Between 1955 and 1960, O. Winston link made 21 self-financed trips to Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina to photograph the Norfolk & Western Railway before it became the last major railroad in America to convert from steam to diesel. The 2,500 pictures he took captured more than the remnants of a dying technology; they also memorialized its place in the routine of rural life and the sentiments toward it, ranging from tolerance to awe, that were exhibited in the people it passed. Although Link’s photographs were known among railroad enthusiasts, none were exhibited until the 1980s, and even after that, only one gallery owned more than a couple of his most famous shots.
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January 2011
As a longtime collector, I enjoyed David Lander’s column about marbles (“History Now: The Buyable Past,” October 2003). Anyone interested in these engaging artifacts should be aware of two great exhibits near where I live. At the Moon Marble Company, in Bonner Springs, Kansas, Bruce Breslow and his partner, Lynda Sproules, make exquisite marbles with century-old techniques (some of them sell for as much as $350). Not so far away the Toy and Miniature Museum has just put on permanent display a marble collection donated by Cathy and Larry Svacine, which, with over a million examples, is the most complete in the world.
Hugh Rawson, in his column on the terms cowboys and skinners (“History Now: Why Do We Say That?,” February/March 2004), neatly evades the trap set almost two centuries ago by the fertile imagination of James Fenimore Cooper. Rawson properly identifies skinners in the American Revolution as Loyalist guerrillas operating in Westchester County, New York, and not as Patriot irregulars. The regiment of guerrillas raised in New Jersey by the Loyalist brigadier general Cortlandt Skinner operated in the “neutral ground” of southern Westchester. Most of them fled to Canada after the war.
In regard to Karen Hornick’s choice of overrated sitcoms (“Over & Under Rated,” October 2003), there is a distinction between the words overrated and overexposed . “I Love Lucy” could never be overrated, but it is definitely overexposed. And yet, everyone has a right to hate a program. One of my closest friends hated “Lucy” because of the degrading way Ricky treated her and the fact that she was just as despicable when retaliating against him. Even a well-known and respected comedian disliked the chicanery and lack of trust he saw in the Ricardo marriage, so he decided to write a show that was more realistic.
The interview on slang really caught our attention when the expert stated that
Spanish has had virtually no impact on American slang. He seems to have missed the whole enchilada. First we thought that maybe he is not really an expert but has the cojones to hold himself as one. Second, we considered that he may be a real bad hombre but then we dropped that thought when we realized that if he were, he would be in the hoosegow with the banditos, and he is clearly not. Our only explanation is that he may be plumb loco, But then again he may be just plain wrong and will have the machismo to say so. Hasta la vista, baby.
The article rightly states that a principal source of slang as been the military, but it didn’t mention some durable acronyms that ended up as slang, such as Jeep (general-purpose vehicle) and flak (from the German term for anti-aircraft artillery— fl ieger a bwehr K anone). The word flak may not now be considered slang, since it is listed in Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language . Another slang word mentioned in the article, goon , was used by Allied prisoners of war in Germany during World War II to signify their captors. A POW would alert his fellow prisoners of an approaching German with “goon up.” The Germans were told that the word meant German o fficer or n on-com. But they eventually learned better. Oscar G. Richard
Baton Rouge, La.
I was so pleasantly surprised to open up my issue of American Heritage and see the interview with J. E. Lighter (“Slang,” October 2003). I devoured the first two volumes of the Random House Dictionary of American Slang and was very sad to hear that the third was without a publisher. You have truly impressed me by delivering the good news of its adoption by Oxford University Press, and even more so, just by covering the topic. I thought we’d never hear about this book and this man again. Brayo, American Heritage !
Until it was eclipsed by the attacks of September 11, the assassination of JFK was the defining moment of my life. My recollections of the events of that day in Dallas are indelibly etched in my memory. In reading Sid Davis’s “My Brush With History” entry in the November/ December 2003 issue, I was frankly appalled that the hospital to which the grievously wounded JFK was driven was misidentified as Portland Memorial rather than Parkland Memorial.