End of my 2019 northern paddling season

Posted on December 2, 2019 by Ron Haines

I almost forgot to post a note about the end-of-season paddle this year with my friends at Paddle Killingly, an eastern Connecticut paddling group I belong to.

To mark the final paddle of the season we always have a pizza party.

This year was a special one because Granddaughter Margeaux came along in her kayak.

It was a chilly day, and I was glad I’d thrown a jacket in for her to wear and that I had my

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Margeaux in the hat she gave me.  She sewed the moose design on it.

backup stocking cap along.  The hat actually was a gift from her that she had hand sewed the outline of a moose into.  One of my paddling friends had an extra pair of gloves that came in handy too.

She did quite well.  The use of a tow rope to augment her paddling works nicely when we’re against the wind but otherwise she can keep up by herself.  We headed back to the launch a bit before everyone else and had such a nice time just moseying along by ourselves that the rest of the group caught up to us about when we were ready to come ashore at the boat ramp.

Here are some photos.

 

 

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Bubbles

Posted on November 26, 2019 by Ron Haines

I’ve never done a whole lot to direct the trajectory of my life. Things just seem to have happened of their own accord as I’ve moved from one phase to another.

That’s why, to this day, I am amazed that I had a hand in affecting the trajectory of someone else’s life in a very substantial way.

To explain this means going way back to around 1980, give or take a year or so. I was a photo assignment editor for The National Enquirer, one of four persons on the photo desk responsible for not only illustrating the various stories brought in by reporters but also scouring the world and our own imaginations to come up with photos that were so good they could by themselves catch the attention of the reader.

It was a fun time. We had no limits on our ideas and no limits on money, as long as the ‘boss,’ Generoso Pope, approved of whatever ideas we came up with. GP, as he was referred to, owned the paper. It was selling millions of copies a week with a very popular, reader-friendly mix of celebrity and real-life stories, displayed with gee-whiz headlines and illustrated with eye-stopping photos.

A lot of the fun for me was coming up with ideas for amazing photos. For example, Cypress Gardens (now the site of Legoland) was then a major Florida tourist attraction (pre-Disney), with its beautiful gardens, lovely ladies in southern-belle costumes, and the famed, Florida-shaped Esther Williams swimming pool.

It was also home to a highly professional, world-class water ski show, often featured in Enquirer photo displays.  It was, in fact, where barefoot water skiing was first performed, in 1947.

I got the hairbrained idea one day of doing photos of someone water skiing on their head. So I called up the publicity person at Cypress Gardens: Do you think one of yourcypress gardens skiiers folks can figure out how to do that? I asked. Sure, was the reply. GP approved the idea.

Weeks went by. I checked in every few days. “We’re working on it,” was the constant refrain. Finally, the word came back from Cypress Gardens: “We can do it using a helmet with a disc attached to the top, but not the bare head.”

I had a quick conference with GP. It’ll sort of look like he’s skiing on his bare head, but he won’t be, I said. Not good enough. Kill it, was the response.

You get the idea. The game was to come up with photos that would knock your socks off. If you couldn’t do that, the photo would not run.

So, to get back to the point of all this, on another day I was scrounging for ideas and found a small story from an Indiana newspaper about Eiffel Plasterer, a high school and college physics and chemistry teacher who for years had been working with bubbles, large and small soap bubbles.

Hmmm, I mused, I wonder if he can put a kid inside a bubble?   So I called him up and asked and he said sure, he could. So I got the necessary GP approval for the project and started arranging things.

I needed a photographer. Richard Faverty was a free-lancer in Chicago I had used often in the past. I knew from those previous assignments and my many chats on the phone with him that he was a great people person, had a good imagination, and would be interested and enthusiastic about this kind of off-beat assignment. He was indeed.

We set aside a weekend for it. Richard called me that Sunday night. Eiffel can’t do it, he reported. He couldn’t get a kid inside a bubble. I decided to pull the plug on the project. There was no sense keeping a photographer there if it just wasn’t going to happen.

Richard called me up the following week. “Ron, I can do it,” he said. This from a person who had no experience in blowing bubbles. OK, I replied, give it a go and let me know how it goes.

To cut to the chase, he did do it. And he photographed it. And the photos ran in The Enquirer.

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That changed his life.

After the photos ran he started getting calls from around the world asking him to do bubble appearances. It started with a Japanese TV show, then a call from a Las Vegas promoter, a stint in Israel with the famed Fercos magic show and it snowballed from there. He was hooked. His career as Professor Bubble exploded and included shows in 37 countries; appearances on The David Letterman Show, the Mickey Mouse Club and Sesame Street; a book in 1987, Professor Bubble’s Official Bubble Hand-book, and the invention of many bubble toys and tools.

Where was I during all this? I kept track a bit, but Richard and I gradually lost contact. Our paths parted about the time his bubble career was really taking off, mainly because I left my job and spent a couple years at home with daughter Jennifer. I was no longer talking to photographers all over the world day in and day out.

When I returned to the business in 1984 it was as photo editor at Globe. The tabloid world had evolved to mostly a celebrity-driven publishing model and my days of enterprising photos and staying in constant contact with freelancers in places other than New York and Los Angeles were over. I remember calling him up in those early years at Globe to touch base and chat, but by then of course he was bubbling along full time. I remember us joking then about the role I’d played in the turn his life had taken.

Fast forwarding along, he moved on to corporate web design and digital photography and away from bubbles in the 1990s and in 2000 moved his photo studio from Chicago to Las Vegas  His exposure to the magic industry, computer skills and limitless imagination served him well and he carved out a nice niche helping acts from the Vegas strip and elsewhere come up with very effective promo shots.

So why dredge all this up now? Well, because I visited Richard last September. We had not stayed in close contact at all. I sort of kept up with him on Facebook. I didn’t think we’d ever met before, but he jogged my memory and I now vaguely recall him visiting the office in Florida one time.

Our relationship for me was like that I’ve had with a couple other photographers from the Enquirer era who I remain in contact with but rarely see. It is hard to explain why some of these relationships last: It’s a combination of a pretty good working telephone relationship, with enough leisurely chatting to know that we have some things in common and perhaps a mutual respect.

And the result of it is the feeling I have that yes, we will meet someday, and we will hit it off in person as well as we have on the phone.

It has worked that way for me with others and it was that way with Richard in Vegas.

We were together only a few hours, with lunch included, and what struck me about him today as it did years ago was the easy-going nature, ease of imagination and sense of humor. We hit it off as well as I had hoped. I was glad I stopped in.

Here’s the sequence of photos from the clipping above:

And here’s Richard in his office during our visit:

Posted in Offbeat, Road trip | 4 Comments

Burma-Shave

Posted on November 21, 2019 by Ron Haines

Those Burma-Shave signs, remember them?  I thought they were completely gone long ago, but I happened upon a string of them on a drive out West a couple months ago.

A relic of a time when driving a long distance was a bit of an adventure and roadside diversions a welcome thing, the Burma-Shave signs were once ubiquitous, but now, as far as I can find out, limited to a nostalgic collection of replicated icons along old Route 66 in Arizona. IMG_9104c

The Burma-Shave brand of brushless shaving cream was the creation of Clinton Odell and his sons Leonard and Allan.  Their Minneapolis company, Burma-Vita, was named after a liniment that wasn’t selling very well.  The ‘Burma’ came from the Malay Peninsula, the origin of one of the ingredients of the unprofitable product.

So they hired a chemist to come up with something people would use daily and voila! Burma-Shave was born in 1925.    Allan Odell is credited with coming up with the advertising idea.  He noticed a series of signs along the highway saying consecutively, Gas, Oil, Restrooms, with the final one pointing to a service station.  That sequence caught his eye better than a single billboard and he wanted to try it out for the shaving cream.  His father gave him $200 to try it out locally and sales soared.IMG_9105c

Soon the signs were nationwide and business was booming. Typically,  consecutive small signs would be posted along the edge of the highway, spaced for sequential reading by passing motorists. The last sign was almost always the name of the product.

The first set of slogans were written by the Odells; however, they soon started an annual contest for people to submit the rhymes. With winners receiving a $100 prize, some contests received over 50,000 entries.IMG_9106c

From 1925 into the 1960s the billboards were a highly successful advertising gimmick.  At the peak of the product’s popularity in the late 1940s some 7,000 signs dotted the country.   Postwar urban growth and higher speed limits started their demise, however, and sales fell with it.  The company changed hands in the late 1960s and corporate disinterest in the advertising campaign and apparently the product spelled the end.

Though it’s murky, the Burma-Shave trademark seems to be in the hands of the American Safety Razor Corporation these days, but they aren’t doing much with it. IMG_9107c

And just one of those little known facts:  We can thank the American Safety Razor Corp. for introducing and popularizing the phrase “Five O-Clock Shadow.”  That was back in 1942!

Thanks for that, folks.IMG_9108c

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The signs above were along old Route 66 near Seligman, Arizona. Did you get through this whole post without skipping ahead to read the signs?  (Photos by Ron Haines)

Here are a few other Burma-Shave jingles.  The interwebs are full of them.

Within this vale
Of toil and sin
Your head grows bald
But not your chin – use
Burma-Shave

Around the curve
Lickety-split
It’s a beautiful car
Wasn’t it?
Burma-Shave

If Crusoe’d kept
His chin more tidy
He might have found
A lady Friday
Burma-Shave

Grandpa’s beard
Was stiff and coarse
And that’s what caused
His fifth divorce
Burma-Shave

Posted in Offbeat, Road trip, Signs | 1 Comment

Route 66. Where old gas stations thrive.

Posted on November 15, 2019 by Ron Haines

This post has been a long time gestating.

I’ve been crisscrossing the United States steadily for nearly a decade now (retirement somehow freed up a lot of time) and I have traveled old sections of Route 66 for miles in all of the states it crosses, sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident.

I have always appreciated the health and vitality of many of the small towns it runs through and I have photographed many of the recycled gas stations I have found along it.  In fact, the whole route is a treasure trove of classic stations that have been turned into other businesses.

One quick example…on a recent drive through Williams, Arizona, which in 1984 was the final section of the original route to be bypassed by an Interstate, I discovered these three former stations, one now a café, the other an Italian restaurant and the third a gas station museum:

By the way, the photos above have been added to my collection of recycled gas stations.

U.S. Route 66, also known as the Will Rogers Highway, the Main Street of America, and the Mother Road, was established in 1926.  By 1938 it had been completely paved.  By 1985, however, it had been replaced by the Interstate highway network and it was removed from the U.S. highway system.

Portions of the remaining roadway in some states have been designated scenic byways and given the name Historic Route 66.  With the nostalgia craze and resultant theft of

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Route 66 scene in Seligman, Arizona.

many metal Historic Route 66 signs, however, the designation is now usually made by markings on the roadway itself.

I am sure many a modern-day road trip has been planned around following some of the existing sections of the old pavement.  If you’re contemplating that, here’s a good link for maps and tips.  For those inclined to a two-wheeler, there is also a USBR 66 these days, a bicycle route that runs along or parallel to former segments of the route for most of its length.

In its heyday, Route 66 stretched 2,448 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica, through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.  It was designed to pass through a lot of towns that at the time were not connected by a major highway and it therefore spurred the growth of the communities it passed through.il_fullxfull.221896335c

In the 1930s it was the favored route for those heading west, many driven by the Dust Bowl that struck the plains in the latter part of the decade.   The route was mostly flat and thus favored by truckers and in the postwar era it became a popular automobile tourist route.  To serve and entertain all the travelers, motels, stores, restaurants, gas stations and roadside attractions sprang up, many with iconic architecture worthy of eventual historic preservation status.  The fast food industry was basically born along the route.

Firmly linked to the growth of the automobile, the route also became part of the culture.

“(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66,” composed in 1946 by songwriter Bobby Troup, was recorded that same year by Nat King Cole and it quickly became a hit.  Troup got the idea for the song on a cross-country drive from Pennsylvania to California with wife Cynthia. Julie_London_Bobby_Troup_Emergency_1971

They began on US 40 and continued along Route 66.  Troup considered a tune about US 40, but Cynthia fortunately saw the potential of the catchy phrase “Get Your Kicks on Route 66.” Of the eight states the route passes through, only Kansas is not mentioned in the song.

Troup, by the way, who yearned to become a Hollywood songwriter, also got some acting roles, most memorably perhaps as Dr. Joe Early in the 1970s TV show Emergency!  He is shown here with his second wife, actress Julie London, who played nurse Dixie McCall in the series.

The route also lent its name to another TV show, Route 66.  The 1960s series was set and Martin_Milner_George_Maharis_Route_66_signfilmed in a different location every week, but ironically barely mentioned the real-life Route 66.  Series stars were Martin Milner and George Maharis, who had to quit because of hepatitis during the run. A character played by Glenn Corbett became Milner’s new traveling buddy.  Milner and Maharis are in the photo at left

 

Finally, I must mention the Chain of Rocks Bridge, because it is at the intersection of two major US landmarks that have figured into my life:  Route 66 and the Mississippi River.

Historically, the Chain of Rocks Bridge carried Route 66 across the river on the north side of St. Louis. It was replaced by a new bridge just upstream in 1966 and the old one now carries only bicycle and foot traffic.

It must have been a white-knuckle ride across that 24-foot wide, two-lane span back in the day.  It’s a mile long and has a 22-degree bend in the middle.

Did I paddle under it on my Mississippi River trip?  No, I went around it.

The Chain of Rocks stretch of the river is a series of rock ledges, resulting in shoals and rapids that rendered it unnavigable for commercial shipping.  In the 1940s and 1950s, the Corps of Engineers built an eight-mile canal to bypass that reach, with a lock and dam at the downstream end of it.  A small, low-water dam was built just downstream of the bridge to keep the water level up and force some flow into the canal.

It is possible to canoe under the bridge and over the rapids created by the low-water dam, or portage around.  But I have no experience with rapids and I’d done enough portaging up in Minnesota to last a lifetime.  So I chose to use the canal and the locks when I paddled through the area.

I did get to walk across a bit of it though.  A friend in nearby Alton, Illinois, who I stayed with on my way downstream, took me there for a look during my visit with him.

Here’s a Google Earth view of it.  The new bridge is at top, the old one below and the low-water dam below that:Chain of Rocks

 

Below, the Chain of Rocks area is circled in red and a yellow line shows where the bypass canal runs.

Posted in Gas stations, Road trip | 2 Comments

A sign of my time

Posted on November 7, 2019 by Ron Haines

A week ago I was privileged to add my name to the wall of signatures of Mississippi River paddlers that Dale Sanders, the Grey Beard Adventurer, maintains at his home in Memphis for just that purpose.

For years Dale has been a ‘River Angel,’ one of those many kind folks up and down the Mississippi who aid thru-paddlers. Since 2012 he’s been collecting signatures on his wall.

A life-long adventurer, he himself paddled the river in 2015, becoming the oldest person, at age 80, to do so. He went on to hike the Appalachian Trail in 2017, becoming, at 82, the oldest person to do that in one calendar year.

I’ve known of Dale for several years and had wanted to meet him and add my 2003 thru-paddle to his wall. Fortunately, our path from Connecticut to Arkansas for a Sue family meetup took us right through Memphis, so I messaged him that I was coming.

Unfortunately, Dale had a scheduled hiking trip on the day I would pass through, but his wife, Meriam, was a most gracious host. The two of them, by the way, hitchhiked around the world together back in 1983, passing through 26 countries.

Thanks Dale and Meriam.

Ron Haines signing wall at Dale Sanders house on 10/31/19. Photo by Sue HainesRon Haines signing wall at Dale Sanders house on 10/31/19. Photo by Sue HainesIMG_0706cA portion of the wall at Dale Sanders house on 10/31/19. Photo by Ron Haines

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Hemp vs. marijuana

Posted on September 30, 2019 by Ron Haines

There is a difference between hemp and marijuana, but apparently some folks don’t understand.

This hemp grower along quiet Mills Lane in Bloomfield, Connecticut, has had to underscore that point.

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Yes, they are both in the Cannabis family, but hemp contains hardly any of the psychoactive compound, Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), that marijuana does.

In fact, in order for hemp to be considered hemp, or “industrial hemp,” its flowers must contain just 0.3% THC, 33 times less than the least potent marijuana.   It’s still good for food, fiber, and fuel though.

Hemp also contains way more of another compound, Cannabidiol (CBD), than marijuana does.

CBD and THC are two of 113 identified cannabinoids in cannabis plants. Those two alone are very confusing these days. I can hardly wait until we start looking at the other 111.

You’d have to be living in a cave to not have seen CBD advertised these days in all kinds of ways, and minds as old and as out of touch as mine probably have that all confused with legal marijuana, getting high, medicinal pot and snake oil.

Let me attempt some clarification:

THC is the psychotropic drug we’ve known and loved for a long time. CBD, first identified in the 1940s, appears to have some medicinal uses and no psychotropic ones.

A CBD drug, Epidiolex, was approved in 2018 for treatment of two epilepsy disorders in the US. Cannibis is still a controlled substance, however and other CBD formulations are illegal to prescribe for medical use or to use as an ingredient in foods or dietary supplements.

Which has not stopped the entry into the marketplace of a wide variety of CBD-infused products making all sorts of medicinal-like claims. Hence my snake oil reference above.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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Steer clear of here..

Posted on September 29, 2019 by Ron Haines

Here’s another road to avoid going down.

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Bedlam Road, Mansfield Center, CT. (Photo by Ron Haines)

See some more of these here.

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Do mothers no longer have maiden names?

Posted on August 21, 2019 by Ron Haines

It’s been ages since I’ve had to pick a “Security Question” on a website account.  I thought maybe that practice had finally gone the way of the corded telephone.

Nope!  It’s still around.  And even stupider than before.

I had occasion today to log into my account for Sunpass.  (Actually I needed to know the car’s plate number and it was easier to look it up on Sunpass than walk downstairs to the garage.)

Sunpass, for those who don’t know, is the highway toll system in Florida that very conveniently works NOWHERE ELSE.

Before I could get to my account, the recently revamped Sunpass website informed me I would have to choose and answer three “security questions.”

security questions

Screen grab from the Sunpass website.

I scanned the questions quickly, looking of course for “mother’s maiden name,”  “first pet,”  “town you were born in,” and the like.  You know…common rememberable things for which the answer just springs to mind, almost without effort.

Nope!  None of those!  As I looked down the list all I could think of was that I’d happened upon a Mad Magazine parody, or Saturday Night Live skit,  of “security questions.”  Just try reading through them slowly and thoughtfully without chuckling a bit.

If I can’t even come up with the answer to a question right now, quickly and easily, how in the hell am I going to remember it the next time I log in?

And I can’t remember ever reading of someone hacking a Sunpass account.  The only time Sunpass ever had a major computer SNAFU was when it just screwed up royally all by itself, without any help from hackers.  It went on for months and took them years to recover.

Let’s be honest, a Sunpass account isn’t of quite the importance, security-wise, as, say, my credit card account, which I can get into with my mom’s maiden name and where I was born.

So I went down the list.  “Who was your childhood hero?” was the ONLY one for which an answer sprang quickly to mind: “Superman.”

So I chose the childhood hero question three times and answered it with Superman all three times and hit “Submit.”

DING DING DING.  Can’t do that!  Can’t duplicate the questions!  Back to the drawing board.

I put my first choice again as the childhood hero question, with Superman as the answer.  For my second choice I put the “learned to cook” question with “Superman” as the answer.  For my third one I put the “first film” question in, and again put “Superman” as the answer.

Hit “submit” and BINGO!  I am in!  Now I have three questions and three easy to recall answers.

And then it dawned on me what a naïve dummy I have been for years.  I have been very dutifully picking security questions and honest, correct answers to them.  You don’t need to do that, you idiot, just pick any question and answer it with any word that you will remember!

When you hack into my Sunpass account, please add a few bucks to the balance.

The way they’re planning to pave over the wild parts of the state with concrete tollways to nowhere so a few developers and their paid-for politicians can make out like bandits I won’t be able to move around down there without a few extra quarters.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Thanks for the warning

Posted on August 18, 2019 by Ron Haines

Every so often a road sign helpfully lets you know where you do NOT want to go.  This one is in Comstock, CT.

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You can see other helpful signs that I have found here.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

When Amazon Prime looks good…

Posted on August 13, 2019 by Ron Haines

OK I will admit it.  I am a bit of a Luddite when it comes to ordering stuff online and having it delivered.

I still go to the pharmacy and pick up my prescriptions.  I still go to Costco, or whatever our favored warehouse outlet is these days, and I still go to Home Depot or Lowes for stuff.

I am still willing to drive to two or three places to find things.  Being retired, I am sure, has a lot to do with this because I do have a bit of free time.

My wife has an Amazon Prime membership.  I use it occasionally, but it is not my first go-to.  I had to use it recently for some special rivets to repair my granddaughter’s kayak.  I visited two big-box stores and a local hardware store  and couldn’t find what I needed—or even someone who understood what I needed—so I went online.

Fortunately I rarely need to go searching for something these days, because I am retired.

THAT’S WHAT RETIREMENT’S ALL ABOUT; YOU DON’T NEED TO FIX THINGS ANYMORE IF YOU DON’T WANT TO.

Occasionally, however, I do get pressed into service.

This time it was fixing some cabinets in daughter Jenn’s basement.  I needed five black, 4-inch barrel bolts.   Not an unusual item, like those special rivets for the kayak.

So, close by me there is a Lowe’s and a Home Depot.  I went to Lowe’s first.  They had two of what I needed.  After a five-minute wait to get someone to help me my question was simple: Do you have any more?  She had to call someone to help her find out if they had any more.  The answer was maybe.  So I said: Can you just tell me yes or no,  because if you don’t have any more I will go over to Home Depot.  The response was swift:  you better go to Home Depot.

So off to Home Depot I went.  I found the aisle I figured they would be on but couldn’t find them so asked an employee and he said he was on his way to help someone else and would come right back to me.

While I was waiting I continued to poke around the aisle and I found the bin they should be in.  Everything BUT them were in the bin and as I looked around it became obvious  to me that whoever was in charge of keeping Aisle 19 organized had been sleeping for a solid week because nothing was where it should be and stuff was stacked everywhere.

So I left the store, waving as I did so to the person who said he was going to come back and help me.  He was busy over at the pickup desk chatting with another employee.  And yes, in case you’re wondering, I sent an email of complaint to Home Depot, for whatever good that will do.

OK, I thought.  Time for Amazon Prime?  Nope, give the ‘local’ hardware store a try.  Not ‘big box,’ yes, but not that close to me either, maybe five times the distance to the big-boxers.  But what the heck, do it.  I went.  They had two of what I need.  Nope, they didn’t have any more.  Could order them though.

It just made no sense to me so I said no.  Go to a store to have them order something for me that will cost way more than what I would pay on Amazon Prime, including delivery, and then I have to drive back to the store AGAIN to pick it up?  No thanks.

There are other outlets of the big box stores and a few other small independent hardware stores I could get to—being retired and having acres of free time—but at some point I need to call it quits and order online and get it cheaper and right to my door.

And the point of this is that the measure for ordering online without getting into my car is getting shorter every time I have one of the experiences I have described above with the barrel bolts.  It gets shorter every time a store employee gives me short shrift and every time the item gets harder to find on foot than on line.

I go to online shopping reluctantly.  I like to shop in person.    I like the contact with sales people.  And I like that once in a while I find someone out to solve the same hardware problem that I am tackling.

Call me an old-fashioned shopper, but I am less so every day, as I get dragged and pushed into the present day.

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