Member: marmot

Hi Marmot,
The King Who Never Smiled was my favorite as a child. Is the one you have about a king who finally smiles when he rides in a fire engine, losing a shoe in the process? I have not been able to find a copy and would love to get my hands on one.

jeanreader

posted by jeanreader at 10:32 am (EST) on Feb 26, 2009

Hi Marmot
Just read your review of THE LONG SHIPS PASSING, a history of the great lakes. As you pointed out, the book was written in the 1940's. America was a different country then. Steel was king. And it was because of the Great Lakes & the long ships that carried the iron ore from the mines in Minnesota to the factories in Ohio & Pennsylvania where that ore was refined with limestone (alsso carried by the long ships) & transformed into steel which was shipped to Detroit where the USA lead the world in the manufacture of automobiles. It was a heady world, then. Full of pride & boosterism. I grew up in Cleveland in the 1940's. "The best location in the Nation!!!" (I had moved away before the river caught fire) But that was the way things were, THEN. And Mr. Havighurst wrote his book THEN. And his perspective was the perspective everyone in America had THEN. So take the book for what it is. A history of the great lakes & also a time capsule peek at our
world 60 years ago which of course, is much different than our world today.
MarianV

posted by MarianV at 12:50 pm (EST) on Jun 19, 2007

Only three books in common, but wow!
My First Freight Train Ride
Check out the cover I found. It seems to be your version. Mine is a couple of years earlier.
I was a student map cataloger at U of Iowa, and "Iowa Blackie" was a regular in the map room.

posted by DromJohn at 11:34 pm (EST) on Apr 14, 2007

I was excited to see someone else with a copy of "A revelation called the Badlands: Building a national park, 1909-1939." I picked up my copy on a recent trip to South Dakota. I'd never seen such natural beauty before!

posted by sagespot at 10:59 am (EST) on Jun 15, 2006

Cool, Marmot! Where are you going in Ohio? Have you been to the LaSalle Grotto south of Rockford? I lived near there for years and never knew about it! There are a couple of environments near there, actually. But the LaSalle one seems the most precarious. We can send you some pix if you like.
LLP

posted by LarsonLewisProject at 3:29 pm (EST) on Apr 29, 2006

Addendum
I took a look at your tags & was surprised not to find any of Richard Bissell's titles among the "rivers". Or is it just that (like me) there are stacks more waiting to be catalogued?

posted by gibbon at 8:37 pm (EST) on Oct 4, 2005

No, I,m afraid the Cabaret passed me by. On the few occasions I visited London I spent practically the entire time in the Science Museum - it's where, apart from helping my father prepare his science demonstrations (no money in those days for equipment in our schools for the children of the toiling masses), I got my education in mechanics - that and tearing an old motor-bike to pieces in my bedroom. However, in my teens I belonged to a club which put on puppet theatre performances and as a result I still know the sound-track of "Snow White" (one of our productions)off by heart after 60 years.
Regards, Gibbon

posted by gibbon at 8:33 pm (EST) on Oct 4, 2005

I see we share Mary Hillier's "Automata..."; I had a terrible shock 20 years ago when I went to the Bethnal Green (London) museum of toys and found in a glass case a Hornby clockwork tin train identical to the one I had been so proud of during WW II (second-hand, of course, the Liverpool Meccano factory was making guns at the time).
Best wishes, Gibbon, Bristol UK

posted by gibbon at 2:48 pm (EST) on Oct 3, 2005