He’s back.
The light is fairly long at that place, so I had time to document his presence not long ago. I don’t know that I see him every summer at this location, at the intersection of two major roads here in the northwestern suburbs, but I know I’ve seen him there over the years. With his straightforward message.
More of the carrot approach, rather than the stick favored by a sign-holder I saw on Michigan Avenue once.
Did a lot of things today, some involving more effort, other things less. None had a higher aggravation factor than trying to put a tent back in the package that it came in. Normally, I wouldn’t consider such a thing, in favor of keeping the various parts of the tent in more-or-less the same place, whether that’s the garage or in the back of a car.
Earlier this year, I bought a new tent from a large physical retailer, a non-brand I didn’t know, with the idea that there will be a revival of tent camping in this household. Been what – 10 years? The old tent is pushing 20 years, and while it was in good enough shape the last time I set it up a few years ago, it has been leaking since its third summer. As much as a few inches of water inside the tent, that one time in Wisconsin.
New tents, on the other hand, even those that claim only to be “weather resistant,” should not leak the first time they are set up, and only the second time they are rained on. The rain was fairly heavy over the weekend, but not as heavy as it can be, and I expected it to stay dry inside. No. The water wasn’t near the door, either, in case it was a matter of leaving it unzipped a bit, but on the other side from the door. A matter of a lousy seam, it seems.
As I was pondering taking it back to the retailer, I noticed (this morning) that two of the four guylines had broken. Just because of the stress of being anchored to the ground, since there was little wind last night. That settled it. Back in the box and back to the store, never mind the aggravation, and good luck getting me to buy that non-brand again.
I didn’t imagine it: Bashful Bob’s Motel in Page, Arizona, was a real place, which I called “a real, honest-to-God tourist court” more than a quarter-century ago. I still have a card I picked up when we stayed there in 1997.
When we returned to Page two years ago, the renovated place was the pleasant but less interestingly named, and more expensive, Lake Powell Motel. Bob Wombacher was nowhere to be found. Not a surprise, since he died in 2011.
I suspect, but don’t actually remember, that we met Bob briefly in May ’97, when we checked in. Running an honest-to-God tourist court is (was) usually hands-on work for the proprietor. In our time, someone with a name like Wombacher, if he left any trace at all, can be found on the Internet.
Turns out Bob was more than a tourist court operator. He left a legacy of obscure humorous poetry, according to a curious site called Porkopolis, the “arts, literature, philosophy and other considerations of the pig.” (Which has a page devoted to Arnold Ziffle, I’m glad to say.)
Bob wrote a poem about pigs, or at least referencing pigs. A collection of Bob’s – Rhyme Time – can be found here. It includes such verse as (picked at random for their brevity):
“Just Following Orders”
I step inside my fav’rite store
And spy a cone inside the door.
“Wet floor,” it states, and so I do
Exactly what it tells me to.
Then, rather wishing I had not,
I’m banished to the parking lot.
“All Set”
I’ve saved enough money
To last me for life.
The children are grown;
I don’t have a wife.
I’ve got enough money.
Yes, plenty and then some.
To last me forever.
(At least ’til I spend some.)
“Half-Pint”
It isn’t that I’m little.
I’m just not very tall.
Until I grow,
I’m last to know
When rain begins to fall.
I also wondered: Bashful Bob? I always considered that a just bit of alliterative whimsy on the part of Bob, but I now know there was a song of that name recorded by Bobby Vee. Mainly because I just found out.
Maybe the song title was an inspiration for him. If so, it was still a bit of Bob’s whimsy. Mr. Wombacher seems like the kind of guy to name his business after a teen-idol pop song of an earlier time, just for fun.
I call it “Still Life With Lincoln Logs and Bottle Caps.”
Garage deaccession continues, if I can borrow such a tony word for the process of sorting and disposing and squirrel damage cleanup in the unheated structure toward the back of our lot. The other day I found a bag of Lincoln Logs. A bag of sad, battered logs. Many are cracked and chipped or even partly missing. Also, there are no roof slates. That’s an important thing to go missing.
I’m pretty sure they aren’t my childhood Lincoln Logs, since they were in better shape – I think — and anyway, this feels like a yard-sale acquisition that our daughters never took to, and was quickly forgotten.
Someone glued together two two-notch logs.
If they were trying to get a four-notch log equivalent, they didn’t get it.
I built a simple structure (see above), for old time’s sake. The rest of the logs are now in the trash. Maybe I’ll add the structure to the broken mug and plate midden in one corner of the yard, and let the elements do their work.
Yesterday afternoon was hot and windy, something like a baby sirocco, kicking dust from the baseball field in the park behind our house. Eventually a smattering of rain came, and the wind died down. Not enough rain to soak anything, but toward the end of the day, enough to produce a large, vivid rainbow to the southeast.
Images naturally do its vividness no justice, but I made a few images anyway.
Also yesterday I thought about someone I don’t think much about, someone I hadn’t spoken to in over 15 years, when we were both at the funeral of a former coworker we had in common. When the person you think about is a journalist (among other things), it’s easy enough to check to see what she’s written lately, as I occasionally have done over the years. But not in the last two years at least. I know that because, to my shock, I found out she had died in August 2022 at only 59.
Her name was Janan Hanna, and we were close, once upon a time. Throughout 1989, to be specific, just before I left for Japan. RIP, Janan.
In hopes of keeping the backyard rabbits from eating our budding tomatoes and other summertime plants, Yuriko has been leaving lettuce and carrots out for them. I’m not sure that will work. For one thing, they don’t seem interested. Bugs Bunny might eat carrots, but actual rabbits not so much.
Was Bugs ever seen eating anything else? I’m hardly the only person to ask that important question, and the answer is yes. I remember some of those listed cartoons, especially “Baseball Bugs” and “Hare We Go,” from which I might have learned the term mess, as in a place to eat. As for why carrots were the nosh of choice for Bugs, that was reportedly inspired by Clark Gable eating a raw carrot in It Happened One Night, a detail I’d forgotten.
A family of rabbits now occupy the backyard, including a large adult and two or maybe three juveniles, who are often spotted eating grass. They might live under the deck.
It’s hard to get close enough to them to capture an image. Even at a young age, rabbits are wary critters and fleet of foot. I figure they’ve taken to the yard this year, much more than previously, because there is no dog on patrol any more, and somehow they know it.
I was up around 5 am today, for the usual reasons, waking up from a dream about – a wedding reception in space? – and noticed the light of a new day out of the bathroom window. Light that has that certain twilight look, reflecting the fact that the sun is about to come up, like a big bald head. (I checked, sunrise was at 5:17 this morning, so I woke during civil twilight.)
At that blurry moment, it occurred to me, who’s bellyaching now about Daylight Saving Time? If we were still on Standard Time, sunrise would have been at 4:17 and civil twilight would have started at 3:43. Who would want that? Sure, early March might be too early to start DST – late April, as it used to be, would do.
At the other end of the day, June twilight lasts until just past 9 pm. Not everyone has a back yard or a deck, but I do, and I appreciate the daylight at that end as I sit outside. It’s called Summer Time in other countries for a reason.
Early last year, I ordered a number of 4″ x 6″ tabletop flags from an online vendor that doesn’t happen to be Amazon. I have pocket change and postcards and tourist spoons and all kinds of bric-a-brac from the places I’ve been, so why not flags? One for each nation I’ve visited.
So I ordered a Portuguese flag last week, to add to the collection. While Macao was still administrated by Portugal when I visited in 1990, it was too much of a stretch to say I’d been to Portugal, until last month.
Something I never noticed on the flag – behind the shield of Portugal, which has a lore of its own – is an armillary sphere, a model of objects in the sky. A navigators’ tool, among other things, which fits Portuguese history nicely. A cool design element.
We saw other representations of the globe — terrestrial or celestial — at Pena Palace in Sintra.
This one at Jerónimos Monastery.
For sale at the Cod Museum, canned fish. At fancy prices.
For sale at a Portuguese grocery store, canned fish. At everyday prices.
In case you didn’t buy enough canned fish in the city, at the airport there’s a branch of Mundo Fantástico Da Sardinha Portuguesa, a sardine store on the Praça do Rossio.
For once, the Google Maps description is accurate: “Souvenir shop showcasing fancy tins of Portuguese sardines in a wacky, circuslike atmosphere.” You can even sit on a sardine throne.
The “Beer Museum” off Praça do Comércio seemed more like a restaurant and bar, but anyway you have to have a beer at a place like that, and I did. A Portuguese brew whose name I was too much on vacation to remember.
I wasn’t awed by the beer, which was good enough, but I was awed by this display. That’s one artful wall of beer.
We didn’t make it to the castle overlooking Lisbon (Castelo de São Jorge), so I can’t comment on the view from there. I will say that the roof of our hotel offered a pretty good one.
Looking up at the city is another kind of vista. There’s a ferry port (and subway station) on the Tagus near Praça do Comércio. Step outside there, and some of the city is visible. The stone tower is part of Lisbon Cathedral.
We emerged from the subway one morning and spotted this.
Monumento aos Mortos da Grande Guerra. I had to check, and found out that about 12,000 Portuguese soldiers died in WWI, including in France but also fighting the Germans in Africa. The memorial is on Av. Da Liberdade.
Europe, in my experience, is pretty good at putting together leafy boulevards.
That’s a tall order for a sandwich shop. We didn’t investigate the claim, either the number of steps, nor the state of mind.
At Basílica de Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, we encountered this fellow.
Rather Roman looking, and I mean the ancient Roman army, not “prays like a Roman with her eyes on fire.” At first I thought he might be Cornelius the Centurion, but the key clue is HODIE (“today”) written on the cross, meaning he’s Expeditus. I don’t ever remember seeing him depicted in a church. The patron of urgent causes, among other things.
We saw a flamenco show in Barcelona last year, but no fado in Lisbon. We did see a fado truck, however.
We ate at the Time Out Market Lisboa twice.
There was a reason it was crowded. Everything was a little expensive, but really good. Such as this place, whose grub was like Shake Shack.
The last meal of the trip wasn’t at Time Out Lisboa, but a Vietnamese restaurant with room enough for about 20 people. It too was full.
Spotted at one of the subway stations we passed through more than once. Alice in Wonderland‘s fans are international in scope.
On the whole, the Lisbon subways are efficient and inexpensive, and the lines go a lot of places. Even so, elevator maintenance did seem to be an issue. There were times when our tired feet would have appreciated an elevator, but no go.
Scenes from Parc Eduardo VII, which includes green space and gardens but also elegant buildings.
There was an event there that day, at least according to those blue signs, that had something to do with the Portuguese Space Agency. I didn’t know there was such a thing. I’d have assumed Portugal would participate in the ESA, and leave it at that. But no, the Agência Espacial Portuguesa was founded in 2019, and is looking to create a space port in the Azores.
We didn’t investigate the event any further, but we did look at the tiles on the building. Nice.
Among the kings of Portugal, there was no Edward VII – only one Edward, who reigned from 1433 to 1438 – so when I saw it on the map, I figured it was for the British monarch of that regnal name. Yes, according to Wiki: “The park is named for King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, who visited Portugal in 1903 to strengthen relations between the two countries and reaffirm the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance.”
Lisbon manhole covers. Maybe not as artful as some of the other street details on Lisbon, but not bad.
I saw S.L.A.T. a fair amount. Later, I looked it up: Sinalização Luminosa Automática de Trânsito – Automatic Traffic Light Signaling.
Time for a second spring break. It isn’t really spring unless you can squeeze in two. Back to posting around May 19.
Today didn’t much feel like spring, anyway. Cold drizzle. Not that cold, really, but it felt that way after a run of warm days.
I’ve read about people who become eclipse followers. There’s a word for it, at least according to Time: umbraphile. (Time is still a thing?) It’s an impulse I appreciate, but I don’t know that I’ll join them.
On the other hand, Pamplona (say) on August 12, 2026 sounds good in all sorts of ways, so we shall see. I’m not counting on being unshuffled when it comes to this mortal coil on August 12, 2045, which is the timing of the next North American total solar eclipse.
Last month, we passed through Farmington, Missouri, which is the seat of St. Francois County.
The courthouse, fourth on the site, dates from the 1920s. “Innuendoes about fraud led to a grand jury investigation; the solution to the architect’s questionable procedure apparently was resolved by closer supervision,” says the University of Missouri about Norman Howard of St. Louis, the architect of the current courthouse.
There’s a story in that line, the details of which may be lost to time.
Who can you see outside an antique store on the main street of Potosi, Missouri? Betty!
Who can you see on the wall of the Laura Ingills Wilder Home in southern Missouri?
A young Rose Wilder Lane, Laura’s daughter and a writer herself, and apparently a foremother of modern libertarianism.
Spotted in downtown Nacogdoches. 
That’s a nicely designed memorial plaque. Showing the nine flags over Nacogdoches; the usual six in Texas lore, plus three more localized ones raised during various rebellions.
Did I make note of the landmarked building? It was nice enough, but not memorable. Lone Star Feeds, on the other hand —
A pet food plant, about 50 years old now.
For sale in Logansport, Louisiana.
“Vintage oil tank,” yours for $200, as of April.
One of the murals I saw in Shreveport was prominently signed.
Your tax dollars at work: funding by the National Endowment for the Arts. Actually, that strikes me as a good way to spend a minuscule amount of federal dollars.
A redevelopment opportunity in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
That would take some serious coin, but maybe it could work. Step one, hire that structural engineer to do a report.
If you have the urge for barbecue in Hot Springs, this place will satisfy. Cookin Q since ’52.
The sort of place with license plates on the wall.
All that is window dressing. The ‘cue is the thing, and Stubby’s has lasted so long for a reason.
On the side of the road on highway Arkansas 7, part of a wayside park.
The plaque reads:
Dedicated to the workers of the Arkansas Farmers Union Green Thumb whose efforts made this park possible so that others might enjoy the beauty of the state of Arkansas. January 1966 to December 1969. Lewis Johnson, Jr. State Director.
Green Thumb?
“Green Thumb was the first nonprofit organization to run a jobs program for disadvantaged rural Americans in response to the War on Poverty,” the union says, beginning in 1966, employing low-income rural residents to build things, something like the WPA or the CCC did. By the ’80s, Green Thumb had vanished.
At Uranus, Missouri, off I-44, Yuriko was driving and I happened to have my phone handy. We were too tired to stop.
I’d driven by Uranus a few times, but not stopped. Something like the Snake Farm on I-35 between Austin and San Antonio. Clearly, I need to visit sometime. Uranus, that is. Maybe the Snake Farm, too.
“Beyond the appeal of what [Uranus owner Louie Keen] insisted was very good fudge, Uranus enticed travelers as a kind of dysfunctional, self-contained utopia, like South of the Border and Da Yoopers,” Roadside America says.
“Uranus, said Louie, was the kind of place tourists want to find on a road trip, with life-size dinosaurs, cheesy photo-ops, ridiculous souvenirs, two-headed freaks, the World’s Largest Belt Buckle, and various shops and attractions such as a hatchet-hurling venue named The Uranus Axehole.”
The town of Center, Texas is in East Texas, while the town of West, Texas is in Central Texas. Just a mild example of Texas naming oddities. This is the state with Cut and Shoot, Dime Box and Jot-Em-Down, after all.
We spent the night in Center (pop. 5,200) and the next morning, April 14, took a look around the Shelby County Courthouse, which also happens to the focus of downtown Center.
It’s a less common style for courthouses, Romanesque Revival, at least in my experience. Impressive brickwork. The story of one John Joseph Emmett Gibson is given in a Texas Historical Commission sign on the site. Originally a brickmaker from Ireland, Gibson ultimately made his way to Texas, in time to design and oversee construction of the courthouse in the 1880s, showing off his skill with bricks.
Older than the courthouse is the nearby former jail. These days home to the local C-of-C.
An assortment of buildings line the square. Mostly occupied. That includes the art deco Rio, open since 1926 as a movie theater, without having been closed or put to any other use since then, which is remarkable in itself.
Not a retro theater, either, but one showing new movies. Such as Unsung Hero and The Fall Guy, coming soon.
“Unsung Hero is a 2024 American Christian drama film directed by Richard Ramsey and Joel Smallbone. The film follows Rebecca, Joel, and Luke Smallbone of For King & Country, and their life journey to become Christian recording artists.”
“The Fall Guy is a 2024 American action comedy film directed by David Leitch and written by Drew Pearce, loosely based on the 1980s TV series about stunt performers. The film follows a stuntman working on his ex-girlfriend’s directorial debut action film, only to find himself involved in a conspiracy surrounding the film’s lead actor.”
I’d never heard of either of them, but now I have. 1980s TV series about stunt performers? That didn’t ring a bell either. So that’s what Glen A. Larson did after the implosion of the original Battlestar Galactica, and Lee Majors did after the Six Million Dollar Man was retired for lack of replacement parts.
How did I miss that? Right, I didn’t have a television in the ’80s.
More buildings on the square.
One that’s small but stately. Farmers of Shelby County, it says, your money is safe here.
It was. Farmers is still an ongoing operation, nearly 120 years after its founding. The bank still occupies the building, and has other locations in East Texas.
Not every building on the square is occupied.
Not every building is even a building any more, but clues remain.
That didn’t take long to look up. Site of a dry goods store for much of the 20th century.
Shelby County partly borders De Soto Parish, Louisiana. That morning, we headed for the border, driving on Texas 7 and then U.S. 84 until we got to a town without any sign noting its name (or maybe we missed it), crossing a river without any identification either. I remembered I wanted to mail a few postcards when I saw a sign pointing the way to a post office. When we got to the p.o., I saw that we were in Logansport, Louisiana. We’d crossed the Sabine River, but as noted, there was nothing to tell us that.
Missed the former international boundary marker, too. I didn’t read about it until later. It’s a few miles out of Logansport (pop. 1,300), and once (and briefly) marked the border between the Republic of Texas and the United States.
No matter. Took a look around Logansport.
Here’s the name we missed. Not on the road we came in on.
Main Street.
Seen in a shop window in Main Street. Do they celebrate Mardi Gras in Logansport?
Yes they do, in the form of a parade put on my an outfit called the Krewe of Aquarius.
We spent some time in a resale store on the main street, Swamp Water Flea Market. I spotted something I don’t think I’ve ever seen at a resale shop.
Yours for $150, an antique leg iron. Not sure I’d want to have it around. Seems like a haunted artifact that might land you in an episode of The Twilight Zone.