somewhere around Red Mesa, I accidently shoved the automatic transmission handle into reverse while I was going about 60 miles per hour. The tires squealed and smoked, the rear end was fish-tailing and I thought I had lost the whole drive train, but I stopped and found that the transmission still worked and the engine was ok, and then proceeded on home. I think I was very lucky.

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1968 Chevy Camaro

The Chevy Camaro lasted us until we found out that we were going to move to Cambridge, Massachusetts for me to go again to graduate school and needed a car that would carry some significant cargo. After looking around, I decided to buy a new 1970 Volkswagen Kombi, the most stripped down Volkswagen bus imaginable, so stripped down in fact that there was no back seat – just empty space and a bare painted steel floor behind the front seats, quite simple and barren, but very serious cargo space. I later built a wood structure that brought the floor behind the seats up to the level of the floor over the engine so you could place a mattress and sleeping bags in the back and comfortably camp. This vehicle certainly fulfilled its purpose for transporting cargo, its box shape maximized space for a huge volume of personal possessions.

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1970 VW Kombi

Like all Volkswagen buses of that vintage it was woefully underpowered, causing extreme embarrassment when going up hills as a long line of angry frustrated drivers gathered behind and generally gave an angry glare and blast on the horn when they were finally able to pass. And the floor-mounted manual shift had so much give that it felt like you were shifting with a sapling. However, this vehicle (I can’t call it a car) served us well, through the last few months on the Rez, the year in Cambridge and the first years of my job in Duxbury, Massachusetts. It was the vehicle in which I did my own limited version of Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley”, taking a wonderful trip by myself with the family dog.

Another pleasant memory relating to VW buses at that time was that you automatically became a member of a certain group or fraternity of other VW bus owners. Heading down the highway in this bus or my later VW Camper, the old “V” peace sign was always exchanged between drivers. This feeling of kinship could have been an assumption of kindred political opinion, for it seemed that VW buses were the preferred mode of transportation for hippies back in the 60’s and 70’s, or the peace sign indication of kinship among VW bus owners may simply have been a sign of shared frustration with driving these boxy, poor handling and under-powered vehicles. At any rate, I did enjoy feeling that for whatever reason, I was a member of that select group.
Soon after settling in to the Duxbury Public Schools job and building the first house we owned in Plympton, Massachusetts, I purchased my dream car, a 1973 Porsche 914. Anyone knowing anything about sports cars, knows that this car, with its mid-engine design, was superbly balanced and handled like a dream. Its engine was essentially a bored out and souped up air cooled Volkswagen engine, coupled with a very tight five speed manual transmission. I really enjoyed this vehicle, taking it on a trip west, visiting my Grandfather and Aunt Ada Friedly on the way, camping in Zion and Bryce National Parks and ending with visiting my parents and brothers in Denver. In its trunks (since the engine was in the middle, it had small trunks front and back) I had my suitcase, tent and camping equipment.

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Campsite in Zion National Park 1973

As an aside, I should mention that when I was comfortably situated in my campsite in Zion, seated at my picnic table, enjoying the peaceful beauty while sipping a Coors after a tasty supper of a bologna sandwich and Van Camps pork and beans, I was assaulted by a huge Winnebago with California plates and dirt bikes fastened to the bumpers, pulling into the campsite beside me. In no time the peaceful and relaxing silence of that heavenly place was violated by the noise of loud voices and laughter, TV and two-cycle engines, completely destroying the contemplative mood in which I had been basking. All I could do was drink enough additional Coors’ until I didn’t really care anymore.

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Utah vista 1973

On the way back to Denver after camping in Bryce Canyon National Park, I found myself on a very straight stretch of highway between Green River and Hanksville, Utah, and decided that this was my opportunity to see how fast my little Porsche would go. Pushing the gas pedal down as far as I could and keeping it there, it got me up to 115 miles per hour, still the fastest speed I have ever experienced in any car.

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Plymouth, Massachusetts 1973

By the way, this little sports car was great on gas mileage, a very valuable feature while waiting in gas lines back in the infamous days in the early 1970’s of “shortages”. After filling up, I was always able to avoid another gas line for a very long time.

When my sanity returned in the midst of building my second house in Plympton, Massachusetts (actually built by my talented brothers, Richard and Glenn – I was the unskilled labor), and knowing that I would have to be “camping” while finishing the house, I sold the Porsche (for more than I paid for it) and bought my second Volkswagen bus, this one a full fledged camper. The well-known “Westphalia” camping configuration inside this small vehicle was very efficient and utilitarian and could sleep a couple of adults and a couple of children quite comfortably. It was also large enough inside to enable me to transport large items needed for the continuing house construction. But on a trip home with some furniture items from the Jordan Marsh warehouse in Quincy one evening, all the lights on the dashboard went on when the engine seized up, the rear drive wheels screeching and skidding until I hit the the clutch pedal. My air-cooled, overstressed (again, a very small engine propelling a fairly heavy vehicle) and hot running Volkswagen engine had simply worn out, maybe threw a rod, as they say, simply broke or whatever. At any rate, I had the vehicle towed to a repair place where I had a rebuilt engine put in the vehicle.

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1972 VW Camper

The final chapter in the story of my VW camper was quite serious. During the winter, while driving home from a friend’s house in what seemed to be just rain, the temperature had gone down and near my house the rain, unknown to me, had turned to the infamous “black ice” . The last thing I remembered before waking up in the Plymouth Hospital the next day was my camper slowing, spinning, totally out of control but still going 40 miles per hour. I was told by the police the next day that I had hit and knocked down a telephone pole and had put out the lights for miles around. The police found me covered with blood staggering around in the back of the vehicle. I had sustained a very severe head wound, a concussion and several broken ribs, the former from striking the windshield and the latter from hitting the steering wheel. The entire passenger side of the front was crushed three feet in. If I had hit the pole a little more to the left, I would certainly have been killed instantly. VW buses were notorious for their complete lack of crash protection in the front.

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1978 Honda Accord

Shortly after that incident, I became acquainted with the Honda Accord through a good friend, who owned a 1977, then a brand new design and entirely new kind of car from Honda, which previously was known mostly for motorcycles and the tiny Civic. After hearing my friend extol its many virtues I was convinced that the Accord was the kind of car I needed, so I bought a new aqua 1978 Honda Accord and quickly became completely convinced that it was one of the highest quality cars I had ever owned. It had great acceleration and gas mileage, handled beautifully, took to Massachusetts winter driving nicely with its front wheel drive and had many luxury features that were “extras” on other vehicles at the time. I loved this car, which marked the beginning of my “practical” car owning days, which included a number of other Hondas, a Plymouth Voyager, a Ford Explorer, a ’76 Chevy pickup with a camper, a GMC van, a Ford Escape, up to the present 2004 Dodge Dakota and the 2009 Toyota Corolla, all practical, none glamorous or exciting.

It’s been a great ride, owning and driving this variety of vehicles over many years. Like so many other things in my life, the people I have known and loved and the places I have lived and worked, each of my cherished vehicles added a distinct kind of experience, color and definition to my life.

Books that Influenced My Life

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by ralphfriedly in Uncategorized

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I am happy that we had books in the house when I was a child and that I had parents that read and taught me the value of reading. A precious memory of my father is seeing him always sleeping with a book or a magazine on his chest. Mom too always encouraged us to read and also was an avid reader, particularly it seemed, of the Bible, The Reader’s Digest, religious tracts and nutrition books.

During my childhood we had two periodicals always in our home: Time magazine and The Reader’s Digest. I read them both thoroughly. Even after becoming a college student at Rutgers, I spent lots of time, too much as indicated by my grades, in the stacks looking at old bound issues of Time, which brought back many memories. I remember as a youngster reading an article about the singer Patti Page with a mesmerizing photo of her in a 1955 issue of Time and was able to find that same issue in the stacks at Rutgers.

In the Reader’s Digest I read most of the articles and certainly all of the jokes under the different headings: “Laughter is the Best Medicine”, “Humor in Uniform” and “Life in These United States”. I also read many of the condensed books at the end of each issue. Several affected me deeply, among them “Little Boy Lost”, about a little boy separated from his parents during World War II and miraculously reunited with his father again, and two autobiographical books by Ralph Moody: “Little Britches” and “Man of the Family”, in which a little boy helps his family make a living on a Colorado ranch and later at age 11 when the father dies, with hard work, ingenuity and the help of his brothers and sisters manages to support the family.

Both “Time” and “The Reader’s Digest” embraced an essentially conservative, patriotic, view of America, reflecting my parents’ political opinions. I too was a good little Republican for many years, also embracing the views reflected in “Time” editorials and “Reader’s Digest” article selection.

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As a child in our first house in New Jersey, I became acquainted with the moralistic Sunday school books called “Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories”. They were all stories with morals, maybe a bit like religious Aesop’s Fables. In these stories, bad things happened to the little boy who lied to his mother; the little boy who helped his mother and took care of his brothers and sisters would find a ten dollar bill on the sidewalk. How hilarious to later read Mark Twain’s “Story of a Good Little Boy” and “Story of a Bad Little Boy” in which nothing happened they way it happened in the Sunday School books: the good boy never was rewarded but was beaten and chastised for his good deeds and the bad boy enjoyed what he had stolen and didn’t fall out of the tree and break his arm. Looking back, I really used to think I would find a treasure someplace when I helped around the house, with which I could provide my parents and my brothers and sisters a better life than they had. But it never happened.

When I was twelve years old, I received from my mother a volume of “Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible”. This classic book went through countless editions over the years. My volume, which I still have, is the light blue cover 1947 edition. I read this book from cover to cover, even memorizing certain stories to tell on the “The “Children’s Hour” radio program over the church radio station, WAWZ.  The illustrations in the book were wonderful and I can still see many in my mind’s eye today. And in these old editions of “Hurlbut’s” all the difficult Bible names had phonetic spellings in parentheses.

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Also in the 1950’s, when they were visiting my parents and took a trip to New York City, I received a couple of books from my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Emil. One, called “American Statesmen” was not that interesting, but the other, titled “The Gudrun Lay”, was the story, in great prose as I remember, of Sigurd, Brynhild, Gudrun, Regin, Fafnir and the rest, and became a book that I read again and again. Unfortunately, that book has long disappeared and efforts to locate another volume have been futile. The closest I can get to it is “The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun” by J.R.R.Tolkien, very academic and certainly not the book I read and remember.

Undoubtedly the books that influenced me the most were a set of “The Book of Knowledge”, probably a 1941 edition. Each volume was arranged in sections called “books” themselves: The Book of Familiar Things, The Book of Stories, The Book of Golden Deeds, The Book of Men and Women, The Book of Literature and others. All the classic fairy tales and classic poems were in these books, as well as biographies, lots of history, answers to perennial questions (The Book of Wonder), explanations of manufacturing, descriptions of famous cities and buildings, information about plants and animals and, in short, just about anything one could think of or might be curious about.

I do not remember ever looking up certain topics. These were books you simply picked up and then quickly got involved in something compelling and couldn’t put down. And they were books that you would usually find strewn all over the house – rarely together on their shelf. Though solidly bound, this set of books eventually became beat up and ragged, a pleasant indication of heavy usage.

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 “The Book of Knowledge” contained my first King Arthur stories and I can still remember the dramatic illustrations of Sir Lancelot, Elaine of Astolat, Queen Guinevere, Sir Gawain, Sir Galahad and Sir Percival. It was where I found the long poems I memorized: “Robert of Lincoln” by William Cullen Bryant and “Darius Green and His Flying Machine” by John Townsend Trowbridge. They were where I first learned about Marie Curie and Albert Einstein, about Shackleton, Amundsen, and Scott, and about photosynthesis and combustion. Bringing these marvelous books into the lives of me and my brothers and sisters is a tribute to the care of my parents, although I know nothing of when and how they were obtained. “The Book of Knowledge” was simply always there as long as I can remember.

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When I was about 12 years old I remember reading a book of my Dad’s that maybe I was not old enough to read – “Out of the Night” by Jan Valtin, a 1941 best seller about the career of a communist spy who was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. This book made a powerful impression on my young mind, maybe not all of it good. I developed an unreasonable fear of communism and its incarnation in the “Comintern” (Communist International) and a horror of torture, as described in the book. The latter memory came back to me in a big way recently when my own country and its leaders employed and even tried to rationalize torture, something that, when reading this book as a youngster, I could never have imagined.

I mentioned in an earlier post that my father used to take us kids with him to the “Auction” on Route 206 near Somerville, New Jersey where I often visited a used book booth and bought a few books that I enjoyed very much. It was there that I bought my “Three Musketeers” and “Twenty Years After” by Dumas, my Mark Twain’s “Innocents Abroad”, Dickens’ “Great Expectations” and Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind”, each costing me considerably less than less than a dollar. “Innocents Abroad” was actually a first edition, in very good condition but I unfortunately had no sense of its value and proceeded to completely abuse it and wear it out. And “Great Expectations” has taken a beating too since I have read it at least three times. But all of these books I still have and keep together in the bookcase because of their special importance and meaning in my life.

Another part of my childhood reading life is worth mentioning. My mother always did her best to make sure we went to sleep at an appropriate time and there were many times she made me stop reading and turn the light out in the bedroom that I shared with my younger brothers. However, there was always a hall light on and she allowed the door to be open a bit to give us a bit of night light. So I cut the top off a Dutch Cleanser container and hung its shiny bottom circle from a nail on the wall above the dresser. When aimed properly this circle of reflective metal would provide a spot of light on my bed which illuminated page after page of forbidden post bedtime reading. What fun, reading while everyone else in the house was asleep in total peace and quiet – something I still enjoy immensely to this day.

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So books were very important to me as a boy and are still are essential in my life. I enjoy so much standing in front of my bookcases appreciating and remembering. Books I have read are important but, so are the books I have not read. These are in special locations, beckoning to me, inviting me and demanding to be read. Since I am now in a late stage of my life and can reasonably speculate on how many years are left, I only hope and pray that there will be enough time. But sadly I know there will never be enough time since now, even this very day, I am reading reviews of newly published books that I add to my “must read” list. But no matter old I get, I hope I will always look forward to each new book experience with the same excitement and anticipation I enjoyed as a boy.

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