Note the chestnut trotter making time going south, pulling the buckboard....

...at about 178th Street with the Washington Bridge in the background and every man is in a suit, tie & hat (bollers seem to have been in style). Sizzling south on the dirt track, behind the dash board, wearing dusters buttoned up to the neck neck and covered with a lap blanket. Her hat is probably held on with a couple of six inch-long hat pins. Coal heat, gas lighting, and, when it wasn't below freezing...mud. Horse sweat, horse shoes and tack, manure (everywhere). People before indoor plumbing, deoderant and dry cleaning...creosote on the pilings, kerosene & lemon oil brass polish, neatsfoot oil, linseed oil, mineral oil, laquer thinner, mineral spirits, benzene, carbon tetrachloride, shellac, varnish, liniment, oil cloth and rags wipe everything on or off...EVERYTHING. Privies out back or downstairs on the first floor that, when you finished doing your business, you threw in a scoop of lye. Saturday night baths, Turkish baths and public bath houses with six man urinals that looked like too-high bath tubs. Straight razors and strops, moustache wax, macasser oil & brilliantine. Matching comb, mirror & hair brush sets with silver plated backs and handles were heirlooms...Coal tar soap, castor oil, saddle soap and leather creaking against the buckles and running gear, water buckets, sand buckets, canvas water and feed buckets, water troughs, urine troughs, muck pits, straw, hay & must... and if you had a lucky dog: horse meat supplemented the usual table scraps ... Hand saws,and braces. Breweries, tanneries, dye works, gas works, slaughter houses, fat renderers and live markets. The smell of things burning... leaves, trash, wood, construction debris..No trucks...wagons and draft animals that went AROUND hills or put on extra teams to get up them. Cinders in the air... and in your eyes from soot and coal dust from chimneys and trains and ash heaps...Rope, blocks & tackle, levers and bridging...timbers & mallets. Offal wagons, teamsters, longshoremen, water trucks to keep the dust down and break down the manure that was everywhere. Leather belting, whips, gloves, men, wearing ties and coveralls carrying tool boxes and lunch boxes, shoe polish and three brushes in your shoe-shine kit. Milliners, lanterns, steam engines, axes, cleavers, hand saws, wooden tool caddies, sickles, rakes, scissors, brown wrapping paper held together with straight pins. Enameled coffee pots that chipped, wash boards, brown soap, mangles, flat irons in half a dozen weights and shapes, clothes pins and clothes lines. Buttonhooks, whale bone corsets, petticoats (garters for men AND women). Everything made out of wood, tin, lead, wool, cotton, brass, bone, leather, fur, horse hair, animal fat, silver, copper & iron. Candles, snuffers & holders, string, burlap, ten kinds of shovels in four sizes each...Twenty types of brooms & brushes for cleaning, grooming, and sweeping out your storefront or front porch three times a day to get rid of the dust and grit that constantly came in. Men with big, heavy trash cans-on-wheels sweeping up outside all the time. Barrels & kegs, bung holes, spigots, stays, staves and corks. Hammers, tongs and ice picks. Bowling ball-like, black smudge pots burning around construction sites, trestles and railroad crossings manned by bib overalled men who stayed in a little shack next to the manual gates and carried red lanterns in order to be seen after dark. Carbide pellets & water to make acetylene for hand-held blow torches and carriage lamps. Wheel deflectors, stables under some New York City buildings with elevators to bring the rigs and animals out of site below the street, beer halls, beer gardens, saloons, barber shops with men getting shaves & haircuts behind barber poles. Meat hooks, and flies everywhere the second the wind drops. Ice & coal. Hard coal, soft coal, pea coal, coal davits, coal chutes, coal wagons, bins, scuttles, coal dust, pitch pots and tar. Everything is burning everywhere: wood, coal, gas and oils of all types, making heat and steam and running forges and foundries, laundries, illumination, manufactory processes and often, just to get rid of unwanted substances like garbage, waste material, etc. "Sawdust is the poor man's fuel". Pickled, preserved, smoked, dried and salted everything. Deaf people, blind people, crippled, deformed and sick people on the streets on crutches, on dollies and just sitting on boxes next to buildings... and the beat cops with twirling nightsticks and rows of shiny brass buttons who made sure that they stayed quiet lest they find out why they should. Stray dogs and cats by the score... everywhere. Screen doors that springs slam shut, secured by a hook & eye... and hand fans, gunny sacks, dumb waiters for getting the coal up to the cast iron stoves on the third, fourth, fifth floors...and big, heavy, iron ash cans that weigh 20 pounds empty so that the wind wouldn't blow them over. Nails, hardware stores with scales and creaky wooden floors, notion stores selling thread, fabric, buttons and patterns. Awning men putting up the awnings on every window all over the city every Spring and taking them all back down again come Fall. Butchers and food stores with two inches of sawdust on the floors and a hundred more bags of it in the basement. Meat hanging on barbed, iron hooks behind the butcher's counter, right out in the air with sticky fly paper hanging in front of it, and the butcher, in a blood stained apron wearing a linen hat, greeting customers, taking orders, cutting & wrapping meat in brown "blood-paper" and making change for each individual customer with those same hands at the end of each transaction. When it got bad, or at the end of the day, the sawdust was swept up and replaced, the butcher blocks would be doused with hot water, given a sprinkle with coarse salt and scrubbed with a steel brush then rinsed off with another bucket of brine, ready for another day!. Sewing machines, paraffin, alkane, moth balls, mentholatum, milk of magnesia in cobalt-blue glass bottles...Darned socks, antimacassers, lamp oil and wicks, button-up flies, braces, spats and cravats....shirts with separate collars and cuffs and one-size-fits-all sleeves that made necessary the use of sleeve garters in order to keep them up. Blacksmiths, farriers, livery stables, saddlers' shops, stalls, lofts, hay racks, cobblestones on the hills, wheelwrights, carriage makers and brass foundries, plank roads, mud puddles and servants. Ah...the good old days!

Two driveways cut from left to right across the pedestrian promenade out onto the Harlem Speedway at about what is today's 180th Street

Looking South onto the Harlem Speedway from the Washington Bridge at 181st Street. note Highbridge water tower standing on the hill at the right...Early 1900's. Now we can see that driveway across the promenade sweeping south and up the hill to that house on the western slope.

Bicycles are permitted on the boardwalk after September 30th

When presented with an hour or two off at the end of the day, a folding bicycle in the trunk affords opportunities for spontaneous cycling.

...luxuriating in the experience of having the Jones Beach State Park gardens, pathways and boardwalk all to myself on a beautiful day.

...on the runway

The group posing high above the Hudson at Inspiration Point. Alfredo Garcia and James Zisfein co-leaders

"Hot Rod Twenty"

(To the tune of Hot Rod Lincoln) (right click then select OPEN IN A NEW WINDOW) http://users.cis.net/sammy/hotrod_l.htm

(with apologies to Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen)

The wife said
"John, you're buggin' me plenty,
Out in the shed with that Raleigh Twenty"

Have you heard the story of the big bike race
When the high-end folders were settin' the pace?
The story is true, I'm here to say
I was ridin that folder I bought on eBay!

'Got an SA hub and it's all souped up
'Lil clear coat made her look like a pup
She's got three big gears, uses 'em all
Heron chainring makes her haul!

She sports two-inch, red-striped, balloon tires
Where they meet the ground they spit out fire!
Low and wide, this bike's got plenty.
Nothing can catch my Raleigh Twenty!

Headed up the Greenway late one night
The Empire State was on my right
Tearing up the Hudson, what a thrill
Passing bikes like they were standing still....

All of a sudden, in the blink of an eye,
Some damned Bike Friday passed us by
I said, "Girl, now that's a mark for me!"
By then the tail light was all you could see....

Other riders were ribbin' me for bein' behind
So I thought I'd let my Twenty unwind
He was makin twenty-two I reckon'd
'flicked the trigger, let in "second"...

Well, the cadence counter read "a hundred and ten"
On a Twenty that means you're near top end.
'Feet were moving like the wings on a bird
It was time, 'clicked into third.

Passed him with the fenders shakin'
"Come on girl now earn your bacon!"
Smoked his cadence, beat his pace
Twenty's don't need Dura-Ace!

Caught him! Passed him! "See you later"
Disengaged my generator.
That bike of yours had best have plenty
if you wanna pass my Raleigh Twenty!

© 2003 John T. Chiarella. all rights reserved
Too many TWENTY's!

Don't miss Sheldon Brown's Raleigh TWENTY pages! They are located at: http://sheldonbrown.com/raleigh-twenty.html

It's too cold to ride, so it must be tune-up time!