Blog Archives
Diamond View
I had the idea that I needed to go look around my mother’s hometown. So I did.
Some people have the fondest of memories about things they did with their grandparents – storybook things like making cookies or going fishing or re-telling family tales or laughing or having that feeling of being loved no matter what. That is not my experience. I have a single, mostly spotty memory, of my grandmother and I decorating a birthday cake. And not one memory at all of doing anything with my grandfather. (I was a timid child and he scared me – he was gruff and said “goddam” and smoked cigarettes, and I wasn’t used to any of those things.)
So my childhood memories of this town are pretty limited. On this visit, the only way I could find their house was through a set of triangulations that involved a row of elm trees on the edge of a schoolyard and a memory of the path I walked from the house to the trees.
Nothing else seemed even vaguely familiar. But I’m not sure why I expected anything else, given my history with the place.
Sonora, Texas
photographed 1.27.2022
Candy Jars
Look! People! Two of them, in one photo!
But more importantly, check out all the delightful candy options.
Junction, Texas
photographed 1.27.2022
Sky Wire
The last row of family plots, at the top of a hill, had fences around them. I don’t know if they were trying to keep people/spirits in or out. But I do know that I made this photo from inside one of those grave-cages, so maybe they aren’t as effective as they were meant to be?
Menard, Texas
photographed 1.29.2022
Dish Cupboard
Y’all, I did a thing. It’s a thing that’s not as far outside my comfort zone as it used to be but that’s still not a thing I can do without sort of having to talk myself into it.
The thing I did was to go inside the Historic Rocksprings Hotel and have a chat with the owner. I wasn’t staying there or anything – I was passing through town and decided to stop and look at the place. She was perfectly lovely, and let me take photos, and I lived to tell about it. Amazing! And I might even do something like this again; you just never know.
Here’s the dish and cookbook sections of the kitchen that’s on the back of the first floor. There’s not a restaurant – just a big kitchen with lots of pots and pans and dishes and guests are encouraged to prepare their own meals.
Rocksprings, Texas
photographed 1.28.2022
Hymnals, with dust
“It’s open – you just got to turn the knob real hard to the left,” a kindly woman hollered at me from her house across the street.
And that’s how I got to see these hymnals.
Roosevelt, Texas
photographed 1.28.2022
One Day | One Image 