Photographers on the road October 13, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Music, People, Photographs, Road trips.2 comments
By now, you’ve probably read about photographer Sandi Wheaton and her journey to document Route 66 with a series of time-lapse images. She’s in the Texas Panhandle now.
But there are other photographers who are traveling the road or who recently did so.
One is Steven Brett Stoddart, who is traveling the Mother Road from Chicago to L.A. and is bedding down in Yukon, Okla., tonight. He’s using professional-grade cameras on his trip, but is also posting images from his iPhone along the way. The iPhone shots, with deft editing software, give the images an old-school Polaroid quality. Nice stuff.
Also, Colorado resident Tommie Bishop recently went back to her native Oklahoma to take moody, black-and-white photographs along Route 66. Some of the photographs will be used in musician Jeff Elder’s Strange Highways project. You can go here to see some of Bishop’s photos, along with a blog post about her bittersweet feelings on returning to the Sooner State. (Disclosure: I recommended some places for Bishop to use during her excursion.)
Neighborhood opposition shoots down Bonnie and Clyde B+B October 13, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in History, Movies, People.add a comment
Opposition from the neighborhood thwarted a zoning permit request to convert a garage apartment in Joplin, Mo., that was once used by famed outlaws Bonnie and Clyde into a bed-and-breakfast, reports the Joplin Globe.
The apartment, which was used by the Barrow gang for 12 days in 1933 before shooting their way out and killing police officers, is owned by the Rev. Phillip McClendon. He’s filled the apartment with books, copies of a BBC documentary, movies and police reports about the gang and the shootout.
A photo of the apartment garage can be seen here. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Those who supported converting the apartment into a B&B included local history buffs, businessmen and a next-door neighbor.
Scott Hutson, an owner of Cycle Connection Harley-Davidson Buell, located south of the neighborhood, said Joplin is known worldwide as a historic Bonnie and Clyde site. He often is asked about the site or for directions to it by customers visiting his shop.
“It’s just as important (to Joplin) as Route 66,” he said. “It’s a story that’s traveled worldwide. Our city will always be linked, whether we try to ignore it or not, to Bonnie and Clyde.”
One neighbor said he was troubled by “the looks” of the people who were seeking out the apartment — a rather specious argument.
But, according to the report, it looks like most of the objections to the permit request stem from McClendon flouting zoning laws earlier and renting the apartment to overnight guests anyway. And the report says that McClendon has been uncooperative in addressing neighborhood concerns.
So it looks like any chance of the apartment being converted into a B&B won’t happen as along as McClendon owns it. So maybe an ownership change is in order.
The apartment is about two miles south of Route 66, at 3347 1/2 Oak Ridge Drive. Bonnie and Clyde also had several run-ins with the law near or on Route 66. Of course, the story also inspired this now-famous movie:
Man stakes faith in newspapers in Santa Rosa October 12, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in People, Publications, Towns.3 comments
In the New York Times, you can read about the tale of M.E. Sprengelmeyer, a former star reporter with the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News who recently purchased a small weekly newspaper in the Route 66 town of Santa Rosa, N.M., and is determined to make a go of it.
The newspaper is the Guadalupe County Communicator, and he didn’t buy it on a lark. He’d been thinking of buying a small-town newspaper for years, and had scouted such operations in Iowa and other states before settling on the Communicator in his native New Mexico (Sprengelmeyer grew up in Albuquerque).
As for the newspaper …
Sales of The Communicator are up, in part because of eight sidewalk boxes that Mr. Sprengelmeyer bought from The Rocky and posted around Santa Rosa. He will not say how much money the paper makes, but says it is more than enough to support him, and he has visions of expanding to two days a week.
“If a house burns down, everybody here knows it, saw it, knew the people, probably hugged them, but they still want to read about it in a paper that comes out four days later,” he said.
That excerpt alludes to an important part of Sprengelmeyer’s business model. He’s been adamant on the newspaper’s Facebook page (which has double the fans of the daily Albuquerque Journal) about not giving away content on the newspaper’s bare-bones Web site. If you want to read about it in the Communicator, you likely have to buy a paper.
It must be working, because Sprengelmeyer has already hired a couple of former Rocky Mountain News employees. I also see no reason to disbelieve Sprengelmeyer’s claims of profitability, as each copy of the newspaper I’ve received has ranged from 50 percent to 60 percent advertising — an excellent sign.
As big newspapers continue to lay off employees because of crippling debt or bad long-term decisions, you’ll see more journalists such as Sprengelmeyer take a plunge into small weeklies. Many of these operations do not have Internet sites, and you’ll see readers respond positively to a resultant increase in professionalism. Sprengelmeyer writes many of the Communicator’s stories, and his journalism background comes through in the engaging prose and willingness to stick his nose into things (such as his chiding of a fractious city council in the editorial page). Even more mundane items, such as an obituary about a former longtime Route 66 business owner in nearby Cuervo, are interesting to read.
If you want to subscribe, as I have, send an e-mail to the Communicator to comsilvercom(at)plateautel(dot)net and cc: ersthap(at)hotmail(dot)com. Write that you want a year’s subscription and that your $45 check is in the mail. Mail the check to The Communicator, P.O. Box 403, Santa Rosa, NM 88435. You’ll probably get the newspaper in less than a week.
Bringing them back October 12, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Animals.add a comment
The Kingman (Ariz.) Daily Miner published this fascinating article about continuing efforts to maintain populations of the rare black-footed ferret off Route 66 near Seligman.
That type of ferret was once considered extinct because of disease and other problems until a small group of them was found in Wyoming in the early 1980s. The effort to reintroduce them to that part of western Arizona started 13 years ago, and appears to be going well.
The reason wildlife authorities want ferrets in the area is because they are natural predators to prairie dogs. According to the article, a black-footed ferret can eat 100 prairie dogs a year. The black-footed ferret is North America’s only native ferret.
This is awesome October 11, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Music, Television.4 comments
Tap-dancing, weird driving backdrops, relentlessly cheeky singers, and the Lawrence Welk Show.
What more could you want?
A rare and old grain elevator October 10, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Attractions, Businesses, History, Preservation.1 comment so far
Bill Kemp, an archivist with the McLean County Museum of History, wrote an interesting article in the Bloomington (Ill.) Pantagraph about the history of grain elevators.
In particular, he focuses on the J.W. Hawes Grain Elevator Museum in the Route 66 town of Atlanta, Ill. The Hawes elevator was built in 1903 and is one of the few wooden elevators standing.
The Hawes elevator includes a restored 1920 Fairbanks-Morse gasoline engine located in an adjacent brick engine house. This working engine turns a power shaft running to the elevator, which gives motion to a system of belts and pulleys, which propels a vertical bucket conveyer. Area farmers would empty their grain wagons into a pit under the elevator’s central driveway, and the buckets would scoop and carry the grain some 60 feet up to the cupola-like “head” of the elevator. At the top, a spout could be swiveled to fill the separate bins. Boxcars (with coopered side doors to hold grain) reached the elevator from a Terre Haute & Peoria Railroad siding, and grain was gravity fed from elevator to railcar. [...]
Regrettably, the old wood-framed elevators are disappearing from the landscape, going the way of corn cribs and other farm-related structures that outlived their economic utility. In January 2006, for instance, it took less than an hour to raze the 80-feet-tall Ballard elevator, a Route 66 icon situated halfway between Lexington and Chenoa.
The Hawes elevator ceased operation in the mid-1970s, and the abandoned structure weathered neglect and vandalism for more than a decade. In 1988, the city purchased the structure with the intention of demolishing what was deemed a public safety hazard. Yet historic-minded residents won the day, and after an arduous restoration the elevator was reopened as a museum in 1999.
For more about the Hawes elevator, go to this cool Web site. The elevator is open for tours, by appointment.
Federal grants awarded for Route 66 tourism October 10, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Attractions, Highways, Signs.1 comment so far
The Illinois Department of Transportation announced several federal grants that will go toward tourism, including Route 66 sites.
According to the Belleville News-Democrat, $395,000 will be used to erect “experience hubs” and signs for Route 66 from East St. Louis to Chicago.
Also, in New Mexico, the state will receive $365,000 in federal funds to improve several scenic byways, including Route 66. According to an AP report, the money will be used for “roadside markers, interpretive exhibits and promotional materials.”