Category: Parks

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North County Park Christmas Display

We went to Wib’s BBQ in Jackson tonight. It gave us a chance to help Grandson Malcolm with a school project. He sent Mother “Flat Stanley,” a storybook character who was smashed “flat as a pancake” when a bookcase fell on him. He was, in fact, smashed flat enough that he can fit into an envelope and go all over the world having his photo taken in exotic locations – like in front of Wib’s. After we shot this photo, we went inside where I ordered two Brown Hots, french fries and slaw; Mother had chili (which she always complains is too spicy.)

When the server came by to see if everything was OK, I gestured for him to lean in, then said, “I think the kitchen made a terrible mistake with my order.”

He look properly concerned.

“They put meat on my sandwiches,” I replied.

Wib’s has the best sauce in town, but I think they must still be on the original pig they started the business with in 1947. There was a whole staff of young folks working there tonight and I think the cook must have a lighter thumb on the scale than the usual one.

North County Park Christmas Display

On the way back from Jackson, we stopped at North County Park to check out the Christmas displays. I’m not sure how many years they’ve been doing this, but it’s become a local must-see.

Some of the displays are very nice. Some are very imaginative. Some are, to be honest, tacky, particularly some of the commercial ones. More and more of them are memorials to family members who won’t be there for another Christmas. Those are touching.

Bumper to bumper traffic

We got there right after dark, so it wasn’t too congested. By the time we left, though, cars were streaming into the park. It’s considered good form to drive with just your parking lights on, but this car broke the rules (and I think him for giving me a little extra light on the scene).

One minivan in front of us had me perplexed. I could see through the back window that they were playing a kid’s movies on a DVD player mounted near the ceiling. Now, maybe I’m old-fashioned, but don’t you think it might have been appropriate to shut the thing off for 15 minutes and tell the kids to look out the bleeping window at the real world?

Past stories with a Christmas theme

Photo gallery of Christmas display

Here are other photos from the evening. Click on any picture to make it larger, then click on the left or ride side to mover through the gallery.

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1964 Capaha Park Swim Meet

This is a swim meet at Capaha Park Pool on July 31, 1964, if we believe the note on the negative sleeve. There are big holes in Google’s Missourian archives for the last part of 1964, so I don’t know if a story ran in the paper. Some of the pictures are pretty marginal, but there are a bunch of Capaha Pool fans our there who will overlook the technical shortcomings. Click on any photo to make it larger.

I almost got electrocuted

All I remember about this swim meet was that I almost got electrocuted. My electronic flash – strobe – was sick, so I borrowed one from somebody so I could cover the meet.

In case you didn’t know, strobes work by sucking an electrical charge out of low voltage batteries and storing it in a capacitor until it’s boosted to hundreds of volts. When you press the shutter release, that closes a contact that sends all that voltage across the flash tube, producing a very short duration powerful blast of light. Later models operated off a 510-volt battery, but that’s another, equally painful story.

Keep the plug covered

The batteries would drain fairly quickly, so some of the strobes had ports where you could plug the unit into a regular electrical outlet. Well, what can go in, can also come out, so you’re supposed to keep the contacts covered with a plug when you’re not using it with AC power. The guy who loaned it to me either wanted to see me dead or he didn’t have the plug. I never did find out.

Photographer lights up

So, anyway, I’m walking across the wet pool deck when my finger accidentally touches those exposed contacts. The strobe says, “This guy must want to take a picture, so I’m going to dump my XXX volts and make a bright flash.” Instead of going through the flash tube, all those electrons took the path of least resistance – my body – to get to the wet pool deck. I thought somebody had tackled me from behind. I looked all around, though, and there was nobody close to me.

Flash was brighter than the photographer

I went on to cover the meet and POW!!! the same thing happened. This time I realized what was going on and made sure to keep my fingers away from the light-the-photographer-up contacts.

Remember braiding lanyards?

I think the kid on the far right is braiding a plastic lanyard. That was all the rage when I was in grade school. Square braiding was easy; round braid was a little harder. I can’t remember all the ways we used them. I think the challenge was in the braiding. Actual utility was secondary.

Wife Lila pointed out that these were taken before the lanes were painted on the pool bottom. Here’s what the pool looked like when they were getting ready for the season. It contains links to most of the other Capaha Park Pool stories we’ve done.

 

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Veterans Day Flag Display

Mother suggested we swing by North County Park to see the flag display on the way to run some errands. I have to admit that I wasn’t all that crazy about doing it because I shot it Veterans Day 2010.

Here’s something I learned at my third newspaper: Things are going to keep coming around like clockwork. When you shoot an event the first time, it’s exciting. Well, maybe not exciting, but interesting. When the anniversary of that event comes around the next year, you have to scratch to drum up some enthusiasm for it. Just before the third iteration of it came around, I found myself gathering up my portfolio and sending out resumes. There was always a little cog in my head that would click when I recognized it was time to head out to a new newspaper.

Finally, by the time I got to The Palm Beach Post, I figured out that all newspapers were screwed up and, when you find one that’s a little less screwed up than most, you should stay. When I was coming up on my magic three-year anniversary at The Post, they made me department head, so I could send other photographers out to shoot that recurring assignment.

Headed off to active duty

So, anyway, we ended up at the park. Even though I had been there, done that, it’s such a moving spectacle, particularly on a windy day, that I had to get the camera out. There was a photographer and a young couple dressed in Navy duds blocking traffic while she was taking their photo. When I say “young,” I mean young enough that they looked like they should be playing with plastic boats in the bathtub, not going off to active duty, which is where they were headed.

It’s considered bad form to horn in on another photographer’s shoot, so I took this from a discrete distance and then left them alone.

Just back from Afghanistan

When I got out of the car, a young guy wearing a black Airborne T-shirt had just taken some photos and was walking back to his car.

“Sure is purty, ain’t it,” I said in passing.

“It is to me,” he said. “I just got back from Afghanistan.”

All I had time to say before he disappeared was, “Thank you for your service.”

Missourian blogger James Baughn beat me to the story this morning, but I can’t improve on his headline, “Blog without words: Veterans Day flag display at Cape County Park North.”

More flag photos

Be warned: if I’m in Cape next year at this time, I’m either going to have to get my portfolio ready to mail or I’m going to have to skip going to North County Park. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the picture to move through the gallery.

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Capaha Pool All Washed Up

OK, that’s a bad pun, considering that the Capaha Park Pool is nothing but grass and memories these days. This single frame of some guys washing down the Capaha Park Pool was in with some stuff dated 5/1966, so I’m assuming that they were getting ready to fill the pool for the summer season.

I asked Wife Lila, a former lifeguard, if she recognized the guys, but she couldn’t put names to faces. Terry, Jacqie, can you ID them?

Other pool photos and stories

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