Sometimes You Gotta to Let the Ponies Run.

(June-2007) We were going east on I-80 toward Salt Lake City when I saw the sign. Bonneville Salt Flats it said.  "Let's stop," I was quick to say.  We turned onto the access road an drove about a mile to a dead end.   On either side the salt was covered by a few inches of water. There was a wide area to turn around in and a large sign. "You want to stop to read the sign?" she asked. "This is Bonneville, " I answered, " I gotta."

 "What's so great about this place,. There's nothing here."

"But this is where world land speed records were set."

"I should have known. It would have something to do with automobiles and speed!"

I then began the education of my wife concerning the Bonneville Salt Flats.

"The flats are actually a dry  lake bed, but the water is long gone except for the rains. It's over forty thousand acres  and named for an early explorer, Capt. B. L. Bonneville. One of the first speed records set here was in 1914, when Teddy Tetzlaff drove his Blitzen Benz to 141 miles per hour. In the early '60s hot rodders were exceeding 400 mph in automobiles built in garages.  The world's record for piston powered wheel-driven automobiles is 426 mph and was powered by two automobile engines joined together.  The fastest jet or rocket powered car to run here went 631 mph. However, the world land speed record is a bit over 760 mph and was set at the Black Rock Desert.  By the way, that's faster than the speed of sound.  This is is also the  place where New Zealander Burt Munro, at age 68, rode his much modified 47 year old Indian motorcycle to a speed of 305 miles per hour. Some of Munro's records still stand today. And that's pretty much the history of the Bonneville Salt Flats in a nutshell."

"I don't understand how they do that on the water," she said.

"It's always wet until late spring and early summer when it dries out. Because of that many racers are now using the Black Rock Desert for speed trials."

"So, are we ready to get back on the road to Salt Lake City?"she queried.

"I guess so."

When we had turned the car around and were on our way back to the Interstate I said, "You know there are no speed limit signs on this road, and we are sort of on the Bonneville Salt Flats.  Do you think we could let those ponies run?"

She looked at me, and I knew I did not need to translate. The gas pedal was floored and over two hundred and sixty romping stomping Japanese ponies started to gallop. The view out the side window became a white blur as the tachometer hand began its climb.  According to the factory specifications the car had a top speed of 140 mph.  We did not reach 140, but I will say that we were in triple digits  in miles per hour. 

But next time, if there is a next time...I WANT TO DRIVE!

Phobias

All of us are afraid of something.  I think that's what the psychologists call phobias. I'm not afraid to admit I have one or rather some.  I don't care for snakes. I don't like high places. I don't like small places. And I don't like cemeteries. It's not that I'm afraid in cemeteries, I'm just not real comfortable in them. But recently with the encouragement of my traveling companion I visited a famous cemetery; the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. She said it was in the guide book and Rick Steves recommended it and who was I to disagree with Rick, the king of PBS travelogues. We had a cafe au laite and bought a map at a small store before entering the massive gates to the final resting place of the famous French and other famous personages. The map was not very useful to me. My knowledge of French is very limited.

This is not the only cemetery in Paris but one of the better known because of its inhabitants and there is a waiting list to get in.  That is to be buried here.  It spans over one hundred and ten  hilly acres of Paris complete with large hardwood trees and shrubbery.  It also has many tourists.  (I guess a lot of people read Steves' travel books.) We thought we would like to see the graves of some famous people.  There are tombstones and tombs everywhere, mostly in rows. Many of the tombs appear to be small chapels or some kind of fortification.  I'm not sure what kind of protection the dead need.  Things seem to be kaput when they bring you here.  We  read the inscriptions with our limited French and laughed at our mispronunciation of the names.  

We visited the mausoleum which was at the top of a hill.  It seems they filled it up and in order to get more space they removed the bones and burned them.  The resulting ashes took up much less space.  Mausoleums always smell funny to me and seem to have a cold wind coming from some mysterious place. We passed the graves of soldiers and saints, (not really) as we continued to walk about. We came to one large stone of the grave of Oscar Wilde, the famous playwright.  You can no longer kiss his tombstone while wearing brightly colored lipstick. The ban applies to both men and women. Two weeks earlier we were standing in front of the courthouse in London where he was on trial, which resulted in his leaving the British Isles.  Victorian England was not a good place to be a gay man. He was a brilliant man of letters who was probably ahead of his time.  

We passed the resting place of the American dancer, Isadora Duncan.  Her ashes are next to those of her children. Considered the creator of modern dance she died tragically in Nice where her children died in an accident earlier.   Lynn Redgrave played her in the movie.  I brought my traveling companion up to date on Isadora Duncan as we climbed yet another hill.  I don't know much about modern dance but did read a very good book about creativity by Twyla Thorpe.  

We passed the tombs of famous painters such as Eugene Delacroix, the romantic painter, and such composers as Georges Bizet. It is very interesting that so very many of the occupants are not French. We separated to look for the grave of an  American rock star.  The formerly blue sky had darkened, and the wind began to blow as I passed a tomb with an open door. I'm sure it creaked! I turned to the right at the intersection of the pathways between the rows of graves where there was a barren tree with gnarled branches reaching into the darkened sky. I caught my breath and thought I heard a raven call.  I hurried on.  I was thinking it was about time to leave that place.  I am not fond of cemeteries. 

I passed an old man bent over a grave. It was such an ominous scene. I was sure he was up to no good.  But  he had dead flowers in his hand and there were fresh ones on the grave.  I looked at the headstone--Edith Piaf, the Little Sparrow.  Our hotel was in the neighborhood where she grew up singing on the streets.  The place was beginning to give me the creeps. 

I quickened my pace and met Claudette.  Somehow the place was not as menacing in her company.  Jim Morrison's grave was nearby.  Initially the grave space for the Doors front man was rented for thirty years, but before the thirty year lease was up his family bought the plot.  His grave is one of the most vandalized in the cemetery, although the vandals probably would not call it vandalization.  The trees near his grave are carved with graffiti.  It is one of the most popular graves in the cemetery.  My oldest son took a train from Marseilles one weekend just to visit. 

At last we had seen what we had come to see. That is to say I had seen enough. At the first cafe after leaving the cemetery I ordered calvados.  No, I don't like cemeteries, and I don't want to be buried in one!

The tomb on the left is that of Oscar Wilde

The last photo on the right is graffiti near Morrison's grave

Jim Morrison's grave is second from the right.

Fishing

My first fishing buddy.

I like to fish.  I don't know why.  I'm not good at it, but I've always done it.  When I was but a wee lad my grandmother would take me fishing. On a warm spring day she would show up at our house asking if I was ready to go.  She said she had everything we needed in her apron. and away we would go. I don't remember if I skipped, but I should have. Down through the cow pasture we would go with her constantly warning me to beware of cow paddies.  We were going to the big branch.  It was four feet wide in places, but when you're only a little over four feet tall, that's wide.  Upon reaching our special fishing spot we got out our gear. Grandma took two straight pins she would have normally used in sewing and bent them in the shape of a hook. Her apron also yielded up a bit of thread.  With these and the branch of a small bush we were in the fishing business.  For fish bait she had some scraps of bread moistened with saliva. With the addition of a piece of pine bark I had shaped with my knife we were fishing.  My grandmother was fearless and seemed to have everything in her apron.  I once saw her catch a turtle and deftly stab it through the neck with scissors from her apron! Those were the days of warm summer days fishing with my grandmother, which I continued until my teenage years.  Hey, when you were a teen-age boy you didn't go fishing with a pith helmet and a cane pole.

Later I fished some with my uncle Frank.  He introduced me to fishing from a boat.  It was a wooden boat with a Johnson outboard motor. It was painted red and green and white with "B-B" painted on the transom.  It was probably named for the famous French sex symbol of the time, Brigit Bardot.  Sometimes we would fish at night, tying up under bridges and railroad trestles.  We had a lantern fueled by "white gas" and Uncle Frank said it attracted snakes. According to him the snakes would try to crawl into the boat. I never saw one, but every now and again Uncle Frank would smack a paddle down hard on the gunnel of the boat and yell, "Did you see that one, boy.  It was a big 'un!" Sometimes it would rain, and my uncle said that was when fishing was real good under the bridges.  He said the fish would come under the bridge to get out of the rain. Uncle Frank was always trying to catch a "waterhorse".  I never knew exactly what one was, and I don't know if he ever caught one.  He did catch a lot of fish. But, he did fish a lot. Actually, that was about the only thing he did.

My Grandpa did catch, or rather kill, a big fish one time.  He was coming back from working in the fields when he saw a big catfish in the shallows of the farm pond.  Grandpa, who was pretty quick for a man his age, stabbed the fish with the pitchfork he was carrying. It was about three feet long and made a great catfish stew.  Catfish were considered "trash" fish by some folks, but we ate  'em.  Even Grandma's dog liked them.  Fatboy, he was a plump daschhound,  would eat a raw fish at any given opportunity.  Once while  I was fishing I was catching a lot of little catfish and throwing them back hoping to catch some larger ones.  I pulled one out and before I could pick it up to remove the hook Fatboy got it.  Think about it.  I had just caught a dog using a catfish for bait. We had to quickly cut the fishing line before cutting the barb off the hook to get it out of Fatboy's mouth.

Once when my younger brother went fishing with me he caught the bigger fish.  He was about twelve-years-old then and had a Zebco 202.   We were fishing in a farm pond, when he hooked a largemouth bass.  The gears in the reel  wouldn't hold the fish, and I managed to pull the fish in hand over hand.  It was a nice fish, and after my brother showed it to everyone in the neighborhood, I had to clean it.  It wasn't so bad except that it was the largest fish I had ever cleaned.  The backbone was as big as my thumb and was hard to cut through.  The big problem was the cat. This creature started by just watching.  Then, she got closer and finally I had to push her out of the way to continue. This was frustrating.  I was continuously having to swat the cat out of the way to finish the job. Maybe I should have given the cat some fish?

I didn't fish any while in the Navy, but when I returned and began attending Clemson University my neighbor introduced me to trout fishing in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  We used canned corn for bait up on the Chauga and Chattooga Rivers.  There is something about "brownie" frying over a campfire with a bubbling stream close by as twilight wanes that is magical.  We also tried to bribe this fellow that worked at the fish hatchery to tell us where they were stocking the trout streams.  We were never successful.

I've fished a little in the Carolina lowcountry.  My friend Henry from church has shown me a new method of bream fishing. Using a fiberglass pole and a cricket for bait it is a method that works  almost every time. One thing that did concern me though; Henry's boat had some loose rivits, so it leaked.  But Henry said it wouldn't fill up with water before we got back to the dock.

There is a special fish that continues to antagonize me.  It is three and one half hours away in a farm pond.  I've seen him in the morning and afternoon.  I know what he looks like.  He is a Micropterus salamoides,  a largemouth bass.  These are the "Jaws" of fresh water.  They will eat anything: worm, minnow, frog, artificial bait. Once I hooked this particular fish in the early morning while the dew was still heavy on the cattails.  He took my worm and ran with it and my old reel sang its song. I put a little pressure on him as though to slow him down.  He jumped, and the water erupted with a splash that could have been heard in the next county.  He let me play the fisherman for a little while as he danced on his tail. And then, I guess he had had enough fun with me, and the hook abruptly came out of his mouth.  This has happened several times but the last time I remember the best. It was twilight. There was a crescent moon appearing in the sky.  The birds of the day were gone, and I could hear the faint screech of a small owl.  A big bullfrog croaked, welcoming the night, and I made one last cast of a purple rubber worm.  The fish hit that worm with all the ferociousness of a charging bull.  I let him run a bit  then tightened the line.  I was thinking this may be the time.  He seemed to dance on his tail across the water, a silver shape in the moonlight.  And then, as if on cue, he seemed to spit out my worm as though it was the wrong flavor and was gone. One day I'll get that fish.  Maybe it deserves a special place on my bucket list. 

I've recently gone saltwater fishing with my neighbor  up the little creeks which feed the Cooper River.

We use mud minnows on spinning rigs.  I've caught a few fish, but my first catch was a stingray. When I hooked him I thought it was one of those "waterhorses" my uncle had talked about. We released him, and he once again became a denizen of the deep.   We moved the boat to a different spot up one of the small creeks that feed the Cooper.  The sun was very bright, and the temperature was about eighty-five degrees with the bluest sky you could imagine.  White clouds billowed along the horizon with thunderheads springing like giant mushrooms into the sky, and the marsh grasses had that jewel-like green  with the water reflecting all that blue of the sky.  The next fish I caught was a ladyfish, and did it ever fight.  It was only about eighteen inches long but ever inch a fighter. Forty-five seconds I will always remember.  After more fishing and catching some other fish  we headed back to the dock.  Along the way I thought of the line in a Garth Brooks song which says, " one of God's greatest blessings is unanswered prayers".  I decided right then and there that ole Garth had never been fishing.

I still don't know why I like fishing.  Or maybe I just like where fish live.

from an old sketchbook

This is a fish story.

Are There Angels?

A few years ago we were traveling across the desert from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.  We had crossed the U.S.A. in one of our transcontinental camping jaunts and were returning home to the east coast.  The Mojave Desert lay in front of us on a scorching summer day. It was a beautiful clear day as the miles sped beneath our Toyota's wheels at a rate greater than one mile per  minute.  Some Lynyrd Skynyrd was playing softly on the radio as we chatted about what we expected to do in the glitz capital of the country.  The harmony of these moments of marital tranquility was broken by the sound of the front passenger side tire on our car disintegrating.  We rolled to a bumpy stop on the side of the nearly deserted highway.  (I guess bad things happen when you play Skynyrd softly.)

Upon observation, sure enough the tire was shredded.  We would need to call AAA for service.  We were standing beside the car surveying the damage when Claudette said to me, "Is that a man up there?" pointing in the direction we were traveling.  "It is, if it isn't one of those mirages they used to have in those desert movies," I answered as I surveyed the seemingly unending miles of sagebrush surrounding us. But the figure had appeared almost as an apparition, and as he came closer we saw that he was a man of about six feet tall and 175 pounds and appeared to be in his early thirties with dark brown hair cut short. He wore jeans, Reeboks, and would you believe, a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt. As he walked up to us he pulled two small bottles of water from his pockets and said, "You look like you need help and could probably use a drink of water." We thanked him for the water, and he asked if we had a spare tire.  We began to unload the trunk in order to reach the spare.  It actually took us longer to dig out the spare tire than it did for our new friend to change it.  But, without much difficulty,  we were soon on our way.  We  asked our new friend if we could give him a ride, although I don't know where there was room for him in the car, because when we camp coast-to-coast we pack the car from the back bumper to the back of the front seats. He declined our offer  and  said his wife and children were waiting for him up ahead and walked away. We stowed away the last few pieces of camping equipment before continuing toward Las Vegas. 

A few miles further I said to Claudette, " We never did see that fellow's family waiting for him did we?"

"No," she answered, "and we didn't even ask his name."

Questions:  Is listening to Sweet Home Alabama in the morning a bad omen and/or are there really  angels?

I Don't Know Why I Draw or A Visual Data Repository

Watercolor sketch 5 X 6

It is something I've always done. Perhaps, it has something to do with, as Hercule Poirot would say, the little gray cells. But ever since I could hold a pencil in my chubby little hand I've drawn pictures. All children draw. I did but did not stop. Why?  Is it an unconscious desire to create or a method to record what I see around me?  I do know that through the years my brain has been stimulated more by pictures than words. A couple of cases in point.... I have great difficulty understanding mathematical relationships, but if they can be illustrated with graphs or vectors I seem to grasp the concepts quickly.  I never would have passed Labor Econ in college had the professor not presented the information graphically. 

Sketchs from the UK

One of my greatest joys of drawing over the years have been my sketchbooks, which I refer to as repositories of visual data.  While in the U. S. Navy I began keeping my drawings in a sketchbook and have continued some fifty-odd years.  In many cases they are autobiographical.  They easily document where I was when I made the sketch. It may be the sketch of a hippie chick lounging beneath the lion in front of the Art Institute of Chicago or a camel in Tangier or a Manila hotel room. My sketchbooks include more than drawings.   You'll find ticket stubs, postage stamps, beer labels, and other objects.  Some times I'll do a rubbing.  I remember once in Wisconsin after I had completed a sketch of a Frank Lloyd Wright designed church I noticed the architect's signature in stone by the door. I made a rubbing of it using my wife's eyebrow pencil.

Long before Moleskin began putting envelopes inside the back of their blank books I was attaching them to the inside of my 5 X 8 spiral bound sketchbook and I stash  tidbits of printed matter there.  I have been fortunate not to have lost but one book in my travels. When we were in Ironbridge, England, and I left my book when we left there.  I bought another book  in Dublin and was fortunate to have my lost book returned via mail about a month after our return to the U.S.A. 

All my paintings start out as a sketch in  my book. The overall compositing is defined and a valued drawing created. Frequently I work out the color harmony as well.  Sometimes many thumbnails are done before finding exactly the right combination.  

There are other uses as well.  It is easier to understand some mechanical processes with a drawing. For example, for several years I have been attempting to render a drawing of a particular 18th century mill in McCormick County, SC.  I have visited the ruins and based on information gathered have drawn a floor plan.  There were four types of waterwheels used during this period and based on my information and drawings I can be reasonably certain what type  of wheel was used. Based on my research I am now very near the completion of this project. My sketchbook contains drawings as well as copies of researched mill data.

I usually provide a visual reference to the size of objects in my sketches. For example I may refer to an object being "4 pens" in length.  I normally use the same size ballpoint pen for all my drawings. Although not super accurate it does record a relative size.

I think the term repository of visual data is fairly descriptive, don't you?

Screen shot of family website with sound, video, and interactive games designed in sketchbook.

Claudette, Angie, Susie, Dixie, and Me.

We were eastbound on Interstate 26 traveling in excess of seventy miles-per-hour when the tire shredded. It was the front tire on the passenger's side of the car.  There was a steady stream of traffic as we pulled over on the wide shoulder of the highway.  It was 10:45 in the evening when the car rolled to a stop. Claudette immediately began to call Triple A on her cell but then realized we didn't know exactly where we were. After starting the navigation application on my cell, Dixie instantly informed me, after finding a GPS signal, that we were 7.1 miles west of Exit 187. Who was Dixie? Dixie is the name I've given the female voice on my cell phone navigation system. Claudette has Susie and her car has Angie. I developed quite a relationship with Angie on a trip from Phoenix to Goose Creek alone.  We have friends who have the British entertainer John Cleese's voice on their system.  Of course you must be accustomed to the British terms used in motoring. For example, he uses the expression "give way" instead of "yield".  These navigation system are a credit to modern technology originally developed for the military.  There are 24 satellites that orbit the earth that are the backbone of the system. Through the transmission and reception of radio signals the received data allows for the accurate location of any earth bound vehicle properly equipped.  Therefore, I was sitting in an automobile looking at a map on my cell listening to a female voice give instruction.  During the long wait for the tow truck a state trooper made an appearance and queried us about our situation and offered assistance. He said we could call him at "star-HP".  I guess it is fitting that their number has a star since they represent law enforcement.  My father always referred to a highway patrolman as "the man". I am not fond of flashing blue lights but must say they were a welcome sight that night. 

It seemed to take forever for the tow truck to arrive.  Forever was about an hour and a half.  Shortly after he put on the spare tire he noticed it was flat. Lightning had been flashing continuously while he worked on the car, and now it began to rain. Noisy heavy drops began to pound a rhythm on the car as the tow truck operator began to attach cables to the car to pull it onto the tilt bed truck.  We had reached the decision that we must tow, i.e. haul, the car to a gas station to get air for the tire.  The time was past midnight when we piled into the cab of the tow truck.  The rain was pouring down, and the lightning illuminated what I believe was an old man building a boat with a bunch of animals watching.  The umbrella I had was made for a thin person, a very thin person. I got drenched. Claudette's fingers were moving on her phone at a maddening pace. Susie tells us that there is a BP station a few miles away.  Dixie was silent due to the death of her battery. Claudette decides to call the gas station due to the lateness of the hour.  She finds that the first two stations listed don't answer and the third is over twenty miles away but is open all night.   The rural roads are narrow with little traffic as the heavy rain limits visibility of the highway lit by continuous lightning. Some of the thunder claps were so close I'm sure some of my dental work was damaged.  Claudette and the driver engaged in a lively chat about speed traps in local municipalities. We followed Susie's verbal directions to the gas station and got air in our tire to continue our journey home. One unfortunate thing was Susie sent us in the opposite direction from our destination! But then she did send us to the closest gas station.  The question then became, "Should we go to breakfast at Waffle House before home?"

What would we have done without a cell phone and navigation system?  I'm not sure.  A navigation application on a cell phone is helpful whether you're searching for a gas station on a stormy night in South Carolin or cupcakes in Georgetown.  And, voice commands really make it simple to find what you need.

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A good explanation of navigation systems and how they work can be found at Garmin's website.