PPP Chains

For a number of years during “growing up time” we would travel from our suburban home in central Ohio to the exciting world of Schrag Shorthorn Farms in southeastern South Dakota, where my father and his 6 brothers and two sisters were born and raised. Our experiences there were, I realized in retrospect, probably as unusually for our country cousins as they were for us town kids. But I can only hope they had as much fun. We made quite the horde when our Chicago kin descended over those magical summer times - all told there must have been close to 20 of us cousins - town and country.

I have a wealth of images in a couple of files called Dakota Diaries. No doubt my much more responsible sister has an equal number of earlier images saved in actual photo albums. Perhaps a compilation lurks somewhere in the future as Christine and I nudge towards “moving house” to the Chicago area. At least the odds increase that we will intersect with Margaret and William between their trips to their kids in Florida.

Ansel Adams talks about the magic of the very small and the wonder of the very large, both of which are clearly reflected in his glorious chronicling of the America West. Our thoughts turn that way here in the summer and fall of 2020 as fires ravage the wild and wonderful vistas of that coast. Strangely, South Dakota, perched about as far as you can get from either coast, provided similar glimpses of the magic of the very small and the wonder of the very large. I can clearly remember perching up on the ridgepole of the barn with my cousin Doug, who was my “go to” guy for all things “farmish.” We would peer off across the seemingly endless prairie to the west while he assessed the chances of the distant thunderheads sweeping over our fields that, seemingly, always needed rain. The wonder of the very large.

The PPP image I am working on now comes from the other end of the spectrum, the magic of the very small. When I walked into our modest garage in central Ohio, I would encounter a few bicycles, a “push-it-yourself” power mower with which I would occasionally try to earn some root beer money. Maybe some random boards, baseball bats and basketballs. But that was about it. Walking into any of a number of the outbuildings scattered around the Schrag farms was, to me, like walking into the dwarves workshops in Middle Earth. Mysterious tools, gadgets and gizmos were scattered across counters and benches. Mechanical devices, large and small, lay about in various stages - I assumed - of completion. None of the objects which adorned the walls were intended as decor. But I found them enchanting, and equally important, recognizable. Hence, this starting point for a PPP image called quite simply: Chains: