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KLMNO POSTLOCAL Talk to us. Talk to newsmakers. Talk to each other. Join the conversation at postlocal.com Shining the decks for a sailboat show JOHN KELLY'S WASHINGTON relics of D.C. hobbies “W


here I come from, there was no money,” Reed Martin toldme. There certainly was nomoney for


hobbies. Where he comes fromis a house on a dirt


road in Bloomington, Ind., froma family that had no idea what a hobby was. An activity engaged in purely for enjoyment? The very notion seemed alien. There would be no hobbies for the young


ReedMartin. I think that’s why the old ReedMartin, 64,


has devoted himself to resurrecting the forgotten hobbies of the past. He is aman obsessed with the unusual ways Washingtonians entertained themselves from the 1920s to the 1950s. Like, for example, by building working-


MARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST Crewmember Emiliano Bibbo helps set up for the 41st annualUnited States Sailboat Show in Annapolis. The show opens Thursday and endsMonday.


scalemodels of internal combustion engines. When I visited Reed not long ago at his Montgomery County house, he pulled back a towel covering a shelf in his cluttered garage. “This,” he said, “is the ElmerWall engine


collection.” There stood an assortment ofminiature


Hot topic: Blocking the box


Post commuter columnist Robert Thomson took readers’ questions about gridlock on the region’s streets Monday during a live chat.


Who’s minding the intersections?


Q: In the early ’80s,NewYork announced lots of “Gridlock Alert Days” with the idea of raising awareness of the trouble caused when people “block the box.” Since the biggest problem I see around here is


cars (and especially buses) blocking the box, has the area thought of something similar or at least enforcing the rules? A: A couple of NYC traffic engineers created the


term “gridlock” around 1980. It came into wide use inNewYork during a transit strike, when many more people tried to drive intoManhattan. The term refers specifically to blocking the box at an intersection. (You can’t have gridlock on a highway. No grid, no gridlock.) The District


now has signs warning drivers not to block the box. Some travelers tell me they don’t understand what the signs mean. But the rule


Whose cabin?


Readers responded to a story detailing how Montgomery County paid $1 million in2006to buy a two- story colonial home in North Bethesda with a log cabin jutting out on one side. State and county officials later spent an additional $1 million to study and expand what they thought was Uncle Tom’s cabin, the former home of the title character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel. But historians say the building is not the real deal.


A $2 million history blunder?


george32: “I can offer the Council family property on Georgia Avenue inWheaton and on New Hampshire Avenue with great historical significance — according to our oral tradition.”


ProfessorWrightBSU: “The reasonable preservation of America’s history (good and bad) is good for us as a nation and important for our children’s future. The only question is whether the price paid was reasonable.”


blasmaic: “If a businessmakes bad decisions, it goes bankrupt. If a governmentmakes bad decisions, it raises taxes and cuts services.”


WASHINGTON POST FILE PHOTO


should be a matter of common sense. Don’t enter the intersection if you aren’t sure you can clear the intersection before the light turns red in your direction. We don’t have enough traffic officers to enforce


Despite posted signs, gridlock endures in the daily commute.


this during rush periods inD.C. I wish we did. Q: One difference betweenNewYork’s “Don’t


Block the Box” campaign compared with any such efforts in theD.C. area is that inNewYork they actually have a “box”—that is, they paint the intersections to create a box and if you stop in the box, you get a ticket. The Brits do something similar (using yellow


paint instead of white) and they call any such intersection a “box junction.” Around here, we have a few“Don’t Block the


Box” signs. The corner of Franconia and Van Dorn in Fairfax County comes to mind, although the sign is located off to one corner of the intersection on the far side of the sidewalk. The intersection of US-50 andUS-29 in Fairfax City is another place; the signs are hung next to the traffic lights and include a diagram showing what the “box” is. But, as usual for Virginia, they’re small signs on the far side of the intersection. I think if there is ever to be a serious anti-box- blocking campaign, the box needs to be painted on the road surface along the lines of whatNewYork and London do, and there has to be real enforcement. It’s a shame that something that’s so obviously common sense has to be enforced by the cops, isn’t it? A: I agree the paint would help. I understand


why many drivers don’t spot the signs on the poles at intersections. Then again, it should be common sense, or common courtesy, to keep out of the intersection till there’s space to go through.


6


MORE ROBERT THOMSON Read his blog at washingtonpost.com/drgridlock.


THE DAILY QUIZ


True or False. According to Marc Kaufman’s article in today’s Health & Sciences section, the ever-evolving theory on Neanderthals now claims that these humans are more like our brothers and sisters than cousins.


EARN 5 POINTS: Find the answer, then go to washingtonpost.com/postpoints and click on “Quizzes” to enter the correct response.


POINTS EVENTS Making a Scrapbook?


Don’t wade through old records and mementos, hoping to find an old newspaper clipping! The Washington Post has historical archives dating all the way back to 1877, and PostPoints Platinum members receive 50 free historical archives searches per year. Gold members receive 25 free searches. To begin your search, log on to washingtonpost.com/postpoints. Click on Benefits and select The Washington Post Archives.


ounanm: “It would have beenmore prudent if they’d spent $2million educating today’s children on the book ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ ”


illogicbuster: “$2million could have put quite a few black inner-city kids through college.”


donnolo: “One log cabin is prettymuch like another. Does anyone really care whether a spittoon was one that Henry Clay spat into or an old whiskey bottle was one General Grant drank from?”


viewpoint3: “Anyone buying inMontgomery County should know he’s paying toomuch for whatsoever he is buying.”


kurttj2002: “Just pretend it’s the right one. No one will even notice.”


6


MORE LOCAL CONVERSATIONS: Visit PostLocal.com


Election season


Anew Washington Post poll says Democratic Maryland Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski has a commanding lead over Queen Anne’s County Commissioner Eric S. Wargotz in her race for a fifth term. Readers chimed in on the poll and more.


A big lead for Md. incumbent


ComfortablyDumb: “As it standsnowinthe 2010 electionseason, there are just toomany other pivotal races fornational groups towaste precious time andresources ona long shot like this one.”


HotChocolate: “It is time for a change.”


Concerned14: “If ithappenedinMassachusetts, the bluest state intheUnion, couldithappenin Maryland?Youbetcha!”


jhpurdy: “As long as theRepublicanPartyhas so little benchstrengthinMarylandthat they nominate candidatesno onehas everheardof, Mikulski andBenCardinwill keeprunning and winning as long as theywish. “The reasonBobEhrlichis theRepublican


candidate for governor is because, quite simply, theRepublicanshadno otherplausible choice.”


pofinpa: “Five terms?Dumpher.”


Cassopolis: “EventhoughIwillholdmynose andvote forher, I certainlywishthat Ihad another sensible choice.”


rcc_2000: “Mikulskihasher Senate seat as long as shewants it.”


pjkiger1: “Mikulski is anold-fashionedsenator who concentrates onconstituent service rather thanspouting off oncablenews shows. If youcall her officewithaproblem, they followup.”


RoboFlop: “Sucha shock:ADemocrat is leading inMaryland.Yawn.”


6


MOREMARYLANDPOLITICSRead our blog at voices.washingtonpost.com/annapolis


Today on


gasoline engines, the smallest no bigger than a soup can, each a handsome assemblage of lathedmetal, brass piping, tiny seashell-like carburetors. Eachmotor was screwed to a wooden base. ElmerWall was a Scandinavian immigrant


who in the early 20th century ran amail- order business out of Chicago selling $1.50 kits to hobbyists who wanted tomake their own engines — not to power anything usually, just for the joy of construction. “When you bought it you got a box of


castings that you would have tomill and lathe yourself,” Reed explained. I imagine that the satisfaction that comes


frommachining, assembling and then successfully starting your own engine is of a different kind than getting the high score on NintendoWii. When Reed was growing up, his parents


wouldn’t let himtake shop classes. They wanted himto choose amore cerebral line of work. But he was drawn to the hands-on. He dropped out of college three times. He sold shoes, worked as amachinist, was amailman, worked in an auto-body shop and restored antiques. He once chauffeured John Cage. He once tuned Tina Turner’s piano. Reed’s retired now, but for 12 years he worked at the Smithsonian buildingmodels. Hobbies evolve. In the 1920s, pond yachts


were a big thing inWashington, Reed said. People would set small sailboats down in the Reflecting Pool near the LincolnMemorial and watch as the breeze carried them soundlessly across the water. After pond yachts came tether boats:


powered speed boats that were connected by a cable to a concrete block in themiddle of the pool. The local club wrote to the government and got permission to run its boats there. Said Reed: “Can you imagine today the National Park Service even answering the letter?” Reed owns what he says was the first tether


boat raced at the Reflecting Pool — orMirror Lake, as hobbyists called it. It’s called the Wasp and was built by amachinist at the Naval Gun Factory named Elmer Luke. By 1940 the tether boat craze was over and


peoplemoved on to tether cars, gas-powered vehicles about 18 inches long that could reach speeds up to 160miles per hour. Crowds would gather to run their cars on a track behind a PigglyWiggly in Chillum. Reed pulled a car out of a box in his house. It’s a remarkable example of themodelist’s art, with a balsa wood body painted with gray enamel and layered with bits of nylon stocking for strength. The body sat atop a hand-cast aluminumchassismade by aman named Jim Owen whose day job was at the Bureau of Standards. The tiny copper gas tank wasmade by a Bethesda dentist named Doc Swanson. Reed is a collector of things (besides


Local weather Get forecasts, analysis, conversation and more with the CapitalWeather Gang. washingtonpost.com/weather


Don’t they have a money back policy, no questions asked?”


—reader Special_One40, responding to an item about a man police say first shopped at a Pier 1 Imports store in Laurel, then returned to rob it


Political buzz Read Mike DeBonis’s blog for the latest in local politics. washingtonpost.com/debonis


Tres chic! Chat fashion with Janet Bennett Kelly and Holly Thomas at noon. washingtonpost.com/discussions


Tell us We’d like to know wha t you think of this page and our local coverage. E-mail us at metro@washpost.com


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engines, boats and cars, he has collected everything frombanjos to circus giant rings), but he’s also a collector of history, reading old newspapers and newsletters to fill in blanks in his knowledge, talking to folks at flea markets and yard sales.Whenever he hears of a cache of hobbymemorabilia, he heads out to see whether the owner will part with it. He remembers a trip to Boonsboro,Md., to


meet a woman whose husband had died, leaving behind 100model airplanes.When he arrived at her house she was feeding tiny hand-carved wooden propellers into the fire. “I already burned all the airplanes,” she told


him. He bought the engines. “Do you know what stopped all the hobby


clubs?” Reed askedme. “Television. It was the evil that came along and leveled all the hobby clubs.”


kellyj@washpost.com Collector digs up


TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2010


A complete list of PostPoints Spots can be found at washingtonpost.com/postpoints.


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