Peter Behrens's Blog, page 561

Peter Behrens Clock & Turbine Factory

Industrial clock designed by Peter Behrens for AEG 1909                     AEG Turbine Factory by Peter Behrens 1908-09
[image error]

The 1945 Chevrolet Pickup, running boards, rat rods, & air.

from our correspondent Michael S Moore, in Northern California

"I see from your travels that you get that impeccable air that has eluded us, everywhere [even BC last week], all summer...not to mention some very amazing vehicles along the way [what was that Ford - something from the mining industry?]. I'm jealous..still the haze and dust persists further west.
      


   "I did get running boards, though, so that's something"--MSM

1934 Packard Eight

On my way to work this morning, came across neighbors loading up their Packard 8 for a trip to an upholstery shop in Denver.

Blunt: 1969 Ford C-Series & the mortal coil

They are to-the-point, out there on Colorado Avenue. The truck belongs to the Sallie Ann (I think that's a Canadianism, but I'm going to let it stand) and was parked across the street from the straight-talking undertakers' shop.

1939 Chevrolet, New Mexico

[image error]

Speedway Garage, San Luis, Colorado

[image error]

1950 GMC, Colorado Springs

Saw this truck on my way to CC last Friday. Sixty-two years old. A survivor. The paint is beautiful.




[image error]

Kit Carson, Anne Carson, & Taos

                               on the road, Eagle Nest, N.M. Drove to Taos. The town was crowded. Like all famous places, it is really a complicated ghost of itself. If you're in the wrong mood, Taos is monstrous...but it's  idiotic to pass judgement a town based on 24 hrs. Maybe to pass judgement, period.  I used to resent visitors complaining about how "commercial" Banff town was. (It's a world famous tourist town--did you really expect it to be holding onto some version of purity just for you?) The Northern New Mexico adobe way of building, which is functional, textured and basic in original form, gets  nauseating when faked, then applied over and over to trophy homes, motels, gift shops, etc.
But. The mountains are there, stoic. And the light changes a lot. Dynamic, characterful light. Aspens were flaming yellow. What is it that we do in US and Canada to famous towns that damages them so severely? The answer: a lot of things. The Dutch are better at letting towns and cities hold on to individual characters.    Sometimes I wish people wouldn't travel so much (what a hypocrite!) Stay home, dig in, pay attention.
          I read Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides' book about Kit Carson, when I was in Texas a few years ago, and brought it along to Taos. Kit Carson is a complicated figure. It's hard not to respect him even though sometimes he allowed other people do his thinking for him. The Navajos have a right to resent him. (He was more or less illiterate, and may not have known how much smarter he was than some of the dumbkopfs he worked for). Kit would lasted about a minute in Taos, as it is now, before lighting out for somewhere. Probably the same 'territory' Huckleberry Finn was headed for, when last seen.
         Coming across Kit Carson's tombstone in the buzz of Taos-town on a busy Saturday reminded me of Anne Carson's poem, which I post by permission here. Maybe she is his great-great-granddaughter, after all.


Strange Hour (Outcast Hour)
3 a.m. cool palace roar of Oakland night.Not even a siren then a siren far off.Train passed a while ago now nothing.
Bare lightbulb in garage across the street who left it on.
Every sentence should contain a fact at least.No one but myself ever seems to set foot on this balconystrange to say.Undertone of hatred I cannot eliminateFrom my feelings of friendship for most people.Clear at this hour.
                                                   -A.C.


[image error]

Another Roadside Attraction: Eagle Nest, New Mexico

Drove US 64 from Taos over the mountains to Raton, New Mexico. High plains within the mountains are a landscape that has always spoken to me. The Yah-ha-Tinda in Alberta was the first time I experienced that sort of country in the West. I've always loved the landscape of the Eastern Sierra--esp. around Bridgeport, CA--and the country around Eagle Nest, New Mexico, where I grabbed these photos this morning, was that kind of unexpected wide open. Taos was shrouded under freezing fog when I left but up over the first range east it was clear. The town of Eagle Nest, N.M.  is at over  8000'. We're spending the year in The Netherlands, and I admire the careful way the Dutch guard their landscape--and especially the civil way they live in their towns and cities--but part of me was craving the careless, wide open West, and here it is.
    Speaking of altitude, I'm reading Wade Davis' Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest. A ripping yarn.


[image error]

1955 International Harvester Metro Van

The artist David Ross, recently of Montreal, now of Chicago--is another Canadian relocated to the US and discovering the exquisite trauma of being a secret foreigner:
"Saw this (llama-)van being pulled into a garage here in Chicago yesterday (Vermont plates, though) ... I knew International Harvester made farm equipment but not vans. We're slowing settling in to our new life here. Decamping to this city has been even stranger than I thought it would be. Slowly coming to the realization that I now actually LIVE in the US. Has its moments, as you well know."--DR








[image error]