Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

Thanks to Flickr friend Angela, I've become a fan of Hipstamatic. Sammy's our beautiful red long-haired wiener dog and, next to me, Teddy's best friend.

Vermont Ferret posted a video:

For my Flickr friends: Teddy in his first video. Cameo by the amazing Maggie.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

Teddy gives me "the dachshund eye" - as usual - and a low growl, daring me to take the squeaky toy and toss it down the hallway. Which I do, of course. I have a video I shot moments later somewhere around here. I'll post it when i find it so y'all can can share in the love.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

Longtime Flickr-friend Erin (known here at Flickr as "eel") and her husband Brian are in town for a few days. Maggie and I met them for breakfast at Bouldin Creek Cafe on South 1st street. This shot of them was taken outside Jo's Coffee Shop on South Congress.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

Took my friends Amanda (on the left) and Lisa to lunch today at Bouldin Creek Cafe. Afterwards they posed for some pictures outside.

The two ladies are currently Rolf clients of mine. Amanda's been my good friend for around 18 years; Lisa I met through Amanda and our friend Meredith only about a month ago, but we became fast friends.

It was 27 degrees in Austin this morning! Hard to believe, since more than one of every four days this year has been over a hundred f**king degrees.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

My dad took this shot of me in Charleston, SC, during the Christmas holidays in 1959. He and I had driven to Charleston together - a father/son bonding thing - and stayed here with his Aunt Mary ("Mamie" to my sisters and cousins) at her Legare Street home. This picture was taken on the porch just outside her front door. Nineteen years later, a year after my dad's death, my mom would marry Mamie's son Owen and move into this lovely Legare Street home with him. They were happily married until his death some 25 years later.

My Christmas present from Tiz and Daddy in 1959 was my first camera - one of the last of the old Kodak Brownie Hawkeyes. The first photo I took with it was a shot of my dad, sitting on the floor of Mamie's living room in his pajamas and opening my present to him.

It was while Daddy and I were there over Christmas that I had a private and hilariously memorable conversation with Mamie about my cousin Pat, her granddaughter, who was and remains the Alicia of the Geer family.

I called cousin Pat in Charleston the day my younger sister Ruthie died in 2007 to tell her that she was invited to attend Ruthie's funeral service the next Wednesday at Charleston's Magnolia Cemetery. Her response was to tell me, "So Ruthie died and you think I should care, Willie?" Neither Pat nor my sister Alicia attended Ruthie's funeral - Pat because she's a godawful toadsucking rodent; Alicia for reasons unknown, but certainly guessed at.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

Yeah, I know: "La Sombra" means "The Shadow", but the character is Lee Falk's PHANTOM. I'm posting this on behalf of a Flickrite who requested it.

This splash page from an issue of SELECCIONES GRAFICAS, published in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and dated November 25, 1948, is actually the first three daily strips of a new PHANTOM adventure.

The only publishing credits I can find appear on the back cover in tiny print: Impreso en los talleres graficos de la Sociedad Anonima Manuel Lainez Ltda. Callao 1332. Buenos Aires. Which Google Translate says means "Graphics printed in the workshops of the Corporation Ltd. Manuel Lainez Callao 1332. Buenos Aires."

There are several strips inside, but only La Sombra is complete. The story hinges on some guy named "Mike" imprisoned in a castle by a Diana Palmer-clone in a fetching harem outfit. His girlfriend Connie appeals to the Phantom for help, which he gives her.

There's a 2-page, full-color piece called VIC FLINT; it's the only serialized strip in color. The rest are "BARRY NOBLE", "PANCHO MAMPORRO, CAMPEON DE BOX" ["Joe Palooka"], "LUCITA Y PIRINCHO", "DOCTOR KILDAR", and "EL TENIENTE ADVENTURERO". All the serialized strips are 2-pagers. There are 46 pages, four of which include a serialized text story and an ad for dance lessons with Domingo Gaeta, 1610 Cangallo, Buenos Aires.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

This shot of my beloved Maggie, wearing a Dan Fogleberg "Captured Angel" t-shirt, was taken on Elliston Place outside the Gold Rush Restaurant in Nashville, TN. Across the street behind her left shoulder you can see the red-and-white striped awning of Nashville's Friday's Restaurant.

When I arrived in Nashville in 1971 after graduating from Davidson College my first job was at a Kodak film processing center on West End Avenue; my second job was waiting tables at Friday's five nights a week. There was no salary whatsoever - Carl Kantor, the owner, made us rely solely on our tips for income - in fact, we even had to turn over $10 of our tips each night to Friday's, out of which they'd issue us checks every two weeks with funds taken out for Social Security, etc. In other words: not only did Friday's not pay us a salary, we paid them to work there.

None of us on the wait staff regarded this setup as especially fair, so we made up for it by ripping Friday's off whenever possible. My friend Jack Goodrich walked out after his evening shifts with what became a full set of Friday's bar glasses and beer mugs; a set of silverware, coffee cups and saucers, china platters, and dessert plates for six; and as many bottles of their best scotch (preferably Glenlivet) and bourbon (Crown Royal and Jack Black) as he could carry before the managers got hip and actually started locking the liquor storeroom. I didn't drink much, so I limited myself to beer mugs, shot glasses, silverware, and tablecloths, which I used as curtains in my kitchen. And, on one occasion, a five-gallon container of ice cream.

I'd never waited tables before working at Friday's, but lied on my application that I had; I had my first night as a waiter two days after getting hired. Walter Harwood, the guy on the left in the above photo, took me aside one night and said, "You don't know what the f**k you're doing, do you?"

"Of course not!"

"I'm hip. Just stay close to me. I'll teach you everything you need to know." Walter became my mentor and one of my best friends from that night.

Friday's in 1971 bore no resemblance to the pathetic chain that you see today. The menu, for one thing, was so limited that it fit on these nifty little one-sided, wood-bordered slates that the doorman handed out when you entered. The featured menu item was the Friday burger, but there was also a Tuesday burger (I think it had chili on it), and a Wednesday burger (with grilled mushroom and onions); there was fried shrimp with honey-mustard dipping sauce; a Mexican plate, which was chili with rice and beans on the side; London Broil, an open-faced sandwich with a thin gravy on the side; and a T-bone steak. New York cheesecake, supposedly flown in every week from New York City, for dessert. That was pretty much it.

Walter was a real ladies man - he had so much charm it was unreal. He had this lovely girlfriend, Janis, whom I really liked, and she was always catching him in lies about his whereabouts. I had to cover for him on more than one occasion. He'd secretly rented a really nice second apartment (I was sworn to secrecy) where he'd take women he met at Friday's; occasionally he'd ask me to come along when a woman was with a girlfriend, and we'd all get stoned together. It was really nicely furnished - lots of decent art and large exotic plants and the largest waterfall I'd ever seen in a person's home.

Working in an always packed singles bar from 5pm to 2am five nights a week will wear you down pretty quickly; smoking dope with the other waiters at 10pm most nights helped take the edge off, though. Is there anything good weed can't do? The worst night was Thursday because at midnight it became Friday - yay! - which meant the place went f**king crazy: drinks were half price until 2am, everyone was given noisemakers and party hats, and Carl Kantor played the execrable "Bits and Pieces" by the Dave Clark Five as loud as he could get it. The worst day of my life up to that point was every Thursday at midnight.

Every Thursday night from about 9pm on my tables would fill up with people who wanted someplace to sit at midnight; so for 3 hours we'd all have these "sitters" who wouldn't order food or drinks. Then at midnight they'd order a shitload of drinks at once, you'd line up with the other waiters at the bar for their drinks, you'd take their drinks back to them, they'd quickly order another round, etc. By the time they left they'd generally stiff you or give you some kind of token gratuity.

Once I got hip to this bullshit I'd make my own plans. As soon as midnight hit I'd retire to the dry goods storeroom, where I'd set up a table and chair beforehand, and eat a slice of that cheesecake and drink a cup of coffee and ignore the dipshits in my section altogether. Every now and then I'd hear someone outside the kitchen yelling, "Where's Will? Anyone seen Will?" The cooks knew, but they wouldn't tell. I always tipped the kitchen at the end of my shift.

By the end of May 1972 I'd amassed almost $900 in savings from working at Friday's. We got one free meal there a day; and except for lunches at the Elliston Place Soda Shop that was the only meal I ate. I paid Frank Lavarre $40 a month to sleep on his couch. I never had any expenses, so I saved pretty much everything I made. In June I flew to England, bought a road bike in Salisbury, and toured southwestern England until August. When I returned to Nashville Walter got me a job working with him for Tex Ritter.

I was living in Austin when Walter and another guy started The Gold Rush Restaurant on Elliston Place. I was passing through Nashville on my way to Boston to live in 1977 when I stopped in at The Gold Rush for lunch and was reunited with Walter. He talked me into staying at his apartment for a couple of weeks, which I did. I was traveling with 4 ounces of Acapulco Gold, so my reunion with Walter, Tom Rees, Jack Goodrich, and our other Friday's buddies was like old times.

Friday's closed for good just a few years ago; in its place is Fiesta Azteca, a Mexican chain restaurant. The Gold Rush continues to thrive.

Walter's car hit a tree one night in 1980, killing him. The news devastated everyone. The legendary Tracy Nelson, who had been a friend and frequent customer at the Gold Rush and, earlier, at Jock's when I was there, dedicated her 1980 album Come See About Me to Walter Ephraim Harwood III.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

Our friend Teenie recently gave Maggie and me an assortment of original Lana Turner paper dolls from 1945. They were reproduced in 2006 and are available on Amazon, but the examples I've seen look like shit. The color's are all wrong or something.

I'll post more of the clothes and accessories if there's enough interest out there among the Flickrites.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

The drawing on the left is by Charles Dana Gibson; the drawing on the right is a penciled copy my grandmother, Kate Owen, made in 1903 when she was 14 years old.

I was never able to find the Gibson Girl Kate used as a source for her lovely copy until today. I don't know when the Gibson version appeared, but it's likely it was newly published when Kate saw it.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

Dana had a keen sense of humor and was game for whatever gag I'd pull on the family whenever we converged on Charleston. One evening over Christmas I taught her the 1960s "revolutionary-drug-brothers" handshake (as Hunter S. Thompson referred to it in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, where you grip the other person's whole thumb instead of the palm), the handshake of choice among us 60s peaceniks.

Later that night, when Sis, Ruthie, and Rik came by to see her, she shook Rik's hand as I'd taught her; then, holding her arm high in a "Power to the People" salute, she cried out, "Right on!". It was truly hilarious. She wouldn't do it a second time because, she explained, "Y'all are laughing so hard it must be dirty!"

A couple of days later we all met at Tiz's home on Legare for Christmas dinner. Before entering the dining room we begged Dana to throw her fist into the air for the camera. Which she did, with Sis and Ruthie leading the way; but she wouldn't say "Right on!" this time at all. She was laughing so hard she could barely talk - all she could say was "It's dirty! It's dirty!"

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

Our grandmother - known to her sister Mamie as Kate and to her grandchildren as Dana - holds both of Sis' hands in hers as they share a moment on Tiz's patio. Sis and her husband Rik - a true shithead by every definition of the term - would stay at Tiz and Owen's Legare Street home whenever they visited Charleston; and having dinner with our beloved grandmother was always the main event of any visit to Charleston.

This photo is a detail of a damaged shot of the two of them, taken from across the room. I found it at Sis' home in Charleston in January 2011 while we were going through a box of old documents, and we both prayed Photoshop could save it. Well, Mission Accomplished. So few photos of Dana and Sis exist (unless Alicia has a trove squirreled away somewhere), and none that I've seen capture them together as well as this one.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

Maggie looked exceptionally beautiful for our Valentine's Day date at Austin's Secret Circus. I took this shot late in the evening before the second aerial dance performance.

Maggie and I have changed our diet - no more sugar, coffee, dairy, processed foods, fried foods - the usual temptations that make life liveable. It took some getting used to - no maple syrup on my morning oatmeal! - but I'm used to it now. I sleep better, I have more energy. And Maggie! Jesus! Maggie looks better than ever! Exhibit A is on this page.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

From the same photo shoot that produced this favorite. The love of my life in her early 20s, a few years after our split.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

For Valentine's Day I took Maggie to the Secret Circus, an event at the Texas Women's Center in Austin that combined diinner, music (most memorably by the exquisite Chrysta Bell), a fashion show of vintage clothes by a collector/model/seller who goes by the name Boudoir Queen. The model in the above photo was one of several hitting the runway that evening; I didn't start taking photos - at Maggie's request - until well into the show, so I don't have all that many to post. Sorry!

Maggie took the evening's '20s theme seriously enough to look her usual sublime self; I'll post a picture of her from that night when she gives me permission (I haven't asked yet).

The food was spectacular, the complimentary drinks were strong and too sweet, the aerial dancers were impressive. The ballroom was like a prison riot for Beautiful People; I didn't know a cow town like Austin had any. I was wrong!

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

Laura Stokes, one of two aerial dancers from Albuquerque who call themselves Ricochet. They were pretty impressive.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

One of the models for Boudoir Queen's fashion show at the Secret Circus last Halloween at the Texas Women's Center.

Vermont Ferret posted a photo:

For Valentine's Day I took Maggie to the Secret Circus, an event at the Texas Women's Center in Austin that combined diinner, music (most memorably by the exquisite Chrysta Bell), a fashion show of vintage clothes by a collector/model/seller who goes by the name Boudoir Queen. The model in the above photo was one of several hitting the runway that evening; I didn't start taking photos - at Maggie's request - until well into the show, so I don't have all that many to post. Sorry!

Maggie took the evening's '20s theme seriously enough to look her usual sublime self; I'll post a picture of her from that night when she gives me permission (I haven't asked yet).

The food was spectacular, the complimentary drinks were strong and too sweet, the aerial dancers were impressive. The ballroom was like a prison riot for Beautiful People; I didn't know a cow town like Austin

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