The above photo was taken 31 years ago this month, outside the mineshaft in Red River.
The one below was taken just a few weeks ago in almost the same place. I forgot to bring the photo with me, so I couldn't get the right camera angle. Still, it's kind of cool.

Next stop: UTK!!

The Cave

Here it is. This is the cave we stayed in back in 1979. I was fresh out of the Army, just back from Germany. Me and Vance had gone up to Red River to visit his friend, Steve Berlin. When we got up there, we went to Steve's apartment. He didn't answer the door and we peeked in through the window. All of Steve's shit was boxed up. We got back in the truck and drove over to Texas Red's (The original, pre-fire one) where Steve worked as a dishwasher. He informed us he'd just gotten evicted and then asked could we help him move all of his shit (which, being a young pot head in 1979, didn't amount to much) up the road to an abandoned gold mine. And this was is. We spent the weekend getting drunk and falling down and doing goofy shit. There was another guy there, I forget his name, but he wore genuine glacier glasses. The ones with the leather shields on the side to keep you from going snowblind. I thought they were the shits and ran out and bought me a pair. This was a good 5 years before the style was popular for about 6 months.
Vance later went and lived in the cave for a while.This had to be in between June 23rd, which is the day I got home from Germany, and July 9th, which is when I turned 21, because I remember not being old enough to drink just then.

These photos were taken just a few weeks ago when I went on a family trip up to Red River. One of the loclas had told me that most of the gold mines had been blown shut for safety reasons back in the 1980s, so I wasn't holding out a lot of hope. Me and the Mrs. drove up Bitter Creek Rd. just to have a gander, and there it was.

People in the fridge......

O.K., this is cool, but Rick and I had this idea years ago. I took a picture of Rick sitting in the fridge holding a bottle of Wishbone salad dressing. If I'm lying, I'm dying.....

Vance has never, to the best of my (Rick's) knowledge, lied. Hence, we offer the above photo taken ca. 1976-7 of me (Rick) sitting in Vance's refrigerator, wearing a bowtie belonging to either Tod or Blaine from their supermarket job, and holding a bottle of salad dressing.

We shot a whole roll of film that night. Vance drew a moustache on himself with a magic marker. Many of these photos centered around the kitchen.

This particular photo appears int he original Moonpie book. I was posting pages from that pretty regularly, but have been a slacker for the past year.... jeeze.