Category Archives: Review

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today…

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…that I got the first trip underway. This blog typically uses Wednesdays for reviews or nothing at all. Calling this post a review is a stretch. It does not evaluate a book or CD that you might consider buying or a movie or concert you might consider attending. It’s a look back at a road trip that not you, nor I, nor anyone else can ever recreate. Calling it a re-view (as in view again) allows me to publish it on a Wednesday without breaking any rules which means it appears on the twentieth anniversary of the first day of travel of the very first of my documented road trips.

4600 Miles to Bowling Green (a.k.a. Rt66in99) is how this website began. August 21, 1999, wasn’t the first date something had been posted to the site. Besides the trip’s cover page, some auxiliary pages had been created to provide a little background and context. To be entirely honest, the August 21st posting wasn’t even the first daily journal to appear. Circumstances kept the trip from starting on the 20th as scheduled but I called it Day 0 and still made a journal entry. In addition, there had been practice entries for Day -33 and Day-202. (The only way to reach these pages is to click “Prev” on Day 0.) But August 21, 1999, was the day I departed Cincinnati, drove to Chicago, and snapped a picture of the intersection of Adams and Michigan to appear in my first from-the-road journal entry.

A lot of things about the site have changed over the years but some things begun with that first trip have stuck. The concept of a page for each day with access to the next and previous day has been in place since the beginning as has a cover page with direct access to individual days. The idea of using the daily “Next’ and “Prev” button to (usually) represent the vehicle being used also goes back to that first trip. An animated GIF showing progress has been used on a few subsequent trips but it requires knowing the full route in advance and that’s often not the case. Besides, it’s a fair amount of work.

The organization of trip cover pages and of the site’s home page have changed over the years as features have come and gone and the number of completed trips has increased, but it’s still a clunky 1999 website. At my age and the site’s age, that isn’t likely to change. I’ve done some rework to accommodate things like small screen mobile devices and I’ve incorporated a few third-party tools to support a blog, mailing lists, and RSS feeds but the site is basically good ol’ HTML with the dated appearance and other characteristics that come with it.

Advancements in technology have brought improvements to the site but even more to the road trips documented here. A series of blog articles, My Gear, documents the various hardware used on the trips while another, My Apps, documents the software. The first three My Gear chapters describe the camera, computer, and GPS receiver used on the first trip. Of these, only the camera had a direct effect on the appearance of the website. That camera was a 350 kilopixel Agfa ePhoto 780c. It may be hard to believe there were once digital cameras with sub-megapixel resolution but easy to understand how a camera upgrade could really improve the website. The sluggish (by today’s standards) Toshiba Libretto and dial-up internet left no lasting marks on the website beyond limiting the amount of data uploadable during an overnight stop. The GPS provided some statistics I used on the site but otherwise had nothing to do with it. My Apps – Chapter 1 talks about the website and image editing software used on the first trip. Maybe better image software could have made those 1024×768 (extrapolated) images look better but I have serious doubts. FrontPage Express, the web editing software I initially used, did have lasting impact. The textured beige background that is used on almost all journal pages came from its built-in inventory. My Apps – Chapter 2 is about the software I used to produce printed route instructions which the GPS sort of helped me follow.

The pictures at right aren’t about advances in equipment but a comparison of equipment I had on that first trip. The picture on the left is one of the few unedited pictures I still have from the Agfa. I also carried a 35mm Nikon pocket camera which took the picture on the right. I have no idea what that proves but there it is.

The final cover page for that trip talks about it being temporary. As I said at the time, I expected it to go away because “I’ll need the space or retiring it will just seem right.” Web space became increasingly cheap and apparently retiring it never seemed right. Two decades later that first trip journal is still online and I’ve added 155 more. There is a clickable index of them all as well as a clickable collage. The collage, composed of one image from each of the trips, is a big favorite of mine. Visually skimming over it is a great reminder of what I’ve done with my gas money over the last twenty years. Pausing on any one of those images will always trigger a flood of memories which I can delve into deeper with just a click.

I’m spending this twentieth anniversary at home. I was on the road when the tenth anniversary rolled around. The 1999 trip consisted of following Historic Route 66 to Los Angeles to join a caravan to the Corvette Museum in Kentucky. The 2009 trip was quite similar with the westbound portion being the Lincoln Highway to San Francisco to again caravan to the museum. That was before this blog existed or I might have done a post similar to this one. Instead, I included a brief summary of the day ten years prior in the appropriate daily journals. I began those summaries with the first posting rather than the first day of travel so they begin on the latter trip’s sixth day, August 20, 2009. The summary of the final day of the first trip ended with these words: “It’s really hard for me to imagine a twentieth anniversary for this website but it’s no easier imagining an end. Watch this space.” I’m really happy that some of you are still watching.

Movie Review
Cuba
Golden Gate 3D

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A new film will open in the reworked all digital Robert D. Lindner Family OMNIMAX Theater on June 7. A few previously shown films have appeared as part of the theater’s classic series but Cuba: Journey to the Heart of the Caribbean is only the second new production to be shown since the theater reopened in December following a long closure. A post on the reopening and the first film, Volcanoes, is here. There were two members-only showings of the new movie on Saturday and I jumped at the chance to attend. Volcanoes is an awesome movie; Cuba might be even better.

It’s the work of Golden Gate 3D, which I’ve now learned was responsible for two of my favorite 70-millimeter real film IMAX movies: Jerusalem and National Parks Adventure. The images are superb, from scenic panoramas to the microscopic; From world stopping slow motion to the super acceleration of time-lapse. The three storylines do a fine job of holding the film together and moving it along. Then there’s the music. ¡Ay caramba, the music! It grabbed me from the start and never let go through slow soaring overhead shots to frantic-paced dance scenes. I expected to see a long list of contributors when I scanned the credits but it appears that just two men composed all the original music: Andres Levin, who was also the film’s music supervisor, and José María Vitier. Wonderful stuff, fellows.

The storylines involve Havana’s official historian, an aspiring ballerina, and a pair of scientists. Eusebio Leal doesn’t just study history, he preserves it. He is responsible for saving and renovating many of the city’s numerous endangered buildings. He is also responsible for the only direct quote I recall from the movie: “Architecture is frozen music and we are a people who love music”.

It was a major surprise to me to learn that the world’s largest ballet school is in Havana. The movie follows Patricia Torres, one of the Cuban National Ballet School’s approximately 3,000 students, as she works to realize her dream of joining the Cuban National Ballet Company. Fernando Bretos and Daria Siciliano study Cuba’s coral reefs to discover why they are actually recovering while those in other parts of the world continue to decline. Their work provides the filmmakers an opportunity to show off their considerable underwater skills in recording some beautiful scenes.

Two of my favorite scenes are the result of underwater microscopic time-lapse recording. Siciliano tells us that the coral is not inanimate stone but is simply living at a different pace than us. The cameras then demonstrate. The scenes instantly reminded me of liquid light shows I saw in the 1960s. The great music certainly encouraged the idea that I was watching a brilliantly colored high-def high-tech version of hippy era stagecraft.

There was another flashback of sorts in plenty of shots of the legendary 1950s American automobiles that resourceful Cubans have kept in operation despite the long-standing complete embargo on parts. Of course, keeping the mostly brightly colored vehicles running is not the only place where the embargo and generally poor economy have led to uncommon ingenuity. Agriculture is one such area that is highlighted in the film.

The lack of money and materials is evident in the film from the aforementioned “classic” cars to the deterioration of buildings. Cuba: Journey to the Heart of the Caribbean doesn’t avoid or downplay this aspect of the politically isolated island but the bright and crisp images somehow make it less sad. The music might also have something to do with that. The faces certainly do.

The movie is filled with smiling faces, dancing feet, and drum pounding hands. Most of the people seen in the movie are happy. Of course, this is partly due to the fact that parades and other celebrations are frequent subjects. Not every face is smiling and not every scene is a happy one but there are a lot more grins than grimaces. Somewhere near its beginning, the film talks of Cuba existing in three different periods. There is its glorious past, its uncertain but promising future, and the present. The present is what it is. This movie might make things look a little better than they actually are but I don’t think that’s an intentional misrepresentation. I think its creators wanted to make a joyful and entertaining movie that included some seriously representative images. They used some of the best of the present and included a little bit of both the past and the future. When you see it, and I really recommend you do, be prepared to tap your toes and maybe dance in your seat a little. It’s gonna be hard not to.

Book Review
Diners of the Great Lakes
Michael Engle

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My original notion of what’s inside Diners of the Great Lakes was not very accurate, but I’m not the least bit disappointed. For no particular reason, I more or less expected this book to be something akin to a directory of diners currently existing in the Great Lakes region along with a telling of their individual histories. There is a certain amount of that, but it comes late in the book after Engle has delivered not just the history of diner operation in the region but of the manufacture of diners there along with their development as something distinct from what occurred nearer the Atlantic.

The industrial revolution of the late nineteenth century was accompanied by a revolution in food sales. Factories might now operate around the clock and their employees needed to be fed quickly and at non-traditional times. At first, food prepared at home would be sold from a pushcart, but it wasn’t too long before larger wagons containing elementary kitchens appeared. Simple freshly prepared items were sold to hungry workers and others through windows. As the twentieth century rolled in, larger horse-drawn wagons, with inside seating for a few patrons became common. The earliest lunch carts were naturally built by their operators. Eventually, however, manufacturers, such as Closson Lunch Wagon Company of Westfield, NY, began constructing wagons to sell. Engle illustrates the development of lunch wagons and the stationary diners that followed them, with wonderful period photographs, advertisements, and newspaper clippings.

As the story progresses from Closson’s horse-drawn wooden wagons through large built-on-site chrome Starlites, I found it interesting how the nomenclature changed slowly from lunch wagon to dining car to diner. I also found it personally interesting to learn that diners had once been manufactured in my home state of Ohio including some in nearby Dayton.

The book ends with what I once thought might fill the whole thing. The “Great Lakes Diner Directory” contains an extensive listing of diners with photos, descriptions, and locations. As Engle points out, assuring that the list is absolutely complete and current is impossible. The region’s diner population, like that everywhere else, is dynamic. “Call before you go,” is certainly good advice but the list in this book is as good as it gets.

Diners of the Great Lakes, Michael Engle, Michael Engle Publishing, November 1, 2018, 8.5 x 11 inches, 322 pages, ISBN 978-0976938927
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
Six of Each
Denny Gibson

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And now for something completely different. Anyone who thought releasing two books within three months might be overdoing it will have no doubts about that being the case when they see another appear a week later. But this is a different kettle of fish. Really. Six of Each is a collection of photographs drawn from the previously published travelogues. Each of those travelogues is available in two forms. There is a black-and-white printed version and a color digital version. Photo-quality color printing is still relatively expensive in the low-volume print-on-demand world. Printing the books in black and white keeps them reasonably priced. On the other hand, color in digital files is free. Offering B&W paperbacks and color ebooks isn’t ideal but it keeps the books affordable and color at least available.

I had pretty much given up on being able to offer any of the travelogue photographs in printed form at anything close to a reasonable price when I saw the chance to steal another idea from Jim Grey. Jim is an excellent photographer and successful blogger whom I’ve stolen from in the past. He is responsible for what became “Trip Peeks” to fill posting commitments with minimal work. Jim has published two photo “magazines” on the Blurb platform. One is in color and the other black and white. Both look quite good and they are not outrageously priced. Magazines are available in a single 8.5×11 inch page size and have a few other restrictions. The quality is not quite up to offset printing standards and the cost is not a match for black and white but both are much more acceptable than other print-on-demand products I’ve seen.

So what I’ve done is pick a half dozen pictures from each of the existing travelogues and combine them in a Blurb magazine. The magazine is only available through Blurb (that’s one of those magazine restrictions) and there is no digital version available (that’s my restriction). It’s also more expensive than it seems a 32-page “magazine” ought to be. But it does let me see what some of my photographs would look like using something besides black ink on stationary paper. And it’s there for anyone else who would like to look.

Six of Each, Denny Gibson, Trip Mouse Publishing, April 2019, paperback, 8.5 x 11 inches, 32 pages, ISBN: 978-0368444654

Preview or purchase at Blurb.

Take a look at Jim’s books here. My reviews are here and here.

I made a comment about seeing my photos “using something besides black ink on stationary paper”. The truth is I’ve seen some of my photos reproduced via some pretty high-grade offset printing in two books by Brian Butko: The Lincoln Highway: Photos Through Time and Greetings from the Lincoln Highway (Centennial Edition and newer).

Book Review
Jefferson Highway All the Way
Denny Gibson

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Too soon? What had been my most recent travelogue, A Canadian Connection, was published less than three months ago and I tend to agree with anyone thinking these paperbacks are appearing just a little too close together. But the facts are that neither the timing nor the sequence of these books was exactly arbitrary. Before I had finished writing 50 @ 70, I knew I had to produce a book covering the Canadian portion of that drive to and from Alaska, and before I had finished driving from Winnipeg to New Orleans last spring, I knew I had to produce a book covering that full-length drive of the Jefferson Highway. Then, in a manner similar to the scheduling of many road trips, I started working backward. It seemed reasonable to target release of the Jefferson Highway book ahead of the 2019 JHA conference. If there was any appetite for the book at all, it would likely peak about the time of the conference. That meant publication by early April (i.e., now). It also seemed desirable to have the tale of the Canadian portion of the Alaska trip follow the U.S. portion of the trip in 50 @ 70 without another book in between. So the sequence and overall timing was set and has come to pass. For the present, the travelogue job jar is empty.

All five existing Trip Mouse books tell stories of road trips. They are not guidebooks even though photographs and descriptions of points of interest are plentiful. All five share a common format, but the latest resembles the first a bit more closely than the others. A Decade Driving the Dixie Highway describes the many trips required to cover all of the network of roads that comprised the Dixie Highway system. Similarly, 50 @ 70 tells of multiple trips that passed through the last sixteen of fifty states. Even A Canadian Connection, which deals with a single journey, consists of northbound and southbound segments with a gap (Alaska) in between. Only By Mopar to the Golden Gate (which could have been called Lincoln Highway All the Way) and Jefferson Highway All the Way tell of a single end-to-end drive of a single historic named auto trail.

Jefferson Highway All the Way tells a little of the history of the original Jefferson Highway Association and the route it defined. It also touches on the formation of the modern JHA in 2011. But the bulk of the book concerns the events and sights (There are about 140 photos.) of that 2018 drive.

Jefferson Highway All the Way, Denny Gibson, Trip Mouse Publishing, 2019, paperback, 9 x 6 inches, 154 pages, ISBN 978-1796535280.

Signed copies available through eBay. Unsigned copies available through Amazon.

Reader reviews at Amazon are appreciated and helpful and can be submitted even if you didn’t purchase the book there.

Book Review
A Canadian Connection
Denny Gibson

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This is my fourth self published book; All are travelogues. This one is a midquel that covers the omitted middle section of a trip that formed part of the previous book, 50 @ 70. When I did my faux review of 50 @ 70, I joked that it would not be my third strike because the first two, while not at all hits, were not quite whiffs either. 50 @ 70 pretty much was. In looking for things to blame that on other than poor writing and an uninteresting subject, I’ve grasped at two.

One is the lack of a predefined target group. The first two books were about named auto trails, the Lincoln Highway and the Dixie Highway, which had their own fan base who could at least be informed that something new existed related to the subject of their affection. Not a lot of people are fans of being 70 years old, and any that are will most likely move on to some other number or will simply cease being fans — or anything else — completely. As for the 50 states part, I did know of a couple of ” all 50″ clubs but they are basically registries and stores with only one way communication. I recently became aware of a couple of Facebook groups focusing on visiting all fifty states so I’ll probably try dropping notes about 50 @ 70 but I don’t expect much.

The second problem is the name. I’ve long accepted that no one is going to find it by accident, but I recently found out that it can barely be found on purpose. The number one hit today for an Amazon all departments search for “50 @ 70” was an Evinrude carburetor rebuild kit. Lower ranked items included elite dumbbells and Honda foot pegs. Restricting the search to books put a John Deere manual at the top of the list. The list also contained books on mid-century music and a hot dog cookbook with 50 recipes. My book was at the bottom of the second page.

So when I picked a title for this book with gorgeous scenery, semi-exotic wild animals, native settlements, and frontier history I was careful not to chose something that looked like a broken email address or a rejected password. I also made an effort to identify with a predefined group. Canadians have been around for a long time and there’s a bunch of them. I’m not so certain that they’re actually interested in a connection to Alaska but I know there’s a good chance that, if they’re not interested, they might apologize for it.

A Canadian Connection, Denny Gibson, Trip Mouse Publishing, 2019, paperback, 9 x 6 inches, 104 pages, ISBN 978-1719274449.

Signed copies available through eBay. Unsigned copies available through Amazon.

Reader reviews at Amazon are appreciated and helpful and can be submitted even if you didn’t purchase the book there.

Book Review
Textures of Ireland
Jim Grey

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A funny thing happened on the way to this review. Not funny ha ha; Funny peculiar. This is Jim Grey’s second book. I reviewed the first, Exceptional Ordinary, in April, 2017. I figured that this review would reference that one, make some comparisons, make some jokes. It would be fun; Maybe even funny ha ha. But that review has gone missing. I don’t know how or even when. I’ve plugged the hole left by the disappearance, but my memory’s way too far gone to try recreating the original review. The best I can do is try to compensate by being twice as impressed with Textures of Ireland as I would be otherwise.

That’s a joke, of course. It’s also impossible. I’m not saying that the book has pegged my impression meter, and that I couldn’t possibly be a little more impressed with it. I’m just saying that it has put the meter close enough to the max that there’s no room for doubling. I’m even impressed with the title. I think I would have picked up on the role that the various surfaces, from rough rock walls and bluffs to smooth water and glass, play in these photos, and I may have even happened upon the word “texture” at some point, but I can’t be certain. It’s the perfect word and I think having it in the title got me focused properly from the beginning. I don’t doubt that some would prefer not to be steered in anyway at all but for me I feel it was a good thing.

Grey’s considerable writing skills see very little action in Textures of Ireland. The first page is filled with text describing the trip he and his wife made to Ireland in 2016. Neither had been there before, and for her the trip included visiting homelands she had never seen and talking with relatives she had never met. The page also provides some common background for the book’s photos. All were taken with a Nikon N2000 and 35mm lens using Kodak T-Max 400 film. There is some discussion of the reasons for choosing that combination which include the camera’s ability to take quality photographs while being rugged enough to survive the casual handling and mishandling that seem to just naturally be part of vacations. The camera’s ready availability at reasonable prices was very much a factor since it meant that a camera disaster wouldn’t automatically be a financial disaster.

Without counting, I’m sure that first page contains more words than the rest of the book combined. The camera, lens, and film are the same for all thirty-five photos and the only additional information Grey shares on each one is their location. Clearly he expects the pictures to stand on their own. They do.

Although I’m sure I’d feel cheated if they weren’t there, even the few words that identify a photo’s location aren’t really necessary. Knowing where any of these pictures were taken does not make me appreciate them any more or any less. I’ll admit that a couple of the pictures made me curious enough to check out the location before I studied the image, but more often than not I’d spend some time soaking in an image then move on without knowing or caring where it was taken. The two exceptions were a picture of people walking over an unusual jumble of rocks and the picture of a hairpin turn on a steep road. The jumbled rocks were part of The Giant’s Causeway, and I think I liked knowing that because it was a name I’d heard before. The hairpin turn was in Glengesh Pass which meant nothing to me but became a place I might seek out if given the chance.

I’m not enough of a student of photography to understand why black and  white images convey texture better than colored ones. Maybe it’s because the absence of color forces the viewer to notice the shadows which are visual indicators of texture, or maybe it’s something else that I understand even less. About three months ago I was able to look over some original prints of some of the most well known photographs in the world. It was at an exhibit called “Ansel Adams: A Photographer’s Evolution” at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati. No, I’m not about to compare Jim Grey to Ansel Adams, and I won’t even try comparing any of their photographs, but I will say that some of the same things that make Adams’ images worth looking at can also be found in some of Grey’s images.

I have other favorites besides the previously mentioned Giant’s Causeway and Glengesh Pass pictures. Two of them face each other. On the left a path bordered by tall (marram?) grass curves out of sight with water and a distant shore in the background. The photo on the right hand page starts with a layer of sand at the bottom, moves to a bit of shallow smooth water, then some deeper water covered in small waves. Above that is a dark shoreline and the whole thing is topped by a sky filled with fairly angry looking clouds. A few man-made objects dot the shoreline with the straight lines of what looks like a building pretty much dead center. Both pictures were taken at Rosses Point Beach, and both pack a variety of textures into the frame. I also quite like a photo of Kylemore Abbey reflecting on itself and one of small boats tied up at Portrush.

I said there were thirty-five photos but that’s not quite true. There are thirty-five interior pages with one photo each. One of these also appears on the front cover. It looks out through the doors of Kylemore Abbey. There is also a photo on the back cover. It does not appear inside and it has no identification at all. In it are columns that go from a coal black silhouette in the center to some reasonably well lighted ones on each side. The columns are at least similar to some inside the book in photos taken at Sligo Abbey. Maybe they’re the same; Maybe not. It’s a cool picture in any case and a little mystery is not a bad thing.

In that missing review of Jim’s first book, I commented on the quality of the printing and binding. It was the first time I had seen a Blurb product and I happily reported that it was not crappy. It was quite good, in fact, and so is this one. The pages are fairly heavy semi-gloss and the printing is quite sharp which helps bring out the, you know, texture of the decidedly non-crappy photos.

Textures of Ireland and Exceptional Ordinary are available digitally or in paperback here.

Book Review
Vintage Signs of America
Debra Jane Seltzer

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I photograph a fair number of signs as I travel, and I know quite a few people who photograph many more than I. Not one, however, is in the same league as Debra Jane Seltzer. If sign hunting was an Olympic sport, the petite Seltzer would be buried under gold medals. Her photo expeditions are legendary. Until recently, when she and her dogs (currently four) headed out in the white Chevy van named Sparkle, they would take along a big stack of notes and marked up map printouts. Today there might still be a printed list of targets but Google maps and a smartphone have reduced the need for paper considerably. The target list is never limited to signs. It’s almost certain to include interesting buildings and other roadside attractions of all sorts.

Seltzer’s website, Roadside Architecture, is the primary beneficiary of these expeditions. It currently contains more than 60,000 searchable photos organized by subject and location. It’s described as “Buildings, signs, statues, and more”. Photos are added and other maintenance is performed between trips. While traveling, Seltzer maintains a blog with stories and pictures from the road and a Flickr account with pictures that didn’t appear in the blog and probably won’t make it to the website. Links to these and more can be found at the Roadside Architecture website.

So why a book? Even though the subject matter of the structured website, the blog, and the Flickr account is essentially the same, they have different uses and different audiences. A book’s audience is different yet. In reading the book, I spotted a couple of signs that could be within range of upcoming travels. As I put them on my own list, I realized that the book could be used as a “shopping list” for travelers. The website, of course, is a super shopping list and both the blog and Flickr can can be sources of things to see, but the printed page is consumed differently and if the book gave me some ideas I’m sure it can do that for others.

However, before I thought of Vintage Signs of America as a shopping list, I thought of it as a primer. There is a one page introduction which, in addition to providing an overview of the rest of the book, offers a little insight into why Seltzer likes signs and why you might, too. This introduction page and a few near the book’s end where the subject is preservation are the only pictureless pages in the book. The other pages are filled with roughly 175 color photographs divided into five chapters. The first of these, “Types of Signs”, is where I got the idea of the book as a primer. Examples of bulb, opal letter, mechanical, and other types of signs appear with descriptive text. It prepares the reader for recognizing the various types in the wild and also provides a little history of advertising and the sign industry.

The next three chapters form what Selzer refers to as the “theme” section of the book. One chapter focuses on “People” with sub-themes like chefs, women, cowboys, and Indians. I was a little surprised with the statement that “There are far fewer representations of women than men on surviving vintage signs”, and considered why that was so. For starters, most of those chefs, cowboys, and Indians are male. The neon women my male mind first thought of were bathing beauties diving into motel swimming pools. Women are portrayed in other roles but not often. Evidence, I suppose, of women being even more underrepresented in the ’40s , ’50s, and ’60s, when most of these signs were made, than today.

The “Animals” chapter is probably my favorite. Colorful birds, fish, and dogs draw customers to businesses of all sorts. Sequenced neon segments can make birds appear to fly and dogs and horses appear to run. A pig almost always indicates a BBQ restaurant although one sign shows a line of pigs merrily leaping in to a grinder to be made into sausage.

“Things” is as varied as you might imagine. Bowling balls and pins are popular as are skates, cars, and assorted food items. Donuts and ice cream cones seem to be the most common edibles used to attract customers. Bowling balls lend themselves to animation and when a neon bowling ball rolls, a strike is virtually guaranteed. Together, “Types of Signs” and the three chapters of the “theme” section make up a sort of sampler of the massive Roadside Architecture site. Picking less than 200 images to populate this sampler had to be tough but the choices made were excellent.

Like the signs themselves, the color photographs snag a reader’s attention. They’re all good eye-candy and some, like those with running animals, flying footballs, or operating machinery, require some amount of study. The pictures are far from alone, however. Every picture has an extended caption that describes the sign, often tells its history, and sometimes includes more general information. As Seltzer tells it, “I snuck facts and history into captions which makes it easier to swallow.” Easy to swallow describes the whole book. Even though it may look like a picture book, it seems quite natural to read it front to back and absorb those “facts and history” along with the images.

The last chapter, “Preserving Vintage Signs”, has those pictureless pages I mentioned earlier. It begins with a couple of pages of text that is sort of a “state of the signs” message. Here Seltzer tells of what has been happening to signs and why. The last page is also all text with some answers to the question “What can I do?” In between are descriptions, with pictures, of the big three sign museums in the country: The American Sign Museum (where I bought my copy of the book) in Cincinnati, OH, the Museum of Neon Art in Glendale, CA, and the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, NV. The whole chapter, and the final page in particular, might just be the inspiration someone needs to get involved is saving or documenting vintage signs.

So I’m thinking that some folks will get inspiration from this book, some will use it as a shopping list for their own sign hunting, for some it will be an introductory primer into the world of signs, and others might see it as a sampler of the full Roadside Architecture web presence. Those are all valid uses for the book and it will satisfy all of them quite nicely. Of course, some might see the book purely as a nice presentation of some very pretty pictures. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that. With the few exceptions noted, there are pretty pictures on every page.

Vintage Signs of America, Debra Jane Seltzer, Amberley Publishing, April 1, 2018, 9.2 x 6.5 inches, 96 pages, ISBN 978-1445669489
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
Ford Model T Coast to Coast
Tom Cotter

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Old-car guys and old-road guys are hardly one and the same although there is definitely a whole bunch of overlap. With this book, Tom Cotter stakes out a position deep in that overlap. Tom is, however, much more of an old-car guy than an old-road guy so it’s not surprising that his position is closer to the car side than the road side. The story of how plans for the trip came together is telling. The idea that Tom started with was driving an old car across the United States. Over the years, the idea had been refined to involve a particular old car. He called it a dream and admitted that it was unlikely to be realized but the car he really wanted to drive across the country country was a Ford Model T. In his dream the road was secondary.

Before getting too deep, let me point out that this is not my great grandfather’s T. My great grandfather once drove a stock Model T to Florida and back. Granddad’s car might have had a theoretical top speed around 40 MPH but the rugged roads of 1920 kept him running in the 20s when he wasn’t stopped fixing a flat tire, worn out brakes, or something else. The car that took Cotter and company to California had a heavily modified engine, lowered suspension, hydraulic brakes, and other improvements that allowed it to cruise at 50+ — safely.

Most of those improvements had been made by Cotter’s traveling companion who was also the car’s former owner. That was Dave Coleman who had sold the car to Nathan Edwards a few years back. Unable to make the trip himself, Edwards loaned the car to Cotter and Coleman. Photographer Michael Alan Ross, following the T in a modern Ford SUV, completed the team.

Only after an authentic but remarkably capable Model T has been lined up for the trip does Cotter look to the route. Calling it a confession, he notes that “I had not heard of the Lincoln Highway until I began planning for this trip.” The trip starts at the Lincoln Highway eastern terminus in New York City, ends at the western terminus in San Francisco, and most of the miles in between were on or near what was once the Lincoln Highway. It was not, however, a particularly strict following of the old highway. There  was occasional streamlining of the route and a few side trips to visit interesting people and places.

So those are the “disclaimers”. The car was not a high-clearance, 20 HP, nearly brakeless, stock Model T. The route did not follow every bend of the Lincoln Highway or even pass by every attraction associated with the historic road. But the car was a very old, extremely basic, and wonderfully historic vehicle, and the route was close enough to the Lincoln Highway to sometimes serve up glimpses of the legendary road and constantly serve up a true view of coast to coast travel. Together they form the foundation for a really cool and extraordinary adventure.

As noted, not every Lincoln Highway icon appears in the book but many do. There’s Dunkle’s Gulf in Bedford, PA, and Lincoln Motor Court in nearby Mann’s Choice. In the midwest, the travelers stopped at the Lincoln Highway Association Headquarters in Illinois and the famous Reed-Niland Corner in Iowa. Farther west they drove through some great scenery and made stops at the Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats and the historic Hotel Nevada in Ely. Michael Ross snapped great pictures of all these scenes and more.

The Model T that Nathan Edwards generously loaned out for this adventure could be considered a “late model”. It was manufactured in 1926 during the next to last year of T production. It performed flawlessly for the entire 3,707 mile journey. They even had to fake a flat tire to get a “break down” photo. Cotter acknowledges that they were certainly not the first people to cross the United States in a Model T but it seems at least possible that they were the first to do it without something breaking. That’s partly due to the in depth preparation that Edwards and Coleman made before the trip started, but might be due even more to the attention Coleman gave the car during the trip. Daily or more frequent inspections sought out low fluids and loose bolts before they became problems. There’s a lot of work involved in getting a 91 year old car from one coast to the other — but it sure looks like a heap of fun.

Ford Model T Coast to Coast: A Slow Drive Across a Fast Country, Tom Cotter with photography by Michael Alan Ross, Motorbooks, May 15, 2018, 10 x 7.9 inches, 224 pages, ISBN 978-0760359464

Available through Amazon.

Musical Review
Cincinnati King

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Although it didn’t feel much like it, this was actually something of a repeat. I attended a reading of KJ Sanchez’ Cincinnati King in Washington Park back in 2015. It was during a King Records celebration and drummer Philip Paul was among the musicians performing before the reading. There was music during the reading, too, but it didn’t make me think of the play as a musical. They’re calling it that now, and they’re right. I don’t doubt that my 2015 perception was off a little. In fact, I’ve probably forgotten more about that performance than I remember. But, as enjoyable as that Washington Park reading was, Cincinnati King sure has sure come a long way since then.

From the long list of colorful and talented people associated with King Records, Sanchez picked three to tell her tale. Syd Nathan, the label’s founder and beyond colorful owner, had to be one of them, of course. To represent Syd’s stable of singers, she chose Little Willie John whose story contains some of King’s best and worst. To help keep that volatile pair on point, she picked the guy who did the same thing for much of King’s product, long time session drummer Philip Paul.

Those great characters are portrayed by great actors. Neal Benari is a convincing and properly blustery Syd Nathans, Stanley Wayne Mathis nails Philip Paul, and Richard Crandle made me wish I could have attended just one Little Willie John performance. Benari and Mathis do sing one song each, but it’s Crandle, along with Cullen R. Titmas and Anita Welch, doing the heavy vocal lifting. Titmas and Welch kind of work their way through the King roster from Cowboy Copas to Moon Mullican and Annisteen Allen to Lula Reed. Welch has a wonderful voice and her dancing certainly adds to the show as well. The singers are backed by a top notch quartet comprised of Music Director Richard Livingston Huntley on drums, Terrell Montgomery on bass, Ralph Huntley on piano, and Seth L. Johnson on guitar.

Cincinnati King doesn’t tell the complete King story but it does paint a representative picture. From our current perspective the King Record story may seem rather sad but that could be mostly perception. King Records was successful: the sixth largest record company in the country. It was innovative: the first record company to record, manufacture, package, and distribute its product. It was progressive: generally colorblind hiring practices and minorities in key positions. It was trend setting: Little Willie John preceded James Brown, Moon Mullican preceded Jerry Lee Lewis. It was inspired: Fever, The Twist, The Train Kept A-Rollin’, and other long lived songs originated there. It was noticed: Syd Nathan is in the Rock & Roll and Bluegrass Halls of Fame and several King artists are in one or the other. KJ Sanchez gives us a feel for all of that in a highly entertaining two hours.

It’s also an informative two hours, and I could tell that parts of the story were real revelations to some of the audience. I’m no authority but I have read a fair amount about King Records and Syd Nathan over the years. Still, one piece of the story was entirely new to me. Syd Nathan, in the very early 1960s, traveled to Hamburg, Germany, to see the Beatles. It’s implied that he could have signed them but missed his chance. Whether or not an actual signing was likely, the reason for Syd not even making it to the club is telling. At some point on the day he was to see the Beatles, he watched a group of German boys walk by from his hotel room window. It’s not clear what it was about the boys that seemed menacing but the sighting caused Syd to stay in his room until time to return to London the next day. The Third Reich had been defeated little more than fifteen years earlier. Germany was not a place the Cincinnati Jew wanted to be.

I think it was the day after I saw Cincinnati King that I read a review written a few days earlier. It was very positive. I’d enjoyed the show immensely and the review reinforced my impressions. It praised the story, the actors, the musicians, and the staging. It was all flowers and sunbeams until the very last paragraph. Describing the show as “anchored in local history”, it concluded that it is “not a show that’s likely to move on to other cities and venues.” Maybe so, I thought. King was definitely a Cincinnati company. But I almost immediately started questioning the review’s conclusion. The company’s influence sure wasn’t limited to its home town. People all across the nation were once interested in its music; Why wouldn’t they be interested in its story? There’s a quote from former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Director Terry Stewart on that panel I photographed:

There are only three places in the country that can claim to be the birthplace of Rock and Roll: New Orleans, Memphis, and Cincinnati.

I’ve no idea what plans may or may not exist for Cincinnati King. I’ve a hunch that KJ Sanchez doesn’t believe that “other cities and venues” are out of reach. I don’t.

Cincinnati King is at Playhouse in the Park through December 23.