Overton, NV - M-41 Walker Bulldog Tank 14 Nov 2020

Every now and then I take a wrong turn that turns out right. We've been to Overton before and this really doesn't fit into the Ed's Travelogue series, but I really should have posted this last year after I took these photos. Oh well. What happened was that we were headed to Boulder City from North Las Vegas. If you take Lake Mead Blvd due east, the road exits North Las Vegas and within about 15 miles leads to the entrance of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. After that, the road splits left and right. Left leads to Overton, right leads to Boulder City. I must have been enjoying the scenery that day because I got distracted and took the wrong turn and ended up going to Overton. Yeah, we could've turned around and went back but we chose to keep going on. Having traveled the Vegas-to-Overton/Overton-to-Vegas route before I know that the scenery is more rugged and spectacular than it is when you head to Boulder City so it's well worth the drive. But it's also a longer drive. From Las Vegas, the drive to Overton is over an hour, and then the drive south on the freeway from Overton to Vegas adds another hour. Compare the drive to Boulder City which is about 45 minutes!

Anywho, I've seen this M-41 parked outside the local VFW on previous trips and always wanted to stop and take photos. Well, this ended up being the day to do it! Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Ed's Travelogue: Rock Band 'Gyro' 7 September 1979

September 1979 was a happenin' month for me. Just three days after the rampage incident (see yesterday's post), I went to the Rec Center and saw the band Gyro. I was never a big concert goer - crowds bug me, what can I say? But a group of guys from the local area had formed a band called 'Gyro' and I thought it would be cool to check them out. And of course I was still messin' around with my camera and trying different effects and filters. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

TRAIN TIME: Classic Toy Trains Hits The Newstand on The Edge of Town Micro-Layout

When my little Edge of Town micro-layout made the pages of the March 2021 issue Classic Toy Trains magazine I was - to say the least - thrilled as heck! But the idea for this newsstand came from Brian Eovitch over at the "The Train Cafe: BUY&SELL TRAINS/LAYOUT PICS&VIDS/Lionel Flyer Marx MTH etc" facebook group. He mentioned I should put copies on a newsstand on my layout! Holy cow - why didn't I think of that? LOL 

I already had a newsstand from Woodland Scenics and was thinking of a way to shoehorn it into the layout somehow. It occured to me that the fruit stand is the perfect place to also sell magazines and such! So I made a copy of the cover of CTT, inserted it into a Word doc and minimized it into a teeny tiny picture. You can just barely discern that it's the cover from CTT but it's a nice detail touch. This was a quickie project and now I'm gonna make copies of other mags and paste them onto the stand as well. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Ed's Travelogue: Setting the Timeline Straight - RAMPAGE at George AFB 4 Sep 1979

Before I settled into this Travelogue format I was posting whatever innerestin' thing came to mind. Welll, that put the whole timeline askew. After the trip to Death Valley during the first couple days of September 1979, a co-worker and former roommate went on a rampage by stealing a JP-4 fuel truck and ramming into about a dozen or more vehicles, including the Base Mobile Command Post! Click on the link and read about a very harrowing day at George AFB:  

And There I Was...Rampage

Enjoy! Opa Fritz

TRAIN TIME: American Model Builders All-American Gas Station and Catching Up With Train Layout Videos

Work on my train layouts always slows down in the summer, regardless of what else is going on in my life, because it gets too uncomfortable out in The Cave to do much of anything. 

My Edge of Town micro-layout had a plastic Littletown filling station made during the 1950's. Littletown buildings were made around the same time as Plasticville but then Plasticville bought them out. For unknown reasons, Plasticville chose not to reissue the Littletown station but chose to go with a plainer, blander design of their own. With its bay window, the Littletown version had more visual appeal but it was a tad bit smaller than the P-Ville one. And that's precisely why I chose it for the Edge of Town - it was smaller, thus using less train layout real estate. But in the end I wanted something even smaller still and chose to go with this O-scale laser-cut wood kit from American Model Builders (AMB). I'm a slow worker and haven't gotten far with it but here's some preliminary shots of the station with the walls built-up. BTW, I've already sold off the Littletown station :-) Enjoy! Opa Fritz

I'm opted to not use the station sign that came with the kit and am gonna keep the one I already had on the layout.

Here's links to some of my fairly recent Y'allTube videos. Some are for the Edge of Town layout while others document my very slow progress on the new Milwaukee North Western layout.

Ed's Travelogue: 1st Trip to Death Valley September 1979

You can't live in California and not go to Death Valley - I think it's a law or something LOL. I never recorded the date but my negatives and prints show I went to Death Valley in September just after the "Tops in Blue" show and just before Tim Davis' rampage on 4 Sep 79. This wasn't a very comprehensive tour of the place - sort of just a quick drive through just to say "I was there". Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Ed's Travelogue: George AFB "Tops in Blue" Sep 2, 1979

I have got to keep busy to take my mind off of things. It's a blessing that I still have a job to go to but the rest of the family is then by themselves in what now feels like an empty house.

To that end I'm going to re-engage in a series gone dormant here on the blog: Ed's Travelogue. The last post was way back in February where I started covering the year 1979. Having joined the Air Force in late 1978, 1979 became the first whole year by myself and away from home. It was also my first experience living in the desert, specifically the Mojave Desert of Southern California (also called the High Desert), and I tried to keep myself busy then as well. I had signed delayed enlistment papers in January 1978, actually reported to USAF basic training in September '78 and finally got to my first air base in Novemeber. But during that time my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. He would turn 79 years old in June '79 and had been smoking since he was 12 years old!! (Good Lord! As a non-smoker it's hard to imagine that, but I know it was a fairly prevalent occurence). By August 1979 he had passed away.

My last post back in February was part four of my visit to The Milwaukee County Zoo in August 1979. What I failed to mention in that post was my return to Milwaukee was initially meant to visit my dad but he had already passed away while I was on the flight home, so the trip changed from a visitation to a funeral.

...and so, it was imperative to keep busy upon returning to George AFB and that leads us finally to the subject of this post. The Air Force has a traveling talent show called 'Tops in Blue' to entertain airmen across the globe and as it turns out, this was the only time I would see them. They have been here in Las Vegas but I just never got around to seeing the show.

The performance was held on-base in the base theater and it was a pretty good show from what I recall. The lighting wasn't real bright and I had to use a flash to get some better photos but here are some of the better ones. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

There is a very '70s vibe to this show as you'll notice in the pictures

My 35mm Minolta camera was still fairly new and I was trying different things, like this prism-effect screw-on filter

"The Wizard of Oz" was a theme of this show

This was the last number