It isn’t in Texas and it isn’t a tavern. It’s a family-owned, all-night burger joint that’s been around since 1930. And it’s awesome.
That shot of Church Street is awful. But I’m including it anyway, because New Yorkers simply cannot fathom how empty these streets can be — and quiet! So often Roanoke seems like a scene in “The Quiet Earth” (1985).
American International Pictures.
“Serving breakfasts, luncheons and dinners, with practice in different styles of table service; soups, entrees, sauces, salads and desserts, with various methods of preparation and garnishings. An opportunity for review of principles learned in Cookery 51-52 is given. One single and one double period per week for the session for non-teaching Seniors.”
— from the Bulletin of the State Normal School, Fredericksburg, Virginia, June, 1917
By University of Mary Washington [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons
Plaster mounted on canvas.
So this was Thursday’s bizarre, abrupt twilight snowstorm. Look how beautiful and blue the sky was before snow and night fell together. Look at the size of the flakes!
“The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.”
James Baldwin, “Another Country,” 1962
Indian ink on cardboard.
What’s most striking to me about Moser’s turn-of-the-century art is how often it can resemble an especially cool 1960’s album cover.
They even have little sparkly studs in the frame.
How can I be expected to BUY the right glasses when the ones I have are broken and I can’t SEE?!? And when I was in a rush!!! WHY THE @#$% WERE THESE IN THE MEN’S SECTION?!?
The boys are going to laugh their @$$es off.
It sucks being old. And blind. And dumb.
Update: MY BUDDY’S GIRLFRIEND JUST TOLD ME SHE HAS THE SAME PAIR!!!
When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras’d
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
Indian ink, white gouache on paper.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 