The Vintage Reader

Via my new happy discovery of the Secret Fun Blog (companion to Secret Fun Spot, which I have linked to extensively in previous posts): Kyle J. Wood's Infamous Unsolved Mysteries of Hollywood. Some of them are actually unsolved mysteries of Oklahoma, though. Interesting stuff!

I've written a bit here about Route 66, but the other day as I was driving back from the outlet mall (one last visit to Carter's) I remembered that I was actually on another historic U.S. highway: U.S. Route 62. Known in my neck of the woods as Niagara Falls Boulevard (and partially, Bailey Ave.), Route 62 is the only even-numbered U.S. highway that goes from Mexico (via El Paso, Texas) to Canada (via Niagara Falls); the reason this is unusual is that even-numbered highways run east-west, while odd-numbered highways run north-south. And if you play Traveler IQ on Facebook as much as I do, you know that Mexico is actually south of the U.S. and Canada is north.

Route 62 is actually partially responsible for the creation of Route 66. Back in the mid-1920s, when the interstate highway system was being developed, the plan was for the six major interstates to end in zero. Because each of these zero-ending highways would go from one end of the country to the other (coast-to-coast or border-to-border), they would be heavily traveled and bring a lot of business to the communities they ran through. Consequently, when Route 60 and Route 62 were both proposed, everybody wanted Route 60 because of its coveted zero. Nobody wanted Route 62. As a compromise, an engineer from Oklahoma suggested Route 66 for the Chicago-to-LA highway. Route 60 would end in Springfield, Missouri, and Route 62 would continue northeast through Illinois (for a mile), Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to Western New York.

Today, Route 60 is nearly transcontinental after all, traveling from Virginia to Arizona, and Route 62 goes from one border to the other, but Route 66 gets all the attention and the big travel bucks from road-tripping tourists ("big" is relative, of course). Because history is weird that way.

(And BTW, the title of this post is in reference to Chuck Berry's version of "Route 66," which is probably my least favorite version of the song ever. Mainly that's because he calls Kingman Kingsman (twice!) and pronounces "Barstow" so that the last syllable rhymes with "cow" instead of "low." For all I know, that's an alternate pronunciation, but it just sounds wrong. Then there's that whole "I'll meet you/on Route 62" thing. The man really seems to hate Route 66, and I would love to know the history behind that, especially since he grew up close to the Mother Road in St. Louis (actually, East St. Louis—is there any other?).)

[Thanks to The Roads That Built America: The Incredible Story of the U.S. Interstate System, by Dan McNichol, and Wikipedia]

(via Beth)

I was secretly hoping that I would do much, much better on the 8th-grade science quiz, thus validating my privately held theory that my 8th-grade science teacher was just WRONG, but the Internet has foiled me once again. What I do find a little disturbing is that I got the same grade answering actual science questions just now as I did back then writing up short synopses of 20-year-old films about the dangers of tobacco, drugs, and sex (this was before safe sex, so they mainly showed graphic pictures of people in the advanced stages of syphilis and gonorrhea).

Although to be fair, my friend Steve and I spent most of 8th-grade science class writing a young adult mystery novel (Something's Happening at Seven Oaks!) in a spiral notebook that we passed back and forth during the boring films, so perhaps it's not surprising that I got a C.

Here's an example of when your web site has stopped being an asset: when you're a property manager and your web site has lots of properties listed... but when someone calls about them, they're all leased. And you don't have any other listings. At all.

And you get all "Well, just keep checking the web site, because I KEEP IT UPDATED ALL THE TIME" on callers. Because, well, you obviously DON'T keep it updated all the time.

Actually, outdatedness the thing that bothers me most about web sites, even though I myself have been responsible for approximately 5% of all obsolete web sites, due to projects that I started and left that were never maintained and never destroyed.

For example, once upon a time, back in 2000 when the web was all shiny and pretty and everybody wanted to be a part of it, I designed and developed a web site for my neighborhood association, in collaboration with a committee that was far too large, but what are you going to do with a volunteer organization, anyway? Tell people they can't be on the committee? So we had people who thought the web site should consist of the bylaws of the organization, the history of the organization, and a couple of pictures of the neighborhood's Frank Lloyd Wright houses, facing off against the people who wanted a bulletin board for current and former residents to connect with each other, a community calendar, and the history of the neighborhood, with lots of photos of neighborhood events and cute kids having fun at the nearby park. All of that led to some lively meetings, interesting discussions, and in one case, my throwing a bottle cap at a fellow board member. Finally, compromises were reached, hurt feelings were soothed, and bottle cap injuries were healed. We agreed on a design and I put it together and it launched to great fanfare. One board member actually said "This is a dream come true!" (To which I replied, "Dude, you need to dream bigger.")

A few years later, when it needed to be updated, we would have meetings that went like this:

VINTAGE READER: We need to update the web site.

CANTANKEROUS COMMITTEE MEMBER WHO DOESN'T EVEN LIVE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD ANYMORE BUT IS STILL PART OF THE ASSOCIATION: But what are we going to do about backing up the office computers?

VINTAGE READER: We can schedule a meeting to talk about office computer issues, but right now we need to talk about updating the web site.

LONGTIME COMMITTEE MEMBER WHO LIKES TO DISCUSS THINGS AT LENGTH: If we wrote a batch file that would automatically back up each of the office computers and then record the stats to an Oracle database hosted remotely, we could shmid to the shmop and everything would sync.

CCMWDELITNABISPOFA: But what will we do with My Documents? The secretaries are SUPPOSED to store all their data there, but they keep MAKING NEW FOLDERS and we can't BACK THEM UP.

LCMWLTDTAL: Oh, I see. Well, we could create an algorithm that would predict what they'll name those folders, and then alter the batch file accordingly.

VINTAGE READER: <pounds head on table>

And so the web site remained unchanged, and eventually I left the association board and the web site committee. And then in 2005 they finally got some poor sucker to take it over, and he pressured me for about a week to hand over the files because he wanted to get started on the redesign ASAP (he was calling in consultants and all kinds of things), and I sent him the files on CD (he didn't trust email attachments, IIRC), heaved a sigh of relief, and figuratively washed my hands of it.

And the web site remained unchanged. It's still there, exactly as I left it in 2003, moldering away with sliced-and-diced images (in a table, of course) and, I'm pretty sure, the roster of board members from 2004.

So I understand how this kind of thing happens. In this case, it's not a big deal; it's mostly just there to show off how pretty our neighborhood is. But honestly, if you're going to use the Internet for marketing purposes, be sure it's bringing customers in instead of driving them away.

This morning Giant-Size Toddler Thing #1 (formerly known as Vintage Toddler) and I went to the outlet mall to escape the heat, and I bought a new pair of sandals, which are so comfortable that I was taken back in time to one of the most comfortable pairs of shoes I've ever had: the Famolare sandals I wore the entire summer after sixth grade. Famolares were in the same vein as the original Earth Shoes: ugly in that endearing 70s way, and really, really good for you. I started wondering if Famolares were still around, and if so, how I might get a pair. Voila: They are! And I can order them online! Sometimes I love the Internet.

Where I live, in the City of Buffalo, you can put just about anything out at the curb and in a matter of HOURS it will disappear. Once we put a broken toilet out at the curb for the next day's Big Trash pickup and went off to run errands; when we returned an hour and a half later, it was gone. Two cheap computer desks have vanished into the ether that way, as have a cat-hair-covered office chair, a set of speakers (but only the cones; they left the cases), and various other perfectly usable stuff that we no longer wanted.

So I decided on the spur of the moment to take out all the bags and boxes of returnable bottles and cans that we never got around to returning (and never will, now that they've sat in the garage for about five years). All told, there are probably a dozen 25-gallon trash bags out at the curb now, full of bottles and cans that will yield a nickel apiece. At first I was rather impressed with myself for dragging them all out there, and then it occurred to me: none of the guys who ride through our neighborhood on Wednesday afternoons on their bikes, pulling grocery carts behind them to fill with bottles and cans that they take out of people's trash bins, have room for all those bags in their shopping carts. I really hope that I did not inadvertently set the scene for a big ol' rumble in the street in front of my house, but chances are a professional trash-picker will come along with a truck and haul the whole mess away before the bicycle guys even get here.

Frankly, I'm kind of tired of people pawing through my trash every week—even the trash I put out for them to paw through, let alone my garbage bin. I'll be happy to live in a place where that just doesn't happen. Seriously, my sister and I sat with my real estate agent in his BMW in front of my mother's house for 10 minutes in the middle of the afternoon one day last week and somebody called the cops. I am not making that up. I guess they were worried that my mother's tiny 1950's cape was being cased by aging yuppies. But that will be a welcome change from having potted plants and plastic chairs stolen off my front porch, my garden tools stolen from the garage (including my favorite Martha Stewart adjustable rake), and the spare tire stolen off the back of the Vintage Honda.

[UPDATE: 2:44 p.m. There's a trash-picker with a truck out there right now loading up all my bottles and cans.]