I was driving around North Sprigg this afternoon looking for the old Shivelbine house before SEMO preserves it in a landfill. The address I had been given was wrong, so I was turning around in a driveway when I saw these young folks cavorting on a rooftop. I gave them a friendly wave so they’d think I was a little less creepy. I’m not sure it worked.
Shades of the old days
That reminded me of this single frame I must have taken when I was visiting my future best man, Andy McLain, at his apartment off William somewhere near Pacific. The place was pretty rundown, but I think I see why he stayed there.
Better get an umbrella
The weather report said we were going to have a front blow through that was going to bring a couple days of rain, so I went looking for a large umbrella to replace the one I forgot to put in my new van. Just after I got in the house, the weather alert went off with a severe thunderstorm warning. I wasn’t overly concerned because it sounded like the cell was north and east of us.
Not too long after that, though, the alert sounded about a strong storm near Mable Hill headed our way. This one had high winds, a possible tornado and large hail. When the first few small hailstones started falling, I debated jumping in the van and heading to the funeral home overhang, but all of a sudden the sky opened up. It was too late.
Marble size and bigger
I’ve been in hailstorms where the stones were bigger, but I’ve never experienced having so much ice fall at one time and propelled so hard. The way the stones were pounding against the kitchen window, I was afraid the glass was going to break.
Here’s just a little of the ice on my windshield about 15 minutes after the main storm quit, and after the rain had melted them smaller than their original pea and marble size.
Yard and street covered
In a matter of a minute or two, the street and yard were a solid white.
Hail makes me uncomfortable
I love storm chasing, but hail makes me uncomfortable. When you get large hail, that means there are some serious winds in that storm bouncing the ice around.
These photos don’t do the hail justice: while it was falling, there was too much water on the storm door to shoot through it, and I couldn’t open the door because I was afraid the wind might blow it from my grasp. By the time I could shoot these, quite a bit of rain had fallen and melted the ice.
Rabbit and solar lights OK
So far as I can tell, Mother’s solar lights and rabbit came through unscathed. I hope I don’t see any dimples on my car in the morning. Click on the photos to make them larger.
Sometime around 1961 or 1962, Boy Scout Troop 8 was paid to distribute flyers for the grand opening of the Sofspra Kar Laundry (I guess they couldn’t think of a way to butcher the spelling of “laundry). I ran across one of those flyers in a file folder. (The back had been used to scrawl some meaningless notes.)
On the way home the other day, I whipped into what is now called the Water Works Car Wash to shoot some updated photos. When I was a kid, I can remember Dad taking the wooden screen panels off our porch, loading them into the back of his pickup (always a Chevrolet) and taking them to the car wash for cleaning.
The days when you could clean your whole car – and I’m talking about a monster 1959 Buick LaSabre station wagon- for a couple of quarters are long gone. Tokens start at a buck and go up. I will say the facility appears to be in pretty good shape, considering that it’s more than half a century old.
