Robert Pence

That's quite an eye-pleasing design, and I like the way the colors work in the setting. I don't understand the chimney, even though I've seen a lot of them done that way recently. It looks as though it's functional, possibly for a fireplace, and in that case I'd prefer it to be faced in traditional masonry. If it's not functional, then I'd rather see nothing at all in its place. I was only being a little bit tongue-in-cheek about front-facing garage doors being considered desirable here. I live in Fort Wayne, and the damn ugly things are ubiquitous in new developments. They really do seem to be a point of pride among suburbanites in Northeast Indiana.

A photo from about a year ago - this little guy is my grand-nephew, whose fourth birthday was today. Before we know it, he'll be a big kid running steam engines.

I don't know what kind of funding arrangement might exist, if any, but the transit system in Indiana, PA definitely shows the influence of the university. Indiana is a modest-sized city, although from all appearances more prosperous than Wooster.

You can get screens that cover the garage door opening for summer socializing space. I think they pull down from a roller; I've seen one in use across the street from a friend's house, and it covered the entire width of a two-car garage door. Gas grill in the driveway, screen on the garage door, beer fridge inside, above-ground pool in the back yard for the kids. It don't get no better'n that.

Depends on where you are. In the midwest, a huge garage door means you have at least two huge SUVs, or maybe one of those Escalade-styled pickup thingies and a big-ass boat to haul with it, and that raises your social standing almost as much as a pickup truck on cement blocks in the front yard and two dogs under the porch.

The shirt marks her as a "look at me and my expensive camera" person. I'd peg her has a too-much-money newbie who hasn't had all that much experience or developed much in the way of skills at photography. I wouldn't take a camera like that to a party; what's the point? If I were carrying that camera, I'd stay stone-cold-sober, and in any setting where there's traffic and distraction I'd have it secured with the strap around my neck or wrapped around my forearm, not slung loosely over my shoulder. I haven't even met her, and already I dislike her. grumblegrumblecrabbyoldfartgrumblegrumble.

Wells County, Indiana, came up with local and INDOT funding to provide service to the general public with vans used by the Council on Aging for senior citizen transportation. The rub is that with their service is demand-responsive and has to be scheduled 24 hours in advance. Their service is called WOW!, short for Wells on Wheels. Corny, but it's a baby step in the right direction. Wooster, 1985:

Reach out and stick an old frame pump through their spokes. They won't be able to chase you. :evil:

I didn't see that coming. I wonder what effect it will have on future use of OCR's excursion rolling stock, especially steam.

If you crop out the sky in the second one, you get the impression of fire on the surface of the water. That's what made me think at first that it must be Cleveland. :wink: Sorry! Sorry! I know better! I just couldn't resist! I hate people who keep dragging that up after forty years.

I'd guess they needed a hole for ductwork, and made it by punching a series of contiguous holes with a diamond hole saw like they use to make holes for pipes. You can see the splatters on the wall from the water.

cute and tidy. :-)

Always a good sign when the barber shop calls itself a barber shop and not a "salon" by some hackneyed attempt-to-be-clever/sophisticated name. I was ready to move there, until I saw that the pizza place is closed.

Great shots, conveying the cool, moist density. Looks like good mosquito habitat, too!

From Cleveland. They have mines that go beneath Lake Erie.

I didn't know until I was 22 that I'm colorblind. I applied for USAF Pilot/Navigator training, and aced all the written exams with near-perfect scores. Then came the physical, and I did poorly on depth perception and completely wiped out on color vision. End of exam. Those were the first two things they checked, so I suspect those are the problems they most often encounter. The color vision also wiped me out on another aspiration, electronics, because components like resistors and capacitors were color-coded with different patterns of stripes to indicate their values. No change on these tests. I failed every one. I can distinguish the strong colors of traffic signals, but on more subtle colors I'm clueless. Give me two identically-styled shirts, one light blue and the other light green, and if I hope to get the right one I have to compare them side-by-side in a strong daylight-balanced light. Try to imagine the blind faith I put in the auto color balance features of my camera and Photoshop when working with color photos. If I put up something really screwy, now you'll know why.

Yum! and Yum! Gorgeous capture of just the right light in both shots!

The only interesting structures are some of the abandoned industrial buildings, the historical society and the blighted building. The rest of it is worse than ugly; it's just nothing. At least an ugly, trashy, run-down dump gives us something to talk about.

I thought the name might have its origin in the ancestral home of the town's founders, but it's not so. The first settlers came in 1827, and the town was platted in 1841. The five men who founded the town wanted to give it a name that wasn't duplicated by any other American place. They went through a postal guide and found Antwerp, Belgium. They didn't know of any other towns by that name, so they chose that one. The Wabash-Erie Canal passed through Antwerp. The main route through there now is US 24, and is assume that the Fort-to-Port Highway will bypass it altogether. I think the nearest city is Fort Wayne, maybe 20 miles away, and I worked with a couple of people who commuted from there.

Nice set of buildings. That courthouse is pretty amazing! Does anyone know anything about that Howard's store? There were three or four stores by that name around Fort Wayne into the late 1980s, and I thought they were locally based. The main store was downtown and was in a block of the oldest downtown commercial buildings razed to build a parking garage around 1990. They used exactly that same lettering on the storefronts. They sold greeting cards, high-end cosmetics and perfumes and cameras and photographic and art supplies. The downtown store had a post office branch in the basement, and had a picture-framing gallery.

Nice views. Dayton looks good in summer, and I like that they take care of their river views.

I've been to Antwerp, but I didn't stay long because the excitement was too much for me. Maybe I didn't get a fair impression, though; I went to attend a funeral. I suspect most of what goes on there isn't that exciting.

:clap: Great Stuff!

Awesome sky photos, great story! Those summer storms that blow up seemingly out of nowhere in just a few minutes are amazing to watch, often frightening to get caught in, especially when large objects start flying around. My dad could control the outcome of almost every situation and get just about anybody to do things his way. There was one person, though, who could lead him around by his nose, and that was Mom. Mom could always control every situation and was the only person who could overrun all Dad's best intentions. Dad's been gone 16 years, but Mom is still living, at 97 in a nursing home with dementia, rheumatoid arthritis and awful-awful EKG readings, and I think the only reason she hasn't died is because she thinks she still has control over the family -- even though she hasn't been able to make any decisions, even about her own care, in more than four years.

Geez. The last time I saw one of those was at least 20 years ago. It was an N600 sedan and it was on an <i>Interstate</i> somewhere in eastern Ohio. It looked like the dickens, a pile of rust, but it was buzzing right along.