The California Files

The Passing of a Warrior

Friday, March 9, a man I’ve known for 45 years died. His name was Donald J. Noe. He was the grandfather of my two sons. But he was much more than that.

Don flew B-17 bombers, Flying Fortresses, over Germany during the war. At age 19, he was commander of one of those incredible airplanes, flying out of an airbase at Great Ashfield, England.

To see the story of one of the planes he flew, go here, if you want – but below the link is the important part:

http://www.b17warhorse.fws1.com/whats_new.html

Please note this footnote, which will tell you a bit about Don:

 “On July 8, 1944 - Lt. Donald J. Noe flew his first combat mission as co-pilot on the crew of the “War Horse.”

“It was on this mission - the 15th for the crew of the “War Horse” - when Lt. W. W. Dutt was hit by flak. The “War Horse” was severely damaged and fell from formation - more than 10,000 feet - before the pilot and co-pilot gained control to pull out of the dive and fly the crippled bomber back to Great Ashfield on three engines.

“On August 6, 1944 - Lt. Noe's bomber was damaged on a mission to Berlin. With dead and wounded on board, utilizing the four engines to maintain elevation and direction, he flew his B-17 back to Great Ashfield without use of rudder and elevator control. All control cables to the tail had been cut by a ME-109 that all but sliced the bomber in half behind the radio room in the waist area.

“At Great Ashfield, the dead and wounded were thrown out using ‘Dead-Man’ cords to open parachutes - then after heading the bomber out to the English Channel, Lt. Noe bailed out.

“It was later learned the B-17 turned and crashed into a house in England. The bomber and house were destroyed but no one was hurt on the ground. The lady of the house happened to be in church that day.”

Also this, from another link, which would seem to provide a bit of detail about the third airplane of Don’s that was shot up:

http://www.100thbg.com/mainpages/crews/crews4/gilbert.htm

Excerpt:
“Hi Sam, after receiving your telephone call and also calling both Jan Riddling and David Julian (Dad flew on Lt Gilbert Crew as NAV) I think we have this figured out. Your dad was originally assigned to the 385th Bomb Group (H) based at Great Ashfield in England. On August 6, 1944, while flying in AC 337528 named “Lady Luck,” they were hit by flak.

“With a damaged aircraft, the pilot, Lt. Donald J. Noe, was able to nurse the plane back to England and crash-land the plane at [Thelnetham]. Records say the crew returned to duty and the B-17 was salvaged.”

After flying his missions and dropping tons of high explosives on Germany, Don quietly managing a Ford dealership in Los Angeles.

At one point he returned to England with a group of former airmen, his brothers in arms. He combed through the field where the house that his plane destroyed once had stood and found shell casings, metal fragments, engine parts and much more.

He told me, in one of a series of letters that he wrote to me, that he’d spent the intervening years convinced that the crash had killed the house’s occupants. He was hugely relieved to learn that this was not the case – he had harbored a tremendous sense of guilt over this.

In all, Don had three B-17s shot out from under him. Rarely did he talk about his experiences - except occasionally after a couple of Christmas Eve cocktails. It’s been a very long time ago, with much very dirty water under the bridge, but I seem to remember that Seagram’s 7 Crown whiskey was the tipple of choice. That, and Miller High Life beer, which he taught me to drink.

He would take down the box containing his flight jacket, complete with nose art on the back, and a D-ring from his parachute rip cord – the one he pulled to bail out over the English Channel, I seem to remember - and show the contents to family members. Then he’d put everything carefully away. We might not see it again for years.

Because of distance and much more, I’ve not seen Don in years. Because of distance and much more, I will be unable to attend his services, no matter how much I might like to. I feel badly about that, but some things just cannot be helped.

But I will be thinking of him as he is laid to rest. And I will salute him, in my own way, with a shot of Seagram’s 7 Crown. He deserves that, and much more.

All in all, Don Noe was a hell of a man, a member in good standing of the Greatest Generation. May he rest in peace.

-JFT

 

Lamenting the Electric Car's Demise

 Recently I was forwarded a tome lamenting the passing of electric cars from GM and Toyota.

 It seemed to suggest that this was the result of some evil corporate conspiracy. Or something.

That’s balderdash.

First and most important, neither corporation – and I sure as hell am not going to defend any corporation – planned for GM’s EV1 or Toyota’s RAV4 EV to be a long-term deal. They were experimental programs involving experimental vehicles with very limited life spans. When they wore out, and when the programs ended, they were done.

Just as well. The EV1 relied on lead-acid batteries. These are short-term batteries. You gots to replace them sooner or later. Probably sooner. Expensive. Same deal with the RAV4 EV. It used nickel-metal hydride batteries. Also not a lot of life, but huge replacement expense. These days, replacing them costs more than the base RAV4 EV is worth –close to $5,000. And if you do replace them, what do you do with the old batteries? This problem of battery recycling is extremely problematic, which is also the problem with current hybrids like the Prius, and with all other electric cars, no matter how advanced their battery packs.

Furthermore, the EV1 and the RAV4 EV had very limited ranges. You got beyond that range, you needed a tow truck, onaccounta back in the ‘90s and early 2000s when these programs were active, there were no charging stations. Zero, zip, nada, bupkis. Well, maybe a few, eventually. But far fewer, and far farther apart, than we have now. And even now it’s not like there’s a charging station on every corner.

If there was a conspiracy by the big companies to kill electric cars, how can it be that electric cars do in fact exist, built by those same corporations that supposedly killed them off? GM builds the Volt, Toyota has electric Priuses in fleet use prior to producing them for larger use, and Nissan offers the Leaf. If there was a conspiracy, none of these ever would have seen the light of day.

But wait, let us back up: Electric cars in the first place? Phooey!

Think electricity is generated without penalty, out there in the ether? It isn’t, you know. With the exception of the Pacific Northwest, which gets a good bit of its juice from the Bonneville Dam generation facility, that thing that has screwed up the salmon runs good and proper, most of our electricity is generated by coal-fired generating plants. In spite of what that industry says, there is no such thing as clean coal. Think heavy pollution.

Don’t believe me? Drive to the Grand Canyon. Notice the layer of haze that lies across that entire section of Arizona. It’s smoke from the coal-fired generation plants that dot the landscape there. Coal definitely is not our friend.

So no, electric cars are not the hot tip.

Also, while we’re at it, phooey to the so-called “water-powered” car. Man, we’re a gullible bunch. Think about it: We don't have enough water for drinking and crops in many parts of the country. Why would we want to fuel transportation with it, even if we could?

Then there’s the compressed-air car, which actually works. But that still takes electricity to supply the compressed air upon which it runs, and electricity is not our friend. We like it for keeping our refrigerators running onaccounta that keeps the beer cold and the pizzas frozen. But we don’t like it for this use.

Ultimately, what is? In my view, at least, hydrogen probably is the hot tip – BMW and GM both could produce cars today to use this fuel. So could M-Bz. They are absolutely pollution-free, and hydrogen is the most abundant substance on planet Earth. The problem is the lack of a hydrogen infrastructure. Can’t just pull into the corner station and fill ‘er up. And given the investment involved, such an infrastructure isn’t going to get built anytime soon.

So, where does that leave us?

It leaves us with the high mpg requirements and the internal combustion engine we know and love. Ultimately, we as a nation will use much less fuel because of them, and that’s a good thing, because the more gas we buy, the more money we send the Saudis and others, and the more of that money finds its way into the hands of people who hate us and want to use it to destroy us.

These high mpg requirements are good, and they’re why you won’t be seeing many more new generations of V8 and V6 engines. There’re why it’s not hard these days to find cars that routinely will deliver 30 mpg on the highway.

To meet those requirements, think in terms of smaller cars with smaller engines. The Europeans have lived like this for decades. No reason we can’t live without Suburbans, huge pickups, enormous sedans. We may want ‘em, but we sure as hell don’t need ‘em.

So, smaller cars. Or, maybe not-so-small. The new BMW 5 Series, quite a large and comfortable car, uses a two-liter (that’s just 122 cubic inches, friends) four-cylinder turbocharged engine. It is rated at 34 mpg in the highway cycle, and makes as much horsepower and torque as last year’s three-liter six-cylinder engine. So this can be done, and is being done. All we have to do is wrap our heads around this notion.

A second option involves modern diesel engines. With these, you get the best of most worlds – great economy, wonderful power and torque, excellent fuel economy -- and the new tech being used allows them to run very cleanly. Diesel fuel tends to be a few cents more expensive than gas, but the mileage is so much better it’s basically a wash. A pal with a diesel VW station wagon gets 45 mpg. Routinely. Why would you not want that?

A third option, if a bit more extreme, is to not buy a new car at all. Keep the one have for as long as you can, drive it, fix it when you need to, keep it in top running condition. Buying a new car is very expensive, and manufacturing a new car is a very high-pollution enterprise – even the cleanest new car, like a Prius, pollutes terribly during the manufacturing phase. There are lots of environmental penalties when you’re making steel and plastic, aluminum and glass – not just scratching those materials out of the ground, but also generating the electricity to make things from the base substances.

Or, this: If you absolutely must have an electric car, buy a Volt. These things are cool, and the dealers are struggling with them, thanks to a recent scare about “car fires.” The feds have inspected this and found there to be no problem. But buyers have stampeded away from Volts like a bunch of chickens frightened by a coyote. Now’s a good time to get a good deal on one. They get about a zillion miles per gallon, and drive quite nicely, from what I’m told, even if they also have the battery recycling problem.

As bad luck would have it, we’re coming up on needing a new car. What to buy, what to buy! Undecided yet. But whatever it is, it’s going to get killer miles per gallon. Gas will not get any cheaper. And we’d much rather spend money on good wine and travel. We sure as hell don’t want to give money to the oil companies.

So the next time someone sings the praises of the electric vehicle, remember the message of this post: Phooey! There are much better ways.

 -JFT

 

The New Year

Are we all ready for 2012?

Laura and I are, we think.

Coming off the best holiday season we’ve spent together in years, we’re eager to return to the routine of work. She’s just left for her office, on this first work day of the new year, and I’ll head out in just a bit.

No way to know, of course, where the year will take us. When the markets opened this morning, the Dow was up by something like 250 points. Now, that’s optimism. But maybe it’ll be a good year. We’re due for one, God knows.

Can only hope that the crazies in Iran don’t start a conflagration over sanctions and oil. Or that none of the countries in the eurozone default on their debts. If either of those things happen, all bets are off.

My hopes? That we all stay healthy, that the cats stay well, that work remains stable, and that we’re able to take some time off to do something interesting and relaxing, while making a few photographs that satisfy us.

Oh – and that my old heap of a car gets through its smog test next month.

We shall see.

-JFT

New Year's Summer Day

What's going on here? It's Jan. 1. The dead of winter. But the thermometer in our back garden indicates that it's 84 degrees at 2:30 this afternoon. Tomorrow is scheduled for more of the same.

I hate this! The Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl, broadcast from a city that is very nearby, will be viewed by millions of couch potatoes, a great many of them stuck in God-forsaken places like the Midwest, the East, and Washington State. I'm talkin' rain, cold, snow all the time.

They see this weather, the bastards all move here. No wonder the state has gone to hell in a handbasket.

But today I did my duty in the hope of much crappier weather.

I washed my car. That almost always brings on a downpour. We can only hope.

- JFT

Who Are All These People and Why Are They In Our Way?

We drove up to the family ranch for Christmas, as usual. The trip up was relatively painless, probably because we traveled on Christmas day. Ah, but the trip home was a different story.

Usually, the 315 miles from ranch to home takes us four hours, 15 minutes: set the cruise control for 75 mph – that’s a safe five-over, mind you – and let the miles roll past. This time the trip took us a little more than six hours.

The ranch is 10, maybe 15 miles east of Interstate 5. As soon as we left the local ranch roads and hit I-5, we encountered mile upon mile of stop-and-go Boxing Day traffic - an endless and flow of cars as thick as something flowing from a faucet. Traffic would come to a complete stop, and it would stay stopped. Then it would move slowly for awhile. Then stop again. Faucet on, faucet off.

We figured there must be one hell of a wreck somewhere up on front of us. Carnage. Mayhem.

But no. It was just an excess of vehicles, far more than the freeway could handle.

It was worse than traffic here in Lost Angeles. It took us about 90 minutes to reach a spot called Santa Nella, which we usually reach in about 30 minutes.

So just south of Santa Nella we jumped off of I-5 and took route 152 east to Highway 99. This was quite busy, but at least it flowed well.

 Traffic got heavy again when 99 and 5 joined, just north of the Grapevine, and got really heavy through Valencia and over the Newhall Pass. We were able to dodge around some of this by using the truck lanes.

Finally we were home. And damned glad to be there. The cats, however, were indifferent, reminding me of my eldest son.

 I think we’ll think twice before we again try to drive anywhere on any holiday weekend.

 -JFT

Excellence Gone

Photography and music. Two of my favorite things. But it seems that the technology that each use these days is marching backwards, in terms of quality of reproduction. And so are the expectations of most folks. In fact, many folks seem to be willing to accept standards that are – well, lower than the belly of a snake that’s crawling along the bottom of a ditch. Low.

Photography, for instance: We’re told that point-and-shoot cameras now are nearly obsolete. That’s because every cell phone now has a built-in camera and that’s what people are using. Oh, you think a cell phone is capable of the same kind of photographic quality that even the rankest point-and-shoot is? I. Think. Not.

Some folks still do make prints of the photos they shoot, but most apparently are interesting in sending photos over the Web. I like prints. But when I shopped for a new printer not long ago, I had to work hard to find what I want – most don’t provide the kind of sharpness I require. This certainly is true of hobbyist printers, and it also seems to be true of at least the lower levels of the semi-pro large-format printers. And don’t get me started on those printers that will print directly from your phone, with its crappy little plastic lens – oh, and when was the last time you cleaned that lens?.

I find this curious: Why would you not want your images just as crisp and tack-sharp as possible? And as big?

People these days seem to insist on HD television, so they seem to know what a great image looks like. But they don’t insist on great images when it comes to their own photography. This baffles me.

The concept of high fidelity also seems to be obsolete. When was the last time you saw a store that specialized in high-fidelity reproduction equipment? Sure, you still see speakers and things, but these days they’re oriented toward surround-sound systems for video.

Rather than listening to music over a stereo system that offers actual, you know, high fidelity, people listen over iPods. Or maybe they dock their iPods in chintzy little devices that channel the iPod’s contents through tiny speakers.

Oh, you think your iPod qualities as hi-fi? I. Think. Not. And if you’re downloading music, because of the extreme sampling rate used, you’re getting low-fi material that’s on a par, in terms of reproduction quality, with the old 78-rpm records. And maybe not that good.

For sure, I take pictures with the camera in my phone. And I listen over an iPod (though the music is all transferred direct from CDs, so actually is quite detailed). But when I’m serious about photos and music, I used a real camera, a real printer that will produce killer, tack-sharp 8 x 10s. And when I want serious music, I crank up a stereo system – one of several in the house – that will provide a near-concert-hall experience.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

Or maybe I’m just showing my age and general crankiness.

-JFT

 

Greece and the Coming Storm

So I boot up my computer this morning, check a news site, and this is what I find:

“NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Monday as positive U.S. economic data helped to offset fears Greece may require increased euro zone financial assistance after news it will exceed its deficit targets.”

I just yesterday had a discussion about this with my son Matt, with whom I had lunch at our favorite Mexican joint.

I don’t really know if Greece will go into default on the massive loans it has taken from European banks. But according to what I read, it seems likely. And if it does go into default, those banks will fail. And if those banks fail, our banks probably will fail.

Result: At the very least, a very deep recession, much worse than we’re now experiencing. And at the very worst, a world-wide depression that will match – and maybe exceed – in intensity the Great Depression.

Really cheery stuff, right? So here’s my action plan:

If all this happens, it’s time to move to a single-wide out in the Nevada desert, somewhere east of Elko, where the livin’ is cheap.

Recreation? Set up an awning by the door, put lawn chair and a beer cooler under that awning. Sit in the lawn chair, prop my cowboy-booted feet up on the beer cooler, adjust my 45-year-old Eddy Bros. cowboy hat, the one that still sports the horsehair hatband that my dad gave me, on my head. Drink a can of beer. Toss the can as far as I can. Spend an hour or so shooting at it with a .22. Then repeat the process. Beer is cheap, .22 ammo is cheap. What’s to worry about?

Might be the only thing that keeps anyone sane if worse comes to worst.

-JFT

Appliance Repair? Not in This Lifetime, Apparently.

Have you had to deal with an appliance repair service recently? If so, I hope your experience was more pleasant than mine.

Here’s the deal. About two years ago, our trusty old Maytag dishwasher died. We replaced it with a gleaming new Bosch unit. A gorgeous thing. Quiet. Very expensive. Damned thing doesn’t come close to doing as good a job on the dishes as that noisy and reliable old Maytag did.

Now that gorgeous, quiet and expensive Bosch has decided not to drain the wash water. And the pump is buzzing, so I guess it’s not really so quiet any more.

I called the service department at Pacific Sales, a well-regarded appliance store in these parts.

The message when I called said that someone would be with me shortly, the wait would be less than 10 minutes. But 21 minutes later I was still on hold, listening to the same endless and inane rock song played by someone who doesn’t know his way around a Telecaster very well. That’s when I accidentally bumped the “End call” button on my phone, wasting all the time I’d put in on hold.

Next I tried Sears. I hate to use them because that name to me is the signifier is all that’s cheap and inept, almost as bad as Walmart. Last time I had them out for a service call, the guy who came out to see about the igniter on one of the stove’s burners so completely screwed up the burner that he had to return later with new parts. Uh, that is, he returned 10 days later when the new parts required, which I didn’t need before he laid his mitts on the stove, arrived from some parts depot in hell.

Oh, and did I mention he spoke only Russian and smelled like a goat that had been feasting on garlic?

Ah, well. Back against the kitchen wall, I braved a call to Sears and got a woman at some foreign call center who spoke broken English. She tried to hard-sell me on a service agreement. It says right there on the Web page that a service call is $129. She was going to charge me $249. I. Don’t. Think. So.

I hung up and made the appointment with some no-name place. Their guy will be out Monday, my day off, so that’s more convenient than any other option. I mean, how bad could it be? What could possibly go wrong?

I can only conclude that nobody wants to fix appliances, that no service provider really is interested in providing service. And I can only conclude that Laura and I are going to become even better at hand-washing dishes than we already are.

Is that what we’ve come to? It looks like it is.

-JFT

And the Wheel Goes 'Round

A whole long time ago, right after I was graduated from journalism school, I had the immense good fortune to become involved in something called the Copley Editorial Careers Program.

This was run out of the offices of a paper called the Burbank Review by a fabulous old pro called Charlie Ohl. His brief was to find likely candidates and plug them into the 13 or 14 Copley-owned dailies around L.A. at the time in a kind of rotating cub-reporter training program.

I went and pounded on Charlie’s door, we got along great, and he hired me. First stop was the South Bay Daily Breeze, where I worked for six weeks. My second six weeks was supposed to be spent at the Glendale News-Press. I went there, and after just two weeks, the city editor at the Breeze called and offered me a job. Which I naturally took. I mean, who could turn down $160 a week?

I was working as a dolly grip in the studio business at the time, making pretty good money. Taking this job cut my income in half. My wife at the time later told me that it was at this point that she decided to divorce my sorry ass.

So I went to work at the Breeze, then Autoweek, then, answering the Siren song of magazines, Road Test magazine, then Pickup, Van & 4WD, another newspaper stop at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, then Cycle World, and eventually Four Wheeler, where against my better judgment, I held the top job.

But newspapers beckoned. And eventually I found myself back to the Glendale News-Press, now owned by the Los Angeles Times, where I was night city editor/copy editor, working happily in a career that has provided more satisfaction than I ever could have imagined possible. Then, in a move I now greatly regret, I left for a gig that promised that elusive specter, “more money.”  Shortly thereafter, journalism crashed, taking my prospects with it.

I was on the street, and not liking it one damned bit. I continued shaking the tree down at the GNP, as it is known. And I picked up a part-time gig, working at another Times Community News paper.

Apparently I haven’t screwed up too badly, because the editor at the GNP has asked me to come back aboard at that paper fulltime as a copy editor.  Well, I thought about this for maybe a fifth of a second and said, “Well, hell yes!”

I couldn’t be more pleased by this. I continue to think that journalism – this process of helping to create and maintain an informed electorate – is incredibly important, maybe more important now than ever before. Our editor at the GNP has all the right equipment and impulses and I’m incredibly proud to be once associated with this paper.

So I’m writing headlines, decks and captions, proofing pages, and helping reporters to craft their stories for both the GNP and the Burbank Leader – which, interestingly, is the child of the old Burbank Review. It’s satisfying work and I’ve maybe even learned my lesson. I think I’ll stay at the GNP for a while, right where I started out so long ago. If they’ll let me.

-JFT

‘Cut My Hair,’ Part II

After thinking about this for 24 hours (and after noting for a couple of weeks now that I’m looking pretty darned shaggy), I’ve decided to do it. Just made an appointment for Thursday with my haircut person.

But what I really wanted to enlarge upon was my comment, “lucky kids,” when I mentioned in a previous post that my son Matt has received a contract to teach in his school district again next season. This was not at all a sure thing, given that state budget problems have trickled down to school districts, which find that they no longer have the money to keep the teachers they’d like to keep.

Anyway, at the start of last school year, Matt saved the life of one of his students. As Matt related this to me, he’d just barely started organizing the kids at the beginning of one of his first gym classes at the beginning of last school year and one of the kids collapsed. Matt ran over, checked him over, found no pulse, no breathing, so he gave him CPR until the paramedics arrived. The kid survived.

See what I mean? Lucky kids.

-JFT