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.
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.
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.
Jim Viles found this well preserved brick in a creek bed near Newport. Jim is the husband of my yoga teacher, Phoenix Wilson.
This one came out of a chimney in Li' Man, The Newport house Becky and I are renovating.
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.
Parker-Russell Mining and Manufacturing Company. A fire brick I picked up canoeing the Ohio River in Cincinnati.
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.
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.
This kind of decorative brick was first used in slaughterhouses and later sidewalks. This particular one comes from Nelsonville, Ohio.
Another handsome patterned brick which I recently found on a hillside in Zanesville, Ohio.
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.
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.
This came from Paducah, Kentucky. Good looking square lugs. With Memphis and Cairo nearby,why not Egyptian bricks?
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.)
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.
Kalamazoo Jerry Wilinski and Tuscaloosa Jamie Brewer with a prized oversized brick.
Tinkie finally used up all of her nine lives. She was our cat - actually Sarah's- for almost 20 years. She had lived in all five of our houses. She hadn't hissed since Blackie died eight months earlier. Now she is resting under the brick wall out back along with Mr.Ted, Willie, and Blackie.
Ten years after the terrorist attack a monument was dedicated to the firemen who lost their lives in New York at the World Trade Center.
Everyone remembers where they were at 9/11. I was getting breakfast at the H&H Grill, a greasy spoon at the corner of Cleaney and Montgomery in Norwood, Ohio. When Xavier University bought it to tear it down, Sarah Fulmer, AKA the Bobkitten, and I snuck over and climbed on the roof to rescue these tiles. Now they cap off the wall at 529 Lexington Ave
