Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

history / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
25
Nov 24

We sit and stand and play and dream beneath them

I received a memo from the desk of the Office of Kitteh Complaints, and such memos are always to be urgently read and promptly acted upon. Previous memos have explained and, again, reiterated the process. Cat photos are expected on Mondays as part of the site’s most popular weekly feature. Their Insta drives a lot of traffic, it turns out.

And, as the weekend memo pointed out, they did not feature into the site last week. It was a serious memo. The subject line was was terse.

So here are the cats.

Not too long ago we ordered pizzas. It was a coolish night, and so they availed themselves of the boxes.

We have, you can see, created two monsters.

Here’s Phoebe taking her afternoon sun in the dining room.

And here’s Poseidon and you can almost see his little mind thinking “PILLOW FORT! PILLOW FORT!”

So the cats, as you can see, are doing well. And now I have to fulfill the rest of their tasks on the memo. They are very particular.

Some time back we had a limb fall from a tree. I cut away a lot of the small stuff by hand soon after it fell, then waited a while and bought myself a chainsaw. This weekend, finally, I got around to cutting it up. I don’t know why I waited so long. This was fast and easy and awesome.

I cut it into firewood-sized sections. The limb was still partially attached to the tree, so eventually I had to break all of the chainsaw rules, fetched the ladder, climbed up, firmly established my balance, reeeeeeeached up, closed my eyes and did what needed to be done for that last bit of the wood.

Felt quite macho.

First time using a chainsaw, as you can probably tell.

We inherited that wheelbarrow in the move, and I’ve come to value it. I had to put some air in the tire, but it works just fine. And the crickets were loving it when I evicted them for these chores.

I could replace that handle, which has been snapped to a little nub, but that’s become part of its charm as I have used it from time to time. It reminds me of what Amity Shales wrote about Calvin Coolidge’s maple sap bucket.

“It had been quaint, it had lived within the painful limits of its self-sufficiency, but it had also yielded all the rest.”

You can see that sap bucket here. And now, for some reason, I want to get stencils for everything.

Things still look properly festive on the front porch. Pay no attention to the dirty floor in need of a fresh coat of paint.

That’s coming in the spring. I am making a list of things to do and that’s well up the list.

My lovely bride has broken out all of the Christmas paraphernalia this weekend and we have deployed it strategically throughout the house and yard. When it was done, we wandered outside and down to the street to see the effect.

Festive, but not overstated. She did a nice job.

The candles in the window are always my favorite.

The tree I was working on earlier? This is it, in the early evening.

The people that we inherited the wheelbarrow from had three kids. Maybe they climbed that tree. I hope so. I hope they had a lot of fun in that part of the yard. It’s easy to be romantic about a place when it gives you shots like that.

Auburn / Friday / Glomerata / history / photo — Comments Off
22
Nov 24

The 1954 Glomerata, part 12

This is the 12th and final installment of our glance through the 1954 Glomerata. (Find ’em all — Part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, part 10 and part 11.) All of them will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. I wouldn’t blame you. They’re quite handsome. The university hosts their collection here.

These are a couple of quick shots with a lot of substance behind them, so let’s get to the good stuff.

This was a play or a skit and we have no idea what was going on here. There’s nothing written to support this one moment in their lives. Hopefully it bubbled to the surface for them from time-to-time, and they thought of it fondly.

Dig that fancy flash the guy is holding. And is this really hazing? You could get in a lot of trouble for that today, of course. But things were different, one supposes. Or maybe it was just in fun.

“Fun.”

I’m beginning to think the impression I’ve been given of the morally upright 1950s might not have been a complete … picture.

What do you suppose this guy was working on? Note the ink jar, too.

This feature has a “post every bike” policy, and now that extends to unicycles. This could come back to haunt us later.

That guy is riding at the gates at Toomer’s Corner. The brick column and the Class of 1917 sign are the clues. This it what it looks like today (in 2015).

You’ll note those globes have been replaced by eagles. Those are 19th century eagles They were brought to campus in the 1960s.

I find I’m over the dodging and burning they were doing in the darkroom to cut out these images. What was going on behind the uni-cyclist could have been interesting to us, too.

From the advertisements in the back … This is obviously a sporting goods store, one I’ve never heard of. A quick search tells me they existed at least until the 1960s. They had a great spot, right next to Toomer’s Drugs.

Businesses come and go. The one in Atlanta is gone, too. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the model’s choice of footwear for this photograph.

J&M is still going strong, though. I bought my first Auburn t-shirt in that store. Shopped there a lot over the years.

It does look a bit different today. The building is bigger, and they sell more apparel and souvenirs than books. The business keeps changing, but the Johnstons are still standing there.

Trey, a kind-hearted guy, still owns the place, and it’s still a family concern. Trey was a football walk-on. He grew up in town, and around that store, which his father opened the year before this book was published. It’s a part of everyone’s lives and has always been a part of his. It’s one of the last things downtown that feels old and familiar and I hope it goes on for forever. (Another bookstore I shopped in closed in 2022.) Trey’s lifetime devotion to the place and the people deserve that.

Hawkins is gone.

Has been gone for decades. Hawkins, over time, became Johnston & Malone. So this book is at the beginning of the crossover period. (J&M traces their roots, indirectly, back to the 19th century.) And Burton’s were the headwaters.

Robert Wilton Burton opened the first bookstore in Auburn. They offered “Something New Everyday” for 90 years.

Born in 1848 in Georgia, he enlisted in the Confederate cavalry at the end of the war. At the ripe old age of 17 he spent two days in the saddle before he was captured and spent the last three months of the war in captivity. Burton spent most of his adult years in Auburn, first as a teacher, and then a business man. In 1878 he opened his bookstore became the literary center for the town. Himself a poet, Burton was published in newspapers and magazines around the country, and had a successful series of children’s stories, too. He died in 1917, and his daughters took over the store, until it closed in 1968 when his last surviving daughter was 77.

Burton, his wife and his two daughters are all buried in Pine Hill, an old cemetery steeped in the area’s history, a place I enjoy as much as one can say they enjoy a cemetery, and, oddly, the last place I visited on the weepy, dreadful day we moved away.

And that’s the end of the 1954 Glomerata. These are the editors. And I bet those tires and candles made for a good joke.

I wonder how many people were in on it.

All of these will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. The university hosts their collection here.

adventures / memories / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
21
Nov 24

Backyard ramblings

In last night’s rain there were great rumbles. The rain fell in such volume and for so long that I walked through the basement to be assured there was no seepage. (There was none.) And then there was a great big, deep boom. The walls shook. The windows rattled. You could feel it in your chest.

I dug up a lightning map and found recorded lightning strikes all over the place. One was about 1.16 miles away, off to the left of the house as I type. But there was another one, just a half-mile away, and to my immediate front from where I am sitting. And maybe it seems silly, but it felt the energy and the sound came from that direction.

That lightning struck in the fields just behind one of the farmhouses, and if the people that live there were home last night it probably scared them to death, too. Today, we drove by there and, for the briefest glimpse it looks like you can see a big scorch mark in the earth.

This is not the closest I’ve been to a lightning strike. Once, several years ago, we were in a restaurant where a power pole outside took a hit. I happened to be facing that way. Everything turned green for a moment. On a map, we were probably sitting about 115 feet from that one, which was intimidating enough.

Not all lightning strikes are created the same, of course, and I would hazard a guess that the one last night was more powerful. There’s such a thing as a superbolt, which meteorologists and physicists estimate can transmit 10 billion and 1 trillion watts of electrical power, but they’re rare. So there’s variety. The one last night was a lot more powerful than my restaurant experience.

I read once that one of my great-grandfathers was hit by lightning. Or, at least, a man with his name. (How many Horaces could there be in one newspaper’s coverage area at any given time?) Whoever it was, the man was walking through his field on a Friday evening in the summer of 1959, the community correspondent wrote, and he was knocked down, but was not seriously hurt. We’ll never know, but I’m guessing he was close to a strike. And it probably wasn’t like the one we experienced last night that felt like an earthquake.

That’s a shot from puttering around in the backyard. We’re just about at the end of the season for puttering around in the backyard, I fear.

Because of the drought and the dryness of everything we haven’t used the fire pit the first time this fall. I keep accumulating fuel for the pit. I need to burn some of it. So I’m wondering, what is the precise window for this? Cool enough to enjoy a fire, not so cold to suffer while having to get one started?

It says here, 45 degrees. So maybe in the daytime, then. It may be nighttime temps like that. It got to 40 degrees last night. Who wants to set up tender and kindling when it is five degrees below the ideal temperature to do so? Especially when it’s nice and warm, inside, just 70 feet away.

photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
20
Nov 24

Start somewhere

The assignments come in thick and fast on Mondays, as they do every Monday this semester. I’m teaching classes which have due dates at 11:59 each Monday. So I sit here and watch the number of submissions tick higher and higher, and try to figure out which things to assess first so the most important feedback gets back to the students in the most timely fashion.

I do this every week, and the answer isn’t always the same, but, also, it always is: start somewhere.

The thing that is the same is the thought that I shouldn’t teach a semester’s worth of classes which have things coming due all on the same day. I’ll spend three, maybe four days doing nothing but agonizing over points and pecking out constructive criticism and compliments.

None of this, none of it, is bad. But there sure is a lot of it!

We have two giant hydrangeas, both of which gave up quite some time ago, of course. But I’ve come to love the look of these faded old flowers. They speak to the season, or to just how a person feels in it, maybe. Still full, but brittle. Slumped to the elements, but still holding some character. And though their spring and summer beauty has faded, there is a new color and charm in there. And just a tinge of the original color, which I didn’t see until I looked carefully.

We’ll have to cut these back soon, which is a shame, in a way. If I brought them inside I could write essays about the corymbs for weeks, but I’m neither a poet nor an English literature professor, so it would be out of character.

Here’s a sunset photo from earlier this week that I didn’t use on the site. This is out on a road that feels lonely in all of the right ways.

I bet the wind whips through there. It probably is right now. It is really coming down out there. The first real rain we’ve had since the end of September. One good soaking won’t allow us to overcome an extreme drought, but you have to start somewhere.

cycling / overwriting / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
19
Nov 24

On the occasion of a record breaking ride

Most rides are for the ride themselves. Or for riding with others. A lot of them are for exercise or to enjoy the great outdoors or both. Take a break, unwind, race a friend you can’t beat, go somewhere. Indulgent as they can be, they always seem to carry at least some sort of purpose. But this ride, today, was just for me. I realized, just before I left, that this would be the ride where I broke a personal best for miles pedaled in a year.

It happened right in here.

After that spot, every turn of the crank arm, every loop the chain made, every time I shifted through the cassette would all be new, a record, a best, an achievement.

You don’t think about that over the course of a ride, but it’s there. When the legs protest, you remember it. They’ve stomped and danced and glided through more miles this year than you’ve ever asked of them before. When your lungs don’t ache, maybe it’s for the same reason. When the lactic acid takes a little longer to burn, maybe that’s why. Or all of it could be that you’ve learned a new kind of patience this late into the year.

All of this is racing the sun, trying to stay on the right side of daylight. I set off through town and out the other side, doubling back into the town again, where 10 miles had gone by in the blink of an eye, thinking about the possibilities of what this ride could hold, given the hour and the time of year.

Yesterday I wanted to do this same route, but started too late and wisely changed my plans. This afternoon, which became the early evening as I swooshed and whirred along, felt like a ride that could go on forever.

I thought about that when I stopped, to put on my windbreaker. I was close to home, but determined to take the longer way back, so I mounted the headlight and left the full finger gloves in my pocket, and riding down that three-mile straight stretch of chipseal. It goes on forever because I want it too, particularly today. And through this stretch I feel a melancholy, a paradox that comes up with the truly great rides. It’s going to end soon. And the season will end soon, which is unacceptable. I don’t want this ride to end, either.

Sometimes you want a ride to be over. You have things to do or somehow the fit seems off or you’re just not feeling it, but there are days when you want it to go on forever, and this was one of those days, evenings, now, because the sun has left me and I’m listening to the rubber on my Gatorskins shuzzzz away in the gloaming.

That’s a great road. No traffic, beautiful farm scenery, two little rollers that can make you feel powerful or humble, or a bit of both. I only want that road to end because of what’s waiting at the turn.

At the bottom of that road is the best part of the ride, a brand-new ribbon that you could soft-pedal at 20 miles per hour, but it only lasts four-tenths of a mile, far too short for something so luxurious.

I have to work my way through two parking lots there, and I become aware that my neck has tightened up because my fit is never quite right and, also, I’m a little bummed about how this ride is coming to an end — I have been out for about two hours and heard two voices in that whole time, a crossing guard in town, who told me to “Go ahead honey,” while she held up her stop sign and a woman two towns later who stepped into the crosswalk as I came through the intersection, she laughed and I apologized and she said “Oh, that’s OK,” and we wished each other a great afternoon and you could hear the smile on her face as I pedaled away through a sleepy small town block. It was those two people and me and road noise and the click click click of my bike and this rattle in my headset, a loose screw that I need to tighten — why should any of this end?

I realized I’d put my foot on the ground just three times during this whole ride. Sometimes the timing is right and that was today, and this turn weaving behind the small car dealership and the gas station beside it, I had the timing right, rejoining the highway and a bike lane with no one coming from either direction. The bike lane there sometimes feels huge and sometimes small. Today, it felt small. I felt big. I felt like I could do anything on my bike, even though I can’t. I felt like my machine was asking me to do more, but it certainly, by now, understands my limitations.

This is why you don’t want these rides to end, why you don’t want colder weather to run you indoors, because you eventually tap into something elemental about this. Something basic and cosmic and purposeful and purposeless. I don’t want to lose that. Not for a minute or four months. It takes too long to find again and would require years of continual study to understand or explain it. Besides, we’ve lost too much this year — family and friends and elections and car keys and cyclists and opportunities and remote controls — and how much must we lose? How much is the right amount? But we lose it all, don’t we? And that’s when I heard the Canada geese somewhere to my left, to the west. They’d blended into the dark blue-gray of the sky, making those incessant honks and barks, those beautifully chaotic, continual sounds. They stay over there to the left, in a wildlife sanctuary, between some pastures, harassing the cattle, adding a bit more to the soundtrack as I stand up and suzsh suzsh suzsh my way up the fourth-to-last roller on my ride. You know the one, it tells you how you’re feeling in defiance of everything else you’ve done, and without any consideration for what else is still ahead, three more little hills, in this case.

At the 4-way stop, the one with the haunted house on the corner, a truck hauling a trailer is waiting for me to pass, even though he has the right of way, and I think, not for the first time, it would be great if everyone understood the rules the same way. But he waited, and I did a track stand for a respectful amount of time and finally I went, even though it was his turn, and even here, it felt like I could have held my bike up for forever. But I could not. But it felt like it just then, and now I wonder, maybe my bike doesn’t want this ride to end, either. Is that what it is? We’re both feeling this moment the same way? The air in the tubes and the softness of the grips and the loose-but-tight grip of my cleats in their clipless mates have all made this tiny little magical moment, which is persisting, but also fleeting.

Down and back up again, just two hills to go. I’ve been thinking, for four miles now, about how I didn’t want this ride to end, about that girl I knew in elementary school, some friends from the 10th grade, a professor I once had, the work I must get to. How the mind wanders. How it can wonder in its wanderings! I thought about the incredible feeling I had on my first ride outside this year, the sweet joy and optimism that came with it, and the feeling of this one, right now. I’m starting to think I should write this down and one word falls out of my mouth as I pull the bidon away one last time: Elation.

Sometime, in December, probably, I’ll have to take my bike to the basement and put it on the trainer. I’ll ride away on Zwift for several months. I’ll pedal a bunch, I’ll sweat a lot. I’ll be breathless. I’ll go nowhere. It’s just not the same.

I saw someone on social media yesterday beaming with pride that their oldest kid had learned to ride the day before and she pedaled away yelling, “I feel freeeeeee!” And, kiddo, it never gets better than that. She’s an old pro by now, because you know she was riding yesterday, and again today. So she knows, but it bears repeating. Be home when the lights come on, or for supper, or whenever your parents tell you, but it never gets better than that. It doesn’t have to. How could it? It just stays that perfect. And you can’t get that feeling on a trainer, no matter how many endorphins you tap into.

My average speed fell away, because why would I want this to end? And I circled one of the neighborhoods, the road shaped like a horseshoe. My neighbor built that development. It’s his, and he thinks of it that way. He still plows that road himself if it snows. He probably contributed, then, to those potholes on the backside of it, the ones I dodged in the semi-dark, chin down to the stem, hands over the hoods like a Belgian champion, using the fullness of the subdivision’s road as I turned into the final length of that horseshoe. The flow of a bicycle in the diagonal is a triumph. You feel freeeeeee. And maybe I could do anything my bike wants to do, even if it is a bit slower.

What is speed, anyway? Today, it just seems like a way to end a ride sooner. That’s a fool’s racket. A hustle with no payoff. At the end of that subdivision, I did another reasonable approximation of a track stand to let the traffic clear, so I could turn left, and then quickly right again. Now a car is behind me, and it’s finally fully dark. I charge up the little hill, throwing my bike this way and that up this penultimate roller, looking like a French prima donna, feeling like a million bucks, thinking of those headlights on me, and wondering where they disappeared to. I glanced over as I switched my headlight on, and the car was gone. So now it’s the downhill and it flattens out to the 90-degree turn into the back of our subdivision, the last hill, then a right-hander and around the big circle to the house. Two cyclists we know live back there, but I don’t even think to look in their yards today. I was, I realize now, too taken with imagining the next ride.

I wonder where it will take me, and how my legs will feel about it. I remind myself, once again, to start earlier in the day next time. This ride was 40 great miles, without even that much fuel, or water, considering the temperatures. I could just as easily have done another hour or two, amused by the muses and the thoughts they bring, bemused by how much better this little tale was, because I was fully in composition mode, while my legs brought me home. Some days it feels like they could go on forever. You must take advantage of those, I said to myself for the 6,000th time in the last 15 years of doing this.

There are days when it never gets old, days like this one. Not the fastest or a technically superior ride, not the first new road discovered, but just a ride for me, filled, in that last little bit, with hopes and fears and love and dreams. My dreams never grow weary.