Shellbacks and Pollywogs

On this day seventy years ago a converted passenger ship named M. S. Bloemfontein crossed the equator at 153° 35’ west en route to the Admiralty Islands and while doing so, commemorated the occasion with a maritime tradition that dated back to at least the early 1820’s –The Crossing of the Line. The ceremony marks the first crossing of the equator for members of the ship’s crew, referred to as slimy Pollywogs, initiating these relatively untested seafarers into the shared hardships and triumphs that lay ahead. Tried and true Shellbacks who have seen southern hemisphere drag the Pollywogs before the most experienced member of the crew who, for the time being, is designated His Majesty Neptune. What follows is a session of hazing which can include being shaved bald, blasted with a salt water fire hose, getting smeared with axel grease or paint, or being forced to drink a dose of “medicine” concocted from ingredients such as Tabasco sauce, diesel oil, raw eggs, and pepper. All the while the Shellbacks hurl insults at the Pollywogs and the ceremony goes on until Neptune is satisfied the initiates have been properly humbled. Once the ordeal is over the Pollywogs are pronounced honorable Shellbacks, members of the Royal Order of the Deep, and awarded a certificate stating as much.

Indy 500 - Born Out of Blood and Smoke

Here's a 2011 interview with Charles Leerhsen, author of Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and the Birth of the Indy 500.

Detective's Office Phase I - Completed!

Well, it took a lot of effort, but with the help of my darling and understanding wife and a lot of sweat and swearing, phase one of establishing my little noir detective's office has been completed. Here are the last photos, from our Memorial Day weekend push.

We start with Sunday and cutting the chair rails to length. Wonderful day for working with the garage door open, though it did keep Kelly from lounging with a glass of wine on the deck. As a bonus, as we were closing down for the night I gave the old ceiling fan one more try and it had magically healed itself. Nice to have house elves with union electrician's licenses! Extra milk on the doorstep tonight, and maybe a little beer too!

We follow up with installing the chair rails, they went up perfectly, the corner joints I sweated were just right. Didn't even need to do any coping. How's that for catching a break?

De-junkified and starting to look like an office again. We moved the desk back to its proper place, took away all of the drop-cloths, stowed the tools, and in this picture I'm in the process of getting the electronics back in place. The floor lamp went to Kelly's office where it has found useful employment.

Beauty shot time. Here's the finished product (so far). My desk with dear Spriggan's bed on one end, no writer should be without a cat after all. Printer stowed inconspicuously in the corner. Cedar chest in its proper place under the window.

The waiting area is ready for the next fem fatal. She had legs that went all the way from her shoes to her hips, that's how she got into the place...

And finally, the dingus.

The Funnies - To Avoid Delays (1901)

Life Magazine, August 15, 1901

Happy Memorial Day!

The Detective's Office Takes Off

The detective's office has languished for a long time, waiting for the convergence of resources and time. Race day weekend, as we Hoosiers call it, proved to be the magic date and the project finally has started rolling. Here's a little before picture to set the stage. I hope you'll pardon my camera's desperate attempt to adjust to the bright desk lamp, but I think you can see that over the months the office has become a depository for all things junk. I've collected disused keyboards, dead cell phones, broken laptops, extra pads of paper, and the tools for actually painting the place in an attempt to recreate an episode of Horders, but that'll be changing soon enough.

Scene two, it's Saturday morning and a good deal of the junk has moved on. Thanks to Kelly's hard work the painter's tape has been applied and my brother helped move all the heavy furniture so we could get to the walls. The night before work began the hall was so crammed with stuff from the office that late night trips to the bathroom became a treacherous affair. First thing in the morning we tuned in some peppy music and got to work.

Drop cloths, or old blankets, in pace and ready to paint when we encountered our first problem. We purchased the paint for this project late in the fall, with the thought that if the weather allowed we'd paint before winter started. Unfortunately, we didn't get to painting and the paint cans spent the winter months in the garage where one can froze. The result, paint that resembled cottage cheese and never was going to mix properly. I was off to the hardware store to buy a replacement can on the Saturday mid-morning before the Indy 500. As you can guess, it was a harrowing trip. After lunch and a Valium to bring me down from dealing with traffic, we got started.

To my surprise, we had the top half of the room painted in no time. The color is hummus, but to me it looks more like butter. You might be asking what kind of noir detective paints his office hummus or butter, well the idea was to replicate the cigarette smoke-stained plaster you might find in a downtown LA office that had another life before the neighborhood went sour and a two-bit gumshoe moved in. I think the color does a pretty good job, and I'm not willing to do painting effects or glazes to make a more accurate imitation. You can also see the beginning of the faux wainscoting in orchard green and it reminded me of the felt on a pool table, perfect for our detective.

Try to ignore the dust on the camera lens, or as the paranormal investigators would call them, orbs. Wainscoting first coat done as the sun started heading for the horizon. We removed the painter's tape before calling the day finished, but I didn't think that warranted photographs. The race day agenda will include touch-up of the walls, correcting paint lines where needed, painting the baseboard and window sill, and cutting the chair rail. Still to come is replacing the ceiling fan and wall switch with something appropriate, installing the chair rail, and generally putting the furniture back in order. More updates and photos soon, in the meantime I'll have an exorcist look at my camera.

Indy 500 - Bob Sweikert

An eerie photograph from a Champion spark plug ad that aired in the March 12 issue of Life Magazine. The driver in the car at the top of the ad is Bob Sweikert. He was born in Los Angeles, California on May 20, 1926. He grew up with automobiles, working at a local Ford dealership in Hayward, CA. He would have been an airman in World War II, but a knee injury suffered during training at Lowry Field, Colorado kept him sidelined until after the end of combat. In 1945 he was honorably discharged from the Air Force.

Sweikert competed in four Indy 500 races, winning the 1955 contest and placing 6th in 1956, the year of the ad. June 17, 1956 of that same year he would be killed in a sprint car race in Salem, Indiana, a wreck that was caught on film.