Railroaders' Nostalgia > Friday the 13th Picasa do-over!

Caution: This one’s gonna be weird! “They” always say better late than never. I have a passing interest in, but I’m certainly not a strict disciple of matters of the occult. Even so I had to be reminded in a phone call that today is Friday, the 13th. And in a subsequent phone call I mentioned that Halloween this year had a full moon. And my helpful friend on the other end of that conversation had to remind me that it was actually a “Blue Moon” (2nd full moon in 1 calendar month).

Even though I was blissfully ignorant of all these matters, I thought I might dig through the photo files to see if I could “scare” up (cute!) something pertinent. I told myself I wouldn’t waste a whole lot of time in this endeavor. Time that would be of much better value spent scanning. But I found this image right off the “bat”, to use a seasonally correct animal reference (ooh, now that was a bad pun). For a color theme I was thinking in terms of black & orange, as in Halloween colors. Of course, I was pretty sure orange as in “pumpkin” probably wouldn’t ruffle anybody’s “turkey feathers” (yikes, it’s getting worse). Then, as I was getting some photo-editing fired up the engine number here gave me a little shiver (with the snow, another bad pun).

The single digit “4”, in this engine number, MY working engine number as it turns out (check out this PICASA-edited link: https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,2711688,2711688#msg-2711688 ), was the subject of one of the few Twilight Zone TV episodes I can remember from the early 60s (yep, he’s gone off the deep end now). In this episode a man who was superstitiously terrified of the number FOUR, kept running into that number everywhere! Street signs, store windows, you name it. So I knew I was on the “right track”. The rest of the episode is a fuzzy memory, but you can see the connection.

So after all that, I came to the conclusion that I should make a special effort while working in Photoshop. Image #1, in the classic colors of Halloween is that result. Image #2 is the more conventional look…

1. Halloween colors, only 2 weeks late!

2. BNSF 4444 leads train X-KALJAM 9/09 (grain empty), stopped at Belgrade, MT acct traffic congestion on Bozeman Pass. Photo date: November 13, 2009.

BTW: Poker, anyone???…
Lance Garrels
santafe199

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Another great write-up and a nice edited shot followed by a great snow shot. Four 4's is a good poker hand but when I had it another player had four Jack's, cost me a lot of money.

Don Allender

ATSFSuperChief Wrote: > ... Four 4's is a good poker hand but ..........

I once had the very same fate with the same quad 4s. While up in Montana I learned how to play live Texas Hold 'em and both versions of Omaha (hi & hi-lo split), among other less well-known games. In Omaha hi-lo split (8 or better for low) one after noon I was holding 2-3-4-4, and the flop came A-4-4. Perfect!!! I flopped quad 4s, and had a lock on the best possible low hand. ANY other low card to show up would give me at least a share of low if not all of it. The turn card was a paint card (J or Q??). And the river was another Ace. I suddenly felt like somebody just wal.... STOPMED all over my grave! Sure enough, another player had flopped Aces-full, and improved to quad aces. What's worse: A month or so later the table-owner established a side pot called "Bad Beat". To win that pot you had to have a 4-of-a-kind hand (or higher) get beat. Every day the pot wasn't won the table-owner would toss in another $50. I was on the table when I watched quad Aces get beat by a Royal Straight Flush, with no low possible. The winning hand won the main pot, something like $180. The LOSING quad Aces won the Bad Beat pot, which was somewhere around $2700... :^)

Lance



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/19/20 13:10 by santafe199.

Both versions look great. Love snow shots on the MRL.

Good photo and photoshop job.
Tetraphobia. The photo and comments reminded me that in China the number 4 is considered very unlucky, similar to 13 for us, as the word for four sounds like the word for death in their language (and in some other East Asian languages as well). They will sometimes avoid 4, such as skipping numbering floors in buildings with any number ending in 4.

NYC303 Wrote:
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>The photo and comments reminded me
> that in China the number 4 is considered very
> unlucky, similar to 13 for us, as the word for
> four sounds like the word for death in their
> language (and in some other East Asian languages
> as well). They will sometimes avoid 4, such as
> skipping numbering floors in buildings with any
> number ending in 4.

I live on the west coast of Canada, and most high rise buildings here built after '97 follow that same avoidance of the number.  That plus an architectural superstition about having a 13th floor on a building lead to some buildings having very misleading information about their actual number of stories.

Like the 4 fours shots!

Larry

What a great TV series that was.  Nothing in comparison these days.