Toot Toot! Honk Honk!

CAMERA SHY

So what's all the excitement with the tooting and honking?  My photo which I entitled Camera Shy took third runner-up as the People's Choice for the best photograph at the Nacogdoches Public Library today!  Twice each year, the Nacogdoches Photography Association members are invited to show two pictures at the library during a designated month.  This year the library provided for the first time ballots for voting for a People's Choice award and I was just informed that I and another member tied for third runner-up.  Hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?  For those of you who follow my FKH Photo Journal blog, don't bother visiting today.  This post is reproduced there as well.

T is for Tattletale ~ ABC Wednesday

Psst Mom!  Junior's crawling under the fence again!

Come Join Me and Others

AT ABC WEDNESDAY

More Coca-Cola Brickart

What I call brickart is more correctly termed ghost signs, advertising which is painted on walls.  An art form starting in the 1890s, these signs are found throughout the world with the United States, Canada, the UK and France having the greatest number of survivors.  This one I photographed in the small town of Center, Texas, about 15 miles from where I currently live and where I was born back in the dark ages (when they were still painting these signs on walls, as a matter of fact!).  It is truly a ghost, being very faded and portions of it hard to read.  Only by increasing the saturation are you able to see it as well as it shows up in this photograph.  I am constantly on the lookout for these gems.

I had mentioned in my last post that I was planning to attend a Renaissance Festival over the weekend.  Two friends and I left before 7 a.m. Saturday morning and headed into a rainstorm.  We drove almost 150 miles south where the weather was supposed to clear up.  We stopped in a suburb of Houston and put in a couple hours of shopping and finally a little after noon, when it was still pouring rain, we decided to head back home.  We drove 300 miles to have lunch and go to Pier 1!  Maybe next year.  This was the last weekend for the festival.

Musical Surprise

On my last trip to Canton I kept hearing the sounds of medieval music, you know, the kind you associate with Robin Hood and Little John riding through Sherwood Forest, that haunting but lilting sound of flutes, lyres, and other ancient exotic instruments.  At first I thought it was canned music but the pause in between each song was too varied so I finally decided it was live.  When I finally found the stage, much to my surprise, the performers were not what I expected.

A Peruvian band!

Including this big guy playing a little ukelele.

A handsome guitarist with a sleek black ponytail.

 

And then this dude who kept pulling various instruments out of a suitcase!

The music was quite romantic.  At the time I thought about buying one of their CD's (I don't even know the name of the group) but decided against it because I have no way of playing it.  Until on the way home I realized I have a CD player in my truck!  Duh!  I usually listen to audio books while driving!  But if I run across them again, I won't hesitate because I love that music.  I'm hoping to hear something like it tomorrow while I'm attending the Texas Renaissance Festival (if it doesn't rain us out!).

Note re Yesterday's Post:  No one picked up on what I tried to convey as the indignity, that being every time I approach cows they turn their butt toward me and pick up their tail!  And then sometimes do you know what right in my face!  For those of you who called this heifer "he," I guess you've never seen a cow with udders!  I got a chuckle at your expense!

Indignity

... is the attitude cows tend to treat me with when they see me coming with my camera!

Horse Whiskers

S is for Stripes ~ ABC Wednesday

Actually, this couple's shirts were not matching, 

but you would never know it since I converted the photo to black and white.

Come Join Me and Others

at ABC WEDNESDAY

Attoyac Valley Medicine Show

This 1928 Model A huckster wagon belonging to the Attoyac Valley Medicine Show can occasionally be found on the plaza in Nacogdoches where the group calls the Old Time String Shop, site of the original General Mercantile Store, home.  With an array of instruments from fiddle, banjo, mandolin, cello, and concertina, the string band performs what is dubbed a mystical auditory adventure in which  pitchman "Rattlesnake Jack" peddles nostalgic elixirs.  The show includes homespun historical comedy and buck dancing (also known as clogging, flat-footing, jigging, or foot-stomping).  The music is a mixture of original and traditional tunes which are focused on the culture of earlier days.

When you enter the Old Time String Shop (once the General Mercantile Store) you step back into the past. The shop features a vintage Coca-Cola advertising mural on an exterior wall (posted on this blog last February as seen here) and stocks an incredible variety of musical instruments, strings and other instrument supplies, music books and CDs, and reproductions of old-timey toys and Christmas decorations. On Saturdays, banjo and guitar players and fiddlers gather on the front porch and entertain themselves ~ and passersby ~ for hours.

Original grocery advertising signs still adorn the General Mercantile Store.

It Can't Be 4 O'Clock

24/100 Dogs ~ Hounddog

Syrup Festival ~ Vol. 5 ~ Random Shots

Thanks to Magpie (at In Over My Head) for giving me the idea of including a group of random shots.  

Thanks for coming along with me to the Heritage Syrup Festival.  I had a great time.  Hope you did too!

A little girl approximately two years old decided to join one of the Indian dancers.  

She got a round of applause at the end of her performance.

Lunch for me was a plate of catfish, hush puppies and twisted taters!

How do they make those twisted taters anyway?

With a Black and Decker drill, that's how!

You could buy ribbon cane syrup in bottles or in old-fashioned cans.

The prices ranged from $6 to $10.

One of my grandpas had a syrup mill and made ribbon cane syrup back in the 1920s.

He made about 300 gallons per season and sold it for

50 cents a gallon!

Just because you're a mounted deputy-ess

it doesn't mean you can't have a nice manicure.

This deputy's horse was featured in the first day of posts on the Syrup Festival.

And although by far from being the best picture,

this next one has to be my favorite.

Like big brother, like little brother!

Is that just too cute or what!

Syrup Festival ~ Vol. 4 ~ I Saw ...

... spinners

 

 ... broom makers

 

... singers and bands

... Civil War buffs

 

... a young Native American dancer

... an even younger dancer

 

... an Indian scout eating Lay's potato chips

... and a handsome gentleman wearing a handsome hat with feathers.

The hat says CSA (Confederate States of America) but I was unsure what his costume was portraying.

One more post tomorrow on the Syrup Festival and then I'll let it be.  Thanks for coming along for the tour.

Rooster ~ ABC Wednesday

Come Join Me and Others

At ABC Wednesday

The Syrup Festival ~ Vol. 3 ~ Transportation

A hayride shuttle transported attendees between downtown and the train depot, 

the two areas of the festival.

Transporting approximately 24 passengers per shuttle, 

you could expect to wait in line approximately 10 minutes behind 300 other people to catch a ride.  

Pretty slick for a bunch of country dudes.

Classic cars

Classic pickups

Classic tractors

There was even a classy Belgian horse who would pull you and your sweetie in a carriage

through the historic area of town for a couple bucks.

The Syrup Festival ~ Vol. 2 ~ Making Ribbon Cane Syrup

For those of you who read my blog yesterday you know that I went to the Heritage Syrup Festival on Saturday and declared it one of the best small-town festivals I've ever attended.  The making of syrup was a traditional task of country folk in the Southern United States where sugar cane grows profusely.  Ribbon cane is simply a variety of this woody plant which looks similar to bamboo.  Sugar cane was brought to the Western Hemisphere by Columbus on his second voyage to the New World.  Below is a brief lesson on how the old-timers made syrup as was demonstrated at the festival.

Entering the syrup-making area.

 

First the cane must be fed into a crusher to extract the juice, which is extremely high in fructose.

This crusher had four ports into which the stalks could be fed.
If you look closely you can see the spout which feeds the juice into the barrel.
They probably used some type of metal container to hold the juice in the good old days.

You must remember that at one time there were no gasoline or electrically powered motors, 

so the energy to run the crusher was powered by mules.

The mule walks around the crusher in a circular track.

This guy's relief was waiting in the background.

The mule driver made sure that all the attachments between animal and machine stayed connected

and to give the mule a tap on the hind quarters if he decided to get lazy.

I think his job was probably the easiest.

A wood-burning furnace must get super hot to cook the juice.

The juice is cooked in a long baffled pan, often 12 feet in length, 

with the baffles allowing the syrup to transition from one stage to the next

and being skimmed during its final journey to the bucket, the can, or the bottle.

In the days to come there will be a series of posts consisting of "There was (fill in the blank)" of all the fun things that were offered at the syrup festival.  I'll try to keep the narrative to a minimum and I hope you have as much fun as I did.

Faces at the Syrup Festival

Today I went to the Heritage Syrup Festival in Henderson, Texas, about 30 miles west of my home.  It was the most fun I've ever had at a small-town festival, although Henderson was transformed from a small town into a huge city today with the number of people who attended from all over the state.  The Syrup Festival celebrates and re-creates the making of ribbon cane syrup which traditionally took place this time of the year in East Texas.  I took tons of pictures and will bore you with them in the coming days but for now here are some of the faces I encountered.

 

A wood carver selling his crafts

A clown who spotted an old friend in the crowd

 

One of the beautiful horses who are members of the Rusk County Sheriff's Department mounted patrol

A young man who could give you a flu shot while you waited in line for the hayride shuttle

A pretty lady in period costume

The mule driver for the syrup mill

Gladewater Mural

This quaint mural can be found along a quarter-block area in Gladewater, a small East Texas town about 75 miles northwest of where I live.  Gladewater is one of the few small towns in Texas that has actually seen an increase in its population in the past 20 years.  Somewhere along the way the powers that be obviously decided to pave over a red brick street and now they're being punished for that decision.  The roadway is rough and chipping but perhaps in a few years more of that beautiful red brick will resurface and they can chip off that ugly old asphalt and gravel composition road covering.

Girlfriends