Read Online Close to Shore by Michael Capuzzo, Mike Capuzzo - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Capuzzo, Mike Capuzzo
Tags: History
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seventeenth-century lanes of William Penn's old city. The roar of the new machines mingled with smells of gasoline and horse dung. Over Broad and Market Streets floated a murky brown haze that Dr. Vansant had noticed only recently—the exhaust from the city's growing number of automobiles.
As the Vansants motored east on Spruce, Independence Day flags festooned every shuttered business window, every rowhouse porch, giving the procession an odd mixture of a festive and funeral quality. It was a massive show of support for England in the European war. The newspapers this year were campaigning for a “safe and sane” Fourth. One hundred and eighty-five Philadelphians had been seriously injured in 1915 by fireworks, cannons, firearms, gunpowder, torpedoes, and toy pistols. The doctor was glad to remove his children from such dangers.
Ahead loomed a highlight of the trip for Charles—Broad Street Station. The mammoth redbrick station was the railroad hub of America, sending its Tuscan-red locomotives emblazoned
Pennsylvania
to thirty-eight states. Some of Charles's most pleasant memories were of riding the Pullman to Boston and New Haven with hundreds of his classmates to watch Penn play football against Harvard and Yale.
Red-capped porters with an ethereal grace led the Vansants to a Pullman, while the hordes of passengers crowded the regular trains. To ride a Pullman on the Pennsylvania Railroad in the summer of 1916 was to experience the golden age of passenger railroading. More Americans rode the rails in 1916 than they ever had before, or would again, and never was an American railroad as mighty as the Pennsylvania. The “Pennsy” was a nation unto itself, with factories, boats, hotels, coal mines, grain elevators, and telephone and telegraph companies, revenues greater than some countries—and twenty-eight thousand miles of tracks that served almost half the nation's population by rail. A man on the overnight Broadway Limited from Philadelphia to New York to Chicago could enjoy all private car accommodations, sip Manhattans in the bar-lounge observation car, dine on roast duck à l'orange in the dining car, and get a morning trim in the barbershop.
The Vansants were bound for none of these civilized points on the map. By devouring all of its competitors, the Pennsy could take a man to the end of the world, or close enough for a connection there. By lease arrangements, the Pennsy's influence extended to smaller railroads, the tiny cross-hatched lines in the farthest corners of the map, such as the New York & Long Branch (N.J.) Railroad, and its subsidiary, the Tuckerton & Manahawkin Railroad. Through the aegis of the obscure Tuckerton & Manahawkin, the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad controlled service to Long Beach Island, New Jersey. There, at the southernmost point on the island, was the barren, easternmost point of the Pennsy empire, reached by the new service, the Beach Haven Express.
The express offered a service to the Jersey shore that would not be equaled in the rest of the century—four daily round-trips between Philadelphia and tiny Beach Haven, only two hours away. With the improved service, Dr. Vansant planned to join his family at the seashore every few days, while still working the entire summer. He would be more available to his patients, and able to return to the city quickly in case of an emergency. He would also enjoy hours on the train in the company of his son. Charles planned to commute from the sea to his job as a salesman at Nathan Folwell and Company, the textile manufacturer. Dr. Vansant was looking forward to time alone with the boy. He thought his son needed his guidance and
more masculine influences. He was hoping vacation, too, would toughen up the boy. Away from the effete
society of Cape May, in rustic Beach Haven his son could meet the rugged challenge of the sea. While mothers worried about the dangers, Victorian fathers considered the ocean a portal through which a boy became a
As the Vansants motored east on Spruce, Independence Day flags festooned every shuttered business window, every rowhouse porch, giving the procession an odd mixture of a festive and funeral quality. It was a massive show of support for England in the European war. The newspapers this year were campaigning for a “safe and sane” Fourth. One hundred and eighty-five Philadelphians had been seriously injured in 1915 by fireworks, cannons, firearms, gunpowder, torpedoes, and toy pistols. The doctor was glad to remove his children from such dangers.
Ahead loomed a highlight of the trip for Charles—Broad Street Station. The mammoth redbrick station was the railroad hub of America, sending its Tuscan-red locomotives emblazoned
Pennsylvania
to thirty-eight states. Some of Charles's most pleasant memories were of riding the Pullman to Boston and New Haven with hundreds of his classmates to watch Penn play football against Harvard and Yale.
Red-capped porters with an ethereal grace led the Vansants to a Pullman, while the hordes of passengers crowded the regular trains. To ride a Pullman on the Pennsylvania Railroad in the summer of 1916 was to experience the golden age of passenger railroading. More Americans rode the rails in 1916 than they ever had before, or would again, and never was an American railroad as mighty as the Pennsylvania. The “Pennsy” was a nation unto itself, with factories, boats, hotels, coal mines, grain elevators, and telephone and telegraph companies, revenues greater than some countries—and twenty-eight thousand miles of tracks that served almost half the nation's population by rail. A man on the overnight Broadway Limited from Philadelphia to New York to Chicago could enjoy all private car accommodations, sip Manhattans in the bar-lounge observation car, dine on roast duck à l'orange in the dining car, and get a morning trim in the barbershop.
The Vansants were bound for none of these civilized points on the map. By devouring all of its competitors, the Pennsy could take a man to the end of the world, or close enough for a connection there. By lease arrangements, the Pennsy's influence extended to smaller railroads, the tiny cross-hatched lines in the farthest corners of the map, such as the New York & Long Branch (N.J.) Railroad, and its subsidiary, the Tuckerton & Manahawkin Railroad. Through the aegis of the obscure Tuckerton & Manahawkin, the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad controlled service to Long Beach Island, New Jersey. There, at the southernmost point on the island, was the barren, easternmost point of the Pennsy empire, reached by the new service, the Beach Haven Express.
The express offered a service to the Jersey shore that would not be equaled in the rest of the century—four daily round-trips between Philadelphia and tiny Beach Haven, only two hours away. With the improved service, Dr. Vansant planned to join his family at the seashore every few days, while still working the entire summer. He would be more available to his patients, and able to return to the city quickly in case of an emergency. He would also enjoy hours on the train in the company of his son. Charles planned to commute from the sea to his job as a salesman at Nathan Folwell and Company, the textile manufacturer. Dr. Vansant was looking forward to time alone with the boy. He thought his son needed his guidance and
more masculine influences. He was hoping vacation, too, would toughen up the boy. Away from the effete
society of Cape May, in rustic Beach Haven his son could meet the rugged challenge of the sea. While mothers worried about the dangers, Victorian fathers considered the ocean a portal through which a boy became a
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