Nothing to see here

While the GRider and I were out yesterday we passed a couple of city street crews patching pot holes in what might generally be called the Como Park neighborhood.

A.  This is problematic based on my past experience that the Saint Paul patching crews use a particularly oily patch mix.  You can get stuff on your tires.

But . . .

B.  Perhaps this means that the potholes at Deadman's Curve have been filled in.

I rode over to find out.

Oddly enough the southbound lane (the way out) has NOT been repaired but the northbound (the way back) has been.  This works fine for me as I don't have any problems with taking the lane southbound, the cars can see me for about four blocks and they will know what I am doing.  On the northbound side I have no such confident feeling.  Based on the behavior of all of the motor vehicles I have encountered over there on numerous passages of that underpass my practice is to hug the curb.  The potholes on the hug the curb lane have been filled in.

So I rode down into the big city.

Recent newspaper articles have detailed the beginning of the demolition of the now inactive Ford assembly plant in Saint Paul.  A columnist who I sometimes read stated that a green tarpaulin had been affixed to the fence around the site blocking all views of the site, the idea being nothing to see here, everyone should just move along.

I wanted to take a look and what I discovered varied quite a bit from everything the newspaper has reported.

No tarp on the fence, the gate was open, it was, in fact, by far the most open that site has ever been in all of the times I have ever been there.

Probably what the deal is is that demolition began with the paint building.  That's probably a good idea as there is certain to be lots of contamination at the paint building, clean up there may be the lengthiest and most expensive, good place to start.

Where I was was the main assembly building, the building out on the River Road which is the building that most of us think of when we think of the Ford plant.  Nothing much is going on over at that end of the complex and there appears to be no need for additional security precautions.

I rode across the lawn to this artwork on the wall near what was the main entrance.  I love the inscription and is that a bas relief?

LOOK at "Excellence is never granted to man but as the reward of labor".

Here's a detail of the work, that looks to me like an old timey Ford truck being held by a figure representing I assume modern man and labor.  Serpents and everything.

I have no idea but I found myself wondering if there is any plan to preserve this particular piece and/or anything else from the old building.

From the Ford plant it is a short ride over to the Falls.  The Falls are looking quite a bit like a tourist attraction right now.

Just a further note about the choice of music for yesterday's post.  There are a bunch of different versions of that song available on YouTube, I browsed and considered several of them.  The Frankie Laine version is there.  The song seems more cowboy than country to me and Johnny Cash is more country than cowboy but I have a fondness for the man in black based partly on his spectacular 1969 duet with Bob Dylan on Girl from the North Country on Nashville Skyline.  My favorite cowboy version is Marty Robbins although apparently Marty himself didn't think it was worthy of release, this version only came out after Marty died.  There were two that surprised me with how much I liked them, both claiming to be the original recording of the song, a very cowboy version by Vaughn Monroe and a ballad by Burl Ives.

It was fun listening to them all and I probably will again but I think it is time to move on.