Blog Archives
The flowers won’t last
Are you bored with your usual shooting locations? Then you might want to head over to a garden center. It might be just the change of scenery you need.
I was at the Antique Rose Emporium the other day, and while my companions looked at plants, I took a few photos, including this one of (some sort of) flower on a wooden bench.
It was a nice break from what I usually shoot, though observant readers will notice right away that this is a doomed flower. Which makes it not all that different from my usual photos of doomed towns. But still…
near Brenham, Texas
photographed 3.1.2014
Corner Window
Say it’s a sunny, cool spring day, and you don’t have a precise schedule. And say the state highway department is very good about signage, so that narrow roads that lead to tiny and remote country cemeteries are clearly marked. And say that your driver is good with the plan to turn down as many of these narrow roads as you want to take, just so both of you can see what’s there.
That is how I ended up at the Knobbs Springs Cemetery, just a few miles down County Road 305. But the real find down that road was an old wooden church next to the new, brick Knobbs Springs Baptist Church. The narrow white boards could have used a new coat of paint, and the windows might have benefitted from being washed. But, then again, this photo wouldn’t have had nearly the same look, would it?
Knobbs Springs Baptist Church
Knobbs Springs, Texas
photographed 2.28.2014
A bad answer
This shot of the caretaker’s shack was taken in the same cemetery as yesterday’s photo.
I took several pictures of this simple cinderblock structure. “Why are you taking a picture of that?” one of the day’s companions asked. It just felt like something I needed to shoot. I liked the texture of the walls and the shallow slope of the roof. I liked the way that one side or the other seemed to have been built at a different time. I liked the contrast between its straight walls and the every-which-way angles of the headstones. Maybe I felt sorry for it, the homely building squatting in the middle of the cemetery,overlooked and ignored. But when I was asked the question, I wasn’t able to articulate any of that. All I could say was, “I just like it.”
Old Independence Cemetery
Independence, Texas
photographed 3.1.2014
Old Independence
Sometimes when I go to cemeteries, things other than headstones catch my attention. Wildflowers, maybe, or things left at gravesites. I never know what it’ll be, and like to just wander until something catches my attention. On this particular day, in this particular cemetery, the most interesting things to look at were the relics of iron markers around the graves.
This cemetery is old (for Texas, I mean), dating from the early 1820s, and many of the graves were ringed by ornate metal fences. With few exceptions all the parts of the grave-fences were there, but almost none of them still held to their original alignment. And over the years, the metal had taken on a reddish, rough appearance; light-green lichen grew on a few of them. On the first day of March, the bright spring grasses made for a nice contrast, both in color and age.
And, so it was that on this particular day, in this particular cemetery, that contrast was what captured my attention.
Old Independence Cemetery
Independence, Texas
photographed 3.1.2014
Facing the tracks
Dime Box, Texas, is not the funniest town name in America. Traditionally, that honor belongs to Intercourse, Pennsylvania. I prefer Scratch Ankle, Alabama, Gnowbone, Indiana, or even Humptulips, Washington. Nevertheless, Dime Box, as a name, caught my ear, so that’s where I headed the next morning out of College Station.
– William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways
Even though William Least Heat-Moon’s visit to Dime Box was written a while back (Blue Highways was published in 1982), much of his description of the town sounded as though he’d been there earlier the same day as my visit. For example, he describes this scene as “worn brick buildings facing the Southern Pacific tracks.” Maybe that bright aluminum door has been added since his visit, but my guess is that the rest of the block looks much the same as it did the day he drove over to Dime Box from College Station.
Dime Box, Texas
photographed 2.28.2014
