Thursday, May 26, 2011

Playing with Fire

After Christmas we had some burned down candles that I thought might be fun to play with. These are a few of the results.





Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The Hidden Well

We have a wonderful friend named Hope Wilson - married to Tom Wilson.  Hope's goal is to perfect as much of the world as she can as quickly as possible.  In the course of meeting that goal, Hope caused the concrete patio behind their house to be ripped out last week to be replaced with something - I am not sure just what.


You can see the pile of concrete rubble.  The brown lawn chair lying on the ground in the top photo covers the hole you can see uncovered in the second photo.  The other photos show what is down the hole.  It is a well or a cistern some 20 feet deep with a lot of water in the bottom.  Note the brick work that lines the entirety of it.  No one knew the well was there.  The house was built in 1867 but the addition at the back is probably 100 years or so old and the well has likely been covered that long.




Thursday, May 19, 2011

My Grandfather's Polaroid et al.

My grandfather Verne Roberson lived far out in rural Illinois south and west of Peoria on what I referred to as the end of the road, at the end of the road, at the end of the road.  However, he was so cool.  He studied law through a correspondence course with the Blackstone Institute in Chicago, although he was a dairy farmer.  He built a kit house from Sears Roebuck that was heated with a big black coal stove in the dining room and converted it to electric heat in the early 1960s.  He also had this camera.  It is a Polaroid J66 black and white instant camera that was made from 1961-1963.  It does not seem to be worth much of anything according to what I have seen on E bay, but I think it is marvelous.


Below that is the first good camera I ever owned.  It is a 1964 Spotmatic with a great 1.4 lens.  I bought it as a high school student at South Side in Fort Wayne when I worked at Howard's Rudisill store, working as much as I could in the camera/film department.  I loved it.





Saturday, May 14, 2011

Lynne's Tulips

These are tulips from my friend Lynne Hickman's yard.  She loves her flowers.