Peter Behrens's Blog, page 421
March 14, 2015
1989 Vanagon Pickup. For Sale.
IT'S a 1989 Vanagon DOKA DIESEL Pickup. 29,116 documented miles.
Excellent condition, apparently. No rust anywhere. Lots of upgrades, so they say.
Factory 1.7 liter Diesel. Check it out on B-A-T.
March 13, 2015
Auto-burial, Cambridge MA
The first big snow came down in the last week of January, and kept coming through February. These photos were taken in the first week of March and by then it seemed as though many people had just given up on driving, even if the T was dysfunctioning for much of the winter.
March 12, 2015
The O'Briens à Paris
French paperback edition, just arrived from Paris. If you buy it and don't like it I guess I'm supposed to pay you back (in euros). The O'Briens was wonderfully translated by Isabelle Chapman.
Porsche 356 SC: Bay Area
I believe these cars were the last refinement of the 356 before the Porsche 911 was launched. Thanks to Mike Moore for the photography. More Porsche here.
March 11, 2015
March 10, 2015
Richard Hugo poem: Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg
Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg
You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
Only churches are kept up. The jail
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
is always in, not knowing what he’s done.
The principal supporting business now
is rage. Hatred of the various grays
the mountain sends, hatred of the mill,
The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls
who leave each year for Butte. One good
restaurant and bars can’t wipe the boredom out.
The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines,
a dance floor built on springs—
all memory resolves itself in gaze,
in panoramic green you know the cattle eat
or two stacks high above the town,
two dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse
for fifty years that won’t fall finally down.
Isn’t this your life? That ancient kiss
still burning out your eyes? Isn’t this defeat
so accurate, the church bell simply seems
a pure announcement: ring and no one comes?
Don’t empty houses ring? Are magnesium
and scorn sufficient to support a town,
not just Philipsburg, but towns
of towering blondes, good jazz and booze
the world will never let you have
until the town you came from dies inside?
Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty
when the jail was built, still laughs
although his lips collapse. Someday soon,
he says, I’ll go to sleep and not wake up.
You tell him no. You’re talking to yourself.
The car that brought you here still runs.
The money you buy lunch with,
no matter where it’s mined, is silver
and the girl who serves your food
is slender and her red hair lights the wall.
--RICHARD HUGO
1954 Advanced Design Chevrolet 3100. La Mesa New Mexico
This beauty came from David Branch who found it in New Mexico: "I've noticed this truck every time I pass through La Mesa. Chope's Roadhouse is there too. A fantastic old bar that serves 40oz bottles at the counter. Restaurant associated with it is good but it's reputation has led to an annex with little of the charm of the adobe bar. The river road from Las Cruces, NM to oh, say Fabens, Tex. is a whole other experience from I-10. Takes you through pecan groves and alfalfa fields. Some cotton and along a dried-up Rio Grande. Well worth making the side-trip. You loose a whole fistful of decades down here."-DB
19th & early 20th Portland Maine: the redbrick city
The light is back.The perma-snow is still here at ground level, one of the reasons I'm looking up on these Portland walkabouts. It's a redbrick town.
