Midwest flooding

[Jesse Joe]

Your right about those stupid scary movies Nightingale... And I know it's not advise to run if you spot a bear Patti, but I would run anyway !

[Patti]

Spiders give me the creeps. I'll squish them too. No I haven't noticed them in the garden, just few ants. Once my son Joe ran away from a bear and the ladder happened to be convenient and he climbed on top of the house. The bear kept hanging around staring at him.. Poor kid. He was only around 12.

[Nightingale]

I don't care what the experts say, I would probably not be able to keep from running...lol.
Thank goodness Joe had the ladder handy...he sounds like he's pretty smart cause that's good thinking for a scared 12 year old

Jesse Joe...my favorite scary movie is House On Haunted Hill...the original version with Pamela Franklin and Roddy McDowell...great scary stuff if you haven't seen it.
I also love the original Body Snatcher's movie...scared the heck out of me when I was a kid...lol.

[Jesse Joe]

I dont remember seeing that movie "House On Haunted Hill." My fav scary movie is the first "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", again at the Drive-In.

[Patti]

I used to love going to Drive-In movies. I think the last one I saw at a Drive-In was Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

[Nightingale]

We still have our little country drive-in. It's called "Mel's" and it plays all summer long

The kids go there a lot but I usually don't

[Patti]

That's good that they have a drive-in around there. I don't know why so many closed, but I'm guessing that a few juveniles got delinquent(?) When I first went to a drive-in, I was with my parents and sibs. Then later went with groups of kids. We didn't get too delinquent other than hiding someone in the trunk once or twice.

[Nightingale]

Hiding someone in the trunk...lol

That's not delinquent, Patti...that's expected!

[Jesse Joe]

lol ! I think everyone hid someone in the trunk at least once or twice. Patti the reason they give down here why Drive-In's are closing, is VCR's. In the early 80's people started buying them. My very first VCR was an RCA (2 heads) that I bought in 1980, paid $2000 for it, just so I could watch "Gordon Lightfoot Olympic Tribute Concert" he did at CNE in Toronto.

You see I knew the guy who sold them, and I asked him if he would set the machine to tape that concert which was on a Sunday night. The store was closed on Sundays in those days... I told him if you agree to do that for me I will buy the machine in a few weeks. But I thought in would not work, something would happen and that VCR machine would not come on at 8:00 pm on CBC TV, how could that possibly occur "Magic?" So he did, and it recorded it, and I kept my word. Must have watch that concert thousands of time.

But their still "Olympic Team Benefit' which Gord did in 1976 at Maple Leafs Gardens that I would like to owned, and a few early Juno Awards shows, where Gord was winning them by the basket full.

Today you can buy a 4 head VCR for less than a $100 dollars, and of course DVD machines...aso.

[Patti]

You got a VCR just to see my Gordie baby? Magic.

So they close down drive-ins because of people having recorders? Still, it'd be nice to go out to a movie.

[charlene]

fundraiser in Kansas - daughter of the cook of the Fitz in pic at link:
http://www.abilene-rc.com/index.cfm?...0F99D333CC83E8

[geodeticman.5]

Patti-
There's still one drive-in in Denver - down out 'o my Highlands here... but its in a distressed neighborhood turning light industrial.... you see a movie there and your hubcaps are off in the gate at 20 MPH, then u park and your up on blocks while you're smoochin' LOL Don't feel bad Patti I remember cramming *4* guys in the folks Chevy wagon with the far back hatch and mini-seat area - my dad tore the seats out saying the roll-down rear window would "exhaust gas any kids in that seat to death, do to turbulence and backflow" - dad the Engineer.... thats why older wagons had that funny 4" x 4ft wide chrome deflector at the back of the roof - ostensibly to ward off exhaust back flow - now wagons *never* come with that....
-geo steve fellow drive-in delinquent at 17...
p.s. I am ashamed ladies to admit this - but in CLeveland the convention at drive-ins - that had really BAD R-rated movies was.... 16 & 17 yr olds would sneak in.... and spend the whole time honking if they did not see... well... certain female body parts that come in two's on the screen... honk until they "showed 'em" - and you thought I was a gentleman hah ! I blame it all biochemically from hormones and a self-replicating retro-muto-genesis syndrome, much as the Andromeda Strain since Dad worked for NASA - it had to come from Mars - now that we know there is/was water there not my fault.... whistle..... shhh shh

[geodeticman.5]

Nightingale - correct me if I am wrong - but wasn't it "House on Haunted Hill" not "The Haunting of Hill House" ? House on Haunted Hill I recall was with Vincent Price holding the Haunted House Party for his ascerbic wife, offering 1 million to whomever could spend the night - and it was all a sham with the skeleton on marionette strings, pushing people into the acid pit in the night ?

I think.... The movie you referred to was actually called The Haunting of Hill House circa '75 colour circa versus Vincent price per above around '65; B & W by Ralph Castle - known for his cheap in-theatre stage gags - in showings of the Vincent Price one - they would run a skeleton down over the audience on a cable - far cry from the slasher movies kids digest nowadays you could not pay me to watch.... and Castle's other haunting movie was "13 Ghosts" - a real bad saturday afternoon spooker where a Hugh Beaumont-type dad puts on "spectre-vision" glasses that allow him too see the thirteen ghosts - and the audience was given red and green folding "spectre-glasses" that allowed them to see pseudo-3D.-

I believe The Haunting of Hill House, in colour , yes, with Roddy McDowall, and the young woman scratched by the cat - and the ghost was of a man with very short legs. And the "Professor" (who was all along holding a study on fright) purged the house with an electro-magnetron - of course. I saw that in a theatre outside Purdue U in Lafayette, Indiana, double-dating with a guy who is now a monk.. and 2 girls from the University. Great Flick - colour. Both have been remade, and are horrible slashers - kids love 'em of course, not me..

Or, I've got it backwards, and u are right. ?? The monk was at Jaws 1st showing in Lafayette, double dating again, and when the head pops out of the dingy boat half-sunk underwater - my friend was so shocked he threw a 98 ounce Coke in one hand and 5-gallon butter pop-corn in the other - both in his own face - and the girls died laughing.....he was not a monk then safe to say... but corfidites remember my ramblings about the monk.. LOL what memories. Good old spookers. Forgive me if I am wrong Nightingale - I have not checked on-line 2 see if I am right - cause I don't believe in trivial (non GL matters...) in taking research time just to prove someone wrong... AHEM Sir John Ahem harrumph....! j/k ole' friend.
- ~geo steve

[Patti]

Steve,
I guess you you have hubcaps on your car, then? You know, once I had a wagon that might have had some problem like that. I didn't notice any exhaust odor or anything, but if I drove it for any length or time, the next day, I would feel exhausted. I don't if it had that deflector. It might have.
...Mars, yeah, probably.

[Nightingale]

Hi Steve,

You could be right about the movie. I just remember seeing it when I was young...maybe 12 or 13 if my memory isn't faulty on that too...lol.
It had Vincent Price, Roddy McDowell and Pamela Franklin in it for sure. Couldn't say who the other actors were though.
Everyone in my family thought it was so funny because in the move, Pamela Franklin is a 'sensitve' and she tries to help the ghost whose name was ...Balasko.(I think). She lets him crawl in to bed with her and well, whatever...but Pamela makes the mistake of opening her eyes to look at him and screams her head off before she goes completely comotose from disgust and fear.
My older sister told me that the ghost had 'deflowered' Pamela...lol.
I wouldn't sleep alone for weeks after watching that movie. I had no idea what being 'deflowered' meant but I knew I didn't want any part of it!

You could be right about the movie...the one I watched has to be somewhere around 40 years old if it was new at the time.

Purdue University...hey, you were in my stompin' grounds when you were there. Only about a half hour from my house

[geodeticman.5]

Patti - LOL I used to have hubcaps on the folks ole Chevy wagon in High School when we snuck in those drive-ins... its long gone. Now I drive a 4WD Dodge truck where hubcaps would be.... superfluous, if not too "pimped" or "bling" if I have the colourful colloquialisms right...for a regular guys ride.... LOL fun memories
~geo steve

[geodeticman.5]

Yes Nightingale - you're right - Balasko was the ghost of the man with the unnaturally short legs he lamented in the movie - thats the one ! imho Vincent Price I still believe was in the old B&W House On Haunted Hill where he gave everyone pistols out of party-novelty mini-coffins at the start... and the rope climbed into the impressionable young polly purebread, who was a real screamer pro, and was of course saved by the [I]de rigeur[I] regular guy - the reporter/hero with the press card in his hat for no discernable reason. I am sure you're right though, my memory is probably crosslinked on a few bad sectors. I wonder if the doc can defrag and reformat me ? LOL
-geo steve

[Nightingale]

Hi Steve,

This is funny because after I thought about if for a while, I decided that you are right...lol.
Whatever...maybe we both have it wrong...lol.
I do remember the movie you are talking about. I remember that acid pit...pretty good scary movie

Jaws...oh my gosh! Now that was a scary movie!
That opening scene still can give me nightmares...poor girl, bobbing up and down with that confused "what the heck is eating me" look on her face
Brilliant! Such a classic...

[geodeticman.5]

Nightingale

Yeah, whichever one was the old B&W one, with the acid pit and the skeleton pushing people into it -- and I gotta say that poor old skeeelatin (as I pronounced it when I was a kid per my parents lol ) looked like a nerfball would send him blown apart into the acid pit himself.... well THAT movie I saw on a Saturday afternoon on TV, and I got so scared by myself downstits in a BIG house - not expensive just BIGGGG, that I got sick to my stomche from fear.

So I matter of factly according to my mother years later told me that I turned the movie off, came upstairs, and said "Mommy, that scary of a movie is not right for a kid my age, it makes me sick I get so scared. So, lets not allow me to watch that "spooker" theatre on Saturdays anymore, OK mommy ?" LOL she said she tried very hard not to laugh, choked on her coffee (she was in a neighborhood coffee "klatch" [ is that correct nomenclature?] and I had said all of this in front of her friends in hats and gloves and stuff and she lost it.....

And so I went back outside into my glorious woods behind my house, climbed a rope in a tree, jumped in leaves (it was near Halloween as I recall) and thought I was the first man to ever explore the trails I went on, having just read the night before one of the science-series books my folks subscribed me to, to "stimulate my mind....", this one was on "Surveying and Mapping" and in the woods I remembered fancying myself to be the weatherhardened nd gravely serious mathemetician standing on the mountain-top, while his "assistant operated the short wave radio". Great memories and scary movies.... later....

[Peter Bro10]

Ok, time to get this thread back on topic!!!
this is a pic that my wife took in Cedar Rapids today... (Cedar River)
Iowa's idea of a houseboat!

[geodeticman.5]

PeterBro and RM:

Sorry for the tangent I went off on there..... man that picture is hard to reconcile with my mental image of Iowa.... that is so sad... and how quickly we forget some things like this. As in - the gulf coast, New Orleans, whole urban areas relocated around to the SW, and _most_ of us start to forget...

It is admirable there are those among us at any given time who are cognizant of the bigger picture going on. I like how the Denver Rocky Mtn News refers to the natural phenomenon/disasters: "Earth Diary" - a daily column that speaks of immense forces of nature around the planet....entire peoples being rendered homeless, whole regional agricultural season's work washed/blown/torn away ., etc... at least brings it to our attention daily....all in a little 4" x 4" column...

Beside it will be a half page article on the cultural aspects of the food festival in downtown Denver..., which, while important, in relative terms overshadowing a whole city being washed or blown away in the little column by it....suggests we need a paradim shift, or at least talking of it for a few minutes every day in schools, etc... not that the cultural aspect of food festivals is not important....

Thank you for reminding us of what, a long days drive away from me, is disaster that ought have more attention paid. I'm embarrassed..... but applaud you for keeping the subject on the table.. I may have missed your mentioning it earlier, but if your wife is in Iowa versus Illinois taking pictures - is she a journalist/photographer, or in insurance or FEMA, etc. ? Is she professionally involved in it , in any event ? I do not mean to ask too personal of questions, only curiosity.

Thank you for reminding me of this...its so easy to loe site of that bigger picture some times. Then again, if we did not cut up, here and there, listen to some Lightfoot, and speak of life's little pleasures or troubles, what a sad world it would be as well. All things in balance.

I am trying to think of the right GL song and/or verse that encapsulates part of this balance of the big and little both warranting attention.... can't bring it to mind... somebody help me here...

Maybe in Don Quixote, looking just at the societal extremes coexisting minutes apart would fit some of this dichotomy: "see the Gentry in the country riding off to take the air..., (only Lightfoot can paint that kind of picture lyrically and musically to me), see the children wake to find the table bare" I thing that is how it goes by memory.

Thanks P-Bro
~geo steve

[Patti]

I liked seeing him sing, "Reaching for his saddlebag ... "

[geodeticman.5]

Patti,

Yeah, I can smell the harness leather in those saddlebag's as Gord sings it; I know what you mean.... " reaching for his saddlebag, he takes a battered book into his hand, and standing like a prophet bold he shouts across the ocean to the shore, 'til he can shout no more.."

Patti when you say you liked seeing him sing about reaching into his saddlebags, did you see him sing DQ in concert, and were reminiscing of that, or was it a simple typo and you were gonna say "hearing him" ,
no matter, only curious.

PeterBro : BTW - what is that floating in the river ?; looks too flat for the roof of a house... partly my eyes, but I can't quite tell.


~geo steve

[Peter Bro10]

In the picture of the Cedar River, it is indeed what's left of a house.
My wife and the kids were camping just north of Cedar Rapids this past week, with her sister who lives in Cedar Rapids. They spent last night in Cedar Rapids at my sister-in-law's house, which I suppose I should mention was high and dry, (2 blocks from the flood evac zone) before returning home later today. Dani, my wife, who toured the city with her sister related the sad conditions there and just a handful of stories of those who lost so much!
Just an aside here, I generally come to corfid with a light heart... this is where I get some diversion from the stresses and struggles of everyday life. I didn't mean to draw anyone down, I was rather just joking. I suppose I ought to apologize, as that is what's left of someone's Home! But sometimes a bit of leviety helps.

All in all, I was a bit amused at how far off topic we corfidians can get! and with Dani sending me this pic, I thought I'd share it with all of you. I've always been fond of Iowa, and can't hardly imagine what they've had to cope with.

G-man, as George Carlin would say... Don't sweat the petty stuff and don't pet the sweaty stuff!!! take care of yourself!

Peace to you all....

[Patti]

Steve, I liked seeing him sing it and also I like what he sings after each time he says it, ... he takes a battered book into his hand ...
... he takes a rusty sword into his hand ...
and
... he takes a tarnished cross into his hand ...

you were looking for a song or verse that encapsulates part of the balance, so since you were already into the Don Quixote song, I thought that would help out some.

So much is going on and some like Don Quixote, do care so much, but no one seems to hear them. ...

Peter Bro10, I know people along the Mississippi in Iowa. I've been there a few times years ago. It looked so beautiful by the river.