The Road Home

Posted on 8 June, 2009

The trip to and from Starkville is full of interesting things. It goes right through the heart of Mississippi through some of the most varying landscape possible. Once you leave the pine belt, it’s all kinda of different farms and different kinds of woods.

Along the way, there are several abandoned buildings, cars, and other things. Some abandoned long ago. Some in the not-so-distant past. Take this sign, for example. It was only a year ago when gas prices were $3.809 a gallon. This was a fairly recent abandonment. The building didn’t look like it was taken over by weeds yet (but the windows were boarded up).

The above ground fuel tanks, however, were starting to rust.

I went up to Starkville this past weekend to meet with friends and collect a few things I had left at the apartment. I thoroughly enjoyed myself over the weekend and feel really refreshed for the rest of the week. Next weekend will bring more photo opportunities. I’ll be visiting Silver Creek and stay the weekend at a friend’s house.

This truck wasn’t abandoned on the side of the road. However, the owner did put it out for sale on the side of the highway. I love old vehicles so I took the chance to get a good shot of it. Either I’m sensitive to the whole car sale thing, or everybody is starting to sell their cars. It must be the economy or something.

Everywhere I looked, cars were for sale. All kinds of cars. New cars and old. Cars in mint condition and cars that can barely run. Sports cars, compact cars, SUVs, and trucks. All were for sale at various prices. And I’m sure they are on sale for various reasons. Some of these vehicles will go on sale indefinitely, begin to rot, and eventually be abandoned and/or forgotten. I still have to locate that abandoned service station with the old 50′s era Chevys. It would make a great addition to this set.

Near the truck was a field with large hay bales and several cows. I originally intended on taking a photo of the field, but ended up taking a photo of the vegetation that was getting in my way (without trespassing, of course). I think this shot turned out just wonderfully in the end and I wouldn’t change it for anything.

This photo just shows the raw beauty of Mississippi’s farm lands. Vast open spaces of varying forms of agriculture. It’s the kind of charm I will miss and cannot get too far away from. I refuse to forget it and I refuse to have it destroyed.

This final photo has nothing to do with the above pictures. It is a picture from early Spring that I never got around to doing anything with. It was from a time when a friend and I went on a hunt for a lockbox in the middle of the woods that someone else on the Internet planted for people to find. It took about an hour and traveling to the Library, searching the Internet, locating a book or two, and combing the woods, but we found the lock box… empty. It was a fun thing to do.