The Not Key West Trip, part 3

 You should read all this in order, I think. You can access the first part here, all the pictures from this trip here.

 Tuesday, June 3

  The sun came up this morning as the same kind of big red ball that set last night. I suspect it's the red-dirt farming dust gives it that colour. The desk clerk thinks it's pollen, but we have pollen at home & the sun is never that kind of dim red ball. Especially when it's as high in the sky as it was when I saw it.

 Anyway. So I spent about half the day today sightseeing in Albany. Started off with a really good breakfast at a place on Old Dawson Road. Drove up and down Dawson Road 3 times, looking for it, before I noticed that it was on Old Dawson Road, which is a short distance to the south. Cafe was called Eggs Up, and I don't know when I've encountered such friendly service. The waitress was from New Mexico & so we talked about a lot of things Texas and New Mexico have in common. We're both amazed at the trees and the rivers around here, they're both present in such profusion. I had shrimp and grits, which of course reminded me of a certain someone who loves that particular dish ... not that I needed reminding. That someone is on my mind pretty regularly as a rule.

the pond at Radium Springs Gardens

 Took my time over coffee, as nothing opened before 9am and I had left the hotel by 7. Then I went to a place called Radium Springs, which used to be a resort area south of town. The old Casino Building was destroyed in successive floods, tornadoes, tropical storms and floods (again) four times in less than 20 years. It stood for about 100 years before the first disaster hit, and then the second, third, and fourth disasters hit before the repairs were complete each time, and in the end they had to tear it down. (One sign said 27 inches of rain fell in one day; another says 24 inches. I suspect that, at a certain point, three inches of rain just doesn't matter anymore.) But the grounds remain as a nice county park (except for those damn gnats; honestly, they make me feel like one of those children on the African Famine Charity commercials, with flies crawling all over their faces), with very nice groundskeeping and a city park on part of the land, gardens on another part, and two other (separate) parks on the grounds across the road and down the south end. Quite extensive. I spent a pleasant 90 minutes or so checking it out.

 Then I headed into town to see the other sights I'd identified. First stop was the Old Railroad Depot. It was closed. It sits athwart a brick-paved street with streetcar rails down the middle. There are maybe 5 or 6 buildings all told, each turned into a specialty historical site of one kind or another: the railroad museum, a general history museum, the regional archives, a museum of surveying, and so on. All were closed, so I just took some pictures of the buildings and went on to Ray Charles Plaza, which is a monument to a native son who made good. It's in a small park on the river front, very tastefully done, although hard to photograph because of the spacing of things, and the sun's position at the hour I was there wasn't conducive to good pictures, either. 

the Blue Hole exhibit

 Just down the street from that is the Flint RiverQuarium, which gives a good explication of the local water source. There are extensive caves under Albany, water-filled and explored by daring scuba divers. So far they've explored about 3/4 of a mile of caves down to a depth of about 1500', where water flows into the Florida Aquifer. The displays of marine life aren't as extensive as at the Texas State Aquarium, of course, but it's definitely worth the eight bucks (senior rate) to see. There was almost nobody else there, which was a big, big plus. 

 From there I drove to the western edge of downtown to see the local Art Museum. It was pretty much as I anticipated: three small galleries showing contemporary exhibitions. I won't say it wasn't interesting, though: the first gallery was a photographic display to do with Native American culture. About half the pics were taken in the early part of the 20th Century, and the rest were done by Wil Wilson, a Navajo photographer I was familiar with. If it weren't for the obsequiously apologetic dissing of the "biases of his time" when expounding on the older pictures, it would have been a well-conceived exhibition. 

 The second gallery contained acrylic paintings on lace paper by some South African woman. It shows extremely wealthy super-model women in extravagant luxury. That by itself was a little too Kardashian for me, but the video of her talking about the burden of having to spend sooo much time getting your hair and nails done.... It was too much. She's a good example of why we should eat the rich.

 The final gallery was a tiny room upstairs where a local artist's work was juried and exhibited: four ... let's call them tapestries .. of odd cloth remnants in random shapes sewn together. It was supposed to represent skin colours and earth colours. I suppose so, but in the end, to me it was just some random bits of cloth sewn together. It was vague enough to accept any explanation you choose to give it, like most modern art.

 After that I had a nice drive west to Fort Gaines, during which I could listen, largely uninterrupted by the Voice of Google Maps, to Rock of Ages, and notice that the narrator's accent would sound frequently like a gentle southern boy moved to Californie, and then suddenly, and briefly, like a Dame of the British Empire for half a sentence. It was interesting, and slight enough not to become irritating. If only he would fully pronounce the last three syllables of each sentence.

 At Fort Gaines, on a bluff overlooking the Chatahoochee River, which is the border between Georgia and Alabama, there is a collection of log buildings called the Frontier Village. These old buildings were rescued from other locations in the county (Early County, if you care) and brought here and renovated, and for some reason decorated with multicoloured Christmas lights, for the edification of people who had never seen how their ancestors lived in the American South before telegraphs and electricity and YouTube. But it was just the buildings; there was no furniture, no rustic tools or implements, and not much in the way of explanation. I've seen enough of this type of historical assemblage to not wonder about things, but if I had small children seeing it for the first time, I'd have been very disappointed.

 Life on the road was a little frustrating after that. I couldn't get a strong signal anywhere in that part of Georgia, and couldn't get RoadTrippers to load; all I had was a few numbers I'd written on the paper state highway map where I'd highlighted my intended route, and I couldn't remember what those particular numbers signified. So I just set off north on the planned route, looking for what the paper map called Highway 161, where I would turn toward the next county in my excursion; and off I went.

 This is when I discovered that the highway numbers on the map aren't reflected on the actual road. There is, apparently, no Highway 161 outside the imagination of the company that draws maps for AAA. After overshooting the turn by about six miles, I set my Google Maps for the next town and learned that, in Reality Georgia, Highway 161 is known as Lucy Lane for a few hundred yards, and then it's called Cotton Hill Road; there being no obvious reason to make that particular switch. Anyway, got where I was going. By this time it was well past lunchtime, so when I stopped at a C-store to try RoadTrippers again (still no signal; only 4G, which it appears is inadequate for that program) I started to buy one of those awful convenience-store sandwiches, the kind with cheap cuts of mystery meat between two slices of white bread decorated with a slice of indeterminate cheese food; but he wanted eight and a half dollars for that miserable imitation sandwich, so I declined, and wondered yet again when it was that Trump was going to bring the prices down on Day One.

 My map didn't indicate anymore planned sightseeing stops before what I remembered I would see in Cordele -- billed as the Confederate Launch Pad, a Titan missile standing by the freeway -- so I just went on, enjoying the good weather and the breeze in my hair and the doings of Junior Bender on audio, until I got to that missile. Cordele is a big enough town, and on a freeway, so it has 5G service and I could finally consult RoadTrippers, to find that the two things I missed after Ft Gaines were instructions to myself. So I didn't actually miss anything. I went to a diner for a refreshment -- by now it was too late to bother with lunch -- and programmed my next couple of travel legs into Google Maps. In my planning, I'd expected to spend the night at Dawson, about 30 miles northwest of Albany, but I made it farther than that, so now I'm in Warner Robins, Georgia, where there's an aviation museum at the old air base that I plan to see first thing tomorrow when it opens at 9AM. 

 Went out for dinner first thing, and found I was at a sports bar; not just any sports bar, but an axe-throwing bar.  Who'd'a ever have thunk you could mix axe-throwing and drinking? There's a row of targets along one wall, and people stand there with their brews or booze and throw axes. Sure, why not. And there's a trivia game going on at the same time, and between questions, they play really loud music and ask questions about it for bonus points. So I got something to eat and drink and was able to watch the USWNT crush Jamaica. Most of it, anyway; by the time it was 3:0 I was done for the day, so I didn't see the last goal, but only read about it on Messenger when S texted to tell me it had happened. 

 Good enough. 

The Not Key West trip, part 2

You should read all this in order, I think. You can access the first part here, and all the pictures from this trip here.

 Monday, June 2

 It was, as expected, another beautiful day: clear skies, not too hot. But I had to start off with half a day's drive on freeway, where you can't hear an audiobook if a truck passes, so the top stayed up until about eleven, while I listened to Rock of Ages, a novel in the Junior Bender series about a burglar who does detective work for other criminals. It's set in Los Angeles and written with a wonderfully wry humour; we've listened to two or three books in the series already and enjoyed them all. We had started listening to this same book on the way back from Colorado last month, but the reader's breathy style -- he fades the last 3 syllables of every sentence -- and the poor quality of the little $10 bluetooth speaker we have to use in that car made it impossible to follow the action over normal road noise. I've now bought a hopefully better bluetooth speaker for the Subaru, so maybe we'll be better able to hear when we travel in it. But I checked the book out again for this trip, hoping the audio setup in the Jag would make it possible to listen to it. It does. It's still a little irritating that he speaks the end of every sentence so quietly that I have to turn the volume way up, and so when Google Maps interrupts with some directional guidance that voice can be heard by drivers on the other side of the highway, but at least I can hear the book.

 I had breakfast at a Wendy's along the highway, having given up on finding anything more local. They have a surprisingly tasty breakfast burrito -- not the least bit authentic, of course, but good, cheap and filling, and not too high in calories. Lunch was at a local fried-chicken place that had excellent green beans as a side; the chicken wasn't as good as what I'd had in Fort Worth a few months ago, but it was OK.

 I got the first handful of counties after lunch: first Union County, where there was nothing to see. In the little town of Colquitt, seat of Miller County, I stopped to see a carved Indian head that I'd found listed on Roadside America. According to the sign there, the sculptor gave one to each state as a celebration of the contribution of Native Americans to our culture. Yeah, okay. Then I passed through Baker and Mitchell Counties without stopping, and into Colquitt County, where I visited the grave of a one-time circus owner. His tombstone is the surprisingly impressive elephant I mentioned in yesterday's post. I also drove through the county seat's historical district, which is impressive in no way that I could see. Lots of early-20th-century nondescript buildings around an equally nondescript courthouse, basically. From there I turned northwest and went through the unremarkable Worth County to Albany, in Dougherty County, where I'm spending the night. 

 Tomorrow I expect to spend most of the day here in Albany, a town of about seventy thousand people. It has half a dozen places of interest to me. Then I'll head west, back to the state line, and then north again for a pass through several other counties. If my plans hold good, I'll end up spending tomorrow night in a little town only about 30 miles northwest of Albany. We shall see.

 There's a Mexican restaurant not far from my hotel, so I went over there intending to have dinner. But the place was so busy that instead I just went to the bar to have a drink, and ended up having a conversation with an agricultural chemical salesman from some small town in Alabama who works this territory. We spent about an hour just talking about everything and nothing; the only thing I really learned from the conversation was that the swarms of insects I've been dealing with every time I stop the car are gnats, not mosquitoes, so that was a relief to hear. For dinner I ended up just getting a sandwich from the Arby's in front of my hotel. It was as good as you might expect. I wasn't particularly hungry anyway. Would have liked to get some more of those green beans but I don't know if there's a Jack's in Albany. Certainly not one within walking distance.

The Not Key West Trip, part 1

Sunday, June 1 

I noticed at some point that, once again, I had long weeks in prime travel season with no trips planned. Key West came to mind -- I won't bother to explain why -- and it had the added advantage that there were a bunch of counties in Georgia that are sort of on the way and that I hadn't been to before. And there were a number of car museums sort of on the way; a couple I'd been to before that I could skip this time, but also several that I haven't seen.

The Undiscovered Country

So that was the genesis of my Spring wander. I got on RoadTrippers and started working out a route that would take me to all the remaining Georgia counties; and then, consulting RoadTrippers and Roadside America and a few other sources, I found things along the way that would in some petty sense justify the travel. I could visit such tourist hot-spots as the elephant-shaped tombstone in Moultrie, Georgia; the Flint River Quarium in Albany; and the Pig Monument in Tennille. Pure gold. 

Well. I find that everything of the least interest is closed on Sundays in this part of the country; not entirely unexpected. More surprising is that it's all closed on Mondays, too. So that meant I'd face, essentially, two solid days of just driving, with no excuse to get out of the car and see a museum or a car collection or anything. And it meant that  I would get to Key West on a Monday. And I didn't really want to be in Key West on a Monday. Long story short, Key West got dropped from the trip. (It was briefly replaced by a trip to Cape Canaveral to see a night launch of a rocket ship, but a couple of days after that was added to the trip, the launch was scrubbed.)

So. The Not Key West trip of 2025. Left today. Tacos at a restaurant on the East Side of San Antonio, drove through Houston and Baton Rouge without even slowing down once for traffic. Amazing! I vow I will never pass that way again on any day but a Sunday.

The weather is good, but I was on the freeway all day long, so the top stayed up. I listened to an entire audio book, a murder mystery set in the Perigord called Bruno, Chief of Police. It wasn't a great mystery, but it was wonderfully evocative of la France profonde, with its descriptions of boucheries and casse-croutes and its casual references to culinary detail. The book really deals with the continuing societal consequences of the Nazi occupation decades before the book's action takes place. I like that kind of stuff, and the reader was easy to understand.

The only stop I had planned for today was in Hammond, Louisiana, where some of my ancestors are buried. Unfortunately, Google Maps took me to the wrong cemetery -- though it insisted it was the right one, despite the name on the gate and the totally different design of the place. A quick search for "similar places" revealed too many other cemeteries to check on my tiny little phone screen, so when I got to my hotel this evening one of the things I did was get on my laptop with its somewhat larger screen, and locate the correct address for the cemetery, about three miles from where Google Maps took me, on the other side of the interstate. I will stop there on the way back in a week's time. Disappointing, but not a major setback, since I'll pass that way again in a few days.

Tomorrow, after a few more hours on I-10, I'll get off the freeway and put the top down. The weather should be good for at least the next 3 or 4 days, so here's hoping for a fun wander.

Things tomorrow, though, won't be the same as they were yesterday. I feel myself slowly declining as the Golden Door draws inexorably closer. This won't be my last trip, but it may be my last wander. (I've said that before, but I was wrong, so don't hold me to it.) I found the planning only somewhat enjoyable, and I'm frankly not looking forward to the rest of the trip with the same excitement and exuberance that I used to feel. 

I don't know where I found it, but it seemed on point.

 

One Day There

I find that if I think of my recent brief excursion to Fort Worth as a reconnaissance trip, I can almost justify it in my mind as a worthwhile use of three days. Fortunately, I suppose, days are things that I seem to have in abundance.

 I've been hearing what seems like a lot about Fort Worth, for it being such a sideshow in the great panoply of sophisticated American life. I've always had the impression that where Dallas was rich, Fort Worth was prudent in its development of culture, and the two cities are locked into a sort of rivalry that pushes both forward (though Dallasites won't admit to the pressure). Thus Fort Worth has long been a surprisingly vital center for the fine arts, a result of the longstanding dedication of a few wealthy people to music, sculpture and painting. And, let's be honest, because Dallas has always been more than a little vulgar in its wealth; that gave Fort Worth the edge in the competition.

 But lately I've been hearing about Fort Worth as -- gasp! -- a center for artisanal and culinary craft as well. This was something new under the sun, and for several years now I've been mulling an expedition up that way to see for myself. I was last there in 2011 to see a very special and truly magnificent exhibition of Caravaggio paintings at the famous Kimbell Museum. That trip, other than the exhibition itself and a brief foray into Grapevine, was a disappointing trip down memory lane, which may have cured me at least partially of feelings of nostalgia whenever Fort Worth crosses my mind. So on this trip, I did my best to avoid the parts of town where I spent or mis-spent the quotidian parts of my youth.

 Weather and Sherry's travel made the middle of March the earliest time I could make this trip. I invited my friend Roland, and he accepted, and his schedule made it necessary to stick to my original poorly-thought-out plan to make it there and back in three days, with only one day to see anything in the city. And a flat tire on the way up meant that a chunk of that one day was spent sitting at a tire dealership, where the only entertainment was a bit of catty people-watching. Our vague plan to split the day between the Kimbell and the Zoo morphed into an afternoon at the Kimbell, with drive-by sightseeing bookending the museum. This, more than anything, kept the entire trip from being anything I would call a success.

 But there were a couple of bright spots. 

 First, the weather heading up was glorious. I took a more westerly route than usual. I almost always go north on 281, through Blanco and Johnson City to Hico, in order to avoid the horrible traffic on Interstate 35. It used to be really bad only as you cross the Colorado River, at Austin, but now the unpleasantness of the drive extends from, roughly speaking, Loop 410 to the east-west split near Hillsboro; and at certain times of day it will linger either until you reach your hotel or until you exit the Metroplex on the farther side of Denton. But because I had to pick Roland up at his house on the northwest side of San Antonio, I saw an excuse to take a western route that would feel too out-of-the-way if done from my own more centrally-located home. So we cut the corner between 1604 and I-10 by taking Kyle Seale Parkway and Sisterdale Road, then climbed up through the Hill Country to Fredericksburg and north on Highway 16.

Not a suspension bridge

 Route-planning is a favourite activity of mine. Finding new and interesting places to sightsee gives purpose to any trip, and the pleasure of anticipation usually exceeds the pleasure of actual experience: the latter often amounts to a few moments of contemplation and photography practice sandwiched between long hours of just driving. (Not that I mind the driving, if the roads are good for it.) And Texas, where almost nothing is new to me, suffers from the curse of familiarity. I have already seen the Dead Man's Hole and the World's Largest Spur (several of them, in fact) and have no desire to repeat those experiences. So the only place worth an actual stop along the chosen route was the Bluff Dale Suspension Bridge (actually a cable-stayed bridge), which looks ready to collapse any day. Since I've seen it now, I won't care much if it goes. The most interesting thing about the bridge is the fact that it was moved to its present location, more than a hundred years ago, when it became superfluous at its old location a mile and a half downstream. 

 There were several other locations on my planned route to begin with, but once I made the calculation that it would put Fort Worth out of reach of a day's drive, I shaved the plan down to the bare essentials: lunch at the Koffee Kup Cafe in Hico (a tradition stretching back decades), the old bridge, and circling around so that I could enter Fort Worth from the northwest, thus avoiding much of the city's (relatively mild) congestion. The popping of a cord in a front tire made me glad I had skipped all that other stuff, as it was still daylight when I had to stop to change the tire, and I only had to drive maybe 35 miles on the spare.

what the ratings mean

 Second, we managed to find what may be the best Thai food in all of Texas, at a small storefront restaurant called Buon Bistro, on Beech Street near Loop 820 North. It just happened to be fairly close to our hotel, and was still open when we got there around 8pm. We were the only people in the place at that hour, which may have played some part in why we had the full attention of the two young women running the shop. The waitress mentioned that the pad wun sen was, in her opinion, one of the best dishes on the menu; and since it's my favourite Thai dish, I chose that, along with an order of spring rolls.

 At Thai restaurants in San Antonio, "spring rolls" are small fried egg rolls. Appetizers wrapped in won ton skins and not fried are called "summer rolls" or "fresh rolls." I usually order those. But this time I ordered spring rolls, 'cuz I felt like that kind of mild sinful splurge. What I got, though, was summer rolls. I was happy with that, especially because the order of three, served with peanut sauce and sweet-and-sour sauce, were outstanding in taste and texture, and the individual servings of sauce meant that I could double-dip to my heart's content. It helped, too, that both sauces were better than most I've had. The peanut sauce managed to be full-flavoured without being at all overpowering; never an attribute of peanut sauce in my prior experience.

 The pad wun sen ... well, I've never had a bad dish of pad wun sen. It must be really easy to do well, but let's not take anything away from the kitchen at Buon. This pad wun sen was so good that I think I have never before had a really good pad wun sen. I ordered it medium spicy, and maybe next time I'll ask for something a little less in the way of spice, but it was sooooooo good that I might just stick with "medium spicy" if I ever make it back to this place.

 There was enough food on both our plates to take the leftovers back to the hotel, and they ended up being dinner the next night, too. Prices were pretty good to begin with, but when you get such good food at such good prices and have enough of it to have it twice, that is really good value.

 We also found a pretty damn good breakfast place, called Breakfast Club 51, which was conveniently located right across the street from the shop where I got a new set of tires. First off, they serve coffee in extra-large mugs, which felt like a no-brainer move to me; and it's a good thing they do, because they only had one girl waiting tables in the entire large-ish dining room, and if she'd had to run around refilling ordinary mugs she'd probably have quit in the middle of her shift and no one could blame her. My breakfast was eggs Florentine, well made and rich and I so wanted to lick the plate but settled for running my finger through the remnants of the sauce one time. Maybe twice.

 And for our one other meal in Fort Worth we went to Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken on Magnolia Avenue, a national chain outlet that was recommended to us by the sales girl at SiNaCa Gallery, where I acquired a piece of art glass for my slowly-expanding collection (nearly 70 pieces, if I count everything; let's say about 50 pieces worthy of the name "art"). That area is now a center for night life and shopping; when I lived in Fort Worth it was a slum. Gus's makes its batter with more than a touch of Louisiana Brand hot sauce, and the result is, as Sheriff Taylor would have said, "goo-ood." Since it was "pi day" and they had it on the menu, I decided first on a slice of sweet potato pie; and since I was being more or less good, dietarily speaking, I only ordered the two-piece dark-meat "snack," which came with just a slice of white bread and no sides. A good move, I think, though a third piece of chicken may not have caused regrets. Excellent food, very good service, good prices, and a welcoming funky atmosphere featuring excellent blues on the PA system. 

 Friday, our one day in town, was clear and warm but very dry and extremely windy (think gale-force), and the wind picked up a lot of dust in West Texas and brought it in for a visit to the Big City; so much dust that by evening it looked like wildfire smoke or a heavy fog. The weather was still good enough to allow us to enjoy being out in Fort Worth, but the dryness of the air gave me slight nosebleeds, and the dust made it a little bit difficult to breathe. It was, on that account, probably for the best that we spent the major part of the day in the Kimbell, seeing their collection.

 I do not at all share the Arts Community's fondness for modern art, and since this blog post is my opinion and no one else's, I will say what I think. If you have different thoughts, you may keep them to yourself, or express them in your own blog post, or you can put your thoughts in the comments and maybe I'll post them. (There's supposed to be a link at the bottom* where you can do that, but half the time I don't see it there. Take your chances if you like.)

 Somewhere around 1820, artists got the idea that all the great stories of our (Western) history -- myths, legends, and the beliefs that inform our culture -- had been done to death. Everything one could say about, for example, the beheading of Holofernes or the fall of Icarus had been said, and every lesson learned. There had been many centuries of realistic sculpture, and a few centuries of realistic painting (starting with the discovery and use of perspective in art, in the Renaissance). Artists were, apparently, tired of painting what they saw, and started painting what they could imagine they saw. Okay, fine. Then they went on to paint lines and blocks and colours and spots, and found that people with money to buy art would buy into glib critical statements of what those coloured lines and blobs meant. Descriptions of art now sound like a waiter's description of a bottle of expensive vintage; substitute emotional terms for fruit flavours and hints of oak, and you've got it in one. 

 Modern art sells, apparently. People who can afford to buy art buy it because it's a way to hold wealth that maybe says complimentary things about them: that they have taste, sophistication, style, grace, &c. It's like Bitcoin for the walls. Modern art is vague enough that you can claim any meaning for it: it is subjective, and because it can mean whatever the viewer wants, it has no intrinsic meaning. Unless, of course, it also happens to be beautiful, but that hardly ever is the case.

Annibale Carracci, The Butcher's Shop

 Maybe some people genuinely like that vagueness. I don't. When I stepped into the gallery containing European paintings after 1820, and saw the blurry landscapes and primitive representations of people and shapeless strokes and lines of paint, I waited for a sense of ... well, anything to come to me, a suggestion of what the painter was trying to say. As usual with this sort of ... art, I got nothing. Sometimes I get something, but it's rare. Perhaps I just wasn't in a receptive mood, after buying tires, to be moved or intrigued by Mondrian's coloured lines on a white background, or the faceless people on a blurry Parisian street. I was much more receptive to the look in some long-dead Englishwoman's eyes in a Joshua Reynolds portrait, and even by the overrated light of Venice in a Canaletto landscape. 

 Well. Anyway. So I spent most of the afternoon seeing all the galleries in both buildings of the Kimbell Museum. Roland mostly sat and waited on various benches. I'm not entirely sure it's because of his difficulty in walking; I suspect he's not genuinely interested in fine art. Not sure why, of all the things I suggested we might do on our one day in Fort Worth, he picked the Kimbell (and the Zoo, but then we had the tire issue to deal with, so it was one or the other, and with the wind blowing so much dust we preferred the indoors). 

 After the Kimbell, we drove a short distance to the location of the Leonard's Museum. When I was a Fort Worther, Leonard's was The Place to go in town: a huge department store complex that took up three and a half city blocks, and had huge parking lots along the Trinity River that connected to the store with a subway! Wow. The store is long gone now, but I wasn't entirely averse to yet another trip down memory lane, especially since I thought it'd be a brief one. Turns out the museum, though, is only open on Saturdays, so Roland was not to be burdened by my reminiscences about something that was probably not as grand a part of my childhood as I want it to be.

* I see that the link for comments has changed; what used to be a pen-symbol is now just the legend, "no comments:". If you click on that, it'll take to you a place where you can question my righteous authority, for all the good it'll do you.