Merle Haggard Drive

Yesterday, I and hundreds of people, gathered at Bakersfield's Harley Davidson store along the new Merle Haggard Drive as the roadway was officially dedicated to Merle Haggard. It used to be 7th Standard road in Oildale. Merle drove up about 12:30 in his RV. He was walked up to the outdoor stage where he was praised by local dignitaries. He was accompanied by his wife, daughter and son. His son plays guitar in the band.

The owner of the Bakersfield Harley shop made Merle a custom made leather jacket that Merle put on to applause. The same giant flag that flew at Buck Owens funeral flew high above the stage thanks to the Bakersfield fire dept.

B26 Marauder vs ME 262

B26 SHOOTS DOWN ME262 JET: 1st Lt. T.V.HARWOOD'S Mission 44,official 323rd Bomb Group, 456th Bomb Squad combat mission/ target number # 376
was flown on the afternoon of 4-20-45 and lasted 4:20 hours, the second mission of the day for
Harwoods crew. 35 ships of the 323rd went up at 11,000 feet. Harwood’s plane, Martin B26 Marauder;
42-96090 WT-M (Bltitz Wagon), dropped 2 2000lbs bombs on the railroad yard at Memmingen,
Germany. Crew: Theodore V. Harwood (P) 2nd/1st Lt., Eugene T. Muszynski (CP) 2nd/1st Lt.,
Anthony B. Caezza (NB) S/SGT., James N. Night (?) T/Sgt., George W. Boyd (RG) S/Sgt.,
Raymond Deboer (TG) S/Sgt. Base of operations; Denain/Prouvy, France. It was April 20th,
1945, in the afternoon. Thirty-five B-26 Marauders flew out toward Nordlingen, Germany to
drop their bomb load from 10,000 feet in the sky to the railroad yard below. This was our next to
the last mission of the war and like any mission, it could have been our last. From the skies below
came a vision of death, the foremost of the German Luftwaffe Jet, rocket aircraft, the ME-262
armed with a 50 mm cannon. It was only seconds before the ME-262 was upon us. I could see the
50 mm cannon of the ME-262 cut loose. It was very close. The whole ordeal was like watching it
happen right in front of you in the fast lane of the freeway. The 50 mm cannon bursts hit the
number two plane, right wing man, and sheered the nacelle door off. I could see it as clear as day.
We had no fighter escort on most missions and on this mission we were alone so we had to take
care of the problem ourselves. The entire squadron opened up with everything we had. Quite
possible it was out turret gunner, but someone found the target and the ME-262 went down. One
of the first jets ever shot down in combat. That same ME-262 craft is now on display at the Air
Force museum in Dayton, Ohio. This occurrence was accidentally misquoted by Major General
John 0. Moench. He had documented the ME-262 attack on 4-25-45, which would have been the
B-26 bombing raid on the German airfield at Erding. The mission that had the ME-262 attack was
on 4/20/45 on the B-26 Nordlingen railroad yard bombing raid. This element is listed in the
official mission folder. The account documented by Major General Moench is as follows:
"Flying the left wing on the Box I, number four flight leader, Ist Lt. Theodore V.
Harwood s postwar account of the ME-262 attack included an observation of fire from the
attackers against the lead flight and the sudden loss of a nacelle door from Capt. Trostle's right
wingman. "Our top turret was chattering like mad and the air in front of us was filled with 50
caliber casings." This element of the attack was not noted in the mission folder." It appears the
date here or in Meonch’s book may be off - 4-25-45 ---The 262 may have hit on both days! he
was on both missions.
MEONCH RECORDING OF HARWOOD: “Ah the second question you have ah on the
last mission April 25, 1945 to Arding, Germany of the 262s ah I was in ship 040 in the low flight
ah, as I recall, according to your diagram everything was in the rear of the flight, however aha as I
recall, I saw the Me262 come up from our right - position itself below us and shoot at the lead
flight, as I recall, according to your diagram here number 969 which was on the right of 131 the
lead ship, I don’t recall any other ship numbers except our own, ah however I could see the 37
MM. puffs of ah smoke from his cannon as he fired, and as I recall the right nacelle door flew off
number 969 in your position ah, that was about all there was to that mission as I could see. Our
top turret gunner was firing which that was the first mission in my 45 mission that the gunners
ever fired a shot and that was sort of startling because I didn’t know they were going to fire made
considerable rattle, the whole sky in front of me was filled with 50 Caliber empties coming out of
ah, I guess the lead flight there but I don’t know how they got back there because according to
your diagram, this ME 262 was ah unless I got this thing reversed, but I wasn’t in the lead flight,
but this trail you got here shows everything in the rear of the flight, but defiantly we saw the 262
and I saw it fire and saw the smoke from the, when the cannon went off you could see a little puff
black smoke every time it fired. Ah, our top turret gunner engineer was considerably ah -hepped
up he thought he hit the thing (laughs) I don’t know there was so much brass in the air, that was
by big problem worrying about the brass coming though the canopy or through the ah
bombardier’s nose compartment.”

This review is from: American Flintknappers: Stone Age Art in the Age of Computers (Hardcover)

This review is from: American Flintknappers: Stone Age Art in the Age of Computers (Hardcover)
American Flintknappers is an American classic. This book is an amazing journey through the strange subculture of American Flintknappers. From an
anthropologists set of eyes. A journey through the past, of men who followed the way of the stone. From Ishi to flake over grinding, the whole experience is here and when you read it you will be there too. Ray Harwood, Western Lithics.

Swoose's Paleo Knapping Technique

The Question that set Swoose, JOHN ALEXANDER, on his quest for the unlocking of the paleo pattern flake code was “how did Indians make such beautiful points out of such hard flint?” It was 1932 and Swoose was 12 years old, in a small west Texas town called McCamey. McCamey, Texas has been called many things over the years. Some of the nicer ones are "Child of Black Gold", "Home of the First Rattle Snake Derby", and just recently the town slogan for the 75th anniversary was "75 and Still Alive". Now McCamey has a new title. By resolution of the Texas Legislator. On February 22, 2001 McCamey was declared the "Wind Energy Capital of Texas", population 1805.

It took Swoose 18 years to to gain the skill and knowledge to master the patterned oblique flaking and fluting. The year after Swoose started knapping, on a Fourth of July
Swoose blew much of his left hand off with a large home made fire cracker,. He was 13 years old and missing his lft thumb and middle finger only slowed him down temporarily and by 1950 he had mastered his craft. Swoose said that he discovered the most important secret by mistake, “I was thinking about something else and I accidentally put a lot of pressure on my perform- instead of leaving a space for the flake detachment, I call this distributed back pressure . This holds the flake together and gives it greater traveling capacity” Swoose used a mounted horn, not antler, wedge to pressure flake the unground margins of his performs and pushed and sheared instead of down and in like Crabtree and Ishi.

Good bye Swoose

Swoose— From Ray
It was early one Saturday afternoon and I got a call from a flintknapper from Texas, he had read the tip flute article I had published in Gary Foggleman’s “Indian Artifact Magazine”. My name is “Swoose!” Swoose gave me a dtailedaccount of the article, he understood the anomaly better than I did- and I wrote the article!. Swoose agreed that a premature flute termination may have, in some prehistoric situations, been overcome by turning the point around and fluting the point from the tip.
A few decades ago a Hungarian inverter, Emo Rubik, invented the mind bending puzzle know as Rubik’s Cube. Flintknapping, the lithic arts, are much like Rubik’s Cube in that a systematic line of attack to break down the sequence into sub problems and then face those on a case by case scenario optimally. Swoose , through his own mastery of deduction, mastered the puzzle, the puzzle of paleo flintknapping.
John Alexander, who goes by the nickname "Swoose," Used a unique process that involves a combination of levered pressure against a prepared platform and a slight percussion strike against the flat surface of the biface near the platform. Striking the surface, which is already under pressure, initiates the fracturing process. Bob Patten (2005) refers to "Swoose's" method of fluting as "axial compression." This technique produces long flutes that relate to Barnes and Cumberland points. (Bostrom, Casting Lab).
According to John Whittaker, author of “American Flintknappers”: “Flint knappers can also be considered a subculture, a smaller unit within American culture as a whole”. All of us that fit into this subculture have our own little niche . Swoose found his as a master of his own method of paleo knapping .

Star Trek creator Gene Roddeberry’s landmark space burial about a decade, or so, ago have long since come crashing back to earth with the hope of space immortality . There was a bumper sticker that Bob Patten used to sell “Love is fleeting, Stone is forever” , I think Bob was right, this being the case Swoose will live forever through his magnificent
Parallel flaked and fluted flint art.


Swooses’ life as told by Peter Bostrum’s Lithic Casting Lab”

“-"Swoose" lives in a small west Texas town called McCamey where he's called home for 86 years. He has many other talents other than flintknapping. The local community is proud of his athletic accomplishments. In various Senior Texas and World track and field events he's held 9 age group world records and received over 400 gold medals. In 2000 John Alexander was inducted into the Texas Senior Games Hall of Fame. When asked by Peter Bostrom, of Lithic Casting Lab, how he came up with the idea of fluting in this peculiar way, "Swoose" says he was exposed to the basic concept when he was stationed in New Guinea during World War II. New Guinea was and still is one of the best locations in the world to observe primitive technology. He was assigned to the 912 signal company and was on active duty from 1942-1945. Before the war, "Swoose" was a ham radio operator. He began with his crystal set in 1933. His knowledge of electronics guided his time in the military towards radar, specializing in repair and installation. In New Guinea he says when the local natives needed power to do something, they used levers. His experimenting with pressure using a lever has produced a simple forked limb method of removing a long Cumberland style channel flake.

BAKERSFIELD KNAP-IN STARTS ANOTHER YEAR! 2008

A fierce arctic storm lashed California on Friday, toppling trees, soaking a coastal landscape already charred by wildfires and threatening to paralyze the mountains with deep snow. Rain Pelted the landscapes of the farms and hills around Bakersfield Saturday and Sunday, but a "rain shadow" kept most of the precipitation out Bakersfield itself long enough for Gary Picket to put on his monthly knap-in at Hart Park on the Kern River.. The Bakersfield knap-in is the longest running monthly knap in in the world thus far.

# Bakersfield's Free Press Newspaper | The Blackboard
With more rodents available, birds of prey have thrived. A list of some ofthe endangered or threatened species living at CALM follows Desert Tortoise
http://www.theblackboardfreepress.com/200306/articles5.html

Extractions: By RAY HARWOOD, THE BLACKBOARD I sit down under the cool shade of pine, the mountain air clean and cleansing. My thoughts go back to a time and place where humans and nature were one, when humans made tools and a living from simple survival skills related closely to the earth. To be one with nature is to be fulfilled. Some local artisans have a hobby along these lines, bringing us back to that stone age time. The group meets on the southeast corner of Hart Part on the first Sunday of each month. The hobby, known as "flintknapping,” is the ancient art of chipping flint type stones into arrowheads, tomahawks and other ancient artifact replicas. As an art form, the image of flakes on stone has a strange attraction, a fascination perhaps, held over from our stone age ancestors. The arrowhead group sets up a barbecue, complete with a banjo player or occasionally a native drum, and commences to chip rocks at about 9:30 am until lunch, then again until the park closes at dusk. They chip glassy rocks to create fantastic stone knives and arrowheads. The group’s leader, Gary Picket, learned the stone age craft while living in Missouri, where flint Indian artifacts are common in the creeks and hollers. Picket experimented for many years before he mastered the craft. Picket says that modern flintknappers sign their work to keep it from being misrepresented as ancient. He invites all interested to the park to learn more about this strange but growing hobby. Gary often does demonstrations for events, schools and museums. For more information, call (661) 392-7729.

Robert Blue - Flintknapper

href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc6O358GYWkZkslBz9Sf9XRTtYxdubXWzw_oAqfbS6KmA8c7lFiAg9C0Y_FJeMkoYTYXwXmwxE_qqdkdKwfDIunsOH7riiG1SRccRhsgYey9GaEnnzybnKuUxwjUMnvgipu-E3SXRKFuw/s1600-h/Wrightwood+1988+%2322.JPG">





Robert was a real nice fellow, I met him through my old newsletter "Flintknapping Digest" in the early 1980s and then met him and his wife Linda at the 1989 Wrightwood knap-in. Robert was an amazing painter and artist and it showed in his knapping. Robert sought out all the greats to learn the knapping craft. Linda Blue came to some the the 1990s knap-ins to honor her husband, Robert Blue - artist, knapper & teacher - who died on January 22, 1998.



According to John Whittaker, author of “American Flintknappers”: “Flint knappers can also be considered a subculture, a smaller unit within American culture as a whole”. All of us that fit into this subculture have our own little niche . Robert Blue had his, from my perspective Robert revived, to some extent, Rinehardt’s lever flaking on large rectangled slabs- and for sure was responsible for its’ use in California in the 1980s. He was also instrumental in the emergence of the lapidary art of “flake over grinding” on jaspers for pattern flaked points (Richard Warren and Jim Hopper style) here in California.

“The knap-in is a public arena where knappers perform their craft and interact with other knappers” (Whittaker). The Wrightwood knap-in, held at Jackson Lake near Wrightwood, California, was the knap-in Robert attended. Knap-ins have specific structure that has evolved overtime. The first knap-ins were circles of knappers attempting to ascertain archaeological data – unlocking the mysteries of lithic technology.Later the became a circle of artists sharing techniques, later booths were added and more of a fair atmosphere, then lapidary equipment and quest for the perfect point- and booths . All of these stages were enjoyable and beneficial to the participants. Each year at Wrightwood there was a centralized knap-in circle, this is where the knapping was undertaken in earnest and people showed what they were made of, it was high noon and the knappers were like gun slingers and pattern flaking could outdraw fluted Folsoms and that could only be trumped by a massive biface. It was all in good fun but prestige was on the line if one was to blow out a key-hole notch or end-snap a large biface when in the circle. I think most knappers were so intent on what they were doing that they didn’t give others but a glance. Most of us had a set up around a secondary perimeter, this is where the booths and demos took place. In the morning after the time at the fire pit, people broke off and went to their set up. Robert Blues set up was right on the edge of the open area, on what might be called the entry, as you drove up the steep dirt entry he was right after the turn on the right, under a large scrub oak. I recall a fairly large gathering at his set up watching him demonstare both flake over grinding technology and lever flaking. Robert’s lever flaker was made of large carpenter vises clamped together. After he was done with his demonstrations he brought his modern knappers collection into the knapping circle and we all looking and pondered. I recall Robert’s detailed narrative for each piece of lithic art. After the collection had been fully explored Robert sat within the spherical line of knappers and took his rightful place within “a smaller unit within American culture as a whole”.









Robert Blue of Studio City, California was inspired by a collection of Reinhardt's points , Reinhardt had been long dead but Blue did find fellow Gray Ghost collector, Charlie Shewey in Missouri. Robert offered to buy all of Shewey's Gray Ghosts and Richard Warren points and that money was no object. Charlie refused Blue's offer, but directed Robert to Richard Warren. After Robert bought a fair number of points, Warren shared some of his secrets with Robert Blue and introduced him to Jim Hopper, whom Warren had taught. Jim Hopper and Robert Blue became good friends and Robert became very good at art knapping. Barney DeSimone, couched Robert through his early years of knapping. Later Robert inspired Barney to return somewhat to lapidary knapping. It was Robert Blue that taught Ray Harwood to knap in the lever style of Reinhardt, Ray produced dozens of "Raynish Daggers" with the lever flaker. The Raynish Daggers were simply slab points in the form of 10 inch Danish Daggers ("2-D daggers" -not 3 dimensional). These were what Callahan called the ugliest Danish Daggers he had ever seen. After Robert's death and some prompting from DeSimone and Callahan, Harwood returned to traditional flintknapping. One interesting bit of knapping lore I overheard at a knap in goes like this:" Steve Behenes had invented this steel fluting jig that could flute supper this preforms. Steve was close to Robert Blue at the time and he sent Robert a thin Folsom and the detached flutes, Robert returned the detached flute -and he had fluted them !

ROBERT BLUE THE ARTIST OBITUARY :

FROM "VARIETY MAGAZINE " AND "WIKIPEDIA"
Robert D. Blue, dead at 50
Son of the late Ben Blue
By VARIETY STAFF
"Robert D. Blue, son of the late actor-comedian Ben Blue, died Jan. 22 of brain cancer at St. John's Medical Center in Santa Monica. He was 50.
Blue, an accomplished artist-painter, had a long history of gallery shows across the U.S. and in Japan. He was co-founder of Davis-Blue Artwork, L.A., and at the time of his death was serving as chairman of fine art at Assn. in Art, Van Nuys.
Blue is survived by his wife, Linda, and a brother.
A funeral mass will be held at 7:30 p.m. Fridayat St. Paul the Apostle Church, 10750 Ohio, Westwood.
Robert D.[1] Blue (1946[2]- January 22, 1998[3]) was a painter noted for his images of pin-up girls in the 1980's and later his cowgirls of the New West series. He was the son of comedic actor Ben Blue[4].
] Biography
Born in Los Angeles[5] in 1946, Robert Blue grew up in Beverly Hills. He served in the United States Army and attended the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, earning a BFA at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles.
His work precedes that of similar artist Patrick Nagel. In 1979, Blue joined Brian Davis to form the Davis-Blue Artwork publishing company. Collectors of Blue's art have included Jack Nicholson, Barbra Streisand and Hugh Hefner, as well as numerous corporate collectors, including the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Los Angeles, and the Atlanta Hilton Motel. Blue served as chairman of fine art at Assn. in Art, Van Nuys.
Blue succumbed to brain cancer[6] in Santa Monica in 1998, and the Robert Blue Foundation to aid brain cancer victims was instituted in his memory. He was survived by his wife, Linda, and his brother, Tom.
Two films have featured Blue's art; 1974's The Second Coming of Suzanne, and 1984's Heartbreakers, the latter of which was loosely based on Blue himself[7]. There has also been a character in a novel based on him."

1984's Heartbreakers, Film Based on Robert Blue:

"Blue{Robert} and Eli, two friends, have problems with women. Blue, a yet-to-be discovered painter is left by his longtime girlfriend, because she considers him too immature for a longlsting relationship. Eli on the other hand, who works in his father's aerobic suit business, is still searching for a woman who is interesting enough to spend more than one night with her. Their friendship is put to a severe test as both fall in love with Liliane, Blue's attractive new gallerist. Written by Robert Zeithammel {zeit@cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de}"