aesthetic luddite 12

Aesthetic Luddite is a "series" where I take then post photos of signs/typography I like. Mostly old stuff.

Hamilton's Shoes
Berlin, WI

aesthetic luddite 11

Aesthetic Luddite is a "series" where I take then post photos of signs/typography I like. Mostly old stuff.

Waffle House
Bloomington, IN

chickenshit

aesthetic luddite 10

Aesthetic Luddite is a "series" where I take then post photos of signs/typography I like. Mostly old stuff.

Victoria Hotel
Racine, WI

aged pita (the saddest story ever told)

As a kid, my dad would take me to Tomahawk, WI quite a bit. He worked for a tractor company that had a proving grounds up there. "Proving grounds" is just a fancy way of saying a big open, dirt area where they'd test out tractors.

Many hours spent on dad's lap as he used loaders backhoes and a bunch of other kinds tractors that do the world's heavy lifting. Though if I'm sure if you asked him today, the backhoes still have most of his heart.

Anyway, I can't remember much of what we did in Tomahawk back then other than ride the tractors and sit in the hotel and zone out to MTV (weren't allowed to have it at home, so it was always a treat).

This weekend, I went back to hang out my best friends' folks' cabin. Lots of beer, swimming around the lake, and fries and root beer at Dog N Suds drive-in. Oh, and the capstone: the dazzling Saturday night show by the Kwahamot Water Ski Club. (Yes, Kwahamot is a palindrome for Tomahawk.)

In other words, tons of shit that make coming back to the workweek feel like one giant paper cut.

(View the entire photo set)

Honey Creek

The baby's getting anxious and cramped up there in A— womb. Figuring there are only a few weeks left to do whimmy things, we loaded up the car today with vague plans and ended up at the sprawl of cornfields, cow pastures, and unincorporated towns near Honey Creek.

Our only real goal was to wander around and check stuff out. See what was there.

We got a dizzying history lesson from Frank and Nancy down at Stir Crazy in Rochester. They spent a good half hour dropping names of the famous people who've been to their coffee "shoppe". Not bragging, just proud. Tony Romo and Jane Hamilton, like that. But more than anything, Frank seemed gladdest of the fact that he hangs his hat (a Yankees one, which you'd assume to be a punishable offense so close to Milwaukee) in the same town that sprung up Ginger Beaumont, the first guy to ever bat in a World Series game.

See, when my daughter asks me what I did for fun before she was born, I'm glad I'll be able to show her photos like these and just say, "Not a whole lot. Wondered around, checked things out. Saw what was there."

(View the rest of the photo set)

Flowdough Day 19: Cudahy

Waited for the bike shop to open.
Walked through Cudahy.
Had everyone staring at me with suspicion.

Flowdough: Day 3

Flowdough: Day 3

squires

Learned that there was a referring visit today from a search for "inheriting tennessee squires land deeds" & I will sleep easy tonight.

Go back and listen to/read my Voices of Lynchburg post.

coolness beyond

There's a coolness that's haunting. And somewhere, a danger beyond all danger.

World's best buddies

Crashed by the laundry pile,
after a long, hard day
of sitting in the sun.

sunworn

water went woosh

Oh boy, that time when Jerry cracked the joke about the Catholic Bishop, the hole in the wall, and the حصان عربي. Then the water went wooosh. Did we ever laugh and laugh. The sound lunged out us! After a while, our insides felt like glass.

Niun

Dumb Luck is smarter than you'd think just by looking at her. 14, lazy-eyed, a reluctant and slow filament of living from just short of the border of the Russian part of town.

"Niun," she says in that way she has. Not accented exactly, in the way you'd imagine.

Each time, the words spray out of her. I'm not kidding. They spray out and land blacky against whatever surface is nearest. It's always primitive, a blight for the eyes; it drains you, drains all of us.

So where's the smartness in that? It's there. You just have to find the order in it, part it like deep water, and duck in.

So far, nobody's dared to take it that far.

chip dimples

Hahhaha, the imagination of lumpy grapes! Can you feel the power of it? The rumbly seduction? Does it rattle your teeth and chip dimples in your cheeks? Head-to-toe I'm corduroyed, ironed sharp, and feeling just fine as stones fall from the shelf of mountain and cover me. All the time, I'm thinking about those grapes, yeah! The way the water of them jumped like punched tears with each magnificent bite.

library dog

breaker

the pours

The green, planty part looks painted onto the concrete tumbler, but it's not. We toss pulled weeds over the fence's thorns, into the patch of rocky dirt along the alleyway. The weeds dig their migrant roots in and bud up around the garbage cans. Some are taller than I can reach. Some are a tangle, a mound, ground-feeders. All told, it's a small jungle of neglect and indifference.

The neighbors must hate us.