Crab Chips

Crab Chips photo by Lynda Fletcher

Ooh, Gross!  Does anyone think these are good?

Artemisia Cafe Portland, ME

Amongst the brick cobbles of Portland’s quiet Pleasant Street sits Artemisia Cafe.  “Coffee no cream, please.”  At these tables pulses culture.  Art expands, contracts, and, we, hope, expands again.

A stained glass fish, half red, half yellow, causes the patron to ponder the struggle of artistry and what it becomes for so many.  Inside this cafe, in this fleeting moment, art stands.  One of the few of the many.

Moist brownie.  Strong coffee.  It pays to wander the streets of Portland.

By the Seashore

By the Seashore

I sit

In the drip of fog

The haze of day

The wail of gull

The brightness of soul

Replenished

Pot Roast Sandwich

Mashed potatoes

Brown Gravy

Pot Roast

Tender

Juicy

Thick

Brown Gravy

Sourdough

Dig In

Portland, Maine WCSH

Gulls adrift.  To and fro.  To and fro.  The afternoon fades into crisp evening.  Dressed in his gray and white, a gull poses atop a brick chimney, a perch in my view from the Holiday Inn.  Coffee’s scent drifts from the pot in the room.  WCSH’s Peacock splashes colorful competition with the gray and white flock.

Springtime Grille

Sizzle on the grille

On the spring evening

A couple of dogs

A couple of burgers

Grille the bun

Just right, its done

A Child of the 1970’s

Break the stale gum in a pack of Topps.  Reggie Jackson, Pete Rose.  Dad has just sprung for some cards and a Snickers for my brother and me with the change from his Hamilton for filling up the Mercury Monarch.

Get Married in Vegas

There is Wedding Information for couples in need.

Wedding Information photo by Jon Sullivan.

Refrigerated Train

The train rolls around the bend.  Faster and faster it glides.  Ahead lie the Tehacapis.  The brown grass blows in the spring wind the train rolls towards Barstow.
The freight train now grinds upward, over the mountain.  Towards the summit roll refrigerated loads of lettuce from the Salinas valley bound for eastern markets.  In a week these loads will be salads on Fifth Avenue.
I watch the growling locomotives and will follow the train on the climb.  The locomotives growl with one hundred cars.  It is a fight to keep the perishable train on schedule.  A refrigerated train stays in front of the pack.  It has priority on the railroad.
I watch as the piggybacked trailers climbed the Tehachapi Grade.  A steel train sits on the secondary siding; it has a red light and waits in the hole.  The refrigerated train passes.  The crews give a friendly wave.
That is working on the railroad.  It is a dangerous job.  It is a rigorous job, yet there is always a friendly salute to a fellow railroader, to a passing kid.  That is working on the railroad, always a wave, yet always alert.
The train rolls onward.  Through the town of Tehachapi, it has conquered the Tehachapi Loop on its climb of the mountains.  Downward into the Mojave, the train rolls to the lonely desert.  As night falls, the train will get a fresh crew in Barstow and continue its trek towards Kansas City.  Its trek eastward, delivering California’s freshness to Fifth Avenue.

Kern County and Beyond

I exit I-5 and pass the dairies of Kern County. Ahead lie the Tehachapi Mountains and the world’s largest wind-mill generation area. Beyond is the Mojave-the lonely high desert where Chuck Yeager first broke the speed of sound. The rails then come together at Barstow; ah, my vacation.

Bakersfield Road by Jon Sullivan