Paul Turner said;
"About the plan, it just looks to my eye that the red lines were drawn with a single pen and in one go. And that would be more likely at the end of the building phase, rather than the beginning. Possibly copied from an aerial photo. Does it really look to you as if someone (Crump?) has added features piecemeal over a few years? Why the same pen?"
Paul:
Some interesting points--the kind I like to consider. One might even call them deep research considerations.
Why do I tend to disagree with you that those red lines probably weren't drawn in a single go? Think about it--basically commonsense. Plug in what we do know. Crump and Govan were shot testers despite what you and Tom MacWood might think about that.
I'll guarantee you when Jim Finegan wrote that in his history of PVGC and in pretty interesting detail he sure as hell didn't make that fact of shot testing up out of whole cloth, no matter what you guys think. I know Jim--I have a real feel for the way he researchs and writes--I've sure read all his stuff. Jim reads research documents, sometimes he quotes pertinent remarks and information, but mostly he writes what he reads from actual research information in his own narrative. But the facts are pretty exact in his narrative---often the narration is a reformation, in some way, of the quote that's actually recognizable. That's the only way TO WRITE WELL, in my opinion--who wants to read endless quotations? Jim Finegan, above all else, in this context, is a great writer--a writer who has a completely fascinating style and turn of phrase and technique. If you know Jim you can actually see his own personality in his writing and you can see his fascinating speaking style too--the very thing Kelly Blake Moran was amazed at just the other day. But Jim has never been an elaborator on research--he reports it, even in narrative form, basically the way it is and the way it comes off the research page to him.
Plus, I'm told those PVGC archives have a ton of letters in them--from Crump and others and all kind of this and that stuff. And we have to remember--the things we're looking at might be just a small part of what's in those archives that we've never seen.
So think about it--if Crump and Govan were shot testers, and they surely were, even if they were shot testing a plan that Colt had given them while at PVGC or even sent to them from England, it takes a lot of time to shot test, to consider what it means, how you want to tweak or change things, what you might want to do with bunkering, this or that. That all takes time maybe a lot of time to consider. If you're building and shot testing and thinking you might even take a month on a hole and still not be satisfied and finished. We do know from written reports that Crump considered a ton of things that he build to be temporary to come back and improve later. Probably the very reason he said he was never going to finish working on PVGC!
We sure do know that Crump was in no real hurry--taking five years and not being done is a ton of time in any time on any project--and still not done. Don't forget, again, when Crump was asked when he finally would finish PVGC his answer was "NEVER!"
So it's logical to me that the red lines may have taken time and a lot of it--and they probably were piecemeal. Why are they all red lines if it took time and a lot of it?
Well, now you're getting into some things, similarities and analogies that Wayne Morrison and I have picked up on without a question of a doubt from our Flynn research.
Flynn used a rusty colored pencil for years to make routing and design changes on working routing maps in the field. Why? Who really knows but think about it because it's basically commonsense, common habit, whatever. Maybe there was a stationery store next to his office and maybe he just liked a rusty colored pencil. Furthermore in a working, communicating sense it's consistent, it's understandable, those who are working for him, foremen, constructors, whatever, can recognize it easily, who it is easily--whatever.
Why would the lines even if over years (piecemeal) look to you like 'one go". I don't know about you but when I did routing map drawings I tried to make it consistent--call me anal or whatever but I think most people doing that kind of thing on a working routing would basically do the same.
It wasn't like Crump had a Xerox machine spitting out endless copies of the topo map and even if that were possible, habit, particularly in those days sort of makes you keep it all together on a single copy for obvious reasons. You should see the Flynn working routing of Shinnecock--frankly, it's beautiful, it's tattered, and a form of an evolutionary architectural roadmap of that project!
I still have the working routing map drawings I did of about 500 hours on Ardrossan Farm and it's all pretty consistent because I think that's basically human nature. Call it a style!