Road Trip 2026 - Part 2 (Albuquerque Breaking Bad Locations)

 I've been trying to make sense of all the photos I took on our recent road trip, and thought it would be a good time to share a few more from the first few days of the trip.

We spent a couple of days looking around Albuquerque, and managed to get off on a bit of a tangent while there. I don't know how many of you are fans of the Breaking Bad or the Better Call Saul series from a few years ago, but be warned that these pictures will only be meaningful if you are the kind of fanatic about them that my grandson and I are. Both series were filmed in Albuquerque for the most part, and these are some of the key homes and businesses used prominently over the years:

This place is even smaller on the inside than it looks from the outside. It played a prominent role in one season in particular, and it is still a working diner today. We had lunch there one day and sat at the same table used by the key actors in the series. The food, and the service, were surprisingly top quality, and the little hot dog diner was packed during the lunch hour while doing a solid business from its takeaway window.

The view of this huge car wash from this side of the building is pretty much exactly as I remember it from the early seasons of Breaking Bad. It's the business through which Walter laundered his drug trafficking profits early on. The interior of the building has been substantially changed, but it was a really smart move on the new owners (a carwash chain) part to put the big letters back on top of the building where they belong. That probably brings in more than a few extra car washes a week...they got me to pony up for one, but I desperately needed it anyway. 

Twisters is a chicken chain in Albuquerque influenced by a Mexican food style of preparing its various offerings. In the Breaking Bad series, the name of the restaurant was changed to Los Pollos Hermanos - the business front of a notorious drug cartel leader. We had an early dinner here when we arrived in Albuquerque, and I have to admit that the food was kind of weird to my taste buds. But we had to try it. 

There were no noticeable changes on the inside of the restaurant, so the television series name of the chicken place is still displayed on the restaurant walls. 

No one is allowed to actually eat at "Walter's" table, but it is OK to take photos at the table with the guy. We couldn't resist, of course, and we took a quick shot of my grandson "sitting" with Walter. 

This motel was often used in the series because it was "shady" enough looking to accommodate all kinds of illegal activity. It's for sale right now, and appears to be largely abandoned. We were warned not to go here too late in the day as the real hotel is in exactly the kind of area that the television series portrays it to be. (We had no problems while pausing to take this picture.)

These are homes scattered around Albuquerque that were used as the residences of several of the main characters in Breaking Bad:

Mike's House

Walter's House

Hank's House

Jesse's House

For the most part, these homes are all in quiet neighborhoods inhabited by folks who are quite used to the idea that lots of people enjoy visiting these homes. The one exception is the "Walter house" in which one of the episodes portrays Walter throwing a pizza on his garage roof in a fit of rage. Idiot fans, over the years, threw so many pizzas on top of the garage that the owners had to build the fence you see in the picture to keep them from getting so close. The home is now for sale again and no one is currently living in it. Neighbors in all four locations are quite welcoming and seem to enjoy the attention that the television series brings...not sure if that helps home resale values or hurts them, honestly.

On our way north out of Albuquerque, headed toward Los Alamos, we found this beautiful spot on the little highway that passes through the heart of an Indian Reservation. 

Next time out, I'll share some photos from Los Alamos and comment on our experience in that unusual city.

Reviews: "King of Ashes," "Every Man a Hero," and "How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder"

 These are three more books that I've been unable to remark on before now - ensuring that my fading memory of them makes it a bit unfair for me to try to do any kind of longish, detailed review of them. Now I'm hoping that these short-form reviews will be enough to give everyone a decent feel for the books.

I'm a big fan of S.A. Cosby's work, but because I thought Cosby's novel just previous to King of Ashes was his weakest effort to date, I was a little concerned that I would be disappointed by this one. Turns out that I shouldn't have worried; this is a good book. It's the story of three adult siblings who have led very different lives up to the date that their father is in a near-fatal auto accident. Now, the eldest returns to their Virginia hometown to help pick up the pieces of a family-run crematorium business that is about to go under because of the bad lifestyle choices made by another of the siblings. What better way to dispose of murder victims than controlling a crematorium? At least that's what one local gang decides, and stopping them is going to be tough. This is quite a crime thriller that the less squeamish readers out there will have some fun with. But be warned, it's very violent (as are most of Cosby's novels).

This 2019 memoir was co-written when Ray Lambert was 98 years old, but it is one of the better firsthand accounts of D-Day that I've come across. Lambert and his brother both were medics on D-Day and both were severely wounded during the fighting. That each of them survived the slaughter of that awful battle is somewhat of a miracle in itself. Lambert tells his personal story from the perspective of a medic as he experienced the fighting in North Africa, Sicily, and France. Mr. Lambert was well decorated the courage he displayed on D-Day, but he reminds the reader that everyone who hit the beaches that day was as much a hero as he was. I recommend this one for history buffs. 

Once upon a time, in Wyoming, there were twelve and thirteen-year-old East Indian sisters who decided that their Uncle Vinny deserved to die. (Because of his regular sexual abuse of the girls, many would probably agree with them.) So they start slipping antifreeze into his drinks over a series of weeks, hoping that will do the trick. How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder is very dark comedy with a twist at the end, and it left me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I appreciate the cleverness of the plot and how it uses magazine quiz interludes like the one entitled "Do You Have What It Takes to Kill?" in order to lighten the mood. On the other hand, the novel struck me as trying too hard to be clever at times, and the whole thing seemed to go on longer than the plot demanded it should. This is definitely, however, one coming-of-age story that fans of the genre will want to consider, especially as it explores the meaning of sisterhood and and the lengths almost anyone might go to in order to protect a loved one from the hands of a sexual predator.

This pretty much catches me up on past due reviews. I hope to spend a little more time reviewing Tim Sullivan's The Patient and Sonny Battar's The Daughters of Rosebud, one of my favorite reads of the year, soon.

Road Trip 2026 - Part I

 My grandson and I just completed a road trip of just over two weeks that completely took me out of my reading rhythm - and I'm still struggling to get back into it. I did fall asleep while reading in bed each night, though, and managed to finish one 345-page book while on the road. But things are still so frantic at home, what with dealing with lawyers and tax people concerning the estate problem we are trying to solve, that I just haven't been able to settle back into my old reading patterns even now.  

Despite that, I wouldn't trade those two weeks for anything, so here's just a little taste of the experiences we had while driving over 3700 miles inside the boundaries of nine different states:

This is the "famous" Cadillac Ranch just outside of Amarillo, Texas. As you can see from the photo, the cars have been spray-  painted now by so many people that they are barely recognizable as Cadillacs. The paint is so thick that big sections succumb to gravity every so often and harden on the ground where some enterprising locals scavenge the hardened paint in order to turn it into "jewelry" to be sold to tourist types like us. We did pass on that opportunity despite the rather surprising appeal to the eye of the jewelry tidbits.

We did a good bit of driving on the historical Route 66 that, in theory, still goes from Chicago to Los Angeles. I say "in theory" because much/most of the old route has been covered over by an interstate highway now. But in Adrian, Texas, we did spot this sign across the street from a large gift shop. It marks the official halfway point of the long drive and must have been quite a milestone for travelers to reach in the pre-interstate highway day.

The old gas station/gift shop at the midway point

There's an old "ghost town" called Puerto de Luna near Santa Rosa, New Mexico, that we drove about 20 miles out of our way to take a look at. The funny thing was that we could see it from the road long before we could find a way to reach the surviving buildings. We had no GPS at that point and couldn't find anyone to give us specific directions, but we eventually managed to get a few pictures. It was all kind of sad, really.

 Remains of the 1907 courthouse

Sideview

Main Entrance to old courthouse

Remains of the old county jailhouse

Another view of the old jail

The sad result of the damage done by vandals in recent years

We did end up having a nice chat with the Native American postman who services the tiny community nearest these old buildings who gave us a 30-minute oral history of the area and his tribe. It was quite interesting, and he seemed very proud of his tribal history. He was a nice man, ad we won't soon forget his generosity.

I'm going to stop here for part one of my trip recap. If you would like to see an enlargement of any of the pictures, just click on them and they will expand.

More to come in a day or two.

Three Short Reviews - Three Very Different Books

 I have to keep telling myself that I was only on the road for a little over two weeks because it feels like I've been out of touch a whole lot longer than that. And now I have accumulated nine un-reviewed books to catch up on - and I know that's never going to happen. I'm not even sure that would be fair to the books in question because, honestly, some of them are already starting to get a little bit hazy in my mind.

So I'll try a different approach:

I first read this classic when I was in my early teens, and I remembered it as a great adventure story. As it turns out, Around the World in Eighty Days is that and more. On the surface, it's the story of a wealthy Londoner who bets his fortune that he can circumnavigate the globe in just 80 days. He has done the calculations and he is convinced that it's doable. The problem is that there's little room for error, and he's not taken into account a bumbling London detective who is determined to arrest him for a theft our hero is not guilty of. This one is great fun; Vernes even manages to throw in a budding romance that takes a nice turn. This is a very accessible classic that I highly recommend.

Alexandra Oliva's The Radiant Dark is a first-contact novel, but it focuses as much on family dynamics as it does on the alien race fast approaching Earth. It's March of 1980 when a strange flickering in the night sky turns out to be a signal from a planet eleven light-years away. No one knows if they are friendly are not, but over the coming decades messages are exchanged with them as the two civilizations gradually learn to communicate with each other. It all evolves very slowly because of the immense distance between the two planets, but in the meantime people on Earth are forced to reassess their place in the universe. All of this is seen through the eyes of the Girard family and how it impacts the lives of each family member. The Radiant Dark is not the science fiction novel I expected it would be, but if you want a nice blend of scifi and family saga, you will really like this one.

I've read mostly short stories, as opposed to novels, from George Saunders so I don't have much to compare Vigil to. That said, this is one very strange little novel. Jill Blaine, who died in the 1970s, has been a spirit guide of sorts for the last several decades. Her current assignment is to help K.J. Boone, an 87-year-old man, through his deathbed experience. Boone, however, is not at all what Jill is used to; he's a ruthless businessman who feels no remorse at all about how he exploited the planet for his own purposes - and he's not having any of it. Things get complicated when other dead souls show up at Boone's home just to taunt and badger him during his final hours. I have to say that, even as much as I enjoy George Saunders short stories, Vigil just did not work for me at all. Frankly, I was just thankful that it is as short a book as it is. It won't scare me away from the short stories, but I can't recommend this one.

I'll stop with these three for now, hoping that I've given at least enough of a taste of each of them that you'll know whether they are for you or not. I'll get to the others soon, including the one I finished just this morning, The Daughters of Rosebud by Sonny Buttar (I absolutely loved this one.)

Two for One: Crows (1985) by Charles Dickinson and Mad Mabel (2026) by Sally Hepworth

 Since I'm about to leave on a two-week wander, with my grandson, around the mid-and-northwest states for a couple of weeks, it's getting to be a now-or-never situation for some of the book reviews that I've fallen behind on in recent weeks. I'm now seven books behind, and I hope to catch up a bit by doing some combination reviews like this one: 

Charles Dickinson's novels have always reminded me of those of another favorite writer of mine Anne Tyler. Their characters are usually numerous and so quirky that they turn out to be as much, or more, fun as the plots of the stories themselves. Crows is no exception.

The main character in Crows is a marginally successful local sportswriter who burns out at the ripe old age of twenty-seven. Perhaps the sheer boredom of Robert Cigar's life explains why he becomes obsessed with the sudden disappearance of his former biology professor, and friend, in a bizarre boating accident on a local lake. To everyone's surprise, including his own, Robert manages to move into his friend's family home and begins to spend most of his time searching the depths of Oblong Lake for the man's body. Over the ensuing months, while the search goes on and on, Robert becomes more and more a real part of the Ladysmith family - even though he is always just on the verge of being kicked out of the house by the missing professor's wife Ethel. 

I've now read Crows twice (some 34 years apart), and both times I began the novel thinking that I was about to read a mystery. And I was wrong both times. Crows is really a novel about grieving and the kind of distorted memories and impressions that can result in the unjustified idealization of those suddenly taken from us. Even though Robert, the main character, is twenty-seven years old, for him this is a coming-of-age novel in which he finally grows up enough to see his own parents through the eyes of a young adult. He even learns to see himself for what he himself really is, and he learns to live with that.

Charles Dickinson is a really good storyteller who hides a lot wisdom amidst the comings and goings of his unusual characters. His books are fun to read, but by the end of them it becomes obvious that producing just another "fun read" is not what Charles Dickinson is all about. I recommend this one.

Sally Hepworth's Mad Mabel tells a much more complicated story than it appears to tackle at first glance, so if you decide to read this one (and I hope you do), pay attention from the very first page. It's peppered with all the clues you need to figure things out well before the end of the novel - and it's fun to see your hunches be confirmed when you're all done.

"Mad" Mabel is one Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, and 81-year-old woman who has lived quietly on the same Melbourne street for several decades. She's purposely never been easy to get along with, a trait she exploits to keep any of the neighbors from prying into her past. That works well for Mabel until an elderly neighbor is found dead under somewhat suspicious circumstances, and someone discovers that Elsie is actually Mabel Waller, who at just fifteen years old became the youngest person in Australian history to be convicted of murder. 

"At six feet tall with broad shoulders and a sturdy backbone, no one would ever accuse me of being birdlike - unless the bird in question was an ostrich. My hair is reddish-grey, and I call people "dipshit" with far more regularity than "dear."

Suddenly Mad Mabel is once again a national celebrity who can't leave her own home without being harassed by the press, the public, and one or two of her own neighbors. Now she is ready to tell her story - her way and in her own good time.

Hepworth uses two timelines for Elsie's story, alternating the present with episodes from her childhood. Mad Mabel is more a character study than it is a mystery, an exploration of how easily a person's life and future can be carelessly ruined by the adults around her - either through sheer inattentiveness or by purely evil intentions. This is a story about the difference between legal justice and real justice, a distinction that can sometimes make it almost impossible for a jury to make a decision that will satisfy anyone, much less everyone.

Mad Mabel is both funny and poignant at times, but most of all it's fun. And do watch out for my favorite character in the whole book, Persephone, a very precocious seven-year-old girl who refuses to take no for an answer when she decides that she and Elsie are going to be best friends forever. 

Out of the Rabbit Hole: Review Catch-Up Time

I slipped deep into a sorting/clean-up rabbit hole these last couple of weeks where whole days go by before I realize it. I suppose it was  all brought on by seeing what a mess my recently deceased brother-in-law left behind upon his sudden death that kicked it all off, but whatever the origin, this seems to be a goal, a feeling, that is going to go on for a lot longer than I imagined it would. 

And of course, having been an avid book collector for more than fifty years, the place to begin the overall curating process was with my bookshelves. I'm only just now poking my head out of that hole - but have now eliminated over 200 hardcover books. The end result of that hard work, and the fun part of all of this, is that I was then faced with a much needed, complete reorganization of my five bookshelves. That's finally all done, and I am now surrounded by my favorite 900 books, leaving me with one final culling of what's still stashed away in a couple of closets and in the garage; I expect that will rid me of another 50-75 books.

The next phase of the reorganization saw me tackling my CD music collection of more than 400 albums (plus a few audio books and dozens of live show recordings I made myself over the years) that was taking up way too much space. I solved that by removing all of the CDs from their original plastic cases and inserting the CDs and their artwork into individual plastic sleeves. That cut the space they were taking up by around 70% - and made them much more accessible, meaning that I'm actually able to enjoy them again. 

Phase three of the project saw me sorting through my movie collection in much the same way. I have over 500 movies, TV series, and vintage music performances from the 1950s on DVD, Blu-Ray, and 4-K discs that had become one big blur to me, so this phase of the project ended up taking longer than sorting the books and CDs. But that's all done now, and just in time for me to re-enjoy some of Dolly Parton's earliest appearances on some old Porter Wagoner shows that I have. 

Anyway, I'm all done with that now, and the challenge is not to slip back into my old habits. I want to use this stuff, make it more a part of my life again, and not just store it away for someone to have to deal with later. 

Unreviewed books are starting to stack up on me, so I plan to do some "pocket reviews" before leaving with my grandson on September 12 on a two-week road trip wandering the highways of America's mid-and-northwest. Six books are stacked up right now:

• Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne,
• Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth,
• Crows by Charles Dickinson,
• The Radiant Dark by Alexandra Oliva,
• Vigil by George Saunders, and
• King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby.

In addition, I'm well into each of these three:

Ray Lambert was a true American hero, and he has all the medals to prove it. Every Man a Hero is Mr. Lambert's 2019 memoir focusing on his experiences landing with the first wave to hit Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. Lambert was 98 years old when the book was published and died in 2021 at the age of 100. The book is co-authored by Jim DeFelice, the same man who co-authored American Sniper with former U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. Lambert's vivid account of what he saw and experienced on D-Day is truly unforgettable. 

Nina McConigley's How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder is a cleverly written little book about two sisters who decide to take measures into their own hands after an uncle from India moves into their Wyoming home with their family. Sadly, the uncle soon proves to be a pervert with no qualms about abusing his two nieces (at least so far, no abuse details are shared with the reader, but the suggestion of what goes on behind the closed bathroom door is more than enough). I'm not sure what to think about this one yet because it reads more like a dark comedy than anything else. 

Old Age: A Beginner's Guide, by Michael Kinsley is a re-read for me but, frankly, I don't remember much about the book (maybe it's my old-age-memory that's causing that). I reviewed the book in early 2016 when Kinsley, who suffered from Parkinson's for well over two decades, was still alive. He has since passed. The book offers a series of essays on aging and dying, but somehow remains surprisingly cheerful overall. Kinsley was one of those guys I didn't often agree with, but I always admired his courage and talent. 

So that's what I've been up to lately. I hope you are all doing well and look forward to chatting with you soon.