05 | January | 2012 | tugster: a waterblog

Unpacking a suitcase or knapsack I like to be fast; unpacking my head after a trip I like to be slow. The foto (doubleclick enlarges) below I took Christmas morning 7:57 am . . . Hiwassee River under I-75 . . . it was so moody, so unwelcoming of Christmas scenes that I stopped the car on the shoulder just beyond the bridge and ran back to get this foto. I know you’re not supposed to do that, but . . .

Notice that I’ve added many new fotos to the Flickr show on the left side of this page, all taken at Old Car City in White, Georgia, a place of ghosts like this one of Hernando de Soto. His face here looks as disoriented as I felt walking through the

4000 cars haunting this woods. The image below is interactive.

Obviously I saw cars here, in various states of degradation, but I also saw people from my past. No . . . I’m not really a lunatic, but seeing a De Soto I think of the great-uncle who sponsored my father to this country. Seeing a Hudson I remember Ernie, the farmer from across the valley who drove one unless he was sitting on his Minneapolis Moline face flushed from a combination of sun and hard cider he made himself.

My parents drove me home from my birthplace/hospital in a Plymouth.

Cadillacs and almst all the cars of my youth were massive, chromeplated, and evocative of greatness with their artdeco decorations. I could go on, but check the Flickr shots.

I’ve said before . . . Wilmington is a place I’ll go back to next December if not sooner. Meet Log Dog, launched 1953, (ex-D. E. 51) and

Isco . . . Here’s a foto of Isco from the bank of Eagle Island.

Pelicans . . . I still need to get a foto of a squadron of these guys wingtips skimming the water. Help me out here: I recall someone telling me of a pelican sighted on Jamaica Bay last summer. Anyone see it or hear of it?