lit up like an angel

sea change

No bigger a shift than the one 'twixt Nixon '68 and McGovern '72 . . .

key rings long ago

Hee Haw



Gwaltney Ham, now a brand of Smithfield Foods.



This one actually saw some use.


A souvenir from a visit to the NASA Langley Research Center back in the 1970s.




First Union

the bell beneath

Lost beside a phone pole is an old Bell System marker for a buried line.



(Click images for closer views.)

vanishing pt

A few dispatches from Afton Mountain, an old tourist stop near Skyline Drive:

Recent images of the abandoned HoJo's.

Earlier images of the abandoned Skyline Parkway Motel (now demolished) and the HoJo's.

And oh, even more recent images.

a blue kerchief

tie of many colors

The NRC forbids me to put this tie anywhere close to this shirt.

(This tie was indeed worn by the same fellow, but never at the same time.)

Please use its power wisely.

ads from '52

An old print ad for Peebles.



Geo. Delk is no stranger either.



If memory serves, Bett's later became a Southern department store (which later became a Peebles).



One can find a Smithfield Farmers sticker here.



The face of the independent phone company back then.



I recall a very cool old neon sign at the Virginia Kernel. So far this ad's all I've found of the now long gone establishment.

All the above are more hasty photos, these being of ads in a program for Surry County's tricentennial celebrated in October 1952.

there was a band

Nope, not mine (before my time) . . .



Theirs.


(Click picture for a bigger, better view . . .)

there was a boy

Well, a boy and a deer . . .


In this detail from the top pic, you can better see the collar and cowbell (deerbell?) on the deer:


Thus, a tame deer and the relatively calm proximity.

4 views of an old house

You'd think an old house in Dendron VA wouldn't gather so much notice.

But Flickr, with its long reach and aggregate worldwide view, shows otherwise.

Since the first pic I saw posted, a Polaroid taken by Look In The Tunk, I've found 3 other Flickrites who've clicked a pic or two or more of the same house.

One intrepid band indeed appears to have noticed the house on a roadtrip north from Carolina up through the counties of Southhampton & Sussex. Another explorer took a close view, probably wondering how long such a house might stand.

I can only very hazily recall that maybe 40 or so years ago I might've known some folks who lived in that house. Or was it some other house?

a year ago & faraway

One morning last fall.

On the planet Solaris maybe.

turkeys out back

This past Saturday morning, a hen and her young (ten or so chicks) stroll through.

(Later, this evening, a different set of wings . . .)

circa '45

Yet more postcards. The ones above from Chicago, the ones below from California.

persistence of vision: street view

Type in a town, a street, maybe a full address and you might get more than a map or an aerial view from Google Maps. You might get a street view of the recent past.

Above is Little's Supermarket. Below is Angelo's. (Again, both images courtesy Google . . .)


Both are closed. And both are still standing (or were as of late June). But they may not stand like this forever. Here they are, probably as they were one day last fall.

And near or far on any road that's been documented, you can see a little ways back in time.

With tiled images creating a 360 degree view at any given point, it's like nostalgia's become a video game.

scanning the past

Some picture postcards from old family correspondence during World War II. (A current photo of the scene above. Or check out Street View on Google.)




A color logo from USO stationary:



A logo from a USO envelope flap:



The blog USO Clubs in World War II has picture postcards from various USO locations during the war.

more of the less-Bennigan's, Steak & Ale

That Mall's Sick And That Store's Dead! (aka Sickmalls) posts photos of a Bennigan's and a Steak & Ale. Evidently, I'm not alone in wearing a black armband for Butters.

Not being much of a theme restaurant goer, I find my interest is more about how these places become landmarks in current and (later on) remembered space. These two are on the outskirts of what was Coliseum Mall, Hampton VA.

persistence of vision: Walnut Mall, Petersburg VA

As posted back in the fall of '06, I tried taking my mom by the Walnut Mall where she used to go way back when. It was by then a red clay lot awaiting a new Food Lion to be born. The adjacent Crater Cinema building was still there (repurposed as a church), but the mall was gone.

Thanks to the online sleuthing of That Mall's Sick And That Store's Dead! (aka Sickmalls) one could check the Virginia Film Office location site & find interior & exterior shots of the vanished mall.

Unfortunately, though the location page still exists for Walnut Mall, the pictures are gone. Perhaps deleted--I can't say for sure.

UPDATE 29 Sept 2008--Forget what I wrote above and try this link for the VA Film Office pics of Walnut Mall:
http://va.reel-scout.com/loc_detail.aspx?id=2657&g=

(Thinking out loud: If these images have been ever are deleted, I hope the Virginia Film Office will pass along copies/hard originals to the Library of Virginia or some appropriate historical group or archive. Perhaps make them available online again as images of Virginia's recent past.)

Thankfully, an informative Labelscar post about Walnut Mall still has two cool pics from 1991. While some things had likely changed, I know these pictures revive my own faded memories of the mall (of Thalheimer's and Peoples Drug, in particular) as it was in the early 1970s.

Also the Labelscar post links to aerial images of the area that still (so far) show the old Walnut Mall.

Sometimes it's good when things lag a bit and information is not so up to date.

two sides to every shirt

Well, this shirt anyway.

Recently decommissioned by an anonymous acquaintance who once upon a time tripped the light fantastic in such as this. Down Va. Beach way, or so I'm told.

Even long gone and reduced to pixels, the shirt puts out quite a vibe. Click either side if you dare to look closer.