Union Church--Pettis County

 

A view inside the Union Church in rural Pettis County, during a glorious moment of late afternoon sunlight in mid-December.  This church has been on my list to photograph and document for seven or eight years now, and I was fortunate to find it in such good condition and with such beautiful afternoon light.

The opera house, the farmer, the desk, and more of its contents

After finding the Christmas card in the desk, we next pulled out an invoice from a Kansas City auto salvage company addressed to "Guillod's Garage and Auto Livery, Triplett, Mo." dated 1924.  Apparently the desk was from a mechanic's garage that used to be across the street, and when the business closed the farmer purchased the desk and brought it across the street to his storage building.  I really don't think that drawer had been opened in twenty or thirty years.  After taking a few more photos of the building and the environs, and then discussing local history, the farmer was kind enough to to direct me to a few more photographic locations in Triplett.  I think my stop in Triplett was the high point of the trip.

The opera house, the farmer, the desk and its contents

Back in October I took a two day photography trip up into northern Missouri.  Northern Boone, Macon, Randolph, Chariton, and Livingston counties were all on my agenda.  I took a chance on a tiny town called Triplett and drove the deserted streets looking for something to photograph.  I was astounded when I found a large, uniquely-shaped brick structure in fairly good condition, situated on what might have been Main Street.  I stopped to photograph the exterior when a combine and pickup truck slowly entered the building through a garage door on the side.  I spoke to the drivers of both and found out that they were a father and son who owned the building and who used it to store their farm equipment.  They told me that it was formerly an opera house, but could not recall the original name.  We went inside and I was able to take a few interior photos while the father told me what he knew about the history of the building and its contents.  Among the contents was a high legged desk. We opened the drawer of the desk and pulled out several documents and various items of ephemera.  One such item was this Christmas greeting card, dated 1923.  I carefully photographed the card while the farmer held it, using the light from the garage opening to illuminate it.  In this post I am only including the photograph of the handheld card, because it seems to be the most singular image of the five or six that I made while I was there.  In the next blog post I am going to post several of the photos together, in editorial fashion, in order to tell the entire story of the discovery.

Lost bird

I came across this lost cemetery decoration on the edge of a cemetery in northern Linn county, Missouri.  I was looking for a rural church that used to stand next to the cemetery, but the church was gone and only a belfry and some tombstones remained.

Yoga under the Oak

This is a photo I took of an impromptu yoga session underneath the grand oak tree at McBaine during the 2018 True/False Boone Dawdle.  It might be one of my favorites from this year's ride...a moment of stillness and poise during an event of chaotic, colorful kineticism.

A history of farming

In the back of my wife's grandma's barn, in rural Indiana, hang these implements that tell the story of the farm's past.  I've long worked on getting just the right angle and light inside the barn to illuminate them correctly and capture these items in a way that visually describes their history and their rugged longevity.  I'm no agricultural historian, but I would guess that both the plow and the other implement, which I think is an early rock-hauling sled for removing stones from a farm field, both date back over 100 years.  This portion of the barn probably dates back to the 1930s...wooden pegs were used instead of nails to hold the timbers together. 

Purdin Mercantile Company

I took a day off work and drove 125 miles to reach this building.  I remember first seeing it during a photography trip in 2010, and I have been enchanted by the prospect of coming back to photograph it ever since then.  The painted signs, advertising groceries, hardware, furnishings, clothing, shoes, and other miscellaneous goods, still stand in strong, easily-legible relief against the brick front of the building, preserved by the fact that the front of the building faces north and is therefore perpetually in shadow.  Purdin, Missouri is north of Linneus, a misspelled attribution to the notable botanist and father of binomial nomenclature Carl Linnaeus.  Linneus is north of Laclede, and Laclede is just north of Highway 36.  And yes, I'd like to go back and photograph this structure again.