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CHANGES!  A TALE OF TWO TOWERS!

 

Some intrepid weather forecaster has suggested snow here today, but the map only shows rain and it's to be in the 40's.  I remind my self of Jimmy Buffett singing about second guessing the weather girl.  Makes no difference to me, but it would be nice to see a flake or two other than those which are on the TV nightly news.

 

  SEWE, pronounced that way is this weekend.  That's the South Eastern Wildlife Exhibition.  Never did the show but some of my friends do.  Every time I visit them down there in Charleston...all they do is complain about lack of sales.  Been doing that for at least eight years that I know of.  Glad I don't participate, but it is a wonderful show to attend.  Lots to do, buy and look at, so if you're in the area it is certainly worth visiting the old town and all the new artwork.

 

I've been posting some old postcards of lighthouses on the site just to show the ravages of time.  Yesterday's meteoric and astroidic (?) flybys just provide an exclamation point to how fast things can change and how little time we have to execute those changes.  I have always said that from a hundred miles up, we are just targets.  So why mow the lawn and make everything pretty!  Well, that excuse hasn't worked for more years than I want to admit to.  And if we get hit by a rock, well it's better than the grill of a semi in the windshield right up there where we can see it coming.  Those last ten seconds could be a real bummer!

 

In 1908, let's see 105 years ago, the Chatham twin lights on Cape Cod looked like this on an old postcard. 

 

 

The road in front looks like it was dirt, sand or an oyster shell composite.  Total it is a two lane city street.  And the tower on the right is gone!  Where? Well to Nauset Beach of course!  Not on the beach but up on a hill kinda in the woods.  I think that it's been moved at least twice if not three times.

 

The light station at Chatham was first established in 1808 and two 40 foot wooden towers were built.  Two were built in an effort to defferentiate it from the Highland or Cape Cod light a bit further north.  As time wore on, the wooden towers were replaced with brick towers and then finally in 1877 two brick-lined iron plate towers were built.  One of these is the current tower, but the other one was moved to become Nauset Light in 1923.  The current keeper’s house was built in the same year as the towers.  I wrote the above paragraph some years ago to be used with prints I sold and hence the different type font.  Furthermore, you know that the highlighted type in this blog leads you somewhere else when you click upon it.  A little computer 101 there as a reminder.  Lord, public school educations, always have to remind them!

 

By 1950 Chatham looked like this on another post card.

 

 

Technology seem to have added three antennas and a watch tower.  By today technology has totally replaced the need for the whole thing other than a tourist attraction. 

 

And Nauset light, well it's a little more rustic.

 

 

I took the above in the 90's shortly after the last move. Looks all neat and tidy.  As does the Chatham light taken about the same time.

 

 

If you all can't make it down to Charleston this weekend to look at all the art, then I suggest a fire in the fireplace if your north of say Georgia, a toddy or other adult libation, and my website.  Just remember the more libation the more you're likely to buy something and then we're  both "Happy, happy, happy". You'll probably see a lot of what the others are showing down there on the site.  I mean I displayed with those same guys for over twenty years up and down the east coast and we all copied what each other were doing at least once.  See something cool that one did and a year later we all had our own variation of it.  The only way I could stand out was to concentrate on Lighthouses.  Seemed to work to some extent.

 

OK, we're now having a very cold rain and it looks a little nasty outside.  Time to light the fire and pour another Pike Place....Thank you Strabucks!   My adult libation of choice.  Have a great weekend!