The Frank Inman House, Martin County, Indiana
It was my good fortune to grow up in the 1940s and '50s in a remote, sparsely populated section of southern Indiana. I was blessed to have the experience of a 19th century upbringing in the 20th century. Many of our neighbors still worked their land with horse-drawn implements, as did I, growing enough hay each year for our cattle. I was 13 when we first got electricity, and 15 when we got a telephone.
Our nearest neighbors were the
Inmans, who lived more than a half-mile away. They were even poorer than we
were, living in a small, log house with clapboard siding.
In 1955 I went off to college in the South and never went back to Indiana to live.
On a visit home in 1972, I spent a day rambling gravel backroads, photographing the abandoned houses of many of the people I had grown up with. Some of the houses were falling down or nearly gone.
Meanwhile, our neighbor Frank Inman had been killed in a hunting accident and his wife and children had gone to live with relatives in Illinois. I photographed their house through the wheel of a broken tricycle I found in the yard because I felt it gave greater poignancy to the feeling of abandonment.
Later, I said to Louise "I don't know why I feel drawn
to photographing old structures. I'll never make a dime doing it." (See my books Rock City
Barns: A Passing Era and Backroads
and Byways of Georgia to see how that played out!)
Photograph and text copyright 1972-2022, David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week unless life gets in the way.
Soli Gloria Deo
For the glory of God alone
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