Peter Behrens's Blog, page 455

Earthbound Moon & West Texas Fury

Lubbock Architecture's Fury. Photo from Earthbound Moon.

1946 Chevrolet COE tow-truck

Mercury M-1 truck

The truck was for sale at Kool Kustoms in Orland Maine. Mercury trucks were sold in Canada. Caught one in Nova Scotia-- a M-3--a while back.

Artists' Cars: Mary-Louise and the Buick Skylark

"Art Cars"--vehicles festooned with concepts and gewgaws of one kind or another--are a tiresome genre. I speak as a car guy. There are exceptions, Shawn HibmaCronan's Ford Falcon van project, "Love, Inertia, and the Perfect Stance", being one.  On the other hand, artists' cars are sort of interesting. A few years ago, when I was on the art colony circuit---Yaddo, Macdowell, Ucross, VCCA--I noticed that artists, often enough out of NYC--tended to drive roomy, battered, nondescript Outer Borough street cars, vans, and pickup trucks. Those gravel parking lots at Saratoga Springs and Peterbrough usually had a scrappy, no-fuss, utilitarian air, filled as they were with the dented, unshiny cars that my people had bought with money from the last or first painting they'd sold, or a scrap of grant money, or a teaching gig. Or maybe they'd inherited the wheels from their grandmother because there certainly were a lot of grandmotherly cars: Oldsmobile sedans, etc. My sister Mary Behrens, another Colony habitué, used to drive a mid-Seventies Chevy wagon. I'm glad to see the artist Mary-Louise Geering keeping a proud bohemian tradition alive with her stylish early-80s Buick Skylark.

Native Species of Southern Colorado: The 1951 Chevrolet

The annual Resuscitation of the Truck, August, 2014, at Libre. Advanced Design-era trucks have featured on plenty of AL posts.

1953 Plymouth Suburban from Stonington, Deer Isle, Maine.

One of my favorite cars of the summer. Saw this 1953 Plymouth Suburban wagon in the parking lot of the grocery store at Blue Hill. It lives down in Stonington, the fishing town down the at the southern end of Deer Isle. About as non-suburban as you will find in the US of A. No plates yet, but very cool. Those red wheels and dog dish caps are perfect.

1954 Bel Air, Duke City

from Michael Moore, in The West:"Just occurred to me that I took pictures of the same car a week apart;
with a little love and attention THIS [Albuquerque, last week]-- 

"...could be THIS [Pueblo, today]; Right?" --MSM [Yes...but I prefer the orange paint--Autoliterate]

Lubbock Architecture's 1970 Plymouth & Llano Estacado

Over the last year or so I've done a few Autoliterate posts on Llano Estacado. So you know I'm obsessed with that West Texas/eastern New Mexico high plains region. One way of working through an obsession is writing a novel. My third novel "Karin"-- which will be out in Fall 2015 in US & Canada --is a Llano Novel (though mostly set in Frankfurt Germany in the 1930s). Some key chapters happen in and just west of Lubbock. If you're wondering about the connection between nazified Frankfurt and West Texas, check this post.
I'm trying to ID this car: I'd say Plymouth Fury III, 1970. Stylish machine. That avacado-ish green was the tone poem of the Seventies. My Maine/Marfa truck is painted in a close but slightly different  shade. Track the Plymouth on Lubbock Architecture's Facebook page. (My novel also happens to feature a Plymouth out on the Llano).

1959 Dodge Fargo pickup

Another from Alex Emond: ".. a gently battered old Fargo. I saw this truck in Kyle, Saskatchewan. A good looking machine, capable of highway speeds. I like it!" -AE [Fargo was  a Canadian marque; basically a Dodge that could be sold by Chrysler/Plymouth dealers ad mare usque ad mare]I wonder if that paint is original. There's also this one-ton Canadian Mercury truck I saw in Nova Scotia a while back: an M-3, basically a Ford F-3, and a handsome machine.Oh, and I found another reason to buy old trucks. Many of them. My 1975 GMC is spending 3 days on a Tommy Hilfiger catalogue photo shoot this week, and thereby earning her keep.

Spartan, a New York Fifty, on Eggemoggin Reach. And 'Off Center Harbor': the website. And Joshua Slocum

Spartan was first across the finish line at the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta, though with her handicap she didn't take first place. One of 9 New York Fifty's built by Herreshoff  in Bristol, R.I.,1912-13, I believe she is the only survivor of that pack. Light breezes at this year's ERR.If you're a sailor and want to improve your skills; or if you aim to be a sailor; or if you're interested in the beauty of boats, and the practical lore of boatbuilding and boat-sustaining, you ought to have a look at the Off Center Harbor site. OCH as a group probably have as much downeast sailing experience and boat knowledge as that Nova Scotian salty dog, Joshua Slocum. And their videos are a treat."In many ways a sailor is like an actor. If he's been in the business a long time, he can improvise anything"--J.S., Sailing Alone Around the World