It was over a hundred degrees and skin-cracking dry in Walnut Grove, California one summer day in 1978. I’d stayed in touch with my college roommate Lee (pictured) who had moved to San Francisco. We planned a road trip from his hometown to Reno, Nevada. No sunglasses, not even a hat with a visor, so I didn’t venture out too often with my Rolleiflex from the comfort of his car’s air conditioning.  Suffering for art had its limits, even in my mid 20’s, but I managed a few pictures.

For years I’ve had the bad habit of lining up small projects that I planned to tackle in the next week or two. They would conveniently fit in an empty 11 by 14 inch Kodak box to set aside for later.  Worse was to place that box on a shelf, out of sight, then out of mind. A month later I might have another burst of energy, line up another small project, only to put it in another box. Today, many of the Kodak boxes (some Agfa, some Ilford) are in bigger boxes, and those boxes are in storage. 

Now, with time to unearth what I hope are buried treasures (yes, I purposely buried them), I found this lone strip of three frames from a roll of Kodak Verichrome Pan 120 (the other 9 frames are surely safely parked with another project in another box). I wonder what informed the composition back then - straight-on, edges squared to the frame, a similar distance from the subject, and, to boot, there’s a partial door at the left edge of each frame.  What was I thinking then? Walker Evans? Robert Adams? Now, decades later, with my scanner and Photoshop standing by, I wondered what it would look like if I piled the images on top of each other. I’m convinced that was the plan all along.

But why stop now on this sentimental journey?

I had no clear memory of where the pictures were taken except that it was a sleepy town off the main road somewhere between Reno and San Francisco. And was there a river nearby? If I took notes on this trip they’re lost or buried in box. Enter Google Maps; I followed possible routes and looked for a memory jogger. A couple of places with “Grove” in the name rang a distant bell. Was it Walnut Grove? I went for a walk down Google Street View. What were the odds that these structures might be around almost 45 years later? I am pretty certain that I found two of them, both rather worse for wear.  A bit patched up and hiding a few clues, check out my finds below. It’s amazing that they’re still standing.

Lee Crown was born on January 24, 1952 and died on June 11, 2021 in the city he loved, San Francisco.

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