Peter Behrens's Blog, page 406

Nevada Oasis, and Bernard DeVoto

                                                                                                                                                   ©Michael S. Moore2015Ah, the West. Always surprising. You head out across the northern Nevada desert--and see what turns up? 
I'm reading Bernard DeVoto, 1846: Year of Decision. His writing style can be annoying--kind of smart-alecky in a 1940s way-- but he certainly did the research and knew the country. His accounts of the emigrations along the Oregon and Santa Fe Trails in the mid-19th century are very much worth reading. Born in Utah, DeVoto was a card-carrying liberal of his era, and bold politically. Made a lot of enemies. Unafraid. But it's hard to escape the blind spots of your own era, isn't it? In DeVoto's history of American emigration, invasion and settlement of the West, Native Americans are granted none of the respect or due diligence carefully applied to his other subjects. He just has not done the research. Pretty much everything he writes about Native Americans reflects bitter prejudices that must have been the village wisdom during his upbringing in Ogden, Utah in the late 19th century, a time and place still very close to "frontier". DeVoto is an impressive narrative historian but whenever he writes about the Shoshone, Comanche, Apache, Kiowa, or Crow, he ends up sounding like an ignoramus.

I plan to read The Uneasy Chair, Wallace Stegner's biography of DeVoto:
Born within a dozen years of one another in small towns in Utah, both men were, as Stegner writes, "novelists by intention, teachers by necessity, and historians by the sheer compulsion of the region that shaped us." From this unique vantage point, Stegner follows DeVoto's path from his beloved but not particularly congenial Utah to the even less congenial Harvard where, galvanized by the disregard of the aesthetes around him, he commenced a career that, over three and a half decades, would embrace nearly every sort of literary enterprise: from modestly successful novels to prize-winning Western histories, from the editorship of the Saturday Review to a famously combative, long-running monthly column in Harper's, "The Easy Chair." A nuanced portrait of a stormy literary life, Stegner's biography of DeVoto is also a window on the tumultuous world of American letters in the twentieth century."

1959 Edsel Ranger Hardtop

Colin Washburn saw it, down the Peninsula. "Just off the Alameda de las Pulgas (Avenue of the Fleas) in San Carlos, Ca.. It had current tags so must be a runner. In case you can't read it, it's a "Ranger"  --CRWLooks like it belongs in the neighborhood. Same era?

The Plymouth Valiant

From Jane Hilberry. See her poem, "The Plymouth Valiant"

Ventura Boulevard. California Blue Sky. 1963 Chevy C10

                                                                                                      ©Jarrod McCabe 2015

Summer Car: 1973 Country Squire

A 1973 Ford LTD Country Squire. Highly optioned, apparently extremely well preserved 24k mile example that's said to run and drive excellently. A 429ci V8 powered car...up for sale...find out more on B-A-T

Saul Leiter's New York cabs

Michael Greenberg's piece about the New York School photographers is in July 9 New York Review of Books. Below: some of Saul Leiter's street photographs. When did NYC cabs go all yellow? Must have been the mid-to-late Sixties. When was the last summer straw boater worn without irony on the streets of Manhattan? Mid-Fifties I'd say.

Mercury Comet & The Motherlode 400

One of the competitors in this year's Motherlode 400. We posted on another '64 Mercury Comet a while back. And there was the '62 Comet Chip Lord saw on the streets of San San Francisco.

Brooklin Maine Boatbuilding Capital of the World

So they say. Have a look at Foggy down the road and tell me which is more beautiful.

Boatyard Dodge, Sedgwick Maine

A truck that looks & works like a truck and not someone's fantasy of (ersatz) manliness.
 

Chevrolet c10, Angels Camp CA

from Colin Washburn, in the Sierra foothills: 
Spotted this beauty driving thru Angel's Camp yesterday. Don't know the year. In regards to the '72 Chevy K20 posted on June 13, they DO breed these short-bed trucks around here, I swear! Sonora is full of similar rigs ; Cheyennes, Scottsdales, Sierras, etc.. I must see half a dozen or more every time I drive around Tuolumne County. Seriously, they're all over the place. Seems most of them are 4x4's and are jacked up. A head-turning, cherry stock one every so often. They've got attitude. I want one, even though one must leave the tailgate down when carrying 8' long plywood!--CRW