50th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is today. RIP

“Fellas it’s too rough to feed ya” ….

That song always gets to me.

Even this Okie listens to it every year on November 10. God bless them.

"We're holding our own ".
Last transmission from the E.F.

Really great interview on NPR with Gordon Lightfoot about him writing the song and not wanting to record it out of respect to the families. He donated a lot of funds to support maritime safety on the Great Lakes.

The most moving song of all time for me. Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven is right up there too.

Quit yer foolin, you ain’t got any feelings …

The legend lives on! As far as the song goes, I think its one of the best ever written.

A guy on that boat was from my home town.
The road he lived on was named after him.
The story was not widely talked about.
Respect was different then than now.
The family was very well to do.
I knew some of the inlaws and outlaws
but not him.

they still do some memorial sections of roads
a section of Highway 11 in WI from Orfordville to Footville was named Corporal Benjamin H Neal Memorial highway the Orfordville post 209 pushed for it as he was from O town
Neal was KIA in Afghanistan in 2012 and it did take 11 years

Round numbers. It carried 20,000 tons of steel. 1 car uses 1 ton of steel. Each load was enough to build 20,000 cars with one load across the lake. (its destination = Detroit auto plants) Average round trip took 5-6 days. If a week was 6 days long then there would be 365/6= 61 weeks... so... 20,000 tons x 61 weeks a year = 1.2 million tons = 1.2 million cars that could have been made with the pellets it hauled in one year.

(the numbers get funny b/c back in the day it wasn't 1 ton per car and there was so much waste in the build process you had throw a lot of steel away as scrap and couldn't actually make that many cars with it... but still... wow)

"Approximately 15.5 million to 16.5 million new light vehicles were sold in America in 2023. Sales have been recovering from pandemic lows, but recent estimates for 2024 predict sales surpassing 16 million, though this is still below the peaks of around 17"

One year @ 1.2 million cars = 1.2 / 16 would = 7.5% of 16 million cars sold in 2023.

They were hammer down hauling day and night non stop getting material into Detroit! They were trying to get to unload and once they were unloaded they left to get loaded again. Whatever hour day or night. No fooling around.

God bless them. Amen.