Some new photos from Fort Wayne

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I've found a photo in my archives of Molly, my grandpa's old cat who lived to be 19 years old! She is standing on the wooden deck behind Grandpa's house scanning the back yard for something to kill; one of her favorite things to do! She was 16 in this photograph, which was made in 2007.

 

[scottgee1]

Chris, I just stumbled on this thread whilst looking for something else. I like the pix we can see; too bad all of the early ones you posted to it are no longer available.

btw, my wife's family is from the Ft. Wayne area -- formerly off Lima Road, near the little airport, now in Churubusco. 😉

Interesting that your images capture what I see in the area; a transition from rural to urban. Fewer open fields and working farms.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Chris, I just stumbled on this thread whilst looking for something else. I like the pix we can see; too bad all of the early ones you posted to it are no longer available.

btw, my wife's family is from the Ft. Wayne area -- formerly off Lima Road, near the little airport, now in Churubusco. 😉

Interesting that your images capture what I see in the area; a transition from rural to urban. Fewer open fields and working farms.

Thanks, Scott. The old photos are still on my website. The reason they're broken on RFF is I rebuilt my site a couple of years ago with a content management system and shopping cart. The photos locations on the server changed, and I would have had to go through all those RFF posts and edit them with the new image locations.

The little airport is Smith Field, and it is still there. The city was going to close it a few years ago, but backtracked when there was a big outcry in the community to save it. I was just in Churubusco last week. Bought some sugar cookies at the IGA store and ate lunch at Magic Wand!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Another from the archives.

The bedrock under Fort Wayne is limestone, and the rural areas outside the city are home to a number of quarries. The oldest and largest is the Hanson quarry on Ardmore Avenue on the southwest edge of the city. I photographed these piles of crushed stone back in 2012.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Last night, I went to Walmart to get a jar of spaghetti sauce and saw this guy standing in the middle of the Pasta aisle! I quickly took a meter reading then pulled out my camera and photographed it. This lawn gnome is 3 feet tall, the biggest I have ever seen!

 

[Michael Markey]

I've found a photo in my archives of Molly, my grandpa's old cat who lived to be 19 years old! She is standing on the wooden deck behind Grandpa's house scanning the back yard for something to kill; one of her favorite things to do! She was 16 in this photograph, which was made in 2007.

I remember fondly those early shots of your Grandpa and Molly.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I remember fondly those early shots of your Grandpa and Molly.

Thanks Michael, she was an awesome cat. I still remember her attempts to murder the dog, and the rattlesnake heads she brought back. Awesomely evil, but she was nice to me and that's all I care about!

 

[burancap]

Love the gnome! Made me smile.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

One of the most enduring symbols of life in rural Indiana is the barn, usually painted red with white trim, with a basketball hoop hanging on the outside. This one is on the east side of State Road 1, south of Yoder Road, a few miles outside Fort Wayne in rural Allen County, Indiana.​

I photographed it Tuesday evening, in the last glimmer of light at the end of the day, just after the sun, which was setting behind me, had dropped below the horizon.​

 

[Paulbe]

Chris--love the barn photo! Its profile reminds me of a locomotive....
Thanks for posting.
Paul

 

[oftheherd]

Thanks Michael, she was an awesome cat. I still remember her attempts to murder the dog, and the rattlesnake heads she brought back. Awesomely evil, but she was nice to me and that's all I care about!

Rattlesnake heads!!?? That was some cat. The fact of the rattlesnake heads and that she was nice to you, and I would guess to others of your family, says a lot about her knowing her place in life.

Thanks for the new photos. I always enjoy looking at what you post. I enjoy almost all of them, and they are learning tools as well.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Rattlesnake heads!!?? That was some cat. The fact of the rattlesnake heads and that she was nice to you, and I would guess to others of your family, says a lot about her knowing her place in life.

Thanks for the new photos. I always enjoy looking at what you post. I enjoy almost all of them, and they are learning tools as well.

Oh yes, Rattlesnake heads. Grandpa's neighbor saw her kill one in his yard one day. Its actually easy for cats to kill venomous snakes. Cats are smarter, have faster reflexes, and because they're warm-blooded they have a lot of stamina. Snakes actually tire very quickly during a confrontation with a cat. The cat's strategy is simply to dance around the snake far enough away that the snake can't strike, but close enough to scare the snake into striking multiple times. Once the snake runs out of steam, the cat can walk up and kill it!

Molly actually disliked a lot of people. My son's mother most of all. Molly hated her on first sight, and would attack her every time we visited my grandparents. Once she hid under the sofa and reached out to claw my son's mother's legs! She tried to warn me, and I should have dumped the woman, who turned out to be psycho.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Yesterday evening, I made another photograph of the Family dollar store being built on Bluffton Road in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I photographed this place the first time back in September when it was an empty lot covered in grass. The only thing that is the same now is the triangular shape formed by the trees in the background!

 

[farlymac]

They're closing more stores than opening them, Chris. Hope they don't just let this one sit empty.

My grandfather had a calico that he let run around in the big garage and store. Only time he would feed her was when she had a litter of kittens. After she would run the young ones off, it was back to mousing for her meals. Don't think she ever took a dislike to anyone I knew.

PF

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Yesterday evening, my son and I went to eat lunch at Magic Wand in the small town of Churubusco, Indiana. I was amused by the claim on their sign: "Rated A Top 10 Restaurant Of The Decade." They do have very good hamburgers!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

A couple days ago, I got a latte at Our Daily Brew, a locally owned coffee shop in Fort Wayne. When I got home, I noticed that their cups have a small American flag printed above the "this stuff is hot" warning at the bottom of the cup. How randomly out of place! I went back today and got another, and photographed the cup in the shop for my American Patriotism project.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This barn sits behind a house on South County Line Road, just west of Zubrick Road, on the southern edge of Allen County, Indiana.​

The man who owns it told me that he painted "In God We Stand," instead of the more familiar phrase "In God We Trust," because he felt that in today's world people need to do more than simply trust God. He believed that Christians had to stand with God, to stop the immorality of today's world.

I photographed it yesterday evening.
​

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Last night, I photographed Elmhurst High School in Fort Wayne as the sun was setting.

I graduated from Elmhurst in 1994, and my sister graduated in 1997. My parents were also Elmhurst grads; dad in 1968 and mom in 1969. I grew up a short walk from the school.​

In 2010, Fort Wayne Community Schools closed Elmhurst, which was the school district's oldest and smallest high school, as a budget-cutting measure. The school had originally been much smaller than the current building. The original 1920's building, which is still visible on the school's northeast corner, had been added on to several times over the decades.​

The part of the building visible on the left side of this photograph was not there when I was a student; it was added just a few years before the school was closed! The curved part on the right is the school's auditorium, which was added in the 1970s.​

The light was changing very rapidly when I made these photographs. They were taken just a few minutes apart!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I photographed this scene in the trailer park across the street from my house yesterday morning, when Fort Wayne was blanketed in fog and rain.

The man who owned the trailer in the background told me that the trailer park's owner offered to give it to him if he would fix it up and pay rent for the lot. The trailer had sat empty for years and the floors had been badly damaged by water from a leaky roof. He had just divorced and his wife got both his house and the house she owned before they married!​

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

These two bouquets of silk flowers lay on the ground in the neighborhood where I grew up. They're on the east side of Arbor Avenue, just south of Sandpoint Road, near the trailer park. I first noticed them during the winter, a few months ago. I don't know why they are there.

I photographed them last Thursday.