50. Rustiques & Young’uns.

Julien, Alice, Sidney.

Julien, Alice, Sidney and the International Buffalo Pumper, built in 1937. Goose Creek Run. Courtesy Jack Taylor.

“Rustiques” includes vehicles, farm implements, and other machinery that became too old and retired to pasture or yard. A few are repurposed–e.g., the yellow cab of a truck into a shelter for children waiting for the school bus. A few are obviously on display in honor of past generations, but most are oxidized, battered, even scattered. No ordinance seems to require their removal, no scrap-metal drive urges it. At worst slovenly, at best authentic. For in ever-varying shapes, compositions, and states of decay, they make up a catalogue of site-specific, sub-art installations. Their own tombstones, they seem like metal parallels to the dilapidated wooden houses and outbuildings that embellish the landscape. Do they not mark the continuity of a family? Add up to the museum of a community? The author deemed it pointlessly interesting to photograph these relics with children beside them. 

boysCar 640

The bros drive their off-road vehicle along New Haven Rd. SE.

Julien by truck 2

Julien wears Grandpa’s garbage-bag raincoat and waits for tow-truck on Penn Rd. NW.

 

Alice.

        Alice’s off-road vehicle near 221 N. 

 

Name

Zachary on horse-drawn road-grader used by the highway department in Floyd County and later converted for pulling by tractor. Probably manufactured in the 1920s or early ’30s. Plate reads Square Deal No. 2 Joadans & Co. Indianapolis. Photo and information by PaPa Irvine Hylton.

 

Sidney and Julien.

      Bros about town near School House Fabrics.

 

Heidi watches Daniel flip to a different sign on an industrial trailer.

Heidi watches Daniel flip a sign on a disused industrial trailer near relic of garment factory behind Food Lion.

 

Sid and Maya.

Sid and Maya take a smoke break before next delivery.

 

Unika at the walk-behind tiller.

Unika bosses the walk-behind tiller, Anahata Community.

 

Samuel Hope by Roberson Mill.

Samuel Hope and mother by the Roberson Mill wheel.

 

Sid, who received $1for this imposition of a pose outside Ray's Restaurant.

Sid accepts his grandfather’s $1 honorarium to pose near Ray’s Restaurant.

 

Amid its 87th or 88th autumn, the gasoline tank of a former General Motors pickup truck fuels a lad's interest. Courtesy Ralph and Ellie Roe.

Leaf, lad, fuel tank and segment of a chassis on the property of Ralph and Ellie Roe, New Haven Rd.*

  • Pamela Swortzel, on the Floyd Group Facebook page, identified the remnants in the photograph above as of a Chevrolet truck 1927-1930. Ralph’s wry observation: “With a little bit of restoration, such as patching, sanding, painting, and adding a motor, radiator, crank, pickup bed, transmission, dashboard, seats, rear end, bumpers, and cab it would be a proud classic.” Below is Ralph Roe’s photo of the label affixed to the chassis, worth $50 on eBay. 

ddd