Quaint Little House

I remember when this smaller house was a hair stylist shop and after that it was a shoe cobbler's shop. Then the house was put up for sale and the new owners have remodeled it from stem to stern and made it into a perfect house for anybody who wants a home. They have a two car garage and a secluded back yard with privacy fence all around. The big red barn belongs to the neighbor and is not part of this property. Almost everything on it is new so anybody who wants to live there could retire and not have to do anything.

Fujifilm X100S Camera

The new X100S Fujifilm camera that is similar to one I had used in 1954 in Japan — it was a 35mm film camera. This new one is all digital — even the viewfinder. But it takes perfect photos and is small enough that one can carry it in their pocket. It is a fixed focus camera so there is no focus to do.

It is hard to get used to and to learn what all the dials and buttons are for and what happens when you push them. Some pro photographers gave up their DSLR cameras for this single camera claiming it is the perfect street camera. I am beginning to think so too.

Setup for X100S Fujifilm Camera

I set this up on a table with a blue lamp to see how the new camera X100S Fujifilm would take it and am proud of the results.

Strangers on the sidewalk

Pepper Jax checking out the neighborhood—he saw the people walking by our house and barked at them. Can you see the people? Sometimes he sees people and barks at them, to tell us in the back of the house that somebody is out in front of our house. We get our exercise walking this distance to see what or who he is barking at. Sometimes it is the postman or mailman, as we call them. We even call the occasional female a "postman,"and she doesn't seem to mind. I love our postpeople and have been known to deliver them a bottle of wine for the holidays. That always set other customers aback when I came in loaded down with bottles of wine for the local people working in the post office.

Sunshine

The dog loves to lay and face the afternoon sun. He gets so hot that he will pant. Finally, when he is about overcome, he will move over into the shade. He is also the only dog we ever had who will watch some television programs when the screen is filled with one or two people talking. And he listens and watches when a dog in on television. I guess he was Lassie in another lifetime.

The Road to a Limestone Mine

It was a cold day here in Brookville, Ohio yesterday but I decided it was time to get out and take some photos from the car. I used the new f/1.2 X100S Fujifilm, fixed focus, camera and shot through the glass windscreen or the driver's side window. These are country roads and this one is going towards a limestone cave where they used to mine limestone. When I was a kid, I worked there, filling paper bags with limestone almost as fine as talcum powder. I had to wear a face mask and the limestone would get between your clothes and skin and burn it so the idea was to seal off all your skin or get burned. Anyway, this is one of the photos that I took and selected it and this composition as the sign tells us to stop but the sign is there and the road is straight ahead or you could turn right and be out of the area in no time. I went on and passed the locked gates to the mine and remembered how I used to work filling railroad freight cars with bags of limestone.

The leftovers on a card table

Christmas came and went. The house is nice and quiet now. The leftovers are on a card table for anyone who happens to come in the house. I had a slice of honey baked ham and Patty  fixed me a fried egg. We both had hot chocolate.

Christmas Day Nuts

Nuts. We got nuts on Christmas Day. I like Walnuts but dislike breaking the shells because the nut-we-eat-part never comes out in one complete piece. At best you get two smashed halves.

Living in Baltimore, Maryland

Patty and I lived on Dundalk Avenue in Baltimore, Maryland. That is me standing on the step looking at my camera. I was getting ready to take a picture of my father-in-law's new car.

I was home from being overseas in Japan and we had a new baby a few days old but took off from Arcanum, where Patty was living with her folks, and drove to Baltimore where I reported-in for duty at Fort Holabird, the Counter Intelligence Corps Center. I had driven from Ohio to Baltimore on the Army driver's license I used in Japan, but when I tried to get on the post at Fort Holabird the guard at the gate told me I had to have a driver's license from Maryland to get on base; and that I should go downtown and apply for one. I had never driven in a large city, like Baltimore, but I drove downtown, found the license bureau building, went inside and applied for a Maryland driver's license. Just getting there was quite an experience and then having to take a written test that I had no time to study for and then drive some cop around the city was finally finished and I was given a Maryland driver's license.

City of Brookville Flyer

I did a whole series of these for the city of Brookville, Ohio.They were used by the city and sent to companies and organizations in an effort to induce them to move their operations to Brookville, Ohio

White Oak Tree

I took this photograph through double pane glass in my office. There is the oak tree that was a foot tall sapling when I planted it. A friend of mine harvested the sapling from under the original tree at our old country school house. Kids, for many generations had sat under its shade and ate their lunches from lunch buckets and paper sacks while watching older kids playing a game of softball on the grass in front of us. I asked if the tree was still there and he said it was and that it had a lot of saplings growing under it. I asked him to bring me one and he did. This is it now. It must be 30 or 40 feet tall and produces nuts each year. The squirrels love it and we do too, mostly for the shade because the squirrels get most of the nuts before they are even mature on the tree.

Photographed through double pane glass in my office with the X100S Fujifilm camera.

The White Oak Tree in winter

The White Oak Tree

The White Oak Nuts

The squirrels plant the nuts and new trees sprout

One of the things that I have been doing since we moved here in 1962 is to try and plant things that look pretty to us and at the same time provide something of value to local wildlife. And we have a bird feeder and a suet cake hanging from the tree all year long and keep it filled and the area clean. The animals respond by hanging around and that much cannot be said for any neighbor around us with turf grass and nothing more. Animals move away from their yards to places where everything from fresh water to shelter and food is provided.

Baby Kitty — Fujifilm X100S camera on gloomy day

This is our Baby Kitty watching the birds outside as they eat sunflower chips and pieces that fall to the ground. The cat likes for me to put some seed on the outside of the window sill so that the birds will land there to get it and be face to face with the cat. The cat will lunge as if to catch the bird but the bird is on the other side of the window and out of harm's way. I see by the clock that the photo was taken at 11:21 AM on Friday (Yesterday). I must tell you or anyone interested in the X100S Fujifilm camera that it is able to gather enough light to make the dullest days look like they are being illuminated by the summer sun. This is the first day of Winter 2013 and it couldn't be more gloomy. Lots of rain and we have warnings about the flooding in the area. And it was exactly the same way yesterday as it is today. It could get really bad as it is suppose to rain all night and again on Sunday (tomorrow).

Via Greyhound

I began my journey from Ohio to Tucson, Arizona by getting a bus ticket at the Greyhound Bus Station in Dayton, Ohio. My dad dropped me off at the bus station and I got out of his 1939 Plymouth Coupe, hoping he would give me some money. He opened his money sack, got out a roll of bills, and peeled off two $20.00 dollar bills and handed them to me.

I inquired about getting a bus ticket to Tucson, Arizona and was told it would take 3 days and 4 nights to get there and a one-way ticket took most of the $40.00. I was able to buy something to eat before we pulled out and started for Indianapolis. Along the way we started and stopped at all the little stops for a rest and food plus use the toilet. I would buy a cheap hot dog with diced onions and mustard and wolf it down. My stash of cash dwindled until I was broke – then I worried how I would make it to Tucson on an empty stomach.


I had to lay over for several hours at the bus station in Chicago and when I got back on the bus for Tucson, Arizona, a lady got on and sat down on the seat beside me. She turned out to be a schoolteacher from Massachusetts who worked at Hotel Desert Air Parkway in Palm Springs, California. She told me that she made more money working as a waitress than she did teaching all winter in Massachusetts. We would both go into these restaurant stops and she would buy something to eat. I didn't have any money so I only drank water. She asked and I told her I was broke and she began buying my meals. When we got to Tucson, we sat together and she asked if I liked shrimp and I told her I didn't know what a shrimp was. She got me an order of shrimp and fries. I was so hungry I ate all the shrimp and fries and drank several cups of hot coffee and smoked several cigarettes. When the bus pulled out, and she waved goodbye, she told me if I ever got to Palm Springs, California that I should stop and look her up.

I slept on a park bench at the University of Arizona that first night and the following morning went back to the bus station used my locker key to get my stuff out – got cleaned up in the bus station bathroom. With fresh clothes and clean shaven, I walked back downtown and into an employment office and they sent me to Levy's of Tucson to interview for a job. The man who interviewed me hired me to work with him in trimming the store's windows. It was a never-ending job with each window featuring something a department wanted to sell. I learned a lot from that job – mostly how to make any size dress fit any mannequin.

I was “working” my way across the United States using my “thumb” that showed all passing motorists I was willing to take a chance and ride with them if they picked me up. Nobody tried to molest or rob me– I think those who stopped and picked me up just wanted to talk. They always asked who I was and where I was from and where did I think I was going to go. I told each one a similar story that I sold pots and pans and encyclopedias from Tucson, Arizona all the way to Dallas, Texas where I decided to stay a while and rest up.

I got a cheap hotel room and laid down and woke up the following day about as refreshed as you could be after wearing the same clothes for several days in a row. I looked out the hotel window and saw a store across the street that sold typewriters. I was keeping a kind of journal or diary (because I loved to write even back then) so I thought I should get myself a typewriter and I did. It was my very first purchase “on-time” (meaning I would pay it off in monthly payments). I sat in my room and began typing one tale after another and in the end I drug it back home to Ohio when I ran out of money and luck. I wonder what I ever did with all those stories?


Story © By Abraham Lincoln

Pushing the snow

This first snow of the season was wet, heavy, snow. It was easier to just push it than to lift it up and throw it somewhere. The neighbor had their snow blower out and tried to use it but it would clog up the screw so he quit and pushed the rest of the snow off of his mom's driveway too. I used to do this myself but lately I am not able to do much of anything so my daughter who lives with us does the hard labor I used to do and Patty used to do too. She ran the snow blower up until two years ago and her breathing got so bad that she had to stop too.

The Double Loaf

The Double Loaf
by Abraham Lincoln

Spending money was what I got to keep when mom sent me to Boyer’s store to buy a loaf of bread. Bread was not cheap but one loaf of any bread was a dime or less. Any money left was my “spending money.”

I never got any special instructions on which brand to buy but one brand, whose name I have long since forgotten, baked their bread in a double baking pan. This produced two loaves stuck together in the middle. It was always fresh and handy to use. You could slap a piece of meat on one slice and fold the other slice of bread over on top of the meat.

It was modern technology back then. Each double slice out of the wrapper made a complete sandwich. If we live long enough, somebody will reinvent that idea and it will be a big seller by a new name on the grocery store shelf.

My dime bought the double-loaf because it only costs 8 cents and that left me 2 cents for spending money.

Spending two cents during the War years was hard to do. The big glass candy case in Boyer’s store stretched from one aisle on the east side to the aisle on the west side of the store. It was about 2 feet deep and was outfitted in thick, curved, glass with beveled edges set in oak wood panels.  Most of the time, during the war, it was empty.

Just as a kind or reminder to kids, Mr. Boyer left the Hershey’s chocolate bar box in the case, empty of course, during the War years. The Milky Way, Mar’s bar, Clark bars, Power House, Bit-O-Honey, Mounds, 5th Avenue, Almond Joy and others whose names neither me nor my wife can remember, used to fill the glass shelves but during the War they were sent to the boys overseas.

Before the War the case also contained a pan of gum drops, boxes of jelly beans, make-your-jaws-ache bubble gum; and nasty tasting Sen-Sens. Sometimes kids bought a box of Smith Brothers, cherry flavored, cough drops and smacked lips like they were candy.

I never went home with money in my pants pocket so I shopped around the store. In those days the cookies came in large cardboard boxes that were opened and set on the counter or on the floor. People would reach in the box and pick out a handful. I always looked at these to see what kind they were and put the one I looked at back in the box. I never bought any of them.

Sometimes Mr. Boyer would put my two pennies in the Spanish peanut vending machine and crank the crank while I held both hands under the chute. If I was lucky, my hands caught all of the peanuts and I didn’t have to pick any up off the black-oiled floor.
On the way home I would eat the peanuts and swing the loaf of bread around like a club.

Country School in 1944

The top photo is all the students in our country schoolhouse and the teacher, Miss Beatrice Brown. I am in the front row, seated on the left side and think I was 9 years old when the picture was taken but turned 10 that October. Most of the people in the photo are dead but enough of them are around to bring back lots of memories. The handwritten piece above is an example of a newsletter that I did once a week or once every two weeks and mailed to several thousand people. The cost in printing and postage made it an impractical way to communicate but we did it because along with this was a listing of items we had for sale.

The Hardware Store

End of an era

Somers Hardware hardware store used to be in this building. After Mr. Somers died, Mr. Behnken took it over but it didn't last long until everything was sold at public auction and the place closed forever. It was a handy place to go to pick up some nails, screws, bolts, or lawn rakes. They sold some great brooms there and mop buckets — things you don't find in one small space in the modern, big box stores.

The building stood like this for a number of years but it was torn down and became part of a parking lot for another business where people get their cars tuned up, oil changed and things like that.

I liked the hardware store. There was a lot of very old kinds of hardware in there from pitcher pumps to horse tack and different sizes of wire. Thicker wire for clothes lines to hand your laundry on to smaller, thinner, wire to tie things up or to make "S" shaped hooks with. We called it hay baling wire but it had many uses. That is all gone and nothing remains but memories of this place.

My Wife is Patty

I have to give this gal credit. She not only fixes my meals, washes my clothes, and cleans up after me, she can also transform a lifeless computer into a work of electronic art. There was a time, not that many years ago, when Patty (my wife of 58 years) would probably not even touch a keyboard unless it was hooked up and played things like "Stardust." She wasn't the best piano player and could read music pretty good so I got her a new piano.

But when it came to getting her a computer, I would save some money, buy myself a new computer and give her the old one. That's how I got her hooked on using a Mac. I got myself a new iMac and a new MacBook Pro laptop and gave her my old iMac. She complained about it bitterly but once she got used to it and how it operates, you can't pry her fingers off the keyboard. She is a fast learner and I tried to make sure she learned the right things that would be good for her.

Way back when, I could be driving our car somewhere and reach over and touch her knee and she would positively melt in the seat. I tried that tactic recently and am ashamed to admit that it really doesn't work anymore—but I did get a frown and not that "come on baby"smile that used to make me break the posted speed limit just to get home. She was, and still is, a great cook and only rarely burns toast or fries the eggs hard for breakfast. She could just leap up and land on the hood of my car while holding my Army cap and never stopped smiling at me.

Snowing in Brookville, Ohio

We have had a mix of snow, freezing rain and rain. There were icicles at least at long as my arm hanging on the overhand above my patio. I was afraid one of them would break off and run through my dog, Pepper Jax, so I broke them off. Melissa spent a lot of hard work shoveling the snow off of the driveway and from around her car and the neighbors used combinations of shovels and snow blowers to clean off their driveways. Now, as I write this, it is dark outside and the snow that was so deep on the driveway where it was shoveled this morning, has melted and might disappear by Sunday morning. I did use my new camera from inside the house to take a couple of pictures of the snow as it was falling and have included one of those in this post.

Technorati Tags: Snow falling,Winter of 2013,X100S Fujifilm X100S fixed focus camera

A Nurse in our Family

Me, Melissa and Patty at Melissa's "Pinning" Ceremony. She worked her butt off to go to school and to work 12 hour days as a Patient Care Technician at local hospitals while going to school and driving back and forth.

But it finally ended, so to speak, last night when the school had a ceremony for the new nurses and pinned them with a Registered Nurse pin. We are so proud of her and her accomplishments and daughter, Audrey, is extremely proud of her mom and it shows in this photo of the two of them.

The Medicine Shelf

This reminds me of past times but way before my time. The box of aspirins, for example, came in small metal tins and a dozen or so aspirins fit in the box. With the lid closed, the box would fit in a watch pocket or in trouser pockets with change. This assortment was found in an abandoned ghost town, Bodie, California. The large bottle was Castor Oil and the small one was Iodine. I have never seen Powder for Men that was guaranteed to be invisible, but there it is in the yellow, striped can.

Gordon Country School

This is the country school house where I went to school in the 1940s. It had two rooms but we only used the smaller of the two rooms, on the left. We had one teacher, Miss Beatrice Brown, who taught grades 1 through 8. After the 8th grade a child had "graduated" and it was the parents choice if the student would be allowed to go on to high school. We walked to school in all kinds of weather but high school students had to be carried to an adjoining town for high school classes. Not many kids went on to high school unless they thought they might want to go to college. In those days you had to have graduated from a high school before you could be accepted into a college. Not many kids went beyond the 8th grade because they were farmers and did not need what was then called a 'higher education.' The red brick school in the country had outside toilets. One for the girls and one for the boys. You can see the wooden fence behind the schoolhouse and on the left is the boy's toilet. Both toilets had two holes or seats but the boy's toilet also had a "V" channel of wood sloped toward the pit and boys were supposed to pee in that to avoid messing up the toilet seats. Older boys would pound on you if you were caught peeing in a toilet seat instead of the pee channel trough.

The Rice House

The Rice House in the village where I was born, Gordon, Ohio. Tommy Rice, the village blacksmith, owned the house and he lived there with his wife, Ella and daughter, Ruth and son-in-law, William or Bill Lage. Bill came over from Germany and escaped Nazi Germany by months. He met and married Ruth and the two of them went on to make a lot of money from selling heating oil and gasoline to farmers and to small towns that had small tanks and one pump for selling gasoline to run Model T's and Model A's. He bought a number of farms during The Great Depression and had tenant farmers run those for him for a profit. It seems like everything he touched turned to money and his contributions to the communities benefited many people. He paid for an entire hospital wing that was added to the Greenville Memorial Hospital, for example. He sold new Reo Cars and Trucks from his small dealership, block building (above), on Main Street in Gordon, Ohio. The building is still there but the car and truck business ended. I remember one of his Reo trucks was used by Boyer's Grocery: it had shelves and drawers stocked with food items and ran a regular route in the country; stopping, showing and selling everything from bread and cheese to candy and hardware to the farmers on the route.

Squirrel Proof Birdfeeder

It was cold here today and windy too--see how the feeder is blowing. I only saw a few sparrows and one red-bellied woodpecker at the feeder all day. It was windy enough that I had to take the green lid (Squirrel protector) off once and then when the wind calmed down I put it back. For some who do not know how this works, let me explain it. I bought the green metal lid with a hole already in the center at a local store called, "Tractor Supply." I added a threaded hook on one side and partially screwed it into a turnbuckle and then added a second threaded hook on the bottom with a lock washer and screwed it into the same turnbuckle. That gives me a hook on top to hook the bungee cord into and a hook on the underside to hook the birdfeeder to. A squirrel slides down the bungee cord and steps off onto the metal lid and it tips way over to almost a vertical surface and the squirrel slides off. So, they never actually made it onto the birdfeeder itself and after several tries at stepping on and falling off the tilting lid, they give up.

I am still reading the book and watching videos of how to use the new camera -- the X100S. There is so much more to it than any other camera I have at present or previously owned. It might be why it costs a lot more than my Canon cameras and considering it has a fixed lens and is nothing like a DSLR camera that I am used to, just getting some nice color prints is almost leaving me speechless.

New Bird Feeder

I just got this new bird feeder at Walmart and it seems to be working out very well. I do my best to keep the squirrels off of it by using a round, metal, flat lid-like piece above it. The feeder is hanging on a bungee cord and without the flat metal piece above the feeder, the squirrels would be able to slide down the bungee cord and eat the seeds out of the bird feeder

The photograph, at left, shows a green bird feeder hooked onto the lid I mentioned above. If a squirrel comes down the bungee cord and walks out on the lid, then the lid tips and the squirrel slides off onto the ground. They may try a dozen times, determined to get on the feeder, but in the end they fail. Once they learn that lesson then you can usually take the lid off and hook the feeder directly to the bungee cord and the squirrels, remembering they have been down the bungee cord before and fell off, will simply not try it with the lid off. 

Snowed in Birdfeeder

We have not had as many birds this year as last and while we do have one pair of Red-bellied Woodpeckers and one Titmouse and a White-breasted Nuthatch we only have one occasional Mourning Dove and various House Sparrows now and then. I try to keep the feeder filled and the snow cleaned off but sometimes it gets ahead of me. I also use two feeders. One newer allows about the same number of birds but they are not able to scatter the seeds like they sometimes do when using this feeder. This one will also take whole raw peanuts but I seldom put them in as it takes some period of time to get one out and that exposes the birds to a lot more risk from hawks. This one had to be shook off and then get the seed unstuck before it was used by the birds.

Brookville Barber Shop and Market Street Cafe

The Barber Shop has reopened and was remodeled and this photo no longer works for the improvements are impressive both outside and inside. The window to the right is the Market Street Restaurant and a good place to eat. The lady who runs it used to be one of our waitresses for our Rotary club meetings.

Old Letters

The blog and comments are © by Abraham Lincoln

I spoke to a group of senior citizens at the Gordon Methodist Church and during that experience I asked the people if they could write a paragraph or two about their memories of their youth. How things were, what they had or didn't have and how they lived.

I ended up getting a whole series of letters from people who are mostly gone now but our lives have been enriched by some of their responses, in their own handwriting. Perry L. Day was 90 years young when he penned his response.

Raw Peanuts

These are raw peanuts without their hulls. I buy them in 20 pound bags and either mix some with the chips and pieces or just grab a handful and toss them out on the ground under the bird feeder. They are also good to lay on the window sills where birds like the Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Blue Jays, Titmice and White-breated Nuthatches feed on them The blog and comments are © by Abraham Lincoln

Chips and Pieces

This is the "chips and pieces" that I feed our birds and any that drops is eaten by any animal that happens along—from squirrels and rabbits to chipmunks and possum. This is a #2 bag and is cheaper than #1. The #1 has no black hulls and very few broken hearts so you could and I have eaten it myself. 

The blog and comments are © by Abraham Lincoln

Nature Centers

I can imagine this field today, with snow and ice coming down, the number of animals bedded down—from white-tailed deer to fox, woodchuck, possum, rabbits and skunks. It is a kind of Heaven to wildlife to come across a place like this. The only real problem with it is that it is situated along a road from where I took the picture and many animals are killed while crossing the road. Fortunately, this spot or location is not that far from Aullwood Farms and Nature Center that is wide open to wildlife and tourists pay a fee to walk a designated trail through the reserve. We should all try to take our backyards or at least a part of them and transform them into a Nature Center for wildlife.

Theater, Butcher Shop and Drive-thru

This building has gone through many iterations

This building was a theater when we moved to Brookville in 1962. After that, it became a kind of drafting room, upstairs for Jackson Cable Company who did all the measurements for cable television and sold out to Time Warner. The building has been used as a place to buy ice in bags and it is where we go to get ice for daily use instead of trying to use ice cube trays in the refrigerator. It was a butcher shop for a number of years and written about in the Dayton Daily News because the parking lot was always full of customers on the weekends. They were famous for their Benlinger Baloney and other smoked meats and a German Baptist Lady made home made cakes and breads. It was just a great place to shop.
The blog and comments are © by Abraham Lincoln

Dreaming Again.

This is the Fujifilm X100S 16 MP Digital Camera with 2.8-Inch LCD in silver. I had a 35mm film camera just like this back in Japan. Loved it. I should have bought this one last year when it was $100.00 cheaper than it is now. Amazon dot com seldom lowers their prices and I have watched this one for a year and it is now $1299.00. But it has all the features I love in digital photography and doesn't weigh a ton. I ordered it! Am so nervous and excited. I can hardly wait until it arrives.

• APS-C 16M X-Trans CMOS II sensor with OLPF-less architecture
• Fujinon 23mm F2 fixed focal length lens for quality without compromise
• Newly developed Hybrid Viewfinder
• Digital Split Image Manual Focus System
• Full HD movies

The blog and comments are © by Abraham Lincoln.

Moving Out

After the mother weaned her four babies, she sent them up and over the fence once last time and out of our lives. I wonder whatever happened to them and I still wish them well.

Public Housing in Brookville, Ohio

Tight squeeze—the raccoon had to work hard to get back out of the box in the spruce tree that was specifically made for nesting squirrels. The opening was 4 inches in diameter and this animal had to dislocate one leg or hip and get that out and then the other came out. In the end it was a "she" and she gave birth to four baby raccoons under my shop and when she had weaned them, she sent them over the fence and she followed and we never saw them again.