Wagner's Store

Walter Wagner's Store. Silverville, Lawrence County, Southern Indiana.

When I left southern Indiana for college in Chattanooga in 1955, Walter Wagner's General store in the tiny crossroads village of Silverville was still very much a going concern.  In 2005 when I made this photograph, not so much.

I grew up on a farm about two miles away, and my brothers and sister and I made the trip many times -- on foot, on bicycles, and on a horse-drawn sled. In those days you could buy just about anything you needed at Walter's store -- a pair of shoes, a pair of overalls, a Coke, or a Popsicle. And groceries, of course. You could even buy a slice of ham or baloney, with which he would give you slices of bread and set out the mustard pot for an impromptu lunch.

Walter and his wife Ivy attended the little Baptist church about a half-mile away, where we also attended. (My parents and some of my siblings are buried in the cemetery behind the church.) Walter's wife was my Sunday School teacher and one of his daughters was my music teacher in high school.

Notice the long, rectangular block of concrete in the lower left of the picture? That's where the two gasoline pumps stood: regular and high-test. If you wanted to buy gas, you used the manual handle on the side of the pump. At the top of the pump was a glass container marked with lines and numbers to indicate the number of gallons you wanted. After you pumped your gas up to the desired level, you inserted the hose nozzle into your tank and dispensed the gas. 

Walter and Ivy are gone, as is most of Silverville. The old store was still standing as of 2005, but I imagine it's also gone by now. As are so many of the old things and old ways.

The photo was made with a Canon EOS 20D and the Canon EF 24-85mm f3.5-4.5 lens.

If you like my pictures, visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Click on the link at left for information about ordering original signed prints from the Rock City Barns book.

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2026 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography      travel photography   Canon EOS 20D camera      Canon EF 24-85mm lens    digital photography    southern Indiana     Silvervillee, Indiana

Life Gets in the Way

 The Maid of the Mist tour boat at Niagara Falls (Canadian side, 2019.) Fuji X-T20, 16-50mm Fujinon XC lens.

My regular readers (all five of them) will probably have noticed that my posts have been a bit sporadic of late. As I write at the foot of every post: "I post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way." Well, life has been getting in the way.

I began blogging in August, 2011, wrote six posts in a row, and quickly realized I couldn't keep up that pace because of my lack of personal discipline and the realization that it took more time than I was willing to commit to. So I shelved the whole thing for eight years.

In December, 2019 I restarted the blog and made a commitment to post three times a week. I've mostly kept that promise, with more  than 775 original posts over a span of six years.

But now, however, life is indeed getting in the way more intrusively in three ways:

First, I'm not making new photographs. I don't find Knoxville to be a very fertile place to make the kinds of pictures I want to make. And it takes time and miles of driving to get out where the pictures are.

Second, Louise and I are both getting older. Her back is an ongoing problem, so many times when I might have been able to go out rambling with my camera I needed to stay close to help her.

Third, my own lack of mobility. Since I had the bad fall at Potter's Falls in August, 2024, walking is not enjoyable. It's hard to make my kind of photos without doing at least some walking, including up and down hills and on uneven ground.

So in short, I'm not creating new content and that makes it difficult to keep the blog going at the level I've established. 

I don't want to quit blogging, so for now I will commit to at least one post per week. I might post more often if I have something especially interesting to share.

If you like my pictures, visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

 

Click on the link at left for information about ordering original signed prints from the Rock City Barns book.

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2026 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography      blogging   Fuji X-T20 camera     Fuji XC 16-50mm lens   

Passing through Gettysburg

 

Dead Confederate sniper at Gettysburg Battlefield. One of the best-known pictures from the Civil War.

Louise's grandparents immigrated from Ireland, settled in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and raised a large family. When her father was grown he immigrated to Maine, where he met and married Louise's mother. They moved to New York, then, when Louise was six, to Miami, where she grew up. Over the years Mr. Devlin gradually lost touch with his birth family. Around 2018 one of Louise's sisters was able to find and make contact with some Devlin relatives still in the Halifax area. So 2019 we hitched our Starcraft travel trailer to our valiant 2006 Chevy truck and set out for Halifax, Nova Scotia to visit relatives we had never met. 

Coming home, we took our time and worked our way down the Maine coast, camping at various places and revisiting places we had first visited in the 1980s. We then went west to Niagara Falls, and from there south through Pennsylvania to Gettysburg, where we met with one of our nieces who lived in the area and her son. They gave us a tour of the battlefield.

Sniper's Den, Gettysburg National Battlefield Park

 I especially wanted to see if I could find the location of the picture at the top of this post. One of the best-known photographs from the Civil War, it was made by Timothy O'Sullivan and Alexander Gardner after the battle. (They exercised a bit of "creative license" by moving a body 40 yards into position.) Nonetheless, it is a remarkably poignant photograph. The photo immediately above shows the sniper's hideout looking very much as it did in 1863. Rocks don't change much.

 Our mighty Chevy truck and Starcraft camper at Gettysburg.

The next day we toured the old town of Gettysburg and ate in a very old restaurant. Then it was back to the road home.

My photos were made with a Fuji X-T20 camera and the Fujinon XC 16-50mm lens. I have no information about the camera used by O'Sullivan and Gardner, but it was undoubtedly very large and made negatives on glass plates.

Click on the link at left for information about ordering original signed prints from the Rock City Barns book.

If you like my pictures, visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2026 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography      Civil War photography   photographic equipment    Fuji X-T20 camera     Fuji XC 116-50mm lens    Gettysburg   Gettysburg Battlefield National Park     Alexander Gardner, photographer     Timothy O'Sullivan, photographer