This is a clip of Johnny Cash visiting his old hometown of Dyess, Arkansas in 1968 while on tour. I’d seen short pieces of this from the music video, but never the whole thing. Also in the video are June Carter, Johnny’s sister Louise and some old friends and neighbors.
Johnny drives his tour bus through town, visits old neighbors and looks at the house he grew up in. The song “Busted” is heard at the end of this clip.
Today I came across something completely by accident. Apparently the name given to the Arkansas Travelers minor league baseball team has roots that go back, back, a long way.
The Library of Virginia has a small collection of interesting old newspaper mastheads, and the “Arkansaw Traveler” is among them. Doing a bit more digging, the Encyclopedia of Chicago noted that:
The Arkansaw Traveler, born in Little Rock but published in Chicago from 1887 to 1916, was one of the most popular humor magazines in the country. A man by the name of Opie Head reportedly started the magazine.
So far as I can tell, the imagery from the newspaper masthead was taken from a painting by Edward Payson Washburn:
A complete explanation of the Arkansaw Traveler can be found at the Arkansas Historical Quarterly.
Another one here.
Even more interesting, is an mp3 of the song itself, or at least one similar to the original.
One of the nice things about the way I had my old photography site setup, was that I had links to a bunch of photo features. Over the years I’ve gone back and forth between creating individual features, and just posting photos here on the main page, and things get messy that way.
So today I went into the attic, and 3 hours later I’ve come back down, all covered with cobwebs, dust, and reminders of many crappy photos I’ve taken in years past.
In no particular order, below are all the photo features that’ve ever shall done been in existence.
Richland Creek Wilderness Area
It had been forever since we floated the Little Missouri River. For the most part, you have to catch it after a good rain, which means you don’t schedule it on your calandar.
Let me start out by saying that I, and my brother Corey, and Adam, and Brandon, ..are stupid. Only idiots would float the upper Little Missouri River in beat up canoes that lack flotation. Not to mention doubling up with two guys in each canoe. If it weren’t for dad rescuing our boats and gear on the bottom end of the “Winding Stairs”, we would’ve had to walk out of there.
In our favor that day was the hot and sunny weather, as well as my sturdy Pelican camera case. It was tied to the canoe, and protected my camera through many, many, many, end-over-end rolls, and big nasty rocks.
Photographic results were varied. Corey bought me “SureFine 35mm film”, and I wasn’t in a situation where I could take photos of the big rapids, as the camera stayed tied to the boat, and well, we weren’t with our boat for good stretches of the river.
Spring is probably my favorite season of the year, fall being a close second, followed by summer and winter. Definitely out of all the 15 seasons, those are my top 4. And living where I live, there is opportunity for leisurely bikerides in the woods and near the river, a) when my chores are done and/or b)when my wife isn’t keeping a good eye on me, and I can sneak out undetected.
All this time, I had never figured out how to adjust the aperture AND shutter speed on the manual setting of my Canon G5. It took a good 35 minutes on a park bench with the sun going down and a good breeze for me to finally, figure, that one, out. Folks, for me it was one of those “eureka moments,” like when Edison made his lightbulb or that Bell guy figured out the telephone. If there were a historical timeline of my lifetime technological achievements, that one would be written on there, right between “discovers tivo” and the yet to be accomplished “learned how to mute wife’s voice with universal remote”. ..But not your ordinary universal remote, this one will be built into a stainless steal eating untensil, perhaps a spoon, which will seamlessly control the television, the wife’s voice, and our DVD player while I’m using it to eat cereal.
The New York Public Library archives provided some interesting finds. A search for “Arkansas” yields 96 results, half of which are from the upper Arkansas River in the rocky mountains, but the rest are new to me.
Western sketches–Arkansas pilgrims in camp.
Hot Springs, Arkansas circa 1875
Mosambique Tunnel, apparently in Hot Springs. I’ve never heard of this. I’d like to find out about it.
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I'm Drew, from Little Rock. I take photos whenever my camera isn't lost or broken.
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