Ghost of Eazy E posted:

I think the Houston one is in this location.
http://goo.gl/maps/FY6bX

I would put my money on the grass area inbetween the monument and the fountain

DUNCAN DONUTS posted:

I live near the park, and I would be willing to take a stroll there Saturday. How long has that train been running? I'd like to figure out what "982" signifies, too. And does that look like a "96" in the tree branches to anyone else? Far right edge of the picture, at the very low end of the tree limb.

Raccoon Leaf posted:

Houston, Hermann Park.

Ghost of Eazy E posted:

Wow I didn't catch that. Good eye.
Whats the fine for digging in a city park by the way?

Raccoon Leaf posted:

I live really close to Hermann Park, and I don't start my new job until Monday, so I have nothing else better to do today than to go and take some pictures.

Raccoon Leaf posted:

Back from my visit to Hermann Park. I'm sorry to say it was not that productive. A good portion of the park was shut down for private events. There's a Garden Center that was having a staff retreat. They had cops posted at every entrance for some reason. The Miller Outdoor Theater was also blocked off for a children's play. There's a statue called "Atropos Key" on the top of the hill there that I wanted to investigate.

Here are some things, most of which are already obvious:

Single star in the sky = Lone Star = Texas
Numbers = Latitude and Longitude = Houston
Pillar with ball = Outline of the circle at Sam Houston Statue and Reflecting Pool at Hermann Park
982 = Number on Southern Pacific Steam Engine that used to be in Hermann Park (I'm trying to find out exactly where this was)
Seven pillars on image = Seventh Month (July)
Red gem = Ruby (July's Birthstone)
Odd shaped leaf right center in the image = Larkspur (July's Birth Flower)

Here's what I got from a quick Google search of some of the phrases in the verse:
"Fortress North"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_North_America
No clue if that would mean something

"Cold as glass"
Mentioned in Ayn Rand's Anthem to describe train tracks. Trains seem to be a big part of Hermann Park, including the old SP 982 and a mini-railroad system that has a whistle. I'm not sure if the mini train was running in the 1980s.

"Friendship south"

Picture I found online while researching the Garden Center

"In the center of four alike
Small, split,
Three winged and slight
What we take to be
Our strongest tower of delight"
The lemontiger guy linked this quote to a Melville piece that talks about falling leaves, locked caskets, and the three Fates.
The logo for Houston Parks & Recreation is a 3-pronged leaf, and one of the three Fates is named Atropos!
HPARD

Atropos Key statue


Lemontiger seems to think it's around the fence at the golf course. I see a few problems with that. First, even if we assume it's there, the golf course has been remodeled, and so it's probably destroyed. Second, he comes up with a scheme involving the number 11 based on the fact that there are pillars in the image and they look like the number 11. I don't think that makes any sense. Third, he ignores a few clues, including "In the center of four alike", which I think is the most important clue to the location (if we figure out what it means).

GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:

Houston

I was talking to some friends about this tonight and one of them hit on something that may be significant.

"What we take to be
Our strongest tower of delight
Falls gently
In December night"

Could this refer to a Christmas tree? Another friend thought she remembered there being a Christmas tree in the Japanese gardens area, but I can't find anything online about it.

Also I reversed the colors to see if anything else could be revealed here.



1. A strange shape in the leaves up here, not sure if they signify anything.
2. The djinn's wrappings look more like a face here wearing an old floppy hat. A really creepy face and not the best thing to discover while lying in bed in the dark.
3. The shadow of this dune looks like a seated lion
4. I noticed there was something written at the base of this pillar before, but couldn't make it out. It looks like 53 to me, but not sure what that signifies. There are also different numbers of rings above the bases of each pillar. 1 on the closest, 2 on the rhino's, and none on the camel's. The closest pillar also has the number one inscribed on it, the rhino pillar has two leaves in front of it, and I still think it's important that the camel pillar doesn't cast a shadow.

einTier posted:

This might be referring to the fountains around the Pioneer Monument. You should be able to see them -- though not the base -- as you walk through the forest.

einTier posted:

Houston
Don't lose your way through the forest, there's not much to guide you here. But the monument could be a direction finder, it is in the center of four alike and is a tower.

T.Worth posted:

If you guys are trying to narrow down what a specific place looked like back in the day there is a possibility you might want to try.

When I was looking at that park in Houston from the overhead perspective and noticed the train was gone I remembered how old aviation and military maps were made. You used to get a plane and take detailed aerial shots of the whole country over and over and then these were used to update the topographic maps with new structures and the such.

These would absolutely still be archived and available somewhere, not sure who to try in the us. Maybe try the USGS and they might be able to tell you where to buy/access them. Should get you a good quality black and white aerial of the places somewhere in a 2 odd year window either side of 1980.

Dr. Gitmo Moneyson posted:

Guys, I think I finally figured out what that wierd tree-branch shape on the left side of the Cask 8 painting is supposed to be...



It's a turned-around number '2'.

einTier posted:

But I also think he misled people on the Houston location. People keep looking around the Children's Zoo, but I can't find anything that links it there other than him saying something cryptic about not being a waste of time to dig there, but couldn't tell you what you'd find. The clues seem to point outside the zoo, and it seems like it would be very difficult to bury inside the zoo. Plus, he didn't seem too distressed that the Children's Zoo was being demolished, even though that might mean the cask would never be found.

I think he was playing a game with that comment, and maybe the one about Central Park. Where else could you bury it in NYC?

Drunkboxer posted:

Houston: I work literally next door to Herman park. I'm there about 6 days a week. I wish there was something more concrete I could do, because this all is pretty cool, but I'm pretty busy most the time. There's nothing little I could do on say a lunch break is there?

einTier posted:

Actually, I'm starting to think that throwing everything out that isn't blatantly obvious -- like the Lat/Long coordinates or the extremely distinctive Legeater statue -- is the way to go.

All this conjecture and no one's found anything on that board other than the cask in Cleveland -- which seems to have spurred on the board itself? I think some of the things accepted as "truth" aren't. It's really hard to talk yourself out of an idea once it's planted in your head.

einTier posted:

Raccoon Leaf posted:

The first space shuttle mission was in 1981. The leaf is larkspur.

BJG posted:

I'm just waiting for the day when people stop yakking about this puzzle and dig a hole in the ground, but I doubt it'll ever come.

Good old Wilhouse armed himself with a bulldozer and a ground-penetrating radar system and had a drat good try at digging one of these things up. Gotta respect that.

einTier posted:

I do plan on going to Houston soon, but it is three hours from Austin by car (and I'm considered close, if you can believe that!). I can't make a whole bunch of trips, so I'm trying to run down as many possibilities from here as I can before I go. I anticipate spending significant time in Hermann park, but I'll probably scout other areas. If you have a way to video conference with someone with a US iPhone (Skype?), I'd be more than happy to do that from the park so that you can "see" the park a little better. Nothing like being there and all that.

einTier posted:

Judging by your username and distance from Houston, I have to believe you live in Beaumont, where I'm originally from. Incidentally, I worked with Gary Lee Love back in the early 90's.

Dr. Gitmo Moneyson posted:

Count me out of any "Goon Meet"-type stuff unless somebody has a really good idea of where the cask is buried (as in, like good enough that we actually find it there) and I get to take some of the credit for finding and uncovering it.

Also I would like the option to take the cask and its contents myself (assuming that it is in good enough condition) so that I can try to sell them to my university and maybe have my name included in a story on the school webpage. I've been in undergrad for too drat long and I WANT SOMETHING TO SHOW FOR IT DAMMIT!

Peenigrippe posted:

Congratulations! Now you can put that on your resume too.

einTier posted:

I'm now 1/3 of the way through this thread, compiling all the information I can for Houston for the wiki. It's amazing how many pages don't have anything, while others have large chunks.

I wish I had thought about it earlier, but I'm thinking it might be a good idea to catalog what searches are mentioned on each page. That way, if someone wanted to see all the discussion about a particular cask/city/verse they could see that Milwaukee was mentioned on pages 23, 24, 25, 38, 42, 45-50, .....

I think that could be useful, but compiling it? Christ. I'm thinking a spreadsheet might be best.

einTier posted:

Houston Stuff

Merlot Brougham posted:

I don't see how they would struggle with several of the verses. The evidence is overwhelming that it is in or around Hermann Park in Houston Texas and only when linked with verse 1.