As a kid I use to walk miles back and forth on such rails to a trestle where I would catch carp with my buddies. I was under the age to legally drink, but this didn’t stop us guys from trading these carp we caught for beer. The folks liked the fish we provided, and we certainly enjoyed the suds. While drinking the beer we sucked down many cigarettes, mainly Marlboros and Winstons. Smokes cost about 45 cents a pack in those days. That was nearly forty years ago. Never did tell my parents about this, but you know my father has been known to view and comment on this blog. Yikes…
Do you like sweet potatoes? If so, how do you like your sweet potatoes cooked? How many sweet potatoes do you eat a year? Have you ever photographed sweet potatoes?
Here are some interesting facts about sweet potatoes from Wikipedia:
The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is a dicotyledonous plant that belongs to the family Convolvulaceae. Amongst the approximately 50 genera and more than 1,000 species of this family, only I. batatas is a crop plant whose large, starchy, sweet tasting tuberous roots are an important root vegetable (Purseglove, 1991; Woolfe, 1992). The young leaves and shoots are sometimes eaten as greens. The sweet potato is only distantly related to the potato (Solanum tuberosum). The softer, orange variety is commonly marketed as a yam in parts of North America, a practice intended to differentiate it from the firmer, white variety. The sweet potato is very distinct from the other plant known as a yam (in the Dioscoreaceae family), which is native to Africa and Asia. To prevent confusion, the United States Department of Agriculture requires that sweet potatoes labeled as “yams” also be labeled as “sweet potatoes”.
Outside of northern Topeka, Kansas, there is a huge Co-Op for feed, grain and such where trains load. We were passing over the bridge of the railroad when I snapped this photo getting an almost bird’s-eye infinity shot following the rail lines. Preston was driving and I was snapping the shutter from the advantage of an upper, moving perspective. You’ll notice the bridge section is a bit blurred in motion yet the rest of the photo clear. Even though deep in autumn, there was still some green evident. To the right of the photo, the power poles still have the old-time glass insulators. The now color photo seemed to call for an old-fashioned look.
In Corel Paint Shop Pro, I processed the photo in Time Machine of an old-time effect called Albumen. The Corel description for Albumen: Widely used from 1855 to the 1890s, this inexpensive photographic method produced paper-based photos. Negatives were captured on glass, and the print was then created on paper that used albumen from egg whites to bind the light-sensitive chemicals to the paper.
Anna was driving and I was on the passenger side of the truck armed with a camera. Heading east from Wamego, KS on Highway 24, going towards the small town of Belvue, I saw this little red car. Now everybody can see the Little Red Car.
There is a little town, Ogden, Kansas that is next to the army base, Ft. Riley, and on the eastern side connects to the small city, Manhattan, Kansas. The history traces back as Ogden Town on the railroad chartered in 1857, and the mixed population serves those who can trace their ancestors in the area and the transient military.
Yesterday was rainy, windy, and cold ushering in a cold front which has brought wet, clumpy snowfall today on Monday. I’ve been in, out, and through Ogden many times throughout the years and I never noticed the stone tower on the hill to the north. With the trees naked, I noticed yesterday. I really do not know what it is, or if it had been a fancy silo, or a part of an old fort like structure from long ago. I couldn’t find any history on it. When I have time and am in Ogden again, I’ll ask some residents who live there. When I saw the tower, we tried to figure out how to get to it. That is when we came upon the horse. Where the white horse was located, going beyond to the right stood the castle looking tower, and down the hill somewhat of the tower were old, rusty mobile homes from probably the late 1950s and early 1960s era. Truly a strange sight all in all. Therefore, a Ogden, Kansas Fairytale.
Once upon a time, there was a knight named Sir Og. He had a brilliant white stallion named Horse Og. Sir Og had a fine castle upon the hill that surveyed all the land below containing the river, hills, and miles of thick strands of trees. One day, Sir Og decided to go deer hunting with only his bow and arrow. He had things troubling his mind. He left on foot leaving Horse Og behind and disappeared into the woods. Then a mighty blizzard blanketed the kingdom. That was the last anyone had seen Sir Og. Many searched for him but found nary of a trace. To this day, the spirit of Horse Og appears often searching for his wonderful master, Sir Og. To this day, only one tower still stands in testament of a time long ago in the kingdom of Ogden, and the memories are all lost in modern time.
I love trees of any kind in all the moods of the four seasons. For me, trees appear to have personalities. This naked field tree hunkering down for winter to come has a personality. If you were to give this tree a personality as it is, what would you term it to be?
Anna Surface
Preston Surface
In our other blog, Abstract Reflections.
