The buildings of small towns seem, to me, like feathers stuck in a barbed
wire fence.
Driving on road trips from Chicago to our respective childhood homes, JD and I often pass through small towns. Very often, these small towns have one or two buildings originally erected, years before, to meet a specific purpose and have, since then, spent decades in slow deterioration; the paint blistering away to infinite tones of gray.
Seeing them prompts me to wonder about their story. I wonder how they got there, how long they’ll hang on like that, clinging. There’s no apparent ecosystem of infrastructure to validate or support their presence. They merely are, with little reason to be; as such, they could cease to exist altogether one day, and nobody would be the wiser.
Buildings in cities, however, are the feathers of a bird. One doesn’t have to wonder about their existence; for the most part, their story is immediately apparent. You don’t have to agonize over a building’s longevity, either: should it ever cease to be where it is, another will quickly take its place.
Driving on road trips from Chicago to our respective childhood homes, JD and I often pass through small towns. Very often, these small towns have one or two buildings originally erected, years before, to meet a specific purpose and have, since then, spent decades in slow deterioration; the paint blistering away to infinite tones of gray.
Seeing them prompts me to wonder about their story. I wonder how they got there, how long they’ll hang on like that, clinging. There’s no apparent ecosystem of infrastructure to validate or support their presence. They merely are, with little reason to be; as such, they could cease to exist altogether one day, and nobody would be the wiser.
Buildings in cities, however, are the feathers of a bird. One doesn’t have to wonder about their existence; for the most part, their story is immediately apparent. You don’t have to agonize over a building’s longevity, either: should it ever cease to be where it is, another will quickly take its place.
