Blog Archives
Body Shop Diamonds
I found this nice little place on our short post-Christmas trip. I am always amused by places like this that have curtains in the windows (here’s another example of incongruous curtains).
But what really captured my attention were those nice glazed tile diamonds on the wall. You just know a body shop with diamonds is a good place to take your banged-up car. Except maybe not this place, as it doesn’t appear to be in business any more.
Childress, Texas
photographed 12.26.2014
Quanah’s Truck
Things aren’t looking so good in the town named for Quanah Parker, the last of the Comanche chiefs.
Quanah, Texas
photographed 12.26.2014
PS – Quanah Parker’s life is very interesting; his mother was a white woman who’d been captured at age 9 and who lived for 24 years with the Comanche before she was recaptured by Americans soldiers. The book Empire of the Summer Moon tells the story.
And, my friend Andy Wilkinson writes of Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah’s mother, in the song “White Women’s Clothes.”
White Women’s Clothes
Andy Wilkinson: Charlie Goodnight (1994)In the moon you call December
On the river you call the Pease
It was cold and I remember
We had just packed up to leave
When a mounted line of soldiers
A sparkle in the sun
Rode down upon our warriors
And shot them one by oneAnd the ponies of our women
They were loaded down and slow
With our lodge poles and equipment
And the meat of our buffalo
So the cowards of your cavalry,
When all the fight was o’er,
Killed the women and their babies
‘Cept for me and Prairie FlowerThe white man’s liberation
Took me from my home
For the prison of his houses
And his white women’s clothesYou could see my hair was flaxen
You could see my eyes were blue
See my skin was white and ashen
Or you would have shot me too
But you could not see the baby that I cradled in my robes
Small red skinned Comanche
The color of my soulThe white man’s liberation
Took me from my home
For the prison of his houses
And his white women’s clothesDressed up for your amusement
In your used and second hands
You parade me through your settlements
And you call me Cynthia Anne
In these walls I’m suffocating
Where the wind never blows
While my heart is strangulating
In these white women’s clothesThe white man’s liberation
Took me from my home
For the prison of his houses
And his white women’s clothesThe white man’s liberation
Took me from my home
Took me from my home
Took me from my home
Took me from my home
Took me from my home
Took me from my home
Hotel is Closed
This place has been closed for so long that the plywood over the (broken) windows is starting to fall apart. Not all that long ago, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed the state of the plywood, but now (thanks in part to Infrared Robert), I saw those holes as an opportunity, and looked inside. And took some photos, of course.
On the back door of the place, I saw a sign that said HOTEL IS CLOSED, which struck me as redundant. But only until I got home and started trying to find out what the place had been, and the sign was the only way I could tell that it had once been a hotel.
The winter sun was low enough that the hulk of the building cast a very nice shadow on the brick street; my vantage point wasn’t high enough to get a good shot, but you can see it here.
Clarendon, Texas
photographed 12.26.2014
Elevator
In case you’re not from an agriculture region, a grain elevator is where grain’s stored – this article explains it better than I can.
I haven’t photographed a lot of grain elevators, although they are lovely in their industrial-architecture way. This one is especially nice with the vertical lines in the rough concrete and the banks of windows climbing up the side.
Hastings, Nebraska
photographed 8.30.2014
Cabinetry. And a lizard.
I took this photo because of those cabinets. And because of the tattered curtains. And because of the patched wall.
I didn’t even see the lizard.
Marfa, Texas
photographed 8.16.2013
One Day | One Image 