Dirty streets

The question arose as to the cleanliness of streets in 1908. As I noted, a half-ton animal can make a fairly large mess. Interestingly enough, The Times complained that the newer paved avenues were more of a problem than the old dirt streets.

You see, with dirt streets, the horse manure disintegrated and was mixed into the dirt, The Times said. However, with paved streets, the horse manure stubbornly remained horse manure--but in smaller and smaller bits.

The problems were so dire that The Times launched one of its innumerable beautification projects in 1908, listing the eyesores of the day.

 

 

 

Found on EBay

 

This is even better than the Pacific Electric detective badge: An envelope addressed to my old friend Victor Segno!

Segno was an early 20th century mentalist who conned people into sending him $1 a month in exchange for a daily "success wave" sent telepathically around the world.

No, I mean it.

I already wrote about him for the 1947project, so I won't rehash it all.  But he is an amazing character. In addition to  "The Law of Mentalism," of 1902, he wrote "How to Be Happy, Though Married" and "How to Have Beautiful Hair."

 

Professor A. Victor Segno transmitting a global success wave. Note the beautiful hair.

A few of Segno's books have apparently been reprinted and he continues to generate some interest, though, thankfully, not much. People who have read his works occasionally find me through Google and ask me if I think he was legitimate. Of course not! He was an utter fake. But a really amusing one.

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Jan. 5, 1958

Note: Carl Sandburg died at the age of 89, despite his predictions.*

 

* Of course, if you figure he lived 32,703 days, he was right. It is divisible by 11.

Health spa

Jan. 5, 1908
Los Angeles

I love looking through the early 20th century issues of The Times. For one thing, they are only about 26 pages and the ads are amazing. Here's a shout-out to Nathan Marsak of the 1947project. Feeling a little run down? Nothing like a swig of radium and sulfur to perk you up. "Sparkles like champagne AND it's radioactive." I kind of like that. 

 

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(Bonus fact: Colegrove was named for Sen. Cornelius Cole and was bounded by Melrose Avenue, Sunset Boulevard, Gower and Sewart streets, according to The Times).

Jan. 5, 1908

Here's what we looked like 100 years ago. Notice we have the eight-column grid, and illustrations instead of photographs. I don't believe the dropcaps on those stacked headlines will come back anytime soon. Most important, there's almost no local news on the front page, except for the index and three-bullet items in the first column.

110 revisited

Jan. 5, 1908
Los Angeles

Journey back with me now to the simple, carefree days of life in Los Angeles in 1908.

You might wonder what our great-grandparents were up to 100 years ago, or 30 years before the ground-breaking for the Pasadena Freeway.

Perhaps you imagine your great-uncle in the parlor serenading the family on the mandolin or winding up the Victrola while great-grandma was opening the kitchen door for the iceman and wondering if great-grandpa had stopped off at the saloon on the way home.

In a word: No.

Strangely enough, what they were really doing exactly a century ago was complaining about the awful traffic in Los Angeles. But wait, you say, we're talking about 1908. Traffic couldn't have been all that terrible, could it?

Indeed, it was.

"At every corner where two streets cross, we used to see an express wagon, as many as four at a junction, standing there most of the day waiting for business to come to them. And at some places were these big furniture vans almost as big as a house," one unidentified councilman said, according to The Times of May 16, 1908.

The councilman was speaking about the results of an ordinance described in The Times on Jan. 5, 1908, that established a downtown "business district" and a "congested district," where traffic was to be tightly regulated.

The business district was a large chunk of downtown from Los Angeles Street to Hill Street and generally Temple to 10th Street. (It's more complicated than that, but I don't want to overly tax anyone's knowledge of local geography--the Google map is complicated by the fact that I have to approximate where Marchessault Street was).

I wonder if you can guess the boundaries of the newly designated congested district.

Oh, come on. Try.

Did someone say "Spring Street and Broadway from 1st to 7th?"  How about "1st through 6th streets from Hill to Main?"

It's painfully familiar, isn't it?

Now remember, this is 1908. Was our new friend, the automobile, the problem?

Mostly, no. In general, it was freight vehicles drawn by animals, which were banned from the congested district from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week.

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Here are selections from the 1908 traffic ordinance:

"Between the hours of 8 o'clock a.m. and 7 o'clock p.m. of any day, it shall be unlawful for any person to drive or propel upon any street in the congested district of the city of Los Angeles, excepting 3rd Street:

Any freight vehicle drawn by more than four animals

or any two freight vehicles hitched in tandem

or any wagon loaded with hay

or any crude oil wagon

or any freight vehicle, the bed, body or carrying part of which shall exceed 20 feet in length or 8 1/2 feet in width

or any freight vehicle carrying a load, which load, together with the bed, body or carrying part of said vehicle shall at any point occupy a space greater than 20 feet in length or 8 1/2 feet in width.

The law also banned furniture vans, express or other wagons waiting for hire.

And at last, the regulation mentions automobiles: The number of cabs, autos or other passenger vehicles that may "stand on any block in the congested district" is limited to six, not more than three on one side of the street, nor within 75 feet of a corner.

And notice this: "They must have permission of the occupant of the property and a license from the Police Commission."

In addition, the speed limit for all vehicles was 12 mph in much of the downtown area (again, it's more complicated than that but that's the basic principle). The speed limit at intersections in the business district was 6 mph.

Not surprisingly, the new provisions of the complicated ordinance sowed confusion among the courts, police officers and drivers (of wagons, apparently).

Did it help ease traffic? The unidentified councilman thought so, but the drivers of freight wagons fought hard against the law.

Interestingly enough, the regulations made parking permits from the Police Commission a valuable commodity that sold for $500 to $1,500 ($10,433.26-$31,299.77 USD 2006).

Yep. I was thinking the same thing.

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LAPD HQ

 

Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Police Department headquarters under construction, 1st Street and Spring, Jan. 3, 2008.

110 revisited

 

Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times
Every year, in the middle of broken glass, bits of metal and trash, these California poppies come up in a crack in the pavement at the Salonica Street entrance to the southbound Pasadena Freeway. There's no on-ramp, just a stop sign and a right turn, so I always have time to admire them while I'm waiting for a break in traffic. 

Found on EBay

Here's an interesting curio I found on EBay: A badge purportedly issued by the Pacific Electric Railway. I'm always suspicious of items like this because reproductions are common and frankly I wasn't sure the PE had a police force.

However, a quick trip to ProQuest reveals several stories in 1906 and 1907 about Pacific Electric Police Detective George Churchill, who investigated the theft of copper wire from the trolley system, the mysterious death of a car conductor and chased down a man who threw a rock through the window of Car No. 353 on the Long Beach line. He also arrested two men on the Santa Ana line who amused themselves by ringing up $30 in extra fares when the conductor wasn't looking.

(Given stories like these--and there are many more--I find it a miracle that the streetcar system has acquired sainthood in contemporary Los Angeles. Have you ever wondered what happened when a trolley car hit a horse? Think about it. The carnage on the streets of early 20th century Los Angeles is not to be believed).

And no, I don't get a percentage on this item or anything of the kind. Rather, this is another example of the amazing trove of history that turns up on EBay. It isn't a can of smog or photos of Julian Eltinge, but interesting in its own way. EBay has certainly offered me an outlet for excess cash in procuring copies of Confidential magazine for the Daily Mirror. (And to all of you who have asked: No, to the best of my knowledge no library or archive owns a complete run of Confidential).

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Editor kills self

Jan. 4, 1958
New York

 

Photographs by Dan McCormack / Los Angeles Times

Howard Rushmore on Aug. 12, 1957, during the Confidential magazine trial.

 

I already touched on Howard Rushmore's suicide when writing in May about another tragic figure in the Confidential magazine case, Ronnie Quillan.

 

Howard Rushmore testifies, Aug. 9, 1957.

And as a bonus, courtesy of Steven Bibb, here's the famous Robert Mitchum "I'm a hamburger" story from Confidential, July 1955. Although Mitchum brought a $1-million suit against Confidential over this story, I cannot find any accounts in The Times reporting on the outcome.

 

 

Note the July 1955 cover in this photo of Deputy Dist. Atty. William Ritzi from the trial.

Page 1

Page 2

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Jan. 4, 1958

Bimini Baths

The Bimini Baths, 3rd Street at Vermont Avenue, Dec. 28, 1902. Note the reference to being part of an old oilfield. Also note the 225-volt lights.

 

Gang shooting

Jan. 1, 1958
Los Angeles

 

Cops kill Marine

 

Jan. 1, 1958
Los Angeles

Officers Ed Neville and R.O. Potter of the Wilshire Division began the year on a thankful note: They were alive.

As final hours of 1957 ticked away, the officers were called to an apartment at 443 S. Alexandria Ave., where 21-year-old Carol Stoos had slashed her wrists. Stoos was taken to the Central Receiving Station and treated.

With the incident closed, Neville and Potter were returning to the Wilshire Division station when they saw a car carrying two men and two women speeding on Wilshire near Serrano Avenue. They stopped the driver, Marine Cpl. John Serino, 19, at 6th Street and Manhattan Place and in checking the license plates, found that he was driving a stolen car.

Neville tried to put his handcuffs on Serino, but the El Toro Marine drew a revolver from a shoulder holster and fired five times at Neville and once at his partner, missing all six times.

The two officers killed Serino, firing 15 shots, The Times said. Serino was hit four times, leaving us to wonder what became of the other 11 bullets. Fortunately, although a total of 21 shots were fired, neither of the officers, nor Serino hit the other three people in the car: Marine Pfc. Noel Land, 18; Theresa Richaurd, 20; or Irene Marsalek, 29, who happened to be Stoos' roommate.*

Serino's three companions were arrested on charges of murder (this may not make sense at first, but yes, it is a point of law). Richaurd told police that Serino had forced her to take the .38-caliber revolver they found in her purse.

The Times never followed up on this story, so we don't know what became of any of these people. But we do know that they all began the new year with a second chance.

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110 revisited

Feb. 11, 1917
Los Angeles

The Times published a map of the Silver Lake Parkway, intended as a beautification project for something called the Bimini Slough. The article notes that Westlake (MacArthur) and Sunset (Lafayette) parks were also built from reclaimed "sump holes."

Bimini Slough, in case you want to trace the path of what The Times called unreclaimable swampland, ran from 6th and Alexandria, east along 6th Street to Vermont Avenue, followed Vermont north past the "Bimini Baths" to 1st Street, then went in a diagonal to Silver Lake Reservoir. The slough was a notorious civic eyesore, having been used as an informal dumping ground for years, The Times says. The slough was filled and graded in 1931, making way for a major realignment of 3rd Street that opened in 1932.

The reason? To ease badly congested traffic on 6th and 8th streets.  It may be difficult to believe that Los Angeles had bad traffic 76 years ago--but we did.

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Jan. 3, 1958

 

 

Note: Three Border Patrol agents crawling through brush found Roberta Elizabeth Donovan the next day, asleep in a clump of mesquite. Also note ABC's settlement with Police Chief William Parker over remarks by Mickey Cohen in an interview with Mike Wallace. That's $317,976.76 USD 2006.

City Hall

Speaking of City Hall, here's a frame grab from "Chinatown," with the fabulous cinematography of John Alonzo. I was quite fortunate to hear him discuss the making of "Chinatown" at a presentation many years ago. If you live in Los Angeles and have never seen "Chinatown," go out immediately and rent it. Today.

Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling) announces that he will not approve the Alto Vallejo Dam and Reservoir, which would be at risk of failing like the Van der Lip Dam (based on the St. Francis Dam disaster).

"It won't hold. I won't build it. It's that simple. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice."

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110 revisited

 

Photographs by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times

 

I found a trace of the past while exploring Sterling Place just west of Orange Grove Avenue: A parking sign from the Automobile Club of Southern California. I can't say I've ever seen another one like it in South Pasadena. At one time the Auto Club was extremely active in posting signage all over Southern California.

 

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Edward Weston dies

Jan. 2, 1958
Carmel, Calif.

 

Photograph by the Los Angeles Times

Edward Weston, after receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1937, when he was living at 4166 Brunswick Ave., Los Angeles.*

 

One of the greatest photographers of the 20th century receives a one-paragraph obituary in The Times. This is almost beyond belief. The next month, in a feature about a memorial exhibit at Barnsdall Park, Times art editor Arthur Millier offered a tribute to Weston:

I believe he taught two generations to see. Perhaps what I really mean is that he taught me to see. An exhibition of his photographs in 1924 staged by the local Japanese photographers opened my eyes. Everything his eyes saw had its special beauty.

The last time I saw Edward Weston, four years ago, he was shaking with Parkinson's disease. He could no longer work in his darkroom. He had finally yielded to the requests of the Eastman Co. to try out their newest color film. Film--and this went against his Thoreaulike grain--that he could not himself develop.

These color prints are not included in the Barnsdall Park show. But they are the finest color photographs ever made. He proved that photography is not just a matter of snapping a button. To be good, there must be an artist behind the lens.

Louis Clyde Stoumen made a motion picture designed to show people the world of Edward Weston. It's title: "The Naked Eye." This film, which should be shown soon, is the finest tribute yet given to the greatest artist I have known--Edward Weston.

Here's the photographer in his own words from 1928. Given his comments about the purity of photography and the evils of manipulating the negative or the print, I suspect he would have detested Photoshop.

 

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* This is so weird. Weston lived a mile from Caryl Chessman, 3280 Larga Ave.

Update: Although The Times reported at least twice that Weston lived at 4166 Brunswick Ave., finding this home is a bit of a challenge. The online Los Angeles street directory for 1938 lists him as living at 4102 Verdant, a block from Brunswick. Further research is clearly in order.

Jan. 2, 1958

Our lawless city

Los Angeles Police Department Crime Statistics
Offense	1956	1957	Increase/Decrease
Homicide	104	119	+14.4%
Rape	1,056	1,271	+20.4%
Robbery	3,548	4,269	+20.3%
Aggravated Assault	5,315	5,786	+8.9%
Burglary	22,799	26,887	+17.9
Larceny (Except Auto Theft)	45,276	50,173	+10.8%
Auto Theft	10,342	13,203	+27.7%
Worthless Checks	12,782	17,390	+36.1%
Total	101,222	119,098	+17.7%

This is only a sample of the extensive annual crime statistics compiled by the Los Angeles Police Department. The summary notes that 1957 "was the highest year on record for reported crimes and attempts."

The highest crime areas were: Central Division, 10,426 crimes per 100,000 population; and Newton Street Division, 10,169 crimes per 100,000 population. The safest areas were the West Valley Division, 2,774 per 100,000 population; and West Los Angeles Division, 2,907 crimes per 100,000 population.

1957 Homicides by LAPD Division
77th Street Division	27
University Division	18
Central Division	16
Newton Division	15
Harbor Division	10
Hollywood Division	6
Wilshire Division	6
Valley Division	5
Highland Park Division	4
Hollenbeck Division	4
West Valley Division	4
West Los Angeles Division	3
Venice Division	1

Source: Los Angeles Police Department, annual report for 1957

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1958 Rose Parade

 

Ready for the 1958 Rose Parade? Let's step off.

Photograph by John Malmin / Los Angeles Times
The Long Beach Mounted Police, accompanied by a stray dog.

 

 

Photograph by Art Rogers / Los Angeles Times
Rose Queen Gertrude Eleanor Wood and her court.

 

Photograph by the Los Angeles Times

"Summer Time," See's Candy Shops

 

Photograph by Art Rogers / Los Angeles Times
"California, Here I Come," Alhambra

 

Photograph by Art Rogers / Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles County Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz. I suspect future Sheriff Peter Pitchess is accompanying him, but he isn't identified in this photo.

 

Photograph by Art Rogers / Los Angeles Times
"Jewels of the Magi," City of Indio.

 

Photograph by Art Rogers / Los Angeles Times

"Hawaiian Paradise," City of Glendale.

 

Photograph by Art Rogers / Los Angeles Times

"New Worlds to Conquer," City and County of San Diego.
Photograph by Art Rogers / Los Angeles Times

"A Dream of Far-Off Places," Union Oil.

Jan. 1, 1958

 

The Los Angeles Times, Jan. 1, 1958.

You can sure tell it's the era of the TV Westerns: Guy Madison and Andy Devine from "The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok," Richard Boone from "Have Gun -- Will Travel" and William Boyd of "Hopalong Cassidy." Also note: Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz and--of course--Montie Montana.

Countdown

 

Photograph by Wayne F. Kelly / Los Angeles Times
I'm a few years ahead of myself, but I couldn't find the photo from 1958. So just pretend.
Happy New Year from the Daily Mirror! (Hey, it's Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians! They're playing "Auld Lang Syne.")

Julian Eltinge

I had never heard of Julian Eltinge until I came across some material for sale on EBay. I dug out his photo file and over the weekend found his former home in Silver Lake.

 

Los Angeles Times file photo

 

Here's Eltinge in his prime in an undated picture. He performed frequently in Los Angeles and appeared at the Mason Opera House in a play titled "The Fascinating Widow," which received rave reviews. In fact, the critic compared it favorably to the annual New Year's show at the Jonathan Club.

 

Los Angeles Times file photo
Julian Eltinge in "The Fascinating Widow," 1913.

 

He was also a boxing fan.

 

And he built this house in Silver Lake.

Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times
Here's the former home of Julian Eltinge, 2328 Baxter St. Warning! Baxter is one of those extremely steep streets around Silver Lake.  Because of the mature trees,  it is quite difficult  to see the home from the street. But it is still there. Note: In his later years, he lived in North Hollywood. He died in New York in 1941, somewhere in his mid-50s. The Times noted that he was a "lifelong bachelor," a vintage code phrase for "gay."   

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Ps. The Times clips are full of interesting accounts about Eltinge. I'll try to post a few as I get time. So many stories, only one Larry Harnisch.

110 revisited

 

I realized I got more than I bargained for as soon as I found this map among The Times pictures of the Pasadena Freeway. As this 1912 map shows, the Arroyo Seco Parkway was originally intended to link Elysian Park to the area north of Devils Gate Reservoir in what is now La Canada Flintridge. But what's this off to the left? A parkway linking Elysian Park to Silver Lake? And what is this Silver Lake Parkway connecting Wilshire Boulevard to Griffith Park? Also, please note the reference to a "proposed boulevard from the mountains to the sea."

You might ask why the city was taking its first steps toward freeways as early as 1912, when autos and auto travel were primitive to say the least.  My goodness, the question of transportation in Southern California gets complicated quickly, doesn't it?

Stay tuned.

Mystery photo

 

Los Angeles Times file photo

Here's a vintage photo of our mystery guest. Some artist at The Times cut it down years ago, but left part of the autograph intact. And yes, I cropped out the signature. No point in making this too easy.

• Mary Pickford? (Interesting guess. But no).

• Julian Eltinge? (Carol Gwenn). Absolutely right! Bravo

This is Julian Eltinge, the leading female impersonator of his day.

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Dec. 31, 1957

 

Company town III

Robert Birchard writes:

    Saw your blog on Francis Boggs and early filmmaking in Los Angeles.

 

    Perhaps one of the reasons you've never found the laundry except in the earlier fire reference is that it is nearly always misidentified as the "Sing Loo" laundry, when in fact it was the "Sing Kee" laundry and it shows up in city directories of the time. 

 

    The laundry, of course, was not part of the 1907 expedition, but was a temporary Selig studio active in April and May of 1909.  Boggs left Los Angeles for location work in Yosemite, the Hood River Valley and Oakland before returning to set up a permanent studio in Los Angeles in Edendale in October 1909.

 

    The "rooftop" studio is somewhat problematic.  "Monte Cristo" has recently been found and restored.  All of the film, except for the emergence of Dantes from the sea, is shot on interior sets.  There is no Selig "Carmen," or anything that might resemble it for that matter, in the release records of the Selig Polyscope Company, and it is highly unlikely that Lillian Haywrd would have worked with Boggs ca. 1906-1907 (although she certainly worked for Selig after Boggs's death) because they were just recently divorced and Boggs was remarried to May Hosmer.  Hayward was also a new mother, having given birth to an illegitimate daughter in Dec. 1906 and only returning to work on stage in San Francisco later in 1907 after "a lengthy illness."

 

    The fellow who gave the photo of the rooftop studio to Hobart Bosworth claimed it had been taken in 1906 when he was appearing in a show in Los Angeles.  I need to do additional research on this to confirm the show (if possible) and its play dates, but I suspect that the rooftop studio does indeed date from 1906, but that Francis Boggs wasn't involved at that time.  It is my suspicion that Thomas Persons blurred the rooftop studio and the Monte Cristo shoot in his memory many years later. 

 

    The first account I've found of the Monte Cristo shoot is in a 1916 article by Charles E. Van Loan that quotes Persons, but which may have been slightly embellished for effect. 

 

Best,

 

Bob Birchard

The 110 revisited

 

Photograph by the Los Angeles Times, July 23, 1939

He looks out from the bridge as if he is gazing toward the future. Not that this is what the photographer intended. Like The Times "Scout Car," a new 1939 Oldsmobile, the unidentified fellow in the suit and two-toned shoes was added as visual interest to an otherwise static shot of Southern California's first six-lane "superhighway" being built from Los Angeles to Pasadena.

But what did our friend see when he looked away from the camera and faced Orange Grove Avenue? The future of transportation? The ultimate solution to the region's intractable problems with congested streets? Did he, or anyone, ever envision long lines of cars backed up on the Orange Grove off-ramp at the evening rush hour? How about freeway signs, shrouded in an attempt to protect them from graffiti?

 

Photograph by the Los Angeles Times

The year after that picture was taken, 1940 Rose Queen Sally Stanton, aided by Gov. Culbert L. Olson, cut a ribbon just east of Fair Oaks in South Pasadena, opening six "glass-smooth miles" of the Arroyo Seco Parkway from the Figueroa tunnels to Glenarm Avenue. The era of the Southern California freeway had begun.

 

Photograph by the Los Angeles Times

Cheryl Walker at the 1938 groundbreaking for the Arroyo Seco Parkway.

But our story doesn't begin with our friend on the bridge, nor with the Dec. 30, 1940, ribbon-cutting. Nor does it open two years earlier, when 1938 Rose Queen Cheryl Walker started a tractor at Sterling Place and Arroyo Boulevard in South Pasadena to move the first mound of dirt for the "speedway between Pasadena and Los Angeles."

As The Times noted in March 1938, the groundbreaking was the culmination of a 20-year effort. Indeed, even a little research reveals plans for a landscaped route along the Arroyo Seco as early as 1907.

With the 70th anniversary of the groundbreaking a few months away, and a large folder of Times archival photos on my desk, I've decided to use the Pasadena Freeway as an instrument to examine the larger question of traffic and transportation in the Los Angeles region. Is traffic a new problem that can be easily fixed with a few more buses or a couple of toll roads? Or, like the line from "Alice in Wonderland," has it taken all the running we can manage to stay in the same place over the last century?

Like most Southern Californians, I have a personal relationship with this subject. The Pasadena Freeway is literally my backyard and my house was moved from Sterling Place to make way for the project. (And yes, although I personally oppose the 710 extension, I'll make every attempt to write about it impartially).

More than that, with the exception of a few years when I lived in the San Fernando Valley, I've used the Pasadena Freeway nearly every day since 1988. As I tell my fellow commuters, driving a freeway is like running a river; you learn where the rapids are and where you are likely to get caught in an eddy. After seeing dozens of three-car pileups in the same sharp curve, I have learned to slow down and say a little prayer for people who speed on by.

Today, despite years of tinkering, the freeway is as outdated as our friend's two-toned shoes and his 1939 Oldsmobile, which had a 230-cubic-inch, six-cylinder engine, a 120-inch wheelbase and weighed a bit more than 3,000 pounds. The builders could have never imagined a dressed-out Hummer H2 with a 133-inch wheelbase and a 393-horsepower V-8 that weighs as much as pair of 1939 Oldsmobiles. And yet the highway continues to serve its intended function: moving cars between Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles.

One might say that the freeway was conceived the first time someone mounted a horse and rode to town. I don't plan to go back quite that far. Nor do I intend this to be a linear history of the Pasadena Freeway. For that, I'll post Patt Morrison's marvelous 1990 nondupe on the freeway's 50th anniversary. Instead, over the next few months I'll be revisiting some of the locations in the old photos to see what lessons we have learned--and perhaps what lessons have eluded us. (Note the absence of a center guardrail in the 1939 photo. A bloody lesson to be sure).

 

 

Photograph by Larry Harnisch / Los Angeles Times

And like the Pasadena Freeway, this will be built in chunks and strung together, then modified as I see what works and what doesn't.

Hope you enjoy the ride.

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