Another Trip to Washington, North Carolina? Hopefully.

January 22, 2025April 27, 2025 bgibson135

I’m hoping to travel to “Little” Washington on Friday, but am wondering if the restaurant, “Down on Main Street,” will be open for lunch then, and/if the Friends of the Brown Library will still be having their Book Sale. *I see from the Friend’s Facebook page that they are suggesting Wednesday (today) be a snow day, and for volunteers to show up on Thursday, so it looks like a go for now.

We had a “big” snow last night which has been reported worse east of I95 and on the North Carolina coast. It doesn’t look that bad out my front door. There is snow on the ground and on the cars, but my sidewalk is mostly clear, with a little salt from before the snow.

I enjoyed my trip to Washington, North Carolina last year (the 19th of January, 2024). I had determined that both the Wilmington, North Carolina and Washington, North Carolina libraries were both having a book sale on January 19th. This was the day after my birthday. Actually, the day after mine and Mary Ann’s birthday, which we normally celebrate together. I was born on her 16th birthday, January 18th, 1954.

I asked Mary Ann if I could stay overnight on our birthday so that I would already be down on the coast. Still, it was about an hour, each way. First I drove down to Wilmington and bought several Michael Connelly novels (Harry Bosch), and then drove back up Hwy. 17 back through Jacksonville, and on to Washington, North Carolina to the Friends of Brown Library Book Sale at the Washington Civic Center. I wrote about this visit here. After the Book Sale, I drove over to Down on Main Street Restaurant for lunch and enjoyed another Shrimp Po’Boy & fried okra.

I found a Washington, North Carolina waterfront web cam sponsored by WITN TV7. I can’t find an easy link or embed code for this web cam view so here is a link to the WITN web cam page. The Washington web cam view is a LIVE Stream, and usually there is some traffic crossing the old Hwy. 17 bridge, so that you can tell you are looking at a video and not just a still picture. I will be able to see how much snow has disappeared by Friday morning.

I really have no books this year that I want to buy at the book sale. I have read all of the Harry Bosch novels and now regret that a little, because I’ve ran the gamut of the Bosch character. I am thinking that I may try to find some books that either Ray & Jacqueline’s children might enjoy, or Ashlyn Mitchell might be able to get some artistic ideas from. *I did leave a few books with Mary Ann on Saturday that I hoped Ray’s children might enjoy: 2 pictorial books about the Titanic & 1 pictorial book about George Armstrong Custer, and a set of 3 books about either Ireland or Scotland in the 1,300s. I’m not sure if they were fiction or based on historical facts, but the covers of the books reminded me of knighthood.

Surprised I found these, on Amazon.
This seems to be historical fiction about Robert the Bruce, of Scottish fame & lore.
Author: N. Gemini Sasson

I plan on going down to Washington, North Carolina tomorrow, but drove up to Raleigh today to go to Wegman’s. I like their sliced White American Cheese. But, I also stopped in to Whole Foods first and bought a couple of links of Chroizo sausage. I talked to the butcher girl who said she and her husband wanted to open their own butcher shop. I told her about Golden Hex and suggested she go there for ideas on exotic sausages. She said their Andouille sausage didn’t sell well so they quit making it. I told her that I liked the spiciness in my lentil soup.

While in Wegman’s I saw the black woman at the Service Desk and went over and asked if she was the one who had the daughter that thought her “labor” was induced by drinking Raspberry tea (or maybe some other Raspberry item). She was, but had not tried the tea yet. That’s been weeks, so maybe not much hope in getting a convert to love Bigelow’s Raspberry Royale tea like I do.

So, I’m in my car and pull up the Washington, North Carolina waterfront web cam. It played perfectly in real time, and even when I went into the grocery store. Whatever web cam and Internet connection they are using is working great. “Angel” I think. I do see that the camera angle adjusts slightly from day to night. At night you see further away over the Hwy. 17 bridge and during the day the bridge seems to be closer, but you don’t see much above it.

I did stop at the Harnett County Library on the way up to Raleigh and bought two large books. They were priced @$2 but I left a $5 for a little extra donation. One book was on Salvadore Dali and the other was on historical Russia. Funny, the Harnett County Library is also having a book sale tomorrow, but I’m only planning to visit the Friends of Brown Library Book Sale. I’ve already got my large gray book bag, or shopping bag that I use when buying a lot of books.

Well, it was a pretty good trip today. Instead of ordering the shrimp sandwich on a Kaiser roll, I ordered it on toasted Sourdough. The sourdough bread was good, but I think next time I’ll go back to the Kaiser Roll. Too much bread for the sandwich. Too few shrimp. I had the coleslaw on the sandwich, and not on the side. The fried okra were delicious. Comes with a small container of Cocktail Sauce.

I got to Washington, North Carolina about noon on Friday, and went directly to the Book Sale for the Friends of Brown Library. I found an open parking spot directly in front of the Washington Civic Center Exit door. The sidewalk still had salt on it, and there was slush in the street gutters.

I actually went to the book sale twice. Once, before I went to lunch, and then once afterwards. I had my large grey tote bag that holds a heavy amount of books. On my second visit, the books were so heavy that I left the bag at the exit door and then brought my car back and found a parking spot almost at the exit. I hope to show you images of all of the books that I bought today. I think I paid a total of $35 and donated an additional $5. Sounds like a lot, but the hardbacks (no matter how large & heavy were only @$2 and the paperbacks were 50 cents each. I brought the largest & heaviest one ,in with me when I got back home, and it might just be the largest book I’ve ever owned. $2 for a book that easily could be resold for $30 or $40, and that person would think they were getting a bargain, and they would be getting a bargain.

I did not buy any books for my own personal reading. I looked at a few biographies, but didn’t see any that piqued my interest. I did buy a number of Art books, and a few history books. The art books are for Ashlyn and the other books are for Ray’s kids. Not sure if they will be interested, but when I was a child, I think I would have been interested in a few of them: General Custer, the Titanic, WWII & it’s airplanes, and Sienna, Italy. *A few years ago I went to the Titanic Exhibit at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, South Carolina.

The Great Book of World War II Airplanes (1996, Crescent Books, pp. 632)

The cover of the above book is solid silver, on the front & back (no writing or pictures), but the spine has the book title & publisher. I paid $2 for this book. It is heavy, very heavy, and it has a great number of large fold-out pages, with colorfully illustrated drawings of various aircraft of World War II, and pages of detailed writings and illustrations.

Baron Von Richtoffen & His Bright Red Fokker.

*When I was a boy there were three things that piqued my interest: Ivanhoe & the Knights of the Round Table; WWI Bi-Planes, Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker/Baron von Richtofen, his bright red Fokker & the Blue Max; and hell if I can recall the third thing of interest, but when I do, I’ll write it down here. But, I can see a boy becoming engrossed in the above book and spending hours looking at the illustrations, reading the details, and probably buying and building several model airplane kits… and painting them.

***USS Nantucket (Monitor Class Civil War Battleship)***

I’m thinking that my third interest as a boy was the Monitor and the Merrimac. Civil War Era battleships. But I never really had a concept of how large the Monitor was as a boy. I thought of her as perhaps being a little bigger than a row boat, but in reality she was a large vessel capable of carrying about 85 crewmen.

As a boy, I built a version of the Monitor and the Merrimac out of balsa wood. My Monitor was shaped like a canoe with a flat deck and a round gun turret. Nothing like the real thing. Kinston has the Ironclad CSS Neuse, or her hull, on display.

The USS Nantucket, shown above, was a Monitor Class battleship. Built low to the water, and subject to sinking easily in rough seas, a dangerous vessel to be assigned to. George L. Morton, a distant relative living down in Wilmington, North Carolina for a while would command the above ship during the Spanish-American War but it would never make it to Cuba before the short war ended. The joke among the crewmen was that “they killed more Spaniards in front of the Orton Hotel (downtown Wilmington hotel) that they did from the decks of the Nantucket. In other words their verbal braggadocio of what they would do as they stood in front of the Orton Hotel far exceeded any actual combat victories. *As I recall they were afraid of firing their large cannon because the large oak beam that held it in place had been cracked at some point and they were afraid that if they fired the cannon, the recoil might push the gun turret off the ship.

The Spanish-American War ended abruptly and the officers & crew of the Nantucket returned to Wilmington on the train. They had been on maneuvers around Hilton Head and Beaufort, South Carolina but never headed further south. The vessel had a “rapid fire” machine gun (probably not called a machine gun at the time) and it’s my belief that one of these was procured from the Nantucket and used in the Wilmington Race Riot later that year, 1898. It was mounted on a horse drawn cart and hauled about town and used to kill “darkies.”

*I do recall that the actor/comedian Bob Cummings, had a TV show, and every so often he would play a relative of his (maybe his character’s grandfather) that had been a WWI pilot. I always perked up when this character came on, dressed in his old pilot’s headgear.

Oh, the web cam view of the Washington, North Carolina waterfront has about a 30 seconds lag time. This camera and/or it’s Internet connection is excellent. It streams fluidly showing automobiles both on the waterfront and crossing the old Hwy. 17 bridge without “skipping a beat.” In fact, this web cam view is the only one of about 10 different web cams that is LIVE. The rest are stills that update periodically. And the stream played fluidly both on my Chromebook at home and while I was in my car on my Android phone.

I took the short route to Washington, but took the scenic route back, and stopped once, in Snow Hill, to buy a pint of whole milk at the Piggly Wiggly. This was the same Piggly Wiggly that I had bought really good pork chops one time.

The scenic route from Little Washington comes near but not actually by “Voice of America.” I considered this the “Cold War Era” propaganda tool by the United States. There were large radio towers spread across a large field and American propaganda was streamed 24/7 across the Atlantic Ocean and across Europe to the Communist countries. I just recently came across YouTube videos of the Voice of America towers being demolished in 2016. I went over there before that time and did see them. There was a home in the area that I think had an underground component, but when I went looking for it via the Google Street View, I couldn’t find it.

Then stopped again in Newton Grove at the Pharmacy to eat a Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream on a regular cone. One scoop of ice cream on a regular cone is still just $2. Nothing for tax, or tax included. *Harris Teeter carries the “Roadrunner Raspberry” ice cream, which is the same name as the Hershey’s version. I have yet to buy any since the Newton Grove Pharmacy stopped selling it a couple of years ago.

Of note, both going and returning, when I neared Greenville & Washington, NC, there was a whole lot of untouched snow still left in the fields and the yards. There is something almost melancholy about snow going undisturbed by laughing & playing children with red noses. As I recall, the snow was still on the ground down near the coast, but as I returned to the Fayetteville area, it was mostly gone from the ground.

Peter Ganine Gothic Sculpted Chess Set

December 16, 2024November 18, 2025 bgibson135

I’m currently reading the Dick Van Dyke biography, “My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business: A Memoir.”

I am enjoying it and am a little over a third of the way through at about 100+ pages. I’ve put the book in the little basket next to my toilet. That almost assures that I will read through it at a fairly fast pace since I read a few pages each time I go to the bathroom, and with my prostate, that is quite often during a day and night;-)

I’ve read several biographies/memoirs this past year since I started by reading the Matthew Perry memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.” Recall that I had come across this memoir in one of the “Little Lending Libraries” and took it to pollinate another lending library location.

Not sure why I came up with the idea to go from one “LLLs” to another, taking one or two books from one location and then leaving each of them at other locations. Sort of playing “a Book Bee.” And, I’ve picked up and taken quite a few books to different locations both in Fayetteville and to other cities, towns and even a different state. I think it was Bennettsville, South Carolina where I stopped by several “LLLs” both taking and leaving various books, some children’s and some adult books.

So, I came across the Matthew Perry book about the 25th of October, 2023. I saw his face through the glass, which filled the cover of his book, and thought that someone, not me, would like to read about one of the recognizable “Friends.”

Less than a week later, I was at home on my laptop and happened upon one of those memorial web sites that lists, both names & photos of, the famous people who have died during the current year. The end of October is usually a little early to be looking for one of these sites. I might see a program on TV at the end of December and then will go to one or more of these websites to get a more complete list of the deaths. I started to scroll down the list and the third photo down the page was the picture of Matthew Perry, the same one that appears on the cover of his memoir. I said to myself, “I didn’t know that he was dead,” and then I went elsewhere to find out when he had died. To my surprise, he had died a few days after I had gotten his memoir, on October 28, 2023. I then said to myself, “That’s hinkey. I guess I’ll have to read his book.” And a few days later I started reading it.

I think it was about the third page into the Matthew Perry book that he stated, “I should be dead by now.” I’m pretty sure he didn’t actually think that his death would be as soon, but he was being honest about how his life long drug addiction (“The Big Terrible Thing“) had created several drastic events from which he could have easily died. He even had to wear a colostomy bag, which collects human waste, for a while due to his addiction.

Perry’s mom and dad had divorced when he was still a child. His father was an actor and his mother, for a while, was the Press Secretary for Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada. Later she would marry Keith Morrison, a very recognizable Canadian broadcast journalist, who Matthew Perry said treated him respectfully.

Perry never got control and although others may have provided him with the drugs that actually killed him, he obviously went looking for those drugs and was not innocent in his own death. I would classify his death as more of “an assisted suicide.” He made a lot of money from his part in the “Friends” franchise, and he spent a bunch of money on drugs. e.g. He once traveled by private jet from Europe to America and when he found that American doctors would not supply his drug needs, immediately returned by private jet to Europe.

I finished the Perry book and then I came across a memoir about John F. Kennedy, Jr. written by Robert T. Littell, his long time friend, called “The Men We Became, My Friendship with John F. Kennedy, Jr.” This was the first memoir that I absolutely enjoyed. There were both places and people mentioned in the memoir that I knew, or knew of. Kennedy, Jr. was married on one of the Georgia islands below St. Simons Island. An island only accessible via boat and not by bridge and auto. And, Christiane Amanpour, a journalist and television host for CNN, was a college roommate (several students, both men & women sharing a house) of JFK, Jr. for a couple of years.

It was probably while reading this memoir that I started googling for images of people, places and things mentioned in the book. This extra information deepened the reading experience and my understanding of the man.

I’ve attended several of the book sales sponsored by “Friends of the Cumberland County Library,” in the last couple of years. It was almost an afterthought at one of these sales that I walked along an isle that had various biographies.

Nothing much interested me until I saw the smiling face of Tim Russert on a book. I bought it.

Tim Russert was the moderator for “Meet the Press,” a long time, maybe “the longest running show,” on the air. A weekly political news show, that aired each Sunday morning, and provided interviews with various famous & not so famous politicians of the day. Russert was always well prepared and fair in his in-depth interviews. And he was a life long fan of the Buffalo Bills, and a faithful Catholic.

This memoir was more of a lauding of the life of Tim Russert by family, friends, fellow employees and acquaintences that Russert had worked with, loved and befriended throughout his years. He died on June 13, 2008 at the age of 58 years.

The next memoir I came across at an LLL in North Raleigh, well probably the outskirts of North Raleigh. I had stopped at the “Savory Spice Shop” located in the “Lafayette Village” which is a European-styled village in North Raleigh. It offers gourmet restaurants and upscale shopping. I decided to take an unfamiliar route and then detoured through an older upscale residential area. I’m not sure if I could find it again, but on that day I was driving through this neighborhood and had turned around to head back out the way I had entered. I noted an “LLL” off from one of the homes so I stopped and walked over to it. It was here that I found the memoir by Michelle Obama called “Becoming.” Another large smiling face prominently displayed on the cover of the book.

I really enjoyed reading this memoir! And more than the other biographies/memoirs that I had just read, I started googling for illustrations of people, places, things and events that had occurred in the life of Michelle & Barak Obama.

I recall that she likes smoked oysters. I must have known, but didn’t recall that she was a Harvard educated lawyer. And I listened to several speeches by her husband Barak Obama from which I came to respect him even more. He was the difference between night and day between an educated President of the United States, and a Presidential businessman. And Obama was “the day.”

I neither felt sorry for her nor envious of her good fortune because much of it was based upon her hard work, and being fortunate to have a loving and supportive family. And that she had a loving and supportive husband, and that she was a loving and supportive wife and mother. I like her.

And now I’ve come to be reading the memoir of Dick Van Dyke and am enjoying that also. Not quite as much as Michelle Obama’s, but Dick Van Dyke seems to be an honorable man. I seem to recall that he might have had a problem with alcohol, but I haven’t gotten to that part in his book yet.

I now realize that I had forgotten one other bio that I read, and now do not recall in which order I read it. I know it was after the Matthew Perry memoir (the first I read) and that’s about it. The biography I had forgotten was by Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, “Highest Duty, My Search for What Really Matters.“

He knew he wanted to fly from an early age.

His meticulous preparation, throughout his entire life led him to be the “right person at the right time” for landing a commercial jet filled with passengers safely on a river and not a runway.

The jet he landed on the river is now in a museum in Charlotte, North Carolina which is named after him, “The Sullenberger Aviation Museum.” I was planning a brief trip to Asheville in August and one of my thoughts had been to stop by this museum on the way to Asheville, but it happened to be closed on Mondays, and I went through Charlotte on Monday, August 19th. I only stayed a night in Asheville and then returned home on Tuesday, August 20th (2024). My last stop in Asheville before leaving, was to the New Morning Gallery in the Biltmore Village District. This is one of the areas that would be devastated by the 100 Years Flooding caused when Hurricane Helene passed through about five weeks later on September 24th – 27th. And I see that this gallery is still closed as of December 17th, 2024.

Perhaps I am not worthy of making the following comment, but my impression from reading his bio is that he hasn’t found “What Really Matters,” at least not yet. He has a wife and two daughters.

Now back to my current read, the Dick Van Dyke memoir, and why I named the title of this blog posting, “Peter Ganine Gothic Sculpted Chess Set.” I watched the Dick Van Dyke Show when I was a boy. I even recall a haunting episode in which (I think it was a dream sequence on the show.) there is a living room closet full of walnuts, and when the door was opened all the walnuts fell out onto the living room floor. I think there were aliens involved and missing thumbs. And I hope to re-watch this episode either later today or in the next couple of days. But that is the advantage I have of reading this memoir, and all the references to memorable people, places & events. I can google for more info, and I can even re-watch the episodes that Dick Van Dyke mentions in his book. I can google for photos of Maureen Stapleton and Jean Stapleton. I’ve watch the pilot episode of the show, and the two part episodes which included Jerry Van Dyke, Dick’s actual brother. *Jerry died a few years ago, but Dick is still alive as of a few days ago, an old man, but still with a sense of humor and a clear mind. I just heard him tell someone on a video that he was 12 years old in his mind, but 99 years old in real life. I even can re-watch some of his movies, “Mary Poppins,” or “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” or “Fritzwilli” (which I enjoyed watchin some years ago which includes Barbara Feldon (from “Get Smart” fame). *Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” was an Ian Fleming (of James Bond fame) children’s novel.

I just saw an online item that Dick Van Dyke was rescued by neighbors and good Samaritans from the recent Franklin Fire in Malibu where his current home is located. They also rescued his cat, Bobo. And Van Dyke celebrated his 99th Birthday on Friday, December 13th.

But, in re-watching several episodes of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” my eyes immediately were drawn to a chess set displayed on a table in the set’s living room.

My favorite chess set was styled exactly like the one displayed in the show, and it is a “Peter Ganine Gothic Sculpted Chess Set.” I’m not sure if this set was first sold in 1957, but my set would have probably been sold & bought by me in the late 1960’s. I no longer have this set and I have played with quite a few other styles of sets through the years. Now I mostly play online, almost daily between myself and “the computer.” I win some I lose more.

The Ganine set was my favorite long ago, and I still favor it some, but in the last couple of years I have begun to favor a more minimalist style, both in metal, plastic and wood. About a year ago I even made a set and painted it from simple square blocks of wood. I glued some of them together, and pasted googly eyes on some and even used colored thumbtacks to represent the shields of the pawn warriors. The rooks include little colored flag thumbtacks as if a flag was flying from the castle turret (Turm).

The “tubular minimalist” chess set to the left above is my current favorite, but I also like the “Isle of Lewis” chess set on the right. I’m not sure if I had a dream, or if I actually saw an example of a pregnant queen (chess set piece), but I have since thought that a pregnant queen is the ultimate ruler. Who could be more vicious that a pregnant queen seeking to not only protect her king, but her child and the kingdom? I even cut some PVC piping to make a minimalist tubular chess set and thought of adding a large marble as symbolic of a pregnant queen’s stomach.

I’m in the process of having read six biographies during the past twelve months, but I’ve also read 30 of the Michael Connelly detective novels in about the same amount of time. I’ve read all of the Harry Bosch novels and several of the John McAvoy (journalist/detective) novels.

I watched the six seasons of “BOSCH,” and since, three seasons of “Bosch Legacy,” and during that time I liked the Harry Bosch character played by actor, Titus Welliver. But, I found as I read more of the Connelly novels that I came to hate Harry Bosch as he was writtern. Beyond hate, I despised him. Why?

It started during the second published Bosch novel, “Black Ice.” I did not read these novels in the order they were published. Some I did, but there was some jumping around. In the second novel Harry becomes involved in a case in which another L.A. detective has apparently committed suicide. Blown most of his head off in a cheap L.A. motel.

The Interim Medical Examiner examines the remains of the dead detective and from a frontal portion of the skull realizes that the dead detective was hit in the head from behind, shortly before his head was blown off.

Harry and the Interim Medical Examiner are “friends with benefits,” and while together Harry is pumping her also for information about the autopsy she has recently performed. She resists telling Harry what she has found (that it was murder and not suicide), and tells him he can’t tell anyone her findings because it would jeopardize her becoming the permanent Medical Examiner, which is the position she wants. Harry assures her that he won’t share the information she give him and eventually she agrees and tells Harry her findings. A little later she asks Harry if she can shower and he agrees. No sooner has she walked into the bathroom and started to shower, than Harry picks up his phone and calls a journalist acquaintance and gives the journalist a “heads up” that he journalist should check more closely into whether the detective’s death was suicide or murder. Harry then gets dressed and heads off to Mexico on the trail of a murderer.

This betrayal of trust by Harry toward the Medical Examiner was the start of my disrespect and hatred toward the character of detective Harry Bosch. She hadn’t even gotten the Bosch stink off of her in the shower before he had betrayed his word to her.

The next Bosch novel, or perhaps the second to next novel I read was published about eight years after “Black Ice,” and was called “City of Bones.” It’s in this novel that Harry once again contacts the Medical Examiner (now permanent) because he needs her to verify whether a bone that was found on a hill, was a human bone. He contacts the examiner on a Saturday late and she has a scheduled date, so she tells Harry to come over, but… and when Harry knocks at her front door, she take the bone, shuts the door and leaves Harry outside. Shortly she returns and verifies to Harry that it is a human bone and it also belonged to a child.

Now Connelly steps in to make commentary about how shamefully she treated Harry. But, in my mind, and because of having just read about Harry’s earlier betrayal, I’m thinking that if Harry had betrayed my trust, I wouldn’t be helping him out by having him come over to my house at all. I would have told him, Harry you need to wait until Monday and get in line first thing. After all the child that the bone belonged to had been dead several years, not just recently murdered.

Connelly – The Overlook

March 2, 2024March 3, 2024 bgibson135

Maybe this is why I either misplaced “The Overlook” or never actually bought it at the book sale in “Little Washington.” I would not have gone looking for a signed copy of this book online. But, I have just ordered it for about $42 (including tax & shipping). Why? If it arrives with a valid Connelly signature as shown below, it would be well worth it for me, “Bill,” even though the “Bill” mentioned in the signature, wasn’t me… but maybe it was meant to be. ‘All the best from Harry Bosch, Good luck in court’;-)

Apparently this is the novel in which the FBI agent, is having an affair and kills the husband, who has stolen radioactive Cesium, and somewhere during this case Harry is exposed to the radioactivity… later giving him a mild form of Leukemia (With mom dying of Leukemia, I find it difficult to imagine a “mild form.”).

On the TV Bosch, Lynn Collins plays the unfaithful wife, who’s husband has been murdered, by her lover, an FBI agent. The actress played Dejah Thorin in “John Carter.” I liked the “John Carter” movie, but later, much later, was reading online that this movie was a “stinker,” and had lost a bunch of money for Disney. In that movie, Lynn Collins looked like a goddess, while she was more haggard looking in the Bosch episode.

[NOTE]: I just recalled that I did a Google Maps Street View on some of the locations from the Bosch TV series that included this story (The Overlook). They had an outside scene for St. Agatha’s Hospital, which I eventually found was another “out of business” hospital that they had put a sign on. There had been an actual “St. Agatha’s Hospital” but that location had been razed to the ground, pending new development. [end NOTE]

I suppose this is the Overlook.

And this was the victim’s home (which is actually very close to the Overlook location.

St. Vincent’s Medical Center used as St. Agatha’s Hospital

The Crossing by Michael Connelly, a Bosch Novel.

December 19, 2023July 4, 2024 bgibson135

I don’t notice it in Bosch Legacy episodes, but the early Bosch shows did something that I found quickly odd. Odd compared to almost all TV shows & movies that came prior. The locations were real, and street signs were real, with a few exceptions where an actual location was used for a different purpose, such as, a bank and it’s parking lot being used as a restaurant and “shoot out” scene for the story. But, for the most part, if you paused the video and looked at a street sign, then you could actually google for that location in Google Maps (Streetview) and you could usually find it. I do recall one house that I couldn’t find on my own in this way, but that was because there was only a house number showing on a gaudily painted house, and nowhere in the scene was there a street sign visible.

So, I have never read a Stephen King novel (that I can recall), but I have watched the myriad of movies which have been made from his writings & novels. Until recently, I could say the same about the author Michael Connelly and his Bosch (and Lincoln Lawyer) novels. I rarely read fiction, and for most of my working life only read technical manuals & industry related items. The exception might have been in reading various works regarding education.

But, I am now almost 180 pages into reading “The Crossing” by Michael Connelly. I’ve cheated, and looked, and there are 388 pages of the actual novel. Why? Well, this is about the third book that I am reading because of my experience with the Little Community Lending Libraries that I took on as my own project, of being a “book bee” (my term for moving a few books from one location, area or even city to another). I normally don’t take a book or two to actually read, but only to cross-pollinate these little book drops. Two exceptions have been “Fig Pudding” and “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing” which was the late Matthew Perry memoir. I will attribute “The Crossing” to these little libraries, but not because I actually found it there, but because I’ve started collecting these Connelly novels to add to these lending libraries starting this coming spring. *I’ve stopped my “book bee” process since it’s gotten colder, because I am guessing that fewer people walk around to these locations in bad weather, and I also don’t want to leave a book, “out in the cold” during stormy winter months. Oh, and I settled on Connelly novels because I had enjoyed the Bosch series on TV. And it was an added bonus that I had independently liked the Lincoln Lawyer series, before I ever knew the connection between Haller & Bosch, and Connelly, the author of both. At the last Cumberland County Library Book Sale, I found a whole shelf of the Connelly-Bosch novels and that was the second day of the sale. No telling how many had filled the shelves on Day One.

I don’t plan to read even a few of the Bosch novels, but I am finding The Crossing to be enjoyable. First, I know most of the characters mentioned, and have probably even seen the story line on TV first, but I do see where an event where Haller is “set up” by crooked cops on a DUI bust… so the cops can view the files he is carrying in the trunk of his Lincoln, after he is carted off to jail, actually happens to Honey Chandler in the TV episode. And I’m not sure of how a fictional event in a book, or a fictional event in a TV episode can “actually happen.” I guess it’s just poetic license.

But all of the previous writing above, was just to get me to the point so that I could mention that the novels apparently echo that of the TV series. Places mentioned in the book are many times, actual places that you can find in Streetview. I’ve skipped over a few locations already mentioned in the book but plan to go back and include them in my Streetview searching.

So, Harry Bosch is meeting another character at a local bar. The book mentions the name of the bar and even describes a large mural painted on the side of the building as being of an old Mariachi. This was the trigger for me to finally go to Streetview searching for this bar & location. Sure enough I put in the bar name, “Eastside Luv” and quickly found it and yup, there was the grizzled old Mariachi musician portrayed on the side of the building.

As another aside, I will miss Lance Reddick, the actor. I liked him in everything I saw him in. Enjoyed his character in “Fringe.”

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I came across the Matthew Perry memoir in one of the little community lending libraries about three days before the actor died. I snagged the book because I thought someone would like to read it. However, less than a week later, as I was viewing one of those online tributes to actors & other famous persons who have died in the current year, I saw a picture of Matthew Perry. My thought was that I didn’t know he was dead, and when did it happen. I quickly found that he had actually died, very recently, and just 3 days after I snagged his book.

So I told myself that I probably will have to read it now. And, I started slowly, but then picked up speed and finished it, except for the last half page, which I superstitiously left unread. He was a tennis player in his youth, so I had that in common, although I started much later in life. He made $80 millions mostly from “Friends” but he also spent $7 millions on therapy. By the end of the book, I was thinking another title might have been “Self-Inflicted Wounds.” Catch-22. Without the holes in his soul, he probably wouldn’t have been talented enough to be on “Friends” and make millions & millions of dollars… and with the holes, he was so “fucked up” that he could never be happy, and would put himself through more pain than almost any enemy would have thought “too brutal” to foist on even the most hated foe. And ironic. From the start of the book he is saying, “I should have been dead by now,” ”many times.”

I got “Fig Pudding” from a LCL in Benson, NC. It was one of many (perhaps 15 or more copies) in the little hut on a stick. I’m guessing this many copies might have been purchased for a Sunday School class, or other group reading project, perhaps at a school. In any case, the read was quick and enjoyable. Not really religious themed, but a family story with ups and downs, and one of the downs being really down. The sudden death of one of the children. It’s not a real family or story, but an entertaining look, that makes the reader want to participate in that kind of cohesive unit.

[NOTE]: On the actor, Titus Welliver… ”Mullholland Falls” from 1996 is still fun to watch, and in it Welliver, a much, much younger Welliver, plays a letch, who is about to screw a young, naive girl, even if it means doping her up beforehand. The Nolte character, a policeman, steps in hard, and kills the Welliver character with his own dope filled hypodermic syringe. But none of that keeps the bad guys, other bad guys, from throwing the Jennifer Connelly character from an aeroplane. And, I don’t know if Michael Connelly and Jennifer Connelly are any, if even, distant relation.

[ A LATER NOTE ]: ”I don’t plan to read even a few of the Bosch novels, but I am finding The Crossing to be enjoyable.“ Funny, since now I am on my fifth Bosch novel, “the 9 Dragons,” and may read more. I am finding “9 Dragons” to be a little slower reading than the previous four Bosch novels I have read, and enjoyed. I think this may be the novel where Harry has to fly to Hong Kong to rescue his daughter, Maddie. Not sure if his ex-wife, who Maddie lives with all but two weeks of the year, (is it Eleanor Wish) is killed in this story. In the TV series, his ex-wife is gunned down in an L.A. parking lot, and I don’t think that Harry flies to Hong Kong in the TV series.

*I enjoyed the first Bosch TV series, and the latest, “Bosch Legacy,” but having started to read Connelly’s Bosch novels, I really like the author’s stories better than the TV adaptations, and part of that is because I like the Mickey Haller, his Lincoln Lawyer half-brother, character. I think I read that it is licensing agreements that limit the Bosch-Haller interaction on the TV series, and that is probably why the Honey Chandler character was prominent in the TV series. I haven’t read if she even exists in the novels, or if she does, probably plays a much smaller mentionable role there.

[AN EVEN LATER NOTE 04/02/24]: Having mentioned above that I don’t plan to read even a few of the Bosch novels, I am now reading “The DROP,” and I have already read about 15 other Bosch novels, and have a couple more ready to be read after the current one I am reading. I haven’t read them in order, and there have been some interesting insights because of the timing & order of reading that I have made. That is one reason for why I wrote a brief article called, “Harry Bosch, that lying sack of shit.” [end of NOTE]

[NOTE 07/04/24]: The 4th of July, 2024, and I am at home watching part of the “Twilight Zone Marathon” on the SyFy Channel. And the current episode is, “Time Enough At Last,” which stars Burgess Meredith. This is the episode in which Henry Bemis, a bank teller, who is a voracious reader with thick glasses is repeatedly stymied at both work and home by “non-readers.” One day, while reading on his break, in the bank vault, an H-Bomb goes off killing everyone else on Earth. Bemis emerges from the bank vault into a world of twisted metal and ashes. He walks the earth and finds that there is enough canned goods and other food in a demolished grocery for him to survive. (I know that canned goods, most of them, have a shelf life, and eventually will spoil, even in a well sealed can. So, eventually he would need to figure out how to reproduce food by “tilling the soil.”) And then, just before deciding to put an end to his aloneness with a bullet, he spies a fallen pillar with the words “Public Library” written on it. And here he finds and starts to compile his readings, sorted by months, as stacks of books on the front steps of the demolished library. And here’s the twist. While bending down to pick up a tome, his glasses slip from his face falling to the concrete steps and completely shattering the lenses. He cannot see to read, which seems to be the most important obstacle for the rest of his life. And the episode ends, “in the Twilight Zone.”

So, I’ve read all the Bosch novels except for “The Burning Room” and “The Wrong Side of Goodbye.” I am a little over 50 pages into “The Burning Room,” which I thought would be a story about the death of a young girl, killed by smoke inhalation during an apartment fire started by a fire bomb. The “bad guys” were trying to get tenants out of this apartment complex so they could build something bigger. *That storyline was from several Bosch episodes on TV. **But that hasn’t happened yet, and we are focused on a Mariachi player, who having been shot ten years prior has suffered and finally died of blood poisoning, due to his original injury. Thus this becomes a homicide which is now handed off to Harry Bosch and his novice Spanish speaking protege, Soto. This is Harry’s last year, not many more cases left in his LAPD detective career before the DROP (not the Bosch novel).

Mariachi Plaza

The shooting occurred at the crowded Mariachi Plaza and was for 10 years thought to have been a “drive by” shooting. But now, with the player’s death, an autopsy has produced a rifle slug that had been lodged into his spine. And the bullet, having been fired from a rifle, was proof (if not positive) that the shooting had been deliberate and not just random.

There is a description, from a store security camera located across the street from the Plaza, of the actual shooting. I suppose from the current Google Street View that that store no longer exists.

The Corner of Boyle and 1st Street at Mariachi Plaza.

As I explored Mariachi Plaza via Google Maps & Street View, I came upon a surprise revelation. I was just looking to find a concrete table, like the one described from which the Mariachi player had fallen after being shot. I found several concrete outcroppings, not quite where I thought they should be, but that made me go to Street View to get a different angle on Mariachi Plaza. And, that is where I looked in the opposite direction from the Plaza. There it was, a view that I was familiar with, from a long ago Bosch novel, “The Crossing.” And here it is,

Eastside Luv Wine Bar

I just checked the publishing order for the Michael Connelly’s novels and see that “The Crossing” was published directly after “The Burning Room.” But, I read “The Crossing” a good many books ago, so it seems at a much different time. ***There has also been a description of a drive-by shooting regarding the “White Fence” Gang. Not sure which novel this other vignette comes from, but there was a shooting into the walls of a garage, in which, at a much later time, LAPD tried to recover the slugs, but unsuccessfully. ****I mention this because I put “two and two together” between two other novels, that I had read, “out of their order.” I read about an Oriental shop/store keeper (wine shop?) who had been shot and killed in his store. Bosch finally reveals that the store owner’s daughter had actually killed her father. But, now I was reading another novel in which Harry drives a crooked detective into hostile territory, during the LA Race Riots, and this detective is pulled from the car and beat to death, while Harry managed to drive back to safety. On safe ground, Harry walks over to a looted wine shop to get cigarettes and some matches and finds the Oriental store owner cowering down behind his cash register. There was something about this description that made me look further, and I realized that this was when Harry first met the store owner that some years later was killed by his, the owner’s, daughter.

Another note. If you look in the opposite direction from the Eastside Luv Wine Bar, up 1st Street, you are looking a short distance to downtown LA.

[end NOTE]