Welcome to a bit of Nostalgia-Ville...
( Not to be confused with Plasticville*(tm))

My "formative" years were spent in a 'burb of Chicago called Arlington Heights.

Several highpoints in those years included catching live music, some great bands, starting with The Byrds...

..and a little local band, the Cellar house band, who had a hit with a Van Morrison tune,...
The Shadows of Knight, doing "Gloria..."

(For more music memories, see my "Just Add Music" Page.)

Getting my Lionel F3 Super Chief train set...


One day, I found Big Daddy Don Garlits' rail...

parked on a trailer, in the driveway of one of those "space age" Lustron prefab houses...
just a few doors south of my parent's house;

The Chicago & Northwestern Railroad was only half block away.
Our time in AH ran from the last days of C&NW's steam...

through their self-propelled RDC experiment...

and on to push-pull commuters, with E units & double-decker gallery cars....


Catching the Blackhawks play & fight against the Detroit Redwings,...
and falling for Donna Collamattio.

Some other memories blur together, like watching "Time for Beanie," with Beanie & Cecil, the Seasick Serpant first as puppets...

later as a comic strip....


Heading to my dad's parents' cottage on Bluff Lake in the Chain of Lakes, swimming out to the raft;

Not getting the Winky Dink "Magic Screen" (which was probably just a sheet of Handi-Wrap) and following the magic message dots right on the TV screen with a crayon (yup, that got me a whuppin');

My dad loading everything into the 63 Chevy station wagon & the whole family going camping to Peninsula State Park in Door County, George Williams College Camp by Lake Geneva, Copper Harbor in the Upper Peninsula,...;

Playing on my aunt & uncles farm. the cows & McDuff the goat, the barn,...
In the peatbog out back, they found Mastodon bones, including a vertebrae, tusk & jawbone.
2 fishing ponds were created out of gravel dug for the Northwest Tollway just South of their place.

My dad was in Tool & Die.
He designed tools for lots of plastic stuff for Cracker Jack, LaFrance toy fire engines and other prizes for Schredded Wheat...

and a whole series of super-detailed 3 inch long blue-grey rifles for some other darn cereal.

"Opi", Otto Kieselbach**, my mom's dad, had an interesting career evolution.
He was involved with the rural electrification of East Prussia. Had to drink the farmer-owners under the table in order to get permission to string the wires.
Later, after arriving in the U.S., middle of the Depression, he got involved with the automation of Brach's candy company.
Carl Brach even wanted him to help start a TV tube company, but they were both in their 70s, so Opi just say, "Thanks, but no thanks."

Both sets of grandparents lived in Chicago, I mean, to use a Tribune word concocted around 1900,..."Chicagoland."

Grandpa & Grandma, Ray & Marge Platt (Americanized from Plath, after Grandpa was a doughboy in WW1) lived in Norridge on Overhill, off Norridge.
Small world for my beer enthusiasm, as the Edelweiss Restaurant is at the end of their block at Irving Park.

Omi & Opi, Lisbeth & Otto Kieselbach** lived on Merrimac, by Austin & Nagle-Narraganset in a classic Chicago bungalow...

Travel to see our grandparents (I was the oldest of three, with sister Karen and brother Terry) was via the United Motor Coach...


I remember travels around Chicago with Omi,
on the "Green Hornet" (the PCC street cars)...

then the trackless trolley buses...
replaced with the Flxible Flyer propane buses....

Oh, and the "L," (Elevated), too...

Like I said earlier, in Arlington Heights, the Northwestern tracks were right nearby, as was the Roller Rink & Prince Castle ice cream parlor...


Going to Junior High, I biked the 2+ miles, crossing the tracks, catching a lot of trains.
The Northwestern was started by some Englishmen, so it was "lefthand," with a 3rd express track in the middle.
When we got to AH in '52, the commuter runs were still being pulled by Pacific (4-6-2) steamers. The passenger cars were an even mix of round top long cars & clerestory-roofed shorties.
Around '55, steam was ending nationwide, diesels taking over, and the Chicago & Northwestern started their double-decker push-pull trains, with a control car aimed toward the Loop...

and GP-7 freight engines at the head-end...

The E-units showed up later, as most of them had been used for the 400 Streamliners & the UP-CNW Challenger, which were dropped when Amtrak took over.

The Northwestern absorbed lines like the Minneapolis & St. Louis & the Omaha Road, so there were some different paint jobs, but mostly the F-units were yellow with a splash of green.

Yup, things got pretty boring, diesel-wise, on the Northwestern except for their RDC test.

My college time took me to Bloomington, located by the Gulf Mobile & Ohio railroad, so I got a little more variety, seeing those Red & Cream FA-units...

and black RF freight units.

Like most kids, I was into plastic models.
Mine were mostly cars & planes, mostly Revell & AMT, with some MPC and very few Monogram & Heller....

but Revell had the best airplane detail...


AMT & Revell...

cars were better, detail-wise, than, say MPC....

or Johan...


I liked the experimental aircraft, like X-3 Stilletto...

the XB-35 Flying Wing...

The YB-49 Flying Wing...

These were both built by the Northrop, same company that builds the B-2 stealth bomber...

The Superfortress B-29....


2 years ago, I got to the United States Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, to see a bunch of these actual size,
such as the B-36 Peacemaker...

the sole surviving XB-70 Valkyrie...

the B-58 Hustler...(my buddy Big Bill Cox worked as a mechanic on those at Rantual AFB near Champaign. He said they were fast, but that they were gas hogs)...

and the B-29 Superfortress...


I haven't been lately, but I used to go to the Experimental Aircraft Association air show in Oshkosh every year.
My favorite EAA memories include the "Forked Wing Devil" P-38...

FiFi, the CAF B-29; the Super G Constellation,
plus the deck run of the BOAC Concorde supersonic transport...

I'm still impressed with the B-52 "Old Buff," that I saw at Mitchell Field in Milwaukee...

PRIVATE PLANES
I've got a few plane rides under my belt, one Piper from Pewaukee to Midway; 3 Cessnas. The first was an OV-1 ride in Arkansas; the 2nd, Fort Collins to Stapleton, parking next to Malcoln Forbes' Capitalist Tool" B-26 and even handled the tiller for some PM "touch & goes" in Wisconsin.

MY FLEET
My first car was a Karmen-Ghia, lasting about 6 hours, when a lady in a Cadillac ran a redlight & T-boned me...

With the accident cash, I bought an Alpha Romeo Guila Sprint ....
from Mort Fadum in Fox River Grove, but just try to find a mechanic for that Weber-carbed, dual overhead camshaft baby...

Then Stan Soltz, who had this hot Falcon Sprint, told me we just had to look at this Porsche for sale. It was an aluminum bodied 550-RSK-Spyder...

but, the engine was in parts and it only had a plexiglas windscreen. No roof or top. "What about Winter ?"
BTW, This was the same car type that James Dean died in.
I hear there are only 15 of these left in the world, with current value about $.75 million each.
Ah well, go figure.

Next car was my 55 Chevy Bel-Air, 265 automatic, which I called "The Hummingbird..."


Bitten by Porsche fever, "Mad John" Lalor, who was driving a '65 356SC (and his wife had a Mercedes 190SL convertible), turned me onto a 1963 356B...

I had a '57 Ford wagon when I was out West...


Then there were a few VWs, including a bug...

and a ratty Microbus I got from my buddy, Jac Stafford...

My pickup addition (still not cured of "Pickup Fever") started with a 55 Chevy Fleetside with an eyebrow...

followed by a 67 Ford Flareside...

Man. that Flareside style got me. It was the same bed & fenders of the classic 53-56 F-series trucks, like this one (below)...


I picked my 67 up in Alburquerque, NM.
I was a traveling buckle salesman and got the 352 replaced at Everell's Junk Yard in Mt. View Arkansas twice a year, for $300 a swap.

In the 70s, I bought a few new.. 72 2WD, 74 4WD...

79 F350 4WD Supercab.
I got a 78 6-cylinder, and a few years ago got my 93 F250HD Supercab.

Somewhere inbetween there, I had a 50s Dodge 1 Ton. No syncro, just a double-clutchin' fool.

When gas started getting pricey in the late 70s, ..."why I remember when gas was $.26.9 in the Panhandle of Texas," I bought a '79 Ford Fiesta.

This was a German, Spanish & British-built import. I'd looked at Rabbits & Civics, but I didn't fit in those.
Man, that Fiesta was hot. Got rubber in 3 gears.

Did the Golf & Jetta thing recently,

I even had a few Lincolns, like a '78 Town Car and a '79 Continental Town Coupe...


STEAM AWAY
My train addiction was just as strong.
I remember taking a Santa Fe El Capitan, double-decker coach version of the Super Chief, out to the West Coast...


Took the California Zephyr...


into Denver for the Great American Beer Festival about 6 years ago.

I've caught the Norfolk & Western 611 in Evanston, IL,
while it was touring the country.


I also caught the UP Streamliner pulled by the 8444 at Butler, WI.


Klinkhammer, an Arkansas cronie, was a relief engineer for the Milwaukee Road during it's dying days.
I got a few rides on freight runs on the Milwaukee-Janesville line in the cab of his GP-units.
After a "party-hearty" weekend, I did my Monday job, came home & hit the hay about 5 PM for a nap. It was Summer, still mighty bright, when I thought I was dreaming, when I heard a...diesel airhorn...in my backyard.
There was Klink, in the cab doorway, waving his cowboy hat in the lead crudball F-unit...

(they were so worn-out, it took 6 of them to make this run)...right in my back yard.
He yelled, "Come on, get your boots on, Boy, let's go railroadin'..."

Another pal in Colorado owns a Westside Shay that he & his dad rebuilt...

A bunch of us got to fire it up & we all took turns loading coal & running the throttle.

Same weekend, we took the Denver & Rio Grande Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge, riding in the open-vestibule Parlor car, Alamosa....

and the next day, we took the Cumbres & Toltec Narrow Gauge, riding in the caboose...


Man, I miss Colorado.
Friends of mine lived for a while in Colorado Springs in a house built right into the rocks.

In the 70s, every Spring, a bunch of us from the Lake Geneva area would head to Breckenridge & Summit County to ski for a week.

**"Kieselbach" - Translates to Pebble Brook. I'm...kinda noisy, so was my mom. I though it should be "Babble-brook." Turns out, my mom's maiden name was....Babbel !!!

More memories & photos, as I get 'em.....

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* Note: "Plasticville" was (still is) a line of O & HO trackside buildings
for those 4x8 sheet of plywood train setups...