THE SLOW FADE

By MICHAEL PERKINS

IT USED TO BE SAID OF CERTAIN RAMSHACKLE STRUCTURES that, if the termites inside it ever stopped holding hands, they would disintegrate.

Over the years, roaming with a camera through every kind of borough, village, burg and town, I’ve often wondered what force inside them was still “holding hands” strongly enough to keep them from collapsing or merely blowing away. Photographers, for reasons rooted in too many years of bias and cliche, are naturally drawn to decay, to the impending end of stuff. Not only do we seek out those things that are just about to vanish, but we feel a near moral obligation to document them, ofttimes spending more time capturing the twilights of buildings than we do their grand openings. And so it goes.

Sunbury, Ohio, about twenty miles northeast of Columbus, is a town that has taken its good old time vanishing beneath the waves. It is a master class in the fine art of the slow fade. As far back as I can recall, it has always been in the process of, if you will, going out of business. Its central square comprises nearly the entire town (village?), its businesses in a content state of near vacancy. There are thousands of such towns all across the midwest, places where, at some time, it seemed a good idea to nail two boards together and start some kind of enterprise, driven by jobs, nature, religion, or just an urge to get good and goddamn far away from wherever it was you started. Who knows why we head out for parts unknown, or how we know, yes, this is a good place to stop wandering.

In such places, the storefronts that promise Good Eats, Cafe, Breakfast, or Dine-In-Or-Take-Out act as these towns’ few solid pillars, as if the attractive force of their various Tuesday Lunch Specials is enough to keep the entire encampment from vanishing in the next strong wind. I am drawn to whatever effort is put forth at such joints to dress things up, to liven the display window, hang a little color from the porch, hand-letter the street signs. Now that this picture is about a year old, I almost wish I had walked inside the world of the Sunbury Grille on that day and checked out that was on offer. I’m always careful, however, when snapping images of these places, as if I’m obviously branding myself as an Outsider, someone who is Not From Around Here. Traveling through small-town America is like riding an an uncertain wave that may crest on a high of hospitality or founder on a beach of Otherness. All I can tell, in clicking off a frame or two, is that something in this place is still keeping the lights on, still holding hands.