Moss house, central South Carolina

I can't remember if I've posted this photo before and I'm too tired to scroll through the entire blog. But I felt like seeing this one NOW and figured I might as well put it up here, just in case I hadn't shown it before.

My favorite old house ever, out in the sticks southeast of Columbia SC. When I had to wrap up my novel a few years ago and couldn't do so at home, I took my Olivetti manual typewriter, set it up on an old electric line spool as a desk, and wrote the last few chapters of the book under the back porch of this house. The house is a major character in the second half of the book, so it made sense.

The heat, the insects, the general atmosphere of decay: all there in the book. But that moss is the best part. I generally don't leave trash behind when I camp (I was there for two or three days) but I put my empty bottle of Old Everholt rye whiskey in a closet in the house when I left. My addition to the general decrepitude of the joint.

Crossroads and train depot, Clarksville TN

Took these two photos within 30 minutes of each other when I was a junior in college at Austin Peay State University, fall of 1993. Pentax K-1000. Sweet little camera, a real workhorse that got me through four years of college and my first newspaper job in Winchester, Tennessee. Rudy was her name. She got heavily dented and rendered unusable in a motorcycle accident in 1998, which means I got 7 good years out of her. After that, Rudy was replaced by her twin, whose name I never caught.