Folk Art – RDZ Photography

Across America – May 2019 – Random Scenes Part 2

Architecture, Art, History, Nature, Transportation, Water Features

Central Tennessee – Bus Graveyard

Northern Alabama – Rock Zoo

Scottsboro, Alabama – Did you ever lose your luggage on an airplane and never get it back. It likely ended up here, as they buy all of the unclaimed luggage from the airlines and sell it in essentially a thrift store.

Pawhuska, Oklahoma

Bartlesville, Oklahoma – Phillips 66 Petroleum Company Headquarters

Vinita, Oklahoma – Will Rogers Rodeo

Eastern Oklahoma – Pensacola Dam. A mile long and releasing a lot of water because of the recent rains.

Joplin, Missouri – America’s 2nd largest truck stop.

Southern Missouri – Presumed dead armadillo

Somewhere else in Southern Missouri – Coke Machine Graveyard

Scenes around Cairo, Illinois – At the confluence of the Ohio River and Mississippi River – with flooding.

Evansville, Indiana – Restored Greyhound Bus Station, now a hipster hamburger place. Manhattan prices in small town Indiana.

The interior looked nothing like a bus station.

Evansville, Indiana – County Courthouse

Scenes around Louisville, Kentucky

And after 3 weeks of running around the country – back in Ohio (in Cincinnati). Only 2 hours to home.

Amarillo, Texas – May 2019 – Planting Vehicles in the Ground

Art

For some reason the people of Amarillo, Texas like to take large vehicles and plant them in the ground.

South of town is Combine City. Since 2002 a farmer named Orville Ladehoff has been ‘planting’ old combines in the ground. Today there are 14 of them sticking up in the Texas prairie.

Slug Bug Ranch is east of town. Here there are 5 VW Beetles stuck in the ground much like the more famous one on the other side of town.

There are a few other items on the grounds that are also covered in graffiti.

By far the most famous in town, and likely in the world is Cadillac Ranch. Since 1974 these old Cadillacs have been sticking out of the ground in the Texas panhandle.

Note – they are not supposed to be in a pond, but there had been lots of rain so it appears they are partially under water.

Houston – May 2019 – The Beer Can House

Architecture, Art, History

The website Roadside America is one of my favorites, and easily one of the most ‘classic Roadside America’ is the Beer Can House of Houston!

As you arrive you are greeted by a fence of (of course) beer cans.

In the late 1960s a retired upholsterer named John Milkovisch started inlaying thousands of marbles and rocks into concrete and wood to make landscaping features because as he said at the time ‘he was tired of mowing grass’.

For the next 18 years he flattened beer cans, that supposedly he and his friends emptied, and attached them to his house. Today the estimated 50,000 beer cans cover the entire house and former garage.

The early morning sun shining through the beer can top fence made an interesting pattern on the driveway.

It is owned today by the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, who have the interesting exhibit next to Smithers Park.

The stringers on the front of the house sing in the wind. It is said that the beer cans actually help keep the house cooler in the hot Houston summers by reflecting the sun rays away from the house.

The Beer Can House – a Houston classic!

Houston – May 2019 – Smithers Park

Art

Smithers Park is an urban art oasis in southeast Houston. Named in honor of a couple folk art philanthropists, the park resides between a residential and commercial area, next to the legendary Houston folk art area known as the Orange Show.

The park has art from over 300 people, mostly self taught. The day we were there a few were working on their current projects.

The band shell was impressive, with an interior of mostly cut up road signs.

The mosaics are a collection of random materials.

All are very original in their design.

Bordering the entire length of one side of the park is a 400 foot long ‘Memory Wall’.

The surrounding neighborhood is predominately Latino, and as a tribute there is a ‘Day of the Day’ couple sitting at a table.

At first you think this is a small grass oasis, until you look closely and see the guitar neck in mosaic beyond it, and the grass is the body of the guitar.