This sketch was actually drawn during my first visit to Jonesville, but essentially nothing has changed a year later. The Barn is where tools and supplies used by the workers at Jonesville-area sites are stored. But, not much longer– I was informed that the building is to be torn down and an improved structure put up.
While enroute to Jonesville, VA for the Appalachian Service Project, we stopped for refueling near Lexington, KY and I picked up this local soft drink (which the check-out clerk had never tried). It is “Ale 8 1”- nicknamed “A Late One” and ’tis claimed by the manufacturer to be one of Kentucky’s favorites. It is a ginger ale and compares favorably to similar offerings.
I spent a lot of time drawing…the landlord and his cronies spent their time listening to cricket on the radio and tried explaining it to me.
We drank a lot, because, you know, you get thirsty in the tropics. We stayed at a “guesthouse”…now you’d call it a “bed and breakfast”…except we got dinner, too. The food was OK, but my most distinct memory is a peanut punch the landlord made…a peanut butter based beverage. I dislike peanut butter, but it wasn’t bad.
One distinct memory is the crowing of roosters at every dawn…for a suburban boy this was a novel, if not welcome, awakening. These days, I might not mind it so much.
I met a sailor in Port Of Spain named Carl Meade. I can’t remember the circumstances, and though I was leary at first, it worked out fine. He was from Antigua but knew his way around T&T. We crashed at his half-brother’s house and then took the ferry to Tobago. That was my first “voyage” on ocean waters.
There was very little going on there…at least of which that I was aware. I hadn’t even planned on winding up there.
I’m heading out of town, so I am posting a week’s worth of pictures from another time I headed out of town around 1975…down to the sleepy island of Tobago….
And yet another Tribune illustration…Rapidograph and brush on paper and I used screens for the midtones, a technique I never used much. Devotees of root vegetables will find several depicted. The Food Dreamer at lower right is my father, who was in his late 40s at the time…younger than I am now!
These roughs were alongside other sketches which looked like Chicago Tribune material…I did a number of pieces for a food-related section called “Taste” in the late ’70s-early ’80s. Whatever they were for, these characters never made it pass this stage…a potato-headed man and a turnip-headed woman.