Groom, Texas
I found this abandoned house on the edge of the panhandle town of Groom, Texas during my trip back to Santa Fe after I took my son home to his mother in Indiana.
September 29, 2007
Texas Windmill Farm: Part IV
This is another photograph that I took when my son and I stopped to see the windmill farm near the Texas panhandle town of Vega. This is Everett Road, looking south toward Interstate 40. The windmills are to my back as I look down the road toward the overpass.
September 28, 2007
Snapshot of My Son
After I picked MacKenzie up in Fort Wayne back in July, we headed down Interstate 69 toward Indianapolis. I stopped to photograph something along the highway and Mack got out to play with his Star Wars lightsaber. My son is a huge Star Wars fan!
September 26, 2007
Texas Windmill Farm: Part III
The final photograph from the windmill farm near Vega, Texas. Everett Road stretches out into the distance toward the windmills at the horizon in rural Oldham County just north of Interstate 40 in late afternoon. These photographs are from my trip to Indiana to take my son back to his mother after his summer visit with me in Santa Fe.
September 25, 2007
The Ortiz Mountains in Early Evening
The Ortiz Mountains to me are more interesting than the more famous Sangre de Christo Mountains that surround Santa Fe to the north and east. The rtiz are located in west-central Santa Fe County about 35 miles south of the city. They’re visible from Santa Fe and from most other parts of Santa Fe County as well.
I often photograph the Ortiz from La Bajada Mesa, and that’s where this photograph was made in early evening a couple weeks ago. I stood along Interstate 25 atop the mesa near the western edge of the mesa. The eastern edge is visible in the image in the distance.
Texas Windmill Farm: Part II
Here is another photograph of the windmill farm near the town of Vega in Oldham County, Texas. The clouds were so beautiful that day, and that blue sky!
Route 66 Drive-In
I passed by the abandoned Route 66 Drive-In theater outside Weatherford, Oklahoma several times during my many trips back and forth from New Mexico to Indiana in the summer of 2007. I never passed it when the light was right until the very last trip, when I stopped and parked my car in the parking lot of the modern indoor theater next to it. I walked back through tall weeds to the drive-in and found the projection and concessions building with Bugs Bunny thinking of popcorn!
September 24, 2007
Windmill Farm: Oldham County, Texas
I had passed this windmill farm near Vega, Texas several times but never got to stop until I was driving my son back to Indiana after his visit with me in Santa Fe this summer. He thinks the big energy-generating windmills are cool so we got off the highway and drove the country roads looking for a closer view of the windmills, which we could see from Interstate 40. This is the first of several photograph that i made as the clouds moved rapidly above the landscape.
September 22, 2007
Grandpa 4-28-07
My grandfather, Charles Crawford, is 82 years old and has Alzheimers. I made this photograph during a visit to my hometown in Indiana back in April. I took him out to eat at Cracker Barrel, one of his and my favorite restaurants. When grandpa was healthy, we used to go out to eat together all the time and that’s the first thing he wanted to do when I got back to Fort Wayne for my visit.
O. L. Duncan
I met Mr. O.L. Duncan when my son and I were driving to Santa Fe in July, 2007. He was working at the T and M Truckstop, a tiny gas station along Interstate 40 in the Texas panhandle just west of the town of Shamrock. Mr. Duncan told me that he retired in the mid 1980’s but decided to work at the gas station to have something to do. He insisted that most retired men just sit around “Twiddling their thumbs”, which he believed was bad for one’s health. He told me that those who twiddle their thumbs all day tend to die within a few years of retirement, and he credited his continued work for his long life and good health
When I took his picture, I promised to bring him a print next time I passed by, so I stopped by to visit him again a month later after I had taken MacKenzie home to his mother. He loved the print, and we sat and talked for a while. We got a good laugh out of a couple guys that were stopped by the Texas State Police in front of the gas station. The police completely emptied the minivan the men were driving and searched every item in it. Mr. Duncan says the cops catch a lot of drug runners around there.
