PP: Part Twenty Six

I am a sucker for old schoolbuses being reclaimed by nature. That old style curved edge bus rusting back down to dirt while vines start to grasp it... again, if I was a man of better financial status affording me ridiculous leisure time, I’d probably cultivate gardens like this as opposed to fancy hedges. Like on my estate, I’d say, “You should see my maze,” and you’d think of aerial photos of hedgerows forming celtic patterns, but then we’d get out there and it’d be like 125 schoolbuses grown over with poison ivy, but with pea gravel walkways. And I’d have every bus full of a different kind of toy I never could get as a broke ass kid with my broke ass parents, just sitting there going to waste. A schoolbus full of Legos over here, one full of Ghostbusters lunchboxes there, G.I. Joes in that one... shit, there’d probably a few G.I. Joe-filled schoolbuses. All I ever had was those little plastic things with the bases that were all green, but you could also get brown ones for a different army, or if you were lucky the drug store had a blue set of Germans every now and then the same time you’re stupid broke ass young mom had an extra 79 cents. Man, times have changed. There’s not even a symbol for cents on my computer. No wonder Americans are so fucking fat and lazy and perfectly deserving of the shitty leaders we always get.

When I started this Polaroid project, I set up the rule that I was only allowed one picture per vehicle. Most of the time, I have been fine with that rule, because I’m just a dude who likes to take archaic format snapshots of old shitty cars, not some guy trying to get “that perfect shot” from every angle imaginable. But I have to admit, after having passed this Jesus Saves bus at the Pentecostal church outside of Dillwyn a bunch of times, I was disappointed with how this particular image turned out. The southside Virginia white people church with a literal conversion van (err... bus) with graffiti “JESUS SAVES” plus Romans 10:13 in script on the front needs to be properly preserved inside the internets. I’ve wondered if they had some kid who was city art college delinquent who found the lord after a bad bout of ecstasy abuse to do it, or it was a local kid who just was stoked to have a giant thing to paint on, or if they had to hire someone to do it? They’ve come a long way from handling snakes.

Farmville Christmas Parade, last year. Slick Chevrolet crosses the cobblestone and retard dude who’s just shorn his dreadlocks clicks clumsily at his obsolete Polaroid camera. No one is concerned.

This is from over by Mike Gee’s house too, and I liked it because you see the orange paint motif, but it’s always fresh and shiny. This is an old ass orange paint job, faded and rusted as fuck. I would park this car on my front porch if my wife would let me, and also if we didn’t already have a chest freezer, two dressers we found in alleys, an old cast iron woodstove, and seven wooden chairs on it already.