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cycling / memories / photo / site / Wednesday — Comments Off
7
Aug 24

Starting year 21

Today marks the beginning of the 21st year of this website. We had a private anniversary party yesterday. A little peach crumble … a small scoop of vanilla … yes, we pulled out all the stops for kennysmith.org.

I opened this place up in August 2004, two cars, three jobs and four houses ago. I’ve been writing in this space through the advent, rise and now the fracturing of social media. I’ve been in all of those places, too, but I figured out, pretty early on, what some have only come to learn in this online cultural nadir. You post it on someone else’s site, you don’t own it. At least all the photos and other things are on my server. It has been a way to pass the time, occasionally learn new code, or, rarely, get a commission. I ramble here, all the time. Often, it seems like I should ramble more. It has been a lot of things, and I’m pleased with all of them. North of six million people have come through here. I have no idea why, but I’m grateful. Mostly, I’m glad you’re here, and that you’ve kept coming back.

Suddenly, it seems as if there should be an announcement. A big surprise. A new direction. A redesign. Something. But I don’t have anything.

Hey, next August, this place will be 21. I might think of something by then.

It has been almost relentlessly humid lately. The sort that keeps you from doing anything outside.It’s been a lot like home, actually. But, today, it wasn’t humid. It rained!

I said, How long are you going to ride?

And she explained her route.

When you drop me, just keep going, and don’t stop and wait for me, I said.

“Are you sure?”

I’ve been going slow lately. If you wait, you’ll just drop me again. Then you’ll wait and drop me, wait and drop me, and it won’t be a good ride for you.

I asked her how long she was going to ride for, she said, “I’m going for distance, and not time,” and explained the route she had in mind.

It’s always about time, so this was rare. And more fun. And this route is a new combination of familiar roads, and longer, and here I am, unfit for the ride at hand.

For the record, the types of ride, in terms of most fun are:

A vacation ride
Riding without a plan on roads you don’t know
Riding with a plan on roads you don’t know
Riding roads you know
Riding for time
Riding in severe weather

All of those are fun, to be sure, including the severe weather. I got caught in a hail storm once. It was hilarious.

Anyway, today, I was dropped quite easily and early, as I imagined. I did see this cool tractor, though. I wonder where he’s taking all that fruit.

I was in a headwind just then, and I’m usually no good in the breeze, but today wasn’t bad. And then there was the rain, which started falling about an hour into the ride.

Then, the most fun thing happened. I just kept riding. Legs felt pretty good and everything worked fairly well. Around the two-hour mark, though, I realized that the old pair of bib shorts I was wearing should really be for rides of 90 minutes or less. Something to figure out before I put on cycling kit.

Somehow, this will be easier than just throwing away the old and obviously worn shorts.

I looked down at some point in the last 10 miles or so and this little maple leaf was being pressed against the brake lever by the wind. I picked it up so I could take this photo.

When I got home I found that leaf, still stuffed in my jersey, ready for its moment. No idea why I kept it. But that changed up my routine at the end of the ride, and somehow that let me notice this daylily that I would have overlooked by the garage door.

It got plenty of rain today, so I’m sure that is one happy plant. If I thought of it at the time, I would have rung my socks out on it, too.

But I had to head over to the peach tree and get today’s haul.

Seriously, come get some peaches. We’re celebrating over here with stone fruit, and we have plenty to share.

cycling / family / memories / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
6
Aug 24

Still not good with the seeds

Every English teacher you ever knew, every English professor you ever met, was always working on that one book. Or they would tell you about their book. Or they had it in them. It was the book of their childhood. Every autobiography was going to have long and beautifully intricate passages about the chrysanthemums in bloom, and their time romping with their friends and the little sisters and cousins of their lives.

It was always so silly because there would inevitably be a metaphor, but the metaphors were interchangeable and, often, not that good. You need a certain something to pull that off, and most people that spend a lot of time in the classroom, or grading papers, don’t have the opportunities to cultivate that certain something. So it all came down, finally, to a lament.

But those flowers were always there, and it was that loss of childhood, the flowers flaring, beautiful, and then fading, like so many bad lectures, and Moby Dick essays before them now

The only person that could write about it well, without it becoming a parody of himself, was when Willie Morris wrote about the jonquils blooming in his native Mississippi. He missed them from New York, where he was finding himself conflicted about so many things in the world changing around him, and he in it. He wrote about the smell of the jonquils, almost every year he was gone. And in most of his work after he went home, they didn’t seem to appear as much. You can use a metaphor up; Morris knew that, and that’s why it worked for him.

I always laughed at the cliché, but now I get it.

One of my lasting memories, he wrote in his best Robert Redford voice, is walking out back to the garden my grandfather kept. He would hold an old dull kitchen knife in his hand. It had a silver handle. Solid but light. It was, I think, the boning knife, that long thin one. He carried a salt shaker in his back pocket. It was a dull white plastic. A little beaten up. Probably it had been around for forever. I followed him as he stepped confidently over ground he’d trodden for decades. And out there, in the hot, bright summer sun, he’d find a great, big, ripe watermelon. He’d pull it from the vine and walk with me over to the edge of his row crops and, there, he delivered to me the secret indulgence of sun-warmed watermelon.

For a long time after he died, I wouldn’t eat watermelon. And then, for a while, I only did when someone brought it out, and only a little, to be polite, and I felt bad about the whole thing. It felt disrespectful.

But now, I do eat some watermelon. It comes with a weird mixture of that same great regret.

And there is also a maudlin nostalgia beneath the rind, the sadly sweet memory in the sweet flesh. I can’t not think about all of that. I thought about it when I cut this one up yesterday. It was a small melon, we got it from a local farm as part of a weekly produce box. I thought about it when I ate part of it yesterday, and again when I had some more today. I will think of it when I finish the thing off tomorrow.

I’ve always thought I was learning the incredibly valuable lesson that fruit was the best when it was still warm from the sun. Putting watermelon in the fridge is an awful act. I thought about setting it outside for a while and eating it the proper way, I thought I’ve never had before, but that really would have been stepping out. This is the thing I have difficulty reconciling. Maybe that’s what grandparents are trying to pass to us. Maybe, a grandparent’s lesson is really about what we can prize about what we had. Maybe it was something about those little yellow flowers on the vine, and the metaphor they hold, briefly, within. Or that salt shaker.

On today’s ride, I set out alone and, ultimately, turned in another slow one. I went through some of the nearby pasture lands and some of the row crops. I pedaled by the winery, turned left toward the gas station and then left again toward the park.

Past some sheep, on a beautifully paved road that has some nice curves into an old neighborhood that leads into the town. Through the town, and out the other side, I wound my way down to the inconvenience center and beyond.

It was that time of day, on a dramatically cloudy day, when you have to plan your route, and be ready to adjust it, based on the light. So I rode on two new roads out that way, watching the light, confident in my bike’s lights — one on the seat post and one blinking through my jersey pocket — and in the three mile downhill back to town. After that, it’s easy, through the town in just under a mile, and then four miles of open roads, and a reasonable bike lane, back to the house.

There’s one spot, in between two hills, and under a dense canopy of trees, that felt dark. But after that, it all opened back up to the same, even, gray light we’d had most of the day. It was 8:30, and I still had time to pick up the day’s peaches.

So many peaches. We’ve only just begun.

Please come get some peaches. If you do, I’ll promise to not torture you with literary allusions.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
5
Aug 24

On Monday

The time has come upon us. Or it is very nearly upon us. Any day now. Any moment now. We’ll be drowned in peaches. I picked these off the ground on Saturday. We’d had some rain and a bit of wind and so a few landed on the ground a bit early. They aren’t all ripe yet, but there are plenty of things you can do with almost-there peaches.

My goal, this year, is to not be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of peaches the tree produces. And the happy thought is I will not get scurvy this month or next. I’ll also get more vitamin A than any reasonable person should.

Seriously, come by and get some peaches. There will be plenty to share. Our neighbors can enjoy only so many. Our freezer has a limit. There’s ice cream and bread to work around in there.

It says here on the ol’ Garmin that I’d ridden two hours and five minutes when I took this photograph on Saturday.

I shot that in the neighborhood next to ours, so I was almost home. My overall ride was about two hours and 15 minutes. All of which is to say, I am riding slow.

That’s not a problem, but it is annoying. And, if you’re slow, you have a lot of time to ponder the situation. A lot of time.

Today’s ride wasn’t any faster, but I did enjoy a new road. Quite a few, in fact, but this was the one I’d wanted to try, the whole point of this particular ride. Through the trees until it teed, and, then, turn right into you get back into town and then head on in.

I saw five deer. Or I saw one or two twice, it’s difficult to say.

This evening I looked and it seems I’ve been slow since May, so there’s that.

But, my ride on Saturday did offer me a consolation. On Saturday, 2024 moved into second place in terms of miles ridden. Still four months to go! I might need them all to put 2024 atop the ledger. Especially after July, which was no good. Sick, heat, travel, and when you mix them all together it turned into a bit of apathy. Maybe the break will help in the long run, but as you can see from the graph, it put me behind.

I’ll get back on track. Staying above those trend lines is an important part of the goal.

What’s more important is the site’s most popular weekly feature, checking in on the kitties. (I think it’s been a few weeks now.)

The most important thing, though, might be Phoebe’s milk. I’ll eat a bowl of granola and she’ll wait impatiently. Lately, she has become more impatient, and has chosen to express this through biting. That was fun for about a week, but then the bites got a bit sharper. A bit more adamant. More … pointed. Everything on this beautiful cat is sharp and pointy.

Apparently, she’s trained herself to know when I am almost through with my bowl. Apparently I have a pattern, because when I pick up the bowl, she knows I’m wiping it out, and so there’s more stamping and head butting and biting.

At first I counted the bites, and recounted them later to my lovely bride, because it was cute. Now, I’m actively defending myself from this beautiful, sharp, pointy cat.

She gets insistent because when I’m done, it’s her turn.

When she has her fill, she doesn’t drink much, she takes a few steps away, stops, and then does the full-body shake. I put away the bowl and find out where she’s chosen to enjoy her milk coma.

Poseidon does not get milk. He can’t handle the hard stuff. He’s catose intolerant. The Yankee gives him almond milk. Bougie cat.

He’s presently sitting on a box. We tell them not to get on the counters, which they ignore. But they are also jailhouse lawyers, and take pride in sitting on papers, bags or boxes that are on the kitchen bar, as if to say, “Not on the counter!”

It is working against him though because, this is his food. And if he’s sitting there, I can’t open it, and feed him.

He’s smart. He’ll figure it out.

I caught him emerging from his cabinet above the refrigerator. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before.

Recently, The Yankee took exception to my calling it “his” cabinet in her kitchen. But, I reminded her, she was the one that put a blanket in the cabinet for him.

The kitties, as you can see, are doing well. And I hope you are, too. Have a great week!

Auburn / Friday / Glomerata / history / photo — Comments Off
2
Aug 24

The 1944 Glomerata, part five

We are, today, wrapping up our look at selected photos from within an 80-year-old yearbook. In the last several I’ve posted about here I think I’m averaging about four installments per year, so this is a slight expansion. This is nowhere near complete, of course, and hardly efficient or scientific, but rather just a few of the things that caught my eye, or photos I wanted to giggle at, or interesting people I wanted to look up. And with record enrollment in 1944, I suppose this was a good year to see a little boost, even as the war was still underway. But because of that, as I realized in this final installment, it looks like the good times and the golden days might have been a little bit leaner. That could have been economics, too, or just the mood of the yearbook staff, who knows? Doesn’t matter. It’s a nice look back, at my alma mater, 80 years ago.

Why are all of these people running?

That looks like Cary Hall in the background, which is where I spent a few quarters taking biology classes. Here’s the map view.

The building closer to us, then, is Petrie Hall, named after the famed historian and bringer of football. At the time of this photograph it was the athletic field house, hence it’s off-scheme orientation on campus. The photographer was standing here, and it looks like this. Later, Petrie became a geology building. Today, it houses people that work in athletic finance.

I spent a bit of time in high school in Petrie because, back then, it was, I believe, the place they shifted people too during renovations, or the place they rented out for state-level work as people passed through.

So they are running. But why? They’re chasing this guy.

Fred Carley, of Mobile, Alabama, was a freshman, studying aeronautical engineering. And this young man has a story to tell.

In high school, Carley was on the track team, an outfielder on the baseball team, and a lightweight boxing champion. He also played in the band. And he’d do some of those things in college, too. He would become the lead trumpet in the orchestral band, the Auburn Knights. He was captain of the track team for two years, and the first track scholarship recipient in the history of the school. Sophomore year, he placed sixth at the NCAA championships, the only mile he lost in three years of college. He won four SEC championships, three in the mile and another in the 880. Only travel troubles kept him from the Olympic trials in 1948. He earned three degrees from Auburn. He did three active duty tours with the Air Force, eventually retiring as a lieutenant colonel. He was an engineer and a track coach, and led his high school alma mater to 11 state championships. He started the track program at the University of South Alabama. He coached a bunch of other track stars in varying capacities while he was stationed at Eglin AFB, tallying 16 individual national championships and 17 national age group record. His athletes set six world records. And we haven’t even touched on his lifelong contributions to engineering, which led to his 1997 induction into something called the Military Packaging Hall of Fame. His wife was a prominent ballerina. They had two children. Their daughter held a U.S. record in race walking, and was a semifinalist in the Miss USA Pageant. Their son was a six-time World Record holder and twice a national champion in Track and Cross Country. He died in 2019, age 92.

Seems like a charmed life, no? This run was no exception. As a freshman, he was the winner of the ODK Cake Race. Back then it was a 2.7 mile run. The winner received a cake and a kiss from Miss Auburn. (I hope that part of the tradition has changed.) The Glom notes he got “exactly fourteen kisses.” That wasn’t the plan. Apparently there were camera problems. (No photos of the smooches were published here.)

Today, the ODK Cake Race lives on as a 5K. The top five men and women will each receive a cake. You see all of those long and heavy clothes the crowd is wearing, above? That won’t be the case when they have the 95th Cake Race this September.

This is where we remember there weren’t a lot of sports that year. The war, and all. There was no football in 1943, no basketball in 43-44, and no baseball in the spring of 44. So this yearbook moves dutifully on, and quickly. There’s no solid lead one the names here, but it’s an action shot of sorts, so …

If you’ll notice, in that first link above about Petrie Hall, you can see the building’s orientation to the modern football stadium. In 1939 it opened with 7,290 seats on the west side. The town was small, and there was a concern about bringing in that many people. There were apparently only two stores with public restrooms back then! Only a year later 4,800 wooden bleachers were added to the east side, and I think that’s what we’re seeing in the background of this shot.

While the stadium was dormant in 1943, the football Tigers returned in 1944. The first game in Auburn after the war was against the Fourth Infantry Raiders. Wikipedia tells me that 5,000 people gathered to see the Tigers win, 7-0, ending a 23-month layoff between varsity play.

There’s some other photos of guys tossing around football. One of women playing basketball, I think, some calisthenics and, for some reason, a three photo tennis spread. One of them introduces us to the powerful forehand game of Louis Shepard, a senior civil engineering major from Mobile, Alabama.

Shepard graduated in 1944 and went into the Navy, serving on the USS Sanborn in the Pacific. He was there for the assault on Iwo Jima, the invasion of Ryukyus and a feint on Okinawa. At the end of the war, the Sanborn transported occupation forces to Japan. Later, Shepard returned to the Naval Reserve during Korea.

When he wasn’t in uniform, he was an engineer, working for Texaco in El Paso, Texas, before settling in his beloved Gautier, Mississippi for Standard Oil. (The modern Chevron.) He fished, caught crab and shrimp, and he did it until Hurricane Katrina destroyed his home. The family rebuilt, and he stayed there until he died in 2012, survived by his wife, three children and two grandchildren.

This two-page spread was titled “C’est le guerre” and it features three photos and it’s all tongue in cheek.

Later we come to a page in the organizations section that is for students called into service before they could finish their education, curtailing the various roles they played on campus. These shots all look like campus photos, but they could be a bit more expansive. One of the names really pops out.

The last guy, Frank Wyatt, fought in Europe. He was a captain, attended the Nuremberg Trials, stayed on for part of the German reconstruction. Came home to law school, which he finished in two years. He worked in the Office of Chief Counsel of the IRS, and then went into the private sector as a corporate VP of finance and treasurer.

We don’t have a caption here, it’s a photo meant to point out the fraternities and sororities are coming up. It’s a strange, collegiate artistic layout. I don’t know who they are, but if any of these beautiful young people are still with us, I’d pay good money to ask them if this was staged.

And, finally, just one advertisement from the slim ad section in the back. Just the one because the rest were text only. But the theater went all out. I’m sure this cost extra. I do wonder who wrote that cutline though … and if the theater liked that.

They had one screen. It was the first theater in town, opening in September of 1926. It stuck around until April of 1984. Two other small theaters closed the next year. And though theaters come and age and go quickly, that marquee, would have kept a lot of cool character downtown if they’d maintained it. But they didn’t think like that in the 1980s. College towns seldom do these days, either.

As of this writing, there’s a nail salon, a beignet joint, and a dumpy pita restaurant in that spot today. There are also two other little spaces there that they can’t keep businesses in, and this in the heart of town. But, maybe, if that marquee had somehow stayed in place …

And that’s it. Thanks for following along with this casual glance of the 1944 Glomerata. All of these photos from 1944 photos live in the Glomerata section, of course. You can see others, here. Or, to just see the beautiful book covers, go here. The university stores their complete collection here.

Coming soon, we’ll check out the 1954 Glom. A few things will have changed in between!

adventures / photo / site / Thursday / triathlon / video — Comments Off
1
Aug 24

New stuff in the routine

At the beginning of each month I do a lot of important and boring things. I create a few new subdirectories for the site. I delete a bunch of stuff from the desktop of my computer. I update a document that holds a lot of standard code shortcuts that I use.

And so on. It is all terribly exciting.

One other interesting thing that I do is update the images on the front page. The rotating photos now feature a small piece of something we saw in California this spring. Head on over to the front page to check those out. It’ll take you 54 seconds for the rotation to carry you through. We’ll be right here when you get back.

My joking complaint about triathlons is that they start too early. We need hobbies, I say, that cost less and don’t start at dawn; if they don’t require too much running, more the better.

So, last night, because the story of this day began last night, as so many of them do, my lovely bride told me that she’d signed up for a super sprint triathlon she found a half hour away. And would I like to go? Also, the race started at 6:30 in the p.m.

Since that was my complaint, it seemed only fair that I should go in support.

Super sprints are short, but I had a long swim the day before, and I haven’t run in a while, so it’s just support, and that’s probably for the better. I’ve done one super sprint, thinking, at the finish line, that I am not able to get everything going in the right direction in those short distances.

Which is a shame, since they are shorter, and I am slow.

But I am a great observer of races. I am well practiced in this area. And, of all of the races we’ve done, I don’t recall having seen one with a flyover.

She’s out there, somewhere. She’s the one swimmer among much of the thrashing. It was just a 500 meter swim, and even then, the water was shallow enough that some of the dudes just stood up in the last 50 or so and waded in.

They all looked gross. This little pond is fed by this, South Branch Rancocas Creek. And it isn’t as nice as you might imagine here. There was a fine black particulate. The Millpond mildew. Something thinner than rubber, and thicker than dust, clung to everything. Whatever was contracted from this event will be given a name in due time.

The bike leg, she said, was nice. Good pavement, fast roads.

The run was one big loop. Neither that, nor the bike ride, would wipe away that stuff that latched on to everyone in the water.

When we left, because it was an early evening tri, we timed the sunset just right. I liked it. Almost didn’t take it. But I did, and I’m glad for it.

We celebrated with Chick-fil-A. The triathlon, not that last photo.