Who Is He
Who is he who has long white hair
Who is told it should be hanging down during a set?
Who is he who sometimes wears shades when singing
But, for the brand, never his readers? Oops he has them on!
Who is he who has a special redhead by his side
With the "merch" and calendar,
Who books his gigs, keeps him busy, and takes care of the social media footprint
And who I study to learn how to market my writing?
Who is he who travels the world
With a band waiting in every country
Or at least it seems that way from our usual front-row seats?
Well, tonight we're in the back, thankfully it's a small room.
Who is he who hit a bear in Alaska
Or according to the redhead, the bear hit them,
And I've heard open a set with a description of a
Thousand pounds on stage coming from southern Monroe County?
Who is he who can switch from the blues, to country,
To heartfelt originals in a flash,
And often travels with three pedal steels,
Plus two or more guitars that have names? One is Louise.
We can't put a date on when we met him
But we're sure glad we did,
Our music appreciation has expanded
And our group of music friends continues to grow.
We appreciate you Son Henry or
Karl Henry Mann, whatever your name is on any given day.
We love the boot stompin', chair dancin' singer man
We follow around town to old places new to us and new places to us all.
Thank you for the music that fills our souls.
Happy birthday our special friend.
We love celebrating with you and Carolina.
I’m a lady that requires regular potty stops. Some travel companions would become impatient with me, but not my Bob. I only have to ask, and he stops even if it’s only been half an hour since we finished breakfast. He never tells me to limit my coffee and sometimes before we find a suitable place I feel like the lady below. I’d never seen a sign like this so had to share. Some of you might be thinking,,,TMI. Sorry. I thought it was fun.
While at this pit stop we watched a young man get out of a vehicle and drop an empty water bottle on the ground. I wish I had had the nerve to go pick it up, hand it to him and say, “I think you dropped this.” He went in the station/store too, and on the way out purposely stepped on the bottle and left it. That young man is not my kind of person and I’m glad we saw little of that attitude on our trip. Unfortunately that type of attitude was prevalent in Barstow and we were very glad to leave that town behind. Mind you that doesn’t apply to any hotel or restaurant patrons/workers we met.
Leaving Barstow we saw more arid desert and mountains. It’s hard to accept California is the most populated state in the US when half of it looks like the above picture.
Molly Brown’s had been recommended so that’s where we went for breakfast. The service was tops, Sharon told us we had an East Coast twang in our speech and I had yet another style of Huevos Rancheros. I sent the picture of the menu to my adult kids and my son wanted to know if anyone ever orders the Big Breakfast. We were told families do and then share. I wish we had seen that happen.
We haven’t found any funny bathroom signs lately, the one above doesn’t count, so I decided to share the sign below. It’s a good way to live one’s life.
Above is an example of “grass” in this region. It doesn’t exist. Many homes have just dirt, this place had what they refer to here as “crunchy” grass. I have to say I will enjoy seeing our green, full of weeds, lawn and maple trees when we get home. Below are two pictures from the “Bottle Ranch” we had also been told not to miss. I’m not sure what the date of 1883 refers to, but the sign proves we were on the road we wanted. The bottle displays were many, varied, and colorful. It appeared someone had made all the bottle trees by welding spokes on an iron pole. The welding was rough, but the job got done. I only noticed the quality because my father was a welder in his day.
We continued on historic 66 through the mountains, again, on our way to San Bernardino. The silver ribbon through the center of the picture is the line of traffic. We learned later, most of them headed toward Los Angeles.
We found this nice mural outside a Rt 66 museum on 5th in San Bernardino. The building housed the original McDonald’s opened in 1948. Today it belongs to a happy, singing on the street, African American gentleman that welcomed us with song and a big smile. Inside the take-out restaurant we entered the museum for free. I can’t say I’ve ever been greeted that way anyplace I’ve visited. We will talk about it for a long time. Of course when he saw our New York license plate, he assumed we were from New York City, but that’s common and we didn’t try to correct him.
When we got back in the car we kissed our EZ 66 Guide good-bye and put it away. We left the route to go south to Palm Springs and left the traffic behind. We’ve driven in LA before, and have no desire to do it again, though we have family and friends there.
The mountains are still present, but have a bit different look and feel. We once again found ourselves surrounded by windmills. These weren’t as big as the ones we saw in Oklahoma, but the number was comparable.
And still the mountains prevail.
Our GPS had the last laugh today when we got in to Palm Springs. It took us to the locked back gate of our hotel. We figured it out, eventually. We are among flowers, palm trees, and it appears a lot of shopping with few residents. There has to be houses away from the highways we can’t see.
After some decompression time, we jay-walked across the street to Shanghai Reds. Siri came through again. We had tasty fresh oysters as an appetizer and then a wonderful dinner served by Javier. I had cioppino, a seafood stew. We were told the seafood comes in fresh each day from Santa Monica. Then we stayed to listen to the blues band. We love an empty dance floor and one song was good for our old style of swing, that is ours alone, no lessons under our belts. To get to dance under an open sky is a huge treat. It’s a lot of fun, more so than dancing in the rain, which we have also done.
The menu above; and our oysters below.
My Cioppino; the fresh scallops were the best. I soaked up some of the broth with garlic bread.
The blues band. Who knows what their name is, but we enjoyed their talents. And I don’t know the significance of the “Union Ice Company” either.
We are officially off Rt 66, but our time in California is not done. I’ll be back tomorrow night.
Each night when I finish writing, Bob proof reads my work, and then I publish it for you to enjoy. Writing daily is one of the perks of this trip. If I’m smart I will continue to do it when I get home. If you know me, you know there is this long manuscript waiting for my attention once I get back to New York. Not the city, but over near Niagara Falls. When you are out of New York state, people assume you are from the city. We have given up and say Niagara Falls, because they know that is not near the city. It’s all a part of living in western New York State.
I want to take a minute to thank a couple of people that have helped make this blog process a fun thing to do. I belong to an international writing group called Carrot Ranch Literary where we write 99 word flash fiction stories. Charli Mills is the lead buckaroo. She led a writing retreat in Vermont this past July that I was lucky enough to attend and she introduced me to an author by the name of Craig Childs. Craig’s books are step by step “walks” through canyons in Southwest USA. He wrote about a time his walking partner looked for him and he was scribbling in his notebook. From that example I learned to scribble in a notebook at all our meals, during tourist breaks, and in the hotel room. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to give you all the details I do, sort of in the right order. Also at that retreat was Ann Edall-Robson. She had a camera with her and took many pictures of the same thing then later picked one picture to share. So I take many shots, and before I send the pictures from my phone to my computer, I check for the best ones and delete the extras. You, my friends, get the details and the best. Thanks for sharing our trip with us and thank you Charli and Ann for teaching me.
Bob and I live in a suburb of Rochester, NY. The Monroe county population is 748,000. We have nice neighborhoods and not so nice, but I have never seen the number of examples of expected crime as I have since we hit Oklahoma. The below sign was at our hotel in Amarillo, but we have been noticing bars on windows, businesses with not only fences, but barbed wire on top of the fences. The farther into the southwest, the more noticeable the security becomes, even on personal, inexpensive real estate. What a sad testament to our current society.
We enjoyed our dinner at the Big Texan last night so much, we went back for breakfast. Once again there were big rigs parked along the side street. If the truckers get off the highway to eat someplace, you can bet it’s good. We could get close enough to the building for good pictures this morning.
Just west of Amarillo, Texas is the Cadillac Ranch. The story goes, a rich man bought a Cadillac years ago and it was a lemon. He got mad and buried it nose first in his field. To prove his point, he continued doing it. I don’t know when the “tagging” started, but found out today you have to take your own paint, park 200 yards away and walk to the site. Last week some “person” decided to burn one of the cars. Today it is almost all covered in paint again. The only real damage was melting the tires off the rims. (Rhonda, it’s all right!)
Below is the line of cars. All but the front one have their tires.
We have seen little trash in the fields and along the roads, except here. Loads of empty paint cans and smashed remnants. Sad, but almost expected.
You never know who will talk to next on the Mother Road. The fellow that owns the van shown below is from Switzerland. We figured him to be in his mid to late thirties. He shipped the vehicle and his Rhodesian Ridgeback (hound) dog over so he could travel Rt. 66. We didn’t get a chance to ask if the dog had to go through a quarantine process. We did ask which language the dog answered better to. The answer was, “It’s about equal.”
As we left Amarillo, the speed limit went up to 75 mph. Among the windmills, cows, and brown range, here goes a UPS truck down the road in front of us at 75 mph.
We made our first stop in New Mexico in the town of Tucumcari. Below is a typical RV park. Really! No trees, no pool, no nothing, except a place to park. Not to my liking. And my niece and her husband are now traveling through the mountains in Washington state. Now that’s some scenery compared to this.
Below is the inside of the Pow Wow Restaurant and Lizard Lounge also in Tucumcari. Take a look at the booth and figure out how many people are eating. Four, right? Wrong. The older couple are painted on the wall. They fooled us too. The paintings above the booths are top notch. The next picture is a mural of the Lizard Lounge. We were disappointed we didn’t get to experience the night life there.
Below is a new apartment building in the same town. Bob works in construction so we are always interested in buildings, bridges and steel structures. He sent this picture to his office to see if they were interested in building this type of structure in New York. You can guess the answer. Next to our car, on that truck, is our needed Wyoming license plate. We are still missing some of the east coast states and Hawaii.
Below is a good example of how, even residences, are barred and locked.
Our three hundred miles to cover today, that we thought would be a grueling day in the car, turned into only 4 1/2 hours with the 75 mph speed limit. The roads might be a little bumpy, but they are straight for the most part. We did change elevation gradually, which I only realized because my ears popped a couple of times. We got in to Albuquerque about 4 pm. I took a quick nap, a shower, and now I am writing this is in a jumping hotel lounge with live music as an accompaniment. The bar tender is ridiculously slow, but the “floor show” is great, and we even got to dance to a Patsy Cline song, before dinner!
Ray and Eva performing in the lounge with only a lead guitar and a tamborine. They played old country, spanish folk songs, and other songs the crowd knew.
The crowd, some from a tour traveling on a Carolina Tours bus, some from the local area, and us. What a blast. Now we need some dinner in the restaurant located in the hotel. And I’ll get to bed before 11 pm. Yeah.
- Vinyl records are referred to based on rotational spee. The RPM’s, or revolutions per minute of the more popular vinyls are:
- 45s
- 33 1/3
- 78s
Other features of vinyl records included reproductive accuracy or “fidelity” (High Fidelity or Hi-Fi, Orthophonic and Full-Range), their time capacity (long playing or single), and the number of channels of audio provided (mono, stereo or quadraphonic).
Vinyl records were also sold in different sizes such as: 12 inch; 10 inch; 7 inch
Vinyl records left the mainstream in 1991. They continued to be manufactured and have started to become increasingly popular with collectors and audiophiles.
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When I was in grade school our house was the local teenager hangout in our little town. We had a good record player in a brown wood cabinet and lots of 45’s. Most of them came from the local bar when they were rotated out of the juke box. My sisters and their friends would sit on the floor and discuss in which order the records would be placed on the spindle. The player could handle about eight but any more than that and they wouldn’t be level anymore so the speed would be off and the words would come out in a drawl. Sometimes someone would put the record on so the B side played and there would be a commotion about, “Who played that?” I tell people I learned to walk to the music of the ’50’s.
My neighbor had a record player and a few 33’s. You had to have good coordination to set the needle in the free space between songs so you could hear just the song you wanted. We would go to her room and shut the door so her little brothers couldn’t bother us.
My time as an Air Force dependent wife was spent married to my high school sweetheart. When he was stationed in England in the mid ’70’s we would go together to the local Pub. He would make a bet with an older “Bloke” that he could tell them the year one of their favorite old songs was popular. They all thought he was too young to know, so they would take the bet. He got a lot of free drinks with that ploy and no one cared it was me that knew the answer. Good memories.
I’ve lived and gone to weddings in a lot of different states and in England. The thing that makes me feel like I’ve come home is when I get to dance in the locale I grew up in and I dance like everyone else does. Until I traveled I didn’t know dancing was colloquial like language.
Sue Spitulnik 