On the hunt
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After visiting Emsworth Locks and Dam along the Ohio River, located just outside Pittsburgh, one noticed a plastic box labeled with ‘take one’ that contained xerox flyers proclaiming this spot as being ‘Buzzie’s Corner.’
I haven’t been able to find out too much about this cognomen, but apparently this was, and is, a popular railfanning location. There’s a website: Buzzie’s Corner, but the proprietor thereof confesses their own ignorance as to the origin of the name and whom Buzzie was or is.
I’m reminded of a Staten Island spot on the Kill Van Kull back in NYC which my friends and I started called ‘Skelson’s Office’ in honor of our dearly departed pal John Skelson – a photographer who lived nearby that spent countless hours photographing the parade of maritime vessels exiting and entering Port Elizabeth Newark from a certain spot on the shoreline.
Man, I’ve got a lot of dead friends.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Historically preserved, restored, and moved from its original location, pictured above is a 1797 vintage log cabin dubbed the Dickson Log House. The Buzzie’s Corner site has a page devoted to its story – check it out here.
Me? It was time to move on to another location and see what could be seen from it. A few miles down the river was found a neat little town which looked a great deal like a fishing village. It was all of two to three blocks in depth, and pavement on its roads stopped about 200 feet from the highway off ramp that took me there. At the very end of an unpaved and muddy road is a small park with a baseball field that sits right along the same Norfolk Southern tracks mentioned yesterday.
I discovered that the end of this road is where the local ‘working guys’ go ‘cribbing,’ meaning that this where they park their trucks while taking a nap at work.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Still batting zero on the train front, I keyed in the next destination on my phone, and let Google maps guide me to another spot I wanted to check out. A rather circuitous route was laid out for me, which allowed for visual inspection of a nearby suburb. One is often annoyed by the navigational suggestions hereabouts. Google doesn’t seem to take into account that their ‘shorter by three seconds’ route requires driving up a mountain and back down again when a U or K Turn would have done the job more simply and not burned out a bunch of fuel.
What also annoys me is these sorts of routes send motorists into residential neighborhoods, increasing traffic flow in precisely the areas where you want it to be cut down.
Back tomorrow.
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The Newtown Pentacle 
My experience with Google’s driving guide is that U-turns were rarely recommended. That may change as more detail is added to their database. I’ve noticed that Google now seems to have more knowledge re: entrances and exits to big parking lots.
One rare time that Google recommended I take a U-turn was when a construction detour had me going westbound on the eastbound span of the twin spans of I-84 over the Hudson.
I think the free Google maps service is marvelous despite some shortcoming but I don’t live in a crazily corduroy terrain like you do.
Have you wondered how Google knows about traffic on your route?
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/92958/how-does-google-maps-know-where-traffic
Given this, why can’t Google inform the State Police when and where a car is doing 100+ on the interstate or going the wrong way? – even if they’re forbidden from passing identifying info for the phones in the car.
dbarms8878
April 18, 2024 at 6:31 pm