Graveyard of Machines

Marco and I were heading north, I following his lead. We were working our way along secondary roads towards home, having left Louisiana behind. The GPS would connect us back to the highway eventually. This was an photo road trip for both of us, a chance to make images that we wanted, rather than what we were being paid to produce at work. The beauty of a motorcycle road trip is the ability to see the landscape with a commanding view of your surroundings. It’s much better than being in an automobile, but the risks are greater as well. Too much sight seeing while riding can lead to distraction, and placing yourself in a dangerous situation. Today, other circumstances would produce the same results.

I can’t tell you where we were with certainty. It could have been Mississippi, Tennessee, or further east. A country road in the middle of Anywhere, USA. I watched Marco slow and pull the bike off the country road. I knew exactly what he was looking at.

On our left was a field, with a house set well back on the property. A rough track led back towards the house. The property between the house and roadway was littered with perhaps 40 to 50 farm tractors and equipment. The tractors ranged from newer to ancient, rusting and gradually returning to the earth they had tilled. It was an amazing sight. The dilapidated house sat in the background, beyond the graveyard of machines.

Marco and I pulled our cameras from the saddlebags. The property was fenced with wire, an old weathered wooden gate a few feet off the road. I locked on a long telephoto. and swept the field. Perhaps we were there for four of five minutes. We stayed on the road, wondering if we should knock on the door and ask to snap a few images. I snapped a few frames.

Approaching the gate, a sign revealed itself. It’s yellowed paper was covered in plastic. It was badly weathered, but still readable. It said:

IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU ARE IN RANGE.

I looked out to the farmhouse in the distance, the windows too dark to tell if a rifle was being trained on us. Marco and I looked at at other and slowly backtracked across the street to the motorcycles. We packed the cameras away and mounted the bikes, making a hasty exit.