Tombstone Shadow (with hat)

Apologies to CCR for using their song title in this weird photographic situation. This is my shadow on one of my ancestors' headstones in Bellwood Cemetery in Pine Bluff, taken by me earlier this month. I was at the cemetery to check on repairs done after a tree fell on some of the headstones last year. The angle and intensity of the light in a photograph can have strange and spooky effects...

One of the bookshelves in my dining room

 

Taken today with an old camera, Canon S120, that I was  recently given. The bookshelf is a twin of the one in the other front corner of my dining room, both made for me in 1990 or 1991 by my friend Pat Calkins when I lived in Austin and he stayed with me for a week or so. I bought the dining room table from Rebecca Railsback Phillips about ten years ago. It originally belonged to the Leon Francis family in Pine Bluff.

Dial Singers 1968-69, Dial Jr High Pine Bluff

 

Front row: Margaret Johnson, choir director and music teacher; Judy Trice, Susie Hastings, Margie Hargis, Karen Curtis, Marti Bellingrath, Peggy Bollier, Cindy Wooten, Melissa Fox, Martha Jones, Ann Younger, George Puddephatt.

Seond row: Lane Townsend, Mark Lindsey, Stephanie Calaway, Janice Woodfield, Carol Condray, Sue Russell , Joel Johnson, John Owen, Johnny Pierce, Lee Bellamy, Sherry Noble, Susan Perchan, Katie Priakos, Jane McGeorge, me.

Third row: Bill Bodie, Ricky Smith, David Myers (?), Joe Owen, Mike Galster, Tommy Montgomery, Dennis May, Drew Noble, Ed Taliaferro, Joe Lane, Curt Patton, John Sweatt.

I wasn't actually a Dial Singer, I was the little drummer boy, standing and playing snare drum, pa rumpa pum pum, maybe with a cymbal also. Let me know of any wrong identifications or who the third-from-left blond guy in the back row is. I'm thinking he's David Meyers, but I'm not sure. Also I'm not for sure if it's Lane or Mark Townsend on the far left in the second row, and I may have Joe and John Owen mixed up.

My Trulock grandmother's home: 305 Martin Place

 It was torn down in the late 1960s, and was vacant in the mid-1960s when I went in it several times, exploring, with my friend Trip Martin, who lived on 15th Avenue, about four blocks away. I didn't know at the time that my Trulock grandmother (1900-1972) grew up in this house.  It was built by Ben J. Altheimer in about 1906, but he moved to Chicago to practice law. Sometime after that, my grandmother's father, Leo M. Andrews, bought it.  I found this photo at the Kehilalinks' Pine Bluff website, along with the one below.  You can barely see Paul Perdue's name in the lower right corner. It was originally posted by him on his Pine Bluff Postcards site.  I'm not sure what's happened to that, or to him.

Caption from Kehilalinks: This wonderful old house at 305 Martin was Mrs. Holmes' Boarding House when the photo was taken in the 1960's. And that's lil' Julia Glover standing out front. The house has since been demolished.

Current view of the same location.  Notice the same tree and small brick retaining wall beneath it.  Also the telephone pole. This property, and the rest of the block east to Pine Street, is owned by a middle-aged couple who live in a one-story, white-painted-brick house that's just out of view to the left. They've made this 2/3 of the block into a very attractive and large flower and shrub garden.

This is just to the right (east) of the previous photo. To complete this set, here's another photo, taken on August 8, 2021, of the remaining part of the garden area, to the east of the above photo. I was standing at the corner of Martin Avenue (called Martin Place in the old days) and Pine Street when I took this photo:

June Freeman's 7-10-1965 birthday

 

Gretchen, June, Andy, me, and David Freeman at June's birthday party. Photo most likely taken by Ed Freeman. I was 10 years old, same age as Andy. I guess I was visiting him that day and it happened to be June's birthday. I visited June this past Sunday, July 11, 2021.  She's 93.  Ed recently died. 

Tom Gibson, Andy Freeman, and me PBHS 1971

 This was probably a school assembly during the day rather than a basketball game at night, judging from the facial expressions. Also I don't think I went to any basketball games when I was in high school. The location is McFadden Field House (the gym), one of the still-surviving buildings from the time I was at Pine Bluff High School. The year is likely 1971, in the early fall.  The people I recognize are the front row people: Tommy Gibson, a member of the school paper's editorial staff, Andy Freeman, photographer for the PBHS annual, and myself, co-editor (with Stephanie Callaway) of the school paper, the Pine Cone. The teacher  behind me looks like Mrs.Marie Chandler.  I don't recognize the others in the photo. Andy sent me the photo yesterday, after I asked him by email about any old photos he might have. He didn't know who took it.

Picture taken in memory of Marshall Miller

 

Marshall Miller died at his home in Hot Springs, with Jeanne, Marsh and Jessica at his bedside, on March 12, 2021. After I'd talked to Jeanne about 1:15 that afternoon and she told me Marshall was too weak to talk, I heard from my brother Steven at about 4 that Marshall had just died. I took this picture as a memorial tribute. I was walking Molly the beagle in front of the River Bend condos in Little Rock with Rita, who was walking her client dog Woody (small white furry) on his 4 pm outing.

In 1974-75, Marshall was a frequent visitor to the Riverhouse--a modern (1969) one-room cabin on the Arkansas River at Pine Bluff that belonged to my family--when I was living there after dropping out of Hendrix College in December 1973. He and my brother Steven and Marc Cronin, among others, played guitars and sang. Beginning in early 1975, I joined in on banjo, finger-picking on some songs. We also listened to records like Viva Terlingua, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Tubular Bells, Greetings From Asbury Park, Live Rhymin', I Got A Name, Daltrey, Love Chronicles, Court and Spark, and others. Jeff Wooley, Karen Jo Simmons and her step-siblings Billy and Linda Huckaby, Gil Bowers, Trip Martin, and Pat Calkins were also among the Riverhouse partiers during the year and a half I lived there. 

The Winthrop Rockefeller Institute purchased Marshall's outdoor sculpture installation two years ago. In 2018, the sculpture was one of about 10 others chosen to be temporarily exhibited on the Institute's grounds on Petit Jean mountain. Only Marshall's and one other were chosen to be permanent installations, and Marshall's was dedicated by the Institute to the memory of Winthrop Paul Rockefeller.