Florida 98

My grandfather (the surgeon) had a sister who was a nurse. She married a steel tycoon who she nursed back to health after a bout with some contagion or other. She lived in Florida and would drive up to visit every couple of years. She was my great aunt but was known as Aunt Anne to everybody. She was an imperious matron with a heart of some valuable mineral. They were lean years and she brought chocolate and oranges for my mother and her five brothers and sisters at Christmas during the depression. Now, near as I can tell she did this for over thirty years. Here's the deal...she drove up some time around 1958, from Florida to Vancouver, British Columbia. She must have been at least eighty. The weather was cold and it was starting to snow when she was due to start back. One of my uncles, her nephew, worked for Air Canada and suggested she fly home, which she did. She left the car, never came back again, and my uncles who couldn't register the car beat around with it for a while and just left it. I rediscovered it pretty much as they left it in a friends yard when they subdivided their big city lot. It was towed away and that was that.

My great Aunt lived for at least another ten years and her millions were drained dy unscrupulous nursing home operators. My grandmother had to fly down and pay the funeral bill. She (my great aunt) used to buy a big new Olds 98 every couple of years so that it would make the five thousand mile trip without breaking down. She died broke. __________________
Ron Morrison

White Lightening and the Black Mariah

White Lightning and the Black Mariah

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For those of you with tender sensibilities, dwell not on the details of this morality play, the lesson is unclear, but the tale entertaining I hope.

With the proceeds from his private distillery, this free-enterpriser built a replica ante belum mansion in the style of the Victorians. Long after prohibition he maintained a hobbyists interest in the distribution of his product - "white lightning". He had two sons, one was relieved of his mortal coil in a friendly fire napalm incident in Vietnam and the other was lost in a firey crash on a bad track in some backwater hellhole (don't jump out of your knickers, its just a word). Due to his poor attitude about the inequitable distribution of divine providence, his wife bolted for town. Annoyed with his God and anxious for a face to face with his maker he dispatched himself for the showdown with a colt forty-five.

What is left behind is the shell of the house and his last rum runner. It is a four-door "sleeper" with a three twelve wedge and dual Holley four-barrels. He called it the Black Mariah. Now curious thing about these cars is that they were built with steel that was bought from the Japanese after WWII. The steel was reclaimed from the blast sites at Negasaki and Hiroshima and sold as part of the post war rebuilding of Japan. Problem was, that since it had been irradiated, apparently it rusted quickly. And quality control on these cars was bad. But this one has sat for forty years and is still intact.

It seems that a ghostly light, strange and nonsensical (like this story) floods this hollow on occasion and provokes from the viewer speculation about circumstances that have uncertain details. I did not want to "fix" this painting by correcting its flaws because the light suggested the story to me. So I just stopped painting and wrote the story fearing by fixing the goofiness I would ruin the effect. Its doodled on the back of a scrap of Arches. Its from the imaginato of course...I did look at a picture I had taken of the car for reference and went from there.

Hot August Day

Bink link to blow..up!

http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w...s/IMG_1875.jpg

On a hot August day fifty years ago there was blood and glass on a sandy road above the river canyon. Beer and whiskey bent this car on a tree and a girl with raven hair was killed.

When I find wrecks, occasionally I wonder how they met the end of their useful lives. I have been on that sandy road and I have felt the cold touch of something as I take pictures. And I think I can see that blood. And there is always glass...


Ron Morrison

The Industrial Park

The conceit of this production is that people will live anywhere they can park and recreate as opportunity affords. Full sheet on the back of something or other. Bink link for bigger.
http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w...s/IMG_1869.jpg __________________
Ron Morrison

Going, Going, Gone to the Other Side of the Road

Homesteading, logging, working in the mill, hauling shingles, growing your own grub, hunting and fishing, and then the kids head for the big city as soon as they are old enough. Maybe built a new house on the other side of the property? Bink to blow...up!