Muted Welcome to Pennsylvania

On the interstate highways, Pennsylvania welcomes visitors with large signs that seek to brand the state with whatever image campaign is in vogue.

When I lived in Pennsylvania, the theme was “America starts here.” The current signs sport the slogan “State of Independence.”

But off the interstate the welcome is a bit more, shall we say, low key.

This sign on U.S. Route 20 on the Pennsylvania-New York border welcomes you but doesn’t describe the state.

But at least the border is marked. I was on a back road that crossed the Pennsylvania-Ohio border southeast of Youngstown, Ohio, that had no sign denoting the state line. No welcome to Pennsylvania. No welcome to Ohio.

I figured out I was in Pennsylvania when most of the cars I saw parked at homes along the side of the road had Pennsylvania license plates.

Last Light of Day

I don’t know if these three women had intended to watch the sun set over Lake Erie at Catawba Island State Park.

They arrived well after the sun had set. But they had time to admire the red, orange and yellow glows of the light bending over the horizon and lighting up the sky before the arrival of the blue hour.

In some ways the after sunset light show is just a striking as watching the sun dip below the horizon.

Steps to Mission Point Lighthouse

If  you follow my blog or spend any time looking around you will notice in time that I like to photograph lighthouses.

This interest is of recent vintage. I’ve long had some interest in lighthouses, but it has accelerated in recent years. Whenever possible, I visit a lighthouse along the Great Lakes.

Shown is Mission Point lighthouse, located at the end of Old Mission Point, which juts out into Grand Traverse Bay, which itself empties into Lake Michigan.

There is a nice beach just steps away from this lighthouse. A website devoted to Mission Point describes it as a classic piece of Michigan history.

It was removed from service as a lighthouse in 1933 so today is is a tourist. Nonetheless, I imagine that many mariners have made note of it as they passed nearby.

This image was made in August 2010 and was scanned from a slide. I have not been back to Mission Point since.

Could be Any Town in Smalltown America

This view happens to be on the main street leading through Ripley, New York, but it could be any small town in America.

The view is looking west down the sidewalk that runs parallel to U.S. 20 not far from the Pennsylvania-New York border.

There is the ever-present post office, which in many towns is now a modern building. There is a collection of commercial red brick two-story buildings where much of the space is vacant.

And it is all there to see to anyone who drives through and is paying attention.

I made this scene on a Sunday morning when the streets were more empty than usual aside from passing traffic.

Even in the slow lane of small town America, there are always people who have places to go.

Invitation to Sit For Awhile

Whenever I see a bench overlooking a scenic overlook I consider it an invitation to set for a spell and enjoy the view.

I didn’t do that when I saw this bench overlooking Lake Erie at Barcelona Harbor in Westfield, New York.

I had come to photograph the lighthouse here, which I did, but then I took a a few minutes to look around for some other photographic opportunities.

I didn’t see anyone sit on this bench during my time here. Perhaps not that many people use it. But I suspect that some have taken up the invitation to sit for a while and enjoy the view.

New England Fishing Village

I don’t remember the name of this town or even what state it is in. It is somewhere in New England, probably in Maine.

I made a trip trip up that way in late October 1978. I had flown in Bangor, rented a car and set out the next day for Acadia National Park.

I don’t even remember what motivated me to travel to Maine. Maybe it was because I had never been there.

More than likely I was driving along and passing through a small town when I saw this scene. I stopped, grabbed my camera and photographed it.

It probably caught my eye because of its beauty but in a way it also captures my mental image of the quintessential New England fishing town. It looks like a scene you might find framed and displayed on the wall of a Red Lobster restaurant.

At the time, I lived in the farm country of America’s Heartland. We didn’t see scenes like this where I grew up. So it must have fascinated me to see something that I had only read about.

I’ve only been back to Maine once since this 1978 trip. I don’t know if I passed through this town or even if I could find it.

Yet it still looks to me like a typical New England fishing village.

My First Lighthouse

Most of my lighthouse photography has focused on the Great Lakes because I live near Lake Erie and have made trips to Michigan.

But my first lighthouse photograph was made far from there.

It was the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse on the coast of Maine. I had to do some research to figure out the name of this lighthouse. Back in October 1978 when I made this image, I was not good about recording what and where I had photographed.

I figured I could remember what it was and where it was. At the time it was enough to know I had made this image in Maine.

If my memory of where this lighthouse was faulty, I remember as though it was yesterday how this image came to be. I had spent the day exploring Acadia National Park. It was getting late and about time to head back to Bangor, where I was staying.

I happened upon this lighthouse and was intrigued by the late day light playing upon it. I made a few image of it on slide film and left.

Upon returning to Illinois and having my film developed, I decided to have an enlargement made of this scene, which I thought was one of the best images that I made on a trip that included visits to Vermont, New York and Massachusetts.

My Dad made a frame for the photo and it hung in my bedroom and, later, my apartment in Indiana.

But life has a way of changing. I got married and the Maine lighthouse photo didn’t have a future in the decor of our homes. It sat in storage for awhile before being discarded.

This is still one of my favorite photographs from that long ago trip. Perhaps some day I’ll get it printed again.

For now this image continues to bring back pleasant memories of a journey I made long ago when I just getting started in photography.

They Jumped Anyway

There are a number of signs on this pier in Grand Haven, Michigan, warning the public not to swim or jump into the water.

This include an exhibit telling the stories of people who have drowned here because of the swift currents.

In fact, the signs suggest that people not walk out on the pier at all. But short of putting up a high fence, trying to keep people away is a losing cause. Many, including myself, want to walk out to the lighthouse and see the lake and the Lake Michigan shore line.

I was not surprised that these three young boys decided to make the pier into a diving board. Those who entered the water here and did not live to tell about it had also been young males.

They don’t think anything bad is going to happen to them. And most of the time it doesn’t.

The romp in the water that these boys had did not end in tragedy. Most of those who swim here come out of the water alive.

You can only warn people so many times about the dangers that may not be apparent. But as the exhibit at the entrance to pier warns, not everyone has made it back.

An Old HoJo Evokes Nostalgia

Judging by the shape of this building I’m pretty sure it used to house the office of a Howard Johnson motor lodge.

There was a time when HoJo played a major part in my life. That was back in my childhood days when we would take a two-week vacation every August, often going east.

We often stayed at a Howard Johnson because it was clean, economical and usually had a restaurant attached. Oh, how I miss those tendersweet fried clams they used to serve.

At the time, HoJo restaurants were noted for having multiple flavors of ice cream, 33 of them if I remember correctly.

If we were there on a day when they were having a fish fry or a clam fry, that a highlight of my day.

Those days didn’t last. I can’t remember the last time I stayed in a Howard Johnson property. I recently read there is just one Howard Johnson restaurant left in America.

There is still a Howard Johnson hotel chain although I seldom see their properties.

Every so often I see a former HoJo motor lodge office that has been re-purposed. This one is located on U.S. 20 at the interchange with Interstate 90 near the Pennsylvania-New York border.

Although it is used to promote fireworks, the store selling them is to the right.

Out of a sense of nostalgia I stopped to make this photograph. This building no doubt looked better when it had an orange roof.

When I was Younger and Trying Things With Film

In October 1978 I embarked on a week-long swing through New England. None of the places that I visited I had ever seen before.

Given how young I was, it is remarkable that I did what I did. I would fly into an airport, rent a car and off I went in search of things to see and photograph.

I don’t remember doing a lot of research on where I was going. I just identified places to visit and went there.

At the time, Allegheny Airlines had something called the Liberty Fare. For a set price, you could buy seven days, 14 days or 21 days of  virtually unlimited travel. It was a heck of a bargain that no other major airline matched as far as I know.

Allegheny served a lot of cities in the eastern United States so I had a lot of choices of places to visit.

As I look back  on that trip now it was one week-long experiment as well as an adventure.

I had been making photographs for less than two years and on this trip I tried some things. In some ways I showed more vision on that trip than I did on other trips that I made in subsequent years.

This image made on Cape Cod is one of those experiments. I actually knew little at the time about photography.

But I must have known enough about how reducing the aperture opening of a camera could produce some high contrast images.

I was shooting toward the light and trying to silhouette the beachfront cottages in the foreground.

There was no digital photography back then. You didn’t know if something had worked until you got your slides back.

It would be a couple weeks before I found out that my experiment had succeeded quite well.

As much as I liked the results, they did not necessarily prompt me to continue doing much experimenting. I still sought to make interesting images during my travels, but generally without experimenting like I had done on this trip.