My friend Carlos and I were wandering around north of Dallas one Saturday and found ourselves in Greenville. We stopped because a ragged and abandoned gas station caught our photographers’ eye.

There was a farm stand across the street. The outside table held what you see here – three heads of lettuce and a few tomatoes. Who knows why we bothered, but we went inside the scruffy building. There was a very old woman, sitting in a rocking chair. Asleep. (Oh, lord, we hoped she was sleeping!) Carlos cleared his throat a few times, with increasing volume, until she woke up. She was happy to have customers, but the wares inside were about as sparse as the ones we’d already seen.

She felt like talking, so we decided we felt like listening. It didn’t take long before she told us her son had recently died, and then she pulled out a photo album to show us his photograph. It was his prom photo, from the 1970s – big hair, colored tuxedo, wide lapels. After that, she sort of lost interest in talking. We didn’t feel right about leaving without making a purchase, so we bought two oranges and a bag of shelled pecans.

Later, that afternoon, we stopped at a picnic table by a lake. The oranges were dried out, and the pecans were stale.

Greenville, Texas

photographed 3.15.2008

(Sometime maybe I will tell you our story about the Tipped Over Old Man. Or even the Very Loud Domestic Dispute Next to a Remote Cemetery. Carlos and I have had some good adventures.)