Candy Red and Chrome

All I wanted to do was get my ass back home, and on the way stop off at the store for some Blue Moon beer. You see, my finally-graduated-from-college daughter, now that she has gotten a decent job and is making some money, has decided that it is her time to enjoy the high life, and apparently, Blue Moon, ice cold with a wedge of fresh orange, is the new “ I have arrived” status symbol of the new Gen Xers.

But back to my story .... So there I was driving along, minding my own business, when looking off to my right, what do I see but a cherry red restored 1935 Ford Pickup truck, outfitted with chrome rims and an engine that was gleaming in the sunlight.

What a sight, I thought as I remembered that right there beside me was my Nikon D300 with its 10mm lens and fully charged battery. “Oh No”, I thought to myself... "It is the end of the day so just drive on by .. Just Drive On By”.

You know, I was so proud of myself that I did just that ... for about 300 feet and then, regretting my decision, and being seduced by that dark red and chrome, I slumped my shoulders, as I guiltily listened to my camera berate me saying, “Dude, you are a street photographer, and here is something right there on the street just begging to be shot.”

“OK, OK. Just shut the hell up”, I told my camera as I started to look for a place to turn around. “But don’t whine and complain if that car is not still there”, I told it, because. many times in “street”, if you do not shoot it right then, it is gone forever.

Lucky for me, however, that car was still sitting in the parking lot of the Quarry Village right next to the golf course and I was able to shoot it and speak with the owner for a bit.

Turns out that the owner has the car up for sale and in exchange for letting me shoot his car, I post some of the images and his information here.

1935 Ford PU

Per Bailey

832-657-700(four)

grandddaddybailey@yahoo DOT com


Ahhhh .. Doesn't get much better that this for a street photogrpapher!

Some Street Images

Photography

by Art Koenig ~ Photographer Artist

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My Conversation With Bill

Bill XXX

Born- 1927
Enlisted in the Army at 17 years old (1944)
Served in Europe in a Combat Unit
Met him at a Local Starbucks 7/19/2011

 In he comes, the man with a cane and pushing a shopping cart, which he parks outside the entrance to the local Starbucks. Hobbling over to the barrista, he orders up a venti vanilla latte, and then proceeds to shuffle over and sit down in the overstuffed chair next to me. I took a look at him and figured that he was about my moms age (85), and because of that I wondered if he had ever served in World War II.

Now, for those know me, also know that I am not shy about striking up a conversation with total strangers. In this instance, however, I hesitated. I was not sure why. Perhaps it was because many of the older people that I try and talk to, seem to have lost it, or are hiding it, perhaps figuring that all the young people like me (55) simply have to learn about the world on our own. Or perhaps they think that we would not be interested.

After a while, however, the old man begins to talk to me. Speaking as clearly as any 30 year old, he tells me that he is 83 and that he came in to get a coffee for his wife and was taking a rest before crossing the street back to his house. Somewhere in the conversation he mentioned that when he was in the Army (my ears perking up now) they drank coffee all the time, but did not have anything like Starbucks. He also said that he used to drink a lot of beer too - but that was when he was young.

Alerting on his introduction of the Army into the discussion, I took my shot and asked him where he was stationed. Whereupon he told me his story.

“Oh yeah, I was in the army, I was a runner for General Patton in Germany during World War II. I enlisted when I was 17, and was shipped over there real soon. I was in the infantry, and was supposed to be in a foxhole, but somehow the Army found out that I was a long distance runner and that I had been doing that since I was a little kid.

They also discovered that I had a good memory, and after that, they assigned me as a runner ( and I mean that literally) to carry messages back and forth between General Patton and the other combat units during the fighting in Germany.

It wasn’t like it is nowadays, where you have radios and all that stuff. It was a situation where actual messages from one commander to another several miles away had to be read, committed to memory, and then delivered in person by a guy like me - a runner. Not only that, we had to memorize three messages - exactly. One of them was the real message, and the other two were fake messages so that if we got captured by the Germans we could give them a fake message.

To deliver a message meant we had to head out cross country in the direction of the other unit, and actually navigate through the combat zone during the fighting. Because a fighting line is not something straight, we had to travel behind enemy lines in order to reach our units on the other side. Because of this, we traveled in peasant clothes so as to not draw enemy attention. We also had to travel across our own units who were fighting with the Germans and so we never knew when we were going to be shot by Germans, or our own soldiers.

During one of those message runs, our squad came under attack by a German unit and we were pinned down pretty good. There was no way it looked like we could hold out, and so, our new 90-day Lieutenant, fresh from the States, told us that it was no use and that we had to surrender. We did not want to surrender as we were afraid of what the Germans would do to us, but the Lt. insisted. It was at this point we told him to go on ahead for himself if he wanted to be the first to try out his idea.

So then, up out of our position he went to surrender, where he was immediately shot dead by the Germans. After that we (all 12 of us) were captured by the Germans. After our capture, they stood us in a line, with me standing at the end, and proceeded to shoot us dead, one-by-one, right down the line. Now, we had one of our guys who was some sort of Indian, and he did not speak very well, but he was kind of a big fella, and when they shot the man next to him, he fell down as if he had been shot, and in doing so the knocked me to the ground. My helmet came off, and the German officer in charge, after having his men get the Indian back up and shoot him dead along with the other 11 of my squad, saw my blond hair and blue eyes and asked “Sind Sie Dutsch?”, to which I replied in my bad German that indeed I was German. Hell, if he had asked if I was Japanese, I would have agreed to that too.

And so it was, that out of all 12 of us, plus our Lieutenant, I was the only one that lived. I was sent to a POW camp, and about 4 months later, when the Germans had to retreat, I was liberated from the POW camp.”

At this point, I asked, just to make sure I heard him right, if me meant that all of his buddies were stood up and shot dead right in front of him like ducks in a row.

“Sure, we were shot dead just like that. It was a war, and that was the way things were done. We did the same things on our side, and the Germans were just doing what you do in war. You can’t have a bunch of captured soldiers bogging you down in a combat zone with bullets flying all around, and everybody on each side knew that.”

After a reflective pause, he continues .....

“Yeah, after that, I was sent down to Dachau. You know Dachau don’t you? The camp had been liberated by that time, but all the prisoners were still there because there was no place else to put them, and it was just a horrible situation.”

Another reflective pause ......

“And you know, many years later, that German Officer wrote me a letter telling me that his daughter was getting married and inviting me to the wedding. He sent me a plane ticket and money for all my costs to come.”

You mean, the same guy who had all your fellow soldiers killed, invited you to the wedding, and that you had kept in touch with him.??

“Sure - he and his soldiers were simply following their orders, and that was just the way it was in war. It is not all sweetness and nice in a war.”

So you went to the wedding?

“Sure I went.” “ Now I think also he wanted to hook me up with his sister, but that never happened.”

And thereafter our conversation turned to other things.

Never Give an Ape an AK 47

Good Things in Old Towns

Well, it didn’t take long for me to blow my schedule. You see, I was on the road traveling IH35 to go to Northern Louisiana for a funeral and along the way I made a stop at the Czech bakery in West, Texas to get a sugar fix. I had intended on it being just a quick stop, but sure enough, along the access road to get back to the hiway, this is what I found. Too good to pass up.

　

As I was taking these shots, I saw an old water tower, way in the distance with its peeling paint and rusted frame, and putting my camera away, and even though I wanted to go check it out, I resolved to just get back to my travel and come back some other time.

Well, that resolve lasted about 14 seconds, because on my way back to the entrance ramp to IH35, I made the mistake of looking down that lonely road. What the heck, just a quick trip up there to see if there is anything interesting, right?

Making a U-turn, I kept telling myself " just a quick stop". Another 3 minutes had me in a different world, as I entered the sleepy town of Abbott Texas, which looked like it could have been the set for that TV series, Friday Night Lights. Over the train tracks and past the general store/post office and then to the town’s major intersection, all of which are within 200 feet of each other, I found my first "mark", an old "townward" facing Methodist church from the 1800's. Right across the street, and likewise facing "townward," in a religious pissing contest, was the other side of the coin, a Baptist Church.


After taking some photos, I ambled down to get some shots of the general store, and went inside to introduce myself. I was greeted by an older man sitting in the back who looked as if he had been there all day just waiting for me, a first customer. No one else was in the store, and indeed, it appeared to me that the store gets maybe 2-3 customers a day.

We got to talking, and I told him who I was and what I did, and he let me take a few pictures. Remarking on how his place reminded me of the country store along the route of the country school bus that my brothers and I used to ride, he told me that the town was still like that and that it was the birthplace of Willie Nelson.

Shut Up! I had earlier seen some county music tee shirts and some Willie Nelson CD’s laid up on the shelves, but I just figured that he liked country music. We talked a bit more and then he told me that Willie Nelson owned the very store that we were standing in, and that the house the Willie grew up in was over there down the street.

I later went to "over there down the street" and sure enough, and just as he described it there was the house, and unassuming white wood screened porch affair much as in any on Americas small forgotten towns.

I have not previously listened to much Willie Nelson music, however, next time I do, I will listen to see if in the music I can hear chords that have sprung from Abbot Texas.

Interesting People

In my travels around town I run across the most interesting people. This time at the Starbucks down at San Pedro and Cypress. There is the local bum that daily comes into the place, looking like he has spent the night in the most trashed out dumpster he could find. Then, following right after him is the business man on his way to his next sales appointment.

I Love My Job!

Of course, there is me, the guy in the corner sitting before a Panasonic ToughBook computer and wearing half dirty denims, a tee shirt and tennis shoes that are scuffed and stained from the mornings’ opportunity photos taken of the graffiti- marked trains sitting on a siding up on the north side of town.


There are others in the store, too. The mother and daughter sitting across the way, apparently working on some sort of school application. The nursing student to my right, studying furiously, as if some patient’s life depends on it - all while listening to tunes on her smartphone.


At the long rough-hewn table where I am sitting, a spot across opens up, and a young woman takes the seat to begin her morning activities. A student, I presume, yet she comes in with more of a purpose than I generally find in the students that I am used to seeing in the store.


After a while, I see that she has pulled out an iPad , followed by a keyboard. Intrigued, I wait for an appropriate time and ask about that keyboard - especially if it is wireless. No - I ask not because I want to hit on her, but because I want to know how far things have come in the technology department - and to learn about what different people are up to. (Well, maybe a little bit is also motivated by the fact that Apple stock has gone crazy in the past several years and this iPad thing may be a reason for that.)


Turns out that the keyboard is indeed wireless, and that her iPad has an internal chip that connects it to ATT wiifi for about $15/month for internet access most everywhere!!!. Thus ensues a discussion about all the communication and connectivity technology that is available nowadays. My tablemate showed me for example, all of the apps that she can get on her iPad, and in particular, showed me her book app, which she says is a real money saver because she can get her textbooks in electronic format for about ½ the price of a hard copy. We both agreed that hard copy books were what we liked to read, BUT, as she stated to me, the convenience of having electronic books and magazines delivered direct to the iPad made not being able to read real books more palatable.


I asked if she was a student, and she replied yes. She said that she already had her psychology degree and was doing additional work to become a funeral director. This, then, led to some more discussion about that particular field and the perceptions of some toward it. In this regard, she told me that one woman told her that "Girls can’t be funeral directors,"while another was concerned that she was "too young (25) to be a funeral director." Go figure.


As I said, I meet the most interesting people in my travels around town.

Street Corner Philosopher

His name is Bill and most days, rain or shine, sweltering heat or numbing cold, he can be found at the intersection of Broadway and Loop 410 in San Antonio Texas, waving and nodding to passers-by as he shows off the day's headlines on the newspaper that he has for sale.

His face, etched by what looks like years of hardship and hard living, reminds me of an old worn shoe, with creases that appear to have been etched by years of exposure and hard knocks - and possibly bouts with the bottle. Bill looks like a street person, what with his crumpled clothes and all, however, those clothes are clean, and so I surmise that he is not spending his nights under a bridge.

As the cars come to a stop, some people extend their hand, showing a dollar, in return for which a paper is thrust to the window for them to grab before the light turns green while others begin to honk in their own haste to get to nowhere. Sometimes there is more than a dollar that changes hands, and I wonder as I see this, how much can a man make standing on the corner selling newspapers to passers-by.

I myself do not take a newspaper, but nonetheless, I find the sight of him to cast a beam of permanence in this impersonal world, and like a stubborn weed clinging to that last bit of soil to be found between the crags and crannies of a hash and unforgiving landscape, so too this purveyor of the morning news purveys more that just the news, for in his act of being there without fail, he demonstrates stability and perseverance in the face of whatever life throws.

Why do I write about Bill? I guess it is because to me he represents the honor of work instead being on the dole as are the bums that inhabit the other corners of that same intersection. Bums and miscreants, who, holding out their cardboard signs with scrawling handwriting proclaiming their "Vietnam Veteran-ness", ask for a dollar here or there because they are just "Oh so homeless." Such disgust I have for these, as they, standing there in their hundred dollar pair of Nikes and with their 5 dollar pack of cigarettes, assault the eyes and senses. One can tell by looking at any of them that they are of the most distasteful sort, preying on the sympathy of the sheep who now and again extend out a hand with a dollar or two. As livestock gravitate to where the food is, so too do these miscreants gravitate to their food supply, given by the people that are doing nothing but enabling them and fostering their return the next day so that they may assault the eyes and sensibilities yet again.

I have always wanted to stop and talk to Bill, and after a year or so of passing him by, I did stop and strike up a conversation. Bill tells me that he has come from Louisiana, and from the speech and the manner and the weathering of his face I tend to believe him.

He said that he lived just east of New Orleans, and that everything he had was wiped out by Katrina. He said that did have a job at one of the oil refinery or pipeline companies ( I did not ascertain which), and told me that he used to go around and look at all the gauges on the oil storage tanks to make sure that they were not leaking.

As to his current job of standing on the street corner for hours at a stretch in the aftermath of Katrina, he says that he makes 20-30 dollars a day, and that even though he lost everything, he really does not miss it and feels freer than at any point of his life.

Becoming a philosopher, he proceeds to tell me in his muted Cajun drawl, that all that stuff just held him back, and remarks that his whole life up to that time seemed to be directed toward keeping up with the Joneses -  and that doing so was killing him. He follows this up by saying that because of the attachment to stuff -  and the payments that go along with having it -  that if a man loses his job he stands to lose everything.

Street corner wisdom, and, indeed, I have heard this from another who told me that he never has felt so free as when he had nothing in his pocket and did not know where he was going to be sleeping that night.

Bill, now engaging in a bit of rhetoric and oratory, goes on to ask "What more does a man need but  20-30 dollars a day" , and further expresses the opinion that, he too, is disgusted with the way that the interlopers (I think he used the word "bums") holding up their signs of false need, and offering nothing in return, suck off the passers-by, like a tick might do on the back of a dog, for money that will just go to beer and cigarettes. He fully supports that the police now and again will pull up in their unmarked cars and take "those people" for a "little ride". (His words, not Mine.)

I like Bill.