I am riding through the hills of northwest Alabama, my stomach grumbling, staring at the beautiful blue sky. I should’ve eaten lunch back in Red Bay, probably even in Belmont, but the sun sets early this time of year. The film was working beautifully and I didn’t want to miss anything.
The road switches back and forth like a cat’s tail up here. You will come up on a place and not expect it, pass a beautiful faded church but forget about it before you have a chance to turn around. The Clash were playing on the stereo when a town jumped up on me. On the side of what once was a main street there was a man sitting at a couple of propped up tables. A handlettered sign said “BLACK FRIDAY SALE.” The only thing I glimpsed on the tables before taking the next curve was a rack of samurai swords.
Roll Tide Silverado, Collinsville, Alabama, Polaroid SX-70 (2023)
I found myself at a well-maintained cemetery in Hamilton, tucked between a neighborhood and a dealer that sold waverunners and four wheelers, the outdoor yard ringed with razorwire. There was a statue of the Christ freshly painted white, the heart in his hands a primary red. A whole family plot was decorated with Georgia Bulldogs gear. Not old stuff—brand new, and enthusiastic. “TWO-TIME NATIONAL CHAMPIONS,” fluttered a miniature banner over the grave of whom I suppose was the grandfather, flanked by a concrete bulldog statue. We were 307 miles from Athens.
Collinsville, down the street from the Chevy truck and across from the Cricket movie theater
These photos aren’t from that trip; they’re from a few months ago, on the other side of Alabama. Sometimes it takes me a while to think through things. Sometimes I wait too long and forget, and sometimes I need to wait to remember. But I have been thinking about that fella selling swords off a curvy road and thinking about that whole family of Georgia Bulldogs up in the Alabama pines.
I also saw a lopsided cardinal painted up on a water tower I wanted to write a short story about. You know what I mean—it was the local mascot, just the head. I forget where I was. I have never been up on a water tower but I bet it is pretty dang scary—they are tremendously far off the ground. You can imagine someone saying they would paint the team’s emblem up there and not realizing what a challenge it would be. I mean it was sideways basically. I am not going to judge them for it, they finished the job, but I have to think they were petrified the whole time they did it, Woody Woodpecker-colored paint splattered on their shaking cheeks.
Kudzu at the site of my father’s now-demolished high school, Minor High, Birmingham, Alabama, Polaroid SX-70 (2023)
Sometimes as I stand in a field, or edged up close as I can to a feast of kudzu, while nudging broken bricks with my toe, I think I wish I had made a photo of this before they tore it down, or maybe before it burned I should’ve come by, or I wish I had a time machine.
It’s the last one that gets to me, because there aren’t any time machines, not really. It’s just pretend. But you can think to yourself that you would tell the scientist, almost gleaming in her white lab coat, eyes hidden behind thick goggles, send me back to that point where the man was huddled under a coat and scarf on the dark side of the street, selling swords, I want to talk to him, I am worried about him in retrospect, it was in Vina, Alabama, why was he was selling off all those blades, maybe he needed money and was in trouble. It was the day after Thanksgiving, 2023.
Or: Set the dial to the parking lot of Pleasant Grove High School, fall of 1992, doctor. I want to see myself in a bright blue Camaro with hair in my eyes, talking with Vanessa about going to the Tesla concert. Hold on, I can Google the date, I bet I can figure it out. They were playing at Oak Mountain. Firehouse was opening up. I can almost see her now, with skintight jeans so stonewashed they are almost white, the knees shredded out. I can’t see her anymore because she didn’t grow up with us, her body didn’t work like ours. Wait, I don’t think I had a car yet, I rode to the show in the back of that truck with Greg. Wait, whose truck was that? Did we really ride in the back of a truck from Hueytown to Oak Mountain to see a concert? Her body stopped working, not like mine, where sometimes my shoulder hurts when it rains. Her body just stopped. Hold on, I can get the date, if you just give me a minute. Just give me some time.
Meadville, Mississippi, at the Homochitto River Festival, with an SX-70 (2023)
I had spent two days in Tishomingo camping, huddled in my tent at night under crimson-colored blankets. On Thanksgiving day I go on a long hike and I tell the trees and the great rocks of the Appalachian foothills about my family. And I remember.
I remember that my great-grandfather, born 1898, was a machinist. He only had one arm by the time I met him. He fashioned me a tricycle, made it himself in his shop. Bent and shaped metal and rubber into a toy for a new child. This was close to fifty years ago now.
Where is the tricycle, I ask the scientist in the white cotton lab coat. Can you find it, is it still in Sandusky, did we leave it in the old shed out back on Tower Drive? God help me, did it rust, was it thrown out? He made it. He made it with his one hand. He made it for me, and I don’t know where it is. Please, can you help me find it, I only have the softest image of it in my mind. Maybe it wasn’t a tricycle, but I think it was? I just want to see it one more time, I just want to make a photograph of it. Just to be able to remember.
“DISCOUNT SWORDS” is a chapter of GORJUS, a dispatch devoted to art and life in the South, held fast with instant film. I promise it is not always so sad. I don’t think of myself as a sad person. But the passage of time is real, and immense, and intractable. Sometimes I am simply overwhelmed by it all, both the beauty of this world and the glory of my life and that which has passed.
If you liked what you saw and read, if you maybe felt a twang in your belly while you looked it over, then this is for you, and I reckon we would be friends. Consider sending this letter to a pal who is like us. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see an archive of Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.
amazing.
I was listening to Daniel Johnston as the ping of a substack notification arrived. So was already in a sad but beautiful place. What a wonderful piece of writing.