Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Nipper

He's an icon of advertising. Nipper the dog, hearing "his master's voice" on a gramophone, the symbol of the RCA company for decades. This four-ton statue of him, without the gramophone, sits atop the old RCA building in Albany's North End industrial district. He's become an adored icon of the city.

Nipper sits atop the old RCA building on Broadway in North Albany.

That's pretty much all the photography I did on this trip. I didn't have much time to wander, and the weather was not good. My aunt's burial was on Tuesday. The cemetery was beautiful, almost like a Hollywood set, shrouded in a dense fog with old leafless trees towering over us like skeletons. I wish I could have a photo of that, but that just wasn't appropriate. After the ceremony, my uncle and aunt hosted a luncheon at a local Italian restaurant.

On Wednesday I spent some time with my cousin and aunt on my dad's side. She, too, is in a nursing facility, but she was alert and we had a good visit. That night I went out for dinner with L & L again to a fine Indian restaurant they know. Thursday morning was breakfast at a local diner with my uncle and aunt before catching my flight out.

That flight was not without its drama. Our plane was late arriving in Albany, so it was consequently late getting out and to Washington Dulles, where my plane to Paris was waiting. When we finally landed, I had 15 minutes to get to the Paris flight, in another terminal. I ran much of the way. When I got to the gate they had already closed the door. The gate staff said they would have to re-book me, but when they tried to verify that my bag had been removed from the plane (I was surprised it made it on in the first place), they learned that it hadn't, so they told the flight crew that if the bag was still on the plane, they intended to board their passenger. So I made it onto the plane just before it departed. Phew! The flight was good and my bag was among the first to show up on the carousel in Paris. My train from the airport was on time and I made it without incident. Ken and Tasha were waiting at the train station to drive me home. There's no place like home!

10 comments:

  1. Welcome home, to "the sound of his masters voice." Amazing when the bag makes the 15 minute connection.

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  2. I've always loved the HMV dog. Isn't international flying just the best thing? Not!

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  3. I remember that neighborhood. Doesn’t look much different from my 1970s memories. I loved that statue. So glad it’s still there.

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  4. Wow, that's pretty unheard of, for a passenger to be let on after they close the gate, isn't it? Glad for you! I'm sure that Tasha was as happy as Ken to see you :)

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  5. what airline was that that let you board after the door was closed? Happened to me once after running thru Atlanta airport having returned from Paris and as much as I begged they would not budge. (delta!)

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  6. Love the Nipper photo! You were living right to have that door opened for you. We were joining friends for a flight at JFK and the door was closed. They didn't open it for us, but our friends sat on the tarmac for an hour. We had to rebook on Virgin Air via Heathrow to get to Copenhagen. We did get some miles later for that problem.

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  7. Nipper is a great dog, so glad he’s become an icon of the city. Hopefully that will ensure his continued preservation. I would love to have seen Tasha greeting you at the station. I can imagine her excitement.

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  8. Too much excitement on that flight home! But amazingly it all worked out. What an amazing statue of Nipper.

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  9. Nipper, and RCA's slogan, is known all over the world, at least to people my generation and maybe slightly younger - there aren't too many older left!

    Is it a disaffected church on the left or a pretentious industrial building?

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  10. travel, I had convinced myself that my bag would be late. Happily, it made the plane!

    andrew, luckily, when I have time to plan a trip, I don't have to make connections. I can fly to NYC or Boston nonstop and then drive. This time, it being winter, I didn't want to drive through weather.

    mitch, I have this memory that they tried to remove it, but public outrage prevailed. In this case, a good thing.

    judy, they hadn't closed the aircraft door yet, just the gate door. There was some back and forth between the gate agent and the flight crew, but the gate agent won, luckily for me!

    melinda, it was United.

    evelyn, I'm sure I would have been taken care of, but I just wanted to get home.

    bettyann, she was almost as excited as I was!

    thickethouse, ah, travel!

    chm, it's an industrial building, pretentious or not.

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