Monthly Archives: February 2024

young horse trainer

This kid right here showed several horses during the horse sale. He’s also – according to the auctioneer – “fixin’ to move to Muleshoe.” That’s not a weird cowboy euphemism, but an actual town name. In case you thought there was something weird going on.

Mallet Event Center
Levelland, Texas
photographed 2.10.2024

at the horse sale

Every day that I go in to my office, I pass by an events center. And every day I read the marquee announcements of coming events. A lot of them are mysterious to me – generally because they relate to agriculture or rodeo things that are outside of my normal set of things I do.

As part of a commitment to “do more stuff” this year, I decided to head over to the center the other Saturday to check out the Clovis Horse Sales. There was no entry fee, so there wasn’t an apparent down side, other than the extremely remote possibility that I might accidentally bid on a pony.

It turned out to be quite an entertaining few hours.

And I came home pony-less.

Mallet Event Center
Levelland, Texas
photographed 2.10.2024

the spot: marked

A couple of dead trees marked the location with the traditional spot-marking X, which was fun to photograph but not all that much help in terms of wayfinding.

Crosby County, Texas
photographed 2.3.2024

not much longer

One of these days – probably it won’t take many of them – this old farm building is going to finish falling all the way down. That’s the way of farm buildings around here as farming practices and populations and the climate all shift.

Crosby County, Texas
photographed 2.3.2024

time can do so much

This building was the school for the community of Allmon for about a quarter century; in 1935 the school was merged with the one in the nearby town of Petersburg. That was followed by years of being vacant, a time as the offices for Barwise Elevator and Fertilizer, and another era of vacancy.

The building is made from tan brick with red-brick accents around the windows, which I guess was the height of rural school design back in 1909.

Allmon, Texas
photographed 2.3.2024

(Historical information from the Texas State Historical Association.)