News photos that have grown whiskers and have become history
In March, I wondered how much longer this old barn on Hwy 74 would last. Click on the link to see more photos of the barn.
When I made my normal Sunday night call back to Cape a few weeks ago, I got my answer from Mother: it was gone.
I guess I’d better get busy and shoot some of the others in the area before time and weather get to them.
Brother Mark is as big a pack rat as I am, except that he’s a lot neater about it. I was looking around in his St. Louis kitchen last night and noticed an old red lunchbox in the corner.
“Hey, is that my old Hopalong Cassidy lunchbox?” I asked.
“Do you want it back?”
I said no, but then got to looking at what they were going for on line. Mine has a few miles on it, but some mint ones are going for as much as $200.
I was in good company with my lunchbox: in 1950, Hopalong Cassidy was featured on the first lunchbox to bear an image, causing sales for Aladdin Industries to jump from 50,000 units to 600,000 units in just one year. In stores, more than 100 companies in 1950 manufactured $70 million of Hopalong Cassidy products, including children’s dinnerware, pillows, roller skates, soap, wristwatches, and jackknives.
What lunchbox did you have in grade school. Do you still have it?
When I went to school back in Ohio, we had the Hocking River flowing through the campus (REALLY through it when it flooded every couple of years). I used to say, though, that to somebody who grew up on the Mississippi, the Hocking was barely a creek.
It was fun taking Ohio Curator Jessica down to the Mississippi at night. We happened to run into a couple of crewmen from the buoy tender Pathfinder who told us what it was like putting out the markers that keep the huge tows in the channel.
We could hear music drifting over the floodwall. Jessica identified one of the sounds as coming from a trombone. She knew it was a trombone, she said, because she used to honk one.
I confessed that I could identify a drum or a cymbal on a good day; otherwise my knowledge of musical instruments was limited. “Is a trombone that horn with a slidey thing?” I asked.
I could hear her eyes rolling, even in the darkness.
When we got up on Water Street, we ran into Crystal Lander of Jackson and Anna Nice of Cape doing some pickin’ and singing.
Showing my newly-acquired musical sophistication, I observed that a trombone was not involved in their impromptu performance.
I was surprised at how little color there was this year as I’ve driven across the country. It wasn’t until last week around Louisville that reds and yellows started popping up.
We had a serious storm (tornado sirens and the whole deal) blow through Cape a couple of nights ago, so I thought most of the leaves would be blown off the trees before they had a chance to show their stuff.
Just the opposite happened: it was like the wind slapped the trees around and woke them up that winter was coming. Mother, Curator Jessica and I meandered all over the place Saturday afternoon, marveling at the changes that 48 hours had made. Jessica ignored my “are you kidding?” look and decided we should climb out on the breakwater off the Trail of Tears State Park marina. Click on the image to make it larger.
I’m glad we went. The sun kept popping in and out of the clouds until just the right combination got stirred in.
We’re on our way to St. Louis in the morning so she can hop on a plane back to Ohio and her husband and cat. I won’t tell you which one she seems to have missed more.
I’m sure we’ll stop along the way to appreciate even more color. Stay tuned.