Examining The Old Bones (52 Weeks, Episode 13)
On stealing photographs of drive-by monuments.
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1. Moving in The Construction Hardware
Dozers and excavators peel layers of soil from the tops of these mountains. Through the dust cloud, you can make out the shapes of men tamping gravel. Scores of other men drive nails into lumber, the pfft of compressed air shooting from their guns.
Across from my office, the field is scraped clean. In that field, stacks of blue pipe and concrete rounds wait for installation. Whatever they are, the visual blight is a temporary price paid for the commercial building that will live outside my office window for the next two decades.
We live in one of the fastest growing regions in the country, a region adding roughly thirty-six people a day. Growth brings money. Money moves dirt. Moving dirt changes the landscape. We’re living through another phase of a great construction boom, and that boom is a sign of everything we worship.
I consider the homes popping up across the county, tiny monuments to growing wealth. In a year, their Ring doorbells will capture an owner’s electric car pulling from the drive, the Walmart delivery driver dropping a load of groceries, the porch pirate stealing Amazon packages. These homes—each of them—are mini-data centers, generating gigabytes of useful information for who? The data shoots to the sky, falls into a server farm somewhere in the great plains or badlands.
I think about these many small data centers. Are they a virus? These perfectly angled homes with modern veneers boast interior decoration straight out of a Condé Nast spread. The colors pop, the lighting is a vibe, and each drives all manner of want. I am ashamed to admit it, but we’re damn-near up against Lent, so I will: These homes make me covet, no matter how much the good book says I ought not covet.
2. Drive-By Monuments
Some might say I make photographs of the old home places and barns in Northwest Arkansas. That’s not quite right. I steal them.
Sometimes I make these photos from the car, allow the motion blur to drive curiosity. Sometimes I pull to the side of the road and take a photo that captures these relics of a different age. I don’t overthink it. I do my best to capture the sense, the essence, the feeling. Maybe that’s nostalgia. Maybe it’s a middle finger to all the perfect angles and Ring door cameras. Like you, I contain multitudes.
The stone and brick bones that have populated this landscape for decades are drive-by monuments. We overlook them on our way to work with no sense of curiosity for the generations who’ve lived in them, cared for them. These monuments have cared for the people, too. And some of them will care for the people for another hundred years.
I drive by Lucas’s home, and I wonder why he would opt for the old Ozark stone home place? He owns his own construction company, after all. Couldn’t he build a sprawling icon of modernity on the cheap? Couldn’t he have the modern American dream if he wanted it? What does he want?
I drive past another house, a singular light on in the window. I wonder what happens in that room. I wonder if the kids have gathered around the dinner table, their parents telling them to put away their phones for the hundredth time. I wonder what’s on the stove tonight and what was on the stove 40 years ago. I wonder whether there are ghosts or angels hiding in the attic. I wonder what stories those stones could tell, and what they’d say to housing popping up across the field.
This morning, a couple will drive from their perfect home, and the eye on their door will watch them drive away. The belly of the home will be empty of its people, and it will know that—at least for now—it is the pride of a region. It will look across the field, watch the machines clear the ancient places, and wonder how a people could ever be satisfied. How long until what’s new becomes a memory?
AN INSTAGRAM RECOMMENDATION: Cory Martin (@jailchap)
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As soon as I saw the stone wall of that barn, I wondered what the person who built it was thinking during the days it took them to put it together. The work of someone's hands changing the landscape.
Everything becomes a memory right after it happens. So many of my memories remind me that I didn’t live sufficiently in the moment to appreciate those moments while they were happening. Now all I have are the memories and the occasional picture. Sometimes you make me think too much, Seth.😏