Here’s Mobile Bay, with the USS Alabama in the background:
The convention center here in Mobile (not pictured in photo above) appears to have a busy railroad track running right through it. Can that be possible?
Open thread.
[Edited slightly for clarity. It was too freaking early to be coherent.]
David Koch
Mustang Bobby
Good morning from Miami. Or it will be when I find my coffee mug. I had it here somewhere…
Tommy
Many times I lived in Norfolk or other places and I love to see these ships in the distance.
NotMax
Looks more like a rent-a-storage space place.
Tommy
I lived most of my adult life on a military base.I am stunned to read it.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: The building in the photo is some sort of cargo handling concern. You can see the top of the Alabama behind it.
The convention center isn’t visible from my room, but a train track runs through it, which seems odd. Even if they have wonderful sound-proofing, it must shake the ground. Seems like that would be distracting during events.
David Koch
Wow. De Blasio freezes most rents in NYC. First time in 46 years
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Thanks. “The convention center here,” being right below the picture, misled me.
NotMax
Most important question: are the driinks at the hotel bar any good?
Wes D
The railroad doesn’t run through the convention center, just very close. Funnily enough, the convention center is a constant talking point as the glass in the roof leaked since it was built. I think they may have fixed it around 2005? My graduation ceremony was just down the block at the stadium, and I applied for work at the ship builders there. If you want a taste of good ol’ fashion southern talk radio, listen to Uncle Henry on News Radio 710 AM station.
Go see the battleship park, you only have to pay for the ship and the submarine. You can walk around everything else for free.
mikej
I’ve been on that ship. It’s kinda neat, but that Reagan era nonsense bringing the Iowa back was moronic. Too big, too vulnerable, a massive waste of resources. That was probably true when it was built too. People trying to refight WWI squandered a lot of money and time.
raven
@Betty Cracker: Here’s a picture of the train coming out of the center.
You MUST go to Joe Patti’s ! The seafood market is incredible and even if you can’t buy anything it is wonderful see. The eatery is right around the corner and it is the real deal!
raven
@mikej: My dad and I went on her and it was great being with him. He pointed to the sub parked next to it at the time and said “that was the size of the destroyer I spent the war on”. Even though he was a destroyer sailor he was an encyclopedia of knowledge about the BB. I also toured the North Carolina and it was interesting that they had a posted in the FDC (Fire Direction Center) explaining that they experimented with going from analog to digital fire control (shooting the 16 inchers) and found the analog was so accurate it would have been a waste of money.
raven
@mikej: Uh, the battleships played an important role in the Pacific. Had the Japanese not had them it may have been a waste of money but we would have been cooked. without them.
raven
dupe
raven
@raven: Well, you must go to Joe Patti’s when you drive back through Pensacola! Wintzell’s Oyster House is Mobile is a trip!
http://www.wintzellsoysterhouse.com
Tommy
@raven: I’d love this.
NotMax
@raven
Surprising, in that case, that the Pentagon didn’t order two.
Tommy
@raven: Yes we did. I will never forget my grandfather was a HUMP pilot. He flew things only wish I knew.
Elmo
@raven: I was born in Pensacola, and my dad moved back there after my mom died in 1991. He took me to Joe Pattis every time I visited him, and to this day I hear the name in his voice when I read it.
So thanks for a nice reminder of my dad.
Kay
@David Koch:
It’s great that they’re rolling out the overtime rule. I’ll be watching. I’ll expect the same full court press they gave the trade deal since the overtime rule change will benefit many, many, many more average people than the trade deal will.
The WH focused a full year on the politics of the trade deal in Congress. If they roll out the overtime rule and walk away it will be gutted by lobbyists during the rule-making process or destroyed by Republicans in Congress. We know this. They know this.
If this is the biggest initiative of the Obama Administration on wages and income inequality (and it is) it should merit all hands on deck like the trade deal did.
I’d also like to see 500 editorials lauding it, and full support from “centrist” Democratic pundits like there were with the trade deal, but I know I won’t get that.
Maybe the pro-trade deal Democrats in the Senate could come out as a group for the overtime rule and vow to block any congressional GOP efforts to weaken it. I hope Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown aren’t out there defending it alone.
Betty Cracker
@Wes D: Thanks! I haven’t been to the battleship since I was a kid. It’s always been a landmark for me, though, a sight that indicated our long drive to visit our Mobile relatives was almost over. The tunnel also.
@raven: Sis and I had dinner at Wintzell’s on Saturday. It was fabulous — good service, good food.
Kay
@David Koch:
Everyone from Tom Perez to Arne Duncan pushed the trade deal, Will I see that kind of coordinated WH-led political campaign on the overtime rule?
Penny Pritzker supposedly has a great relationship with business interests. Maybe she could put that to use and mitigate what will be ferocious pushback from every lobbyist and media hack in the entire universe on a liberal priority instead of a conservative priority like the trade deal.
Let’s make this “can’t lose” like they did with the trade deal. Failure is not an option.
raven
@Elmo: Aw, I’m glad. Same thing with me and the Alabama.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Yes, I’m hoping the admin pushes the hell out of the new OT proposal too. It could make a positive difference for a lot of people.
Keith P.
When I was a kid, my Boy Scout troop spent the night on the USS Alabama. That was a REAL fun trip, seriously.
raven
@Keith P.: Couple of years ago I visited the USS Massachusetts in Fall River on a Friday and the campers were gathering.
debbie
@David Koch:
Yay for both the rent freeze and th wage proposal. I still haven’t gotten over this 2012 NPR interview with Joe Olivio, the head of the NFIB, about raising the minimum wage, who said he believed some people are only worth $2 or $3 an hour:
http://www.npr.org/2012/07/08/156458470/raising-minimum-wage-a-help-or-harm
MazeDancer
While this convention center may be train-free, the Penn Station-Madison Square Garden city block installation is full of trains and tunnels.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: I’ve been on the Missouri twice, once when it was in mothballs in Bremerton, WA and latter at Pearl.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: You read Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal?
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Nope.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: It’s really good, Hornfischer wrote The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors too and it’s one of the best books I’ve read.
Larrybob
The history of the battleship in fifteen hilarious pictures
http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/01/battleship-history/#ixzz3PN33lNgV
Lynwood Allen
I remember when I was a kid (4th grade?) the schoolchildren of Alabama gave nickels and dimes to “save” the Alabama and bring it to Mobile.
J R in WV
Regarding the BBs, am I the only sailor who remembers the accident on the Iowa where a turret full of live ammunition exploded? April of 1989, 47 sailors killed. The ammunition was pre-WW II old, yet the Navy was certain it was caused by a suicidal (gay, or course) sailor with personal problems, not 45 y o black powder.
I was in Mobile Bay on my ship which was in a floating dry dock the day Agnes blew through town. Scariest weather day. Big old tender, up out of the water, resting on wooden crib blocks held upright by hawsers from the ship to the floating dry dock. This was for a yard overhaul, which all ships get every decade or so, and Mobile Bay got the bid for the hull work.
Then we moved to Pascagoula MS where the vast majority of the new installations were done. They rebuilt the WW II sub tender to support Fast Attack nuclear boats instead of the diesel boats it had been supporting. We both hated Pascagoula, which had expanded from a sleepy fishing town to a huge industrial city in 5 or 6 years. All the big old homes were now boarding houses, and every facility you can imagine was over loaded from the new population swell from 6k people to 20k+ people overnight.
We lived across the bayou east of town from the fish meal factory. There was a pulp mill too! Ummm good. The fried catfish place out in the country was good, and there was a bunch of nice swimming holes in the bayous north of town.
Not to complain, but your clip of text for the photo is way confusing, no convention center in sight, and the Alabama seems to be in the background behind an ugly freight yard. Still not a bad photo… I learned a lot about pipe fitting as a fire watch, asking the guys I was keeping from catching on fire about their work. Lots of guys on 6/12s for the OT pay!
Has anyone seen Freddy Deboner’s Politico piece about how today polygamy should be the next push for marriage freedom folks? Wordy but not altogether wrong for all that. I always wondered if 3 or 4 people fall in love, why not? You just need a complicated pre-nup and lots of love, and not so much old fashioned cussedness. Who cares?
sharl
@debbie: I’m glad you mentioned Olivo’s connection with NFIB, since your link didn’t make the connection (at least the text at the site didn’t). The failure of NPR to acknowledge this connection fortunately did not escape the notice of some observers at the time.
But is Olivo actually the head of NFIB, or just their go-to guy for media interactions? Y’know, just a reg’lr, hard-workin’ small businessman..
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
The big convention center in Chicago, McCormick Place has a rail line that goes through the building. Great way to bring in heavy stuff for a show, instead of an endless line of trucks stopping traffic. Been there for a few days and never heard a train go through. Bet it’s a spur line.
sharl
@J R in WV: I am not now, nor have I ever been a sailor, but I remember that USS Iowa exploding turret incident. The Navy did not adorn itself with glory on that one; they clearly tried to set that kid up as a fall guy for something he wasn’t responsible for.
With big cuts going on in fleet maintenance operations, I’m worried that the environment is ripe for something like that to happen again. I hope it doesn’t of course, but if something does happen, I hope they’ll at least be more honest about it this time around.
Ruckus
@sharl:
Part of the problem with the 16 in guns was that the black powder is in bags and there are a few, if I remember correctly, 5 for each shot. That leaves a lot more room for anything to go wrong than an enclosed cartridge. However even the 5 in guns we had on a DDG were separate bullets and cartridge for the powder. And they were all hand loaded onto the ship one at a time. A slip by one person going up a damp metal gangway in leather soled shoes carrying a 75 lb high explosive round could cause enormous damage and loss of life. I was lucky, I managed to keep my hand under the round so it didn’t hit the gangway. BTW at the time I only weighed twice the round I was carrying and I was not the lightest person there.
sharl
@Ruckus: Yikes! I appreciate – seriously! – your detailed description. It’s one thing to hear that something is a “dangerous task”, but learning of the potentially fatal consequences of just a single slip-up happening under arduous working conditions…that really brings it home, at least for me.
Betty Cracker
NotMax & J R in WV: Thanks — edited slightly for clarity. My sister complained a bit about the view — she would prefer a pristine estuary. I guess I would too from an environmental standpoint. But I enjoyed watching the port activities. Dragged a chair right up to the floor-to-ceiling window and watched the tugs, trains and cargo ships come and go.
Regarding the hotel bar — it has a fine selection of craft brews, including a nice honey ale from Back Forty, an Alabama outfit.
debbie
@sharl:
At the time of the interview, they didn’t realize the connection. I do recall a follow-up about this a few weeks later. I think it was a misrepresentation on Olivio’s part. (I’m shocked, shocked!)
AliceCat
Loved climbing through the USS Alabama as a kid. Many a fond memory of various school trips to it and the Spanish Fort there in Mobile.
the Conster
@J R in WV:
Complicated isn’t quite the word for what it would entail, since everyone would have to marry everyone else in the marriage to make each partner equal to each other, and have the pre-nup cover all the possible issues related to tax, inheritance, property, insurance, beneficiary and custody laws, and have everyone agree to sign releases for things that they may or may not even understand or have knowledge of, as partners with a variety of assets and liabilities and custody arrangements come and go from the marriage. The only beneficiary of those arrangements will be lawyers.
celticdragonchick
@mikej:
I disagree. The need for littoral fire support was (and is) real, and the 4 battleships also became the center of combat groups to match the new Soviet Kirov class battlecruisers with associated escorts that posed a significant threat to Atlantic convoys in a hypothetical war.
Elizabelle
@raven: Thanks for the heads up on Joe Patti’s and Wintzells.
Made a note for future trips to the Gulf Coast. Have not been to Mobile since 2011 or so….
Tripod
Throwing shells from battlewagons is an incredible waste of crew and resources. The reality today is airborne guided munitions, which have the benefit of utility beyond ship to shore operations.
The Mississippi had a very similar turret explosion to the Iowa off of Makin Atoll in ’42. Both were probably caused by some combination of powder characteristics and operations. At least the magazines weren’t compromised. British WWI battle-cruisers were horribly flawed in this regard. They lost three at Jutland, and the Hood during WWII when magazines went BOOM.
fdrlincoln
The Iowa rebuilds were intended to match the Kirovs and while expensive, where cheaper than designing a new class to do the same thing. The engines and hulls on the Iowas were still strong and with updated electronics and retrofitted missiles they served well.
However they required large crews due to the older equipment and the old ammo was a hazard. When the Cold War ended and there was no further need to match the Kirovs they were quickly laid up.
I despise Reagan but there was some logic behind the Iowa recommissionings.
Tripod
@Ruckus:
Freight access is all by truck. They can drive over sized loads right into the South Hall.
There are a couple of rail lines, a busway, and a Metra station underneath. Freight and Amtrak on the line that splits west, and a whole bunch of Metra and South Shore passenger trains on the north south main.
David Koch
@Kay: This is a regulation. He doesn’t need congress.
NYT: “The administration has the power to issue the regulation, which would restore the overtime salary threshold to roughly where it stood in 1975 in terms of purchasing power, without congressional approval.”
WaPo: “Republicans hate Obama’s new overtime rule, but they can’t do anything about it.”
This like his regulations reducing CO2 by 30%, he didn’t need to cull votes, he just needed ink in his pen.