Like most internet time-wasters, I spend a lot of time watching videos on Youtube. Recently I came across a channel of a guy who decided to visit every state in the US, by car. For some reason I'm fascinated by the things he records, particularly the off-the-beaten-path stuff and a side of American life that I hadn't given much thought to. Here's a link to his channel, and a list of all the states he has visited so far... https://www.youtube.com/@LordSpoda And here's a video I enjoyed today, KANSAS: Fading Rural Towns In A Forgotten Corner Of The State - Plus A Ghost Town In Oklahoma. It made me think of @Hedi Mitchell 's upcoming move to a small Kansas community. If you have some time to kick back and do some "sight seeing," take a look. You can see America and not spend a dime on gasoline. This video is 32 minutes long.
Actually, when I named the thread that song came roaring into my head. I knew people our age would "get it."
As many of you know, other great resources for "looking around" a place from the comfort of the sofa are Google Maps or Google Earth. As shown in @Ken Anderson 's previous thread "Google Earth - Places I Have Lived," it's fun to have a look at recent satellite images of places we haven't physically seen in many years. Here's an image of part of my neighborhood from Google Earth. You can see that we are right on the San Jacinto River.
When I was a teen, the most amazing place I saw was Glouchester, Mass. We stayed at a motel by a public beach. A sandbar led up to a rocky island at low tide where we picked raspberries. Very few houses or buildings around past town. Beautiful views. I visited it in person maybe 10 years ago and it was wall to wall mac mansions and modern businesses. The lobster shacks were still there but not much separated them from the next building. I guess using the internet to see what we are getting into before going would be helpful.
Way back in the early 50s we would take a Sunday drive and of course we had the old original bridge being so long ago. I remember there was an all Black Rodeo and it was staged on the Old Sand Bar Ranch. The opposite side of the River was popular for having fire works on the holidays. In the early 70s my best friend and I would fish out on the River. You had to be careful because of all of the water moccasins. You pull up your lines to check and it wasn't unusual to have a snake on the hook. There was a lot of alligator Gar in the river. When I hear something about the River I always think about The Breezeway. Now that was a nice club, but somewhere out in Humble was a little small club that you had to wade thru the weeds to get to, inside it was pretty nice but I can't remember the name of the little club. I do remember the 59 Club having gone there numerous times. I saw it had been closed down while I was back in Houston in 05 and on my way to Livingston. In my early life living on the north side of Houston, the end of Jensen Drive going north you were on the old two lane before the freeway system built all the familiar old routes today. If you drove to 1960 in the 50s you were way out in the country. We would stop out in the woods and shoot a 22 rifle and chew pine gum. Now what kid wouldn't want to chew pine gum.
In places that the Google Car has visited and indexed, you can go down into street view and really get to know the neighborhood, visually, anyhow.
So weird, but while I was in Google Earth checking out our neighborhood, I "zoomed down" to street view and the street view of our house was from several years ago. The date on the bottom of the image(s) said 2020, but there's an oak tree pictured in front of our house that was cut down at least 10 years ago.
There are still a lot of "joints" along the river; on a summer night you can hear the music blaring from upstream somewhere. In the top right of that neighborhood photo, that long paved area that appears to be a street is actually a private boat ramp. In the summertime, drunks are roaring up and down the river on boats or jet skis and they always try to get into the private ramp. Our neighborhood association was having to have the locks changed on the gate every year because The Entitled were making copies of their keys and handing them out. A few years ago we stopped buying the replacement keys since they got too expensive (a couple of hundred $$ thanks to all the copies floating around). We don't have a boat anyhow. We had friends living off 1960 in the early 80s and it was still "way out in the country." Now it's unrecognizable.
The ones that end up in their index are usually very old, and I don't understand that. While I was clearing land for my camp several years ago, the Google Car came by. This was a dirt road that isn't even plowed in the winter, but the Google Car went by. Then they turned around, probably because the road got bad, and came back the other way. But that picture has never appeared on Google Map street view.
My school friend living across the street on our right was Jay Demaret and he was the nephew of Jimmy Demaret who won the Masters I think it was 54. His Father was Malon Demaret and he was in charge of selling all the real estate at the Champions Golf Course and Subdivision on 1960. It was pretty quiet out there in 57 and 58. I have been out there quite a few times when younger. I haven't talked to Jay since 1970 and it was down town Houston at the old McDonald's that was under the Gulf Freeway coming thru downtown. I think the street over was Milam, it has been a while since I have been in that part of town. Jay just happened to be at the drive in because it was the place that was popular in that era. He had come home for a weekend and he was in the Air Force stationed in San Antonio. Actually I did see him one more time and our other friend that lived across the street from me ran into Jay again New Years Eve and the two of us got up early and drove over to the 610 loop to say hello to his folks and see his folks new house they had bought. It was TC Jester I think, at the time a pretty expensive place to live. So we saw his folks and said hello and goodbye and that was the last time I saw or heard from Jay. My other buddy that lived across the street died in 2015 and I have no idea what he died of because there was no obituary I assume his sister is also dead now. I know Thelma would have put a piece in the Chronicle for Buddy since he had a lot of friends. Last time I saw Buddy I sold him all my Furniture and that was 73. I did see him a couple times after that I think but not sure of the timing. So last year I was looking at obituaries and saw that Jay's Mother had died and in the photo of him and his mom at a home he looked really fit and healthy. I got a bunch of nice photos of his Mother and Father going back to their early life together even here in New Orleans where she was born and raised. She worked at the Gulf Building as a secretary and retired from there. I have ran out of all my relatives and close friends in Houston. There simply aren't any more left. For the first time in my adult life I do not have the urge to get up and move anywhere. This is it for me and I feel pretty good about it, sometimes I think I should have stayed in Nevada and not have come back to Houston. I came back to here in 08 and I still had close family living here but they all up and moved to the East and West and here I was without any family except a couple cousins and friends from when I had lived down the highway 4 miles from here. Both those two husband and wife died within a year of one another, they had bought my old house but they were long time family friends. Well I guess I'll stop talking, got to watch Andy Griffith in a while, got rain coming tomorrow until the weekend. I won't hold my breath because they just can't seem to get the weather right, expect the opposite from what they say it will be. You and family have a great Thanksgiving.