Pauls Valley, Oklahoma

About 10 years ago, while Jackie was attending a conference in Dallas, I was forced to leave town under questionable circumstances after causing a minor situation at the infamous book repository high above equally infamous the grassy knoll.   After being shocked to find out that the good people of Dallas had the nerve to want me to pay $8 for the dubious privilege of walking up 4 or 5 flights of steps to see the window from which Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot JFK, I suggested that they should be the one's paying reparations to the rest of us for something that happened on their watch, rather than profiting handsomely from their complicity, inattention, and ineptitude, that was further attested to by the killing of Lee Harvey right under their noses.  Metaphor intended... The whole thing still reeks, and they were not amused.

High tailing it out of town one step ahead of the mind police,  I thought I may as well see Oklahoma while I was in the neighborhood, and ended up in the most extraordinary time capsule of a place, Pauls Valley, a town seemingly bypassed by time and progress, isolated from change and still living in the 1950's, with no shopping centers or box stores to sap the vitality of a downtown.  I often reminisced about the joy of holing up there and since we were passing by on the way back to Austin,  Jackie needed to see this mythical town, and I needed a reality check as well.  It was a short stop this time around and when you are just passing through, you take what you can get.  The sun was out, there were clouds in the sky, and though I was shooting from the hip with no time to linger, got some good shots and the place was just as I remembered it, although the dark clouds of doom were on the horizon as I discovered on the access road leaving town.

One thing I was surprised to see when looking at these photos was the fact that there was no one on the streets, something that might be explained by the temps, 87 degrees when we were there...

Or possibly the reason there is no one on the street has to do with the recently built Walmart Super Center and other such life sucking entities that now stand along the access roads at the edge of town, draining all of the life out of this once vibrant and self contained community where people once came into town to buy shoes and clothes and appliances or hardware or what ever and linger on the sidewalk or coffee shop talking to their neighbors.  The people of Pauls Valley obviously didn't understand the implications of allowing demonically predatory Walmart into their home to destroy their economy and way of life, all so that they could but cheap shit from China that they don't really need but which is all they can afford working for slave wages they earn at one of the most despicable employers in the country.    The unholy alliance of China/Walmart will poison them in the end.  And that's why there are no people in these photos taken in mid afternoon on a normal business day.

                                                                          Pablo