Detritus of the Move - Changing Offices at WES

In mid-2004, the laboratory where I worked moved into a new building. I managed to be out of town during the move (that was good timing!), but upon return to Vicksburg, I wandered around the old building to see what was left. It was largely junk that no one wanted to take to their nice and clean new offices - debris that probably should have been dumped a long time before. My coworkers were scientists and engineers; we are the type of people who keep stuff - forever (just in case we might need it...).

9-track tapes used with older VAX-VMS computer systems. For decades. this is how you sent data to other scientists. You have seen tape reels like this in news articles of the Gemini and Apollo space missions. 

We still used these sturdy analogue telephones. The wheel on the right is a Kodak Carousel slide tray.

The manuals on the table are for Microstation software. In the 1990s, Microstation made you buy  proprietary workstations to run their software - at extortionist prices, of course.

A particle-board ersatz wood-grain computer station. Furniture at its best.

Good debris on another example of particle-board furniture. Definitely not worth moving.

That was a good Scotch tape dispenser!

Compared to the 9-track tapes, here we have "modern" data storage media: compact disks (CDs). The CD was originally developed as a music media to replace LP records, and a CD of about 640 mbytes could include the entire contents of Symphony 9 by Beethoven in uncompressed format.

More of the Microstation manuals and the proprietary Microstation keyboard. This software was used for bathymetry charts and analysis of sounding data. 

Trash is often interesting. Here we have Polaroid instant 35mm film and boxes of diskettes. 

Finally, a sad plant. "Take me with you!"

Photographs taken with a Leica M2 rangefinder camera on Kodak BW400 film. This was a black and white film that could be developed in C-41 chemistry, like any common color print film.

From the Archives: a Day at the Beach, Geneva, 2000

Dear Readers, today was the July 4th holiday in USA, and it was an opportune day to look through old boxes of slides and purge "pretty" pictures. And here in Mississippi, it was hot and muggy, so these scenes of the cool clear water of Lac Leman (Lake of Geneva) made me wish that I were there.

The Bains des Pâquis are on a man-made peninsula that juts out into Lac Leman from the north shore in Geneva. It was an unusually hot spell in June of 2000, and I had a few spare days in Geneva, so swimming was of definite interest. You pay a modest admission and can rent towels and use a changing cabana. The water flows to the west, or left to right in these photographs. Many of the conservative Calvinist Swiss ladies seem to lose part of their swimming suits when they visit the Pâquis.

I took these photographs with a Leica rangefinder camera through a 20mm Russar lens. This was a marvelous design made in the Soviet Union. The lens was a bit hard to use, but under the right conditions, had wonderful optical quality. I sold it several years ago, and, of course, now wish I still had it (you know how that goes).

Changing cabins at the Jetée Des Pâquis, Geneva.

All the water from Lac Leman flows out the west end of the lake into the Rhône River, past Lyon, and finally to a broad river delta in the Mediterranean Sea south of Arles. Geneva is an interesting and historic destination with easy access to hiking areas in the Swiss and French Alps. Definitely go.

Shotgun Houses and Grayson Court, Jackson, Mississippi - 2004

Grayson Court was an old-fashioned alley running south from East Fortification Street and just west of North Lamar Street in Jackson.

I do not know much about the history of these types of "courts," but I assume they were built in the early 20th century to house industrial workers. The men from Grayson likely went to Mill Street to the railroad or various industrial concerns, while the women worked as domestics around town.

By the early 2000s, the little houses at Grayson Court were in poor condition. But some had been recently refurbished.

I met a gent with painting equipment and tools at one house. He said he had been fixing the houses and was mad that they had been condemned. Then another fellow came up and the painter chased him away with a hammer. The carpenter said he was a drug-dealer.

Some of the houses had been secured to prevent vandalism. But in the mid-2000s, all these houses were cleared away, and the site is now a flat empty lot.

A few blocks away, on Blair Street, rows of early 20th century cottages were also closed and secured. Notice that the porch supports are missing in this 2004 photograph. Here, too, I think most of these houses have been demolished. Possibly a reader can share some history of this area.

Photographs taken with a Fuji GW690II 6×9 medium format camera on Kodak Panatomic-X film, developed in Agfa Rodinal developer at 1:50 dilution. The camera was tripod-mounted for all of these frames.

Country Stores 16: Windham's Gro., Caile, Mississippi

In April of 2017, I was driving south on Mississippi highway 49W, and about half way between Indianola and Belzoni, came across this little country store. The store looked unused, but a car to the left indicated that the house behind was occupied.

The faded sign said, "Sid Winham's Gro., Caile, Miss". Possibly a reader can tell us about Sid Windham or when the store was last open.

I took these photographs with a Rolleiflex 3.5E with 75mm ƒ/3.5 Schneider Xenotar lens using Kodak Panatomic-X film. I scanned the negatives with my Minolta Scan Multi medium format film scanner using Silverfast Ai software.

Country Stores 15: Poboy Don's, Tallulah, Louisiana

Just east of Tallulah, Louisiana, LA route 602 takes a wide swing through the farm country south of Interstate 20. An old country store sits at the corner of Montrose Road and 602. It was an active little shop and snack bar in 1989 when I took some photographs on 4×5" Fujichrome 50 film. I do not know when the store closed, but my Tallulah friend said he remembered eating there about 20 years ago.

In recent years, my friends and I have been biking on 602 because it passes by ponds with plenty of birds and alligators. But the old store has been closed at least since 2015.

June 11, 2022 Update: While biking on 602, I saw two fellows repairing the siding. They said they will convert it into a hunting camp. One of them said his grandmother built the store in the early 1950s.

Vermilion flycatcher, an occasional and rare winter visitor, LA route 602 near Mound

Smooth bike riding on LA 602 and very little traffic.

Summer wildflowers on LA 602.

I took the 1989 frames with my Tachihara 4×5" camera and 180mm Caltar IIN lens on Fujichrome 50. A generous friend gave me an Epson 3600 Photo scanner, which has a light cover large enough for 4×5, so I am slowly scanning old transparencies and black and white negatives. The 2017 black and white frames are from a medium format Hasselblad with Tri-X professional 320 film.

Country Stores 14: Wagner Grocery, Church Hill, Mississippi, in the heat with Ektar 25 film

This is a continuation of my irregular series on country stores and no. 02 in my irregular series on Abandoned Films ("Films from the Dead?). 

It was almost 95° F. one typical day last summer; I had received my Rolleiflex camera back from repair and wanted to test it. Where to go? Well, Church Hill, on Rte. 533 south of Alcorn State University, had an old country store, so off I went. It was also a good opportunity check some long-expired Kodak Ektar 25 film. This was one of the finest-resolution color print films ever made, and I still had 5 rolls in the freezer.

By the time I reached Church Hill, the temperature was converging on 100° (37° C.) and the light was harsh and glarey. OK, typical Mississippi August day. Just be careful to not drip sweat into your viewfinder. There is an old wood grocery store on Rte. 533 a bit north of Church Hill. There was no name on the building. It was secure, so not a derelict.

Just to the south, the elegant stone Gothic Revival Church is on a knoll at the road junction. Dating to 1857-1858, it is said to be the oldest Episcopal Church in Mississippi.

Right across the street from the Episcopal Church is the historic Wagner grocery. The building is reasonably sound and may be under renovation.

This is a crop from the full-size TIFF file showing the Coca-Cola sign on the building facade. Notice the amazing detail recorded on the Ektar 25 film and this 1950s lens.

Like many rural stores in the old days, this one served as the local post office for the town of Church Hill.

The detail and texture from this 1950s 5-element 75mm ƒ/3.5 Schneider Xenotar lens and the Ektar 25 film is quite amazing. I have no complaints. A modern medium format digital camera might show more detail, but this looks different than digital. Note that scanned at 48-bit full color and at 2820 dpi, the 54×54 mm Rolleiflex negative results in a 218 mbyte uncompressed TIFF file. This film likely contains even more detail, but I do not have a higher-resolution scanner. I tripod-mounted the Rolleiflex camera for all frames.

The Mississippi Delta 19: Into the Woods in Redwood (B&W film)

Redwood is a small community north of Vicksburg on Hwy. US 61 (the "Blues Highway"). Most people rush by heading to Eagle Lake or Yazoo City, but there are some interesting photographic topics (well, if you like old things, as I do). Redwood is at the southern margin of the Mississippi Delta; north and west of here stretch the flat farmlands and hardwood bottomland of the Mississippi River's alluvial plain.

Abandoned cement silo off Rte. 3. 35mm film, Pentax Spotmatic camera, 35mm Super-Takumar lens.

US 61 swings west after it crosses the Yazoo River, while MS Hwy. 3 proceeds north to Yazoo City. The hulking abandoned cement silos are just off Hwy. 3 about a mile south of the Vicksburg International Paper Mill. I have photographed these silos before. The tracks serve the paper mill and a rail yard further north.

Quite by chance, I drove up a dirt road across the highway from the silos and found this abandoned concrete structure and some sort of crushing mill. I am not sure what it once crushed. It resembles a giant version of the incense burners you see in monasteries in the Himalaya in Nepal.

Hmmm, a snake lives in the pond underneath the concrete frame. Was water from the pond once used in the crushing process? By mid-spring, poison ivy takes over.

There are a couple of abandoned houses along Rte. 3, but nothing too interesting.

Just north of the International Paper plant, the rails fan out into a rail yard, with a lot of parked rolling stock. The tracks end, and I do not know if they once continued north to Yazoo City. The photograph above is the view looking south, with the paper plant at the horizon.

Most of the square photographs were taken with a Rolleiflex 3.5E camera with Xenotar lens. The film was Kodak Panatomic-X, with expiration date 1989 but it still performs perfectly. I wrote about Panatomic-X earlier this year. The close-up of the crushing mill was from a Mamiya C220 camera with 55mm Mamiya lens on Kodak Tri-X Professional 320 film. I previously wrote about the silos in 2010 and in 2017.

The Mississippi Delta 18: Grace Church, Glen Allen

Grace Church is a modest wood frame building at 6260 Grace Road, just east of Mississippi Hwy. 1 in Issaquena County. Grace is not really a town but rather a farming community a few miles northwest of Rolling Fork. Do any of you readers know the age of the church?

There are silos, sheds with farm equipment, and a few homes along Grace Road. I am sure I have missed some places to photograph, so I'll return in autumn. Also, nearby Rolling Fork is worth some more exploring.

For previous articles on the Delta, type "Mississippi Delta" in the search box on the right.

These photographs are from my Fuji GW690II 6×9 medium format camera with a 90mm ƒ/3.5 lens. The film was my favorite Kodak Panatomic-X, long discontinued but still in good condition.