I am drawn to looking at the fringes of things, especially the edges of towns. There’s something about the seasonal fireworks stands, the sketchy convenience stores, the low-rent retail operations, and I wonder how further growth will impact these places. Sometimes they get swallowed up, if the city’s moving their direction. Or if it’s not, maybe they eventually shrivel away.

And then sometimes, things take a faster turn – like this road just a few miles from my house. For years, it was a farm-to-market road that everyone called “1585.” Then parts of it were annexed by the city and it became, officially, 130th Street (although most people still called it by its old name). And now part of it is in the path of a new loop road around town, Loop 88, and demolition has already begun on the businesses that lined 1585 for all these years. It is a landscape that changes every time I go by.

My mind wanders all over the place on a good day, and now that I’m working from home and am without the daily dose of hilarious comments from co-workers, I’m left thinking things like, “How soon will we start to call our beloved 1585 just plain old 88?”

Lubbock County, Texas
photographed 3.17.2020