Hey, I'm walkin' here!

If you are headed somewhere, hope you get there safe, and enjoy the trip.

Google Street View find.

Another piece of the puzzle

As a military kid, we were constantly moving when I was growing up, and my parents also moved many additional times that were not required by the service. It was a crazy lifestyle for a kid, and I am still trying to construct my own history. It’s very difficult to do, as I do not have anyone to ask anymore (father gone 1967, mother gone 1993, no siblings). I might run across an old, hoarded and sometimes inherited piece of paper – a letter, postcard, receipt – and from that I find an address or date to help complete the puzzle. Sometimes, all I have are memories, which was the case here. I had no address, and all the landmarks had been destroyed.

Daddy was transferred to the North Pole, on the DEW Line to keep an eye out for the Russians during the Cold War (and in his case the "cold" part was literal), an 18 month assignment with no families allowed (what I know about that one deserves its own post), so my mother and I ended up waiting this one out in Carterville, Illinois. It was a really small town with a population at the time (1960-1961) of about 2,600 people. The house we lived in was a tar paper shack, which was a little wooden structure covered in a paper-based material that is tar-coated to be water-resistant. A lot of it (most of it, really) has a fake brick appearance. The house, although it was right in the middle of town, had no electricity, heat, or plumbing. I have no photos of it (Daddy took his camera with him to the Arctic) but found this pic on flickr that resembles it very much. Click to view larger at its source. Seems like our shack was in better shape, even though the front steps were rotten enough for Grandma to fall right through one of them once.

Mother would attach a water hose to the neighbor’s faucet, and ran the hose through a hole in the wall of our little cottage, that was our running water. I am assuming that she had permission to do that. There was a wood-burning potbellied cook-top stove in the house for both cooking and heat. She chopped wood for it every day. I don’t remember any furniture (I guess it was in storage). I do remember sitting on the floor playing with paper dolls while mice scampered around. I am not bothered by mice (luckily).

In the backyard, there was an outhouse, and establishing the boundary of the property in back was an active railroad track. My mother planted a food garden back there, and I remember homegrown corn and strawberries.

I tried to locate the house by looking for the railroad tracks, but Google maps didn't show any. I had to search online for an old map of the town that showed the old tracks.

On Google satellite view you can see the path going through that was left by the old railroad.

I tried locating it by finding my Grade School, seen below, but it has apparently been bulldozed as well, replaced by unremarkable modern buildings.

Look how close we were to the train!! I am amazed. The house next door to the east was even closer.

Here is the current Google street view of the place. It still holds a little house, but an infinitely better one. I got a kick out of the way the residents were captured sitting in their car, with the car parked in the yard, and one of them is sitting in the hatchback! That's a little bit hillbilly, but they've got nothing on us.

Labyrinth at Natural Gardener

This labyrinth update is for Debra. A couple of years ago, the labyrinth was in a transitional state. They had been trying to construct it in plant life, but that plan did not work out. Now it is back, and made of good, old stones. Take a look at the gate for it, which leads into a short path, in this older post.

The Natural Gardener is a nursery, a plant business, but it's such a wonderful place it's worthy of just visiting. We went there to buy some milkweed for the butterflies, and it is doing well in the backyard now.

The labyrinth is surrounded by beautiful wildflowers, a few garden sculptures, and on one side there is a teepee. Here's a nice view facing outward, and at bottom, Google's satellite version.

Museums for staycationers

Well, this is fabulous.

No really. It is. On the Google home page today, I see a link for the Google Art Project. They have been creating browsing version of major art galleries in the world, and not only can you view the artwork by museum, you can view by artist, by works, or put together your own collection.

My favorite part is the "street view" option that lets you click through the halls of places like the Acropolis Museum or the White House.

Something Wonderful

I love Google Street View! I love being able to click through the narrow roads in Wales, look up places I've lived to see how much they've changed, or in some cases, look back in time to see destroyed places as they once were.

There is so much potential for this technology, especially when they incorporate the "Panoramio" features like they did last Fall at the ACL Festival. They used panoramic cameras to capture on video the experience from all angles. Click here to check these out. Click, drag, pan, look behind you, look down, look up, look at the band, look at the audience (where we managed to get our mugs in a couple of times - typical us...)

They are now sending the cameras to the Great Barrier Reef. Read more about it in the article here, and give some of the results a tryout here, (sample screengrab below).

There's a sidebar on the panoramas to show you where you are on the map. Is this cool, or what?

Guitar show Friday

Eric Johnson and Sonny Landreth are doing a really limited tour (just a few dates in Louisiana and Texas) as co-bills. Both will play their own stuff and there will be some playing together, as seen in the video above. It's at the Paramount Theatre, a proper venue with seats and carpet and velvet and the whole deal, usually has good sound. I am excited, I will admit!

Love the Google Street view of the place and its marquee!

Trees, Space and the Meaning of Life

We went to see the film "The Tree of Life" last weekend, but before saying anything about it, I want to share this wonderful stop motion animation that was part of the Alamo Drafthouse's pre-show. This is great stuff, and you can find more info and more great stuff at blu.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Big Bang, Big Boom. The rest of the pre-show was themed this way too, and appropriately. This movie is critically-acclaimed. It won the Palme d'Or for Best Picture at Cannes, and is sitting on an 86% Tomatometer right now, nice and fresh. It's very thought-provoking and dwells on the spiritual... an individual's place in all of creation, life, the afterlife... I recommend seeing it even though I wasn't a big fan of it myself, judge for yourself. You might just think it's the greatest thing ever - really. The religious aspects of pondering on God - not really my cup of tea anymore, I don't even claim to be 'spiritual' - but the Space-Odyssey-esque trips through time and space were pretty cool.

The main reason I wanted to see this (other than the buzz) was because it was filmed in this area, several scenes in Austin but primarily in Smithville and parts between. I like to look up trivia and try and locate the filming locations on Google maps. Google just so happened to be doing street views of Smithville while the filming was going on (coincidence?) and all the blocks where it was underway it shows the closures, such as this view, which (if you could go 2 more blocks) would be facing the house. Also, it looks like Google was denied the privilege of doing street views in the closed areas at that time.



Reportedly, the Jolie-Pitts (kids and all, including the ones on the way) wanted to stay at an Austin resort during the filming but they wouldn't settle for Pitt's offer of $3000 for a month, so they either bought or rented a ranch instead. Mr. and Mrs. Smithville? That was irresistable. Sorry.

Very surprising trivia: they actually dug up and relocated a 65,000 lb. tree to the movie house's yard. This was documented in some short videos on this channel. Of all the...!#@!

While I was looking for more filming locations in Matagorda, Texas, I stumbled on this labyrinth! Debra, thought of you, of course. It's on the corner of Lewis and Fisher at the Christ Episcopal Church. Totally unrelated to the movie, as far as I know. And while we are distractedly Googlemap-surfing, I also want to mention that Smithville is really close to this (and recycling a 6-year-old screen capture here):

It's made from trees, and spells out the name of the landowner. It can be seen from space, and in fact, is so large and linear that it's used by NASA as a measurement device. Well, maybe that isn't so far off topic after all.

No retirement package

Barmaid in a dive, it's a job
You wonder how people end up in some situations, and being the barmaid in The Wheel Bar is one of those situations. To briefly sum up the situation, I had just completed 2 years of Fine Art at the Community College... receiving a degree meant for transfer to a 4-year college, but zero job training or career prep, and I had no money to continue with school. The fact was that I needed a job, had no job skills, and did not want to become a hooker. This bar was similar to all the other dive bars that I spent time in growing up (not voluntarily - my cousins and I had to amuse ourselves with the jukebox and such while our folks drank). I was a drinker, and had not worked in a dive or tended bar, so I was open to adding that to my life experiences.

When I walked in, the owner leered at me (as a young woman I was used to that), and said "God damn it. You wanna tend bar?" I did. "Ahright, get yer ass behind this bar afore we take you in the back room and check you for hemorrhoids." Yes, that's really what he said, and I didn't think it was funny, it was just typical old drunk in a bar low-class humor, and I had been sexually harassed on just about every job I'd had, so it was not a deal-breaker and I figured I could withstand it. Funny thing, he didn't even ask me if I was of drinking age (I was 21 [actually I may have been as old as 23], but he didn't card me. Whaddya think? Wouldn't you card me?).

The job paid $15 a day for about 9 hours of work, and it was 6 to 7 days a week. It was paid in cash. I was also allowed to serve myself alcohol, as much as I wanted, and I could have a frozen Tombstone pizza for dinner but had to eat it during the shift. There weren't breaks. Also, there were almost no tips. I'd get maybe a dollar or two during a shift maybe, but I remember one night when we were well into the night and I still hadn't been tipped. I told the owner, and he pounded his fist on the bar and yelled "God damn it!! You sonsabitches tip the god damned barmaid!!" Then a couple of people put quarters on the bar, and not without a grumble.

See, this was the kind of place where it's all regulars. Every night around 5-ish, the same people came in. I knew what their usual drinks were. I had to learn the signals, like the one guy, when he put his empty in just a certain place, that meant he wanted another one. The jokes and banter were the same every night. I heard the hemorrhoid joke nearly every night. I drank all night, and got through it, learned to roll with the punches (it wasn't recommended to go through a night in there sober, I tried it once). Some stayed until closing every night, and if somebody passed out, head on the bar, we could joke about them being "Asleep at the Wheel." The owner and his wife sat all night at opposite ends of the bar, glaring at each and sometimes arguing. When they weren't in the bar, they were upstairs (they lived there, literally).

Next door to The Wheel was a Sunday bar, which they also owned, called The Hub (I think). This was when MO still had the Blue Laws where you couldn't serve more than .03% beer on Sunday, so that's what they did. Hardly anyone would be around other than the most hard-core regulars, just the people who practically lived at The Wheel (or actually lived there). Both places had a jukebox well stocked with hard-core country music, and a pool table. The Wheel also one of those bar shuffleboard machines. One night, some black people came in. They were waiting for a bus or something and came in to play some shuffleboard. It was not the best idea for them to step into a bar that was as rednecky as this one. At The Wheel, they HATED people of color, and when they walked in everybody got a little nervous and jumpy. Pretty soon, the owner's wife told me to reach under the bar and hand her the gun. I refused. Guess I was the one with the risky behavior then, but guns are always bad news. Fortunately, they caught the bad vibes from the hostile stares and walked out. Sigh of relief. See, on that side of the highway it was mostly white and on the other side it was very mixed, and some of those old-timers are not big on diversity, to say the least, and can go over the edge over the smallest thing (just look at the Tea Party).

After a few months, they hired another barmaid. She was going to work days mostly. They really liked her even though she was kind of fat, because she had a pretty face, laughed a lot, had really big boobs and liked the skimpy sundresses. They really liked her, that is, until they found out she was dating a black man (although they never used polite terms) and she got fired on the spot. I was getting pretty tired of that place by then, and got myself hired as a cocktail waitress in a restaurant lounge with a piano bar, where they made me wear itty-bitty shorts with Budweiser logos all over them. I went from serving drinks to food, and then got notified that I'd been hired to work assembly at the GM plant that was in north St. Louis at the time. One of the foreman was a semi-regular at The Wheel, and had helped me get hired there and moved me into the next phase of my working life [I blogged that phase under the tag Autoworker].

I love Google Street View. I looked up this place and it looks like some kind of warehouse now, and except for the lack of bar signage, it looks the same.
There's the Sunday bar on the left, the little beige building.

SXSW Day Crawl Four

Mean

Above: a mural on the south side of the Mean-Eyed Cat Bar.
Below: the view from the same spot facing west.

The Mean-Eyed Cat is a really funky little bar and music venue. Here it is not long after it opened. It used to be a chainsaw repair shop and is located by the railroad tracks - and it looks great as a bar with its Johnny Cash motif. It used to fit in with the surrounding places until the 5th Street Commons wiped out everything nearby and all but swallowed the Cat.

The construction is further along than in this picture below showing what is east of the bar, but you can get the idea of how sterile the new buildings look. The condos share a patio with the Cat (where the arrow points), and they go together like pickled beets and popsicles.

Anyway, we finished the week at Mojo Magazine’s party at the Mean-Eyed Cat. First up was David Thomas Broughton, who is described as having "his own unique blend of off-kilter folk"... to say the least, yes. I might describe him as how I would imagine Crispin Glover if he took up being a singer-songwriter... as different as he could be and made us laugh out loud quite a few times. He was a hoot. Make it two hoots. And a holler.

The Proclaimers are a duo of identical twin brothers from Scotland. They had kind of an early 60s folk-pop sound that I liked. ("I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more")

Dan Auerbach

OK, (of course) I have not only heard of the Black Keys but have heard nothing but raves about them - but I admit that really wasn't familiar with the music. This was a HUGE treat to see Dan Auerbach (half of the Black Keys), especially at such close range and in a cool little venue rather than on a big festival stage or amphitheatre. Wow. I wish that we'd taken video, but you can listen at the (myspace) link above.

Shearwater, one of my new favorite local bands. This is Rooks. I also recorded Hail, Mary that preceded it, but Google Video is being uncooperative (it's too big for Youtube).

This is from their bio and does a much better job of describing them than I can do with my quaint writing style:

Hailed as "almost impossibly majestic and beautiful" (NPR), Shearwater's Palo Santo (2007, Matador), a suite of ethereal but oddly disquieting art-rock songs loosely centered around the life and death of singer Christa Paffgen (aka Nico), marked the Texan quartet's debut on the national stage. The New York Times named the album one of the year's very best, and the band's singular combination of sonic abandon and restraint, spun around the soaring, otherworldly voice of part-time ornithologist Jonathan Meiburg - drew comparisons to late-period Talk Talk and both the lovely and anxious moments of Eno's early solo work.

OK, I am hooked on their sound, but new to them nonetheless, and didn't yet realize that Palo Santo was partly about Nico. I loved Nico - I loved her deep voice, and thought she was incredibly beautiful.

The Mojo party finished us up for the festival, and we left soon after Shearwater played. Eventually I will have a lot more photos of all 4 days posted on my website (look for a Facebook announcement of that). We had a great time. The only disappointments have to do with not being able to be in multiple places at once.

Dirty Freaky Commie Pinko Fag Hippies

There's the soundtrack for this post --Our House by CSN. I googled-mapped the house where I lived in Sarasota, Florida in the late 60s, which was a very special time. The Air Force offered us a free move one-way anywhere in the world after my dad died in 1967, my mother picked Boston (long story). We were there for less than a week when we changed our minds, hailed the moving van en route, and told them to head to Florida instead. Wheee! Close your eyes and stick a pin in the map. This is about the house on Magnolia.

There were many cultural changes happening during that time, and my mother, although still grieving, was feeling emancipated from the Air Force and loving not having a boss anymore. She was around 50 yrs. old. Here she is hamming it up for the camera. Someone spray-painted that ceiling tile green! It could have been me… not sure…

She felt like she could live anywhere and do anything she damned well pleased for once. She had already been playing mother hen for years; she would gather young people around her in droves, many of them cast-offs of their real families and of society in general. Tired, poor, humbled masses yearning to breathe free*… let’s party! Come on over, come on in. Stay all night, stay a little longer. Dance all night, dance a little longer. Kick off your shoes and throw them in the corner, don’t see why you don’t stay a little longer**. She had done it already in Albuquerque and in Greece… now it was the late 60s in Florida. The kids looked a little different, but we did too by then. Here she is sitting in the middle of our typical weekend crowd.

The kids were mostly around my age (15-16) to 19. We mostly didn’t drink (drinking wasn’t considered that cool, except for occasional wine), but drugs were plentiful. Mostly pot, LSD, and a few others. She hated needles and didn’t allow anyone to bring them into the house. Also, no sex allowed. Amazingly, everyone respected the house rules. Everybody was peaceful and got along. Nobody had guns (except my mother had a stupid little .22 handgun). There were no fist-fights, rather there were trippy debates about the meaning of life, the universe and everything... mostly everything. The different social sub-groups partied together with us and didn’t have problems with each other (gay, straight, Pagan, Christian, biker, whatever). Here she is with some folks just sitting around chatting.

We covered our domain with contact paper (the tacky velvet flocked or mosaic for windows) and sometimes I did paintings on walls or ceilings. The rest was decorated with posters, more of my art, or weird finds. Like that orange plate with the devil’s head. She was a Christian but was fascinated and open-minded about anything mystical or spiritual. “You want to have a séance? Let’s do it! You worship Satan? What’s that like? Your house is haunted? Wow. Who's haunting it?” The bookshelves were lined with everything to do with the spiritual: Josephus, Anton LaVey, Aleister Crowley, the Lost Books of the Bible, Edgar Cayce, Egyptian Book of the Dead, even Criswell.

The centerpiece of the room – the record player. It was one of those kind that folded up into a suitcase. That Jefferson Airplane poster would probably be valuable now. Also featured, our beloved Rolling Stones. She always carried a teensy crush on Mick. Mine was for Brian. I was a very bad girl and stacked the records up vertically, many not even in their cardboard sleeves – but what a stack of great records they were! Now all worn out, of course.

Here’s the kitchen. More contact paper!

Me, sitting in front of one of my paneling paintings.

This is our friend, BW.

This is GP, I think he was BW’s cousin. He’s wearing a getup that we bought in our favorite theatre costume shop. GP loved to cause a stir using nudity. He and another friend (a girl) went into the burger place in the wee hours of the morning, both dressed in see-through gauzy robes with nothing underneath. Anything to freak people out and get some laughs!

This is my charcoal drawing of Jim Morrison. Behind it is a chicken I painted on the wall.

We bought this big school bus, even though neither of us drove. We relied on others to drive it for us, which wasn’t that easy! We took out most of the seats, padded and upholstered the walls, carpeted it like a crazy-quilt using free scraps, and made fringe to hang over the windows. I painted some Yellow Submarine art here and there on the inside, and decorated the sign with an Egyptian circle and wings (the name of the bus was “The Flying Void”. Cosmic!).

The freak flag on wheels, with the gang.

Our spaciest friend, SK, painted this “Jesus and the flying saucers” thing on the back. I hated it.

Here is SK and another friend, MM2, goofing it up for the camera in the yard.

SK liked to sit in trees for hours, and sometimes he would be running around in the yard naked, rather embarrassing later on when we were trying to sell the house. We didn’t always know if he was there or not, he just hung around. He enjoyed chanting and making buzzing sounds. Last I heard of him, he had gone to join the Children of God cult. Here I am with another friend, MB (SK can be seen behind us in the doorway), and I am wearing SK’s wonderful jester hat.

My mother always took an “in your face” attitude, especially during this time. She decided to paint the house with horizontal stripes, royal blue with one orange stripe.

We lived in a fairly conservative neighborhood (with a big church across the street!!), and the local lawmen kept a close eye on us. As you can imagine, we were under surveillance, and unsurprisingly one day (it was on Valentine’s Day) there was a bust. Turns out that one of the kids who had spent the night on our couch had told us that he was 18… and he wasn’t… and he was on probation… and his dad was in law enforcement. They charged my mother with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and others were busted there too, but I can’t remember what for. The whole affair dragged on and on for many months, court dates postponed, I’m sure they were hoping for something bigger to happen but my mother was progressively more and more freaked out with paranoia. They really WERE out to get her, so it wasn’t unfounded, but after the bust, the fun was mostly replaced with worry. It was kind of a death of innocence, the party’s over, time to clean up, wake up call. Nobody with any sense wants to be in jail. And of course, after a bust, people tend to hang around less so our inner circle got smaller. After a year of having the white cars parked in front and the black suits with face shields cruising the house on motorscooters (and after the contributing charges petered out) she decided to move us up to Carbondale IL so she could be close to her parents. Another chapter begins there.

So, getting back to where this post started, I googled-mapped the house, and noticed that they provide street views for that area. Here is the house now. It’s GONE. The shopping center that was a couple of blocks away has grown, and our old house is part of the parking lot. If there are any old-timers who still attend that church that was across the street from us, I know they are thanking Jesus that the notorious abomination was torn down. Praise the lawd!

My mother (whose name was Lola) always counseled young people that they were responsible for their actions, and would have to live with the consequences of them, and if they needed help or a place to stay or just wanted to talk, she was there. The door was open. Comments welcome, and I know it will be tempting for a lot of people to be judgmental about this post concerning youth, drugs and parenting. Believe me, there’s absolutely no point in preaching. There’s no situation described here that can be corrected by any amount of that. It is just part of my history.

*Lady Liberty
**Bob Wills

Somewhat related:
My mother and Pop Festivals

Another of BW's cousins, and Led Zeppelin