Monday, October 14, 2013

My Life, such as it is…………………… Growing up in Bennet Nebraska

My Life, such as it is…………………… Growing up in Bennet Nebraska

As I said in my last posting, I started out as a very young child. I can remember bits and pieces of my early years but can’t remember five minutes ago. What I remember is that life was pretty good then. I played all day with a dog and chased chickens in my grandparents back yard. I remember the outhouse in the back and if it was cold or in the middle of the night the chamber pot under the bed did the trick. We listened to the old radio in the living room at night. Shows like Inner Sanctum, lone ranger, gene autry, the shadow, jack benny, etc. You got to use your imagination to visualize the scenes. The photos below is my house as it stands today in 2013. Looks a little different with a few modifications and minimum modifications.
We used to go downtown a lot. It was only about a four block walk. Downtown was fun back then. there was one big general store, now gone, a bank, now a post office, a meat locker, now gone, and an empty space between two building where they showed movies on the wall outside on some weekends. We sat on wooden benches. The meat locker was where we went when it got really hot. The owner let us stand in the cooler for a couple of minutes.

Just south of town the is a set of railroad tracks. I can remember us going down ther a couple of time to watch a flash flood roar down the tracks. Boy what excitement we had. Below are some more pictures of the town today. The fire station is the original station and a recent grant allowed an artist to paint the mural on it. Kind of cool.


This is the converted bank.


Empty space where the meat locker was.


Bennet gained some fame when Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate came along. (Caril Ann Fugate (born July 30, 1943) was the adolescent girlfriend and accomplice of spree killer Charles Starkweather. She is the youngest female in United States history to have been tried for first-degree murder.) Charles Starkweather killed the childhood friend I used to play with.

Other memories I can remember is Saturday night baths in the kitchen in a wash tub, Sunday chicken dinners, walking down dirt roads and picking goose berries so my grandma could make pies and jelly. My grandma also taught me how to crochet. She was left handed and I was right handed, but it all some how worked out.

My grandpa ( really my step-grandpa) was a great male influence on me. Don’t know much about my real grandpa on my Mom’s side. Even back then I don’t remember my dad being around much. Don’t know if he was working a farm or already in the Army. No one around to ask anymore. Anyway, my grandpa was a veterinarian. Everyone called him Doc. He used to sit on the front porch in the evening in his rocking chair, smoking his pipe with Prince Albert in a can, and drinking a beer. I would sit on the right arm of the rocker. He was the first one to give me a beer. I had my own shot glass and he would pour me a couple of drops. I would make a terrible face but always came back for more. By the way, the beer was Schlitz but I was too young to pronounce it correctly. I called it Shits. Like I said my grandpa was a veterinarian and he provided the human killing of the Sunday chicken dinner. He would hang the chicken by their feet on the clothes line out back and stab them in the throat. He also introduced me to my first baby rabbits. He was digging up some potatoes in the back yard and discovered them. He also had grape vines in the back yard. Probably for making jelly. Can’t imagine for what any other reason.

A few days ago when I visited Bennet to get the pictures I decided to stop into the cemetery. I vaguely remember the funerals and knew about where they were my grandparents were buried. I found a map on the board there and was able to locate their graves. Picture below.


Wednesday, October 9, 2013

My Life, such as it is....... Introduction

My Life, such as it is……………………

Introduction

Awhile back I was reading a short story by Stephen King (yes he writes not scary stuff too). It was about a grandfather and grandson interacting and in one part the grandfather was telling the grandson about the three times in a persons life. He said there is long time, normal time and short time. Long time is when you are young and it seems that everything takes a long time to happen. Such as in May it seems like a long time before school is out, etc. Normal time is when you reach late teens or early twenties and short time is when you reach late fifties or early sixties. During short time everything seems to go by fast. I have experienced all three and am now in short time.

I got to thinking that I never really knew a lot about my folks or grandparents youth and personal lives in general and decided I would try to document my life as best I can for my kids and grandkids (and anybody else that might be interested). I am not very good at opening myself up to the world. My folks and grandparents were like that and that is probably where I get it from. But I will try my best.

In upcoming chapters, I will describe various things that I remember happening in my life. I was going to try to document things chronologically, but my mind don’t work that way so things will show up as they pop into my head.

For starters, I was born in Bennet, Ne. a little town of 250 16 miles southwest of Lincoln. I was born March 31, 1941 at 1:10 AM. I weighed 9 pounds and was 21 ½ inches long. Head measured 15 inches (at 8 weeks) and my chest was 15 inches (at 1 month). I was born with a full head of black hair. My first hair cut was at two weeks old. I walked at 9 ½ months and didn’t want any help ( still that way).

Monday, May 27, 2013

Double Trouble

As promised in my last post, here are a couple of dragsters from the Topeka NHRA event that had a little trouble on the way to the finish. These may not be the most tack sharp images but hey they are moving around 300 miles per hour. Enjoy.



Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Up Close

Went down to the NHRA Drag races in Topeka last weekend trying to get some action shots. Got lucky when two dragsters blew up. Those pics will come later. But for now here is a shot of Courtney and John Force watching Shawn Langdon beat Tony Schumacher up close at the finish line. 3.75 secs and 324.20 mph.


Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Finally Got One..........

We out the other day to Lake Manawa in Iowa to see if I could find me some eagles. There were a bunch of them. Unfortunately the longest lens I have is a 55 to 250 mm zoom so even at the 250mm setting I was still too far away to suit me. So here is one that I ran through some heavy post processing. I almost like it but the processing caused some artifacts. But I got close to one on my bucket list.

Thanks for stopping by. Contact me or visit my web site( papagphotos.com ) if interested in buying anything.





Monday, February 11, 2013

Extreme Processing

I'm back..... just like a bad penny. Today I am posting a photo that I took at the NHRA drags in Topeka  KS last year. I took this from the finish line more than 1000 feet away. I applied some cropping and extreme post processing because I wanted to create a poster feeling to the event.

What I did was crop it in Lightroom and then take it to Photoshop for some heavy hitting. First I ran it through Nik Define to remove noise (there is always some noise in digital images). Next came a run through LucisArt for some grungy HDR like foolin' around. After that I took it for a dip in OnOne Perfect effects for some amazing detail and color boost. After applying these I next took it for a trip into Nik Color Effects Pro 4 for the border treatment. So here it is. Top is original and bottom is the extreme image.

Thanks for stopping by. Contact me or visit my web site( papagphotos.com ) if interested in buying anything.




Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Before and After

Well my buddy over at Iowa farm boy has thrown down the gauntlet. He just did a before and after blog showing how he improved an image using lightroom, photoshop and some filters. So I just had to give it a try.

The first thing i did was take the image into Lightroom and apply only the camera and lens profile to it. Next, into Photohsop and ran it through the Nik Define noise reduction filter. All digital images have at least a little noise so I do this with all my images. Next I ran it through a Lucis filter. This filter has some unique processing that can bring out a lot of detail in an image. In the filter you can mix different amounts of filtered settings and original image to get the look you want. Every image you process will need different settings. Next I took the image as processed to this stage into OnOne softwares Perfect Effects 4. There is a couple of presets in there that I use called Amazing Detail and Auto fix. You can adjust the strength of these presets to your liking. While I was in OnOne I decided for this image that I needed to brush in some more detail in the sky (yes you can do that in OnOne). I next applied all the OnOne settings and returned to Photoshop to add just a little levels adjustment. I should also point out that at the beginning of this process in Photoshop I removed some annoying power lines and cropped out a pole on the left side.

So here are the images. Top on is before and the bottom is after. Let me know what you think.




Thanks for stopping by. I know I have not blogged much lately but maybe I have got my juices flowing again. Check out my web site papagphotos.com for a gateway to my other images that are currently for sale.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Can't we All Just Get Along..............

Well it's January 1, 2013 and I am going to do something that I generally don't do. Make some new year resolutions.

First off let me say that I am guilty as anyone when it comes to my resolutions of what I am not going to do. I know that sounds a little confusing. But , this is my attempt to try and make things better and less stressful for what ever time I may have left (only God knows that). So here goes.

I resolve to do things on my schedule and only my schedule. If you want my help with anything, we make an agreed upon schedule. If you do not live up to the schedule, it is on you and the task is over. Same for me. I am no longer going to keep changing my schedules to accommodate you constantly changing yours. Remember, "A failure to plan on your part does not constitute a crisis on my part".

I am no longer going to be anyone's personal computer geek, photography guru, automobile rescuer or handy man (which I am not anyway). If you want my help in these areas, see above paragraph.

I resolve to try to lose weight, cut down on my drinking and get the hell out of the house and get some fresh air and exercise. And I don't want to hear from anyone on how I am doing. Leave me alone on this.

I resolve to leave the premises whenever I have to listen to family members bickering about trivial things (and this is an area that I am guilty of doing also). People need to learn to get back to talking to each other (yes REAL talking). Text messaging, in my opinion, is the worst thing that has come along. It is so easy to misinterpret, misunderstand and just go viral at someone through texting. I hate it.

Now there are probably more things that I should resolve, but I think this is a good start. I am sure this is going to probably piss off my wife, family and who knows who else. If some of the things I ranted about above change for the better, maybe my resolutions will change too.

Folks, the bottom line is Life is too short. Get closer to your friends and families ( me too). You will miss them when they are gone. I really don't know why people have developed into the attitudes I see today. Maybe it is the economy or government or both. I know the economy and helping others (and my not being able to say no when it came to expenditures) has caused stress in my life. That is why I had to file bankruptcy.  Got only four more years to go and only four more years of Obama. If I make it, things should start looking pretty good.

Ok, let the comments begin. I got my big boy undies on.

Happy New Year.