Take Your Medicine!

wfeller

Taken with a P&S back in 97. A cool shot I just thought I'd share.

Rustydiva

very cool!

DaddyO

Reminds me of the wagon in the original Wizard of Oz. Neat one. Where
the heck did you find that? I see its in the mountains somewheres.

wfeller

Rustydiva wrote:

very cool!

Thanks.

DaddyO wrote:

Reminds me of the wagon in the original Wizard of Oz. Neat one. Where the heck did you find that? I see its in the mountains somewheres.

You don't see too many medicine wagons on the highway anymore, not like there used to be. This was dumped next to a pile of tailings in the Owens Valley, CA.

DaddyO

wfeller wrote:

You don't see too many medicine wagons on the highway anymore, not like there used to be. This was dumped next to a pile of tailings in the Owens Valley, CA.

Owens Valley. OK, I see where that is. Where you coming or going from
Death Valley? Didn't know one could expect to find even one abandoned
Medicine Wagon anywhere. I guess it makes sense that there were loads
of these kinds of wagons about the place. Roving Walgreens.

Llywellyn

What a cool find!

wfeller

Llywellyn wrote:

What a cool find!

Thank you.

wfeller

DaddyO wrote:

Owens Valley. OK, I see where that is. Where you coming or going from
Death Valley? Didn't know one could expect to find even one abandoned
Medicine Wagon anywhere. I guess it makes sense that there were loads
of these kinds of wagons about the place. Roving Walgreens.

I'm just about thinking that these were the predecessors of the meth labs of today. Ol' Doc Dave maybe jumped in the back and whipped up a concoction of salt and battery acid right there on the spot for you.

I think this particular shot was made in 97. I haven't a clue where I was heading to or coming from. Maybe DV. Although I prefer just about all the other routes in . I've been in the area countless times since 96 when I first started shooting for the Digital Desert.

Awais Yaqub

This is cool !
nice Wagon too

DaddyO

wfeller wrote:

I'm just about thinking that these were the predecessors of the meth labs of today. Ol' Doc Dave maybe jumped in the back and whipped up a concoction of salt and battery acid right there on the spot for you.

Digital Desert.

Lucky me. God bless Doc Dave and his bro's. Not!!!!!!!!!

Checked out many of your shots at Digital Desert. Nice info but they
sure ain't big on showing big photos. Many of the web photo conversions
for color and such are lacking quality spank. Whats up with that?
Michael

wfeller

Awais Yaqub wrote:

This is cool !
nice Wagon too

Thanks Awais!

wfeller

DaddyO wrote:

Lucky me. God bless Doc Dave and his bro's. Not!!!!!!!!!

Checked out many of your shots at Digital Desert. Nice info but they
sure ain't big on showing big photos. Many of the web photo conversions
for color and such are lacking quality spank. Whats up with that?
Michael

I have quite a few problems with myspace, etc. snatching shots and bandwidth. Crappy, tiny photos keeps the nuisance to a minimum.

When I started the site, a lot of monitors were still of the 640x480 variety. I tend to stay at least a step behind the trend, and some of my advertisers were slow to upgrade too. The site started out as an experiment in interactive mapping and community modeling. The photography has only taken a higher priority in the last 2-3 years when I started using photoshop.

The Digital-Desert.com and its companion site, MojaveDesert.NET are still model oriented, but not so heavy on the mapping, and new photos when I have the time. The last few years have been mostly accquiring information and linking between the disciplines. For example; today I've been working on linking wilderness areas to geomorphic provinces to ecosections and subsections to habitats to historical mining and Native cultural notes, then preparing for back links. EXAMPLE The photography is secondary at the moment.

After I'm done with the wilderness linking phase (about another week), I'll be preparing shots for talks I occasionally give at museums and historical groups, etc. Once I see how these audiences react to my shots, they'll get phased into the sites. My photos are usually a couple years old by the time they get posted on either of these sites.

That's sort of the ~nutshell view. I'm hoping I get maybe another 7-8 years to work on it. 20 years will be enough for any project. I'm also working on a few other projects that will make use of my better shots- in a media I see to be a little more gracious than the web.

Skippy

wfeller wrote:

Taken with a P&S back in 97. A cool shot I just thought I'd share.

Did they sell real medicines from these wagons, or hocus pocus kinda stuff?
Interesting shot, the wagon looks quite weather beaten

.... Skippy
.

DaddyO

Walter, my thanks for taking the time to talk about your site and the
photos in it. Figured bandwidth +++ and such had to come into play in
some way. Get that. There is tons of excellent information collected
for all to use. Sweet. Too bad I am so far away from the area to go there
with regularity. Michael

wfeller

Skippy wrote:

Did they sell real medicines from these wagons, or hocus pocus kinda stuff?
Interesting shot, the wagon looks quite weather beaten

.... Skippy
.

But the medicine, I imagine is the hocus-pocus variety. I think it may have been with some type of traveling carnival or circus show (possibly as recent as the late 1960s- early 70s). I can just see the good "Doctor Dave" in his top hat, long hair and dusty overcoat, wildly waving a bottle of what would amount to being a flat bottle of warm rootbeer, extolling the virtues and values of 'holistic' healing and a long life.

The desert is/was full of these types of characters. My favorite is ol' Doc Springer who built Zzyzx. I remember hearing his ferverent spiels on the radio curing this and that, as the link mentions, "everything from hair loss to cancer."