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THE YEAR 1936

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In 1936, my diary all but disappears except for the account of our Great Lakes cruise in July; for that I made a comprehensive write-up. But beyond that, there are three days of diary and two of them in New York City while the third is a pep talk to myself delivered on January 6th. Consequently, material for a HOME, FAMILY AND FRIENDS section is almost non-existent. There are a few pictures of Willie and the children at home and at the Peninsula. Also, a very few ideas come from my mind but they amount to little. I don't think we got our Filmo-8 movie camera until the fall because the first movies we took appeared to have been that autumn. However, they fail to record much of a story. Despite these inadequacies, I shall do what I can with this part of the story.

When I come to the General Electric part, however, I find there are several large projects and on some of them, I have a considerable material. So this should provide a good record and be fun to write. The thing about the GE things of this sort is the fact they are lengthy undertakings, lasting months in many cases, and so they have left a better image on my memory than what went on in our domestic life, most of which was highly repetitive and therefore not particularly noteworthy.

And so, as usual, I seem to have quite a challenge to come up with an interesting account of 1936. In our family life, the outstanding event was undoubtedly our Great Lakes cruise and I shall put this in as a separate section just as I did the 1934 Québec trip although I didn't keep a day-by-day diary of it. On the business side, there was the Busch-Sulzer Illinois Central job, the New Haven switcher order, the Scranton Grade helper study, the first conferences on the 0361-66 job, and a lot of anecdotes I collected for writing material. Also, there was an experience that I'll never forget--my first plane ride. Although I took it while on a business trip, flying has become such an integral part of so much about travel that I think I'll put it with the domestic section. As luck would have it, this first flight of mine has proved to have been the most hair-raising one of my entire flying experience.

Forman H. Craton

Erie, Pa.
May 2o, 1974.