china tour part 4

before i get going again, the food on the planes in china was just god awful.  along with the same crappy food over and over again we saw the same crappy videos over and over.  the movies were the worse crap ever made.  some seemed like they were made just for the flights we were riding on.

guilin is almost to vietnam’s northern border and the countryside really resembles nam.  the people look vietnamese too.  lots of rice paddies bring the whole thing together and i was back in nam again.  very strange.  much warmer weather as well and more humid.

downtown guilin is a nice place.  a small large city with a lot of character going for it and a great vibe.  we had a wonderful lunch in town.  very tasty and a delight to look at as well.  it was in the same restaurant president clinton dined at while in guilin.  a nice photo of him and the family is on the wall of the place.  after lunch and while boarding the bus i was accosted by this little kid yelling ‘hey gi. hey gi’ buy my crap.  the ‘gi’ deal was weird.  you were always getting hit on to buy stuff by all sorts of folks but this kid was pissing me off because he kept touching me and he wasn’t the cleanest thing going.  most of the hucksters would go away when you said no or no thanks but some never gave up like that kid.  you would literally have to yell at them to get them to go away.

we stayed at a very nice hotel on the river.  after check in we went to other side of river and into this grotto like deal.  interesting.  it reminded me of the caves at corona del mar here in socalif.  i was just dicking around taking video when all of a sudden these four chinese babes, in costume, come up and grabbed me and wanted me to take a picture with them for money.  really cute ladies.  this gave me another big time nam flashback of hotels in nam and the hookers upstairs.  same deal when you got off elevator.  babes all over your ass grabbing you.  any the ways, this action got big laughs from the group. even g/f.  sadly they wanted too much money for a picture.  however, i was just enjoying the attention and this particular flashback.  one of the round eyes on the tour said they would have picked me clean.  i told him it wouldn’t have been the first time.  that got a big laugh.  as it was g/f got a picture of them and me while their boss wasn’t looking.  our guide said guilin was big a one night stand place.  so the babes must be really easy there.  no wonder bubba made the trip.  i don’t blame him, the women there were gorgeous.

we spent the rest of the day going to other places.  a nice dinner then another show this one in the hotel with singing, dancing, and some acrobats.  more beer.  a very fine show but i almost fell asleep while watching it.  even with the nice babes on stage. 

after the we show got in the elevator to go up to our room.  two nicely dressed westerners get in too.  for some reason we are the only people in the elevator. which was weird because of the number of people who had been watching the show and were now heading back to their rooms in the hotel.  we get up to our floor.  the men stayed in the elevator and as we get out one of them says, in an aussie or limey accent, good night, john.  yeah, no shit.  i had never seen those guys before.  i just ignored them and kept on walking.  however, i was jolted. 

very spooky and strange and the last time on the trip that i noticed anyone taking any interest in me in a langley sort of way.  i had completely forgotten this little incident until i was reading my old emails.  even now it seems very bizarre.  we were at least 1,000 miles from xian and the russian, chinese terra cotta warrior deal.  now i had british MI6 guys(?) wishing me a good night.  hmm…  

the next day we took a 4 hour boat ride down the li river.  a very famous boat ride as you get to see some of the best scenery in china along the way.  a shit load of boats make the trip and they all serve you lunch on board.  lunch on board was ok but if we had seen how they washed the dishes and pots no one would have eaten anything.  they just pump water out of the river and wash the stuff with no soap.  yeah.  nice.  we didn’t get sick but 4 of the folks in group did get the shits.  with a good amount of haze or smog in the air some of the scenery was a bit washed out.  but none the less spectacular.

one of the big deals in guilin is chinese wine with a snake in the damn bottle.  i don’t recall just what kind of snake it is.  but one of the people in our group bought a large glass of the stuff on the boat then passed it around.  it smelled like white port and tasted like watered down tequila.  guess it was supposed to be an aphrodisiac or something as well.

all and all a nice boat ride with some amazing scenery to look at.  there are a number of people who live on river.  some of the houses even had satellite dishes on the roof.  while going down river some boats passed us coming up river.  going up river it’s an 8 hour ride.  as the boats traveling up river passed i would yell at them and ask if they had seen col kurtz.  i was ignored.  it was also the only time on the trip where i got goofy.  maybe it was the wine and beer combo.  i dunno.  though it did seem appropriate at the time.  regardless.

boats going down river lined up like the freeway at rush hour.  8 million people go thru guilin every year as tourists.  i think most of them were on river that day.  we had good boat and driver who ended up passing most of the other boats going down river.  we were the 3rd boat to make it to the stopping point.  it still took 4 hours though.  after some shopping in an open air market a bus took us back to the hotel in about a 30 minutes.

guilin was a wonderful place and i’d lke to spend some more time there some day.  great scenery, food, and beautiful women.  though i guess you could say that about most of china.

the next day it was off to shanghai.  again.

the caves along the river across from our hotel.

scenery along the li river.

jmh

china tour part 3

i think beijing has been more or less covered.  one more thing about beer before we move to xian.  beer was the drink of the day in china.  lunch and dinner.  one free one with each meal and you could buy more.  $1 for a big bottle and most of the beers were ok.  just depended on which city you were in on what beer you got.  usually the local favorite.  we got by the one beer deal by having the ladies order beer as well then we would drink theirs.  they would in turn order bottled water.  by the middle of the tour we were getting as much beer as we wanted.  guess the tour guide liked us.  don’t know and didn’t ask.  don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.  without beer at lunch and dinner the long slogging walking days would have been very hard to deal with.  trust me.

off to xian.  meaning another trip to an airport in beijing and the security hassle.  g/f had trouble with here lap top she had dragged along as she had to take it out of it’s suitcase.  i was watching her and sat my video camera bag on the ground.  then promptly forgot it and walked away.  i realized i had forgotten it by the time we had almost gotten to the plane.  i sprinted back for the bag ala the old oj hertz airport commercials.  of course, it was gone. i’m asking everyone around where the camera bag was.  they just looked at me.  then some american yelled at me as he was leaving and said it was over at this counter.  thankfully it was.  they had it out of the bag and were looking at it.  in order to get it back i had to sign some form that was all in chinese.  guess i may have copped to the oj murders and the peterson case too.  at least i got the camera back.  then the 3 hour flight to xian.

xian is a very old city.  one of the oldest in china. a walled city on top of that.  for some reason or another lots of japanese have always lived in xian.  they still do.  interesting.  the trip from the airport was a long ride and a trip back in time as the country side and small settlements reminded me of nam.  lots of flashbacks.  amazing.  once we got into the city it reminded me of saigon and more flashbacks.  i was starting to get creeped out in a good way.

we stayed at the sheraton in xian.  the lobby was nice but the hotel itself had seen better days.  our air conditioning in the room didn’t work very well.  which sucked.  xian has horrible smog.  just god awful.  all the farmers burning old corn stalks and sugar cane fields.

while in xian i got to watch a little tv.  some drew carey and the simpsons via satellite in our room.  it was strange watching homer do his thing in a hotel room in china.  we were told that the government didn’t allow cnn to be aired in china.  though i do recall seeing it on a tv or two in passing.

while in xian we went to a bunch of pagodas.  the big goose pagoda being the largest and nicest.  or in some places known as the wild big goose pagoda.  a ton of nice photo ops with the buddhist monks or nuns as g/f calls them.  chinese pagodas.  we saw several every day.  in general they were a very peaceful place even with a vast amount of people wandering about.  some better than others.  a personal thing i suppose.  i enjoyed the pagoda experience.  i imagine not unlike the cathedral experience in euroland.  though i’d rather wander through pagodas.

we also visited the main gate house for the city back when the city was still confined behind this massive and impressive wall and moat.  a very cool place indeed.  the day we visited the main gate the local japanese were setting up for some sort of ceremony in a light rain.

on the way to see the terra cotta warriors we stopped off at a very nice hot springs place.  a very lovely place where chiang kai-shek made his last stand against the communists in 1948.  there are still a number of .50 caliber bullet holes in the walls of the buildings.

xian is the place where the old buried terra cotta soldiers were discovered.  before going to see them they took us to a terra cotta factory so they could sell us shit. they did that a lot on the tour.  a jade factory.  pearl joint.  tea place.  silk place and a couple of other places.  interesting but…

while at the terra cotta factory there was a guy standing around with big sony video camera on a tripod.  i went up and started talking to him about his camera.  he had an odd accent.  turns out he was a russian tv news photographer or that was his story.  he said they were doing set ups as putin was visiting the factory the next day before he went to see the actual warrior site.  there was a talking head with him but i didn’t talk to him.  anyways, after chatting with the ruskie and getting him to pose for some video i wondered off taking more videos.  suddenly this really nice looking chinese babe came out of nowhere like a sudden heart attack and asked me in very good english if i’m getting some nice pictures.  this kinda freaked me out.  who was she?  where did she come from?  i said yeah and blew her off.  i think she may have been chinese langley.  did she and the chinese think i was cia as well? 

years ago some old farmer found the terra cotta warriors while digging a new well.  the government took the farm away from him but gave him a job as greeter of the place, ala joe luis in vegas years ago.  he sits there all tabbed out in chinese mob style splendor in one of the buildings and autographs books about him finding the warriors.  he sits there smoking these horrid stogies and waits to sign his name if you buy a book.  one of the people in our tour bought one of the books and i got him signing it on video.  i threw him a salute and he gave me one in return.  nice.

the terra cotta soldier deal is amazing in person. nothing at all like seeing it on the tube or in photos.  just an incredible place.  we spent over 2 1/2 hours going thru the 4 buildings they built over the site.  really nice.  our local tour guide in xian was one of the guys who worked on the horses after they were dug up.  nice guy and very bright.  he spoke better english than i do.  the history behind the whole place is amazing and very interesting.  if you like that sort of thing you may want to check it outelse where.  we also had lunch at the museum cafeteria.  it was ok but nothing special and a long wait to get anything to eat.

while we were at the terra cotta digs 3 guys in bad suits walked past.  i immediately made them for russians.  one of them stopped and gave me the eye for a minute or two.  guess he had heard about me from someone at the terra cotta factory.  i ignored him.  putin was to be there as well the next day.  so i guess they were just more russian ‘cultural’ folks checking stuff out in advance.  did the russians think i was cia too?  what was going on?we heard a day or so later the chinese closed the place for 3 hours so putin could look at the shit by himself and not be disturbed.  i hope he enjoyed himself.  

that night back in xian we had a wonderful local meal.  a very famous dumpling dinner.  it was excellent.  after dinner we went and saw some old time chinese stage show in a theatre in downtown xian.  an ok show with some ok babes dancing around. i was busy drinking beer and enjoying the show.  i’m not real sure but i think one of the hot babe leads may have been a man or something.  or so i heard.

that pretty much covers xian. the next morning it was off to airport and heading south to guilin.  another security deal but nothing left behind this time.  just another 3 hour flight. 

the wild goose pagoda.

the warriors today.

jmh

china tour part 2

beijing is a great place.  very clean and nice folks but a traffic nightmare.  the whole damn country is a traffic nightmare.  it reminded me of saigon at times.  chinese drive worse than vietnamese in saigon or mexicans in mexico.  just goddamn amazing.  you could not drive there.  if you tried you would either be frozen with fear at the curb or dead in about 2 seconds.  yeah, it’s that bad.  blow the horn and go. pass on the right?  sure why not.  cross double yellow lines to pass cars with cars coming at you.  piece of cake.  cars going the wrong way or in your lane with the horn blaring.  miss your off ramp on the freeway?  no problem put it in reverse and just back up on the freeway.  illegal but nobody cared.  you name it and they did it.  the tour bus driver too.  but you sorta got used to it.  strange thing is we only saw a couple of accidents with all the driving around we did.  some cops out but not enough by any stretch.  they need a battalion or 2 of traffic cops in every town.  plus out on the highways.

they are supposedly going to ‘fix’ the traffic troubles in beijing for the old limp dicks.  yeah, well they sorta did here in l.a. for the 1984 deal. but i find it hard to believe the chinese can pull it off.  unless they figure on rolling the tanks out along with a division or two of soldiers.  there’s traffic nightmares then there’s chinese and beijing traffic nightmares. 

while in beijing we saw tienanmen square and were told to avoid anybody protesting anything.  we didn’t see any of that.  the place was packed.  but then everywhere we went was packed like disneyland on a crowded day.  mostly chinese tourists.  you have to remember there are billions of them.  plus tours from here and euroland plus a few from latin america.  then of course, the chinese tours with chinese from other parts of china as well.

we also saw the forbidden city which they were remodeling for the limp dicks.  amazingly packed too and in a smaller area.  we were told to watch out for pickpockets.  lots of them around working the crowds and usually working in pairs.  the usual modus operandi everywhere in the world.

also on the list was the temple of heaven and the summer palace which is on a big man made lake.  nice place and huge.  highlight there was a boat made of marble.  a big damn thing.  temple of heaven was nice as we got there early.  not that many people.  summer palace was another story.  tons of people.

on the way to the great wall we stopped at ming’s tombs which is sorta like the pyramids but underground.  an amazing place.  also packed with people.

my favorite place on the trip was the great wall. the weather that day was very nice.  the skies clear and the october light was amazing.  perfect for videos and stills.  tons of people out on the wall. just being on that sucker is one amazing experience.  we climbed up to several stations and were going to do more but we came to a spot that was one way traffic only with a cop there directing the traffic.  a glut of people milling about so we nixed going on.  the wall is a hard climb in spots but worth every step.  the great wall is a place i’ll never forget and is worth the whole trip.  thankfully, we did it in good weather.

while on the wall g/f had her picture taken while sitting on a camel.  i was mistaken for actor leslie nielsen.  something that happens now and again.  people wanted to shake my hand and have a photo op with me.  fine.  i wasn’t about to create some international incident by trying to splain stuff to the local chinese.  not me.  so today there’s more than a few chinese who probably have our picture on a wall in their house and they tell folks about meeting the great american actor while visiting the great wall.   

on a side drift the weather was ok most of the trip. not hot except in guilin but not that bad there. the fall is probably the best time of year for china.  not hot and not cold, yet.  summer is blistering and it’s to cold in winter.  spring is not good either unless it’s late spring.  i could not imagine our trip in summer.  it would have been a killer. even with air conditioned buses and hotels.  people going to the old limp dicks are going to be in for one hell of a surprise.  walking all over those places would have been enough to kill me in summertime.  plus more people in summer.  more chinese with kids.  the kids were in school when we were there so it was mostly just chinese oldsters out touring.  as for rain we hit just a tad of drizzle in
beijing one morning.  then the east wind came and blew out the rain and smog.  beijing without smog or whatever is dazzling.  we also hit a small amount of rain in xian too.

the trip back from great wall was a nightmare of biblical traffic proportions.  just jammed with buses, trucks, and cars all just trying to ace each other out and just move.  very scary.  lots of tour buses had people sticking video cameras out windows to shoot the chaos.  myself included.  it turned out the cops or army were pulling all the trucks off the freeway for some reason and that action was causing all of the trouble.  though downtown beijing traffic is almost just as bad.

we finally got to eat a traditional peking duck dinner sometime after 8pm.  which was the usual time with all the traffic and stops we made everywhere every day. like i said we were lucky to get into bed by 10 or 11 most nights.  then up at 6 or maybe 7 if we were lucky and do it all over again.  at any rate the duck dinner was superb.  though not as good as one we ate in hong kong years ago.

i enjoyed our short stay in beijing.  i’d love to go back some day and hang out again.  i’d especially like to go back and wander around on the great wall at least one more time before i pack it in.  

jmh

china tour part 1

back in 2004 g/f and i went to mainland china.  at the time just your typical 12 day tour.  i’ve never blogged about it before other than a quick something here or there.  i have nothing else going on in my head at the moment, blog wise and other wise as well.  just the usual.  so i guess just because it’s 2008 and the old limp dicks(OLYMPICS) are coming up in china i may as well run the deal down.  some of you might even be going to the old limp dicks or just going to visit china.  you may want to hear about stuff.  fine.  i’ll do what i can for you.  although it was 4 years ago it should still be helpful.

the only stuff i have written down from that trip is a series of emails i sent to my friend, dfr, when we got home.  the emails were based on notes i took during the trip.  the notes were sporadic at best.  this blog is being written from the emails and my faded memories of thing trip.  i must say that while i was reading over the old emails i had completely forgotten some of the stuff that happened.  age, hits you hard.  where to start?

the beginning

the trip to the airport, lax, was uneventful.  we hired a car with a chinese driver.  no, we weren’t in china yet.  just easier to do than trying to get someone to drive you to the airport and then pick you up.  or parking your car there for 2 weeks.  then driving home exhausted.  but i’m already getting ahead of myself.

the trip through LAX wasn’t too bad.  actually much better than our trip through LAX last year when we went to chicago in june.  for the china trip everyone working at the airport was friendly and helpful.  no shoe check for bombs, dog, and or cow crap or whatever.  though you can expect the shoe check now.  we flew china eastern one of the many state run airlines in china.  i think they are all the same company just different names depending on where you are flying in china.  nice take off and the trip to china was under way.

thankfully, our seats weren’t anywhere near the ‘facilities’.  we’ve been pretty lucky in that regard for just about all of our trips.  for some reason or another we were mislead as to the length of the flight.  we were told it would be only 14 hours.  yeah, only 14.  i wish it had been only 14.  by the time we ended up in beijing we were pretty close to 19 hours in the air and a good 24 hours worth of travel time had elapsed as we traveled into the heart of darkness.

it indeed took us only 14 hours to get to shanghai.  however, we needed to change planes and carry on to beijing.  our first or second stop depending on just how you want to count stuff.  the chinese customs or army guys ran us around the shanghai airport by bus and foot for what was probably an hour or so.  i’m not sure to this day what was going on but it was not unlike a chinese fire drill.  if you get my drift.  hustled here.  wait.  hustled there.  wait.  some other little guy wearing a big hat comes in and says something and we are on the move again.  3 or 4 trips around the airport.  literally.  a 19th nervous breakdown of running up and down the stairs for sure.  finally we are told to sit and wait in this waiting room for our plane.  thankfully, there were restrooms handy.  my bowels were still on california time.  speaking of time.  china has only one time zone.  it’s the same time in china from one end to the other.  interesting.

it was another 4 or 5 hours of air time to beijing. after clearing customs and being driven to the hotel it was around midnight or later.  just bone tired.  head full of cob webs the size of pittsburg.  everything just a huge purple tinted haze. 

we were ensconced at the tianlun dynasty(not sure if i’m spelling it right but i don’t feel like checking, sorry) in downtown beijing.  a truly 5 star hotel or at least it was then.  at the time, rumor had it that when the old limp dicks rolled into town in 2008, rooms would be going for 2 grand US a night.  g/f didn’t think so but i heard it from a reliable source at the hotel.

i’ve already mentioned this was a tour.  i suppose you could go to china on your own if you were just going to one city or something.  getting around might be a chore if you weren’t hooked into the ‘tour’ network.  driving a car on your own would be fool hardy at best.  more on this later.  plus if you don’t speak chinese you are at a distinct disadvantage.

the rest of the folks on the tour were mostly all chinese from all parts of the u s of a.  there were two other round eyed men on the tour which was nice.
we could get together for some laughs and beer.  both very nice gentlemen with lovely chinese wives.

ok.  so it’s a 5 star hotel and we spent 3 nights there.  breakfast everyday at all the hotels was a buffet.  a mixture of western and chinese stuff.  actually pretty good.  nothing like eating a few stir fried veggies or steamed veggies for breakfast along with some decent sausage links and a croissant or two with aussie butter and jam along with a few chinese steamed veggie buns.  some fresh fruit and juice as well.  chinese coffee was ok.  nothing like here though. 

as for lunch and dinner it was always a chinese banquet style deal.  lots of food and generally speaking all very good.  always a fresh fish but a non saltwater fish so tons of bones.  not my fave.  and lots of eel as well.  it’s ok but the sauce makes eel.  that’s for sure.  plenty of veggies and some tofu if you were lucky.  perhaps some chicken or duck or maybe beef or pork stuff.  i don’t know.  well, i don’t remember to be really fair.  g/f and i both agree the chinese food in general is better here in socalif.  though some of the meals in china were just as good if not better.  for the most part it was way too much food but no one gained any weight as we were kept on the run most of the time.  sometimes literally.  up at 6am and maybe hit the pillow at 11pm if you were lucky after a very full day of going here and there with lots of walking about thrown in. 

there are almost as many starbucks in china as there are here.  i never had a starbucks while we were there.  though i did go into one someplace or another.  i think it might have been in shanghai.  i was in desperate need of water.  bottled water. 

we were told not to drink the tap water.  not even brush our teeth with it.  oh, we were told the water was ok, it was the pipes that were bad.  someone was shitting someone.  at any rate, the tour provided some bottled water and each hotel left 2 bottles in the room every day.  but after brushing your teeth a couple of times there wasn’t much left for drinking. 

when time would allow bottled water shopping was at the number one spot on every ones list.  especially after i got hosed by our beijing hotel when buying a few bottles of french stuff for $10 US.  regular chinese bottled water, even the high end stuff, was only 75 cents a bottle.  a travel tip, when in china and you ask for bottled water at a meal make sure the bottle is still sealed when it’s brought to the table.  if it isn’t send it back and ask for another.  a sealed bottle.  capitalism being what it is lots of places are not above refilling a bottle from the tap.  though i suppose having a number of chinese speaking folks on the tour helped considerably in this regard.  after a few days the tour provided more bottled water but at times it still wasn’t enough. 

having a number of chinese speakers on the tour also helped with the important beer drinking at lunch and dinner or other times as well.  if you don’t ask for cold beer you get room temp beer in most places.  not pleasant.  perhaps for the english and germans but not me.  you also want to see them open the bottle of beer.

alright we are in beijing.  things are cool.  time to hit the sights.  

jmh

a crappy job, literally

this is a re-worked piece from last year.  i’ve even added a few photos of the actual place.  a very nice b/w shot giving the whole sordid affair a touch of class.  a sort of visual aid as it were to a very crappy job. 

back when i was a kid i had some pretty crappy jobs.  this job in particular is probably the worst of the lot.  easter summer.  so what?  well, actually it wasn’t, THE, summertime job but a part of THE summertime job.  how’s that for convoluted?   lucky me, i got this summertime work yearly during my high school life and after, working in the maintenance department for the high school i went to.  can you say, nepotism?  i knew you could.  well, that am how shit used to work and to some extent in some places it still might.  the way things were if i wanted money for the car and other important teenage guy stuff during the school year, the job was a necessity.  i had no choice.  fine.  i managed.

the job also entailed working most easter and christmas breaks.  yeah.  everyone else is fucking off.  sleeping in.  me?  i’m working man’s dead.   doing the nasty stuff the regular working stiffs left for us kids to do during our off time.  ah, well, um, if i’m on like this weird working vacation and you like have this job all the time and you get paid way more than i do, why do i have to do this or whatever?  good question, pilgrim.  and one to this day i don’t have any answer to.  the particular job i’m talking about happened during the summertime job.  over the years i did it twice.  unfortunately.

the high school i went to had a bell tower.  fine.  lots of schools do.  this one had like a lip or something on it.  a small square space about 2 feet deep maybe more by maybe 8 feet across or more.  capice?  i hope so.  let’s see.  you got this tower.  way the fuck up there.  a nice square space 2 feet or so deep.  ok.  you have this sorta deep space way up high and it’s full of pigeon crap.  old dried up pigeon crap and it needed to be cleaned out.  i suppose if it wasn’t cleaned out it would begin to become a mountain and the locals could or would see the mountain of pigeon shit every time they looked up at the tower to see what time it was.  i guess no one was up for that action.

just to veer a bit, the tower served many purposes.  it collected pigeon crap, it told you the time, it was nice to look at, and it held one of those old civil defense horns made famous back in the cold war days.  the horn was up in the area where the pigeons crapped their little hearts out. 

in those days we didn’t live very far from the tower and i remember a few times the horn going off.  it was usually in the dead of night and raining.  of course, it took a while for someone to roll out of bed to get there and that someone had to have the key to get up there.  not everyone was privy to that key.  my dad, who worked there for years, had most of the keys to the kingdom but not that one.  so it was a good hour or so before everyone within miles of the thing could go back to sleep.    

so back to the job.  it’s summertime and de onta summer hot.  today you boys go up into the tower and clean out the pigeon shit.  figure out how you want to do the deal and just do it, boys.  sure, ok.  as nasty a damn job if there ever was one.  and i did the deed twice in my short sweet life.  just unreal.  nice view however.

first time we did it we used this block and tackle deal to drag aluminum trash cans up on the outside of the tower.  drag em up.  then lower them down full of pigeon shit.  then dumping the cans in a dumpster.   ooofa.   just hot nasty hard dirty work.  the guy on ‘dirty jobs’ should do that job.  once.  there wasn’t much room up at the top, no pun intended, given the fact whoever was wielding a shovel or two around.  so jobs got rotated.  didn’t matter the process was just a nightmare.  

second time was the same crew, sorta.  it was a few years later.  this time however, we had this poor stupid teacher who wanted a summertime job and he got stuck helping us.  yeah.  well, at least he came up with a semi better idea.  sorta.  his idea was we bring up big plastic bags and fill them up with the bird crap and then just drop them down the hole where the ladder was.  ok.  yeah.  cool.  no wonder the guy was a teacher.

yeah, right.  it was still just a nasty job taking two days in the hot damn summer of de onta.  the plastic trash bags?  i was almost hit by two of the damn things as they fell to the bottom of the tower.  you couldn’t hear what the fuck was going on in there with the noise and echos.  clear?  ok, i’m dropping a load.  what?  i can’t hear you.  so you would stick your head out into the ‘zone’ and look up to see what was going on.  wham.  here it comes.  screaming down the tube.  30 or 40 pounds of pigeon shit.  nicely wrapped up in a heavy duty plastic bag.  heading right for your dumb ass teenage head.  good thing i’ve always had good reflexes and quick reaction time.  still do.  damn straight.  none the less it was close.  way too damn close.  closer than nam ever got close.  too fucking close.  killed by pigeon shit.  not good.  not a good obit.  nice catchy headline, but obit, nah.  teenager killed by falling bag of pigeon shit. 

like i said i did this job, twice.  pigeon crap dust everywhere.  not to mention the crap itself.  along with the assorted feathers and whatever else the birds had transported up there.  no masks.  no osha.  no nada.  no zip.  no zilch.  i ain’t complaining.  i lived through it, sorta.

the nice b/w photo below is the tower in question on the campus of my olden high school.    

a nice small semi artsy color shot as well.   along with a couple of others as well. 

there’s no music being provided for this one by anybody.  because nobody wants to be associated with old dried up pigeon shit and stupid teenagers doing what they are told because they need the money.

jmh
 

photographic memory(?) part 3

today’s photos are what was the workingman’s life in the olden days of the dreaded inland empire.  more b/w stuff from long ago.

there can be no semi real photographic study of the empire without a photo of a dairy down in chino.  chino at one time had a bazillion times more dairy cows than there were people.  i’ve mentioned it before but on a foggy winter day the cow shit smell still lingers.  i love the smell.  the photo below is the dairy at boy’s republic.  a boy’s home that still exists in chino.  they make some of the best christmas wreaths you will ever see.  actor steve mcqueen did time there.

the next 2 photos are from 1929.  i suspect they are actually some sort of promotional stuff set up by the winery in guasti.  the ladies in the photos are a bit to clean to have been picking grapes for very long in the hot september sun.  the same goes for the crushing plant photos.  any the ways, interesting.

the next 2 photos are of the wine train bringing the grapes in from the field to be processed.  note no ladies in these photos.

the old redwood fermenting tanks.  doing what they do best.  helping mother nature turn yeast shit into alcohol.

the last photo is from an old lemon packing plant in upland.  yes, the workers were mostly women in those plants.  there were numerous packing plants within walking distance of each other in the southern area of downtown upland.  a few of them still exist though they are being used for something else these days.

jmh

photographic memory(?) part 2

continuing in the vein of yesterday’s old b/w photos here’s a few more for today.  i brought a tear to the eye of my old friend, dfr, with the grape vistas in part one.  not an easy thing to do i assure you.  though the stark lovely peaceful bucolic coyote laden days and nights of those old days still live forever in the hearts of those of us fortunate enough to have lived there in those times.  lived in the dreaded inland empire when it just might have been one of the best spots on the planet.

yes, of course i’ll get some what abouts about that but be that as it may.  it am what it was.  pretty damn special.

yesterday was for grapes.  today is for oranges and lemons.  the vistas remain the same.  lovely.  time hasn’t changed them much except for the addition of way too many people.  the san gabriels still stand over the valley watching and waiting.

the photo below is a lemon or orange grove.  take your pick.  it looks to be on the eastern edge of upland, ca or the western edge of claremont, ca.   the san gabriels as always.  note the citrus isn’t growing in the sand that the grapes grew in but the alluvial rocks brought down from the mountains by the rain and creeks in the area for millenniums. 

the next photo is of an old ornage grove that sat above 19th street in upland for longer than a great number of others did.   i remember when it finally fell to progress not that many years ago.  flanked by euclid ave back when it wasn’t paved.  those days were even before mine.

upland, ca, 1906, looking north on 2nd ave.  the san gabriels once again.   note the horse crap in the street.  upland was famous for it’s lemons and oranges.

the last photo is of ontario, ca in 1885.  or i think that’s the year.  probably close enough.  you are looking north from the south end of downtown ontario.  north to the ever present san gabriels.   the street, euclid ave, is still there.  though it’s paved now and the trees or some of them are different.  just another grand vista that lost out to time.  ontario, ca the city of my youth.

jmh

 

photographic memory(?)

i suppose, in the long run, this might only be of interest to just a few of my friends.  which is fine.  it isn’t a problem.  but if you like nice black and white photos of old stuff stick around.

the other day my friend, dfr, found a great place for old socalif photos.  he heard about it on a local pbs tv show.  he turned me on to it.  the place?  the los angeles public library’s on line web site.  http://www.lapl.org/catalog/photo_collection_overview.html  some really good stuff if you are interested use the search feature.  at any rate, that’s where the photos that are here came from.  i’m very grateful to them as i think they are wonderful shots.

when i think of the dreaded inland empire.  i always think of it from the perspective of my youth.  the vistas in these pure simple black and white photos are of a time when socalif was still an open uncluttered place.  the dreaded inland empire the home of grapes, oranges, lemons, and cows.  well, other stuff too.  miles of walnut orchards, peaches and apricots.  along with some of the best sweet corn this side of iowa.  plus acres of potatoes and onions.  yeah, it was an atom heart mother place.  the place of my youth and once vivid youthful dreams.  i hope you enjoy the photos. 

the photo below was taken in guasti, ca back in the day.  you are looking north to the san gabriel mountains. 

the next photo was taken a bit further north but still in guasti, ca.  in this photo you can see the sand in where the grapes  grew.  the same sand the santa anas blew everywhere and the same sand that filled the walls of the homes in guasti.

the last photo was taken further north in cucamonga, ca.  you are looking south in this photo.  just to the north and behind you are the oranges and lemon groves.

 

jmh

in the face of greatness

yep, that is what it is and what i watched yesterday.  tiger woods.  the 21st century face of golf greatness.  sure he started his run on greatness back in the late 90’s.  fine.  he threw down some classic stuff back then.  well, he’s still doing it these days. 

this weekend’s, arnold palmer bay hill classic, in florida, was just another example of the man’s greatness.  ah, tiger’s.  arnie is and always shall be great, as well.  arnie, the man who ben hogan only called, fella.  never by his his name.  only, fella. ben hogan, a man of golf, a man of the ages who had a surreal career cut short by a fog shrouded road in texas.  a man who was left for dead by the texas highway patrol.  a man who endured pain and suffering to win his last l.a. open on just pure guts and will power alone.  a man who refused to empty the trash because it involved using muscles other than those used in golf.  yeah, golf.  the sacred game.

tiger woods equaled ben’s career pga victory mark yesterday of, 64.  equaled the 64 wins with an amazing birdie putt on the 72nd hole to stave off a playoff with a veteran of the pga wars, bart bryant.  a man of class to be sure.  a man of such class that when speaking of his lost attempt at making the field at the up coming shrine, augusta national, he didn’t break down and cry.  though in his heart he was weeping like a baby.  who could blame him?  no, he’s a vet of the pga wars.  a laugh, a cavalier doff of the cap belies his inner heartbreak.

a 45 year old veteran of the man eating pga.  bart has gone through the pga qualifying school 6 times over his career.  a man who’s won on the tour.  a man who’s won a semi-major, the players championship.  doesn’t matter.

tiger didn’t play that well this weekend.  missed opportunities were rampant for the most part.  his putting was off.  but when push came to shove.  when charlie was in the wire.  when you are flying the plane by the seat of your pants in the face of your own overwhelming mediocrity you suck it up and just fucking do it.

that’s what tiger did sunday.  fiddle farted around.  3 putted a green.  something he rarely does.  he was just on the odd outside of his game.  the tour vets and young lions whetted their own game on his semi sad game.  though tiger’s sad sorta game is usually more than enough for any for pga tour event.  sunday it came down to put up or shut up.  tiger put it up. 

it’s what he loves.  he thinks the game of pga golf or golf in general is fun.  just a game.  and in truth that is what it is.  a simple sacred game.  something for you to have some fun with.  there lies tiger’s greatness. 

since as a 3 or 4 year old on the old old mike douglas tv show hitting golf balls on national tv, golf has been his main entertainment.  how can i have some fun?  how can i amuse myself and over come nature and this supremely handcrafted golf course? 

there ya go.  that’s what he and his game are all about.  having fun playing at something he’s loved since he could barely walk.  it wasn’t his green beret dad or his thai mom that drove him to be what he is.  they were there for him and nurtured him.  however, it was he, tiger, that drove him to be what he is.  pure and simple.  we are the lucky ones to be witness to his greatness.

arnold palmer.  ben hogan.  jack nicklaus.  sammy snead.  the list goes on and on.  without divine intervention tiger woods will be the greatest golfer of all time.  he will be the muhammad ali of golf.  ain’t nothin’ else to be said.

jmh

relief translating part 2

the knife was still stuck into the back of the relief translators head.  it was just a small paring knife so the headache wasn’t so much of a bother as it was annoying.  it may as well have been late august and some ballpark in the midwest with the humidity hovering around monsoonal and temperatures to match.  he pulled the knife from his skull, wiped the blade and his forehead, then took a long satisfying leak of large carnivore proportions.  the relievers job was done.  finally.

it wasn’t an easy job.  yeah, i thought it might have been but looks are deceiving.  sure i’d spent an hour and a half on the first part of the translation transforming chinese english into perhaps something a bit more readable.  it seemed like there wouldn’t be much more to do.  just a couple of more simple paragraphs to go or so it seemed.

we finally got back to it yesterday afternoon.  the meat of the stuff.  the artistic words and sentiments from the chinese perspective.  they needed to come across as they were written in chinese or so said g/f.  none of your turning the chinese thoughts into some english novel.  that one came up more than once.  what’s a poor boy to do?  it either comes across as chinese english or english.  take your pick. 

we struggled with the next paragraph for almost 2 hours.  color, light, abstract, landscape, style, brush strokes.  and so on.  just mind numbing work.  we finally got something down.  i had a headache.  i needed vino.  large amounts of vino.

we got back to it again this morning right after breakfast.  it seemed like it was going to be a piece of cake.  sure.  just like life. 

more thoughts and words crammed into the smallest amount of chinese characters adding up to a mountain of english words or more specifically chinese english.  we are doing a translation not writing a novel.  well, i come up with stuff in place of the silted chinese english but you don’t like it and then tell me i’m supposed to come up with something for these words and ideas that are just gibberish to me. 

on it went.  hashing out a few words at a time.  yeah, ok that’s fine.  i don’t care.  you aren’t helping.  i’m doing all the work.  well, perhaps it’s because i don’t speak chinese let alone i’m not chinese and you don’t like what i have to say so i don’t care anymore what the damn thing reads like.  i just want it to be over.  your, brother, fucked us both with this little ditty.  yes, i know.  i’m as angry as you are.

it took us a bit over 2 hours to finish the deal.  over 4 hours total of free mind breaking work.  brother gets of scot free and looks like a hero.  i had a paring knife stuck in the back of my skull very near the top of my spine.  g/f had a headache as well.

so it seems to be done.  note i said ’seems’.  g/f has not read what i came up with on my own.  from our exchanges the past 2 days i don’t have much hope for my attempt to make the cut.  well, she has the whole thing back on her computer now so she can deal with it on her own.  or at least until i hear, ‘john, john, come here.’  emanating from the other room.  god help us all, tiny tim.

jmh