Finishing the museum pics...

... and believe me, I could have taken many, many more. They really have a lot of stuff.

The last pics were taken in a simulated frontier village. What was different about that exhibit, you could actually walk into the buildings and you were not forced to stay behind ropes. Of course, they had security cameras. 

More from Canyon, Texas...

I'm just trying to get all the pics up. I'd like to move on the the Knight's Inn section.

 

Canyon, Texas, continued...

Here is another batch of pics from the Panhandle Plains Museum, in Canyon, Texas. Canyon has a college, part of the A&M system, with an enrollment of over 8000, by the way. That, plus the oil boom, is making the small city of Canyon quite prosperous.

Here in Lubbock, TTU's enrollment exceeded 33,000 for the current semester (Fall, 2013). You can see the difference those students make when you drive anywhere in town. Lots of extra traffic, especially around Tech and the places where these kids party and shop. Texas Tech infuses massive amounts of money into the local economy. Lubbock is also benefiting from the oil boom. Jobs seem plentiful. Let the good times roll...

More Canyon, Texas

My wife thinks that name of that BBQ place was FAT BOYS. She is probably right. Well, FAT BOBS might have been a better name, giving it a Harley connection. At any rate, the museum took us two hours to tour. Here is the first installment of pics:

This museum has a local focus, but the time span ranges from the Cambrian to about the 1950's. Especially interesting are the oil industry exhibits and the reproductions of early habitations. It is really obvious in this area that an OIL BOOM is taking place. We saw several convoys of immense oil field equipment while on the road, and signs of boom times in every little community. Unfortunately, such prosperity has always been cyclical, part of a boom-bust cycle. There's no reason to believe that the current drilling binge will be any different. 

Canyon, Texas

Months in advance of our trip we reserved a room at Knight's Inn. We found it in an online list of hotels and motels in that area. It had a two-star rating. I did not realize what that would actually mean.  It is less than a two hour drive to get to Canyon. You just take I-27 North and it's a divided highway. But I quickly discovered that that stretch of road is very poorly maintained. Repair work was in progress, especially around Plainview, which led to a plague of orange warning cones and concrete barricades and single file traffic in opposite directions. I'd hate to drive that road at night. But Canyon is a pretty town. We got there on schedule, with plenty of time to take a slow tour of the Panhandle Plains Museum. We dumped our stuff in room 106 at Knight's Inn and toured the museum.  First it was necessary to get something to eat, however. We wanted to find a LOCAL place, not a big corporate chain. And we did! That's where I kind of had food thrown at me, but it's just a matter of local customs. The place we found, FAT BOB'S BBQ just had an unfamiliar protocol. You give your order at the counter, the cook notes it, and instantly prepares the first item, wraps it, and tosses it on the counter in front of you. I was just kind of startled because it happened so fast. I wasn't expecting it. So then you come up with your side and it is instantly scooped out and placed before you. Item number two is ordered and SPLAT it lands in front of you and your side quickly follows. Pretty darned efficient. You don't get a tray to put this on. You just sort of make multiple trips to the table. I don't know what happens when they are busy. But the food was good. My wife had a chopped beef sandwich with potato salad and I had BBQ sausage with potato salad. Lots of meat on these sandwiches! Hearty! Good potato salad!

To be continued...

Mr. Sawmill, SIR!!

In case you thought I was kidding about the One Man Sawmill thing, check this link:

http://www.mistersawmill.com/

Can a One Man Army Corp be far behind? Keep your old comic books because they might well be books of prophecy!

I'd like to see OMAC do battle with OMSaM!!

Finishing the latest color series...

... of stuff you can see around town. These are things that attracted my attention last weekend. I'm very happy that my wife went with me, to hunt this stuff down. We also walked through some older neighborhoods and noted how much has changed over the years. In most cases those changes were not for the better. My wife has a longer history in Lubbock than I, and knows much more about this town and the people who have lived here.

I hope, soon, to have some photos from another town in this area, to the north of us, since we plan to spend some time exploring.


 

Some More Lubbock in Living Color!

And I think, if your kid aspires to be a One Man Sawmill, you should encourage them... there used to be a comic character called OMAC, which stood for One Man Army Corp. Well, a One Man Sawmill could be just as impressive, in a civilian line of work. There used to be classified ads in the back of Popular Mechanics, where you could buy everything you needed for that line of work. Impress your neighbors! At any rate, here are more pics:

Here in Lubbock there are wonderful things to see and do. First you see them, then you do them.

Lubbock in Living Color!

Of course, these are just little fragments, bits and pieces, of the pulsating entity that is Lubbock, Texas---

I would liken the energy level of the average Lubbockite to that of a One Man Sawmill! I try to capture that almost dangerous dynamism in my photos.

Concluding Black & White in Lubbock

That is, concluding this current SERIES...

Tomorrow I'll start a series of COLOR views of Lubbock.
 

More and More Black & White Lubbock!

With even more to come. I like funky stuff like this.