Dac Crossley's Western Blog

Modern Photography

We tell each other. "The best camera I've ever used is in my cell phone." I wonder.

Do you still have your old cameras? I have my first camera, a little Univex. Remember rolling the film forward and looking for the next number in a little red hole? Did you have a favorite Kodak Brownie? My Grandfather's camera was a box Brownie - I still have it.

My friend Clive had a big collection of cameras. He had to give it up when he moved into a retirement village. I'm not there yet. My assorted cameras are a march through history.

After the Brownies came the 35mm jobs. I have my first Exacta, clumsy but effective. I learned how to develop Plus-X film cartridges. And remember the old Kodachrome, speed ISO 10? Those slides are still good. And Ektachrome, ISO 40 that you could develop yourself?

Ever use a half-frame camera? Twice as many pictures on a roll? Or one of those funny little jobs with negatives on a wheel? At last we moved on to Leicas and Canons, interchangeable lenses. And got serious about photography.

My friend Sharon read the handwriting on the wall and sold her camera store. Digital arrived. The neighborhood film developer was on the way out.

Canons, Leicas, all became digital cameras with interchangeable lenses. Serious instruments. Displaced at last by the cell phone.

But I wonder. I have a letter - Dad offering advice to a young lady photographer: "Nice work. Including something in the foreground gives your photos depth. But remember to turn off the autofocus option, or you camera will focus on the foreground or background but not both. Stop down to f16, That works."

Maybe I'll get out my Canon again.

Dac Crossley
Sunday, June 23, 2019.

"The secret pf staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age." - Lucille Ball.

Drinking a Beer in Amarillo

Amarillo, Texas is way up there in the Panhandle, over 700 miles from my home in Brownsville. Nevertheless, I married a young lady from Amarillo. Visited there many times. Met her when I studied biology at Texas Tech in Lubbock.

The city was named for a nearby Playa lake but it wasn't pronounced the Spanish way. The LX Ranch took notice when the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad started building their way in 1887. The railroad bypassed Tascosa, the old Cowtown. A new city, soon named Amarillo, rapidly became a cattle shipping point. The town grew. Hotels, stores, a newspaper. Amarillo became the county seat of Potter County, Texas. All was well.

Yet the owner of the competitive Frying Pan Ranch pointed out that the town was built on low ground, subject to flooding. And sure enough, a rare rainstorm did flood the town. Residents picked up and moved to the east. Stores followed; Amarillo was on the move. The new 40-room Amarillo Hotel became a social center as the town drifted eastward. The depot and courthouse stayed in the old site because the law decreed that they couldn't be moved for five years after their establishment in 1887. Eventually new structures were built in the new town center, to the east of the original one.

Amarillo continued to expand to the east. Soon it lopped over to the adjacent Randall County. And here's where I come in.

Randall County, unlike the rest of the Panhandle, was wet. You could buy a beer in Randall County and sit down and drink it. But not across the line in Potter County.

Think of the revenue. All those people in Potter County streaming across to Randall County to spend their money. Bootleggers driving in and out, trucking their cargo to those thirsty college students down in Lubbock. Wow!

I'm sure that's all been settled by today. Even here in Georgia the number of dry counties has dried up. Texas has gone legal.

Or has it?

Dac Crossley
June 16, 2019. Happy Father's Day.

"The Golden Years have come at last. The Golden years can kiss my ass." (attributed to the Cat in the Hat)

Writing Memoirs

Maybe it's not such a good idea.

I'm trying to write my memories in language that will be interesting to people who don't actually know me. To do this, I have to place myself in the environment of the times. Nostalgia rises to the surface. People and places of oh! so long ago. I feel better if I live in the moment, although today's moment gives me a cranky refrigerator and cat urine in the carpet.

When I was twenty I went with Larry Cavazos to Texas Tech in far north Lubbock. Thinking back on it now, I can't help but contrast today's lifestyle with those ancient years. Seventy of them.

Most automobiles were pre-war. Production couldn't keep up with the demand for new ones. We arrived in Lubbock in my 1936 Oldsmobile, surviving two flat tires and a broken rear spring on the trip.

No television. In the Panhandle, TV was five years away. Movies, yes, continual showings afternoon and evening.

Drugstore lunch counters, nickelodeons blasting at us. The
Big Band area fading away as vocalists rose to fame. Nat King Cole sang "Nature Boy." In Lubbock Hank Thompson, Hank Williams cried at us. And of course Homer and Jethro. Elvis was just a few years away.

Up-to-date dial telephones, no "Number please." Long distance? Dial "Operator." Tell her "Brownsville, Texas." Insert coins when asked.

Our undergrad classes taught by stogy old professors, ready for retirement. Amazement when Harry Truman was elected. We weren't involved, in those years.

In that long-ago milieu we made friends, other biology students. Beryl Nowlin, ever generous. Travis Everett from down in Post, Texas (named for the cereal). He went on to become an entomologist. Clyde Snow, who got an MD someplace in the Caribbean and earned his reputation in forensics. My young wife who struggled to find herself. And our brothers who followed us to Tech and hied their way onward to fame. All gone now, the Lubbock and the Texas Tech of the late Forties, the students and professors. Instead we have cell phones and computers and the internet and it is all different.

You see why writing your memoirs is not such a good idea/

Dac Crossley
June 6, 2019

"No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated." - Ellen Glascow, novelist.