Brick Exhibit at the Newport Public Library

This month I have some bricks on display at the Newport library. I got started with brick collecting by picking up discarded street pavers from around town.This KENTUCKY BLOCK was once part of a Newport street. Most street pavers come from Ohio, but not this one.

NEWPORT

NEWPORT bricks are hard to find. My neighbor Dennis gave me this one. The lettering is always faint and so I filled it in with a Sharpie. There is another rarer variety of Newport bricks: NPBCo.

KAINTUCK

Loiusvile Fire Brick Works Kaintuck I found this brick in a dump in Stamping Ground, Kentucky on Derby Day, the day of the Kentucky Derby.

WESTWOOD

This Cincinnati brick was manufactured by James Gamble,of Proctor and Gamble fame. He invented Ivory Flakes. I found this in a torn down house on Westwood Ave.

ANDERSON (New Cumberland,West Virginia)

Jim Viles found this well preserved brick in a creek bed near Newport. Jim is the husband of my yoga teacher, Phoenix Wilson.

CINCINNATI 1

This one came out of a chimney in Li' Man, The Newport house Becky and I are renovating.

PAT. DEC.II.0.6

My buddy Dan Bare found this brick in Fairmount, an old neighborhood of Cincinati. No collectors had sen one before with a date on it.

OHIO

So pretty a brick, that I took one to Russia as a brick.

PRM&M CO ST. LOUIS XXX

Parker-Russell Mining and Manufacturing Company. A fire brick I picked up canoeing the Ohio River in Cincinnati.

BUCKEYE

A road trip to Zanesville, Ohio with Mike Corn. Our guide Steve Saunders took us to several secret locations. This brickcame from near the world famous Y bridge.

Wooden Brick

I got this brick from Jean Bear, the famous brick collector from Washington, Pa. She had picked this wooden brick up in a dump in Akron, Ohio. It is made of white oak and soaked in creosote. There are still six wooden bricks on 6th. St. in Newport.

Star brick

This kind of decorative brick was first used in slaughterhouses and later sidewalks. This particular one comes from Nelsonville, Ohio.

Church Brick

Another handsome patterned brick which I recently found on a hillside in Zanesville, Ohio.

DIABLO

In contrast to the crosses of the last brick, here is diablo, the devil. A California brick that I picked up at the Little Rock swap meet.

A. W.

I picked this brick for the library show, simply because I like the deep lettering. I think Frank Clement gave it to me up in Buffalo.

EGYPTIAN

This came from Paducah, Kentucky. Good looking square lugs. With Memphis and Cairo nearby,why not Egyptian bricks?

DICKINSON LITTLE ROCK

An Arkansas brick, the name highlighted with a Sharpie.

CHANDLER O.T.

O.T. stands for Oklahoma Territory. I also have an I.T. brick: Indian territory.

THURBER

Thurber is from Texas.

MEXICO

Yes, this is a Mexican brick. It doesn't like rain or snow.

For some reason Tennessee bricks are few and far between.

INCARPAZ (La Paz, Bolivia)

This brick is unique to my collection. It is from La Paz, Bolivia. Thank you, Swapna Takkallapell, for snatching it for me when you was volunteering down there. (This is the final brick of my display. At some point they will all be walled.)

Finkel's (Paducah, Ky.)

Road trip, Paducah, Kentucky where the Tennessee River flows into the Ohio. Used to stop here in the early 1970's when I was a deckhand on the Delta Queen. This time through I snarfed the Egyptian paving brick pictured later.

Cairo, Illinois is a historic river town where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi. It is also one of America's most forlorn places. Don't believe me? Check out this video clip:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJW8lOzJJPE Becky and I arrived there in a rainstorm at night which made the deserted streets even more desolate. There were piles of bricks everywhere. With my flashlight, I could see that none of them were marked. All except one.

Halliday and Fletcher Cairo,Ill.

What are the odds? Only one brick is marked and it is from Cairo.

Halliday and Fletcher Cairo, Illinois (cleaned up0

Here is the same brick all cleaned up with a special masonry detergent.

Briar, Missouri in the Mark Twain National Forest

A charming old shack in Southern Missouri

Stone shed Briar, Missouri

A 15' X 15' little building just like what we want to build on Washington Ave.

Little Rock Arkansas Brick Swap

The Little Rock brick swap. It is a few minutes before 9:00 A.M. on Saturday morning. We have all spread out our bricks on the ground. Everyone has checked out what people have brought. You are allowed to put your foot on one brick to claim it before the whistle goes off. Pictured are the bricks I brought from Kentucky.. Being claimed is an 'H' brick and an old interlocking brick. I claimed an O.S.P. (Oklahoma State Prison) When the whistle goes off at 9:00, everyone starts grabbing bricks until they are all gone.

Becky and the legendary Norm Roller

Norm amassed one of the largest collections of bricks in the world. And as he said: "I Like to have my picture taken with a pretty girl."

After the auction

Kalamazoo Jerry Wilinski and Tuscaloosa Jamie Brewer with a prized oversized brick.

Arkansas razorback

It is football season at the University of Arkansas and there are razorbacks all over the state.

Cotton Apoppin

In the Arkansas delta there are fields of cotton,soybeans and rice.