Late February’s a good time to visit South Texas. Five years ago, during a trip to San Antonio, I was even able to enjoy some outdoor greenery. Just budding, but there.
Any day in February when you can wander out in the non-freezing air is a good one. At least for us Northern Hemisphere, Temperate Zone dwellers. Roughly above the 40th parallel, that is. How’s that for overqualifying? Never mind, it was a good walk.
Speaking of latitude, the Tobin Trailhead of the Salado Creek Greenway is —
I always take many more pictures than I post in any given year. Here are some from this year to close out the decade. Back to posting around January 5, 2020. That year sounds so far in the future, at least for those of us who vaguely remember Sealab 2020 — and yet here it is.
Near North Side Chicago, January 2019
San Antonio, February 2019
Downtown Chicago, March 2019
Elmhurst, Illinois, April 2019
New Orleans, May 2019
Arcola, Illinois, June 2019
Pittsburgh, July 2019
Oak Park, Illinois, August 2019
Midland, Michigan, September 2019
Charlottesville, Virginia, October 2019
Schaumburg, Illinois, November 2019
Millennium Park, Chicago, December 2019Good Christmas and New Year to all.
I pinned this to the wall behind the front door today. It’ll be there until I will be obliged to take it down. Why there? Just a passing whim. I was tired of it lying around my office. It’s a plastic bag and a relic of the 1970s or the ’80s at the latest. Not only that, a souvenir from San Antonio. At one time, Record Hole was a local chain of record stores in that city. Or so I believe.
The brand is long gone, and so far I’ve found only one trace of it online — a passing mention in an article about a different and surviving record store, as of 2016. Not that I’ve looked very hard. But Record Hole is so obscure that it didn’t even make in on this list of defunct retailers, which includes Record Bar, Record Town and Record World.
Some time ago, I picked up the bag at my mother’s house — again on a whim — and brought it back home. She’d been using it to store odds and ends. I might well have bought a record at a Record Hole and left it with her 40-odd years ago. I didn’t buy many records, but I did buy a few. Or maybe my brother Jim bought something there.
At one time, Record Hole was established enough to air local TV ads. I vaguely remember them, because they featured a primitive animated version of ’70s-record-listening dude.
Who was sitting on a record on a turntable. Trippy, man. The store’s motto, which is also on the bag but upsidedown and backwards in my picture: Whatever music plays in your head, we can put in your hand.
Plastic bags, though they may last for centuries in landfills, are notoriously ephemeral when it comes to being saved elsewhere. Sure, it’s still worthless now, but some happy descendant of mine might make a fortune off the bag in, say, the 23rd century, when the notion of plastic bags and records are historic curiosities that excite collector interest.
Besides Decatur, we spent some time over the weekend in Champaign, including a short visit to the Idea Garden of the University of Illinois Arboretum.
Back in the spring, the Idea Garden was mostly just that, notional, but since then volunteers have brought the place to full flower. Literally. A small structure mid-garden was being used for an informal gardening class when we passed by. Something about garden pests. Sunflowers reaching to the sky. Taller than a grown human being. One of the volunteers told me it was a special kind that grows tall. Not a lot of gardeners like them, he said, but he did.
Elephant ears! I have fond memories of large elephant ears when I was a child. The picture is ca. 1970, of my brother Jim and I and the front-yard elephant ears. I might have been small, but that’s not why I remember our elephant ears as large — they were objectively large. That’s the way they grew for a few early years at our house in San Antonio. In later years, they came up smaller and eventually disappeared.
I’ll note the anniversary of Apollo 11 here by linking to 10 years ago. Also, I was once the sort of lad who built a Saturn V model and had coloring books that I didn’t take that seriously.
But I did more than watch TV coverage or color or build models (I had a CM and LM set, too). I had books as well and I read them avidly, along with various editions of National Geographic. None was better on Apollo 11 (at least in memory) than Apollo: Lunar Landing by James J. Haggerty, published right after the event by Rand McNally, with a 1969 copyright.
Closer to the present, we had a hot old time in Austin on July 4 three years ago. I mean that literally. Even though we were out and about fairly early that morning — our goal was the now-closed Hope Outdoor Gallery, which we soon saw — temperatures rose quickly, as you’d expect during a Texas summer.
Before (after?) we went to the gallery, we spent a few minutes walking across the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge, which crosses Ladybird Lake (Colorado River) just east of the Lamar Boulevard Bridge. In full, it’s the James D. Pfluger Pedestrian and Bicycle Bridge.
Though the heat was on, it was a nice walk across. This is the Lamar Boulevard Bridge and activity under the bridge.
In the other direction, east, is downtown Austin and a railroad bridge with prominent graffiti.
“The bridge is named for Austin architect James D. Pfluger, who designed much of the city’s hike and bike trail system, including the ones on either side of Town Lake, which are now connected by the bridge,” the Daily Texanreported when the bridge was opened in 2001.
“The walkway will also honor cyclist Chris Kern and jogger Jack Slaughter, who were killed by motorists on the Lamar bridge. Kern died in 1991 after a drunk driver rear-ended his bicycle, and Slaughter died in February 2000 when he was struck and killed by a car.”
According to the story, Kern and Slaughter have a plaque on the bridge, but we must have missed it.
When were driving through LaGrange, Texas, on the first day of the trip, I began to wonder. What’s this town known for? I know it’s something. Then I saw a sign calling LaGrange “the best little town in Texas.” Oh, yeah. Famed in song and story.
On the way to Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston, we took a quick detour — because I’d seen it on a map — to see the Beer Can House at 222 Malone St., a quick view from the car. Looks like this. Had we wanted to spend a little more time in Houston, I definitely would have visited the Orange Show. Ah, well.
We enjoyed our walk along Esplanade St. in New Orleans, where you can see some fine houses. Plus efforts to thwart porch pirates. We saw more than one sign along these lines during our walk down the street. We spent part of an evening in New Orleans on Frenchman St., which is described as not as rowdy or vomit-prone as Bourbon St., and I suppose that’s true, though it is a lively place. We went for the music.
At Three Muses, we saw Washboard Rodeo. They were fun. Western swing in New Orleans. Played some Bob Wills, they did.
At d.b.a, we saw Brother Tyrone and the Mindbenders. Counts as rock and soul, I’d say. Also good fun, though they were playing for a pretty thin Monday night crowd.
Adjacent to Frenchman St. is an evening outdoor market, the Frenchman Art Market, which we visited between the two performances. The market featured an impressive array of local art for sale, though nothing we couldn’t live without.
Something you see on U.S. 61 just outside of Natchez, Mississippi: Mammy’s Cupboard, a restaurant.More about it here.
In Philadelphia, Mississippi, Stribling St. is still around. I don’t know why it wouldn’t be, but after nearly 30 years, I wanted another look.
So is the local pharmacy run by distant cousins. Glad the chains haven’t spelled its demise.
During our drive from metro Jackson, Mississippi, to Montgomery, Alabama — connected by U.S. 80 and not an Interstate, as you might think — we passed through Selma, Alabama. I made a point of driving across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, though we decided not to get out and look around. Remarkably, the bridge looks exactly as it does in pictures more than 50 years old.
In downtown Montgomery, you can see this statue. I understand the bronze has been around since 1991, but was only recently moved to its current site not far from Riverfront Park, the river of course being the Alabama. I’d forgotten native son Hank Williams died so young. Some singers die rock ‘n’ roll deaths, some die country deaths like Hank.
Speaking of death, early in the trip, I was activating my phone — whose dim algorithm always suggests news I seldom want to see during the process — and I noticed the name “Doris Day” in the feed. I figured that could mean only one thing. Sure enough, she became the first celebrity death of the trip.
I hadn’t known she was still alive. In fairly rapid order during the trip after Ms. Day, the reaper came for Tim Conway, I.M. Pei and Grumpy Cat. I didn’t know that last one, but Lilly did.
I remember a time that Tim Conway described himself as “the funniest man in the universe” on the Carol Burnett Show. We all took that as a comedian’s hyperbole. But what if he was right? What if some higher intelligence has made a four-dimensional assessment of human humor and come to that exact conclusion?
As for Doris Day, I will try to park as close to my destinations as possible in her honor for the foreseeable future (a term I remember hearing as long ago as the ’80s in Austin).
Also in Montgomery: the Alabama State Capitol. The Alabama legislature had been in the news a lot before we came to town, as the latest state body to try to topple Roe v. Wade. That isn’t why I visited. I see capitols when I can.
From a distance. Closer. The capitol was completed in 1851, though additions have been made since then. The interior of the dome is splendid.
Actually, the Alabama House and Senate don’t meet in the capitol any more, but at the nearby Alabama State House, something I found out later. When we visited, the capitol’s House and Senate chambers seemed like museum pieces rather than space for state business, and that’s why.
Seems like hipsters haven’t discovered Decatur, Alabama, yet. But as real estate prices balloon in other places, it isn’t out of the question. The town has a pleasant riverfront on the Tennessee and at least one street, Bank St., that could be home to overpriced boutiques and authentic-experience taprooms. Of more interest to me was the Old State Bank, dating back to 1833 and restored toward the end of the 20th century. It is where Bank St. ends, or begins, near the banks of the Tennessee River.
Even more interesting is the Lafayette Street Cemetery, active from ca. 1818.
It’s more of a ruin than a cemetery, but I’m glad it has survived. During the entirety of the trip, there were plenty of random bits of the South to be seen along the way. We also listened to a lot of Southern radio on the trip — something Lilly plans to avoid on future trips, Southern or not, with her Bluetooth and so on — and we had a little game whenever we tuned into someone discussing some social problem in earnest on a non-music, non-NPR station. The game: guess how long will it be before the discussion turns to God. It was never very long.
Near the Galleria in Houston, which is a mixed-use property that includes the 1.9 million-square-foot mall of that name as well as office towers and a couple of hotels, is a local feature unlike any other: the Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park. Or more commonly, the Waterwall.
Waterwall is an apt name, with water cascading down the front. Water cascades down the back as well. According to a nearby plaque, 11,000 gallons of water spill over the walls per minute, from a height of 64 feet. John Burgee Architects, working with Philip Johnson, designed the massive water feature, apparently inspired by ancient Roman theaters.
This is a drone’s view. All we had were our own eyes to appreciate the place.
It’s a popular place to have your picture taken, front and back, but especially in the circle near the spray coming off the waterwall. More than one person asked Lilly to take their picture at the site, including the young couple above, dressed to the nines.
Completed in 1985, Waterwall was privately owned until it looked like ownership might destroy it. In 2008, the Uptown Houston Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, a local nonprofit, acquired the Waterwall and the surrounding land. That might have been when I first read about the Waterwall, but then I forgot about it.
We stayed near the Galleria — in the nicest La Quinta I’ve ever stayed at — and when I was mapping out a route to visit the mall, I noticed the Waterwall nearby on Google Maps. I remembered it instantly and knew I wanted to go. We saw it late on the afternoon of May 11.
The next morning, we checked out and headed for New Orleans. But not before we spent a while near Buffalo Bayou, the main river through metro Houston. It’s another map feature that I wanted to see with my own eyes.
The park associated with Buffalo Bayou near downtown Houston has its charms, one of which is a view of downtown Houston. That is the city’s original downtown, but at least in terms of office building density, the Galleria area now functions as another downtown for Houston. I knew that because I’ve read about the Galleria office market, but seeing it myself drove the point home.
Lilly and I walked along the Buffalo Bayou Park path for about an hour.
At one point, the landscape urged us onward.
At the tip end of Buffalo Bayou Park facing downtown is the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern. I can’t remember when I read about that. It wasn’t long ago. Maybe in the likes of Atlas Obscura. That publication saves me the trouble of writing a description, along with the embarrassment of publishing the crummy pictures that I took inside the cistern.
“Built in 1926, this 87,500-square-foot… space was one of Houston’s first underground reservoirs,” the Atlas says. “The eight-inch-thick concrete roof is supported by 221 concrete pillars reaching 25 feet high that march in rows into the dim distance.
“A public works facility for decades, an irreparable leak was eventually found in the structures walls and thus it was subsequently decommissioned in 2007. The city was preparing to demolish it when it was found by the partnership developing Buffalo Bayou Park. After briefly considering using it for parking or mulch storage, the developers decided to keep it as an unusual and attractive space for park visitors.”
We took the 20-minute tour inside. “That was cool,” Lilly said afterward, meaning it metaphorically, not literally. I was expecting the inside of the cistern to be cool like a cave, but it was closer to room temperature. Anyway, I completely agree with Lilly.
Just outside the hamlet of Serbin, Texas, if you follow your map but also keep your eyes peeled — because the map isn’t quite accurate — you’ll find yourself outside St. Paul Lutheran Church. The exterior is nice, but isn’t particularly distinctive. Inside is a different story. St. Paul is one of the Painted Churches found in Central Texas. In its case, the church was built in the late 19th century, but not decorated until 1906, when the congregation itself took up the task.
“Cross the threshold of these particular Texas churches and you’ll encounter not a simple wooden interior but an unexpected profusion of color,” says KLRU, which aired a documentary on the churches nearly 20 years ago.
“Nearly every surface is covered with bright painting: exuberant murals radiate from the apse, elaborate foliage trails the walls, wooden columns and baseboards shine like polished marble in shades of green and gray. These are the Painted Churches of Texas.
“Built by 19th-century immigrants to this rough but promising territory, these churches transport the visitor back to a different era, a different way of life. Inscriptions on the walls read not in English, but in the mother tongue of those who built them: German and Czech.”
I’ve wanted to visit the Painted Churches for some time now, but something or other has always make it inconvenient to do so. Still, potential destinations sometimes get under your skin, so I designed part of this particular driving trip to scratch that longstanding itch.
Heading south from Waco on U.S. 77 on May 11 in sometimes heavy rain — sheets of rain — we passed through such towns as Rosebud, Cameron, Rockdale and Giddings, and near the wonderfully named Old Dime Box. St. Paul Lutheran is near Giddings and the first of the four churches we visited.
Further south, in the town of Ammansville, is St. John the Baptist Church. We went there next.
A cemetery is adjacent to St. John the Baptist, which was built in 1918 and painted the next year by one Fred. Donecker of San Antonio, who seemed to specialize in church interiors.
St. Mary’s, also known as Nativity of Mary, Blessed Virgin, is in High Hill, and was built in 1906. St. Mary’s billed itself as the Queen of the Painted Churches, and it was indeed gorgeous. Unfortunately, it was also dark inside. These pictures capture a bit of its ornate interior.
St. Mary’s stained glass captured a fair share of light, even on a cloudy day. Finally, near Dubina, we visited Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church. Artist unknown (1909), but he did a fine job. By some counts, there are as many as 20 Painted Churches in Texas, so our visit wasn’t comprehensive. But after four or five such structures, you begin to get your fill of even the most beautiful ecclesiastical spaces anyway. Maybe I’ll see some of the others some other time.
Just back from a driving trip whose mileage I didn’t bother to keep track of, but it was in the thousands. Actually, only part driving. Lilly and I flew separately from Chicago to Dallas earlier this month so she could take possession of her new car — an ’05 Mazda 3 that her uncle Jay gave her, provided we could drive it from north Texas to northern Illinois. The car rattled and occasionally made other odd noises, but soldiered on all the way.
The uninspired thing to do that would have been to drive straight through, which normally would take two days by breaking the trip in Missouri, such as at the Munger Moss.
Despite being a driving trip, that would be a pedestrian way to do it. Instead I took a week off so we could take a more interesting route. We left Dallas on May 11, heading south to the vicinity of Schulenburg, Texas, to visit some of the Painted Churches, which were built by late 19th-century German and Czech congregations who gave them richly artistic interiors — all the more interesting because much of it is vernacular art.
Rain came day most of that first day on the road, but we didn’t encounter any more until yesterday in Nashville. In between the days were sunny and often hot. Everyone we talked to about the weather reported a wet spring, however, and the Southern landscape looked lush, from Texas into the Deep South and up through Tennessee.
We spent the first night in Houston. I didn’t plan it this way, but our time in Houston focused on water features: the Waterwall near the Galleria Mall that first evening (the rain was over) and Buffalo Bayou and the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern during the next morning.
The next day we drove to New Orleans, a city I haven’t visited in 30 years, and one new to Lilly, and spent two days and three nights.
We ate very well. We saw excellent live music. We rode streetcars and walked the streets of the French Quarter, Treme and the Garden District. We toured one cemetery formally and one informally, and we visited the National WW II Museum.
On May 15, we drove to suburban Jackson, Mississippi, by way of the city of Natchez and the Natchez Trace to visit our cousin Jay and his wife Kelly, who hospitably put us up for the night.
The next day we passed through Philadelphia, Mississippi, my father’s home town, stopping for a short visit — Lilly had never been there — and then went to Montgomery, Alabama, where we spent the night.
On the morning of May 17, we saw the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, both only open since last year, and the very different Alabama State Capitol, because I visit capitols when I can.
Leaving Montgomery in the early afternoon, we had enough time to visit the Ave Marie Grotto, not far north of Birmingham, and then spent the night of May 17 in Decatur, Alabama. The next morning I took a short walkabout near the Tennessee River and along Bank St., named for a handsome bank building there dating from the 1830s.
By that afternoon, we were in Nashville to visit some of my dear old friends, including one I hadn’t seen or enjoyed the fine company of since 1990. Today we did the long drive from Nashville to greater Chicago — I used to do it fairly often — arriving this evening.
Mostly, things went smoothly. Even traffic wasn’t that bad most of the time in the cities we passed through.
But while driving along Rodney Road in rural Mississippi outside Port Gibson and not far from the mighty river of that name, we suddenly came to this. That’s stagnant algae-filled water, completely covering the road. For as far as we could see into the distance. Who knows how deep it is. So we backtracked on Rodney to the main road at that point, which happened to be the Natchez Trace.
News I missed, and I miss a fair amount, which I figure is actually healthy: “For the second time in history, a human-made object has reached the space between the stars,” a NASA press release from December says.
“NASA’s Voyager 2 probe now has exited the heliosphere — the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun…
“Its twin, Voyager 1, crossed this boundary in 2012, but Voyager 2 carries a working instrument that will provide first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space.”
Voyager 2 is now slightly more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from Earth. Or 16.5 light hours. That’s still in the Solar System, though. “It will take about 300 years for Voyager 2 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly 30,000 years to fly beyond it,” NASA says.
Not long ago, the original Godzilla — Gojira, to be pedantic — appeared on TV, in Japanese with subtitles. Not that the famed atomic beast needs any subtitles. I had my camera handy. I didn’t watch it all, but that’s one way to approach televised movies. Not long ago, I watched the first 15 minutes or so of The Sting, a fine movie I’ve seen a few times all the way through. But other tasks were at hand, so I quit after Luther is murdered.
Later, I had the presence of mind to turn the TV back on and watch the last 10 minutes or so, when the sting is put on gangster Doyle Lonnegan. It’s a satisfying ending, but it got me to thinking.
A con with that many people would surely generate rumors. Just as surely, the rumors would make their way to the murderous Lonnegan, who wouldn’t rest until Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker were dead. But that’s overthinking things.
Here’s another example of a dim algorithm. Just about every time I use YouTube, I see anti-teen smoking PSAs. Or maybe they’re blanketing the medium, regardless of audience. Still, if I didn’t take up smoking 45 years ago, I’m not going to now.
That brings to mind the first time I remember seeing one of my contemporaries with a cigarette. That was about 45 years ago at a place called the Mule Stall.
The Mule Stall was a student space on the campus of my high school with a few rooms, chairs, a pool table and I don’t remember what else. It was tucked away about as far as you could get from the rest of the school, opening up to the street behind the school.
High schoolers used it, but junior high kids from the district had gatherings there occasionally as well. The event I remember might have been the wrap party for one of the plays I was in. Besides not acquiring a taste for smoking back then, I also discovered the theater wasn’t for me, except as an audience member. But ca. 1974, as a junior high school student, I did a few plays.
There we were, hanging out at the Mule Stall, when we noticed a girl named Debbie, who was in our class, pass by with a cigarette between her fingers. I didn’t know her that well, and I don’t remember much about her now, though she had curly hair, glasses and the sort of development adolescent boys pay attention to. At that moment, I guess she was on her way out to smoke the thing, though we didn’t see that.
I don’t know anything about her later life. She attended high school with us for a while, but either moved away or dropped out before the Class of ’79 graduated. I wonder if even now, she holds her cigs in yellow-stained fingers and spends part of the night coughing.
As for the Mule Stall, we had occasional high school band parties there later. One in particular involved almost everyone lining up to dance to the “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” That was fun. As Wiki accurately says, the dance was very much alive in Texas in the 1970s.
In fact, the Wiki entry has a description of the style of dance we did. Someone who did the dance seems to have written it, because this is exactly right.
“This dance was adapted into a simplified version as a nonpartner waist-hold, spoke line routine. Heel and toe polka steps were replaced with a cross-lift followed by a kick with two-steps. The lift and kick are sometimes accompanied by shouts of ‘whoops, whoops,’ or the barnyard term ‘bull s–t.’… The practice continues to this day.”
We used the barnyard term. An administration with no sense of history apparently razed the Mule Stall in the 1990s. Now the site is parking.
Good Christmas and New Year to all.
