Ghost Signs: Part 2

Location: Corner of Scott & Second Street, Little Rock

"When asked how he managed to be happy every day, Mr. Adair would simply say, 'I trick my mind into thinking I'm having fun.' This attitude adjustment always applied, even to those times when he found himself hoisted high above ground in 100-degree heat."

The above quote is from Bob Adair, a lifelong painter of wall signs. I read the interview in Ghost Signs of Arkansas after Jenna surprised me with it one night (she had planned on presenting it to me after the wedding, but I talked about buying it too much, so I got it sooner. Yay, persistence!). These painters were commonly known as "Wall Dogs," and this particular dog began his career in 1924, ending it sometime in the 90s.


Location: Sheridan

The wall dog's job was one of precision. Folks like Adair would often travel in pairs, with one dog laying down a framework in charcoal, and the second filling out the skeleton with colored paints. The above sign was in a particularly bizarre location, lurking in a back alley home now only to bits of broken glass and plastic lawn chairs. I spotted it from far away and hiked over the cracked concrete to get to it. Later, I felt like I needed some ice cold refreshment. Looks like those ads still work this many years later...


Location: Batesville

Speaking of refreshment, this sign in downtown Batesville was totally restored by some modern wall dogs in 1988 at the behest of the city. The 20 years since then have worn it down, letting some of the layers underneath peek through. If you squint, you can make out the phrase "Relieves Headaches" at the upper right. This is hilarious, but I'll remind you that extra-strength Excedrin actually contains caffeine as one of its active ingredients. Unfortunately Coke is still just about as inept at curing migraines as it is curing thirst. That didn't stop me from drinking some on the afternoon I snapped that picture, though.


Location: Hot Springs

The thing I love the most about these signs is that they are never tacky. I'm sure someone out there might argue with me over that, but I haven't seen a tacky one yet. The text is perfectly aligned, it's clear and legible, beautiful, classy and artistic. There's no papyrus or comic sans or monotype corsiva. And when the text isn't perfectly aligned, it's endearing instead of annoying. The artists were skilled.

"One such skill, according Mr. White [another wall dog], is the ability to judge scale and proportion well enough to start at any point in the lettering or graphic and paint the sign to fit the space. To prove himself to a skeptical client, he once had to paint lettering for the word 'Solarcaine' backwards, from right to left, on a large billboard."


Location: Hot Springs

As a last image in today's entry, here's one of my all-time favorite signs. This one has just about everything on it, from giant 3-d letters to Coca-Cola to outdated prices to long-gone businesses. The box in the upper right advertises a "saloon," which is worth an entire time machine in itself. The phantom of the word "rooms" haunts the very top of the display, bringing me to muse on what kind of folk populated the rooms in the first half of the 20th century. And looming behind the whole picture is the colossal, cryptic "SELZ," that could really be just about anything.

Next, we'll travel outside of Arkansas to see what ghosts other states might offer.

-Jonesy

Ghost Signs: Part 1

All right! It's time to dust this little blog off and talk about one of my favorite things in the world of time fishing: ghost signs.


Location: Beebe

The first time I heard about ghost signs was when I encountered this book. I'm not actually sure where it came up, but somehow I was linked to it on Amazon and next I found it our local Hastings, beat up and evidently returned but still toting a hefty $20 price tag. For this reason I didn't leave the store with the book, but I did sit on the floor then and there and went through the book, cover to cover.

Being left-handed causes me to flip through books backwards, so I didn't actually do much reading that time. Mostly I just gaped at the pictures, looking for signs I might have seen before on my trips. I did, however, gather the idea behind ghost signs. They were large, painted advertisements created generally between 1900 and the 1950s (so at the same time most classy things were starting to disappear in America). In those old days, the signs were positively ubiquitous. They were painted on the highest buildings in town so everyone could see them.


Location: Bald Knob, Market Street, across from the MoPac depot

As the years went by and advertisers started turning elsewhere to cheaper options, the signs were left to fade. Sometimes, as in the above case, older signs become visible beneath the most recent ones as the paint erodes. The "war bonds" callout dates the sign easily, and the phrase "barber shop" affords an identity to this otherwise vacant and unmarked building. The structure's other side displays the text "White Way Cafe," revealing another persona.


Location: Batesville

Sometimes the signs are located in areas which don't really seem logical now. The above sign was on the back of a building on Main Street, advertising Optima Flour to predatory wasps and employees taking smoke breaks. But the positioning suggests that that area was once a high-traffic and high-priority zone. It also suggests that a product called "Optima Flour" existed at some point.



Location: Batesville

Here is an example of a ghost sign displayed at a tall vantage point. Anyone trotting down Batesville's Main Street in 1920 would see clearly that someone named "Hail" owned a Dry Goods shop in that building. It's the equivalent of seeing "McDonald's, Exit 92, 2 miles ahead on the right" on I-40, except this sign was beautifully hand-painted by a person instead of laser-printed and mass-produced by a corporation. Sorry, a little bitter.


Location: Batesville

For my last entry in our intro to ghost signs, we have one of my favorite types. Occasionally when a building is being renovated, or burns down, or is otherwise removed, one of these old signs is revealed, at least for a while. The Landers Theater, one of two beautiful old theaters in downtown Batesville, is currently being renovated and being made into the home of a Fellowship Bible Church (yeah, weird, but I guess it is Arkansas). When one of the walls was torn down, it revealed the massive sign seen above. Signs of this size rarely still exist on buildings, usually having been painted over or otherwise removed. This one is positively enormous, covering most of the side of the neighboring building, and is definitely advertising something which would cost a lot more than $3.50 these days. What that product is, I'm not sure.

So that's part one of our three-part discussion of ghost signs. I find these everywhere, and I always get really happy when I see them, so expect to hear a lot more. Next time: Wall Dogs!

-Jonesy

A quarter of Maine

Here's something I learned today.



The lighthouse on the Maine quarter is a real place. Not only is it a real place, but we inadvertently visited it on an exploratory drive.



The lighthouse is at Pemaquid Point, a remote coastal location about 45 minutes from our bed & breakfast in Boothbay Harbor. Of course, it's on the Historical Register (I think probably the entire state of Maine is on the register). The perilous point was the site of a couple of late 1600s shipwrecks, whose passengers went on to settle in places like New York and Massachusetts.

Once you get into the lighthouse, which we didn't expect to be able to, since the brochure said it was closed on rainy days, you see this:



Most of the complex is a museum these days, but the 1856 fourth-order Fresnel light is still used to ward ships from impaling themselves. Members of the coast guard arrive every now and then to replace the bulbs. Once at the top of the tower, the viewer sees this:



The view would be grander on a clearer day, but the ocean never changes. Outside the lighthouse tower is another unusual building:



This mid-1800s building once held the lighthouse's bell. These bell towers are now a rarity, and Pemaquid's is one of the last remaining. Hurricane Bob knocked it over in the 90s, but it was repaired.

Whew. I tell you what, Maine is far too easy. Everywhere I turn there's beautiful stuff, weird stuff, ancient stuff. Some of them I can't believe I missed when I was little. Expect to see more.

-Jonesy

Fill 'er Up

Readers may remember when I mentioned all of the abandoned gas stations lining highway 367. Old gas stations are one of my favorite subjects, simply because they are positively everywhere. They also tend to be cunningly hidden, which presents a fair challenge. Highway 367 is brimming with them if one knows where to look.



Our good friend the metal dinosaur (now painted green!) heralds the start of the gas station parade. Most old stations were quite small, featuring one or two garages, an office/supply shop, and usually no more than two pumps. As more and more people bought cars, and the larger gas companies started building convenient stores and restaurants into their stations, the smaller ones became outmoded. Many, however, remain viable businesses, but no longer retain their gasoline-selling identity and are devoid of pumps. In fact, the car dealership to which metal dino belongs is a former station.



The telltale sign is the concrete island to dino's left. This is the structure which originally would have housed the two pumps: note the overgrown hold just to the right of the pole. Upon closer inspection, the hole contains many tubes which once would have connected to a pump.

Here are a few more old stations seen between Searcy and Bald Knob (click to enlarge):



All of the above stations are either completely abandoned or are still being used as auto repair shops. Sometimes, though, they take on an entirely new identity.



This station, only identifiable by its 60's or 70's wavy canopy, seems to have become a lumber yard and is completely fenced off.



This one, one of my favorites for its gigantic triangular canopy (seriously, that thing looks deadly), now houses a pecan business. We found this antique scale sitting outside:



The birds living in a hole somewhere in the ceiling haven't treated the scale very well.



This station's canopy peeks over the owners' burgeoning fruit and vegetable stand. Ever wanted to buy fresh tomatoes at a gas station?



This one (possibly an old Sinclair station) has been granted the unlikely job of Bald Knob Fire Station. It's right next to the Bald Knob Farmer's Market.



Sometimes it's pretty hard to know what these buildings used to be. I think the structure bulging from the right side of the building is added on and may cover what was once a garage. The only way I figured this one out is because of the distinctive curved filling station light post, seen on the far right of the frame. These particular light posts are present at an alarming number of gas stations, and some still linger in places where they have become meaningless. I still have yet to figure out the significance of these guys.

I love these old stations, but my favorite is one which I've mentioned before.



This is clearly the oldest station on the stretch, demonstrating its age with a highly individual architectural style including a decorative gable (closeup pictured at the top of the entry) and wooden garage doors. It's another one which is suffering from an identity crisis, having been transformed into a hair salon. But I'd rather have it house some business than none. It's listed on the national register of historical places, along with the cafe next to it which was designed by the same architect. Here's a closeup of the beautiful wooden garage doors:



Given the sheer number of stations on 367, It's clear that the road was once a heavily traveled thoroughfare. Now, the stations are just relics of a time when drivers could see more than just trees and 100-foot-tall signposts from the road.



-Jonesy

Ghost Town at Twilight

When Jenna and I traveled to Calico Rock, a tiny, but beautiful town situated around 15 miles northwest of Mountain View to shoot a wedding, the last thing we expected to find there was an honest-to-God ghost town. But find one we did.



The above picture is the functional half of Calico Rock, which includes a gorgeous cafe with a restored soda bar and a number of buildings with prominently displayed historical markers. The whole town is on a cliff overhanging the White River, which once brought steamboats to unload at the town's other half: the ghostly east side.



The town even goes so far as to acknowledge East Calico Rock's (AKA Peppersauce) undead condition. An iron bridge crosses the (notably unhealthy and non-steamboat-worthy) river into the east segment. A sign to the left gives a quick history of the once-thriving town, describing scenes such as swarms of vigilantes ridding the town's tavern district (Peppersauce Alley) of its scalawags once and for all (!) and the formerly busy Walnut Street thrumming with the noises of the factories and mills which made up the heart and lifeblood of Calico Rock. These factories, by the 1940s, had become unprofitable, and the buildings of East Calico were deserted. Here is Walnut Street at the present day, in its ectoplasmic preserved-but-not-quite-preserved glory:



Please forgive the poor lighting: we were ahead of dusk by only a few minutes. The tall building dominating the right side of the frame was a grocery store; the crumbling lot immediately to its left was once a movie theater; the next building was a barber shop, part of which seems to have been restored and moved into by an individual (we could hear the telltale sounds of television from within).



Closer to the river is this tiny "city jail," which I can only hope was once stuffed full of scalawags fresh from their troublemaking in Peppersauce Alley. I understand there are more town jails like this around here, and I intend to find them at some point.



Across from the city jail is this old feed store, which was covered in faded "Purina Chow" logos.



Many abandoned warehouses line the streets, each containing whatever dark machines the inhabitants of East Calico have left behind since the 40s.



Emerging from the foliage behind another warehouse is a menacing structure the map deliciously labels as an "incinerator."



Finally, at the end of Walnut Street, peeking through the trees, is what I learned to be a former church/schoolhouse. I discovered this particular building before the wedding and was able to decipher its identity from the preacher. Here is a final picture of it, from closer:



All in all, we didn't have enough time to fully explore Calico Rock and Peppersauce with justice. At a future date, I plan to return and shoot some more photos of the ghost town and some of its other buildings (like, apparently, a cheese factory).

-Jonesy