The Secret Playground, Vicksburg, Mississippi

This essay could be named The Secret Garden (apologies to Frances Hodgson Burnett), but I will call it The Secret Playground. A couple of weeks ago, my old car suffered a breakdown at the corner of Wisconsin and Confederate Avenues, near Toots Grocery, in Vicksburg. I coasted into the parking lot of the New Mt. Elem Church at 3014 Wisconsin Avenue. While waiting for a flatbed truck, I walked up a dirt path that led away from the church lot, rounded a corner, and came across a semi-abandoned playground.

The first play machine you encounter is the merry-go-round. It still turns, so someone must have maintained it within the last decade or so. The site is not totally overgrown, so does someone cut the brush possibly annually?

The slide is reasonably intact, a slide to nowhere.

This is sturdy, old-fashioned playground equipment made of heavy-duty steel.  The nearby bench has survived the years.

Here is one of the children's seats. I remember these massive things from the 1950s, when they would have been equipped with a chain and a hook to keep a child from falling out.

I showed these photographs to several coworkers who lived all their lives in Vicksburg, and none knew anything about the site. It was too far from the old Ken Karyl School (now the Vicksburg Family Life Church) and across a busy street to have been associated with the school. If anyone has any information, please comment.

Update, March 23, 2013: I spoke to an old friend, a retired City of Vicksburg employee, about this site. He said it was still an official city playground but was not sure if the Parks and Recreation Department maintained the site any more. He recalled buying some of the playground equipment many years ago. He said the access road was once one of the National Military Park loops, but when the City and Federal Government exchanged land, part of Confederate Avenue was relocated and the city built the playground on the loop.

For a 2014 update: Click Here.

Photographs taken with a Panasonic G3 digital camera with Lumix 20mm f/1.7 lens. On this camera, I can set the aspect ratio to 1:1, which lets me frame square. I learned to appreciate the square viewpoint after using Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex cameras for 30 years. Raw files processed with Photo Ninja software on a Mac computer. I recommend Photo Ninja highly (but I recommend using real film in a Rolleiflex even more highly).

For some genuine film pictures: Click here

Historic Steel Bridge, Vicksburg National Military Park

Long-term Vicksburg residents may remember that Confederate Avenue in the Vicksburg National Military Park crossed Old Jackson Road on a steel arch bridge.  The bridge and four similar structures were built in 1905 and used for many years, but by the 1970s, the other four had been replaced with modern concrete bridges.  By the mid-1980s, the steel bridge over Jackson Road was still open to pedestrians, but the road had been rerouted over a modern concrete span parallel to and west of the historic bridge.  Sometime in the early-1990s, the bridge was closed to pedestrians, but it remained unused in place, a relic of sound early 20th century engineering and construction.

This is the view of the historic bridge from the new concrete span. As you can see, it spanned quite a deep valley with a road and creek below.

This is a postcard from the archives of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Sometime in the late-1990s, one of the footings on the south side washed away, leaving the bridge standing on only three footings. According to the Vicksburg Post (June 20, 2002), National Park Service officials concluded that the bridge was structurally in imminent danger of failure and that repairs would be too expensive. Jackson Road was closed because of the fear that the bridge would fall.

I examined the footings with a friend who is a mechanical engineer, and his opinion was that if the bridge was standing strong on three legs, there was no imminent failure mode. The footing could have been repaired with piles or a concrete pad. Regardless, the decision was made to raze the beautiful old bridge. This photograph shows one of the footings on the north side of the valley.

Here is the still-intact arch entering the brush on the south side. You can see the dangling footing in the lower center of the frame. The demolition job was contracted to Riverside Construction of Vicksburg, and the workmen literally pulled down the span using a bulldozer and dump trucks on June 20, 2002. The steel was cut up and taken away for recycling.

This is how we lose our architectural and engineering heritage: no one cares, and authorities take the cheap and brainless way out. For shame that this happened in a National Park.

Photographs taken with Kodak Tri-X film on a 4x5-inch Tachihara camera, using 180 mm and 75 mm lenses. I had to carry tripod and camera down Jackson road on my bicycle because it was closed to traffic.

At the Grand Bazaar and Egyptian Market, Istanbul, Turkey

Dear readers, let us continue our tour of markets, which are always fun.  One of the oldest and grandest anywhere is the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul. According to Wikipedia, the Büyük Çarşı, meaning "Grand Bazaar" is one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world. It contains 61 covered streets and 3,000 shops, and may attract 250,000 to 400,000 visitors every day.

When I was here in the 1960s, it was still pretty authentic (= smelly, dark, questionable sanitary standards, suspicious jewelry).  Unfortunately, I do not have any photographs from that era.  Bad or good news (depending on your opinion of modernization):  today it is clean, well-lit, and the vendors take credit cards. There are even ATMs for your convenience.  That takes some of the fun out of the experience.  However, keeping up with the times is how a 500-year-old institution thrives.  We were warned that many of the authentic "Turkish" carpets are made in China now.

Trivia question:  What James Bond movie has some scenes in the Grand Bazaar?  Answer:  From Russia with Love, the second Bond film, released in 1963 and starring Sean Connory.

Proceed east, downhill towards the Golden Horn, and you reach the Egyptian Market. On a Sunday, this is a lot of fun. The barrel-vaulted building, dating from 1660, is also known as the Spice Bazaar (Turkish: 'Mısır Çarşısı'). The "Egypt" part of the name may come from the fact that revenues from Egypt, then part of the Ottoman Empire, helped pay for construction.

You can buy clothing, all sorts of nuts and spices, and the normal farmers' market stuff. The dry figs that I ate here and in central Anatolia were the most delicious I have ever tasted.

These are a bit more mysterious.  Do you eat the red berries or the yellow husk?

If figs or unusual fruits are not enough, visit the operatic gyro vendor.  His pita sandwiches looked really good, as did the fries and chilled juices, and he sings for you.

When it is time for a drink, these gents sell genuine freshly-squeezed orange juice, but I am not sure if they sing.

In keeping with the theme of appreciating the local ladies of the market, this trio is has plenty of attitude.

I suppose this little guy also had attitude.

If you prefer quieter ladies, some of them are missing parts of their heads, while others are missing their undergarments.

When you tire of the crush of people at the markets, cross the Golden Horn on the Galata Bridge (Galata Köprüsü). The waterway has been spanned by bridges since the time of Justinian the Great. Leonardo da Vinci designed a bridge for this site, but the sultan chose not to build it. This is the view back across the Horn, with the Süleymaniye (Süleymaniye Camii) Ottoman imperial Mosque on the skyline.

Walk along the waterfront west of the Galata Bridge, and you come to a casual restaurant that grills freshly-caught sardines, served at tiny tables.  They have big crunchy rolls, so you can make a sardine Po-Boy. Good company, a beer, sardines, the Golden Horn: it doesn't get much better than this....

Older market posts:

• Athens Flea Market today.
• Athens Flea Market in the early-1950s
• Athens Central Market
• Farmer market in Vrahati, Greece
• Reading Terminal Market, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Asan Chowk in Kathmandu, Nepal
• Ladies of Nepal 

Most Istanbul photographs were taken with a Sony DSC-W7 compact digital camera.

Ladies of the Athens Flea Market, Athens, Greece

In the previous post, we saw the Athens Flea Market in the early 1950s. Today, it is more refined, and most of the stores sell inexpensive new manufactured goods. Many even accept credit cards. But Sunday is still a good day to explore, and you never know what a vendor will produce from a bulging suitcase.

Monastiraki Metro station, Athens

The best way to reach the market is to take the metro to the Monastiraki Metro Station.

Turn right as you emerge from the station, and you see the old mosque with the Acropolis in the distance. The mosque was built in 1759 and now houses the modern pottery collection of the Museum of Greek Popular Art. This is one of the few buildings remaining from the Turkish era.

Turn right again and you will see the opening to Hephaestou Street. As the sign says, open every day.

I promised ladies, and here they are, complete with odd sweaters and underwear (or no underwear).

Do you prefer the tough lady look? Here is the military style

Or how about a Soviet babushka (ба́бушка)? I saw a surprising amount of old Soviet equipment, but nothing interesting like genuine military-issue watches or rocket launchers. 

Warning, warning: Greek Zombie attack. 

 And now the red riding look. The wolf might like her. 

To demonstrate equal opportunity, here are the gents of the Flea Market. Regardless of your tastes, there is plenty to see.

(If you would like to see some other lovely market ladies, come to the markets in old Kathmandu or Venice).

Most frames are from a Panasonic G1 digital camera (the first generation micro four thirds camera), some with an older Sony DSC-W7 compact camera.

The Athens Flea Market, 1951

In a previous post on the Pláka district of Athens, I described how the flea market has changed over the decades, becoming much more gentrified. The market is in the Monastiraki (Greek: Μοναστηράκι = little monastery) neighborhood just to the north of Pláka. To check if my memory was correct about the character of the flea market decades ago, I scanned some of the family's 1950s black and white film negatives.

In the early 1950s, Greece was just emerging from the brutal civil war, and the country was desperately poor. US aid was pouring in, but people were still impoverished (except for war profiteers - that is an especially ugly story).*  A flea market like this was the place to raise a bit of cash, barter some odd metal scrap for some clothing, or buy an old steel bedstead.

More treasures for sale. I recall that you often saw Greek men hanging around, seemingly without work. I also remember many crippled veterans in the post-war era.

This is a Kodachrome slide from 1953 converted to monochrome.

A tourist in the market. Notice, he is wearing a suit. Even at leisure in those days, gents often wore suits. Sixty years later, we have become a nation of swine.

This is the view of the Agora with the Theseion temple in the distance. The train below is the original metro, the Athens-Piraeus Electric Railway (Greek: Η.Σ.Α.Π. - Ηλεκτρικοί Σιδηρόδρομοι Αθηνών-Πειραιώς, Ilektrikoi Sidirodromoi Athinon - Pireos). The rail line from Piraeus to Theseion was inaugurated in February 1869 as a steam train. The route was extended to Omonoia Square and electrified in 1904, making this one of the world's oldest metros.

This may be the end of Athenas Street where it meets Omonoia Square. I remember policemen with their white gloves directing traffic from the round pedestals. Later, sometime in the 1950s, the municipal government installed traffic signals throughout Athens. 

1906 street scene, single panel from a stereo card

• Title: Street scene, Athens, Greece
• Creator(s): Keystone View Company., 
• Date Created/Published: Meadville, Pa. ; St. Louis, Mo. ; San Francisco, Cal. ; Toronto, Can. ; New York, N.Y. ; London, England : Keystone View Company, Manufacturers and Publishers, 1906. Copyright 1906
• Medium: 1 photograph : print on card mount ; mount 9 x 18 cm (stereograph format)
• Summary: Stereograph showing outdoor market with street vendors and their merchandise.
• Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-stereo-1s25683 (digital file from original) LC-USZ62-65909 (b&w film copy neg. of right half stereo)
• Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
  
• Call Number: STEREO FOREIGN GEOG FILE - Greece--Athens [item] [P&P]
• Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Back to the Pláka District: here is the Temple of the Winds. The 1800s houses were still authentic and unrestored then.

Finally, here is the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, on the south flanks of the Acropolis. Workmen are setting up chairs for a concert. The theater was built in 161 AD by a wealthy Athenian, Herodes Atticus, and is still in use for the annual Athens Festival. The seats are rock hard (really!) - take a cushion. Notice the view of the city in the background.  It looks like a village.

Technical note: Most of these negatives are Ansco Ultra Speed film. Fortunately, we saved them all these years. My dad exposed the film with his Canon rangefinder camera (possibly a model IIB) with a 50 mm ƒ/1.9 Serenar lens. This was a Japanese post-war replica of the German Leica IIIC camera and the Leica 5 cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens. The Serenar lens was not as good optically but still capable of fine work. The edges of the frames are a bit soft. The negatives were scratched and dirty, but I did not retouch. I scanned them on a Plustek 7600i 35mm scanner using Silverfast Ai software. A couple of the negatives were so thin, I would never have tried to print optically through an enlarger, but the Silverfast was able to extract a surprising amount of picture information. Black and white film is an amazingly archival storage material. Will we be able to read our digital files in 65 years?

* For a detailed description of the terrible World War II years, see:

Mazower, Mark, 1995.  Inside Hitler's Greece, The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 437 p.

Many of Greece's elite collaborated with the Nazis and became wealthy. And in Thessaloniki, many Greeks willingly let the Nazis deport Jewish merchants and profited by taking over their businesses and property. It was vile and shameful.
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For 2013 revisit to the Plaka area, please click here.
For a description of the Leica cameras that we used over the years, please click here.