So, we rolled back from the Rambler ramble down to Petersburg, just south of Richmond. It was a breathtaking event, if you have not seen an acre or two of American Motors projects. The memories of the design and industrial deployment of those now-old rides actually brought a tear with the recollection of Mom emerging from the Kroger supermarket to load up her Rambler American. Powerful memory! Upon return through the modern DC madness of automobiles crawling in the snarl without the flair of fins.

So, return meant time to catch up on some of the lunacy that passes as current affairs. The Decisions are starting to emerge from the Supreme Court. The first big one was about some attachment that can be placed on the stock of commonly available semi-automatic rifles. We think the decision made a certain amount of sense, since the regulations issued by the BATF- the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and things that go ‘bang.” They are responsible for the investigation of federal offenses involving the unlawful use, manufacture, and possession of firearms and explosives; acts of arson and bombings; and illegal trafficking of alcohol and tobacco products. We have been participants in some of those, with official sanction, of course, and responsibly use some of the others. So, we generally agree with the Court, who found that if the Congress had intended for commonly sold firearms should be considered “fully automatic” with the addition of a plastic stock and some rubber bands.

We are not in favor of machine guns for mass public sale, and it that is what Congress intended, they should have written their law to reflect it. The Supremes voted 6-3 that it was the responsibility for the national legislature to determine that, not the courts. So, the case was not so much about machine guns but the role of the courts in serving as an unelected legislature to refine or determine laws from the bench.

There seems to be a lot of that going on. There was a time in our lives when we took to wearing clip-on bow ties. It was an act of protest against coat-and-tie business-wear at the time. We had adopted the look from a fresh-face personality on the television. His name was Tucker Carlson. We liked his light-hearted approach to reporting the news, and followed his career even after he abandoned the ridiculous neckwear. Apparently there was a falling out with Fox News and he is off doing something else a bit more partisan than the Murdoch Boys were willing to accept. This morning, Splash came in with two thing.The first was the note that CNN wass apparently leaning on the Ticketmaster folks to cease promoting Tucker’s public appearances.

That is a new role for media, and of course we are excited to see where this goes. The other thing Splash had was a carefully-cropped bit of an old panoramic view of the Socotra House up in Michigan nearly fifty years ago. It is inserted into the lead slide above, a 1968 Javelin with the 343 engine package. It is below the image of the 1948 Ford that transported us as kids. You can imagine the reaction to the faded and blurry image. An ancient wooden cash box was retrieved from a closet and opened to reveal stacks of faded red-leather envelopes. They contained images that were three times older than the Javelin. The images below had no amplification or names, so we became immersed in a search for names or dates or significance for why the images had been saved.

From the folders with notations, we saw some of the deaths of the people included people who had been born at the time of the Revolution and went to their rest before the time of the Civil War. It gives one some perspective, and here are the ones whose names may be unknown, but whose eyes and faces remain frozen in their time:

They have been resting with the covers closed on the little red books. But that search led to other floating bits of historic jetsam. Some of the ones included one of the Grandfathers who was installing the telephone system in Panama City. It was something he had done on islands in the Caribbean and down in Buenos Aires. He heard the Canal engineers planned on using semaphore flags to signal the opening and closing of the mighty locks. A lot of water is involved, and the risk of mischance was such that he advanced to the chief engineer at the Panama Club and offered to demonstrate the telephone might be a more reliable signaling device. It worked, as did the locks, and the Canal opened in August of 1914.

The problem with digging up stuff that had been put away before Mom’s Javelin was built is obvious. We tried wearing some of the old helmets and t-shirts, and began to compile the post cards from what became the Canal Zone in 1912 into a sparkling account of old and new trips down to Lake Gatun in the middle of one of mankind’s largest engineering projects.

So, there are two more projects, and we may find the names that should be associated with the pictures. They are family, after all. More on that as things continue to lurch toward that election thing later this year!

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com