Author: Ken Steinhoff

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Advance Birthday Autographs

Mother was Facebooking six decades before we gave her an iPad. There’s a new Facebook fan page called Advance Hornet Alumni where all the buzz is about the upcoming high school reunion. Mother graduated with the Class of 1938, the group that named the Hornets, she says. Anyway, she pulled out a scrapbook I had never seen before.

It contained her Graduation Memories Book. You’ll be seeing bits and pieces of it from time to time.

Birthdays January to April

There was a section for Birthdays. I noticed that most of the handwriting was different. “Well, I was just downtown, and whenever I’d see anybody, I’d take down their birthday. Most of them wrote them themselves.” These pages read like a Who’s Who of Advance in the late 1930s. I recognize about a third of the names on these pages. It’s a real thrill to look up to see the signature of your grandfather, Roy E. Welch, [Feb] 6 – 1891, written in his own hand. I’ve seen that writing before and would recognize it anywhere. You can click on any page to make it larger. I scanned them a little bigger than usual if you want to look at the names.

Birthdays March to June

There are contemporaries of my mother, friends of her parents and the high and low of Advance society. Roy and Elsie Welch ran a variety of businesses in town: a hotel, a tavern and a liquor store, among them. Mother could put a head on a mug of beer when she was in her early teens and she managed to hoodwink the sheriff into not confiscating a slot machine full of money when they left her in charge when she was about 13. The businesses, plus living downtown, put her in contact with everyone.

Birthdays July through October

Elsie Welch shows up as Sept. 24, 1892. I recognize her handwriting from the scores of cards and notes she sent me over the years.

Birthdays September through December

I’ve never been much interested in collecting the autographs of famous people, but I have to admit to feeling a little thrill when I see the handwriting of ordinary people my mother stopped on the street in a tiny town in the Midwest when she was a high school senior. That’s why I said she was creating a Friends list and doing Facebook six decades before she ever got her iPad.

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Waiting for Hurricane Irene

I pulled into West Palm Beach shortly after 6 p.m. Monday night. It was an incredibly smooth trip: the new transmission transmitted, traffic was fast and light. Either traffic going through Nashville, Chattanooga and Atlanta was a lot less congested than usual or my driving experiences in Seattle have made anything short of a one-hour parking lot seem fast.

I hit the Florida line’s Welcome Center right about sunset Sunday night. The first thing I noticed was that our cost-conscious Governor Rick Scott had two signs (that I saw) telling everyone that he’s the Gov. I called Wife Lila and Mother to let them know my progress, then I went in for a – as they say in the Tour de France – a natural break.

That’s where I was greeted by a sign that had me a little worried. There are some things I’d rather do myself. I didn’t know if robot arms were involved or if this was some kind of new stimulus project. I waited until the room had cleared out before I grabbed my cell phone to capture this photo. I was afraid to hang around too long lest someone mistake me for a Congressman and pull out handcuffs. The fly I saw at Lambert Airport was less unsettling.

Where’s Hurricane Irene going?

Last night’s track was a bit troubling. You don’t want to see your home right in the middle of a Cat 2 Cone of Uncertainty. The news tonight is both better and worse. Now it looks like it’s going to be a Category 4 storm when it’s offshore West Palm Beach. Offshore is a good thing, but it doesn’t take much of a wobble to really spoil your day.

The tracking map, by the way, was done by SkeetobiteWeather. They do some of the best and most useful maps I’ve seen anywhere.

Tuesday’s track will determine what I do next. I stopped in Ocala in central Florida to pick up bottled water, batteries, a new Coleman LED lantern, some Coleman chemcial Glow Lights and a selection of fruit.

I like Glow Lights

I’m a big fan of chemical glow sticks. They have a long shelf life, they’re safe for kids to use and they throw out a surprising amount of light without generating heat. The Coleman lantern is very bright for using only four D-cell batteries. LEDs don’t burn out like bulbs and they burn cooler. The one I bought looks like the same one in the link, but mine says it’ll run 86 hours on high and 122 hours on low. It’s a lot safer than the old-fashioned propane or white gas lantern with their delicate mantels. A more expensive model is available with rechargeable batteries, but I think that’s a bad buy for an emergency light: if you don’t use it all the time, the battery will be dead when you need it, and if the power’s out, how are you going to charge it? A stack of alkaline batteries makes more sense.

I noticed I wasn’t the only one with a cart full of water, but the clerk said they hadn’t had a run on supplies yet. If it still looks close, I’ll pull the generator out, change the oil, hook it into the gas line and fire it up for a test run. I adapted it to run on gasoline, propane or natural gas. Since we already had a line for our kitchen stove, hot water heater and clothes dryer, I tapped off it as fuel of first choice.

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Tower Rock Persimmons

Mother’s not going to be happy with me for writing about this.She considers this her personal secret stash of persimmons.

When I got my van back from LeGrand Bros Transmission, I wanted to give it a good workout before heading to Florida. The road from Cape Girardeau through Perry County to the washed-away community of Wittenberg was the right mixture of hills and curves to see if it had any kinks. The final test was to take it on the hilly gravel road that leads to one of my favorite places, Tower Rock on the Mississippi River.

We always make it a point to go up there during Mother’s Birthday Season because there are some of the best persimmon trees we’ve ever seen at the overlook parking area. [Click on the photos to make them larger.]

Most persimmons don’t ripen before frost

Almost every persimmon I’ve seen isn’t ripe until after the first frost. I don’t know if the frost provides something to make them sweet or if the timing is just right when the frost arrives.

Most persimmons will turn your mouth inside out if they are the least bit green. If it’s ever happened to you, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t had it happen, come here. I have something I’d like for you to taste.

This tree doesn’t need a frost

What’s unusual about the fruit on this tree is that it ripens without a frost.

When I visited Tower Rock earlier in the spring, I thought this might be a light year. The rain and windstorms had knocked a lot of the fruit to the ground.

When we showed up today, the tree was loaded. Mother picked around on the ground until she found a couple that had fallen off the tree and had that rich, golden brown look. She wanted to taste persimmon a lot more than I was willing to risk, but she pronounced them good. If it had been Brother Mark, I wouldn’t have trusted him, but your mother won’t lie to you.

So, now I’ve let the secret out of the bag. I bet Brothers David and Mark just moved up a notch in the will.

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Cape Clouds at Sunset

Here are the clouds we spotted just before heading out to the new Central High School stadium to see if it would make a good foreground for a sunset photo. I’m glad we discovered the Marching Band practicing there, but I would have been satisfied with some cloud photos. This was due south when we climbed into the car. [You can click any of the photos to make them larger.]

Cloud was boiling and growing

Second by second, this massive white mass was boiling and growing larger. It was neat, but I wanted something more interesting in the foreground. In Florida, there are always palm trees handy. Palm trees are a cliche, but even cliches can make a nice photo.

Wife Lila was driving and she cautioned that I should shoot what was in front of me because the light was changing so quickly that the magic might leak out. I’m usually the one saying that, so this was a real role reversal.

Sunset coming fast

She was right (as always), though. The sun was getting ready to go down. As soon as that happened,  the wonderful white highlights would go away. Still, I thought there might be a better shot elsewhere.

Aggravating circumstances

Normally I would have hated to have been stuck at a long red light, but this gave me a chance to experiment with the clouds and passing truck traffic at Silver Springs and Shawnee Parkway. The composition isn’t quite what I would liked to have had, but the red light changed to green before a truck with his side running lights could streak by with another truck in front of him. I have to confess I was hoping that the guy in the foreground who hadn’t turned his marker lights on would get ticketed by a cop, but I don’t think the charge of aggravating a photographer is in the state statutes.

If I hadn’t been convinced that there might be a better shot at the high school, I’d have stayed here to work on a little nicer photo. The elements were there, just not in the right combination during this light cycle.

 

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