El Paso landscape #12 (Infrastructure series). El Paso, Texas, 2018 by Bruce Berman
REDOING THE CLOCK
Redoing The Clock. El Paso, Texas, 2018
It’s been 5:00 o’clock at The Clock on Dyer Street for as long as I’ve been in El Paso (43 years).
It’s reassuring that time does not change particularly after 43 years (if you know what I mean).
But even in a land where time stands still, once in awhile, roadside signs need to be renewed.
It’s an art form. The letters are made of rubbery plastic. You have to know what you’re doing and this phantom sign renewer does. Name? Withheld. Working for the restaurant? Not saying. Getting paid? Maybe.
It’s almost 5:00PM for this image. It’ll be almost 5:00AM in twelve hours.
Even a broken clock is right… twice a day.
CROWN OF CANUTILLO, TEXAS: RUMINATION ON FACTS
Text by Bruce Berman
Whatever this crown was announcing is long gone. A bar? A restaurant? A store? Probably a bar… but who knows?
The photograph of the Crown of Canutillo, Texas is what remains (and perhaps a memory here and there).
Who constructed it? Why a crown in this funky little town that’s on the border up against New Mexico? Was there dancing?
Who knows?
CRANKSHAFT MAILBOXES
TRUCK WARRIOR
We like old cars because they’re like older people. A little twisted, Smashed up a little. Never gonna be what they were. Their very existence holds clues and mysteries about where they’ve been, what they did, where they lived, what happened to them.
The mysteries: What happened to twist her teeth? When did her paint disappear? What color had she been before the golden rust appeared? What tasks did this truck warrior perform through her long and, I am sure, honorable service? Who mourned her decent?
These things we will never know. There’s the limitation of a photograph: her past cannot be known, nor her future. There is only this, my noticing of now.
I guess the ultimate question is, does she still run?
¿Se serve?
If so, who does she serve and what service is left to do?