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.