Fading Memories — My Sight

East of Interstate 5, on a 2-lane blacktop that zig-zags its way around irrigation canals and past orchards of bare trees, lies the tiny town of Alpaugh. In the center of town, at the crossroads of Avenue 54 and Road 38, sits the Alpaugh Grocery store. It’s not architecturally significant by any means, but something about it grabs my attention. It rears up suddenly out of nowhere, looming over its neighbors. It’s a jarring sight after miles of driving down empty roads with nothing but power lines and dirt on either side.

What was ubiquitous eventually becomes anachronistic. The devolution is slow and often escapes our notice. But zoom out a few decades and it becomes apparent that the changes happen relatively quickly. I’ve long been drawn to photograph buildings like the Alpaugh Grocery, to preserve these reflections of our past before they fade from memory. Some still serve their communities. Others are closed and abandoned. But what attracts me to all of them is the way they hearken back to an earlier time. Collectively, they form a mosaic that reveals the impermanence of our times, and ourselves.

I first saw the Alpaugh Grocery on my way back from Death Valley a few years ago, when I took a gamble on a rural road running between Highway 99 and the interstate. The old store wears its age with honesty. No one has tried to gussy it up. A dirty façade, streaked with years of rain; its lower half whitewashed in a losing battle with graffiti. Windows dark and covered by plywood. Blocky hand-painted letters announce its name. A rickety portico shields a dark entrance. It seems to be held together by a collection of temporary fixes that became permanent. It looks like it’s barely hanging on.

On that first trip I was through the town before I knew it, the old grocery store fading in my rearview mirror even as I kept glancing back at it. It was a foggy morning, and its’ white facade glowed as it rose out of the gloomy mist. It was one of those pictures you drive past, then kick yourself down the road for not stopping to make. But you don’t turn around, and the image haunts you. Still.

So when I was heading back to Death Valley at the end of January I retraced my steps backwards, hoping to see it again. Sure enough, about 30 miles east of the interstate, there it was. The foggy mist was gone, but at least there were a few clouds in the sky. I pulled over, and got out to take a look and make a few photographs. I’m glad I did, because there’s no guarantee I will drive past it again, or that it will still be there if I do.

As I stood there looking at it, my mind drifted back to other old stores I had come across in my travels. I thought about Buster’s Food Market, on the other side of the Sierras in Bridgeport, CA, where its weathered exterior under an ominous sky had caused me to do a double take, then a U-turn. I stopped to make a few photographs as a cold wind blew across its’ barren parking lot. Within a year, the building was clad in dark gray paint. The only sign of the old store was the “R” scavenged from its exterior, propped up in a window adjacent to its entrance.

Like Buster’s, most of the buildings I photograph will soon disappear. Knocked down by time, taking their memories with them. Had this winter’s heavy rains finally brought down the roof at the Desert Center Market that I visited last year? Was Clark’s Liquor still there? Has the Columbia Bar re-opened, or fallen down? Is the Cornwall Corner Store still “Small Enough to Know You and Large Enough to Serve You?”

It is not often that I return to one of these buildings to photograph it knowing it’s there, as I had done in Alpaugh. Rather, I typically stumble upon them when I am far from home, in the middle of nowhere and rushing to get somewhere else. It is tempting to drive on, telling myself I’ll return one day when I have more time and the conditions will be better. But I remind myself to pull over. To make the best of whatever weather and light is available. To wander around and soak it up, and try to preserve that moment before it disappears.

Because time is not on their side, or ours.