Posts

Posted on

James McMurtry Concert

I like to listen to music while I’m working, and I like artists who use words well. When I saw that James McMurtry, son of Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry, was going to be in St. Louis, I polled Brother Mark and Friend Shari to see if they’d like to hear him. Mother said she was in until she found out that the show wasn’t going to start until 9 pm, so she bailed, leaving a ticket for Friend Shari’s BFF Linda. Mark invited Friend Robin.

I hadn’t planned to take any photos – I explained to Shari that I can either work or I can watch, and tonight I wanted to be a civilian and enjoy the show – but Robin said break-ins were common and I should take my camera with me.

The show was going to be in The Duck Room at Blueberry Hill. When I booked the tickets, it assigned us a Section, Row and Seat, but it also said Standing Room Only. Boy, was it EVER. (As always, you can click on the photos to make them larger.)

Where are the exits?

The first thing I do when I go into any room is to locate two exits. When we went down the narrow steps into The Duck Room, I couldn’t locate a second exit. Then, I looked up and saw the floor above us was wood, there was no sprinkler system and the audience was standing – not exaggerating – shoulder to shoulder. I elected to take a place where I could lean against the wall about 15 feet from the exit. That also kept me out of the traffic of people going back for drinks.

Unfortunately, the four guys who were standing next to me consumed four pitchers of beer after I started counting. They weren’t mean drunks, but they bobbed and weaved so it was almost impossible to keep anything close to a clear line of sight, and as the evening wore on, their loud talking and hooting drowned out the show.

How did I take the photo?

I mentioned that I like music with words. Unfortunately, the guy running the sound board thought louder was better. He cranked up the mike so loud that McMurty’s distorted lyrics sounded like Dylan gargling with a mouth full of marbles. I had a digital recorder in my pocket and it confirmed what my ears heard. McMurtry and his band play some mean guitar and drums – Choctaw Bingo had the crowd rocking – but you’d have been at a loss if you didn’t know the words.

I couldn’t resist banging off 36 frames during the show. I was pretty far back, and catching a view of McMurty between the bobbing drunks was like threading a needle with mittens on. Still, I like this shot of the performer framed between a shadow on the left and a ghostly face on the right..

From a technical standpoint, there was so much dark in the photo (this is a pretty tight crop) that the automatic meter wanted to open up the lens to let in more light. The part of the photo I was interested in, though, was McMurtry, who had a spot on him. I underexposed the shot about two stops or more from what the meter was calling for. That gave him the right exposure and caused everything else to go dark.

An interesting oops

I normally have my camera set to operate at 200 ISO, with the ability to go automatically to higher speeds when the exposure drops below 1/30 of a second. The other day, though, I wanted to shoot some interiors at the highest possible quality, so I locked the ISO at 200 and put the camera on a tripod. The shutter exposure was so long that I even used the self-timer set on 10 seconds. After I pushed the shutter release, the camera counted down 10 seconds before making the exposure. That allowed any motion from the button push to die down.

While our party was walking to dinner, I thought I’d try some street shots. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to put the ISO back on “float” mode. I composed this shot, squeezed off what I thought was going to be about a 1/8 second exposure, then started to put the camera down. Because the film speed was so slow, the actual exposure was 4 seconds, creating these streaks of light. Except that my friends (and brother) were hungry and there was a cold wind blowing, I would have experimented more with this.

Bottom Line on The Duck Room

I’ll never go there again.

  • Putting a bunch of drunks in a dark room where I could spot only one exit is a good way to kill folks. I don’t intend to be one of them. I’m not going to say that there WAS only one exit, but I’m a guy who looks for them and I didn’t see more than one.
  • The sound was lousy.
  • Two-plus hours is too long for my old legs to stand. It’s a good thing Mother bailed.
  • For the price of the tickets for a bad sound and uncomfortable surroundings, I could have bought multiple copies of McMurty’s CDs for the group and we could have enjoyed them in Mark’s living room.

 

Posted on

Hillcrest Inn BBQ

I have so many photos of my own to wade through that I usually don’t publish ones by other folks, but I found this offering from Jeffry Boswell Hawk, Class of  ’61 too interesting to pass up. She writes about the Hilltop Inn, located on Kingshighway across from the StarVue Drive-in. I don’t recall ever seeing it, even though it’s just up the road from our house on Kingsway. I’ll let her and her brother, Wayne tell the story.

Family-run business

  Hillcrest was a family-run BBQ Drive-In with inside and curb-hop service. We sold BBQs, Hamburgers, Cheeseburgers, Deep-fried Chicken and Shrimp, French fries, cole slaw, soft drinks, shakes and Beer (*with 3.2 alcohol). *That is why we (my brother and sisters) were able to work there for our parents.

Daddy’s given name was Homer Franklin, but back when he was very young, and I suppose, also very mischievous, there was a very popular book called, Peck’s Bad Boy. Peck’s bad boy’s name was “Jeff”. So, He ALWAYS went with the H.F.”Jeff”Boswell name. And, yes, I’m named after my dad’s nickname. Mom’s name was Erma.

Mom did all the cooking- Daddy helped as needed and ran the operation. We kids, waited tables, curb-hopped, filled the soda and beer coolers, swept and mopped floors, washed windows and dishes, helped prepare the hamburger patties, peel potatoes for the fries and put them thru a hand-pulled slicer. Custodial work was also our job as well as mowing the grass. That’s where I learned to operate a riding mower.

Outdoor beer garden

Daddy, with the help of my older brother Wayne, built covered picnic tables and an outdoor walk-in cooler which was surrounded with a bar and stools.  The outdoor beer garden also had an archery range behind the building and horseshoe pits. There was also an outdoor jukebox in case someone wanted to hear their favorite music and dance.

Our indoor restaurant seated about 28 people in 7 booths that lined the walls; and probably about 10 tables with 4 chairs off the dance floor; with about 5-6 more tables on the dance floor. So probably about 80-to 90 people in tables and booths and a wrap-around bar with about 14-15 stools to allow for about 100 people. The food preparation went on inside the wrap-around bar.

Filled with dancing kids

Friday and Saturday nights, the dance floor was filled with high school seniors and college-aged kids from Cape and Jackson doing the jitterbug and slow-dancing. There was also a bumper pool table, pin-ball machine and a slide-bowling machine that were kept busy with players.

Sunday was usually family day for lunch and supper. Mom also made breakfast for some of the regulars from time to time. Several farmers would stop in for lunch.

Last business before Jackson

Hillcrest was the last business building on the right side of Kingshighway (61) with the StarVue Drive-In Movie until you got to Jackson.

Mom and Dad got a call about 8 am one Saturday morning telling them that Hillcrest was on fire. We lived out in Red Star with only Broadway straight thru to Kingshighway to get to Hillcrest, so by the time they got there, it was fully engulfed with flames. I still have a couple of burnt, melted dimes fused together as a memento- but many happy memories of our family working out there together!

(Daddy didn’t build another business there because he knew that the interstate would be built soon after and he thought that it would by-pass Cape and no one would be able to get off or drive ‘that far’ to the business.) If only we could have known what we know now!

– Jeffry Boswell Hawk ’61 – Jackson, MO

Across from StarVue Drive-in

I don’t know the exact date when we bought the Hillcrest, but it was sometime around 1955. We only owned the business, not the building. When the building burned down sometime in 1958, the land owner offered to sell us the 25 acres of land the building was on for $25,000. Unfortunately, our parents did not have enough money to buy the land at that time or money to rebuild the building and we lost our income when the building burned and our parents had to find another source of income. The land behind where the building was located, is currently occupied partly by a condominium complex.
– Wayne Boswell

 

Posted on

Trading Stamps and Blessings

While we were rooting around down in a basement cupboard for the cigar box Dad always used to pick out pecans, we found another one that had these trading stamps in it. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

The 1968 City Directory lists the Top Value Redemption Store at 2146 William Street. I don’t know who gave out Triple-S Blue Stamps. Here’s a link to more than you ever wanted to know about trading stamps.

The Star Gas stamps came from the Star Service Station at Broadway and Frederick. A book containing 90 stamps would earn you $1.50 worth of gas when the price was about 36.9 cents per gallon. I took a photo of a perky blonde who looked like she might have been promoting Plaid Stamps in what I thought was a Cape store, but it turned out to  be in Jackson. She was dressed like the dancing silhouette at the middle right.

I wouldn’t wish that on anybody

Lew was a photographer on the Ohio University Post. He was a nice guy with curly red hair and a pale complexion. He and a beautiful black reporter became an item. You could tell they were getting serious by the sparks that flew between them, and I don’t mean the static electricity kind you get by shuffling your feet on the carpet.

One day they came over and said, “We going to get married and we’d like for you to be Lew’s best man.”

I gave them a long lookover, then, in my most southern of Swampeast Missouri tones drawled, sorrowfully, “You know I like you two, but I’m sorry, but I can’t give you my blessing. There are some things that are just wrong. Wrong. I’m sorry.”

They were crestfallen. They hadn’t taken me to be One of Those People.

“Lew, your last name is Stamp.”

Looking at his bride-to-be, I continued, “Your first name is Plaid. There is no way in the world that I want to be a part of making you Plaid Stamp until death do you part.”

Of course, I relented. I tried to recruit Lew to work with me at The Gastonia Gazette, but he had the good sense to turn me down. He still pops up on Facebook from time to time.

Posted on

Elephantiasis and The Kid

“KID!!!” bellowed the burned-out copy editor who had come to The Jackson Pioneer from The Kansas City Star. I was “KID!” until I was about 25, but in this case, I really WAS a kid. It was the summer of my junior year of high school.

He was editing my “exclusive” interview with Gary Rust, a Goldwater supporter and a delegate to the 1964 GOP National Convention.

My lead was “One week out of the year, once every four years, the nation is stricken by elephantiasis.”

“Kid,” he continued, in a quieter tone, “either you don’t know that elephantiasis is an African venereal disease that causes your nuts to swell up so big you have to carry them in a wheelbarrow, or you DO know and you are the most astute political writer for your age in the country.” After a pause, he said with a sly grin, “Either way, I’m not going to change it.”

[This isn’t the grizzled copy editor, by the way. It is Gary Friedrich. Gary played a role in the SEMO Fair investigation.]

Cow Palace Conclave

I’ve been telling that tale for years, but, truth be told, I wasn’t absolutely, positively sure that it was true. HAD the story actually run?

When I came home this time, Brother Mark gave me a huge, wax-coated cardboard box that had once contained chicken pieces. In it was a stack of clips from the paying-my-dues days at The Jackson Pioneer, The Central High School Tiger, The Ohio University Post and a smattering of other things.

For better or worse, near the middle of the stack was my June 24, 1964, story as I had remembered it. (Like always, you can click on the photos to make them larger.)

How to get a newspaper job

Rust had gotten me the job in the first place. I was a Barry Goldwater fanatic; had worked on a political campaign a year or so before; Friend Shari’s grandmother was a big poobah in the Republican party, and The Pioneer was a Republican paper. The Pioneer’s publisher, John Hoffman III, had been injured in a car wreck that had killed his wife. Rust thought Hoffman could use some help, so he introduced us. [That’s Hoffman in a wheelchair covering a high school football game.]

Hoffman said, “We’re not making much money; we can only afford to pay you $75 or $100 every two weeks.”

Not completely understanding how this negotiating game was played, I promptly said, “I’m just getting started out. I’ll take $75.”

Wall to wall people

Rust described the convention as “wall to wall people.” Always a sucker for numbers, I shared that the event was linked to the world with 30 TV cameras, 325 teletypewriter lines, 264 radio circuits and over 3,000 telephones.

He said the convention was basically a “fight between the liberals and the conservatives of the Republican Party. By the end of the week everyone was trying to outdo the other in being a conservative. About 80% of those attending the powwow were behind Goldwater.”

Counting hand claps

I never watched one of those political events afterward without thinking about an observation he made. It was reported that immediately after Goldwater spoke, there was a brief silence before the applause.

“It wasn’t the type speech you clap or applaud. It was more an outline of his principles and philosophies, and it was a shame to have to applaud, but we were all politically-minded enough to know there was probably someone in the back of the room marking down ’26 hand claps for Nixon – hmmmm, only 22 hand claps for Goldwater…’”

Could have torn them up

Rust told the group, including candidates Jean Ann Bradshaw, Truman Farrow, Robert Hemperley and Harold Kuehle, that most of the Goldwater people there were “most generous and decent. At any time during the convention, they could have torn them (the Scranton people) up on any vote.”

Goldwater’s success came as a shock to many people. Rust said, “We found ourselves with a winner and we didn’t even know how to celebrate.”

I’ll tell you later about another paper in the stack: my story of covering Ronald Reagan stumping for Goldwater and how I got to meet the new Linotype operator.

You can see photos of Goldwater campaigning in Cairo here. There was some talk about The Pioneer’s staff throwing yellow food coloring in the Jackson Courthouse fountain so Jacksonians would wake up to real gold water, but I don’t know if that got beyond the talking stage. I doubt that they could have scraped together enough money to buy the food coloring.

Gary Rust went on to become a newspaper publishing magnate in the region. I don’t know if he ever saw my story.

 

 

About Proudly powered by WordPress