Tis A Season

Here it is, Christmas again.
So Season's Greetings.
Here is, would you believe it, a SEPTA subway, decked out- you can ride on it up and down Broad Street but everyone uses the other cars.....

 

 

 

And here are a bunch of guys in South Philadelphia, who, all on their own, head out to the Italian Market on the last Sunday before Christmas singing carols until inebriation begins to mangle too many verses- they are about mid way through the journey at this point -

 

 

 



Just a few vignettes for the season.
What's this yellow stuff anyway?

BIG CITY TRANSIT

Recently I had the pleasure of  a "behind the scenes" tour by SEPTA (that's South Eastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, they run busses, subways, els, trolleys and trains in these parts). Hauling hundreds of thousands of people all over the place is an enormously complex task. SEPTA is the sixth largest transit organization in the country and one of the best. Last year they won a bus rodeo for crying out loud.
So here is where they keep an eye on stuff going on....this is just one subway line-

 

 

 

They also have folks watching cameras all over the place to help catch ne'er do wells throughout the five county area. Not to mention glimpsing at the weird folk that on occasion traverse some of our public transit.

Like to tinker with stuff in the garage? Check out where they take care of subway cars-

 

 

 

 



And you can walk underneath these cars in a long trench. Very cool.

 

Here is what connects the subway to the third rail. Get between this and the third rail and there is nothing left but....

 

 

 shoelace nibs and a belt buckle, along with passengers angry at "jumpers".

Safe travels!!

 



REAL HOLIDAY SPIRIT

So we all know folks go to sometimes absurd lengths to grow giant pumpkins. In fact there is quite a lot of science, dedication and work involved. Many of us would be tempted to think that this is a silly waste of time. Those have not been to Damariscotta up in Maine in October.
Up in Damariscotta they know that this is what to do with giant pumpkins-

 



Or this -

 

 

These and many others like it bedeck the main street of this bucolic Maine coast town, where they used to build ships and nowadays do tourists and wonderful pumpkins. When in Maine, don't miss it!



Outstanding Signage

We often pass by glorious and informative gems as we go about our business. But it sometimes pays to keep one's eyes peeled. For example, here in the Quaker City, we have the unique institutions shown here-



 





On the left is a place that may be most helpful to many of our residents who are jerks. Their question "Where should I go?' has an easy answer in our town - just go to the JERK CENTER. What could be easier?
Kenny's is an outstanding establishment, offering "cigarette" and its the only place on the planet where one can obtain a "PACKED ICE CUBE". No lie, you can't get this item anywhere else!

At our beautiful 30th Street Station, there is a special place where one can make free calls!

 

Since I lack the photographic acumen of my grand nephew in Maine, I must explain that the free calls are available from a not pay phone, removed from this booth in order to make way for a new free call system.

 

So people keep your eyes peeled!

Crap Free (not free crap)

To the tune of "Born Free", the one about the lion-

Crap free, as all of the junk goes
More free as the pile grows
Crap free as I empty our house

This is about the wondrous joy brought about by getting rid of a lifetime (or even more than one life time) of accumulated stuff. Actually, its mostly crap, since only my things are "stuff" and others' is "crap".

 

Since I have been in the old manse for 35 or so years, an extraordinary amount of crap has accumulated, mostly not of my doing. Now its just Connie and me here so of late an unending stream of crap and some stuff is flowing out. Pictures of long dead family nobody remembers, old 45 rpm records, unopened boxes of games, bags of bags, my old man's hospital bed (had to be dismantled), the stupid black recliner and the ugly chaise lounge are but highlights of the exodus underway. Only the departing books give me some sadness, but nobody wants most of them so out they flow.

 

 

Where does the crap go? Metallic crap goes to the curb where its promptly picked up by our loyal bands of scrappers. Some goes out with regular trash on Thursdays. And some I haul to a place sacred to me, one our fair city's four municipal dumps open to the public. Few things in life give me as much joy as tossing crap into the maw of the trash truck and watching it get crushed to oblivion.

Whatever enters there will never haunt me again, its gone forever.

The dump also has special places for scrap - it contains a chair and stupid stool nobody ever sat on, gone now from my life -

There is also a place for electronic crap, all those pieces of "must have" glowing screen junk that get wrapped up and shipped to some godforsaken place where they get recycled into new electronic crap-

The guys operating the dump are a pretty jovial lot, if a tad over weight, and if they have to change trucks there are always plenty of dumpsters at hand. They are not quite as satisfying since they don't crush the crap, but departure from my life is complete nonetheless. And, just to make the dump run a total joy, there is a fine Italian bakery just up the road. Makes for a fine morning.

A Real Crappy Doglet

There are all too many little dogs, or doglets, around theses days. They are not really dogs, more like defective cats. And it seems they are all spoiled rotten and generally nasty.
Here we see a guy who was trying to walk a doglet, which sat down every two yards and would not budge until given a treat.

This guy could easily hurled this useless creature down the sewer inlet, or simply hurled it across the street. Or he could have taken off the leash and left the mutt there to be rescued by some youthful pretty young thing. But no, he just fed the mobile garbage and very slowly progressed to his abode.
The other day I happened to look in the paper ads about pets. Hard to believe that people pay hundreds of dollars to own living excrement. They probably also have black appliances and granite counter tops....

Service with a Smile

After a great deal of work, the old dishwasher on the third floor of the great manse in Germantown was dismantled and taken out. It had served well for some time, but awhile back it just plain gave out. A dishwasher is hard for one person to lug down three flights of stairs until the door and motor are removed; then its a piece of cake.
Here in our part of the Quaker city we enjoy the free service of guys who take any sort of metal from the curb to recycling places, known formally as scrap yards. Those individuals are scrappers, and the do much more valuable work than rappers.
So here is the demised dishwasher-

 

 

And here is the scrapper, who took it away within sixty seconds of its arrival on the curb - you could not get better service anywhere on the planet, and its FREE!!