Bob Rogers Archives

February 2, 2013August 24, 2015

Old Man’s Cave

I don’t care how much you like your job, there are days when you get hit with the “I gotta get outta town blues.” The great thing about being a newspaper photographer was that you had a ready-made excuse to cruise. When I got that “gotta get out of Athens” feeling, I’d either call Ruthie, our Logan bureau reporter, and say “Need anything shot in Hocking County?” or I’d tell Messenger Photographers Chuck or Bob, “I’m headed up to Logan today.” Nobody much cared where you went so long as you brought back a picture for the next day’s paper.

Hocking County was the home of Old Man’s Cave, one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever been. Even if other people were around, the gorge twisted and turned so much that it gave you the feeling of being alone. It was a place of beauty in any season, but it became magical when the dripping water and waterfalls turned to ice in the winter.

Lila had a winner

There was some kind of photojournalism conference in Ohio where spouses could enter a photo contest. Wife Lila selected this one shot at Old Man’s Cave on April 20, 1970. I’ve always liked the image of a child running across the bridge at the bottom of the gorge. Unfortunately, we arrived too late to get the photo entered. You don’t need some judge to give it a ribbon, it’s a winner in my book. I’d be happy to have MY name under it.

A younger Ken at Devil’s Bathtub

She also caught a much younger me photographing the Devil’s Bathtub.

The Bathtub looks the same

The Devil’s Bathtub looks much the same in 2013. I, alas, do not.

Fun to share with friends

No telling how many people I hauled up to the area during my stay in Athens. Even though it took us quite a few miles off our path from Ohio to Cape, I couldn’t resist giving Friend Jan a look at the place.

Coincidences

I had another case of those get outta town blues in the early 1970s in Florida. I took off with no destination in mind. Lila either couldn’t come with me or she saw the crazy look in my eyes and decided this might be a trip better taken solo. I picked roads at random until I finally ended up on Cedar Key, a tiny spit of land sticking out into the Gulf of Mexico more than half-way up the state.

Walking down the main (probably only) drag, I thought I spotted a familiar face. It turned out to be former Central High School debate partner John Mueller. He had the same desire to escape from his job reporting for the Associated Press in Tallahassee as I had to get away from The Palm Beach Post for a weekend.

There is no telling where Cape Girardeans will turn up.

Grandma Gatewood

This is also the place I shot Grandma Gatewood when part of the trail was dedicated to her.

Photo gallery of Old Man’s Cave

Black and white photos were taken in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The color shots were from our recent visit January 24, 2013. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

September 17, 2012February 7, 2021

Picture Day at Hollister School

Missourian photographer Fred Lynch left a comment on my post about Paul Lueuders showing up at Central High School to take homeroom photos for the Girardot: “When I was in high school, I always liked working alongside a group photographer. I would take pictures of the kids ‘getting ready’ to be photographed when they didn’t think anyone was watching, or taking their picture.”

That got me to thinking about this picture page I did for The Athens Messenger November 8, 1968. The original assignment was to go to Hollister School to capture kids being vaccinated or something, but it turned out that local studio photographer Ralph Norris was there to shoot student photos, so I switched gears.

Once you got out of the Ohio University-dominated Athens and out into the county, you were in Appalachia, where poverty and worked-out coal mines were found down every back road. When I see people walking down the street sporting “Hollister” labels, I have a different picture in my mind than they do. (Like always, you can click the pix to make them bigger.)

Slicked-back hair and shiny faces

Like Fred wrote, it was fun to sit back and watch Ralph work with the kids. He had a gentle touch and put the children at ease. He wasn’t the master photographer Paul Lueders was, but he was a decent craftsman who had been doing his job for years.

My copy was short and sweet on the page: “Slicked-back hair and shiny faces were the order of the day at Hollister School Wednesday. That’s when photographer Ralph Norris came to take everybody’s picture. Here’s how it was.”

Pretty girls and a crown

Ralph and I would cross paths from time to time. He was a nice guy who was fun to talk with. I don’t think we ever exchanged any heavy thought, but I do owe him big for one piece of advice he gave me.

Covering Miss Rutabaga or something

He was the official photographer for some local pageant. I don’t remember if it was Miss Athens County or Miss Rutabaga or whatever. All I know is that it involved pretty girls and a crown. I went to the swimming pool to shoot the bathing suit competition. Hey, newspaper photographing is a tough job.

Now that I think back, I don’t know how I got the pageant assignment. That had boss Bob Rogers written all over it. He must have been out of town.

Anyway, Ralph pulled me over to the side and said, “It’s become kind of a tradition for the girls to throw me in the pool after I take the group shot, so you might want to be prepared to get wet – you know how all those photographers look alike – or to beat feet while they’re distracted by me.”

I managed to get a shot of him making a big splash, then exited quickly.

I should go look for those negatives

Now that I think of it, I need to go digging for those negatives. To look for Ralph, of course.

June 27, 2012

Mississippi River Panoramas

This was the week for shooting panoramas of the Mississippi River. Friends Bob and Claire Rogers are walking to the very tip of Illinois where the Ohio (left) and Mississippi rivers join at Fort Defiance. The Mississippi must be running slightly higher, because you can see that it is holding the Ohio back. Click on the photos to make them larger.

There are seven frames stitched together by Photoshop in this panorama. What’s amazing is that Bob and Claire were walking away from me when I swept the scene, so they appeared in two photos and different locations. The program was smart enough to know that there’s only one Bob and Claire in the world and not to duplicate them.

View from Trail of Tears

The overlook at the Trail of Tears State Park offers a beautiful view of the river. While we were there, we spotted a guy in a rowboat making his way downstream. The way his gear was packed, we figured his destination was New Orleans.

“If he lands in Cape,” I commented to my friends, “I wonder who is working the Huck Finn Beat now that I’m gone.”

This was made of five frames.

June 26, 2012June 27, 2012

Yarn Bomb Day

Bob, Claire and I were walking around on Water and Main Streets when they spotted some knitted / crocheted (don’t ask me) objects on the park bench at the southwest corner of Themis and Main. I looked behind me and saw some sewing patterns in the store window, so I dismissed them as having to do with sewing notions.

There’s an other one

We crossed the street and spotted another one on a support post for the walk-through in front of 101 North Main, which doesn’t look like anything has been done to it since the last time I was in town. Our curiosity was piqued.

Claire and I went in to quiz the shopworkers in the store behind the bench. They disavowed all knowledge and weren’t much help in formulating a cool rumor to spread. They DID think they had seen the colorful “bombs” on Spanish and Broadway.

Bob documents the yarn bombs

We spotted more of the craft objects on a bench on the northeast and southeast corners.

We saw some folks standing in front of the Cup and Cork and started to ask them if THEY knew what this was all about. The new owner of the place, a nice guy named Patrick Abbot, said they were in the middle of dedicating the place, and he’d explain in a couple of minutes. We watched as a guy splashed the doorway with a clear liquid, then sprinkled a little on Abbot and a woman. It was a killer hot day, so I hoped I’d get a spritz, too, but it didn’t happen.

Abbot said that he watched a woman – a “unique individual.” was the way he put it – put the squares on the bench across from him. When she moved to the bench in front of his store, he asked her what she was doing.

International Yarn Bomb Day

“It’s for International Yarn Bomb Day,” she explained.

I did a quick Google News search and could come up with but two stories referencing anything about Yarn Bombing.

The Salisbury Journal (in the United Kingdom) had a story, “Visitors to Salisbury Citycentre this week may notice something a little bit different about the statue of Henry Fawcett in the Market Place. The statue was adorned with knitted decorations by a group calling itself the Ninja Knitters, marking Worldwide Yarn Bomb Day.“
nj.com reported, “FRENCHTOWN — More than two dozen yarn bombers descended on this tiny Delaware River town in Hunterdon County last night, June 8, to tie colorful knitted and crocheted handwork on trees, signs, posts and benches throughout the downtown. Yarn bombing, sometimes called guerrilla knitting, is a type of graffiti or street art that employs colorful displays of yarn or fiber rather than paint.“

A search for “yarn bomb” didn’t turn up any info in The Missourian.

[Note Homeland Security: if your searches turn up repeated mentions of the word “bomb,” be sure to read it in the full context of what has been written. I would hate to have an innocent post blown up out of proportion. (Oops.)]