So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Lean'n'mean]

^^^^
Kinda like the folks who move to the country and complain that the dairy down the road smells like a dairy.

Or take legal action against a local farmer because his cockerel wakes them up in the morning.

 

[3fingers]

Or take legal action against a local farmer because his cockerel wakes them up in the morning.

Hence the reason for right to farm laws here in the U.S.
The nuisance lawsuits got completely out of control brought by people moving out into the hinterlands and being outraged by the noise, dust or sights and sounds coming from nearby farms that had been there for generations before the special people graced the yokels with their presence. One memorable complaint involved a lady complaining that her neighbors cattle engaged in sexual behavior where her children could witness it. Others did not like the dust produced during harvest season.
The majority were reasonable and came to some accomodation with their neighbors as far as working hours near their homes, buffer zones for spreading manure, etc.. Others ran to attorneys at the first minor annoyance without ever contacting the source of their discontent.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Only reason I could see getting a large pickup is to live out my Walter Mitty locomotive engineer (train driver) fantasy... and my wife has already said no. So, that's that.

 

[tonyb]

“Regular” cars as we’ve known them — sedans and coupes — make up a dwindling percentage of new vehicles produced. “Crossovers,” smaller, more car-like SUVs, are all the rage.

I can see the appeal here, where it might be 60-plus degrees this afternoon and tomorrow morning we’ll wake to a foot of fresh snow. And the things are compact enough not to be too great a handful in city traffic.

 

[Zombie_61]

Only reason I could see getting a large pickup is to live out my Walter Mitty locomotive engineer (train driver) fantasy... and my wife has already said no. So, that's that.

Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that driving a truck (of any size) and "driving" a train are more dissimilar than they are similar. Of course, you can put an air horn on just about any motor vehicle.

 

[BobHufford]

Of course, you can put an air horn on just about any motor vehicle.

I had air-horns on a dressed out '77 Suzuki 750 back in the day. Sure got the attention of the "cagers" about to pull out in front of me.

 

[GHT]

Only reason I could see getting a large pickup is to live out my Walter Mitty locomotive engineer (train driver) fantasy... and my wife has already said no. So, that's that.

Simple answer, by a classic. (models to be included)

I had air-horns on a dressed out '77 Suzuki 750 back in the day. Sure got the attention of the "cagers" about to pull out in front of me.

The car is called Jessica, so named because my wife, who named her, said she was a redhead, had a fabulous body and a cracking pair of hooters.

 

[tonyb]

We do get a few effete types here, but most of them don't survive the first winter. Although they say Oscar Wilde was a big hit with the lumberjacks when he came to Bangor on a speaking tour in the 1880s, so you can never tell.
...

Is the phrase “summer people” in the locals’ working lexicon?

 

[ChiTownScion]

Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that driving a truck (of any size) and "driving" a train are more dissimilar than they are similar. Of course, you can put an air horn on just about any motor vehicle.

Not just any air horn: an actual K5LA (used on an Amtrak locomotive and can be heard for miles) and an ebell as well.

A friend voiced her disapproval, "I mean, it's all right for a TRAIN... but not in my NEIGHBORHOOD."

 

[Lean'n'mean]

The car is called Jessica, so named because my wife, who named her, said she was a redhead, had a fabulous body and a cracking pair of hooters.
View attachment 151144

I can see the similarities.

 

[vitanola]

I had air-horns on a dressed out '77 Suzuki 750 back in the day. Sure got the attention of the "cagers" about to pull out in front of me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Is the phrase “summer people” in the locals’ working lexicon?

You still hear that occasionally, although "outastatah" is more common around my section of the coast. You also hear "summer complaints" a lot, which is an old term with an interesting origin. "The summer complaint" was 19th Century slang for a a certain extremely violent form of diarrhea, related to a type of cholera, that was very common in the summertime -- so you can see how it got attached to the tourist crowd.

 

[HanauMan]

That is funny, especially since I, when a tourist, feel much the same way about the locals in the places I visit most of the time!

 

[Edward]

The 'Christmas' tree, or fir tree, far from being a 'wretched custom' as you put it, is actually a Christian symbol of the resurrected and immortality of Jesus Christ.

It's used as such now; Christian usage of the evergreen Christmas tree seems most likely to begin with Martin Luther, a good couple of hundred years before Christmas became really popular (Christmas as we know it is a very much more recent invention than most people would assume). There are a whole range of Winter traditions which involved an evergreen tree, holly, ivy and the rest predating the Chritianised Christmas tree, of course; it seems the Christian usage of these evolved out of such earlier pratices, albeit with a different intended meaning behind that symbolism. Much like Yule, Father Christmas (not the same person as Santa Claus, but one of Santa's many pre-Christian ancestors), the Yule Log, and so on.

There’s a TV ad that ran in regular rotation a month or so ago for some 4WD Ford vehicle. The ad shows a youngish woman and a girl-child, about 10 years old, traveling in said Ford and cutting down a small evergreen tree out in some snow-covered mountainous area and strapping the tree to the top of the vehicle. The voiceover says (close paraphrase here), you could have gone to a Christmas tree lot in town, but you have a Ford Somethingorother. And an example to set.

What example is that, exactly? Are we to think that driving a gasoline-burning vehicle into the edge of the wilderness to cut down a young coniferous tree is somehow more ecologically sensitive than buying a tree grown on a tree farm?

I’m not here to defend Christmas trees and all the rituals associated with them. I don’t much care about all that one way or the other. But I lived for a couple years right near Christmas tree farms. I drove past them frequently. They are about the only agricultural activity anywhere near them. That’s largely because the soil and the climate there don’t readily lend themselves to other crops. I find it hard to accept that cutting a tree out on national forest land is in any way more virtuous.

But, you know, they got Fords to sell.

It does rather smack of tree-theft. Not to mention being too cheap to buy a tree, and too dumb to realise you've spent the same money on petrol getting out to steal one and bringing i home...

I love Christmas trees and snow, lights, the whole kitnkaboodle of the holidays.
Halloween's a blast too, enjoy carving a jack o'lantern; and All Souls Day,
lighting a beeswax candle to guide nocturnal spirits.

I enjoyed real Halloween more, before the Americansed version came back to this side of the Atlantic and took over from the original folk traditions. It's corned beef and cabbage all over again.

Well now I wouldn't say that. I spent the better part of an entire day in New York this summer, walking the length and breadth of Harlem, and I never met anything but pleasant, helpful people who went out of their way help the weird white woman with the saddle shoes find her way to Convent Avenue. And then back down again to Lexington when the people I was supposed to meet weren't home.

By the way, Sugar Hill really is more of a small mountain, especially if you're going up it.

Everyone I met in NYC was lovely, with the specific exception of two, very specific groups: security/immigration staff at JFK, and the staff at the theatre where Wicked was playing.

 

[tonyb]

...

It does rather smack of tree-theft. Not to mention being too cheap to buy a tree, and too dumb to realise you've spent the same money on petrol getting out to steal one and bringing i home...

Cutting of Christmas trees on public lands is permitted in certain locales. I’ve never done it myself, but I know folks who have. I sensed it was as much an excuse for a family outing as to save on the cost of a Christmas tree.

The practice is okay by me, in the places where I’ve known it to be done. The forests are so thick in some of those places that you can’t see more than a dozen or so feet into them. So whatever environmental damage it might cause is negligible at worst, considering the plenitude of trees and the relatively few Christmas tree cutters. I just wouldn’t wish people to think that it is somehow more ecologically sensitive than purchasing a farm-grown tree at the lot in town.

What most annoyed me about the Ford ad was the clear suggestion that is more virtuous to cut one’s own tree out in the wilds. Don’t throw out your shoulder patting yourself on the back, lady.

 

[Edward]

Cutting of Christmas trees on public lands is permitted in certain locales. I’ve never done it myself, but I know folks who have. I sensed it was as much an excuse for a family outing as to save on the cost of a Christmas tree.

The practice is okay by me, in the places where I’ve known it to be done. The forests are so thick in some of those places that you can’t see more than a dozen or so feet into them. So whatever environmental damage it might cause is negligible at worst, considering the plenitude of trees and the relatively few Christmas tree cutters. I just wouldn’t wish people to think that it is somehow more ecologically sensitive than purchasing a farm-grown tree at the lot in town.

What most annoyed me about the Ford ad was the clear suggestion that is more virtuous to cut one’s own tree out in the wilds. Don’t throw out your shoulder patting yourself on the back, lady.

Interesting... I am, of course, informed largely by having grown up and always lived on islands where very little natural forest exists, as opposed to managed (and largely artificial) woods.

 

[tonyb]

Interesting... I am, of course, informed largely by having grown up and always lived on islands where very little natural forest exists, as opposed to managed (and largely artificial) woods.

It would become a real problem if everyone who bought farm-grown Christmas trees decided to go out into the forest and cut a “wild” one instead. But, Ford television ads notwithstanding, I can’t envision that happening.

“Old growth” forests are largely depleted now, much to the chagrin of many. Out in the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state the HUGE cedars are mostly gone. Still, it’s a temperate rain forest, with conditions all but ideal for several varieties of evergreens. If all the humans left for a couple-three or four years, most signs of their ever having been there would be obliterated by new vegetation.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When I was a kid we used to just go a mile or so out of town and cut something off the side of the road. Scraggly, malformed, covered in bugs and lichens, and often a cat spruce. But it was free.

All Christmas trees I remember from those days were ridiculous-looking things -- it was what a Christmas tree looked like. The craze for manicured, perfectly-shaped trees didn't hit here until the '80s, around the time my mother said the hell with it, and got an artificial one. And yet she managed to go out and find a weird-looking malformed artificial tree.

 

[GHT]

All Christmas trees I remember from those days were ridiculous-looking things -- it was what a Christmas tree looked like. The craze for manicured, perfectly-shaped trees didn't hit here until the '80s, around the time my mother said the hell with it, and got an artificial one. And yet she managed to go out and find a weird-looking malformed artificial tree.

Prehistoric was it?

 

[LizzieMaine]

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