Hobo Jungle

[E7]

Sarge,

Your smoking lamp: Wonderful, just wonderful. Pleasing to hear Mr. Patel is more than a wisp of your imagination.

Rich

[sarge]

Having had the privilege of having lived amongst such people in the context of the times, you can perhaps understand why I sometimes feel the urge for the odd rant against modern anti-society, but just on the odd occasion, you understand.

So it is I must confess my version of Mr Patel in my stories is indeed based on a very real and admirable man.

[webenda]

Ah, a little more revealed about the smoking lamp. A wonderful true tale Sarge.

[Tramp]

I raise my glass to Mr. (Mr) Patel and all those like him, and curse the fact that his kind are all but gone and society in its carelessness has evicted them from culture, which no longer deserves the name. I could rant, but I would rather drink. Cheers!

As an aside, do any of you notice my column or does it just not suit?

http://www.penbaypilot.com/article/eric ... trip/50406

[rex desilets]

I sometimes feel the urge for the odd rant against modern anti-society

I admire your restraint, although you are doubtless younger and more resilient. My rants come more frequently as time passes.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I sometimes feel the urge for the odd rant against modern anti-society

I admire your restraint, although you are doubtless younger and more resilient. My rants come more frequently as time passes.

He shows every sign of morphing into Lord Henry Ames,

Harrumph!

[sarge]

Tramp, mate

Actually is does suit, perhaps too well. Although we speak from experiences gained from different sides of the world, do you notice the theme is very much the same? Social change has made our worlds we are writing of vanish. Instead we have today's dilution to lowest common denominator sameness.

A road trip is now an air-conditioned Oriental van that never breaks and you can't fix if it did, stopping at the same hotel with the same pool, gym, and hideously priced coffee-nouveau that you stayed at the night before. What was a sea voyage is now a cruiseship, so inclusive as to be sterilised of any special sensory stimulation other than the hourly bellying up to the hogtrough and a day or two of some stomach virus or another. Neither can be be poetic. Poetry needs a dream, and there is nothing to dream when everyone already has the experience and the use of "experience" is arguable. There is nothing here to dream.

There is no longer a "road less travelled". It's been paved over as an Interstate so everyone can go, easily and equally, and never know what Frost was on about. Then, all the old roads are dynamited to make sure that happens.

Bollocks.

[healey36]

We're reading them Tramp...keep 'em coming...

Years ago I used to travel to NYC on a routine basis via AMTRAK Metroliner. At the back of the train was the Club car. This was a car with only sixteen passengers (full), its own kitchen and beverage cart. There was a single porter assigned to the Club car, and he took very good care of his charges. As painful as the job and NYC was, the trip itself was always a joy for the three or four hours we were on there.

Healey

[Rufus T. Firefly]

We're reading them Tramp...keep 'em coming...

Yes, please.

[robert.]

here is a photo of some pipes a customer left with me. his hopes were that i could sell them at the Miami antique show. it's not the best of photos.

[J. S. Bach]

As an aside, do any of you notice my column or does it just not suit?

A very short quote from your column: "...This was a road trip, without air-conditioning, before GPS, no set route,..." reminds me of times when I and one or more shipmates would leave NAS Landbound and just decide to drive. "Never been up that road before." "OK, lets find out where it goes." One night was a ninety or so mile trip to somewhere that when we got there we had a beer and then returned to the NAS. Thanks for the memory there. Oh, and it was not even a good beer!

[E7]

Tramp,

Looking forward to the next installment of the Seattle saga.

Rich

[webenda]

As an aside, do any of you notice my column or does it just not suit?

I read and collect them Tramp. Subjects change rather fast here in the hobo jungle, but since we are back to the Penobscot Falcon...

About the Preacher: I had a 1968 Oldsmobile Delta 88/custom with 455 cu in engine for a while. I found it hard to get off the line without spinning the right rear tire. Too much throttle in second gear set it spinning also. I think it came with 5.5 inch rims. I tried buying 7 inch rims at the Olds dealer, but they were $130 each. So I went over to the Chevy dealer and purchased the wheels for about $38 each. Then, with larger tires, wheel spin was easy to control.

I read you and Ben got locked out of the Olds. My Olds had side bar locks. I frequently locked myself out so started carrying a small screw driver to torque the lock and small Allen wrench for first rotating the pins to line up with the side bar then hunting for the pin shear line. One day I was at AAA Lock Smiths and the owner was sweating in the sun trying to pick the locks on another Olds. He told me these Olds have side bar locks and are impossible to pick. He was about to give up and drill one of the locks out. I wanted to help him so bad, but locksmiths are very wary of amateurs. After an amateur gets through with a lock it is often left un-pickable. If he saw my tools he would have known without a doubt I was not even a good amateur.

The rear window seal on my Olds had been replaced three times by the dealer while the previous owner had it. The third time they had to replace the rusty metal between the window and trunk opening. Water was still leaking into the trunk when I bought the car. It was ugly, but I just kept applying clear RTV to the line between the window and car body until the leak stopped.

I can relate to automobile overheating problems climbing out of Death Valley through the Panamint Mountains in the afternoon, but not through the heart of Death Valley at night.

Some Oldsmobiles eat water pumps. My Olds had had three water pumps replaced before my purchase. True to form, it wasn't long before the water pump bearing was shot and seal leaking. I noticed the four drive belts were tightened to the point they sounded like a bass guitar string when plucked. I put a new water pump in and tightened the belts very loosely--just enough so they did not squeal. Never had to put another water pump in.

This car was on its third carburetor. I had to get Arizona emissions checked on it before I could register it. It flunked with very high hydrocarbons. I took the air cleaner off and looked in the carburetor. Gas was just running into the front two ports. So I cleaned the carburetor with WD-40, installed a carburetor kit, started the engine and watched the gas poor into the front two carburetor ports. Took it apart and measured the float level again. It was good. Called the dealer to ask if they could fix the carburetor... Answer, "Those Quadra-jet carburetors are impossible to get right." Forget the dealer, I lowered the float level almost 3/16 inch and it passed emissions for several years that way, until I sold it.

Poetry of the road? That is what we have you for Tramp. Hmmm... I remember one about the road not taken. Double hmmmm...

Ah ha!

"Oh public road ... You express me better than I express myself."
- Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road"
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178711

[Tramp]

Thanks, lads, for the votes on my column. I put a lot of effort into those, and when no one responds, I wonder of anyone reads them. It took my editor three weeks to get this one in the newspaper. She wanted me to remove the word black before the word preacher in the first sentence.

Wayne, really enjoyed your writeup about the cars. Sent it to Ben who I'm sure will delight in those facts. Can you add your words to the comment section under my column in the Penobscot Bay Pilot newspaper?

One question: would choking off the exhaust stop the engine without issue?

No one knows how to evict Chinamen from Sunset 3rd Rail engines?

Robert, looks to be some nice pipes there. Does anyone still smoke a pipe?

Sarge, I've been thinking a lot about that phrase: Poetry needs a dream. You might of hit something quite squarely with that.

[sarge]

It took my editor... She wanted me to remove the word black before the word preacher in the first sentence.

Oh, my! Really?

There was a time when an Editor cracked the whip of the deadline, encouraged an author to write in voice, inspire a little thought (perhaps a little controversy), and remind the author that words were the authors responsibility to craft either to sooth, enrage, offend, rally, whatever the desired result of the piece was.

Now, sterilisation is considered a journalism major-now-editor's reason for drawing breath; the fear of letting slip the slightest most oblique excuse for those who actively search for offense and live to be offended to feed upon. The result is to remove any inspiration of the reader to a definitive emotional response, which rather defeats the purpose of writing in the first place.

Puts me in mind of a modern day "editor" with whom I crossed swords; she took great exception to my use of the word "niggle". I pulled out of the whole gig over that.

Today's version of what once was a cigar-chomping green-shaded leader would today edit the American Declaration of Independence to read "Perhaps" for fear of offending. Good Lord!