DennyG
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Posts posted by DennyG
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Wow! I've certainly got a lot of catching up to do. I've barely glimpsed at Dave's New York trip and mobelines's Illinois outing and Kip's 66 adventures and I think there are a couple of others as well. I'll get to them all in time and it's sort of nice to have a backlog. Even though I saw the postings go by, I wasn't able to spend much time on them since I was busy covering some milage of my own. If there is time and interest, what I did over the weekend (blues in WV & a book signing in PA) is covered at http://www.dennygibson.com/pitpa072007
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I think the Delaware comments and the sequential number clue knock this out but my first thought was US-80 at Yuma so I'll blurt it out anyway.
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If you happen to live between Washington Courthouse and Canton in Ohio, you can see the Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge today. If you live east of there, maybe you can catch them on one of the next few days. Check their website for route and schedule. These are cars built and driven by teams of high school students and they're pretty cool. I got to see them yesterday near Wilmington, Ohio, and put some pictures up here.
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Well, guess what. Brian Butko is doing quite a bit more than the pair of Pennsylvania events that I knew about. After the PA appearances, he will rejoin Wallis in Schererville, IN, and will be with him for the three Illinois stops. Here is a list, from Brian, of his appearances including links to newspaper articles on the Pennsylvania events.
Saturday, July 21Ligonier, PA
Ligonier Beach, 1920s swimming pool
car cruise and signing, 6-8 pm
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07200/802656-59.stm
Sunday, July 22
Pittsburgh, PA
Heinz History Center – my workplace!
Summertime Fun and car cruise 11–3 pm; program at 12 pm
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07196/801263-37.stm
Thursday, July 26
Schererville, Indiana
Teibel's Family Restaurant
Dinner by reservation, 5:30 pm, I'll talk, don’t think they’ll have books available
Friday, July 27
Flossmoor, Illinois
Flossmoor Public Library, 5 pm, I'll do PowerPoint, not sure if they’ll have books
Saturday, July 28
Joliet, Illinois
Joliet Area Historical Museum, 9 am, I'll do PowerPoint, signing
Franklin Grove
Franklin GrovePublic Library, 1 pm, I'll do PowerPoint, signing
Quite a few opportunities for some excellent Lincoln Highway exposure.
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...author Brian Butko will be appearing with Michael Wallis as well.
David Martin
Flossmoor Public Library
I knew that Brian would be at the Ligonier & Pittsburgh stops but not beyond. I half expected him to post something here himself but I'm sure he's just a little too busy right now.
Although I guess I've never seen anything to justify it, I kind of assumed that photographer Michael Williamson would be part of the tour but I'm starting to get the feeling that he's not. Any insight on that, David?
And welcome to the forum. Always good to have somebody who knows their way around a library.
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I got to wondering how that homeless lady in Maryland was doing and was pleasantly surprised to learn that she had slipped home without me knowing. The Maryland Madonna of the Trail, displaced by a water main break in December 2004, was returned to her rightful place on June 6. Read all about it (with photo)
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Wow! Google Earth is really cool. I've used it a few time to verify locations, etc., but could probably use it more than I do. Not all their imagery is as good as the overhead of the hairpin but most is quite good. It may save gas in the short term but I now want to experience that hairpin first hand so it will eventually balance out.
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While looking for something completely different, I found a site offering a rather interesting looking guide to the Mohawk Trail in Massachusetts. The publisher has a stated goal of producing guides for other Massachusetts auto trails with this being the first. I know nothing about the book, the publisher, or evin the Mohawk Trail. You?
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This sounds really cool but I see that it's a little too far away to make this year. I really didn't know where Phoenixville so had to look it up and now know it's sort of close to Philadelphia. The Route 66 museum in Elk City, OK, has a little fake drive in display where you can watch some old movie trailers including one for the Blob. That was kind of cool but not even close to seeing the whole movie in that theater. I don't know that I'd drive all that way just for that but it would certainly work as one more thing to justify a trip to the area.
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Interesting conversation (and a great example of the rule of unintended consequences:-). Note that one of the Michael & Michael book tour stops, Joliet, Illinois, is actually on an alignment of Sixty-Six near where it crossed the Lincoln Highway. It's also pretty close to the one time longest US highway, US-6, and probably some other cool roads I don't know about. It's kind of early, 9:00 AM, but, now that you Illinois folks won't be up late the night before at a movie premier like you hoped, that shouldn't be a problem.
In checking US-6's rank in the length standings (it's currently second to US-20), I discovered this quote from George Stewart who considered using Six, then the longest, as a photo subject before settling on US-40: "Route 6 runs uncertainly from nowhere to nowhere, scarcely to be followed from one end to the other, except by some devoted eccentric." Wonder what his point was;-)
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The new Lincoln Highway book by Michael Williamson & Michael Wallis has just been released and a coast to coast promotional tour will be starting next week. The schedule is here. Wallis, of course, is familiar to roadies for his Route 66 connections and Williamson's earned two Pulitzers for his photography.
Pennsylvanians (and maybe at least one Ohioan) will enjoy an extra bonus since Brian Butko will be appearing with the two Michaels on at least two west Pennsylvania stops - Ligonier & Pittsburgh. Brian released his own "Greetings from the Lincoln Highway" just about two years ago and his latest, "Roadside Attractions", could start appearing any minute now. There are rumors that it may be available at the Ligonier & Pittsburgh stops. Yeah, being an author and a Lincoln Highway authority is pretty cool but, on top of that, Brian's also a forum member.
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An RSS feed is now available from the American Road® Forum. This means that, if you use a portal style web page that you've customized with your choice of news headlines, weather, cartoons, and movie schedules, it is very likely that you can have recent American Road® Forum activity appear right next to the latest stock prices and baseball scores. Three of the more popular portals are Google, Yahoo, and AOL and simple instructions for adding the forum feed to those pages are now in Forum Technical Help. Other portal pages should be similar. If you run into problems, please post them whether the page you are using is among these three or not. A forum member just might know the answer.
If you have your own website, you may also want to consider adding the feed for some road related dynamic content and to offer a link to the American Road® Forum. Every situation is different and you won't find any step by step instructions for this in the help section. But that doesn't mean the forum can't help. Some forum member just might know that answer, too.
There is just a touch of the experimental in this so we are anxious to hear how you are using it, how it works for you, etc.
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An RSS feed is available that identifies American Road® Forum topics with the most recent activity. What follows may help in adding that feed to a few of the more popular internet portal pages. The URL of the feed is http://americanroadmagazine.com/forum/inde...rssout&id=1.
MyYahoo!
Click "Add Content" link immediately below search entry area at upper left.
Click "Add RSS by URL" next to "Find" button.
Enter URL and click "Add" button.
Click "Add To My Yahoo!" button.
The feed is added at the bottom of your MyYahoo! page. Arrange to suit.
iGoogle
Click "Add Stuff" at right side towards top.
Click "Add by URL" link to right of "Search Homepage Content" button.
Enter URL and click "Add" button.
The feed is added to to top left of iGoogle page. Arrange to suit.
AOL
Curiously, both a newly launched MyAOL portal and the previous "myAOL feed reader" are identified as "beta". Just as the name indicates, "myAOL feed reader" is nothing more than an RSS feed reader. It contains an "Add a Feed" link that allows the RSS URL to be entered and added. The "myPage" tab of the newer offering (currently at http://beta.my.aol.com/) seems to be a multi-function portal. The following steps apply to "myPage".
Click the "Full Gallery" link to the right of the "Add Content" button.
Click the "Add a Feed" link at the bottom of the left column.
Enter the URL, give it a title, and click the "Save" button.
The feed is added to to top left. Arrange to suit.
MSN
I had no success in adding the American Road® Forum feed to MSN. It says that a feed can be added by entering the URL in the search field that is accessed by pressing an "Add content" link and I was able to add other feeds this way. I don't know whether this is a problem with the way the URL is formed or with MSN's handling of it. Any insight would be welcomed.
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D'oh! We (Ohio) lost but we did end up in the top half - barely. 7th out of 14. One of the Springfields on Route 66 did much better. Springfield, Illinois, placed second behind Vermont. Vermont??? They may have won the premier but no one's going to believe the Simpsons live in Vermont. Are they??? Vermont?!?!?!
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I glance at these new postings and all too often see something that I want to respond to when I should be about my boss's business. I'll try to be useful while being quick.
Too bad you're not passing through South Bend two days earlier. Michael Wallis will be there on the 26th signing copies of his new Lincoln Highway book. I'm expecting Ypsi Slim to throw something in the LH forum here any minute but, if not, I'll do something later.
Don't be too quick to judge the lady with the National Road in her front yard. That "undistinguished road" you're planning on taking north in a couple of weeks was once a Dixie Highway connector. Check out how some of it is signed in South Bend and maybe some other towns.
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A little more on "Victorian Elegance":
I just discovered that Russell C. Poole's 2006 "photographic journey across the National Road" includes a picture of the house. He doesn't identify it with Stewart and it's a straight on shot which I'll use as my reason for not recognizing it before. When he took his picture, it was a bed & breakfast called The McKinley House after its builder. In that photo, there is a "McKinley House" sign directly in front of the front door. That spot is visible, with no sign, in mobilene's picture from Saturday.
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The house and one of the barns was already gone from the "Blue Ribbon Farm" when the Vales sought it out in 1980 for the 1983 book. A small modular home sat where the big farm house once was. The barn nearest the road remained but was no longer bright white. It may very well be completely gone by now. The little bridge was also still there in 1980 but it was no longer white, either, and there was no evidence of the white wooden fence that is on either side of the bridge in the Stewart photo.
In Marshall, the date and name (1889 & Grabenheimer) that KtSotR mentions topping the corner building were gone before the Vales photographed it.
The Vales reported the "Victorian Elegance" house abandoned and deteriorating. Their photo clearly shows how overgrown it had become. Your photo and report indicate a major (and rare) reversal.
Nice job. I may benefit from your report a little more than most since I have the Americanized version of your Matrix (a Pontiac Vibe) and now know to be extra careful when turning around on brick sections of the National Road.
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OK, I know we're getting used to "then & now" photos with spreads of 80+ years but sometimes you just gotta lower your standards and take what you can get. I submit this
April 2004 photo as the "then" mate for BabyBoomerBob's definitely "now"
Hey, three years ago was kinda then, wasn't it?
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Hmmmmm. The caption of the picture says it's on the highway south of Bardstown. Any chance this was the Wigwam Village #1?
I don't think so. "south of Bardstown" could apply to either location and the sign is an exact match of the one at WV#2 today. Also there are three of the tepees visible (one just barely) in the picture that seem to match the big arc of WV#2. WV#1 only had six guest room tepees and apparently all were behind the office and restrooms. Some fairly small photos of WV#1 can be seenhere.
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Good stuff, although i am a bit disappointed by the lack of a chimney pot (something I didn't even know existed two years ago) photo.
I knew nothing about the seceding counties so I was also surprised by Russellville when I was there in December 2005. I still didn't know about the Missouri counties until I read your report. I guess we could have had West Kentucky & West Missouri to go with West Virginia.
As many time as I've been to Bowling Green, I've never stopped and don't even recall noticing, the old pedestrian bridge. Is it the bridge that both DeLorme and Google Earth label Old Louisville Road? I'm now guessing no because, after I wrote that question, I successfully ran a route across it with DeLorme.
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I ordered the $18 copy of the Stewart book and the $4 copy of the Vale & Vale book just now. :-)
If you don't like them, blame Pat & KtSotR. They started it.
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If you click the link in Denny's message, it'll fail. Remove "localhost/" from the URL and it'll work.
Denny, how fascinating to read your grandmother's writing and compare it to your trip and photos. Makes me wish my grandparents had been travelers. Well, my dad's dad drove a truck, but probably wasn't the picture-taking type.
Yeah, yeah, I'm probably going to break down and buy that book.
jim
I used to do that (locate something in my local copy and forget to change the link for posting) a lot more. Thanks for catching and sorting it. The link has been edited. Even though I sometimes wish there were more...pictures...letters...details...I'm really just thankful to have some hints of their travels and to have known them for several years.
As someone who 1) lives near US-40, 2) owns both a car and a camera, and 3) has been known to use them simultaneously, not owning Stewart's book just seems wrong.
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Wow, so many branches on which to hang comments and even an invitation to fill in holes. When I first scanned this thread yesterday, I thought I'd come back and make a small comment related to the discovery of matching photos. That comment will now come at the end since there are all those other branches.
First, the Stewart book. I just now saw a copy for $18 on Alibris. Try searching wwww.alibris.com if that link doesn't work. Mobilene, you strike me as the sort of person whose life will not be complete until you own this book. You might also want to pick up something that Thomas & Geraldine Vale did in 1983. It's a thirty year update on many, but not nearly all, of Stewart's photos. Alibris shows this available new in paperback for $7.50 or used for $4. It's nothing close to what Frank Brusca is working on but I think it's still worth four bucks.
Frank did post a note in his US-40 egroup about working on photos this summer between Kansas and San Francisco. I expected to see a similar note show up in the US-40 forum here but it hasn't yet. He is looking for help along the way and he doesn't sugar coat the task ("lugging camera gear, battling critters") but it would be an opportunity to be involved in what promises to be a remarkable book. Anyone interested can contact Frank through his profile here.
Russell Olsen did release his second volume of "Route 66 Lost & Found" a year or so ago but I just got a copy last month in Clinton. I explained to Russell that I was waiting to pick it up myself so I could save postage. He's well into a third (and probably last) volume of the series and was heading east from Clinton to nail down some of the photos.
And now my own "old family/road picture" discovery. My great-grandparents drove a Ford Model T to Florida in 1920 and, in 2001, my girlfriend & I retraced that as best we could. Prior to the trip, I had borrowed and scanned lots of old family photos hoping to find something from the 1920 version. No joy. Then, after we had repeated their stop at Lincoln's Cabin near Hodgenville, KY, we (actually my girlfriend had to point it out to me) realized that one of the scanned photos was of the cabin but reversed. While it was a picture taken by rather than of my relatives, I was still pretty excited. I now knew that about a half-dozen similar sized pictures were likely from the trip and that the pictures were all contact (i.e., reversed) prints. A couple of the others are at roadside but lack any sort of clues as to location. The photo can be seen here. It's not much - just one more picture of a cabin that has been photographed probably millions of times - but finding it was a bit of a thrill for me.
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RoadDog is a good guy and I know his heart is in the right place but, when I saw a campaign message from him in that all important Simpsons Movie premier election, I knew I had to take an opposing stand.
Fourteen cities named Springfield are vying for the honor of hosting the upcoming Simpsons Movie and two of them are on Historic Route 66. I can only hope that the major Mother Road Voting Block will be split with my candidate benefiting. I'm as big a fan of Sixty-Six as anyone but I can't drive to Illinois or Missouri in an hour and a half and I can reach Joe's U.S. 40 Grille in that amount of time. So I'm urging everyone to stop by http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/simpsons-contest.htm , check out the movies the cities have submitted to support their claims, then vote for Springfield, Ohio. The only (AFAIK) Springfield on the National Road and for sure the only National Road town with a shot at hosting one of the greatest movie premiers of all time. Voting ends July 9.
Tour For New Lincoln Highway Book
in Lincoln Highway / U.S. 30 / U.S. 50
Posted
And a pretty good photographer, too.
I connected with the tour in Pittsburgh and Michael Williamson was right there with the writers. I believe he will be at all the other stops, too. The museum where the event was held happens to currently have a display of Pulitzer Prize winning photos including one of Michael's.
I picked up (and had autographed) copies of the Butkos' "Roadside Attractions" and the Michaels' "The Lincoln Highway: Coast to Coast from Times Square to the Golden Gate" but have only peeked inside. Both are calling to me.
FlossmoorLibrarian: Williamson did make a short impromptu speech in Pittsburgh but I don't know that will be the case everywhere. I am sure, however, that he will take part in any book signings.
For the curious, some photos from the Pittsburgh event are at http://www.dennygibson.com/pitpa072007/day...ex.htm#section5