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Amongst the Qat Sifters
Feb. 28th, 2008 06:16 amWilliam F. Buckley has shuffled off this mortal coil. One hopes that his last words were appropriately pithy.
*****
This is interesting. Suddenly it makes much more sense why the RNC seems to prefer a contest against Obama over one with Clinton.
*****
Back around Christmas, I decided, apropos of no reasoning that I can adequately reconstruct, that it would be a good idea to wait until February 25 to write about Christmas. Now it's past that date, and of course, I'm completely uninspired to write about Christmas.
Two gifts do stand out, though - first,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pyesetz gave me some knob and tube insulation. Specifically, a pair of flare-ended tubes, and five or six two-part knobs (ie, the sort that directly support the wire, rather than requiring a supporting splice), which he'd recovered from his Canadan house whilst remodelling.
I'm planning to install it at my mother's, possibly in support of an outside light for the patio. The stuff looks uber-dangerous to modern eyes (which is why I treasure it) but is probably safer than modern two-conductor wiring. Updates will follow as progress is made.
Second, my mother gave me a 1953 pamphlet from the Pure Oil Company intended for first-time visitors to the Five Hundred, with information about routes to take, where to park, what to bring, etc. Such ephemera are still issued today, although now they're in the form of little booklets, put out by the Speedway. This one's poignant, and a little macabre, since on the back there's a big picture of Chet Miller in the Novi 'Pegasus', one of my all-time favourite cars. He was killed in practice that year, in that car, probably about the time these were being first offered in gas stations.
See the thing on the front, that looks like a bumper? That actually concealed an oil sprayer, to oil down the front tires to reduce their grip. The car oversteered horribly, and that's what they did to correct it. That proved unpopular with the other competitors, of course, so 1952 was the only year they had those.
Pure was headquartered here in Columbus, oddly enough. You still see a few of their old stations here and there - they had the ones that looked like little cottages with pointy roofs.
*****
This is interesting. Suddenly it makes much more sense why the RNC seems to prefer a contest against Obama over one with Clinton.
*****
Back around Christmas, I decided, apropos of no reasoning that I can adequately reconstruct, that it would be a good idea to wait until February 25 to write about Christmas. Now it's past that date, and of course, I'm completely uninspired to write about Christmas.
Two gifts do stand out, though - first,
pyesetz gave me some knob and tube insulation. Specifically, a pair of flare-ended tubes, and five or six two-part knobs (ie, the sort that directly support the wire, rather than requiring a supporting splice), which he'd recovered from his Canadan house whilst remodelling. I'm planning to install it at my mother's, possibly in support of an outside light for the patio. The stuff looks uber-dangerous to modern eyes (which is why I treasure it) but is probably safer than modern two-conductor wiring. Updates will follow as progress is made.
Second, my mother gave me a 1953 pamphlet from the Pure Oil Company intended for first-time visitors to the Five Hundred, with information about routes to take, where to park, what to bring, etc. Such ephemera are still issued today, although now they're in the form of little booklets, put out by the Speedway. This one's poignant, and a little macabre, since on the back there's a big picture of Chet Miller in the Novi 'Pegasus', one of my all-time favourite cars. He was killed in practice that year, in that car, probably about the time these were being first offered in gas stations.
See the thing on the front, that looks like a bumper? That actually concealed an oil sprayer, to oil down the front tires to reduce their grip. The car oversteered horribly, and that's what they did to correct it. That proved unpopular with the other competitors, of course, so 1952 was the only year they had those.
Pure was headquartered here in Columbus, oddly enough. You still see a few of their old stations here and there - they had the ones that looked like little cottages with pointy roofs.
