Category Archives: Review

Book Review
Overground Railroad
Candacy Taylor

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“This is not a book about the history of road-tripping and black travel”, is the first sentence of the last paragraph of the introduction. That’s something I knew long before I read it. It was something Candacy Taylor said early in the presentation I attended in Indianapolis back in February. It may even have been something she said during another presentation of hers I attended back in 2016. I discovered Taylor the same way she discovered the Green Book. Well, not exactly the same way. She learned of the Green Book while doing research for a Moon Travel Guide on Route 66. I learned of Candacy Taylor as a mere attendee at a conference on the historic road. Research for the book was well underway when Taylor spoke at that conference in Los Angeles but Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America was still a concept. It was a reality when she spoke in Indianapolis, and that’s where I acquired my copy.

Another phrase that caught my ear at the Indianapolis presentation and which I subsequently read in the book is this: “I wasn’t interested in presenting the Green Book as a historic time capsule.” Maybe the reason I noticed the phrase was that, without actually being aware of it, that is exactly how I saw the Green Book. The book, published between 1936 to 1967, identified businesses where Negro travelers were welcome. A too often true assumption was that they were not welcome in any place not listed. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not make racial discrimination disappear, but it did make it illegal. By the time I became aware of the book, it had not been published for decades and I figured it had been more or less the same throughout the time it was published. In my mind, the Green Book essentially was a historic time capsule.

The book was no doubt historic, but it was not a sealed capsule. If pressed, I would have known that the book must have grown over the years and that listings and advertisers would have come and gone. Taylor meant much more than that. There were changes in the book’s overall tone that were related to changes in society and vice versa. She uses changes in the Green Book as a timeline to frame changes in the world at large. It isn’t a hard link and the two certainly don’t move in lockstep. Societal changes just aren’t that tidy. But the editions of Victor Green’s book pace the chapters in Taylor’s.

One of the bigger Green Book changes Taylor covers occurred with its return at the end of the Second World War. The guide was not published during the war, and when it returned in 1946 it was bigger and better than ever. Not only was the book enlarged, its tone was changed a bit, too. Serious articles about the situation of blacks in American society appeared along with information, such as a listing of black colleges, not exactly associated with travel. In a chapter based on the 1946 and ’47 editions, Taylor says, “This comprehensive list of colleges elevated the Green Book from a travel guide to a political weapon.”

Another big step came in 1952 when the guide’s name was changed from the Negro Motorist Green Book to the Negro Travelers Green Book. Train travel by blacks had already been included starting in 1950. Travel by airplane and other means would be covered in the future.

In a chapter linked to the 1957 and ’58 editions, Taylor addresses what is almost certainly a big reason she felt the need to stress that, “This is not a book about the history of road-tripping.” The chapter is titled “The Roots of Route 66”, and she uses Route 66 examples to explain why blacks have virtually no nostalgia for the classic American road trip, but the story is essentially the same for every other highway, too. While it’s very much an understatement, the following line does sort of sum up the chapter: “[T]he experience of driving Route 66 was not the same for everyone.”

Overground Railroad is heavily illustrated. Taylor’s research for this project included cataloging and visiting businesses listed in the Green Book, and several of her photographs of sites that remain appear throughout the book. She also includes some personal photos. Numerous historic photos along with reproductions from the Green Book accompany the text. A section in the back of the book lists surviving “Green Book sites” and includes Taylor’s photos of many. It is followed by a section with reproductions of every known Green Book cover other than the very first edition of 1936.

Victor Green hoped that “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published.” That day came, technically, when the 1964 Civil Rights Act became law. There was just one more Green Book published before it shut down permanently. But reality has never quite matched the technical equality of the Civil Rights Act. The first chapter of Taylor’s book, in which she discusses the risks and difficulties of Negroes driving during the early years of the Green Book, is titled “Driving While Black”. It’s a title that could have come from yesterday’s newspaper. Maybe it did. In her introduction, Taylor asks the standard road trip question, “Are we there yet?” then answers with a whole book that tells of progress but ends up with a solid “No.” It is not, however, a hopeless “No”. The “Author’s Note” near the book’s end talks of the challenge and is followed by a “What We Can Do” list.

Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America, Candacy Taylor, Harry N. Abrams, January 7, 2020, 9.8 x 7 inches, 360 pages, ISBN 978-1419738173
Available through Amazon.

Music Review
Viral Streaming
Various Artists

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This isn’t so much a review of music as a review — and preview — of a situation. For quite some time, the Internet has used the word “viral” as if it owned it. Widely and rapidly shared videos, jokes, and photos are said to have “gone viral”. Now the Internet is helping us deal with something that has gone viral the old fashioned way. The novel coronavirus that causes the disease known as COVID-19 is being widely and rapidly shared and we’re trying to make it stop.

We’re trying to make it stop by practicing social distancing. Some people at the World Health Organization want to use the more accurate “physical distancing” but “social distancing” seems to be pretty entrenched. Even before there were “stay-at-home” and “shelter-in-place” orders, bars and the dining areas of restaurants were closed and the income of people who make their living in them was suddenly interrupted. We are quasi-quarantined and semi-isolated, but thanks to the Internet, it’s a quarantine that is, in ways both good and bad, unlike any that’s come before.

One large group whose income has been interrupted is performing musicians. Major festivals and tours, including the Rolling Stones’ “No Filter Tour”, have been canceled or postponed. Some of the big-name stars have moved to fill a little of the vacuum with online concerts and performances. I understand Willie Nelson took part in an online concert last week. I learned of it too late to watch and sure am sorry. There’s an excerpt here. Neil Young has talked about a series of home shows and has one posted here. It’s unclear to me if that’s from a live stream or when there will be more. I stumbled on and surprised myself by enjoying a live feed from Brad Paisley. I’m sure there are others. I think the big-name home show I enjoyed the most is the one pictured at left. That’s Neil Diamond singing Sweet Caroline with some modified lyrics: “Hands. Washing hands. Reaching out. Don’t touch me, I won’t touch you.” 

Of course, no one is really worried about Mick and Keith missing a few paychecks, and neither of the Neils was looking for a handout. Nor was Willie. He was, however, bringing attention to others on the feed who could use some help. A few rungs down the ladder from the Stones and Willie are a whole bunch of musicians that have managed to derive a livelihood from music. With the venues closed, the income is gone. Many are trying online “concerts” in hopes of pulling in some tips. Even on paying gigs, many would typically have a tip jar out. Now, though, the tips aren’t to augment what might be rather small payments from the venues. They’re the whole shebang.

During the last week, I’ve watched online performances by some Cincinnati musicians who happen to be in my line of sight. The opening picture is of Rob McAllister (Dead Man String Band) who did a show on Saturday. So did Ricky Nye, pictured at right. I watched Ricky live then caught Rob’s archived show on Sunday morning. On Sunday night I watched the folks in the other picture on the right, Serenity Fisher and Michael Ronstadt. These are all people I know so I sort of knew what to expect but there were surprises. Rob played a new only-heard-once song and Serenity broke out the bunny ears.

I also checked out some folks I’d never heard before. Ricky, Serenity, and Michael did their own streaming through their Facebook pages. Rob kicked off a series of live streams from CincyMusic. I took advantage of the series to catch three new-to-me artists. Kyla Mainous was on Monday night. Vusive and Matt Waters were on Tuesday. All three showed a lot of talent. Kyla and Matt are singer-songwriters that I’d welcome the chance to see in person. Vusive produces electronic music which happens to not be something I’m likely to go out of my way for although I appreciate the talent and effort involved.

I really enjoyed the “concerts” and I think the performers had a lot of fun too. Although I didn’t, many took advantage of Facebook’s comment support to request songs or just say hi. It gives the shows something of an intimate and interactive feel. I know there are lots of people in Cincinnati besides musicians whose income has suddenly disappeared and I know that’s true for cities everywhere. The interactive two-way aspect of this streaming means the help can go both ways. Music can be a tremendous benefit in dealing with tough times, and right now there’s a lot of music flowing through the Internet because it’s got nowhere else to go. Some can make music, and some can’t. Some can tip a little, and some can’t. Sometimes the helping hand drops a dollar in a hat and sometimes it strums a guitar.

ADDENDUM 25-Mar-2020 13:00: Not long after this was published, CincyMusic shared news of a ten act live stream planned for tonight starting at 7:30 in addition to the already scheduled stream at 6:00. Check them out here and here.

Movie Review
King Kong
Radio Pictures

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No, I’m not really going to review an eighty-seven-year-old movie that just about everybody has seen multiple times. But I am going to review the experience of seeing it on the big screen for the first time ever. The original King Kong was released on April 7, 1933, so it’s not quite eighty-seven years old but it’s mighty close. My first glimpse — and it wasn’t a whole lot more than that — was sometime in the mid-1950s.

It was on TV, of course, on what was decidedly NOT a big screen. It was probably in 1957 when the movie made its national television debut. The timing likely wasn’t considered “late-night” then and certainly wouldn’t be now, but it was late enough that I had to beg for an exemption to my normal bedtime. Although I was successful, I did not get the exemption’s full benefit. I fell asleep before the movie started, woke up to watch a few scenes through bleary eyes, then dozed off again before the big ending. Today I can’t even remember what portions of the movie I saw. I remember that I saw all of the giant gorilla, not just his face or hand, and I remember it was dark. Seeing Kong in his entirety narrows it down some. The fact that it was dark does not. The entire film was darkened to obscure, reportedly, some of the bloodier scenes and some details of Fay Wray’s femininity. Fay Wray had lots of femininity.

Since then, there have been several viewings that I did manage to stay awake for. Although the screens were considerably larger and clearer than the one parked in our living room sixty-some years ago, all were on a TV. I think the movie became a favorite the instant I actually saw it all. The story was fairly creative but not particularly complex, and the acting was only a few steps removed from the silent film era. Neither was what attracted me to the film. I appreciated its craftsmanship and the window on history it provided. Stop-action animation and rear projection on matte paintings were not invented for King Kong but they had never been used anywhere near to this extent.

The window on history I mentioned exists largely because the movie was made as a window on, if not the future, the leading edge of the present. The film’s exciting finish features the Empire State Building which had just been completed in 1931. It was then the world’s tallest and would hold that title for almost forty years. The armed airplanes that attack the doomed giant were seen as “the most modern of weapons”. Some were models built for the film but some scenes show actual state-of-the-art military planes from a nearby U.S. Naval airfield. From two decades into the twenty-first century, those bi-planes look pretty primitive. Realizing that they represented the most advanced technology of the day definitely helps generate a real appreciation for the film’s special effects created with contemporary tools.

On Sunday, I finally got to see the big guy on the big screen. Fathom Events put together a one day showing at Regal Cinema. Something I’d recently learned was that King Kong was the first movie with a thematic score. This means it was written to coordinate with and enhance on-screen actions rather than just provide some background music. Sunday’s showing included the opening and closing overture which had naturally been cut from every time-constrained TV version I’d ever seen.

The experience was nearly everything I’d hoped it would be. The wall-filling Kong was more frightening than any smaller version I’d seen, and Wray was every bit as alluring as I remembered, and her screams, with an assist from the theater’s sound system, were even louder. That thematic score, which I paid a little more attention to than usual, benefited from the sound system, too. If I ignored the fact that I was sitting in a wide well-padded recliner with NBA sized legroom, I could almost imagine I was watching like it was 1933.

The experience was only “nearly everything I’d hoped” for one reason. In the lead up to Sunday, I’d read a review of the movie which was really a preview of a 2011 screening. It’s here. My anticipation grew when it talked of “seeing it in a packed theater on a big screen with an audience”. I got the big screen but I did not get the packed theater. There were less than twenty people at the 1:00 show. I know that old B&W movies just generally do not draw big crowds but there was more going on here. COVID19, the disease caused by a Coronavirus, was growing. Large gatherings had been banned and the NBA, NCAA, MLB, and other groups had canceled events. In Ohio, schools had already been closed by the governor and within a couple of hours of me leaving the theater, he would close all bars and restaurants. Many museums and other institutions have closed on their own.

That’s why Sunday’s experience was about as far from a packed theater as is possible. Yesterday (Tuesday) the theater itself was closed and so was the Empire State Building observation deck. I’ve only been to the top of the Empire State Building once. It was in the early ’70s when King Kong was no more than forty years old. In a narrow space on an inside wall. there was a heart with the words “King Kong loves Fay Wray”. I’d like to think it’s still there but probably not. 

Book Review
The Other Trail of Tears
Mary Stockwell

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I read this book by accident and belatedly. The accident comes from a spontaneous purchase. The belated reading comes from me not realizing how good it is. I picked the book up back in June of 2018 when I went to hear Mary Stockwell talk on her just-published Unlikely General about my childhood hero, Anthony Wayne. I knew nothing about Stockwell or any other books she had written but bought a copy of The Other Trail of Tears because it sounded kind of interesting and, perhaps more importantly, I was there. Unlikely General worked its way through the stack in a fairly timely manner; It was read and reviewed by November 2018. I let other books move ahead of this one and even loaned it, along with Unlikely General, to a friend to read. When I eventually did start reading The Other Trail of Tears, I quickly put it aside to accommodate two new road-related books. The second attempt went much better and I quickly regretted not diving in sooner. As is too often the case, my preconceptions were wrong. This is another book that was much more than I expected.

Like most people, I am fairly familiar with the forced removal of Native Americans from the southern United States that caused inconceivable suffering and thousands of deaths during the trek west known as The Trail of Tears. Those were the most horrific of the relocations resulting from the Indian Removal Act of 1830 but there were others.

Several reservations once existed in northern Ohio occupied by Shawnee, Wyandot, Seneca, and others. As an Ohioan, I was somewhat aware of these reservations and even knew a little bit about the forced removal of these people. I assumed that Stockwell’s book was filled with details of that removal. Perhaps that assumption and the accompanying assumption that those details would be terribly depressing contributed to my delay in actually reading the book.

My assumptions were not wrong but neither were they complete. The stories of the actual treks to the west are properly told and they are indeed depressing. But they do not fill the book. More pages are used telling of what preceded the removals than on the actual journeys. Stockwell’s coverage of the treaties and trades that resulted in the removal and the people and policies involved is rather detailed and seems complete. There is a lot of history here that I was quite ignorant of.

Though extremely educational, the pre-removal history is also somewhat depressing, and the whole book can fuel that sense of guilt we descendants of European Americans often feel when contemplating the last few centuries of Native American history.

Stockwell doesn’t stoke the guilt or overly stress the sadder aspects of the treks. Although she doesn’t completely hide her sense that Native Americans got a really raw deal, for the most part she sticks to accurately reporting the facts about an undeniably sad period in U.S. history.

The Other Trail of Tears: The Removal of the Ohio Indians, Mary Stockwell, Westholme Publishing, March 18, 2016, 9 x 6 inches, 300 pages, ISBN 978-1594162589
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
After Ike
Michael S. Owen

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There are things that fans of old roads or of transportation history in general falsely assume that everyone knows about. One such item is the continent crossing Motor Transport Corps convoy of 1919. In the summer following the end of the first World War, a group of military personnel and vehicles set off from Washington, DC, to test the nation’s roads all the way to San Francisco. Although he was primarily an observer on the trip, his future accomplishments make Dwight Eisenhower the member of the convoy best-known today. Michael Owen uses the future president’s nickname in naming this telling of his own retracing of the 3,250-mile-long path that some 300 men and 81 vehicles of all shapes and sizes followed a century ago.

As one might expect, Owen mixes lots of information about the military convoy’s trip with the description of his own journey. Much less expected is the fact that he is not one of those long-time fans of old roads or transportation history that I mentioned earlier. As a US Ambassador, he spent considerable time in Africa and Asia. Now retired, he is happily becoming better acquainted with the roads and attractions of his homeland.

On his coast to coast drive, Owen is part researching author and part curious tourist. He often spends multiple days in one place and digs into local history and points of interest. Some of what he finds relates to the convoy and some is simply interesting on its own. A sampling includes a stop at Carnegie-Mellon to talk with a professor about autonomous vehicles and a visit to the Pro Football Hall of Fame which provides an opportunity to talk about Ike’s time as running back at West Point. He visits several museums including the Studebaker museum in South Bend, IN, and the El Dorado County Historical Museum in Placerville, CA. He spends time in small libraries and chatting with locals.

Much of the convoy related information Owen shares comes from journals and official reports written by the participants but local newspaper archives are also used extensively. The motorized convoy was a major event in those early days of the automobile and much attention was focused on its progress. Communities along the route often vied with each other to host the convoy and the dinners, dances, and demonstrations were documented by the local press. More or less typical is the South Bend [Indiana] News-Times report of the convoy’s arrival and departure that included the observation that “…lemonade was given to them in abundance by the Chamber of Commerce.” In Austin, NV, the Reese River Reveille reported that officials “…placed shower baths in the four cells of the jail…” for use by the soldiers.

Some non-convoy related items Owen finds in those old newspapers are used to provide a peek at the world of 1919. A headline from that South Bend News-Times issue reads “Seven Women Take Aeroplane Rides!” From the DeKalb [Illinois] Daily Chronicle, he quotes an article about the convoy’s “3,000,000 candle power searchlight” followed by quotes from an advertisement for the latest Thor Electric Washing Machine. In writing about his modern-day travels, Owen uses signs he sees in a manner similar to the way he uses those period newspaper items. It’s kind of like having a passenger who reads signs aloud; Signs like “Farm fresh eggs! Laid by Happy Chickens”, “Food! Liquor! Wine! Beauty Products!”, and “Gardening for God Brings Peas of Mind”.

Eighteen pages of black and white photos are placed just past the book midpoint. All were taken by the author. Readers familiar with the Lincoln Highway and the modern Lincoln Highway Association will find some familiar places and faces.

The book cover bio says Owen has “driven over the Lincoln Highway several times” but he doesn’t come across as a seasoned road tripper. On one hand, that brings some freshness to the writing. Things like reading aloud signs about eggs bring a sense of sharing the surprises to the reporting. On the other, it may be responsible for allowing a few minor errors to slip in. Early in the book, Owen notes his awareness of “America’s penchant for superlatives: biggest, oldest, first, fastest, best.” He does not list “only” and does pass along a couple of not quite true “only” claims. Qualifying it with the word “purportedly”, he writes that the bust of Lincoln at Wyoming’s Sherman Hill is “…the only statue of Lincoln on the entire Lincoln Highway” and says that the rotary jail in Council Bluffs, IA, “…is the only one of its kind in the US”. Regarding Lincoln statues on the LH, those in Jefferson, IA, and Fremont, NE, come immediately to mind. As for rotating “squirrel cage” jails, the one in Crawfordsville, IN, is not only standing but operational. These errors, and a few others, are not terribly significant but I couldn’t just ignore them.

After Ike is an enjoyable read that delivers an overview of an important event in US transportation history along with a sense of what a modern-day long and leisurely road trip is like. Owen’s fresh eyes and all those signs make it a bit unlike many travelogues.

After Ike: On the Trail of the Century-Old Journey that Changed America, Michael S. Owen, Dog Ear Publishing, LLC, July 22, 2019, 9 x 6 inches, 224 pages, ISBN 978-1457570421
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
Route 36 Ohio to Colorado
Allan McAllister Ferguson

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US-36 is kind of special to me. It is one of just a handful of US highways with an endpoint in my home state and one of just two that pass through my birth county. It’s even more special to Allan Ferguson. He grew up near the route in Illinois, has ancestral connections to the eastern end in Ohio, and currently lives near its western end in Colorado. It has had a role in much of his life from childhood vacations and visits to relatives to business trips and drives between old and new homes as an adult. Not all of his travels between Colorado and Illinois have been on Route 36. Not surprisingly, his early trips back home were on expressways. At some point, he tried US-36 and came to realize three things. The first was that it took no more time than driving the interstates. Between Denver and central Illinois, the US-36 is quite straight and about 100 miles shorter than either I-70 or I-80. Secondly, it was relaxing rather than stressful. The third thing he realized was that the drive was actually interesting and that realization eventually led to this book.

Ferguson stresses that this is “a book about today’s Route 36″ (italics his). He delivers plenty of history and even describes a few older alignments, but the subject of this book is the Route 36 shown on current maps and marked by modern signs. That means there are no turn-by-turn directions that fans of historic routes such as the Lincoln Highway or Route 66 might expect in a guide to a road. And there is another possible expectation that Ferguson intentionally does not meet. There are no lists of restaurants or places to stay. This sort of information is, he points out, ever-changing and available elsewhere.

Today’s US-36 runs through six states in connecting Uhrlichville, Ohio, with Estes Park, Colorado. There is a chapter for each of those states. Following an overview, which provides some history, geography, and geology, a drive through the state is described. Both the chapters and the drives are sequenced east-to-west. The basic organization is by town. Each town entry begins with some common items such as population and a website address. Museums, parks, and libraries are also listed where they exist. Descriptions of various well-researched points of interest, often with photographs, follow.

I know that all sounds rather formulaic, which it probably is, and maybe dry and boring, which it decidedly is not. Good writing makes for easy reading and the quality of Ferguson’s writing makes even this fact-heavy subject matter go down smoothly. In particular, I found the state overviews a very pleasant way to be informed.

A Section II, titled “Background,” follows the guide. A very well-done history of land transportation across the United States, its two chapters divide the story more or less at the appearance of the automobile. This history is not specific to US-36 and reading it is not at all necessary for enjoying a drive along the route. Depending on your own background, it can be a very nice introduction or a very nice review.

Naturally, many of the place names in the guide were familiar to me and I was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar “people name” in there, too. Road fan Jim Grey has documented a number of roads at JimGrey.net. Of course, Ferguson’s interest and recommendation was aimed at Jim’s photo-rich report on US-36 between Indianapolis and the Illinois border. I’ll second Ferguson’s recommendation and add that Jim’s reports on several other old roads — and lots of old cameras — are also worthwhile.

Some of those familiar place names come from the fact that I’ve driven certain bits of Thirty-Six hundreds of times. I have, however, driven the whole thing only once. This book’s east to west order matched the direction of my single full-length pass which made it easy to compare the book with my own memories and journal. I’m glad it wasn’t a competition. I documented very little that Ferguson didn’t, while he identified many points of interest that I missed entirely. I’ll do better next time.

The book has its own website at US36GuideBook.

Route 36: Ohio to Colorado – America’s Heartland Highway, Allan McAllister Ferguson, WFPublishing, August 1, 2019, 10 x 8 inches, 264 pages, ISBN 978-0971032668
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
Tales… from the Dickens Scenes!
The Rainy Day Writers

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This book is unusual and unusually good. The Dickens Scenes of the title are those in Cambridge, Ohio, that starred in this blog’s most recent regular weekly post. There are currently 94 of those scenes and each began life as a sketch by a fellow named Bob Ley. Bob is one of a group of writers, known as The Rainy Day Writers, who help each other practice and improve their craft and occasionally collaborate on projects. Ten of them contributed to Tales… from the Dickens Scenes.

The book’s organization is simple. Each of the scenes is the subject of a two page spread. On the left-hand page is a black and white photo of the scene along with the Bob Ley sketch on which it is based. Text that appears on a sign placed by the scene completes the page. Each sign contains an identifying number and the scenes appear in the book sequenced by those numbers.

The individual photos are not credited but acknowledgments at the front of the book identify Tom Davey and Lindy Thaxton as the photographers. The photos are all quite good and do a nice job of capturing each scene from its best vantage point. Together, the book’s even-numbered (i.e., lefthand) pages make up the sort of catalog often prepared for a museum display. The village really is such a display with the sidewalks of Cambridge forming the museum.

Filling the righthand pages is handled with skill and creativity by The Rainy Day Writers. The text on each page was created for the scene it is associated with. There are works of fiction that imagine a day or a minute in the lives of the figures in the scene, and there are factual essays with subjects such as Victorian England, modern Cambridge, or Charles Dickens himself. Some are thought-provoking, some are educational, many are both. Simply noting the great difference between life in the late nineteenth century and today is thought-provoking and educational.

I’m sure that tailoring a story or an essay to a single page was often a challenge for the writer, but their small size helps make reading them about as non-challenging as it gets. Reading the odd-numbered pages in an easy chair makes sense and so does having the even-numbered pages at hand while walking around downtown Cambridge during the Christmas season. The book is available online but I suggest getting it at the source if possible. At least “while supplies last”, copies sold at the Dickens Victorian Village Welcome Center (647 Wheeling Avenue) have been signed by all ten of the contributing writers plus you can put the book to work as soon as you step through the door.

The first paragraph of this article contains a link to The Rainy Day Writers website. The site contains quite a bit of good information but appears to be less current than the group’s Facebook page.

Tales… from the Dickens Scenes!, The Rainy Day Writers, Independently published, September 21, 2019, 6 x 9 inches, 198 pages, ISBN 978-1691098804
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
A Mythic Obsession
Tom Kupsh

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Sometimes I astound my friends with my knowledge, admittedly quite useless, of unusual and obscure roadside attractions. Othertimes I astound myself with my complete ignorance of a major and fairly well-known piece of public art. A stop on a recent Society for Commercial Archeology bus tour was an occasion of the latter sort. I imagine readers of this review will have thoughts that are similarly divided. Some will wonder just what is that pile of junk and why would anyone put it on the cover of a book. Others will smile with instant and delighted recognition. Ah yes, the Forevertron.

From one perspective, the Forevertron is a 65-foot tall sculpture made of various bits of scrap metal. From another, it is a fantastic device waiting to propel Dr. Evermor “up to the celestial spheres.”  From a third, it is a marvelous project that helped Tom Every deal with the real world. Tom Kupsh covers all three of these perspectives in A Mythic Obsession.

The book contains something of a Tom Every biography. It describes his early attraction to unwanted stuff and what seems to be a natural talent for getting some good out of what other people throw away. It tells about his ups and downs in salvage and professional scavenging and his long-time involvement with Alex Jordan and his House on the Rock. His relationship with Eleanor Gryttenholm, a.k.a., Lady Eleanor, that continues today, having survived both marriage and divorce, is in there too. It’s a life that Kupsh describes as rocky but never dull.

It is Every’s artwork, however, that attracts all the attention and warrants a book. Much of it is big, like the Forevertron, but he has also produced some rather small pieces. The common attributes are whimsey, creativity, and scrap metal. Kupsh describes most if not all of Every’s major works. His descriptions usually include information about when and how the piece was made and sometimes even why. He often tells what the components actually are and where they came from. This is very much the case with the Forevertron and that is something I very much appreciated. The book and the sculptures are a natural pair. At times, while reading the book, I found myself wishing I had read it before visiting the collection so I would have been aware of various details about what I was seeing. On the other hand, I’m kind of glad I had my first look with few preconceptions. I’m thinking that neither sequence is wrong and that whether you start with reading or visiting, you’re going to have to repeat. Seeing the sculptures will raise questions that only the book will answer and the book will fuel curiosity that only a visit will satisfy. I intend to return with book in hand.

The biographical bits are aided by several pictures and there are pictures included of the various pieces of art described. Most are black and white but there is a section of really nice color photos that includes an annotated view of the Forevertron. You can bet on me having that page bookmarked when I next head to Wisconsin.

A Mythic Obsession, Tom Kupsh, Chicago Review Press, June 1, 2008, 6 x 9 inches, 196 pages, ISBN 978-1556527609
Available through Amazon.

I purchased my book onsite from Lady Eleanor. Tom is in a nursing home and rarely gets to the Forevertron these days. Both had inscribed the copies available about nine months previous. I selected one with a fairly lengthy message from Tom even though that message wasn’t quite clear to me at the time. I figured it would become readable when I was sitting still in good lighting. It hasn’t. Among the few phrases I can make out are “80 years” (His 80th birthday was five days earlier.), “I can’t see”, “don’t stop your art”, and “The House on the Rock”. All help from those with better eyesight or insight is appreciated.

Book Review
Historic US Route 20
Bryan Farr

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This book didn’t put US-20 on my to‑drive list, that happened long ago, but it did move it up quite a bit. At 3365 miles, Route 20 is currently the longest of the U.S. Numbered Highways so it’s quite naturally a road I’ve thought about driving. I have driven bits of it, of course, and crossed over it many times. It would be pretty hard to completely avoid a road that crosses the entire country as this one does. In Historic US Route 20: A Journey Across America’s Longest Highway, Bryan Farr documents an east to west drive over the entire length of the highway and the entire breadth of the nation with a couple hundred great color photos. There is something I’d like to see in just about every one of those photos.

A chapter on each of the twelve states crossed by US-20 follows an introduction and a brief history of the highway. Each chapter’s opening page contains a small map and some statistics such as length and highest and lowest elevation. A few pictures also appear on those opening pages but the best pictures form the chapter’s body. Many get a page all to themselves and few pages contain more than two. That means they are generally big enough to appreciate and the good print quality also helps.

Some images are of noted man made landmarks, such as the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts, and the Veterans Memorial Bridge in Cleveland, Ohio. Others capture the natural beauty of places like the Driftless Area near Elizabeth, Illinois, and Yellowstone Lake. Together they show off the wide range of experiences available along the highway as well as Farr’s photographic skills.

Although it’s certainly not overdone, the book is not without text. There is that one-page introduction and two-page history that open the book and virtually every picture gets some sort of description. Some get a one-line caption while others get a paragraph or two. Most descriptions that go beyond a sentence provide some history about the subject and all are interesting. There are essentially no travel directions. This is not a travel guide. It is a photographic trip journal and a very attractive one. Even without directions, it will certainly be an aid in planning my own trip. As I said, just about every one of those photos contains something I’d like to see and something likely included in any itinerary. Plus, just flipping through it randomly keeps my desire to drive “America’s Longest Highway” at least on simmer.

A Kindle version of the book is available through the Amazon link at the end of this article. New paperback copies are available directly from the publisher at Historic US Route 20.

Historic US Route 20, Bryan Farr, The Historic US Route 20 Association, Inc., February 16, 2015, 8.5 x 11 inches, 166 pages, ISBN 978-1628476880
Available through Amazon.

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.