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Saturday 18 February 2012

Not Necessarily a Rest Stop

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/T-azs-shosse-5130.jpg/1024px-T-azs-shosse-5130.jpg

Petrol station «Slavneft» at the 135 km of Yaroslavl highway, on the west side of the highway, near the Car service station in Kasarka place, Pereslavl distric
t: photo by PereslavlFoto, 5 November 2006





The wind was blowing, it was late, the parking lot contained a forlorn fleet of archeopteryx-
like bootlocked shopping carts, a grove of dying potted plants on metal racks,
some scattered shapeless figures with blurred faces, clutched paper sacks, a scent of gas

and drifting acetates, a bitter taste on the black air, that wind, backs turned against it
more out custom than out of choice, there is no choice in this custom, the ghosts of the displaced
forming up in the usual ranks, in the cold whipping nightshadows






http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Bail_Bonds.jpg/1024px-Bail_Bonds.jpg

Bail Bond agency, Indianapolis: photo by Daniel Schwen, 10 September 2008

9 comments:

ACravan said...

Well, that's a nice start to the weekend. I love the shape of this and am a sucker for service station photos like this one, but especially bail bond store fronts. I remember once finding myself (in San Diego of all places) in a hotel that was sited next to a bail bondsman. It was deeply unsettling and I thought that whoever made my reservation either had something against me personally or was from way out of town. Curtis

TC said...

And that's one heck of a welcoming filling station. Lovely place to spend one's saved-up Gulag ration coupons.

The splendid touch in the bail-bond agency shot is the moonshine crock holding the door open. All the better for flight from circulation?

gamefaced said...

almost feels science fiction except it is non. and the science a bit screwy.

TC said...

Da.

In fact true nonfiction legend has it the modern screw-cap was invented in this building in Pereslavl.

But the march of science is inexorable, and leaves only ruins in its wake.

(Just kidding, they're to be having the gardeners in on Monday!)

TC said...

The bus station is another favoured spot, where the local Fashionables meet and greet. They say a bus actually stopped here once, sometime late in the last century.

The wind blows clear and cold and 180 proof.

vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras) said...

Imagine it's 1961, you're inside the bail-bond agency with that jug of white lightnin' and it's a
Quarter to Three!

TC said...

Vassilis, it's ALWAYS fifteen to three in the morning in that particular convenience store parking lot, and it's ALWAYS a quarter to four at that Bail Bonds Agency.

Beautiful yellow console turntable, turn turn turn!

In the winter time in Pereslavl, we take our fun where we find it.

Akeith Walters said...

Nice poem...but great photos.

TC said...

Thanks, Akeith.

I like your late Greyhound leaning against that guardrail (speaking of rest stops.)