July 2014

July 14, 2014

Then and Kind of Now Exhibit

I mentioned in a couple of posts that Curator Jessica of the Athens County Historical Society & Museum had put in some hurry-up requests for photos she could exhibit. I started bugging her for photos to prove that she had actually put together exhibits using the pictures.

Cyrus Moore III shot a panorama of the panoramas of Athens, Ohio, I took from the Radio and TV building last fall to go along with some cityscapes I had taken in 1969. I was pleased with the way they played off each other. If I remember correctly, the panoramas were about four feet wide and were made up of five or six frames stitched together with Photoshop doing all the heavy lifting. Something that used to take hours in the darkroom is done in about a minute in the computer.

Athens train station

Jessica and company did a nice job pulling together my photos of the Athens train station to go with a couple of older shots. I spent quite a few hours at that station going to and from Cape by rail and waiting for boxes from Railway Express. The building is still there and is in good condition.

Train station today

I wish more of the old train stations could have been maintained this well.

Court Street

Court Street is one of two main streets in uptown Athens. Jessica’s photos picked up some bad reflections from the plexiglass, but you can still get a sense that most of the buildings have stayed the same over the past 100+ years.

I posted the whole set of photos I sent her to consider if you’d like to see better examples of them.

That looks like the same spot

One of her interns said, “That looks like it was taken from the same spot,” referring to the photo at the bottom of Curator Jessica and Carol Towarnicky walking to lunch on a snowy day in October of last year. I didn’t take the top photo, but I bet the photographer was, like me, on that corner killing time waiting for the light to change.

A display with spirit

I mentioned the other day the hurry-up request for photos of the first beers being served at the student union back in 1969. She threw up this window display to help promote the Historic Tavern Tours the museum does as part of the 9th Annual Ohio Brew Week Festival.

You can see better examples of the photos here.

Passes the meter maid test

Jessica says she knows her displays works when the meter maid stops to check it out.

July 14, 2014

Immanuel Lutheran Church Cemetery

Mother is my eagle-eyed cemetery spotter. In the scores of times we had driven to Perry County, I had never looked to the left just south of County Road 524 off Hwy C to spot the cemetery on the hill. It turned out to be the Immanuel Lutheran Church Cemetery, established in 1918.

One of the first things that caught my eye was that there were four freshly-dug graves side-by-side. Had there been some kind of tragedy that wiped out a whole family all at once? No, the graves had different names on them and different, though recent, dates.

I quickly discerned the pattern: unlike most cemeteries I’ve visited, these graves weren’t grouped by families, they were in chronological order.

First grave dated 1919

It didn’t take long to confirm my suspicion. The first grave in the southwest corner of the first row was dated 1919, and all the graves to the right were in date order. The only other place I had run into that kind of order was in a cemetery in Frohna, another German community.

Meticulous details

I give the cemetery credit for keeping good records.

Plenty of room for expansion

There is no shortage of room for more arrivals. Later on, we’ll show you photos from a cemetery right across from the Immanuel Lutheran church in “downtown” New Wells.

Click on the photos to make them larger.

July 13, 2014

North Riverfront Park

Brother Mark and I rode our bikes from his house near the Botanical Gardens, past the Gateway Arch, and onto the St. Louis Riverfront Trail, over Chain of Rocks Bridge and into Illinois. You can read an account of our 2004 adventure on my bike blog.

Chain of Rocks Bridge

The blog has some neat photos and some interesting history of the Chain of Rocks Bridge, which used to be part of U.S. Route 66. The unusual bridge has a 22-degree bend in it to allow river traffic to have uninterrupted navigation of the river.

Quick tour for Curator Jessica

When I took Curator Jessica to the airport last November, we had some time to kill, so I took her to the North Riverfront Trail where we parked at the Union Electric Light and Power Company. Whenever I park at a trailhead, I scope out the lot for broken glass that indicates that cars have been broken into while their owners were away. Bad guys figure that you’re going to be gone for awhile.

The lot passed that sniff test, but I still felt uneasy for some reason. I’ve parked there before and ridden my bike in the area without my hackles going up, so I don’t know what I was picking up.

Floodwall Art Project

We passed the Floodwall Art Project, a seven-foot tall, 150-foot long tile mural designed by ceramic artist Catherine Magel and created with the assistance of at least 1,500 youth and adults from at least six St. Louis communities. The mural displays the history of the natural world beginning with microscopic life forms, moves into sea life, graduates to earth creatures, then ends with migrating birds.

Here’s where you can find out more about the Great Rivers Greenway. You can click on the photos to make them larger, too.

I felt uneasy

Curator Jessica was thoroughly enjoying herself, but my feeling of unease was growing. We were the only ones around, so there was no obvious reason why I was picking up bad vibes, but I suggested that we head back to the car.

This weird feature on a pedestrian overpass is unsettling, but I don’t think it was what was poking at my lizard brain.

I told Jessica that my misgivings were probably unfounded, but I had learned over the years to trust that instinct that something isn’t as it should be. She gave me her normal eye roll and “crazy guy” look, but didn’t object to moving on. I fully expected to see my car broken into when we got back to the parking lot, but everything was as we had left it.

I’ll have to see if I get the same feeling the next time I go there.

July 12, 2014

What’s Going On Here?

From time to time, I’ll go back looking at directories of photos I’ve run before to see if I missed anything. When I hit one containing photos of Terry Hopkins and Brad Brune smoking cigars on the riverfront and swapping lies, I was about to skip to the next one.

This thumbnail jumped out at me, though. What in the world is in this photo? What is that arm doing? What is he pointing to and why? Click on it to make it larger.

When I blew it up, it all became clear. Terry, whose dad had been in the sign business, was feeling where the lettering for Lang Jewelers had been scraped off the window when it closed after being in business since 1916. The buildings on the west side of Main street reflected just like I was shooting directly at them.

I’d like to call it art, but I have to confess to accident instead.