I wrote before about my service in the military installation responsible for the road construction and clearing, bridge building and other engineering support tasks. Unfortunately, I’ve never got to see a pontoon bridge being built in real life; not that we didn’t try, but my comrades where so untrained and slow that no one wanted to wait for us to complete our bridge, especially that a real bridge was nearby. I am sure our commander didn’t look good at the post-exercise briefing with his superiors, and knowing that he was cursing up a storm on the radio, but what do you expect from a bunch of virtually unpaid soldiers who didn’t want to be there in the first place especially waist-deep in the cold water on the first day of April.
Apparently there were troops in the Soviet Army who knew how to build a PMP Floating Bridge and here are a few videos to prove it. Those are quite fun to watch, notice that they start floating the equipment in under 7 minutes (it took us an hour just to drop all the links).
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpD7esUuwDU
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-hCTO00mPI
And now we dance: Russian Army Choir Presents “Not Gonna Get Us” by T.A.T.U.
On the tingling eve of the big high school football game, drama was being played out in thousands of U.S. cities and towns. Girl students swirl like autumn leaves as they lived and breathed their hopes and fears in high-pitched whispers. The biggest men in school, the football stars, brooded over their assignments and the hundreds of friends who were counting on them. Mass pep rallies in front of school or on practice fields built up the excitement. Coeds mooned over their heroes in class and the popular girls set their caps for coveted dates with the team’s star players.
The tension of the adult world – even college football – seems tame beside the bubbling pressures of high school football. In Lawrence, Kan., a city of 33,000, the pressure is even greater for the Lawrence High Lions have the longest current winning streak in schoolboy football – 45 games. As Lawrence, on the weekend reported in these pictures, prepared for its big game against Shawnee-Mission North, the 1,100 students urged the ream on with usual fighting, go-get-‘em slogans. But the players themselves faced things a little differently from most. Booted in the strict religious environment of Kansas, they attend a prayer meeting and Bible discussion at a barn outside of town, where on of them wisecracked, “He who playeth hardest beateth Shawnee-Mission North.”
When I post the old photos from the Life Magazine Archives my secret hope is to hear from real people who either recognize a person, a place or an episode shown in the picture. For the most part the photos are not that old, so finding an eyewitness is not that far-fetched.
I was excited to hear from the grandson of Max Jaben, one of the people photographed for the Kansas City Crime series.
Making up Civella’s inner circle were; brother Cork, nephew “Tony Ripe”, gambler Max Jaben, and enforcer Carl “Tuffy” DeLuna. On the fringes was a powerful Capo named William “Willy the Rat” Cammisano, who headed a semi-autonomous crew in the vein of the Riccobene faction in Philly or the Licatas in Cleveland. Nick and Cork and Max Jaben became charter members of the first edition of Nevada’s “Black Book” in 1960.
I often wondered what causes people to become upset about a closing of a business, but be completely unmoved by other closings or downsizing. Is it the history, nostalgia or tradition? Job losses, growing unemployment, shrinking tax base? The answer most likely is the smell, which probably explains all the commotion around the closing of the Folgers plant downtown. Folgers is not the first Kansas City or Downtown company to close, but other businesses quietly drifted away into oblivion without Facebook support groups and Twitter followers. It must be the smell of coffee…
One of the downtown businesses that is still around but way past its former glory is the AT&T Long Lines building at 1425 Oak. It still serves as a long-distance hub for the Kansas City area, but there are only few people left working there, down from over 1,700 who were employed in call centers and various business departments, as well as the training facility, cafeteria and whatever else made the biggest phone company in the world ring. Every long-distance phone call made in Kansas City went through this building. Built in several stages and completed in the 70’s it was an example of a secure, earthquake- and explosion-proof architecture of the Cold War years. Inside were the technological marvels still impressive to this day; the phone company led the technological progress from the invention of the transistor, to the TV transmissions, communication satellites, and computing.
Yet when the calling centers were closing and the people were let go, no one shed a tear. The shareholders probably received a nice payout.
