Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[HudsonHawk]

Looking it up just now, I could be on a bus to LA tonight for $255 one way. That's not too bad an increase over thirty-three years.

You could be on a plane from Boston to LA in the morning for $368, and be there before lunchtime. Not sure how long it would take you to get to Boston, however.

 

[tonyb]

... I shared my seat with young ladies both ways, one who was working her way through college (or so she told me... and I'm gullible enough to fall for it) by stripping in clubs up in Hamilton Ontario. I brought a couple bottles of cold champagne and a couple of flute glasses for such an occasion. As I recall we discussed art, history, and film. ...

I'm acquainted with a couple of young (youngish, in one case) women who are members of burlesque troupes. They don't get quite all the way down to their birthday suits, but they may as well. A couple of square inches of cover there, there, and there is the extent of their attire. They do this for recreation. It's somewhat akin to roller derby in that it's quite campy and the participants get a sense of female empowerment.

Seems that I'm reading more and more about the increasing acceptability of what is now called "sex work." Attractive young women with serious educational and career ambitions have exclusive clientele, mostly men in professional occupations, who "help pay the bills." I've read quotes from such women saying, effectively, that they see their choices as having "arrangements" with people who pay them a sizable amount of tax-free scratch for a few hours of their time and attention, or to work a full week waiting tables. Gotta have time to write that thesis, you know.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I'm acquainted with a couple of young (youngish, in one case) women who are members of burlesque troupes. They don't get quite all the way down to their birthday suits, but they may as well. A couple of square inches of cover there, there, and there is the extent of their attire. They do this for recreation. It's somewhat akin to roller derby in that it's quite campy and the participants get a sense of female empowerment.

Seems that I'm reading more and more about the increasing acceptability of what is now called "sex work." Attractive young women with serious educational and career ambitions have exclusive clientele, mostly men in professional occupations, who "help pay the bills." I've read quotes from such women saying, effectively, that they see their choices as having "arrangements" with people who pay them a sizable amount of tax-free scratch for a few hours of their time and attention, or to work a full week waiting tables. Gotta have time to write that thesis, you know.

I've known numerous women who worked their way through college as strippers. Earning $1,000-1,500/night a couple of times a week was preferable to earning $60-80/night waiting tables. I don't know if they felt empowered at all, but none of them complained about the money.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I've known numerous women who worked their way through college as strippers. Earning $1,000-1,500/night a couple of times a week was preferable to earning $60-80/night waiting tables. I don't know if they felt empowered at all, but none of them complained about the money.

Unless this gal was an unapologetic skinflint I doubt that she was making that kind of money, even adjusting for inflation from 26 years ago.

Amtrak.

Coach.

Flying wasn't all that more expensive, and if she was that flush with cash on the train I think that she'd have tried the old Amish trick: upgrade to a sleeping car accommodation en route for half the price of the accommodation. Dead of winter, non- holiday travel, there would have been space available. Heck, if I had known how to squirrel away money the way I do now, I'd have had the cash for an upgrade.

 

[tonyb]

I've known numerous women who worked their way through college as strippers. Earning $1,000-1,500/night a couple of times a week was preferable to earning $60-80/night waiting tables. I don't know if they felt empowered at all, but none of them complained about the money.

Hell, back in my stripping days I made more than that on a bad night.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Hell, back in my stripping days I made more than that on a bad night.

It's all about supply and demand. There's only one of you to go around.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Looking it up just now, I could be on a bus to LA tonight for $255 one way. That's not too bad an increase over thirty-three years.

In Euro, that would be absolutely fair! I would take a visit to the Ennis-House and the famous 2nd-street tunnel.

 

[Zombie_61]

Unless this gal was an unapologetic skinflint I doubt that she was making that kind of money, even adjusting for inflation from 26 years ago...

Maybe, maybe not. My mom worked as a cocktail/cigarette girl on a gambling boat when she was still "underage" (as she described it), and would often go home with $1,000 or more in tips. And that was sometime in the early-1930s.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Unpaved streetcar tracks in the streets. Occasionally you'll find a patch or two under an old railroad viaduct where paving over is next to impossible, but it's becoming rare.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our trolley tracks got pulled up for scrap during the war, but the cobblestone rail bed is still just under the surface of the pavement, and often makes a reappearance after a really bad winter.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Our trolley tracks got pulled up for scrap during the war, but the cobblestone rail bed is still just under the surface of the pavement, and often makes a reappearance after a really bad winter.

You had a streetcar in your little town? Or was it part of a larger interurban system?

 

[LizzieMaine]

It ran from Thomaston to Camden, a stretch of about 12 miles, from the 1880s until 1929, when the highway/auto industry interests got it shut down. At its peak, using transfers from line to line, it was possible to ride trolleys all the way from Camden to Boston. You better bring a lot of newspapers to read along the way.

The last surviving element of this trolley system, by the way, is still in business and still running on sections of the Green Line of the MBTA in Boston.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The history of the electric interurban is a fascinating one. At one time- save for a gap of about 20 miles- it was possible to travel from New York to Chicago on the electric cars. Of course, the New York Central, Erie, Pennsylvania, and the Nickel Plate all offered through sleeper car service on one train, so few actually pursued this option.

Among their biggest antagonists were the steam railroads. At the turn of the 20th Century the steam railroads owned quite a few state legislatures lock, stock, and barrel (one reason that we went to popularly electing our US senators) and they could impose often absurd restrictions upon the electric interurbans: in Pennsylvania, for example, they mandated an "electric gauge" of 5' 2 1/2" (as opposed to standard railroad gauge of 4' 8 1/2") to prevent the interurban electric roads from "stealing" carload freight business. The roads that could handle interchange freight had a better chance of surviving, so you can see where this lead.

Most of the roads were poorly capitalized and tracks were laid between towns next to existing roads: the famous "Toonerville Trolley" comic was not that much of an exaggeration in describing the low budget engineering. On the other hand there were some roads (such as the Chicago, Aurora and Elgin) that were originally built with the heavy rail and ballasting of steam road standards. Because of the undercapitalization, many of the roads never got beyond the paper only stage: others were built and disappeared within ten years, and some never earned overhead wire at all. Service on the latter was usually provided by a gas electric car. The industry was a gold mine for speculators and flim flam men.

By the time of the First World War most interurbans were gone. As noted: better roads and the Model T made them obsolete. There was heavy reinvestment in the 1920's in the Midwest, largely through men like Samuel Insull. He controlled the electric utilities that sold the power as well as many local city streetcar lines, such as the Chicago Surface Lines- as well as the Chicago Rapid Transit Company system. The manure hit his ventilator, so to speak, when the market crashed in '29. More systems died in the 1930's but a few lasted through the Second World War. The Chicago, South Shore, and South Bend Railroad is the last of 'em.. although it's debatable whether it's a "true interurban" or a "heavy electric" road.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yeah, Insull was a real prize package, having sold a boatload of worthless securities to the gullible public. He was also, law enforcement authorities discovered, a very unconvincing transvestite.

 

[ChiTownScion]

One of my great uncles lost his savings because they had his money tied up in Insull stock. I think that my grandmother felt that the guy had it coming: he tended to put on a few more airs than she tolerated. But he wasn't the only one: hundreds of thousands went broke when his stock collapsed.

The common yarn is that, after being acquitted in a Federal fraud trial that Samuel Insull "died penniless in a Paris subway." Actually, at the time he was enjoying a pension of about $21,000 a year: a respectable sum in 1938.

His mansion still stands, south of the village where I now live. It's been named for a subsequent owner. A much desired wedding banquet venue. The bank in the village was started by him as well: he lost that with everything else in 1929. He also lined up the original medical staff for the local hospital, long before it got bought out by a corporate medical outfit. I'm sure that many wanted him tarred and feathers in the 30's, but his legacies- good and bad- are still around.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

The history of the electric interurban is a fascinating one. At one time- save for a gap of about 20 miles- it was possible to travel from New York to Chicago on the electric cars. Of course, the New York Central, Erie, Pennsylvania, and the Nickel Plate all offered through sleeper car service on one train, so few actually pursued this option.

Among their biggest antagonists were the steam railroads. At the turn of the 20th Century the steam railroads owned quite a few state legislatures lock, stock, and barrel (one reason that we went to popularly electing our US senators) and they could impose often absurd restrictions upon the electric interurbans: in Pennsylvania, for example, they mandated an "electric gauge" of 5' 2 1/2" (as opposed to standard railroad gauge of 4' 8 1/2") to prevent the interurban electric roads from "stealing" carload freight business. The roads that could handle interchange freight had a better chance of surviving, so you can see where this lead.

Most of the roads were poorly capitalized and tracks were laid between towns next to existing roads: the famous "Toonerville Trolley" comic was not that much of an exaggeration in describing the low budget engineering. On the other hand there were some roads (such as the Chicago, Aurora and Elgin) that were originally built with the heavy rail and ballasting of steam road standards. Because of the undercapitalization, many of the roads never got beyond the paper only stage: others were built and disappeared within ten years, and some never earned overhead wire at all. Service on the latter was usually provided by a gas electric car. The industry was a gold mine for speculators and flim flam men.

By the time of the First World War most interurbans were gone. As noted: better roads and the Model T made them obsolete. There was heavy reinvestment in the 1920's in the Midwest, largely through men like Samuel Insull. He controlled the electric utilities that sold the power as well as many local city streetcar lines, such as the Chicago Surface Lines- as well as the Chicago Rapid Transit Company system. The manure hit his ventilator, so to speak, when the market crashed in '29. More systems died in the 1930's but a few lasted through the Second World War. The Chicago, South Shore, and South Bend Railroad is the last of 'em.. although it's debatable whether it's a "true interurban" or a "heavy electric" road.

I use the South Shore Everytime I go into downtown Chicago as it is ever so much easier than driving 60 miles, fighting traffic and hoping to find a parking spot.

 

[2jakes]

Main street downtown consists of bricks.
Traffic signal light at the corner is very comfortable to view when I drive my ’46 truck.
One thing that is disappearing are the public weighing scale/fortune machines on the sidewalks.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I use the South Shore Everytime I go into downtown Chicago as it is ever so much easier than driving 60 miles, fighting traffic and hoping to find a parking spot.

East of Michigan City it takes on a real interurban flavor: flying across the rural landscape on a single track main under wire, after trundling through the streets of Mich City streetcar- style. It was an awesome ride when they still had the old Pullman Company cars doing the work.

 

[Trenchfriend]

The bus itself was very comfortable, but as ChiTown says the passengers were a very motley lot, and the bus stations where you stopped along the way to eat were in the shabbiest parts of town and were usually dingy, dirty and not particularly appetizing places to get food. Most of them either incorporated a Burger King -- which was considered the lowest of low-end fast food in 1983 -- or Automat-type vending machines where you could get cold sandwiches in those wedge-shaped plastic containers. The only sit-down dining, as in counter-and-stool sit-down, was at the station in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where I got a plate of fried chicken that I wolfed down, and then violenty separated from about fifty miles down the highway.

Last evening, I got a nice idea and didn't forget it over night!:

If I will ever do such a nice (priceworth) bus-trip in my life, I will grab one of my normally unused, nice little handy plastic kitchen lock-boxes, fill it with oatflakes and a teaspoon.
I think, that would be a great (and healthy) basic "march ration" for a couple of days and you will going secure with that!

 

[Bruce Wayne]

East of Michigan City it takes on a real interurban flavor: flying across the rural landscape on a single track main under wire, after trundling through the streets of Mich City streetcar- style. It was an awesome ride when they still had the old Pullman Company cars doing the work.

Sounds nice. I've never gone further east then Dune Park as I live 15 minutes away as the crow flies from that station. However I have looked at the route the train takes on Google Earth & I would like to try it sometime. I would just need to have someone pick me up at the end of the line.