Memories of the Red and White in my Past

When I lived in San Francisco as a kid, I didn't have any money at all. I used to go down to Fisherman's Wharf to shine shoes in those days when tennis shoes still were a new item. It was also different back then at Pier 43-1/2. The little office of the tour boat company had a ramp and still is there, but back then during the very few days I went to school, I'd be out there at Fisherman's Wharf and run up that ramp which lead to a observation area where I could look out over the piers and boats, toward Alcatraz Island and beyond.....

Those were indeed the Days!

I never had money to ride those tour boats, and eventually, I had moved out of the City I called home. The very few days when I was in my City by the Bay as an adult, one of the very first things I did each and every special time I returned to my City, I'd go down to Fisherman's Wharf to buy a steamed crab, ask them to crack it so I wouldn't cut my fingers bloody later. Then I'd jump on a Cable Car and head to my parents' home which was quite a distance away. 

That poor steamed crab didn't even last 10mins on the cable car ride home!

I didn't return to my City till the late 2000s to live permanently, and what a surprise! Most buildings and streets I remembered well. I felt I never lived my youth in those early days of hippie of the City, and I was busy doing stuff. I was a lost soul and never quite content with my Life....

The City had changed but in reality, like any other place I had lived since departing my City, everything is different but in reality, it hasn't changed at all. Many of the buildings were the same. Now able to drive around, the one way streets with synched traffic lights were still one way and synched. But I really wanted to see the one place that was special to me, and I immediately went to Fisherman's Wharf...

There it was at Pier 43-1/2: The little ticket office of the Red and White Fleet. The huge boat was still above spinning around, and the ramp was still there but now roped off.

At least now I was able to afford a ride on their Red and White tour boats, and finally could get pictures of my City from a viewpoint I couldn't even think of getting when I was that young kid before.

I've heard the company CEO has retired. I'll miss him....  and wish him and his Family well.

If I ever get back to the City, of course I'll stop by. It's something of my childhood that I miss immensely and will never forget!

 

Sights and Memories of MY City by the Bay

Right now the winds of western New York are blowing past 30 mpg and while we have experienced in walked in winds past 50mph, it's still interesting to be inside and hear the howling winds! 

I am always remembering my hometown and its sights, colors, events and Beauty! How can I not think of it when I have so many fabulous image files and memories?

What is your favorite city or place in this vast place we call Home?

 

Operation Earnest Will

These days WHO remembers the reflagging of Kuwaiti oil tankers, allowing the United States to provide protection by the US military from attacks upon oil tankers in the Persian Gulf? Later US Navy minesweepers were deployed to the Persian Gulf to sweep those waters for mines. I saw a lot of "mines", later determined to be actually dead livestock in the Persian Gulf with their legs straight up in the waters! Really!

I am shocked to discover that online sources do not mention the many US Navy minesweepers that participated in Earnest Will, along with other minesweepers from other countries. 

Looking Back at West Coast Memories

 After so many centuries - I've always wanted to say that - I can accurately and honestly say as long as I have been behind a camera viewfinder, I've been trying to archive those image files! I haven't advanced too much in that endeavor though, and yes, I just create yet more self-inflicted work and it's already too much work!

It's not all work though, as I relish in so many great events, times and memories that I am seeing. It's so unfortunate that I have lost many of my negatives though, as I had trusted "friend" Zach Kunkle with a lot of my personal stuff and later abandoned all of this stuff which consisted of furniture, personal papers, many negative files, books, lots of 5x7 silver framed images (Black and White nudes), very expensive equipment including a Canon DSC520C camera body, my Lucky darkroom enlarger and associated darkroom stuff, and more, in a back yard shed in Lenoir, North Carolina a few years ago. 

Here's one image that was snapped back in San Francisco, and as usual I am just so amazed at what my camera has seen and recorded!

My cameras and I have been to a lot of places and seen a lot of stuff! I even remember a trip south to San Diego where I went for my Navy bootcamp, and to sightsee and do a few more things than I was able to do way back in the early 70s!

 

Reflective Balboa Park 

Hotel del Coronado

Coronado Bridge

Portable personal transportation (among other things)

All my life, I've used and loved riding bikes. Even while in the Navy, I purchased a bicycle in France during a deployment, and even started a bicycle club on the aircraft carrier I was serving aboard, and unknown to me till I read about it by chance, my first ship the USS Forrestal (CV-59) kept that fine tradition of a bicycle club till its final days!

Back in those days, folding bikes weren't the craze they are now, and is easily being replaced by electric bikes. But in my mind, having a bicycle that can be folded and transported easily is the wave of the future!

I picked up my first folding bicycle over a decade ago while in San Francisco, buying online and the bicycle making its way - unknown to me at the time - from across the Pacific Ocean! Amazingly, it got to me in less than a week, which I thought was impressive if not impossible, but it did! I had used it a few times, but not as often as I would've wanted since the City by the Bay is full of hills! I had lived then in the middle of hills! I'd ride it from North Beach to Fisherman's Wharf, then along the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building. Once I even rode from the Ferry Building all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge and back to North Beach!

In my pre-teen years, I had a bicycle and by the time I was 14, I had rode my ten-speed bike from North Beach to the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped for fish and chips in Sausalito at Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips. Then I'd ride to Mill Valley, then up Mt Tamalpais, then speed all the way down to Stinson Beach for lunch, then ride all the way on the same route back to North Beach! These days with my advanced age, I can hardly believe it happened at all, and all several times before I turned 15!

Now Sheila and I have folding bicycles, two in Niagara Falls and two in Rota, one being my original white folding bike of San Francisco fame! Everywhere we ride, people stop us to say how much they like our folding bikes, and that they have never seen them before!!

Have you ever ridden a folding bicycle before? I know there are some pricey full-size mountain bikes available that fold too!! Amazing!!!! 

Our bikes in the minivan!

Sheila and our bikes along the Upper Niagara River

Our folding bikes are turning heads at the lower Niagara Gorge

Recent Sights and Scenes

Just a few pictures of things seen over the past few days and weeks.We get out everyday (hopefully) and the things we see are breathtaking! Perhaps to others, they would think not, as most of the things we see are simple scenes that happen once in a lifetime: lovely clouds, gorgeous trees, a flower or something else.....  it's those simple things that touch our soul/alma to open our eyes, our hearts and our minds to something else that is so very pleasurable, aside from that device in the hand. 

A fabulous sunset of a few days ago

Last night's sunset over the Upper Niagara River

All of these and many more moments, are UNedited, uncropped and all captured with my screwed-up smartphone which is still acting up (every single day and even every minute) simply because my SSG S5 doesn't get Android operating system (OS) updates any longer. 

NOTHING works properly now  :(

It's stuck on version 5 forever, and since years ago, when it began with error messages (which now literally happens every minute everyday ~ really!!). I am angry that Samsung could create and build, then SELL such a "smart" phone that basically is worthless after its OS is not updated any longer. 

I can understand not supporting the OS any longer, but for the system to give so many errors every minute it is turned on, is beyond me. It should work as if it were new, and NOT be a pain giving errors and apps dying and having to be rebooted every ten minutes as it is now for over a year, and crashing every few minutes. Not even the Samsung apps work properly! 

There is not one app or samsung android function that operates correctly, and this has been going on for over a year!

You can bet my next phone will NOT be a samsung; they have lost a client that previously, I have raved continuously online about my previous S4, and now the S5 I have had all my time while in WNY....  now the only thing I would rave about is the unreliability of the phone, which is the only constant!

Enjoy the moments ~ moments that will only come once in your Life, no matter how many times you think it looks like yesterday, last year or whenever you saw it. It will never be the same - NOTHING is, though you'll think it is exactly like the last time! Those simple pleasures are truly the treasures of your Life! Enjoy it now while you still realize they are true treasures and pleasures that didn't cost you a penny, save for the time it took you to look up, see it, and stay in pause mode to enjoy it before it disappeared for ever!

Moon watches over feeding deer yesterday

Watching the rain fall

An hour after this, the rain could be seen (and felt!)

Oooooh, those gorgeous clouds!

Would you pause to snap or sit and feel the wind?

Looking UP gives fabulous views

Watching storm clouds roll in then feeling the cool winds of the rain

Late July 2019 sunbeams over the Falls!

Reminders of Days and Years Long Gone

I've been to a lot of places. I have even called "home" in even more spots. Let's see if I remember those locations:

   ~ California
   ~ Italy
   ~ Virginia
   ~ Germany
   ~ Two different places in Spain on different
      coasts       
   ~ Nebraska
   ~ Oregon

What makes me think of those past residences are the many reminders everywhere. Perhaps a billboard or exit sign on some highway or interstate. It could even be images seen in magazines or newspapers. Maybe even a glimpse of my past from the internet, which sadly happens way too often.

What made me remember now is when I went shopping while temporarily (again) in Michigan....

Way back when I did attend school...

... and even enjoyed it, it was here where I attended grammar school. Not even 123.17 feet from my front door and a simple three-minute walk as a child, I remember days of such heavy fog that after stepping out of my flat where I lived on the same street as the school, I couldn't even see the school!

I've been meaning to revisit my old schools since my return late last year but work in getting stuff out of this apartment, photography and trips and plain stress and laziness has kept me from doing this. But today after a simple walk around the block, I entered finally to see that though the upper floors has been converted into an adult learning center and downstairs a childcare center, it really hasn't changed. Down the stairs to where cars are now parked in half of the schoolyard is the same wall I used to play handball ~ and won quite a few competitions too! I always considered myself quick on my feet with excellent reaction and reflexes, and that was proven easily against my fellow students.

I noticed now the beauty of marble-lined banister in the stairwells, something I didn't even notice nor care about as a very hyper child.

Of course now the classrooms were filled with desks much larger than when I sat in while in attendance, but being in the rooms ran a nervous chill down my back, and I quickly left the rooms and went out to the hall then outside. It was here that one teacher ~ forgot her name ~ realized that I had creative talent and allowed me to "do" some things not allowed other students. For example, I have the intense memory of drawing a perfect circle with ease, which my fellow students did with worse results than I. As a result of that I never was "required" to follow through learning to write in cursive and when I entered the military, I was told my non-written signature was not "legal", something I was told required cursive - so my "signature" was then born from my lowercase name which was my signature then, adapted in a fake cursive mode to appear as my signature!

Another memory was when we were all told to stand at attention and face the flag, which was lowered to half-mast upon news of John F. Kennedy's death... nobody near me knew why we were doing it, and nobody cared about it except that it was using up our precious recess time.

My old grammar school may be an adult learning center now, but to me it's was an open book in my past, and still is ~ with lots of memorable pages waiting to be opened and turned!

Ooooooh, the memories!!