Have A Happy and Safe Thanksgiving Holiday---

but look out for Black Friday!! I hear it's likely to be more wicked than in the past. No prediction---mind you---just hear-say, of course.

SOME of you don't like airplanes, I know, but it' been a long time since the Wright Brothers left the Terra Firma at Kitty Hawk. The constant change in technology has made flying more safe than ever in the states.


I have followed a young man that I have come to admire because he flew around the world solo at 16, has come back to earth long enough  to get his education at MIT and has never owned a car---more or less, but flies a Beechcraft 36 everywhere. Last night he stopped in Bryan, Ohio to refuel on his way home to South Dakota for Thanksgiving, not landing until  01:30 this morning.  after being in Vermont and upstate New York before heading for home.

He has a foundation that he set up. He travels everywhere by his own plane; has more flight hours than some first officers that fly commercially. He writes software---for lack of a better way to describe it---and enjoys life to the fullest. 

I went out to DFW yesterday after paying my annual visit to my bank's branch in Irving. I said to the tellers that every thing has come early this year--spring;summer;fall. So, here I am in November rather than December this year! I had a little check (AARGH) people still send those, that had that little annoying statement---deposit promptly. Then why use checks....electronics work fine. Also, since I get one of those annually and it's 16 miles out to the bank and 16 miles back---unless I go to DFW from there, which I did. But I wanted the tellers to show me how to use the app to deposit the check electronically so I didn't have to heed the warning---Deposit Promptly.

One of the guys came over to the desk and I explained that I wanted to learn about the photo process of depositing checks with the app and where could I get the app since I had looked and could not fine it on the website. He paused a minute and then said," Actually, I've never used it."  I said to him, Gee. I don't even know you and I love you already!" The other teller broke out in a laugh. He said, I can tell you like being honest. Any hoot. I got the little annoyance deposited and then headed to the airport.

Founder's was packed when I got there and I didn't stay long, but long enough to see changes to the new rail line into Terminal B. It opens very soon with the TEX rail from Ft. Worth to the big airport. Terminal A has had Dart's light rail for a couple of years already and it won't be long before the Cotton belt will roll in to the mix. 

A hawk riding thermals above the 18's at DFW. Surprisingly, the planes come in under him on approach and take off below and  beyond him. It's like a soup bowl and he flies right over the center as planes come and go on the rims down into the bowl. Make sense?  Also, he scares off a lowt of the birds that could cause a problem.

Atlas at UPS with the wintering grasses being cut beyond the fence to the tarmac. The tractor driver likes to watch the planes too!!

Here, where you see the crane boom, look to the right at grade level to see the canopies for the TEX rail into Terminal B. Also, the runways at the end of the 17's are getting  a re-configuration for holding and crossings. A big improvement. One side has it already.

There was an Atlas Air 747 parked at the UPS terminal. Normally, Atlas parks father down beyond the American Airline Hangers on the west side of the field. I can only make a couple of guesses as to why: 1) UPS leased the Atlas 747 for the holidays.2) Atlas is under contract for UPS during the holidays.3) Amazon is somehow in the mix of things! (they have a plane with the A to Z arrow logo on it that flies into DFW already.

At home, I got a text from my baby brother that lives here in the Metroplex. I knew that he would be going to Houston to see his daughter over Thanksgiving and we are having lunch on Saturday. He has a way of telling me things that is funny and always tries to up one on me. He said he was taking the Von Lane to Houston (google it---he said) I said in reply, Nice Buses! I have photographed them on the road! (I just had to do that, don't ya see?) Anyway, it didn't take long to figure out that he was on the bus en route already. We had an hour and a half of texting back and forth. The buses really are nice. 22 plush recliner-type leather seats with food, refreshments, WI-FI, power plugs, even table tops for video projection in the back. That's it! 22 people-no more- direct drop-off at the hotel. I'm saying, like little brother---google it!

So, my turkey is thawed and ready for the oven tomorrow. I'm going to have a quiet Thanksgiving---I'm hoping. And I'm going to try to do some more walking with the weather being nice and getting nicer again. 70s for the weekend. Clouds are high and thin and that is an old farmers observation that a weather system is moving in. So, I got to get moving to have pictures to work on tonight. I have had a run of several straight days of sales. The hard work over the long hot summer is beginning to be realized in sales. Like the old bumper sticker from years ago---"Fly Southwest. Herb needs the Money", well, media buyers I have 8,000 images on line so " Fly dallaspaparazzo.com. I need the money like Herb did !"

Books of Note and People That I Miss

The connection between Books of Note and People That I Miss is that the Ritter's have funded with their wealth,a library in Vermillion, Ohio, where George was born. He took note growing up that Andrew Carneige funded libraries but never put one in Vermillion.   

I just finished re-reading Arthur Gordon's " A Touch of Wonder ". The book was copyrighted in 1974 and it was given to me as a gift in 1991.  Some twenty-two years later, I am still reading it cover-to-cover, although you can read it by chapters in about any order. Yes, it is a book of spiritual inspiration but it's more like sitting on the front porch in a South Carolina beach house listening to a friend of many years telling stories. Gordon grew up in Georgia and that story telling craft  wasn't much different from the South Carolina's way.

My copy is so ear marked and annotated in it's margins that I recognize a particular story by my own markings faster than reading the index. In fact, I have re-indexed it by material. One of my favorite stories is when AG,as a young man, ask Thomas Watson to lunch at the Central Park Zoo. He had no ideal who Watson was but Watson pointed him into the direction of new thinking that: " On the Far Side of Failure ", was success.

While the Bill Gates or Michael Dell's of today are interesting people, the men that I grew up with were the real business tycoons that had learned from  people like Tom Watson, Henry and Edsel Ford, even  R.A. Stranahan,Sr. or Mr.George W. Ritter, Vice President and General Counsel of  the former Willy's Overland Motor Company. Today, we still know that company's product as the "Jeep".  Yes, that Jeep.

George Ritter and his wife Mary, were people that just seem to "stay with you" over the years. What I remember of George and Mary would be strange to some but that  encounter with them is something that I have cherished over the years knowing that a very few people have had the opportunity that
was afforded me by the Ritter's. The time frame as I recall was some time between 1965 and 1972. A few years before, they had built a private mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery-- not a mile as the crow flies from that beautiful piece of architecture know as the Headquarters of Willy's Overland. That HQ building has since been imploded to make way for what is now the I-475/ I-75  expressway,although, Chrysler does have a picture from 1948 showing the bottom half of the building with a full lineup of the Jeep products post war era and the grand staircase that marked the entry of the building.

 I was invited to tour the finished mausoleum with it's beautiful stained glass window. The marble was their favorite rose marble because they thought white marble aged dirty. The invitation came following one day when Mary, was trying to describe the rose marble to me and I said to her that I knew what it was because my grandfather (who was two years older than George) had a headstone in rose marble because my grandmother had rejected a white marble for the same reason. Mary smiled widely and didn't say another word. While I was afraid that I had offended her, the call came the following week to tour their mausoleum. The mausoleum is situated on an angle that points directly toward the Willy's Overland Plant from the banks of the stream that flows through the cemetery on the north end of the bridge's bank, almost in a triangle to the R. A. Stranahan mausoleum  and the Edward Drummond Libby mausoleum,guarded by the massive Spitzer mausoleum on the south end of the bridge. To this day, I still think that the Ritter's have the more desirable location for beauty and privacy.

 

Perot's House of Dreams

Ross Perot donated 50M. That donation was directed toward moving the Museum of Nature and Science from Fair Park into the heart of Downtown and an ever-growing Uptown. The new 174-foot tall building (that's the equivalent of a 15-story building)  which  has an impressive glass box on the outside  houses a 54-foot escalator. The behemoth staircase at Busch Gardens in Florida isn't enclosed in glass. But, where technology and history meet there is sometimes a chain reaction and the Perot Museum of Nature and Science certainly will create that chain reaction. Columbus,Ohio's COSI is an amazing place for science and industry, but the Perot Museum of Nature and Science will surpass COSI in short order.

This image was taken from on board the M Line as it crossed Woodall Rodgers.