Altenatives Too

A Nash Metropolitan hauling a pop-up trailer trundles past the Garland Avenue Benewah Creamery Milk Bottle in Spokane, Washington.

Pop-up trailers are a lightweight and compact alternative to regular trailers. Fiberglass and canvas, however, do not provide sufficient protection from ravenous bears.

Two Benewah milk bottle stores were built in Spokane in the mid 1930s. Benewah Creamery had the milk contract at Westview Elementary School when I transferred in the mid sixties. A half-pint glass bottle with crimped paper lid cost 3 cents. (This was back when keyboards had cents signs but no exclamation points on them and no one had even heard of a tilde!)

This ad from a North Central High School  year book shows the bottle in the early 1970s. I have vague and potentially false memories of a neon Indian chief on the Garland Avenue building. Vague and false memories are par for the course in this project.

A Recurring Theme

Trailers Haunt My Work of the Past

Sketchbook 

c1974

Etching Suite (portholes)

c1977

Etching Suite (awnings)

c1977

Etching Suite (behind Grand Central/Fred Meyer)

c1977

Tomato Tornado

1997

Tornado Bait

1999

Close Encounters II

Long before many things were open-all-night Dad would drive until he was literally or figuratively out of gas and then pull over behind a "filling station" where we would sleep until it opened. On one occasion the parking place was perilously close to undetected train tracks. When a freight train blasted by in the wee hours we had a truly rude awakening. Someone (probably Sandi) said it was almost as loud as Kay blowing her nose. 

As recently as 1976 there wasn't a gas station open late in Dillon, Montana. A note on the pump gave a number to call where for an additional $10 an attendant would come and turn on the pump. I made the call, paid the ransom and filled my tank. While I was in the town diner ordering hot chocolate someone siphoned all my newly purchased fuel. I always suspected the gas station attendant in bathrobe and galoshes of the crime. Later that night I narrowly avoided colliding with a jackrabbit in the middle of the road that was as big as a small cow. It might have been a sleep deprivation induced hallucination--or not.

Entertainment System

Our entertainment system consisted of an AM radio and a deck of cards. Occasionally we caught a glimpse of a movie as we sped past a drive-in theater. We pronounced the word theater with emphasis on the middle syllable--just like Jethro Bodine.

Trailer Envy Eye Eye Eye

Portholes.

Road Kill II

At one time the jackrabbit was seemingly ubiquitous on Western highways. Both the two and three dimensional varieties dotted the landscape. Drawn to highways by the reflective warmth, green vegetation, and the promise of romantic liaisons, the reckless rabbits were sent to the great beyond in large numbers by speeding cars.

Rabbit at Pompey's Pillar

This jackrabbit surveys the sandstone rock formation visited and defaced by Captain William Clark in July, 1806. The outcropping was not named for the Roman general  or the brothel-filled city destroyed by Vesuvius but for Jean Baptiste "Pompy" Charbonneau--the infant son of expedition member Sacagawea.

Now a National Monument the landmark was in private hands until the BLM (Bureau of Land Management, not Black Lives Matter) purchased it from the Foote family in 1991.

Our visit was in the mid to late Sixties. The rock was closed for no apparent reason. We ate cold fried chicken outside the gates.