An auto show with a big difference

My neighbor, who teaches at Prescott College, alerted me. A very poorly advertised car show was taking place at the Crossroads Center today. A car show, yet! I usually associate PC students with anti-auto sentiment, but it turned out that this was an appropriate gathering: the Arizona Mini Owners.

And what a wonderful assortment of wee cars it was! Everything from several shiny new front-opening Isettas...

...to hot sports cars from an earlier era, back when such imports were a lot smaller than any American-made vehicles. However, I just noted the lack of wire wheels on the vehicle above -- in fact, it looks like modern low-riders, which, my neighbor who restores cars would explain, make for greater safety on today's high-speed roads.

There were Subes the likes of which I've never seen...

...a mail carrier direct from the UK, still wearing its English license plate.

No indication of this car's origins, unless one went up to inspect it!

As a reminder that at one time, made-in-USA cars weren't the huge gas-guzzlers we now enjoy, a line-up of Nashes. I remember the Nash quite well -- my LH was driving a little brown Nash station wagon when I met him!

Here's another small American car that I recall from the past -- the Crosley. In this case, a sporty convertible model. And below, its engine compartment.


It turned out that this colorful coupe is a work in progress -- bright shiny new two-tone paint on the outside, but in need of furnishings as well as work in the passenger compartment (below).

When your car is a mini, an enclosed trailer is quite feasible. The owner of this unit said that his collection included five little automobiles that he has restored.

And, yes, this wag not only had his jokemobile on display but rode it about to show just how to achieve the ultimate in miniaturization. I doubt if he worries about $4 or $5 gas.

Before the iPod, there was...

I gawked at the goodies over at Batterman's the other day with Patty. Wow, what an ingriguing variety of antiques and collectibles. Especially this music making machine for milady's parlor, circa the 1890s.

The Regina music box works off metal platters with holes -- just like the old key punch cards for earlier IBMs (or, if you really want to go back further in history, the punched cards used by Jacquard looms as of 1801.)

Since this was a quality piece of household furniture, it included storage room for a proper collection of platters.

Another, less prepossessing music box, this one driven by rolls of punched paper. A familiar sight if you've ever seen music rolls for a player piano. I was surprised at just how big the holes were in this music roll, however.
These automated predecessors to the iPod reminded me of a small corner of family history. My grandfather's brother founded the Mills Novelty Company in Chicago before the turn of the century (the 20th, that is). Tho Mortie didn't invent the slot machine, he managed to acquire the patents and become a major manufacturer of one-armed bandits. But that was in addition to his own inventions -- a splendid assortment of coin operated automatic music machines for the saloon business. I found this Mills machine tonight over at eBay, where it had just sold for $41,000, even though it was an as-is sale.

The Violano-Virtuoso, an automatic violin with a robotic piano for accompaniment. Many years ago in Chicago, a friend and I found a saloon out Milwaukee Avenue whose proprietor collected antique coin-op machines. The violin machine in that particular collection did not feature an actual instrument body, but merely a string plus playing mechanism. The tunes depended, again, upon punched paper rolls. Made by Mills.

Note the claim on that name plate. Today's marketing men don't have nearly the chutzpah of their early predecessors.

Butte Creek

In our hiking days, the LH and I never tried to trace the course of local creeks down from the hills above town. As a result, Butte Creek is a bit of a mystery to me; the name certainly suggests its origin -- Thumb Butte. What I do know is that Gurley Street crosses this watercourse just before the light at Gail Gardner. The creek defines the boundaries of the shady Pine Lawn mobile home campus and the big Woodlands apartment complex. The crossing (above) at Willow Street is the next in line from Gurley! Once the creek passes under Willow, it cuts through the Prescott College Campus.

It seems to me that this driveway is a fairly new piece of construction. The culvert makes a fine frame for viewing the waterway upstream (below).

However, I was struck by the different evaluation of flood potential by the property owner above (fairly low), compared to the city (a good 3x higher), which installed three huge passages for melt water, the every-10-year 100-year flood or possible hurricane remnants.

Moving on, the low water crossing on Norris Street near Prescott College gives a picture of how high this winters' waters pushed debris.

Today, the creek is steady, fed by continuing mountain snow melt. But the flow is gentle, making wonderful patterns on the cement apron.

The course of the shallow water was parted here, detailed by flowing algae.

And here's a small discovery I made the day these pictures were taken: there is a spring slightly uphill from the concrete apron on the northeast side of Norrist. Butte Creek continues its run from here past several more Prescott College buildings, crosses under Miller Valley Road where it joins Miller Creek and then on to the big one, Granite Creek.

What's with all those bikers?

How many times did I see this scene repeated today? I didn't stop to count the ways. However, anybody who was out and about around noon probably saw the many clumps of bikers headed through town on their way to ??? I even saw a clutch of them parked briefly on Coronado just across from Lincoln School.

I thought perhaps they were headed up to Mormon Lake for the un-Sturgis event there. However, a quick consult with The Google dismissed that idea; Too Broke for Sturgis takes place in late July. Last year, over 1200 cyclers made the scene in the high country (above). Further research uncovered the facts that 1) this is Arizona Bike Week and 2) today there was a 260-mile Riding for Kids Charity Run. Figures; the bikers we saw today were coming up Iron Springs Road, the wuss-route, instead of taking the curves of the White Spar through the mountains.

Once the weather warms up here (and gets too hot down in the Phoenix area), the motorcycles begin their regular pilgrimages to Prescott. One sees all sorts of bikes parked at the Square and on Whiskey Row.

I can't decide whether to dream of a proper all-BLACK machine -- or indulge my weak spot for R*E*D! A Harley, of course.

Today the Harley is such an American icon that we support a chain of Harley shoppes for leathers, bandanas, Ts and all manner of paraphernalia. But then, it took the taming of the Easy Rider image to rescue Harley Davidson back in the early 80s, when the company was about to go belly up. Now, you know when you see a flamboyant bike that the owner is probably a stock broker living in one of those $-million built-from-scratch "lofts" in the big cities of America. Once in a while -- just once in a while -- we see a group of gray-bearded, over-the-hill bikers in their black leather vests and bandanas roar into town. Oh, nostalgia!

Thank goodness the rebel image lives on in the cartoon strip, Rose Is Rose, where that sweet wife and mother at left harbors an inner biker who periodically surfaces when the suburban life gets to be too much.

Projects on hold?

That sale is now a done deal -- well past the pending stage. The other house on my street that's been for sale for well over a year? The owner's taken the sign down; doesn't really have to sell.

On the other hand, you wouldn't know that there was a real estate problem to judge by these trucks, busy moving soil from this hillside near Rosser Street up higher, to make a flat top, suitable for new houses in Cliff Rose (below).

The Sson suggested that inertia is what keeps some projects moving along; Newton's first law in action. Do we really have enough pent-up demand here in Prescott to support a batch of new Shops at the Boulders? Funny -- when I was visiting my MD up thataway in mid-aught-seven, there wasn't much happening on this Willow Creek Road project.

It may be a gamble -- perhaps the developer is getting a price deal from excavation contractors anxious to keep busy.

In contrast, this West Gurley Street condo development seems to be awaiting better times.

Ditto at the two corners of Montezuma and Goodwin. No doubt those condos will happen one day, but probably not right away. Bet there are a few developers breathing a sigh of relief that ground hadn't been broken when the bottom fell out.