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Today's Adventures
We didn't make it to the water gardens tonight. We're planning to spend a couple hours there tomorrow watching it change through the course of dusk and sunset.
Instead, we visited a playground at a park named after a World War I flying ace. A three-story metal slide shaped like a Frankenstein's Monster drew me to the place; it was a perfect replica of one I remember playing in as a child in Mundelein, Illinois. The Illinois version is long gone, but the Texas one is still there, albeit with the third floor interior of the monster's head closed off due to rust. The monster's tubular arms make for a slide from the second floor to the ground, and I slid down one, of course! I tried to shimmy up the inside like I used to do as a kid, but I didn't have long hair back then to keep getting caught under my back! The rest of the park was great too. As well as vintage '60s equipment like a caterpillar-shaped climbing structure and dome-shaped monkey bars, there was a much newer castle-shaped climbing structure that looked like tons of fun. It was getting dark though, and that plus the large number of kids made it difficult to get a lot of photos (though I did get some good ones!).
Instead, we drove on to a memorial to the aforementioned aviator, Vernon Castle. He flew hundreds of combat missions in World War I, opened an aviation school near Benbrook in 1917, then died in a crash in 1918. He was trying to avoid hitting a plane piloted by another student when his plane stalled. He'd let his student take the ostensibly safer back seat: his student survived the crash, but Castle died.
A small memorial, in the shape of a biplane atop a steep pyramidal obelisk, sits at the base of two large water towers in the residential subdivision that was once his flight school. I love seeing these odd pieces of the past in unexpected places. And I'm glad I had people to share both of these with. Sharing things just makes them that much better. Especially since my parents both remembered that Frankenstein slide very well themselves.
Also today, we visited a mausoleum with six larger-than-life statues of American founding fathers sculpted in Italian marble. In fact, the entire mausoleum was lined with book-matched slabs of Italian marble under a coffered and barrel-vaulted ceiling. Inset in the floor, made entirely of marble and semi-precious stone in the appropriate colors, was the great seal of the United States. And this was built in the late 1990s! Until today, I didn't think they built buildings like this anymore; in quality and workmanship, if not in scale, it felt very much like a regal state capitol building like the one in Madison.
What else did we see today? A house whose yard is decorated, quite cleverly and even, believe it or not, attractively, in thousands and thousands of empty beer cans. Exclusively Milwaukee's Best, as far as I could tell. I truly love people who do bizarre things like this. People who have a crazy idea, a fixation, a passion, and dive into it headlong. If I was independently wealthy, I'd travel the country visiting them and write a book about these people and the amazing and unique things they create. A folk history of folk artists and their art.
Instead, we visited a playground at a park named after a World War I flying ace. A three-story metal slide shaped like a Frankenstein's Monster drew me to the place; it was a perfect replica of one I remember playing in as a child in Mundelein, Illinois. The Illinois version is long gone, but the Texas one is still there, albeit with the third floor interior of the monster's head closed off due to rust. The monster's tubular arms make for a slide from the second floor to the ground, and I slid down one, of course! I tried to shimmy up the inside like I used to do as a kid, but I didn't have long hair back then to keep getting caught under my back! The rest of the park was great too. As well as vintage '60s equipment like a caterpillar-shaped climbing structure and dome-shaped monkey bars, there was a much newer castle-shaped climbing structure that looked like tons of fun. It was getting dark though, and that plus the large number of kids made it difficult to get a lot of photos (though I did get some good ones!).
Instead, we drove on to a memorial to the aforementioned aviator, Vernon Castle. He flew hundreds of combat missions in World War I, opened an aviation school near Benbrook in 1917, then died in a crash in 1918. He was trying to avoid hitting a plane piloted by another student when his plane stalled. He'd let his student take the ostensibly safer back seat: his student survived the crash, but Castle died.
A small memorial, in the shape of a biplane atop a steep pyramidal obelisk, sits at the base of two large water towers in the residential subdivision that was once his flight school. I love seeing these odd pieces of the past in unexpected places. And I'm glad I had people to share both of these with. Sharing things just makes them that much better. Especially since my parents both remembered that Frankenstein slide very well themselves.
Also today, we visited a mausoleum with six larger-than-life statues of American founding fathers sculpted in Italian marble. In fact, the entire mausoleum was lined with book-matched slabs of Italian marble under a coffered and barrel-vaulted ceiling. Inset in the floor, made entirely of marble and semi-precious stone in the appropriate colors, was the great seal of the United States. And this was built in the late 1990s! Until today, I didn't think they built buildings like this anymore; in quality and workmanship, if not in scale, it felt very much like a regal state capitol building like the one in Madison.
What else did we see today? A house whose yard is decorated, quite cleverly and even, believe it or not, attractively, in thousands and thousands of empty beer cans. Exclusively Milwaukee's Best, as far as I could tell. I truly love people who do bizarre things like this. People who have a crazy idea, a fixation, a passion, and dive into it headlong. If I was independently wealthy, I'd travel the country visiting them and write a book about these people and the amazing and unique things they create. A folk history of folk artists and their art.