I glance at the headline of an old newspaper that had been used to insulate one of the old log cabins that make up the museum in Frisco, CO.
“Bankers Blame Tax Laws for Securities Drop” (The Denver Post…November 7, 1937).
The Great Depression had been ongoing for over eight years.
Yesterday the Dow fell over 500 points. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Sigh…
Some 20,000 years ago, a volcanic eruption sent gouts of lava into what is now Northern California’s Hat Creek Valley. This molten rock, like any liquid, flowed downhill, gravity pulling it into the lowest channels. These rivers moved slowly, the sides and top cooling as they touched ground and air. A hardened skin slowly formed around the molten flow, creating a rock tube through which the still-liquid lava continued its downward movement. If the gradient was steep enough—and the viscosity low enough— Continue reading “Subway Cave”
My son once opined that explorers should always travel with a ship’s poet, the better to name the newly discovered.
Great Pond. Black Mountain. Rio Grande. No poet named those.
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Planning a road trip into the Rockies had dragged my map mouse across several northern California highways unknown to me. Whim uppermost, I fixed on Route 36, a skipper above Lake Almanor, until three names bade me stop: Boiling Springs Lake, Drakesbad, and Dream Lake. The first brought me sulfurous thoughts; with the second, I heard oom-pah tubas; the last was reverie.
All three of these place names Continue reading “Boiling Springs Lake”
“With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, craftsmanship dissolved miserably into creativity.” In his shop beside the flour mill, the cooper spoke flatly and firmly, with no correction possible.
It was Colonial Williamsburg, and my daughter Emily and I were breaking our cross-country drive with a hot summer’s day walk into 18th-century Virginia. Continue reading “Craft vs. Creativity”
Marty Stein and Benny Silverstein operated shoe stores in Oxnard, my California childhood’s small town. Marty’s store (Kirby’s Shoes) was on A Street’s east side, right next to my father’s men’s & boys’ clothing store. Benny’s store (GallenKamp’s Shoes) was directly across the street. Marty carried a marginally higher-priced line, but in a town that lived off three 
military bases and farming, they competed for the same clientele. The men were not friends, but they ate lunch together at least once a week, at which they spoke only lies.
Both Benny and Marty were Continue reading “A Teenager Selling Shoes”
A guest post by my oldest child, Emily.
I had this memory of my father. I was very young, and he was shining shoes. I well-remembered the smell, and the mess, and how careful he was with the polish in the little tubs. Everything was kept in a shoebox, and newspapers spread on the table, and I remember my amazement as the shoes would become transformed.
Last year I brought my daughter and my favorite clogs to my father’s house. I told Rhiannon: “Watch what Pobba can do — he will make them look new again.” She was dubious, carefully watching him unload polishes and stained toothbrushes and other such stuff from his very very old shoebox. But as the scuffed leather began to gleam, she delighted. She talked Continue reading “Shoe Polish and History…Repeating”