Friday, May 10 2013
The Later Year Coal Trucks
The Progress of My Lawn Maintenance
I figured that I might as well tell everyone about how my grass is doing. Yesterday and today, I bough lots of bagged black earth and seeds. Then I had to spread the seeds all over and cover them with earth. 2/3 of my lawn is done, and now it's watering time. The weatherman says rain, so I'm hoping that happens so I don't have to keep watering.
My neighbour across the street has grubs. They're the larval stage of insects that lay their eggs in the ground. THese particular white grubs "feast" on the roots of grass, and kill the grass. I had the problem last year, and had to purchase "live" nematodes. They come refrigerated from Ontario - another province next to Quebec. You add them to water and spray them all over. You then have to water your lawn for about 5-7 days so the nematodes can burrow into the ground and eat the grubs.
Since Canada and Quebec became more eco-friendly, it's hard to find good pesticides and herbicides that do their job and are still eco friendly!
So that's the update on lawn maintenance. As for flowers, that's my wife's job. Since our climate zone is higher in North American, my wife likes to wait till about the end of May or the first week of June before she plants. Meanwhile all the large stores are selling the flowers now. I can't convince my wife to plant early, so that's that!
The Coal Toys
If you study or write about toys, you'll eventually start to know when certain toys were made. It's harder for European toys, because they always were ahead of toys compared with North American manufacturers. So when Europeans were manufacturing lithographed tin or hand-painted tin, North America was making cast iron.
Basically, the North American (mostly USA) manufacturers started the late 19th and early 20th century with pressed tin toys followed by cast iron. By the 1920's-1930's cast iron toys were still being made,but pressed steel,then lithographed tin became more common, These processes were faster,more toys could be made in a work shift,and machines did much of the work.
What I found interesting, is that most of the time, the toy manufacturers that are presented today actually had toy reproductions of coal cars with their side chutes or openings to release the coal. However, some manufacturers (e.g. Chein and Marx) simply took a truck and added the words "Coal or "Coal Truck" either through the lithography process or with decals. These trucks could have been any other type of truck for that matter, buy simply adding on other decal names!
The Bing Hopper above was made circa 1915. In the USA most toys
were still made by the cast iron process.
Notice how the 2 different manufacturers above have similar designs. I'd need to check to see that these companies were not the same or that one was purchased buy the other. However, that always reminds me of Apple (IPhone) having sued Samsung over the "rounded corners" of the Samsung cell phone. Of course the lawsuit was much more elaborate than that, but to me, the fact that in the late 19th century and 20th century toy manufacturers could make similar toys without the "fanfare"always amazes me. Of course, I've written about the US patent office, and have matched up toy patents with the "real" toys.
Another idea came to mind. If there were only so many truck manufacturers at the time, could all of the toy manufacturers have gone to the truck makers get licenses to produce reproductions of the "real" trucks? Thn in that case, 6 different toy makers could have all have produced similar toys based on the "real" truck.
I like that small side opening on the truck. It must have been fun to load the truck, then open the slide to let the "coal" spill out. I'm sure though sand was used instead of coal!
The above is a Chein "Coal" truck. It could have been a delivery truck for that matter.
Where's the chute? I wonder if any young children became unhappy when their parent brought home this toy, when they might have seen the real coal truck with it's chute or slide?
Here's another "coal truck".
Now this is more my type of coal truck! It has the slide to open the coal from the back, and the rear truck can actually tilt! I'd have to check about coal, but I wonder of the 3 different compartments were for different qualities for coal that was used for heating? I do know that there are in fact different qualities of cola. Some are cleaner (less dusty), and some are harder and have more energy per weight that the less-expensive coal.
I must be over-tired because I'm having thoughts that are making me laugh. I have to remember that these are toys, but as an adult, I am thinking "adult" Would such colourful toys have been modelled after such colourful "real" trucks? I know that when I was young, I 'd often clean out the BBQ. In those times, a BBQ actually had charcoal briquettes - a distant cousin to coal. Cleaning a BBQ then was a big mess. Would coal delivery trucks in "real"life have been so nicely painted? Could you imagine the mess, the dust, and all the scratches from the coal?
This Kingsbury toy was probably made in the 1930's , and it's for transporting larger loads of coal.
The engineering is great ince the whole truck can be tilted to unload its coal cargo.
Since these are in fact "toys", I will have to think like a kid, and say that "OK, maybe they had coal trucks like this way back then. I actually like the mechanics of this Marx "coal truck". It moves via the wind-uip mechanism, has a dumping capability, and is brightly coloured. I especially like the lithographed tin driver. So, I guess I'll let "artistic license" win out over the authentic reproduction of a "coal truck".
It must be a combination of the heavy yard work of the lawn in combination with too much sun. Thankfully, I'm finished the lawn in front of my house, and it's going to rain tonight and tomorrow.
I'll be able to recuperate, and think better over the weekend.
Thanks for dropping by,
and have a great weekend wherever you may be.
Stacey
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