Blog Archives
Wayward cloud looks like a banner
I caught a chill when I wrote yesterday’s post, so let’s look at something I photographed on a day that was about 100 degrees warmer. Literally.
This is another view of the sign you can see in this shot. The most remarkable thing here, I think, is the way that one little wisp of a cloud looks like a banner fluttering from the sign.
But do you see what else? Yep – painted-and-faded plywood!
Snyder, Texas
photographed 7.10.2013
Just a touch of red
This is as Christmas-y as we get here at One Day | One Image: a little bit of red in an otherwise black and white scene. I’m pretty sentimental, as you can tell.
Plainview, Texas
photographed 12.10.2013
Tower
Evidently the fine folks in Odessa like their signage to be big. There was this theater marquee from a couple of days ago, and now this fantastic structure, which marks the location of the Great Oil Basin Shopping Center.
This sign is three or four stories tall, and I suppose at some point in its past it actually SAID the name of the shopping center. In neon. In neon that blinked and flashed and all that other fancy stuff neon signs can do.
But now it’s mute. Oh, and red.
Odessa, Texas
photographed 12.8.2013
The remains of the gin
This abandoned cotton gin is right in the middle of town, just a few blocks from the county courthouse. It’s sort of fantastic looking, now, to people like me.
But, I feel bad for anyone who lived nearby – and there are houses just across the street – when it was operational. Cotton ginning’s a dirty business; at the height of the season, everything around is covered with so many fluffs of cotton that it looks like snow. It might sound sort of pretty, but it’s not. And it’s hard to breathe, too.
Levelland, Texas
photographed 3.14.2012
At the theater
The sign alone would have been worth a photograph. Add in the shadow…and I had to stop.
Turns out that the sign, for the Scott Theater (which opened in 1959), was a revolving marquee fashioned after signs at the New York World’s Fair. The sign weighed 5 tons, and was said to have cost $35,000. It was also said to be able to withstand winds of 130 miles per hour. Mr. Bill Martin, whose company designed and built the sign, said it was “the ultimate design for the future of all marquees.”
The theater closed in the late 1980s. And the sign hasn’t blow down yet.
Odessa, Texas
photographed 12.8.2013
