. . . started doing taxes

and other non-enjoyable financial things most of yesterday. I love that so much can be done over the internet, by faxing or by emailing or by on-line banking. Should speed things up a bit.

This window is in a building in my hometown I remember as being The Creamery when I was a kid. I guess it was where the farmers brought their milk to be processed. But the front end of it also sold ice cream and there was some type of soda fountain in it, too. It had that peculiar dairy smell I have always associated with raw milk. Lots of kids went there after school; everybody walked to school back then, and since this place was only about two block away from school, on the way to downtown, it was a natural gathering place. My mother did not allow us to go there. She must have thought it was a racy place to go, because a lot of high school kids hung out there. We would have been in BIG TROUBLE if we had stopped by there, so it's probably a good thing she never found out that I went there. Not often, because I never had any money, so I could not purchase the nickel cokes and ice cream cones. It was also across the street from the city jail, and it was always an adventure to see if anyone was incarcerated. I can remember seeing only one man in all the times I checked it out. After The Creamery closed, the gathering place changed to what was known as the Middle Drugstore, because it was in the middle of the block. The Rexall Drugstore was on the corner. We were also not allowed to go to the Middle Drugstore. I never knew why. It was okay to go to the Rexall Drugstore, but no one else went there after school. Strange rules for a different time.





This picture is most different from my usual photos, isn't it? Something about the rough texture of the painted bricks contrasted with the soft tracery of the winter weeds just appealed to me. I would like to be able to make marks on my paintings as randomly and freely as in this photo.