WGBH Journal; Commuter Boats From The South Shore, Weathervane Manufacturer, Louis Lyons, Walter Muir Whitehill Excerpted Interview

Good afternoon and welcome to GBH Journal. I'm Bill governess. On today's show we'll hear about a commuter boat service from the south shore into Boston. We'll have an interview with the manufacturer of weather vanes new lines will take a look at the news and we'll have some excerpts from an interview with the lake water in your White Hope who died in Boston this weekend. With a hug. If thousands of people who commute into Boston every day the accepted means of commuting are either by car or by bus so my train for many people who live along the south shore however the most direct way of getting into the city would be across the water. Commuter boats from the south shore into Boston now exist but the trip is leisure late and long. New and faster commuter boat service may be

starting as early as this coming summer. Richard frosting has more. So sure commuters may soon be able to cut their travelling time to Boston in half. A 20 minute commuter boat service from the saw shore to Boston may be running as early as this summer. That's if the state gives its ok. State Representative Carolyn Stahl For of Hingham and Bill Spence president of Mass Bay commuter lines recently returned from a trip to England where they explored various types of commuter boats. Spence and staffers said they found a boat they like to have a Marine which they proposed to use during a years test in Boston. The new mode of transportation is some aspect of a hovering craft of a marina of a craft or something of that nature hydrofoil. And we went to look. The most well operating craft. Over in love with they seem to be about as. Is there anywhere in the world. One was what you think of as a traditional hovercraft. It was if it came

right up out of water and went over the mud flats it was very noisy. It utilize the airplane airplane propeller kind of propulsion which we think of as the hovercraft crafts type of operation. The hover Marine however is different in that it utilizes small boat propeller kind of propulsion and it is in the water which means that it is not noisy as opposed to the other. We also wrote on a what is it a hydrofoil a smaller hydrofoil. It was also quite noisy. Spins has been running a commuter boat service out of home for 15 years. Explain how the hub Marine works. Basically the concept involved in the how of a Marine is to have the craft ride on a bubble of air on the hovercraft it is truly on air. There is nothing in the water but this requires the use of the jet engine and the noise that Carolyn has mentioned and greatly increased the expense the hover Marine uses standard General Motors

engines diesel engines just like we have right now on our vessels and just like they have in General Motors buses. They're much less expensive we're talking about one third the cost of some of these other craft. And again the boat drives because it has two propellers in the water. It has rather those in the water and just about a foot into her from what I would call upon two homes on each side. When it's up on its bubble of the air that do stay in the water. This gives it stability going from side to side in and makes it more maneuverable. The commuter boats now in service are reliable but slow traveling at a speed of seven to 10 miles per hour. Stouffer feels the hub Marine would be able to cut commuting time in half. But passengers would have to sacrifice some of the luxuries of the slower boat for speed. The current boat from Hingham takes ideally 15 minutes but usually more like 55 minutes Bill's boat is a trifle slower and it takes about 55 minutes but it's seven miles instead of 10 miles. The hover Marine could

probably at least have that. In other words it would be no more then 25 minutes I suspect and maybe less. But. Have to understand to the difference between what we have now in a conventional hall and what will be essentially a fast over the water bus. Right now there's a gracious kind of style of of travel. People can get breakfast English muffins and coffee and tea in the morning and wine or beer at night the same on both the Hingham and the whole boat. That would not be possible on the bus type. You would have to fairly or not you would not have been able to move around as freely as you can on the on the current books. The whole marine measure is 50 feet long and 20 feet wide and holds about 65 to 75 passengers spent anticipates the boat will operate with multiple runs between hall and Hingham and the Boston waterfront. He said that if he runs the new boat he doesn't expect fares to increase our present fear from a dollar and a half. But if

you buy a coupon book which we let be good for over 10 trips it goes down to a dollar and twenty cents we charge $12 So in essence for me weekly commuters point of view it's $12 a week for turn trips Stouffer pointed out of the year's experiment proves successful a larger boat might be purchased or the hard Marine might be used toward the purchase of three new boats. It's unlikely the new boat will have much impact on the already beleaguered Southeast Expressway a roadway that was designed to handle 60000 cars a day and is now handling one hundred twenty thousand but solutions like the one Spence and staffer are proposing however small do help. Spence again I do see the kensho for literally carrying hundreds of thousands of people and the only way you will find out whether you can do this is to try the new technologies and just going to our own boat which carries about 70 people in the winter and about 150 in the summer.

If you triple the speed and the hover Marine goes between 30 and 35 miles an hour which is triple at ten miles an hour. And if you thereby triple the number of trips question in my mind but that you will fill that boat up it doesn't represent a lot of people maybe 200 more people. But again you are establishing whether people are interested in doing that. And I I said that they will be the decision to buy the new boat in the hands of the state's secretary of transportation. Favorable action is expected in the coming weeks. Journal this is Richard frost. Henry White helps to uphold an old New England tradition by doing his job for

what he does is to manufacture and restore weather vanes. Mr White descended from a long line of sea captains is a retired roofer. He works full time at his shop located in the garage of his house in one time. There is certainly a good deal of weather in Massachusetts but you may be wondering if there is still a market for weather vanes even Dukat. Found out more in this interview with weather in manufacture. And why'd. You cut make them and put them outside they'll steal ammonia so you make them and put them inside and enjoy them. And then you have to make them good enough so they can stand close close scrutiny. Really you make them only for inside use. I couldn't make one for outside use but it's usually a simple simple weathervane that's not too attractive and that that's not too attractive I don't mean it that way I mean it's just not true. I catching but it gives the man who owns it a good deal a pleasure to look at it to have it on his building and look at it.

You wouldn't put a $500 weathervane on on a on a bond today or a garage today because there are people around that know the value of them and they snap them up and you're just out of luck. What kinds of weather vanes do you make what are some of the themes. Ah see I made for example. I've made different kinds of ships. I made as I showed you that I made a kite you know with lightning going down the line into a key. The Ben Franklin idea. I did a sailfish twice I do two sailfish is it a. Made of copper the sailfish is on his tail instead of being impaled like the sacred card is sometimes when you see it as a weathervane seeing the thing as on his tail or coming out of the water and there's a line and a line coming out of the smiles and I set it on the harpoon get a stalk for a

doctor an obstetrician and put the diaper and the baby in there. He goes he thinks a lot of it he wouldn't want me to tell you where it is either. Even not even the town he lives in. But you still meet them at the directions on them. Oh yes yes yes. And I make them with the letters you mean and. Oh sure you know you have you've got to have. You've got to have a complete weathervane there's no sense in putting just the thing up there because not many people today know where north is today as a matter of fact so. So you have to have all the letters on it to tell and point to the compass so people really do use it to tell the points of the compass if they matter in the building. All Yes yes. Of course they're not like the old farmers that used to tell the weather on the old sailors it could tell you what the weather was going to be from the wind and the condition of the clouds of the sky there. There's nobody around that can do that. I guess that way now they don't bother it's too easy to snap on the radio and get the information that you need even though you may complain about it but it's what you need is what you get from

radio and TV. The weather is good Those fellows are a lot smarter only they know more about the weather and a lot of these old timers with their rheumatism. But anyway it's. That's about the size it is just for the pleasure of seeing the thing there isn't that either does much work. It's just if you're a weather vane buff just the joy of seeing a turn into the wind and the little thrill you get from the thing staying up they get up in the morning it's still there you know and it's it's it's a nice feeling. What's it like to restore weather vanes that have been made by other great masters. Oh it gives you a chance to see some of the good work that's done and and marvel at. Their ability to make what they made as well as they made it with the tools that they had to work with. We got much better tools and means of making them today than they had then.

For example the grasshopper in Faneuil Hall is a sixteenth of an inch thick and if you've worked a sixteenth of an inch thick might not sound like much to a man who works around on steel but when you get working at it and it hardens on you way it's pretty it's pretty can get tricky. Let's put it that way can get difficult to keep the thing so it's not twisted out of shape. How long does it take you to make a weathervane make to make a ship it takes me about six weeks to two from the start to the finish. But yeah that would be like six eight maybe 10 hours a day some days but I never use eight hours a day six weeks and when you think that they quit they I asked for them. I make it about a dollar an hour. Oh sure. Oh I wouldn't I. I'm very happy with doing what I do and what I like is to see some cute little kids about eight or 10 years old and he comes up and he looks at what I make and she missed and that's great I like that

I'm paid. That's all I need. It isn't all I need but it really gives me a great deal of satisfaction. A major development in the Taft-Hartley Act in dealing with the ongoing strike. The topics of commentary. After the coal miners rejected by Toto on the agreement their leaders had accepted. They now prepare for the government intervention they knew was coming. The president has invoked the Taft-Hartley Act that will let him order the miners back to work. National Health and Safety require it he declared his choice had narrowed to the injunction or temporary seizure in the mines. The Taft-Hartley procedure will take about a week

for the court injunction whether the miners would have banned injunction is the dilemma the administration has faced or the weeks of the lengthening strike with its increasing prices to other industries. The miners preferred a government takeover for a nice great strike that brought them the health program that was one of their objectives. That struggle 30 years ago also brought defiance of the government but that was under a leader of a legendary stature and skill John L. Lewis. This time the miners have defied their own union president and council in rejecting an agreement that the operators yielded under government pressure. The operators had calculated that this anarchy in the mine union would prove their best weapon greater even than the rest in their own ranks. The same says something about coal mining incompatible with an industrial society. As dire predictions of increasing unemployment were voiced today Washington had reason to recall the defiance of the British miners that neither Labor and the Tory government was able to cope with. And with the coal miners the

friends who make the core of French communism. But our Appalachian coal miners have no visible ideology except to get more out of the operators there averred leader John Eloise became a Republican to contest a Democratic administration. One of the riddles of the call strike is the pension issue. They only had one a pension fund from the operators but the operators have insisted on cutting down their contribution to it offering instead a wage increase that reaches 37 percent in the three years of the contract. But this failed to sweeten the contract and now have a report of one district union vote was it two thirds of the members are pensioners. If this is typical then two thirds of the membership have everything to gain and nothing to lose in wages by continuance of the strike. The administration economists have only now begun to say that the 77 percent raises built in inflation which anybody could have seen by a glance at the figures. But the administration did not blink at the inflation threat as against the widening unemployment

and the loss of energy that must be made up by coal by oil imports and the end of the illusion about converting industry to coal. The now the water Muir Whitehill at 72 closes the life of the most complete Boston Brahmin of his times event a living man may be said to constitute a Boston institution. It was he said Mayor White in unveiling a plaque to him two years ago at the Faneuil Hall Market. Why deal had been instrumental in restoring the man named him one of his little list of grand Bostonians last year magisterial in a parent's awesome and is learning. He was he was involved in every activity that would concern a proper Bostonians to preserve and heighten the culture of his city. Historian author lecturer scholar and librarian his own culture had almost medieval dimensions. He was chairman of the American Council of Learned Societies the Athenaeum was his base. He headed that Bostonians symbol nearly 30 years but his association reached the other

institutions that characterize the city. Harvard College the museums the innumerable organizations of the arts and science and in public affairs. The plaque Mayor White unveiled Mokhtar role while he led come to occupy between the all in the New Boston. He was the informal consultant of several generations of mayors about the preservation and restoration of Rand marks and the advisor of the organizations promoting preservation and history to advance their projects with public officials. Born in Cambridge he was educated at Harvard and then soaked himself for six years in medieval studies in Europe. Returning then as a museum director in the second world war he served as a defeat at King wrote a biography of King returned as a Lowell Institute lecturer senior tutor at Harvard became librarian of the Athenaeum whereas continuing research has produced a classic topographical history of Boston and one after another histories of Boston institutions. But with all its lore impressive and

precise diction he was a hearty jovial companionable man who enjoyed life in the four and was always ready to lend a hand. The Pentagon is proposing an act of Congress that would seem bound to knock the bottom out of the opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. Opponents of the claim that would make women liable to combat service. Now the Pentagon asks Congress to allow the voluntary enlistment of women in combat service. They need it for they can't get enough men to meet the service needs the Pentagon says particularly qualified men and keep posting such as flying fighter planes and serving on naval ships in a three page letter of February 14 to Speaker O'Neill reports today's New York Times deputy secretary Charles Duncan said the Pentagon will shortly submit a proposal to repeal legislation that bars women from service aboard combat planes or ships. The voluntary military supply needs more women he says because we're coming to the end of the baby boom.

They'll be a 15 percent drop in the supply of 18 year olds by the mid 80s. A 25 percent drop in the 1990s. We shouldn't be depriving women of these jobs they are qualified for and want to do. The Navy is not going is severely limited by current law. It has increased assignments for women to the extent practical within the present law. The Pentagon announces a goal to increase the number of women from the present hundred eight thousand five percent. Two hundred twenty six or seven percent of total military personnel. Lee Lyons noted in his commentary today the death of Walter your white hero a man who personified much of the Boston cultural scene by Dale was the author of several books about Boston. He directed the Boston Athenaeum for almost 30 years and had ties

to vast numbers of cultural institutions both locally and nationally. We looked through our archives today and found an interview with Walter Muir Whitehill from 1975 conducted by Eleanor stout. We accepted part of this interview to close today's show when you wrote the book on Boston what had to do with the topographical Boston. What was the focus of that book. That book I O didn't Tyler. LOL LOL Institute for years is giving public lectures to me asking me to give 8 like Joes on any subject that I chose. Now I had spent 9 years in Spain working on the Spanish Roman has got it. I travelled about Spanish Peninsula became very familiar with the appearance of cities the Spanish city is not apt to have an industrial suburb. Therefore

you approach it from a distance you see the principal churches in the town hall in their relation to the slopes of ground in the river. And there was a clarity to the planning of those Spanish towns and cities that enchanted me. I had grown up in Boston I'd never looked at it particularly it was simply the place I lived. But when I came back from Spain I became curious to see how Boston had become what it was and I began looking at maps and documents and discovered the core of it was a perfectly intelligible 17th century English water. Front column and I began to see why cutting down hills and filling in. It had become from a watering Peninsula a part of the mainland. And so I

tried in the eight lectures that I gave the Law Institute to present as much of that as I could at that point. Thomas J Wilson director of the Harvard University Press took the lectures way for a meeting point of the book titled Boston the topographical history on the book. When did that come out and do you mean 50 now I mean it was reprinted several times and in sixty eight and a new printing was needed the press asked me to write another chapter that described the previous decade I had given lectures in 1958. So when. 1968 I edited a chapter covering the decade 58 68 and I suppose it is time I may have to put a tense chapter on describing what's happened in that case you have a book coming out a handstand book called Boston and strangely enough I guess. Actually it

has a little more of a title it's Boston a series of engravings on ward by Rudolph Ruzicka. With text by me this is a reproduction of twenty nine perfectly in charred wood and ravings in three or four colors in a row. That would be between 1912 and 1940 Wotton for the Marymount press was dropped by the proprietor of the press got to do an engraving of a C in Boston and surroundings each here printed sent them out to the friends of the press with his New Year's greetings and those and chanting things that one seldom Vine's together in one place sums.

Mr. Wright Oh you certainly have written so much about Boston and know so much about it. Which buildings do you feel are the most interesting historically. It depends on the century. It depends on the nature of the building. I am particularly devoted to the Boston Public Library 1895 wrote a book on that. I actually wrote a centennial history of it some 20 years ago. Devoted to many buildings in various parts of the city. I particularly love the two houses design but those Bullfinch should 85 Mt. Vernon Street and fortified Beacon Street. I have a great fondness for the facade and the interior of the Boston nice New Year. I have such a general love affair with the city that it's somewhat difficult. It's a hard task and anything that I particularly like but I think the Boston Public Library has such a wonderful

combination of loft sculpture painting and all the aughts that it is really one of the most of the buildings in the United States at any time. And that's our GBH journal for Monday the 6th of March 1978. The 140 second anniversary of the fall of the Alamo. Producer for GBH Journal Marjorie Hurd C engineer Michael Garrison and I build governments. Very Monday.