News photos that have grown whiskers and have become history
I emptied the water from the kiddie pool water trough and filled it with fresh water on Saturday before the temps dropped.
The wind chill in Cape dropped into the lower teens Sunday night. When I looked out the window this morning, I saw what must have been a Jesus Bird walking on water.
A closer look showed that he wasn’t walking on water, he was on ice, looking for a place where it had thawed so he could have a drink.
That revelation caused an ecumenical downgrade to Regular Thirsty Bird.
I’ve been on an orgy of scanning lately. I digitized all of the 1967-68-69 and 70 Ohio University football games, and printed more than 600 pictures for a reunion of my old paper, The Palm Beach Post.
I created a subset of the football pix that showed the OU Marching 110, considered one of the best college bands in the county, because I have two grandsons in marching bands. The older of the two was recruited out of his middle school by the local high school. Both boys were recognized as section leaders.
Anyway, I need to explain why my eye kept coming back to this photo so that I don’t come across as a dirty old man who has a picture taken as a dirty young man.
When my high school buddy Jim Stone convinced me to transfer to Ohio University in Athens my junior year, I have to admit I didn’t realize that it was a fine arts school, not a journalism school. I felt as welcome as a beer can at a Baptist picnic. Some of my classmates called me a prostitute because I took pictures for money, not “art.”
So, let me give a fine art spin on my cheerleader picture. That’s a bit of a departure for me because I always contended that my photos stand by themselves with maybe a little who, what, where, when, why and how help.
I’ve written before how most kids wanted to build time machines that would let them jump behind or ahead of the present day. I wanted a machine that would freeze time, and that’s why I became a photographer.
This young cheerleader is frozen in mid-cartwheel. Her hand is reaching out to land, her legs haven’t begun their transition over the top, and she’ll be in that pose forever. The other thing that strikes me is the complete disinterest the folks in the crowd showing. She’s giving her all, but nobody cares.
I captured a young woman in the prime of her life who is probably a grandmother today.
Curator Jessica and her sister, Elizabeth, were both in the Marching 110. Jessica would describe how close her bandmates were then and now. I’ve seen pictures of her marching with alums down Court Street. As a mature woman, she admits being a little sore the day after, but she’s still glad to lug her trombone down the bricks and gyrate with the youngsters.
I was never a jock or a frat boy, but I had the same sense of belonging as a member of The Ohio University Post newspaper. We lived an breathed the news biz and put out a darned good paper every day.
At Jessica’s urging, I returned to Athens in 2013 to cover a game honoring the 1968 MAC winners. Since I didn’t have to come up with action pix for the next day’s paper, I took an unconventional approach.
I was roaming around SE Ohio in 2014 when a guy at the Glouster fire department said there was going to be a big playoff game that night, but they were afraid the home field was going to be too wet to play. They brought in a helicopter to hover over the grass to dry it out.
I had a wonderful time photographing the fans who took an intense personal interest in the game.
Sikeston Bulldogs bite the Tigers big time
When I heard that the Cape Central High Tigers were going to clash with the Sikeston Bulldogs in 2010, I thought it would be fun to relive my old high school football games with a modern digital camera that would let me shoot color where I had struggled to shoot black and white. Both teams were undefeated going in, but the Bulldogs ran all over Central 21-0. Fan spirit can go only so far.
Here’s a gallery of Ohio band photos. Click on any picture, to make it larger, then use the arrow keys to step through the collection.
This is the time of year when I’d saddle up the pony to head to Cape Girardeau to celebrate Mother’s Birthday Season that centered around Oct. 17. I always felt guilty because I always wanted to head back to Cape at vacation time. In fact, I don’t think we did more than half a dozen trips as a family that didn’t pass through my hometown.
Sometimes we’d end up at Kentucky Lake with Brother Mark.
This was our first Christmas after getting married in the spring. I put together this photo book for a class project.
I wrote a blog post about the Last Rose of Summer in 2015 after Mother’s death. Friend Shari was over enthusiastic in her pruning of the rose bush, so I’ve had to replace it.
This rose bush next to the mailbox got mowed down by a guy who ran off the road, but it survived that and a near-drought.
Birthday Season is also the time for my annual whine about walnuts. We’ve had a bumper crop again this year. The first year I stayed in Cape by myself, I was freaked out by the sounds of the nuts bouncing off the roof.
If you don’t believe me, here are some of my walnut rants.
I’ve had some yard guys try to time the jungle on the east side of the house. There are still some limbs down, but it look a whole lot better than it did a couple of years ago.
Phoebe the Bleeping Cat wasn’t around in the Mother era, but she enjoys playing furry lawn ornament when I let her out.
When I started spending most of my time in Cape , Wife Lila was sure I would starve to death and perish in my own filth. The latter is still a possibility, but I’ve turned into a passable cook.
I saw a picture the other day of something that reminded me of one of our frequent family meals – something Mother dubbed Hungarian Goulash. I’m not sure where she got the Hungarian part – maybe she was thinking of Hungry Goulash.
Anyway, I looked up several recipes, extracted the common elements, and started creating my own version.
This contains two pounds of ground beef, five strips of bacon cut one-inch long, onions, peppers, and garlic, all prepared on my Blackstone griddle. When the meat and veggies were ready, I moved them into my 6-quart Instant Pot because that was a convenient place for everything to come together.
I added beef broth, water, two cans of tomato sauce, two cans of Rotel diced tomatoes and green chilies (instead of just plain diced tomatoes), a bunch of seasonings that just happened to be in front of me, and three bay leaves (what they do, I’m never sure).
I’m a memory cooker – meaning that I remember having something extra on the shelf that needs to be used up. That caused me to add a package of frozen corn.
Once everything was well-mixed, I let it bubble for about 25 minutes.
The next step was to throw in a box of elbow macaroni. I thought that stuff was sort of small (it eventually expanded), so I remembered I had a box of Zatarain’s black beans and rice sitting on a shelf.
After that was well combined, I added a whole bunch of cheddar cheese (abut three times as much as the recipe called for), then about the same amount of Mozzarella cheese.
You can never have too much garlic, onions, bacon and cheese, after all.
About 25 minutes later, the cheeses had melted together nicely, and the noodles had expanded. I was ready to see how my 6-quart experiment in culinary time travel went.
It turned out well enough that I wasn’t ashamed to farm out most of the pot to friends and family in town.