The week prior to Reds' Opening Day saw another blast of snow from Old Man Winter. While it had recently been too warm for the White Death to accumulate, the individual snowflakes were the largest I ever recall having seen:
Despite the valiant effort of my R2 unit, the Android didn't quite capture the scene adequately. These snowflakes were three inches in diameter (as I write this on the holiest of days for my radical Left-Wing anti-American crypto-communist extremist friends [Tax Day], it's snowing. Again.) Later that same day, I found myself exploring the outer reaches of Denmark when I discovered a road sign which misspelled a street name:
Not that it really matters which one is misspelled, I suppose.
My recent travels have taken me to some remote, uncharted territories. Well, perhaps just a little more often than usual, anyway. I shot two brief videos of my off-road excursions with my R2 unit last month (March) which you can watch here and here. This month (April, if you were uncertain) I shot an epic-length video of a drive through a depopulated sector of the Miami Valley. The video is only partially ruined by brilliant sunlight.
Remote, uncharted territories is an apt description for nearby regions of SE Indiana. Not that I'm telling you anything you don't already know.
In the photo above, at center, approximately 8 million miles across this expansive field, is a farm. There is another farm at right, 12 million light years distant. I wonder if the inhabitants have ever met?
For the past 22 years, my expeditions into this wild, untamed province of the Hoosier State have taken me past a once stately old home that fell into abandoned disrepair generations ago:
Its rate of collapse has been glacial but I sense that in recent months it is accelerating. I thought it was important to photograph before gravity and the elements bring it to complete destruction. No doubt due to all the genealogical research I've filled my days with over the past few years, and with a strong dose of the semi-amateur historianism that courses through my being, I also felt compelled to employ my information super highway resources in an effort to determine who may have lived there at about the very time this old home was built, if only for purposes of my own entertainment (this is what I do during rain delays of Reds games).
In 1884, this home which sits on the western bank of Indian Creek in Union Township, Union County, Indiana was part of the 136-acre property of a Samuel Bake. Indian Creek bisected this property, just west of the (one-time) census designated place of Contreras (and here, all along, you thought Contreras was just the name of a road).
Speaking of properties bisected by Indian Creek, I had occasion recently to pay a few visits to the non-census designated Ohio locale known as Schlichterville and to one of the eponymously-named families there whose own vast farm occupies both banks of Indian Creek (not photographed nor depicted here).
As for the old home photographed here:
Both levels of one front corner have fallen away. One can imagine that it's only a matter of time before the whole structure - as loosely defined by that term as it may be - succumbs. Pity that no one has had a vested interest in maintaining the grand old place but it must certainly have been too expensive a proposition. In pausing for the moment to photograph this home and to contemplate when the time comes that it's gone and forgotten has given me another idea for a similar photographic essay which you might see here in the coming weeks.
Across the road from this abandoned home, yet still on the 1884-era property of Samuel Bake, a small barn recently collapsed.
I confess to never having examined this structure very closely before, but calling it a barn - due to its smaller size - might very well be incorrect. Shed? Workshop? I cannot say.
Driving home from the Reds victory this past Palm Sunday, I was moved to ignore what passes for post-game talk (the so-called "Extra Innings") on 700 WLW and instead searched out on the Jeep Main Battle Tank's radio-and-satellite communications array for some rousing and/or cheerful music. As seems to so often be the case, I settled upon the vibrant sounds emanating from the satellite radio's Channel 49, Soul Town.
Jamming out to Stax/Volt records' Sam & Dave, I was reminded of the enjoyable email debate I had recently with loyal subscriber Kuertz about which was better; Motown/Tamla or Stax/Volt? It was a great debate because there isn't a definitively wrong answer and it required us to examine a subject we both appreciate. While I admit to a certain level of partiality for Motown/Tamla primarily through the influence of its greatest promoter - THE WHO and their mid-1960s brand of Maximum R&B, after protracted consideration I have arrived at the opinion that while Motown/Tamla had more quantity of great music, the best examples of Stax/Volt were marginally superior.
All this driving around can make a guy hungry. Every time I patronize the Olive Garden (which, regrettably, isn't weekly), I textify Jude a photo of the best dinner your Treasury-inflated greenbacks can buy:
Chicken Parmesan.
The second-best dinner money can buy is another of Jude's favorites and it just happened to be part of a Tax Day promotion - two Boston Market half-chicken dinners for the price of $10.40 (regularly a $16 value). Get it? 1040? After putting in a long day at the office, I made the hour-long drive to the nearest Boston Market to get my reward. Of course, I sent a photo to Jude with the caption; How ya like me now?!
To which J-Kil replied; Strong.
This past Friday I enjoyed a tasty basket of Fish & Chips at a restaurant that employs a wait staff which unfailingly insists on clarifying my Fish & Chips order with, "Do you want fries with that?" I will not identify the name of this fine chain of eateries other than to provide you with the visual hint, below, of the Jeep Main Battle Tank parked out front:
You'll never guess which restaurant it is.
I capped off my Fish & Chips & Fries with the greatest dessert found in this or any parallel universe:
Hot fudge cake!
Roll the credits!
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