This old truck sitting beside a country lane has been my subject for several years. I have watched it slowly crumble due to natural elements and vandalism. It seems to be more photogenic with each visit.
Tag: OM-D E-M5
Peacock Alley
This short narrated photo essay provides a glimpse of downtown San Antonio that most residents and tourists never see. Peacock Alley meanders through old commercial districts just blocks from the Alamo. It is part of the infrastructure of the city that dates back to around the time Teddy Roosevelt was in town recruiting Rough Riders for the Spanish-American war.
Ageing – Not Gracefully
This old lumber truck has been the subject of many of my photographs over the last ten years. It sits at the side of a dead-end country lane in the Texas Hill country next to a family run saw mill. I first photographed it on a sunny spring day when flowers were blooming through the rotting planks of the long flat bed. The scene was quite beautiful almost like a postcard of rural tranquility.
The truck was mostly intact the first time I saw it except for the wooden planking of the bed. The key was still in the ignition like someone had thrown their work gloves on the dash and stepped out after a day’s work. The years have taken a toll on the old truck. Someone broke out the side windows and mirrors to allow rain to eat at the interior of the cab. It also looks like a raccoon nested inside one winter. The sad signs of abandonment and terminal decline are evident.
As a subject the old truck just keeps getting more photogenic with each visit. It is settling onto the landscape and becoming a little more organic, if steel can ever be said to be organic, every day. An artifact of twentieth century American manufacturing prowess turned signature of Rustbelt glory.
Somehow in the post industrial twenty first century products just appear from somewhere, who knows where, for us to enjoy. We have no need for the cold hard steel that made us who we once were. My twentieth century immigrant grandfather, uncles and cousins who worked the railroad shops as machinists and tool makers would be lost here.
There is no room for nostalgia about the twentieth century. Too soon, too many souls are still around to tell it like it was. There is insufficient time yet for history to apply varnish to the old century. There is still too much evidence left to allow for a good story.