Humble Oils

kramerw.com is a name for another site I toyed with. Never really developed legs and walked on its own, but then, the ephemeral nature of some of the collection makes it difficult to categorize.

Not quite a whole site unto itself yet more than just an entry, it’s an image that captivates me every time I walk by. It’s adjacent to the current office PO.

Something I can’t quite grasp about that empty Humble Oils station. Essence? Loneliness? I’d like to think of the name and the images as paean to a bygone era, a footnote in history, a forgotten piece of some larger bit of history.

Because I am merely a tourist, not a resident, I have yet to hear the backstory. I don’t know what tales have been told. Best I could do was dig up a little web-history about the location, and that was pretty thin stuff.

“Owner didn’t return media phone calls.”

One of my cameras that died an inglorious death, “(It) should’ve died hereafter, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace …”

Anyway, that camera – not a good one – caught a special image that I had blown up and printed. The light was suffused and prismatic, rainbow shards of reflected and refracted sunlight showing. It was an error within the camera’s lens and subsystems, the automatic focus puller. Didn’t do right, but in the error, that simple refraction of light?

That’s where the magic happens.

Almost by accident?

No, totally unintentional.