Monthly Archives: June 2020
If you need a sofa
Maybe, after all these stay-at-home months, you’ve gotten weary of your place. And maybe you’re thinking a change in furnishings might be just what you need to lift your spirits. And maybe you’re thinking specifically of acquiring a different sofa.
If this sounds like you, please get in touch: I know where you can find one.
Roby, Texas
photographed 5.22.2020
A pair of shoes and a flyswatter
If conditions permit, I will always peer inside an out-of-business business: I have a strange fascination with seeing what things were not important enough to have been taken. The best things I spotted here were the flyswatter hanging on the wall, and a pair of Crocs.
But that wall just behind the Crocs has a story, too. Someone had really good intentions – they framed it and installed the gyp board, but somehow the taping/floating/painting steps never happened.
Aspermont, Texas
photographed 5.23.2020
Taken by Storm
Sometimes we’ll go an entire spring season without any storms to speak of. This is not one of those years; between where we stopped for this shot and our house (80 miles) we:
- saw this storm
- skirted a storm that had a tornado
- pulled off the road to let storm ahead of us move out of the way
- saw power poles just a block from our house leaning over from wind
- made it home just minutes before yet another storm hit
It was one of very few times in my life when the weather has frightened me.
near Clairemont, Texas
photographed 5.23.2020
Many sheets of plywood
It took many sheets of plywood to cover the windows at this un-used elementary school.
Hamlin, Texas
photographed 5.23.2020
Barbershop
I keep a list* of mundane things that fascinate me – like garbage cans, car washes, laundromats, parking garages. And barber shops.
After my dad became too frail to drive, one of my tasks was to take him to the barber shop, a two-chair operation where one of the barbers was even older than my dad; they were both as deaf as a stump but they seemed content as they carried on parallel yet unrelated conversations, like this actual one I overheard:
Barber: It’s cool today.
My dad: Yes, I’m feeling a little better.
The haircut was eight bucks. My dad paid with a twenty, and the barber gave him a ten and two ones as change. My dad handed him the ones as a tip; the barber took both ones and handed one of them back. It was a complicated financial transaction and took very nearly as long as the haircut had.
Usually, though, the younger barber cut my dad’s hair and his kindnesses toward my dad – holding the door, helping him in and out of chair, walking him out to the car – always made me emotional. As the days in assisted living moved on, eventually going to the barber was the single thing left from my dad’s old life. And then one day, I took him for a haircut and the place was dark; the door was locked and the phone was out of service. I felt so bad for my dad: just like that, with no warning, that single thing from before was gone. And we didn’t know what had happened.
I did find out a few months later, through one of those coincidences that happen in a town like Lubbock. Over lunch with a work friend, I happened to mention that later that day I was taking my dad to get a haircut but we were having to go to a new barbershop, and I told her the story of the vanishing barber. She said, “Edward? Oh, he died!” He was in a relationship with one of her employees and he’d died suddenly, after a Thanksgiving lunch. I never told my dad – I couldn’t bring myself to tell him any more bad news than what I already had to deliver on a regular basis.
And then when he passed away, my friend from work and the barber’s girlfriend both came to the funeral.
Of course none of this has anything at all to do with today’s photo. But it was on my mind…
Brownwood, Texas
photographed 5.23.2020
*An actual list, on the door in my studio. In case I forget.
One Day | One Image 