63/77 |   1989 |   2005 |   2006 |   2008 |   2009

In August 2005 and January 2006 I made two trips trips to East Texas, first to help organize a show of my jazz photographs at the Longview Museum Of Fine Arts and later to attend the opening. I repeated the process again in December 2008 and June 2009, when I had another show at the museum.

When I was not attending to matters related to the shows, I drove around the countryside, my cameras loaded with black and white as well as color film. The primary purpose of the excursions in 2005 and 2006 was to find images that might be useful as chapter headings for my novel, Rose Hill. I managed to take a few photographs that may work in the book, but the vast majority didn’t relate in any way to Rose Hill. They had to do with what I believed was a fascinating yet little explored subject: Highway 80. I took many more photographs in 2008 and 2009.

US Highway 80 was the axis of these journeys, from Terrell in the west to Waskom in the east. Jacksonville was the furthest I ventured south; Daingerfield was the most northerly. For the most part, however, I stuck pretty close to the Highway 80 corridor, venturing a few miles north or south, with multiple trips to a few towns and hamlets in and around Kilgore and Winona.

Old Highway 80, near Hallsville, 2009