Sunday Photographer


Last Sunday afternoon after church and lunch, Dad suggested that I might like to take a ride on his motor scooter. He did not need to twist my arm. We had had great fun riding the previous evening. Now I would go it alone. He pointed out that my camera bag would just fit into the scooter’s luggage compartment. I could take pictures as I went on this beautiful cloudless Sunday afternoon.

The first thing I did when I rode into town was to go to the automated discount fuel station Dad uses and fill up the tank. He had given me his gas card. Even now a gallon and a half does not set one back too much.

That done, I rode a few blocks to the old downtown area. I figured that it would be deserted on a Sunday afternoon. Actually nowadays it usually does not have many people at any time. As has happened in most small towns, the viable downtown I remember from my childhood has been devastated by competition from big-box stores located miles away. You can count the number of open businesses on Main Street on one hand now. The loss of local retail jobs and civic-minded small businessmen has been a great blow to the town’s civic life.

The side streets have fared even worse. A block east of Main Street there is a little shopping center. It once boasted an IGA grocery store (where I saw some of my first comic books), a little department store, a florist, and one or two other shops. Now the whole place is boarded up. I parked the bike in the deserted parking lot and took a picture of the grocery store’s battered sign against a blank sky.

Next I walked down to Front Street. Only one business remains open there. This is the family-owned pharmacy across the street from the railroad depot. When I was a child Mom would occasionally leave my brother and me in the car parked out front while she ran errands. We would look at the blue locomotives idling on the track by the depot, their huge diesel engines purring. This was during the oil shock of the 1970s, when people feared that fuel was about to run out and the schools were full of talk about energy conservation. I wondered how in the world they could waste so much fuel running the engine doing nothing. Much later I learned that it was actually more economical to let engines that big idle for a couple of hours than it was to stop and restart them.

The store was closed for Sunday. The depot was deserted. I could not see a soul around. There were not even any dogs dozing on the cool strip of bare earth between the depot and the street. When I was a kid the town had no leash law. You saw dogs wandering around and lying down just about everywhere.

The store front beside the pharmacy had been a TV repair shop. On the window I saw a small poster advertising a circus that had put on a one-day show at the town who knows how many years ago. When I peered inside I saw assorted junk and what had one been a nice pressed-tin ornamental ceiling. These old retail buildings have a lot of history, and would be good for years more of service if they were only kept up. It is a great shame and waste that so many have been left empty to decay all over the country, while fields and forests are constantly devoured by new construction.

Beside the TV store had stood the town’s movie theater. The TV store had, in a way, helped to put most of these small-town theaters out of businesses. The theater had stood derelict for as long as I could remember. The only person my age who ever claimed to have gone inside was a friend of my brother. He said he had seen strips of old film everywhere.

Some years ago the roof fell in. Now the lot stands bare. All that remains of the movie house are its tile floors, naked to the elements, and the marks on the neighboring brick walls where the ends of its ceiling beams had rested.

Something about the juxtaposition of empty space and surviving buildings, the sky and the exposed walls, and the old tile floors made this ghost of a building a great source of photographic compositions. I quickly finished the last few shots on the black-and-white roll of film I had loaded. I loaded a color roll and repeated my shots for contrast. The blue sky and the sun-bathed brick walls made nice color combinations.

As I worked, some pigeons perched on top of one of the walls watched me. Once a train blasted by less than a block away and scattered them. They must face this disruption several times a day, never getting used to it. When I was a child the blare of a train’s horn that nearby would have frightened me too. Now it was just an annoyance.

I returned to the scooter and rode just out of town to Sticky Road. In the days before modern roads this area had some of the stickiest mud around. I’ve heard stories of wagons that had to have their wheels removed to turn them into temporary ox-drawn sledges to pass over the mud that gave the road its name. Wheels and horses and mules just could not handle it. In my childhood the road was paved (badly) for a couple of miles out of town before turning into gravel. Some miles up the road was a tiny town that could only be reached over gravel. It somehow kept its own school open until the mid-1980s. Today it has a paved road running all the way out to it. It makes a lovely drive.

Just out of town on Sticky Road sits the municipal airport. Actually it is just a little air strip. Its only facilities are a wide open sheet-metal hangar and a wind sock. While I was downtown I had seen a plane that I recognized as belonging to one of Dad’s cousins flying away from the field. Now there was nobody there. I could walk right up to the hangar and the planes in it. There was a Cessna, a Beechcraft, an ultralight that my uncle had tried to fly for a while, and what looked like a tiny helicopter or autogiro underneath a tarp. As I got a photo of this last aircraft, I realized that the eves of this hangar bay sheltered a large number of buzzing insects. Together they sounded like an approaching airplane in an old movie.

I rode on up Sticky Road a few miles, to a little Pentecostal church that sits out by itself. I photographed it and rode back home. On the way back I got a shot of a house on a hill surrounded by pasture, with a pond nearby. It is a beautiful homestead.

Back home I found Dad snoring on the couch, resting from teaching Sunday School and preaching a sermon after a full week’s work. He would preach an evening message in a couple of hours. Mom sat in the kitchen grading papers. We chatted for a bit about my afternoon’s ride and her Spanish classes.

Then Dad woke up. It was time for them to begin getting ready for the evening service. I could not go with them. I had to load my belongings into the car and prepare for the drive back home. With no vacation opportunities on hand, I had to be back for work the next day. I said my goodbyes and headed out. It was a good evening to travel. Still, I always regret leaving.

As always, I feel like I'm there when i read your stuff. I feel bad leaving too.

It sounds like it was a good day.