Some new photos from Fort Wayne

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

After visiting the Three Rivers Festival, I saw this sticker on a light pole at the intersection of Clinton Street and Fourth Street in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana.

It looks like a one dollar bill, but if you look closely, it says: "Trust No One."

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I photographed this train on the tracks just south of Edgerton Road in rural east Allen County, Indiana. It was a rainy day, but there are a couple of birds visible in the sky above!

I made this photograph on 7-27-17, a few minutes after I photographed the wind farm near the state line in Paulding County, Ohio.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Still working my way through my backlog of work to post.

I photographed this street preacher, who told me that her name was Chris, on the corner of Coliseum Boulevard and Coldwater Road in Fort Wayne last September.

Her t-shirt says: "Jesus Saves."

 

[Rob-F]

Here is the last of the three photographs that I made of the windfarm in Ohio a couple weeks ago.


This wind turbine stands in a hayfield on the Ohio side of State Line Road, between Township Road 94 and State Route 613, in Paulding County, Ohio.


I found it interesting that the entrances to all of the wind turbines (there is a door on the side of the mast) were elevated several feet off the ground, with a little stairway leading from the ground up to the door. You can see it in the crop below:

Entrance? You mean you can go up inside it? Is there a circular stairs inside? To get to the top for maintenance, apparently. Or maybe they just go into the base to flip a circuit breaker or take readings? I wonder if they are all like that; I didn't realize they are big enough to go inside of.

 

[Larry H-L]

Not sure if spiral stairs exist in these, but some I have seen have a series of ladder work and platforms... all the way to the top.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Entrance? You mean you can go up inside it? Is there a circular stairs inside? To get to the top for maintenance, apparently. Or maybe they just go into the base to flip a circuit breaker or take readings? I wonder if they are all like that; I didn't realize they are big enough to go inside of.

Yeah you can go inside. The big box on top that the windmill blades attach to is actually quite large. About the size of an RV. It contains gearing and the generator. Access to the top is needed for maintenance and repair.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Not sure if spiral stairs exist in these, but some I have seen have a series of ladder work and platforms... all the way to the top.

I searched online and all of them I saw had one LONG ladder all the way to the top. No stairs and no rest platforms. After a climb like that, I'd be too damned tired to work by the time I got up there if I were one of the mechanics that service these things.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Another photo of the street preacher I photographed last September in Fort Wayne.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Small businessman Jim Hawkins stands behind the counter of the New Paris Store in the small town of New Paris, Indiana. The store is in a former drugstore built in 1901, and still has the original molded tin ceilings.

Jim opened the New Paris Store in 1978. The store sells cigarettes, some food items (mostly candy and other snacks), and secondhand merchandise that people bring in and sell to the store. Most of the used merchandise goes on Ebay. Renting DVD movies is a big part of the store's business, second only to tobacco sales. Jim estimated that cigarettes make up 70% of his sales!

New Paris is in the southern part of Elkhart County, a few miles south of Goshen. I made this photograph on the evening of December 31, 2016. It was my last photograph of the year.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

The front of of the New Paris Store in the small town of New Paris, Indiana. The building is a former drugstore built in 1901. The gable stone above the door, installed when the building was constructed more than a century ago, says: "Drugs." I photographed the store at sunset on a January evening.

Yesterday, I posted a photo of the inside of the store, with the owner standing behind the counter.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Yesterday morning, these handmade signs appeared around the neighborhood around the former Elmhurst High School building at the corner of Ardmore Avenue and Sandpoint Road in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

In 2010, Fort Wayne Community Schools closed Elmhurst High School. Opened in the 1920s, it was the oldest high school in the city. In August of 2012, FWCS auctioned off the furniture and equipment in the building. A couple of weeks before I made this photograph, FWCS announced that the school property had been sold to Hanson Aggregates, the limestone quarry located behind the school. Hanson intends to demolish the school.

I graduated from Elmhurst in 1994. My parents both graduated from Elmhurst in the late 1960s. It was Elmhurst's longtime art teacher, Don Goss (also an Elmhurst grad), who encouraged me to become a professional artist.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

When someone dies in a traffic accident, people often put a wooden cross on the side of the road to mark the spot where the accident occurred.

This one is on US-6, just west of County Road 43, in rural Elkhart County, Indiana.

The cross commemorates a man named Timothy Roach, and has his birth and death dates and age spelled out with the sort of number stickers that people use for mailboxes. He was born on 11-21-58, died 7-2-98, and was 39 years old.

 

[dmr]

When someone dies in a traffic accident, people often put a wooden cross on the side of the road to mark the spot where the accident occurred.

Teddy bears are the rage around here.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I'm finding these photos to be significant.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I'm finding these photos to be significant.

Thanks, Ko.

Teddy bears are the rage around here.

I have seen one here, I think it was where a child died. I haven't been able to photograph it since I found it because the weather hasn't been good.

I did see some teddy bears in New Mexico back in 2011.

 

[dmr]

Around here there have been several resolutions introduced to regulate roadside memorials over the last so many years. I'm not sure if any have actually become law and I'm not that curious to look it up at the time. 🙂

(Sorry to hijack your thread.) 🙂

 

[Rob-F]

Around here there have been several resolutions introduced to regulate roadside memorials over the last so many years. I'm not sure if any have actually become law and I'm not that curious to look it up at the time. 🙂

(Sorry to hijack your thread.) 🙂

I can't think of any reason to prohibit them, unless it would be out of concern that someone might get run over while trying to put one up. I think they do serve a purpose.

 

[Out to Lunch]

Some time ago, I was living in rural France which was dotted with tree lined secondary roads: at one point, the local authorities placed large billboards with photos of people killed in road accidents along these roads...a stark reminder.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I can't think of any reason to prohibit them, unless it would be out of concern that someone might get run over while trying to put one up. I think they do serve a purpose.

Some people think they're an eyesore, which I think is silly.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This rock is famous in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Decades ago (nobody can remember when...it was there when my parents were kids) someone realized that this large rock on Sandpoint Road behind the Hanson Limestone Quarry looked like a frog. That person painted it to look like a frog, and over the years it keeps getting repainted whenever the old paint begins to wear.

No one knows who kept repainting it over the years, but I believe that Hanson keeps it painted now. The appearance changes a bit with each paint job. Once, when I was in high school, some kids painted it orange, with the label "Acid Frog" adorning the side of it! It soon reverted to the traditional green. Through most of my childhood the Frog had a yellow belly.

In the summer of 2012, Hanson's management had the Frog moved to a location next to the quarry's main entrance on Ardmore Avenue. The quarry had bought the part of Sandpoint Road where the Frog had been located, and they closed the road so that the quarry could expand. Because the Frog was a beloved local landmark, the company decided to preserve it.

This is the oldest photograph that I have found of the Frog Rock in my archives thus far. I made it in 1996, 21 years ago.