BEING A DETECTIVE

My former school in Berkley, Michigan where I attended the seventh and eighth grades. All the students could walk to this school. The school was razed a few years ago as the administration felt there were not enough students attending. Land was sold to a housing developer. Photo was provided by an old schoolmate that attended Oxford School with me. Thanks -- Dallas

I have always been a detective of sorts. I began this lifestyle when I was young by filling empty cigar boxes with small items that intrigued me -- such as political pins, old photographs, old buttons, letters, jewelry, crackerjack trinkets, stones, and other items that I categorize as mementos. I wanted to know everything about these items -- they became part of my detective work as I pieced my young world together. 

As an adult I still hunt and find pieces that were and still may be the building blocks of our society. Only now instead of finding items that would fit into cigar boxes I find items both small and large. I find them in houses, trees, cities, barns, streets, clothes, paper-goods, small towns, photography, etc. They are not glamorous nor endowed with sophistication. They are what our society would probably feel is common or even in some cases lowly. These common or lowly objects tell me something about how we existed in our past and in many cases how we even still exist today. 

Yet these building blocks aren't really blocks that are stable. They fade and are replaced -- thus changing our world -- economically. financially. and environmentally. They are only temporary  -- until they are replaced.