Tuesday, February 6, 2024

1979 Honda CB750F Super Sport "Montjuïc Special"by Luis Etchenique

 



I'm not often impressed by motorcycle builds, but this Honda CB750F Supert Sport built by my friend Luis Etchenique is just a work of art in my eyes. Luis Etchenique built this bike as a tribute to the Honda RCB machines that won the 24 Hours of Montjuïc in Barcelona, Spain, back in 1976.

 

Stan Woods in Montjuic 1976

The 1976 edition of the 24 Hours of Montjuïc, won by Stan Woods and Charlie Williams on a Honda 941, was the 22nd edition of this race, organized by the Barcelona Motorists Association at the Circuit de Montjuïc on the weekend of July 3 and 4. It was the second round of the European Endurance Championship (called the FIM Cup until 1975) that year.

That year's extremely hot Barcelona summer forced the Honda Britain ( Stan Woods/Charlie Williams ), and Honda France ( Jean Claude Chemarin/Christian Leon ) teams to remove the machines' cowlings as to allow for a much needed improved cooling. You could see all the hardware, the mechanisms, the internal components. I recall being at the pits ... in awe of such raw performance and engineering.



I was at the time a teenager, and I promised myself that one day I would build a bike that would convey a similar feeling; a bike where you could see its engine, the carbs, the exhaust -- its guts and its soul.

For this project I used a 1979 CB750 Super Sport I found ( in need of many of its original parts ), which otherwise would've probably ended up in someone's junkyard. 








Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Battle of Chickasaw Bayou


 
A little more than 160 years ago, the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, also called the Battle of Walnut Hills, (fought December 26-29, 1862), was the opening engagement of the Vicksburg Campaign during the American Civil War. Confederate forces under Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton repulsed an advance by Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman that was intended to lead to the capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton - Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman

On December 26, three Union divisions under Sherman disembarked at Johnson's Plantation on the Yazoo River to approach the Vicksburg defenses from the northeast while a fourth landed farther upstream on December 27. On December 27, the Union army pushed their lines forward through the swamps toward the Walnut Hills, which were strongly defended. On December 28, several futile attempts were made to get around these defenses. On December 29, Sherman ordered a frontal assault, which was repulsed with heavy casualties, and then withdrew. This Confederate victory and the victory against Grant at Holly Springs frustrated Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's attempts to take Vicksburg by a direct approach.

Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant

Starting in November 1862, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, commanding Union forces in Mississippi, undertook a campaign to capture the city of Vicksburg, high on the bluffs of the Mississippi River, one of two Confederate strong points (the other being Port Hudson, Louisiana) that denied the Union complete control of the Mississippi River. Grant split his 70,000 men army into two wings. One commanded by himself and one commanded by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman. Sherman commanded the Right Wing, or XIII Corps, Army of the Tennessee, redesignated the XV Corps on December 22. His expeditionary force of 32,000 troops was organized into four divisions, commanded by Brig. Gens. Andrew J. Smith, Morgan L. Smith, George W. Morgan, and Frederick Steele.

Up. left Andrew J. Smith - Morgan L. Smith, Lo. left George W. Morgan - Frederick Steele

Grant's wing marched south down the Mississippi Central Railroad, making a forward base at Holly Springs. He planned a two-pronged assault in the direction of Vicksburg. As Sherman advanced down the river, Grant would continue with the remaining forces (about 40,000) down the railroad line to Oxford, where he would wait for developments, hoping to lure the Confederate army out of the city to attack him in the vicinity of Grenada, Mississippi.

USS Baron DeKalb Gunboat in 1862

The seven gunboats and fifty-nine troop transports commanded by Rear Adm. David D. Porter departed Memphis, Tennessee, on December 20, stopped at Helena, Arkansas, to pick up additional troops, and arrived at Milliken's Bend above Vicksburg on December 24. After advancing up the Yazoo River, the transports disembarked Sherman's men at Johnson's Plantation, opposite Steele's Bayou, north of the city. Preceding the landing, the U.S. Navy conducted torpedo clearing operations on the Yazoo, during which the ironclad USS Cairo was sunk.

This photo is of a soldier sitting next to Chickasaw Bayou, north of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The exact point on the bayou is not known. 


The Confederate forces opposing Sherman's advance were from the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana, commanded by Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton, a Pennsylvanian who chose to fight for the South. The officer in direct command of the defenses of Vicksburg was Maj. Gen. Martin L. Smith, who commanded four brigades led by Brig. Gens. Seth M. Barton, John C. Vaughn, John Gregg, and Edward D. Tracy. Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Lee commanded a provisional division with brigades commanded by Cols. William T. Withers and Allen Thomas; Lee was the primary commander of the Confederate defense in the Walnut Hills until the arrival late on December 29 of Maj. Gen. Carter L. Stevenson. Although the Union forces outnumbered the men to their front by two to one (30,720 to 13,792), they faced a formidable maze of both natural and man-made defenses.

Up. left Martin L. Smith -John C. Vaughn, Lo. left John Gregg - Edward D. Tracy

First was a thick entanglement of trees, which was broken intermittently by swampland. Chickasaw Bayou, a stream that was chest-deep, 50 yards wide, and choked with trees, also acted as a barrier to Sherman's men because it was parallel to the planned line of advance and hampers communication between units. Furthermore, the Confederates had formed dense barriers using felled trees for abatis.

On December 26, Sherman deployed the brigades of Col. John F. DeCourcy and Brig. Gens. David Stuart and Francis P. Blair, Jr., to perform reconnaissance and find weaknesses in a Confederate defense. They moved slowly ahead through the difficult terrain, skirmishing with S.D. Lee's covering force that had been at Mrs. Lake's plantation. On December 28, Steele's division attempted to turn the Confederate right flank, but was repulsed by Confederate artillery fire as they advanced on a narrow front.

Up. left  John F. DeCourcy - David Stuart, Lo. left Francis P. Blair - S.D. Lee (Conf.)

On the morning of December 29, Sherman ordered an artillery bombardment of the Confederate defenses to weaken them before a general Federal advance. For almost four hours, an artillery duel took place all along the line of battle, but did little damage. At 11 a.m., the duel ceased, and the infantry deployed into their lines of battle. Understanding the formidable nature of the Confederate fortifications, Sherman remarked, "We will lose 5,000 men before we take Vicksburg, and may as well lose them here as anywhere else. »

At noon, Union troops advanced with a cheer. Blair's brigade moved on the left, DeCourcy's in the center, followed by Brig. Gen. John M. Thayer's brigade on the right; all of Thayer's brigade except the 4th Iowa Infantry was ordered not to follow Thayer's orders by General George W. Morgan (the order conveyed by General Steele who was officially Thayer's superior.) Thus, instead of arriving before the Confederate lines with 3500 men, Thayer found himself with 500. Colonel James A. Williamson, commanding the 4th Iowa, was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions that day. They crossed water barriers and abatis and carried the advance rifle pits on the weight of sheer numbers, but met stiff resistance when they came against the main Confederate line and began to crumble under the heavy fire. The survivors fell back across the bayou on a corduroy bridge. S.D. Lee ordered his men to make a counterattack, during which they captured 332 Union soldiers and four battle flags.

Brig. Gen. John M. Thayer - Colonel James A. Williamson

Another assault ordered by Sherman was conducted by two divisions under A.J. Smith (his own division and that of M.L. Smith, who had been wounded the day before) advancing across Chickasaw Bayou to seize the Indian Mound that was in the center of the Confederate line, defended by Barton and Gregg. Skirmishers from the brigades of Cols. Giles A. Smith and Thomas Kilby Smith covered the bayou crossing and the 6th Missouri Infantry of G. A. Smith's brigade led the way with 20 pioneers, building a road on the far bank. Five attempts to carry the position at the Indian mound were repulsed.

On the far Union right, an attack by Col. William J. Landram's brigade of A.J. Smith's division was easily repulsed by the Confederates of Vaughn's brigade.

Painting of Brig. Gen. John Crawford Vaughn, of Roane County, Tennessee, with his Tennessee Brigade in 1863.

That evening, Sherman declared that he was "generally satisfied with the high spirit manifested" by his men although their attacks had failed in the face of strong Confederate positions on the high bluffs. The battle was a lopsided victory for the Confederates: Union casualties were 208 killed, 1,005 wounded, and 563 captured or missing, the majority among the 4th Iowa and the brigades of Blair and De Courcy. Confederate casualties were light at 57 killed, 120 wounded, and 10 missing. Sherman conferred with Adm. Porter, whose naval gunfire had also failed to do any significant damage to the enemy. They decided to resume the attacks on the following day and Porter sent a boat to Memphis to get more small arms ammunition.

 
This photo was titled "Chickasaw Bayou, Mississippi, The poison spring. Battlefield of Chickasaw Bayou" by the photographer William Redish Pywell. The photograph is assumed to have been taken at the time of or shortly after the battle in December, 1862. It appears to show a wagon, limber or caisson partially submerged in water at the bottom of what is assumed to be either Chickasaw Bayou or McNutt Lake (see maps). Amazingly, there also appears to be the body of a soldier lying in the mud beyond and just above the wagon wheel (see zoomed section below). If this photo is correctly identified, it may be the only known image of the Chickasaw Bayou battlefield at or near the time of the battle. The terrain certainly matches the various descriptions of the bayou and surrounding landscape.


By the morning of December 30, Sherman had concluded that resuming the attacks at the same location would be fruitless and he and Porter planned a joint army-navy attack on Drumgould's Bluff to the northeast, hoping that the steep bluffs would provide cover for his men as they advanced. It was imperative that such a movement be started in secrecy so that the Confederates would not shift their defensive forces. The movement commenced on December 31, but was called off in heavy fog on January 1, 1863.

Brig. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest - Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn,

During this period, the overland half of Grant's offensive was also failing. His lines of communication were disrupted by raids by Brig. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and by Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn, who destroyed a large supply depot in the Holly Springs Raid on December 20. Unable to sustain his army without these supplies, Grant abandoned his overland advance. Sherman realized that his corps would not be reinforced by Grant and decided to withdraw his expedition, moving to the mouth of the Yazoo on January 2. On January 5, Sherman sent a letter to General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck, summing up the campaign (in a manner reminiscent of a famous statement by Julius Caesar), "I reached Vicksburg at the time appointed, landed, assaulted, and failed." He and his command were then temporarily assigned to Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand for an expedition up the Arkansas River and the Battle of Arkansas Post. Although Grant tried a number of operations, or "experiments", to reach Vicksburg over the winter, the Vicksburg Campaign did not begin again in earnest until April 1863.



Saturday, December 23, 2023

A house in heaven or Hell

 

 

Thanks to the Vieux Carré Digital Survey, I was able to retrace a piece of the history of my great-grandparents in New Orleans. On Saturday, April 25, 1857, my great-great-grandfather Joseph Fassy of New Orleans inherited the property of his brother Vincent Fassy located at 940 Saint-Louis St in New Orleans.

 

Following the evaluation of the Vieux Carré Commission, the house was and still is a two-story brick commercial building in Creole style from 1830 built on land forming the corner of Saint-Louis and Burgundy St measuring F.M. 29' 10" frontage on Saint-Louis by 84' on Burgundy. It was a house with four apartments (rooms), a gallery and two wardrobes, built in half-timbering and a wood-fired kitchen."
Thirty-one years later, on Monday April 30, 1888, my great-grandfather Albert and my great-great-aunt Octavie Fassy, in turn ,inherited from their father Joseph. In 1896, 18 years later, on Monday July 27, Albert and Octavie sold the house to a certain Mr. Augustin Nicolas Tourné.


 

In 1857, Joseph also bequeathed to his son Albert and his daughter Octavie a property located at 430 Burgundy St. which he himself had inherited from his brother Vincent.

During my research, it appears that Vincent Fassy had bought this house in 1839 from a certain Mr. Antoine Roubet, a slave owner for the sum of $950.

 430 Burgundy St.

For those who know me, you can easily imagine what this kind of research can do to me. You will of course tell me that it was another era, other mentalities but still... If I manage to retrace, more or less, the history of my family I cannot help but wonder what what happened to these five slaves. I managed to find the trace of several slaves bought or sold by this Mr. Roubet, these were :

- Constance, aged 30, mother of two children, speaking French, purchased by Mr Antoine Roubet on April 6, 1815. Constance was sold in 1818 by Mr Roubet to Mr Debuys.
- Théodore, Constance's son, was bought by Monsieur Roubet in 1815 and sold to Monsieur Debuys in 1818.
- Désirée, Constance's daughter, was purchased by Monsieur Roubet in 1815. 

Thank God I did not find Fassy's name on the list of New Orleans slave owners on the Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy Database but the fact remains that this "testimony" should not make us forget what those troubled times were and what they led to a whole generation of Americans fighting against each other.

When we say "if the walls could talk", some would tell stories that we would prefer to forget but which must be remembered



Tuesday, December 5, 2023

La Niña Bronca by Jim fergus


 

I have just started Jim Fergus' novel "The Wild Girl", in this novel based on historical facts, Jim Fergus takes us on a journey of magnificent magnitude and heartbreaking consequences populated by unforgettable characters. With prose so vivid that road dust practically rises from the page, The Wild Girl is an epic novel filled with drama, peril, and romance, narrated by probably my favorite novelist. Of course it made me want to know more and share it with you.

 

 In the 1930s, a tough Sonoran rancher named Francisco Fimbres led a series of extermination campaigns against the Apaches. They had murdered his wife in front of him and stole and later killed one of his small children. Fimbres and his men hunted for Apache camps, and almost invariably they contained only women and children. Nelda Villa, a local historian in the Sierra Madre and a renowned expert on the remnant Apaches, believes that most of the men had already been killed by Mexicans while raiding. Fimbres and his men killed all the Apache women they could find and adopted the children.

In 1930, the tiny band of Indians made international headlines when a Mexican rancher named Francisco Fimbres started recruiting American gunslingers to wipe them out, Meed said.


Fimbres, a ruthless latter-day Indian fighter, was motivated by vengeance and his "Apache Expedition," bankrolled and promoted by publicity-hungry businessmen in Arizona, drew more than a thousand trigger-happy volunteers. The mercenary force even boasted its own airplane to spot elusive Apache camps.
The Mexican government, more alarmed by the prospect of armed Americans overrunning its northern frontier than by hazy reports of renegade Apaches, squelched the crusade before it began. American diplomats heaved a sigh of relief.
"They wouldn't have caught a single Indian anyway," said Pedro Fimbres, a nephew of Francisco Fimbres. "The Apaches moved every day--stealing a horse here, gathering pine nuts there, killing a cowboy over there," said Fimbres, a grizzled saddle-maker. "The Americans would have been running in circles for months."

Despite their dazzling ability to cover 70 miles a day over exhausting terrain, the fugitive Chiricahuas were being slowly picked off by ranchers armed and deputized by the Mexican government. Gunfights often forced the harried Indians to abandon their food caches of acorns and rustled beef.
"When logging took off in the Sierra, it was all over," said Mexican Apache buff Zozaya. "The Sierra was all cut up by new roads, new sawmills, new settlements. There was no place left to hide."

By 1934, Grenville Goodwin, an American anthropologist who had heard about the holdouts while living among their cousins on Arizona reservations, estimated that no more than 30 Apaches were "fighting a losing battle in Mexico and it seems only a question of time till they will be exterminated." Goodwin tried, as did several U.S. government Indian agents at the time, to make contact with the Apaches across the border. He failed.

The Sierra's beleaguered Apaches certainly left no records of their own. Though some Indians doubtless gave up and were absorbed into local Mexican populations, most sources agree that far more were hunted down and shot. Details vary, but the last major Apache battle in North America probably took place in the spring of 1933, in a brushy ravine in Sonora about 300 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Fimbres and others describe how one of the few Apache survivors of that bloodbath fled into the mountain undergrowth, only to be nabbed weeks later by cowboys out hunting mountain lion.
Zozaya believes she was dubbed "Julia Tasahuinora" for the summer month when she was captured and the craggy, pine-studded peaks where she was found. Others, like Guillermo Damiani, remember her simply as "the wild girl." "She died in the jail," Damiani said, waving a hand in disgust. "It took a few days. She starved herself to death."
In the language of the Opata, another Mexican tribe, Tasahuinora means "hill where the sun rises." Whatever her real name, she was the last documented Apache captured alive in the Sierra Madre.

In many ways, Fimbress journey to find his son resembles The Searchers, but one thing sets it apart: Apaches attacked the Fimbres family on October 26, 1926, over 90 years after Cynthia Anns kidnapping and 40 years after the last major Indian attack in the United States. Whereas every other Indian tribe on the North American continent had died, moved on to a reservation, or amalgamated into European culture, the Apaches who had attacked Fimbres had held out in the mountains of Mexico well into the 20th century and continued to live as they had for the last 300 years. A world with trans-Atlantic flight, rockets, and Hitler, was home to unconquered Apaches.


Monday, November 27, 2023

North Cascades: Bastion of the Wild

 






Sitting like stone guardians just below the Canadian border, the North Cascade mountains are keepers of the wildness that once roamed unchecked across North America. Soaring high into the skies, their stony and snowy peaks seem to scrape at the clouds that pass overhead demanding tribute as they float by. Sparkling like scattered gems, glacially fed lakes brilliantly reflect the sunlight while, through deep green valleys, bright, blue-gray rivers run down to the surrounding flatlands. It is a spot where a person could quickly leave behind all of the trappings that attach themselves to our modern daily existence and transport to another existence entirely. Roughly 90 million years ago, the range began to take shape when two continental plates collided. The force caused parts of the North American plate to begin to jut upwards, reaching for the sky. It created volcanos, still active today, that form part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, along with the rest of the Cascade Mountain range. The area is still dominated by huge granite deposits, remnants of mountains that eroded away 5 or 6 million years before now. Read more at : North Cascades

Story by: Hudson Lindenberger

Images By:Jason Hummel & Ben Matthews

Thursday, November 16, 2023

The Denver Old West Auction


Visalia Stock Saddle Co., San Francisco Saddle - Edward H. Bohlin "Dick Dickson" Saddle

Harpham Bros Spotted Batwing Chaps - W. Davis & Sons California Batwing Chaps


Kirkendall Boots and Buermann Spurs - Two Pair of Early Cowboy Boots

Winchester Model 1873 Military Style Musket - Winchester 1866 Saddle Ring Carbine


Colt Single Action Revolver 

Sioux Beaded Saddle Blanket - Crow Beaded Saddle


C & X Lockwood Bros Bowie - Impressive Large Bowie Knife


King Ranch Gun Leather - J. S. Collins & Co. Cheyenne, Wyo. Belt & Holster Rig

Via The Denver Old West Auction, by Brian Lebel's Old West Events, June 28, 2014


Monday, November 13, 2023

Jeff Wilson's Lonesome Dove photography

 
 






Jeff Wilson's photography career was born in the darkroom of his high school newspaper in Temple, Texas. After graduating from St. Edwards University he spent the better part of a decade working the trenches of state employment. At the Texas House of Representatives he worked on an ongoing documentary project photographing lawmakers during the legislative session. He soon amassed a brilliant catalog of images that were created on a work-for-hire basis and can never be published by him for money. This marked the last time he would ever be paid to shoot 35mm available light with nothing but a Leica and a bag of Tri-X.

At the Texas Department of Public Safety he traveled the state for six years as a Forensic Photographer. There he amassed a brilliant catalog of images he would rather not think too hard about. His work with blood spatter patterns has been called "adequate" by several DNA and Trace Evidence analysts. He subsequently worked for renowned photographer Dan Winters, who put him to work as his assistant for several years. Sequestered in Driftwood, Texas, under Winters' tutelage, Jeff developed his photographic skills, a strong work ethic and a penchant for Red Wings.

One of his not so recent works, a photo essay for Texas Monthly Magazine about Texas high school football stadiums, received a nomination for a National Magazine Award and was recently expanded into a book entitled "Home Fields" published by the University of Texas Press in the fall of 2010.

A more recent work for the afore mentioned Texas Monthly, a piece on Texas dancehalls, was a National Magazine Award finalist. Both times he lost to service pieces describing the best places to eat certain comfort foods within a given geographic area. With that under his belt, Jeff has developed a reputation amongst his pets as a reliable and amiable provider. His family is on the fence, but leaning toward "winsome." Jeff has been featured in the PDN Photo Annual and American Photography, and his photographs are included in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. and the Wittliff Collection at Texas State University, as well as the foyers of several discerning South Austin collectors who live on his street.