River Rant

Pawn Stars

2011-03-19T09:59:00.021-04:00

Greetings Earthlings! Sorry about the multi-month gap in posting. Truth is, we are very busy right now and blogging is rather low on the tasking hierarchy at RR HQ. That's not to say this blog's days are over. But the postings have clearly decreased, a reflection of our diminishing amount of free time and our diminishing enthusiasm about blogging in general. We're sure you understand completely. We're not going away for good though so please continue to check in on occasion!

Today's post is about World Famous Gold and Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, home to the hit cable tv show Pawn Stars.

We've been a fan of the show since the first season, mainly because few television shows make history into something fun and exciting. The shop has since become something of a tourist attraction; we arrived around 11am and already a 100 or so people were lined up outside the front door. Antoinne, the tatted security guard often seen on the show, let in groups of ten every few minutes. Inside, the store was packed like sardines, a notable departure from what you see on tv. They must clear out the tourists on production days.

The shelves and cases contained many of the items discussed on the show. Like the death clock, seen here in the upper right corner, so named because the 19th century manufacturing process involved the use of mercury. Notice the antique dueling pistols in the case on the left (as seen on the Message in a bottle episode). It's items such as these that seperates World Famous Gold and Silver from the typical pawn broker; the peddler of used power tools and old stereos and whatever assorted junk comes their way.

Not that the place is a museum, mind you. There were still plenty of gold coins and jewelry and Rolex watches and similar whatnot you'd find at most other Vegas pawn shops.

How about this bronze Elvis piece. Or should we say 'Elvi' piece, as in plural: the skinny 1950's hip shaker from Tupelo on the left, and the fattened leisure suited Vegas act of the 1970's on the right. Both equally iconic in their own regard.

There were several original works of art from famous artists, like Picasso. There is another tv show (an inferior copy cat, in our opinion) about a pawn business in Detroit and they never have this kind of stuff. And frankly, there is nothing interesting about a business that sells used microwave ovens and old couches.

The cast have become something along the lines of rock stars, like Chumlee here. On the show, he's the affable doofus, fodder for ceaseless ribbing from the Old Man, Rick, and Corey. People now line up to get his autograph and a picture with him, probably several hundred times a day. All because he works at a very unique pawn shop.

Abandonment

2010-09-26T08:56:00.013-04:00

Tucked deep in the Idaho Rockies far away from any paved road is the open pit at the former Stibnite mine. Once a thriving company town of 1,000 people, Stibnite was the source of 98% of the antimony and tungsten used to make hardened steel for munitions and battleships during WWII.

Other than the open pit, the tailings are all that remain today.

Rainstorm sweeps across the barren Oregon desert.
General Mercantile, Paradise Valley, Nevada

Clouds and shadows dance upon the sagebrush hillside.

Parish church on the high plateau.

Silver City

2010-09-19T20:17:00.018-04:00

While the actual number of Idaho ghost towns is anyone's guess, there's no dispute as to which one is in the most pristine condition: Silver City, nestled deep in the remote Owyhee Mountains of southwestern Idaho. What makes this site so unique is its authenticy; for in the western U.S., most ghost towns are either long abandoned piles of timber and metal or kitschy tourist traps, such as Tombstone and Virginia City.

Getting there is no easy task; once the pavement ends the road rises through outlying sagebrush hills on the way to subalpine 8,000 feet passes. Mining is still occuring in the area, and encountering an ore hauler barrelling around one of the numerous blind curves could be disasterous. Further on, the road narrows to a one-laned jeep trail as it traverses high ridges covered in mountain mahogany and juniper.

Silver and gold were discovered in the area in the 1860's, and soon after the town boomed to 2,500 people. Thanks to the quick prosperity, Silver City is historically notable for several reasons; it was the first town in Idaho to have telegraph service and a daily newspaper, and one of the first in the west to have electicity. While few of the buildings are occupied today, they are in remarkable good condition given the harsh desert environment and unmerciful threat of wildfires.

What's always amazed us about western ghost towns is how the residents abandoned all earthly possesions in the quick exodus after the lode ran dry. Cars and equipment were left behind, as well as fine china, furniture, and every other type of househood goods. It's as if the people presumed all they owned could be replaced as soon they arrived at the next boomtoom. Now, antiques (and junk) left behind from the golden age of mining can be found in abundance for retail in many mining boomtowns such as Globe, AZ, and Deadwood, SD.

Outside the city limits, old mine shafts dot the adjacent hillsides. In total, an estimated $60 million dollars (obviously worth much more today) of gold and silver were extracted from the hundreds of miles dug deep into the mountains.

Someday, as Silver City continues to age and the effects of time wear hard on the buildings of this once prosperous town, there will be little left but fallen timbers and heaps of scrap metal. But today, as one stands in the center of town, it's easy to imagine the sights and sounds of a whiskey fueled Friday night at the Idaho Hotel one hundred years ago, when dreams of silver and gold were the reality.

Idaho Big House

2010-09-12T21:19:00.022-04:00

We're still here! Despite our ever-lessening blogging tempo, we have a batch of fresh posts on the way (let's face it. The blogosphere peaked long ago, and RR was never much to brag about even during the golden era of blogging. So from now on we'll be limiting postings to unique places or experiences, like Idaho). First up: the Idaho State Penitentiary, one of three remaining territorial prisons still standing despite the erosion of time and neglect.... just like this blog!

Built in 1872, the Idaho State Pen housed 600 inmates at a time, for a total of 13,000 before closing in 1973. All 13,000 entered through the bars of this sallyport entrance and upon completion of their term, walked out this same gate. Lifers left in coffins of course, as did 10 inmates executed by hangman's noose in the rose garden.

High sandstone walls with rifle towers rim the complex, which housed several dorms, a hospital, dining hall, commissary, and laundry facilities. The rocks were cut and hauled from local quaries and meticulously placed by the hands of.... you guessed it.... inmates. Building the walls of your own prison must be one of the more disheartening things a man can do with himself.

When the prison closed in 1973, the Department of Corrections transferred the property to the Idaho State Park system, which greatly benefitted the facility's preservation. Unlike many other historical prisons which were dismantled, looted, or simply fell victim to neglect, the facilities at the Idaho State Pen are in the same condition as the day the last prisoners left.

Many cells look as if the residents had just left for recreation time in the yard.... soda cans and cigarrette butts sit on makeshift card playing tables; toothbrushes and shaving razors stand in cups along the sinks. The only sign of abandonment is the peeling paint, although not to say it wasn't already peeling in 1973.

Throughout the prison are photographs and stories of some of the more notable inmates. Like Henry Wilmbusse, who served a life sentence for killing the judge who previously committed him to an insane asylum. The brief vignettes offer insight into the people who occupied the often violent and lawless western frontier.

Scattered among the many cattle thieves and bank robbers are stories of the 200 women prisoners who served time at the prison. Like Mary Mills, Idaho's own "Typhoid Mary", sentenced for spreading VD. In the early days of the prison, women were actually mixed in with the men. Of course, predictable problems ensued, and so a womens dorm was built in 1905.

Even though the cells are empty and the washing machines sit idle and the only residents are the quiet ghosts of former inmates, it isn't difficult to imagine the constant commotion and clatter of when 600 prisoners occupied the prison. The best part of the visit: walking out the front gate, freely and without impedence, an event the 13,000 inmates of the Idaho State Penitentiary could only dream about.

Shooting Rats

2010-05-17T20:32:00.023-04:00

Ah, springtime. Time for budding tulips and chirping birds. Time for turtles on the log and peeper frogs in the swamp. Time to head to the desert west for the annual spring RR varmint eradication mission!

Drew laid down waves of suppression fire with his sporty new S&W MP15-22.

Andy kicked it old school with a Marlin Model 60 and shooting sticks.

"To kill, you must know the enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit- ever. They're like the Viet Cong. Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior firepower and superior intelligence. And that's all she wrote." -Carl Spackler, Caddyshack

Drew after he let the air out of his first rat. Honestly, the boy couldn't have been prouder.

Hours later, the ground was littered with scores of dead rodents.

Goodbye, Mr. Harwell

2010-05-08T00:03:00.010-04:00

May 6, 2010: Ernie's final visit to the ballpark.

News trucks from all over were on site.

Major League Baseball network, filming live.

Fans wrote kind messages the kind man will never read.

By noon, the line wrapped around Woodward.

To pay respect to perhaps the most publicly beloved man Detroit, Michigan has ever known.

The Bull Fight Part II

2010-03-15T20:29:00.025-04:00

WARNING: THIS POST IS NOT FOR KIDDIES, BUNNY HUGGERS, AND WELL-MEANING PROGRESSIVES WHO ESCHEW BRUTAL OLD SCHOOL TRADITIONS.

Now that we've gotten that little disclaimer out of the way, we can show you what a real professional bullfight looks like. Watching one is a very unique experience, for many reasons. We'll delve into the why so in a minute, but first, let's discuss a brief history of the tauromachia.

Bullfighting dates back to ancient Rome, when Roman soldiers engaged in various man vs. beast contests, both as a machismo rite of passage and entertainment on remote empire posts. Over the centuries, the sport spread across Europe and due to expansion of the Spanish empire, eventually much of Central and South America.

Today, in this modern age of animal rights and political correctness, few countries still permit bullfights. Even in Spain, where bullfighting is deeply engrained in the national culture, it is controversial. The Spanish royal family is divided on the issue... while Queen Sophia is known for her public dislike of bullfighting, King Juan Carlos regularly presides over his countries' national pastime.

There was no royality present at our bullfight. The stands were mostly empty in fact, and the atmosphere had a blue collar feel. Before the fight, when the bull was released into the ring, the matador appeared pensive, as if he recognized that minus the pageantry, the event came down to him vs. the bull, and only one would walk out of the ring.

Bullfights have three acts, known as tercios. First is the tercio de varas, where the matador confronts the bull and engages in a series of passes to impress the crowd and gauge the bull's ferocity. This stage includes the lancing of the bull by a picador on horseback, a move intended to weaken the bull by severing powerful neck muscles. Obviously, the bull doesn't approve and attempts to gore the horse. In days of old, before horses were protected with padded armor, they were often disemboweled and stepped about on their own guts before collapsing in front of shocked audiences. Thankfully, this did not happen during our bullfight.

Next up is the tercio de banderillas, the stage where two bandrillas (barbed sticks) are planted into the bull's back in an attempt to anger and invigorate after the lancing.

For the final stage, the tercio de muerte, the matador engages the bull with a crimson cape for the series of passes known as the faena. The goal is to not only fatigue the bull, but impress the crowd with how close he can get to the bull during the tandas, or the passes.

When the matador feels the faena is complete, he readies his sword for the estocada, or the thrusting of the sword into the bull's back.

With a deft move that took less than a second, the blade is inserted into the bull and driven into the heart. The bull stumbles and snorts blood for a moment, then falls to the ground.

As the bull writhed on the dirt floor, we were struck by the complexity of the moment; the brutality mixed with pageantry. Here's a man wearing ballet slippers and an outfit with more sequins than a Liberace Vegas costume facing a 1,000 pound horned beast. And how this animal died under much more nobel circumstances than the bovines who get a piston to the head in Iowa slaughter houses.

The sword is withdrawn and the bull takes his final gasp of life.

The matador is given a hero's ceremony.

After cowboys roped the back legs of the bull's lifeless carcass and pulled it off the arena floor, a bloody stain and drag mark is all that remained.

The Bull Fight: Part I

2010-03-07T20:07:00.015-05:00

We're getting to the bullfight.... but just like how it went down at the Plaza De Toros, first up are the many dances, parades, and contests- all part of the pageantry that take place before the official la fiesta de toros.

For almost two hours, horsemen and dancers engaged in spectacular displays of cultural showmanship, like this Mexican square dance on the dusty arena floor.

Sash wearing chareos dance their crazy sword dance.

Horseriders display the flags of the tourist countries.

A mariachi band warms up the crowd.

Tourista damas play a game of catch the greased piglets.

And the tourista hombres play an invigorating game of man vs. little bull soccer.

Which didn't go so well for this guy.

Or this guy.

And the pre-bullfight activities concluded with the grandest of animal contests; the rooster fight.

Up next: the moment you've all been waiting for, the tauromachia.

Playa Del Carmen Part II- Akumal

2010-03-02T21:11:00.011-05:00

Yal Ku, a lagoon full of reef fish and barricudas and perfect for snorkeling located near Akumal. One of the gems of the trip was finding this quiet resort village.

The Akumal PD.

Delicious shrimp-filled releno at La Lunitas beachfront bistro.

The Akumal fishing fleet.

Our fishing guide, The Skipper.

His trusted assistant Jose, aka Gilligan.

Our day's catch.

Playa Del Carmen Part I

2010-02-28T20:33:00.016-05:00

Hola Amigos! Back from our trip to Mexico we are. The snow may still be ankle deep in Michigan but after the next several postings, you'll feel like you were there with us... toes buried in the warm sand, a sweating mojito off to the side, watching the clouds pass and the tide roll in.

The threads will start off with various random collections of how it looked last week on the Yucatan peninsula, 60 kilometers south of Cancun, and finish with a bullfight at the Plaza De Toros. Ole!

Above is how the beach looked in morning, before tens of thousands of sun crazed Americans, Canadians, and mixed Euros plopped their white bods in the sand to scorch in the rays.

The food was awesome. Check out the size of these killer prawns... as big as chicken drumsticks!

We visited as many of the local sites of interest as time allowed. Here you see the ruins at Tulum, a walled Mayan port city dating back to the 12th century. Walking past the castillo (main temple, seen here), we thought of the Mel Gibson yarn Apocalypto and wondered how many beating hearts were sacrificed before the Mayan civilization went extinct.

Now the only inhabitants at Tulum are the many iguanas who pose like swimsuit models on the rocks above the azure blue waters.

Back in Playa Del Carmen, a street performer does her nightly fire dance.

So until next posting, buenos noches!

Last Brick Standing

2010-02-18T20:21:00.006-05:00

The Lafayette Building is now days away from final respite.

The claw showed no mercy to its crumbling bricks and rusting beams.

A new hole is opening in the city skyscape.

Through the wind-sheered grand canyons of Detroit.

Lafayette II

2010-01-24T12:31:00.005-05:00

The demolition continues, brick by brick, beam by beam.

Soon this building will become another empty lot in a city awash in empty lots.

Dust and Bones

2009-12-30T21:00:00.016-05:00

It's too bad, really....

Whenever another historic Detroit landmark falls victim to time and neglect....

Soon the majestic neo-classical Lafayette Building, built in 1923....

Will become a pile of dust and bones.

Red Dawn in Detroit

2009-10-19T19:10:00.012-04:00

Filming of Red Dawn II has officially commenced in the Central Business District of the D.

In the distance is the set for one of the movie's Big Scenes, where the American generals meet the foreign generals.

A closer view of the set.

The camera boom was moving all around and people were yelling "Action!" and "Cut!" Getting some exterior shots before the extras arrived, perhaps?

Extras hanging around waiting for their cue.

More extras, heading towards the set for the Big Scene.

Jekyl Island, GA

2009-07-21T19:26:00.008-04:00

The ocean and oak trees.

A sailboat heads to sea.

Sea turtle hospital.

Home to sick loggerheads...

...awaiting surgery to remove fish hooks and soda cans from their innards.

Darien, Georgia

2009-06-13T20:39:00.016-04:00

Shrimping boats on the Darien River, coastal Georgia.

Darien is home to Fort King George, the southern-most British fort built in North America during the colonial era. Constructed in 1720, the fort's purpose was to keep Spain from encroaching north out of Florida. Note the Union Jack still flies above the cannons.

The fort was abandoned by the Brits in 1736, burned down during the Civil War, used as a logging camp during the early 1900's and finally restored to original condition in 1988. The only inhabitants now are the remains of sixty British soldiers who died during their tour of duty on this foreign land.

Located just outside the fort are the tabby blocks of an early Spanish mission built in the late 1500's. Little is known about the mission, other than the Gaule indians (a tribe that has long since disappeared into the vacuum of history), mounted a violent rebellion against the Jesuit priests stationed at Mission Santa Domingo de Asoa.

Sunlight passes through long beards of Spanish moss dangling from a live oak above the old mission.

Crumbling warehouse in Darien, once used to store tobacco, cotton, rice, and other goods destined for transport across the sea.
On the outskirts of Darien is the Cypress Lounge. The sign above the front door grabbed our attention- three sharp looking chaps enjoying frothy beverages as one vigorously raises his arm, a scene more akin to a Dartmouth debate than a Georgia fishing village tavern.

Inside, tattered Confederate flags hung from dark walls. Two leathered commercial fishermen wearing rubber boots sat at the bar nursing mid-day Natural Lights. "This yer first time here?" asked one of the grizzled boatmen. "Hot outside but the beer is cold." After discovering the Cypress Lounge was not a collegiate debate club, We opted for the door instead.

The absurdity of the moment was further compounded by this mannequin hog-tied to a telephone pole in the parking lot.

Savannah

2009-06-01T20:27:00.008-04:00

If a tourist from another country were to ask RR what American cities are must-sees, Savannah would top our list. They would find a most unique mix of history, architecture, southern culture, a thriving art scene, and a town that knows how to have a good time.

It's also the first city we've visited that converted a crumbling cemetary into a park. From 1750 to 1853, the Colonial cemetary was the final resting place for hundreds of early residents. Many of the graves are encased in tombs made of brick and cement- a practice we assume was done to discourage robbers from obtaining the gold watches and gold teeth of the interred.

Crawdads and oysters on the deck at the Bayou Cafe- Savannah cuisine at it's finest.

Pull the handsome little critters apart, suck the spicy juices from the head, and eat the tail!

Countless unique features adorn many of the buildings, such as this iron dragon sign holder at the Bayou Cafe.

Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, one of America's oldest churches.

Long Beach, Washington

2009-04-05T20:27:00.015-04:00

In the distance, the Columbia River empties into the Pacific Ocean.

Our rental. Yeah, the outside is a bit rough (salt air will do that), but inside, it was very nice.

Gandolf the wood carving.

Driftwood dude.

Marsh's Museum, a Long Beach attraction since the 1920's.

The walls are lined with hundreds of bizarro mounts... like this two headed piglet.

Old skulls hang from the ceiling. Something ain't right about that.

The family of this Amazonian called. They want his shrunken head back.

The most famous residence at this macabre museum is Jake the Alligator man. Acquired by the musuem for $750 in 1967, Jake is equal parts baby alligator/another unfortunate shrunken jungle head, evidently the creation of a mad Dr. Frankenstein taxidermist. Jake now has a cult following, including an annual blues fest named in his honor.

Florida Keys

2009-03-08T17:47:00.016-04:00

We apologize for the lack of activity, but we've been in deep hibernation and simply haven't had any material to post. Until this week that is, spent in the balmy Forida keys.

The days passed too quickly, as they always do. Adventures and good times were plentiful, like the morning spent on a catamaran sailing trip from Key West.

Another day was spent renting a boat and exploring Indian Key. Once the Dade County seat and home to fifty residents called "wreckers" (they eked out a hard scrabble existence by salvaging the cargo from shipwrecks), the island was abandoned in 1841 following a Seminole Indian attack. Now, only the rain water cisterns and the rubble of fallen buildings remain.

Fishing the shallows for barricuda.

Pelican carcass is found... with a leg band.

Over at Mallory Square on Key West, Dr. Juice, also known as the Calypso Tumbler, jumps through small hoops and flips across the sqaure like a doodlebug. Now in his fifties, Dr. Juice is one of the many street performers who entertain the masses before the sun sets from the southernmost point in the lower 48.

Juggler Will Soto, a mainstay at Mallory Square since 1976, does his high-wire schtick before another crowd.

Only in Key West.

White Pine Down

2008-11-18T19:51:00.020-05:00

When we first moved into the RR HQ complex several years ago, one feature we enjoyed the most about our Back 40 was the eight story white pine that towered majestically over the neighborhood. Unfortunately, ice storms during the last few winters broke off the lower branches, rendering this once-regal tree into a toothpick with a sail. Its days were clearly numbered- the tree was going to come down soon, either by chainsaw or by wind. And by wind would almost certainly crush our abode or our neighbors.

So we called the local tree service and initiated euthanasia. The owner looked up and purveyed the enormity of the situation: "This is too tall for my bucket truck" he said, "I'm going to have to call my monkey boy."

His monkey boy arrived and we asked how many trees of this height he's cut down. "Millions. Dude, I've been doing this for twelve years." Allrighty then! Fire up the Husquevarna!

The monkey boy scramb-led up the trunk quicker than a fox squirrel and began the surgical cutting of smaller branches to get to bigger branches. How these guys don't cut their safety lines or get tangled in rope systems or have a massive branch twist and slam into them is a credit to their skillset. We're continuously amazed at professionals with jobs that straddle the razor's edge between accomplishment and failure on a daily basis- heart surgeons, state troopers, airline pilots, and yes, monkey boys.

He loped off the top and descended from his high perch. One of his co-workers cut the pine at the base and it fell with a loud thud that shook the house. The trunk indented a deep groove into the wet ground that will have to be filled in with a load of dirt. The tree, which once produced both admiration and fear, had been felled. Summertime views of our world from the back porch will never be the same. Over the last several years, we've cut down three dead ash trees and a dying pear tree. Our yard, once a haven for birds and sheltered from neighbors we don't know, is now an open expanse.

The skidder came and lifted the cut pieces into a utility truck. After the stump grinder comes and pulverizes the only remaining sign that a 100 year old white pine (the state tree of Michigan!) once stood here, nothing will remain but a pile of mulch. We will miss our white pine- except when the strong winds sough across Portage Lake.

Bones and Ashes

2008-09-28T19:05:00.009-04:00

Animal bones, abandoned Air Force radar base, Burns, Oregon.

Desert car, Wrights Point, Oregon.

Abandoned wrangler cabin, Oregon.

Motorcycle accident, Ukiah, Oregon.

Ashes into the Umitilla River.

Water Rock Sky

2008-09-27T09:50:00.014-04:00

The Crooked River at Smith Rock State Park, Prineville, Oregon.

Look closely- three rock jocks are scaling the cliff. We used to do that kind of thing but those days are long gone....

Buddha head rock.

Big scrum rock.

Vapor trail.

Tumalo Falls.

West

2008-09-25T20:38:00.005-04:00

Dagger Falls, Middle Fork of the Salmon River, Idaho.

Middle Fork launch at Boundary Creek.

Frosted mountain tops, Bear Valley, Idaho.

Tree trunk, Pendleton, Oregon.

Harney County, Oregon

2008-09-24T17:58:00.009-04:00

Redneck hunting blind, downtown Burns, Oregon.

Check out this cool Polaris four wheeler.

Or this even cooler Oregon State Police Charger.

Firefighters are welcomed back at Egans Tavern.

To play a game of shuffleboard.

And make a selection from the taps.

Hell Music Festival

2008-08-24T09:50:00.027-04:00

Hell, Michigan, home to Screams Ice Cream Parlor and this weekend, the Hell Music Festival, an annual fundraiser for UM Children's Hospital.

Stickman outside of Screams. Inside, we ordered a cone of chocolate/caramel/fudge goop from Erik, the Survivor guy known by millions of viewers for making one of the dumbest moves in the history of the show. We wondered how many pesky customers bring up his bonehead move that probably cost him the million dollar prize. "Have a hell of a day", he said as he handed the cone over the counter.

Our melting cone of brown goop would have made great ammo for a game of Monkey Poo Toss.

Cementhead.

Ten bands played from 11am to 11pm. We left to attend our first-ever co-ed baby shower and missed the evening acts. Below, one of the first bands of the day covers Jane Says.

Mesa Verde

2008-08-22T15:50:00.039-04:00

We spent a quick couple of days this week in southwestern Colorado on business and had the good fortune of squeezing in a visit to the ancient cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park. It is, in all honesty, one of the most incredible places we've ever seen. Seriously.

Words cannot fully describe the magnitude of Mesa Verde. Since not being able to describe something has never stopped us before, we'll give it a try. After entering the park, the road winds upward for several miles through numerous hairpin turns (dented guardrails everywhere, presumably due to motorhomes the size of submarines driving on a road no wider than two mules). When the road crests onto the high plateau, the terrain flattens and is bisected by numerous canyons and deep gorges in parallel, north to south, as if sliced into the earth by a colossal prehistoric butter knife.

These canyons are home to several hundred cliff dwellings, built and occupied by "Ancestral Puebloans" during the 11th and 12th century AD. For decades, the term "Anasazi" was widely used to reference these aboriginal peoples, but in certain translations (that apparently rile the gods of political correctness), Anasazi means "ancient enemies." So in an effort to not offend, the new term is "Ancestral Puebloans." Whatever. All we know is whoever built these amazing and complex structures from stone and brick nearly 1,000 years ago were, regardless of their current name, an amazing and complex people.

We arrived early in the morning and hiked on the first guided tour of the day into the Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in the western hemisphere. Good thing, too. By the time we finished the tour an hour later, a caravan of buses full of tourists from Europe and Japan pulled into the parking lot.

Here's what they would learn about American history during their visit: the dwellings were abandoned in the 12th century and for six hundred years saw no human life, until 1880's when cowboys on horseback travelled through the area. Why the dwellings were abandoned is sometimes cited as one of the great mysteries of history; the theories include political upheaval, drought/crop failure, problems with rival tribes, and southward migration to the lush Rio Grande valley. We have our own theory- more on that later.

What makes Mesa Verde so unique is how pristine the ruins are. Unlike many other crumbling historical sites scattered across the west- ghost towns, army forts, pony express stations, mining camps, Spanish missions, etc., Mesa Verde shows little sign of degradation. It's a testament to the craftsmanship of the builders, and the protection the desolate canyons provided from looters and the erosive elements of nature.

Every square foot of the Cliff Palace had purpose and design. Over 150 individual housing units (the site resembles a massive apartment complex) hover above five kivas (recessed circular areas used for communal or sacred ceremonies). Primitive ventilation systems kept the rooms cool in the summer and pushed out campfire smoke in the winter. In other dwellings at Mesa Verde, archaeologists have found notches carved into walls where sunlight would mark the solstices. Here you see where the women would sit and grind corn into flour, in partitioned areas with metate stones and spillage barriers.

A most incredible facet to 12th century life in the cliff dwellings is while the people resided in the cliffs, they hunted and farmed on the high plateau. Carved into the soft sandstone cliff sides above the villages were countless toe and finger holes used to climb in and out of the canyon. While the residents were no doubt very good at scrambling the rock faces, we can only imagine how many ancestral Puebloans fell into the canyon abyss when rain or ice made the climbing routes treacherous and deadly.

Which brings us back to why, in our educated opinion, the dwellings were abandoned: the residents grew tired of the endless rock climbing accidents. Living below a cliff was probably a lot of fun- until you broke both your ankles one icy morning on your way to hunt a deer. Even the most agile and experienced climbers, at some point, lose balance or grip- ingredients for disaster, of course. Sooner or later, the luster of living on the side of a cliff would wear off, and you too would elect to move out of the canyon to a nice pit house on stable ground. Yeah the view might not be as nice but at least you wouldn't have to worry about stepping over the ledge when getting up in the middle of the night to use the lavatory. You won't see this theory, by the way, in any history books.

The toe and finger holds used by the ancestral Puebloans were replaced by steps and ladders in the 1930's. Here you see how the path climbs up a slot canyon. Had the technology advanced towards these safer routes of travel in the 12th century, the residents may have never left their handsome cliff houses overlooking spectacular Navajo Canyon.

Firecrackers

2008-07-06T11:25:00.018-04:00

What a perfect Fourth of July weekend on the Huron Chain of Lakes! It was warm but not hot, no thunderstorms, and everybody was out having a good time (as seen here, on Baseline Lake). Our only complaint was the small crowd of drunks who camped in our neighbor's backyard last night and shot off bottle rockets and M-80's until 3:30 am. Heeewww. They're sleeping off their hangovers right now but as soon as we get this posting finished, we've got some chainsawing and weedwacking to do along the fenceline!

Here's a RR collection of random images from the weekend:

Friday evening sun vs. cloud, Baseline Lake.

Traffic jam on the Huron River, above Whitewood Lake, Saturday afternoon.

Double-decker poonton boat with rock band jamming from the bow. As we passed, we heard this chorus:

Good Times, Bad Times, you know I had my share; When my woman left home for a brown eyed man, Well, I still don't seem to care. Sixteen, I fell in love with a girl as sweet as could be, Only took a couple of days 'til she was rid of me. She swore that she would be all mine and love me till the end, But when I whispered in her ear, I lost another friend, oooh.

After the sun lowered and the sky darkened into night, the Portage Lake fireworks show began.

Let freedom ring!

Taking fireworks pictures requires patience and timing. If you wait until the firework explodes, you're too late- the picture will be smoke and darkness. If you jump the gun and take the shot too soon, you'll photograph the sparkler trail as the pyrotechnic climbs altitude. It took us a good twenty attempts before we figured out the correct sync of things.

The folks who organize the Portage Lake fireworks do a great job every year and this year was no exception. Near the end, they added a series of fiery explosions with sonic booms that were so loud, the glass windshield on our boat rattled and car alarms triggered at nearby houses. It was the sound of freedom- and probably very similar to the last thing the Taliban fighters see and hear when a MC 130 Combat Talon lights up their mountain hideouts along the Pakistan border!

Silver Lake Sand Dunes

2008-06-15T20:12:00.019-04:00

Summertime in Michigan means four-wheeling at Silver Lake State Park.

But we need to get there first. Five miles away from the dunes, Drew's jeep ran out of gas. Thankfully, one of the asparagus farms gave us a gallon of petro and saved the day.

Hop in the backseat as we enter Silver Lake State Park.

Up the big hill we went, like twenty-five times. Unsucessful we were, like twenty-four times. Here we totter, high-centered on the dune, hoping gravity doesn't flip us like a big turtle.

Luckily, another good samritan came along and yanked us off our precarious pearch.

Our tire tracks plow deeper and deeper....

Time to let more air out of the tires.

Drew basks in the moment of victory.

Next sand ridge over, dirt bikers conduct their own gravity tests.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

2008-06-01T14:09:00.007-04:00

Tom Petty and his awesome cadre of musicians known as the Hearbreakers played the Palace of Auburn Hills last night. As always, he put on a great show. The setlist included many favorites not played on recent tours:

You Wreck Me
You Don't Know How It Feels
I Won't Back Down
Even the Losers
Saving Grace
Mary Jane

Sweet William
End of the Line
The Waiting
Straight into Darkness
Spike
Face in the Crowd
Learning to Fly
Don't Come Around Here No More
Refugee
Running Down a Dream
Mystic Eyes
American Girl

Here's a RR short clip from the Petty show, for your enjoyment:

Postcards from the D

2008-04-24T17:31:00.015-04:00

This week was a very big week at RR: we canoed the Huron for the first time in '08 (had a great high-flow run but neglected to take pics- we deeply apologize but we we're simply having too good a time to bother with the camera). And we found a new (and very good) source of postcards at secret place whose location we will not reveal under any circumstance. We will, however, show you some century-old postcards from Detroit, back when "pleasant" and "beautiful" were honest descriptions of the city.

Check out this "Aero View" (that's how it's described on back) from the 1920's. The big building in the middle is the (soon-to-reopen) Book Cadillac Hotel, with detailed little cars motoring down Michigan Avenue. Heading east (right) is the wedge shaped Lafayette Building, the Fort Shelby Hotel, and the Dime Building. On the Detroit River, notice the flotilla of ships spewing smoke off the Rivertown freight docks, a reminder that Detroit was once an international seaport hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean.

Many of the buildings seen above no longer exist. Like the Hotel Tuller on Bagley Street. On back, it reads 800 rooms- 800 baths. Popular Rates, Detroit's Most Popular Hotel. Beautiful Air-conditioned Lobby- Large Popular Priced Cafeteria. Coffee shop and Cocktail Lounge. Free Parking 5:30 P.M. to 9 A.M. Specializing in Tourist Groups. By the 1970's, Hotel Tuller had devolved into another squalid downtown flop house occupied mostly by derelicts and was shuttered for good in 1976. In 1992, it was demolished and remains a gravel lot to this day. Click here if you want to see the vacant lot that was once the "popular" Hotel Tuller.

Next door was another hotel that is no more: the Hotel Statler (click on the image and you'll see the Hotel Tuller sign on the right side). One of Detroit's leading hotels, centrally located on Grand Circus Park reads the inscription on back. Buit in 1916, the Statler is regarded as the most elegant hotel ever built in Detroit: glass chandeliers and walls of marble hung in splendor in cavernous rooms designed in ornate Georgian architecture. But by the early 1970's, as blight spread through downtown Detroit like a disco-era STD, the Statler fell into disrepair and closed forever. In 2005, six months before Super Bowl XL, the Statler was demolished as part of a quick attempt to clean up downtown before the lens of world focused on Detroit.

One old building that still stands is the Charlevoix Building on Park Avenue. Built in 1906 as a stately hotel, over the decades it housed low-end apartments and union offices. Vacant since the late 1980's, now the only occupants are squatters and vermin. Click here to see how the Charlevoix looks today.

Here's a gem: postmarked May of 1911, the small print on back reads Canal Scene Belle Isle. Canoeing is the leading sport at Belle Isle, Detroit's largest playground. Its 702 acres are threaded by many miles of of canals and lakes, affording an ideal spot in which the light little craft cruise about by thousands. Band concerts are given at the city's expense during summer afternoons and evenings and on such occasions the canoesits are present in great numbers. It's been a long time since canoeists paddled the canals of Belle Isle, much less enjoyed concerts paid by the city.

Low Bridge

2008-04-20T15:16:00.004-04:00

The Amtrak Bridge on Dexter-Pinckney Road snagged another semi-truck and trailer this week.

Despite low clearance warning signs and a truck route detour, this happens a couple of times per year. Hard to believe professional drivers would attempt to drive a semi truck under a bridge with a 11'10" clearance. Or the trucking companies wouldn't do a better job of route selection.

Hudson Cemetery

2008-04-16T20:33:00.015-04:00

Just north of Dexter, nestled between the Huron River and corn fields destined to soon become another subdivision of oversized homes, lies the pioneer cemetary of Hudson Mills.

Now forlorn and forgotten, Hudson Mills was one of the first settlements in southeast Michigan. Records indicate the first known white settler was Cornelius Osterhout, who built a sawmill on the banks of the Huron River. By 1846, the location had a hotel, general store, and a flour, cider, pulp, plaster, and lumber mill. Today, only the cemetery and earthwork from the original mills remain.

Over the past six years, we've driven by the cemetary twice a day, quickly and without hesitation on the way to and from work. Simple math equates to 3,000 times- and until this morning, we've never even thought of stopping for a closer look.

What we found was a remant from a time long forgotten, neglected and slowly being by reclaimed by nature. As we walked towards to the back of the property, three deer jumped from their bedding and leaped over a rusty barbed-wire fence into the adjacent corn field. Tree limbs were strewn across the burial grounds like toothpicks.

Some of the graves were completely overtaken by vegetation. Seeing this was bothersome- by pure coincidence, earlier this week we stopped by a family gravesite in Detroit and found the headstone sunken and covered in leaves and dirt. Minutes later, we were at the cemetery office filing a work order to remedy the situation. One of the comforts of life should be knowing someone will be vigilant in keeping nature from overtaking your final resting place.

Most of us who live between Dexter and Pinckney came from somewhere else. Which explains the fallen and broken gravestones of people whose kin moved away generations ago.

One consistent factor among the buried is age of death: most of the interned died young, at least by modern standards. Few of the early inhabitants lived past their forties. Many died in their twenties and thirties, presumably from diseases that have been eraditicated by medicine and vaccination.

The saddest graves are the pioneer children. Like the son of F.W. and Mary Peters, who died in 1846. Aged 2 weeks and 2 days, Denison R. Peters' marker reads Death culls the choisest flower Nor tells the reason why To kiss the rod is ours And know that we must die. His short life is a testament to the difficulties of living in an early pioneer settlement in the hinterlands of southeast Michigan along the Huron River.

Mr. Warmth

2008-04-12T11:02:00.012-04:00

Don Rickles brought his schtick to Andiamo's Celebrity Showcase in Warren last night. Surrounded by a twelve-member orchestra, Mr. Warmth delivered a bawdy mix of ethnic jokes, insults to people sitting in the front row, and Frank Sinatra stories. The most entertaining part of the evening (for us) was when he broke from his routine and reminisced about his early days working burlesque shows at Detroit strip clubs owned by "the boys" (i.e.- the mob). Those days are long gone and Rickles is one of the few remaining dinosaurs from the pre-historic era when "the boys" ran seedy Detroit hangouts.

His show had the politically correctness of a stag party. How Rickles gets away with this is a testament to his talent- instead of dismissing him like a nutty relative with a case of Tourettes syndrome, you realize he's simply having fun and everybody is in on the joke, regardless of who's getting skewered.

Our lame excuse for the lack of better photography from last night is: our table was waaay in the back and the lighting was lousy. But this clip is pretty close to how he operated (although without the orchestra).

Das Boat II

2008-04-05T18:16:00.011-04:00

Four items are needed to install a new boat floor: plywood, fiberglass, band aids and beer.

The baseball game on the tv above the tool pile in the garage. So far, the Tigers are zero and five. Not exactly what the experts predicted at the onset of the 2008 season.

Mixing up another batch of epoxy and hardener.

New floor coated in a thick layer of headache-inducing shellac.

After curing overnight, the new carpeting is installed. Looks sweet too. The seats are next and then it'll be ready for launch.

Das Boat

2008-03-29T20:45:00.035-04:00

We're back! Sorry about the absence- we simply haven't had much to report lately. Unlike many blogs, we've chosen to not write about: 1) politics 2) religion 3) private thoughts 4) mundane daily activities 5) Britney Spears 6) Britney Spears' sister, ex-husband, boyfriends, et. al. With such self-imposed content restrictions in place, an unintentional consequence is limited posting when not much is happening other than working, eating, and sleeping (which pretty much sums up our last month).

But the weather has finally broken, and as we prepare for another boating season, we have something noteworthy to report: fixing the dire situation aboard the Sunbird SS 185, the flagship of the RR fleet. Three years ago, we noticed the floor was becoming spongy around the ski well. Two years ago, the rot began to spread like a bad cancer to adjacent plywood. Last year, nearly the entire floor felt like it was about to collapse under foot. When we put the boat away last fall, we realized it needed some serious attention before launching in 2008.

So last week we removed the outer plastic tarp, only to discover massive ice blocks had formed on the canvas cover. Water from rain and melting snow must have percolated through the tarp over the past few months and pooled on the canvas, which shredded like wet newspaper when we attempted to remove it from the boat. Piece of crap canvas cover.

After we removed the icebergs and seats and filthy carpeting, we discovered how truly bad the damage was. Years of exposure had rotted the center panel so badly it resembled a crank addict's mouth. Prying away the rotten plywood was easy- it broke away like bits of pecorino cheese. But not so much elsewhere- solid plywood coated in fiberglass and epoxy and thick ice made removal a back-wrenching exercise in boat maintenance. Like a wise sage once told us, the two best days of owning a boat are the day you buy it- and the day you sell it.

Fortunately, the sun warmed away layers of ice and we were able to remove the plywood flooring above the gas tank.

Hours later, we had the hull scoured and ready for a new floor. We drove to the lumber yard only to find they were closed on a Saturday afternoon- a surprise, since we assumed a lumber yard would be open for business on the day most homeowners are working on house projects. We'll get the new plywood sometime this week and next weekend we'll slap it in, slather some epoxy on it, and staple in the new carpeting. It's gonna look nice and you will be most impressed with how it turns out.

Cards from an Airman

2008-03-02T10:41:00.036-05:00

Interspersed among thousands of old postcards at Kaleidoscope Books in Ann Arbor are many of the cards sent by Army Air Corp Private Edw. M. Siantz to his future father-in-law, Valentine Smutek. From 1942-1943, Valentine Smutek spent 14 months in a body cast at a Detroit hospital following spinal surgery and Private Siantz was stationed at Kessler Field in Mississippi, training to become an Air Cadet. Aside from documenting the day to day activities of an airman in training, the cards memorialize the friendship and respect between the two men.

Valentine Smutek passed away in 1965 and Edward "Eddie" Siantz passed away in 2000. We'll share some of his postcards with you before we send to his family.

December 23, 1942:
Hi Pop. Well, I feel much better today because I got two letters from my Virg. I also got my x-mas gifts from home just what I needed too. I hope you are feeling as good as I am today. Good luck-Eddie

January 29, 1943:
Hi Pop. How are you feeling today? I finally got some new type cards, cute, I think. I got two letters from Virg today so I feel pretty good although I am very tired from loafing yesterday. It was our day off. Good luck. Eddie.

July 22, 1943:
Hi Pop. How are you today? I hope it isn't as hot in Detroit as it is here. Boy the sweat just pours out of us. All I did today was work on a little detail. We start classes Monday and we get our books today. Classes last 4 weeks and then...? Good luck, Eddie.

August 17, 1943:
Hi Pop- How are you feeling today. Helen and Ray have probably been over to see you. I know that's one of the first places I would go, just like I did on my furlough. You have certainly treated me well and I only hope I can repay you and live up to your expectations of me. Take care of yourself. Good luck Eddie.

August 18, 1943:
Hi Pop- how are you today? Boy, this is a grand day for us. I leave for home Monday for about 15 days and I'll see you next week at this time. Boy, it's going to be good to get home again. I can't wait. I told Virg all about it and so I'll bet she's glad. Well, Pop I'll see you next Wednesday. Good luck, Eddie.

November 26, 1943:
Hi Pop- how are you feeling today? I hope your feeling better. Don't believe the other side of this card because this will be the longest stop I've made since I became a cadet (4 months). I'm going to do some extra studying tonight. Good luck- Eddie.

Queen Mine

2008-02-25T20:12:00.026-05:00

Behold the entrance to the Queen Mine, a labyrinth of old mine shafts below Bisbee, Arizona, that produced six billion dollars worth of copper, gold, silver, lead, and zync between 1870 and 1970. Now a museum, it's one of the best mine tours in the country, if you're into these kinda things. We are, so kick back and join us as we descend 1,500 feet into the bowels of one of the most famous mines in North America.

For twelve bucks admission, they gave us slickers and hard hats with a headlight, just like the miners wore. Then everyone jumped on a little train, just like the kind you see kiddies riding at the mall during Christmas (except it was made out of metal and not plastic) and off we went into the darkness.

About 200 feet inside the mountain, our tour guide stopped the mini-train and asked if everyone was okay and said now was the time to speak if claustrophobia was taking over. We were doing just fine until the power of suggestion kicked in; suddenly we were stricken with unwanted thoughts about earthquakes and recent mine tradgedies and bad earth gas. This lasted for 30 seconds or so, until we smiled at the thought of how much our attorneys could sue this place for in event of a catastrophe.

Claustrophobia can be a spooky headspace, for sure. We've never succumbed to it, but have witnessed other people suddenly wig out when trapped inside a confined space. Matter of fact, just a couple of days prior at the Titan II missile museum (see below posting), some dude freaked while in the launch control room and had to be rushed out. In our opinion, the Queen Mine, with its rotten timber cribbing holding up narrow shafts filled with dank air offered 100x the impetus for someone to go bat shit.

Our tour guide stopped several times along the way, including a huge cavern called a stope, where miners had removed thousands of tons of rock to access a rich vein of copper ore. We took some photos but the cavern was so massive and dark, nothing turned out. Here we have the guide explaining how the blasting process occurred: holes were drilled 7 feet into rock and filled with sticks of TNT. Then Kaboom! The next several hours would be spent loading blasted rock onto outgoing train carts and building cribbing to support the walls from caving in. Working in the mine was a constant cycle of drilling holes, blowing up rock, hauling out the rock, and then hauling in timbers to keep the ceiling from dropping on everyone.

Over its 100 year operation, the Queen Mine produced 8,032,352,000 lbs of copper, 2,871,786 ounces of gold, 77,162,986 ounces of silver, 304,627,600 lbs of lead and 371,945,900 lbs of zinc. No exact figure exists on how much poop was hauled out over the century of operation, but this butt dropper cart, with dual leather seating and foot rest, probably carried away more nuggets in one week than all the silver and gold combined.

Ruins

2008-02-22T20:45:00.013-05:00

Twenty miles north of the Mexico border you'll find Tumacácori National Historic Park, a Jesuit mission founded by Spanish Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino in 1691 and the location a bloody O'odham Indian uprising in 1751.

Inside, a cross made of flowers adorns the crumbling chancel wall.

Outside, a grave with no name is covered in stones.

At Casa Grande National Monument, the eroding walls from a 13th century Hohokam Indian village are the only remaining sign of an ancient civilization that flourished for centuries before disappearing into the folds of history.

Now a ghost town, Fairbank on the San Pedro River was a once a thriving depot town during the height of the silver and copper mining era in the late 1800's.

Desert Cemetary

2008-02-19T16:43:00.017-05:00

A purple kitten greets visitors.

Storm clouds crest above the angels of Journey.

Some graves are remarkable spartan.

Some graves are remarkably ornate.

None have headstones, only simple wooden crosses.

Framed by distant mountians.

San Xavier Mission

2008-02-18T19:21:00.017-05:00

A Tohono Indian girl sits in front of the San Xavier Mission, also called "The White Dove of the Desert."

The mission was founded in 1699 by Spanish Priest Eusebio Francisco Kino.

The serpent door handle reminds parishoners that sin lurks everywhere.

A lion stands guard before the white cross of calvary.

Titan of War

2008-02-17T15:33:00.023-05:00

Buried in the desert south of Tucson sits the only remaining Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile site in the United States. Once the backbone of the United States nuclear missile arsenal, the Titans were made obsolete by the Minuteman series (500 Minuteman IIIs are presently located in North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming) as well as nuclear weapons on submarines and heavy bombers. Following the signing of the Salt II Treaty in 1982, sixty Titan II sites in Arizona, Arkansas, and Nebraska were decomissioned and all the missiles, except for this one, were removed from their silos and dismantled. Today, USAF Titan Missile Complex 571-7 is a museum to a Cold War relic from the era when peace was never fully won; it was only kept minute to minute.

Above ground, there isn't much to see, other than a huge cement door on tracks. Since the other Titan silos were dynamited into rubble piles after the Salt II Treaty, one of the requirements for establishment of the Titan museum (other than removal of the warhead) was placement of barriers on the tracks so the door could not be opened. Russian satelites watching from high above regularly check on the site to make sure no funny business is taking place. Not that sneaking one additional missile into the current U.S. arsenal of 3,700 nuclear weapons would make much of a difference, but hey, an agreement is an agreement.

Five stories below the surface is the launch control center. Protected by concrete walls several feet thick and steel blast doors weighing 6,000 pounds, the room is designed to withstand either a direct hit from an incoming warhead or accidental explosion of the bad boy sitting 250 feet away.

Another fascinating engineering feature was how the entire complex sits suspended on massive springs. A necessary component, when you consider over 400,000 pounds of thrust would be pushing an object weighing 270,000 pounds out of a hole in the ground.

A total of four airmen would be inside the complex at any given time. Every 12 hours, two man crews would rotate duty at the control center. Had the relationship between Moscow and Washington DC ever spiraled into Def Con 1, a series of numbers and letters would be transmitted over the speaker atop the control panel. Both airmen would write the code in notebooks. They would then switch notebooks and the code was read again.

The airmen would then open this cabinet (each had the combination to one of the locks) and compare the launch code to the codes inside. If there was a match, a numerical code would be revealed. This number was entered into the control panel and unlocked a butterfly valve inside the booster rocket of the missile, allowing the propellant fuels to combine for ignition and lift off. Then the airmen would simultaneously turn the launch key at their stations and thirty minutes later, the warhead would reach its target. Both men carried .38 revolvers on their belts, in the event the threat of force was necessary to ensure the launch order was followed to completion.

The Titan II carried the largest thermonuclear warhead ever deployed in the U.S. arsenal. With a yield of 9 megatons, the Titan II warhead had 700 times more power than Little Boy, the first nuclear bomb used in WWII (15 kilotons). The blast alone from a Titan II warhead would result in a fireball 1 mile wide lasting 12 seconds. The radiated heat could be fatal to a 20 mile radius. Blast effects would collapse most residential and industrial structures within a 10 mile radius. Within 3.5 miles, virtually all above-ground structures would be destroyed and blast effects would inflict near 100% fatalities. Envisioning the destruction these weapons can render is mind boggling, especially when you consider some 27,000 active nuclear weapons are currently deployed throughout the world.

If a launch ever occurred, the crews had 30 days of food and water and perhaps two weeks of oxygen within the complex. At some point, they would have to enter a new world, a nuclear world. And they would've been among the very few people on earth still alive.

South by Southwest

2008-02-16T21:49:00.032-05:00

We've just returned from a glorious week in southern Arizona, and hewww doggies, do we have some good stuff on the way. In no particular order, upcoming posts will include:

1. The Tucson Gem Show
2. A tour of the only ICBM site in the world open to the public
3. Spanish missions founded in the 16th century
4. Old ghost towns and abandoned ruins from 13th century civilizations
5. An abandoned copper mine
6. Tombstone, AZ (home to the famous shootout at the OK corral)
7. Random scenery, like this photo of a grandaddy Saguaro cactus from the outskirts of Tucson.

We're glad to be back posting original material for you. As much as we enjoy occasional diversions about postcards and whatnot, our goal has always been to provide an authentic mix of words and photographs.

But that is often easier said than done, especially in the winter when there's just not a lot happening. We've opted to avoid the Filler Trap (posting about personal minutae, political and religous musings, and private matters better kept secret) so many other blogs fall into and instead share our perceptions about time and place and the absurd and the sublime, spiced up with RR guerilla photography. We'll never have advertising here, nor will we ever charge an access fee (not because we wouldn't like to make some extra dough, mind you. But with all of thirty daily readers, most of whom being people we know- a money truck this site will never be). We're having fun though and that's all that matters so thank you for your loyal patronage and occasional comments and emails.

Here are some teasers from our trip to the southwest:

A ferruginous hawk takes wing from an earthly perch.

Jesus stands below a cliffside shrine to the recently (and not so recently) departed.

Mexican woman making tortillas over an open fire.

Heavy metal angels hover above a garden in Bisbee, AZ.

Memorial to Army Indian scouts at Fort Huachuca, AZ.

This is what Nogales, Mexico looks like. Avoid at all costs, unless you like skeevy towns that smell of pollution and raw sewage. Walking the streets of Nogales is like being transported to the third world, within fifty yards of the United States. Pharmacies sell all sorts of drugs that can only obtained with perscriptions in the US and trinket shops peddle everything from fake Cuban cigars to ostrich leather cowboy boots. On the sidewalks, below dangling live powerlines swinging in the breeze, circus barkers yelled at us to come inside their stores or encounter bandidos around the corner (we kept walking and saw no bandidos). At one Mexican blanket store, the proprietor led us to the back where a bottle of brown tequila with no label sat on a table and offered to pour us a few shots. Uh, no thanks, we replied, that shit looks like used turpentine. At all the businesses we visited, employees followed us like we were kleptomaniacs intent on stealing their fake Gucci purses or Corona salt and pepper shakers. We quickly became discourged with shopping in Nogales and sought refuge at the historic Hotel Regis for a couple of Tecates with lime wedges, and laughed about this crazy place, south of the border.

More RR 1970's Ad Mania

2008-02-06T18:50:00.002-05:00

Seeing how you're looking at RR again, either you're at work bored senseless or suffering from insomnia. How 'bout we kill some time with another batch of absurd old magazine advertisements, like this 1977 ad for the Marantz 2500, the world's most powerful receiver. With a retail price of $1,595, this audio marvel boasted features like a Toroidal Power Transformer, a tunnel "pin fin" heat sink, and full complentary symmetry direct-coupled output. Added to the gooble-dee-gook is the 18 db per octave 15 hz sub-sonic Butterworth low filter and a dual-gate MOS FET FM front end. Wow. Imagine, though, what $1,600 of 1977 stock in Apple would be worth today. We'd prefer that over the Marantz 2500, thank you very much.

This 1975 cigarette ad of a young Farrah Fawcett look-alike, straight faced and trying her hardest to look older than 18 and a half, would surely be banned in 2008. I learned about smoking by trying different cigarettes, it reads. Winston may not be where you start. But when your taste grows up, Winston is for real. Winston sure knew how to attract new consumers from the Charlie's Angels era, eh?

Back when Gerald Ford was President, telephone technology was just beginning to go hi-tech. The phone on the upper left is an ancestor of the modern day cell phone, the Pulsar II Mobile Telephone Control Head for car or boat. Price: $890, not including antenna and transmitter/receiver. Since there were no cell phone towers or even dedicated frequencies for their use, this ad harkens us to the age when communications technology was transitioning between switchboards and operators to the modern era of Blackberries and Skype.

Speaking of hi-tech, look at this car-component Supersystem: the Pioneer KPC 9000. Priced at only $582.70, it comes with a GM-40 20 watt component power amplifier that delivers 10 watts RMS minimum per channel (both channels drive) into 4 ohms from 60 to 20,000 Hz with no more than 0.8% THD. Whatever. It still sounded like shit compared to today's technology. But when you're playing Hall and Oates, what difference does the quality make?

Now here's a clothing item no one admits to ever wearing: the Sears Thumbs Up Couduroy Jeans. With the long-wearing ruggedness of polyester. Perma-prest, too to keep things neat. Fortunately for all of the free world, the Thumbs Up Jeans went extinct as quickly as the Sears Stretcho Waist Jeans.

Another staple of seventies fashion were the boots. And the bigger the heel, the thicker the leather, and the fatter the toe, the better. Check out these embossed American Eagles, yours for only $16.95 (if you enclose a bottom flap from a pack of Camel Filters). Here we see a couple of hikers taking a break along a stream bank, and no doubt the guying wearing the blister-makers is hating life and wishing a pair of Adidas were on his aching dogs instead of these loads.

Speaking of loads, here we see OJ sporting a pair of Dingos.

Advertising the Seventies

2008-02-04T16:45:00.001-05:00

We recently came across a pile of old magazines from the time when disco music polluted the airwaves, men grew bad mustaches, and cars were built to break down as soon as they got paid off. Yes, we're talking the early 1970s. Looking at the advertising from this bygone era illuminates and contrasts how tastes and preferences of society change over time. Take, for example, this ad for Salem cigarettes, where a fish jumps as a fisherman paddles his canoe while choking down a cancer stick. Springtime! It happens every Salem. The small print reads Natural menthol. That's what gives Salem a taste as soft and fresh as Springtime. So smoking a Salem cigarette equates to the joy a fresh spring day. Quite the leap, eh?!

Here's a real deal: join the Stereo Tape Club of America and you'll get a free 8 track stereomatic player, speakers not included! The only stipulation is you'll need to purchase at least six cassettes now and one a month for the next year. With selections like Now I am Woman, The Best of Wilson Pickett, and Led Zeppelin III, how could anyone refuse such an offer!

Thirty years ago, dull sounding 8 tracks were the tip of the spear when it came to audio technology. No doubt few people, if any, envisioned a day when 10,000 songs could be played from a device the size of a business card holder. No doubt we have no comprehension what the technology will be in 2038.

For whatever reason, in the 1970's, nearly all cigarette ads were in color. And nearly all other products were displayed in black and white. Not sure why... were profit margins for the tobacco companies prior to the billion dollar settlements of the 1990's large enough to pay for color advertising when no one else could? Or is the message a subliminal one: you know, smoking makes the world a more colorful place? We dunno.

Notice the shift in marketing from the lone canoeist crossing a placid lake in the Salem ad. Instead, we see a nicely dressed couple wearing glasses enjoying a Viceroy as they read a passage from a musty tome. Browsing through a bookstall. Peeking in the past. Maybe they'll even find a signed Ernest Hemingway. Their cigarette? Viceroy. They won't settle for less. It's a matter of taste. The target group must be the literate intellectuals, or people who think they're literate intellectuals: smoke Viceroy, and people will think yer smart.

The Hot Comb from Remington. Now this is a product you don't see anymore, thank goodness. The small print reads You probably didn't realize it. At least not all at once. But life for men was changing. Ties were getting wider, waists were getting narrower, and hair was getting longer. The trouble was, that along with more hair you got something you didn't need or want: more problems. The Hot Comb is Remington's answer for more hair. What it does is dry your hair. And while it's doing that it does a lot of other things. Like shape it. And take out the lumps, the wings, and the cowlicks. It can even make dumb waves disappear, or make idiot curls go straight.

Wow. The Hot Comb is one heavy duty man primping tool. We hope the day never comes where we own one. Unfortunately, the indicators of long hair returning to vogue are beginning to show: the neighbor kid who shovels our driveway has a mop that resembles Leif Garrett, circa 1978. At the local mall last weekend, we noticed several high schoolers with long manes of hair wapped in thin bandanas at the forehead, looking like characters from a Freak Brothers comic book. Fads are cyclical, yes indeed. We just wish styled manhair stayed buried in the past forever.

Postscript: after posting, we noticed the model for the Hot Comb looked familiar. Click on the ad and see if you can guess who's pitching this fashion tool. Clue: he's played a young Godfather, a Deer Hunter, and a Raging Bull.

Here's another cigarette ad (having a tobacco account must've been the career goal of every 5th Avenue sales rep). The party's over and they've all gone home and at last it's quiet and no more people thank goodness and... This... is the L&M moment. Holy smokes! Is the tension ever palpable in that run-on sentence. The implied message: entertaining friends is hard work. Hosting a party is stressful. Let L&M ease your world after a long night of serving h'or derves and martinis. You deserve it, you exhausted party hostess you.

This is an advertisement we'd like to see again: a $1,990 car. Loaded too: no extra costs for all-vinyl, foam padded bucket seats, nylon carpeting, and two-speed windshield wipers on this Datsun. Looking through the stack of old magazines, one thing we noticed is cars were cheap and electronic gadgets were expensive. Reel to reel tape recorders and 35mm cameras cost $1,000 but $2,000 got you a new car. Today, we have the inverse: economy cars go for $20,000 and 10 megapixel cameras and Ipods cost under $200. It's not right.

Now here's a blast from the past: a listing of restaurants in metro Detroit, circa 1971. Only two jumped out at us as still operating: The St. Clair Inn is a nice place and Porter Street Station continues to eke out a enough of a profit to stay open in post-Tiger Stadium Corktown. We remember Ciungan's Shrimp House in Ecorse, a throwback to the steel era when the titans of industry ruled Downriver from dark rooms with cigar drenched carpeted walls like Ciungan's and Sibley Gardens. And the Top of the Pontch was the place to go to impress a first date in high school. Ah, the memories.

'Toon Cards

2008-02-01T10:03:00.000-05:00

It's snowing like crazy today, no better excuse to show you a sampling of postcards from our cartoon section. Some are funny, some make no sense, and others reflect a time when cartoon postcards were cheap advertising for products long gone from the market place. Like Old Reliable Hell on Earth Whiskey, Their slogan in 1909 was If Whiskey interferes with your business, give up your business. No use trying to do two things at once. Whoever came up with that catchy little jingle for a brand of rot gut rye deserves a Clio Award!

Some old product cards have slogans that don't make sense. If your radio set does not seem right, see what this soap will do; it's been found effective many a time, but no offence to you! What the hell does this mean? Doesn't the tone seem a little condescending? Did consumers back in the day enjoy these petty insults in advertising? We dunno.

This card shows an old battle axe staring angrily at clouds of smoke coming from a restroom. Hey, just relax and let the old man have a Pall Mall and a BM and you'll be on the road in no time. Sent to Mr. E. H. Price of Topeka, Kansas on August 3, 1952, it reads Dear Ed & the gang- Just made it to Rapid City. Seeing some lovely scenery and I stop when I get hungry or tired. Take care of things. Guy.

"Stopped Here For The 'Weak' End!" This card was sent by Pvt. Edw. Siantz, 590th T.S.S., Kessler Field, MS, on November 3, 1942, to Mr. Valentine Smutek at the Herman Kiefer Hospital in Detroit, the message reads Well I'm still here in Miss. There's talk of moving but nothing has happened. Haven't had any drilling even you could be here and get by with your back. Hope you're getting along fine. Eddie.

Pvt. Siantz promoted to Aviation Cadet Siantz and sent this cartoon postcard of a fire hydrant spraying a dog to Valentine Smutek in June 21, 1943. How are you today? I caught up with a bit of letter writing this morning and then went to the show and then we went swimming. I suppose you had your visitors and I only hope that JK were one of them. That's all for tonight. Good luck, Eddie.

Our final card from Aviation Cadet Siantz to Mr. Smutek was this cartoon machine gunner promising to fight as long as the letters keep coming. Mailed from Selma Field, Monroe, LA, on November 20, 1943, it reads, How are you feeling today? Maybe you're home by this time because I haven't heard from Virg for a week now because of my changing comps. I do hope that you are home now or will be soon. They are changing the system here and so we have to change barracks this afternoon. Good luck. Eddie.

A Google search produced some additional information: Aviation Cadet Siantz eventually became US Army Air Corps 1st Lieutenant Siantz and flew a B 24 bomber on bombing missions over Italy during the end of WWII (hopefully, the bombs from his aircraft didn't land on the Catacombs at Cappucinni. See previous postings for more on that). We believe we located a valid address in Florida and the cards have been mailed to him. They belong with their rightful owner, not us.

This card show a stick figure man fishing, reading, golfing, getting a sun tan, and drinking beer. Makes for a full day when you can engage in all those activities.

We'll close with this cartoon of a man pulling on the back of his head while holding an unhappy baby. I love my wife but no more kids. Mailed to Mr. W. Fisher in Rhinelander, WI, on August 22, 1910, a message scribbled in pencil reads Put on your old gray bonnet Let me call you sweet heart I'm in love with You. Bea. Bea, now listen and listen good: when you send your man a card with a picture like this on the front, your message of honey and roses gets negated instantly.

Postcard Magic

2008-01-26T12:01:00.000-05:00

Today's random mix of RR postcards starts off with this rifle bullet penetrating an apple. Look at the blowback on the right side- the reverse inertia from a ballistic object passing thru softer material at 2,000 feet per second. Pretty cool, huh? The card was sent to "Dr. L. Hensacker" of Ann Arbor, MI, on November 18, 1978 and reads, Dear Laval, Sorry to have been uninformative re: St. Louis. I plan to get in the evening of the 28th so why not book for the 28 and 29th? I hope to leave late on the 30th. You can book for both if us. Happy TG. Jim. Hmmm- cryptic stuff, yes indeed. We wonder what kind of doctor the recipient was; hopefully not an emergency room surgeon, given the number of gunshot wounds those guys look at. We're guessing Dr. Hensacker had a PhD in physics or mechanical engineering and his friend knew this image of velocity vs. mass would be well recieved.

Here's a blast from the past: FLORAL DESIGN, "IN DETROIT LIFE IS WORTH LIVING," GRAND CIRCUS PARK, DETROIT, MICH. The printing on back reads, Detroit, like other progressive cities, has a slogan, which is "In Detroit Life is Worth Living." There is no date or postmark so the exact date is uncertain, but the one penny stamp dates back to the 1940s. Now let's jump ahead to 2008: Grand Circus Park is still there, but the area is known as "skyscraper graveyard" as so many of the adjacent buildings have been abandoned. The slogan expired long ago.

This one has us scratching our heads. The print reads GREETING FROM PORTAGE LAKE, WIS but someone scratched off WIS and wrote PINCKNEY, MICH. The postmark reads Pinckney, MI, and Google says there is no such place as Portage Lake, Wisconsin. So maybe it is Portage Lake on the Huron chain? Perhaps a shot of what is now the DNR boat launch? Sent to Carol Cousino of Toledo, OH, on August 8, 1946, it reads, Hi kid. It's been rather cool!! up here so we haven't been swimming yet. These cards are sharp. They don't even resemble the lake but anyway. Love Pinkie. Ya know, Pinkie has a point: it doesn't resemble Portage Lake. We don't what we're looking at. A mystery of history, this card is.

This card was published by the Hiawatha Card Company in Ypsilanti, MI. THE HUNTER AND HIS DOG- A thrilling and expectant moment in Michigan following Indian Summer and the opening of the bird hunting season reads the small print on the back. Waiting for a bird to emerge from a clump of oak leaves so it can be shot and eaten is obviously an overwhelming thrill for this hunter and his springer spaniel.

Here's another thrilling moment: woman catches big fish. Man grabs tail. Both attempt to row boat with one hand. No doubt they're yelling at one another to let go of the oar and get the damn fish in the boat. Sent to Ford La Noble of Lansing, MI, in July of 1949, the message reads, Dear Ford: Are having a grand time. Have covered most of Minnesota, leave for St. Paul on Thursday. Your carrier certainly has made our trip a lot more enjoyable. Many thanks and hope you have a dandy vacation. Fred. Click here if you want to see Ford's 1922 high school yearbook picture. His motto: mildness rules the earth.

Closing things out for today is a postcard of a hillbilly family, shoeless and clad in tattered overalls, walking down a hard scrabble Arkansas road. The flipside reads, Back to their home in the "holler" goes this happy little family of Ozarkers after a shopping trip to the crossroads general store. Paw and the boys can't carry much because they have to open gates and chase hogs and cows out of the road. Postmarked in 1963, the card reflects a time when barefoot children smoking corn cob pipes was considered quaint, in a down home, ah shucks, kind of way. If this photo was taken in 2008, social services would place the kids in foster homes and slap endangerment charges on the parents. Times have changed, yes indeed.

Postcard Madness

2008-01-21T16:54:00.000-05:00

Holy Cow! Did we ever harvest a bumper crop of random postcards over the weekend. Our source for these nuggets of obscurity is moving and with prices marked down to a third of normal, we loaded up for weeks to come. If you're alarmed about our collectors' obsession with this hobby, well, so are we. But were having fun with postcarding and hope you are as well.

It's cards like this one that amuse us to no end. Sent to Kirk and Lance of New Bremen, Ohio, the message reads: This is a clown on water ski's at Cypress Gardens. Disney World was great. We'll be home by Wednesday, July 25. Your friend, Jeff. Our imagination runs wild and to us, this image conjures up John Wayne Gacy impressing his friends with his deft barefooting skills on a summer day at the lake. Maybe that's why we get such a kick from looking at these things.

We found another lost gem, a companion to an earlier card of the Catacombs at Cappuccini. It's remarkable, simply because you don't see this kind of stuff anywhere else but postcards. That the catacombs were destroyed during World War II Allied bombing raids makes it all the more unique. Now we can only imagine what it was like to visit a tomb where thousands of skeletons look like macabre mannequins at some hellish JC Penney's. No doubt the people in this picture never envisioned their remains would someday be immortalized in a postcard dated 1906 or a blog dated 2008. Which brings about this existential question: so how will we be remembered five hundred years from now? A deep thought for you to ponder as you go about your frenzied existence.

Some postcards are momentos of disappearing Americana. Like this shot of Ronald Reagan in front of the Frontier Hotel in Vegas. Here we see the Gipper, wearing an apron with asking Jas vils Du Haben? above a Pabst Blue Ribbon emblem (We're assuming the English translation is What are you having? and not something like Want to drink cheap American skunk water? Herr Joel- help us out on this).

A search of biographical data revealed this shot was taken in February, 1954, when Reagan was an unemployed actor and took a short-term job at the Last Frontier as an emcee for a nightclub act called The Continentals. Coincidentally, the Last Frontier was the first Vegas venue to book Elvis Presley (1956) and the last place Diana Ross played with The Supremes (1970). In November of 2007, the Frontier casino was demolished to make way for a new casino. An obvious parallel can be made to the Catacombs of Cappuccini postcard: both places are forever gone, but a moment in time captured a long time ago lives forever.

This card of an Army ferry transporting a truck across the Big Piney River at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO, was sent by Private Floyd S. Wood to Mr. Vandenberg at Eaton Manufacturing in Battle Creek, MI, on September 17, 1944: Hello. Just a line to let you know where I am what I am doing. The combat engineers boy do they work you hard. If anybody cares to write I will be glad to answer. Thanks for everything. Woody. Thank you, Woody, for your service to your country and we hope you enjoyed building Allied bridges and dynamiting Axis bridges during the waning days of WW II.

This card from the customer-void Shrimp Box restaurant in Pensacola, FL, was sent on January 7, 1955, to Wesley in Harrisburg, PA. The message was typed: Dearest Wesley. Here's another card for your collection. Hope you had a nice Christmas. Guess what we sent didn't amount to much as we've had no thanks from you or your mother. We are well and had a wonderful Christmas even though our new television did not arrive. Love, Grnadma Hollowell. Thanks to the power of the internet, we were successful in locating the recipient and had a nice conversation. The card is in the mail to him and we hope to report back with more on it's history during a later posting.

Our last card today is the Overland Limited Crossing the Great Salt Lake at Sunset. What a scene to behold. We suspect this picture was taken immediately after one of the 928 nuclear weapon tests conducted between 1951 and 1992 in neighboring Nevada. Western sunsets are always picturesque but when you add a one-kiloton warhead, well, then they become spectacular.

Junque Shop Postcards

2008-01-20T10:27:00.000-05:00

Deltiology - The study of postcards; the person doing the research, a deltiologist. It means (from the Greek) the science or study (logos) of small pictures or cards (deltion).

Today's research specimens come from the Junque Shop, a southwest Detroit antique store owned by a couple of retired city firefighters. While lamps and model train cars and patina-covered WWII medallions comprise most of their inventory, a small postcard collection can be found inside a faux crystal punchbowl below a stringer of old fishing lures. Our quest got off to a great start with this shot of canoeists, Shooting White Horse Rapids- Yukon. The card does not have a divided back (you know, the line separating the message from the address), meaning it was likely issued prior to 1907. For certain, it was printed before 1958, when a hydro-dam neutered White Horse Rapids into Schwatka Lake.

How about this postcard from when the Crazy Horse monument was little more than an idea? If you want to see how it looks at present, click here. Progress is going slow but hey, let's not forget that Rome wasn't built in a day either.

Sometimes, we'll find a card that indicates an enigmatic aspect of the human psyche. Like this King Cobra Eating Black Snake from Jungleland Snake Farm. Sent to Jean Robinson of Marquette, MI on July 12, 1964, it reads: Hi Jean. I thought I send this one to you, please put it in the middle of the cards you are saving for me as I can't stand looking at it. Mimi. Psychologists would say Mimi's request to save something she abhors is an example of human behavior known as attraction/repulsion.

Big guns are a common sight among military cards (along with shots of hospitals. Discuss.) Taken at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, the print on back reads "Anzio Annie" This caputred (their typo, not ours. It's fun to find these) famous German railway gun poured fire into the American forces on the Anzio beachhead in Italy in World War II. In the right is a U.S. 280mm gun, M65, the Atomic Cannon. Guided missiles made these big guns obsolete a long time ago but they remain intimidating nonetheless.

The last find of the day was this postcard of James Oliver Curwood (described on back as the very young explorer for the Canadian Government). Actually, he was much more than that: before his death in 1927 from an infected spider bite, Curwood wrote over thirty novels about the Pacific Northwest. Some were made into early Hollywood movies, providing Curwood with a measure of success that allowed him to build an 18th century french castle. Now a museum dedicated to his accomplishments, the castle overlooks the Shiawassee River in Owosso, MI.

BIG NEWS: We just got a tip that Kaleidoscope Bookstore is having a moving sale and cards are priced to go. Yeehaw. More postcard madness soon to come, for sure.

Eastern Market

2008-01-16T18:27:00.000-05:00

Did a little shopping at Eastern Market, your BBQ RIB HEADQUARTERS!

Got some chicken feet for stewing and assorted voodoo rituals.

Pig's feet- only .99 a pound.

Carp on ice.

Speaking of BBQ's: this Detroit recipe is called St. Aubin style, EXTRA CRISPY.

Postcards From Hell

2007-12-29T11:25:00.000-05:00

We've added a new batch of old postcards to our ever-growing collection (a true indicator we live in Nerdville is we now proudly display our pile of random postcards to visiting guests and family members. They play along and act amused but probably secretly believe postcard collections are for dorks and geeks. That's okay- we're having fun and that's all that matters).

Unnoticed until hours later is the common theme among the new additions. They are from places we'd rather not be, or from events we'd rather not see. Like this image of a glowing alien ship passing over San Francisco. We agree with the experts who believe an alien encounter would not be benign and friendly like in E.T. and Close Encounters, but the complete opposite. The invasion would redefine "shock and awe" and any resistance would be futile as our primitive weapons would be no match for their advanced combat systems. When the invasion occurs (which will probably happen sooner, not later), it will not bode well for the human race. So enjoy today because tomorrow you may be a slave in the Melange mines on the planet Arrakis.

Here's another scene we'd rather not witness: Abraham Lincoln about to get shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1965 at Ford's Theatre in Washington DC. Who would mail such a card? True, it's a pivotal event in American history, but so is the OJ Simpson trial and the Exxon Valdez spill and no one wants to get postcards from either of those tragedies. Why so many old postcards are macabre and violent (Japanese executions, dead soldiers strewn across Civil War battlefields, etc.) is a mystery to us.

The same goes for watching a man hammer eight inch spikes into his head. But that's exactly what "Skeets" Hubbard, "The King of Torture", is doing in this Ripley's Believe It or Not postcard from the 1950's. His ability to nail spikes into his melon led to additional nicknames such as "The Human Plank" and "The Human Blockhead." Just looking at this picture causes an instant sinus headache of the worst kind.

Here's a bizarre and unsettling scene. It's supposed to be the Arizona desert (the back reads Arizona highways sweep across wide mesa sentineled by the flowering yucca, toward the purple haze of majestic mountain ranges. Purple haze is right- a Jimi Hendrix purple haze! Notice the inscription at the top: High in Arizona. Guess so!

A massive log jam at Big Ripple on the Clearwater River in Idaho is something we hope to never encounter. Not that we will: when the Dworshak Dam was completed in 1971, the Big Ripple disappeared under the fifty mile long Dworshak Reservoir. So did one of the finest salmon fisheries and extended whitewater runs in North America. So we don't want to see any postcards of the Dworshak Dam either.

7018. Salt beds, Great Salt Lake, Utah. Look at the man and mule plowing salt as a cartoon train comes chugging down the tracks. Plowing salt has to rank as one of the least enjoyable outdoor pursuits in Utah.

We've never stayed at the Oleander Court on US Hiway 17 N in Brunswick, Georgia, but we have spent plenty of time in the area. It's not a place we go to by choice; the coastal breeze wafts with a pungent odor of melting vinyl, courtesy of a nearby pulp mill. Sand fleas and mosquitos are pestilent all year long. Summers are hot and muggy and miserable. On the back of the card, a message dated August 22, 1954, reads Dear Wesley- Granddaddy, Patsy and I are sleeping here tonight. $7.00. Air conditioned and very nice. Be seeing you soon. Grandma Hallowell. Glad to hear they enjoyed their visit. We'll stay away, until the next required visit.

Musty Drawer Messages

2007-12-10T19:46:00.000-05:00

If the posting tempo is faltering a bit at RR, it's not because we've abandoned this little blog. The actual reasons are: 1) the weather has become a wintry shit mix of ice and sleet in SE Michigan, meaning zero river adventures until next spring. 2) Work obligations are increasing. 3) We're busy doing other things, like dealing with the endless projects inherent with owning an old house, the kind that seem simple at the onset but increase exponentially and ultimately entail significant allotments of time. Now that we've laid our cards on table, let's move on to our expanding postcard collection and discuss some recent acquisitions from Kaleidoscope Books on State Street in Ann Arbor. Some people collect cars. Some people collect handguns. Some people collect ex-wives. We collect random postcards, and oh boy, do we have some gems to share with you.

Like this card from the Ossario nel Convento del Cappucinni in Italy. The inscription on back (addressed to no one) reads, "Where the monks were buried in the convent where we stayed." Based on the style of writing and faded pen ink, we're guessing it dates back to the early 1900's. A Google search revealed more information: the photo is from the Catacombs of Cappuccinni, an abandoned 16th century monastery that was home to some 8,000 skeletons before allied bombs leveled the place during WWII. What a scene- just look at all the skulls nailed on the walls. We paid a buck for it, and the bookstore owner commented the postcard was very rare and worth much more. To all who may be interested: the first $1,000 takes it.

How about this diamond from the era of women and feathered hats? Obviously taken before the days when PETA flung paint on people wearing clothing made from animals, the front of this card reads Getting Acquainted on the Famous Green Benches of St. Petersburg, FLA-"The Sunshine City." Upon closer inspection, notice how not all is birdy in Florida: on the far bench in the red dress, one of the blue hairs is covering her face, clearly embarrassed she didn't wear her egret hat that day. In the back right corner, the sign reads "X-RAY SHOES." What the hell are x-ray shoes? We suspect the postcard artist who painted the colors took some liberties of his own when prepping the image for production.

Buried deep in a box of postcards we found this picture of Frank James, proudly standing in front of the family homestead in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. The older brother of famed robber Jesse James, Frank was a Civil War veteran who joined the James Gang on numerous bank and train hold-ups between 1866 and 1879. In 1882, five months after his brother was killed, Frank met with the governor of Missouri and handed over his pistol and said, "I have been hunted for twenty-one years, have literally lived in the saddle, have never known a day of perfect peace. It was one long, anxious, inexorable, eternal vigil." Following his acquittal in two trials for his involvement in various robberies and murders, Frank retired to the family farm where he gave tours of the homestead for fifty cents until his death in 1915.

Look at this postcard from the Roma Galleria d'Arte Moderna (Rome Gallery of Modern Art), circa late 1800's. Here we see a father and son, returning from a successful rabbit hunt, dog in tow. What drew us to this image was the ornament above the door: a hawk nailed to the door frame! No doubt shot by an angry hunter tired of competing with birds of prey for his dinner, this is something you just don't see anymore. Hey, we've watched hawks swoop down and nab rabbits and ducks while out hunting, but we always figured they needed the meat more so c'est le vie. Or whatever that translates to in Italian.

The final postcard for today is this image of a menacing puppy in front of a beware of dog sign. On back, a message dated Dec 9, 1916, reads Dear Grandma and Charlie, Your letter I received today. And was very glad to hear from you and to know you are feeling better. Your loving Anna May. Grandma and Charlie and Anna May from Mason, Michigan, are probably long passed, but their thoughts live eternally among the thousands of postcards nestled in the musty drawers of a bookstore in Ann Arbor, waiting to be discovered.

Buck Pole

2007-11-21T15:51:00.000-05:00

The bucks are hanging at Mill Creek in Dexter, an annual fall ritual celebrating the hunt and the harvest and the bounty from the land. No deer hunting for us this year- instead we went duck hunting on one of the small lakes near Chelsea. Not a single bird flew in the cold drizzle. To make matters worse, a couple of days later we came down with a most unholy case of poison ivy. We must have hunkered down in the wrong clump of bushes. Usually, we see the plant long before we get near it (the oily green leaves of three are forever imbedded in our memory after a Salmon River rafting trip in 2002 caused an outbreak serious enough for a visit to the emergency room), but the fauna was little more than brown leaves and bare twigs. This reaction may not be the worst we've suffered, but it still merited two steriod injections to the rump (which hurt like a sonofabitch) and enough methylpredisolone pills to last Barry Bonds for a month.

Back to the Dexter deer pole: LOTS of nice bucks this year. Despite the fact that 350,000 people live in Washtenaw County, there remains enough farm land and wood thickets to support a healthy herd. Perhaps too healthy- the county ranks as one of the highest in the state in deer vs. car collisions (averaging 1,400 road kills per year). We've had our share of close calls, but knock on wood, no accidents since moving here. Since we hit two in one year in another state, hopefully we've filled our road kill quota for life.

Look at this old boy, the largest of the bunch. He may just be an eight point, but as thick as his antlers are, this grandaddy buck clearly has been around for awhile.

Speaking of being around for awhile, our 20 year high school reunion is happening this weekend. For the last several weeks, we pondered going, but ultimately decided against it. The many reasons included: 1) We regularly see many friends from back in the day. 2) The few people (and we mean few) we would like to see probably will not attend as they moved out-of-state long ago and are not the type to return for a class reunion. 3) We have little desire to play nice to the skilletheads and ding dongs we've known since grade school who will attend en masse. 4) The occasion will be the equivalent of going to a bad wedding reception, with cheesy DJ music and people getting sloppy drunk, except this event costs $170 per couple. 5) We have no desire to engage in multiple awkward conversations that go no further than asking (and answering), "So what are you doing these days?"

This young buck won the prize for Most Abnormal Antlers. It's one of the most atypical sets we've ever seen- both antlers protrube from the left side before twisting upward. A large bony knob sits above the right eye, so big it almost forces his right eye shut. It's probably a good thing this guy was removed from the gene pool, lest his bad seed gets passed along. And it's probably a good thing we'll miss our 20 year reunion, lest we have to witness all the bad seeds we grew up with showing pictures of their offspring.

Dexter buck pole + missing our high school reunion. We have reached a new zenith. This has to be one of the most absurd postings ever written in the history of RR blogging.

Have a nice Thanksgiving and we'll be back soon, broadcasting from our perch above the epicenter of the random and absurd.

Spartans vs. Wolverines

2007-11-03T22:57:00.000-04:00

Sunny and crisp, it was a perfect fall day for Spartan tailgating.

Burgers and brats sizzled on the grill.

Michigan fans watched college football on their HD flat screen.

A State fan displayed his opinion of the Wolverines on his back. Why some MSU students wear ridiculously obscene shirts like this in public is a question we we'd like to ask their parents.

A sell-out crowd of 77,000 filled the bleachers of Spartan Stadium.

The dorks sitting in front of us kept making annoying handsigns throughout the game.

Eight minutes into the fourth quarter, and State was up by 10. But their shot at victory flitted away as quickly as the setting sun. MSU lost another close game and the bummer cloud only got worse when we discovered Hop's van got towed and impounded. When it rains, it pours.

Best of All

2007-10-26T21:10:00.000-04:00

A late October sunset ignites the sky over Portage Lake.

Hidden troves of gold loft high from towering trunks.

The morning sun pierces through the forest canopy.

Best of all he loved the fall
The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods
The leaves on the trout stream
And above the hills the high blue windless sky

-Ernest Hemingway

Silver Shrine

2007-10-10T18:48:00.000-04:00

A million dollar sparkle shot from the top of the new MGM Grand casino while we were downtown this morning. We captured the sight from a parking lot several blocks away on Abbott Street, and like a moth drawn to flame, we had to go check it out. Swanky, it is. MGM Grand outdid all expectations with this very upscale and classy resort where, in all honesty, the only feature that distinguishes it from a Monte Carlo or Bellagio is the bourgeoise Detroit crowd, most of whom probably think the Wolfgang Puck restaurant is named after a hockey player instead of the world renowned chef.

As a matter of habit (thanks to this blog), we hardly go anywhere these days without our camera. And sometimes it pays off- like this morning. The sky quickly turned ominous but an opening in the clouds along the eastern horizon produced a beam of sunshine that illuminated the casino like a medieval cathedral during some dreadful dark ages' plague. Maybe it was a message from above: blessed are those who enter and may the contents of their wallets fill our slot machines. We attempted to maneuver for a closer shot but in less time than it takes a 21 dealer to flip over a blackjack, the sunlight ebbed and the silver turned dull gray before we could gain a better angle. Our luck ran out before we made it to the front door.

Luck was also on short supply on Michigan Avenue, where a DDOT bus sat parked in the middle of traffic, flat tire off to the side. A handful of riders were still in the seats, gosh knows for how long, no doubt wondering when the heck they would be getting to their destination. Hopefully, the occupants made it home and DOT fixed the tire (or had the bus towed) before nightfall or there won't be much bus left come sunrise.

No mail in the box at this house, sandwiched between Michigan Avenue and the I-75/Rosa Parks service drive. What a sensible location for a mailbox too- right on the utility pole. Usually the electric company tears off these types of unauthorized attachments, but given how the power has likely been shut off for years, Detroit Edison probably wouldn't care if someone mounted a sixty foot billboard to the pole.

Go south another block on Michigan Avenue and you'll find this old stone storefront looming over the sidewalk. Come the next freeze-thaw weather pattern, this omnipresent threat to pedestrians is coming down. Despite the shine and sparkle of new casinos, the city remains in a perpetual state of entropy, cracked and rusting away as gravity slowly tugs at the brick and mortar of thousands of abandoned buildings.

Spider World

2007-10-07T12:50:00.000-04:00

Unseasonable warm weather this weekend had us working on the house- scraping old paint, pulling down a TV antenna from the roof that was installed thirty years ago, puttying a huge hole in the siding made by little bastard yellowjackets, etc. While we were making a general mess of things, we came across this furry beast under the back porch eave. Barn spiders must like these warm October days too. Mrs. RR wanted it to get the broom- "It makes me itch just looking at it!" she shrilled. Heck no! Anything this badass-looking can hang from our gutters all it wants. Lookee close- she's nibbling on a juicy bug like it's a piece of bacon. How cool is that?!

After she finished lunch, she turned and posed for shot of her dorsal side (the above shot is her ventral view, if our memory from junior high earth science class holds correct). While she looks intimidating, barn spiders are non-venomous arachnids (not that we'd want to get bit by one) who build webs on porches near outdoor lightbulbs. Their sense of prey must be honed to where they know light attracts bugs, especially those yummy and delicious house flies.

Here's one of her young'ins, strolling down the screen door, hoping a scrap of bug will be left when he returns to the web.
You're welcome to stay as long as you like, but be forewarned: we will be firing up the power washer soon. Sorry lady, but come next weekend, 350 psi of water is headed your direction.

Up next: a canoe trip down the Huron. Promise. Fall colors should be awesome.

Rock Star

2007-09-24T18:48:00.001-04:00

Taylor, Michigan, a shot-and-a-beer suburb of Detroit plagued by an over-abundance of mullets and homemade tattoos, isn't exactly the kind of place where you'd expect to encounter a celebrity. Especially at a bookstore. But that's exactly what happened today when Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx visited Border's Bookstore to sign copies of his new book, old Motley Crue album covers, skateboards, bass guitars, and whatever body parts were placed before his Sharpie marker.

And by pure happenstance, we witnessed the hoopla. We were driving through Taylor when a radio station announced his mid-day appearance: Well, shout at the devil! Lunch today will be at the Southland Mall food court! And take the camera, we will!

Several hundred people were lined in front of the mall by the time we arrived. Sixx's appearance is probably the biggest thing to happen in Taylor since native son Steve Avery went to pitch for the Atlanta Braves twenty years ago. In a city where many residents trace their roots to the backhills of the rural south (the city is known locally as Taylortucky, a reference to when the town was an enclave for southerners moving to Detroit to gain employment in the car factories during WWII), having a bona-fide rawk star like Sixx visit is a big deal, indeed.

Sixx (born Frank Feranna Jr.) was in town to hawk The Heroin Dairies, his auto-biographical memoir drawn from entries he scribbled in his private journals during the height (or would it be the depth?) of his heroin addiction. The book chronicles his life from 1986-1987 and is equal parts do not do as I did because it almost killed me and no shit, there I was, snorting ants with Ozzy from the sidewalk next to the tour bus. We didn't wait in line for a copy, but we did ask this young man from Indiana (who looked like he could have been a member of Motley Crue, circa 1982) what he said to Sixx during their three second encounter. "I didn't know what the f*** to say", he said. "So I put my arm around him instead." Today, in all honesty, was probably the biggest day of his life.

We do have to give Sixx credit for being one of the most humble and unassuming rock icons out there. If you've ever watched him interviewed on TV, you can't help but be impressed by how articulate and introspective he is. We listened to a recent radio interview where he spoke with clarity and honesty about how he used drugs to mask long-standing unhappiness that, over time, compacted into a festering bullet wound on his soul. Instead of blaming fame or the wrong crowd, he blamed himself. It was a breath of fresh air from the usual chorus so often heard from self-absorbed rocker narcissists who have long lost the compass bearings of self-awareness and humility.

The crowd was vintage Taylor, even if many in attendance drove from somewhere far away. Aging Barbie dolls wearing fishnet stockings and barbwire tattoos sauntered about as if they were next in line for a backstage pass on the Girls Girls Girls tour (We overheard several lascivious comments from the silicone queens, most of which are not repeatable. The funniest was when one gal, long past her skanky 80's prime, blurted how Nikki Sixx is the only rock star she'd be willing to catch a STD from. Er boy). Young and old rocker types, the kind that play in metal cover bands doomed to advance no further than weekend gigs at bowling alleys, brought guitars to have autographed and copies of demo tapes that no doubt went straight into the dumpster. And then there were the trolls, the ones who live on the far outer fringes of society in permanent 1980's exile, where the record players spin Motley Crue songs over and over and the wait for the return of the Rule of Metal goes on and on and on.

But those days are long past, and will never return. Except when Nikki Sixx came for a visit, and Livewire was heard blaring from a Camaro as the driver burned rubber on Eureka Road. For a halcyon moment, it was 1983 in Taylor, Michigan, once again.

The Biggest Little City in the World

2007-09-22T09:32:00.000-04:00

Allrighty now. It's time to wrap up our 2007 Big Trip Out West thread. Hope you enjoyed reading about it in the last several postings. Next up- hopefully we'll back in the canoe for an early look at fall colors, which have just started showing their brilliant oranges and golds.

So our last night was in Reno, where our trip began. There are two groups of people: those who think Reno sucks in comparison to Vegas, and those who'll take Reno over Vegas anytime. We belong to the latter. Vegas is too crazy, too loud, too crowded, too hot, etc. Reno can get crazy too but it's easier to get away from it. And the people are friendlier.

They liked us so much at Harrah's they put our picture on their outdoor teletron.

Thanks for all the "free" rooms, by the way. We'll come back someday so we can hopefully win back how much they really cost. You folks had us figured out from the onset.

Here's the Silver Legacy, the largest of the downtown casinos. Nice place too- in our opinion, the Silver Legacy is Reno's schwankiest casino.

Behold the Silver Legacy at night. What a nice shade of green, too. Hey, isn't that the color of money? What a coincidence!

Tahoe

2007-09-20T18:14:00.001-04:00

The Sierra Nevada mountains were ablaze as we drove from Oregon to Tahoe.

Smoke from the fires muted the usually crisp outline of North America's second deepest lake. Notice the concentric lines on the calm lake. That's a sign of cyclic loading- the geophysical indicator of the torque and weight and pressure of billions of gallons of water in a confined space. Look it up if you think we're full of shit.

Later that day, after the western winds increased, we rented a jet ski from a resort in Zephyr Cove and crossed the lake. The wave action was so big we might as well been on Lake Huron. Luckily they issued us a GPS unit or we would've been out there for hours trying to find our way back.

We passed by the SS Dixie in Emerald Bay.

Back at Harrah's Tahoe, we enjoyed "free" beers while playing Let It Ride. And a "free" room for three nights too. In the end, free really wasn't so free after all.

We also got sucked into a condo timeshare gimmick where they give gullible tourists $100 to sit through an hour-long sales pitch about Lake Tahoe timeshares that cost $14,000 to $50,000. At the end of the spiel, this kid lays on the heavy sales pitch: isn't this too good of a deal to pass up? What about this deal can you say no to? He went on for several minutes and nothing we said seemed to quell his fire. We finally told the young Dale Carnegie to listen and listen good: Your Jedi mindtricks won't work on us. Now give us our hundred bucks so we can go squander it at Let It Ride.

Later we went for a gondola ride and hike at the Heveanly ski area. Don't hike here because of revegetation efforts, read the sign. Doesn't look like they're having much success with that. Kinda like our efforts at Let It Ride.

Museums of the Absurd

2007-09-19T11:54:00.000-04:00

We took the time to stop at various roadside museums on our recent Oregon/ Tahoe/Reno trip, and oh gosh- there's some crazy shit on display out there. Like this diorama at the High Desert Museum near Bend, where we witnessed upclose how turkey vultures eviscerate a car-hit deer. Since we passed a half-dozen real occurences of the exact same event during the car ride to Bend the day prior, we can't say we got much out of their crude educational attempt describing how carrion play an important role in removing road pizza from highway medians. We did feel sorry for the parents with toddlers at the museum: good luck explaining to your crying four-year old what the mean birds are doing to poor Bambi.

The insanity continued when we stopped at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City. Here we found Toonces the Mumified Cat mounted to a branch like he was a hunting trophy. The card in the display case read This unfortunate cat was collected in Genoa Nevada many years ago and may be one of the first domestic felines in the state. Well, latee friggin' da. We're overwhelmed with history. It's a dead cat- so why not save us from having to look at the ghastly thing and go dig a hole and bury him and let Toonces rest in peace?

And it continued when we walked the wooden sidewalks of Virginia City, where nearly every saloon or gift shop has a sign advertising some kind of tacky museum. Here at the Museum of the Comstock, we found two bear cubs on display, permanently immortalized as one week olds. Notice the one on the right: barely able to stand with his mouth open and wailing, forever waiting for momma bear to come back with some fresh possum. We've never seen anything so sad and pathetic.

And it continued at the "Red Light Museum", below the Bullette Saloon, admission one dollar. Not much "red light" history here, other than some ribald black and white photographs on the walls. Random junk is a better description: old medical tools, low-end indian artifacts, and this human skull, sitting on velvet in a glass display case. Absent is any historical data about the item, leaving us to wonder why an old skull with a gaping hole is sitting in the musty basement of a bar and not in a ground with the rest of the skeleton.

We finally discovered a museum with a sense of history at the Gambling Hall of Fame in Virginia City, filled with old slot machines dating back to the infancy of gambling in Nevada. Like this Caille Brothers nickel draw poker slotmachine, circa 1902. Now here's some interesting history: Adolph and Arthur Caille were Detroit furniture makers who built coin-operated devices like candy machines and music boxes. Their company, along with the Mills Novelty Company and the Watling Manufacturing Company, pioneered the mass production of slot machines, an invention which has generated untold billions since first introduced in the 1890's. At the peak of their reign, Caille Brothers slot machines could be found in saloons across America and Europe, often with a swiss music box attached to the bottom in an attempt to evade classification as gambling devices.

Oregon

2007-09-16T13:52:00.000-04:00

For the second time in a year, our rental car was upgraded to a convertible because of over-booking. Sweet. Here we sit above Bend after driving across the desert with the top down and XM radio blasting.

It was a beautiful day,
the sun beat down
I had the radio on,
I was drivin

Yeah runnin down a dream
That never would come to me
Workin on a mystery,
goin wherever it leads
Im runnin down a dream

The only thing that kept us from pushing the gas pedal to 110 mph on the straight stretches were the livestock lurking along the roadside.

We recalled Newton's 2nd law from 9th grade science class:

Momentum= mass x velocity. Acceleration = GM/r^2\ propto M/r^2\propto Mass/Surface\Area.

Let's do the math: an object weighing 3,487 pounds accelerating to 110 mph collides with a stationary object weighing 1,200 pounds. That would make for one heck of a science expiriment, eh? We choose not to try it.

Old wrangler cabin near Frenchglen.

Lava fields south of Bend.

A dead pine sits perched above the barren volcanic moonscape.

Northern Nevada

2007-09-14T23:21:00.000-04:00

Abandoned gas station near Winnemucca.

Winnemucca town cemetary.

Red light district, Winnemucca

Desert highway.

Abandoned building, south of Denio, NV.

Welcome to Oregon.

Vapor Trails II

2007-09-13T21:17:00.000-04:00

We're going to take a break from posting about our recent western trip to follow up on our Vapor Trails posting. We used our sharply-honed investigative skills (i.e.- google) to track down the recipient of the postcard Bob at Purdue sent to Kirk at Bowling Green in March of 1984. As luck would have it, our attempt was successful. The following are excerpts from Kirk's emails:

I'm happy to share a bit of history behind the card:

Bob is my longtime friend. He is very adept at cow tipping and snipe hunting. He also has some local historical acclaim as a freelance groundskeeper allowing various machinery and equipment to work unaided by human hands. A vehicle he once owned was very attractive to local deer. They worked around the clock to improve the aerodynamics of that car, ultimately impacting(no pun intended) his ability to be on time when picking up friends to attend local "dances". These dances were often held on baseball fields, usually with a band on a flatbed truck and several trucks dispensing beer in 1/2 gallon jugs. When the 1/2 gallon jugs were almost empty they were rocketed into the air, spewing their contents on everyone below. Speaking of spewing, it was always fun to watch a couple mashing (the very drunk version of a makeout session) see one of them stop to throw up, and then both continue mashing. Any guesses why this county had the highest alcohol consumption per capita in the United States!

Bren(da) was Bob's neighbor, just two or three houses down the street from him. They started dating in high school, separated and attended different universities, ultimately keeping in touch and getting back together. This is certainly a tribute to the saying "abscence makes the heart grow fonder". They married soon after graduation. They live in Ohio and have four great kids, the oldest soon to go away to college. I'm not aware that this child has any romantic attachments to other neighborhood friends, so it appears that future in-laws will have farther to travel to meet each other than Bob and Brenda's parents.

The statement "Been to any Proms lately" is an inside joke referring to the fact that Brenda was once my Prom date.

Bob and Brenda are happily married and enjoying all the trials and tribulations associated with family life, their careers, aging parents, the first child leaving the nest, etc.

I hope your other readers enjoy this information in your Vapor Trails.

Kirk

Then we asked if he recalled the history of the postcard:

I really don't have additional details about the card. I don't usually get rid of things with sentimental value, so I'm not sure how this ended up at a bookstore. My best guess stems from my continuous purchase of old fishing books and subsequent release back into the used book world after I've lost interest or focused on a different type of fishing. I would guess that I was using it as a bookmark accidentally let it go.

I would imagine that it has been out of my hands for several years. Just reading it makes me feel like I last saw it yesterday.

Kirk

The amazing thing about the internet age is how it facilitates the human connection. We've never met Kirk or Bob or Brenda. But we enjoyed finding their 1984 postcard in a pile of 10,000 plus postcards at a musty Ann Arbor bookstore and writing about the vapor trail.

Virginia City

2007-09-09T21:24:00.001-04:00

We're back! Back from our annual sojourn to familiar haunts in the sagebrush desert of northern Nevada and southeast Oregon. We filled our 1gb memory card with lots of pics from Lake Tahoe and Reno and numerous places you've probably never heard of: Denio, Burns, Fields, Rye Patch, and so forth. Perhaps therein is the draw: in these trips we combine the action of Reno and Tahoe with the wanderlust fun of being in the buttcrack of nowhere, where desert mountain ranges heave endless horizons and the few signs of mankind are rusting away in lost towns with storied pasts and long-faded dreams.

So we'll start off with a posting about one of the most famous towns of the American west: Virginia City, just south of Reno (by the way, we arrived in Reno as the annual Burning Man festival was winding down. We didn't go- we're too old to go camping in the Black Rock desert with 40,000 hippy freaks with their glow sticks and bad sanitation and weird rituals. Additional reasons can be found in this humorous piece by Brad Bynum of the Reno News & Review. Driving on Interstate 80, it was easy to tell who attended Burning Man 2007: cars/vans/micro-buses either had a red stick figure painted on a window or were covered in layers of tan dirt from playa dust storms).

Back to Virginia City: gold was first found in the area in 1850 by panners on their way to California. Nine years later, miners tapped the Comstock Lode, the largest known concentration of silver ore ever found on earth. By 1876, 40,000 people lived in Virginia City- including a cub reporter for the local newspaper named Samuel Clemens. The vein produced a total of 1.2 billion dollars of silver and gold, equaling $500 billion dollars in current value. Mining ended before the start of the twentieth century when hot water from underground geothermic wells burst into hundreds of miles of mine tunnels and, overnight, the town was virtually abandoned.

Now, less than 1,000 people live in Virginia City. While a small operation extracts gold flake (also known as "invisible gold") from old placer mounds, most people eke out a living catering to tourists. On our visit, the streets were filled with noisy Harley riders from California and British tourists in town to see the annual camel races. We ducked into the Ponderosa Saloon and watched U of M get trounced by Oregon on national TV before a most agreeable PAC 10 crowd. During halftime, we paid Buckskin Bax (seen here) four bucks for a tour of the 500' deep Belcher Mine, one of the many portals into the byzantine system of tunnels that run under Virginia City.

Buckskin regaled the history of the mine: how investors pumped 1.2 million dollars into money pit that only produced $450 in silver, where the dynamite was kept, how the average miner lived no longer than 40 years, how the best way to leave the mine at the end of a shift was make sure you were still friends with the guy running the cable elevator, etc. Listening to Buckskin was at times difficult, as many of his sentences went like this: Back in 1860, when the yarschkadarsh lijadarsch keppadarsh was in full operation, the heppadarsh skippidarsh skilladaggaway went deeper and deeper. Well allrighty then!

We listened intently and thought maybe he's been breathing too much bad mine air. Carbon monoxide must cause a man to slur and ramble. Then we caught a whiff of 80 proof burpage in the close quarters. Er boy. There might not be any gold in that thar mine, but we suspect there's some Goldschlager down there.

So stay tuned. We'll be serving up plenty more from our western trip. Next up: the southeast corner of Oregon, where the sheep and cattle outnumber people by 200 to 1.

Postcards From the Edge

2007-08-26T08:58:00.000-04:00

Since we received a bit of positive feedback to our Vapor Trails post (a truly rare occurence here), and since apocalyptic weather has kept our canoe flipped over waiting for the tornados to pass, we're going to paste more of the postcards we found this week at a local used bookstore. Like this one from the Drake Hotel in Chicago, circa fifty years ago, where guests at the Coq D'Or cocktail lounge are enjoying their mid-day drinks. At the bar sits a well-dressed business man, Pall Mall in one hand and Johnny Walker in the other, precisely the clientele the Drake was targeting. This card harkens us to a place and time when the captains of industry conducted their day to day business in smoky rooms, where discussions with gin-soaked associates ended with either a warm handshake or swinging brass knuckles.

The writing on the back of this card was in Russian so we're not exactly sure what it says (if any of you can translate Без перевода ðàçüåäàòü õîäèòü ïî ïÿòàì, let us know). Our best guess would be peasant family feeding their chickens in the Ukranian countryside or something to that effect. The bigger mystery here is when was this card made: with their yellow skin and neon clothing, we're left to wonder if this photograph was taken before or after the Chernobyl melt down?

There's something a little odd about this beach scene. Why is the schnauzer twice the size of the people? Why is he staring at the lake? Maxine Farrow of Bancroft, Iowa, chose to not discuss the obvious incongruituies in her note to Mrs. J. White of Portland, OR, dated May 25, 1945: It rained nearly all day. I sure wish it would warm up. Our company left Saturday. Gee it's lonesome now. We had a wonderful time. Write soon.

Look at this card with the border collie sitting in front of the barrel house in Tonopah, NV. We've been to Tonopah and can attest to the lack of trees in the high desert. So it makes perfect sense that a early pioneer, after his horses died of dehydration crossing the barren hinterlands of northern Nevada, would use whatever belongings he had to make a home. Nice casa too- except for the little problem with bulging lower barrel (by the dog). Uh oh- that is not in the book of good things. We wonder if the hard-scrabble homeowner fixed the structural defect or if he awoke one morning after a heavy snow wondering why he was covered in dirt and rocks.

Written on the back was this message dated January 8, 1909, to Mrs. Bertha Blecha in Clark Co, Wisconsin: My dear- rec'd. pkg. All OK. Just lovely. Bunch of girls coming and we are going to spread paint in my room. Wish you were here. Hastily, Lola. Lola clearly had lesser things to worry about in her home than the owner of the barrel house.

This postcard of oil fields near San Luis Obispo, CA, also had us wondering. We passed through the area several years ago and found a quaint city nestled in the hills with magnificent views of the Pacific Ocean. So why would anyone choose a postcard of sludge tanks over a nice ocean sunset? Clarence didn't consider this in his note to Miss Lottie Miller of East Toledo, Ohio on January 20, 1921: Dear Cousin. We all well and happy to find you all the same and i am to home now. You git better i say goodbye to all.

Then we saw this postcard of the Kentucky Dam on the Mississippi River, and we had an epiphany: back in the day, oil fields and dams were objects of great civil pride and that is why so many of the postcards from decades past show interstate tunnels and skyscrapers and power plants. These were the projects that built our society and made us different from the rest of the world. Pretty sunsets and mountain peaks- phooey! How about our freeways and hydroelectric dams!

On the backside, the card is dated May 24, 1942 and addressed to Mrs. Rose Clegg: Dear Grandma, It is 2:00pm and we are ready to catch some big ones. Sure hope we do. We'll we see you in a week or so. Love Mont and Everett.

Now here's a card we can relate to: a solo canoeist style paddling a cedar strip canoe near Algansee, MI (we'd never heard of the place and wondered if it still existed. A Wiki check said yes, Alagansee is a real place near the border of Indiana). The card is postmarked June 21, 1915 and the handwritten note to Miss Mary Franks of Montgomery, MI (another place unknown to us. Turns out it's right next to Algansee), is absolutely illegible. But we still like the card.

Vapor Trails

2007-08-23T16:28:00.000-04:00

Back in the day when a Blackberry was something picked on the side of a country road and a Bluetooth was how your mouth looked after nibbling on too many blackberries, the most popular way to send a brief note to someone was by postcard. We witnessed the fading days of their golden era in the 1970's, when summertime mail included assorted postcards from friends and family on vacation who felt obliged to send a short message from some faraway tourist destination. The cards documented the weather (always warm) and the sunsets (always beautiful). Before chain hotels and fast food restaurants overtook the interstates, postcards could be found at almost every Mom and Pop motel and greasy spoon diner. Like the Riverview Motel on River Road in Harrisburg, PA, where the rooms are modernly furnished, steam heated, and have showers. To make a reservation just dial CEdar 39822!

At Kaleidoscope Used Books in Ann Arbor, you'll find stacks and stacks of old postcards (according to the owner, they have over 10,000. We concur with that estimate). Some are very rare (like a pre-WWII Japanese beheading postcard. Who would want to get that in the mail?), but most display freeways and museums and natural attractions and assorted apple pie Americana. Flipping through the postcard collection is a portal to the past and reading messages written by people decades ago allows for a brief glimpse into their life experience. The handwritten notes, scribbled in pencil and faded from the years, are akin to vapor trails; a term used in quantum physics to describe the remnant signs of sub-atomic particles after their energy dissipates into the vacuum of time and space.

So we bought a few of the cards and scanned them to share with you. The writers, no doubt, never fathomed that decades later their messages would be posted on some lamebrain blog. And somewhere, from the far reaches of the universe, they are reading this and chuckling at the absurdity of it all.

Greetings from LA. Having a delightful visit! wrote Martha Gainsburg to Mr. and Mrs. Gehrman on April 18, 1960, on a card with this pool scene at the Cavalier Hotel, where the ladies (looking like models from a Sears catalog) adorn modest swimwear and high heels- even when on the diving board. The men are standing watch over the pool, as if parahna fish were seen lurking earlier in the shallow end. Notice how no one dares enter the dangerous water.

Other cards, like this one dated August 24, 1941(addressed to "Miss Wendt, Toledo, OH"), mark a time when America was small enough that mail service only needed a name and city. This country is beautiful. Having a busy time, going places and see and seeing things. Mrs. Degener. We've been through Kansas a few times and beg to differ with her assessment of the geographical center of the U.S.A.

From the far northern reaches of Quebec, "Master Craig Hudson" received this card from "Johnson" on August 19, 1960. Hi. There is much of this country to see and they sell excellent ice cream. Evidently the deer in Quebec have little fear of mankind- take a nap under a tree and you might awaken to the sensation of a fawn licking vanilla flecks from your chin.

Not all cards are cheery and bright. "Mr. and Mrs. P.M. Haskell" of Lima, OH, received this note on July 12, 1953: We came to see Lester we only could see him a few minutes. He is still under restriction so we saw him a few minutes. Floyd went to find out where he was and he saw me in the car and came running. You come the week of Aug 2. See he will be under restriction. A google search of Station Hospital revealed it served American POWs. We hope Lester overcame his afflictions in quick order and went on to live his life without restriction.

Mrs. Alice Teare was sent this card displaying Hairpin Curve near Lewiston, Idaho (postmarked September 28, 1964): We are about ready to climb 4,000 feet from the river valley of Lewiston, where we spent last night. Yes- today we crawled up one even worse- car over-heated part way up and we had to let it cool down and re-fill the radiator. No problem tho as we lots of H2O in our tanks. We are fine and hope you are too. Merton and Mary. We can attest that Hairpin Curve, Idaho, is still causing cars to overheat, forty-three years later.

Mrs. C.R. Van Bruggen recieved this nice card from Hartwick Pines State Park near Houghton Lake, MI, on October 14, 1957. Jim and Dee took us up to the old logging country and to this lodge today. Lovely sunny day. Hope all okay with you. Louise. Notice the white writing on the wooden bench- that is not painted lettering. Back in the hay day of black and white postcards, messages were scratched into the enamel of the negatives. And if anyone recognizes the serious-looking man in the portrait above the fireplace, let us know. We suspect he is Major Edward E. Hartwick, who died overseas in WWI and his widow later donated the land from their logging empire to the State of Michigan.

This gem from the Roanoke Courts Motel in Roanoke, Alabama, comes with a message but no name or address. This was not uncommon- some people bought nickel postcards just to document a pleasant motel stay or ocean overlook. April 25, 1957. Room cost 4.00 very nice for that and so clean. Came from Moticello Fla today- 260 miles. This is the same room I had last fall Oct 27 when I went South. Such a clean place and the lady who manages it is sure nice; her name is Mrs. Hornsby. Got here about 4:30 had supper in town. Mrs. Hornsby no doubt appreciates your kind words, whoever you are. And Room 6 will always be your special room.

Mr. Wm R Mcgee in Jackson, MI, received this postcard of the Feather River Canyon on August 26, 1962. Bill, this is beautiful country came through here on the train. It was really something to see the snow covered mts. We arrived at Gerber last nite which is about 40 miles from Jo & Howard they were there to meet us and to our surprise R&G were with them. Arrived sooner than expected. Hope all are fine- Mom and Dad. It does look awfully nice there. We'll have to visit someday- maybe launch a boat on the Feather River.

Kirk at Bowling Green State University received this postcard of McCutcheon Residence Hall at Purdue dated March of 1984: Hello Kirk, Thanks for the card. Well, all is fine on this end. My physics sucks, English is boring. Calculus is not easy. German so so. This weather is great for morale, rotten for scholastics. 2.5 weeks till spring break. Can't wait. I saw Bren last weekend. 1st time in 4 weeks. Too long!!! You're right, we are close as ever. Maybe too close for 19. P.S. Been to any proms lately?!!! Bob

Bob and Bren may have been a college fling that ended two months later. Or maybe they're happily married now with three kids and a dog and a nice house in Indiana. We'll never know. But the vapor trail lasts forever.

Dog the Bounty Hunter

2007-08-10T22:14:00.000-04:00

When we heard on the radio this week that Duane Chapman, (aka Dog the Bounty Hunter) was coming to a local Borders for a book signing, we knew this was an event we could not miss. While Ann Arbor gets a fair share of writers on the book hawking circuit, for the most part they are little-known and obscure (for example, the next writer in town is Fred Thompson, author of Barbeque Nation- 350 Hot off the Grill Recipes from America's Backyard. Our point exactly). So what the hell, we thought- we'll buy Dog's book, wait in line for an autograph, engage the Dog in brief conversation, and off we'll go with a story to tell about meeting a C-list celebrity best known from a reality show on the A&E Network. What a Friday night that'll be!

It didn't quite work out that way. We'll discuss why in a minute, but first let's delve into Dog's background (mainly for our loyal cadre of readers in the former Russian republics where American television is prohibited. Огpомное спасибо- На здоpовье!). In a nutshell, Dog's life redefines complicated: married five times, father of twelve children (two deceased). Former Texas outlaw gang member convicted of murder in 1977, who, following his release from prison, turned over a new leaf and became a bail bondsman in Hawaii. He made international news in 2003 when he captured Andrew Luster in Mexico after the creepy heir to the Max Factor cosmetics company skipped the country during his rape trial (Luster is currently serving over 100 years in prison). Unfortunately for the Dog, bounty hunting is illegal in Mexico so he was arrested and charged. After a lengthy legal battle, all charges against Dog and his posse were ultimately dropped (within the last several days, ironically). The notoriety of arresting Luster led to a show with the A&E network and after four seasons, the escapades of Dog and his bounty-hunting family have become one of the most popular reality shows on TV.

For good reason too- we have to admit the show can be amusing. Often clad in biker leather and flea market jewelry with little feathers braided in his hair, Dog looks more like a Harley rider from El Centro than a bounty hunter. His uber tan and power mullet and faded prison tattoos only add to the caricature. He says aloha to whoever he meets and calls everyone brah and utters the same cliches (he calls them "Dogisms") over and over to the point of ad nauseam. Each episode starts with Beth (Dog's alpha-female wife) throwing a kinipshitfit about losing the bond money they posted so an accused criminal could get released pending trial. Dog and his posse (mostly family members) then go looking for the missing jailbird and the goat chase officially begins. Sheepish relatives and associated derelicts get pinched for the last known whereabouts, doors get kicked in, clouds of mace shoot from canisters the size of small fire extinguishers, and the bounty hunters fight and wrestle with some degenerate who clearly does not want to return to the grey bar hotel. Every episode ends with Dog having a "Come to Jesus" conversation with his absconder as they drive to jail and by the time they arrive, the bad guy is bawling and promising to give up his n'er-do-well ways and thanking Dog for returning him to a 6x10 cell.

It's that sense of empathy that endears Dog to so many people. We expected to encounter a small crowd, and oh boy, were we ever mistaken. We arrived an hour before his scheduled appearance and the store was absolutely packed. We bought his book (the only way to get a wristband to meet and get an autograph), only to find 450 people were already ahead of us. Dog arrived and gave the local media an interview before they shuttled him off to a question and answer session with 75 early attendees. Hundreds of more fans funneled through the door and we contemplated whether it was worth waiting three hours to have a five second encounter with a reality-TV celebrity who is equal parts Boba Fett and P.T. Barnum. Outside, a perfect summer evening beckoned and minutes later, we were enjoying a carafe of merlot and a thick steak on the patio of a new restaurant. When we got home and read the opening lines of Dog's book, we knew we made the right choice.

In the old days, there weren't enough lawmen for all the criminals on the loose, so sheriff's posted hefty rewards to capture crooks on the run. Legends of the Wild West, like Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, and Billy the Kid, all made their living hunting bounties. Now I might not be as famous as some of those guys, but I am the greatest bounty hunter who ever lived.

The Battle for the Rubber Chicken

2007-06-24T10:32:00.000-04:00

There were eight contestants in the Best BBQ Chicken Wings in the Northern Hemisphere Competition (also called the Ving Off and the Battle for the Rubber Chicken), held yesterday near Pinckney, MI. The contest brought people from as far away as Idaho to sample a broad mix of homemade recipes. Like these Burning Ring of Fire wings prepared by Wendy and Jen. True to their name, they were scorching hot last night and this morning.

Cheeseburger (yes, that's his name) concocts a batter made from Cheeze It crackers and mustard before immersing his wings into a deep fryer.

Chris won the coveted Rubber Chicken trophy with his wok-cooked recipe called Velvet Heat.

Since we sat on the judging panel, we were officially banned from the competition. However, nothing precluded us from delighting our friends' palates with five pounds of swinging sirloin from Fairbury Steaks in Nebraska.

Rocky mountian oysters deep frying in oil, seasoned with Old Bay and a dash of cajun spices.
Sam dips a golden-brown huevo de toro in seafood cocktail mixed with horseradish and hot sauce. Yummy yummy for the tummy.

Pine River

2007-06-17T16:46:00.000-04:00

One of the finest canoeing rivers in not just Michigan but the entire Midwest, the Pine twists and turns some sixty miles across the northwestern corner of the Lower Peninsula before entering the slack waters of Tippy Dam Pond. Also reverred for its blue ribbon trout fishery, the Pine is almost entirely encased by the Manistee National Forest and other than the occasional summer cabin or oppulent log home, the scenery is mature hardwood forest or high sandy ridges covered with towering pines. A day on any river is a good day but a day paddling the Pine can make for a most exceptional trip.

Our trip was two years in the making. In 2005, plans were made with old MSU buddy Drew to go four-wheeling in his Jeep in northern Michigan. The weekend before he drove over from Wisconsin, Drew attempted to replace the tire rods. While removing one of the rods with a cutting saw, the metal disc jammed and bound inward into his right forearm. In the span of a half-second, the razor-sharp blade buried itself into the soft tissue above his wrist. Not a good thing. A couple of pints of blood spewed across his garage floor and luckily for him, a neighbor heard the commotion and called for an ambulance. Too make a long story short, for the next several months, Drew underwent several operations and unimagineable nerve pain. That he recovered to where he could hold a canoe paddle two years later is amazing.

Speed ahead to 2007, and the four-wheeling trip in the woods finally happened (as you'll read about in our next posting). But not without additional drama. Thirty miles from the Wisconsin dock to the Ludington Ferry, Drew's Jeep blew an axle seal. Further inspection by a mechanic determined the entire axle was fubar. We considered shit-canning the weekend and then said, hell with it, life is too short. So Day One was spent scrambling old logging trails in our Yota truck and Day Two was spent running the Pine, with cold Labatts delivered on a paddle.

The Pine may not be the Salmon or Owyhee, but nonetheless, the River Banshee demands respect. A gradient of ten feet per mile down a narrow glaciar-carved river corridor creates strong current lines pushing towards logjams on the outside edges of many curves. Add countless stumps and mid-stream rocks and you have a river not for the unintiated. Like these frat boys who flipped 100 yards below the launch. Other than losing their beer cooler and Teva sandals to the Banshee, they were okay. Can't say what happened to them downstream as the river gained momentum and the logjams grew larger- we sped by quickly and wished them luck.

They weren't the only skilletheads on the river. We encountered mullet-haired locals kicking their way down on inner tubes, adolescents stuck in tree branches yelling obscene comments at each other, large flotillas of college dormmates, and a group of Vietnam Veterans from Detroit. One minute we'd witness a brood of wood ducks swimming upstream in a lazy river eddy. Then around the corner, we'd pass 1,200 pounds of humanity loaded in a raft made for no more than 600 pounds. The amazement of a river trip never ceases.

We can't complain about our river mates too much, though. As we passed a college group from Grand Rapids, the girls yelled and asked if we wanted some turkey sandwichs. They made too many- and besides, most people in their party were too busy guzzling Jagermeister to enjoy a proper lunch. Thank you very much. We had a bag of trailmix and probably would have survived the canoe trip without having to eat bark and leaves and whatnot, but the sandwiches hit the spot. The Banshee is both merciless and merciful.

May Day

2007-05-19T11:57:00.000-04:00

Canada geese nibble on delicious dandelion shoots as cars speed past on Packard Road, Ann Arbor.

May 2007 is sure flying by quickly. What a great time of year- the flowers are blooming, the weather is temperate, and the days are long. No bugs yet either. In two weeks, we won't be making that claim.

The boat is in the water and running smooth, thanks to new spark plugs.

Over on Ted's farm, the log birdhouse resembles the face of a man who needs a glass of prune juice.

The grill burns off a little grease before another pile of chickens get cooked over applewood coals.

The National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers

2007-04-19T22:46:00.000-04:00

Sitting on a hilltop outside Milwaukee and a baseball toss from Miller Park is the General George H. Wood Veterans Home. The building, commissioned in 1865 by President Abraham Lincoln as one of the original federal hospitals for veterans, was initially called the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. And for decades, the facility housed generations of injured war heroes from across the nation. Now abandoned, the only sign of life in the building are pigeons roosting in the broken windows on the tower.

Built in a Victorian Gothic style made evident by tall pointed arches in windows and doors and the use of contrasting colors, the hospital once housed over 1,000 men. Long before the evolution of medicinals and rehabilitation allowed injured soldiers to return to their homes and farms, the Wood Hospital was built for those who made great sacrifices for their country, not out of charity, but instead as a reward.

Life at the Wood Hospital paralled life in the military. Men were grouped in companies based on their ailments and issued uniforms, fostering a continuing sense of fraternity and purpose. Rank and discipline ruled their daily existence, just like on the battlefields of Gettysburg and Normandy. Those who were able held jobs taking care of those who weren't. Brass military bands with legless musicians played songs to cheer up the invalid and blind actors performed in plays for men with tuberculosis in wheelchairs. While a modern VA medical center was later built nearby and currently houses many of our soldiers coming back from Iraq, the old Wood Hospital embodies the spirit of a time when those wounded in war lived in dignity amongst themselves. And, according to a source who has been in the building, the sound of old men talking and playing cards or the muted bleet of a calvary bugle can still be heard from the long hallways and empty rooms covered in cracked plaster and water stains.

Along the western edge of the hospital is the Wood National Cemetary, the permanent resting place for 37,661 soldiers and sailors. The first internment was Pvt. John Afton, a Michigan infantryman who died in the Civil War in 1861. Veterans from every war since lie among the orderly rows. Most are from northern states, but two Confederate soldiers from the Civil War represent Southern Pride. If the South someday does rise again, they will be outnumbered significantly.

In the sea of white gravestones, one is of Marine Cpl. David Gander, killed in Beirut, Lebanon on October 23, 1983. 240 other American Servicemen died that horrific day. May they also rest in peace under the shade of lofty oak branches among their fathers and grandfathers and brothers and let us never forget the wives and mothers and daughters and sons whose forever loss gives us our freedom.

Spring Day

2007-04-15T23:57:00.000-04:00

The weather has offered up a welcome respite from winter and we're back to normal seasonable temperatures. Finally. Before going to the Lucinda Williams show at the Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor, we went for a hike along the Huron River. It's not quite canoeing weather, but those days are not far off.

An elm lists over the river, soon to fall.

Mother Goose perches on one leg on a downed tree.

Clear waters flow over rocks and pebbles from the basement of time.

Barren trees sway in the brisk wind below the sapphire sky.

Keys Dreams

2007-04-11T17:23:00.000-04:00

Seeing how it's mid-April and instead of tulips and robins we're dealing with yet another late-season wintry mix of foul weather, we've decided to drop yet another Florida Keys post. Maybe it will take our mind off what has become a most dreary spring thus far in Michigan.

An egret perches on a scrub brush at Robbie's Marina, Islamorada.

Baby octopi in sesame and sweet jalepeno sauce, seconds before we scarf it down.

Saint Paul's Episcopal Church, Duvall Street, Key West.

Tarpon swim in the shallows at Robbie's Marina, Islamorada.

No sunset is ever the same.

If you're interested in a Keys vacation and staying at a great place for a great price, click here. Your travel guides at River Rant give it our coveted five-star rating.

Sail Away

2007-04-02T20:49:00.000-04:00

We took our Key West yacht out for a sunset cruise last week. Moored near Mallory Square, it sits at the dock most of the year except when we visit.

Just kidding. Other than our canoe and Sunfish sailboat, the closest thing we have to a yacht is a ten year-old runabout Sunbird with a noisy outboard that stalls every ten minutes.

It's amazing how the mega-wealthy live: the owner of this yacht also probably owns an ocean-front home in Malibu, and upper eastside high-rise in Manhattan, a horse ranch in Taos, and a winter home in St. Barts. A man walked out onto the deck and we half-expected it to be someone we'd recognize, like Sylvester Stallone or Ted Turner. Instead, he was a random Harry who likely made his zillions by inventing a new heart shunt or an internet dating site. He didn't invite us aboard so we went sailing aboard the Liberty Clipper instead.

Built in 1993, the Liberty Clipper is a schooner typical to New England during the 1800's. She spends her winters in Key West and summers in Boston and leaves port every night for a sunset cruise laden with cubed-cheese and boxed-wine. Good cubed-cheese and boxed-wine, mind you.

Her crew was comprised of a captain, first mate, and a half-dozen college kids, mostly from the Boston area. For a moment, we were envious of their life; they were beholden to little more than sea winds and ocean currents. But then we recalled the movie Dead Calm and envisioned how living on a boat with a group of strangers would test our patience and temperance. That must be why we never dropped out of college for a year to sail on a schooner.

The sunset was spectacular, yes indeed. The captain said if we watched carefully, we'd witness the "green flash", a supposed natural phenomenon where at very last moment, the brilliant orb suddenly flares a green tone. We watched with eyes wide open and saw nothing but fiery orange. Everyone else said they saw it. It reminded us of a Benny Hinn healing event, where the power of suggestion combined with group dynamics propels normally lucid people to embrace every miracle no matter how impossible.

Maybe we're just blind to green flashes and miracles. We'll still take the ones we can see.

Ship of Silver and Gold

2007-03-28T18:23:00.000-04:00

Twenty-two years ago, the newspaper reported that a salvage diver named Mel Fisher had discovered the lost treasure of a Spanish galleon sunk in a 17th century hurricane off the Florida Keys. We've been interested in the story ever since.

Built in 1620 during the height of Spain's quest to rule the seas, the Nuestra Senora de Atocha sailed under the command of the greatest naval fleet of the time. The Atocha was primarily a transport vessel, bringing gold, silver, copper, tobacco, and emeralds from the New World back to King Phillip IV, the sixteen year-old ruler known more for frivolous amusements than governance (how a teenage kid can be crowned as king has always been a mystery to us; the dimbulbs who pack our groceries at Country Market barely get that job done right. No wonder Spain is no longer a world power). In September of 1622, the Atocha sailed between Havana and Key West with a known load of 250,000 silver coins, 1,200 silver ingots, and 160 gold bars. Intentionally absent from her manifest were boxes of gold destined for the Catholic church and the smuggled treasure of her crew (one thing the 17th century friars and smugglers had in common: keep their gold a secret).

On September 6, 1622, a hurricane pushed the Atocha into Marquesas reef, thirty-five miles west of Key West. Massive waves hurled the ship beyond the reef and she completely disintegrated and sank in fifty-foot water. 260 passengers and sailors died that merciless day, and a bounty of silver and gold disappeared under the sandy ocean floor. Until Mel Fisher came looking.

Driven by big dreams, Fisher was a hard-scrabble treasure hunter with a flair for big schemes. Depending on if he owed you money or not, Fisher was either a heathen or hero. He ultimately spent twenty years searching for the Atocha, and his story is one of lucky breaks and tragic events, peaks of joy and deep valleys of sorrow. At times, he was nearly bankrupted by the search. And in the end, despite the payoff, the Atocha cost him dearly.

Fisher's obsession with the Atocha started in 1964, when he found 1,000 gold doubloons scattered across a sandy reef. The discovery led him to skipper a small flotilla of rusty trawlers and a rag-tag crew of salvage divers who were sometimes paid, sometimes not. Their search and recovery method involved criss-crossing an area with a magnometer looking for debris on the ocean floor (which could be the wreck of some unknown nineteenth century banana hauler or a WWII German submarine), and then anchoring the boat and placing a large metal deflector against the boats three propellers. The propellers, each nearly four feet in size, would spin and the deflector would angle the force towards the ocean floor, churning up centuries of sand and sediment.

And for twenty years, Fisher's boats went out every day and aside from a couple of rare items, the wreck divers came back with little more than occasional handfuls of silver coin or a rusty musket. They weren't even sure they were working the Atocha until July of 1975, when Fisher's oldest son Dirk found several cannons with engraved markings traceable back to the original 1622 manifest. Until that joyous day, they were purely speculating the discovery wasn't one of the countless random shipwrecks that dotted the dimestore treasure maps.

Tragedy on two of Fisher's boats almost derailed the salvage effort. In August of 1973, the eleven year-old son of a National Geographic photographer was sucked into the propellers of the Southwind and killed instantly. In 1975, Fisher's oldest son Dirk and daughter-in-law and a crew member drowned after the Northwind listed and capsized due to a gasket rupturing in the ship's toilet. Their deaths occurred the day after Dirk found Atocha's marked cannons.

Fisher's search for the Atocha treasure had become a long running joke among the dock rats and bar flies in Key West. Then, to everyone's amazement but his own, Fisher's persistence paid off. In July of 1975, a pile of silver bars as long as a semi-truck was discovered, with lobsters nestled in every crevice and a WWII dummy bomb sitting in the middle. The mother lode had been located. Two days later, Jimmy Buffet strummed his songs from atop the heap of silver ingots at the dock. A month later, some $400,000,000 worth of silver and gold had been pulled from the depths.

The Atocha story continues, but as you might expect, it becomes mired in court battles and legal squabbles and things we have little interest in writing about. So we'll stop here. Mel Fisher died in 1998 and never enjoyed the fruit of his toil. But his legacy lives on at his museum in Key West, and in ocean waters thirty-five miles to the west, where to this day, divers continue to find treasures buried under the sand. For sale last week on the bargain rack at the Mel Fisher treasure store were two gold bars found by a diver in 2006, each priced at $110,000. If we had the money, we would have bought them.

Cat House

2007-03-26T20:59:00.000-04:00

One of the most famous tourist attractions in Key West is the Hemingway Home, located one block west of Duval Street and the pubs Hemingway regularly bellied up to between 1931 to 1941. The residence was more or less a base camp for Ernest, as he spent considerable time in Spain covering the civil war (or was on one of his many testosterone and whiskey fueled African hunting safaris). Today, in addition to being a place he sporadically laid his head on a pillow, the house has two legacies: where he wrote some of his finest works (including The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and Snows of Kilimanjaro), and where forty-eight descendants of Snowball, his six-toed pet cat, now reside.

Sign of feline habitation is prevalent throughout the property. Cats saunter in and out of every room in the residence and lounge lazily in the shade on the flat stone walkways in the garden. They have their own ornate drinking fountain (a former porcelain urinal from Sloppy Joe's Saloon that Ernest emptied his bladder into countless of times. There's some irony in this). A corner of the curtilage has been dedicated as a cat cemetery, with little gravestones permanently memorializing past kitties like Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra. They even have their own website, which is all fine and good, but considering all the feral cats we saw wandering the streets and alleys of Key West, we had to wonder: how many of Snowball's "descendants" are local vagrants who jumped the brick wall after whiffing a cat in heat or a dish filled with Friskies cat chow? It was a question our tour guide wouldn't answer.

While the home was intentionally decorated to appear as though Ernest and second wife Pauline had moved out last week, there were numerous indicators to the contrary. Like the swimming pool filled with chlorinated fresh water. Back in the thirties, when the only source for fresh water on Key West was the rainwater collected in cisterns during the wet season, the pool was filled with salt water that quickly turned fetid in the sub-tropical climate. Now it looks nothing like the bacteria cesspool that needed constant draining and cleaning. And inside the home, the walls are adorned with schlock pastels of sea scapes painted by "local artisans" and framed cancelled checks to Abercrombie and Fitch (which was a safari outfitter decades before the company name was used to sell overpriced jeans to tweenies at suburban malls). We had to ask- is this how Hemingway really decorated his home? Again, the tour guide wouldn't (or couldn't) answer.

A notable answer to our unanswered questions, perhaps, is that when Hemingway sold the property he specifically asked the home not be used as a tourist attraction. Obviously, his wish went unheeded. Maybe that's a good thing. Now commoners like us can gander at the room where he typed out some of the greatest American prose ever written while standing (he once compared writing to bullfighting and said neither could be rightly accomplished sitting in a chair). But somewhere in the absurd preservation effort, the essence of Hemingway has been lost. Historical reverence has been replaced by Snowball refrigerator magnets and other trite knick-knacks in the gift shop.

And all the cats. Criminy. Fresh cat turds dot the walkways like landmines on the Ho Chi Minh trail. We have to believe, that if Hemingway awoke from his grave tomorrow and made a return visit to his former Key West home, the first thing he'd do after walking through the front gate is step in a pile of cat shit. The second thing the ghost of Hemingway would do is get rid of all the hissing six-toed pests who think they own the place and get a dog.

Keys Disease

2007-03-25T17:09:00.000-04:00

A palm tree dances in the ocean breeze, Islamorado, Florida. It's a sure sign we're about to be stricken with a bout of Keys Disease, brought on by the intoxicating mix of beaches and boats, bikinis and bait strikes.

I know I don't get there often enough
But God knows I surely try
It's a magic kind of medicine
That no doctor could prescribe

I used to rule my world from a pay phone
And ships out on the seaBut now times are rough
And I got too much stuff
Can't explain the likes of me

But there's this one particular harbour
So far but yet so near
Where I see the days as they fade away
And finally disappear

Storm clouds build under the mid-day sun, oceanside of Marathon Key.

As the son of a son of a sailor,
I went out on the sea for adventure,
Expanding their view of the captain and crew
Like a man just released from indenture.

Old motors lie in permanent salt air repose, near Marathon.

Mother, mother ocean,
I have heard you call,
Wanted to sail upon your waters since I was three feet tall.
You've seen it all, you've seen it all.

Watch the men who rode you,
Switch from sails to steam.
And in your belly you hold the treasure that few have ever seen,
most of them dreams, most of them dreams.

Bar Olympics include toss the coin in the grouper's mouth at Capt. Tony's Saloon, Key West.

I went down to Captain Tony's to get out of the heat
When I heard a voice call out to me,
"Son, come have a seat"

I had to search my memory as I looked into those eyes
Our lives change like the weather but a legend never dies

Bob and Kathy enjoy a pina colada and mojito at the Cheeca Lodge tiki bar.

Boat drinks. Waitress, I need two more boat drinks. Then I'm headin south 'fore my dream shrinks.

I gotta where it's warm. I gotta go where there ain't any snow,where there ain't any blow,'cause my fin sinks so low. I gotta go where it's warm.

Bob skewers baby octopus in sweet jalepeno sauce for a morning snack.

Nibblin' on sponge cake,watchin' the sun bake; All of those tourists covered with oil. Strummin' my six string on my front porch swing. Smell those shrimp--They're beginnin' to boil.

Pelicans menace fishermen for a handout at the Futura Yacht Club marina.

Don't want to land in Comanche Sky Park,
or in Nashville, Tennessee.
I don't want to land in no San Juan airport or the Yukon Territory.

Don't want to land no San Diego.
Don't want to land in no Buzzards Bay.
I don't want to land on no Ayahtolla.
I got nothin' more to say.

The sun slowly fades as another beautiful day ends. Thanks, Jeff- we owe ya one.

Stay tuned: we'll visit Hemingway's Key West home, fish the shallows for barricuda, sail aboard the Liberty, and search for millions in silver and gold from a 1622 shipwreck (it was easy to find).

The Golden Pepper

2007-02-24T23:18:00.000-05:00

Every year in late February, about the time when winter's icy grip begins to loosen ever so slightly, a chili contest is held in a barn near the town of Chelsea. We've participated for the last three years in this mid-winter competition, and no matter how unique our recipe, we've always come in second place. The first year we made spicy oyster chili- and lost. The next year we cooked cajun crawfish chili- and lost. This year's recipe was atomic jalepeno chili. Read on to see if the 2007 contest brought us victory or if we, once again, walked away the Susan Lucci of the Waterloo Road chili contest.

For weeks prior to this evening, we mulled over various recipe options. It had to be spicy, but not too spicy. It had to be different from the dozen other entrees, but not too different lest we offend the purists. Coming up with the perfect chili recipe is as much art as it is science. We're not about to give up the exact ingrediants of this years concoction, but we'll offer this little secret: be sure to remove the seeds from the jalepeno peppers. You want heat, not grenade mouth.

After the meat has been cooked and the veggies cut, the second trick involves the crock pot process. Simmer too long and it turns into soggy mush. If you don't cook long enough, the flavors don't blend properly. Optimum time for the crock pot stage is three to four hours. Only at RR will you get these precious nuggets of culinary advice.

By the time we arrived at the barn, our competitors had their entrees waiting and warming. We had a close call on the way- we took a quick left turn at high speed and our crock pot flipped on its side. Luckily we duct-taped the lid to the pot, but we still had spillage. Dammit- not a good omen.

When it was time for eating, we were worried. The competition this year was especially tough- wood duck chili, seafood and shrimp chili, and multiple delicious variations of venison chili (wild game submissions are varsity-squad challenges. The cook has the added avantage of boasting about the adventure of hunting and killing the main ingrediant). After everyone sampled the entrees and after the Tums bottle was passed around, the voting occurred. We waited anxiously for the outcome. Like a college basketball team that's progressed year after year to the Sweet Sixteen but no further, we refused to succumb to the trap of over-confidence.

And our diligence and humility paid off. We were awarded the 2007 Golden Pepper. It now sits in a place of honor on our fireplace mantel- proof the universe is indeed a benevolent place for those that dare to dream big and make the necessary sacrifices and never give up when all seems lost.

Irons

2007-02-18T21:36:00.000-05:00

Up north in the piney woods of Michigan, between Grand Rapids and Traverse City, you'll find the town of Irons. The area is home to three things:

1) Blue ribbon trout, steelhead, and salmon fishing on the nearby Manistee and Pere Marquette rivers.

2) Miles and miles of snowmobiling trails on the million acre Huron-Manistee National Forest.

3) Where actor James Earl Jones grew up (born in Mississippi, Jones was raised by his maternal grandparents in nearby Dublin before graduating from the University of Michigan). Who would've imagined that Darth Vader spent his childhood amidst the forested tranquility of northwest Michigan?

Irons is a one-stoplight town, so small the stoplight blinks yellow. Aside from a realty office specializing in riverfront property and a grocery store that also sells kerosene and rifle ammo, the Oak Grove Tavern is one of two places in town to get a bite to eat. During the winter months, when the snow is deep and fresh, there are more snowmobiles than cars in the parking lot. Friday night we arrived just before the weekend rush of snowmobilers settled in to party. A DJ was spinning new country music songs. We asked him to play some Marty Robbins. He said Marty was too old for his taste. Private note to the owner of the Oak Grove: fire your DJ immediately. He has no business working at a roadside honky tonk.

The ceiling at the Oak Grove is covered in dollar bills, many so old they're black with soot from decades of cigarette smoke. It's probably the bar owner's retirement fund, although he may want to wash the bills at the laundromat before taking to the bank.

Winners and Losers

2007-02-04T18:47:00.000-05:00

It's time for the annual winter poker game. What was once a weekly occurence twenty years ago now happens twice a year, thanks to the exponential increases in career demands and family obligations.

Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. Two things remain the same, though: mercy is non-existent and the insults are plentiful. What a relief it is to see some things stay the same in this ever-changing world.

Here's an inside glimpse into how this finely-oiled machine operates:

A game is called and cards are dealt. Most are poker variations, but many are simple luck games. With names like Guts and Bullshit and Screw Your Neighbor, the pots can grow quickly and empires can be made and destroyed within minutes.

The bluffing goes full-scale as the bets and calls inflate the pot.

After all bets have ended and the cards are laid on the table,

one man will revel in the thrill of victory
and the other will suffer the agony of defeat.

Da Bears

2007-01-31T17:04:00.000-05:00

Mother/daughter polar bears Barle (pronounced barely) and Talini were out sunbathing and frolicking about today at the Detroit Zoo. When we first arrived, they were laying on their backs, motionless and legs in the air. In this position they remained for several minutes- like puppy dogs in warm grass on a sunny August afternoon. Compared to their native habitat above the artic circle, perhaps a 23 degree January day in Michigan is comfortable and balmy. Just as we began to worry they were frozen in place, a zookeeper threw carrots and sweet potatoes into the pen. Without dithering, up they jumped and scrambled over for a delicious morning snack.

Barle came to the Detroit Zoo in 2002, after she was rescued from a Mexican circus in Puerto Rico. She was one of a dozen polar bears being kept conditions so miserable they re-define the word hellish; aside from mounds of filth that make the sewage piles in the ghetto of Calcutta look sanitary, the bears suffered endlessly in the sub-tropical heat. Public outcry led to their transfer to accredited zoos after pictures of the bears, slumping and lethargic with mucas draining out their eyesockets, received national attention.

Two years after Barle was moved to Detroit, her health improved and she was introduced to Triton, a stallion visiting from the Indianapolis Zoo. They hit it off and did what bears do in the woods and in late 2004, baby Talini was born. Defying the depressingly low odds of captive-birth survival rates, Talini lived and is now bigger than her mother. Since Barle was able to successfully begat Talini, another stud is in the waiting to make more romance and hopefully more polar bears.

Iceland

2007-01-17T19:50:00.000-05:00

With temperatures hovering in the twenties, it looks like we're hunkering down for real winter- for a spell.

The frozen landscape makes for a world most surreal, where the sunlight illuminates every object with oblique light. It makes real a world our parents read to us thirty years ago in fantasy books, like the Chronicles of Narnia.

Back to reality: last spring, a local high school lad was killed in a tragic car accident on a sharp curve on a nearby road. For the last several months, everyone who drives past the memorial is reminded daily of a life cut short. We've never understood this macabre custom of making a shrine at the place of death. Note to friends and family: if we ever die on a roadway, please don't memorialize the tradgedy in perpetuity. Leave the flowers at the grave and move on with your lives.

An icy grove of trees shimmer and sway at Peach Mountain.

A leaf hangs suspended in a stiff layer of ice under the University of Michigan public radio tower.

A long spike of ice juts into the dark from a clump of maple leaves.

Drops of water hang suspended in nature's icy beauty, exemplifying the magnificence of the day.

No Snow

2006-12-29T19:48:00.000-05:00

Went north on holiday in search of Michigan winter wonderland. Maybe rent an Artic Cat for a day and hit the trails.

But we encountered a little problem: No snow (except for fake snow at the ski resorts). Only rain.

No ice on Little Traverse Bay either. Locals can't remember the last time the bay wasn't frozen solid in late December. Maybe Al Gore is right about global warming.

So we went to Guntvillers Taxidermy Museum and Gift Shop in Elk Rapids to gander at two-headed calf specimens and whatnot.

And drove home in quintessential Michigan wintry misery.

Big Star

2006-12-24T22:22:00.000-05:00

Crossing paths with a movie actor doesn't happen very often, so we'll pass today's little incident on to you:

We had an hour to kill before the start of the new James Bond movie (the best 007 flick we've seen in years), in Birmingham, MI. Just enough time for a cold beer and tomato juice at Dick O'Dows Irish pub. The Lions game had just begun, and a woman behind us asked the bartender if they'd change one of the televisions to the Steelers game. We turned to see who was speaking and two feet away was Tim Allen and wife.

No one pestered him for autographs or pictures (which no doubt happens all the time), but the pub kept the televisions set to the dreadful Lions game. They walked out the door and a few minutes later so did we, leaving all of six people to cry in their beers over another season down the dumper.

Ocean Dreamscape

2006-12-08T23:37:00.000-05:00

Since it's all of 23 degrees at the present and too cold to go outside in search of something interesting to post about, we decided to throw up a shot of the Oregon coast from our trip three months ago. With several months of gray winter misery ahead of us, we'll be dreaming often about distant shores and warm ocean breezes.

Weather here aside, we're still hyped from the G n' R concert at The Palace two weeks ago. We've found a youtube bootleg of one of the new songs from the upcoming Chinese Democracy cd (if it ever gets released) called Better. Fire up the speakers and blast this new G n' R jam, courtesy of your friends at RR:

No one ever told me when I was alone
They just thought I'd know better, better.
No one ever told me when I was alone
They just thought I'd know better, better

The hardest part this troubled heart has never yet been through now
We've healed the scars that got their start inside someone like you now

Well had I known or I'd been shown back when I longed you'd take me
To break the charge that brought me home and all that won't erase me

I never would know that I could No matter what you'd pay me.
Replay the part, you stole my heart I should have known you're crazy

If all I knew was that with you I'd want someone to save me
It'd be enough, but just my luck I fell in love and baby

all that I wanted was
Now I know you better
You know I'd know better
Now I know you better

So bittersweet, this tragedy won't ask for absolution
This melody inside of me still searches for solution
A twist of fate, A change of heart
Kills my infatuation
Of a broken heart
To provide the spark for my determination

No one ever told me when I was alone
They just thought I'd know better, better
Ooh, no one ever told me when I was alone
They just thought I'd know better, better

All that I wanted was I know you know you know better
You know I know you know better
Now you know me better

I never wanted you to be so full of anger
I never wanted you to be somebody else
I never wanted you to be someone afraid to know themselves
I only wanted you to see things for yourself

All that I wanted was
Now I know you better
Now we all know better
All that I wanted was

If I were you I'd manage to abhor the invitation
Of Promised love that can't keep upwith your adoration
Just use your head and in the end
You’ll find your inspiration
To choose your steps
I won't regret
This kind of aggravation

No one ever told me when I was alone
They just thought I'd know better, better
No one ever told me when I was alone
They just thought I'd know better, better

Eastern Upper Peninsula

2006-12-02T11:02:00.000-05:00

Tea colored water plummets over Tahquamenon Falls

Windswept shoreline of Lake Superior at Whitefish Point

The Soo Locks, Sault Ste. Marie

VFW Hall, Sault Ste. Marie