Time Fishing

"Stift Station" Sign

2012-02-10T18:12:00.000-06:00

I'm a bit torn on this one. The sign as it appears today is classy, but totally devoid of neon. It used to be a sign for Little Rock Paint & Wallpaper Co., which has been gone for a long time. Even when other businesses were in this building it kept that sign. But recently it changed to this. Here's what it used to look like. Judge for yourself.

"Thrift" Sign, Stift Station

2012-02-09T18:45:00.001-06:00

Classy.

This sign is just a block down from Buice Drugs. Signs from the 1950s and earlier tend to look like this in the last days of their lives. It's sad. Google Streetview from 2007 shows a business called the "Broom Closet" here, but the sign wasn't in much better shape then than now.

Buice Drugs, Stift Station

2012-02-08T18:20:00.000-06:00

Google Map

An excellent old neon sign in the Stift Station neighborhood near downtown Little Rock. The owner, George Wimberly, recently died at age 92 or so. The interior is cleared out and I wonder what will happen to this institution. By the way, it's pronounced like "vice."

More photos from Stift Station to follow. A bit of background after the jump.

Welcome to Stift Station!

Stift Station (god that's hard to type) is an old suburb of Little Rock a bit west of downtown. In better days, the streetcars would come all the way up Markham, and there was a station at the top of the hill. Hence the name. Nowadays it's probably the third tier down in the hilly older neighborhoods west of downtown; the other two are Hillcrest ($$) and the Heights ($$$).

The Djinn of Centre Place

2012-02-07T18:00:00.000-06:00

Google Map

One of the more characteristic architectural details on any building in downtown Little Rock. There's four of those guys on the Centre Place building, and I bet they've been holding up those columns for at least 100 years. Rough work.

The Rebirth of Argenta

2012-02-06T07:35:00.000-06:00

Downtown North Little Rock, 1990s

I've been talking about downtown North Little Rock for a while, so how about the story of its rise from death.

See, in the 1990s, NLR's downtown, just across the river from Little Rock, was laced with crime and decay. What was once a place for the town's many industrial and railroad workers to live and shop had become a dried-up slum, a place for people to slink through the darkness and murder or be murdered.

The houses looked like this.

The lords of this shunned land bought up the houses and turned them into slums. The businesses had long since fled to the suburbs, and the only holdouts were the city government, who every day fled before the sun sank. Main Street had become one-way, a funnel back across the river to civilization. It was just the way to get home. In the 1970s through 1990s, half of the district was scooped up and thrown away with the trash. Most of the houses around downtown were marked as "unsalvageable" by urban renewal.

And this.

So what happened?
Simple.

Argenta. It was the old name for North Little Rock. A few of the still-surviving buildings and businesses on Main Street bore this name, like Argenta Drugs. But it wasn't widely known. Sandra Taylor Smith of the North Little Rock History Commission surveyed about 300 buildings in the district (sometimes traveling with cops for safety), then requested the National Register of Historic Places to list the downtown as a historic district.

At first, she was laughed at. Historic districts were the rich neighborhoods, the prosperous ones, not blue collar cities. But the National Park Service was impressed with what it saw, and the listing went through.

The strip of crumbling buildings became the "Argenta Arts District." From then on, a team of dedicated homeowners and entrepreneurs surged into the city and changed it. The homes were repaired, art galleries and restaurants moved in, and Main Street was made two-way again.

Above and below: The same two houses from the previous pictures.

Now, Argenta is a desirable place to live. There's stuff going on all the time. But there's still work to be done.

As you walk north, evidence of North Little Rock's ruined past become evident. There are still abandoned storefronts and decrepit neighborhoods.

A walk over the Main Street Viaduct and you can see some surviving evidence of North Little Rock's industrial past, too.

The concrete barriers of the viaduct, typical for 1920s and 1930s highway bridges

Old houses near the railroad

Where the railroad ends

Discarded tracks

There's work to be done. But for once I'm optimistic.

-Jonesy

The Lost Rialto, North Little Rock

2012-02-01T19:04:00.000-06:00

Note: Haircuts, 35 cents.

Continuing through the Argenta Historic District, we come to one landmark that left us years ago. The Rialto Theater shares a name with another one of my favorite places. This art deco beauty was torn down in the 1970s or 1980s as part of what they called "urban renewal" (my fist). Guess what's in it's place these days.

Old fire station, North Little Rock

2012-01-31T16:01:00.003-06:00

Google Map

Downtown North Little Rock's old fire station. Abandoned for years, it was purchased by the city and renovated to serve as the William F. Laman Library and the headquarters of the North Little Rock History Commission. They even replaced the old fire poles!

Aside: I actually visited the NLR History Commission today, and the director, Sandra Taylor Smith, told me a little more about the Baker house with its amazing tower. Turns out that story I told wasn't exactly true - a black man was probably driven out of his house in the late 19th century, but it took place at a different house (which is also amazing). I'll probably blog about that later.

My city, 1910

2012-01-30T13:48:00.000-06:00

Google Map. Open in a new tab for super-size.

Little Rock, my city. From the Arkansas River, 1910. Very little of this scene still exists today. The Capital Hotel is a notable survivor and its roof can be seen behind the flat water tower just right of center. Also quite visible are the painted ads that would today be ghost signs.

Image courtesy of Shorpy.

Argenta Drug Co. Sign, North Little Rock

2012-01-27T07:39:00.003-06:00

Downtown North Little Rock

Argenta Drug Co. has been in North Little Rock since 1885 or so and still operates as a drugstore. The sign is in sad shape and I don't think the neon is still functional, but it's a great example of an art form that has all but vanished in the 21st century.

100th Post: Downtown Dreams

2012-01-26T08:55:00.000-06:00

Someone caught a big time fish.

Over the course of the last three years and 99 posts, I've been to a lot of forlorn places. I've seen broken windows, fallen bricks, crumbling mortar, long-dead dreams, ghost signs, signs of ghosts, signs of future ghosts. Whole buildings missing like teeth. Parking lots put in their places. Main Streets empty of the souls they were built for.

Lots of forlorn places.
This isn't one of them.

Today, we're going to talk about a YMCA. I'm surprised I haven't spoken about them before, actually. The Young Men's Christian Association started in 1844 and established activity centers in the hearts of American cities great and small. Their buildings were usually multistory and grand - here's a good example from Norfolk, Virginia. And another here.

Google Map

Today, Ys look like that (above), if they still exist. In a lot of places, Little Rock included, the YMCA is a dying breed. Actually the above Y was the last one in Little Rock and it closed in December.

Google Map

The Y first showed up in Little Rock in 1885. Downtown went through three buildings since then, with the first one burning around 1915, the second built not far from there, and a third built in 1928 a few blocks from the second. We're talking about the third one.

If you squint, you can read the letters.

It was a fixture of downtown Little Rock. When Bill Clinton was governor, he would jog on the roof. In the 80s a TV movie was filmed inside. But by then white flight had bled downtown of all of its residents, and the Y was forced to close the building due to lack of interest.

It sat like that for 20 years.

Until 2010, that is, when Brad and Shellie Barnett bought the building from a holding company that hadn't put it to any good use. The roof was leaking, the paint was chipping, etc., etc. But that didn't matter to them. To them, the YMCA was a spark of life for a downtown Little Rock that desperately needed it.

So the Barnetts are repairing the YMCA. They live inside. Brad has an insurance agency on the first floor, and some businesses will be moving in later this year. I called the Barnetts, and they graciously gave me a tour of the building. It's really like nothing you've ever seen before.

The mission-style elements are everywhere, mixed in with fanciful Greek reliefs and columns. It feels like a hybrid of an Italian palazzo, a Spanish mission and the palace at Minos.

Oh. And the tile work.

It's amazing, and it's everywhere, absolutely everywhere. Just look at that staircase, where every step has a different design. (By an odd quirk, Shellie told me, the city still technically owns the tile work.) And check out this gem:

This would have meant something entirely different in 1928 than it does now. Besides that, the floor tiles are covered with symbols like the fleur de lis and others. All different. Everywhere.

There's a plaza in the center with a fountain:

The fountain looks like this.

You can walk on some of the rooftops:

Work in progress, of course.

The above shot was formerly walled in and covered with cheap, 1970s materials. When it was taken out the Barnetts were surprised to find the beautiful floor tiles you can see there. (The 1970s addition looked like this.)

Did I mention there's a pool?

It's tough to see by looking at the pictures, but the whole thing is made of tile. The floor, the sides, everything. Shellie told me some of the pool experts she had visit were completely dumbfounded by that detail. Interestingly, one stipulation of the Barnetts using the building was that they must only use the pool for personal purposes. I know, right?

There's a bunch more that I didn't get to see, like an old basketball court and the rooms where people would spend the night (It's fun to stay at the YMCA, remember?). Here are some more exterior shots:

Bricks and Gutters

The plans call this a "balcony," but I wouldn't stand on it

You can see Regions Bank photobombing there

Left bars are original, right are near-perfect reconstruction

A new lantern, hand-made

More ornate bars

SPIRIT - MIND - BODY

Ahh. I could go on and on. The Barnetts are really doing something wonderful here, and I love their enthusiasm for something that is greatly in need of enthusiasm. The YMCA might be dying, but the built legacy it left behind won't be dead anytime soon. I hope more people go downtown because of their efforts.

For some more (awesome) pictures of the old building, check out this gallery. They were taken by Paul Henry, chairman of the Little Rock YMCA board, in 2009, long before the Barnett's work began.

-Jonesy

"Street, 1895," North Little Rock

2012-01-25T07:30:00.001-06:00

Google Map

If, for some reason, you're ever curious as to how old a building is, and you have no resource other than your eyes, there are two good places to look. A lot of buildings have a cornerstone with detailed information. Failing that, check the top of the facade - like above, you might see the name of the original owner and the date it was built.

By the way: Tomorrow is my 100th post, and I've got something special in store. Stay tuned...

Baker House Bed & Breakfast, North Little Rock

2012-01-24T07:27:00.000-06:00

Google Map

The Baker House was built around 1899 in downtown North Little Rock. Want to know how racist Arkansas was? The house was built for a man from the north, but when he came down here, he wasn't allowed to live in it - because he was black. If I were him I would have burned down the whole city.

Owens Building, North Little Rock

2012-01-23T07:20:00.000-06:00

Google Map

The mission-style Owens Building was built in 1928 as a funeral home. I believe it is currently home to law offices. The wires you can see in the photo means the River Rail streetcar goes right by its front door.

Thomasons Building, North Little Rock

2012-01-20T07:55:00.001-06:00

Google Map

Downtown North Little Rock, commonly called the Argenta Arts District, is one of my favorite places in the Little Rock metro. More to come.

"The Standard" Ghost Sign, Nashville

2012-01-19T07:57:00.000-06:00

Downtown Nashville

"The Standard" is a restaurant in an ornate, 1840s Italianate townhouse to the left of this sign - apparently Nashville's only remaining of its kind (Photos). It looks to me like there's an older ad underneath the Standard one. The Sears sign from yesterday is on the other side of this building.

"SEARS" Ghost Sign, Nashville

2012-01-18T07:40:00.001-06:00

Downtown Nashville.

This one tried to hide from me, the bugger. I don't know if the Sears advertised is the same one that exists now. Did Sears ever sell farm equipment?

Exploration - Marathon Motor Works, Nashville

2012-01-17T07:42:00.000-06:00

Google Map

For a long time, it was just a passing affair. I'd be driving down I-40 through Nashville, throw a glance out the passenger side window and catch an eyeful of rusting water tower, crumbling bricks and a painted white phrase: MARATHON MOTOR WORKS.

Finally, one day, I convinced some people to take me out there and solve the mystery.

Actually, the above happened twice. The first time I failed to bring a camera and instead explored with eyes only. The second time I brought along the old Rebel, and now I'm finally telling the tale.

The 1881 main tower is the oldest structure in the complex.

Marathon is the type of place I live to find. It's equal parts mysterious, ancient and ruinous. It speaks of a different age, at once alien and familiar. The toppled bricks and ornate artwork covering the building practically bleeds history.

The logo design expresses an obsession with Greek imagery present in the early 1900s.

I guess I should explain.

Around 1904, one Southern Engine & Boiler Works bought what was then an abandoned cotton mill (the 1881 tower you saw up there). In an attempt to shoulder into a burgeoning new industry, Southern changed its name to "Marathon" and started makin' cars. At the time, Southern was the largest manufacturer of its type in the nation.

At its peak, Marathon manufactured about a dozen different types of automobiles. It was the only automobile manufacturer in Nashville, and demand became ridiculously high.

In 1912, Marathon was pumping out 200 cars a month and was shooting for 10,000 a year.

Somehow, despite having everything going for it, Marathon almost immediately found itself in dire financial straits. The place went through three presidents in four years and it collapsed under its own weight in 1914.

Folks stuck around at the factory for a few more years to provide mechanical services, but by the 1920s there was nothing left of Marathon but an old building next to the railroad, twice abandoned by its users. Now, there are only eight known Marathon automobiles in existence, and Nashville hasn't had another car manufacturer within the city limits since then.

Pictured: Some of my generous Nashville friends

It's not really a sad story, though. So some bureaucrats failed 100 years ago. They left behind a handsome castle to fall into ruin, and nowadays there are actually tenants using the building for some businesses. I saw an antique store, a gym and a radio station holed up in various parts of the complex. Other parts are ruined and crumbling; whether the owners intend to leave them like this or fix them up is a mystery to me. Frankly I think whichever option they pick, I win. Here's some more photos from our trip:

The north side of the complex is falling down. There are bricks everywhere.

I love old vault alarms like this.

Picturesque.

Trains still visit the factory, and these ones are carrying cars. But not Marathons.

I don't know what "READ UP!!!" means.

Rail ruins. Strategically placed highway overpass for dramatic effect.

So that's Marathon Motor Works. I love it. It goes down in my top 10 with places like Hot Springs and Bald Knob and the old Grayville High School. There's not much info on Marathon I could immediately Google, but in any case here are my works cited.

Oh, and here's me. Peace out y'all ;)

Berger Building, Nashville

2012-01-16T07:48:00.001-06:00

Downtown Nashville

Please excuse the lack of focus, but this title was just too excellent to pass up. The building was once a Genesco headquarters, a piano shop and a toy museum.

Neoclassical Moon, Nashville

2012-01-13T07:53:00.000-06:00

Downtown Nashville

It's the same building as yesterday, but from a different angle and with the moon. Note the variation in column shapes.

Neoclassical building, Nashville

2012-01-12T21:03:00.000-06:00

Downtown Nashville

Here is a case where I know nothing about the building in the photograph, but I love the Corinthian columns and dentals along the roof. Mmm.

Ghost Sign, Nashville

2012-01-11T18:42:00.002-06:00

Downtown Nashville

Ghost signs are everywhere! I doubt this one is particularly old or historic, but I'll save those for later, and meanwhile, enjoy a pretty sunset view in Nashville.

Traditional and Modern

2012-01-10T18:10:00.002-06:00

Google Map

Three buildings, two in traditional styles and one in post-1950s modern style. They do not appear to be friends.

Gazette Building, Little Rock

2012-01-08T21:42:00.000-06:00

Google Map

Established in 1819, The Arkansas Gazette was the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi until it was absorbed into the Arkansas Democrat in 1991. Many of my coworkers are former Gazette writers and I have been assured that the atmosphere there during its last years was...not pleasant. The building is now used for a charter school.

Alley, Little Rock

2012-01-06T07:49:00.004-06:00

No Google Map; I forgot exactly where this is

No modern city is complete without alleys, complete with dumpsters, graffiti and shuttered windows. At night, they become the places where you don't want to meet people.

Urquhart Building, Little Rock

2012-01-05T07:47:00.000-06:00

Google Map

We now exit our exploration of Main Street. I'm guessing this building's name, as "Urquhart" is chiseled over the entrance. The architecture is beautiful, and I suppose whoever the Urquharts were, they had some power.

Another photo after the jump.

A face that is, perhaps, deceptive?

Lion Relief, Little Rock

2012-01-04T07:39:00.000-06:00

Intricate Details

Little faces or animal details seem to be common on the architectural styles along South Main. This lion appears to be a bit worried. Perhaps because he's not sure how long he'll last?

Center Theater, Little Rock

2012-01-03T18:26:00.000-06:00

Google M - Wait a second...

...Where'd it go?

Oops. Continuing on down Main Street, we find one landmark that's missing altogether - the Center Theater, which until recently was the city's last old movie house. Like all major cities, cinemas and their festive neon could once be found along nearly every major avenue. But unlike most major cities, Little Rock didn't manage to save any of them after the cineplexes of the 1970s and 1980s caused most of them to close and turn to husks and bones.

The Google Ghost

The theater is one of the first things I remember seeing when I first visited Little Rock in 2004 or so. My friends and I were stumbling down Main Street wondering why there were no people anywhere. The shuttered face of the Center seemed a reflection of this desertion.

Because Google's street view of this area hasn't been updated since 2007, it still shows the theater there, even though the overhead view (you can see it there in the little box on the bottom right) shows an empty lot.

The Center opened in 1920 as the Royal Theater and was later remodeled in 1949. It was added to the Historical Register in 2003. The Arkansas Repertory Theater (a live theater venue in one of the few inhabited buildings along the avenue) is nearby and there was talk of the Center being incorporated into it. That didn't happen.

I've since found Little Rock to be a much more vibrant city than I originally thought. But the desolation along Main Street and losses of landmarks like the Center are things that I hope will, one day, be addressed with devices other than bulldozers.

Eagle Relief, Little Rock

2012-01-02T07:51:00.002-06:00

'Merica

Eagle and wreath detail on an abandoned/vacant building, North Main Street, Little Rock.

Neoclassical details, Little Rock

2011-12-30T08:15:00.000-06:00

North Main Street

Many of the taller buildings on North Main are neoclassical, meaning they have elements of classic Greek and Roman buildings. It's a common style for early 1900s banks because of its visual strength. This building also has some Italianate elements.

"Fulk" Building, Little Rock

2011-12-29T11:20:00.000-06:00

North Main Street, Little Rock

The building labeled "Fulk" is one of the few from this series that is not vacant - it houses Bennett's Military Supplies, a 100-plus-year-old shop that has always been on this block. The building itself is in sad shape, however, and I don't know who "Fulk" is.

Snapshot - "BEFORE I DIE"

2011-12-28T09:01:00.002-06:00

Google Map

The next set of photos were taken on Little Rock's Main Street. Most, if not all, of the buildings pictured are vacant or abandoned. Photos of Main Street from decades past show crowds of shoppers and workers; those days are long-past. The above photo is from the old MM Cohn building, a department store that also saw its golden age many years ago.

Hinderliter Grog Shop (Little Rock)

2011-12-27T11:35:00.000-06:00

Google Map

You would probably never know just by looking at it, but this is the oldest building in Little Rock.

It was built by a German immigrant named Jesse Hinderliter in the late 1820s, one of dozens of log buildings in the growing city. Hinderliter opened a pub and grocery in the building, and folks visited it in this capacity for over a century.

Image from MSBarnett

By the 1930s, Hinderliter was 100 years in the grave and the building was deteriorating. In 1939, the pub and a couple other buildings on the block were under threat of condemnation. A woman named Louisa Loughborough campaigned to save them, and soon the Historic Arkansas Museum was underway. The old logs behind the wooden frame boards were too far gone to save, so the building was restored in its framed state.

Image from MSBarnett

Today, you can visit the Hinderliter Grog Shop as part of the museum's house tour. Reenactors play the part of pub customers.

Big ol' chimney

To me, the grog house and museum are a rare success story in the preservation of a built environment. Despite the multi-story condominiums surrounding the block, walking around on the museum property really does feel like entering a time capsule to the 19th century.

Snapshot - Tuf Nut Building

2011-12-26T09:24:00.001-06:00

Google Map

Tuf Nut was a company that manufactured work clothing. This building was once their Little Rock factory - it's now loft apartments and first-floor businesses.

Snapshot - Congress Square, Portland, 1904

2011-12-22T11:56:00.003-06:00

Google street view from 2009. The YMCA is gone and the skinny building has gained a floor.

Another gem from Shorpy. This photo shows Portland, Maine - not the better known Oregon version. I was born in this city 81 years after the photo was taken.

Snapshot - Staircase ruins, Poplar Bluff, Missouri

2011-12-21T07:49:00.000-06:00

Google Map

An ornate staircase built across from the Poplar Bluff train station in the early 1900s. The stairs were a symbolic gateway between the railroad and the heart of the city - and you can see how long that symbolism lasted. The station is similarly dilapidated.

Snapshot - Pulaski County Courthouse, 1905

2011-12-20T09:21:00.001-06:00

Found at Shorpy Historical Photo Archive

Today's photo comes from an outside source. The courthouse is, happily, still exactly as it appears in this photo, except with a working clock in place of the blank face seen at the tower here. It's a stunning red stone building. As you may guess it is no longer the tallest thing around. And you won't be finding any horses or carts wandering around its perimeter.

Snapshot - Bricks, tracks, and river rail

2011-12-19T07:50:00.003-06:00

Google Map

Old brick courtyard and abandoned railroad track at left; replica streetcar at right; modern condominiums and office buildings in background

Snapshot - Another ghost sign by the river

2011-12-16T10:00:00.000-06:00

Too lazy for a Google Map. But it's right next to this one

This business, which apparently belonged to "BRANDON," now advertises mainly to a dumpster and a no-parking zone. Occasionally weird people like me come along to pay homage to the ghosts.

Exploration - Fairfield, Illinois

2011-12-15T21:06:00.000-06:00

There's something about a city's downtown. It's the easiest way to get a snapshot of what the town is, who lives there and what values exist. I see a dead downtown as evidence of a dead, or dying town. It's also the place easiest to find visible history.

So a month or so ago we took a couple hours to walk around downtown Fairfield, Illinois. How did it measure up?

Characteristics
Where: Southern Illinois (Google Map)
County: Wayne (County Seat)
Population: 5,154
Incorporated: ???? (probably early-to-mid 1800s)
Layout: Parallel one-way main streets; business district between and alongside; courthouse square on one side; old neighborhoods clustered around downtown; sprawl close to the west

Wayne County Courthouse

It's very easy to walk from one end of downtown Fairfield to the other. I was pleasantly surprised to see other people walking around and folks out tending their houses. It spoke to the level of community. There were lots of shops in the storefronts (most closed for holidays, but still present).

Here's some more of what we found...

Storefronts

1930s WPA-style high school, still in use, unlike the one on my header image

I shot into the sun like a moron, but you can see most of a ghost sign here

Alley with a little shed at the end

Brick courthouse square! Always charming, and a rarity

The downtown felt at least as bleak as most low-income small towns in the midwest, but there was enough life that it wasn't a depressing experience (a huge contrast, to, say, Augusta, Arkansas).

We also saw some great houses:

Oddball craftsman with a gigantic dormer...and shooting into the sun again

Giant Queen Anne with lots of windows and a little tower

Another Queen Anne with a crazy double porch and a 3-story tower

Oh, and I always have to take pictures of the old Phillips 66 gas stations with the gull wing roofs:

You can see where the old sign would have been at the wing tip

I didn't mention that Fairfield was apparently the base of a really notorious Illinois gang, the Shelton Brothers. Neat!

Overall

I liked Fairfield a lot. It had the character of a struggling small town but with enough heart to cling onto its identity. I hope to go back again.

I'll leave with a couple parting shots:

MAIN ST.

another MAIN ST.

Snapshot - Ghost Sign, River Market

2011-12-14T09:00:00.000-06:00

Google Map

Ornate brickad for a long-defunct business. The sign might have advertised to river or rail traffic; the only folks wandering this way now are joggers, hobos and tourists. Note the modern advertising on the upper left.

Snapshot - Democrat Printing and Litho. Co.

2011-12-13T07:48:00.002-06:00

No time for Google Map - maybe later

This 100-year-old downtown building presently hosts upstairs lofts, a few random shops and Arkansas Business Publishing Group (my place of work). Oddly, Democrat Printing & Litho. Co. still prints my company's material, but it's in another location now. Strange how that worked out.

Snapshot - Central Supply Co. Building, Little Rock

2011-12-12T11:30:00.000-06:00

Google Map

I'm not too sure what the "Central Supply Company" is or was, but it certainly no longer resides in this early 20th century building. Some of its floors are home to the Arkansas Times - I know that much.

Lost Empire: Rock Island Railroad

2011-12-10T12:28:00.001-06:00

In the glory days of railroading, multiple passenger lines crisscrossed through cities. The Rock Island Railroad wound its way from Rock Island, Illinois, down south through Arkansas. Here in Little Rock, Rock Island built a huge span over the Arkansas River.


Google Map

But in time all empires must crumble.

Rock Island became financially encumbered throughout the middle of the 20th century. It declared bankruptcy three times, each time floating to the surface through bailouts or changes in management.

Finally, in 1980, Rock Island collapsed under its own weight. Hundreds of miles of railroads through the south and midwest were either scrapped or left to rust.

In Little Rock, the huge bridge found itself orphaned of tracks and meaning - just a collection of steel crossbeams and mothballed machinery.

At least, until 2011.


Resurrection

The city spent millions of dollars this year to renovate the old bridge into a pedestrian walkway, linking it to Little Rock's River Trail and joining its brother downriver, the Junction Bridge.

But that's not all!

When the Rock Island crumbled, it left behind its historic depot, Choctaw Station, near the railroad bridge.

Italianate

I understand the majestic building once house an Italian restaurant, and probably sheltered its share of hobos through the 1970s and 1970s. But in the early 2000s, Little Rock swept in and renovated the entire area, building the glass shoebox known as the Clinton Library and landscaping a huge park for parks and trails. Thankfully, they spared Choctaw Station, founding the Clinton School of Public Service and employing the building as its campus.

Here are some more shots of the station.

Original loading dock side. Note River Rail streetcar in the background

Waiting area, with Clinton Library on the right

"The Choctaw Route" stretched from Little Rock to Memphis to New Mexico

Snapshot: Title, high rise, Little Rock

2011-12-07T22:11:00.001-06:00

Google Map

Ornate "B-B" title on a high-rise in downtown Little Rock. Likely refers to original builders. This building has lofts upstairs, and I believe the bottom floors are currently vacant.

(also: go hogs)

Snapshot: Ghost Sign, Little Rock

2011-12-06T23:21:00.001-06:00

Google Map

A ghost sign spotted on President Clinton Avenue in downtown Little Rock.

The Return of Time Fishing!

2011-12-05T23:37:00.004-06:00

As was prophesied, I am now ready to return to this world after moving to a new place and getting a job where I don't write about history.

So let's talk a little about history. I'm going to do something like what I described in one of my last posts, where I'll blog single photos through most of the week and write longer posts as I come to them, usually for exploration of small towns or whatnot. Since I live in Little Rock now, there's an abundance of unexplored neighborhoods and areas to provide ample snapshot material.

And now for a little bit of movie theater.

More after the jump...

The above is Showtime Cinemas, a three-screen theater in the town of Carmi, Illinois. Jenna and I have driven past it innumerable times in the last half-decade, always on the way to her hometown, Albion. Actually, I might have written about it before...

But I bring it up again because I had the rare occasion a few weeks ago to actually watch a movie in one of the frequently abandoned movie houses I photograph. The movie we saw was The Muppets.

The screen was tiny, the air was muggy and you could hear the thudding bass of the movie next door through the wall. Before the film start, the projectionist had to keep ducking in and out of the projection booth to see if the frame was aligned.

But you know what? There's something to be said about choosing Lo-Fi over the cutting edge spectacles of the Cineplexes. I like to think a greater sense of community existed within the walls of Showtime Cinemas. I felt it as I watched all the native Carmi-folk file in to see the latest Twilight film. (not many were there to see Muppets, sadly.) I liked watching the concession stand folks buzz around to prepare $4 sacks of popcorn - quite a bit less dough than your standard 12-screen fare - and the smiles on their faces as they did so.
It all felt a bit more genuine, I suppose. At least I'd like to think so.

And that slice of identity, the grins of people who know each other, the chattering on the sidewalk after the movies let out ... that's part of what Time Fishing is all about.

So let's hear it for another year.

Time Fishing is history!

2011-06-12T11:23:00.005-05:00

...at least for now.

Since it's taken me five months to make an entry, I'm thinking it's time I declare a hiatus on Time Fishing for a little while.

I expect I'll return to this world when I move to a new place and have a lot of new areas to explore. And when I'm not already writing about history elsewhere and being paid for it.

So, until then, enjoy a cute historical picture:

[Noah Moody, 3, of Garner, Ark. and the Union Pacific No. 844 steam engine, both in Bald Knob last week]

You can also see photos I post to my Time Fishing Pinterest.

Poplar Bluff I

2011-01-23T21:12:00.003-06:00

Poplar Bluff is a town through which we drive every time we go visit Jenna's family in Illinois. Actually, though, the highway takes us on a gentle curve around the actual city, so recently we stopped there for a look-around. It being historically relevant, there were plenty of things for my little eyes to see.

I saw the peak of the Rodgers Theater from over the rooftops of other buildings in downtown Poplar Bluff. It's a truly glorious downtown theater - obviously in need of some work, but apparently still in working order.

The building was put up in 1949 by I.W. Rodgers, who evidently took over most of the theaters in town at some point (this is, I think, the only old one left). It had capacity for 1,160 folks and included a "crying room," an enclosed area with sound-proof glass so emotionally unsound viewers could continue watching people being devoured by triffids whilst not disturbing the other film-goers.

A closer shot of the Rodgers:

More to come.

-Jonesy

Bygone grocery

2011-01-12T21:17:00.003-06:00

I refuse to give up on this blog.

Driving to Rose Bud today, I discovered this relic:

I note that a fairly recent-looking Arkansas Democrat-Gazette machine is still guarding the door, so this grocer hasn't been closed for too long, I suppose. Judging by its looks, it's probably been around since the 1930s, maybe 40s, and was one of those hardwood floored Third Places where old men gathered around a hanging light bulb and told stories.

It's interesting to me that many old groceries (such as this one, from my friend Barbara's blog) had those old signs with very similar hand-painted text.

I bet that once this place was an oasis of food and culture, the only stop between Rose Bud and Joy or Center Hill, and when you're on unpaved roads up in the hills, that's a long way. It's paved now, of course, but not much more than a half-century removed. I bet this was a great place to gather. It would have had that inviting closeness and clutter that spoke of individuals and care, rather than cold vast-market calculation and consumer psychology. No rolling smileys or self-check outs here, just the people you know.

Ahh, I'm probably just romanticizing it.

-Jonesy

Setting the Tracks Straight: III

2010-11-15T17:39:00.002-06:00

At last, the most glorious of Searcy's depots!

The Rock Island railroad originated in a town of the same name in northern Illinois. I believe the part that came through Searcy was a spur that terminated right at the edge of downtown. The depot was right across the street from Spring Park, a destination for many travelers to Searcy in its pioneer days.

The Rock Island depot was notable because it was brick and expensive. No one was really sure why the railroad built such an extravagant building in Searcy, because the town wasn't exactly a major destination for the railroad, even with the sulphur spring. But build it they did.

I love to imagine the geography and feel of the town when all three of these railroads were operating in its borders. Imagine hearing those steam locomotive whistles every few hours? And being able to hop on a wooden M&NA car and taking a scenic trip up to Pangburn or Letona? Assuming it came in on time.

The Rock Island depot was turned into a car dealership for a while in the 1960s, but sometime in that period it was demolished. Here is the same location now from the above picture:

The brick building on the left is a law firm, but if you study the historic photograph, you can see that it was once a ticket office.

By far the most ironic thing to me about these buildings is how Searcy struggled to get the railroads to notice it while other towns nearby like Kensett, Judsonia and Beebe reveled in the major arteries passing right through them. But now nobody goes to Kensett, Judsonia or Beebe, and they still have those rails.

Hm.

-Jonesy

Setting the Tracks Straight: II

2010-11-15T17:15:00.005-06:00

Continuing in the discussion of Searcy's depots. I don't know which of the other two came first, but I can definitely tell you which one was demolished first. The Missouri & North Arkansas line, which I've also discussed several times before, was a north-south line from Eureka Springs to Helena. It was plagued by a cluster of developmental problems, and ceased operations through Searcy in the mid 1940s.

The quaint little wooden depot was characteristic of the M&NA. Few of them still remain. The picture was probably taken around 1905 or so - take a look at the horses and folks. A passenger car very much like the one picture is on display in Bald Knob. Almost no evidence of this part of Searcy remains to this day.

But, if you walk down Mulberry Street, the little spur road off of Beebe-Capps and Main, you might notice some rails poking through the asphalt. This is the old M&NA roadbed. A few other bits of evidence still stand nearby, like loading docks on sheds and the ruins of an old motel.

I'm not terribly certain, but I have a hunch that the old Kelso Feed Store stood in the same place the M&NA depot was. It was demolished about a month ago after a long period of neglect and abandonment.

-Jonesy

Setting the Tracks Straight: I

2010-11-15T16:50:00.003-06:00

I keep coming back to the Searcy depot.

My problem was, I didn't realize it should have been depots, the plural. In the late 19th century, Searcy was bypassed by the major railroad (the Cairo & Fulton, at the time). Town leaders struggled to get the live-giving metal rails to pass through this town, and they finally did - but Searcy was still a bit off the beaten track. So at various times, Searcy had three unique railroads, each with their own station, passing through.

1. The Doniphan, Kensett & Searcy Railroad

This was the first railroad to make it through the town, and it was an extremely short line. "Doniphan" doesn't even really exist anymore as a town, being mostly just a location between Searcy and Kensett. In its early days, the DK&S was a wooden tram line between Kensett and Searcy.

Oh, and no locomotives traveled it. Instead, passengers rode on a flat cart pulled by mules. Yep.

Here's that depot:

The DK&S went through multiple owners and identities, finally being absorbed by the supermassive Union Pacific Railroad. Ironically, though it was the smallest railroad in town, it's the only one with any tracks left. The tracks leading down Park Avenue past the Cloverdale area is the original roadbed leading from Kensett.

In fact, it's probably because Upac owns the building that it still stands today:

The wooden surface sticking out on the left is the freight loading dock. It would seem that the DK&S building was once about twice as long, judging by the older picture, but it was never the town's most glamorous station. This area was once the town's booming industrial area, home to strawberry packing and a prosperous shoe factory.

Two more to come!

-Jonesy

Pioneer Village II: Garner Depot

2010-11-08T13:54:00.003-06:00

Going on with the Pioneer Village. This is my favorite piece in their collection, and anyone who reads this blog can probably see why.

This beautiful depot once stood in the desolate town of Garner, which lies a few miles south of Searcy. It's an odd duck, because none of the depots that once stood in the villages bordering Searcy (Kensett, Judsonia, Higginson) still stand. But it's probably because of its unusual history that we still have it.

The Missouri-Pacific Railroad ceased passenger railroad activity from Garner in 1939, moving it instead to neighboring McRae. To avoid confusion, the railroad ordered that the depot be moved from the railroad. These days, it probably would have been demolished instantly, but back then the people of Garner had other ideas.

It was moved across the street (pausing in the middle of the highway overnight), then converted into a residence. Years later, a family from McRae acquired it and moved it onto their property, where they operated an antique shop out of it.

Eventually, those owners passed away and the next of kin offered the building to the White County Historical Society. They packed it up and moved it to Searcy, where it remains to this day.

The 1888 building shows the sort of character that public transit buildings had in those days, and gives us a rare glimpse of what small-town depots were like.

-Jonesy

Pioneer Village I: Pangburn drunk tank

2010-11-08T13:48:00.006-06:00

The Pioneer Village is a hidden hamlet nestled in the middle of Searcy's industrial area. The White County Historical Society started putting it together in the late 1960s and now they have a bunch of old, quirky buildings collected from around the county, as well as a lot of historic trinkets and artifacts.

Here's one of them:

Up until around 1960, this was the Pangburn jail. It's not much more than a tin-and-wood shack, with one room and a few tiny windows. There's a hatch on the gable for who-knows-what, but the guide suggested it might have been to help cool the building in hot summers.

But she did note that the building was an oven in the summer and a freezer in the winter. It was also reserved almost entirely for drunks. So don't get drunk in Pangburn, folks, or you'll end up in this thing, like my beautiful wife Jenna (pictured) did. Shame, Jenna, shame!

Also, hanging in the building are a pair of chaps said to have belonged to Jesse James at one point. Take with a grain of salt.

-Jonesy

New look, slightly different taste

2010-11-07T10:29:00.004-06:00

So I was looking over Time Fishing and I realized I hadn't changed the layout since I started in March 2009. So here, have a new layout! If you're reading this on Facebook, click here to take a look.

With the new look comes a bit of a new approach. Writing for the Citizen, I publish history-related articles every week. Since a good chunk of this town gets to read those articles, it becomes a bit more difficult to post here, where my readership is unarguably smaller (and that's okay).

But instead of posting FEWER items, I'm actually planning on posting MORE. However, I'm going to focus on shorter entries maybe showcasing one picture, a bit like the blog of my friend Barbara Duncan. Also, I'm going to prepare my entries ahead of time (like I started doing with my new Posterous), that way I should be able to consistently get a couple of articles out each week.

I have a bad habit of flaking out on personal projects after performing them for a while. I've never been able to keep up an exercise routine, for example.

I don't want that to happen to Time Fishing. So, in conclusion, here is a picture of the Frank Myers dinosaur, a friend of mine that I blogged about almost two years ago. He's green now, and the car dealer there changed his slogan to "Frank Myers: The T-Rex of Used Car Sales."

Artifacts Anonymous

2010-10-24T18:15:00.000-05:00

My name is Luke Jones, and I'm an artifactaholic. And I have no plans to change! HA!

Today's artifact is still the M&NA railroad. We previously discussed the sad shape of Pangburn's rail center. I found an archival photograph of the same building:

This was taken in 1921, still a good 28 or so years before the railroad's ultimate demise. Apparently the M&NA wasn't exactly the world's most favorite railroad. To many, the letters more accurately stood for "May Never Arrive," but if you had to get to Pangburn or Letona or one of those other little burgs you had to grit your teeth and take it.

I read an account (from the White County Historical Society) where a man remembered the wood stove on his passenger car running out of kindle and some brave or crazy men jumped out of the car and tore some boards right off of the depot.

But when M&NA engines broke down too much, oftentimes they would end up in Kensett. Yes, the little hamlet called Kensett was a major intersection for M&NA trains back in its day. It's a sad place now. A man who grew up there told me the other day, "Wal-Mart killed this town."

But the M&NA had packed up and left probably before Sam Walton had been kicked out of Newport. So the rail ruins of the M&NA have had a long time to become part of the scenery. The same man who dictated Kensett's death showed me these:

On the edge of someone's property on a back road in Kensett are these unusual concrete ruts. I was absolutely delighted to learn that they are the ruins of the M&NA locomotive shop! There may have been a complete structure built over these ruts at one point but now the concrete structures poking through the ground are all we have.

The "teeth" on the edges of the trenches once held cross ties between them (a few are left). Locomotives would roll over the pit and workers could slide under there and make repairs. This must have been a major stop for the M&NA, because there are two more bays:

Across from the bays are some more ruinous bits that are impossible to identify:

I find it amusing that the roadbed leads right up to the ruins of an old barn, which in turn doesn't seem to be used for its original purpose. The discarded farming equipment along the repair bays leads me to believe that prosperity hasn't been seen in this part of Kensett for a long, long time.

-Jonesy

Derelict depot

2010-10-19T19:02:00.000-05:00

There's a certain amount of pleasure in finding a town's old train station in an odd place. Many of the smaller towns in Arkansas were served by the Missouri & North Arkansas line, an up-and-coming railroad that had a depot in Searcy in its day.

Unfortunately it made the mistake of following the Mississippi River instead of going to Little Rock. A man who's studied the rise and fall of the line told me that if they had gone to Little Rock, they might still be around today.

But they aren't. Their thinking was if they followed the might Mississip, they would get all of the commerce along the way. But commerce along the river died halfway through the 20th century, and so did the M&NA.

The M&NA literally created some towns, including Pangburn. This little burg lives right at the border of White County and had its heyday with the railroad. The old commercial sector is mostly gone now, just one single block of 19th and 20th century brick buildings left.

And the old depot...well, see for yourself.

Actually it's fairly rare that a small town has been able to keep its depot at all. Most tiny towns like Kensett, Judsonia, McRae and Garner all had depots at one point but they were sacrificed for various reasons. This one, though, managed to tough it out.

It has been a private residence for many years and the other side of the building is still covered in dismal vinyl siding and is barely recognizable as a train station. But the owners recently peeled the siding off on this side and the beautiful Italianate style has come through once again. It's still in pretty hideous shape, though.

I've heard there are plans to restore the building, but I never hold my breath for this type of thing. I hope, I hope, I hope, but we'll see. In the meantime, enjoy it while it lasts.

-Jonesy

10 things to do in Searcy on 10/10/1910

2010-10-10T12:35:00.000-05:00

The last time we had a 10/10/10 was 100 years ago, and it will be 100 years until we have another one. So let's celebrate this exceptional decimal by looking back at the last time we had it.

A man recently gave me some .pdf copies of vintage Searcy maps, and one dates from 1908, so much of my information is coming from there. Searcy was still a pretty small town at that time, boasting 3,500 people. In fact in those days it was actually competing with Beebe, Kensett, Bald Knob and Judsonia, all of which had better access to the railroad than Searcy. So this little town had to struggle to survive with its better-accessed brethren.

Funny how things work out, isn't it?

Anyway, let's go.

10. Have a drink
And I'm not talking about Coca-Cola, although even in 1910 that would be possible. White County was very much wet right up until about 1957 when a bartender in Bald Knob shot a guy for saying something to his wife. Or so the story goes. But the point is, in 1910, any of those many, many groceries around the court square wouldn't have blinked twice if you asked for a bottle of whiskey. But no longer. In fact, try to find a grocery near a courthouse square in any town in this country. Let me know. I'll just wait here.

9. Get tailored
Take a stroll down Spring Street in 1910 and just across from the Gentry Baptist Church (approximately where the First Baptist Church is today) you will find a tailor. Pop in, get measured and leave with a suit that's made exactly to your proportions.

8. Enjoy residential Race Street
It may be hard to believe, but the part of Race Street leading into downtown was once a shady residential avenue. Before Sexton's, Walgreen's, Mi Ranchito, Lazercade or any of that business popped up, there were large, beautiful houses and stately oak trees. Chances are, you would know who lived in each and every house. By the late 1950s, a man named Oran Vaughan built a hardware store across from the famous Black House (now the Searcy Art Gallery) and the Rodgers house. Feeling scandalized by the rude brick building, the Rodgers built a person-high wall along the front of their property so they wouldn't have to look at the Vaughan store. The Rodgers house was bulldozed in the early 2000s. The Vaughan store still stands.

7. Watch the new bank being built
There were at least a couple of different banks in Searcy in 1910, but the one that still stands to this day is on the corner of Spruce and Arch. After 100 years, it's not a bank anymore, but instead holds some offices. Regions bought out these bank at some point. The plaque on the side of the building labels it, "Searcy Bank: 1905." However, in 1908, the map labels this area as "Ruins of Fire." So it must have been rebuilt after that fire in its present form. On this day in 1910, you might be able to stop by and ask the construction workers what the new building will look like.

6. Walk to the city limits
I mention this simply because it was very, very easy to do in 1910. Nowadays, Searcy has sprawled right up to Highway 67, and even sprawls a little bit past there. Back then, the part of Race Street that we consider the "business district" was just wilderness, possibly farmland and most likely unpaved. Essentially, the town ended right around where Harding University is now. So you could walk there and to the other end of the town in just a few hours. But watch out for horse poop!

5. Check out the shooting gallery
This raises a lot of questions. Just west of the court house, in a building that I believe today holds the Toy Box, is labeled "Shooting Gallery." Was this like the typical carnival game where you fire at mechanical moving targets with a toy gun? Or did you actually fire a real gun? Who knows! All I know is I want to go to then and there.

4. Sneak into Galloway's natatorium
Harding University had its early years in the town of Morrilton, Arkansas. But even in 1910 it hadn't started yet, and the prestigious woman's school known as Galloway was in its place. A couple of Harding's modern buildings were used by Galloway before Mr. Armstrong got there. In 1910, the school had just a few buildings. What came to be known as Godden Hall (razed in the 1950s) was the main building, and just west of that was a business department and dormitory (now known as Pattie Cobb Hall). A short distance southeast was a laundry and heating plant, just along the railroad. South of the dorm was a natatorium. But wait, what the heck is a natatorium?
It's an indoor swimming pool. I think you know what to do.

3. Ride a train to Little Rock
This is probably the first thing I would do after walking around the town for a while. Searcy had a few different railroad depots in those days, and most of them had to transfer to other towns (like Kensett or Bald Knob) to get to bigger cities. The trip to Little Rock, to me, would be more than just visiting a big city. It would be a chance for me to see all of the struggling small towns in their heydays, living on the blood of the railroad. I wouldn't care if the trip took three hours (or maybe more). It would all be worth it. So let's go.

2. Watch some vaudeville
In the place where we can find the still-in-business Rialto Theater today was labeled in 1908 simply, "theatre." By 1910 there wasn't much in the way of film to watch, so I have to assume that what went on in the Searcy theatre was either drama or vaudeville. I see enough drama as it is, so I would definitely elect vaudeville in this case. By the way, next door to the theatre is a place called "Searcy News," and then down from there is a marble works and a bottle works. Times sure have changed, eh?

1. Visit Sulphur Springs Park
Would you believe that in Searcy's earlier days, people came from all over to visit Spring Park? Yeah, I know! But it's true. In those days, Spring Park was a healing mecca. The park is named for its white sulphur spring, which folks would bathe in to heal various ailments. The water contained sulphur, chalybeate and alum. Apparently, it both smelled and tasted terrible. The railroad once terminated right at the entrance of the park, allowing visitors to step right off the train and into Searcy's greatest resort.
In 1910 there were still a number of hotels around the park, including the popular Gill House, an institution that eventually changed into the Mayfair Hotel, a building that still stands. Searcy's resort days were over around the time that Harding rolled into town, but 100 years ago, it was like the Disneyworld of White County.

And that's the list! Depending on when you read this, I hope you have a good 10/10/10, but if you missed it, you'll have to wait another 100 years. Maybe by then we'll have those flying cars and all? Yeah, probably not.

-Jonesy

The Ten Things I Hate About Now: Part 3

2010-09-13T14:45:00.000-05:00

2. Factory Farming

I may step on some toes with this one. But I know something must be important to me when it affects my eating habits.

Then:
Animals were farmed by traditional methods - you know, the way we all have in our heads that they're farmed. On a homestead with a quaint family, a few angsty brothers, a hen-like mother and maybe a tomboyish daughter. The whole red barn with silos, ancient farmhouse, rolling meadows, animals of many different species roaming about, etc. All of the cliches you learned on the see-n-say.

Now:
The above description accounts for something like one percent of farming in this country. Maybe less. For everything else, it's the factory farm.

I'm not exactly sure how to describe just how awful the idea of the factory farm is. Maybe you remember when PETA was doing an expose on KFC farms, and how the workers were abusing the chickens all the time? Not only is that still going on, but it's just the very beginning.

Farming by its very nature involves a certain amount of cruelty, but nothing to this extent. Factory farms operate under the notion that animals are not animals. Instead, they are machines that can be tuned up, altered and controlled to better supply the human population. In this way, some animals are fed food that they aren't meant to eat (pigs and cows are fed human-unsuitable corn grown in gargantuan fields that could be otherwise used to feed people, for example). The environment is controlled at all times and most animals never, ever see the light of day. Waste disposal is at best unnatural and at worst apocalyptic to the environment on and around the farms.

And this method hasn't been around for that long. It was only in the postwar years that it really caught on.

Hogs and cattle have it pretty bad, but let's talk about the worst sufferers in this mess: Chickens and turkeys. Have you bought "cage-free" eggs? You were deceived. The USDA stipulations for cage-free are laughable, and any hen factory worth its salt is going to milk the loopholes for everything they're worth. "Cage-free" hens usually get to exit through a tiny, gated porthole in the side of the coop that opens into a tiny patch of fenced-in dirt. And most of the time that gate is closed, and the hens are confined inside.

Oh, and you know how when you think of turkeys, you see huge, magnificent birds with lots of feathers? Throw that image in the shredder. Modern turkeys have been bred to the point that they are so top-heavy (I.E., more breast meat) they can barely stand, let alone fly. Both turkeys and chickens are complicated animals that form social groups.

So do hogs. You know, there used to be lots and lots of different breeds of hogs. But now, farmers have essentially phased out all of those other breeds and replaced them with the current one that is fragile, temperamental and allergic to sunlight. The same thing happened to turkeys: There once were different, regional breeds of turkey. But now, everywhere you go, it's the same one.

Did you hear about the recent outbreak of salmonella in chicken eggs? Some ex-workers at one of the Iowa chicken plants said that, on the conveyor belt that was supposed to only carry eggs, they would regularly see chickens, alive and dead, rats, tools and once, a live cat. And when they pointed out these problems to USDA officials, they would turn their heads and say, "There's nothing we can do about it."

I could go on and on. Shady business tactics, massive distances between farm and slaughterhouses, frequent abuse, awful slaughterhouse conditions, disease-ridden meat--every horrible thing you can imagine goes on at these farms, and no one seems to care much about it.

Future:
I think--and hope--that in the decades to come, humanity will look back on factory farming and call it one of the biggest evils of the 21st century.

But the solution is not at all easy. The problem is, unlike what PETA believes, people are not just going to stop eating meat. And the reason meat prices have stayed relatively the same over the last 60 to 100 years of rapid growth is because the factory farm movement has kept up with demand. Its efficiency is unrivaled.

If factory farming were to stop today and suddenly everyone was farming traditionally again, meat prices would skyrocket. There just wouldn't be enough to go around. Unfortunately the easiest solution to this might be higher prices or - yes - lab-grown meat. In fact, I would even support the latter if it meant an end to this travesty of a development.

I'm not even really an animal rights guy. I like eating meat. I always have. I think it's natural. I just can't keep buying into this system. I just can't look at a plate of pork loin or chicken Parmesan or brisket and think, "This end justifies the means."

1. Suburban Sprawl

Well, here it is. The big issue. The one that ties into just about everything onto this list. For some people, it's abortion or human trafficking or starvation. For me, it's suburban sprawl.

Then:
Cities, towns and villages existed as coherent, unified systems of businesses, residences and industry. Zones complemented each other -- residential areas mingled with commercial and industrial, so workers could live near their factories, shop owners could live above their shops and civilians had easy access to the town around them.

Towns were for people. Not for cars. Sidewalks, alleys, paths -- all of these things existed to allow people to travel on foot to their destinations, which were usually within walking distance.

In fact, just quit reading now and go visit Paris or Florence or Tokyo or some small town in Britain and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Now:
Some bug set off a chain reaction shortly after World War II. Somewhere in the military tactics we used overseas clicked in our town development, and a problem occurred.

We started dividing the elements of a unified space. Business moved out of downtown and into a new place, on the edge of town. These new residential areas - subdivisions started appearing. Places called "industrial parks" appeared.

If a town is a unified mixture of ingredients, the sprawl model is all of those ingredients spread out, far apart, on a long, low table.

But what's so bad about all of that, you ask? What's the problem? I'll tell you. It destroys community. In fact, it's destroyed community so utterly that we don't even know what the word means anymore.

We'll talk about the living environment first.

You can see a sprawl-model neighborhood in just about any town. Most of the time the houses were built anywhere from the 1970s until now, with a few rare earlier examples. All of the houses look just about the same - low, usually one story, with a lot of yard and a very large, sometimes two- or three-car garage. Sometimes the garage takes up the entire front of the building.

The roads in the neighborhood are long, winding, and seem to have no rhythm or purpose. Some lead to dead-end cul-de-sacs. You might enter a neighborhood thinking you will find a shortcut to a place on the opposite side, but the roads may turn you completely around. Although the speed limit is 25 mph, you find it very easy to speed 10 or more over the limit.

Probably there are no sidewalks or parks. There are people outside, but not too many. As you leave you see the name of the neighborhood is something completely irrelevant, like "Stonehenge Garden" or "Perimeter Center."

The sprawl house, in essence, is trying to be the American ideal of a farmhouse: isolated, a family's treasured living space with a lot of surrounding property and the promise of unconquered land. But the fatal flaw is, you can't have that in a town or city environment without creating a sense of total alienation. I've read about Boomers who fled our cities during the 1960s and found themselves living in these sprawl neighborhoods where they never, ever met anybody.

As a result, people become paranoid. They lock their doors (in the 1950s and earlier, they didn't) and are suspicious of visitors.

And the businesses you see pop up in the sprawl are just hopeless parodies of the community-driven places that once existed in downtowns. But I've already covered that in my big-box retail section.

And these neighborhoods and business zones are horrible, horrible wastes of space. Take a look at some aerial photos of sprawl restaurants (Chili's, Applebee's, Olive Garden, etc.) and note how much space is devoted to parking lots. And that goes back to our over-reliance of cars.

The same cars that are splattering kids in the sprawl neighborhoods. The reason why this happens is because of those long, winding roads I was talking about. Neighborhood designers made them like that because they were supposed to be safer, but instead, the gentle curves and wide lanes just provoke people to drive faster. A good neighborhood has sharp right turns, lots of stop signs and big obstacles. Nothing makes you drive slower than having to stop all the time.

And why do you think we have such a problem with obesity? People in the sprawl drive everywhere. There's no public transportation and kids are never able to experience their town because there is no town. So they stay at home, play video games and at worst, never meet the other kids in their neighborhood. They turn into that alienated and depressed teenage generation that we can't seem to understand.

But who convinced us to move to these neighborhoods? People didn't just show up there overnight. Some of it was the new families returning from the War. The earliest sprawl neighborhoods were what they called "Levittowns," and were built specifically for those soldiers.

But it continued through the 1950s, and led to this particular phenomenon called "White Flight." This happened when blacks started moving into the older neighborhoods in cities and racism started urging folks out. Underhanded real estate techniques (usually called "block-busting") populated these new neighborhoods. And then the 50-minute commute began.

As a result, our cities and downtowns atrophied. Do you remember when, in the 1990s, New York City was legendary for its crime? That was a recent development. It happened because people simple left the city! All of the business was handed to the sprawl on a silver platter.

In some places, it's gotten severely out of hand. Try driving through Houston, Phoenix or Atlanta and you'll see what I mean. I lived for seven years in West Mobile and watched the sprawl choke the life out of everything around me.

Sprawl affects our aesthetics (it's all very, very ugly and commands low respect), our property values (it lowers them almost 100 percent of the time) and ultimately our community. The big box stores, the McMansions, the fast food, the megachurches, the oceans of parking lot, the death of downtowns, the crime in cities - all of it ties back into the sprawl.

Future:
I can't really say. Sprawl a multi-headed beast and I don't really know which head is the main one. I can say that a lot of towns and town designers have seen the problems that sprawl creates, but it will be a very, very long time before all of the damage is undone. I am pleased to say that I've witnessed a bit of a renaissance in Searcy's downtown over the last five years, and some of that has to do with Main Street Arkansas, a program that I love with all of my heart.

Other times I think, "Why don't I just leave this country?" But I can't, because it's my country, and my family and friends are here, and I can't just leave it all behind like that. So I guess, in the meantime, it's back to fishing for time.

FOR SOME FURTHER READING...
I got a lot of my information from the following sources...
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck
The Old Neighborhood: What we lost in the great suburban migration, 1965-1999 by Ray Suarez
The Failure of Modern Architecture by Brent C. Brolin
America's Forgotten Architecture by Tony Wrenn and Elizabeth Mulloy
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser
Super-Size Me (Film), dir. John Banzhaf
Food, Inc. (Film), dir. Robert Kenner

Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small
that we can never get away from the sprawl

-Jonesy

The Ten Things I Hate About Now: Part 2

2010-08-29T16:42:00.000-05:00

6. Interstate Highways

This is the one transportation-related thing that I hate more than automobiles.

Then:
Automobile transportation took place on regular highways. They are the roads that we now consider to be the "back roads," the ones that go through actual towns. Trips took much longer by car, but were full of character as towns were full of commerce, people and life.

If you wanted a more direct route, you could just take a train. Intercity routes were all-inclusive. Towns that railroads didn't reach were scarce. Even the most minuscule of hamlets usually had their own stop. Trains in the 1930s, 40s and 50s were sometimes even faster than the modern Amtrak routes because of better tracks, less competition with freight lines and more right-of-ways.

Now:
It's possible to take your car and drive it across a country apparently made up of absolutely nothing except for rest stops, bill boards and the occasional cluster of high rises. To most drivers, towns along the interstate are exactly as valuable as their selection of fast food. Cities invited the interstates in with open arms, then found out that the highways did nothing but spread them paper-thin, eviscerate neighborhoods with depressing concrete vistas and create garbage-strewn wastelands where streets and boroughs once stood.

Pictured: Madness

The biggest problem comes from how cities decided to incorporate the highways. Instead of treating them like airports, letting them flow alongside cities at a safe distance, they let them come right in through the city center, dissecting them in

Additionally, all of the once-flourishing and personality-laden businesses along the old highways died and are still rotting there. This was inevitable. I would much rather visit a kitchy wigwam motel than any one of the cookie-cutter La Quintas clogging the country.

Sure, interstates are ultra-efficient and marvels of engineering. But that doesn't stop them from being dehumanizing.

Future:
People hate driving for hours and hours. They really do. So this is one area in which, I feel, a slight glimmer of hope can be seen through the cloverleaf intersections. Intercity public transit may make reappearance in my lifetime. Obama relegated a cool $8 billion towards high-speed trains a year or so ago, moving him up a notch in my book.

Then again, China is planning on spending something like $300 billion to amp up their already-nice railroads and highway people want to relegate $600 billion in Arkansas alone. So...damn, I guess.

5. Apparel

Again, another item that boils down to aesthetics. But I feel it goes deeper than that.

Then:
While in public, men wore suits and hats. End of story. Suits had great variety of color, style and decor and were tailor-made by clothiers. But this is the most important bit: Everyone wore clothing that complemented the human body. Even the poor and homeless looked distinguished--maybe not to the eyes of the time, but to our modern eyes they do. Also, no such things as t-shirts (which I wear, by the way).

Whenever I watch a movie made in the 1950s or earlier, my overwhelming feeling is always, "Why can't we dress like this anymore?"

Now:
Everything resembling a dress code has been obliterated, its remains trampled on and left to putrefy. Suits are a necessary evil: We wear them to work, but only if we absolutely need to and definitely not on Fridays. All other times, we basically parade around in our underwear. We buy ready-made clothes from department stores who outsource almost entirely to sweatshops in third-world countries. Crocs, flip-flops, jorts, oversized t-shirts, sneakers--the lot of it.

See, I think dressing well purports a certain attitude of respect, not just for others, but for yourself. When you dress in a way that complements you, you automatically feel better about yourself. And when everybody does, it elevates the respect you have for your fellow man. It improves communication. And going back to the tailoring, think about how special it is to own a suit that was made in your town by someone you know. Who can say that anymore?

However, I will admit that apparel is overall easier for women now. Even though I still believe people--including women--dressed better in older times, I know that clothes were more restrictive for females. It still is, sometimes, but it's less complicated.

Future:
We absolutely will not go back to old ways. The overall cultural revolution of the 1960s and 70s put the dress codes so far behind us that I will eat my shorts if the masses ever want to go back to them. While I'm thinking, "I wish I could dress like that," most everyone else is thinking, "I'm glad we don't have to wear suits all the time anymore." It's just so easy to slap on a shirt, shorts and flip-flops that dressing well seems too old-fashioned to exist.

4. Big Box Commerce

Then:
All business, big and small, took place downtown. The downtown was a strictly organized sector that allowed for a mixture of business, pleasure, and residence--folks met in stores owned by their fellow citizens and sometimes lived above them in loft apartments. Many town shops were what we call the "third place," a midway between home and work that friends and acquaintances frequented.

Buildings were built for multiple uses and when they changed hands, new stores could easily be built within the confines of the old walls. Cars were allowed within the space of downtown, but the champion of its borders were pedestrians: everything was within walking distance.

Many products were house-made or unique to the environment of the town. Tailors, soda shops, drugstores, banks, cafes, movie theaters, even churches and civic buildings were all located in one area.

Now:
Wal-Mart. Home Depot. Walgreen's. Starbucks. McDonalds. Malls. The list goes on. We've put our trust in these supermassive companies that we now call "big box retail," and I don't really need to explain what they are, because they are in every town.

But the whole idea might be best explained by talking about Wal-Mart, the most recognizable of the giants. Sam Walton's plan was to build these so-called "discount cities" (the original subtitle for Wal-Mart stores) on the edge of town, far away from the original business sectors. He probably didn't intend to actually replace them entirely, but that's what ended up happening.

Through the 60s, 70s and 80s, these huge franchises with the "slightly out-of-town" model got bigger and bigger and bigger until now most towns have two distinct areas.

Let's take Searcy, for example. Here, the original business district is on the west end of Race Street and the big-box part is on the east end. Where we see Wal-Mart (note: at the very edge of town) and Chili's and Fred's and so on used to be mostly wilderness between Searcy and Kensett. Now, it's a different kind of wilderness.

The third place is dead and gone. People don't congregate in places like Wal-Mart to socialize, because there's no trace of locality. You could go to Cabot and it's exactly the same as the big boxes in Searcy. It doesn't matter where you are, the big boxes are exactly the same. And when a big box dies, its hulk sits there, rotting, usually until some other big box tears it town to replace it with its own cookie-cutter standards.

There's nothing for pedestrians. Walking between the big box stores is usually not just dangerous, but downright impossible. Zoning standards demands these huge drainage ditches that are uncrossable by pedestrians. So we drive everywhere, and that aspect of community is further degraded. And this all ties into a much, much larger issue that I'll deal with further down the line.

And what about downtown? Well, up until a few years ago Searcy's original business district was certifiably dead. The few stragglers that made it past the 60s and 70s bubbled into rambling masses: First Security Bank now owns a full block of downtown and has offices in an entire row of storefronts that were once separate shops; Sowell's Furniture owns almost all of its part of its end of Arch Street. We're just now starting to see a resurgence of interest in the area, but we have to fight for it. And it's a long, uphill battle.

Future:
If we see a transportation overhaul and the replacement of gasoline with something else, big box retail will collapse on itself like the huge package of hot air that it is. But we have to fundamentally change first.

3. Architecture

Throughout my time as an art student, and especially after visiting the architectural mecca called Chicago, I've eventually concluded that my very favorite form of art is architecture. Maybe it's because it has the ability to transform entire living spaces into works of art and alter our perception of the world as we know it like no other art form can.

Then:
Every town, even the smallest, built their environments to last with a variety of very different, but compatible, architectural styles. Neoclassical, Victorian, Gothic, craftsman and even art deco were able to coexist in a way that complemented each other in increasingly rewarding ways.

Now:
Modern architecture happened. Its tendrils were creeping around in the big artistic minds even since 1900, but the true fruits of the various movements weren't really seen stateside until after 1950.

The Bauhaus, blobitecture, De Stijl, functionalism and the very worst, brutalism, all reared their unsympathetic heads and took over the majority of architectural firms.

Now, modernism as a whole emerged as sort of an evolution of all other styles, and I suppose on paper it might work in the minds of those who understand the principles behind each movement. But that's exactly the problem. Architecture, above all other art forms, is specifically for the public. It's not like you can design a town and display it in a gallery, then take it all down after too few people show up.

See, none of these new forms mesh with the older, traditional forms at all. They stick out like the proverbial sore thumbs, degrade their surroundings, and above all, alienate people. They appeal only to the very high-minded sort who came up with the styles in the first place. And with them came an acute disdain for traditional styles, which seemed only to propel the new styles toward clashing as violently as possible with their older brethren.

That all might not have mattered if the styles didn't trickle down to major manufacturers. As it turns out, most modernist styles are cheaper and easier to produce than the the older ones, and that means builders don't care to look in any other direction. Now, when the oldest and most beautiful structures are torn down, they are frequently replaced with something that is lacking entirely of grandeur, warmth or subtlety.

Take Penn Station, for example. Built in 1910, the station was one of the Pennsylvania Railroad's palatial terminals in Manhattan. Here's what the interior looked like:

Tremendous, vaulted ceilings, Corinthian columns, a space fit for the most grand of cathedrals. Arriving into Penn Station, a traveler must have felt like he or she was part of something truly great. You were arriving, like royalty, into a vast castle of the greatest city on Earth.

On account of progress and the atrophy of America's passenger railroads, the entire thing was razed, to literally everyone's horror, in 1964. A new terminal, still referred to by its name, was erected in its place. Here's what it looks like now.

Low ceilings, diffused fluorescent lighting, Styrofoam ceiling panels. Practical, but with all the visual appeal of a dumpster. Arriving in the modern Penn Station, a traveler feels the stress of the voyage and will mostly likely reflect on the meaninglessness of his or her short, brutish life. Or else they just won't notice the building at all.

This sort of things happens everywhere, all the time. The grand and artistic structures of yesteryear are razed to make way for parking lots, or at least structures that might as well be parking lots. In short, our cities have been raped and left in ditches.

Oh, and big box stores are all ugly and modern. Just thought I would throw that in there too.

Future:
Some virtuous people are in the business of saving old buildings, but it seems that for every beautiful thing saved, ten more are broken down. It just doesn't seem fair to me. I have been to a few cities where the built environment is treated with respect, and when old buildings are burned or razed, the new ones are constructed in a way that conforms or complements the rest of the city. But they are rare.

The simple fact that modern architecture exists and is practical simply defeats any reason for traditional styles to be used. People in this country just don't care if a building is one year old or one hundred years old, if a profit might come from demolition and replacement.

Continued in part three.

-Jonesy

The 10 Things I Hate About Now: Part 1

2010-08-24T09:13:00.000-05:00

In traveling through the endless layers of time, in exploring pocket worlds, vast vistas and deserted downtowns, in watching countrysides and forests and cities blur by with frightening speed, while knocking on the door fully expecting no one to be home, while snapping the photo in the instant before the clapboards and rowhouses are gone, I've generally come to the same conclusion.

I missed it.

In fact, I've had that feeling my entire life, right from the get-go. Before I even knew what a "downtown" was, I was playing with Transformers in 1991 and watching as they disappeared from shelves for what seemed like forever. I spent my whole childhood rummaging through yard sales and fleamarkets, searching for some evidence that better things once existed. I missed them.

I would go to Sounds Easy Video in Wiscasset and pick through the Super Nintendo cartridges, selecting the best-looking ones and playing them in the sample system they had set up there. But what I really wanted to play was the NES games, the previous generation, which I had missed. And then the workers unplugged the Super Nintendo and replaced it with a 3DO, and of course we all remember how fabulous and well-known that system became (no we don't). But that's another story.

And now, while I rode the rails from Little Rock to San Antonio, here spying the crumbling, pleading remnants of railroad towns and there rumbling through the ruins of urban train culture, while driving the interstates and catching a glimpse of a derelict drive-in theater, while watching the men in fedoras and overcoats in 1940s film footage, I always get that exact same feeling.

I missed it. I missed it all.

So here are the things I feel I miss the most. And let me take a second to disclaim. This will be my grumpiest post. It will be full of ire, poison and downright disdain for many things that probably some people hold dear. Sure. That's fine (they're probably not reading this anyway). But these are the thoughts that constantly visit my brain, every time I explore, every time I'm in a new town, every time I'm in an old town. And I need to write them out, so here they are.

10. Soft drinks/fast food.

Let's start with something less consequential. Yeah, we've heard it all before (hopefully) so it's low on the list. But it's still important to me.

Then:
American didn't survive on sugar, sodium, partially hydrogenated oil, corn syrup, artificial flavors and colors mixed into one delicious cocktail of obesity and super-corporate ad campaigns aimed at children. Was that vitriolic enough?

Sure, Coca-Cola goes back to the 19th century, and yeah, it did have actual cocaine in it for a while in those days. But it still exuded something resembling class (and still does sometimes). But fast food didn't become the norm until post WWII. Before that, people were okay with waiting a bit longer for something that is less likely to murder you.

Now:
Well, I pretty much already said it. And to be fair, America has come a ways in badgering the fast food companies into at least having some options that aren't just flagrantly too large and fattening.

But I especially felt this when I was a kid, when I simply hated all sodas because I couldn't handle the carbonation. Sometimes it really alienated me in a world where all drinks seemed to be soda, no matter what. Nowadays I drink soda every now and then, but I can't believe that some people basically survive on the stuff. Anyway, let's move on.

Future:
Fast food has been around for about 50 years and probably won't go anywhere anytime soon. But I hopefully have enough life in me that I will see some severe changes in the industry.

9. Fiction Famine

This is coming from a writing perspective. I am trying to keep most hobby-type stuff out of here to fit with my Time Fishing theme, but this continuously irks me enough to make the list.

Then:
Beginning writers could submit stories to a vast array of fiction-centric magazines, ranging from sleezy books like Eerie and Weird Tales to high-class selections like Colliers, Cosmopolitan and, yes, Playboy. A short story author, with a bit of drive and chutzpah, could survive on his short stories by selling them to fiction magazines.

Now:
Television. That's the short version. People read less. Because of that, magazines stopped having fiction sections. Just about all of them. A writer who wants to be published now looks mainly towards literary journals, most of which pay solely in contributor's copies (I.E., nothing). So good luck.

Future:
Lord, who knows. People still obviously read a lot, and I'm not ever going to try to say "literature is dead," because that's just dumb and wrong. It's not dead, it's just...slim. And that saddens me.

8. Cheap Design

You will find more and more that my topics on this list have to do with aesthetics. Frankly, aesthetics are very important to me. To a certain extent, you can judge a book by its cover, and modern covers look pretty bad.

Then:
Advertising was handled manually, usually with hand-painted artwork and logos with the addition of movable type. Beautiful advertisements were painted on buildings in business districts by trained artists. In later years, ornate logos of normal business hung throughout downtown and lit up at night. Design was tasteful and usually meshed well with its surroundings.

Pictured: Capitol Avenue, Little Rock, 1958 (note the abundance of signs and how they complement each other)

Now:
Any schmuck with a computer can slap together wordart and call it a day. Hundreds of free gimmicky typefaces are available. Signage is usually bought ready-made. The result is a mess of sloppy designs that project an overwhelming vision of cheapness. Take a look at any commercial suburban sector and you'll see what I mean. Take a look at any downtown and...well, you probably just won't see anything.

Future:
Because this country focuses on efficiency over everything, there's no way we'll go back to those more tasteful days. No one has the time or desire to design ornately, except for huge corporations, and do they care about the built environment?

7. Automobiles

What? Automobiles? We love automobiles! Yes, as a country, we do. And in fact I use them all the time. If you read this and you know me, feel free to silently judge me as a hypocrite because I am. Sometimes I eat fast food when I would rather not. Most of the items on this list I begrudgingly support because I'm not enough of an activist to resist them.

Then:
Cars have existed through most of the years I've chosen as my range, but never as many as there are now. And through that time, they shared the country with other options like trains and streetcars. Oh, and they looked awesome.

Pictured: 1930s awesomeness

Now:
Cars cause constant consternation for parents of small children and animal owners. Drunk driving accidents happen all the time, mostly because we rely so much on cars that the town drunk is actually from another town and has to drive himself back there. There are one million cars on every given street, and because we rely 100% on them for traveling, we never meet any other people, just other cars, and the only sort of communication from car-to-car is limited to bird-flipping, horn-honking and fender-bending.

We've created this completely egotistical and alienating way of traveling. And because car companies are basically all-powerful, plus some other factors, those aforementioned publicly-available items like trains and streetcars are all-but extinct in this country. Buses, subways and taxis exist but only in urban areas.

Oh, sure, there are streetcars in San Francisco and Little Rock, and yeah, if you're in a very specific location you can sometimes take Amtrak to other parts of the country. But mostly there are just the miles and miles and miles of highway.

Future:
Americans are are about as likely to abandon their cars as they are to hand over their guns. It just ain't gonna happen. Even though we hate holding our left ankle in the same position for hours on end, we just can't seem to stay off of the interstate. Which brings me to my next point...

Continued in Part 2!

-Jonesy

Some more railroad dreams

2010-04-21T14:05:00.000-05:00

I've talked about Mt. Carmel before. I've been there exactly as many times as I've been to Albion, Jenna's town, because that's where both her church and her grandmother are. It's also where her mother grew up, and her mother's mother, and her mother's mother's mother...

And, like most small American towns, the railroad was once the pump of its bloodstream. Driving into the town I always would notice this huge brick complex:

I always thought it was once a factory or some other source of labor for the city--and I was right. Take a look at this:

Same place, different time. The present buildings are visible in the top-right of the photographs. The brick hulk is the main shop of the Big Four Railroad Yard, which as you can see was a pretty major railroad terminal. Nearly all evidence of the tracks have disappeared; a few still pass through the town in unrelated areas. Around the back I found a few stragglers:

This grandfather of railroad prosperity is, I'm sure, full of tales. Big Four was where trains came for industrial needs, but wasn't a place for passengers.

This Italianate depot resembles the depots of just about every small town ever, but it no longer stands. Mt. Carmel received a much fancier terminal in 1905, and a little wandering will lead you to its doors.

The 1905 depot is an unusual 2-story affair that more resembles a household than a train building. It stands just a few blocks away from the former Big Four area, sandwiched between downtown Mt. Carmel and its orbital neighborhoods (full of incredibly beautiful houses and brick streets, I might add).

Here's the building as it appears now, standing upon its little yellow-bordered cement island in the middle of a parking-lot pond. It's currently used for office space, but hey, at least it's in use.

This is the loading dock side. Where the passengers would once have lined up, waiting for passage, folks now sit outside on some dated 1970s vinyl chairs and eat a light lunch. If you look at old pictures above, you will see some bridges crossing the old right-of-way: these bridges are no more. In fact, there is no evidence of tracks whatsoever. Just another town marooned from the railroad.

By the way, here's some news. In about a month--I am very pleased to say--I will be taking Amtrak from Little Rock all the way to San Antonio for a wedding. You have no idea how excited I am to be on a train for almost 20 hours. I am VERY excited. Okay see you later

-Jonesy

Bricks of our Forefathers

2010-04-10T12:15:00.000-05:00

It's a little surprising that, considering the number of times I've been to my wife's hometown of Albion, Illinois, I've never blogged about it.

The town of around 2000 folks has a few factors in common with Searcy. It's the seat of a dry county. One of its official buildings is the oldest in the state. The courthouse square is vibrant.

Albion, however, has managed to keep track of its history more faithfully than Searcy has. For example, the square and quite a few of the nearby streets are still paved with brick! Not only is it brick, it's brick that was originally manufactured in this town (as you can tell by the first picture, above).

The courthouse is probably older than Searcy's, but as Illinois is older than Arkansas, that likely doesn't say that much for it. It's still quite an imposing centerpiece. The little blue children have something to do with preventing child abuse, and according to Jenna's father they pop up every year around this time.

Now here's something you don't see too often. Abreast of the courthouse is a building that, these days, would be totally inept for its purpose. It's the original jail. In this country, you can tell if a building is extremely old if the shutters are actually in use. Note that the four lower windows are shuttered closed. A more austere architectural style tends to point to a very old age as well.

In fact, Albion was settled right after the war of 1812 by some English folks. This is probably the origin of the name, since Albion is literally the oldest known title for the mother country. Of course in 1812 you could probably be shot for calling England anything other than "that island of oppressor dogs," so naturally the surrounding occupants of the future Edwards County were suspicious.

But, all turned out okay.

Attention to history has left Albion with a gorgeous collection of antique storefronts, many of which are still populated with businesses. Around the corner, a Subway is inside one of the old buildings. This warms my heart. Of course, there is a standalone McDonalds just across the street, but hey, you can't win 'em all. Unless you're Subway.

Whereas Searcy's courthouse is the oldest in the state, Albion's library gets that title. It's one of those great old libraries that has a distinct smell, and of course books with stamped cards that date back to when your parents were little.

Near the aforementioned Subway is one thing that saddens me just a little. You can see that some mundane steel paneling has covered up what used to be some neoclassical details on this old bank building. The Corinthian and rows of quoins on the sides are the only pieces of its history this bank has left to it. But I've seen a lot worse in Arkansas.

For the rest of the post, let's take a stroll down the bricked streets around the business district and check out a few of the old and beautiful houses.

A very individualistic building near the courthouse might have once been a residence; most recently it has been antique shop of sorts and is now for sale. The style holds together very tightly; I find the economy of space in this building pleasing. Someone want to buy it for me?

A beautiful Queen Anne home sits just one incongruous block away from a McDonalds. Take a look at the oddly ornate chimney nestled between the tower and the gable.

A huge double-porch mansion (in the 19th century Edwards County sense; most folks wouldn't consider this a mansion these days) is across the street from the Queen Anne house. Judging by the austere style and functional shutters, it's probably one of the oldest houses in town. It strikes me as similar to this moldering ruin we spotted in Augusta. In fact, I understand the Albion house was in a state of ruin until just recently when a citizen began the process of restoration. And that's what sets towns like this apart from towns like Augusta.

And the last image of the day is...

Whoa! What the--? Is it a--or maybe a--huh? I've honestly never seen a house like this before. The gambreled roof is perched over what might be some kind of Italianate first floor, complete with dentals...but after that I'm lost. I kinda like it, though. It's nothing like any of the other houses on the street, or downtown, as far as I saw.

And that's Albion! It's really a great little town, and I promise my in-laws aren't breathing down my neck as I type this. There's a great deal of live and vibrancy that you miss in many of the small towns in rural Arkansas. Why is that, I wonder? I suppose I'll learn one day.

-Jonesy

Hello! My Name Is:

2010-03-29T14:52:00.000-05:00

A few of the houses in Searcy are important enough to warrant their own name tags. I believe all of them are on the National Register for Historical Places, but these don't represent all of the houses on the Register in Searcy.

Actually, I'm not sure why some of the houses have them and some don't. But I believe this list represents all of the name-plated houses in Searcy. We'll call them the Entitled Seven.

Black House, 1866
Location: East Race, next to Walgreens
Profile: The Black House is Searcy's Art Gallery and one of the oldest homes in town. The last owner of the house before it was turned into a gallery died in the 1980s (at a very old age). Since it's considered one of Searcy's landmarks, the house is kept up very neatly. Unfortunately any environment of historicity around the house has been mostly sapped by development. The ancient and haunted Porter Rodgers house once stood next door, but the family tore it down.

Wilburn House, 1875
Location: E Race, near Midnight Oil
Profile: Most of these houses I don't know anything about except for their names and ages. The Wilburn House is the most forlorn of the Entitled Seven. I have never seen anyone inside or outside. The herringbone brick path fades away before it reaches the sidewalk. A claw of creeper vines choke out the western chimney. But the delicate neoclassical details still stand out under the peeling paint, and the name plate next to the door reminds any curious passerby that the house has relevance to somebody somewhere.

Paschall House, 1877
Location: East Center Street, close to downtown
Profile: This is the stateliest and most austere of the Entitled Seven. When I was shooting this picture, an older black man walked by. "I know that house must have a lot of history," he said. "Look at the five-foot window frames. The old bricks. The stained glass next to the doors." He told me he was from New Orleans and when you live in New Orleans, it doesn't take much to notice if a house has a history. Sadly, neither he nor I knew anything of this house in particular.

Lattimer House, 1895
Location: East Market Avenue, near the Methodist Church
Profile: The rambling Victorian revival style of the Lattimer house makes it the most unusual of our Entitled Seven. The house only looks really good from this angle; the bubbling porches and huge brackets are a little awkward when viewed from other sides. The house is currently home to an abstract company. Fitting considering the nature of the architecture.

Ben Lightle House, 1898
Location: East Market Avenue, across from the Lattimer house.
The Ben Lightle house is one of two of the Entitled Seven associated with the Lightle family, who I believe were influential in Searcy a hundred or so years ago. It's a bizarre house, not quite as odd as the Lattimer house but still gets points for having a second-story door open onto what seems to be a giant telephone booth. My guess is a number of additions have been afforded onto this house since 1898. It must be some sort of guest house or condominium now, since there is a notice on the front door addressed to "All Guest."

Deener House, 1912
Location: East Center Street, near the Paschall house.
Profile: As we ease into the 20th century, we must eventually encounter the Craftsman. I've mentioned this house before, but this picture much better represents it. The Deener house spends most of the year shrouded by the surrounding foliage, but in Spring and Winter, it's one of the largest and most unique bungalows in Searcy.

Lightle House, 1923
Location: East Race Street, across from Sexton.
Profile: The Lightle house, the youngest of the Seven, as a contrast from the Wilburn house (the other of the Seven on Race street) is very well up kept and sits reservedly at the top of an incline. Last I heard, it was home to a Harding professor who has used it as a bed and breakfast. Frankly, I think it as the least remarkable of the Seven. It's very stately but just a little too bland for my tastes.

The main thing I note about the Seven is that they are all within a few blocks of each other: all east of downtown (especially considering there are quite a few old and notable houses west of downtown). But a discussion of the unnamed houses...that's for another time.

-Jonesy

Liquortown

2010-03-23T19:35:00.000-05:00

Most folks around here know Augusta, Arkansas for one thing and one thing only: liquor. It's the closest town to the west that's not in a dry county, and the county-border liquor store does a lot of business with the residents of White County (including us, I'm afraid).

But a slight detour will lead you off of Highway 64 and into what the signs refer to as a "business district" (this is driving lingo for "downtown," seeing as all of the business in Augusta takes place far from here).

The road to downtown Augusta is watched over by the above courthouse, a very solid-looking building that was built partly out of an extremely old household. Most of Augusta was destroyed during the Civil War, but some of the larger homes were kept standing so the Union officers could have places to stay. I would like to think that the house at the top of the post (next door to the courthouse) was one of these homes.

There are more dogs than people in downtown Augusta. On our entire walking trip around the business district, we saw not a single person outside of a car, and even those were rare. A few people could be seen in their yards several blocks away from Main Street, but other than those souls, mostly we just heard the howling of dogs.

Augusta had its heyday in the age of steam, when most of the commerce going up and down the White River were carried by boat. Augusta foolishly waved on the railroad when they came through, then later built their own line when they realized their town was dying. That desperate attempt petered out by 1958.

In 1930, a bridge was built across the White River that represented the last portion of the river still requir ferries to cross. Later on, we spent $17 million to blow up the historic bridge and replace it with your standard 4-lane highway. I guess I could harp on that for a while, but we've all heard Joni Mitchell sing about it already.

To be honest, Augusta has one of the bleakest town centers of any I've ever visited. Even husks like Kensett and Wynne are more populated than this place. Oh, and it has a moldering old movie theater which I have previously blogged about. These days, besides serving alcohol to naughty Harding students, I suppose Augusta mostly struggles with its 50/50 black/white population.

One little detail that I really enjoyed about Augusta's downtown were these mosaic titles on a few of the buildings:

I know, one of them is actually stained glass. Direct all complaints to my secretary. I especially love the bank tiles that feature a period. As if to say, "THIS IS A BANK. DO NOT ARGUE."

Needless to say, the identities of these buildings as a bank and drug store changed long ago.

-Jonesy

It's pronounced "CAR-my"

2010-03-18T19:52:00.000-05:00

A long drive to a country town is always a good way to experience the way highways used to function: passing right through the proper of a variety of little hamlets. Since I've been to Jenna's hometown of Albion so many times, a few of the preceding villages are like old friends of mine. Some of them, like Grayville, Crossville and Mt. Carmel have been mentioned on here before.

In fact, I've spoken of Carmi before in my last batch of movie theaters . Their Showtime Cinema was a favorite quick-glance-from-the-passenger-side sight. Recently, we finally got a chance to explore the town.

We've seen it all before, of course. Rows of grandfatherly business buildings, some populated, some renovated tastelessly, many vacant. Very few people--although I grant it was a very cold day. This NOT being Arkansas, however, there was a bit more to see than usual, and quite a few extraordinarily beautiful buildings.

The folks of Carmi call this fantastic collage of late 19th century styles "The Castle." Like most beautiful buildings in this country, it faced destruction in the latter half of the 20th century, but a group of historic historians saved it. It faces the courthouse just on the edge of downtown. Take a look at the little winged creatures on the rooftops.

The 1883 courthouse is the seat of Illinois' version of White County. Ours, however, is older (1870s) and commands more of a presence in Searcy's square. Carmi's downtown is more a thoroughfare, however, whereas Searcy's is a square.

Oh! There are some ghost signs.

"TIMES" probably stands for "Carmi Times," whose building is close to the river. Take a look at this picture of their amazing streamline modern sign on their current building (from my old favorite Roadside Architecture; good LORD she's been everywhere).

The entire side of this building was once a sign. "GRADE CHEWING" of course stands for the stuff stuck between Babe Ruth's teeth.

Not really a ghost sign, I know. But it is a beautifully sculpted logo on the side of a (I believe) vacant building that was once a Ford showroom. Wow! Back from the days when car showrooms actually fit INSIDE of our towns. "The Universal Car" is apparently what Henry "in the year of our" Ford dubbed his inventions way back in 1908. This sign may be that old.

Here are some more photos from in and around the business district.

A residence (I believe now used as a funeral home) with some serious Ionic columns. The fountain out front tends to freeze in a picturesque fashion in the colder months. Here is a fantastic picture of the latter.

A very 1960s exterior job on one of the downtown buildings. This business no longer exists but the neon work has been preserved.

A radio station now lives in what once was a neoclassical bank.

This is a very old-looking and well-kept house a few streets over from Main. The steel roof is unfortunate, but at least is colored tastefully. I wouldn't be surprised if this were one of the older buildings in town.

Evidence of train industry is still moldering a few blocks away from Main. There are a few abandoned factories and warehouses, including some old ghosts like this one. I couldn't find a depot at all; it may be lurking somewhere back there, but wind burn precluded a more thorough search.

On the way back to Albion, we stopped in a mucky drive to take this final picture:

These are the bones of a drive-in theater screen. The grounds nearby are mostly home now to a selection of rusting vehicles and other trash. I wanted to go farther back and see if any more of the theater remained standing, but there was the aforementioned wind burn and muck, so we retreated.

Until our paths cross again,
Jonesy

A year of fishing, and what have I caught?

2010-03-08T14:48:00.001-06:00

February slipped by like a whisper, and suddenly I realized my blog just turned one. I've been at this a year, and where am I? What do I have to show for it?

This is the Smyrna Church.

For a few months during my first year at Harding, some friends of mine and I attended a Bible study in the home of now-former-county-judge Mike Lincoln. Lincoln lived outside of the bounds of Searcy in a little farmhouse off of Highway 36. The winding Wednesday-night drive always took us past this tiny church building that loomed whitely out of the woods like a specter. I always looked for it out of the corner of my eye. That building haunted me, but I didn't know why.

Many years later I came to find out that the Smyrna Church (as it's called) is the oldest building in White County, clocking in at around 153 years. The abandoned sanctuary had been moldering on the side of Highway 36 for Lord only knows how long. Fortunately, the White County Historical Society weren't about to let it disappear forever.

By 2007 the structure of the church and my interests in bygone downtowns had only started to poke their heads through the layers of blue tarp and fluttering plastic sheets. In the beginning of the next year I made some of my first forays into what remains of downtown Judsonia, the place where the real seeds of time fishing were planted.

In 2009 the plastic was peeled away to reveal the chipped and flaking paint of yesteryear, akin to the decay of the Craftsman and Victorian homes that cluster near the heart of our cities, the old suburbs, the good suburbs. Who attended the Smyrna Church on the edge of civilization? Who awoke to the bell tolling from afar? Who alive can remember fanning the summer fumes away from their stiff-collared shirts?

It's all romantic. I admit it. The lure of the steam locomotive, the chinking of the streetcars, the wailing calliope, the flashing neon movie palaces, the corner stores, the record shops, the Italianate depots, the gingerbread Gothic homes, the soda jerks, the pressed tin ceilings, the living ghost signs. They're all old friends that live together in a heaven of my own invention.

In 2010, the Smyrna Church stands reinvented. It has emerged from its cocoon, existing no longer as a shadow of its former self but as a celebration of a historic past in an enlightened present. But now I'm starting to sound too much like an ad for a college town. Work on the church and the fishing for time continue onwards. Ever onwards.

-Jonesy

Snapshots on a snow day

2010-01-30T12:08:00.000-06:00

It's been a while since I've just let some picture speak for themselves. And on a snow-carpeted day like this one, I think it's a good a time as ever.

Abandoned church building, somewhere in Independence County

The remains of downtown Ola

Abandoned building in Fort Smith; note the progression of columns (from Doric to Corinthian): an architectural nod to the Roman Colosseum

An old bank in what I remember to be Booneville

A former one-room school, somewhere near Strawberry

Signpost guarding the ruins of Dogpatch USA, Marble Falls

Queen Anne mansion in downtown North Little Rock

Downtown Mt. Carmel, IL; showcasing the burned-out Hadley's Cafe

The Junction Bridge, Little Rock

706 Market Street, today.

-Jonesy

Life, Death, Resurrection

2010-01-24T12:10:00.000-06:00

Considering the heavy nature of my last post, some of you might think this is a continuation of those sentiments.

But no, it's about theaters. We're back to our regularly scheduled broadcast.

I'm going to talk about three theaters; each in a different stage of being. The first fits into the "Life" category.

The Lyric in Harrison (northeast AR) has one of the most beautiful facades I've seen on a theater (it having been built in 1929 will have something to say about that). Like most of the examples on this blog, it has been shut down at some point in its life (in the 70s through the 90s in this case). But it is alive now, though not in its original capacity. They show classic films occasionally, and otherwise the theater is used as a venue for local artists and musicians. When we visited the Lyric, it was celebrating its 80th anniversary. Note the LED display mounted tastefully atop the neon-adorned marquee.

According to my good friend Cinema Treasures, the Lyric's best feature are its intricate wall murals painted by hobos in the depression. I didn't get to see these, sadly.

I don't think I need to insult the reader's intelligence by stating this theater belongs in the "death" category.

The only information I have, besides its seating capacity, about Augusta's Lura Theater is that its name was typoed to "Laura" in 1935's Film Daily. The last thing this poor husk has left to it is its rusting marquee, proudly but dimly declaring the name of "Lura," emphasized by the single, cursive "L," to the pedestrians of Augusta's main street. On the Saturday I took this picture, we were the only ones.

Actually, if the Lura's marquee were to disappear, I probably wouldn't have even picked out this building as a theater at all. There is no visible ticket booth and only the vaguest indication of where previous owners might have hung movie posters. When I peered through the glass front doors, I saw nothing but piles of overturned furniture. Why is it that abandoned buildings tend to fill up with this kind of offal? It's as if, in death, the shell of the built environment becomes a gigantic trash receptacle. But I digress.

The Lura is nothing more than a death-mask.

Our last theater takes us out of Arkansas and into Illinois. I've noticed the Showtime Theater of Carmi every single time I've driven to Jenna's family home in Albion (and that is a lot of times, let me tell you). Showtime Cinemas (formerly the Carmi Theater) is the youngest of our three examples, having been built in 1940. It falls under "resurrection" mainly because I have seen this theater undergo death and rebirth during my lifetime, each observation occurring during that little snapshot of a glance I would get every time we drove through downtown Carmi.

The theater, like most small American theaters, had already died and been reopened at least once since the 1980s, but by 2007 it had closed again. Fading Spider-Man 3 and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince posters hung on its walls under the marquee's simple message: "closed."

But as of this year, Showtime Cinemas is open again! The little three-screen theater shows current-run films. And that's enough to make this little blogger a happier man.

-Jonesy

Dara Jones, 1956-2010

2010-01-17T17:18:00.001-06:00

In almost every other circumstance I would refrain from posting personal things on this blog (it's not LiveJournal, after all). However, for this I am going to make an exception.

It isn't the best picture of my mom, who passed away around 1 PM, central time, on Friday, but it is from the last time I saw her, on my wedding day (last May).

I know the first question on everyone's lips, whether they admit to it or not, is, "How did she die?" So I'll tell you.

A couple of years ago (let's say around May of 2008), a violent strand of pneumonia attacked her lungs. The doctors thought it might have been tuberculosis, but it didn't turn out that way. The battle was long, and for a while we really thought she wouldn't make it. But she did, with the major casualty being one of her lungs. The doctors considered taking it out then, but for various reasons decided not to.

At the end of '09, close to Thanksgiving, she started coughing up stuff (what she called "green slugs"). She went back to the hospital to discover that a couple of different forms of fungus were growing in her dead lung. Neither of them were cancerous, but they were still causing her breathing problems.

The next thing that happened was a pharmacist misreading her fungicide prescription. That didn't hurt her too much, but another problem occurred when the correct medicine didn't help at all, but still gave her all of the side effects.

She was in the hospital right through Christmas. Elliot, my brother, stayed with us through his Christmas break because my parents would spend the entire weekend in the ward. She got worse and worse right on through January. The pneumonia came back and resumed its attack on her remaining lung. We were told that if she did recover, it would be a very long road to good health. The few times I spoke to her during this period, she could barely speak for the phlegm interfering with her throat.

By January 13th, the pain medication had been increased to the point where she was no longer responsive. My dad set up a couple of phone conversations with us, with Elliot, and with her two older brothers. The doctors lessened the painkillers so she might at least be able to hear us. That evening, we spoke to her for what we understood would be the last time. It was an odd feeling, talking into a cell phone on speaker-mode and trying to envision my unresponsive mother at the other end.

On the 14th, she was on 100% oxygen. My brother flew down to Virginia so he could see her. I decided not to. I wanted to remember her like she was. Her brothers made the same decision.

On the 15th, after my brother saw her, my dad and the doctors turned off the oxygen. He called me that afternoon to say the words, "Mom's gone."

I had actually intended to work through the rest of the day, but I guess I overestimated my thick-skinnedness. I told Mark (my boss) the news and he let me go home without any qualms.

A lot of things, good and bad, can be said for my mom, so I'll say a few of them.

The first thing that should be known, and will be repeated, is that she performed her job as a mother and caretaker with finesse. Both my brother and I were (are) pretty odd ducks, and she never showed us anything but support for our talents and hobbies. None of this "force the kids to be normal" business that we see on Disney-channel movies. And she understood us. She really did. Even if, for Christmas, she would buy us stuff we never used (devotional books, "Life is Good" shirts, etc.), she had a deeper knowing of our personalities that very few on the planet could match.

When I had problems with relationships (girls), I always knew I could talk to her about it. I never really held out for the answers to my problems, but the things she said always were comforting.

She suffered a lot of headaches, drank a lot of coffee, and took a very long time to finish her meals. When she ordered food at a restaurant, she had to dissect the ingredients in each order, combine some from other entrees, and always get the dressing set out to the side. "Make sure those vegetables are steamed and with no butter," was the constant request. One time, during a vacation in Quebec, I had to leave the restaurant and walk once around the block to keep myself from screaming.

She had a small collection of phrases originating from various things Elliot and I said, some from our childhood. Here are two of them:

1. A long time ago, I explained to her the idea of Stage Bosses in video games. She applied that to her life and concluded that Time was her Stage Boss (she had a problem with completing things in a timely fashion, so the ticking clock represented her enemy). So watches and clocks, in their every form, became Time Bosses. When I would sit at the table to eat dinner, she would always say "Luke, Time Boss," which meant I needed to take off my watch. As a result, sitting down for a meal would result in watch removal, no matter where I was. Pavlov was right.

2. During a time when she had to drink cappuccino every night, she would say, "Must Feed!" This was what the Dark Archons would mutter in Starcraft, a game whose sounds were frequently heard in our household.

We always had to take our shoes off inside the house to satisfy her need for cleanliness. When I was a kid, my friends could almost never come over to visit because she was concerned they might mess up her order. I wasn't allowed to get dirty (I still am a bit anal about keeping my hands clean all the time), and I wasn't allowed to bring my toys outside. Later on, she paid me to clean up my room every day.

She homeschooled me. In prehistory, my mom was trained to be an elementary schoolteacher, and actually did this for a while before she had me. I got through pre-K before she yanked me out of Boothbay Harbor's school system and did it her own way. As a result, I was a pretty dang smart little kid who got to go to bed whenever he wanted, but had some serious issues in adapting socially later on. Also, I learned my multiplication tables late. But she did her job, and she did it well. Homeschooling was good for me, despite its few shortcomings.

She was a trooper and a fighter, until the end. In 2004, she fell off her bicycle and broke her hip. It would never have healed so fast if she hadn't insisted on walking as much as possible (fun story: I visited my childhood librarian last year and she referred to my mom as "the woman who walked everywhere"). When she was in pain, she almost always refused medication. She went through childbirth unmedicated. When her hip was operated on, she was given a button that, when pressed, would deaden the pain. She never pressed it.

I was obsessed with Transformers from an early age, and my mom always tried to help me hunt those prizes down. We would go to yard sales, flea markets, consignment stores, you name it, just to find those toys. Star Wars toys, too. And I had this other obsession: I loved to see ruined barns. I called them "Falling-Down Barns." Whenever my mom saw a Falling-Down Barn while driving, she would note its location and we would go back and see it.

And something must be said for my dad here, too. As she became more and more difficult to take care of in the last ten or so years, there was still never any question of the marriage ending. As I saw so many of my friends' families crumble over my life, I never even heard the word "divorce" in my household.

I think, maybe, I've said enough. I could go on and on, tell story after story, but I'll just say one more thing. Because of the nature of her death, she was able to discuss with my dad her postmortem wishes. She will be cremated, and after her memorial service on February 20th, her ashes will be spread over the snows of Maine. Even though my family moved all over the U.S., she always longed to go back to Maine. And that's where she will stay.

-Jonesy

Finding Subiaco

2010-01-06T19:27:00.000-06:00

I think if you asked most relatively experienced Arkansas-dwellers about Subiaco, they would probably know what's out there. Jenna and I haven't lived in the state long enough to know things like that, though, so when we ran across it, we almost had to scrape our eyeballs off the floor of the car.

Here's how it happened.

As any reader of mine should know by now, the Jones thing to do when driving cross-state is to check the road map and take the smaller highways, the cinnamon-red ones, or, if we're feeling more adventurous, the spidery black ones. Some of them (like Highway 7) are lined with these little purple dots that represent "Scenic Byways," otherwise known as "the scenic route." Others are not lined with anything except one-horse towns, one-light towns, and cow towns. Subiaco rests on one of these.

The town itself is about fifty miles east of Fort Smith and about thirty miles south of the Interstate (O vast enemy of mine). It isn't really fair to refer to Subiaco as a "town," per se, and in fact the thing that distinguishes it actually predates the post office, and therefore the identity, of the town. But I guess I better quit beating around the bush.

While winding through the valleys of nowhere east of Fort Smith, we passed through Subiaco, looked to our left, and saw something like a fortress standing atop a hill. The fortress-thing was titanic, made all the more massive by its location on the hilltop, and was replete with battlements, towers, and medieval ambiance. "Can we turn around and go check it out?" Jenna said, after we finished freaking out.

"Yes. Definitely," I replied.

Subiaco abbey was begun as a little priory in 1877 by some German immigrants. Because really, if you're a Catholic German immigrant in 19th century Arkansas, what else are you going to do for mass except just build a church yourself? The little settlement started out as St. Benedict's Priory, and remained so until about 1910, when the town received its own post office and became Subiaco. By then, the abbey had moved to the top of the hill and had opened a school for boys.

There've been some ups and downs since then, and the end result is that Subiaco Abbey and Academy is a prestigious school (8th grade through 12th). Something like 90% of the kids that go through there graduate college.

The abbey itself is, of course, a gorgeous cathedral (and I've heard it's gorgeous inside as well; we didn't venture within). It's the kind of thing you would expect to see while driving through the middle of nowhere in England or Scotland, maybe, but not Arkansas. Of course those European abbeys would probably have four to five hundred years on this one, but hey, you know. It's America.

The academy even has its own sports teams (not sure who the mascots are). My guess is a lot of the boys here get so, shall we say, lonely, that they forget what kind of rare and awesome environment they get to go to school in. For all I know it's soul-crushingly strict, too. But I just know it's one of the most startlingly beautiful built environments I've ever encountered in Arkansas. I mean, sure, we've got some really pretty churches, even in towns like Tuckerman. But it's the fact that for miles is nothing but rolling hills and little colonies of cattle. No plaster bank-palaces or grinning neon fast-food joints.

And that's another thing. The monks of Subiaco own much of the surrounding farmland, so the abbey is self-sufficient. They even make their own habanero pepper sauce (it's called Monk Sauce. I'm serious).

The whole thing just knocked both of us way off guard. We explored the complex while giggling like fools, taking a moment every now and then to pause and exclaim, "I can't believe this is here!" Sometimes it's hard to love Arkansas, but this was one of those times where it really wasn't.

Here are a few more pictures from the complex.

The cathedral viewed from below

Inside the complex

The cafeteria, complete with giant chimney

It's finds like this that make small-highway exploration so worth it. And the road goes on...

-Jonesy

Last Train to 2010

2009-12-29T16:58:00.001-06:00

The winter marches on, and we're back again to the subject of trains. This is a good train story, though: no lamenting over buried tracks or abandoned right-of-ways or derelict depots. No, sir.

This is about the Arkansas-Missouri Railroad.

But first, Van Buren!

Van Buren lies just north over the river from the much larger city of Fort Smith. Van Buren is like Fort Smith's kid brother. Unfortunately, Fort Smith got into drugs and carousing and general raucous behavior, while Van Buren kept itself under a warm hat of responsibility and historical self-respect. What I'm trying to say is, its downtown is ever so much more beautiful than Fort Smith's, even though the latter town used to be some kind of breathtaking destination-town. For example, the above building (probably Van Buren's most famous) is an 1889 bank building that resulted from a feud between two bankers: since in the late 19th century the complexity and beauty of brickwork was indicative of a business's prosperity (and now you shouldn't be wondering why I am nostalgic for such times), one banker just up and built a bank right next to his rival's, only built his to be as architecturally marvelous as possible.

As it happened, none of it would really matter. Neither the "Crawford County Bank" nor the "Citizen's Bank"--the smaller of the two buildings, belonging to the other rival--managed to pull their business into the 21st century. Both of them (as well as the even older bank across the street) lost out to some bank buildings that probably didn't even use bricks.

But in the end, Van Buren got to keep its built environment, and the Crawford County Bank now adorns all of the little "Visit Downtown Van Buren" brochures. Fort Smith, on the other hand:

They sacrifice their built environment so ten more people can park their cars on a Friday afternoon. Oh, sure, they left the pediment and some of the pilasters of this building so people (like me) can see them and just wonder what used to be there. The face remains, like the only piece of a shattered family heirloom we can't bear to throw away.

But let's get back to the matter at hand. Whatever railroad depots and tracks and excellent things Fort Smith had are long gone. Van Buren's, however, are not only still standing, but are still quite in use:

Yes, it's your average Italianate depot with the addition of a mission-style shingle setup, much the same as many of Arkansas's smaller towns', but the presence of a sizable crowd is what makes the difference. And what's that? That thing just to its right?

Ah yes. A train. The Arkansas-Missouri Railroad is a small, privately owned line operating out of western Arkansas and southern Missouri. Like the Maine Eastern Railroad, the Arkansas-Missouri operates a freight line as well as a passenger excursion line. They have a number of different excursion packages, stopping in little towns up and down the west edge of Arkansas. We could have chosen one with a seat in a caboose, or one with an acted-out train robbery (complete with blank-shooting pistols). We chose the one that went from Van Buren to Winslow and turned around. Not the most exciting, but take a look at the inside of the car:

It's vintage 1920s. The seats were springy, but did we care? The car is a relic of a time when care went into the making of everyday objects, transforming mundane environments into ones of beauty. Of course, a family trying to get from Little Rock to Memphis because their grandmother is about to die probably would not care if the car was just a steel box, and sure, anyone who sees the same beauty every day might forget it exists.

I wouldn't, though. The sublimity of the car and our surroundings transfixed the four of us (me, Jenna, Drew and Kelsey Spickes). The trip took us through little towns, shallow gullies, cages of blasted granite, pitch-black tunnels, deep gorges at the bottom of which lie the bones of the American telegraph network...

The conductor on our car was an old man, hard of hearing but full of stories. He told us about the train trips he would take in his early childhood on this same route, stopping at the tiny depots every town once had. Each station would only yield a person or two, if any, but one thing was guaranteed: the train would load bottles of milk from every depot. This was an image burned in his mind.

The little towns we chugged through weren't so notable except for an anecdote or two the conductors would relate here and there. Winslow was little more than an arbitrary place with an extra track to turn the train around. But one town I will always remember: Mountainburg. Here's why.

There are three towns in Arkansas that start with the word "Mountain." They are Mountain Home, Mountain View, and Mountainburg. Mountain Home is famous for being the Arkansan version of Florida: old people go there to pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist. Mountain View is famous for attracting musicians from not just around the state, but from around the country, and for just being all around one of the best towns ever. Mountainburg is famous for dinosaurs.

Yep. When we passed the dust-mote sized hamlet, our conductor told us what he used to tell passengers about Mountainburg: "I used to say it was the only place in Arkansas you'd find dinosaurs," he said. "Then I found out about this place up north that has 'em too." Well, the "place up north" is, of course, the late Dinosaur World, but that's too tangential to go into now.

Mountainburg has two dinosaurs. Click here to see what they look like. We could just make them out from the window of our car, and that little glimpse made my day. Of course, the train had already made my day four or five times over, but hey, you know.

Seems like I need to wrap this story up. The funny thing is, I actually enjoyed this train trip more than the one in Maine. Something about the scenery, the antique car, the food, the conductors...it was just better. One more leisure railroad remains for me to encounter in Arkansas, and my ultimate goal still stands: ride a steam locomotive. All in years to come. Don't touch that dial.

In the meantime, I bid farewell to 2009. It has been a good year for Time Fishing. Maybe not so consistent, but good nonetheless. I look forward to fishing in 2010...

-Jonesy
P.S. Take a look here to see pictures of dinosaur statues all over the country. This is awesome.

About a House

2009-12-10T17:09:00.001-06:00

November was a dusty month for Time Fishing. I won't plead, "I didn't have time to blog," because it's a pet peeve of mine when people use the excuse, "I don't have time for X" (especially when X = Reading). But I will say that we were moving from an apartment to a house. This house:

Folks from Harding may recognize it, because it's on Market Avenue close enough to Harding that if I were to step outside and spit, the saliva--with decent trajectory--might meet Bruce McLarty's forehead. Not that I would do that. Also, if I were to exit via our back door and scramble my way through the weeds and crud bordering our backyard, I would probably stumble right into Midnight Oil.

The house is old. Probably 1920s or 30s, by my judgment. It's sandwiched on either side by two houses, both similarly venerable. Facing the house, on the right, is this:

From time to time a pickup truck-shaped tank will park on its lawn, and an older gentlemen will live in the house during those times. I asked him how old the house was. "Probably 1901 or 02," he said without hesitation, as he sprayed WD-40 on the tailgate hinges of our borrowed truck. It predates Harding, the Rialto, the asphalt on Beebe Capps, and Dr. Ganus (maybe). To our left is its brother:

Three-to-four cars live at this house, and the owners of the cars love to remind us, every couple hours, of their disdain for mufflers. The house is just as Tudor as our other neighbor, but an instinct within me says that it may be younger. Another instinct tells me its age and beauty is wasted on the motor-heads living there...but don't tell them that.

Anyway, our house. It's not only old and beautiful, but also quite strange. Take, for example, this munchkin-sized door situated at the terminus of our violently sloped roof:

It leads to nothing--not a garden, or a path, or even a munchkin-sized replica of our house; it just is. I suppose that if I were magical enough, it might lead to Narnia or Oz or Tir-Na-Nog, but at the moment it just opens to a narrow strip of grass betwixt the motor-heads' driveway (highway) and our western wall.

It's not in very good shape. The door isn't, and sometimes the house isn't either. Like a lot of older houses, it's drafty. A thin crack in our bedroom window admits enough cold air to chill our toes even when the heater is blasting. All of the windows have been painted shut. Though there is a chimney with a legitimate fireplace and mantle, it lacks a flue and has been neutered by layers of insulation. We have no dishwasher, no garbage disposal, very little room in our kitchen, few power outlets in most rooms and none in the dining room. Some of the lights in the bathroom don't work.

But is it weird that I probably love this house more than any other I've lived in? Possibly even more than the 19th century carriage house I grew up in? Even though it's just a rental house? Here's what it has going for it.

The almost-Craftsman style of the architecture means draftiness, but it also means lots of windows. The whole interior (with the exception of the lime-green kitchen) is painted in shades of golden-yellow, slightly different between each room. The above is our hardwood-floored den. In the morning, it glows like the streets of glory, to the point where we thought we had left all the lights on overnight. If you examine the picture closely, you can see that we have the White Album on our turntable. It's Jenna's favorite Beatles album (mine is Sergeant Pepper's).

The aforementioned hearth sits right next to the front door, and though it is currently functionless, it still provides its intentional centrality and (metaphysical) warmth. If you ask me where we got all of the wine bottles on the mantle, I will not tell you. The Halloween lights, however, came from Walgreens, as well as the Renuzit, which helped wash out the stale cat-urine smells that came with the house.

Please excuse my shoddy indoor photography; my wife is the one who gets paid for photography, not me. Another thing I love about this house are its old doors. I don't think any of them have been replaced (though a few have been added here and there), and so they have their antique rattly doorknobs and skeleton keyholes. The keyholes do us no good on any of the doors--the bathroom door has been equipped with a rude hook and loop to keep out intruders--but they remind me of a time when kids would peek through keyholes to spy on adults, and keys were beautiful enough to display in museums.

Here's a last weird thing.

Anyone out there who knows what this is? Show of hands? Nobody? That's because we don't use them anymore. This little scoop in the wall would have been a place for a telephone. It might have been added to the house in the 1940s, or it might be original. Either way it feels just as old as the rest of the house, and either way it will never serve its intended purpose while we live here. Despite my love of old technology, there's just no getting past the fact that cell phones have completely precluded land lines in my generation, just like how land lines did with telegraphs and so on. So what are we going to do with this alcove?

Maybe put a Virgin Mary statue in there. For now this little dinosaur will have to stand guard.

The last thing: 706 E Market Ave is in the remnants of a real neighborhood. There are lots of old houses (several of the beautiful examples from my Craftsman article are nearby, and I even considered taking a picture of this house back then). The range of income levels is diverse, and meaningful retail is within walking distance. There's a sidewalk. The neighborhood was probably prettier before Harding started growing parking lots and empty green spaces like warts, and a little burr in my brain says that someday a red cube of an administration building or a dismal square of parking lot will erase the munchkin door, the sloping roof, the skeleton keyholes, the insulated chimney, and the telephone nook from memory evermore.

But until that day, I'll admire this house.

-Jonesy

Railroad Hamlets

2009-11-17T20:22:00.000-06:00

"All across America, hamlets grew into towns, and towns into cities, with the coming of the railroad; and with the going of the railroad, cities faded into towns, towns into hamlets, and hamlets into ruins. As if it were a vessel supplying blood to the brain, the shutting off of the railroad brings on stroke, paralysis, and death..."

--Donald Harrington, Let Us Build Us a City

But the real blood flow in these towns and cities wasn't actually engines, cars, or cabooses: it was people. And the blood, the people, would exit and enter the railroad cars into the bloodstream of America by way of depots. I've been here before--to train stations--and I've returned again. The first few are all remarkably similar to each other, and all three are conspicuously located along U.S. Highway 64 (a new, rerouted vein).

Russellville's depot stands proud on a podium of pristine concrete, surrounded by curving sidewalks and pedestrian statues crystallized in bronze. It's the center of attention in a downtown restoration not, hopefully, just limited to Russellville. The station, like the other two on 64, still commands its own section of tracks, but no passengers have boarded a train from this station in probably 50 years.

Continuing to the west, Morrilton (the aboriginal location of Harding University) wields a dusky downtown and another Italianate station, this one converted into a geneology museum. The station, like Russellville's, owns its own little section of sidewalk with brick borders and immobile wooden benches. Do festive Morriltonians inhabit these benches at any time? During our short stay in the town (near twilight), we spied no pedestrians.

The last stop on highway 64 is Atkins. Though Atkins' station is quite similar to the other two, it has been left high and dry on a slough of gravel and weeds, separated from its blood vessel by a rude wire fence. The station does not seem to be home to any organization in particular, but it does bear the town's name and appears to be in generous upkeep.

In a different direction, in the north part of Arkansas, south of Harrison and north of Conway, we find a true railroad hamlet: Leslie.

Even in 1950, the town's depot was forlorn and probably mostly empty of red blood cells. Leslie was legitimately a town that was born and died with the railroad; in the early 20th century, it was the end of the line, with only steeper grades reaching northwest beyond. Its population doubled and redoubled and re-redoubled until it teemed at nearly 10,000, a gurgling mass of industry, entrepreneurs, and--no doubt--gallons of hard liquor. But the industry left with the railroad, and the population finally tumbled down to around 500 today.

I had to blink and rub my eyes a couple of times before I decided that yes, this was a train station, and yes, trains once did chug their way this far into the mountains. But they do not anymore, and Leslie's depot is now embargoed into the property of a local lumber company. Stripped of its passengers, its rails, and its dignity, the building probably does its best to hide its original, all-important identity.

Leslie's is not a story of failure, however. The little town is just off the beaten (automobile) track towards Harrison and Eureka Springs, and has managed to save their downtown from desolation, instead transforming it into a pleasant, antique-store laden diversion. It's also home to a few cafes and a renowned privately-owned bakery.

Each of these towns with their stations reminds me of a time when cars did not own our lives, and gives me a little (just a little) hope that one day we may pluck them from the hands of the lumber yards and historical societies and cobwebs to supply that energizing lifeblood again.

-Jonesy

Our Arkansas Traveler Map: November 2009

2009-11-03T17:43:00.000-06:00

As Jenna and I travel around Arkansas and explore, we keep a record of our journeys on this road map:

The thumbtacks represent towns, cities, and some other-type locations we have visited ("visited" here meaning going out of our way to experience, rather than just driving through). Major roads we've driven on are highlighted in orange. The action figure doesn't really represent anything. But he's pretty hilarious, isn't he?

Here's a list of all the places we've been, as of now:

Atkins
Augusta
Bald Knob
Batesville
Beaver
Beebe
Berryville
Blanchard Springs Caverns
Booneville
Bradford
Cabot
Calico Rock
Center Hill
Charleston
Conway
Danville
Dardanelle
Eureka Springs
Fayetteville
Fort Smith
Garner
Greenville
Heber Springs
Hot Springs
Jacksonville
Judsonia
Kensett
Little Rock
McRae
Morrilton
Mountain View
Newark
Newport
Nimmo
North Little Rock
Ola
Paris
Pine Bluff
Possum Grape
Rose Bud
Russellville
Searcy
Sheridan
Subiaco
Tuckerman
Van Buren
Winslow
Wynne

I figure I'll be posting updates to this map every six months or so. I plan to visit at least every major city in Arkansas at least once, and just coat that map with thumbtacks.

-Jonesy

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T10:03:00.001-05:00

In the spirit of Halloween and Time Fishing, here are five animated shorts from the golden age of animation (and theaters), in chronological order. Beware of haunted houses, grinning ghosts, and dancing skeletons!

1. Haunted House (Disney, 1929)

This is a classic tale of a gimmick-laden gag haunted house, complete with a lengthy skeleton dance number. But the main reason to watch this is for the joy of seeing the mouse prince of commercialism having the crap scared right out of him.

2. Hittin' the Trail to Hallelujah Land (Warner Bros., 1931)

This is one of my all-time favorite cartoons. I originally found it on one of those dollar store 6-hour cartoon tapes, sandwiched between some of the lamer color Popeye material and the 1970s Three Stooges 'toons. It's mainly known as one of the Censored Eleven, a group of Warner Bros. cartoons that have not aired publicly since the 1960s on account of their racist content. Frankly, I never really saw what was so racist about it, especially when viewed alongside cartoons like . I love it for its eerie graveyard sequence, catchy tune, and twisty-mustachioed villain. Also keep an eye out for the overt ripoff of Steamboat Willie.

3. Minnie the Moocher (Max Fleischer, 1932)

Here is one of the all-time weirdest Betty Boop shows. And if you've ever watched a Betty Boop cartoon, you know that's saying a lot. Betty gets upset with her parents, grabs Bimbo, and flees her house, running headlong into a cavern inhabited by a ghostly rotoscoped Cab Calloway disguised as a dancing walrus, while ghoulish creatures frolic in the background.

4. Skeleton Frolic (Columbia, 1937)

Admittedly, this film is more or less an outright plagiarism of Disney's 1929 short The Skeleton Dance. They were both directed by the same animation genius, Ub Iwerks, also known as the guy who actually created Mickey Mouse. But it is, to me, a more evolved and nuanced version of the earlier subject. It's also in color and brimming with frightful gags and moody color schemes.

5. Jasper and the Haunted House (1942)

The last cartoon on here is also one of the most unusual. It's a George Pal Puppetoon, a stop-motion feature from a series of other subjects also starring the young black child named Jasper. George Pal was accused of racism for his cartoons, but I think those were overblown claims from an overly sensitive time. This one I love just for how extraordinary is. Plus, the scarecrow and his raven are some of my favorite cartoon villains I've ever seen.

My favorite line from this one: "I SHO GOT ME A MESS O' PIE."

Happy Halloween!

-Jonesy

October Special: Part 4

2009-10-29T18:58:00.000-05:00

As the October Special began, so also shall it end: with a house that is in every sense haunted.

In my early days of downtown-exploring, before I really knew the causes of small-town rot, downtown desertion and suburban sprawl, I was a lot more fascinated with ruinous buildings than I was the reasons for their ruin. One of the first towns I explored was the close-at-hand Judsonia (which I discussed in my second-ever post). This nearly-deserted town has plenty of charm; there are some brick storefronts, signs of old commerce, a rusty water tower, a picturesque trestle bridge.

And then, there's the house.

It rises from the ground like a recent corpse, shouldering off grasping, earthen tendrils. Some of its windows are blinded by rude plywood, others stare openly through ragged, blanched curtains. The low overhanging roof is tinged with a rotten green.

The front door is bizarrely offset, letting the sickly yellow siding and the crumbling red bricks take precedent. Two chipped and tapering columns barely support the spartan gable. Tentative cats dart in and out of holes in the foundation. The dwelling's most disturbing feature, however, is not located at the front door, but rather on the pediment at the other end of the house.

Positioned neatly over the sagging curtains is an unlikely element on any house: a clock. Probing vines have climbed all the way to the old time-piece's face, gathering it in their arms like a trophy.

The clock is itself an oddity, displaying an unused-for-bygones strip of fluorescent light. The hands have eternally frozen at about 2:14. Was it in the early morning or afternoon? Do the residential spirits take flight at this hour, causing neighbors to flee to their bedrooms, closing their blinds?

This clock presents a vast number of questions, but they will never be answered; neither will the questions raised by what we found sleeping in the old carport behind the house.

This ghastly vehicle is a 1947 Cadillac hearse. It has since vacated the premises, leaving the house alone with its clock and its cats. I imagine it might have departed this world altogether.

The car is at once terrifying and gorgeous. Being a 1947 model, it exemplifies the streamline modern style prevalent on just about everything in that era. Here are a few detail pictures:

The decaying house in Judsonia remains a mystery to me. I've asked folks living nearby about it before, but have never gotten any answers regarding its condition, the rusting clock, or the stately hearse. Though the Cadillac is gone, the house still stands, haunting the minds of the few explorers of downtown Judsonia.

Well, that concludes my October Special. Expect a return to normal postery once we pass into November (the realm of my nemesis: Christmas; that juggernaut of commercialism who has me crying "HUMBUG!" until about a week before its actual date, and who is always poised to strike out Halloween before it has even occurred). Ciao!

-Jonesy

October Special: Part 3

2009-10-13T18:01:00.000-05:00

October is a time for phantoms, specters, and revenants to wander the earth unchallenged. And what are more ghostly than ghost signs?

Signs peer out from behind peeled back plaster, like this nearly-unidentifiable example in Morrilton, Arkansas.

Astral beings are the only souls slinking through the old square in tiny Newark, Arkansas. Perhaps the apparition of the wall dog that painted this sign across from the railroad haunts the shadows of this building.

Whatever hotels still exist in Paris have certainly now been banished to sprawl zones, leaving this the only indicator of any such business.

This rust-colored wall in Paris has boiled away enough to show some of its previous identities.

The oldest building in Russellville is also an epitaph for Selz, a defunct brand of shoes, as well as a meat market, among other things. An enterprising denizen of the 21st century also has left his transient mark on the building.

The flesh of downtown Wynne's carcass is beginning to slough off, revealing sinewy ghost signs. This building's signs in particular seems to be reflecting the dismal conditions of the tarp-covered goods being sold in front of its facade. The face of this building reminds me of an afflicted older gentleman, gazing silently at the rot surrounding him and attempting to stand tall over it. I can only hope that he succeeds.

The side of the same building is a pale wipe of signs, all of them as mysterious as the cemented-in windows.

The ancient text "Royal Crown" is creeping out from under the "Wholesale Parts" sign, perhaps betraying an earlier, more glamorous purpose for this building. I'll leave you with this sad reminder of the state of almost all of Arkansas's dead and dying small towns. Be wary, this October 31st, when the souls of the dead walk the earth, of the wandering spirits of Arkansas. I am not so sure they will be happy with us.

-Jonesy

(P.S.: I recently wrote an article on ghost signs for the Arkansas Farm Bureau magazine "Front Porch," which should be coming out sometime this week or next. Hurrah for being published!)

October Special: Part 2

2009-10-08T19:07:00.000-05:00

When we drive to see Jenna's family in Albion, we always pass through a little town called Grayville. Like most small towns in rural Illinois, it has a crystallized downtown and some of those token treasures I always seek out, like ghost signs and old theaters.

However, there's one other thing in the town of Grayville that I had always heard about, denoted by pointing fingers and hushed tones.

Far up on a hill on the edge of town, there is an overgrown field. The old bones of some sport equipment poke up through the earth, calling back to a time when this field was frequently beaten by the cleats of young residents of Grayville. But the field is antiquated, as is its host building just beyond its borders.

Rising above the weeds of the old field is the ghost of Grayville's original high school. The vehement claim of "1911" looms over the bulging doric columns framing the building's doorway.

Any doubts of the building's original purpose are whispered away by the words "PUBLIC SCHOOL" rendered in terse capitals over the doorway. But no students have passed through these doors in at least forty years.

All the marks of a long-abandoned building are present: window panes yawn with gaping holes; names of errant vandals are scrawled on stone surfaces; smells of asbestos and decaying plaster waft out of the wounds sustained by time. The ragged teeth marks of an unchallenged storm still mark the entire right side of the building; a combination of questionable ownership, lack of funds, and general disinterest conspire to keep the high school in this partially-dismembered state.

Quoins and bricks and cinder blocks litter the ground like scattered entrails. Like most abandoned buildings we find, we did not enter this one, wary of poisonous air, wilting ceilings, indwelling monsters, patrolling officers, or a combination of the above. But despite this monolith's slow dissolution, it still dominates the hill as a symbol of the power and respect an education once offered. I see this high school as a defiant figure, challenging any new Styrofoam-and-plaster laden modern school to climb its hill and fight it in a battle of pure majesty. There is no doubt in my mind that this rotting sentinel would win that battle any day.

-Jonesy

October Special: Part 1

2009-10-03T18:12:00.000-05:00

I love October. It brings with it a change of weather and color as the year begins to die, it breathes in dead leaves and cool breezes, and as it ends, the boundary between Earth and Elsewhere weakens, ushering in a time of skeletons, jack-0-lanterns and grim reapers. And I guess beer bottle and sexy nurse costumes, but I try to ignore that.

But in honor of this month of horror, we're going to do some Deep-Time Fishing. It's like Deep-Sea Fishing, in that sometimes you dredge up a creature which looks more at home in a Lovecraftian myth than on planet earth. Every now and then, I encounter these creatures.

Here's one for this week.

Highways in Maine are much less dreary than anywhere else in the nation (because many of them have yet to be transformed into freeways or interstates). While we were driving towards Bar Harbor, Jenna and I had a conversation that went something like this:

Me: "Wow, nice flea market. Should we--WHOA!"

Jenna: "What? What?"

Me: "Did you see that house!?"

Jenna: "No, I didn't!" She turned to see it. "Wooooww!"

This is what I had seen on the side of the road:

There may exist, somewhere, a more grotesque house than this one, but I don't know if I want to find it. Just the quickest glance of this house gave me a little sour nudge in the pit of my stomach. We didn't stop for pictures that same day, but we did on the way back.

The architectural style seems to be something like a Queen Anne or a Victorian Revival, but those values have been usurped completely by putrefactive horror. The forces of time and rot are dragging the house's structure quickly towards the earth. A man in the flea market across the street offered us no hints about the house's identity except to warn us that it's very near its catastrophic end. The "DO NOT ENTER" road sign mounted on the right seems out of place, and adds to its eerie quality.

Take a closer look at the sinking outbuilding:

The parabolic shape of this building's roof line reminds me of something out of Tim Burton's nightmares. If we didn't believe the house had become the residence of demon spawn, perhaps we would have ventured inside. But, like Lovecraft's doomed explorer of The Picture in the House, I think what we might have found in that building would be worth a special degree of madness.

Something about the unnatural bending and undulations of the woodwork literally sent shivers through my spine. If I had seen this house in the dead of midnight, I don't think I would be writing this blog post.

Here is a parting glance of this, the House on a Highway in Maine.

See you here again in a few days. In the meantime, you may wish to enjoy Cinemassacre's all-month-long Monster Madness, or indulge in X-E's Halloween Countdown. Until then, ciao!

-Jonesy

The Craftsman in Searcy

2009-09-22T11:07:00.000-05:00

I started getting interested in architecture when we took an architectural tour in Chicago. We got to explore the inside of Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House. The guide showed us minute details in skyscrapers that I had never considered before; previously I had only imagined city buildings as vertical glass shoeboxes.

I'm still no expert, but the American Craftsman style has grown to be one of my favorite residential styles. And fortunately for me, Searcy is loaded with examples.

It's a style that evolved first in Britain, and then once it was done being popular there, we started doing it (like most things that come from Europe...). It was derived from the bungalows used by the British Empire in the heart of India. In fact, the style is still sometimes called "bungalow," although "bungalow" can also generally mean "low, one-story house."

To start, there's one Craftsman house in Searcy that most of its residents should already be familiar with:

Is it Midnight Oil? IT IS Midnight Oil. Craftsman houses were (originally) built to keep the sweltering heat of India at bay by promoting as much air circulation as possible. For this reason, Craftsman bungalows grow rarer as one travels farther north. Here are some general architectural characteristics of the Craftsman house:

The first is an emphasis on wood and natural materials, although Midnight Oil is mostly covered in stucco. It might have been added later. Next...

...long, low-pitched roofs, usually hipped and gabled...

...eaves that overhang severely...

...tiny columns, usually squared and tapered...

...a deep front porch, usually extended from the main roof and supported by the tiny columns, and...

...exposed rafters or fanciful brackets.

Craftsman houses started to wane in popularity in the 1930s. You'll find most of them in early suburban districts close to the city center (Little Rock has a wealth of them in the difficult neighborhoods around Central High School). Their location hasn't been kind to them: proximity to the city meant many Craftsman houses were victim to the white flight of the 1960s and onwards. Fortunately, we're starting to see these neighborhoods slowly climbing back to their feet.

But Searcy hasn't really had to deal with any of that. Its Craftsman homes are still elegant and populated, for the most part. Here's a selection of some of the best I've found...

Craftsman style is almost purely residential, but occasionally will carry over into the commercial realm. Take a look at this Citgo station on Race Street:

A low, faux-gabled roof with exposed "rafters," supported by thin columns.

As a last note, I discovered something rather odd on this Crafstman-influenced house on Market Street.

Frugal Searcians will recognize this building as the Methodist Church's thrift store, but there's a clue to an earlier identity in the iron railings over the entrance.

What looks to be an inverted, incomplete peace-sign I recognize to actually be the letter "Y." There's one family in Searcy who always incorporates that letter into their estates. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'll give you a hint: they're in the dessert industry.

-Jonesy

(it's the Yarnells)