June 2011

Amish Pickup Truck
Garnett, Kansas
2011

I don’t know a lot about the Amish faith. In fact about all I know is that some Amish don’t drive motor powered vehicles at all. Around Garnett, there are some Amish that aren’t allowed to drive cars, but they can own and drive tractors, so you see a lot of Amish driving tractors around town on errands. They aren’t allowed to drive pickup trucks either, but apparently pulling a trailer made from the back half of a pickup behind your tractor is o.k. It seems to me like that’s splitting a mighty fine religious hair, but whatever works.

Patriot’s Dream #22
Waverly, Kansas
2011

Two sides of the same garage. It makes an interesting statement, although I’m not sure what that is. I did note that the Confederate flag was hung on the south side of the building and the American flag on the north.

What If
Overbrook, KS
2011

Doors like this are a common sight on some grain elevators. They’re intriguing to me because they look like they open right into the bottom of one of the big storage bins. It seems like I’ve asked this question before, but what if you opened the door; do you suppose all the grain would come spilling out on the ground? Besides the pending question, I like the photo for the same reason I liked the one from Waterville, KS I posted a couple of days ago. in that case the sky mimicked the texture of the grain elevator nicely, while in this one it’s the texture of the grass that matches the elevator.

Tall Drink of Water
Waterville, Kansas
2011

A tall skinny looking grain elevator whose height relative to it’s girth is only slightly exaggerated by the camera angle. I like the way the patchy clouds in the sky seem to mimic the patchy paint on the upper part of the elevator.

Bleached
Badlands National Park, South Dakota
2011

Scenic wasn’t the only place in the area south of the Badlands that looked a little worse for the wear. These trees have certainly seen better days. It looks like they sucked up a little too much alkaline water from the soil. The fence posts soaked up some of that water too but then they didn’t have as much to lose by imbibing as the trees did.

Indians Allowed
Scenic, South Dakota
2011

This saloon was a relatively recent business, i.e., not dating from 1906 as the sign suggests. I assume that the “Indians Allowed” part of the sign is comment on issues from a bygone era rather than information that actually needed to be posted. In the case of the former, the local Indians must have a good sense of history or a reasonably good sense of humor (or both) since the building is still standing.

Patriot’s Dream #21
Scenic, South Dakota
2011

The flag behind bars. I wonder what the charge was, maybe disturbing the peace?

Patriot’s Dream #20
Scenic, South Dakota
2011

I’ve been traveling the last two days, arriving today in Topeka, Kansas for my first art show of the season. I’ll be on the road a total of about twelve days this time out and will post photos from along the way.

Scenic, South Dakota is on the south border of Badlands National Park. Composed primarily of a string of business buildings obviously designed to cater to tourists, I don’t know if it was named Scenic and then became a tourist trap or was a tourist trap that they named Scenic in hopes of drawing more travelers into town. Either way, it didn’t work. Except for a few private homes and one repair type business, the town is all shuttered, abandoned, faded and dilapidated.

Cave Nuggets
Pictograph Cave State Park, Montana
2011

Some rather large (maybe three feet in diameter) chunks of rock embedded in the walls of one of the caves at Pictograph Caves State Park. From the looks of them, they may be about to become unembedded. (Or is that dis-embedded? My spell checker seems to think so.)

One on One
Pictograph Cave State Park, Montana
2011

A lone cloud and a lone tree…or maybe that’s two clouds, in which case the title is about the two clouds not the cloud and the tree.