In Love

This past weekend I went down to Statesboro, GA for the ArtsFest 2010 (which was a wonderful show).  I took some back roads down there since I don't like driving the boring interstates and it would give me the opportunity to take pictures of old farm buildings for the plates that I've been painting.

When I found the first house to photograph it was quite run down, I was certain it was abandon, the windows were all gone, the fields were all weedy and the buildings were sagging greatly.  We approached the house with some caution and peered threw the windows.  It was too dark to see much except some old rags hanging around windows and door frames.  It seemed that the door was open so I headed around the corner of the house towards the door.  As I carefully approached I heard a noise; a huge vulture flew our the front door missing me by only a few feet.  My heart seemed to stop beating for a minute and before it could resume another vulture flew out following the first.  When my heart started beating again I decided to just take pictures and not explore the interior.

When I was done taking pictures and walked back to my truck I saw a man in a mini van pull up. 

"What are you doing?" he asked.

I explained that I'm an artist and I painted pictures of old farm buildings on some of my pottery.  He said he owned this house and he had more pictures of this place at his other house.  He invited me over, he'd be glad to show them to me.  I was a little nervous about following this man to his house but he did seem harmless enough and I thought it'd be interesting so I jumped into my truck and followed him down to his farm house across the road.

When we went into the house the first thing we saw was that the Christmas tree was still up and decorated; in April.  This is not normally a good sign so I started to worry.  Then the man started to cry.  He explained that his wife had passed away around Christmas and he just didn't have the heart to take down the decorations.  He recovered and showed us the pictures, invited us to stay and visit and have a cool drink, even move in if we'd like.  We decided it would be nice to stay and visit for a few minutes as the man seemed quite lonely.  We chatted until he started talking about happy stuff which I took as a signal that it was a good time to get back on the road.

As we were saying our good-byes and thank yous we noticed the cat was rubbing up against the rooster in that affectionate way that cats will.  It was very cute and we commented as much.
"Oh, those two" he said.  "They are in love; it's embarrassing!"

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