I Used To Take Pictures

Pelicans! 

I used to take pictures. Well, to be fair and a bit more accurate, I used to take more pictures. I stuck a whole bunch of them RIGHT HERE, although I must disclose that many of those images were uploaded by scanning prints, before I got around to procuring a scanner that could handle negatives. So, yeah. some of them are pretty okay, I think. Here is a nearly-random sampling, spanning several decades. Some were shot on film(!), some on a digital SLR, and a few on iPhones. Enjoy!

New Orleans, LA 2011

Lancaster, VA 2013

Rockville, MD 1986

San Francisco, CA 1987

Rehoboth Beach, DE 2001

Berwick, LA 2011

Rockville, MD 1988

Duck, NC 2023

Key West, FL 2001

Manning, SC 2017

Washington, DC 2013

That's all for now. Join us tomorrow, when I'm less lazy and tired. Maybe I'll even write something...

The Loon Says What We're All Thinking But Not Really

"I'm not a kite! Let me down! Let me down!" Photo by J. Scott 2001

With a lot of the ridiculous hoboes on John Hodgman's list, the back-story is right there in the name. Santa Fe Jinglebell, The World's Most Christmassy Tramp comes to mind, as does Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick (obviously). Some hoboes were deliberately mis-named, like when a huge man is nicknamed "Tiny," or a bald guy is called "Curly." Occasionally, a member of this rag-tag above-ground underground of untouchables ended up with a moniker that held two or more meanings - both perfectly apropos.

Such was the case with The Loon, a man who is said to have wandered the rails between Wilmington, Lewes, and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware in the 1920s and 30s. Almost all we know of The Loon's hobo years comes from his "leavings" - the chalk and/or creosote-scrawled hieroglyphs he posted on barns and buildings and telegraph poles - and from a bit of oral history.

From the leavings...

"Only I can solve this."

"The yarn remembers, but will never speak."

"400 proof? What is this - Mothers Day?"

"Who is the more of clown - him who wears a squeak-nose and tons of makeup, and falls down to make children laugh, or I, who does the same but with no makeup?"

"The Loon is feeling uncharacteristically melancholy, probably due to his sudden switch to third-person."

"Never trust a rude frog. A prince would have better manners - and listen to your horse!"

"Not twenty years after the world finished burying the dead of the War To End All Wars, we're gonna do it all over again - only much, much worse. Learn your damn lesson, already!"

"One day, they'll let people in motor cars turn right in the midst of a stop signal."

"Stophack whipping tinker deterrent!"

"If you think the bumper cars are swell, just wait 'til you see the flying cages."

"I woke this morning to the horrible realization that there was still a bit of blood in my rumstream."

"I never said I always say that. I always said I never say that."

"I tried to go home, once. My father had left a couple of years prior, and my mother was talking to a coconut with one of his old hats on it."

"Don't blame me. I voted for Al Smith in '28."

"Soon, radios will come with pictures."

"The Loon says The Loon says The Loon says... AA-OOOOOOOO-GA!"

He left loonier track-side missives, but most of those were either too dirty or too violent to be reprinted in a nice wholesome family blog like this one.

The other reason he ended up being called The Loon was largely unconfirmed, having been passed from hobo to hobo for so many years, no one could remember who started it. It was said that the man was a master imitator of north American waterfowl.

That's all. Bye!
       

When Fear Was Fun

It's Flashback Friday, gang.  Why not?  Recently, I've been finding magic in unusual places.  Tonight's story, however, is real.  It occurred in the late 1970s, during one of my family's August trips to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.  It is sad.  It is creepy.  It is kind of gross.  And it is a childhood memory which simply refuses to leave me.

We arrived for our two-week stay, unloaded the car and helped Mom make the beds as quickly as humanly possible.  Then, all six of us headed down to the Boardwalk before our annual first-night dinner at the Crab Pot, to assess what was new since last year.  My brothers and I were mostly interested in mini-golf, arcades and rides, while our parents lamented the demise of the old chicken stand.  But something weird was in the air.  I didn't notice it until my older brother pointed it out, but then it immediately became palpable, even to my ten(ish)-year old senses.

Instead of the usual happily-milling crowds, we found a couple of hundred people gathered at the edge of the Boardwalk near Rehoboth Avenue.  They were all watching a hovering helicopter and several small boats very close to shore.  Three black-suited divers were in the water, disappearing for a couple of minutes at a time, just beyond the waves.  Word was efficiently passed from mother to mother that a boy had disappeared in those waves not two hours prior, and the operation was now focused on finding his body. 

They did not find a body that night, and the next day the search was called off. Grownups seemed sad.  The big kids were fascinated.  Little kids - like me and my younger brother - were spooked.  Playing in the waves had a new potential hazard, as we were sure at any moment a dead kid would brush against our feet.  Our father explained as carefully as he could just how a submerged body works - rolling on the ocean floor, potentially catching a current that takes it many miles away, and so forth.  Still, we were afraid.

We went about our vacation, but there was a haunted quality to everything.  Even the magical boardwalk, with its rides, arcades, cotton candy and Nick's Pizza, was different.  That body was out there in the ocean. 

We stubbornly went ahead with our nightly family walks on the beach, and there were plenty of chilling moments there, too.  Any odd shadow in the sand or surf looked liked a body, and some were quite convincing until proven to be otherwise.  I secretly hoped we would be the ones to find the body, and I assumed it would be at night, for maximum creepiness.  I gave myself more than one nightmare, thinking about it night after night.  What would it look like?  Smell like?  Would the eyes be open?  Would stuff already be living in it?  It terrified me, but it also lit a new spark in my young imagination, because it was real - finding that body was not impossible.  Now, I know boys are stupid, but rest assured, Mom made sure we all had the proper appreciation and respect for the fact that a boy - not that much older than myself - had been playing one minute and dead the next, that his parents were devastated, that it could have been one of us, and that it wasn't "neat."  Still, it kind of was.  It was electrifying, in spite of all the negatives.

About a week after the drowning, my brothers and I were in our beds in the awesome front bedroom of our rented Philadelphia Street house when a beach patrol truck (they weren't called SUVs, yet) roared past, headed toward the beach.  It was followed immediately by an ambulance (no sirens) and several police cars (again - no sirens).  We knew.  The body had been found.  Also, confirming our creepiest fears, it was found at the end of OUR street, where we'd been playing in the surf for a week, and where we had poked a washed-up jellyfish with a stick that very evening.

The fact that a boy had drowned was not fun, even to a little kid, but this vacation enjoys special status in my memory.  It was exciting to be that creeped-out by something real, at that age.  It gave our whole family a common ground we didn't often enjoy.  We were all spooked, and somehow that unified us - especially me and my brothers.  It wasn't exactly Stand By Me, but it was still very cool and utterly unforgettable.  Somehow, death had become magic.  Dark magic, perhaps, but magic nonetheless.

The only way it could have been more gross would have been for us to find the body.  The only way it could have been scarier would have been for the body to have never been found.  ::shudder::

There.  This concludes our flashback.  I'm going to go watch a bunch of cartoons or a Will Ferrell movie or something.  See ya!