On The Road With Jack & Neil & BBB

[Bob Boze Bell]

January 3, 2013

About a week ago, the javelina biker gang I call The Biebers broke into my studio through the doggie door, knocked down the heavy cabinet I had moved in front of the door to stop their entry, breaking almost everything connected to it, or sitting on top of it, including a sentimental bottle of 2007 reserve Grace wine. Those aggressive little Bastardos!

 

We're working on a saloon feature for the next issue of True West. Of course we're featuring the legendary Palace Saloon on Whiskey Row in Prescott. We're running this photo of us filming a segment for the Westerns Channel. That's Ken Amorosano giving me his direction on how he wanted the shot to go and a local re-enactor at right who was in the scene.

 

Just finished reading Neil Young's "Waging Heavy Peace" early this morning. I'm also reading "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac as well on Kathy's Kindle. Don't really like the Kindle experience. Can't tell where I'm at in the book. I prefer the tangible and tactile over the electronic. Interesting to me that both are basically road pictures, or in this case, road memoirs. Inspired this heatwave phenom memory from my youth on old Route 66 when you'd meet a car floating on the horizon.

 

 

And, of course, saw many storms on my many trips across the desert. Violent colors and cloud patterns inspired this "patina" painting from last year:

 

 

So many of the roads we traveled on when I was a kid have been abandoned. When I drove up to Choc Hamilton's funeral in October I went the back way through Seligman, Truxton, Peach Springs and on into Kingman I kept spying old roadways, long abandoned, that I remember we used to travel on. There was a garage in Kingman called "Old Trails Garage" and now I get it: Old Trails.

 

 

I've seen some magical scenes in my life but the one that takes the cake was the rain storm in Monument Valley last year. Lucinda Amorosano snapped this pic of me setting up for another shot on our Westerns Channel shoot (ironically shot the same day as the Palace Saloon photo, above).

 

 

"This two-lane with the faded yellow line is soothing somehow, although the roughness of the surface harkens back to smoother times."

—Neil Young, page 458, "Waging Heavy Peace"

[Jim Holden]

Hmm, our experiences are different on the Kindle - love mine.  You know, if you "tap" on the Kindle screen while reading the book, it tells you exactly where you are (66% of pages read, etc.) at the bottom of the page.  But I understand the tactile part.  I still buy "real" History books in hardback - but all fiction is on the Kindle...

The Kindle Fire is a good upgrade.

[Neil Waring]

I like reading from my Kindle, but do miss glancing at a book to see where the marker is (and I like page numbers). Read about half books and half on Kindle now. Read, On the Road, a few years ago, not sure if it messed with my mind or I was always screwed up but I seemed to recognize myself and friends in too many places. The wild hog looks downright nasty—don’t think they will ever get this far north, but then again we do have wolves, but they don’t fit through the doggie door.

[Jim Pettengill]

Ah, the Palace Saloon!  We ate there twice during the WWHA Roundup there last August, excellent food and a great bar. When I first saw that bar (and the huge icebox on the right of it) I remember thinking that during the Whiskey Row fire 100+ years ago, those cowboys who carried the bar across the street to the courthouse lawn, along with the icebox, must have been big, motivated, and there must have been a lot of them.  That is a really big bar!  Great historical photos and exhibits there, too, should be a must-see for anyone visiting Prescott, along with the Elks Opera house and the Sharlott Hall Museum.

[Kent Fevurly]

I'll never give up books.  Who wants to curl up on a rainy day with a computer?  I'm totally with you on the tactile part.  I love to turn the pages, look out the pictures (if any), check out the design and layout.  I even dig the binding and the covers.  I own hundreds of books, and I'll never give them up!.

[anthony martin]

  Bob,

    Your Kindle experience and resultant frustration reminded me of an old episode of the original Star Trek where Elisha Cook,playing a defense lawyer for Captain Kirk is extolling the sheer tactile delight of owning and holding a real book as opposed to canned books on a computer screen,a very prescient observation nearly 45 years ago!I too still prefer my real books.

[Sue Cauhape]

After years of playing solitaire on computers, I  grabbed an actual deck of cards and played with them until they were battered and dog-eared. I bought a replacement deck and discovered the difference in textures between the two decks. The Bicycle cards have a raised cross-hatch texture that prevents them from slipping and sliding across each other, very handy when you want to keep the darned things all wrangled in neat piles. The other deck's slick texture drove me nuts because the cards would spin and slip all over the table. Made for a very rambunctious game.

[Margaret-Anne Moore]

Anthony, thanks for that Elisha Cook--Star Trek comment.  I have many moons behind me and have always read and used tangible books.  Bob, thanks for the John Ford moment in Monument Valley.