Around the town

Being a photographer, artist, designer and having an interest in history, I found myself interested in what the city I lived in had to offer. These pictures are a conglomeration of things I have found and was able to photograph over a few days.

Enjoy…

Respecting their history

I remember the first time I went to a junk yard with my Uncle. There were mountains of rusty car parts, twisted frames, car bodies with cut out sections used for other cars, blemished chrome and rows of forgotten cars. I was curious how these machines ended up here to their final resting places being picked over for parts until they were crushed and melted down to be reincarnated into something else.

I began to looking into how Henry Ford revolutionized the assembly line and how cars were built. I figured at the young age of 7 there were at hundreds of hands that had made their mark on a vehicle before it was ever started and driven on the road its first time from the miners who pulled the ore from the earth to the truckers who drove the ore to the refinement plants to the workers who melted the material to a piece of metal to the plant workers who had their processes to cut down, bore and polish the metal to a motor block, transmission or parts for each. From there there were the interior pieces, the plastic pieces, the glass pieces, the rubber pieces and so on until the paint was added and these machines assembled.

From there you had the car salesman and lot attendants who finally got the car into the consumers hands.

The car was used and either sold or passed on or traded in and the vehicle would have its marks, touches, scratches, changed hubcaps, paint changed or something that each owner did to it along its life.

They have absorbed a piece of each person who had taken part in their life to form their own character.

Even now when I go to junk yards 30 plus years later, I still wonder what kind of lives they had. Did that 1965 Mustang belong to a college student in the late 60's? That 1954 Bel Air belong to a business man in the 50's? Did that 1966 Dodge D-100 live its life on a farm?

When I see an old car at a car show, I am always interested in its history. Whether it was bought off the lot from an old woman who drove it back and forth to the grocery store once a week, driven once and put in a garage with 100 miles on the clock, driven hard and hot rodded, customized lead sled show cars or an old barn find, they all hold some interest to me.