Into the future...

I did it today, I gave the go-ahead to have my new computer built. After years of dreaming of what I wanted in a new 'puter I had almost just decided to go the route of the majority of Americans and Dude, order a Dell.

However I have been talking to my friend Graylon Coffin for years about building one and he can deliver a custom built machine for about the price of a beefed up moderately priced Dell consumer box. Graylon is one of the authorized Intel dealers here and a wizard. His custom built machine will not be much more powerful than what I could get with Dell, but the real advantage is that he will not add all the peripheral and background programs [i.e. nonsense] that Dell would stick in the box, thus allowing it to operate at a greater speed.

From what I have now the new machine will be like going from the Wright Brothers biplane to the space shuttle. Top speed is not that important for me, so I'm getting a 2.8 GHz processor, but graphic quality and the ability to handle large graphics is. I'm getting a top of the line graphics card and 1 Gb of memory. I have 48 Mb of memory now. An 80 Gb hard drive may not sound too large to some geeks I know......but I have 3.2 Gb now and I have never filled it up. I'll be saving pictures in larger resolution from here on in.

From where I sit now, it should be a thing of beauty. And, Graylon designs these things to be easily upgraded or to mix and match hardware, unlike the consumer boxes that, at some point, you are stuck with what you have. Happy Computing...!

Barney is gone....

Barney Fife, Don Knotts, has died. It was a shock when I read this news a moment ago on another Blog, from Australia of all places. That was the universal esteem in which Barney was held, the classic loser with a huge heart. A great piece of my childhood is gone. It must have been prophetic that Jack gave me a DVD set of the early Andy Griffith Show for Christmas two months ago today.

Barney made the show as much, or possibly more, than Andy, Opie or Aunt Bea. But all together they were great, a real slice of American life. When Deputy Sheriff Fife took a detective job in Raleigh and moved from Mayberry the show was never the same afterwards. What else can be said, or need be said about Barney. So I will just Nip It, Nip It, Nip It!

2 Good Chutes....

Today's Picture of the Day is one of my more unusual shots. See if you agree.

Somewhere, I hope, I still have a Beta format tape of a complete airborne drop from take off to landing. I didn't jump but filmed the whole operation from the cargo bay of a C-130 and from the cockpit. I haven't seen it in over two decades but as I recall it was really a great film. From the cockpit I got good shots of troops exiting the aircraft directly ahead. As I was usually going out the back it was something I had never seen before. One of the most memorable parts of any jump was that instant as the chute opened and you got a glimpse of the aircraft flying away, something very few people get to experience.

In all my jumps I never had a malfunction or was injured on landing, but I saw some close calls and had one myself. Once jumping from a group of five C-141's, one of the trailing aircraft was too low in the formation. As I exited the aircraft my first view after the chute opened was of a massive jet plane flying right towards me. Luckily the pilot spotted the problem and executed a quick turn raising his wing over me and my fellow jumpers. I can still imagine myself snagged on that wing or perhaps sucked into a jet engine! On another occasion I spotted a jumper near me with his chute in a "cigarette roll", where the nylon had wrapped around itself on opening transforming the chute into an olive drab streamer. This poor trooper was plummeting to earth at deadly speed. Luckily, the army trains it's jumpers well and he was quickly able to open his reserve chute and make a safe landing. All part of the job.

Midland Panorama...

Several weeks ago I mentioned being high atop the Midland County Courthouse with Judge John Hyde. I left the reason unstated. The reason, now stated, is that we wanted to reproduce a panoramic photograph to match one that I had from 1926. My new panoramic view matches as closely as possible the shot taken in 1926 though from the old courthouse the original photographer was closer to the street than I and I did experience a slight degree of distortion due to the panoramic lens I used to shoot the images that make up this new shot. I've become interested in who the 1926 photographer was and what kind of camera and lens he used to shoot his wide angle image. I've not yet added the numerical reference points to match the pictures, but again the points in the old and new photos match up very nicely.

Adios Cox.....!

Today was a day I have anticipated for years. Walking boldly to the side of the estate, implement in hand, and with a deft whack...snipping the Cox Cable connection. Here I am caught at the moment of snipping. The gratification was immediate. As I've said previously I lost all love for Cox when they charged me $100 just to change my account over to this address when I bought the home. Also gone is the Southwestern Bell line which I will not miss either since they are not really the "old" SW Bell whom I trusted earlier in life. An added benefit of the line snipping was the beautifiction of the back lawn as both the Cox and SBC lines were strung with such inepptitude that they sagged to within barely 10 feet from the ground causing an unsightly eyesore.

All systems with Grande are up and running smoothly and I have to say that the experience with them, compared to Cox, was Grande. The service techs were nice, polite, helpful and efficent and the home office even called the next day to ask if we were satisfied and everything was functioning as ordered. What a change!

Isn't it Grande...!

I'm spending my lunch hour today, well OK probably the rest of the day, at home with Charles of Grande Communications. That's Charles above, tapping into the main cable feed in the alley. We are finally moving into warp speed with our communications systems. A move long overdue, if for no other reason than I think that Cox Communications is a surley band of foul smelling carpetbaggers. I've held that opinion ever since they charged me a smooth $100 just to flip a switch when I moved into the Bedford Dr. estate and transfered my account to this address.

But Cox will soon be a thing of the past, as will Earthlink, SBC Global Communications aka AT&T and EV1.com. These will all be replaced by one wire with Grande's bundled service encompassing TV, Broadband, phone service, a free hot breakfast everyday and fresh flowers for a year...or something like that. Plus blinding Internet speeds compared to our two dial-up systems. As much as we do on the Internet it's amazing that we've survived with a dribble from the digital hose for so long.

The only bad side to the move is that I probably will have to replace my computer that was built during Herbert Hoover's administration with a new machine. Seems that 1920's technology just doesn't have the horsepower for modern systems. Come to think of it that's not really so much of a downside. My 'puter has 3.2 Gigs of hard drive space, 48 Megs of RAM and the cathode ray tubes keep burning out. A new one is in order.

An interesting sidebar to the Grande visit is that Charles is yet another Army Veteran who got his technical training via Uncle Sam. The last communications technician at the estate had also been an Army Vet, a Ranger to boot. I always enjoy talking with the guys about their experiences. And the Vets seem to be the most professional and hard working guys around. See you on the new high speed super cyber highway.

Another passing...

Time marches on, which is a good thing lest we become bored. But on it's march it slowly starts to leave some loved ones behind. One more important person in my life has left the march. Mrs. Victoria Chapple died last Friday exactly one month shy of her 100th birtday.

I've always described Victoria as my third grandmother, but really she was more like the kindly great-aunt who was always glad to see you. I believe that Mrs. Chapple was probably the first person my family met when we moved to Midland 46 years ago. She was our next door neighbor from then until now and knowing her she would have been the first on the block to bring cupcakes [she made great cupcakes] to the new neighbors. She was a great friend to my Mom as is her daughter Tohya today. It's going to be awfully hard knowing that Mrs. Chapple is not at home next door anymore....she has been for five decades in the Craig family life.

Victoria had an amazing story, some of the details you can read in the link above. Born in Panama when Teddy Roosevelt was the President, daughter of a Panamanian Supreme Court Judge, her brother an ambassador to France and a girl so lovely that she was chosen the Queen of the Panamanian Carnival....their equivalent of Mardi Gras. She attended school in London, taught english and she later married a handsome young army doctor stationed in Panama and made a life with him which eventually brought them to Midland in 1936.

Victoria was without a doubt the kindest, sweetest and most giving person alive. As my old friend Bill Stallings in Houston said today when I told him the news, "well I really didn't know her very well, but I do remember that she was very nice to all the kids and gave out homemade cupcakes for Halloween". Yup that was Victoria. Except that she also had a great accent, sounding like a very sophsiticated Charo...

Up on a roof.....

Today's "Picture of the Day" finds me up on the roof of the Midland County Courthouse along with District Judge John Hyde and his bailiff Rusty. I'll leave you to talk among yourselves about what we were doing there. However if your choice is that I was about to be hung you are wrong. Maybe next time, but in due course you will find out the purpose of our excersion.

I have to tell you that it is lovely from the top of the Courthouse, but today it was also cold and blustery. And also, there are no side nor parapets to the top of the courthouse so one can take some great pictures if he looks over the side.

Internet Journey.....

In the last several days I've put the Internet to work in ways that it's inventor, Al Gore, could never have imagined. The modern Internet contains so much data and ways to retrieve it that I am more amazed all the time. Some things done with the data can be for nefarious purposes, but some result in good things. Such is my story today.

It started several days ago when my friend Bill Loos sent me some interesting links on Microsoft's mapping site TerraServer which showed some old WWII bombing targets in West Texas. I'll share these in a later post. I had tried TerraServer some years ago, but found it somewhat lacking, especially in comparison to Google's map function. But apparently TerraServer has been greatly enhanced since my last visit and I decided to explore some aerials of homes I have lived in and the homes of my grandparents in St. Louis.

I found my Mothers' parents home in Webster Groves where I had spent many an early Christmas. The house was built in the late 1890's and is a marvel, all wood, three stories on a beautiful street. You can see it here on Rock Hill Rd. It is on the far left at center, the second house down with a swimming pool, a modern addition. My Grandparents lived there from the late 1930's until the early 1960's.

Next I went a mile or two away to the home in Kirkwood Mo. where my Dad grew up at 44 Hill Drive seen directly above the red dot. A home that my Grandfather designed and built in the mid 1930's. I helped clean the house out in 1995 after my Grandmother and Grandfather had passed away so I had more recent history with this home, where I had spent much time over the years. And this is where the interesting part of the story really begins, for in viewing these homes I came to realize that with all the 1000's of photos I've taken over the years, I had none of these homes that were so important in my life. I've often regretted not taking a camera to St. Louis a decade ago to record all the memories.

I have had some experience in researching addresses on the Internet using such sites as 411 Locate and Anywho.com but not where I knew virtually none of the information about the occupants. However in browsing 411 Locate I came to a reverse address lookup. Type in the address known and amazingly it will give you the names and phone number of the current owner. I did so on the Kirkwood address and swiftly came up with that information, a Bill and Michelle A. With a little trepidation I called the phone number and sure enough it was the correct home but I spoke with a Nanny who was quite a little suspicious of a strange caller who wanted a picture of the house, even though I explained the story of why. She said she would leave a note.

Wondering whether my message would get through, I decided to explore futher. I remembered hearing that the person[s] who had bought the house from the estate was an attorney, so I Googled attorneys in St. Louis and immediately hit upon Michelle A. at a major lawfirm that had a very good website with biography and email contact. So...today I sent an email to Michelle and within hours I had heard from her! Though surprised that I had tracked them down, I think Michelle understood my purpose and was glad to learn some of the history of the house. Surprisingly she said that her husband is an attorney in St. Louis and has quite a love of art and art history, which is what attracted him to the house. My grandfather was an attorney, an artist and had quite an impressive art collection and being somewhat of a Bohemian had desiged the house with quite an artistic touch.

Michelle promised to send some photos of the house, which has been given a much needed make over. Something that I could tell had been done just from the aerial photo. Michelle seems like quite a nice person and apparently looked over BigGoldDog.com for she made a nice reference to Tres in her second email. I hope to hear more about them and now it's on to try and contact the owners of my Mother's old home on Rock Hill Rd. Hope they're as nice!

Updates....

First, a quick update to yesterday's story of the historic home photograph. An immediate response to the possible identity of the house was offered in an email by alert reader Bob P. who wrote....

"We moved to Midland in 1944 and lived a few blocks north of this house, it was known as the Midkiff home. I have enjoyed seeing your photos of old Midland, as they bring back memories of Midland while going to high school here. My grandfather came to Midland in the early 1880's and ranched southeast of here for many years. I think the brown stone house in your blog was where Mollie McCormick lived, she was Leona Bryant Smith's mother."

Thanks Bob, I'll have to do more research into both houses.

A second update is to our previously told story of the mysterious "harmonic hum". I've been waiting until I was sure of the outcome, but it appears that the hum has departed as eerily as it appeared. I noticed this a week or so ago while walking the Big Gold Dog one morning. As we ambled down the alley about half way through the walk, it hit me that something was not the same as previous mornings. The hum was gone. I thought that maybe it was just that the wind was from the east wafting the hum away from us, but when the wind turned back from the west the result was the same.....no hum.

When I am at the old stadium walking most days I think I can still hear the motor in the distance that was causing the hum and that, logically, something has been fixed or adjusted, but I can't help wondering if the fact that Father Rodney at St. Ann's Catholic Church was also bothered by the hum has anything to do with it's disappearance. Prayer does work miracles!

History tour...

My family has lived in Midland for 46 years now and in a town the size of Midland one would think that he knew almost all the history and historic places. But that really is not the case. Probably, I'm much more knowledgeable on places and events around the town than the average citizen but still I have much more to learn.

Today I decided to spend a couple of hours taking some photos of places I have been interested in. First, I took many shots of an old stone house just north of downtown, a house made of the sandstone which came from the original Midland County Courthouse. There were originally several of these homes on Colorado St. but one of the two remaining homes burned several years ago and was torn down. I wanted to capture the last one while it still stands. Sadly, until just recently, no one in Midland in a position to take action has seemed much interested in preserving our structural heritage. A prime example was the demolition of the train station decades ago.

With my love of trains my next stop was to take a close-up of a train traveling through downtown, something I've wanted to do for a long time. By close up I mean within about 15-20 feet from the tracks. At our home, about a mile from the tracks, it seems like we hear a train about every five minutes. But trying to catch one coming through town while attempting to photograph it is a different thing indeed. I waited by the tracks for over 45 minutes without the Cannonball Express making an appearance.

Not to be discouraged I moved on to a house on the west side of South Big Spring St. about a mile from downtown. I'd seen it from the road as I drove by many times but never had been any closer. This house looks to have been build in the late 1800's or early 1900's and would have been some distance from the center of town at the time. Once, one could tell, it had been a rather substantial home for early Midland. Though still lived in, it is in very bad disrepair and sits surrounded by old commercial buildings and some small ramshakle homes. Seen here in the "Picture of the Day" I have digitally removed the surrounding buildings, trash and old cars and given the shot a slight colored pencil effect making it appear somewhat as though it were still outside of town as it once was.

I'm not sure whose home this was but I've sent the photo for identification to my friend Judge John Hyde who has become somewhat the resident early Midland history expert. Judge Hyde and I have discussed further ways to enlarge my Old Midland website to encompass more history and photos of Midland past. To that end he and I are going atop the County Courthouse this week to take a panoramic view of downtown showing the same scene as appears in the first photo of the Old Midland website. How it looked then and the way it is today. Hope to have it up soon. And if you have any knowledge of the home pictured today, please let me know.

Snoopy Dawg.....

Today I'd like to introduce you to Snoopy. As I tell some people on our daily walk, he's my "spare dog". Actually he's become quite a good friend though he belongs to the Mladenka's down the street.

I generally walk the Big Gold Dog down the alley, which passes behind the Mladenka's house....and Snoopy's backyard. I don't know when, it has been a long time, but Snoopy started to jump the fence in his own yard to join us on our walk. For a long time he was very wary and wouldn't come near me and barely near the Big Gold Dog. But as time has gone on he warmed up and now looks very glad to see and smell Tres and will stand by my side while I pat him and rub his ears.

We all agree that it's not a good idea to have your family pet out roaming the streets and the Mladenka's eventually raised the height of the wall you see in the photo. The wall in this image is deceptive, it's well over 6 ft. tall. It makes Snoopy work a little harder to get over, but as you can tell he can't be discouraged by a thing as trivial as a six foot wall in joining us.

Two summers ago, I believe, Julie started joining me on our walks for a period. She wasn't aware of Snoopy and his behavior. This was when the wall was lower and Snoopy prefered to jump the fence under the cedar trees at the corner at the corner of the backyard. Well as we approached the Mladenka's stretch of the alley, Snoopy decided to come on over. It looked like a big black dog fell directly out of the cedar trees into our path....scaring the peewaddlin' out of Julie.

Snoopy will walk with Tres and Me where ever we go, but when we turn for our home, Snoopy turns for his and jumps back into his own yard, to await the next days adventure.