Freddie and the Wall of Death

As I was drinking a cup of coffee this morning I noticed that I was using a souvenir cup I had bought in the Dominican Republic. On it was an illustration of a family on a motorcycle and I began to think about one of the first times I had seen a motorcycle.

It was quite a while ago when I was probably about eleven or twelve years old. Freddie Johnson and I were at the county fair. We always looked forward to it.  It was a chance to get out of school early and ride the amusement rides.  How could you not have fun on such things as the Wild Mouse, the Cyclone, the Rocket,  and our most favorite - - the Bumper Cars. Of course there were other things to see that we just didn't have in our home town.

It was a beautiful fall afternoon in late September, and all seemed right with the world. Freddie and I were at the fair and each had two dollars.  Mama said we could be on our own like big boys. I wasn't real sure what she meant by "like big boys", and I didn't ask.  I wouldn't want to give her a chance to change her mind. We had already figured out how far our money would go on rides and were headed for the midway. Actually, I had figured it out. I was a year older and a lot better at arithmetic than Freddie.  It was going to be a great day, and we had three hours before we had to meet Mama back at the church booth where she was working. The music was coming from the Merry-go-round, and we could smell  cotton candy and popcorn.  We heard a sound like a siren on a firetruck.

"Let's see what that is,"  Freddie said, and he started to run.

Since I was bigger and taller I didn't have any trouble keeping up with Freddie as we raced toward the shrill of the siren. We ran past tents that had funny looking animals.  Some had some really strange looking people too. There was one place that had this sort of stage with women on it.  They had these sparkly little bitty bathing suits on. The man on the stage with them was talking through a loudspeaker saying, "Step right up, Gents.  See somethin' you ain't never seen before!"
I don't know what it was, but there was a whole lot of men there, and I believe one of them was Uncle Bill.

We kept right on running til we got to the sound of the siren, which stopped right before we got there.  A little crowd of men and boys were in front of this stage that had a man with a loudspeaker and two men with motorcycles on it. Behind it was a tall tent with a big banner saying, "The Wall of Death". It had a picture of a skeleton riding a motorcycle, and it was on fire. I'd never seen anything like it. I elbowed Freddie.  The fellows with the motorcycles had on their riding britches and brown high boots. And they both had on brown leather jackets and brown leather aviator helmets. One of the men cranked a motorcycle with a kick starter.  Boy, was it loud. "Is that a Harley-Davidson?" Freddie asked.

"I don't know, " says I.  "I never saw but  one motorcycle  before. Me and Daddy was at the seed store one time, and Mr. Carlisle rode by. I think it was a Harley-Davidson, but it had big saddlebags and a windshield. These don't  got no saddlebags or windshield."

"I b'lieve that one has an Indian chief's picture on the gas tank," said Freddie.

The rider put the back wheel of the motorcycle on a pair of rollers and hopped on the seat. He revved  up the motor, and the rollers turned the siren which made a deafening sound.  All this time the man with the loudspeaker was telling us how dangerous the Wall of Death was and how easy it was to get killed riding on it.  But captains Brown and Seigler, he said,  had been in the war, were afraid of nothing, and would ride through the gates of hell itself. (I could never tell Mama what he said 'cause she would wallop me for saying "hell".)  He said it was only fifty cents to see the show, and this could be the last one, because the riders just might get killed doing this stunt.

Freddie and me paid our money and climbed up the steps to the inside of the tent. There was a wooden wall made in a circle about twenty feet across and chest high. We could barely see over the wall. Inside the wall was a pit, kinda like a well, about twenty feet deep and sloping in a little bit at the bottom. The floor looked like it was wood too.  There was a little door to the side and the captains pushed their motorcycles into the bottom of the pit. Capt. Seigler cranked his motorcycle first. Something fell off it with a clunk.  "What was that?" I asked.

"That was just the kick starter.  It don't keep it from running," answered my buddy.

"Wonder what he's gonna do now?" I thought.

The rider gunned the engine, and the motorcycle began to climb  and gained speed going around the wall. Soon the motorcycle seemed to be flying around the wall, which would move a bit with the weight of the machine. He was riding the motorcycle only about a foot from the top of the wall. And then he took his hands off the handlebars and held his arms straight out. The crowd cheered. I didn't cheer.  I was holding onto a steel cable that held the wall together.  My knuckles were white.  Some of the men held up one dollar bills and the rider would lean over and snatch them from their hands.  Down at the bottom of the wall Capt. Brown was cranking up his motorcycle.  He lit out up the wall and commenced to race with the other rider. Round and round they would go chasing each other and passing each other.  They put on quite a show.  Both riders hit the brakes of their machines, and they came down off the wall quickly.

Freddie and I climbed down the stairs knowing we had seen something few of our classmates had.  We took a short cut between the wall of death and another tent.  One of the motorcycle riders was leaning up against a post with his helmet off and jacket open.  He had a pint whiskey bottle in his hand and was taking a long drink.  The man put the cap back on the bottle and stuck it in his jacket
as he saw us. "You kids like the show?" he asked.

"Yessir, we sure did!" we said together.

"Good, come back again, " he said as he turned to go back into the tent.

We walked along a little ways in silence and then I said, "You reckon Mama would let me ride a motorcycle like that?"

Freddie thought a minute and then said, "Naw, she won't even let you drink."

Once Upon a Time in the Desert

We had passed one of the largest solar power stations in Europe on our way to the Tabernas Desert. A huge billboard from the highway along the desert highway, N-340, proclaimed the Oasys Theme Park. It was the object of our venture into Europes only desert and was one of the places on my "must see" list for Spain. This theme park was built on the original movie sets of the great Sergio Leone westerns. The ones they called spaghetti westerns starring a little know American actor named Clint Eastwood. I remembered the films well. They were some of the first "realistic" westerns. The cowboys weren't all clean shaven and well dressed.  They were rough and crude and smoked cheroots. Yeah, I liked 'em all and now I was going to see where the films were made.

We parked our rented Opal, bought our ticket, and entered the turnstiles to another world. We had visited Old Tucson in Arizona, where a lot of American westerns were made, and naturally tended to campare the two. The teepee on our right looked kind of cheesy, but we continued walking a bit further and wound up on the town square. It looked like a typical western town with a few European architectural details. The sheriff's office and jail with a nearby gallows was on our left, the town square with the bank, saloon, and other businesses on the right.   In the jail  Claudette snapped a picture of me behind bars. I'm not sure of my motivation, but I have pictures of me in jails in Yuma, AZ, Edinburgh, Scotland,  Virginia City, NV, and other cities around the world, but I have never been incarcerated.

For about an hour or so we wandered around the town. People in western garb, some on horseback, wandered around with the visitors. We checked out the livery stable, which had a collection of rolling stock, and the cemetery.  Boot Hill was at the edge of town with the mountains rising behind it. A split rail fence, cacti, and low growing shrubs surrounded it. We laughed about the inscription on one of the tombstones.  George Lucas was the name on the headstone.  A little Spanish joke?

As we continued our way back to the center of town a cowboy on a horse passed us under the brilliant blue Spanish sky. I believe that clouds are illegal in this part of southern Spain.  And the sun...well the rays you feel piercing your skin like thousands of needles of fire.   The sun-bloc was in the rental car. We ducked into the bank building and absorbed its cool darkness. Of course once our eyes adjusted it wasn't really dark at all. It was a museum for movie memorabilia of Italian western films made in Spain. There were dozens of old movie posters and old motion picture projectors.  Claudette translated for me.  As we exited there were two dance hall girls  at the door. I pointed at my camera and said to one, "Photo?" She was tall and slim with blonde tresses under her cowboy hat. With a shy smile she softly said, "Si." Had I not understood the Spanish word I would have still understood her meaning. I've got this thing about having my picture taken with pretty girls...I guess it's some kind of "dirty old man" obsession.

The sound of a piano waifed into the street from the Yellow Rose Saloon, and it beckoned. Behind swinging doors it was semi-dark, with a mirrored bar down the left hand side and a stage at the far end.  We looked around a bit and had an adult beverage with foam on top. It was welcome after our time in the desert heat. While there we noticed that everyone seemed to move for the door en masse.  We were standing on the boardwalk in front of the saloon when a cowboy was knocked off the boardwalk into the dirt of the street. He was followed by another in a yellow duster who jumped astride him and began to pummel him with both fists.  There was a sound of horses approaching as a wagon with a coffin sped by dangerously close to the men on the ground. The horses bared their teeth as the driver pulled back on the reins, stopping the wagon. The driver leaped to the ground clad in top  hat and long black coat.  He was met by two men on horseback who dismounted quickly and ran to the wagon. Opening the coffin they retrieved rifles and walked menacingly toward the bank at our right.  Gunfire erupted, and the men ran from the bank carrying a strongbox.They loaded it onto the wagon which had the coffin, and the undertaker drove away. From the sheriff's office at the other end of the street the men of the law appeared. They were tall men in black suits, white shirts, and string ties. Their six-shooters cracked in the Spanish sun as the bandits made their getaway. Two of the lawmen mounted their horses and chased the robbers, guns blazing.

The town square was empty for a few minutes except for the lonely watering trough in the center. Across the way we saw a mounted rider.  It was one of the lawmen, and he was dragging something behind him, raising a cloud of dust. It was one of the bandits.  What followed was a true horse opera. The villain was jailed, but his companions broke him out of jail, and a gunfight ensued culminating in a hanging of one of the bandits. Others escaped the noose only to be gunned down by the sheriff and his deputies.  All of this with dirty filthy cowboys cursing each other in Spanish. (I really don't know if they were cursing, but they were very angry.)  The background music, reminding me of A Few Dollars More, blasted in the background. At the end of the show a dying villain arrogantly gave the one-fingered salute to his executioner.

It was fantastic!

We went back into the Yellow Rose for an adult libation. (Watching gunfights is thirst provoking) It was crowded, and a band was beginning to play.  Actually, it was just a guy playing an old upright piano and a girl playing a banjo.  They were pretty good.  The girl singer did a stirring rendition of Nancy Sinatra's Boots.  I guess that was kind of appropriate. After the band stopped playing the crowd was getting a bit noisy when the piano player walked into the center of the saloon, pulled out his revolver and fired a shot into the air.  It was deafening.  Things quieted down a bit for the dancing girls to hit the stage.  It was a can-can style show, and we really enjoyed it.  We decided we had had about as much of the old west as we could stand, so it was time to head back to Seville.

By the way, the show in the Tabernas desert far outshines the Arizona desert version even though I couldn't understand what they were saying.

Leather and Clay

members of our tour group get a chance to model

During our travels in the interior of Turkey we visited several manufacturing facilities.  These were touted as promoting local crafts. Two very interesting places were the leather goods factory and the pottery factory. I refer to them as factories only in the sense that they produced products for sale. The first we visited was on a tree-lined street near the ancient city of Ephesus. I'm not really sure how big the manufacturing area was, because we did not see the complete facility, but I suspect it included about 75,000 square feet, or about three quarters the size a Wal-Mart super center. Our guide told us to expect a fashion show, but we were not prepared for what we saw. It was a large room with a stage and runway. We sat facing the runway.   A young man in a sport coat and open collared shirt welcomed us to the business and asked that we enjoy the show.

Every thing about the show was western.  The music was western, and the fashions were western as well. The lights dimmed on the audience, floods lit up the stage, and the music blasted out a few decibels louder than the average metal band. The models came prancing down the runway, tresses bouncing, hips swinging like Saturday night hookers...it was great!  At the end of the show the models selected audience members to model some of the fashions. (I did not get selected.)

leather samples

After the show was over we moved to another building and were given a brief introduction to the virtues of their products. They made leather jackets and coats for some of the best known brands in the world. The leather is very thin, about the thickness of flannel. The hide is split by a laser. It feels like a soft fabric but with a smooth finish.  It can be wadded up and returns to its original shape. It is impervious to most stains.  The modern showroom had hundreds of coats and jackets for sale in dozens of styles and colors hanging from chrome racks. Salesmen scurried around anxious to help wall-eyed consumers.  I was reminded that it is the skin of an animal and will probably last forever. We did not buy. The least expensive one I saw was in soft black leather and cost $800.00, but it was beautiful and appeared to have excellent construction. One way to stretch your lira, though, was to buy a reversible garment.

Hand cast and decorated plate.

Then, we were back on the road again, into the real world of mud brick houses and acres upon acres of sugar beets. Tractors pulled trailers full of sugar beets. Women in kerchiefs and baggy pants worked in the fields and herded sheep.  We stopped for some food and a bathroom break. I had some chick peas cooked in olive oil with paprika and other spices.  It was delicious. We normally ate cheap at lunch, since this meal wasn't covered by the price of the tour. For some reason, I know not why, the assistant driver would wash the forty foot tour bus at every rest stop. By day's end it would have been washed as many as three times.  After a one hour lunch we were on the road again, in a very clean bus, to the pottery factory.

Anyone for tea?

 The town had a huge pot in the center of town at a sign with the town's name. The pottery factory was a large modern building of about fifty thousand square feet. There were polished marble floors and smooth stucco walls. There were decorative pots everywhere, some small and some as large as a man.  We were ushered into a small auditorium and introduced to the company by a Turk speaking impeccable English. I think they pride themselves in their mastery of English, but then I must remember these people have been traders and merchants since the days of the caravans and must communicate well to sell their products. We had a great demonstration by a potter. His hands deftly shaped the clay as the potter's wheel spun. He had been making pots for forty years and was at the top of his game. It was incredible! His skilled hands deftly molded clay into the shape of a large hollow donut then added pieces to it to form a pitcher like none I had ever seen.  To serve with the pitcher, the server would place his arm through the "donut" part of the pitcher. (This pitcher is seen  at the far right in the photo below.) After this demonstration we went to see the women painting the pottery. They used small brushes and felt tipped markers to paint the pots before they were fired in a kiln for the final time.  We saw a quick demonstration on how plates were cast from clay, then it was time to shop. The price of the clay creation depends not only on size or intricacy but which craftsman made it. Student pots are much cheaper.  In most cases our guide, Yesim, would negotiate a better price for expensive objects in the factories we visited. (She saved us $300 on a rug.)  Since I am married to an unabashed anglophile, it was necessary that we purchase a teapot. And, a beautiful one it was, with a beautiful design of tiny flowers on a vine in a repeating pattern.   The probability is very near nil that I will ever have a cup of PG Tips brewed in this pot.

a master at the wheel

Every Boy Needs a Good Uncle.

 Some people and events you remember better than others.

When I was about twelve years old I was fascinated by my daddy's older brother.  He was  a little bit shorter than Daddy but a lot thinner. His name was Thomas Oliver or T.O. for short, and he was  a character. He was a veteran of what he called the Great War, WWI to the rest of us. "Boy," he says to me in his high nasal twang, "They sent us over there to beat the Hun! And we beat that ole sombitch"

I was having a little trouble keeping up with him as we walked tbrough the fresh wood shavings. They always put shavings on the ground at tbe county fair each year. I didn't know why. Daddy, Uncle Tom, and I were at the Lincoln County Fair. Mama was at home with my baby sister, and I had gotten to go to the fair with the menfolk.

Mama didn't have much use for Uncle Tom.  She said he was a no account skirt-chaser. I didn't know what she meant by skirt-chaser but I thought he was plenty account. He was a war hero; had practically whupped the whole German army by hisself. He would be called wiry, I reckon, at least that's what Andy called Barney, and he was about the same size as Uncle T. He walked fast. He always wore a hat and a necktie, and today was no different. It was a bright red necktie. Mama said he even wore it to plow his mule, but she didn't think he really plowed any.  She said she thought he hid the plow and mule and went skirt-chasin', whatever that meant.

"Were you a captain in the Army?" I asked.

"No, not none of me, Boy. Officers are lazy and stupid."

"Why you say that?"

"They's always standing around telling everybody what to do. Don't do anything themselves. Ain't good for nothing. The privates, corporals, and sergeants get the job done! "

We were walking toward a huge building that looked a lot like one of our barns on the farm.

"Where we goin', Uncle T?"

"Your Daddy said there was a toilet in that main building there, and I gotta go. When you get old like me you have to go a lot!"

We entered the building through these big doors big enough to drive a truck through.  There were fresh wood shavings all over the floor and a lot of displays and exhibits lined up in rows like grandma's onions. Bright electric lights hung from the overhead. We went walking down between the rows of displays. Boyd's Farm Equipment Supply  had some brand new Farmall tractors there and the local Chevrolet dealer had what Uncle T said was a sports car. The name on it was c-o-r-v-e-t-t-e.  It was kind of little. There was lots of other kinds of stuff too. The racing cars looked really fast to me. Down at one end of the building was a display booth painted red, white, and blue with a lot of crepe paper  streamers and flags. There were lots of people around in straw hats and a little band was playing music.  There was a big banner over the booth that said, "Alexander P. Nealy, General US Army Ret.  for Congress" You shoulda seen him.  He was big man in a fancy uniform with medals and decorations all over his coat. I had never seen anything like it.  But I knew he was some kinda war hero. We'd heard about him in school. I couldn't believe what we were doing. Uncle T, with me trailing along behind, were going right up to the general. I didn't know why.  Uncle T sure didn't like officers.

I caught up with my uncle about the time he stopped right in front of the general.  The man in the fancy uniform grabbed my uncle's hand and was telling him how he would appreciate his vote.  And Uncle T just said, "Which way is the toilet?"

The general pointed to the door in the corner and said, "It's right over there, Sir."

As me and Uncle T walked to the toilet I asked him, "Why did you ask the general where the toilet was? Daddy had already told us exactly where it was."

Uncle T stopped walking,  looked me straight in the eye, and with a slight grin on his grizzled old face said, "I just always wanted a general to call me, 'Sir'."



The car in the photo used to illustrate this post was driven by the legendary A. J. Foyt.

Worms and Rugs

While we were visiting Tangier we came into contact with a rug merchant. We like the beauty of the hand knotted Oriental rugs. However, we did not like the agressive sales technique used. We were awe-struck by the beauty of the rugs.  We escaped the clutches of the salesman with me complaining that he did not have one which was a flying carpet, and therefore we would not buy.

Oriental rugs are rugs made in the "Orient" which refers to Asia. Little did I know that we would have the opportunity to purchase a rug at the point origin again.

In 2012 we were fortunate to go on a short tour of Turkey.  There we were able to observe the manufacture of the beautiful rugs in person. The manufacturing facility we visited was a school supported by the Turkish government. Reminiscent of Mahatma Ghandi's cottage industries, the Turkish government supports schools where carpet or rug weaving is taught. It is a gender specific endeavor. Only women are carpet weavers. However, those who repair carpets are male. Interesting? The women are taught this skill so they can work in carpet factories or can work at their own looms in their homes.  We entered this school and were introduced to the process by the school administrator. He showed us the threads and yarns used in the manufacturing of double knotted carpets. The substrate or that which provides structure can be of one material while the pile can be of another. For example, the most common combination is cotton and wool. the Cotton provides the structure while the wool provides the pile. Other combinations are cotton-silk, wool-wool, and silk-silk. The most striking and beautiful carpets are made of the  of the cotton-silk and silk-silk combinations.  Each of these combinations were shown to us to observe and feel. How a textile fabric feels is called its "hand" and the silk carpets had the best hand. Another attribute of the silk carpets was the ability to appear to change color.  This visual delight occurs because the silk fiber is triangular  rather than circular in cross-section and therefore reflects light differently.  Carpets have been made by the double-knot method probably as early as the fourth century B.C., but one of the greatest innovations was in the twentieth century. When Kaiser Wilhelm visited Turkey drumming up support for his upcoming war, WWI, he introduced the Turkish carpet makers to chemical dyes. Until then carpet yarns had been dyed with vegetable dyes but chemical dyes gave them a greater range of color and colors that were more brilliant. One of the most beautiful rugs exhibited depicted Da Vinci's Last Supper, silk on silk. This was obviously created for tourists. Turkey is a Moslem nation, and the religion does not allow  images of people. Our introduction to rug making ran the gamut from yarn manufacture to rug production.  As a person who had spent a bit of his working life in the textile industry it was most interesting to me.  In one part of the training area we saw a woman in native dress, kerchiefed head and baggy pants, standing beside a wooden barrel with white threads being drawn from it. By the smile on her wrinkled face I could tell that she did not understand a word we were saying. As we looked inside the barrel to see silk cocoons, about one and one quarter inches, floating in the water, Claudette asked our guide, "How much thread is on each cocoon?"

The fairly young man in a sport coat said in slightly accented English, "It is only one thread. It is wound around the caterpillar. It can be over 1200 meters long."  I made a  quick calculation with my cell phone. That would be a thread over thirteen football fields long!

"Why are they in water?" she asked.

"We must put them in hot water to kill the caterpillar.  It makes the thread easier to unwind."

We watched as the woman with a gnarled hand guided about a dozen threads  from the cocoons over a drum onto a large spool for winding.  The spool was driven by a foot pedal. Very little foot pressure was needed, but a constant speed was required.  We found out that the silk cocoons came from the operator's family. This silk thread would be used to make rugs.

Next, we watched the weavers make the  rugs. Actually, they may be referred to as knotters. The rug is basically a simply woven substrate with knots of yarn attacked to the warp (longitudinal) threads. The tail of the knots are trimmed to produce the pile of the rug.

We entered a large room with seats around the edge of a beautiful hardwood floor.  It was time for the rug show. The rug "wranglers" brought out rug after rug of various sizes, design, and construction. They are exquisite. We were offered beverages while the rugs were shown. Tea was available, dark and sweet. It is served in small clear glasses, cylindrical and about 1.5 inches n diameter. The other choice of beverage is indeed an adult one. Raki, the official alcoholic beverage of Turkey, is served in the same size glass It is a brandy made of the leftovers of wine making.  It is very strong and is served with water. Real men don't drink diluted raki!  It was a humbling experience to assert my manhood. I am sure that the imbibing of the beverage increases the probability of a purchase and will allow one to fly without the requisite carpet.

We were shown a multitude of carpets, but one in particular caught our eyes. It was a thing of beauty, made of natural woolen yarns (no dye used). We were told that the time to manufacture it was about two months. This was very believable considering the tedious process we had observed in the factory.  Needless to say, we bought a carpet.