Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Florida Is For Love Bugs




These bugs get in the radiators of cars and trucks and can stop them up to the point the vehicle will over heat from a stopped up radiator. It happened to me once on the road from Orange City, Florida to Mobile, Alabama. I had to go to a mechanic and havc them take a rod and open up the radiator and push all the bugs out. Unbelievable but true.
Click on the pictures to enlarge them and read all about lovebugs in the links below.
T Shirts say I Love NY.and Virginia is For Lovers. I say Florida is for Lovebugs. And they can have it.






http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovebug

http://myspacecoast.com/Articles/lovebugs.htm

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Something Weird Hot Thrills and Warm Chills


http://www.bestofneworleans.com/blogofneworleans/archives/2009/09/11/champagne-girl-rita-alexander-and-the-new-orleans-burlesque-festival/
Good interview with Rita Alexander The Champagne Girl in the link above.

I remember seeing this act on Bourbon Street in 1965 or 1966 at the Silver Frolics. She was really good.
Except in the club when I saw her she had little or no clothing on. Her top was bare that much I remember and she could place the champagne glasses on her breasts and lean back and drink out of the glass without spilling a drop.  The video shown above is mild by comparison.

Bourbon Street In New Orleans In The 1950's

Bourbon Street in New Orleans in the 1950s. Click on the picture to enlarge it.
I remember seeing Lily Christine at the 500  Club around 1959 or 1960. She was the Cat Girl and would tell the men to meow and growl and she would then hand out photos of herself.
I used to get her confused with Lily St. Cyr.
Al Hirt's music was so loud coming out of his club with the door open my friend Jerry said he could feel the vibrations.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Tuba Skinny plays "Cemetery Life" on Royal St 4/16/12


I found some more Tuba Skinny videos I haven't seen before. Click on the label Tuba Skinny in the Labels box below for many more.
Eddie Hunter liked this tuba skinny video so much he put it on his blog and linked to my blog. So I will return the favor. Here is a link to his blog Chicken Fat.
http://ethunter1.blogspot.com/

Tuba Skinny - "Garbage Man" - Spotted Cat 4-10-12

Tuba Skinny - "Carpet Alley Breakdown" Spotted Cat 4/10/12

Tuba Skinny - "Satan your Kingdom must come down" Spotted Cat 4/10/12

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

MUSTANG SALLY- WILSON PICKETT


When Sally Ride went into space I played this record. Mustang Sally. Ride Sally Ride.
There are two more versions below this one.

Wilson Picket rare "Mustang Sally"

mustang sally - wilson pickett

Monday, July 23, 2012

Favorite New Orleans Street Band... Tuba Skinny


  Early Tuba Skinny from 2 years ago. I hope they never are ruined by success. They have just come back from the Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy. They sound more polished now than in this early video made on the street in New Orleans.  But this video shows how they were in the beginning. Very good and unselfconscious. I love this band and I love good street music. Rave on Tuba Skinny.

Eric Hoffer pt. 1 of 5


Go to YouTube to see the other 4 parts of this 5 part interview done in 1967.
Click to enlarge the picture and double click to go to YouTube.
Eric Hoffer was the author of the book THE TRUE BELIEVER.
He was a long shoreman on the docks of San Francisco and an original thinker and writer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer

Thursday, July 19, 2012

AMC BACKSTORY: Peyton Place Including Video Of Interviews With The Author Of The Book Grace Metalious


This contains some intervew footage of the author of the book Grace Metalious and information on the book and the times in which it was published.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Peyton Place(The Book), Fear Strikes Out(The Book) And The Decameron(The Book)

The three books listed in the title were ones I read my senior year in high school in 1958. I dont know why I chose to read the book Peyton Place but I am glad I did. I think it was the first adult book of modern 20th century fiction that really got my attention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peyton_Place_(novel)

   From the first paragraph it was so well written I could not put it down. I remember sitting on the back row in 12th grade English class reading Peyton Place. I had the paperback. Mr Wilkie was my 12th grade English teacher. He did not say anything to me but he must have seen me reading a book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Metalious

Here is a link to more on Peyton Place and what other thought of it. See below.
http://savidgereads.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/peyton-place-grace-metalious/
   Maybe Mr. Wilkie asked what I was reading. I told him. Some kid in class said "You will never pass this class from Mr. Wilkie reading that book". And Mr. Wilkie replied, "Oh I dont know about that. Joe when you finish the book let me read it and I will loan you and even more notorious book called The DeCameron by Boccaccio."

  And so I did and so he did. I liked The Decameron. It was surely the first serious piece of literature I ever read. I had been reading Mickey Spillane and Richard Prather up until that time.

   I also liked The Revolt Of Mamie Stover very much. I think I have written about reading that book already on this blog.

   Peyton Place(the book) was so good I read Return To Peyton Place and The Tight White Collar by the same author.   I never cared for the movie or tv version of Peyton Place. They are so watered down as to be unrecognizable. It is the language of the book that makes it special. Grace Metalious was a good writer. And she is much under appreciated.

The opening paragraphs of Peyton Place(the book)are beautifully descriptive.
First edition hardcover shown above.

Paperback of Fear Strikes Out.  I did a oral book report of this book in 12th grade English class. The book really got to me concerning Jim Piersall's mental illness.


And above is a copy of The DeCameron.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Monday, July 16, 2012

Tuba Skinny - Umbria Jazz - 13 07 2012



More Tuba Skinny. I can't get enough of them. I have posted many more videos of them on this blog. Click on the label Tuba Skinny in the Labels box below.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Walking Around Les Halles


This person has made the best videos of Paris you will ever find on youtube or anywhere else for that matter.
Go to youtube to see all his other videos. His are the best by far. They are the next best thing to actually being in Paris.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

1975 Yamaha RD250 Original


I used to own one that looked just like this. It had six forward speeds. The racers loved this bike. They would take the headlight off and it was ready for the track. I sold it when I realized it was just too dangerous to ride around Washington D.C. And I was getting older and losing my reflexes.
I write about what happened to it in the post below this one.
Also I write about my other motorcycle(a Benelli)and a road trip I took on it back in 1970.

1968 Wards Riverside by Benelli And A Road Trip I Took On My Motorcycle From Washington DC To Mobile Alabama And Back In The Summer Of 1970.


In 1968 I owned one of these motorcycles just like the one shown above.
Jim was working at DC Duplicators on P St. and when I went in one morning Roy(the shop owner) told us that Montgomery Wards was having a closeout sale on their entire line of motorcycles. There was a large ad in that mornings Washington Post newspaper. It said they were getting out of the motorcycle business and selling off their inventory at a large discount.
A 250 cc like the one shown above was selling new for 250.00.
And a 350 cc was selling for 350.00 dollars.
So Jim and I went out to the Montgomery Wards in Arlington, Va. on Route 50 near Seven Corners.
  The motorcycles were selling fast.   Some people were buying two or more at a time.
I bought a blue 250cc and Jim bought a  red 350cc.  
We went to the place where they checked out our credit and sold them to us. As I recall I paid it off at 15.00 a month.
These were brand new motorcycles with the name Riverside on them but made in Italy by Benelli.

I remember going back to DC the bike stopped. I had forgotten to turn the fuel petcock to the on position.
    From then on I did not have any problems.
I got a large Esso Sunflower decal and put two of them over the Riverside decals on the fuel tank.

Some time later Jim rode his bike all the way from DC to Miami to visit two of our former college class mates. They were getting a divorce and he must have thought he had a chance. But he later told me that when he got off his motorcycle he knew right away he had made a mistake. He said later it was the craziest thing he had ever done. A 2400 mile mistake.

I  later rode my motorcycle from Washington DC to Mobile, Alabama.  And back. Except for a sore backside I think it was worth it. I was a nutty thing to do but gas was cheap. 30 cents a gallon and the motorcycle got 100 or so miles to the gallon. About 30.00 in gas for the roundtrip.

Somewhere in Georgia the chain got messed up but some friendly automechanic fixed it for me.

Also I got lost in the woods of Georgia. Small roads leading nowhere and I ended up staring at some kids right out of the movie Deliverance. I asked the directions to Atlanta. One of them said, "You goin' to ride that thing all the way to AT-lanta?" I said yes. He gave me directions. Turned out I was only 80 miles from AT-lanta.

South of Tallahasse Florida I rode all along the Gulf through Sopchopppy and Port St.Joe and Appalachiacola.
Then on to Panama City and Pensacola. By the time I got to Mobile I had taken my shirt sometime ago and in the month of June or July I got a really good suntan.
Again some kid in a service station in Pensacola saw the DC license plate on the back and asked me, "You rode that thing all the way from DC?" I told him yes.

The ride back to DC later that summer was a long a painful on the rear end ride.

The ad above was from 1967. So we got a great deal. More than half off in the sale in 1968.

http://www.piston.com/historical/mward.html

Later when we moved to Mobile in 1971 I sold the bike when we moved to Fla. in 1973.
In 1977 I bought a 250 cc Yamaha six speed motorcycle new for 823.00. It has six forward gears.
I was a beauty white with chrome fenders. I was getting old and my reflexes were going and the DC area is no place to ride a motorcyle. The motorists will wipe you out if you don't do it to yourself. So I sold it to a young man who was a courier. I told him I did not want anyone to get hurt on it. It only had about 1400 miles on it. He bought it for what I paid for it.

I forgot to take the tags off. I think he lied and said he would take them off.
A couple of years later I got a card in the mail from Call Carl auto repair shop in DC on Wisconsin Avenue telling me I could come pick up my motorcycle.
I went just to take a look. When I got there they could not find it.
They told me some young guy had killed himself riding it. So it was either the young fellow I sold it to or someone he sold it to.
Oddly I never heard anything from the DC police about this and I dont really know how Car Carl got my name and address to send me the card.  
Sad story.

UMBRIAJAZZ12 TUBA SKINNY 2


Since I am not there I am collecting these Tuba Skinny videos as they appear on YouTube.
Next best thing to being there. Amazing to see these videos a day or two after they play live in Perugia Italy at the Umbria Jazz Festival in July 2012.

UMBRIAJAZZ12 TUBA SKINNY

TUBA SKINNY at Umbria Jazz 2012

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Let Us Now Praise Famous Women Joan Trumpower At A Woolworth's Lunch Counter In Jackson Mississippi May 1963

Click on the picture above to enlarge it.


Joan Trumpower was a Freedom Rider. That is a picture of her(in the middle)and two other Freedom Riders getting the royal treatment welcome at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Jackson Mississippi in May of 1963.
Here is some more information on her and the other Freedom Riders.
http://breachofpeace.com/blog/?p=54
She was first arrested in 1961 and sent with others to Parchman Farm in Mississippi.
http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2010/05/toward-a-manifested-courage/57179/
Now she is honored in Mississippi. See below.
http://breachofpeace.com/blog/?p=112

Freedom Rider Returns To Mississippi. See below.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/jul/05/inspiration-from-across-time/

More info on the Woolworth sit in. With more on the pictures below.
http://www.hunterbear.org/Woolworth%20Sitin%20Jackson.htm

Click on the photos above to enlarge them.

Below is a statement she wrote for the Civil Rights Archives.
Joan Trumpauer Mullholland age 60
I was born in Washington, D.C and I live in Arlington, Virginia. Down home is Georgia. Most of the relatives I knew were old line Georgia. I’m a teaching assistant in an elementary school, English as a second language.



My mother’s side of the family was your stereotypical Georgia redneck, that’s the only way I can put it, Pentecostal. I think that exposed me to a lot of the rural Deep South, hearing them express their attitudes and religious fervor. My father’s side of the family was more college-bred Iowa. My folks had met in Washington, D.C. during the Depression. Though my closest identification was with the Georgia branch, I also had this relationship with the other side of the family. My Iowa family cancelled out my Georgia family.



My involvement came about from my religious conviction, and the contradiction between life in America with what was being taught in Sunday school. I was at Duke University in Durham, which was the second city to have sit-ins, and the Presbyterian chaplain there arranged for the students from NTC to come over and talk with us about what the sit-ins were about and the philosophical and religious underpinnings. We had to keep pretty quiet because you could be locked out of the buildings, or burned out or any number of things on campus. At the end, they invited us to join them on sit-ins in the next week of so, and that started a snowball effect. Duke and I became incompatible over this, and dropped out and was working in Washington, D.C. actually in Senator Ingalls office, involved with a group called NAG. Hank Thomas was going on the Freedom Rides, and we thought this was a big joke and gave the poor guy a hard time, he was off on this cushy all-expense paid vacation because exams were over, and ho ho ho, but we quite laughing with Anniston.



People from my group, Paul Dietrich, John Moody going down to Montgomery, and my apartment had a direct off-campus phone which was a clearinghouse for the Washington, D.C. who joined the Freedom Rides.



By the time I went things were rolling a bit, and we flew to New Orleans with Stokely Carmichael, I like to say that I brought him to Mississippi. We flew to New Orleans and had a little orientation there, then took the train in. We got arrested. The part that really sticks in my mind was I was 110 pound with curly blonde hair, very Southern looking, and after they arrested me, stepping out of the paddy wagon at the jail, and the police officer reaching out to help me down the high step, and saying “We don’t want anything to happen to you, little lady,” and then catching himself and realizing he was being a southern gentleman, and I was a Freedom Rider. This horror-struck withdrawal on his part. So, it was two months and I think $200 fine in my sentencing. Since I had already been accepted at Tougaloo, I would serve the two months, and work off the fine until time for school to start and pay the rest. So with the clothes on my back, I enrolled at Tougaloo.



We were in Death Row, the first group that went to Parchman. When the paddy wagon was going up, and he turned off the main road off into the rural, and pulled up at somebody’s house, and who knew what was going to happen. We sure didn’t know what was coming at Parchman, the rest was pretty standard. In my mind it was the physical conditions, as far as the space, the bunk, the cleanliness, and the food was far superior to the jail which we just gotten so crowded we had as little as 3 square feet of floor space per Freedom Rider which made sleeping interesting. So it was much nicer facilities, but I think the psychological pressure of knowing how isolated we were, and that we were on Death Row, was intimidating, and took its toll on us to varying degrees.



You had a white roommate if you were white and a black roommate if you were black, but the cells were alternated, white cell and a black cell. There weren’t that many women, compared to the men, and we really did not get the brutalization that I understand the guys got. We did have our mattresses taken once, they sort of toyed with us as it were, but there was not the inhumane brutality. When we came in that was the worst.



We had organized lecture times, singing times, quiet times, and you had all the Bible you wanted to read, and debates and discussions. It was a very vibrant crowd in many ways, a lot of different experiences and backgrounds, like the college professor who would give us lectures, and those who had been in the Southern movement could tell tales. There was a lot to talk about, different opinions, politically and socially. Of course, with a rotating group of people, new people came in and people left.



I was known as sort of the Jackson movement secret weapon, because I couldn’t carry a tune, so if you wanted to run off the cops, let me get up front and sing loud!



June 8th (arrest) out in early September, late August. The closest you could go to the start of the school year. There was a day or so in Jackson when you got rested, and washed up and they had clothing available for you, but no more than a couple of days or so at the Freedom House rented by SNCC and that whole crew. Whoever was in town stayed there.



I don’t remember much about Jackson, except I got a pink flowered dress that was really nice to get, that someone provided so I had two sets of clothes. I went so quickly to Tougaloo and that was an impressive change in my life, and that’s what sticks in my memory. I graduated in ’64, and even with the summer of ’64 and I was involved in some of the planning that had led up to it, but having finished school, I felt that that was the right time for me to leave.



The first part was people getting used to white students, and figuring out why we were there, and were we for real, and were we going to stay. A whole new phenomena, for many of the black students it was the first time they had been in this situation with black and whites living together on equal footing. So there was a novelty aspect, but certainly by the second year. I was sort of on my own, there were people who didn’t like me, but it wasn’t necessarily based on race, my charming personality. I think I was accepted quite well, I joined a sorority, I had a roommate who said when you first came, I questioned, it, but we’re still good friends.



My family was completely against it, it was “You’re still our daughter if we can help you, or if you need something,” what have you, we will offer that help. Once I got into Tougaloo it was like I was kicked out of the family, except for sending me money to come home, like for a holiday or something, then doing their best to talk me out of this whole thing. Real tension existed even when I was out of school, and out of every day movement life, having kids. It started to soften by about the third kid, but my mother was quite elderly telling somebody “Oh, Joan’s statue is in this museum, and where is that? Memphis?” And that was proof to me that she really had Alzheimer’s because she was bragging on this. And at no point until then had I gotten anything but cold criticism. We had danced around the whole topic for years but by then I knew she was around the bend by bragging on it. Unfortunately, she was bragging to a cousin who was visiting who happened to be, probably, a Klansman, if not close to it, so that was uh...different!



(On the reaction from her children)

I think aside from being something they could throw up to me whenever I brought up an objection to something, I think it really influenced them positively, to do your own thing, do what’s right for you, accepting people, stepping outside the box and feeling free to go of and do what they wanted to do with their lives. This really fed into that, and they’ve certainly done that. No matter what revolution or war was going on, they went off and did what they wanted to do and thought was right.



I think in the way I look at things, I’ve found very often that I’m not thinking in the middle-America, white mold. This has made me much more often to accepting whatever changes have come along. With the school I work with, there are no majority population, and I can relate to whichever group comes in and see problems that are building, a subtle misunderstanding that has taken place, and think of ways to change things. I remember once it must have been late 70s or early 80s we were having some workshop on the human relations committee in the county schools and there were games that we played with everybody lined up in two rows, facing each other. You closed your eyes and a statement was read out, and if you agreed with it, you stayed where you were, if you disagreed, you took a step back. At the end of twenty questions, you opened your eyes and all the blacks were up front, and all the whites had moved back except for me, and I was up front with all the blacks. It was a black and white setting, there was no other groups at that point. And that was sort of startling, to me as well as everyone else. And that really affected, engrained, my thinking process, and that’s just an example.



I think the main thing that I’ve taken out of it is not rebellion or going against the system per se, but looking at things honestly and not limiting your view of what the situation is, but being able to hear things differently, and independently, and acting accordingly. I think that’s what I try to instill in my students, the kids that I’ve worked with in the schools for twenty years. You have to define your problems yourself, not let someone else define the situation for you. Seek solutions that will improve the situation, not what appears to be temporary gains,...I think today, after September 11, this really come true.



The school where I was is about a mile from the Pentagon, and in the direct flight pattern, the school shook when the jet flew over headed to the Pentagon. Everybody was at work, so the principal was running around calling out small clusters of teachers from the classrooms to talk to them. He told us the Twin Towers were gone, and the Pentagon had been hit. Teachers were literally falling on the floor crying; eventually they did pull themselves together and go back into the classrooms, including teachers whose husbands were at the Pentagon. I thought this is not me, and walked up to the principal and said “After the sixties, I’m probably the calmest person in the school, if you need anything call on me.” I was completely gone, I realized that after the sixties, it was a survival thing to step back, disassociate yourself with it and do what needs doing. The only other two people who were as equally calm was a lady whose family had been involved with the Sandinistas, and a guy who had been imprisoned on the wrong side of the government in Ethiopia, and the three of us were fine. And I think this was the strength that came from the movement, and this is what we need to be able to do is step back, disassociate yourself with it and do what needs doing.

http://www.outreach.olemiss.edu/Freedom_Riders/Resources/

Monday, July 9, 2012

Tuba Skinny @ Umbria Jazz 2012


Ok. Here is a full video of Tuba Skinny at the Umbria Jazz Festival on July 7th 2012.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Umbria Jazz 2012 - primo giorno July 6th Tuba Skinny Appears In This Video At 1:30

 
This video was made yesterday in Perugia Italy at the Umbria Jazz Festival. The New Orleans street band Tuba Skinny appears in this video at 1:30.
Amazing to find this on Youtube one day after it happened.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Nesbitt's Orange Drink ...A Big Orange Drink....Best Orange Drink Next To The Original Orange Crush In The Original Brown Bottle

Back in 1952 to 1955 when we lived in Kirbville, Texas Nesbitt's Orange was my soft drink of choice.
 Kirbyville is in East Texas 52 miles north of Beaumont Texas.
   After football practice I would go across the street from the school to a little shack where a man sold sodas and candy and things in that line.
I was so thristy after football practice where they limited our water that I would down three or four Nesbitt's Orange drinks.
Finally one day the old man spoke to me after I had finished about 3 or 4 Nesbitt's Orange drinks. He said,
"That will burn a ho le in your stomach". I was around 14 years old at the time. Maybe 13 years old.  I did not worry about it. And no hole ever appeared. It was a cold refreshing drink that really hit the spot after a long sweaty football practice.
   Just as good(and maybe even better) was the Original Orange Crush drink in the dark brown bottle.
Even in the 1960s this was beginning to be hard to find. The new Orange Crush never tasted the same to me.

The last time I had some original Orange Crush in the brown bottle was in the summer of 1966. I went into a little grocery store in Greenville, Mississippi that was run by Chinese people. I pulled back the lid on the old fashioned soda box and there was the amazing sight of bottles or original Orange Crush in the original dark brown bottles.
  When I got home I check the contents. It tasted correct. And the color of the liquid was not really orange. It was more greeish yellow. The guy below calls the old bottles color Krinkly Amber.
http://www.angelfire.com/yt/soda/Rosman-OC-amber.html