You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

She’s super gentle, and doesn’t get overly excited. She enjoys eating earthworms, fruits and vegetables, and slowly moving around her tank. Her favorite food – at least for what is in season now – figs.

If Methuselah sounds like a grand old dame, it’s because she is: the fish is the oldest living specimen in captivity, aged somewhere upwards of 92 and potentially as high as 101 years. She arrived on a steamship from Australia along with 230 other fishes to the Steinhart aquarium in San Francisco in 1938 as a young, small fish. And Methuselah’s story unfolded in a typical way, for a fish in an aquarium: she grew. Humans came to look at her. She peered back through glass at humans.

Then there is Methuselah, who is no ordinary fish. She’s the only fish still living from the steamship. And most importantly, she’s a lungfish – a species more closely related to humans or cows than to ray-finned fish like salmon or cod – which can breathe air using a single lung when streams become stagnant, or when water quality changes. Lungfish are also believed to be an example of the original creatures that crawled out of water and moved to land in evolutionary history. The species was discovered 1870 – and the scientist who first described the fish originally thought it was an amphibian.

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

This is what Mercury should have done for the 69 and 70 Cougar Eliminators: Engine Callouts on the fender. You got the 351/4V std. Boss 302 and 428 CJ were optional. How much would a set of decals cost? Pennies in the quantities they needed.

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

[Lee Stewart]

Almost. Chrysler used two different master cylinders: one for FDB as shown and the other for drum. This application should have both the cover and bale painted black.

[Lee Stewart]

P-39s crowded on the ramp outside Bell’s factory in Buffalo, New York awaiting final assembly, 1941

This reminds me of an incident that took place while I was working in Buffalo.

I had called on Bell/Textron a number of times and had a good feeling about getting my foot in the door. They were a very loyal IBM account. Their computer room was one of a kind.

Mainframes are huge and because they carry sensitive data thee computer room are built away from prying eyes. But not Bell. They spent a lot of money and wanted to show off their expenditures to the public. The room was right next to the lobby and one wall of the room was glass. About 70 feet of it. The only thing separating the room from the outside environment was that glass. And it wasn't special glass like HERCULITE ARMORED GLASS. Just plain old double pane.

Buffalo gets lots of storms and definitely lots of snow but one thing it didn't get was large hail. Until it did - golf ball sized hail which broke about 40 feet of the glass exposing the computer room to the storm and the outside elements.

I had heard about the incident from a friend of mine who couldn't keep a smirk off his face. "How stupid do you have to be to build your computer room in that fashion?" His was in the basement.