ghosts got left behind

Posted on October 9, 2026 by greg

What do you do on a bright sunny October day when you don’t want to do the stuff you really ought to be doing? You decide to drive 30 miles into the countryside to photograph an abandoned (and reportedly haunted) 1860s Italianate house for Wikipedia.

Well, that’s what I decided to do anyway. But some days just don’t turn out the way you expect them to.

The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has a Wikipedia page. Officially it’s called the J.G. and Regina Long house, but historically it was known as the Maple Grove Hill farm. Why? Because the house was set on a hill and Joseph Grayson (J.G.) Long planted a grove of maple trees which, in the mid 19th century, weren’t common in Iowa.

Three things on the Wikipedia page caught my attention. First:

According to local tradition, it was a stop on the Underground Railroad and features an underground tunnel connecting the house to a barn.

How cool is that? Very cool, is how cool. Who wouldn’t want to see a house with an underground tunnel (okay, ‘underground tunnel’ seems kind of redundant) to help escaped slaves? And then there was this:

a radio station in Iowa, has reported the house to be haunted by evil spirits due to its history.

Really, a house with a secret tunnel would have been enough. A house with a tunnel that was part of the Underground Railroad would have been enough. Dayenu, right? But on top of that we’ve got some evil spirits. It’s almost too much. According to the documentation to have the house listed on the National Registry,

A female wraith, projecting an image of haunting, albeit benign, sorrow, has appeared over the years to individuals in different rooms. The present owner, who has experienced the phenomenon, believes the figure to be Regina Hiskey Long, second wife of J. G. Long, because of its resemblance to a photograph of her.

So okay, maybe the spirits aren’t all that evil. Maybe Wikipedia got that part wrong. But even benign spirits are cool, right? And the third thing that caught my attention? There was no photograph of the house. We’re talking about a house that was part of an informal secret network to help slaves escape their bondage, a house haunted by a wraith (who may or may not have been evil, who knows?), and there was no photograph of it on the Wikipedia page? How was that possible? A house like that? It deserves a photo. The situation needed to be rectified. And I decided I was just the guy to do the rectifying.

So there’s me yesterday, camera in hand, ready to do right by Wikipedia…and what did I find? No maple trees. No underground tunnel leading to a barn. No barn, in fact. And absolutely no ghosts. Not even the slightest tingling feeling of ghostitude. I can’t say I felt cheated, because the house was still exceedingly cool (for an abandoned farmhouse), but it wasn’t quite what I expected.

There was a very good reason for that. It turns out the house has been moved. Back in 2012 the property was sold and the new owner apparently decided he didn’t want to own a historic haunted house. So another person bought it and had it shifted a couple of miles to this new location. The tunnel, the barn, the maple trees, and the ghost were left behind.

But here’s the thing: houses aren’t just buildings; rooms aren’t just areas enclosed by a ceiling, floor and walls. Inhabited spaces can be metaphors for the people who inhabit them. A lived-in room can inform you; it can answer questions. Who lived here? Who worked here? What were their lives like? How did their lives shape this structure, these rooms?

The J.G. and Regina Long house, even though it’s been moved and inhabited by many other people, can start to answer a lot of questions about who J.G. and Regina were. And the first question is this: how did they come to build a farmhouse in an Italianate style with Gothic arched windows in rural Iowa in the 1860s?

The U.S. Civil War had ended; ‘civilization’ was moving westward, driven by railroad expansion. The arrival of the Chicago & Rock Island railroad in Monroe, Iowa made it feasible for goods to be shipped from the east coast. Italianate style private homes had become popular on the east coast in the 1840s, largely because the development of cast-iron and press-metal technology made the production of decorative elements more affordable. Without the railroad, it’s highly unlikely an Italianate home could have been built in Iowa in the late 1860s.

An 1875 illustration of the Maple Grove Hill farm in its original location.

In the early 1860s, Joseph Grayson (J.G.) Long and his brother Jesse moved from to Iowa from Pennsylvania following the death of J.G.’s first wife. They’d been prosperous in Pennsylvania and farmland was cheap in Iowa. They both bought land, built similar Italianate houses, and became successful breeders of thorough-bred cattle. J.G. remarried (Regina Hiskey, a schoolteacher from Ohio) and had a family. Jesse became the president of a local bank. The future looked bright and promising for the Long brothers.

And yet, something was clearly wrong. In 1875, J.G.’s brother Jesse committed suicide by hanging. A few years later, J.G.’s son died from a self-inflicted gunshot. And according to the local newspaper, in 1899 J.G. himself “became insane, was adjudged a fit inmate for the asylum at Mt. Pleasant by the commissioners and has been taken thence.” He was institutionalized for a year; shortly after his release, he died in house he’d built. Jesse’s house was destroyed in a tornado.

Regina continued to live in the house her husband built; she died there in 1925. If ghosts actually exist, then I can see her as an “image of haunting, albeit benign, sorrow.”

The house and property passed through various hands until 2012, when it was relocated. It’s now completely abandoned. Sadly, but not very surprising, the house has been vandalized. Inevitably, at some point in the future, the house will be gone—either intentionally demolished or a victim of severe weather. It’s a shame for many reasons. There’s something poignant and tragic about any abandoned house, but especially one that held such promise when it was built.

As the documentation for its inclusion on the National Register of Historical Places says:

The Long house dramatically expresses the optimism and economic vitality, which [the region] experienced during its early years when its location on a major overland route from the southeast to Des Moines seemed to insure its future growth.

Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil’s Dictionary, defined the future as a “period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.” Obviously, that sort of future is often an illusion. J.G. Long surely didn’t anticipate his future. And hey, my day yesterday didn’t turn out as I’d expected. But spending time in the J.G. Long house, learning about his life and the odd history of the house he built, has been worthwhile. I do find myself thinking about Regina, alone in that large house out in the countryside.

Any actual ghosts may not have moved with the house, but house itself is in the gradual process of becoming a ghost. I’m glad I was able to witness and explore a part of that process.

unexpected romance

Posted on September 28, 2026 by greg

I live in Iowa, a farm state, but I don’t know dick about farms. Or farming or farm life or farm culture or farm technology. Crops—I can distinguish corn from soybeans. Livestock? I’m sort of familiar with basic farm animals—I’m okay with generic pigs and cows, but I couldn’t tell you about different breeds. I can identify some farm equipment, like a combine, though I don’t really understand what it does. I’m basically ignorant about almost everything farm-related.

That said, I’m sort of intrigued by farming in a sociological way. Periodically, I’ll make my way out into the countryside or I’ll visit a small town to shoot some photographs and maybe try to get a sense of what life is like for rural folks. In keeping with that, last week I went on a brief tour sponsored by the Iowa Barn Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving old barns. I expected to learn something about the history of barn architecture.

I did not expect romance.

Two sheds, a wheelbarrow of bricks, and a very red truck.

I’ll come back to the romance in a bit. First, the reason I wanted to take that tour and visit the Mitchell farm was to see their barn. Not the barn you see in the photograph below. Their other barn. The barn they bought in 2019, the barn a neighbor was about to demolish, the barn (built in 1915) they decided to jack up and move to their property. That’s right, the young couple you see in the photo bought a used barn for US$2000. Then they found some folks who’d put it on a massive trailer, and they had it hauled a couple of miles to their farm.

I was eager to see that barn. I figured any barn that could elicit that sort of response from folks must be one hell of a barn. But when we arrived at the Mitchell farm, I didn’t even notice the barn. In fact, I spent the entire morning on the farm and failed to shoot a single photograph of the exterior of that vagabond barn, that vaga-barn. Why? Because I was immediately distracted by…well, by everything else on the farm. Beginning with Matt and Libby Mitchell.

I noticed them even before I left the tour bus. They were sitting on the tailgate of a pickup, casually talking to each other. What struck me was how obviously comfortable they were with each other. Kicked back, patiently waiting for a bus to disgorge a small group of strangers who were there to nose around on their property. There was no sense of discomfort or unease or anxiety; there was, instead, a very palpable aura of quiet contentment. You could see that these two people liked and cared for each other, that they shared a casual, companionable intimacy. They were so obviously affectionate, so relaxed and comfortable, so contented. I wanted to photograph them…forget the barn.

Then, of course, there were all those tractors.

Some of the approximately 35 old tractors.

So many tractors. At one point I asked Matt how many he had. “Oh, about thirty-five or so.” Thirty-five or so. Like the actual number didn’t matter. What makes this even more weird is that the man doesn’t seem like a collector. At least not in the traditional sense. Not like people who collect coins or thimbles or comics. He doesn’t seem to be deliberately putting together a collection, he’s not out tractor-hunting. He just hears about old tractors nobody wants…and brings them home.

Those tractors? They’re all operational. They work. He hasn’t restored them; he apparently doesn’t care that they look like old tractors. He just wants them to work. To be working tractors. I don’t know, maybe he wants them to fulfill their tractor destiny or something, and tractors are supposed to work. That’s the purpose of their existence.

It was the same with almost everything on the farm. Matt Mitchell is something of an agri-tech otaku. He has a deep, obsessive passion for old farm equipment. He finds it, buys it, or barters for it, or just agrees to take it off somebody’s hands so they can get rid of it. Then he brings it home, gets it in working order, and…and that’s it. Then he’s happy.

Scattered throughout the farm are projects—some finished, some in progress, some only a vague promise in the future. It’s a working farm, of course, so there’s a haymow in the vaga-barn’s hayloft (a brief tangent; I learned that a haymow is a pile of hay, loose or baled, stored in a hayloft). The vaga-barn is also a place to store future projects. An old Suzuki motorcycle, a pair of ceramic farm sinks, a rocking chair, an old desk—all of it dusty and distressed but potentially functional.

Potentially functional, that seems to be the key. Functional and practical. Not necessarily practical in the present day, but practical for its time. For example, the vaga-barn has an operational Louden Hay Carrier. “What in the hell is a Louden Hay Carrier?” you ask. It was a revolutionary pulley and track system developed by William Louden in 1867. It allowed farmers to easily transfer hay (either loose or in bales) into a hayloft, which made it possible to build bigger barns with larger lofts to store more hay. Here’s a video showing how it worked:

Unfortunately, I didn’t learn about the Louden Hay Carrier until after I’d spent time in the loft, so my photographs don’t show the tracking system. But in the photo below you can see the loft’s drop door and the ropes that accompany the system.

The loft of the vaga-barn, with the ropes of the Louden Hay Carrier

Following Matt and Libby Mitchell around their farm, listening to them talk about the things they’ve acquired, the projects they’ve completed (or started), I came to understand their interest isn’t grounded in nostalgia. Nostalgia is a sentimental longing for a golden past that’s very likely imaginary. This isn’t about a desire to capture the past.

This is romance. Not the sort of soppy, sentimental romance we see in movies (and, okay, I confess to enjoying rom-coms, but this isn’t that). This is romance in an older sense. I’m talking about an active, emotional connection with, and affection for, old technology. It’s passionate, to be sure, but not the burning, all-consuming sort of passion that torches everything and eventually extinguishes itself. This is a quiet, relaxed, enduring sort of passion. It escapes the boundaries of logic and convention, yes, but it never strays very far from reality. This is romance grounded in the appreciation of the beauty, purity, and out-dated practicality of agri-tech that can still work.

Matt Mitchell praising mortise and tenon joinery.

The Mitchells don’t need a thing to be shiny or pretty; it just has to have a history, it has to have had a life, it has to have mattered once to somebody, and it needs to have the potential to perform its function. If that potential is there, the Mitchells would like to see it fulfilled.

That’s romance, right there.

rained out

Posted on June 11, 2026 by greg

I was supposed to meet a friend yesterday and do a sort of photo-walk. He’s got something planned that requires a specific sort of urban photography–street scenes without people. We agreed to meet at the top of a parking garage at 0930. That would give us the last of the morning light, and at that time of day most city workers would be at their desks instead of loitering around the street. The delivery drivers would have unloaded most of their goods by then, and the unemployed folks would probably still be in bed or having coffee.

We hadn’t counted on the storm, which arrived almost precisely at 0925. My friend had the good sense to turn around and go back home. Me? I’d arrived early (an old PI habit; you always get there early and check out exits). I was atop the parking garage watching the storm come. It was impressive. Lightning, thunder, wind, the complete package.

I do love a good storm. My camera, however, does not. My little Ricoh GR isn’t waterproof. It’s not even weather-resistant. I’ve had it out in a light sprinkle, but that’s it. This wasn’t the sort of storm that begins with a few tentative drops; this arrived as a goddamn deluge. I took shelter in a rooftop elevator lobby…at the opposite end of where my car was parked.

I was dry, but effectively trapped. That gold Prius in the photo below? That’s my car. Without a camera, I might have made a run for it. But nope.

I didn’t mind being trapped, really. I was dry, my camera was dry, and I figured the rain would let up eventually. I just had to be patient (which reminds me: a million years ago when I was in high school and got in trouble (again), the Boys Advisor told me that patience was my only redeeming quality). Besides, there were windows in the stairway beside the elevator, so I had stuff to look at. And, as I said earlier, I enjoy a good storm.

After about ten minutes, I remembered something obvious. The city of Des Moines has a skywalk system. And (I believe) it connects every public parking garage in the city center. So I wasn’t trapped at all. I just had to find the skywalk entrance and I was free to wander around.

I used to spend a lot of time in the skywalk system. It’s been somewhat diminished over time; a major urban fire cut off a large central chunk, as did some urban renewal. It’s not quite as extensive as it once was, but it still covers about four miles and connects over fifty buildings and parking ramps. The skywalk is climate-controlled–heated in the winter, air-conditioned in the summer. There are coffee shops, barbers, law offices, restaurants, small markets along parts of the skywalk. It used to be one of my favorite places for photography.

The thing about the skywalk is that it zigzags all through the downtown area. It not only connects building (hotels, banks, businesses, apartment buildings), it sometimes passes between them or behind them or through them. It crosses streets, rambles above alleyways, sidles up against structures, and reveals parts of the city you might otherwise never see. And reveals them from perspectives you wouldn’t otherwise get.

I roamed the skywalk for maybe half an hour, then the storm passed, the rain stopped, and the sun came out. I found the nearest exit to the street level, stepped outside and shot this photograph. The post-storm light was delicious…for about ten minutes, at which point the city became unbearably humid. I should have stayed in the skywalk. Instead, I hiked the streets back to the parking garage, got in my car, and went home.

I didn’t get to meet my friend (we’ll reschedule for next week) or shoot the sort of photographs he needs/wants. But I had a good time and stayed mostly dry. After a month of shooting mostly monochrome, it was difficult to think in terms of color again. I did shoot a lot of high contrast monochrome photos during my walk, but I decided to stick to color for this blog. It was refreshing to think about color again. Refreshing…I guess that’s what rain is for.

It worked.

agri-culture

Posted on September 4, 2025 by greg

The only thing I know about keeping livestock is…okay, I don’t know anything about keeping livestock. I mean, I know it’s hard work. I don’t know that from experience, since I’ve never kept livestock, but even sharing space with a pet (cats and dogs, certainly, and probably birds and lizards, what do I know?) means cleaning up after them. Even the tidiest of cats uses a litterbox and somebody has to deal with that.

Why am I talking about this? Because looking over the photographs I took at the recent Iowa State Fair, I noticed I have a lot of photos of farm people cleaning stuff. Cleaning their animals, cleaning the gear needed to take care of their animals, cleaning the things their animals pull, cleaning up massive amounts of animal shit. Everywhere I went, men and women and kids were busy cleaning.

And when I say ‘cleaning their animals,’ I don’t mean they were just washing them (although there’s an astonishing amount of animal-washing going on all the time). I mean they’re shampooing them, blow-drying them, combing them, trimming them, vacuuming them.

Seriously, people were vacuuming off…something, I don’t know what. Loose hair? Dandruff? Barn grit? No idea, but everywhere you go in the animal barns at the fair, there are men and women and kids vacuuming their livestock.

Women grooming sheep while men sit and chat.

These animals weren’t just being cleaned; they were being groomed. Meticulously groomed. (Okay, sorry, a slight tangent here. The term groom has a slightly hazy etymology. It’s probably(?) related to the Old English growan, meaning ‘to grow.’ At any rate, by the 14th century groom referred to a male servant who attended to officers (and their gear and horses) in a noble household. By the 19th century, the noun had been verbed, and groom referred to the process of tidying up or preparing for a purpose. So groom referred to both a person and what the person did. I don’t know why I thought you needed to know that, but there it is.)

A young girl vacuuming (or blow-drying) a cow.

As I was saying, these livestock animals (and I’m talking about cows, horses, pigs, goats, sheep, llamas, alpacas (is that the plural of ‘alpaca’?), rabbits, and chickens (do rabbits and chickens count as livestock? No idea.) are meticulously groomed. It’s clear that some of the grooming is done in the hope of winning a prize, but it was also clear that much of it was done out of pride and affection. That was especially true of the younger people.

Here’s a thing you probably need to understand. All this cleaning and grooming? It’s taking place in and around massive cooperative barns housing hundreds of animals. Animals are noisy, so these barns are a constant barrage of animal noises. Also? Animals shit and piss a lot. I mean, a LOT. And they’re not particular about where or when they do it. So even though there’s a constant stream (so to speak) of people shoveling, sweeping up, and carting of waste products (the logistics of livestock waste management must be staggering), the fact remains that these massive barns…well, they smell like you’d think they’d smell, but not as bad as you’d expect.

What I’m trying to say here is that there’s an astonishing amount of hard work done by the farm families who bring their livestock to the fair, and all that work makes the environment as pleasant as possible. One of my reasons for visiting the animal barns during the State Fair is to look at animals, of course, but it’s also to see this remarkable group of people cobble together a shared sense of community. There’s something very tribal about it. And as a sociologist by training, it’s fascinating.

But here’s the problem with being a sociologist: I know that the farming community I see at the State Fair is, largely, a myth. Around 40% of farms in Iowa are owned by corporations. Modern farming, even among non-corporate farms, is a business more than a self-sufficient way of life. The farming life we witness at the State Fair is something of a sentimental homage to an idea of rural living from the past. An homage grounded in nostalgia and an agrarian myth.

But so what? I’d argue there’s value in that. The fact is, it’s not corporations who are grooming their livestock at the State Fair. It’s not corporations who are hauling manure and polishing wagon wheels. It’s families doing that.

My visits to the State Fair animal barns always leave me impressed (and yes, a wee bit stunned by the smell and noise). I leave those barns profoundly grateful there are people–families–still willing to do the hard work of making sure the world gets fed. As myths go, this is a pretty damned good one, and I’m glad folks are keeping it alive.

the one thing everybody agreed on

Posted on June 15, 2025 by greg

Like a few million other folks, I showed up at the local No Kings protest. We were all there for the same fundamental reason: because Comrade Donald Trump and his cadre of Nazgûl have been merrily shitting on…well, everything that’s good and promising and hopeful and decent about the US.

People are pissed off about SO MANY things Trump has done (and intends to do). The attacks on immigration, science, trans rights, healthcare, civil liberties, the environment, due process, Gaza (and Israel and Iran and and and), veteran’s benefits, free speech, the national debt, the January 6th pardons, everything about January 6th, the assault on education, the assault on libraries, the assault on the very concept of Truth.

But one thread tied all the anger and frustration and resentment together. A deep, abiding rage against Donald Trump as a person. Not only for the horrors he’s inflicted on the United States, but a profound loathing for him as an individual. As I wandered through the No Kings crowd, I kept seeing this same sentiment. Fuck Trump.

People really hate this motherfucker and they hate him personally. They hate him for what he’s done, they hate him for what he wants to do, and they hate for him who he is. Which, I suppose, is only fair, considering how many people he hates for who they are. Trump has a singular talent for both hating others and being hated.

Why do people hate him so? Because he’s a liar, because he buried one of his many wives on a goddamn golf course, because he’s betrayed the United States, because he’s got truly godawful taste in everything, because he’s cheated on every wife he’s had, because he’s massively ignorant and unaware of it, because he’s a liar, because he’s fucked over every person and contractor he’s ever worked with, because he’s an unrepentant racist, because he hates women, because he loves autocrats, because he’s a liar, because he’s a coward, because he’s never owned a pet, because he’s a narcissist, because he pretends to support the military but believes they’re losers, because he’s a liar, because of his stupid fucking red hats, because he’s a phony, because he’s put incompetent people in positions of power, because he insults everybody who disagrees with him, because he’s a vindictive prick, because he’s a liar, because he’s rude, because of his stupid fucking hair, because he encourages his followers to be violent, because he hates immigrants but hires them to work for his resorts, because he’s shit all over the Arts, because he’s a liar, because he’s cruel and enjoys inflicting harm on others, because he pretends to be a Christian without having an inkling of Christian charity, because he’s a sex pest, because he’s committed many many crimes but has never been held accountable for any of them, because the people who like him are all massive assholes, because he’s a fucking liar.

I’m sure I’ve skipped a few dozen other reasons why people hate him. But I think you get the point. People sincerely hate Trump.

But there was another guy at the No Kings event. Bearded guy, dressed all in black, sitting on a granite railing. He was wearing a T-shirt that said “Hate Will Never Win.” I hope he’s right. I genuinely hope hate won’t win. But I also hope the hatred against Donald Trump will get people to stand up for themselves and for others. I hope it will get people to push back against his authoritarianism. I hope it will get people to vote. I hope it will get people to hold Trump accountable for all (or at least some) of the horrible things he’s done to this country.

And then I hope we can let go of that hate.

small love story

Posted on December 12, 2024 by greg

I’m at the Christkindlmarket and I see this guy and his dog sitting at a table. He’s holding the dog and the dog is leaning against him. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the moment I saw them I thought, “Madonna and child.” I blame all the Christmas stuff for that. I’m not a Christian, but I’m a fan of any holiday that’s (supposed to be) about love and sharing.

Anyway, I’ve got my little Ricoh GR3X in hand as I approach them, and the guy knows why I’m coming. I could see it on his face, the recognition that I wanted to photograph his dog. And it obviously pleased him. I barely got the words out…”Would you mind if I…?” before he said, “Sure.”

The dog, though, seemed a tad uncertain, so I slowed down. Instead of the close-up I’d intended, I stayed back a bit. Instead of shifting my position to isolate the guy and his dog from other people from the frame, I stayed still. Instead of shooting 3-4 frames, I took only one. I moved slowly to take the photo.

I said something like, “He’s a wee bit shy, isn’t he.” The guy said the dog was timid around other people, which is why he’d brought him to the Christkindlmarket and why he was holding him. He wanted the dog to feel safe and protected, but he also wanted him to get used to being around other people.

I didn’t even try to pet the dog, though I wanted to. I didn’t try to shoot more photos of them, though I very much wanted to. I figured the little guy was dealing with enough already.

In the end I said something like, “You’ve got yourself a little buddy.” He said, “I sure do.” And I walked away. But seeing them together lifted my spirits–which, given the world as it is today, was quite a feat. The obvious bond between them, the care the guy was taking with the dog, the trust the dog had in the guy — it was lovely, and I was weirdly proud of them both.

I could have taken a better photograph of them. They deserve a better photo. But it might have made the dog nervous, and no photo would be worth that.

colors, textures, and retirement-age train otaku

Posted on September 29, 2024 by greg

I’m not a train guy. Not a railroad guy. I mean, sure, I like trains and railroads. I appreciate their historical significance. I like to hear their whistles and see them rumbling along the tracks. I absolutely love the photographs of O. Winston Link. But if somebody asked me if I’d like to go spend a day looking at trains, I’d say…well, I’d say yes. Not because I’m a train guy, but because I’ll go look at just about anything.

And that’s exactly what I did recently. I agreed to go on a family/friend train excursion that included historic trains, a small train museum, and a dining experience in an old train that traversed some fields and woods and a ridiculously narrow bridge over a rather high river valley. It wasn’t something I’d have chosen on my own, but I’m really glad I agreed. (Pro-tip: always agree to do almost everything, because you never know.) It was fun and, of course, I took a few photos.

I’d expected to enjoy the train ride, and I did. There was a period of time when I lived on the East coast and I frequently traveled by train–Boston, New York City, Washington, DC, Norfolk. I always enjoyed it. But there’s a radical difference between (what in the US passes for) ‘modern’ train travel and an historical train. The engine that pulled our dining cars wasn’t a steam engine or anything, but it was old and slow and pleasantly lazy. Which was just as well, since the tracks were also old and the train swayed a LOT more than any train I’d ever been on. Hell, at times it swayed more than a lot of boats I’ve been on. You don’t want a lot of swaying when you’re on a high trestle bridge over a river valley. Still, it was fun and the food was surprisingly good.

But the train ride and the meal were, for me, secondary. Hell, they were tertiary. I could have spent the entire day noodling around the train yard, looking at stuff I didn’t understand and appreciating it. BIG blocks of color. Gobs of dark, sexy shadow. Weirdly-shaped mechanical bits and bobs. And who knew trains had so many ladders? Everywhere you look, there’s a ladder. And different shapes of ladders, at that.

I hadn’t anticipated being fascinated by the shapes and forms, particularly of the works of the undercarriage (if that’s what it’s called). Everything was so massively sturdy. And I was completely captivated by the colors–the sun-faded greens, the bright yellows and oranges, the weathered reds and russet browns of the cars. I could have spent an hour just looking at the variety of textures and photographing the industrial weirdness of the undercarriage.

For once, I was more interested in the stuff than in the people, and I rather regret that because when I took a moment to actually talk with the people they were…well, I guess you could call them retirement-age train otaku. They were obsessive, but reserved until encouraged. One guy, with minimal encouragement, agreed to let my brother and I climb up an exterior ladder into the engineer’s cockpit (if that’s what it’s called). I don’t think it was actually prohibited, but it was certainly not part of the routine. Once we got up there, he explained how the engine, which had been built in 1958, had been retired from some Canadian railroad. He rattled off the specifications of the engine, and where it fit in the evolution of train engines. I suspect he’d have told us the entire life history of that particular engine, but folks were waiting for us and we had to leave.

I actually regretted leaving the train yard. But not everybody shares my interest in weathered paint and arcane mechanical whatsits, so I left without complaint. Now I find myself with a metric ton of train-related photographs, and while I’m hesitant to impose them on the unsuspecting Intertubes, I’m afraid you’re going to see more train stuff on my social media. Of course, I won’t be able to identify what’s IN the photos. You’ll have to find a retirement-age train otaku for that.

i still talk to strangers

Posted on September 10, 2024 by greg

I wrote a piece back in April of 2023 about my habit of talking to strangers. Here’s a somewhat concise summary of the point of that post.

I like talking to strangers. I like meeting new people and learning something about them. Granted, most of my conversations with strangers are casually superficial, so it’s not like I’m learning anything important or meaningful about them or their lives. But the simple fact of meeting and having an idle conversation with random strangers tells me something about humanity in general.

And this is what I’ve learned: most people are pretty much okay.

That’s still true. Most people really are pretty much okay. A few days ago I found myself in Perry, Iowa, a small town of about 8,000 people. As my companion and I walked down the street, we saw a guy get out of a pickup truck, carrying a couple of small jars. One of which looked like homemade pickles.

I kind of leaned forward and grinned at the jar of pickles…and he stopped. He was delivering the pickles and some homemade cherry jelly to a couple of friends in a nearby shop. I asked if he sold his homemade goods, and he said, “No, I just give them to friends.” He asked, in a very kindly but curious say, what we were doing in Perry. I told him we were just walking around, looking at the town and its architecture, shooting photos.

He started talking about the town—how it had changed over the years, how it had fallen on hard times, and he started to get a bit emotional. I said something vague about how it was clear that he loved his town, and that sort of love was a wonderful thing. Then he left to deliver his goods.

We walked on. I stopped to take a few photos. And then the guy came trotting up to us. The friend who was to get the cherry jelly wasn’t in the shop, so he thought we might like it. This stranger, just because we’d chatted with him for a bit, wanted to share his jelly with us.

Randy Kennedy and a jar of cherry jelly.

Randy Kennedy. He’d lived in Perry most of his life, and he walked with us down the street, giving us a history of almost every building and the people/families who lived/worked in them. The old shoe store owned by Greek immigrants, whose son was a hero in the Second World War. The French woman who ran a small diner/sandwich shop, and the various sandwiches she made, and how he and his friends would tap on a window and she’d sell them sandwiches through the window. The florist whose shop always smelled so nice. The building where the local newspaper had been printed and how he and his brother had been paperboys and they’d gather at “that door right there” and collect their papers, and how he was sometimes late in getting his deliveries made because he’d stop and get a slice of pie at another shop. He told us about two taverns with doors on opposite sides of an alley, one for hippies and one for farm folks, and how they’d drink together and argue politics in the 1970s.

As we walked and talked, other locals would drive by or ride by on bikes, and many of them would call out to Randy, and he’d wave back. He walked with us for maybe thirty minutes, telling us stories about how wonderful the town was, and how it was failing now, and how MAGA had created deep rifts in the community. He talked about the way the town felt increasingly divided, and had become less tolerant. He talked about the local pork producing plant that closed six months earlier, putting 800 people out of work. Eight hundred, out of a population of eight thousand.

He didn’t mention the school shooting that happened in January, leaving an 11-year-old boy and the school’s principal dead, and seven others wounded. Some things were apparently still too raw to talk about. But most of the shops—even the ones that were closed and empty—kept ‘Perry Strong’ posters in their windows, maybe claiming more resilience than the town actually has. Maybe hoping resilience would hold the town up long enough for some good news.

This guy loved his small town and was proud of what it had been and mourning what it had become. He was pessimistic about the future, but desperately hoped he was wrong. His love for the town was heartbreaking. He was sad, but said he was okay. That’s when I asked if I could take his photograph, holding the jelly he’d give us.

Like I said in my earlier post, most people are pretty much okay. In a lot of ways, being okay can be seen as a victory. Randy Kennedy may look a wee bit sad in this photo; he has good reason to be. And yet he’s basically okay. The proof of that is that he chased a couple of strangers down the street just to give us some cherry jelly that he’d made himself.

I talk to strangers. I will always talk to strangers. And this morning, I had cherry jelly on my toast.

gregfallis.com

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