Jim,
Honestly, I don't see any reason left to keep on discussing this.
I've asked several questions to those of you who believe in LIFS that I think are logical, relevant, and obvious, such as how Francis's Committee, who according to Mr Francis were trying to figure out how to fit the last five holes into the routing inexplicably decided to swap 14 perfectly fine acres of gently rolling land that they supposedly already owned across the street from the clubhouse ("now covered with fine homes along GHR") was supposedly swapped for a narrow, limiting 4.8 acre triangle of land, and those questions get ignored.
At this point, I feel that I'm the only one providing anything like source material and when I think we're making progress as Jeff advances a theory that not only is consistent with the timelines but actually makes sense with the known facts and acreages of the hard evidence at our disposal, you insist we haven't advanced "an inch", because it doesn't work with a literal interpretation of Francis.
So we're stuck.
I've reached the point where I don't think the thread has gone on this long because there are unanswered questions. Instead, I've reached the point where I think the thread has gone on this long because some people don't like or can't accept the answers.
Out of the blue today I'm spending hours of my day trying to answer questions advanced by Tom MacWood, whose new theory is that because the train to Atlanta in December 1910 supposedly went through Philadelphia, and because a newspaper article that locates Merion Cricket Club in Lakewood, NJ says that they've secured Barker to lay out the golf course, it should now be obvious to everyone that Barker actually designed the course in December 1910, because Merion clearly wanted "the best".
So you know, I wrote back to Phil Young and Tom MacWood privately and let them know that I also have a newspaper article from the day the course opened that states it was layed out by Fred Pickering, and that it was his best work to date.
I suppose based on that article, we should now all admit that we've been wrong with our theories, and the actual architect of the course was the sometimes maligned Mr. Pickering all along.
Then, about every 5 days or so, I end up having to respond to Patrick Mucci, who starts about 200 prior posts and starts firing off lengthy, inflammatory, bright green posts raising issues that were settled 150 posts ago, and demanding to know the truth and demanding that the club release it's private records for his review and supposed approval.
The latest is this new "130 acres" theory, which to be honest, also has no supporting evidence with anything to do with the actual club records. Earlier this evening Tom Paul sent me the following;
As far as I can see from all MCC's records, MCC itself never optioned anything at all of those 338 acres. The only entity that did any optioning of that land was HDC. That was actually mentioned in part of MCC's meeting minutes. By the beginning of Nov. 1910 HDC held title to parts of that 338 acre total or held "options" (which was described as "assignments in blank") to other parcels. I believe the Davis and Taylor properties may've been the latter and perhaps the Dallas Estate too. It could be that some of the participants on GCA don't really understand what an "option" is. And it seems quite likely that some of the newspaper reporters who wrote some of those articles didn't either. Traditionally an "option" has a potential buyer paying a seller a "premium" for an option that generally sets "terms" to purchase at a later date. If the option is enacted by an eventual purchase the premium payment generally becomes part of the purchase price and if the option to purchase is not acted upon the potential buyer gives up the premium payment to the potential seller.So now I have to decide whether to try and figure out what the hell this means when to be honest, I don't think it was accurately reported, and I'm honestly astounded at the amount of mistakes, misrepresentatioins, and flat-out inaccuracies of all types exist in those articles. So, I'm left with the decision of trying to pretend those reports are accurate and then try to discuss it seriously, or be left to seem like I'm ignoring important evidence by summarily discounting it.
At some point, it becomes a circus.
A few weeks ago, I thought we had begun to make some progress, and I did enjoy discussing the evidence with you, Bryan, and Jeff.
However, neither of you will give up on the idea that Francis traded for the entire triangle and I frankly don't see how any of the actual evidence in the club records, or even in the news accounts, supports that idea, once the timing of events are considered.
So, we're at an impasse, and without some new evidence, or some smoking gun I've become convinced that we could go another 2000 posts of ever-increasing strained tenor between us and still be left in the same stalled state.
Perhaps that would be tolerable if it was only those of us who could do this type of thing with a decent level of civility, but when every five days I get another barrage from a Patrick calling me a liar, or Tom MacWood appearing with a new theory out of the blue, I think it's time to just move on to much more productive uses of time.
I think if we are all honest with ourselves we'd admit that it's a good idea at this point...