Route 66! Part III: Elmer's Bottle Tree Ranch and More...

Route 66 in its heyday was known for some interesting attractions.  There's the Cadillac Ranch in Texas where several Caddies are half buried at an angle.  A small motel chain with teepees to stay in.  A roadside restaurant where you can get burgers, tacos and "dead chicken".  And as I was to find out on my first journey on this old road to Barstow, this interesting collection of sculptures.

I didn't know what it was at the time.  On the 11/30/11 trip, I took some photos of it from across the road, and when I repeated this on 7/16/13 with Sheila, we got closer to it.  This time I knew what it was:  Elmer's Bottle Tree Ranch.  I think this time it was open but we didn't go in.  Maybe next time.  Now on to the pictures.  As a reminder, if you click on any of them, a larger view will appear, with all photos of this posting as thumbnails below.

From across the roadway, 11/30/11.  I was thinking, what is this?

Another view from across the road, 11/30/11.

And one more shot from that day.

From the 7/16/13 trip with Sheila. We walked across the highway for a better look.

Now that I'm looking at this photo again, I'm thinking we should have gone in and looked around some.

Yes, we should have gone in.  Well, I'd drive this road again in a minute, and I'm sure Sheila's up for it too!

Another closeup of the Ranch.

North of the Ranch, heading eastbound 66, one sees this abandoned structure.  I had seen it and photographed it on my first drive down this road.  This photo is from 7/16/13.

Here's another one.  I missed this on 11/30/11, but not on 7/16/13.

Looking again at these photos is having the effect of making me more fascinated with this old highway.  Even though I've now seen this twice, I'm finding myself wanting to do this again next year.  I think though that the next stretch of 66 is going to be that segment between Kingman and Flagstaff, which is now signed as Arizona State Route 66.

More Route 66 Pictures! Part II: Leaving Victorville

Upon leaving Victorville, the highway that used to be known as US 66 (and still is known by that in our hearts) is National Old Trails Highway.  This next series of pictures is what you encounter upon leaving Victorville, heading north into Barstow.

Upon leaving Victorville on 11/30/11, I stopped off at the side of the road to take this shot looking back.

And here's what it looks like looking north, which is Route 66 East.  From this point it looks like I'm in for a beautiful day.  Photo taken 11/30/11.

OK, now let's fast forward to 7/16/13.  Same road, different day.  It turns that this is the first abandoned gas station one sees on the road to Barstow, and not the one that I mentioned on my first posting.  We'll get to that one in a later post.  This is an abandoned Mohawk station, at the intersection of 66 and Mill Street.

Here's another view of the Mohawk station.  This photo, and all photos of the Mohawk station that follow this were taken on 7/16/13.

A closeup of the gas pumps themselves.  With the price accommodating $1+ per gallon pricing, this station had to have been in commission in the second half of 1979.  If you look closely at the sign in the background, you'll see that we are in Oro Grande.

While we were there, Burlington Northern Santa Fe made their presence known.

One more shot of the gas pumps.  I have no idea when this one closed, but you can judge from the brush growth that it wasn't recent.  At one time this had to have been a solid business, but when I-15 opened between Victorville and Barstow there wasn't any reason for anyone to use this road any more.  Thus, we have one of several casualties of progress.

Here we have a closeup of the Mohawk Mini-Mart, which is next to the gas pumps.  I'll have to do some research on the Mohawk gasoline brand to learn more about this.  I'm not sure, but I think it was a chain.

This is going to be it for this evening.  Stay tuned.......more photos are on the way.

Some Route 66 Pictures! Part I, Victorville CA

OK, I'm going to start posting Route 66 pictures.  I can't do this all in one post so what I'm going to do is start off with a Part I, which will be photos taken in Victorville CA.  The photos you see here were all taken on 11/30/11.  Also, the captions are below the pictures.

If you wish to see "larger" pictures, there's a way to do that.  You'll have to single click on them, whereupon you'll see a larger picture with this neat black background.  You'll have to click on the X in the upper right in order to get back to this blog.

This is 7th Street once signed as US 66, looking west.

The same street, but looking east, in my direction of travel towards Needles.

This shot is in the historic district, looking back (east).

Here I'm not too far from the left turn, which will place me on National Trails Highway, with the next major town being Barstow.  At this point I'm really excited about what lies ahead!

One last look back.  This is what you would see upon entering Victorville, if you were taking 66 from Barstow.


More pictures are coming, which will include those taken on 7/16/13.

I Really Should Post More Often.....

Greetings to all homo and hetero sapiens out there.  One thing I really wanted to do here this year was to post more often.  I started this "money" series that I need to write more often on, I need to post some Route 66 pictures from my two trips there, I need to comment more often on the headlines, and it probably wouldn't hurt to write some personal reflections on some other things. 

As it is, I seem to spend a lot of time "taking care of life", for lack of a better term, and my job has me putting in overtime from time to time, and I've seen some of that.  My employer does pay me straight time for the OT, which is a plus since I'm salaried, but to be honest I think I would rather have a normal schedule.  But the problem there is that I happen to enjoy my current assignment very much and I have no desire at this time to pursue other opportunities.  That's a good thing.

In case anyone was wondering, I am spending a lot of time with Sheila and less time on the hobbies I was enjoying before I met her.  I tell myself that I need to pick up the guitar and finish some songwriting projects that I started a year ago.  I need to catch up on some reading (I'm currently working on the LBJ biography series by Robert Caro.....I highly recommend it!), and there's season number five of the classic Hawaii Five-O DVDs (I often watch these episodes with Sheila).  And of course, I spend time with my two devoted cats, and due to this thing I call "cattus interruptus", I sometimes don't get much done in my leisure time.   That too is a good thing; it's their job to slow me down and make me pet them whenever they want my lap, which is very often.

One thing I've been doing is trying to get the house caught up to where I want it.  It's something that I resolved to do two years ago and it still isn't where I want it to be.  The good news is that there's a new spa heater, the back door to the patio has been fixed, a new patio carpet was put in earlier this year, I've built some shelving, and a contractor is coming over on Friday to replace some aging shower doors.  After that I want to get a new stove and a new dishwasher, and I'm also thinking about a deep freeze unit and stocking that up with meat from Costco (I'm really going to need that freezer if I ever get off my sitting end and bag a deer).  And in addition to that, I'm thinking about becoming active in ham radio again, and getting that dipole antenna up on the roof. 

Oh, did I say that I want to get my coin collection better organized?  I work on that from time to time.  Over the years I have collected lots of foreign coins, and although I am working on filling vinyl pages with them.  There are also lots of US coins in the collection, and I'm working on searching a box of pennies that I picked up the last time I was on the east coast (there is a rare die variety on the "P" cents, and coins from Philly are hard to come by in the Grand Canyon State). 

When I think of all the things I want to do, I sometimes suffer from this dread of retirement.  I mean, if I have my way, I'm going to be in the workforce for several more years, but when I retire I'm thinking that I just might be as busy then as I am now.  That's a good thing too, as that there are lots of horror stories about aerospace engineers kicking the bucket not long after retiring, and I sometimes think it's because they have nothing to do with themselves once they stop working, and somehow that kills them.  I have no way of knowing if I'm right on that.  Me, I'll have plenty to do, though I see myself as spending a year on the highways of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada before getting a part time job.  I'm not sure if I'll bag groceries at Safeway or if I'll return to my present employer as a part time consultant.  I'm also not sure if I'll stay in Tucson when I retire.

Arizona does have a lot of retirees, and from what I know a great many of them are escapees from California.  A good friend of mine from San Jose is right now in Prescott Valley and I think he picked a damn good place to retire.  I was originally thinking I would end up in the White Mountains somewhere, as that I want to be somewhere where there's plenty of hiking, hunting and fishing.  The White Mountains strike me as such a place, but so does Prescott.  And, I'll admit that I'm intrigued about the prospect of retiring in Ely, Nevada.  I've never been there but I'm thinking of making a scouting run up there, but if I want Nevada then maybe I should consider Pahrump.  Las Vegas is out....don't get me wrong, Vegas has plenty to offer in terms of entertainment and I could spend lots of time people watching on Fremont Street, but Clark County is northeast Southern California and the real estate market there has been dicey.  I won't make a lot of equity living in Ely but Ely doesn't have the big city problems that I seem to be reading more and more about here in Tucson.

Well Sheila has just arrived, and so I'm going to sign.  Moe and Larry are in the process of welcoming her (and of course they'll get plenty of pets from her) but I need to take over from them when they're done.

Don't forget to pet a dog or a cat.

Will the Fast Food Workers Go On Strike?

Somewhat recently I saw on the news that fast food workers in New York City who were working at Wendy's, McDonald's, and Burger King went on strike.  Workers also walked off the job in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, and other places (LINK).  They were demanding a wage of $15 per hour, somewhat more than double the federal minimum of $7.25.  This didn't exactly command a whole lot of headline bandwidth that day, as that my sense is that most of the rest of the nation regarded them as malcontents who were having a hissy fit.

Here we are a month or so later, and some fast food workers are threatening to walk out again on the 29th.  From what I can tell they are being urged by SEIU, who would no doubt like to add more dues-paying members to their rolls.  For decades fast food workers have been paid minimum wage upon hire, and those that perform well get more than minimum, and those that don't perform well are either canned or not given raises until they've had enough and move on.  I was a fast food worker once, back in San Jose, and I learned a few things from that experience.  It was not something that I did hoping to make a career out of; it was simply that I wanted some spending money and got tired of doing odd jobs to get money so that I could buy Bachman-Turner Overdrive records.

I learned a few things from that experience.  One is that if you consistently work harder than the guy next to you, the manager then takes a liking to you and gives you more responsibility.  My boss back then, named Clayton, was a real good guy and would sometimes let me run the store while he was upstairs with the assistant manager doing paperwork.  Clayton knew then that I wasn't going to make a career out of working for him, yet took the time to help me become a better employee and insisted that his assistants act professional.  He didn't blame me for finding another employer (not fast food) shortly after the robbery I survived, and within three weeks of my leaving he left too to pursue a career in electronics.

Sure, I started out at minimum wage.  It was an entry-level job and was there to help me pay for college textbooks (as well as BTO records).  I knew back then that I was destined for better things if I stuck with college and since my ambition was to become an engineer the job did help instill in me a motivation to pursue my studies.  The point I'm making here, is that the purpose of the job was never to have a career in it.  It was to get me started, and in spite of the minimum wage, I regard working there as a positive experience.

Now it appears that things have changed.  From what I'm now reading, the attitude of some of the workers isn't the same as the one that I had when I was flipping burgers.  I can well understand the extreme difficulty in trying to make a living working in fast food if you're living in a place like California.  But those who are itching to strike should be well aware of a few things, and these next few paragraphs are directed at them.

One, the fast food industry really isn't obligated to pay you $75,000 a year.  They aren't obligated to make you happy.  They are not obligated to provide you with full coverage health care.  Get used to it.

Two.  We've got a lot of illegal aliens here who are out picking fruit and trimming bushes.  Although I am not in favor of "amnesty", the way I see it is that they would be much more grateful to do your job for what they are paying you now.  Why not step aside and let them take your place if you're not happy?

Three.  There are a lot of community colleges out there who offer night (as well as day) classes in a wide variety of subjects.  They can teach you how to weld, how to drive a truck, how to assemble circuit cards, and several other skills where you could increase your earning potential.  What's stopping you from bettering yourself?  Before I graduated high school I knew that I wanted to be an electrical engineer and I went on to get a degree in it; working in fast food and retail along the way.

Don't get me wrong.  I don't think people who work in fast food are to be looked down upon in the sense that they're unskilled.  The reality of it is, is that 90% of them are dedicated, and the local Jack-in-the-Boxes here (as well as In-N-Out Burger) have really good people working for them, who don't strike me as being some malcontent who thinks that he or she is entitled to a salary that would afford them a Ferrari and vacations at the Kahala Hilton.  I think most of them have aspirations to do be doing something better thirty years from now, and more power to them.

But what's disturbing to me about this is this:  I'm concerned that we have become a nation where people no longer wish to climb the ladder of success, and instead want the government to provide them an elevator free of charge.

To San Jose and Back

Now that the trip is over, I can reveal that Sheila and I were up in San Jose within the past week so that she could meet my parents.  The trip was not foreseen at the beginning of the month as that I was involved in a hot project at work and that Sheila didn't think she could get the time off.  I decided to take the week after the Fourth off thinking that I would be spending it in Tucson, but Sheila made some inquiries at where she works and she learned that she could get a block of time off.

Since we didn't know when we would have this opportunity again, we took it.  We left Tucson on Thursday the 10th and we were up in San Jose the next afternoon.  We bypassed both Phoenix and L.A. on the way up, and with a detour at the Tehachapi Loop there were 892 miles on the trip odometer when I pulled into my parents' driveway.

We took three days to drive back as that I had my heart set on taking her down Route 66.  Ever since I did that drive in November 2011 I had been wanting to repeat it, and with some company this time.  I have to devote a separate post as to what we saw that day, as that there was more than one abandoned gas station between Victorville and Barstow.  Also, what I thought was once a truck stop east of Barstow was instead an agricultural inspection station.  The Spirit gas station next to I-40 is now a Valero station, and is operational.  And there's some new graffiti at the old gas station at Cadiz Summit.  I plan on posting some pictures of this trip and the previous one.

As for San Jose, there wasn't much time to play tourist.  There were my parents, some longtime friends, and we got to visit Mark's parents with the help of Skype.  I didn't get to see everyone that I wanted to see either.  That will have to wait until the next time.

I hope we can be back in San Jose for the holidaze, but all indications are that Christmas will be spent here in Tucson.

I do know one thing.  I really enjoy being with Sheila, and like me she thought that 66 was the "bomb".

Fourth of July, 2013

It's the Fourth of July today, our national holiday where some of reflect that it was on this day that our Founding Fathers declared their independence from Great Britain and King George III.  Fighting had been going on for well over a year, and those brave men in the Continental Congress who voted for this Declaration were committing an act of treason against the Crown.  The penalty for doing so was death by hanging, but they were willing (and committed) to the cause.  Independence was formally won in 1781 with our mother country recognizing it via treaty in 1783.

So where have we gone since then?

We went westward.  We had an internal war.  We took in more rejects from Europe.  We invented things.  We built railroads.  We built highways.  We fought the Kaiser almost a century ago, and we fought the Nazis a generation later.  We put several men on the moon and we brought them back.  And right now, I'm asking where we are going.

There's a strange collection of news lately that suggests that there is something wrong.  IRS official Lois Lerner testified under oath before a House Committee and then invoked the Fifth Amendment (which I happen to believe in, for the record).  She now wants immunity from prosecution, which is a strange demand if she really did do nothing wrong, and if she needs immunity then that suggests that she's already committed perjury.

Not too long before that, we had Attorney General Eric Holder running guns to the Mexican drug cartels, of at least which one of them was used to murder a Border Patrol agent.  The person who pulled the trigger of that gun is exactly the type of person that the Obama administration wishes to give amnesty to, and for reasons I can't understand the Republican Establishment (an organization which is a very grave threat to our national security!) is going along with this too.

We have allegations in the news as of late as to how the NSA is reading emails, listening to phone calls, monitoring Facebook, and the emails of journalists.  (I don't really have a problem with the NSA trying to figure out who the terrorists are, for the record.....though I'd prefer you guys get a warrant from the FISA court).

And over in Florida, we have a much publicized trial going on, which in my opinion is only happening due to unusually high pressure from Organized Media, who would love nothing more than to see riots, burning, looting, destruction, and mayhem, so that they can report higher ratings and try to collect more advertising revenue.

Yes, it's strange out there.  Very strange.  You have to wonder where we going, and why we are in this handbasket.

In spite of all that, I happen to believe in this country.  I like living here.  I like enjoying the freedoms that I have, in spite of my concerns of them being under attack from radical leftists who hate this country more than Al Qaeda does.  And although I have some reservations about policies coming from the federal level, I at least, as I write this, still have the right to write my Congressman with my concerns.

However, freedom isn't cheap.  Many thousands of brave Americans have perished on the battlefield to preserve what we now have on this day.

We really need to think long and hard about this before we surrender that freedom.