Forgotten Friday-McFadden Farm, Murfreesboro

   When I first moved to Rutherford County in 2002, one of the first places we explored was the Stones River Battlefield. One of the tour stops is known as the McFadden's Ford. It was in this area on January 2, 1863, near the McFadden's family farm, that the Confederates attempted to cross the Stones River from the southeast to attack the Union forces entrenched on the hills. Cannons pounded and the Confederates were killed by the hundreds.
   Currently at this tour stop you will see a monument, cannons, a small family cemetery, and you can walk down to the river where fighting occurred. But when I first visited(with my non-digital camera) in 2002, there was an old abandoned farmhouse. I took only this one photo of it, thinking I would take more in the future. And then one day it was just gone. I asked a park ranger who said it was removed because it wasn't original to the site. And that is rather sad, because it was still clearly a quite old home.

Throwback Thursday: Astrodome

    Took this photo most likely in 1994. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo was in town, and I was apparently on the Ferris wheel at the time. I love the Dome. Opened in 1965, home to the Houston Astros baseball and Oilers football teams. I went to so many Astros games that I didn't know what it was like to watch a professional baseball game outdoors! It wasn't until I saw a game in Tiger Stadium in Detroit in 1999 that I experienced pro ball the way most people know it! I pray that they never tear the Dome down. It was the first of its kind and deserves to be preserved.

Throwback Thursday: Snow in Houston

   Winter of 1973 I'm pretty sure. The Houston, Texas suburb of North Shore. The apartments I grew up in. That's our apartment back there, lower right with the curtains open a little. It doesn't snow often in Houston, but when it does you take as many photos as possible!

Throwback Thursday: Colorado Street Bridge

    Scanned from photo from trip in 1994. The bridge over Arroyo Seco in Pasadena. Famous for jumpers, probably close to 200 people have committed suicide here since it was built in 1913.

Throwback Thursday: Scans from Los Angeles

  Today's "throwback" is going to focus on photos I took on vacations around Los Angeles and California back in 1987 and 1994. I didn't take as many photos back then because, well I couldn't afford the film in the age before digital. I didn't know what would come out, you couldn't just "delete" photos you didn't like, and there were times that rolls of film didn't get developed(due to lack of money) and/or just got lost.

Throwback Thursday: Classic Cars Need Some ID!

 Well they weren't classic at the time!

I have no idea what these two cars are, but the writing my mom put on the back says "Barstow Motel 1969". That's me on the bouncy horse.

Me hanging out of my dad's car, "Somewhere in Nevada 1969", perhaps a Gran Torino?

Station Wagon, this one might even be before I was born taken by my mom in the early 60s(maybe even late 50s?), possibly out in the desert near Barstow, California.

  I know these aren't technically "mine" since I didn't take them, but I am IN two of them, and they were all taken by my mom or dad. And I've been wanting to post them for so long in hopes of getting an identification on the cars!

Los Angeles

I've recently become re-obsessed with Los Angeles/Hollywood and the area. I spent a month reading this thread on the skycraperpage website and everything in it about Los Angeles' history fascinates me. And makes me quite sad that I never paid more attention the times I was there.

 From the roughly the summer of 1967 through 1980, I spent nearly every summer-at least a week or two-in the Los Angeles area visiting family. Of course I don't remember most of those trips, as I was quite small during many of them. We went on quick trips a few more times from 81-83. We spent a week there in February 1986, and another week in October of 1994. I'd love to go back now, with different eyes(through a history buff/photographer's eyes), but I just can't afford a trip like that. I barely get trips up to Nashville these days(20 miles away).

 Anyway, here a few of my favorite scanned photos from those last two trips. They were taken from the perspective of "hey let's get a quick shot of that to remember it by" rather than stopping to take a more artistic view of the place. And many were taken straight from the vehicle we were traveling about in.


Graumann's Chinese Theater, Hollywood


Pan Pacific Auditorium, off Fairfax, 1986, abandoned-would burn down soon after


Hollywood Forever Cemetery, backside of Paramount Studios


Colorado Street Bridge, Pasadena


Tail o'the Pup hot dog stand, now gone


Original clock tower at Farmers Market on Fairfax at 3rd


Dinosaur near Palm Springs-most famously seen in PeeWee's Big Adventure