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Saturday, September 03, 2022

A Visit to My Corrales Childhood Home - August 27, 2022

I timed my New Mexico trip to coincide with the annual Corrales Art Studio Tour, because my childhood home is stop number five on the tour, and thus open to the general public.

With help from several laborers (Juan Garcia and Ernest Martinez, and my cousin Fred Aragon), plus my mom of course, my dad built this house in the years 1959-1961.  My parents sold the house to the fellow from Carlson's Heating and Air in 1990, who proceeded to completely transform the place to the point of unrecognizability.  There have been several owners since - a true multigenerational project!
 

These days, they call this place 716 La Entrada Road.  When I was young, that system didn't exist, and so the house had no formal designation.

We planted two cottonwood trees that grew very slowly.  Both are still here, though!  Here's the one at the southeast corner of the house.

Entering the house through the (thoroughly-reworked) front door.

They put in a skylight.  Given the propensity of this house to leak, that's madness!

The same light fixtures.  Decades later!  Amazing!

Behind some of the artwork, a glimpse at one of the two fireplaces we put in before our abortive San Diego move in 1971.

The space between the house (on the right) and the garage.  Our dog Prince dug up a nest of mice here around 1969.

They put in a pool!  A pool! Hard to wrap my head around this.

The garage is full of pottery these days!

They added on to the kitchen.  This is not part of the original house.

My sister Michelle and her son Aaron look bewildered.  Of course, Aaron is too young to remember any of this.

Here's where the French doors used to be, where, on a hot summer's day in 1963, a loose bull entered the house for some shade.  I tried to get the bull to charge by making faces at it - someone on the school bus told me this would work - but the bull remained inert and placid.  Eventually I alerted my mother, and she chased the bull outside with a broom.

Me and my sister Marra.

Art tourists shop among the wares.

The pool, with the garage behind it.

The living room.  The bricks in the floor are just the same as sixty years ago!  My bed was here. on the left where the paintings now hang. This part of the house was unheated during my years here.  When I went to college, the bed was vacant, and thus it came to pass, when my grandmother fell at the age of 88 and needed a place to recover, that she came here.  She died in my bed in 1982.

Looking through glass windows here - the part of the house we aren't permitted to visit.  This is the southeast corner of the family room, where my two sisters and I had our beds in elementary-school years.  Now it's a dining room.  Just surreal!

They blew out the northeast corner of the family room for an expanded kitchen and living space.

They have goats!  It's like life has come full circle.  Sixty years ago, the Lewis' goats next door would get loose and come over to our house.  And now, there are goats here again!  They live here, though.

A pretty flower grows in what used to be pretty uninviting dirt out front.

Friday, September 02, 2022

Flight from Sacramento to Burbank, CA - August 26, 2022


Interstate 5, at the airport's doorstep.

Sacramento Metropolitan Field (SMF) - Sacramento's airport - and Interstate 5.

Westlake Development.  I modeled air quality impacts for this development when I was at Sierra Research about a decade ago.  I somehow doubted this development would be built, but here it is!

Arco Arena, undergoing demolition.  I remember the first time I ever came to Sacramento, about 1987, and how proud everyone was of their new NBA Arena.  Now it's being smashed into pieces.  It's fairly new too!  Sigh.  No one listens.  Also, Pepper Von's new health and fitness studio is in this shot.

The American River.

Folsom Lake, Lake Natoma, and the American River.

Yosemite Valley, including El Capitan and Half Dome.

Two fires near Yosemite - probably the Red and Washburn fires.

Bass Lake.

Millerton Lake.

Millerton Lake and the San Joaquin River.

Somewhere over the southern Central Valley.

Edge of the southern Central Valley - Elk Hills/Buttonwillow Airport.

Bleak down there!

Tortured, mountainous terrain.

Just east of Fillmore, California.

Happy Camp Canyon.

Tapo Canyon Road, Santa Susana.

Canoga Park, in the San Fernando Valley.

Van Nuys Airport.  Amazing!  Burbank Airport is nearby, so these two large airports have to share air space.  Airliners landing at Burbank fly low and perpendicularly-across the runway at Van Nuys Airport, because directly over the airport is exactly where they WON'T encounter any Van Nuys air traffic!

San Diego Freeway (405).

Sherman Way and Highway 170.

Landing!

People disembark out both doors, onto the tarmac, here at Burbank.

My Beast of Burden!

"Fly Quietly."

The Process of Archiving “Better Call Saul” Filming Locations

The process of archiving “Better Call Saul” filming locations requires resolving partial, contradictory, or changing sources of information, and induces a certain mindset…. 

(Thanks, Andrea Nowak!) 

 

Visit to the Duke City

Sunday morning, August 28th, I drove through the mural-laden alley behind the El Rey Theater, but didn’t see the Glass Block Windows I expected, so I returned on foot in the afternoon. There were two street folk there, a man about 40 with an Ethiopian accent and probably a local woman about age 30; both exhausted by the afternoon heat. So, we all struck up conversation. 

I told them my windows lament. The fellow blamed recent changes, and responded about how he had once been able to get and smoke crack cocaine in this very alley, but - poof! No more! So we commiserated with each other and waxed nostalgic about not being able to find what we wanted in the post-apocalyptic hellscape of modern Albuquerque. 

The woman shot the man a look like ‘maybe you should be quiet,’ but the man kept talking, this time about various martyrs in the murals, and soon he began expounding on the injustice of O.J. Simpson’s acquittal. Twenty-seven years on, and that case still irritates people. The woman asked me if I had any extra water. I didn’t, but I went and got some for her anyway. Justice is a mixed bag in this world, but Albuquerque afternoon heat is a very real and present danger, and must be guarded against.

This interesting mural isn't in the alley, but rather on the side of the Tri-H Convenience Store, known in "Breaking Bad" for "Hey man, someone stole your bike!"