After moving to So. California in my late teens, I'd make the drive
back up to Northern CA, every year after that, to where I was raised so
that I could spend Christmas with my family....driving my BMW as fast
as I could via CA Hiway 99 both ways. This was a lot of fun, however,
the older I got and the more crowded the roads became, it became
more stressful than fun, so I began to take it easy and look
around at what was going on....along the roadside.
To my surprise, I discovered that a lot of the deteriorating remnants of
what used to be a thriving commercial byway, before Interstate 5 was built and bypassed it, was still visible. So, I began stopping here and there to
capture some of it in b&w, with the idea of possibly putting together a
book about the loss of this formerly commercially viable roadway. But,
then I discovered that someone else already had! Besides that, today
it has pretty much recovered to the point where, unfortunately you
can't tell what town you're in because all of the little mini-malls that
have been built along that "roadside" look pretty much the same!
No matter, because I had become just as interested in making
photographs of the old, vintage travel and house trailers I kept
coming across then as well....because they seemed to have other
stories that were all their own, as well. Ironically, in fact, my interest
in these old coaches was what started me down the road of becoming completely involved with the vintage trailer phenomenon at the turn
of the last century....but, for more on this, please see my <INFO>
page. The images here that I've made of these old girls that I've
found all over the state, while looking for the same thing
to collect, resell or restore...are a result of that and the
titles I've given them allude to their imagined stories.
The photography of the three, vintage fire trucks in
front of the Keeler Volunteer Fire Department also makes
for interesting and ironic subject matter. That's because, either
they must not have a lot of fires around the town of Keeler or
there must be some other, newer fire engines around somewhere.
Because, these old trucks are in no condition to be fighting any fires anywhere, anytime soon. Thus the tongue-in-cheek, "Ready To Roll?" title.