I have recently wanted to write a story about people in general. I have seen a lot of them in my life. I'm qualified, my credentials include 19 years in Minonk, a town filled with small merchants and farmers plus a colorful group of retired miners. There were no African Americans, Latinos or Asians. Still there were some pretty "salty" individuals. Here is where [in the 40's], Saturday night meant buttered popcorn, new bib overalls and pink shaven faces. I knew them and they knew me. I was a part of this downtown scene.

My "city slicker" cousin lived in a big house in Evanston, Illinois and loved to visit Minonk where there were tons of kids to play with. Once my aunt sent along some "Chicago" style clothes in her honest effort to spiff me up. Included were wool tweed knickers, short pants and knee length plaid socks. All I needed was a beret to finish me off. Thank goodness my parents understood my plight even though my dad always wore shirt, tie, vest and coat. In cold weather he wore grey overcoat and felt brim hat. The years after high school gave new meaning to watching people. By 1955, I had lived off and on in Rhode Island. Besides interloping sailors, this tiny state had a mixture of Newport wealth and snobbery, "Portuguese" emigrants and old family mill workers. Their hair was darker and most spoke with a special drawl. It took a while to know them. One noteworthy thought is that this was the era of Sen. Joe McCarthy, when no one wore red and people were suspicious of teachers, preachers, and library books.

The next three years, plus a previous year living there meant Colorado Country. Here the motto was: "men are men and women know it" There were no midwestern sodbusters! But, these were my kind of folk , nothing pretentious, but how could there be with huge cattle feeding lots surrounding the town. Colorado cowboys do have a certain aura that suggest they spend a lot of time out of doors. There was denim, denim and more denim, broad felt hats, "pinch toed" shoes and kerchiefs. Those 180 acres were planted in sugar beets and irrigated.

My study of people now led me to Hollywoodland where I have spent the past 45 years. This is a huge state North and South with 2/3rds of the Eastern part filled with creosote bushes, salt flats and lava beds. I live in Orange County where once aerospace was king. I quickly moved from teaching to technical illustration and then management training. This genre was middle management with short sleeve shirts, blazers, ties and leather shoes. A few artists like myself stretched the fashion mode with bolo ties, pastel shirts, suede and corduroy jackets. Facial hair was not hip! If you wanted to see characters, you went to Santa Monica. People fascinated me so much that I now concentrated my art work solely on faces instead of the glorious mountains and oceanfront. The very minute, precise drawing needed for technical art forced me to stand back and experience humanity.

New Orleans, Miami Beach and New York have just about all you could ask for if you want an abbreviated look. For real eye openers, try Venice Beach in California, or Elvis Presley's compound in Memphis, especially on his birthday, or for the Southern redneck version, try Gatlinburg, Tenn. The "elder" generation tends to congregate at Branson! San Francisco, at the Mark or Fairmont you can still find a few surgically altered faces in 1990 fashions At Bloomingdales and Macys, you can see young girls in tight capris and "mature" ladies in tighter ones. It can be fun to try and place the correct woman with the polo or Hawaiian shirted guys sitting there waiting. You can only speculate whether all those men wearing "ball caps" are from the Plain States!

The current craze for gambling boats and casinos, like big screen TVs has given "common " folks a chance to see life in the US of A. Las Vegas will put you in touch with star athletes, movie stars, high rollers and Silicone Valley millionaires. If you want to be a watcher you can spend hours with $50 in quarters, actually nickels are more economical. Places like Laughlin and Tunica, Miss. and Davenport bring forth my kind of people. Some sport "salty" tee shirts, klutzy sneakers, snow bunny shoes, alligator boots, feathered hats and cardigan sweaters.

You don't have to be from Texas to be a cowboy or cowgirl for that matter. You don't have to be from Orlando or St Pete to have blue hair or seashelled jewelry. You might find hats advertising Pioneer corn or some made from beer cans, maybe a simple US flag fashioned into a headscarf. Elegance can be a 60ist woman in a white suede pant suit complete with gold spangles or a portly man dressed [my favorite] in bib overalls partially covering some classy tattoos. [If I were only younger!]

Last year, near Baton Rouge, Louisiana we encountered a convention of Harley Bikers, scary at first [Hollywood image] until you look closer and see shaven faces, manicured nails and shiny leather outfits. Many haul their "hogs" in trailers behind their motor homes

I love to watch people, maybe I have trouble interacting with strangers, but by rendering some in watercolors and oils, I believe I can somehow relate to them. I wonder if I had started back in the 40s whether my Minonk friends and families would be quite so colorful. In those days they had reason to be grim and preoccupied. Young people of today can experience "now" what has taken me 50 years to attain. I've had time to select the good stuff and bury the bad. Yes, I wish that kids today weren't so foul mouthed and used rational language and tried to be considerate to us oldsters. I doubt that I could convince them to avoid the errors I made or to listen to "understandable" music or to drive carefully. I do wish they would see REAL people rather than what the laser or computer enhanced photography has wrought. Some how, with luck, it might come to pass.

Albin Johnson, Class of 1948