The moment of truth is at 7 p.m. tonight when Tulsa’s sunken 1957 Plymouth Belvedere is unveiled here for the first time since 1957. Some folks spied a hole in the wrapping. If so, it could be a pile of Oklahoma rust.
UPDATE It was a mess, especially inside. A real sunken wreck. Someone shined up a spot on one of the chrome bumpers, but otherwise… What do you bet that it wouldn’t have started anyway?
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Posted in Scribbles
Tagged Plymouth Belvedere, Take Me Back To Tulsa, Tulsa, Tulsarama
So, fifty years ago, the city of Tulsa, OK, decided to time-capsule a Plymouth Belvedere. I suppose because of the shark-like profile and the tail fins on the ’57 model. Lord knows it couldn’t have been the engineering. They recently popped the capsule, for a little event called Tulsarama, only to discover a slight problem. The capsule had leaked and the car was up to its floor boards in brown water. Hopefully only the tires will be ruined. Could be tough finding four new ones with those wide white sidewalls of yesteryear. Good recent piece in Slate, about a (shudder) Studebaker, shows why these old cars were so much worse than the ones today. Nostalgia only goes so far. And fifty years is too far.
Via Autoblog.
UPDATE Oops. This report says the water was up to the windows. Lots more than tires to fix.
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Tagged Plymouth Belvedere, Studebaker, Tulsarama
There’s obviously no freedom of speech in this secretive police state:
"Police said the officer saw Kelly had a camera in his lap, aimed at him and was concealing it with his hands. They said Kelly was arrested after he obeyed an order to turn the camera off and hand it over."
Now Kelly, 18, has been in jail, his mother had to use her home as collateral to get him out, and he may have to go back if convicted, all because he videotaped an officer without permission. Where is this? North Korea? Try Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. Will someone please call the ACLU. Oops, nevermind. They’re busy suing a company that’s helping fight terrorism.
Via Instapundit
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Tagged ACLU, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, videotaping secretive police, wiretapping laws
Gasped, I tell you, when President B. failed to address the Pope as "your holiness." Then, to show that he had no shame, whatsoever, he crossed "his legs ‘Texan style.’" I’m still working out that one. Apparently only the South African Press Association has a clue as to what it means.
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I borrowed this from Texas Chef, who seems to have got it off this Wikipedia entry about Wales. He wonders if anyone in Texas still builds these things, called stiles. I remember seeing one–a bit shorter than this one–near a rest stop on US 290 West, east of Fredericksburg. Or maybe it was Texas 71, west of Bastrop (which, BTW, is celebrating it’s 175th anniversary this weekend), but I think it was on 290. Looked pretty ingenious to me. Doesn’t defeat the fence because it’s too narrow for the animal (theoretically, anyway) to get over it.
I let the anniversary pass, so I could include both relatives, both from Dallas, who went ashore on Omaha Beach on the first and second days. One, a great uncle who landed on the first day as a Navy communications officer, died a few years ago. The other, his nephew who was an Army officer in the signal corps who came in on the second day, is in his eighties. I like Belmont Club’s take:
"Sixty three years after D-Day the ghostly 8th Airforce bomber fields are silent, unvisited by men now too old to make the pilgrimage. Across the green counties, ‘Muhammad is now second only to Jack as the most popular name for baby boys in Britain and is likely to rise to No 1 by next year’…"
Changes, indeed. My great uncle’s nephew went back to Omaha in 1999. I turn the little bottle of sand he gave me in my hand. It looks like ordinary beach sand. But it isn’t.
What to do with all the basil in the front flower bed? Mix it up into a gin-and-tonic, of course. Now why didn’t I think of that?
Via The Mad Housewife, aka Alice in Texas
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 