Sometimes I see 'rural ruin' pictures where the poster can only guess at the history. I know the history of this set rather well, at least up to a point. This is the junkyard my dad had next to his garage in rural North Carolina. Dad used that junkyard for spare parts from at least 1975 until he died in fall of 2011. We built race cars, off-road ( Read more... )

My Dad died this morning. I don't really want to write about his death, so much as I want to say a few positives about his life, but I guess I have to write about both. It wasn't entirely unexpected - this was his forth fight with cancer. (Possibly 3rd, since this could have been what they didn't catch the last time. I guess it really doesn't ( Read more... )

After this quarter's finals next week, I've got a break of two weeks. My dad has been in pretty bad shape the last year or so and bookwurm and I had been going back and forth on driving down to NC to visit him, my mother, and my grandmother for a few days. After a lot of consideration I'd finally come to the conclusion that this was a trip we probably ( Read more... )