Miles past the Pawnee Grasslands,
there is a town where the sun sets red and no one is around to watch it. A town
of fences and dirt, snow and quiet. Last weekend I visited this time capsule,
back out to the eastern plains where the skies are always bird’s eye blue and
the prairie always yellow.
Even before I made it to the town, nestled safely in no man’s
land, I realized I had come to another world. Like I hadn’t been really seeing
anything before, suddenly I had gone through a portal to the wild, where semis
hurdled down muddy dirt roads and dead crops peeked up from swathes of bitter
snow. Other than the trucks, there was no one here, as perfect as I could’ve
imagined it.
Stepping out of the car to the cold air, one of the first
things I saw was this yellow house, repainted a couple years back.
Off to the
right was another house and what looked like a mechanic’s shop, with a man just
getting ready to leave town for the night, not bothered by the outoftowners who
drove two hours for old wood. I strolled around the dirt corner and came to a
red brick shop. Every now and then when I come to a new type of abandonment, I
feel a sense of fulfillment. Fulfillment, strong with the pile of red bricks
and large KEEP OUT plastered on boards.
I found my way in through the collapsed building and inside
the store. Inside was dark. Comfortingly dark. I was greeted by the scurry of
an upset pigeon, flapping disturbingly close to my face. It’s always the damn
birds.
The storefront windows had been vacant for many years. The floors,
though old boards, were cushy in their carpets of torn insulation. Again, I
felt a great sense of fulfillment, not taking pictures but just being here.
Being back here, in the dim and musty that I had so dearly missed. I carefully shuffled further inside the
store, surprised. It was bigger than I thought it was gonna be. Past a dusty
black machine I came to the storeroom, rays of light peeking through from the
setting sun. Made my way back out, where the sun made the beams above look like
they were on fire.
I walked into a part of the shop filled with bottles and
jars, a welcome curiosity. I turned around to see a wall of peeling paint.
Finally! Up to that point, I had seen so many excellent shots of peeling paint,
so many in fact that I had no doubt they are one of the most clichéd shots, but
I had never mastered the peeling paint myself. One small step for mankind, one
large step for my portfolio.
A door in the jar room lead me to stairs winding up. I had
no idea such a small place even had an upstairs, another hidden treasure in the
winter’s late day. The stairs were cramped and I could feel them sigh under my feet.
I gave myself a small measure of comfort in knowing that if they did break and
I did fall, it wouldn’t be that long of a fall and I probably wouldn’t break
anything. Probably.
The upstairs was mostly empty, in contrast to the
claustrophobic density of the downstairs. Whoever ran the shop likely lived on
the upstairs level. I was struck as I vaulted over a fallen door and came to
the upstairs kitchen area. Even with the sagging floorboards, this felt like
home. Felt like a place you could have a cuppa or a couple cuppas. A place you could
sit down a long while and rest your bones, weary from a day in the fields.
I walked back down the tired stairs and back outside,
knowing there was still more to be seen. I jogged happily through the snow,
fingers beginning to freeze but my heart race increasing. Up the hill was the
old church where birds screamed at my approach, unwilling to stay above the structure's roof
for one shot capturing the motion of flight. Fucking birds.
There wasn’t too much to be seen at the church and there was
still more I wanted to see before the sun left, so I branched off to my left to
a muddy snow path. The sun was even more intense than it had been before I went
in the shop, and even though we were so far out, I could still see the
mountains proud in the distance.
An open gate lead up to the most easily identifiable feature
of the town, its black watertower. Beyond that were the remains of the
schoolhouse, gray concrete slab of stairs going nowhere. Beyond that the world
could have ended for all I knew. It was colder then, even though the sun seemed
to be omnipresent. Turning back to leave town, the whole sky dimmed to red.
There was no one there at that point but my dad and I. I’ve
seen a fair number of sunsets in my short life, but none quite like that one. It
whispered through the dead prairie grass and blownout windows, turning half of
everything intense and everything else to shadow. I stood before the old house
one last time, thinking to myself in that moment, no one gets to see this. I’m
seeing the most beautiful thing and no one ever even knows that it’s happening
right here, in this town, every night.
I took a couple more shots and then headed back to the car,
cheeks rosy and panting from the hike up to the watertower in heavy snow. Driving
the many miles back home, I didn’t even have time to glance in my rearview
mirror as the ghost town blinked out of consciousness one last time.
