The “courtier” in his red coat and white cloak is undoubtedly a French officer belonging to a regiment of lancers. His strange hat is a czapka with a mortarboard top tufted with an aigrette. It was worn by lancers as late as World War I (the Prussian uhlans). British lancers were wearing czapkas at the Battle of Balaclava.
In regard to your “Postscripts” item in the August/September 1981 issue: The First Schwenkfelder Church stands at the corner of Thirtieth and Cumberland streets in Philadlephia.
When I was a boy my companion and I would play half-ball (a rubber pimpleball cut in half plus a broomstick for a bat), utilizing the churchyard as an outfield. Cumberland Street at that time was paved with rectangular-shaped cobblestones for the largely horse and wagon traffic. It has since been paved with asphalt.
My friend would stand on the church pavement and throw the ball across Cumberland Street. A hit ball that rolled to the curb was a single; if it hit the pavement it was a double; if it hit the ornamental fence it was a triple; and if it went over the fence it was a home run. The home run presented problems since we had to climb the fence to retrieve the ball. At that point old Reverend Heebner (of blessed memory) would come running out of the church to chase the juvenile trespassers.
As a sometime reporter and former redleg myself, I must aver that the caption for the photo of a fire direction center in Hughes Rudd’s “When I Landed, the War Was Over” (October/ November 1981) is dead wrong. There could have been no “security reasons” for using the firing chart that obviously appears under the range/deflection fan on the table.
In the absence of a map, American artillerymen were trained to “make their own” by a technique of observed fire on targets and topographic features using a grid sheet.
There were obvious limitations on this technique—weather, visibility, tube wear, and others—when compared with the accuracy obtained from maps, but it worked beautifully as long as there were people like Rudd in the “Maytags” or forward observers with the advanced infantry elements.
Many other critics have lambasted the historical epic, and with cause. It is often a mishmash of bad history filled with unjustified extrapolations and preposterous statements placed in the mouths of real-life historical protagonists. Also, the romantic interludes are apt to be ponderous and pallid when compared with the best novels emphasizing human relations.
At General Motors’ Flint, Michigan, Fisher Body Number One, the largest auto-body factory in the world, it was early evening of a chill winter day. Suddenly a bright red light began flashing in the window of the United Automobile Workers union hall across the street from the plant’s main gate. It was the signal for an emergency union meeting.
When the swing shift took its dinner break at 8:00 P.M. , excited workers crowded into the hall. UAW organizer Robert C. Travis confirmed the rumor crackling through the huge plant: dies for the presses that stamped out car body panels were being loaded into freight cars on a Fisher One spur track. Two days earlier, he reminded the men, fellow unionists had struck the Fisher Body plant in Cleveland; now, fearing Flint would be next, General Motors was trying to transfer the vital stamping dies to its other plants. “Well, what are we going to do about it?” Travis asked.
Last night, reading through Southwestern Bell’s newsletter “Telephone Talk,” I saw that it said electrical Christmastree lights were invented by Ralph E. Morris in 1908. The frontispiece in last December’s issue tells a very different story. Perhaps the question of the “first electric Christmas tree” is somewhat like the question as to whether the hot dog, ice-cream cone, and iced tea all originated during the 1904 World’s Fair; but as one interested in history, I am curious to know which of the two stories is correct.
Although Christmas-tree lights were a good quarter of a century old when Mr. Morris first turned his on, in a sense he does deserve inventor’s laurels, for he had no idea that the lights were in commercial manufacture. In the winter of 1907, Morris, a Matapan, Massachusetts, telephone man, had a bad scare when his four-year-old son knocked a candle off the family Christmas tree and singed his hair.
After reading “Assassin on Trial” in your June/July 1981 issue, I wonder if Charles Guiteau might have sung two songs at his hanging—the one quoted in the article and the one enclosed here, which I’ve known ever since I can remember. I wonder if anyone knows any more verses—if, indeed, there are any more. The song may not be error-free; I’ve only my memory to depend upon:
The shortsightedness of professional archaeologists and anthropologists as shown by Dean R. Snow in his recent article (“Martians & Vikings, Madocs & Runes,” October/November, 1981) has prompted this letter. He would label me an amateur archaeologist, only because I haven’t been schooled by his good books. We amateurs are looking for answers not grades; we’re interested in results, not grants, we’re looking for truth—not from the good books—but by studying, researching, and analyzing. We’re serious-minded individuals who do more than run off at the mouth. These know-it-alls sit at their desks and ridicule almost everyone who isn’t a “trained professional archaeologistanthropologist.” When it doesn’t fit their theories—books—it’s a fake, hoax, or an outright fraud. They have all the answers, the plow did it, the farmer, nature, or God did it all. …
Should all our learned scientists ever place their heads in the very holes they helped to dig, as Mr. Snow has obviously done, we as a people would never have learned anything.