Wait, we're at a trout farm now? Watching Going Places with Lowell Thomas #10

Is this worth your time?

If you have a thing for vintage educational shorts or just want to see how people used to learn about the world before the internet, absolutely. But if you’re looking for a coherent narrative, you’re gonna be annoyed. Most people will probably find this incredibly boring, but there’s a weird charm to how disjointed it feels.

Lowell Thomas acts as our narrator, and his voice is exactly what you’d expect—the kind of booming, authoritative tone that could make a grocery list sound like a war dispatch. It’s comforting, in a way.

The Great Whiplash of 1930-something

The transition from Athens to the American Southwest is just jarring. One minute you’re looking at these grand, crumbling pillars and thinking about history, and then—boom—you’re watching Zuni Indians weave blankets in the desert heat.

There is absolutely no attempt to bridge these two worlds. It feels like someone dropped a pile of film reels on the floor and just decided to splice them together in whatever order they landed. It’s wild.

Oddly specific observations

• The Zuni blanket section is actually kind of fascinating, even if it feels like a snippet from an entirely different movie.
• I spent way too long wondering how they transported all that camera gear out to those remote locations back then.
• The ending at the trout hatchery? Truly bizarre. It just ends, like the editor ran out of tape or just got bored and went to lunch.

It reminds me a bit of the random shifts in The Covered Schooner, where you’re never quite sure if you’re supposed to be learning something or just looking at pretty pictures. It’s not deep, it’s not poetic, it’s just... there.

Honestly, watching this feels like digging through your grandparent's old attic boxes. You find a cool photo of a statue, then a weird rug, then a fish farm. You don’t know why they kept it, but you don't want to throw it out either. 🐟

The whole thing is barely long enough to finish a cup of coffee. That's probably a good thing. Any longer and the lack of structure would start to get on my nerves. As it stands, it’s just a weird, imperfect little curiosity that I’m glad I saw.