... passing through downtown Houston

Even though I have visited Houston many times, I have only been in downtown only once!  This is not something to be proud of or to brag about, is just a simple fact.  Downtown Houston was the original site where the city was founded by brothers John Kirby Allen and Augustus Chapman Allen in an area where the White Oak and Buffalo Bayous meet. That spot is now known as Allen’s Landing and that piece of land was bought from John Austin’s widow, T.F.L. Parrot.

I have passed many times to its side in my way down to the Hobby airport, but have never entered it. That was until the first weekend of November 2012. … however, shame on me! ... I went through, looking for the place where a Korean festival was held, could not find a place to park, and went out as I went in …

... pretty fast, I guess ...!

A Houston Landmark ...

It was 1968 when Czechoslovakia is invaded by Russia; Francisco “Morochito” Rodriguez wins the first Venezuelan Gold Medal in the Olympic Games; “Bloody Monday” marks one of the most violent days of the Parisian student revolt; Andy Warhol is shot in his loft by Valerie Solanis; Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated; Jacqueline Kennedy marries the shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis; Apollo 8 is the first manned space ship to orbit the moon; and John Martin Milkovisch "got sick of mowing the damn grass."

Absolutely true, 1968 was the year that Mr Milkovisch, a retired upholsterer who resided in 222 Malone Street, in Houston, Texas, decided he was tired of taking care of his garden and decided to replace his lawn with cement slabs covered with marbles, curious stones, metal pieces and all sorts of interesting junk.

    

Once the front and back yard were done, he also started covering the outside walls of his house with flattened out beer cans.  

                   

He also adorned the fences with other parts of beer cans, beer caps, beer bottles and other beer paraphernalia. “Curtains” made of long chains of bottoms, pull-tabs and tops of beer cans started hanging from the roof eaves. Curtains, mobiles, fences, sculptures, windmills, and wind chimes were places everywhere. After 18 years of work that house virtually disappeared under a “mantle” of aluminum and the whole beer covered house unexpectedly helped to cut energy bills!

                         
                                                John and his wife Mary in front of the house

Today, the house is known as the Beer Can House and it is a folk art house owned and operated by the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, an organization founded to preserve works of extraordinary imagination and provide people with the opportunity to express artistic vision.

 
                 John's working place                                            John's tools

                                                         

Amen to that!  ... Prost!