Sunday, July 16, 2006

Facades

In a world of vertical lines, do you sometimes feel like you’re the only diagonal? This doorway going against the flow is located on a grain elevator in my boyhood town of Morrice, population about seven hundred (more or less), located in central lower Michigan, far from just about everything.

The grain elevator is the largest building and the biggest employer in town, with the possible exception of the Catholic Church. Both sprung up in town shortly after its founding in the early 1800s. Both have done a pretty good business over the years. One taking care of the harvest of grain produced by area farmers; the other taking care of the harvest of souls.

Soul harvest apparently pays better than grain harvest. The church, parsonage and community center consist of freshly laid brick, while the grain elevator remains a hodgepodge of patches, plates and pipes.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2006 James Jordan.

1 comment:

jeff said...

I have often noted that in small town Michigan the nicest buildings are always the churches.