Blog Archives
Spatula
One of the great mysteries that I encounter every time I peek through a dirty window into an abandoned business is what sorts of things were left behind.
A spatula, this time. And a heat lamp.
Did someone intend to come back and get the rest of their things? Or did they just say fuck it and walk away from their failed business, hoping that maybe on another day in another town, they’d get a new spatula.
Floydada, Texas
photographed 3.25.2017
Ethanol, fourth
Without any frame of reference, these dunes of millet could be dunes of anything. And located anywhere. It was oddly disorienting, because I was literally a few steps from the road.
But I liked the feeling.
(This is last of the ethanol plant photos. For now…)
Hockley County, Texas
photographed 3.19.2017
Ethanol, third
“It seems like there ought to be birds.”
“Oh, THERE they are.”
Hockley County, Texas
photographed 3.19.2017
Art in a desolate location
This used to be part of a little complex on the edge of the town where I work; there was a cotton gin, the gin office, and this building. The gin stopped ginning. The office turned into a place called Larry’s BBQ, which had live music at lunch every day and where if you ordered anything other than a burger, you’d’ve made a big mistake. Then a chain BBQ place came to town and Larry’s closed up. After a few years, someone driving a bulldozer pushed Larry’s place into a pile, and someone else with a front-end loader loaded Larry’s into a container and hauled it (him?) away. Last year, someone else (I guess) spent a very long time taking the cotton gin down, probably to salvage the metal building components.
And, so, all that’s left is this little building, with a mural. (Which sounds fancier than calling it graffiti, but I’m in a generous mood, so what the hell.)
Levelland, Texas
photographed 3.16.2017
Fog and Ethanol
I go by this ethanol plant on my way to work, and it’s almost the highlight of the trip.* Over the years, I’ve learned that there are a few days in October and again in April when the morning sun hits the metal structure in a way that turns it into a huge cross. And that on the coldest days of the year, the low sun can make the clouds of steam glow a magnificent bright yellow. And that sometimes there’ll be a train on the long curving track moving continuously, but so slow it’s nearly imperceptible, as the grain is off-loaded.
But until the other day, when it was shrouded in fog, I’d never even turned off the main road to go look more closely at the place.
Hockley County, Texas
photographed 3.16.2017
*I know. That’s kind of pathetic.
