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I was living in Shreveport, Louisiana for a couple of years (late 1962 thru mid 1965) when JFK got shot.

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They let school out early. One kid said, "I'm glad that ni**er President Kennedy got shot". I lived in a subdivision, Cherokee Park (418 Chickasaw Trail, if I remember correctly) on the other side of town from my school (Alexander Elementary), and we had to go through downtown Shreveport to get home (as well as crossing a bridge that had all sorts of L'il Abner-looking houses and people living on the banks of the river that it crossed). The place was nuts, and there were old-school newsboys running all over the place waving "EXTRA"s in the air. One older (as in 5th grader) kid stuck his head out the window and boutght one. Ordinarily, the bus driver (Mrs. Green) would have ahd his ass in a sling right then and there, but this time she let it pass.

The weekend was nuts, of course, and nothing was on TV except assassination coverage. By Sunday, we all felt the need for some fresh air, so we went to a public pier at Caddo Lake to hang a pole or two off the dock. Nothing was biting, but it wasn't too long before a laughing fat guy in bermudas, a captain's hat, and a cigar stub showed up, walking the length of the pier, gleefully telling nobody in particular that "Lee Harvey Oswald is no longer of this world".

Lots of other stuff happened when I lived in Shreveport, like The Beatles on the Sullivan Show, Beatlemania in general, my first bicycle, nearly getting suspended from school for kissing a really cute girl in my class (Cathy was her name) in first grade, the Charles Cole incident, my falling in love with baseball, and much more. A few years later, when I had moved back to Gladewater and discovered jazz, Shreveport proved to be an extremely fertile ground for finding promo copies of the latest jazz releases cheap (thank you, Stan & Ace Lewis), as well as a treasure trove of cutouts at the Shreve City Mall Woolco (found a really smoking Arabian wedding music LP - with liner notes entirely in Arabic - just before going to the theatre there to see Network), and old mom-and-pop stores with plenty of old jazz & R&B stuff at original prices (or less, sometimes).

Shreveport was also as far as I could stand riding the bus back from NYC on my first visit there (1979). It was a "local" ticket. My folk's house in Gladewater was an hour and a quarter from Shreveport, and when they said that the bus would get there in "betweeen four and five hours", I dropped a dime and called the folks. Enough was enough.

The last time I was in Shreveport was around 1989. Played a hotel gig with an oldies band for a week. They hadn't opened the "off shore" :g casinos yet, I don't think, and downtown was a mass of empty, boarded-up buildings, the streets populated by homeless folks and crack dealers. Stan's Record Mart, once a jumping bastion of everything you'd think of in a "big city record store", and Jewel-Paula Records (right next door) were shuttered up and beaten down. KEEL (730 AM), the place where Gene Kent had pumped The Beatle loud and proud for most of 1964, had turned into a 24-7 talk-radio station. KWKH (1130 AM), once an "good music" station during the week and home of the Louisiana Hayride on Saturdays, had gone totally C&W, taking a break only for Rush Limbaugh in the afternoons. The crime rate was high, and the mood was ugly everywhere you went. I went back home as soon as I could.

Haven't been back since.

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From the other side of the pond

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Petronas Twin Towers. Houses a large shopping complex, office buildings, art gallery and a concert hall (most of the major jazz concerts are held here).

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Sultan Abdul Samad building - Designed by a British architect 1890s. This must have been taken on a quiet Sunday evening cause the roads are jam packed on working days.

Edited by LAL
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Hardbop:

The next house over has a horse- he has about 20 acres for the horse to roam around. When we moved out here, seems everyone asked us if we're getting a horse (answer = no, or not until my daughter is a lot older and she can take rae of it). We have 12 acres- 6 of it is woods- to the left of the picture of the front of the house. Picture is taken from the county road in front of the house.

Speaking of cutting grass- you're looking at him.....takes 4-5 hours on a riding mower to cut it. Takes about 1.5 hours to cut the front...then I have the sides, back yard and the "way back" where we have a garden and fruit trees. About 2-3 acres in all- the rest of the open area is a meadow where I maintain a walking path through the wildflowers and the bluebird boxes.

It's very peaceful and quiet...real quiet with a light snowfall..right now it's loud from all the katydids in the trees at night, but when the first frost hits and kills all the chirping insects it is so quiet, it's eerie. My mom came to visit and she a city girl, born/raised in Philly and it was too quiet for her.

If you like astronomy- it's so dark out here!!

Ironic thing is: I grew up at the Jersey shore (Margate City) 2 blocks from the beach with houses on top of each other and traffic everywhere and I consider myself a "city person", yet I live in the country. I love going to Manhattan and Philly and everything associated with it, but I do love living here.

My wife and I consider ourselves very fortunate to live here- and have the opportunity to raise our little girl in a setting such as this!

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  • 4 months later...

I grew up in Astoria, Queens, new York City. Queens is one of the "boroughs" of New York City, and Astoria is a section of Queens, lying along the East River, just opposite Manhattan.

Here's a picture of the "elevated" subway in Astoria:

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A fairly typical street in Astoria:

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Another:

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Astoria Park (Manhattan across the river)--

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Astoria was great for little food markets of all kinds:

astoria_veggie_stand.jpg

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