Saturday, September 06, 2008

Barstow, California


Looking from the arcade of the Harvey House at some of the commerce carried on the tracks. We seemed to see an endless parade of freight trains - "the industrial might of China parading across the western landscape" as Bill put it.


See, even in the California desert I'm looking at architectural detail.


Some of the engines pulling the afore-noted train.


How American can we get, eh?


When cars were cars!


And horseless carriages were horseless carriages.


Gas station nostalgia. I remember stuff like this.


A map of Routed 66.


For the quilters out there


A Harvey Girl loses her head over me, what can I say?


One finds the most unusual items in out-of-the-way museums.


Headlines from when I was conceived!


Yes, youngsters, cars did look like this on the interior, and it was way cool, so stop sniggering.


A vintage California license plate. I remember when our family car had a plate like this. FBB 081 was the number, if I recall correctly.

I have more pics of Kingsburg to share but it's time to dash to downtown Fresno for some photography before hitting the road to Lodi and the wedding.
--the BB

3 comments:

susan s. said...

By now, of course you have gone straight up 99, right? thru Turlock, Modesto(where I lived for 17 years), Manteca, Salida, Ripon, Stockton, and into Lodi. Hope the traffic wasn't too bad, and the Wedding is/was wonderful.

Paul said...

Susan S., you pretty much had it bang on. Except that somewhere along the line we picked up a nail and had a flat tire while driving through Manteca. In the fast lane at California driving speed (which is to say further over the speed limit than I would dare in New Mexico and exactly as I used to drive in California). So we eased on over to the exit and limped into a gas station where we took off the pathetic tire and put on my recently acquired "donut" spare. We then got to the hotel, showered and changed, and got to the wedding with about ten minutes to spare.

It was a lovely wedding. Some locals called Pep Boys and verified they were open on a Saturday evening and could fix us up. So between the wedding and the reception I got a new tire to replace the one trashed by this incident and repaired another one that had a slow leak. Feeling far more secure we went to the reception and just got back to the hotel.

Crimson Rambler said...

"Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino..." lovely!!!