Category Archives: Railroad

Andy, Angie, Becky, Bill, Black & White, Carla, Cathie, Dad, Elizabeth, Jesse, Joe Duff, Kim, Kio, Linda, Logan, Michelle, Micky, Monica, Postcard, Railroad, Sara, Self-Portrait, Shannon, Slice of Life, Suzie, Tamara, Teresa, Willy, WPC - Submissions

WPC – WEEK 348 – SLICE OF LIFE

May 16, 2022 Christopher D. Bennett

SLICE OF LIFE got more results than I am expected. You people have impressed me!

As of 12:01 PM on Monday, May 9, this was the current list of ACTIVE streaks:

+ Linda Bennett – 1 week
+ Jen Ensley-Gorshe – 2 weeks
+ Angie DeWaard – 3 weeks
+ Jesse Howard – 3 weeks
+ Kim Barker – 5 weeks
+ Sara Lockner – 5 weeks
+ Becky Parmelee – 5 weeks
+ Joe Duff – 6 weeks
+ Dawn Krause – 6 weeks
+ Suzie Brannen – 7 weeks
+ Monica Henning – 8 weeks
+ Logan Kahler – 8 weeks
+ Teresa Kahler – 16 weeks
+ Tamara Peterson – 16 weeks
+ Carla Stensland – 16 weeks
+ Michelle Haupt – 17 weeks
+ Micky Augustin – 18 weeks
+ Andy Sharp – 19 weeks
+ Bill Wentworth – 20 weeks
+ Cathie Raley – 24 weeks
+ Elizabeth Nordeen – 25 weeks
+ Shannon Bardole-Foley – 27 weeks
+ Kio Dettman – 30 weeks

But you didn’t come here to listen to me talk all tommyrot about participation rates or streaks. You came to see the submissions and what streaks continued and what streaks flamed out:

WEEK 348 - SLICE OF LIFE - TERESA KAHLER

Teresa Kahler – 17 weeks

Monica Jennings – 9 weeks

Monica Jennings

Elizabeth Nordeen – 26 weeks

Elizabeth Nordeen

Joe Duff – 7 weeks
View from “The Mount” of several harden by Hermann Park in Houston

Joe Duff
“Inside the Octopus”. The main ballroom of the Octopus where countless Christmas parties, summer socials, and special evets were held.

Joe Duff
TPC Group “Octopus”, built 1959. An octagonal building with ballroom and meeting facilities. Built by employees from wood harvested on site.

Kim Barker – 6 weeks

Kim Barker

Micky Augustin – 19 weeks

Mary Green – 1 week

Kio Dettman – 31 weeks

Tamara Peterson – 17 weeks

William McAlpine – 1 week

Bill Wentworth – 21 weeks

Christopher D. Bennett

Shannon Bardole-Foley – 28 weeks

Linda Bennet – 2 weeks

Angie DeWaard – 4 weeks

Cathie Morton – 25 weeks

Michelle Haupt – 18 weeks

Suzie Brannen – 8 weeks

Logan Kahler – 9 weeks

Becky Parmelee – 6 weeks

Jesse Howard – 4 weeks

Andy Sharp – 20 weeks

Carla Stensland – 17 weeks

Sara Lockner – 6 weeks

Sara Lockner

31 submissions from 24 participants! That is a great week! Better than I expected, considering the extra rule for this week. Don’t worry none of the remaining Year 9 themes have a bonus rule.

Also, the following people earned this week’s bonus points by submitting a black & white image:
+ Teresa Kahler
+ Monica Jennings – 1 out of 3 anyways
+ Joe Duff – 1 out of 3 anyways
+ Mary Green
+ Kio Dettman
+ Linda Bennett
+ Angie DeWaard
+ Suzie Brannen
+ Logan Kahler
+ Andy Sharp

Be sure to check your mailbox, those bonus points should be arriving any day now.

This was an exciting week for new participants. Mary Green participating for the first time ever. As did William McAlpine. Willy’s submission came all the way from Portugal!

Also you may have noticed a couple name changes from a couple of the participants. I wonder what that means? Congratulations is what is means!

But it wasn’t all good news. 2 streaks did bite the dust. Jen’s two week streak. Gone. Dawn’s 6 week streak. Poof. I have no doubt they will be back with great submissions again in the future!

Here are the current top streaks:

9. Teresa Kahler – 17 weeks
9. Tamara Peterson – 17 weeks
9. Carla Stensland – 17 weeks
8. Michelle Haupt – 18 weeks
7. Micky Augustin – 19 weeks
6. Andy Sharp – 20 weeks
5. Bill Wentworth – 21 weeks
4. Cathie Morton – 25 weeks
3. Elizabeth Nordeen – 26 weeks
2. Shannon Bardole-Foley – 28 weeks
1. Kio Dettman – 31 weeks

Congratulations to Elizabeth as her submissions (all the way from Florida) made her the third person to have a streak extend for half of a year! WooHoo!

But enough dwelling on the past. Time to look to the future. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future! This week’s theme:

HAT

HAT! What a great theme for Year 9 of THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE!

But what exactly is a HAT photo? It is very simple. Just any picture that features a HAT in the image works. There are all sorts of hats out there ranging from fedoras to beanies to fedoras to bucket hats to fedoras to baseball caps to fedoras. Did I mention fedoras?

There is a warning on this theme though:

NEXT MONDAY I WILL NOT BE IN ANY POSITION TO SEND OUT ANY KIND OF REMINDERS. YOU ARE DEFINITELY ON YOUR OWN ON THIS ONE.

While considering subjects for your HAT image, mediate on the following quote:

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
-Henry David Thoureau

I look forward to seeing your interpretations.

RULES

The picture has to be taken between 12:01 PM today and 11 AM next Monday. This isn’t a curate your photos project. This is a get your butt off the couch (unless you are taking your picture from the couch) and take pictures challenge.

You can send your images to either bennett@photography139.com OR you may text them to my Pixel 5.

That is all I got, so if the good Lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise, we will all be sharing your idea of HAT in this place where I hang many of my hats next Monday.

Art, Basketball, Black & White, Christianity, History, Kio, Railroad, Road Trip, Teresa

Monroe and Mahaska County Auxiliary Images Vol. 1

May 11, 2022 Christopher D. Bennett

A long, long time ago when I revealed the towns signs of Monroe County I pointed out that the town of Melrose, Iowa had a memorial up in their town park to honor the 1936-37 Melrose Shamrocks boys basketball team. A team that the Des Moines Register honored as the best team in the first 100 years of Iowa boys basketball in 2012.

Kio took great offense to this and sent me the following email:

Some of what Melrose claims about their championship basketball team might be a bit of blarney. I have to stick up for the Boone High Boys State Basketball 1931 State Champions. Although I’m not completely impartial, my Dad was the captain of that team, it had a legitimate star at all positions. Also worth noting, there were no classes or divisions in high school basketball in those days. All the teams in the state were lumped together. So if you won the state championship, you were truly the best team in the state. I always add this footnote when talking on this topic. Although Boone hasn’t won a state basketball tournament championship since 1931, no one would have been prouder to see his team’s record beaten than my Dad.

While Kio is clearly prejudiced, I think it is fair to reveal why the Melrose Shamrocks are considered the best boys basketball team in the first 100 years of Iowa boys basketball.

Here are some facts about them:
+ Melrose was the smallest school to ever win a single-class state basketball title in Iowa. Enrollment was 66. They beat Marshalltown in the championship game. A school with an enrollment of 1,077.
+ Melrose was the first team to go undefeated in state history. Going 33-0. They defeated undefeated Rolfe (29-0) in the semifinal game. They beat them 29-13.
+ Their 35-17 win over Marshalltown was the largest margin of victory in the championship game up until that point.
+ Played their home games in an opera house because they didn’t have a gym. The court measured 30 feet by 40 to 45 feet. Why 40 to 45 feet? One of corners of the playing floor featured a wood stove that heated the building and was blocked off so players didn’t run into it. A standard basketball court is 50 feet by 94 feet.
+ “Many of the players on the Melrose basketball team wanted to fit in with the “big city” crowd of Des Moines. In the fashion of the day, they slicked back their hair with Rose Hair Oil. Rose Hair Oil was inexpensive (“about 15 cents per gallon,” according to Walt O’Connor), so they apparently used lots of it. The oil also had a nice smell to it.

While this was fine before the tournament started, it gave the team trouble in their first game against Geneseo. During the game, the hair oil went from their hair to their hands to the ball. As Walt O’Connor recalled, “We started perspiring and wiping our heads to get the hair out of our eyes, and the first thing you knew, the referee couldn’t hold the ball.” After having trouble handling the ball in the first half, the players washed out their hair at half time. Better ball handling in the second half helped them to win the game, 35 – 34. After almost letting the first game of the tournament slip their grasp, Melrose stopped using the hair oil in the later games.”

Some of this information is taken from the Melrose website article on the team:

1937 Melrose Shamrocks

All of that being said, the Ames High team featuring Harrison Barnes and Doug McDermott would have beaten this team by at least 20 points. They did win 53 games in a row.

Here is the first collection of the auxiliary images from a road trip I took to Monroe and Mahaska County with Teresa.

Georgetown

Albia

There are still two more collections of images to share from this road trip.

Art, Christianity, History, Politics, Railroad, Road Trip

Cedar County Auxiliary Images Vol. 2

May 7, 2022 Christopher D. Bennett

Here is the second collection of auxiliary images I took while harvesting the town signs of Cedar County. A few of these are taken in Muscatine County. A few are taken in Benton County. The majority of them are taken in West Branch at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library.

Herbert Hoover was the first president born west of the Mississippi River. He is also the only president born in Iowa. I always thought it was embarrassing that the worst president in history was born in Iowa. But then I looked it up. Herbert Hoover was not the worst president. Just one of the worst. John Tyler. Worse. Millard Fillmore. Worse. William Henry Harrison. Worse. Franklin Pierce. Worse. Warren G. Harding. Worse. Donald Trump. Worse. James Buchanan. Worse. And according to presidential scholars, historians, and political scientists. Andrew Johnson. The worst.

If you are wondering, the three presidents that are currently considered the best are:

3. Abraham Lincoln
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt
1. George Washington

And while one of the worst presidents was the only president born in Iowa, think of sad states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Florida, West Virginia, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama… to name a few… that haven’t even had a sad sack like Benjamin Harrison (the president ranked just ahead of Herbert Hoover) born there. He was born in Ohio. Just like William Henry Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, William H. Taft, and Warren G. Harding.

Enough presidential birthplace history. Here are the rest of the pictures from my Cedar County road trip:

Wilton

West Branch

Benton County – Junction of Lincoln Highway and Red Ball Highway

Here is some information about the Youngville Cafe from the Wikipedia:

Youngville Cafe, also known as Youngville Station, is a historic building located northwest of Watkins, Iowa, United States. It was a one-stop roadside business that included a café, a Skelly gas station, and three cabins for travelers to stay in. The cabins have subsequently been removed. The building calls attention to increasing business opportunities for women. The Tudor Revival building was built in 1931 by Joe Young on his pasture land for his widowed daughter Lizzie Wheeler to support her and her children. The main building also contained residential space where the family lived. It is located on U.S. Route 30, which at this point had been the Lincoln Highway. The café/station also served as a bus depot for the Greyhound and Jefferson bus lines.

When Wheeler retired to Cedar Rapids, she rented out the business to others to run. She returned to the café/station in 1967 after the lease ended, but it closed that year because it didn’t have enough parking and vehicles could no longer park along the highway. The building was used as a residence into the 1980s, when it was abandoned. The Benton County Sesquicentennial Commission acquired it as a restoration project to celebrate Iowa’s 150th anniversary of statehood in 1996. It is now owned by the Youngville Highway History Association and open as a café on a limited basis. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.

The cafe has been closed since 2020 because of the pandemic and because of damage it sustained from the derecho. However, according to a Facebook post on the Youngville Highway History Association Facebook page, it will be opening up and serving lunch Tuesdays from 11 AM to 2 PM starting on June 7th. You can bet dollars to donuts or burgers or tenderloins or whatever they serve, that I will be taking a day off from computer mining to go experience it.

If the menu that is lying on the ground is still accurate, I’ll definitely be knocking down a raspberry pie and probably a rhubarb pie as well.

Art, Christianity, Michelle, Railroad, Road Trip

Linn and Jones County Auxiliary Images Vol. 1

April 23, 2022 Christopher D. Bennett

The Saturdays of repairing broken “An Artist’s Notebook” post from the past are gone. At least I think I hope they are. I’m sure there is still work to be done still. There always is work to be done.

Therefore, I’m not sure what will occupy Saturdays. It will probably just be a random collection of things until maybe I get caught up on the backlog. And then it is quite possible we will start taking Saturdays off. Of course, I’ve been saying that for years, so we will see what we see.

Here is a collection of pictures I took while harvesting the tow signs of Linn County and Jones County. Linn County was done over two trips. One where I got most of the town signs of Linn County and another where I went back and got some troublesome signs like Cedar Rapids and Hiawatha and Robins. I didn’t take many auxiliary images in Linn County. On the second trip where I cleaned up Linn County, Michelle was my “navigator”. It was also a windy day. It seems like whenever Michelle and I get together, it is a windy day.

Here is the first collection of Auxiliary images from Linn and Jones County:

Linn County

Jones County – Stone City

As you can tell, Grant Wood and “American Gothic” is important to Jones County. Stone City is a cool little unincorporated town. Although, there is much there now but memories. It is too bad that nothing remains of that hotel pictures on the sign. It looked beautiful. I wish we would have been able to visit the inside of the “General Store”, but it wasn’t open yet when we got there.

There are plenty more pictures from this road trip to share in the future!

Art, Black & White, Christianity, History, Railroad, Road Trip, Ruins, Vest

Decatur and Wayne County Auxiliary Images Vol. 1

April 6, 2022 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

Several months back I cruised around Decatur County and Wayne County with Vest harvesting their town signs. This is the first collection of auxiliary images I took on this trip:

Weldon

Le Roy

Humeston

Garden Grove

Leon

You may recall a few weeks ago I talked about a sweet free gift I picked up in a strange park in Bremer County. It was on this trip, that I decided to pay that gift forward.

Free gift’s new home.

I left it on a picnic table in a nice park in Garden Grove. What happened to it from there? I will never know.

Art, Baseball/Softball, Black & White, Christianity, Railroad, Road Trip

Kossuth and Winnebago County Auxiliary Images Vol. 3

March 30, 2022 Christopher D. Bennett

Several months back I cruised around Kossuth ad Winnebago County harvesting their town signs. This is the third and final collection of auxiliary images from that road trip.

The next time we hit the open road and share some auxiliary images from TOWN SIGN PROJECT road trips, we will be in Decatur and Wayne County.

Art, Basketball, Christianity, History, Iowa State, Railroad, Road Trip, WPC - Reminder

Kossuth and Winnebago County Auxiliary Images Vol. 2

March 25, 2022 Christopher D. Bennett

Today is a big day for Iowa State athletics. Iowa State is one of only two schools that have both their Men’s and Women’s basketball team still alive in the NCAA tournament. For the Men, this is pretty shocking since they only won two games last year. This was the expectation for the Women.

However, for the third time in as many games, in their infinite wisdom, the NCAA has scheduled the Men’s and Women’s games to overlap. (Yes, I actually know that the television networks schedule the game times, but still!) This has lead several people to ask me how I’m going to watch both games. The astute people know that I refuse to DVR games, so that isn’t a possibility.

The answer is simple. I’m going to watch Season 2 of BRIDGERTON on Netflix and then read about the games in the morning paper on Saturday.

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Several months back I cruised around Kossuth ad Winnebago County harvesting their town signs. This is the second collection of auxiliary images from that road trip. All these images were taken in Kossuth County.

Algona

Wesley

Titonka

Lone Rock

There is still one more collection of images from this trip to share.

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This is your reminder that this week’s THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE theme is SHADOW:

SHADOW

SHADOW! What a great theme for Year 9 of THE WEEKLY PHOTO CHALLENGE!

But what exactly is a SHADOW picture? A SHADOW picture is simply a picture where one of the major compositional elements of the image is a SHADOW. The SHADOW can be on the ground. It can be on a wall. It can be across somebody’s face. A silhouette picture is a SHADOW picture, for example. And of course, there are other types of less literal SHADOWs out there too.

Happy photo harvesting!

Art, Basketball, Christianity, Elizabeth, Iowa State, Music, Naima, Photo of the Day, Railroad, Self-Portrait, Still Life, Travel

Fat Mum Slim – February 2022

March 4, 2022 Christopher D. Bennett

Back on Monday I completed another month of the Fat Mum Slim Photo A Day Challenge. I once again should thank Elizabeth as she assisted on a few of the photos this month.

Here are the pictures from February:

February 1 – A is For…

February 2 – B is For…

February 3 – C is For…

February 4 – D is For…

February 5 – E is For…

February 6 – F is For…

February 7 – G is For…

February 8 – H is For…

February 9 – I is For…

February 10 – J is For…

February 11 – K is For…

February 12 – L is For…

February 13 – M is For…

February 14 – N is For…

February 15 – O is For…

February 16 – P is For…

February 17 – Q is For…

February 18 – R is For…

February 19 – S is For…

February 20 – T is For…

February 21 – U is For…

February 22 – V is For…

February 23 – W is For…

February 24 – X is For…

February 25 – Y is For…

February 26 – Z is For…

February 27 – Letters

February 28 – Your Fave Word

This month I did manage to take pictures in 3 different states. Iowa, of course. Pennsylvania and North Carolina. I was also in Illinois for a bit, but didn’t take any pictures there. At least not for the Photo A Day Challenge.

These are the Photo A Day Challenge Prompts for March

March 1 – Weather
March 2 – Something in Your Kitchen
March 3 – Skyline
March 4 – Makes You Feel Nostalgic
March 5 – Books
March 6 – A Corner
March 7 – A Bus Stop
March 8 – Sunset
March 9 – From Inside the Car
March 10 – A Meal You Made
March 11 – Somewhere with a Good View
March 12 – An Insect
March 13 – A Close-up
March 14 – Something You’ve Never Photographed
March 15 – A Playground
March 16 – A Local Cafe
March 17 – Something You Think is Boring
March 18 – Flowers
March 19 – A Grocery Store
March 20 – Something Weird
March 21 – A Colorful Place
March 22 – A Garden
March 23 – A Leaf
March 24 – A Sunbeam
March 25 – Graffiti
March 26 – An Empty Road
March 27 – A Tree
March 28 – A Shop Window
March 29 – Old Building
March 30 – A Stranger
March 31 – Under a Tree

Of course, you can follow the daily posting on The Gram by following @fmsbennett.

Animals, Art, Black & White, Calendar, Railroad, Road Trip, Ruins

Southwest Auxiliary Images Vol. 2

December 24, 2021 Christopher D. Bennett 1 Comment

The May picture for the 2022 Photography 139 Calendar is a picture of an elk from Jester Park.

It was from the first “real” photography session I took after taking a few weeks off from photography.

Tomorrow I will reveal the June image.

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Here is another collection of images from a trip(s) to Southwest Iowa to do some serious town sign harvesting. It has been some time since I went on this trip, so I’ve matched the location of the picture with the town the best that I can.

Imogene – Imogene has one of the restaurants that is on the Tenderloin Trail 2.0.

Randolph

The window placement fascinates me.

Tabor

Thurman

Did I Photoshop out the powerlines? You’ll never know. Okay, I did. I hate powerlines so much!

Sidney

I wish I would have photographed more of these boots.

I would love to interview the artist.

Riverton – One of my favorite restaurant signs ever! EVER!

Hamburg

I love this picture. There is a shot, I would have included it in this year’s calendar if I hadn’t edited it yesterday.

There are plenty more pictures from southwest Iowa still to come.

Art, Brandon, Flowers, History, Logan, Railroad, Road Trip, Ruins

Cass County Auxiliary Images Vol. 1

December 15, 2021 Christopher D. Bennett 2 Comments

Several weeks back Logan and Brandon accompanied me on a town sign harvesting trip to Cass County Iowa. Here is the first collection of auxiliary images from that trip:

Adair County

Anita

Wiota

Cumberland

Griswold

Cold Springs State Park

I do want to point out that I do not venerate Jesse James. Many criminals in our history our venerated. Some deserve it. Some do not. Jesse James was a trash human being that shouldn’t be thought of as a hero.

There is still another collection of images to come from this amazing road trip to and through Cass County.